Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

"We all change," he said. He unfolded his arms, and stood looking at her, his head cocked to the side. Every line of his body expressed tension and a just-under-the-surface anger, but his mouth was smiling. It was a cool, tense smile, radiating the promise of things which might or might not be pleasant, but which one couldn't help wanting anyway. "You've changed since we played together when we were five. Haven't you?"

"Maybe." The Slytherin girl arched her head back, a small smile playing on her mouth. Her hands were on her hips, her shoulders back, her chest thrust forward. The provocative pose could have been copied from the pages of Teen Witch Weekly, but on Blaise it didn't look silly. "Do you like it?"

"That depends." Draco reached out and gently touched her hair. "Are you still angry at me?"

Blaise lowered her eyelashes. "I don't know."

"It's pretty simple really," said Draco, and lightly touched her face, running his knuckles along the curve of her cheek, over her lips, down to her collarbone. "Either you are," he said, and dropped his hands to her waist, pulling her closer, "or you aren't."

In answer, she raised her face, eyes closed and lips parted, and he kissed her. It was a slow, controlled, unhurried kiss; plainly he had kissed her this way before. Just as plainly she liked it; she went pliant under his hands, and her arms slid around his waist.

Hermione felt herself flush scarlet. Now she felt as if she were spying on something that was none of her business; even worse, she remembered what it was like to be kissed by Draco like that. She had never much minded his relationship with Blaise before, now she found that she did mind it, very much, and was ashamed of herself for minding.

She screwed her eyes shut. When she opened them again Blaise and Draco had separated, although not by far; Blaise was smiling up at him, and in the darkness of the corridor, his pale hair and her scarlet shone out like beacons. They could have been Ginny and Draco. But Ginny would never have smiled at him like that.

"I guess you aren't," Draco said, in a voice that made even Hermione feel a little wobbly around the knees. Oh dear. "Angry any more, that is.'

"Not now, but if I ever catch you so much as kissing another girl, Draco Malfoy-" Blaise said, her voice breathy.

Draco cut her off with a laugh, short and mirthless. "That won't happen."

Blaise looked at him languidly. Under her dark lashes, her eyes showed green as a cat's. Somehow she had managed to allow her Quidditch robes to slip off one shoulder, showing the strap of her lavender camisole beneath. Hermione had no idea how she'd done that without even seeming to move. It was a feat of engineering. "Sometimes I think I don't know you at all," she said.

"Sometimes I think the same thing."

He let Blaise go, and she stepped away from him, straightening her clothes. "I think we're done here, Draco," she said, and added: "I'll be in the common room if you want me," managing to make even that sound like an invitation to a round of unsavory but pleasurable activities. Drat the girl. Hermione watched her as she walked away, the sway of her hips mesmerizing under the dark green robes she wore. How did she walk like that? It wasn't at all fair. Blaise disappeared down the corridor in a swirl of green and scarlet, and as she did so Hermione glanced back down and saw Draco looking up at her.

Their eyes met, and she felt herself flush again. He stood where he was, not moving, the torchlight flaring and fading on his fair hair. Under his eyes were dark bruised shadows, and his mouth looked bruised as well, possibly from kissing. He had lost the thinness he had acquired over the summer, and she could see the slender musculature of shoulders and arms outlined under his clothes as he took another step back, tipping his head up to look at her, and the unsteady light played its shadows over his face and hair. For a moment, she saw another face superimposed over his.

"Draco," she said.

He smiled. The smile did not translate to his eyes. There was something else in them, something shadowy and despairing and primal. "What?"

"Do you love her?" she said. It wasn't what she had meant to say at all.

"What do you think?"

"I think you don't know."

"Then you give me too much credit," he said. "In the meantime — if I give you something, will you give it to Ginny for me?"

She shook her head. "Give it to her yourself."

"You don't have to tell her it came from me."

"Draco." The word came out as half a wail, half an accusation. "Why are you acting like this?"

"I'm not acting," he said. "This is the way I am."

He raised his chin further, as arrogant and proud as she had ever seen him, and the torchlight flared on his bright hair and then vanished, as if a shadow had come between them and the light. In the half-darkness she saw his cool-water eyes on her, his chest still rising and falling quickly from rage and perhaps kissing, and she knew what had gone into that kiss: all the fierceness and the fury and the passion that he felt for someone, someone other than Blaise.

"You can love more than one person, you know," she said.

His eyes flashed. "Don't feed me platitudes, Hermione," he said. "You think I don't know that?"

"You don't love her," said Hermione, now certain of it. "You kiss her like you're trying to get revenge."

"Revenge on who?" Draco said, his voice tight with exasperation, or maybe it was something else.

Hermione shook her head. "I don't know."

"Well," said Draco, and shrugged. "Owl me when you find out, all right?

Maybe there's a book in the library on it."

"If you think — "

"Just leave me alone," Draco said, and turned on his heel, and walked away. Hermione watched him go, the tension in her chest almost unbearable. It was getting worse — all of it. And there was no one she could talk to about it. Not Harry. Not Draco. Not Ron. Not anyone. Everyone, it seemed, was at a loss. And she suspected that Hermione Granger, smartest witch at Hogwarts, was the most lost of them all.

Exhausted, Harry walked slowly down the long corridor that led to the abandoned armory. Once a week, on Fridays, he made this journey, always at six-o'-clock, the hour before supper. On the first day of school, Dumbledore had shown him the way. Him, and Draco.

The walls here were dusty and bare of decorations and tapestries. Harry's feet echoed on the stone floor and the sound made him feel strangely lonely. He had been in the infirmary for a half hour before Madam Pomfrey had shooed him and the rest of the Gryffindor team out the door. He had made a cursory search of the castle but had not been able to find Hermione, and then it had been time for his appointment with Draco and he'd had to go. He felt the ache of not having been able to find her like a dull pain in his side. He did not want to be without her, especially not after the traumatic events of the game. But he also knew he had no right to require her company, not after the way he'd been acting lately.

He wanted to do something to show her what she meant to him, but he couldn't. He felt her being torn from him and there was nothing, it seemed, that he would or could do about it. A dull sense of inevitable loss immobilized him.

He had reached the end of the corridor. The door in front of him was old, scarred, dark-red wood banded with bronze. He pushed the handle down and the door swung open. He went in, and shut it carefully behind him.

He stood in a large oval-shaped room with high windows, at least twenty feet above Harry's head, that were barred with iron grilles. The room was empty of furniture save a long table that ran along one wall; the walls were bare of ornamentation. Instead they were lined with empty glass-fronted cases that had once held swords and shields, axes and lances, enchanted weapons of all types. Now, it was never used. Dust motes floated in the weak rays of winter twilight that lanced down through the grilled windows.