Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

"He's not talking for me," Hermione said stiffly. She hated the way she always froze up when she was upset, but she couldn't seem to help it. "I'm talking for him."

"And you think I don't know why? I saw your face when you looked at him just now- the way you always look at him — you feel guilty, don't you?

About the way you feel about him, about everything. About what you did

— you chose me, and you broke his heart, and he never said anything. If it'd been me I'd have crawled off like a sick cat to lick my wounds somewhere in private, but he couldn't do that. He's too proud. He had to behave as if he didn't mind. It would've killed me, but then he's strong in a different way than I am. And I saw how you pushed us towards each other, me and him, like you thought I could fix it for him, patch over what you broke, make him happy — because damned if you'd want Ginny to make him happy, or some other girl, no, that would have made you jealous. But what is it you really want me to do for him? What do you want me to give him that I haven't already? What do you want me to be for him that I haven't? I've always tried to be what you wanted, Hermione, but bloody hell, I can't even tell what you want from me any more!"

Hermione gaped at him. She was too stunned to even begin teasing out all the threads of what was true from what was rage and confusion in what he had just said. All she knew was that she had almost never seen Harry this angry in her life. "Maybe I did push you," she began, her voice wobbling. "Maybe I am selfish. Maybe you're right to hate me — "

Harry squeezed his eyes shut. "I don't hate you," he said. "Just because I know you're not bloody perfect doesn't mean I hate you. You're the one who thinks everyone has to be perfect. I practically killed myself trying to be what I thought you wanted me to be. But I'm not perfect, Hermione.

I'm selfish sometimes and I do bloody stupid things and I hate — you wouldn't believe how I can hate. I think ugly, brutal, horrible thoughts. All the time. I wish I'd broken Wormtail's neck — every day — " He broke off, his voice ragged and desperate. "If you knew the half of it — what I'm really like — "

"Don't, Harry," she said. "Open your eyes — "

"No." He kept his face averted. "You're not listening to me. Remember that time third year when you told Ron I didn't want to kill anyone? You were wrong. I want to kill Voldemort but maybe that doesn't matter, he isn't even human, but if I could get my hands on Draco's bloody father, I'd kill him, and he is- I thought about killing him at the Manor — if it hadn't been for Draco, I'd have done it, too, I'd have grabbed one of those swords off the mantelpiece and stuck it through his throat and I would have been glad — "

"If it hadn't been for Draco," Hermione said. "You didn't hurt his father for his sake — you couldn't take his father away from him, even though his father's a monster. That's unselfishness, Harry, it's — "

"It's not!" Harry shouted. "And that's exactly what I mean. You don't see me. You see what you want to see. And I'm not saying I'm a bad person, either, because I don't think I am — I'm just ordinary — "

"You're anything but ordinary."

He took a deep, shuddering breath, a sound like a sob whipsawing its way out of his lungs. "You'll never understand," he said despairingly. "I love you so much but you just don't understand. You've always seen my best self, and I wanted to be that for you, so badly. But I don't think my best self has much of a chance against Voldemort, Hermione. I just don't."

"Is this what you couldn't tell me?" Hermione whispered. "Is this what you've been hiding from me all this time?"

"Yes," he said. He had raised his face a little, but his eyes were still shut, stubbornly, his teeth biting down into his lip. "Mostly."

"Harry, open your eyes, please. Look at me."

"No. I can't look at you and say these things. I can't do it."

She moved closer to him, reaching out to touch him for the first time, her outstretched fingers feathering the lightest of touches against his bruised cheek. She felt him tense all over, as if he were holding himself back from leaning into her touch. "Open your eyes, Harry," she said again, and this time he did.

He opened them slowly and looked directly at her, and there was in his eyes a sort of hopeless relief that made her think suddenly and acutely of that first night at the hotel in Diagon Alley and the look on Draco's face when he had turned to her in the narrow bed and held his arms out.

Exhaustion warring with relief warring with despair: he had done something he had been afraid for a long time of doing, and then it was done and all choices rendered irrelevant. She had felt it in the way that he had touched her, as if she were a dream he had been afraid of having, not a girl but a penance.

Just like him, she thought. She said, "I'm sorry you thought I wanted you to be perfect, or anything other than what you are. If you'd killed Wormtail — if you'd killed Lucius — it wouldn't have made me love you less.

Draco's right. You're a hero and that means you find yourself forced into positions where there are no right choices. I love you, Harry. Nothing changes that. Nothing I could do changes it. Nothing you could do changes it. No wrong choices could change it. I've loved you since I met you and I'll love you if I never see you again. And I'm not angry at you. I promise I'm not. I feel like I've done nothing but scold you for months and I'm sorry. I was just scared of losing you."

He put his hands out and she took them. They were cold in hers, and she ran her fingers lightly over the backs of his knuckles, her thumb against the scar on his palm. "You're really not angry?" he asked.

"No," she said.

"Thank God," Harry said. "I don't think I could cope if you were both furious at me."

"I know." She reached up, pushed his hair back out of his eyes. "You are going to have to talk to him eventually."

"I would, but — what could I even say?" Harry asked. The loose strands of his dark hair tickled her eyelashes. "Maybe I should wait until he's a little less angry."

"He's Draco," Hermione said. "He won't get less angry."

Harry sighed. "I can't believe I could have so — "

He broke off, pulling away from her. He was staring over her shoulder.

She turned and saw Draco standing framed, blond and indolently scornful, in the doorway. He was looking at them both with an expression of bland distaste.

"Sorry to break up the touching reunion," he said coolly. "One of your pots on the stove's boiled over, Hermione. Black stuff is leaking out of it and catching on fire."

"Oh!" Hermione spun around. "Did you take the pot off the stove?"

"You told me not to muck about with it," he said. "So I didn't."

"Oh, Draco, honestly!" Hermione leaped to her feet. "I'll be right back, Harry," she said to the silent boy on the bed, and ran for the door. The corridor was half full of black smoke and by the time she arrived in the kitchen and flipped the stove off, she was cursing Draco under her breath.

"Not at all," he said, having tailed her to the kitchen. "I assure you my parents were married."

Black fluid had pooled all around the base of the stove and the ingredients inside the pot were charred and unusable. "Why didn't you come get me earlier?" Hermione demanded.

Draco made a face but stayed well away from her. He was being very careful not to get any of the reeking black liquid on his expensive leather boots. "I didn't want to interrupt anything. I feel no need to go blind earlier than I have to."

Hermione glared at him, and dumped the ruined pot into the sink. "There was nothing to interrupt. We were talking."

"Is he all right?" Draco said abruptly.

"Ask him your bloody self," Hermione snapped.