Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

"Good," Draco said, and his voice shook. He dropped his hand back to his side, tightening the fingers into a fist, hiding the ugly weals along the palm that Harry knew better than to ask about again. "Then we understand each other."

"Do we?" Harry said. "Because if we're going to go on together, you and I, then we're going to have to learn to get along better than this."

"Go on together?" Draco echoed. The gray eyes were veiled again, barely visible beneath lowered eyelashes. "What do you mean, precisely, go on together?"

"If we're going to stand against Voldemort together," Harry said, "then we can't be fighting with each other."

Draco looked at him incredulously for a moment, then smiled delightedly, that swift characteristic smile that lit up his face and made his eyes sparkle, a smile that felt like something tugging at the corner of Harry's own mouth, making him want to smile back, and then Draco, still smiling, said, "You thought I was going to come with you now? I'm not sure what's funnier, Potter — your endless optimism, or your boundless stupidity."

Harry's smile vanished. "What?"

"Well, of course you'd think that," Draco said dryly. "After all, what purpose do I have on this earth beyond following you around?" His gray eyes, up close, were shaded with an amused and tranquil blue. "I remember when I was eight years old," he added, confidentially, and Harry, bewildered, felt the confiding and gentle tone like pain, as the memory of past and lost intimacy is always painful. "I had a pet bird. It died. My father killed it, actually. I ran away from the Manor. My father sent the hellhounds to drag me back. They dropped me on the floor at the foot of the staircase and my father came down and knelt down over me. I thought he might pick me up, but he didn't. He said, You were wrong to run. You belong to me. You are mine, like this house, like these dogs, like the portraits on the walls. No less and no more than any of my other possessions, you belong to me. You are subject to my laws and to the Manor's laws. Fight me and I will break you. Run from me and I will bring you back. There is no part of this earth you can run to that I cannot find you, no place so distant that, finding yourself there, you will no longer be my son.""

"But this isn't like that," Harry said. "You don't belong to me like that and I don't make you do anything you don't want to do. I'm not like your father. I'm not friends with you because you're useful. You matter to me," he said, thinking how very feeble that sounded. If only he had Draco's gift of words. "And I'm your friend because I want to be. I assumed it was the same with you. I would never want to hurt you, not deliberately."

"I know," Draco said. "I'm sure you wouldn't. And you, I suppose, are mine as much as I am yours." The blue-gray eyes, supremely calm, were icy. "I wanted my death to mean something," he said. "And you took that away from me. Maybe you meant to, maybe you didn't. But I won't ever forgive you for it. Ever."

Utterly bewildered, Harry stared. "I don't understand," he said.

Draco cut him off. "You wouldn't," he said. "And it has passed the point where it matters to me whether you understand me or not." The deliberate voice was elegant, the words carefully chosen; Harry wondered if Draco had rehearsed this particular speech, or if it was simply that in times of stress he reverted to his Malfoy upbringing and the carefully cultivated ancestral graces that kept real emotion at bay. "I remember when you said you didn't choose the connection we had, it was forced on you…" The careful voice stumbled a little, but Draco caught himself and went on with perfect clarity, "I should have listened then. I didn't. But you were telling the truth, and I'm grateful for it. I'm grateful for a lot of things, Potter. And I will miss you," he said, "when I can," and he stopped, not as if he had nothing else to say, but as if he could not find the words to go on.

"Miss me?" Harry echoed. "But I'm not going anywhere."

"I am," Draco said. "Tomorrow. I'm going back home. You and Hermione can go on together. I won't try to stop you. I promised her I'd find you, and we've found you. My responsibility in this matter is discharged. I intend to return to England by myself."

Harry felt his knees give; he slid down the bedpost and found himself, to his surprise, sitting on the floor. He felt as if he had just been running down the stairs from Gryffindor Tower, shrugging his cloak on, late to breakfast as he often was, and just as he was about to put his foot down on the last step a black pit had opened up at his feet and he'd toppled into it without warning or even enough time to cry out in surprise. He looked up at Draco, but from this vantage point the other boy's face was in shadow: he could see him only in shades of light hair and pale skin and dark clothes. "I could stop," Harry said. "I could come back with you…"

"And leave Ron, and your revenge, and all that? Could you really?"

Harry couldn't pretend. "No. I have to go on."

"I know," Draco said. "I'm not asking you to come with me. I don't even want you to come with me. As I said, we are not without choices, and this is what I choose. I chose you as a friend, and I can retract that choice by my own free will. You don't have to pretend that you need me to come with you," and for a moment he almost sounded amused, but then it wasn't really amusement at all. "I would just — "

Harry interrupted him. He did not want to hear it. "Are you saying you no longer want to be my friend?"

"Yes," Draco said. "It's my decision. Perhaps it's not what you want — "

"It's not what I want."

"— But I trust that you will abide by it."

"I couldn't possibly," Harry said, immediately, without thinking or deliberation.

Draco was motionless, looking down at him. The curtains stirred in the faint, cool wind from the half-open window, and the same wind ruffled Draco's hair and blew the fine bright strands across his face. His eyes held no light of their own, only reflected light from the lamps in the room, and if there were any pity or regret or tenderness or remembered kinship in them, Harry could not see it. He could see only the tension in the thin shoulders, the shadow-hollowed eyes, the downturned curves of the dispassionate mouth. "I'm asking you," Draco said.

"I can't," Harry said. "If I said I could I'd be lying."

The tension went out of Draco's shoulders; he looked down, as if he were gazing at himself, at the blood still splashed on his boots and trousers, the wreck of his clothes, the ruin of his beautiful hands. "You won't even do that for me," he said. "Not even that."

"No," Harry said.

"Then," Draco said, "I suppose we are at an impasse, Potter," and he sat down on the floor, at the opposite side of the bed's foot, leaning his back against the other bedpost. He pulled his legs up and wrapped his hands around them and rested his chin on his knees. Harry looked over at him, waiting for him to go on, but Draco was silent; there was only the faint sound of the wind coming into the room, and the shadows lengthening on the floor between Harry and the boy whose pale hair blew across his face and covered his eyes so that Harry could not see them. Over the sound of the wind Harry became aware of a faint whispering noise and realized that, as it had been promising to do all day, it had finally started to rain.

Hermione tapped the heavy bolts holding Viktor's bedroom door closed with the tip of her wand, and they melted away. She paused a moment, hand on the door, listening for any sound from within. Silence. Perhaps they were sulking? Perhaps they'd made up and were chatting in a happy telepathic silence? Perhaps they'd ripped down the curtain rods and beaten each other to death with them? Where Harry and Draco were concerned, anything was possible. Biting her lip in trepidation, she pushed the door open.