Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

Hermione laughed and took the letter back, folding it carefully into her robe pocket. "And the Ministry will be closed half the day tomorrow, so it'll be a perfect time…"

"Closed?" Draco asked curiously. "Why?"

Hermione paused before replying. "Because," she said. "Tomorrow — is New Year's Eve, Draco."

"Oh," he said, his face very blank, and then, "Oh. I hadn't realized it had been so long."

So long since what? she thought, but didn't say it, instead she touched him on the arm and said, "We should get some sleep."

He nodded. "You go ahead."

They had a pattern now. Hermione would go into her bedroom and change into her nightgown with the door shut, and climb into bed. After a short interval had passed, Draco would knock on the door, barefoot in pajamas, and climb under the covers with her and would fall asleep with their arms around each other, but they never, after the first night, kissed each other and they never took off any of their clothes. Hermione had gotten used to Draco, to the way he slept, the scent of his sweat and laundry soap, the sound of his sleepy whispers, the way she had never imagined that she would ever get used to anyone but a lover.

When he came in tonight, his hair was damp and he smelled of Healfast and bandages. He lay down, and she curled up beside him. Draco wound a curl of her hair around his fingers and twirled it idly. "Do you think you'll be able to sleep?" he asked. "Or will you be anxious about tomorrow?"

"I didn't get back to sleep properly last night after you woke me up yelling," she replied, putting her hand on his chest, the fingers splayed out so that she could feel the beat of his heart through the thin cotton of his pajamas, steady and rhythmic against her palm.

"Oh?" He turned his head towards her and she felt his chin against her hair. "What was I yelling?"

"You were just shouting for someone."

She felt him tense up. "Who?"

Hermione hesitated a moment before answering. "Your father," she said, finally.

A long moment passed. When Draco spoke again, his voice sounded only bewildered. "Why would I shout for him?"

"Because he's your father," she said. "And you love him."

"No," he said, and turned his head so that her head fit under his chin. "I don't think so," he said, and his voice was soft and distant, falling away into sleep, falling and almost lost. "I don't love anyone anymore. Maybe not even you."

By the third day of fever, Harry's dreams had stopped making sense and had become an odd jumble of images. Some seemed like memories -

watching Hermione run across the snow towards the Quidditch pitch, Ron with his orange hat pulled down, trying to fix a broken broomstick with Spellotape, Draco at his desk, writing industriously with his raven feather quill — and some were obviously dreams or nightmares. He dreamed he saw the corpses of Cedric Diggory and his parents tethered to posts under the lake, their hair drifting in the current like weeds. He dreamed he was a ghost, haunting the Manor. He dreamed he was sitting on a beach, and that the tide had drawn far out, leaving bare wet patches where the sea had been, and that he could see a red plastic bucket being drawn out by the current. And he dreamed that he lay in a strange bed in a strange room, and that the room was full of flowers, and that Fleur Delacour was sitting in an armchair beside the bed, her long fair hair falling all around her and a quizzical expression on her face.

"You're awake," she said, leaning forward with a smile. "I had begun to think it would take an earthquake to wake you up."

Harry blinked at her. "I'm not awake," he said. "I'm dreaming."

Fleur leaned farther forward, and put her hand on his arm. Her fingers were cool against his skin. She pushed his sleeve up, her fingertips tracing the sensitive skin of his wrist lightly. Harry wondered if this dream was about to go in a very unexpected direction. He'd had the occasional dream about Fleur before, when he was much younger — okay, sixteen -

but lately, he'd been much more likely to -

"OW!" Harry yelled, and jerked his arm back. "You pinched me!"

Her blue eyes danced. "I had to show you that you weren't dreaming, didn't I?"

"I…" Harry looked around himself wonderingly, startled all over again. He was in a pleasantly appointed bedroom whose walls were painted pale yellow. A fire burned in a small brick fireplace, and everywhere there were vases of flowers, on all the tables: lilies and gardenias, marigolds and poppies, tulips and asters and phlox. Colorful curtains were slung back over the windows, through which he could see a snowy landscape, dotted with bare trees, mountains in the distance. "I would ask 'Where am I?'"

Harry remarked, "but that just sounds so stupid."

"You're in Bulgaria," Fleur said, and got up from her armchair to sit on the edge of Harry's bed. "This is Viktor's house, and these — " she tugged on his sleeve — "are his pajamas."

"Viktor Krum?"

"Do you know any other Viktors?"

"No, but — well, it's not as if I was expecting him. I was in the Floo Hub in London — "

"You fainted," Fleur said. "Viktor was there with his team, coming back from a match, and he saw you. You were very ill, Harry. You had quite a high fever when he brought you here and you were delirious. Do you know how long you've been here?"

Harry shook his head.

"Three days," Fleur said.

"Bloody hell," Harry said, startled, "I must have been really ill."

"You were. Can you get up and walk now?"

Harry considered. He felt drained and tired but not precisely ill. His muscles ached slightly, and his right hand hurt as thought he had cut or injured it. He glanced down at himself, and blinked — the pajamas he was wearing were enormous on him, the sleeves dangling down over his hands.

He threw his legs over the side of the bed and stood up gingerly. For a moment he felt lightheaded, and reached for the bedpost. Then, realizing that his pajama bottoms were falling down, he grabbed for those instead.

Fleur chuckled. "I've already seen it all," she said. "Someone had to get you into those pajamas, you know."

"Oh," Harry said, and, to his great annoyance, blushed. Nobody, to his knowledge, had ever seen him stark naked under good lighting conditions before — well, unless you counted Draco, who had inhabited his body after all, but Harry preferred not to count that, because it was weird. "Where's Viktor, anyway?"

"He is probably off writing," Fleur said. "This is his country house. We came here a few months ago because he wanted a quiet place to finish his book. It has been very dull for me, although as you can see I've been experimenting with flower magic." She waved a careless hand towards an enormous vase of tulips, then reached up and pulled on a small tasseled bellpull next to the bed. "Viktor will be happy to see you up and around.

He was worried." She pointed to a trunk at the foot of the bed. "All your things are in there," she said. "Your clothes, your little bag, your sword too — well, everything except this," and she drew the Malfoy Family Code of Conduct out of her pocket and held it up. "I was reading it. It's very amusing. Did you know Malfoys are forbidden on pain of death from wearing powder blue?"

"Hey!" Harry took a step forward and almost fell over the trailing legs of his pajamas. "That's mine. Give it back."

"How ungrateful!" Fleur exclaimed, and tossed the book at him. Forced to make a split-second decision, Harry let go of his pajama bottoms, and caught the book. The pajama bottoms fell down. Fortunately, he was wearing boxer shorts underneath them; less fortunately, the shorts were unfamiliar to him, and had a design of enormous interlocked D's on them.