Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

She propped her broomstick against one of the griffin statues and ran up the stairs, her yellow raincloak as wet and heavy as drenched carpeting.

The door knocker was brass and very heavy, carved in the shape of an eagle's head holding a ring in its beak. Blaise's wet fingers slipped on it at first, but on the second try she managed to lift it. Its fall sent a great echoing reverberation through the house.

There was no reply. Blaise waited a minute, two; then leaned back and looked up at the house again. Lights burned in the upstairs windows and some of the downstairs as well. Someone must be home, then, and surely they could spare a house-elf to open the front door, even if they weren't expecting visitors. Annoyed now, she reached out for the knocker again -

The door swung open before her fingers could close on their target. She stepped back, uncertainly, rain dripping from the hood of her cloak and running, cold, down into the open neck of her dress. She blinked, clearing the water from her eyes, and stared.

The entryway was full of candles. They burned, high and hot, giving off a strange gold light, and in the center of that gold light, his hand on the open door, stood Seamus Finnigan. Blaise felt her mouth open of its own accord; what on earth was he doing here? And in those clothes, they looked fifty years out of date — those boots, that long tailored black cloak, the white shirt under it, so odd against all his pale hair and lightly freckled skin and what on earth was that splashed all over his cuffs, was it red ink…? And why was he looking at her like that?

She had no idea, of course, how she looked to him. The darkness behind her, her slim Chaser's body wrapped in the familiar yellow cloak — because Seamus did remember it, as he remembered everything about the girl he'd loved, so Tom remembered it too — and the poppy-red hair escaping from the hood, streaming in long soaked strands down over her shoulders, plastered to her throat, her face in shadow under her hood.

He caught her to him so fast that she had no time to exclaim in surprise; his right arm went around her, his other hand sliding up under her hood to run itself over the wet planes of her face, her damp hair. The look on his face was indescribable — a glazed sort of desperate hunger, as if he were holding himself back, but just barely. She could feel the tremors running through the tense young body pressed against her, and the wild hard beating of his heart. "I knew it," he hissed under his breath, "I knew you couldn't stay away…."

Oh, bloody hell, Blaise thought, mortification mixing with her horror. He thinks I'm Ginny.

"Seamus," she said, and oddly, his body relaxed at that, as if he were surprised to hear her say his name. "Seamus, I'm not Ginny. It's me, Blaise, so…" His grip on her relaxed further, although he did not release her. Blaise bit her lip. This was certainly very awkward. Perhaps he had been drinking? "Mistake anyone could have made, really," she assured him. "Is…is Pansy anywhere about?"

It was a moment before he replied. "You're not Virginia?" was all he said, and Blaise blinked. Did anyone actually call Ginny that? Well, apparently Seamus did. There was no accounting for boyfriends.

"No," she said lightly, "although after a greeting like that, I can't understand why she ever dumped you. I wouldn't have thought you had it in you, Seamus. You always seemed so stolid." She tipped her head up towards him, and her hood fell back, exposing her face. "Appearances can be deceiving, I guess."

At that, he smiled, his soft mouth curving upward suddenly into a hard malicious grin. He leaned towards her, his pale curling hair falling forward over his forehead, and a spark of apprehension lit in the back of her throat, making her swallow hard.

"You have no idea," he murmured, and, still holding her where she was, his free hand came up to trace again the contours of her face, the shape of her mouth. "Perhaps you are not her," he said, "but you'll do just as well for the moment. In fact," he said, raising his hand, a gesture which slammed the front door closed so hard that the hinges shook, "in fact, you'll do very well indeed…"

A muffled noise woke Harry: it sounded like a bag of wet sand striking against a wooden surface. Blearily, he pried his eyes open and looked around.

Surely it couldn't have been more than a few minutes since Hermione had left. Draco, however, was apparently now awake, and was several feet away, down on his hands and knees, trying to get something out from under the bed. Harry rubbed his eyes. "Did you drop something?" he asked. "I thought I heard a noise."

"Go back to sleep," Draco said ungraciously, and dragged what he had been looking for out from under the bed. It was his sword, the one Sirius had given him. The dark steel seemed to part the moonlight, like the gleam of a fish's back breaking the surface of river water. "I'll be out of your hair in less than a minute."

"You're not still blithering about leaving, are you?" Harry got slowly to his feet, yawning. Being so very tired had the effect of making him feel a little drunk. "I thought maybe you'd have slept that off."

"Right, because, you know, I didn't mean it in the first place. I was just being melodramatic for kicks." Draco straightened up. "Get out of my way, Potter."

Harry realized that he had, whether deliberately or inadvertently he wasn't sure, put himself between Draco and the door.

"No," he said.

Draco paused and blinked at him. He had slept oddly on his hair and it was sticking up wildly all around his head; in another situation, Harry would have been tempted to laugh. "What do you mean, no?"

"If you want to leave you'll have to go through me," Harry said.

"Potter." Draco looked pained. "Tell me you're not really doing this. 'If you want to leave you'll have to go through me?' Who says that? This is just embarrassing."

"I don't care," Harry said, and found that he didn't. Far from feeling mortified, he felt merely resolved, absolutely adamant, and it was nice, finally, to feel something that wasn't subject to question. "Hit me if you want. You already did once today."

"And then what? You'll hit me back and we can scrap like we used to, make each other bleed? And what does that prove? This denial problem of yours is becoming tedious. Just get out of the way, Potter, it makes me sick to look at you."

"Then look at something else," Harry said. "I don't care — you're not going.

I don't even care what you stay for, it doesn't have to be me, but this is where you should be — "

"Because you say so?" Draco took a step forward. His eyes were flat, glittering with fury. "Get out of my way."

"No," Harry said, again.

"Move, Potter," Draco said, and tried to step around Harry; his shoulder knocked Harry's, and Harry, already strung up and tense, threw out an arm to block his way. Draco moved to shove him sideways, and Harry pulled back so hard that he toppled over; he grabbed at Draco, and they went over together, landing on the carpet in an unpleasant and awkward heap, the sword clattering to the floor just before Harry.

"Ouch — ouch!" Harry yelped as Draco's sharp elbow dug into his arm. He had landed with Draco on top of him and crosswise, and it hurt. "Malfoy -

"

Draco, going very pale, pulled back. "Are you all right — are you cut, are you hurt?"

"No, I'm fine. Your elbow — "

The pallor vanished, followed by a flood of angry red. "Potter, you stupid bastard," Draco snarled, and started to get to his feet.

Harry, moving with a greater speed than he would have thought himself capable of, threw out a hand and caught hold of the front of Draco's shirt and hung on like grim death. "I said you weren't going anywhere," he panted, "and you aren't."