Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

It was not a hostile gesture. It was, very plainly, a teasing gesture that said, You're not paying attention to me.

Draco brushed the hand away, but with a shrug and a smile that nearly buckled Blaise's knees. It was a smile without any edge of malice or cruelty or secret amusement. She would not have thought Draco Malfoy had a smile like that in him. Then he'd lifted the rag he'd been using to clean the boards, and threw it at Harry's head.

Blaise tore herself away after a few more minutes of silent staring, and crept, shattered, back to the Slytherin dorms. She was the daughter of Death Eaters. In her sixteen years of life, she had seen many disturbing things. But nothing had disturbed her as much as the fact that she had just watched Harry Potter write Kiss Me, I'm Rich on the back of Draco Malfoy's brand new green shirt with a piece of chalk and that Draco, when he had noticed, had not shoved his wand through Potter's throat, but instead had laughed as if he thought this behavior was genuinely funny.

As far as Blaise was concerned, this could mean only one thing. They had to be having sex with each other.

Blaise was a worldly girl. She had read books. She Knew Things. This would certainly explain why Draco, the most-wanted boy in school, would pay a girl to pretend to date him. She supposed it would also explain why Harry Potter was seeing a girl everyone had long supposed to be Just His Friend. It was all a ruse to cover up their passionate affair.

After lying stunned on her bed for several hours, Blaise decided that out of all possible outcomes, this was hardly the worst. After all, this was an amazing piece of scurrilous gossip. Nobody had heard gossip like this since Headmaster Dippet had been removed from his position by the Ministry after rumors flew that he was carrying on an illicit affair with the giant squid in the lake. The squid had been allowed to keep its job; nobody wanted to fire a fifty-foot squid.

But this was even better. Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy! And, she supposed, it made some sort of sense: Potter was an idiot, a revolting Gryffindor Mudblood-lover, but he wasn't exactly ugly. He had all that tousled dark hair and that wiry-slim body and those lynx-colored eyes that could shoot cold green glances or blaze up like leaves burning when he was angry. The corduroy trousers he'd worn to play Quidditch in for the past two years were worn to parchment thinness and had holes in all sorts of interesting places. They did a great deal to keep the interest of the female population of the school riveted during especially dull games.

Of course, she had always thought Harry Potter looked like someone who'd never had sex in his life, but then appearances were deceiving.

After that, Blaise borrowed Pansy's Invisibility Cloak and began following Draco around in earnest. A terrible perverse curiosity had seized her.

Draco would kill her if he knew she was following him, of course, but in her feverish state that hardly mattered; she had to know, to be sure. She crept after him when he went down to Quidditch practice, when he studied in the library at night, when he climbed to the top of the Astronomy Tower — And looked at the stars, and went back downstairs alone.

For that was the most peculiar part. Her spying was not entirely fruitless — there was definitely something going on between Draco and Potter. They met up with each other whenever they seemed to have any spare moments. They studied together. They practiced fencing. When Draco got a hundred and ten percent on his Potions exam, he showed the results to Harry, looking superior. Harry said something snarky. Draco kicked him in the shin. When Harry got his broom upgraded, he went and showed it to Draco. Draco said something snarky. Harry took a handful of the packaging paper that had come with the broom and shoved it into Draco's shirt pocket. Whereupon Draco had taken the broom and thrown it out the window. It had fallen several stories and landed on Mrs. Norris, who had set up a plaintive yowl. Draco had burst out laughing and Harry had dragged him away from the window.

It was at this point that Blaise learned that Harry Potter was also in possession of an Invisibility Cloak.

But they never touched each other. At least, not in any significant way.

They were easy around each other, comfortable in a way Blaise had noted boys rarely were. When Harry fell asleep in the library one night while studying, Draco had taken his quill and, with a look of fiendish glee, had scribbled small obscene messages up and down Harry's forearm. When Harry wanted Draco to be quiet, he'd clap a hand over his mouth. So yes, they touched each other. They pushed each other, tugged on the back of each other's shirts, stole each other's notes, ate off the same plate. But as for behavior that could contribute to some kind of scurrilous gossip, there was none.

This was upsetting to Blaise. If she could not categorize their relationship, she could not understand it. If she could not understand it, then she could not understand Draco. If he had been sleeping with Harry Potter, that would have been one thing. Weird, perhaps, but understandable: Harry was gorgeous, and boys were stupid and largely driven by their hormones. But since that did not appear to be what was going on, then there was more to it. And if there was more to it, it stopped looking like some foolish mistake on Draco's part and a great deal more like a calculated decision.

It started to look like betrayal.

In her obsession, now, to understand what was going on, Blaise began watching both boys even in public. Their social faces were almost unshakable: they were single-minded in their brutality towards each other. It seemed odd to her, this public hostility, a travesty of some kind, like watching someone scribble ugly graffiti on a beautiful painting. She wondered how they could stand to keep it up.

One afternoon she had glanced at Draco in Potions class and had seen him suddenly smile down at his desk, as if he had thought of something amusing. Driven by habit now, she looked immediately at Harry, seated all the way across the room. And she had seen him smile, too, at the same instant, the exact same way. Neither Draco nor Harry was looking at each other and there was no obvious cause for their mirth. Over the next few days she caught this happening more and more. They would react, simultaneously, to some invisible stimulus, and if she had not known it was impossible she would have thought that somehow they could read each other's minds.

She began to wonder if she was losing her own mind. It was hard to be the solitary custodian of such an enormous secret. Perhaps she ought to tell Draco she knew. Of course, he might well break her neck for her troubles.

Nevertheless, she had nearly made up her mind to tell him when she realized in fact that she was not the only one who knew, after all.

Charms class had just begun, and everyone was filing into the classroom and taking their seats. In the confusion, Colin Creevey had slipped into the room, and had announced in a loud whisper to Professor Flitwick that Harry Potter would not be coming to class that day because he had been injured during Quidditch practice and was in the infirmary.

Two things immediately happened. First, Blaise's gaze flew to Draco.

Sprawled behind his desk, he hardly moved, only she saw him whiten, and he brought his hand down hard on the point of his quill, so that it dug into his palm. Secondly, she saw that someone else had turned to look where she did — Ron Weasley had whipped around in his seat to stare at Draco. Draco shot him a furious glare, and shook his head almost imperceptibly, and Ron turned back to face the front of the room, biting his lip.

Blaise barely had time to wonder what that meant when the classroom door opened and Hermione Granger came in. She said something a low voice to Professor Binns, and then moved to take her seat next to Ron. As she went, she passed Draco. Her bookbag struck against the side of his desk and knocked his Charms book to the floor.