Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

He staggered and fell as a wave of blackness rolled up and over him, knocking him to the ground. He heard screaming in his ears and felt shards of glass tearing his skin. He screamed, having no idea who or what he was shouting for. He could not hear his own voice over the howling wind in his head. He seemed to be in two places at once: he could see wavering light in front of him, blood and fire, splintering walls. At the same time he felt the cold stone floor under him as his body twisted and thrashed in agony.

Through the fog of pain and the wailing screams that surrounded him, hands reached to touch him. There were voices all around him, chattering in another language. Harry wondered briefly if he was dying. Then he didn't care. Arms went around him and lifted him up. A familiar voice said his name in his ear but he fainted before he could reply.

Faint light moved in a reddish glow and behind that glow were shadows.

Draco came up out of the darkness slowly, as if he were crawling his way up through mud or layers of water. When he opened his eyes, he did not immediately know where he was.

Slowly the blurred shapes that he was seeing resolved themselves and he recognized his surroundings. He was lying flat on his back on the bare marble floor of the hotel room in Diagon Alley, and his head was pounding as if a mountain troll had set up residence in his cortex.

Draco sat up slowly, convinced that if he moved quickly his head would come off completely. Pain laced his vision with a black mesh and he had to blink several times before he could focus. When he did focus, the first thing he saw was Hermione. She was sitting on the floor a little distance away from him, wearing white pajamas, her back against the couch. She was staring at him. In her pale face her dark eyes looked enormous, like wells of black ink.

"Hey," he said.

It was all he could think of.

Her hands, clasped in her lap, tightened themselves hard around the small silver flask she had been holding. Draco recognized it as the antidote flask she had been carrying around with her since they'd left school. It was chased silver, with a dark blue stone top. In the dim light it had a strange, bluish sheen that was somehow familiar. "You look awful," she said.

"I feel awful." Sitting up was proving to be too difficult. Draco lay back on his propped arms and concentrated on breathing through the pain in his head. He glanced down at himself — he was shoeless, wearing only his shirt and trousers. His shirt was splotched all over with silver stains and his gloves were gone, his hands bare. "Er…what happened exactly?"

She blinked at him. Her expression didn't change. "You don't remember?"

He shook his head, and winced as another bolt of pain shot through his temples. "I went looking for another Portkey…"

"So," she said, her voice very measured. "You don't remember tearing apart Blackthorpe's office? You started off by blowing his desk into toothpicks, and moved on to smashing every single on of the windows. I'm surprised you didn't kill everyone with the flying glass shards. Then of course all the floorboards wrenched themselves up and burst into flames."

"I put the flames out," said Draco, to whom recollection was returning in rather lurid fragments.

"With a rain of blood," said Hermione frigidly. "Then all those snakes burst out of the wall. Although they didn't get the attention they deserved, I fear, since everyone was kind of distracted by the wailing chorus of the damned and the giant rats that ate each other."

"I was proudest of the flock of invisible ducks, myself," Draco said.

Hermione did not laugh. She did not seem remotely amused. "I suppose you think you really showed them," she said. "Especially the part where you keeled over in a dead faint and I had to use the hotel Portkey to get us back here. Thank God I had it, or we'd both be dead."

Draco was interested. "Did I really keel over in a dead faint?"

"Yes," Hermione said flatly. "That's why you're on the floor. I couldn't lift you. I didn't want to use a spell. I think you've had enough magic tonight.

Harry always did say that if you ever let your Magid powers get out of hand it would blow the roof off Hogwarts. I guess he was right."

Her flat tone of voice was beginning to alarm him. "How long have I been out? You changed into pajamas…"

"I had to," she said expressionlessly. "You coughed up blood all over my clothes."

"Oh." This, Draco felt, ought to be worrying information. He didn't feel upset, though. Just very tired. "I'm sure the hotel has house-elf laundry services. I'll pay for it — "

Thwack! Draco barely flinched away in time as the flask Hermione had been holding sailed by his ear. It smacked soundly into the tiled floor and rolled away. He blinked at her.

"How dare you," she hissed. "How dare you sit there and act as if this is all about laundry?"

"I didn't say it was about laundry — " Draco began in what he thought was a reasonable tone, but barely had he gotten the words out of his mouth when Hermione seized a crystal candlestick off the coffee table and slung it at his head. He ducked, again, and it shattered against the floor.

"Hey!" Draco protested. "You could have hit me!"

"Good!" Hermione shrieked. She was on her knees now, cheeks scarlet with rage and suddenly, with an almost painful clarity, Draco remembered the skinny, wild-haired girl who had slapped him full across the face when he was thirteen years old. It had been the first really stunning thing that had ever happened to him. "I wish I had hit you! Do you even have any idea what you did, you stupid, stupid bastard? You're not supposed to use your magic! I told you that! Snape told you that!

Don't you listen to anyone? Did you think he was telling you that because he was trying to be funny? You're not supposed to use your magic because you're dying, and it takes every bit of your own strength and every bit of the strength in that antidote just to keep you alive! And then you go and have a stupid temper tantrum like this one, and I can't even imagine what it's cost you — a week off your life? Two weeks? And for what? For nothing.

It's not like you got what you wanted. They couldn't have helped you if you'd burned the whole place down."

"I was angry," Draco said. "I'm tired of living every second like I'm under a death sentence — "

"You are under a death sentence," Hermione said savagely. Casting about for something else to throw, she seized a heavy ceramic mug and hurled it at the far wall. It hit with a crash. Draco winced, but Hermione seemed to feel better. "You're not tired of living like you're under a death sentence, you're just bloody tired of living. I have to make you take your antidote.

You go walking into a place like that brothel without even bringing a Portkey to get you back out. And then that little display of suicidal temper. If it wasn't for me you'd be dead three times over today and you act like you don't even care. You don't care about anything now, and it isn't fair. He left me too, you know."

She broke off, but Draco remained silent. He lay where he was and looked at her, as the angry color slowly faded out of her face. She bit her lip.

"Say something," she whispered.

"Every time I say anything, you throw something at me," Draco pointed out.

"I won't this time. Just say something."

Draco sighed. He felt very tired. "This isn't about Harry," he said. "But if you want to make it about Harry, then fine. He left you, too. But he didn't write you a letter and tell you how worthless you were and how it made him sick to look at you, did he?"

"He didn't say that to you, either," Hermione said.

"Not literally, perhaps, but that was the general gist. Harry's too kind a soul to say anything like that outright. Apparently he couldn't stand living in my head anymore because it's such a revolting place. I can't blame him. I don't like it there myself."