Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

When he opened his eyes, she stopped singing, startled. He had been asleep so long that she had almost forgotten that she was waiting for him to wake up. When he stirred and exhaled and opened his eyes slowly, she broke off and leaned over him, her long hair brushing his hand, and whispered, "Harry?"

The green eyes looked up at her, leaded by their long black lashes. His sopping hair was pasted to his forehead in limp dark streaks. He had already sweated through four pairs of pajamas and the ones he wore now were comically oversized on him. "Hermione?" he said, squinting up at her. His voice was raspy-soft, vague with sleep. "Is that you?"

"No," she said, and reached for the glass of water on the bedside table.

"No, it's not Hermione."

"I searched for you on the beach but I couldn't find you," he whispered, his eyes fixed on her but not seeing her. "I wanted to tell you I was looking for him — "

She halted with the glass in her hand, arrested by curiosity. "Who are you looking for?"

"Ron," he said, impatiently, as if she ought to know this. "I lost him, but I'm going to find him again."

She lowered the glass of water to his mouth. "Please drink," she said, but he turned his head away irritably and the water splashed down over his chin and onto his already soaked pajamas. His hand went to his throat and he closed his fingers as if he expected to find something there, but they closed on air. "Your Epicyclical Charm is gone," she said. "Have you lost it, Harry?"

He shook his head fretfully. "I left it for you," he whispered. "With my letters. You got my letters, didn't you? I told you to look after Malfoy. He's not well — "

He started to struggle up to a sitting position, but she put a hand on his chest and pushed him back down. Weak as a kitten, he flopped back onto the pillows. "You're not well, bébé," she said. "It's not Draco that's ill, it's you. And you need your rest."

He turned his head into the pillow, his eyes shut. Across his chest, he held his left hand tightly with his right, as if it were injured, although, when she had looked at it earlier, she had found thathe skin was unmarked. His breathing slowed, and he cried out a name. She wondered what he was dreaming.

Hermione was in the kitchen when she heard the door of the hotel room open and close. She had been making a new batch of the antidote — Add tisane of bloodroot, flower of antimony, wormwood infusion, powdered mandrake — when she heard the click of the lock. She dropped the pestle she'd been using to smash the mandrake to powder, and bolted out of the kitchen.

Draco was standing in front of the hotel room door, unbuckling the front of his cloak. His hood was down and there were flakes of snow caught in his hair. He looked up as she raced into the room, a startled expression crossing his face as she flung herself at him, almost knocking him back into the wall.

"I thought something happened — "

His arms went around her and for a moment he held her so hard that she winced as the buckles on the front of his cloak dug into her skin through her blouse. Then, as if suddenly recollecting himself, he pushed her away.

"Be careful," he said. "There's ash all over my clothes."

Hermione glanced down at herself. The front of her white nightgown was smudged with dark gray streaks. "I see that," she said, irritation beginning to flood over her relief. "And where were you? You could have told me you were going out-"

"You were asleep. I didn't want to wake you." His voice was light, careless.

He undid the last buckle on his cloak and threw it over the back of a nearby armchair. A pale cloud of ash rose from it, almost making Hermione cough. "Sorry," he said. There were streaks of soot on his face; what she had thought was snow in his hair, she now realized, was ash.

"We went to bed rather late, if you remember."

His casual use of the phrase "we went to bed" threw Hermione briefly. She felt herself blush; Draco noticed, and smiled a blandly engaging smile at her.

"I remember," she said tightly. "That doesn't mean you should just go haring off without me, you know. I thought we were in this together."

"We seem to be in a lot of things together," Draco said, pulling off his jumper. He threw it on top of his cloak, and went to work on his shirt buttons. "Suddenly."

Hermione blinked at him. "Where did you go, Draco?"

"Floo Hub," he said, pulling his shirt off. He was wearing a t-shirt under it.

There was ash around the collar.

"Looking for a lead on Harry?"

"No, I just have a kinky thing for fireplaces. Yes, looking for a lead on Harry."

"And you went without me?"

"Do you actually want me to respond to that or can we both agree the answer is fairly self-evident?"

"If you do that again, I'll — "

"You'll what?" He flung himself into the armchair, shedding ash all over the red leather, and went to work on the laces of his dragonhide boots.

"Or after I've spent a bracing morning getting knocked into various fireplaces by the security trolls at the Floo Hub while looking for your misplaced boyfriend, you'll stand there with your hands on your hips and glare at me like I just bashed your cat in the head with a steel-toed boot?

Oh, wait. YOU'RE ALREADY DOING THAT."

Hermione glared at him. "Are you done?"

Draco glared back. "No. I'm just getting started. I'm considering it as a career. Whining for England." He yanked off his left boot and tossed it on the floor. "I need coffee."

"Not until you take your antidote," said Hermione automatically.

"Fuck my antidote," said Draco with great satisfaction. "Fuck it upside down and sideways."

"You really do need coffee," Hermione said. "As repartee goes, that was not up to your usual par."

Draco took off his second boot, and dropped it with a deliberate thud.

"It's early yet."

"I don't suppose," Hermione said, "you're going to tell me why the security trolls threw you into a fireplace at the Floo Hub? Not that I can blame them, given your current mood."

Draco scrubbed the back of his hand across his eyes, looking exasperated.

This was possibly not the best move, as it succeeded mainly in smearing streaks of ash across his cheekbones and forehead. "Because," he said. "I was trying to get the Transportation Clerk to hand over the travel records for yesterday. You know everyone who passes through a Floo Hub has to fill out the paperwork. I figured they'd have a record of where Harry Flooed to. Only-"

"Only he wouldn't let you see the records," Hermione guessed.

"He didn't even have them. I broke open his desk, so I know. He said he hands them over to his boss at the end of every day. Maybe he was lying -

— what does it matter? He didn't have them, and I tried to get them and I couldn't, and that's the end of that, isn't it?"

"This," said Hermione, folding her arms, "is why you should have brought me with you."

"Right. Because the only thing more fun than failing is failing with an audience."

Hermione glanced sideways at him. He looked tired, and for Draco, filthy: black streaks in his pale hair, eyelashes clogged with soot. He met her gaze with a defiantly bitter one, as if daring her to say anything.

"Wait a second," she said, and disappeared into the kitchen. Her wand was lying next to a merrily boiling pot of water on the stove. She doused the flame and took the wand in her hand. A few simple spells later and she was back in the living room, a steaming mug of coffee in her hand. "Here," she said, shoving it at Draco.

He took it with a look of guarded surprise. "I thought you said — "

"I know what I said." She perched herself on the arm of his chair. When he didn't seem to mind, she relaxed slightly. "Draco, you have to stop thinking of this as something you can achieve by yourself."