Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

Overhead, leaves rustled in the icy wind. Scattered dawn light caught the strands of his hair as they blew across his face, dull ivory threaded with silver. He didn't move to push them out of his eyes. "I suppose there ought to be some sort of aphorism for an occasion like this. Something in Latin perhaps. I can't for the life of me think of one, though."

Harry took a step forward into the clearing. Dead leaves rattled under his feet, and the bones of some small woodland animal, stripped bare and white, clanked together where he had kicked them. He shuddered a little -

This place feels like death. "Come on." He held out a hand to Draco. "We still have a long way to go."

"You have no idea," Draco said. He raised his head, looked around the clearing. "Nothing ever changes between us, does it, Potter?"

"How can you say that? Everything's changed between us."

"You always get the best of me, don't you? Every time I think I've got the limits of you figured out, you do some incredible, stupid, Gryffindor thing." The bitterness had gone from his voice, and now he just sounded defeated. "You know, it was easier there for a while to think you hated me.

Because then — "

"Because then what?"

"Because then there was less to want to live for," Draco said. His eyes seemed the only light thing in the shadows, bright as coins in the darkness.

"There's nothing wrong with wanting to live," Harry said with some bewilderment. "Look, come on out of there. We can talk while we're walking."

Draco's mouth curled up at the corner. "Veritas vos liberat," he said.

"There, I've thought of it. Although, it's funny — I don't feel very free." He began to walk towards Harry, his hands in his pockets, his booted feet kicking up the dried corpses of leaves. There were more white bones under them. A strange prickle of apprehension ran up Harry's spine. "Do you want me to translate?"

"I doubt I could stop you," Harry said.

"It means," Draco said, and he had come close enough now that Harry could see the morbid, scintillant amusement in his eyes, "that the truth will — "

He did not finish his translation. There was a sudden loud noise, as of tearing earth, and a wide black pit opened up in the ground exactly where Draco was walking. Caught between one step and the next, Draco pitched forward into it, vanishing without a sound.

"Crucio," the Dark Lord hissed.

Nothing happened.

Wormtail looked astounded. Voldemort merely narrowed his eyes, and tried again. "Crucio!"

Nothing continued to happen. Hermione stood where she was, blinking, her mouth slightly open, clearly in no pain. Ron remained frozen, his heart beating hard against the inside of his ribcage. His instinct was to fly to Hermione and protect her — but against what? She seemed fine.

Wormtail cleared his throat. "Perhaps if you stood a little to the left, Master — "

Voldemort shot his servant a look of icy death. "Do you think I do not know how to cast a simple Excruciating Bane, Wormtail?"

Wormtail looked from Hermione to the Dark Lord, and said nothing.

"It is as I surmised," Voldemort went on, stepping closer to Hermione, who shrank back. "She is protected."

Wormtail's eyebrows went up. "Protected by what, Master?"

"By the Fourth Worthy Object," Voldemort said. "By the Cup. Clearly she carries it on her person, for it conveys upon the bearer the blessing of immunity from curses." He smiled at Hermione, never a pleasant sight. "I shall give you one chance, then, little girl," he said. "I know you have the Cup. Give it to me."

Hermione tossed her damp hair back and glared at him defiantly.

"Certainly not," she said.

"You're not denying you have it?"

Hermione pressed her lips together. "I'm not giving you anything," she said. "You can't hurt me. You just said so."

"I can lock you away in a windowless dungeon and leave you to starve, then remove the Cup from your corpse," Voldemort pointed out.

"Then go ahead," Hermione said.

"The Cup will likely protect her even then, Master," said Rhysenn, from her place on the floor. She had taken a gold comb in the shape of a butterfly out of her hair, and was toying idly with it. "It has powers beyond the ken of humankind."

"'Beyond the ken of humankind,'" Hermione muttered. "Who talks like that?"

"I am not," Voldemort said, "humankind." He turned his snake's gaze on Hermione again. "I may not be able to harm you," he said, "but I can harm those you love. How would you like to see your friend here — " and he gestured at Ron, "-tortured, disemboweled, gutted before your very eyes?

How would you like to dance to the music of his screams — "

"You can't hurt him, either," Hermione said, looking bored. "You need him just like you need the Cup. He's as necessary a tool as the knife or the mirror — "

"I am not a tool," Ron muttered.

" — Because without his blood," Hermione went on, shooting a quelling gaze at Ron, "and the transformative power of his Divining abilites, the Four Worthy Objects can never come together to form the Tetragrammaton. Only Ron's blood can bind them. You can't even torture him," Hermione added, with a clinical detachment that Ron found disheartening. "You need his mind whole. If he goes mad, he's not a Diviner anymore."

"I could torment him merely to the point of madness — "

"Ron's madness point is pretty low," Hermione said. "He's a wimp, really."

"I am not — " Ron began indignantly.

Hermione glared. "Yes, you are. All the Dark Lord would have to do is poke you with a toothpick and you'd go absolutely barking."

"I wouldn't."

"You would too."

Rhysenn chuckled aloud.

Hermione fixed her with an angry gaze. "That's right, laugh," she said.

"You're the one who told me that the Dark Lord couldn't hurt Ron in the first place — "

Voldemort emitted a shout of rage, and whirled on Rhysenn. She cowered back, suddenly as white as her white dress. "You! Lucius' pet!" he spat.

He lifted his wand. Rhysenn raised her left hand as if to protect her face, the butterfly ornament she had been clutching tumbling to the floor. Ron could not repress a sudden surge of sympathy for her. He started forward

And a cultured cough broke the silence. "Master," said a familiar, drawling voice. "Has my servant done something to displease you? If so, let me have the disciplining of her. I would not want you to trouble yourself," Lucius added, and took another step forward into the room, as silently and gracefully as he had entered it. He was dressed richly in dark green robes, and a small smile hovered around the edges of his sharply sculpted mouth. "Not," he said, "when I have such good news for you…"

The crypt Lucius had made had walls as smooth and hard as marble; Tom had bloodied his knuckles on one of them. It had been a short outburst of rage, and futile. He was too weak to cast the kind of spell that might have broken down the enchanted walls, and with every passing moment he grew weaker still.

The bitterness of Lucius' betrayal was like acid in his mouth. It was not that he thought that Lucius had cared for him, nothing like that, but Lucius had belonged to him. It was as if his own dog had turned and bitten him. Of course, when he had been a child, a stray puppy had bitten him. Later he'd broken the mutt's neck and left it dead in the street. If only he could break Lucius' neck in similar fashion — but such pleasant fantasies were denied him by his own ebbing strength. He had not the energy for hatred. Not when all his strength was bent on the girl in his arms, on holding and keeping the fragile mortal spirit inside her alive, one moment at a time.

In the darkness he sat still as a stone, holding Ginny in his arms. He could feel the tenuous life inside her, the slight rise and fall of her chest, the beat of her blood. He could feel it ebbing outward, like the tide pulling away from the shore. With all his strength, he willed it to stay. He had never learned healing magic; he had never wanted to. Only spells to hurt and to crush and to destroy. He could no more hold her life inside her than he could turn back all the tides of the world. And so he sat, and held her, and waited for her death, that would bring his own.