Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

Draco looked at her sideways. "At some point, you're going to have to tell me a bit more about Tom Riddle and that diary business. I'm thinking my education might not have included some of the more salient particulars.

Like why he's got it in for Ginny, for a start."

"I would have thought you'd be the expert on Young Voldemort."

"My father didn't tell me much." The windows, as they passed them, were opaquely silver with rain. "I know he is — was — the Dark Lord," said Draco. "I know Tom Riddle was a friend of my father's before he became Voldemort."

Hermione shuddered. "That still seems so weird. Tom Riddle. Here."

Draco sounded almost amused. "Everything in our lives is weird. What's one more undead evil maniac out to terrorize the populace? And may I point out that I always said Seamus Finnigan was up to no good."

"It's not Seamus and you know it."

"Perhaps not but you can bet the Dark Lord recognized a kindred spirit in him. 'Here's the kind of guy who could do with a good possessing!' he thought to himself the moment he clapped eyes on Captain Cardboard.

'He's got no personality himself, so plenty of room for mine.'"

"One of these days," said Hermione darkly, pushing the door to the Owlery open, "you can explain to me exactly what your problem with Seamus is — "

"Was," said Draco, blandly, ducking past her and into the long, dimly lit room beyond. Up here at the top of the school, the smell of rain was even stronger, along with the smell of dismal, wet owl. Hermione could never understand why people were always coming up to the Owlery to snog. She could not imagine engaging in passionate romantic activity with a bunch of goggle-eyed birds staring down at her.

Hermione shot Draco an angry look. "It's hardly Seamus' fault that — "

He cut her off. "I need some air. Everything in here reeks of owl."

He crossed the room to the large picture window that looked down over the grounds. Hermione scribbled several notes, including an inquiry note to Gringotts, addressed them, and sent them off with a brown barn owl.

Then she joined Draco at the window.

Beyond the glass, rain tautened like silver strings, barring her view of the Forest and the grounds outside. She could see the slightly blurred reflection of Draco's face in the rained-over glass. His eyes looked black, veiled with lighter lashes, his gaze distant. She knew what he was thinking. She was thinking the same thing. Where was Harry, was he all right, did he have somewhere to go, somewhere out of the rain? Was he alone, did he think of them, had he dismissed them from his life, was he safe now, would he die soon, would Draco know if he did, would Harry know when Draco was gone? Would he sit up in bed, as Draco had, blind-eyed with a sudden shattering sense of something missing, and whisper into the empty dark that he had lost something but he didn't know what?

A bleak feeling of misery swept through her.

"If you wanted to find him," she said, without thinking, "you could find him."

He placed his gloved fingertips against the glass. "You can be a real bitch sometimes, you know that," he said tonelessly.

"It's not just anyone we're talking about, here. It's Harry. If you hate him -

— "

"It doesn't matter if I hate him."

"You're right," said Hermione. "It doesn't matter."

Draco looked sideways at her. She could see the dull gleam of his Epicyclical Charm where it lay in the pale hollow of his throat. "I was expecting a bit more of an argument on that one."

"Look, it doesn't matter if you hate him. You used to hate him. It doesn't matter if you love him or hate him or despise him or want to kill him or think he's the only real friend you've ever had — "

"If you keep trying to talk to me about Harry," said Draco, forgetting, for a moment, to use his surname, "I will walk away from you, Hermione, I promise you that."

"— It doesn't matter because it doesn't change anything, not really. This connection you two have, it's not dependent on love or hate or even liking each other at all. It's beyond that. You're beyond that. You're too angry to see it or to want to see it, but if you wanted to find him, you could."

"No," he said, between his teeth. "I can´t. You think I didn't try?"

"I think you didn't try," she said. "You can walk in and out of his dreams.

You think you can't find him? He's Apparated himself to you, before, when you needed him — "

"I remember that," said Draco. "And I stuck a sword in him."

"I could get you to him," said Hermione, a little desperately. "I could send you — "

"I'm not so sure, Hermione," said Draco, "that that's something that you would want to do."

"I just want Harry back," she said, her voice thin. "I just want him back."

"And I want a solid gold bonnet. We don't always get what we want in this life."

"Don´t you dare be flippant at me!" Hermione shouted, losing control suddenly and shockingly. "If you won't even try — "

He moved quickly, so quickly she hardly saw him move towards her or catch at her arms and spin her to face him. Her back was against the cold glass of the window. When he leaned to her ear she smelled on him the antidote she had made herself, scents of blood and bitter aloe.

"You want," he whispered, his voice alive with soft mockery. His grip was tight on her upper arms; she could feel the pressure of his fingers through the skin, against her bones. "And you think I don't? You think I don't know about wanting what you can't have? You lot of fucking Gryffindors live everything you are on the surface — every pinprick, every disappointment, you've never learned to swallow it down, even when it's poison and it chokes you. And because I have learned it, because I don't bawl my eyes out over every bloody paper cut, you think I don't care. You think you can push me and push me and push me and I won't break — "

He cut himself off. Hermione did not know what to do. He had drawn back and was looking at her as if he loathed her and in that moment she knew she represented every Gryffindor he had ever hated or been frustrated by to him: she was Harry to him, she was Ginny, she was herself.

She raised her chin. "You're hurting my arms."

He drawled, "You sound like you haven't decided whether that's a good thing or a bad thing."

"Don't." Her tone was savage. "You don't mean it."

The sound of the rain on the window behind them was louder now. It sounded like gunfire. The glass rattled against her back.

His voice was cold. "I thought I already told you not to tell me what I do and don't mean."

"Go to hell, Malfoy," she snapped, and tried to pull away from him.

It didn't work. Any shifting just brought her in closer contact with his body. She could feel the buckle on his belt where it dug into the space just under her ribs. His clothes were damp and smelled like rain.

"Yes," he said, his voice flat. "I probably will."

Hermione stopped trying to pull away. A sudden arrow of remorse shot through her. There was no point in trying to hurt Draco, no point in fighting. They were on the same side, and anyway, he had already been hurt beyond the point of being able to be hurt again. "If you're determined to lose your mind over this," she said, as gently as she could, "lose it some other way."

He raised his eyebrows, in that way he had that lifted the veiling silvery lashes slowly up over his smoke-colored eyes. The pale scar at the corner of his eye looked like a line drawn in metallic ink. "What other way," he said, "would you suggest?"

She looked up at him. She had the sudden urge to tell him things. He had said he would not talk about Harry to her, but he had not forbidden her to do the same. She wanted to tell him how she had always thought that being as smart as she was would get her out of anything. That the idea that there was a problem she could not figure or study her way out of made her want to put her hand through a window. That Harry not leaving her a letter had broken her heart, that doing what she was doing, keeping busy, solving problems one by one, was the only way she could avoid thinking about it. That if Draco kept holding onto her arms like that and looking at her like that she was going to do something that would make them both very sorry. That she knew why he was doing it, too, and that it bothered her less than it probably should have.