Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

Like everything else in the Parkinson home, the sink was immensely tacky, with bronze spigots in the shape of spitting dolphins.

Draco had once scornfully called the Parkinsons the kind of family that bought their own furniture.

This had struck Blaise as both amusing and accurate, although it said more about Draco than it did about Pansy.

She wished, again, with a dull sort of anxiety, that he had come. He had been invited, of course. Most of the Slytherins were here, even some of those who had graduated — and, in the case of Goyle and Crabbe, even those deemed not bright enough to graduate. It was the party of the season, especially since Pansy's parents were at a days-long Ministry summit and essentially they could do whatever they wanted. And Draco had always loved parties.

But then, that had been the old Draco. The one Blaise had grown up with.

Not this new version of Draco, whom she felt she did not know.

She remembered the night in August when he had come to her house. It had been a humid summer night, the kind of night where even blinking made you sweat. When the charms had rung she'd come reluctantly to get the door, trailed by a score of tiny levitating fans, all spinning madly in a vain attempt to cool the air. Opening the door to find Draco Malfoy on her doorstep had left her speechless.

How many Hogwarts girls had dreamed of this exact circumstance? There was Draco Malfoy on her front steps, in jeans and a white cotton t-shirt that clung to his slenderly muscled torso, the moonlight striking sparks from his pale silver eyes. On top of that, he was holding a bunch of flowers tied with ribbon. Roses, with pale yellow petals, the color of new Galleons.

Blaise pushed her damp hair back behind her ears, and stared. A number of potential witticisms spun through her head. She picked one at random.

"If you were looking for Goyle's house, it's farther down the road. Second after the turn."

Draco looked unperturbed. "The last time I gave Goyle flowers he ate them."

"Then what are you doing here, Draco?"

He smiled at her. That smile that was like a punch to the stomach, half angelic wickedness and half carnal mischief. A smile that promised unspeakable things involving silk scarves and toffee and long sweaty nights.

"I came to give you money," he said.

He held out the flowers, and she took them. Instantly the petals dropped from them, a shower of gold — and it was gold. When they hit the floor, they turned into Galleons, which rolled around her feet.

Blaise held the denuded flower stems delicately between her fingers.

"What's this about, Draco?"

"I have a proposition for you," he said. "Can I come in?"

She stood aside to let him pass into the foyer. He brushed by her as he went, unnecessarily. One inside, he made an amused face and looked down at his shirt, gone half-transparent with sweat. Blaise blessed the hot evening but said nothing. "It's a little warm in here," he observed.

"We can't afford the Cooling Charms," she said, bluntly.

"Well," said Draco, his mouth curled into a cat's smile. "That shouldn't be a problem for you from now on."

He had seemed very much himself that night, provoking her and enjoying it. They had gossiped wickedly about the other Slytherins, mocked the Gryffindors, sealed their bargain with a handshake. Later he had kissed her in the front garden, among the dead rose bushes. She had stored it away as an important memory. Kisses from Draco Malfoy did not come along every day.

In fact, in no part of their agreement was it stipulated that he had to kiss her at all. He did, sometimes, anyway. Once the school term started, they spent long hours in his room together to make things look "convincing."

Mostly he did schoolwork and she watched him. He was an apt, absorbed, careful student, filling sheets of parchment with exquisitely lovely handwriting, doing extra research he didn't need to do simply because it interested him. Generally he didn't seem to notice she was there, but when he did notice, he was coolly agreeable towards her, if never very affectionate. She would stretch out along his bed and watch him as he wrote or looked out the window or ordered clothes from shops in Diagon Alley. Sometimes he would try on the clothes and she would tell him what looked good and what didn't. Very little didn't look good on him, and the small task filled her with satisfaction; it seemed intimate in a way and surely he wouldn't take her advice if her opinion didn't matter to him.

It was a little while before she realized that he never actually did take her advice. He kept what he liked and sent back what he didn't and he smiled at her suggestions but did not in fact listen to them.

Sometimes they did do other things. Long hours in his room, just the two of them, something was bound to happen, and sometimes things did. He was cooperative, if not overly enthusiastic. She grew to know the lines and curves of his body, memorized the pale skin flawed in such a few places by its scars — one under his eye, like a crescent moon, the jagged bolt along his left palm, the slightly silvery sheen along his forearm as if something had been burned there. She knew the graceful planes of his collarbones, his temples where the feathery hair drifted, the vulnerable spots on the insides of his wrists. She knew how the pulse in his throat beat when he kissed her, and that when his eyelashes fluttered shut over closing eyes it meant he liked whatever she was doing to him. Sometimes while she was doing it he would put his hand over his face, fingers splayed to cover his eyes, and then she would stop, and say, Look at me, Draco, and he would take his hand away and sit up and that would be the end of that, usually.

He never pushed her for any kind of physical favors and when she stopped giving them he did not seem to notice that either. She had a feeling that he was slightly relieved that she had never really offered herself to him entirely as it would have been awkward for him to turn her down and Draco hated awkwardness. And it bewildered her, because it was not as if he didn't like girls — his body seemed to like her just fine, reacted instantly when she put her hands on him, like any seventeen-year-old boy; it was his mind that was, always, elsewhere.

And that was it. He was elsewhere. Always elsewhere. It was around this time that she began to really notice the difference in him, that it was constant and ongoing. The other Slytherins had noticed it as well, but she, with more time to study him, noticed it more sharply. He had changed. He was still arrogant, as he always had been, still charming and quick-witted and beautifully malicious, but that malice had lost some of its bite and edge, his wit was less brittle. He was less a glass dagger, and more a silver knife.

It was another few weeks before she was able to tie this change in him to its cause.

In October, Draco had been given detention. By Flitwick, if she recollected correctly, for casting an illicit Vestatum Transparens charm on Neville Longbottom during class. Everyone had seen a great deal more of Longbottom than was necessary. Draco had been given a week's detention and assigned to cleaning the blackboards in the classroom during dinner hour.

She had thought that it would be a good idea for her to sneak him some food. It would be the act of a concerned girlfriend. It would assist their deception. Or so she told herself, as she wrapped some sandwiches in a napkin and headed upstairs to the second floor classroom where Charms was held.

She never knew what made her pause and glance through the grilled window set in the door before she went in. Perhaps simply her knowledge that Draco did not appreciate surprises in general, and surprises from her in particular. But it was Blaise who was surprised.

Draco was in the classroom, and he was indeed cleaning one of the blackboards — in a bored, lazy, methodical manner, standing well away as if he did not want to get chalk dust on his expensive green shirt. But he was not alone. Harry Potter was sitting on one of the desks behind him. He was talking, gesticulating, his face animated and lively, and as he gestured he was smiling. It was bizarre. Blaise barely had to think in confusion that she didn't remember Flitwick giving Potter detention as well, when he leaped off the desk, went around Draco, and poked him in the chest with his index finger.