Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

Well, don´t strain yourself. So, what else is in here?

Nothing important. Look at the desk — he always empties his things out on the desk when he comes home. Anything there that looks — like anything?

Harry edged over to the desk and looked it over. If he´d hoped to find some kind of evidence of Lucius´ recent evildoing, like a bloodied knife or a handy-dandy parchment with "Muggles To Be Killed" written across the top, he was disappointed. Thereś not much here. Some blank papers, a pipe, some coins and things. It looks as if he was travelling fairly light.

Hmm. Draco sounded thoughtful. What kind of coins?

Harry blinked at the gold on the desk. They looked like ordinary Galleons to him, but then what did he know? He picked one up, feeling its cool heaviness against his fingers, then closed his hand around it spasmodically as the door to the study opened, and several more robed and hooded figured entered. Harry spun around, dropping the coin into the sleeve of his cloak.

The tallest of the Death Eaters drew his hood back; it was Lucius. "Harry," he said. "How kind of you to agree to talk with me."

Harry said nothing.

With a wave of his hand, Lucius dismissed his entourage. They left quietly, and Lucius and Harry were alone. Lucius drew off the cloak he had been wearing and held it up; the mahogany coat rack in the corner bent itself sideways and plucked the cloak out of Lucius´ hand.

Underneath it, he wore an expensive gray suit and a dark tie. He looked, to Harry, like a Muggle businessman. He squashed the urge to ask Lucius if the suit was Armani.

Harry felt quite cold now, despite the fire. He watched as Lucius sauntered across the room and sat himself neatly in the chair behind the desk. He did not offer a seat to Harry, and Harry made no move to take one. They stared at each other for a long moment in silence, the tall blond man and the slight boy with his torn cloak and cuffed right hand.

"Would you," said Lucius finally, "like a drink?"

He raised his hand again, and the decanter on the sideboard rose into the air and came to hover by his side. Harry shook his head. Lucius, seeming indifferent, allowed the decanter to pour him a glass of port, then took a long and thoughtful sip.

Harry, near screaming point with impatience, dug his nails into his palms and spoke evenly. "If heś really ill," he said, "you shouldn´t leave him up there like that. Itś too cold. He might die too soon, and then where would you be?"

"Doubtless you´re right," Lucius replied, with an affected sigh. "Very shortsighted of me. One of my many faults."

Harry again said nothing. One of the useful things he had learned from Draco was how effective silence could be when utilized as a weapon. If he waited, Lucius would get impatient and speak.

He did. "It is very interesting," Lucius said, "how much you have changed, Harry Potter. How much of you has bled away through this connection you share with my son — and yes, I know all about it — how much has bled away, and how much has been replaced. Do you even know who you are any more?"

"I know exactly who I am," Harry said coolly. "I´m sorry if itś confusing for you. Wait, actually, no I´m not sorry at all. You know why? Because I hate you."

"How sad for me," Lucius said, taking a slender enameled pipe out of the wooden drawer on his left, and tapping it against the side of the desk.

"And here I had so hoped we would become close."

"Do you always want to become close with people you´re planning to kill?" Harry asked.

Lucius laughed and reached for a small gilded box that Harry had thought was a paperweight. He opened it, and withdrew a pinch of tobacco. "I´m not going to kill you," he said. "I have thought a great deal about what the best way to get my son to cooperate with me might be, and have concluded that killing you at this juncture would be relatively ineffective toward that end."

"I´m touched."

"You would not be the first thing he has loved that I have destroyed,"

Lucius said. "It might teach him a lesson. Of course," and he shrugged, Dracoś own, elegant, shrug, "that lesson is not todayś lesson."

"You can´t kill me," Harry said. "The Ministry would have your head.

Whether Draco cares about me or not, thatś not the issue — and anyway, you´re wrong. You taught him not to love anyone, don´t you remember?

He hasn´t forgotten, even if you have. He feels responsibility, loyalty….obligation to me — "

Lucius chuckled. "Maybe he can´t love," he said. "Or he couldn´t. But what of you? You can, and he has become what you are. I see how it has changed him. You feel, and he feels through you. Through you he can know what it is to love and to grieve, to dream and to sacrifice. You can be his expectation of happiness; you can be his broken heart. Think of all that world of feeling he would lose, if he lost you."

"But," Harry said, "it is not my death you are planning."

"Planning?" Lucius echoed. "I am not planning his death. It has already begun. And perhaps, now that I have told you what my son would lose if you died, it is time for you to think of what would happen to you should the reverse occur. I appeal," he added, raising a small gold wand from the desktop, "to your sense of self-preservation."

Think of what would happen to you, if he died, Lucius had said. And Harry tried. He stood where he was and he tried to imagine it, but it was like trying to imagine what it would be like to be paralyzed. As surely as his legs and arms moved when he told them to, as surely as his lungs filled with air when he breathed, Draco existed as part of him. Lucius might as well have said, Imagine you never were a wizard, or Imagine you had never heard of magic, or Imagine your parents had never died.

"Why do you hate him so much?" Harry whispered finally. He heard his own voice as if from a great distance; wondered, vaguely, if Draco could hear or experience anything of this through him. He hoped not. "I understand why you hate me. But Draco, heś your son. He loves you — he loved you, anyway, and he would still if you hadn´t burned all that out of him. What did he ever do to you?"

There was a long silence. The fire crackled harshly in the grate; the afternoon shadows lengthened across the floor. A nervous pain twisted behind Harryś ribs, as if his body comprehended what his mind could not, and was wincing in the anticipation of some terrible physical loss.

"I told Draco this once, a long time ago," Lucius said. His voice was curiously flat. Harry had not heard him speak like this before. "When a man pledges himself to the Dark Lord, when he receives the Mark, he must, in exchange for this honor and to prove his loyalty, give to the Dark Lord one thing. One…gift. It must be something of precious personal value. I have seen men give up a great talent for music or art, a treasured memory, a grand passion. Draco asked me once what I gave up, and I said that what I had given was him. That is not strictly true, for each man can give only what is his own to give; even my son, in the end, belongs to himself alone. What I gave was my own capacity to care about him."

"You gave up….your ability to love?" Harry asked. It felt bizarre, asking such a personal question of Lucius Malfoy. But his curiosity was stronger than his anxiety.

"No," Lucius said. "Just my feelings of paternal love. I had no children at the time, of course. Had I never had any, as I planned, I suppose it would have been an empty gift in the end. But then, the Dark Lord has no use for empty gifts. Only a year after I pledged myself in his service, he requested that I have a son. So I had a son." Luciuséyes went to the window, and for a moment he seemed to gaze into nothingness. "The Dark Lord is nothing if not thorough. In me, he knew he had a servant who would produce a child he would not mind giving up when necessary -