Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

"I wasn't sick on you, was I?"

Hermione smiled. "How romantic. No, you weren't sick on me. You weren't sick on Draco either, which is disappointing. I wonder how he would have handled that."

"Badly, I suspect." Harry put his hands up to his temples. "I barely remember anything from last night after…" He went suddenly very pale.

"After…" She watched as awareness flooded into his expression, followed by shock, followed by horror. "Oh, God," he said, sounding numb. "Oh, God. Last night. What you must think of me. I don't know what got into me-"

"About a quart of vodka, from the look of things."

"I think it was gin," he replied distractedly. He looked at her, pale and remorseful. "Hermione, I — "

"Went to a strip club. I know."

Harry looked as if he might fall off the bed. "You know? How do you know?"

"You," she said, and poked him with a finger, "talk in your sleep."

"Oh." Harry looked very embarrassed, which she had always thought was rather cute — his ears turned red and he bit his lip. "I, uh — "

"Who's Angelique?"

"Angelique?" Harry floundered. "She was, um, the bartender."

"The topless bartender?"

"Y-yes. Well, she had a lot of hair."

"Really." Hermione's voice dripped scorn. "And was Snape really there playing the clarinet?"

"Hermione!" Harry cast aside the pillow he had been holding with a gesture of despair. "I don't know how I ended up at the Sleazy Weasel, it just happened, and I'll make it up to you, I'll buy you and Ginny copies of the Playwitch swimsuit calendar — "

"I heard Charlie was February," said Hermione, intrigued.

"— Just forgive me."

Hermione blew out a breath of exasperation. "Oh, Harry, for God's sake, I don't care about that. So you went drinking, so you went to the — uh, Sleazy Weasel, what a ridiculous name, I don't care, I know exactly where to lay the blame for all that, and that's on Draco. But I don't even blame him, he was just trying to cheer you up and if it had worked, for Heaven's sake, I'd be the first person thanking him. I've been so worried — "

"I'm not just sorry about that." He stood up and took her by the wrists, lifting her to her feet. She rose along with him, and stood, tilting her head back to look up at him. She remembered when she had been taller than he was. No longer. "There's also what happened in the common room. I'm sorry about that. I was a total git, and — forgive me, please."

Hermione hesitated.

Harry's hands tightened. She could feel his grip braceleting her wrists and looked up to search his face. Behind the sheer green color of his eyes was concern, and even a rising panic. He was afraid she wouldn't forgive him, and why? Because he knows that whatever it is he's hiding from me is something serious, and if I knew what it was, I would be angry. Very angry.

"Of course I forgive you," she said. She heard her own voice as if at a distance: remote and a little cold. "There's almost nothing you could do that I wouldn't forgive you for and you know that."

A little of the fear went out of his expression, but some anxiety remained, like the afterimage of sun against closed eyelids. There was always that darkness there in his eyes. Hermione thought of it sometimes as the darkness of that broom closet under the stairs, the shadow that could never quite leave him. "Then what…"

"I don't know what's bothering you, Harry," she said. "But something is.

You think I can't tell?" She pulled her wrists out of his grasp, took his hands and turned them over. Along the side of his right hand was an ugly bruise and on both palms were the faded half-moon imprints where nails had been dug into the skin. "You're beating yourself up about something, literally as well as figuratively. And if you don't tell me what it is that's tearing you apart, then you put a gulf between us. And if one day I can't reach you across it, then you have no one to blame but yourself."

She raised her eyes to his face, and for a moment saw the shutters drop from his expression, exposing for a moment the Harry she knew -

vulnerable, bewildered, fiercely loving. Then his eyes slid away from her face. He said, "Just give me a little more time."

She sighed. She felt very tired, but then again, she had hardly slept the night before. "Do what you need to do, Harry."

"I love you," he said. His tone was hopeful, a little defensive. But she reacted to the declaration anyway, as she always had. She raised her face and he kissed her gently, the light stubble along his jaw and chin brushing her skin. She put her arms around him then, and he held her, his face bowed down into her hair, his hands clasped across her back. But even as they stood locked together, seemingly as close as two people could be, Hermione felt the distance between them and knew that it had not been breached.

Breakfast. Ginny poked morosely at her plate of eggs and toast. She wasn't sure why she was in such a low mood — perhaps it was nervousness over the match that afternoon, or perhaps it was the fact that she hadn't slept well the night before. She had lain awake in her bed, thinking of Draco's face when he said, "I never promised you anything." His expression so blank, those gray eyes so illegible. She thought the blankness was worse than the coldness he sometimes showed. At least coldness was a feeling.

The blankness was just — nothing at all. And it was exasperating.

Sometimes she wondered if people fell in love with him so easily because he could be so unreadable — like a beautiful, empty house. You could dream anything into it.

She wondered if Blaise knew how to read him, or if anyone did. Harry, maybe. When he tried.

Argh. Ginny ate another bite of eggs, and refrained from looking at the Slytherin table, which she had gotten good at. Draco was impossible.

Totally impossible. There were lots of other attractive boys at school.

Seamus Finnegan for instance. There he was across from her, eating porridge with a fork. With his dark blond hair, blue eyes, and Irish accent, Seamus was certainly appealing. Not a bad Quidditch player either. So why wasn't she interested in him?

"Ginny?" Seamus was giving her a peculiar look. "Have I got something on my face?"

Ginny realized she'd been staring. "Oh. Uh. No."

"Yes you have got," said Dean, looking around. "A bloody great lot of freckles."

"Have not," said Seamus amicably. This was true — Ginny, being a Weasley, knew a lot of freckles when she saw them. Seamus had only a few, on the bridge of his nose.

"Have to."

"Have not."

Ginny abandoned Seamus and Dean to it. They were capable of going on like this for ages. She looked hopefully around the table once again, as if Harry, Hermione or Ron might have spontaneously appeared there since she'd last looked, but no — they were all still late to breakfast. Next to her, Lavender and Parvati burst into a fresh spate of giggling. Ginny was able to catch, amidst the giggles, the words Draco, so and cute. She threw her fork down and looked up to see that they were indeed staring over at the Slytherin table, where Draco was engaged in conversation with Malcolm Baddock.

Ginny sighed. Ever since Hermione had, probably unwisely, told Lavender and Parvati that Draco Malfoy wasn't so bad when you got to know him, they'd felt free to express the crushes on him that they'd probably had all along. Just watching him get up and down from the Slytherin table at mealtimes had become something of a spectator sport for them.

"You know, in a way it's lucky he's in Slytherin," said Parvati a bit mistily.

"Green really suits him."