Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

The lamp on the mantelpiece had burned out and the room was in shadow. Grey light poured in through the open window over the bed, along with wind and the metallic smell of city rain. For a moment she thought the room was empty and wondered wildly if they had both been desperate enough to climb out the window to get away from each other.

Then her gaze slid down to the foot of the bed and she saw the two figures huddled there on the floor, wrapped in their dark cloaks, apparently fast asleep.

There was so little light in the room that it was hard to see them properly.

The faint illumination from the window stenciled them both with light, touching the edges of Harry's black hair with lighter shadow, turning Draco's fairer tangles to silver tinsel. Draco was asleep, slumped back against the right bedpost, his chest rising and falling softly as he breathed. Harry's head had fallen back against the footboard and his eyes were closed and his mouth was soft in relaxation and for a moment she just simply stood and watched them breathe in tandem: one sleeper, two bodies, she thought.

Kneeling next to Harry, she reached to stroke his cheek, gently. She meant only to smooth his hair back and go, but when she touched him his eyes opened, slowly, the veiled lids lifting over tired green eyes. He looked young in his exhaustion, the dirt and cuts smudged darkly against his pale skin, a blue tracery of spiderweb veins visible beneath his eyes.

There was a faint curiosity in his expression. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," she whispered. "When did you two fall asleep?"

"Two hours ago, maybe three," Harry said, fighting back a yawn. "I've just been dropping off and waking up again. Listening to the rain. I'm glad you came back," he said, and smiled at her. It was a dejected smile, a little disbelieving — Ron had smiled at her like that, she remembered, the first time they'd seen each other again, sixth year, after they'd broken up; less a happy smile than a rueful admission that sometimes life didn't turn out the way you wanted it to. She wondered what Harry been sitting here thinking about. He looked a little dazed, as if he'd lost something extremely important and was still trying to remember where he'd last seen it. "I appreciate what you tried to do," he said. "Even if it didn't really work."

"It didn't?" Hermione tried to keep the surprise out of her voice.

"Harry…if you want we can go into the living room and talk."

"I can't," he said, and slid his eyes sideways. She followed his gaze and saw that he was looking down at Draco. When she had first come in she had thought that the boys were leaning on each other, but had realized as she came closer than it had merely been a trick of the shadows. Draco was in fact leaning away from Harry, his head cradled against his own arm, braced against the foot of the bed. But his other arm, his free arm, was extended towards Harry, and his left hand gripped the sleeve of Harry's cloak tightly, his fingers so intricately knotted into the material that Harry could not possibly have stood up or drawn his cloak away without waking the other boy.

"I thought you said you hadn't made up," Hermione said.

"We haven't," Harry said. "He told me he never wanted to talk to me again, and then he sat down and fell asleep. I started to get up but he grabbed my cloak. I thought he'd woken up but he hadn't. He was still asleep. He must have been really tired," Harry added, "to fall asleep like that."

"He hasn't been sleeping much lately," Hermione said softly.

"Well," Harry said, "I'll just sit here then. I don't mind."

Hermione looked from Harry to Draco. Even asleep, Draco seemed to have arranged himself elegantly, his hair tousled just right, the curve of his arm just so, whereas Harry always slept as if he lay where someone had tossed him. Draco had the charm and the physical beauty, but Harry would always be, to her, the more beautiful. Draco was the graceful one, but Harry had grace, grace in the sense she had learned about as a child: innocence that inspired mercy, courage that merited compassion. What she had said to him before was true. She could never have hated him.

"I love you," she said.

He smiled at her, a tired smile but a real one, and she leaned forward and kissed him lightly on the mouth. She meant it as a gentle kiss, but his mouth opened under hers and she felt her nerve endings spark. His lips were as soft as she had remembered and he still tasted faintly of chocolate. His left hand came up to cradle her face, although he kept his right arm where it was, with Draco holding on to him, and she felt somehow as if she were kissing them both and it was a very odd feeling although not entirely unpleasant and she pulled back, suddenly afraid that they would wake Draco up and precipitate what promised to be a very bizarre scene. "I should go," she said.

"Well, now I'm not going to get back to sleep," said Harry, although he sounded amused rather than cross. "I don't suppose you want to tell me what that was for?"

"No," she said, and stood up. "It'll do you good to wonder," and with that, she walked out of the room, and closed the door behind her. When it clicked shut, she leaned against it, closing her eyes.

Because her eyes were closed, she heard the noise before she saw them: the sound of footsteps on the hallway's wood floor. Her eyes flew open and she sucked in a startled breath of absolute horror at finding herself surrounded. She fumbled for the knob of the door behind her but there were already rough hands on her arms, jerking her forward. A hand clapped over her mouth, cutting off her scream, and she bit at the fingers but it was too late: something heavy and hard came down across the back of her head, and the world exploded into a fragmenting kaleidoscope of shapes and colors before fading entirely to black.

It had been raining steadily for twenty minutes already when Blaise landed her broomstick in front of Pansy Parkinson's house, but she stood on the gravel walkway in front of the door anyway, reluctant to go up and knock.

Nouveau riche, her parents called the Parkinsons, their tone distasteful, and it was evident even from the outside of Pansy's house that the Parkinsons' wealth was new rather than inherited. Despite, or perhaps because of, the two huge stone griffins (rampant, with heraldic shields) that guarded the front door, the enormous house looked somehow cheap and tawdry — the two awkward modern wings that had been slapped on at either side stuck out like sore thumbs, and the enormous brass P's that served as door handles were just…

"Hideous," Blaise muttered, wrinkling up her nose. At least the grounds were beautiful. Lawns fell away to a small lake in the distance, and she could see the shadowy copses of trees dotting the hillsides: slender birches, attenuated larches, stripped and elegant and dripping with rain.

The air smelled wet and heavy, sharp with dampness and wet bare wood.

Blaise sighed to herself. The truth was, she did not want to go inside; she did not want to face Pansy; she did not want to do any of the things Ginny had asked her to do. And yet, somehow, she felt she had to. Partly because it would help Draco — and she did love him, although standing here somehow she found it hard to conjure his face out of the shadows and the falling rain — and partly because Ginny had asked her to, and while she felt she owed the other girl nothing, she also felt a strangely perverse desire to prove herself.

It was inexplicable — prove herself to a Gryffindor, a girl younger than herself! And yet — Hermione had said to Blaise, I trust you, but Ginny's face had showed her open disbelief and her mistrust and finally, a doubtful hope. If Blaise turned back now she would only be fulfilling Ginny's expectation that she would fail, and that she refused to do.