Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

"Of course," Dumbledore said, and, raising his eyes to Tom's, gave him a measuring look. For a moment they locked eyes, Tom returning Dumbledore's searching gaze with an affectedly innocent stare. Tom had very unusual eyes, often the topic of discussion among the Hogwarts girls: so dark a blue they were nearly black, the iris seemed to meld with the pupil, giving his eyes a peculiar, almost blind look. They appeared shrewd sometimes, blank others, knowing always. But they could not quite manage innocence.

It was Tom who looked away first. "Lucius," he said, and held out a long-fingered hand towards the younger boy, index finger crooked in an imperious gesture. "Are you coming?"

Lucius, in the process of hurling his robes on over his infirmary pajamas and quickly buckling his boots, looked up and nodded breathlessly.

"Almost ready, Tom — wait for me?"

"Yes," said Tom, and lowered his hand. His blue-black eyes were suddenly full of some secret amusement. "I'll wait for you."

"You know, Draco," Hermione said, looking wearily at the fair-haired boy in the infirmary bed, "sometimes you make it awfully difficult."

"To resist my manly charms? Yes, I know," said Draco, currently engaged in resolutely pulling all the feathers out of an overstuffed pillow Ginny had lent him. Tiny white feathers tangled in his fine fair hair, stuck to his eyelashes, sifted down onto the shoulders of his blue silk pajamas. "You must be strong, Hermione, for all our sakes. I've been told that breathing exercises can help."

"To feel sympathetic towards you, is what I was going to say," Hermione corrected him primly. "And now you have proved my point. Plus, you are ruining that pillow."

"It was tubby," Draco said, yanking out another handful of feathers and tossing them into the air. "I can't sleep on tubby pillows."

Hermione snorted. "Spoiled," she said, succinctly.

Draco grinned at her through an obscuring rain of feathers. Hermione hugged her book to her and tried not to smile back, not wanting to encourage him. Draco had been in the infirmary now for almost three days, ever since they had arrived back at Hogwarts. They took it in shifts to sit with him, all except Seamus. (Seamus had offered to sit with Draco one day, but upon his arrival in the infirmary, Draco had nonchalantly hurled an entire box of bandages at his head.)

Hermione had assumed Draco was being forced to stay in the infirmary by Madam Pomfrey, but now she was beginning to wonder. He really seemed to be — well, enjoying himself wasn't it exactly, but he wasn't moping around, either. She got the impression that he had been, somehow, running himself ragged for weeks and weeks and now, he was resting from it. His old playfulness had come back, and he unmercifully teased or flirted with everyone who came near him — odd behavior for someone under a tentative death sentence, but there it was. She had never thought she'd actually see anyone tease Snape before, but Draco managed it. He flirted with Madam Pomfrey, who had given him nearly every pillow and extra blanket in the empty infirmary, and who allowed him to wear his own silk pajamas instead of the infirmary's standard-issue flannel stripes.

Ginny and Harry, meanwhile, were constantly bringing him books, food, magazines and anything and everything they thought might be either diverting or helpful. Hermione was convinced that one day she would arrive in the infirmary to discover them fighting over who had earned the privilege of staging a sock puppet revival of Death of a Salesman at the foot of the bed for Draco's amusement.

Meanwhile, Draco presided over it all like an ailing prince of the realm, accepting the attention as if it was his due, all rumpled hair and sprawled gracefulness and wide silvery eyes with foot-long lashes that seemed to get batted at everyone. Only Hermione felt herself immune to the ridiculousness. She suspected that somewhere, inside him, Draco was as well — that the ailing-prince performance was just that, a performance, and in its own way, an attempt to distract everyone. He was behaving like someone recovering from a terrible illness, when after all, the opposite was true. The terrible part was only just beginning.

"You know, I talked to Madam Pomfrey," Hermione said, unsuccessfully attempting to take the no-longer-overstuffed pillow away from Draco.

"She said there isn't any reason that you have to stay in bed; if you're careful, and don't exert yourself, you can get up and go back to your dormitory."

"My pillow is flat," Draco said sadly, examining the wreckage he had created.

"Of course it is." Hermione took the empty pillowcase from him, and put it on the nightstand. "Do you understand me, Draco?"

"Seldom if ever," he replied. "But therein lies your charm."

"Oh, honestly," Hermione wailed. "Wouldn't you rather go back to your own bed?"

"No," Draco said in a decided manner. "There's no one there and it's really boring."

This was true. There were very few students still at school for these holidays, but the complete lack of Slytherins was notable. Not one had stayed behind.

"All right, fine," Hermione said. "But I, for one, am not going to be peeling you big piles of grapes, or fanning you with a handkerchief. I'm sorry you're ill, but you will get better. Snape's found every ingredient but two in the antidote, did I tell you? And he said he'll find the other two today or tomorrow at the latest. And I do wish you'd at least come and open Christmas presents with us tomorrow morning — "

"Oh, bugger," said Draco, with feeling. "Christmas. I forgot."

"You forgot Christmas?" asked a light voice and a hand drew the curtain back. It was Ginny. She smiled at Draco, a smile that immediately vanished as she surveyed the wreckage of her pillow. "Draco!" she snapped. "What have you done with my pillow?"

"I'm not sure," said Draco, removing a feather from his hair. "I think I went mad with fever."

"That was my pillow I've had since I was eight! I've slept with it every night for years!"

Draco looked unrepentant.

Ginny made a hmph-ing sound, yanked the curtains shut, and flung herself down into the chair next to Hermione's. Ostentatiously removing a book from her bag — she was now halfway through Trousers Revisited, which she had begun upon giving up on ever finding her copy of Passionate Trousers again — and began reading, ignoring Draco and Hermione both. Draco glanced at Hermione with dancing eyes.

"I told you you were spoiled," Hermione snapped, determined not to be moved by his contagious mirth. "You just enjoy lolling about, having everyone wait on you hand and foot and bring you sandwiches. I swear, Harry's worn a hole in the portrait pear, he's been in and out of the kitchen so much."

Draco flushed a delicate and indignant shade of mauve. "I do not make people bring me sandwiches."

As if on cue, the curtains around the bed were drawn back again. This time Draco lit up like a Filibuster Firework. Hermione twisted around to see Harry standing at the bed's foot, a covered plate in his hand. "I brought you a sandwich," he said, and handed the plate to Draco.

Hermione shot Draco a glare, which he studiously ignored. Ginny made a faint noise and glanced briefly over the spine of Trousers Revisisted.

Draco ignored this, too. Instead, he bestowed upon Harry a smile that somehow managed to communicate that his gratitude for this gift of a sandwich had briefly — ever so briefly — drawn him back from the brink of complete dissolution. If not for this sandwich, Draco's smile seemed to say, the pain of merely going on might have become too great to bear. As it was, he would probably manage to hang on a bit longer.

Hermione resisted the urge to smack Draco soundly.

"It's peanut butter," said Harry.