Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

Well, fuck him.

"It's private," Harry said — and felt his arm seized and jerked back as Draco spun him around so they were facing each other. Draco's cold fingers burned against his arm, five slim, icy wands digging into the skin.

"It is my business," Draco said. His voice shook, like a violin string wound so tight that it vibrated at the slightest touch. "It is very much my business, Potter, so tell me, tell me right now — "

"No," Harry said. "That letter was for Hermione. If she didn't show it to you, she must have had her reasons."

Draco's hands were balled so tightly into fists at his sides that the skin looked translucent. "Sure, she had a reason," he said. "The reason that she never got any bloody letter because you never bloody wrote one — "

"Of course I wrote one!" Harry yelled, losing his head completely. "I can't lie to you — and why would I even bother? It's none of your fucking business in the first place if I write a letter to my girlfriend, it's nothing to do with you — "

Draco laughed, unpleasantly, a sound of bitter amazement. "You don't get it, do you?" he said. "You and your letters — and all your lies about loyalty and friendship and caring about people and all that cant, it's just words to you, isn't it, everyone's always loved you, the whole world loves you, and whatever I could give you, it was nothing to you, just one drop in the ocean of how much everyone loves you — nothing special, nothing different, nothing you couldn't do without." He spoke with a rapid despairing intensity as if it no longer mattered what he said, or how he said it. As if nothing mattered anymore. "And how do you think it feels to know that the one person in the whole fucking world that you can't do without, can do just fine without you?"

The one person in the world you can't do without — Harry stared, his rage turning to frustration. "How can you say that? How can you even think that for one second, that I can do just fine without you?"

Draco was breathing hard, his cheeks flushed scarlet despite the cold.

"Because," he said, "you said so."

"When? When the hell did I ever say that?"

"In your letter," Draco said simply, and, taking a much-creased, much-folded, and worn-to-the-point-of-translucency piece of parchment out of his shirt pocket, he slammed it up against Harry's chest. "If you forgot what you said — go ahead and read it. While you're standing here looking at me. Read it right now."

"Save her life?" Lucius said. "What on earth would I want to do that for?"

Tom gazed at him through lidded eyes. He was clearly in pain. Lucius knew what Tom in pain looked like; he had seen Tom through innumerable agonizing magical transformations during which the very bones inside his skin had melted and transformed. Clearly, now, Tom was barely able to keep himself upright and was in considerable agony.

A small blossom of excitement began to unfurl inside Lucius' stomach.

"I need you to save her life," Tom said, "because if she dies, I die. We are linked." He looked down at the girl in his arms, and a peculiar expression twisted his features: there was loathing in it, and a strange exultation. "We are joined, she and I, by an indissoluble bond. What death divides, it will destroy."

"Is that so?" said Lucius. He turned away from Tom, hiding his expression, and began to make a pretense of looking for his wand among the objects on his desk. His heart was beating fast. Never had Tom come to him like this before, never in the Manor, where Lucius was at his most powerful…

"How peculiar."

Tom moaned. Lucius turned, wand in hand, to see that Tom had slid to his knees. He still cradled the girl against his chest, his head bent over her, the pale strands of his hair mixing with her scarlet. There was blood on the front of his shirt, the cuffs; a great deal of blood. Lucius wondered how much of it was Ginny's; he could not see much blood on her, only some in her hair, and splashed on the white column of her throat. They made a strange Pieta, the murdering boy with the unconscious girl in his arms.

Tom glanced up as Lucius turned away from the desk. His lips were drawn back from his teeth in a snarl. "Hurry, Lucius, you fool — what are you waiting for?"

Lucius twirled the wand between his fingers — and saw, as clearly as if it were that very moment, the figure of a boy, dark and slender, twirling a wand between slim, pale fingers, and smiling — and oh, that smile, so disdainful and so arrogant, admitting of no flaw, no weakness…

"Lucius!" Tom's bark ended in a bubbling cough. "Attend to her! Can't you see she's dying?"

"Oh, yes," Lucius said. "I can see that very clearly." The wand spun between his fingers. Tom's eyes on him were very blue. Lucius gazed beyond him, seeing and feeling the Manor all around him, its power wedded to his, its magic running in his blood. I am the Master of Malfoy Manor, Lucius thought, and this ruined boy on his knees before me, is nothing more than a shell of what he was…

Lucius raised his wand, pointed it; Tom's eyes widened and his grip on Ginny loosened fractionally, but Lucius was already speaking. Exige — The Manor roared. Lucius stepped back hastily as the floor of the library ripped open; great sheets of stone sprang up through it, encircling Tom and Ginny and closing them instantly inside an unbreakable marble crypt.

Harry read the letter over once, then twice, then, although he felt sick, a third time. It had obviously been read many times before. The parchment was thin and the ink had blurred and there were small tears in the paper where it had been folded.

Harry held it out to Draco. "I didn't write this," he said.

Draco didn't make a move to take it. "Of course you did," he said.

"No," Harry said. He was amazed how calmly they were both speaking. As if it was an ordinary discussion, this desperate conversation here in this frozen field under a wilderness of stars. "I didn't."

"Hermione enchanted the letter," Draco said. His eyes were on Harry, a clear and lucent gray. "To identify who had written it." He paused. "It identified you."

"Some of the words are mine," Harry said. "But not in those combinations.

It's as if someone came along and rearranged all the letters. Although who would have done something like that — and how it could be done — I don't know."

"You don't know," Draco said. His voice was flat, almost affectless, but Harry could see the drumbeat of pulse at the base of Draco's throat, the grim tightness to his lips. "Someone came along and changed the original letter you wrote, and wrote this instead, and you don't know how it could have happened."

"That's right," Harry said. His tone was flat, but his mind was racing -

surely there must be something he could say, some words that would break down the walls upon walls that Draco had raised to protect himself from Harry. If only Draco would let him in -

"You could Veritas me," Harry said.

Draco blinked, and looked at him more narrowly. "A Truth spell?"

"That's right," Harry said.

"They hurt," Draco said.

"I don't bloody care." Harry felt himself shaking. "If it's the only way you can satisfy yourself, Malfoy — "

"Satisfaction," Draco hissed. "Is that what you think this is about? Some point of honor?"

"I — " Harry began indignantly, then cut himself off, knowing that there was no angry or defensive reply he could make that would force this scathed and embittered boy to accept Harry's version of events as the truth.

Words were Draco's genius, not his, though Harry knew enough by now to know that this was a knife that cut two ways. Like an expert fisherman caught in his own nets, Draco snared himself easily in the traps of his own words. So brilliantly could he argue the case of Harry's guilt that even Harry could not convince him otherwise — though every word Draco spoke was a knife to his own heart.