Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

Draco was looking away now, the muscles at the sides of his mouth knotted with strain. "I won't do it."

Then let me tell you this way, Harry said — throwing all his strength into it, all the force of his own desperation gathered to break down the barriers inside Draco's head. I can't lie to you with my thoughts, you told me that yourself -

"Stop it!" Draco reeled back as if Harry had hit him, the look on his face halfway between astonishment and anger. "I told you to stay out of my head."

There's no other way. If Harry had been able to really think about it, he might have been surprised at the lack of opposition he was encountering; he felt Draco pushing him away, but it was a weak resistance, as if Draco lacked the strength to really fight him. Instead, Draco staggered back away from him, as if the only possibly escape from Harry was a physical one. I didn't write that letter, Harry told him. I'd never seen it before you showed it to me — and I didn't write it -

Stop it! Draco was still retreating, his face averted, hands flung up as if to ward Harry off. Stop -

I would never have said any of those things, I don't think a single one of them are true. You know what the real letter said? What I really wrote? Do you want to know?

Draco froze. He was still looking away from Harry, but at least he no longer seemed to be fleeing. Shivering, he drew the ragged edges of his cloak closer around him. Feeling almost invisible, Harry said: I told you I couldn't stand to leave you, that it was the greatest punishment I could imagine for myself, doing this without you. I said you had taught me what it meant to put your faith in someone, to let that faith make you brave -

In the distance the sky had begun to lighten. And as Harry spoke, Draco tensed all over, like a troll or a night-elf turned to stone by the sun's first rays. Harry began to wonder if he would ever move again.

And I said — I said that the thought of you, would guide me home.

At that, Draco did move — on the sound of a sharp indrawn breath, he raised his head, and stared at Harry. His hand fell away from his cloak, and the cloak, released, fell open, and showed the base of his throat where a hard pulse beat like a live thing under the skin, struggling to get out. His eyes looked very dark in his face, as if they had drunk up the sky's indigo and it had turned them black. "Is that true?" he said, wonderingly, and for once there was no artifice in his voice and no distance.

"You know it is," Harry said. "And there's more — "

"No." Draco shook his head. "I don't need to hear it. Harry, you — "

"I remember every word," Harry said.

"Yes," Draco said, and then, "You must have wondered — wondered why I was so angry after I'd read it."

"I don't know," Harry said, "I thought maybe you'd thought it was — a bit too much."

For a moment Draco stood where he was, very still, and then he began to shake. Frightened, Harry took a step towards him, and only then did he realize that Draco was laughing — a hiccupy, startled sort of laughing.

"Potter — " he said, between hiccups, "you're a bit too much."

Harry blinked at him in astonishment — sometimes he really did wonder if Draco was a bit mad. "So you can tear this up, then?" he said, and held the letter out though Draco didn't take it, jut stared at it. There was a look on his face Harry recognized. He'd seen it on Fred and George's faces when he handed them that bag of gold at the end of fourth year. He'd seen it on Hermione's face when she'd realized he hadn't died in the bottomless pit outside Malfoy Manor. It was a look of bewildered gratitude.

"You didn't write it," he said. "You really didn't write it?"

"Of course I didn't write it," Harry said, suddenly weary of the whole thing, "and what could ever have possessed you to think that I had — why I would ever say those things — "

"You left," Draco said.

He said it very quietly, and without accusation, but it stopped Harry in his tracks. Two words only, but Harry felt them like painful lacerations.

"You said you weren't going to leave," Draco said. "But you left — without even telling me you were going." A faint pinkish tinge had risen to stain his cheeks, and Harry was reminded of the earliest times he had ever seen Draco blush, and had enjoyed it, taking it as appreciated proof of the other boy's discomfiture and pain. "And I know how I sound — " Draco added, with a faint familiar snarling curl to the edge of his mouth, " — and I know how little it matters in the face of everything. I mean, you're not just anyone. Your promises aren't anyone's promises. I know that better than almost anyone. The safety of the wizarding world rests on you. And that always has to come first." He shrugged, a poised and weary gesture.

"You wouldn't be you if it didn't."

"I couldn't take you with me," Harry said. "You were ill. You could hardly walk."

Draco's eyes darkened. "I'm walking now — aren't I?"

"Well, yes," Harry said. "But that's because you're cured."

A faint wash of color spread across Draco's face. For some reason it reminded Harry of the time Hermione had slapped him, and the red mark of her hand had stayed on his cheek for several minutes. "Cured, of course," he said. "But you didn't know that at the time, did you?"

"I did actually," Harry said, half-apologetically. "I heard them talking -

Snape and Dumbledore, that night I left — after you fell asleep. They were talking about the antidote. And it was just after — " He broke off, trying to gather the words to explain what he wanted to say. He had never been good at explaining the intangible; that was Draco's department. "You know," he said, "how sometimes you make bargains with God, or Fate, or whatever, inside your head, that if God will just do this one thing for you, if this one thing can just be made to happen, you'll do whatever -

whatever you have to do?"

He broke off. Draco was looking at him with an odd steadiness. "I know about bargaining with God," he said.

"Well, I made a bargain with God in my head that night — that night that I left," Harry said. "That if an antidote could be found for you, I'd go away, on my own, not risk any more lives, leave the rest of you to be safe. Stop being selfish."

Draco's lips parted in astonishment. "You did what?"

"So when I heard Snape tell Dumbledore they'd found an antidote for you, it was a like a message — after that, I had to go. And I knew if I waited, you'd convince me I was wrong, because you're much better at convincing than I am. And then I would bring you with me and something would happen to you — you'd be hurt, or killed — and I'd know it was my fault, because it would have been. I'd given my word, you see — "

"My God, Potter," Draco said in a terrible voice. Then he turned and walked away. It took Harry several moments before he realized that Draco wasn't just pacing while he thought, he was well and truly stalking off into the underbrush between the trees. Harry blinked a moment, then plunged after him.

The forest grew high and thickly enough that the ground between the trees was largely bare. Roots as thick as a dragon's tail snaked over and under each other, buckling the half-frozen ground. Shafts of weak wintry light pierced the darkness at rare intervals. Between the shafts of light, Harry could see Draco. He was standing between two arched tree roots, at the base of a stunted oak. Harry remembered another forest, another year, the sky lit up with a green death's head and Draco twirling his wand in the trees' shadows. Mudbloods and Muggles first.

"You running away, Malfoy?" Harry asked, trying to sound as light as possible, under the circumstances. "You haven't made it very far."

"Story of my life," said Draco, with a pure, undiluted bitterness.