Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

Rhysenn gasped, so loudly that Ginny looked up. Her gray eyes were wide and full of wonder and amazement. "Free? I am truly free?"

"Yes," Ginny said.

"I need never answer to another Malfoy?"

"You need never answer to anyone," Ginny said. "You're free to go prance around half-naked wherever you like. Preferably far away from here."

"Free," Rhysenn breathed, and then she was up on her feet, and racing towards the window. She threw it open, and leaned out into the starry night. "Free!" she screamed, and turned to look at Ginny. The cold air spilling through the open window whipped her black hair across her pale, unpretty face. "Thank you," she said.

"Don't thank me. Thank Draco. He's the one who freed you," Ginny pointed out.

"That is true," Rhysenn said, pausing like a bird hovering mid-flight. "He can still be saved, you know," she said.

Ginny's eyes flew open. "He can? How? Do you know the antidote? Do you"

"Only you can do it," Rhysenn said firmly. "Only you," and with that, she leaped lightly up onto the sill of the window, and vanished into the ice-spangled night.

Only me? What does that mean? Ginny wondered, her heart pounding, and then she heard a groan and glanced down to see Seamus stir, his eyes opening, fastening on her face. And they were blue, as they had always been, clear sky-blue, untainted by any darkness. "Ginny?" he whispered.

"Is that you?"

Taking his hand in hers, she held it to her chest, winding her fingers with his. And now my penance begins. "Welcome back, Seamus," she said.

"Welcome back, my dear."

"You're lying," Harry said. His hand trembled, the sharp point of the sword pricking the base of Lucius' throat.

"I wish that I were," Lucius said. There was bitterness in his voice, heavy as a black weight on Harry's soul. "If there was any one thing I could go back and change — "

"Stop it," Harry snapped, cutting him off. "Besides, it's ludicrous, that you'd expect me to believe any of this. Thousand-year-old dragon's blood?

Why?"

"Both the poison and the antidote were the creation of Salazar Slytherin,"

Lucius said. "Handed down through the generations of Malfoys ever since

— it is a perfect poison, traceless, tasteless, passed through the slightest wound or scratch into the blood. Instantly curable with the antidote, it also brings swift death."

"No, it doesn't," Harry said. "Draco's been dying for weeks."

"He is a Malfoy," Lucius said, "and great protections run in his blood. But even those protections must erode eventually, such is the poison's strength."

"So if I had a time-turner," Harry said, "I could go back into the past, and get some of that dragon's blood — "

"Have you a Time-Turner?" Lucius asked, almost dryly. "No Time-Turner can take you back to a time before the Time-Turner itself was created.

Even if you could find a Time-Turner that ancient, even if you could survive two thousand-year time journeys, even then, the antidote takes a hundred years to prepare. Draco doesn't have a hundred years left in him. I doubt he has a hundred hours."

"Shut up!" Harry snarled, the sword jerking in his hands. A thin thread of blood ran down into Lucius' collar. "What matters is that there's a chance."

Lucius glanced down at the sword against his throat. Over his shoulder, Harry could see Ron, watching them both intently, a strange look in his eyes. "At least I know," Lucius said, "that whatever torments of guilt I myself may suffer over Draco's death, your suffering will be greater."

The urge to slam the sword through Lucius' throat throbbed at the back of Harry's temples. There was a dull roaring in his ears like the sound of the sea, but louder, more urgent. He wondered if it was the sound of his own rage. "Why is that?"

"Because you allow yourself to hope," Lucius said.

Harry shook his head slowly, the roaring behind his eyes, surging inside his head, growing louder and louder. Like a wall of black flood water, thundering towards him. "And you don't," he said, "because you are too cowardly to risk it."

Lucius gave a sharp little bark then, of anger and something else. "If you came here to cut my throat, then cut my throat," he said. "I've told you what you wanted to know. There is nothing else I would be willing to tell you. So get on with it."

Slowly, Harry lowered the sword. It rose higher, that blackness in the back of his mind, the surge and roar. Something was happening. He struggled to speak.

'

"No," he said, and briefly, the flood waters receded and Harry saw Ron's head jerk up as the redheaded boy stared at him. A faint light of surprise flickered in Lucius' eyes. "No," Harry said again. If he could have seen himself, he would have been startled by the look in his own eyes — a cold look, Draco's bitter humor. And his tone was Draco's, too, when he spoke again, as dry as winter air: "As much as I despise you," he said, "that is as much as is my regard for your son, who is no longer anything like you. I have had my parents taken from me and it has been a wound inside me that has never healed. I would not cause that same pain to anyone that I love. So live," he said, and flung the sword at Lucius' feet, where it clattered, and Lucius, looking startled, took an involuntary step back.

"Live, and know that you do it by my sufferance — and with my pity."

Lucius' face changed — and for a moment Harry seemed to see through the polished villain he hated to the ragged and rotting shell underneath. A twisted snarl warped Lucius' mouth, he looked as if he were about to speak -

And the flood waters rose again in Harry's mind, black and choking, and this time he knew what the sound was: it was Draco, calling out for him so loudly that the cry had become one uninterrupted and nearly unintelligible howl of despair. It was not Draco's voice calling him, but something more primal than that.

Lucius was speaking, but he had vanished, ceased to matter. Blindly, Harry flung himself towards the door, fumbling for the knob — he heard Ron call his name, loudly and urgently; he turned and saw Ron behind him, holding his sword in one hand, and Draco's in the other.

"Take this," Ron said, his voice like a whisper against the screaming in Harry's head. He was holding the sword of Gryffindor out to Harry. "I can't hold two swords, and I don't want him getting hold of the other one."

Blindly, Harry grabbed the sword out of Ron's hand, leaving the other boy with Draco's blade. Something nagged at the back of Harry's mind, something strange about Ron's expression, something Harry wanted to ask him. But the panic in his head was too great; it crashed and roared around him like floodwaters. He had to get to Draco. Without another word to Ron, he spun on his heel and began to run.

Hermione did not know how long they sat there, the minutes ticking by, as she held Draco in the circle of her arms as if doing so could keep him tethered to the world of the living. Time seemed to stretch out; she could have believed that he breathed once an hour. She stroked his hair lightly with her fingers, drawing it away from his face, as if he were a child. "I can't reach Harry," he said, finally, opening his eyes. His gaze wandered unseeing across her face. "I don't think I'm strong enough."

"It's all right," she said. His hair felt fine as silk tassels threading through her fingers. "He won't hurt your father. He loves you too much for that."

"He'll do what he has to do," Draco said, his tone distant. "I gave him my permission — I can't ask him to forgive my father, not after what he's done."

"He'll make your father tell him what the missing ingredient in your antidote is — then we can cure you. That's what's important," Hermione said, with a wild stubbornness.