Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

"I can't be your girlfriend," Hermione said, her voice remote and flat.

"That's what's different."

He hardly seemed to hear her. He was very white, and the skin of his face seemed to be pressing back against the bones. She wanted to tell him not to look like that, but she couldn't. "Can't? Can't or won't?"

"I don't know, Harry," she replied despairingly, "when you say you can't tell me what's bothering you, do you mean you can't tell me, or you won't?"

He looked as if she had slapped him. "That's not fair."

"It is fair! It's completely fair!" She hugged herself tightly, willing herself not to cry. "You're lying to me and I hate it. I hate it and pretty soon, I'll hate you too."

"Hate me, then," he flung back at her. He was holding the bedpost again, so tightly his knuckles were white. His face was white, too, his green eyes the only color in it. "If you could hate me over something like that, then maybe you never loved me in the first place."

She had thought she was beyond being hurt again, but apparently not. His remark went into her like an arrow in her heart. For a moment, it was hard to breathe. "I can't do this," she whispered. "I can't."

She turned automatically towards the door, but his voice stopped her like a hand on her shoulder. She had never heard him sound like that. "I love you," he said. "Please don't go."

"Then tell me," she said, without turning to look at him. "Tell me what it is you've been hiding. Tell me, Harry. Please."

His silence was the only answer she needed. She shut her eyes, willing her voice to remain even. When she did speak, she was startled at the calmness of her tone.

"I'm leaving school, Harry," she said. "I'm packed, and I'm taking the train out of Hogsmeade to London tonight. If you want to say goodbye to me, I'll wait for you on the platform. I hope you'll come. I do love you. I always will love you. Believe that, if you don't believe anything else."

He was still silent, although she could hear his uneven breathing, and she wanted very much to turn around. But she didn't. Blindly, she walked towards the door, and blindly turned the knob, and blindly stepped out into the corridor. Draco and Ginny were still there, staring at her silently, but now her vision was so blurred with tears that they looked like distorted, funhouse versions of themselves. She saw Draco reach a hand out to her, and a voice from a long way away asked her, "What happened?"

She shook her head. "Go in there," she said, "go take care of him," and then she fled down the corridor without looking back.

Ginny looked at Draco. Not surprisingly, he was looking away from her, down the corridor where Hermione had fled. "She shouldn't be by herself," he said.

"I know," Ginny said. "Do you want to go after her?"

He shook his head slowly, and brought his eyes back to hers. "You should.

I'm not particularly good at girl talk."

Ginny sighed. "I'm not sure I am either. All those brothers…" she trailed off. "Still. You'd better talk to Harry. Whatever happened, he'll tell you."

"Mmm." Draco sounded thoughtful. "What about Finnegan?"

Ginny was taken aback. "Seamus?"

"You remember him? Quiet fellow, square jaw, Irish flag up his arse?

Probably dyes his hair?"

Ginny frowned. "What about him?"

"Well, shouldn't he be around through all this? Lending you a massive, unsightly shoulder to lean on?"

Ginny sighed. "I think Seamus is upset with me."

Draco raised an eyebrow. "Really? Why?"

"It's complicated," she said, but she had the unnerving feeling that his clear gray eyes saw right through her. For a moment, he almost looked sympathetic.

"Well, don't break his heart," he said. "We've got enough broken hearts around here already," and with that, he pushed open the door to Ron's old room and went inside. Ginny caught a brief glimpse of Harry sitting on the edge of the empty bed before the door shut, blocking her view.

With a sigh, she headed off down the corridor. It was a small flight of steps and a turn to get to Hermione's room; the door was closed when she got there. She raised her hand to knock, then hesitated, trying to think what she should say. She had no idea, and no idea what Hermione might be feeling, and no idea if she would hate seeing Ginny at this moment.

After all, she was Ron's sister. She slowly lowered her hand, and on impulse, put her ear to the door.

Hermione was crying. Ginny could hear it very clearly through the door. It was a terrible, sad, desperate sort of messy crying, the way a child might cry — the way her mother had cried, all those years ago, over Andrew, night after night for months. It was the crying of someone who knows they have lost something they will never get back.

Ginny hesitated, one hand on the doorknob. Then she slowly stepped back, and leaned against the wall. She slid slowly down it until she was sitting on the floor; then she put her head on her knees, and did not move for a long time.

Hermione had been standing shivering on the platform for nearly an hour when she finally understood it: he was not coming. It was almost midnight, and it was freezing cold, so cold that the chill seemed to have soaked into Hermione's bones. The Hogsmeade train station was utterly deserted; she was the only person on the empty platform, and a light, dusting snow had begun to fall.

With a sigh of resignation, she glanced down at the watch in her hand. It was Harry's watch, that he had thrown at her. She had not been able to bring herself to give it back to him. It was, apparently, five minutes to midnight, and there was no point waiting any longer on the platform. He wasn't going to come.

She turned, climbed wearily onto the train and went into the nearest compartment. She sat down close to the window, and propped her chin on her hand. From here, she could see the lights of the castle, faint in the distance, glimmering on the clifftop. The mountains behind were wreathed in mist, and there was a shroud of vapor around the moon. She felt the sting of tears fierce at the back of her eyes. I can't leave him here, alone…he only has me…how can I?

And then she heard it: the sound of running footsteps on the platform.

She stood up so fast she nearly banged her head on the overhead luggage rack; swiftly she seized at the window, and pulled it down hard, leaning as far out as she could. Someone was running along the platform towards her: a slender, shadowy figure, turned to a silhouette by the mist: she saw a black cloak, recognized the dark school clothes, and then as he emerged from the shadows she saw in the torchlight that the banding at the wrists of his cloak was green and silver, and she realized with a queer stab at her heart that it was not Harry after all, but Draco.

"I'm here!" she shouted. He had been gazing up and down the empty platform; now he turned, and blinked at her. "I'm here! Draco — "

He cam quickly to stand below the train window. He threw the hood of his black cloak back; they were almost on a level, but he had to tilt his head to look up at her. He was flushed from exertion, his hair a crackling white halo around his head. Flakes of melting snow clung to the dark silver blades of his lashes. She drew in a breath: sometimes he was almost too beautiful to look at — nearly girlishly pretty, but no, there was too much steel in his expression for that. "I know I'm not who you were expecting," he said, low-voiced. "He told me you would be here. I came as quickly as I could."

Her voice shook. "But he wouldn't…?"

Draco shook his head, a firm negative. "He wouldn't come."

"Oh." She blinked back tears. "Did he send you?"

"Not exactly." Draco shrugged, elegantly. "I hated the thought of you going off like this, with no one to say goodbye to you."