Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

"Yes?"

"Who do you think she is?"

Draco knew immediately what he meant. "I don't know," he said honestly.

"She looked like Hermione. It was a good disguise."

"But you have guesses? I know you do."

Draco nodded, slightly. The sun had risen outside the window, but there was still no color in Harry's face. He looked wan and ghostly, and Draco was suddenly reminded of the way he had looked second year, when he'd toppled off his broom during a match, and the bone in his arm had broken with a sickening crack. Draco hadn't been at all sorry, but a certain primal empathy of feeling had made him wince all the same. He remembered Harry's sick, pained, white-faced look then — he looked the same now. "Who hates me that much?" Harry said, and his voice was a little wistful. "To plan something like that?"

"If it's any consolation, Potter," said Draco, as gently as he could, "by my calculations, it didn't have anything to do with hating you."

The sky outside Dumbledore's office window was pale gray, streaked with darker gray clouds. Hermione kept her eyes apathetically fixed on it while she waited for the headmaster to arrive. She was exhausted, having not slept all night, and she felt slightly dizzy. She had been absolutely dreading breakfast, but to her relief, McGonagall had been the first person to knock on her door in the morning, and had requested that she come straight to Dumbledore's office. Well, that wasn't exactly true. Harry had knocked on her door late in the night, and she'd opened the door, taken one look at him, and shut the door in his face.

I know he came to apologize, she thought. She'd seen it in his face. But she hadn't wanted to hear it then. She didn't want to hear it now. She wondered if she ever would.

The door opened behind her, and she heard someone come into the room.

A throat was cleared, and a voice spoke: it was Dumbledore, as she'd known it would be. "I'm afraid I need to speak with you, Miss Granger."

Hermione turned and looked listlessly at the headmaster. "I know, sir."

He moved to stand behind his desk, looking very grave indeed. "Please come and sit down, Miss Granger."

Hermione nodded. She had no idea how much the professors knew about the events of the night before. A great deal, she imagined — she'd seen it in McGonagall's face, and saw it now in Dumbledore's. At another time this would have withered her with humiliation, but now she was beyond the point of caring. She went towards the seat that Dumbledore had indicated, in front of his desk, and sat down, clasping her hands in her lap. "What did you want to talk to me about, Professor?" she asked.

Dumbledore took the seat behind his desk, and regarded her gravely over the top of his gold-rimmed spectacles. "A rather serious matter, I'm afraid," he said gently. "Normally I would not call you in to discuss the private business of another student, even a close personal friend of yours…"

"I know," she interrupted, her own voice sounding a little desperate in her ears. She kept her eyes fixed on his desk: "You want to talk to me about Harry."

There was a short silence. Hermione kept her eyes fixed on Dumbledore's desk: Finally, he spoke, still gently, "No, Miss Granger. I wanted to talk to you about Mr. Weasley."

She raised her eyes slowly, and the compassionate kindness she saw in his expression almost undid her. "About Ron?" she whispered.

He nodded. "Mr. Weasley has left us," he said.

For a brief and bizarre moment, Hermione thought that he meant that Ron was dead. The room seemed to tilt crazily around her, and she grabbed tightly at the arms of her chair. "He's what?"

"He has resigned as Head Boy," said Dumbledore. He glanced down, and she followed his gaze. Only then did she realize that the shiny square she had noted earlier was a badge…Ron's Head Boy badge, to be precise. It was upside-down, and she could see the inscribed lettering where his name was printed, backwards. "He has left Hogwarts."

"Left school? But how could he…"

"Classes are over for this term," Dumbledore said. "I could compel him to stay, if I wished. But I saw no point in it. I hope he will want to return, once the holidays are over…"

"No," Hermione whispered, staring at the silver badge on the desk. "He can't have left, he can't — "

"Miss Granger, I had hoped that we could discuss the fact that, since there is no longer an acting Head Boy at Hogwarts — "

"No," Hermione said again, and stood up so fast that her chair crashed to the ground. "Headmaster, I — is there any chance he's still here, do you know, has he left yet?"

Dumbledore regarded her with cautious alarm, rising from his seat. "He went to clean out his room and to collect his belongings," he began, and might have added something else, but Hermione did not wait to hear it.

She turned on her heel, and ran out of the room, leaving Dumbledore staring after her.

The door to Ron's room was closed, but not locked. Hermione flung it open, and stepped inside. Her heart sank.

The room was bare. The Chudley Cannons posters had been stripped down from the walls, the trunk was gone from the foot of the bed, and the school books from the shelf by the door. The patchwork duvet cover Mrs.

Weasley had made for Ron fifth year was also gone, and the bed looked as bare and impersonal as a hospital cot. The only sign that Ron Weasley had once lived here was a small object tucked into the frame of the mirror that hung on the wall by the window. Moving slowly, Hermione crossed the room and gently pried the object out of the frame.

It was a photograph. Not a wizarding one, but one that had been taken with her own very ordinary Muggle camera, on a delayed timer. It showed herself, in her school robes, standing between Ron and Harry, a hand on each of their shoulders. They all looked well and happy and smiling.

Staring at the photo, she felt a fist clench at her heart. Slowly, she set the photograph down on the window sill, and turned away.

The door behind her opened. She spun around. She saw a slender white hand on the doorknob, then a bright red head. It was Ginny, and she was talking to someone behind her. "If you want to look one more time to make sure you haven't forgotten anything," she was saying, "then we could…"

Ron, Hermione thought numbly. She stood frozen in place, the rest of Ginny's words lost on her, as Ron came into the room after his sister.

Unlike Ginny, he saw her instantly — his eyes went straight to hers across the room, and for a long moment they stared at each other in silence.

"…or you could wait downstairs with the coach driver, and I could look — "

"Ginny," said Ron, very quietly.

Ginny broke off, and turned to follow his gaze. When she saw Hermione, she paled, but held her ground. "Hi," she whispered.

Hermione nodded. She felt unable to force a sound past her tight throat.

"I was….Ron and I were just going downstairs," Ginny said. She glanced around quickly, and then back at her brother. "It doesn't look like you left anything behind, we should probably just — "

The hitch in Hermione's throat loosened. "You left this," she said, and plucked the photograph from the windowsill. She held it out to Ron, who looked at it, and whitened. "Don't you want it any more?"

It was Ginny who moved to take the photo, but Hermione retracted her hand. Ginny looked at her brother, her eyes alight with concern. "Let's -

it's better if we just go."

Hermione bit her lip. "Please," she said imploringly to Ron. "Just talk to me for six minutes, and you can go, I won't ask you again. I promise." Her voice shook. "You owe me six minutes, at least."

Ginny looked faintly bewildered. "Six minutes?"

But Ron understood, as Hermione had expected he would. "Six years," he said in a remote voice. "One minute for each year we've been friends."