Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

The first letter was addressed to Hermione. This name meant nothing whatsoever to Tom. It meant something to Seamus, but nothing terribly interesting. The name across the top of the second letter, however, was Draco Malfoy, the full name, written out, and that meant something to Tom.

Malfoy.

A burst of searing hate exploded through Tom's chest. Not his hatred, but Seamus'. A metallic emotion, in equal parts resentment, loathing, and fear. There was something else there, too, threaded in with the other emotions. Tom could not identify it, although someone who was not Tom would have been able to recognize it as pity.

Tom's mind, however, was already ticking over his own memories and knowledge.

Draco Malfoy.

A Malfoy.

Lucius' son?

Why is Lucius' son getting letters from a Gryffindor?

With a swift nail, Tom slit open the first letter, the one to Hermione, and read it through. His heart began to pound. There was his own name — not his birth name, but the name he had given himself — woven through the letter — there was a history here, a history between himself and Harry Potter — In fact, if Potter could be believed…but no, that wasn't possible, was it? Surely there was some mistake. He reached for Seamus' memories, but so great was his agitation that they slipped away from him like murky water.

With a bitter oath, Tom crumpled the parchment in his fist and flung it into the fire. It caught and went up at once, bursting into ashes.

He took a moment, then, to breathe. To force calm on himself. Very slowly, he opened the second letter, and read it over. This time he took note of the handwriting, the looping, childish script that seemed to spill over itself as if the writer could barely contain everything he had to say.

Draco — It feels weird to be writing you a letter, I've never written a letter to you before. You always know what I'm thinking so there never seemed to be any point. But you're asleep now and I think I should do this before you wake up. I know Snape has found an antidote for you — I heard him say so to Dumbledore — and I know what I promised — I meant it, too.

There are other things I thought you should know, things I've never told you, not properly anyway-There was an ink blotch there, as if the writer of the letter had pressed down so hard with his quill that it had snapped. Tom's eyes narrowed as he scanned the rest of the letter quickly. What was this about? Here, again, Seamus was no help. Through his rage and confusion, Tom could dimly access thoughts of a friendship between the two boys — Lucius' son and one of my enemies? — and some wild intensity of emotion, but he could not separate out the threads of Seamus' hatred of Lucius' son from his thoughts about Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy grouped together.

Tom's hand closed on the letter, meaning to crush it — And paused.

His fury urged him to destroy this letter, in which Harry Potter mocked him, mocked Voldemort, swore vengeance against him, and seemed to think that he himself, a mere child, a foolish boy — Tom took a shuddering breath. He wanted to rip the letter in half. But was it the wisest course? The letters had obviously been written with passion and care, and they were alive with a certain vivid pain that Tom could appreciate, being something of an artist in the area of inflicting pain himself. He had no part of emotion, wanted no part of it, but his very distance from it made him a useful student of human behavior.

Destroying this letter would hurt the sender, that was true, but there were better ways to assure that Harry Potter's friends did not receive this last message. That they would not follow him where he had gone, on his quest of vengeance. This would cause chaos and confusion, and chaos and confusion were useful allies.

He read the letter again. It would, he decided, not be difficult at all to mimic Harry Potter's voice: the vividness of the letter came from its simplicity and the blunt sincerity of the statements. Tom could see that it was quite a moving letter, really, or would certainly be considered so by the recipient if the tone of the letter was any indication. This was good: an emotional letter was so much easier to twist and alter.

He passed a hand over the surface of the letter. A surge of magical energy rocketed up his arm and through his hand, almost painful in its intensity.

It had been so long…

He whispered a word, and the paper trembled in his grasp. Slowly the ink on the page began to writhe as if the letters were tiny slithering snakes.

They curled and uncurled, wound around each other and formed new words. New sentences. Draco, it feels weird to be writing you a letter, but I thought if I didn't there'd be more of a chance that you would follow me, and I don't want you to follow me. I know you'll want to and you always think you can help me, but you can't help me now. I know I said that I would wait but I think that it's better if I don't wait — I know what I promised, but there are things you don't know…things you won't understand…

The letter went on for several paragraphs. Tom gave it a last scan, and felt proud of himself. It was a cruel letter, without being overtly so at all. The cruelty lay mainly in its subtlety, and in what it did not say, Tom having removed much of the original text. He greatly regretting having destroyed the first letter, the one to Potter's girlfriend. He could have created quite a work of art out of that one. Ah, well. No use grieving over lost opportunities. He placed the letter, folded, back on Harry's bed, with the gold charm necklace on top of it. Then he straightened up.

He was still angry. Long ago Tom had taught himself to focus his rage, to channel it. To wait for a time and place in which he could spend it. And now, lost and bewildered and furious, he stood and tried to make sense of the chaotic whirl of thoughts and memories that vied for attention inside his overcrowded brain. Names and faces came and went behind his eyes — Black-haired Harry Potter, whom he hated. Draco Malfoy, who looked like a more perfect version of his father in childhood, a miniature done in ivory and silver gilt. And Ginny Weasley, her rosy sunflower face crowned by all that brash, bright hair — oh, Ginny he remembered. Ginny he knew.

Ginny who he recollected by the crack of her bones beneath his gripping hand, her body squirming under his as she tried to get away from him, the scent of salty tears and her own terror.

He had always known he would find her again, somehow.

Even more interestingly, Seamus loved her, it seemed. Tom felt the sickly adoration as a pain beneath his ribs and grinned at it, a wolf grin that split his angel face in half. Oh, yes, Seamus loved her. Loved her oh so very much that he had given her a charm bracelet so that he would never lose her. So that he could find her wherever she was and race instantly to her side. How he must have loved her, to have done something like that.

Still grinning, Tom reached down into his shirt, and drew out the small gold arrow charm on its chain. He knew by the tingle of it beneath his fingertips that she was nearby; she was not far away. Still grinning, he closed his hand around the charm.

He had found something to spend his rage on, after all.

Draco had always told her that if she had been born a boy she would have been just like him and if he had been a girl he would have been exactly like her.

Blaise suspected that this, like most things Draco had said to her, seemed true because she wanted it to be true.

Still. If Draco had been at Pansy's Christmas party — which she had gone to because she'd hoped he'd be there, but he had not come — he would, just as she had, have spent three hours getting ready despite not really wanting to go. Hours spent knotting small silver flowers into her apricot hair, charming the circles out from under her eyes. Selecting just the right dress. Green, with pale embroidery along the hem. Now, perched on the sink in Pansy's bathroom, she made several minute and delicate adjustments to her cosmetic charms, and looked at herself in the mirror.