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All he'd need for that one was a Reparo. "Oh, sure. No problem."

"What about sawing people in half?"

Draco started, sure he must have heard that wrong. But no, she was making a little sawing motion with one of her hands, her gaze expectant as she looked at him. Hopeful, even.

Merlin's balls, she was actually serious!

Draco's stomach started churning. The moment she'd mentioned such a gruesome act, his mind had flown straight to the one topic he tried hard never to think about. Samhain.

He'd arrived in that clearing expecting to see Harry tortured. Worse, he'd been looking forward to it. He'd wondered what the Dark Lord would do to Harry Potter. He'd come up with some ideas, too. Ideas that made him shudder, now.

True, he'd never once thought about seeing Harry sawn in half, of all things, but he'd imagined other things that were just as horrible. Worse, even. And then, what he'd actually seen happen . . . Harry, held fast to the ground as he was stabbed and stabbed and stabbed. Harry's eyes, saved for last. Harry, blinded.

The whole thing had been utterly sickening.

And the worst part of all, perhaps, was that Draco hadn't thought so, not back then. He'd been too caught up in his paradigm shift, too shocked at learning the horrible truth that a life in the Dark Lord's service could only be a life of slavery. Besides, he'd hated Harry, and realising that Harry was braver and stronger than every Death Eater there had only made Draco hate him all the more. It was so unfair. Harry was the enemy, the one who'd scorned his offer of friendship. Who bested him at Quidditch, who spoiled the Dark Lord's plans, who was to blame for Lucius' brief stay in Azkaban. Harry was even at fault for that awful summer when Lucius had been enraged at the loss of an elf.

It wasn't right that he should exhibit pride and confidence while the Death Eaters grovelled at the Dark Lord's feet.

It wasn't right, but it was true, so Draco had done his best to cope. Getting Harry's wand. Befriending him like Severus and Dumbledore had ordered. Telling Slytherin the truth, even though they wouldn't listen.

Any more than he would have listened to someone claiming that a half-blood, any half-blood, was a better bet than the Dark Lord himself. The words raving loony came to mind. No wonder the others couldn't understand. They hadn't been in that clearing. They hadn't seen what Draco had seen.

The torture hadn't bothered Draco so very much at the time, but now, he found the whole thing profoundly sickening. True, he hadn't known back then that Harry would someday be his brother, but perhaps that was just the point. Harry was his brother now, and when Draco thought of what Lucius had done to him, when he thought of the way that he himself had simply stood there watching . . .

It was no wonder Draco was feeling ill.

He told himself that the fish must have been off, but he knew it was really the memories bothering him.

"Draco?"

Oh, right. Rhiannon wanted to know if Draco was in the habit of sawing people in half. Just the thought of it almost made him shudder, which showed how much he'd changed, he supposed. He didn't think it would have bothered him before Samhain. Or not much. "No, I don't do tricks like that."

Pushing his food away, he struggled to find a change of topic. His glance fell on a square sheet of newspaper that the breeze was trying to catch. Draco snatched it up and peered down at the headlines. "Oh," he said in as bright a voice as he could manage. "It says here that they're building a line from Paddington to Bayswater. Looks like a number of houses are going to be demolished to make way for it."

Rhiannon raised an eyebrow. "Very funny."

Draco didn't know what she meant, so he took a closer look at the broadsheet. Then he felt a perfect fool. It wasn't real! Or if it was, it wasn't anything close to current. The date at the top wasn't even in the right century!

"Bit odd they'd be wrapping the fish in newspaper over a hundred years old," he said, keeping his tone light in an effort to cover his confusion.

It must have worked, since that time, Rhiannon chuckled. "Hmm, good point. Say, you think it might be a reproduction?"

Oh. That made sense. Well, some, Draco supposed. "I don't really understand why they'd use newspaper at all, to be honest."

Maybe he shouldn't have been quite that honest. "You haven't had take-away fish and chips before, have you?"

"Uh . . ." Too late now to call his remark back. "No, actually."

She gave a slight sigh, as if that had come as a disappointment. "All right. Well, it's traditional to use newspaper, but then people started thinking the ink might be poisonous, something like that, so now they make special paper and print it with old headlines. I mean, the ink in that is supposed to be safe with food."

"Oh."

"I thought you were joking, that bit about the District Line. But now . . . you've never been on the Tube?"

Draco wasn't sure what the "Tube" was, but he knew better than to ask. It was something he ought to know, clearly, and he felt like he'd made enough gaffes for one date. He made a mental note to ask Harry about tubes later. "No. Can't say as I have."

Her gaze narrowed. "You probably go about in a fancy car. A Bentley, unless I miss my guess."

At least that time he could figure out what she meant by Bentley. "I've never once been in a Bentley." Or any car, he thought, but didn't say. Well, at least it seemed clear now that whatever this tube was, it involved transport. Draco couldn't imagine what kind, though. It sounded awful.

"That's good. Colin--he was the worst of the rich boys at Chatham, the absolute pits, really--used to brag about his father's Bentley constantly. I can't tell you much I wanted to smack him. People that go on about their money and try to show off how much of it they have . . ." She shuddered, then finished the last of her soda. "So, you said you went to school in Scotland? That's a long way."

She was hinting, trying to find out how he travelled there, Draco thought. She probably thought he'd gone by private car. Had some servant drive him, something like that. Well, this was as good a chance as any to let her see that he wasn't like those prats at Chatham. "Oh, yeah, it takes almost a full day just to get to my school. I go by train, of course."

He'd always thought that taking the Express along with the rest of the students, Muggle-borns included, was a tiny bit common. He'd have preferred to Floo to school. But now, he was relieved that he'd had some experiences Rhiannon would think of as normal.

"And your father teaches there. Um . . . is that just a hobby for him, something like that?"

Draco slanted her a glance, thinking the question a very odd one. "No. Oh, he likes his subject well enough, though. Why would you think it's just his hobby?"

Rhiannon shrugged, the motion a little defensive to Draco's eyes. "Well, in my experience, wealthy people don't work at jobs like that. They're in finance, or investments, that sort of thing."

"Oh," said Draco, catching on. "I think you've got hold of the wrong end, there. Severus isn't wealthy. Only Harry and I are." Then, realising that sounded a little bit daft, he decided he'd better explain. "Harry's father left him a lot of money, you see. And I ended up with a bequest from a distant relative. Bloke I'd never met, actually. But none of that has anything to do with Severus."

Rhiannon's lips thinned. "Your brother's rich, too? He doesn't act it."

"Well, it's kind of complicated, but he didn't know he had any money until just a few years ago. He'd been orphaned, and he grew up with relatives who weren't very nice to him, but then they died too, and Severus adopted him."

"You grew up with money, though."

She said it like it was a character flaw. Those rich kids must have given her a harder time than Draco had realised. Clearly, she didn't trust wealthy people and was overlooking the money, in Draco's case.