Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

"But I want you ordinary," she cried. He flushed though his eyes were clear as glacier ice. "And it doesn't matter — you never could be ordinary, even if you tried."

"Flattery will get you everywhere," Draco said, though there was a resigned look on his face, as if he were on his way to the gallows. "I remember," he said, "once, when you gave me the strength to fight. I suppose I owe you as much back. Less would be — dishonorable. So ask me, ask me whatever you must."

"Do you love me?" she said.

For a moment he was absolutely still, only the nervous movement of his hand, curling inward, showing that he had even heard her question.

Finally, he said, "You really want to know?"

"Yes," she said.

"We're trapped in a prison, any help is continents away, Voldemort is about to subjugate the entire world to his evil will and the best we have to look forward to is very messy deaths, and you want to talk about our relationship?"

Ginny nodded. "I want to talk about our relationship."

"It's going to be very hard to do that without any poetry," Draco said plaintively.

Ginny fixed him with an unflinching stare. "Try," she said.

"And we have time for this before Armageddon?"

"If you have a better suggestion," she said, "make it."

He looked almost amused. Shrugging, he went over to the wardrobe and rapped on it. It made a noise much like the noise of any wardrobe when you rapped on it. "I've never told anyone I loved them before."

"But you must have," Ginny said, surprised. "What about Hermione?"

"She asked me once, and I said yes. But I never offered it. It would have seemed like an insult," Draco said, his tone thoughtful, and Ginny knew he was telling her the unvarnished truth — if not about the way he felt about her, then at least about the way he felt. "To her and to Harry. No, I couldn't have done that."

"Blaise, then?"

"I liked looking at her," he said, "and I liked that she loved me, but no, I never loved her, not the way you mean, and I never told her I did. It would have been a lie." He hesitated. "I used to think I couldn't fall in love, and then I thought that if I did it would kill me, and now I know that neither is the truth. But love hasn't killed me, although sometimes," he said wryly, " it's made me wish I were dead. I never asked you, did I," he finished with a trace of a smile, "if you loved me?"

"I've told you I do," she said. "And I know what you think: that I love you because in my head I've made you out to be something that you aren't.

But it's not true. I don't think you're some hero on a white horse who's going to rescue me, and I don't even want that. I just want you the way you are."

"The way I am," Draco said, a faint, puzzled tiredness in his voice.

"Yes, the way you are, and that means the bad things too." She stopped abruptly. The room was still; Draco was still, waiting. She felt an uprushing of words-all the thoughts about him that she had kept so carefully in check. " — You're cowardly sometimes, and you laugh everything off that you don't agree with, and you're selfish, and afraid of your own feelings. You despise weakness, and that means you're capable of real cruelty towards the helpless, and you despise your own weakness most of all, and that means those who love you have to watch while you hurt yourself. And right now," she added, half as an afterthought, "you look terrible."

He laughed, but it sounded like choking. "Ah, hit me where it hurts. — "

"But I know the good things about you, too," Ginny rushed on, her voice cracking. "And I know that when you love people, you love them completely — so I suppose there's no point asking you if you love me -

because if you did, you'd know it."

"No." He looked as stricken as if she had slapped him. "No — oh, God, you have got hold of the wrong end of the stick, haven't you? And it's my own fault." He took a step towards her, and now they were close enough to touch, though he didn't reach for her. "Ginny, I'm the last person who would know. I'm not sure I've ever managed proper love, not in all my life, only passions where they weren't wanted and nothing where they were. It's no one's fault, or no one but my father's perhaps — I've only learned the difference between love and hate this past year… I'm a child and perhaps what you need is someone more… grown-up. Finnegan, even," he said, and his voice was both grudging and strangely sad.

"I don't want him," she said. "I want you — I only ever did want you."

"I know," he said, "it's not fair, is it? To either of us, really."

"But you do know the difference between love and hate," she whispered.

"You love Harry — "

"Until I die," Draco said. "Although I suppose that isn't saying all that much."

"It's a different sort of love, I suppose," Ginny said, and when Draco said nothing to that, she went on: "You love Hermione — you were in love with her. That night in the rose garden you as near as told me so."

"I wonder sometimes if I fell in love with Hermione because Harry loved her," Draco said, thoughtfully. "So much of Harry transferred itself to me when we switched places — and that was the strongest emotion in his heart; perhaps I took it on myself. Not that that banishes or changes the emotion, I suppose, but it might explain it."

"You still love her," Ginny said, accusingly.

"In a way, yes," Draco said, lightly, "but I have put it away, with other childish things — and yes, I know, I'm quoting. I'll stop. Look at me, Ginny, please." She looked at him. She could see the fever in him, but his eyes were very clear, and lovely in their clarity. When he died, those eyes would shut forever, she thought, and banished the thought with an inward sharp wince. "Believe me," he said, "Hermione doesn't stand between us, and you mustn't blame her. It isn't because of her that I can't tell you that I love you. I'm the one you should blame and hate. This whole stupid situation has robbed me of the chance-the perfectly ordinary chance-to learn to fall in love where and when I might choose to

— robbed us both, I suppose. If I could choose, I would love you with all the love my rags of heart were capable of, but I need time for that — and time is the one thing I don't have. I'm dying, and love can't grow in a dying heart, any more than you can grow a flower in darkness and water it in blood. Can you understand that?"

"No," she wanted to say, but it would have been unkind. And through her sadness, she felt a great, strange pity for him: to die without loving and having that love returned did seem cruel to her romantic heart.

Underneath all his layers of bitterness and indifference she knew Draco would feel the same, would knew that lack, and the torment of regret. "I almost understand," she began, "I wish that you could- "

She broke off, hearing a noise behind her. Slowly turning around, she saw a flicker of movement near the wardrobe in the corner. A moment later, Tom stepped into the room.

Apparently, Harry thought, you could lie through telepathy, provided that you were very careful and the person you were talking to was very tired and distracted. He'd told Draco that he had run from the guards, and this was true. And he'd also told him that he was hiding behind a rock on top of a hill, and was all right. This was true as well. What he hadn't mentioned was that he'd been spotted behind the rock, and wasn't likely to remain all right for very much longer.

The guards had caught sight of him a few minutes ago, and had begun circling the rock he was hiding behind in a wide circle. Slowly, the circle began to tighten. Realizing the jig was up, Harry straightened up and stepped out from behind the rock, turning to face the guards as he did so.