Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

"You've never admitted I'm dying before," was all Draco said, but the fingers holding the pillow, which had been whitely bloodless, relaxed their grip.

"Because we will cure you," Harry said. "Snape said he had most of the ingredients for the antidote identified, didn't he? But until he has them all

— no, I won't leave."

"Why not?" Draco asked.

Harry looked down at his hands. He wondered how much of all this was revelatory to either of them, how long they had both known and understood the intractability of the forces, exterior and interior both, that kept them bound together. "Does it matter?"

Draco's voice was soft and unusually defenseless in reply. "I guess it doesn't."

Harry looked up. Draco had shut his eyes, and while he did not look relaxed, Harry felt that the strung-up nervous tension which had wound him past sleeping was receding. "Besides," Harry said, more lightly. "I don't even know where to start looking for Ron right now. I have to figure that out first."

Draco's eyes fluttered open. "Oh, right, about that," he said. "I had some ideas…"

"Are you saying I still cannot see my son?"

Narcissa's voice was like ice. Sirius looked at her and swallowed nervously.

"I'm saying it still isn't safe."

Her mouth tightened. She stood by the window in the small upstairs room, her arms tight at her sides, her shoulders straight and angular.

Everything about her body language forbade approach, so Sirius stood where he was, unsure what to do.

The house they were in made him nervous — it belonged to an old friend of Narcissa's and was very obviously the abode of previous Death Eaters.

He could not have explained exactly how he knew this, but everything in the house teased at his old Auror-senses, whispering of a history of malignant spells and spilled blood, layered over with a skin of rich furnishings.

Narcissa put her hand to the sash of the curtains. Outside the sky had gone from a gray-white pearl to a black one and the room was full of shadows. "I want to see my child," she said. "He's ill, and even though you won't tell me how ill, I can see in your face, Sirius, that he's very ill indeed."

"He's in Dumbledore's hands," Sirius said. "Dumbledore and Snape will do everything they can for him. It's not safe for you to go to Hogwarts, you know that. The Ministry is entirely controlled by Lucius at this point — he's watching the Floo network, he'll be watching the roads to Hogwarts — he'll be trying to keep an eye on Draco- "

"Is he dying?" she asked.

Sirius felt his muscles tense. "What?"

For a moment, Narcissa's face seemed to flicker, and behind it he saw another face, all iron. "You heard me. Is my son dying?"

Sirius hesitated.

"Yes," he said.

Her hand fell from the window sash but she made no other movement. "I want you to promise me something, Sirius," she said.

"Yes," he said again. "Whatever you want."

"If my son is going to die, then I want to be there with him when it happens. I have never been there for him for even one important event in his life. I want to be there with him when he dies." Her expression was grave and composed. He could see Draco in her face, in the thin angles and planes of it, the barely but perfectly controlled tension under the surface. "And if you can't do that for me, Sirius…"

"I can do that for you," he said. "Narcissa — "

"What?" Her voice was remote. He might have been someone she had never met before.

"He knows you love him," Sirius said.

"I very much doubt that," she said. Her voice was the voice of winter biting dead the leaves on the trees. "I don't think he actually believes in anyone's love for him. He's learned to live without it. In an abstract way, I admire that. But I'm his mother, and I love him, and even if he's learned to live without believing he's loved, I don't want him to die that way."

She had begun to cry, a silent, effortless, almost aphysical crying. Tears ran from her eyes like the water that ran from the mouths of the snakes in the fountains at the Manor. She did not lift her hands to wipe them away.

Sirius took a step forward. "Narcissa-"

"Go away, Sirius," she said. Sounding, for that moment, very much like Lucius. "Just go away."

He went.

"Potter, are you falling asleep?"

Harry jerked awake guiltily. "What? No. Not at all."

"Of course not. It was just the snoring that confused me," said Draco with some amusement. Harry sat up, glared at him, and then glared generally around the infirmary. He could not have been asleep for more than five minutes but it seemed to him that the night had greatly advanced. Light had crept by degrees into the sky outside, and the frosted-over windows cast a lacework of shadows against the sheets of Draco's bed. They patterned his skin as well, tracing a fine spider's web of lines across his face and hands.

"Well, it's not as if we were getting anywhere anyway," Harry said crossly.

"I mean, I don't know what your father could possibly want with Ron. If he's got him, I don't see why he isn't letting us know he's got him. I mean, all right, he probably sent me that chess piece, but that's a lame and pretentious gesture if there ever was one. And it still doesn't explain anything."

"You know, I made a number of useful suggestions towards that end, which you missed due to having fallen asleep."

"I was not a-oh, all right, so I was. What did you say?"

"Well, I had a couple ideas. One was that he took Weasley as bait, and then found out about that whole…rift between you two, and being who he is, my father would assume you wouldn't have any interest in Weasley any more after that. So he might be trying to figure out what to do with him now."

"Somehow I can't help but figure that whatever plan he comes up with will probably not involve either daisies or ballroom dancing lessons."

"No. Probably not. You don't think…"

"What?"

"That my father's maybe trying to get Ron over on their side?" said Draco, with some nervousness. "I mean, you wouldn't be able to bring yourself to hurt him no matter what…and if they threatened him enough…"

Harry looked at him. "He wouldn't do it," he said. "Ron hates Voldemort as much as I do."

"Nobody hates Voldemort as much as you do," said Draco.

Harry cocked his head to the side. "Don't you?"

"I hate what you hate," Draco said. "And I want him gone because he's a threat and a danger. And I'm none too pleased about this poisoning thing, but I suspect that that was my father getting his kicks on his own. But then again, Voldemort did require my father to have me. If it wasn't for him, I might not exist. There's a paradox for you."

Harry's head was spinning. "I didn't know you knew that."

Draco smiled a humorless smile. "My father told me that while he was still stuck in St Mungo's Home for the Sorcerously Befuddled. A useful piece of information. Anyway, that's not my point. My point is that you hate him more than I do, just like I probably hate my father more than you do. In fact, I'm slightly surprised that you aren't just haring off after him, like you said you wanted to before. Get Voldemort, you get my father and all the other Death Eaters in one fell swoop. Save the world, save Weasley, save us all. Seems like something you would do."

"I didn't realize this was a how to save the world' planning session," said Harry dryly. "I would have brought my notes."

"It might not be the best time," Draco said in amusement. "It's three in the morning. Any plan we come up with now is bound to be ridiculous."

"Define 'ridiculous'," said Harry.

Draco's eyes sparkled and for a moment he resembled nothing so much as an oversized kitten, with all of a kitten's affectionately cruel playfulness.