Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

There was a short silence while Hermione thought. "Draco said something like that to me earlier today," she said finally. "I guess I've been yelling at you both a lot lately. I'm sorry."

Harry looked as if she had taken the wind out of his stubbornness. "So you're not angry?"

"Well, of course I'm angry," Hermione said hopelessly, "you run off and leave me, you put yourself in danger — I mean, Harry, what were you doing out so late? Viktor said he made you promise to be back before sunset, what happened? Did you just decide to ignore him?"

Harry looked grimly exasperated. "No, I — " He sighed. "Could you hand me my cloak? I think Draco threw it over the footboard."

Wondering, Hermione picked up the cloak handed it to him. There was a distinct bulge in the inner lining; turning the left pocket inside out, he drew out a small green book, stamped with gold lettering. The Malfoy Family Code of Conduct.

"Draco's book?" Hermione asked.

"You could say that. He gave it to me for Christmas," Harry said, running a thumb along the spine. "I had it in my pocket when I went out earlier — I wanted to bring a book with me, and there wasn't anything in the flat in English, and I — "

"Left it somewhere?" Hermione finished. "And had to go back for it?"

Harry had the grace to look embarrassed. "Yeah. I couldn't Summon it -

it's got all sorts of protective spells on it."

"You couldn't have gone back for it tomorrow?"

"Someone could have bunged it in a rubbish bin by then!" Harry looked outraged. "Or stolen it, or — Hermione, surely you understand why it's important."

"Well, because Draco gave it to you, of course."

"He didn't give it to me — he trusted me with it." Harry set it carefully down on the nightstand. "He trusted me with a lot of things, I think, and I let him down on all of them, and I didn't want to screw this up too. It's an heirloom, and you know how he is about things like that. Family things — "

Harry winced, and broke off. "My ankles," he said. "I almost forgot."

"Oh! I'll get them," Hermione said, and touched her wand to the ropes at his feet. They fell away, and when she looked up he was leaning back against the headboard, rubbing his chafed wrists again and looking at her ruefully.

"You know," he said, "I've thought about what it would be like when I saw you again a hundred times since I left, but I have to say I never exactly imagined it this way."

"I'm sorry it came to this, Harry," she said, trying to keep her voice steady. She wanted to touch him, wanted it badly, wanted to push the damp hair back from his forehead and kiss the welt on his cheek and put her arms around him and feel that steadfast, familiar heartbeat, the constant pulse of her safety and his. A wild tenderness surged up inside her, but she said nothing and remained where she was, her hands folded quietly in her lap, her gaze fixed on a point just below his left ear.

"Came to what?" Harry said, leaning forward to undo the ropes that were tied around his ankles. Hermione leaned back to give him room. "Malfoy losing his mind entirely?"

"He had to knock you out. You would have run away again."

"He didn't have to tie me to the bed."

"Well, I suppose he could have tied you to the couch, but I'm not sure that would have been a distinct improvement from your perspective."

Harry made a low, exasperated sound. "I don't want to talk about Malfoy," he said. "Do you hate me, too? Is that what this is about?"

At that, she did look up. "I hate what you did," she said, softly. "I hate that you left me."

A spasm of pain crossed his face. "Hermione, I — "

"I hate what you did to Draco," she said.

"I don't want to talk about him."

"Too bad," Hermione said unsympathetically. "If you think I'm going to let you leave here without us, you're out of your mind, Harry Potter. I don't care what fantasy you've got in your head about saving the world single-handed — "

"I don't want to leave here without you," he said in a low voice.

Hermione stared at him. She would have thought he was lying, but Harry didn't lie. Not in the same way that Draco didn't lie — Draco didn't lie to himself, because self-delusion was weakness, and weakness was despicable. Harry didn't lie because he couldn't. He looked at his hands, clasping the blanket, plying the fabric nervously between his fingers.

"I was wrong to leave without you," he said. "Both of you. I see that now.

I've been pushing you all away because I thought I couldn't possibly ask you to come with me. I thought it would be the most supreme kind of selfishness possible to drag you two along on a quest that was mine. It's my death the Dark Lord wants, after all. It always has been. What happened to Ron is my fault."

"But, Harry — "

"Don't." Harry's hands shook on the blanket, but his voice was steady.

"Let me talk. I'm telling you what I thought, not what I think now. Draco kept trying to tell me, but I don't think I ever really listened," he said, and Hermione noted his abstracted use of Draco's given name, but did not comment. "He kept telling me that I was a hero, I was going to have to make a hero's choices. I thought he was mocking me a little, the way he always does, hell, the way he always did — calling me Harry Potter, World Savior and all that. I figured he was trying to keep me from getting an inflated opinion of myself. But I realized, after I left, that he meant it. And he was right, too. He wasn't mocking me at all. He was trying to tell me that being a hero was hard and brutal and even demeaning, that it isn't glorious, that its all these ugly choices you make, day after day, every day. He was trying to tell me that you don't get the luxury of sparing your friends pain. You have to choose the world and not…not everything else," he said, and there was nothing self-pitying in his voice, only a frayed and irresolute exhaustion.

"I thought," Hermione said, "that's what you were trying to do. Choose the world."

Harry shook his head. "No. I was trying to keep the people I couldn't stand seeing hurt from being hurt. But that's not choosing the world.

That's choosing myself and what I love and can't bear to be without. The truth is, if I really want to defeat the Dark Lord, I need you both. I can't be without you. I can't think properly without you — I get all muddled and I try to think what you'd do but you're not there to tell me — and without Draco I — "

He broke off.

"Without him, what?" Hermione asked, but Harry just shook his head.

"I never meant to hurt either of you," he said in a low voice. "That much is true, anyway."

"Then why did you write all those horrible things in that letter to Draco?"

Hermione said.

It was cruel, but then she meant it to be a little cruel. His head jerked up and he stared at her, astonishment seared across his features. "He showed it to you?" he said.

"He didn't believe you'd written it, at first," Hermione said. Some small part of her wanted to remind him that he had not written her a letter at all, but pride stopped her. "I had to do a spell to prove it."

Harry's hands had fisted themselves on the blanket. His knuckles were white. "I know I'm not a very good letter writer," he began, a little unsteadily.

"Harry. It was horrible."

"I didn't mean it to be horrible!" he said, and there was anger in his voice now as well as anguish. "I was trying to be honest. God, I can barely even remember what I said, now. It's all gone blurred together — but I never intended — "

"You can't have meant those things — "

"And what business is it of yours?" he half-shouted at her, suddenly, and Hermione almost fell off the bed in surprise. Harry never shouted at her, never. "Why are you tasking me on Malfoy's behalf, Hermione? Why don't you tell me how you feel? Do you need Draco to talk for you?"