Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

There was a staircase around the next corner; Draco took the steps two at a time, ignoring the tightening pain in his chest. He jumped the bottom step, hit the stripped-wood floor with a clatter of boots, and was running down the hallway. There were several doors, unmarked, but it didn't matter: he knew which one he needed. He could feel Harry nearby now, as if they stood in the same room. Nerves and shortness of breath made his fingers shake as he tried the door: it was locked, of course.

Draco stood back and put his hand against the door. He took a deep breath. He knew perfectly well that he wasn't supposed to do this. He was not meant to be using magic. Not for something like this — not for anything. He knew that, but it didn't matter. He could feel how close he was, and at the same time he could feel the pressurizing rise, the power uncoiling inside him that wanted to be used. Harry always envisioned it as a beast on a chain, barely controlled. Draco had never questioned his own control. He didn't question it now. He merely opened his hand against the surface of the door, and pushed.

The spell seemed to tear out of him as if the bones of his arm were tearing through the skin. He felt the blaze of it down through his veins and into his hand, taking him by surprise with its force. To Draco's great astonishment, the door gave a great jerk under his hand, and ripped itself off its hinges with a grinding noise. It toppled forward and Draco, taken completely off guard, tumbled after it. He staggered forward, tripped, and sprawled on the floor at Harry's feet.

The wizard had planned to kill his succubus wife immediately, as it were, but when he learned that she was pregnant, his plans took a different turn. It was not that he had a sentimental attachment to the idea of a daughter. It was that she was something of his, his blood and his breeding. Surely, then, her fate should rest in his hands.

He had a cage built inside the largest of his halls, and all its bars were made of solid gold. The succubus he had cast inside it, heavily bound in chains of gold. And there she withered and there she died, poisoned by the metal all around her, but even as she died the baby inside her body waxed and grew healthy. At last the child was delivered and once it was cut from her body, the succubus crumbled away to dust, which the wizard scattered on the wind.

He went then to look upon his daughter.

She was a baby not quite like other human babies. She had been born with a mane of long dark curling hair, and her eyes, heavily lashed with black fringe, were as gray as windowpane glass. She had long nails the color of blood and skin like white snow. The wizard took her and set her down in a patch of sunlight, and she began to weep there, and to wriggle in pain, but she did not die.

"You are mine," said the wizard. "And yet you are also not mine, for the ichor of demons runs in your veins alongside my own blood. There is always the chance that you will revert to the maternal strain. Precautions must therefore be taken before you can begin to be useful to me."

His daughter looked at him with wide uncomprehending eyes. Eyes that were his own eyes, set in the face of what he hated. And perhaps his voice was not steady as he called for his servants, and perhaps his hand was not steady as he held his wand, but it made no difference to the effectiveness of his spells. He had had nine months to work on them and they were perfect.

He cast first a spell that would bind the child, utterly, to that side of her inheritance which was human in nature, and which was more specifically Malfoy. For as long as she lived she would be unable to lift a hand to harm anyone of Malfoy blood. Her obedience also he bound. She would be obedient to the head of the Malfoy family, bound to his bidding, whatever he might ask. His lightest request would be her law. She would come and go at his pleasure. And when he died, she would pass, like an inherited trinket, to the next in the family line.

You look curious. You want to know, I imagine, what would happen if there were only daughters. But there are never daughters. Draco never told you? Malfoys only have male children. It is a peculiarity of the line.

But I digress.

All these spells and bindings the wizard laid upon the child. At the end, he bound her with sympathetic magic. Should she harm the Malfoy she served, should her disobedience or failure cause him pain, she would feel that same pain herself. And the farther she was, physically, from the one she served, the weaker her powers would be. Eventually she would feel it as a physical debilitation. She could not stay away long.

When he was done, he lifted the child up in his arms and kissed her once, on the forehead, and then he set her down inside the golden cage which had killed her mother, and he walked away. He did not speak to his daughter again for ten years.

And now you look sad. Have I made you sad? It is a sad story, I suppose, although it is my story, so I rarely think of it that way. And all love stories are sad, especially for you mortals. You have such short lives.

What's that? Well, of course it was a love story. Isn't a love story, after all, just a story about love? Must the story end happily for the love to have been real? There are many kinds of love, after all. Love that cannot harm and love that never abandons and love that cannot imagine betrayal. And then there is love that corrupts, and love that destroys, and love that works in the blood like poison. And they are not so far apart as you might think.

Harry gave a little gasp of astonishment, but other than that, remained perfectly still. He did not move away as Draco scrambled to his feet. He stood where he was and stared at Draco, and Draco, feeling stupid with relief and shock and exhaustion, stared right back. He hadn't seen Harry in so long — or at least it felt as if years had passed, although he knew perfectly well that it had been a matter of days — that all the words he had wanted to say turned to dust in his mouth.

He looked around instead. They were in a small room paneled in plain wood. There were no furnishings (unless one was to count the destroyed door lying in the middle of the floor, which Draco didn't.) Harry was standing by a small table on which sat a what looked like a bronze paperweight. A gold chain lay coiled around the base of the table. He held an open padlock in one hand.

Draco coughed. Harry was still staring at him. For some reason, Draco could taste blood in his mouth. Maybe he had bitten his lip. "Harry," he said, finally. The name sounded odd. "Are you all right?"

Harry said nothing. Draco became aware of the way that Harry looked. He looked ragged. He was wearing a torn and filthy shirt and there were tears in the knees of his jeans. His shoes were caked with mud. His black hair straggled over his face in damp and tangled strands, and he was flushed, the hectic color high in his cheeks. He wasn't wearing his glasses. One of his hands was bleeding, although not badly.

"Harry?" Draco said, and got to his feet.

Harry seemed to come alive. With a jerk, he stumbled back, putting himself between Draco and the table behind him. "Don't," he said vehemently. "Don't come any closer."

"It's me," Draco said. "It really is me — "

"I know it's you!" Harry half-shouted, startling them both. "I can't believe I ever-" He broke off and shook his head. He looked sick to his stomach. "I know it's you, Malfoy," he said, more quietly. "How do you know it's me?"

"Oh, for God's sake, Potter," said Draco. "Could we possibly have this idiotic conversation later? Like, once we're out of this pit? And what the hell are you protecting there? A paperweight? You're acting like it's the last Portkey out of Azkaban."