Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

She read it over again, just to be sure, but the words on the page still said the same thing: 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-It went on. She finished the letter, feeling stunned, almost breathless with shock. She read it again, then tore her eyes from the page and stared at Draco. He was looking at her, wide-eyed, and there was an unguarded defenselessness in his expression that took her entirely by surprise. "You see what I mean?" he said. "He couldn't have written that. He wouldn't say those things. I think-"

"Is that," she interrupted, as calmly as she could, "all that there was?"

Something flickered behind his eyes. "No," he said, finally. "There was this…" and he took up something that had been lying beside him on the coverlet and held it out to her. The gold chain glittered like liquid fire under the torchlight and she could see the faint marks in the band of the Charm where Lucius had once scored it with his nails. "It was with the letter."

"Oh, God." Hermione heard the breathlessness in her own voice. "Oh, Harry." She reached out and took the Charm from Draco; he let her have it as if it was some casual trinket that didn't matter. "I can't believe he'd leave this behind…but then he said he didn't want to be followed…"

"Leave it behind?" Draco blinked at her. "You don't really think he wrote that letter and left this here on purpose, do you? I mean — "

"If he didn't write this, then who did?" Hermione bit her lip. "There are things in this letter that nobody could possibly know but Harry. This is his handwriting — the way he crosses things out, even — his way of wording things — " She broke off. "These are things nobody else could know but you two. I mean, Draco…are they true? Because I never knew that you went to visit his parents' graves. Did you?"

"Yes, we did, but — but then someone forced him to write it!" Draco stood up suddenly, and paced away from the bed. She could see how thin his wrists were now, underneath the too-large cuffs of his jumper. "And took the Charm — "

"And did what with Harry? Killed him?"

Draco whirled and shot her a look of accusatory fury. "Don't even joke about that."

"I'm not joking." Her voice was even. "But I know Harry. And to get that Charm away from him you'd have to kill him. Unless he was willing to take it off voluntarily, it wouldn't come off. It's charmed that way, you know that, Draco."

His hands were clenching and unclenching into fists at his side as if he didn't know quite what to do with them. "You don't understand.

Yesterday — when we were talking — he promised — "

"I know what he promised. It says it in the letter. Draco — " She yearned to reach out and touch him but held herself back. "People break promises.

Even Harry breaks promises. If he thought it was for your good somehow -

— "

"But that's not what the letter says, does it?"

"I know." She looked at the piece of parchment in her lap. For a moment she wondered whether to point out the fact that Harry, apparently, hadn't left her any kind of message at all. But she doubted Draco would be very much moved by that — better no letter than one like this. Some part of her own mind rebelled against the idea that Harry could have written something so carelessly cruel. "It's a horrible letter. I don't want to think Harry wrote it, either. But the alternatives are worse. Either he wrote this and went off voluntarily or he didn't write this and something awful has happened to him — I'd rather think he did this than that he's dead — "

"He's not dead." Draco's voice was the keen edge of an icicle. "I'd know."

"Can you…" She made her voice as soft as possible. "Can you reach him at all?"

Draco shook his head. His mouth was a thin tense line. "No. He's blocking me. But I can feel him. I know he's alive."

"Is he blocking you on purpose?"

Draco nodded grudgingly. "Yes."

"Well, then…" Hermione looked down at the parchment in her lap. For a moment there was only the crackling of the fire. She could feel Draco standing near her, vibrating with tension like a strung wire. She reached into her pocket and drew her wand out and touched the end to the letter, half-whispering the words of the spell, which she'd used before less than a fortnight ago….

Ink and parchment, quill and bone

Let this letter's truth be shown.

Quill and inkpot, seal and feather

Reveal the writer of this letter.

The parchment trembled. Then the words on the page rearranged themselves to form a single name: HARRY JAMES POTTER.

Hermione jerked her head up and looked at Draco. She was standing close enough to him that she saw his color go, like flame blown out in a lamp.

But other than that, he was expressionless. "Draco…"

"All right, then," he said. His voice was expressionless, too, and careful. "If that's the way it is."

"It's better than if something had happened to him," she said, in a half-whisper.

"I know." He spoke stiffly. "I guess I hadn't thought about it that way.

You're right, of course." He pushed a lock of bright hair out of his eyes.

Eyes that were wide open but looked shut, the blank eyes of someone who had just died. "You're always right."

Hermione put the letter down. She stood up, reaching her hand out to him. He had turned his face away from her; she could not read his expression. She could see the rapid pulse beating at the base of his throat, where his shirt fell away from the fragile collarbone. There were words she wanted to say. Words she would have said to Harry if it had been some similar situation, love-words and endearments. But they dried up in her throat. She couldn't imagine them as applied to Draco Malfoy, who didn't lie, didn't dance, didn't faint, didn't cry, and didn't, ever, show that he felt anything at all. Not even now.

"I think maybe he wanted you to be angry at him," she said. "So you wouldn't miss him when he was gone…"

"No." Draco's voice was flat. He reached out and took the Charm out of her outstretched hand, and she saw the gold flecks of the firelight reflected in his iron-colored eyes. He closed his fingers around the Charm and said, "He doesn't think like that or tell those kind of lies. He knows me well enough to know that it wouldn't be some kind of favor to me to let me die hating him — "

"You're not going to die!" Hermione exploded. "Don't say that! And you could never hate Harry! It isn't in you — "

"Oh, God," said Draco and there was a terrible almost-mirthful humorlessness in his voice. "Save me from you bloody Gryffindors! You're just like him! I wonder if that's why — " He broke off, shaking his head, and his hair flew around him like colorless starlight. "Don't tell me what I'm capable of," he said, his voice calmer now. "Or what bloody good reason Potter might have had for what he's done. Tell yourself whatever pretty stories you want, but leave me out of it. Understand?"

Hermione felt a prickle of despair at her heart. It had been a long time since Draco had called Harry by his surname when speaking about him.

And she did understand, despite herself. Draco came from a line of highborn wizards who would rather throw themselves on the point of the sword than wait for the slow transfixion, and as much as he had defied his father he was still a Malfoy through and through. He did not lie to others unless he had to and telling himself lies would be the worst sin of all.

"I understand," she said, and meant it. "I do — but I'm not lying. I'm not."

But he was backing away from her now; he almost knocked into the small table by Seamus' bed and they both stiffened with the surprise — she could not remember ever having seen Draco walk into anything before. "I should go," he said. "I should…"