Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

"Sirius has to say that," Ron said woodenly.

"No, he doesn't! And if you two really did have a fight, then maybe this is your chance to patch it up. You've fought before. It never lasts."

Ron didn't reply but Ginny knew what he was thinking. This will last.

"Your absence would really mar the happiness of this event for Sirius and Narcissa," Mr. Weasley said calmly. "It really would."

Ron's head snapped up at that. He stared at his father. "You can't honestly expect me to believe that they'd care. Why would they?" he said, and his voice was so toneless that it was hardly a question. "Why do you?"

"Of course I care!" Mr. Weasley began explosively. Then he threw up his hands. "I can't talk to you," he glowered. "I can't talk to you at all!" He spun on his heel and stomped out of the study into the kitchen. He paused to glare at Ginny and her mother, his face tomato-red.

"TEENAGERS," he announced, in the same tone Wizard Wireless Network reporters usually reserved for reporting an outbreak of goblin fever, and flung himself out the kitchen door and into the garden.

Mrs. Weasley's face was the picture of dismay. "Oh, dear," she said, gazing anxiously out the window at her husband, who had begun a violent and probably unnecessary de-gnoming of the lettuce patch. "I suppose I'd better go talk to Ron."

"No." Ginny got to her feet with a sigh. "Let me do it. I think I understand what's going on."

She left the kitchen without another glance at her mother, shutting the connecting door to the study firmly behind her. Was it her imagination, she wondered, or was the temperature in the study actually several degrees colder than the temperature in the rest of the house? Certainly a chill seemed to be emanating from Ron, who was still sitting on the sofa in the same position he'd been in for the past two hours — head down, shoulders bowed. She went and sat down on the sofa next to him. He didn't move.

"I'm not going, Ginny," he said.

"I know," she said. "But you have to."

His head went up and he looked at her, betrayal evident in his eyes. Ginny winced. When she'd been eleven, the summer after the diary incident, she'd been plagued by nightmares. Her brothers had taken turns sleeping on the floor by her bed so that she wouldn't be alone. Her parents had offered to do the same, but Ginny had wanted her brothers there.

Brothers were for protecting you. It was what they did.

"Don't look like that," she said. "You know why."

"Because of Mum and Dad — "

"No, not because of Mum and Dad. Because of Harry."

"Harry? Harry's the reason I want to stay away! He can't possibly want me there."

"No," Ginny admitted. "Possibly not. But think about it for a minute, Ron.

Harry is famous. Draco is famous. Sirius and Narcissa are both famous.

This wedding is going to be a huge media event and there will be reporters there. If you don't go, they'll have a field day with it. 'Harry Potter's best friend, son of the Minister of Magic, was conspicuous by his absence from the gala affair…'"

Ron buried his face in his hands with a groan. "Don't," he said. "Anyway, fine, maybe I have to go to the wedding but why do I have to go a day early with the rest of you? I thought the luncheon thing tomorrow was supposed to be top secret anyway, there won't be any reporters there, nobody even knows about it except the people who're invited."

"I know, Ron, but don't think they won't ask around at the wedding and find out who was there the day before."

"They wouldn't," said Ron, miserably.

"They would," Ginny replied flatly. "They'll dig around, too, and they'll find someone willing to talk. And then they'll splash it all over the gossip pages of Teen Witch Weekly just like they did third year with that Krum business, and fourth year with that whole Harry and Cho thing — and none of that stuff was even true. And Harry will be humiliated all over again.

Do you want that?"

"No! No, of course I don't!" Ron flung himself to his feet and paced over to the fireplace. THe hearth was empty and cold; there was no fire lit. In the momentary silence between them, Ginny could hear that it had begun to rain outside. "If I could go back and change things, don't you think I would?"

"It doesn't matter. You can't," she said. "You can't fix what you did in the past. But you can maybe make the present a little more bearable."

"If you had told me a year ago," Ron said quietly, still staring down into the empty fireplace, "that I'd be expected to go to Malfoy Manor on my Christmas holidays, to attend a wedding of all things, and that Harry would be there too because he lives there now — and that I'd be expected to be happy about this, because everyone else is — I would have laughed at you. I hate Malfoy. I hate all the Malfoys and everything they stand for.

And sometimes, still, I wonder if Draco is the only one besides me who remembers how things used to be. I can tell by the way he looks at me -

like he's gloating about how he's finally won. He always wanted Harry on his side and now he's got him. I miss him, Ginny — " Ron's voice broke, and she stood up, wanting to go over to him, but she could hear the live undercurrent of pain in his voice, and was afraid that any expression of sympathy might crack the last of his self-control. "I miss my best friend,"

Ron said, more quietly. "He loved what I loved and hated what I hated, and always put me first. And now — now I don't know. If we had to go through that Second Task again right now, who do you think he'd be rescuing from the bottom of the lake? Not me, that's for sure."

"Ron," Ginny said softly. "People change."

"I don't. I don't change." Ron looked at her and through her; she knew he wasn't really seeing her at all. "I'll go," he said. "I'll go to the wedding, for all the reasons you said. But I have a bad feeling about it. Something is telling me that there's darkness coming. Bad things are going to happen -

terrible things."

Ginny was suddenly on the alert. "Bad things? Are you just saying that, Ron, or do you see something? Because if you do — "

Ron smiled bitterly. "It doesn't matter what I do. It doesn't matter what any of us does. What's coming will come and we can't stop it."

Draco sat bolt upright and stared. "You want me to what?"

"You heard me," Harry said.

"Uh-huh," Draco said. "Would this be select memories, or do you want them all gone? Planning to start life over again as somebody else? Going to enter the Wizarding Witness Protection Program? Spend the rest of your life wondering where that funny-looking mark on your head came from, are you?"

"Ahem," Harry said. "You're hysterical."

"I am not hysterical," Draco said with dignity.

"Yes you are, and anyway, I never said anything about you taking all my memories away. I don't want you to take all of them away, or even most of them. I just want to not remember…" His voice trailed off.

Draco sat very still. In the past seven days, he had only once heard Harry say Ron's name, and that had been because he was angry. He had not said Hermione's name either, referring to her only as "she" and "her" when he absolutely had to. Despite Draco's light words about desensitization he was, on some very deep internal level, badly frightened by Harry's reaction to everything that had happened. He would never have admitted it to himself or anyone else, but he was.

"I just want not to remember all of that," Harry finished. "You know. Just for tonight, because it's Sirius' party and I don't want to ruin it by being miserable. I ought to be happy for him, and I am, it's just…" Harry closed his eyes, and for a moment, held his breath. Eyes shut, his eyelashes brushed the tops of his cheekbones in fine black penstrokes. "I'm so tired," he said finally, wearily. "It's such an effort, acting normal."