Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

"But I'm all right," Ginny said. "Aren't I?"

"Yes, you are." Draco looked at her, uncharacteristically somber. "If you ever," he said, "almost get yourself killed like that again on my behalf, I'll murder you. Do you understand?"

"Not really." Ginny put her hand up to her aching head and felt her hair matted with dried blood. "Did I very nearly die?"

"Very nearly," said Draco, and paused. "It was Finnigan who saved you."

"Seamus? Really?"

"Really," Draco said. He paused again. "Is he…"

"What?"

"Your boyfriend? Madam Pomfrey said…"

"I don't know," Ginny said, honestly. Was he? She supposed he was.

Certainly they'd both been behaving as if he was. And she owed it to him, didn't she? "My head," she whispered. "It aches so."

Draco nodded. "I'll get Madam Pomfrey to give you something." He stood up. "It's amazing what a chap misses while he's in a brink-of-death coma," he added, half to himself.

"Draco," Ginny said. "Wait. There's one thing—"

He turned to look at her. "Yes?"

"Remember when I fell off my broom in that Quidditch match?" He nodded. "Later, when I was in the infirmary, someone came in and kissed me. Was that you?"

There was a long pause, during which Draco made some minute and unnecessary adjustments to his cuffs. Finally he said, "Yes, it was."

"Why?" Ginny said, with all the pent-up emotion she could muster, in her exhausted, filthy, worn-out state. "What were you doing?"

Draco left his cuffs alone. "I was confusing the issue," he said.

"Draco…" She wanted to say more, but her eyes were fluttering shut with exhaustion. Dizzy images passed before her eyelids-Ben kneeling down beside Gareth and weeping, the antidote sparking as her tears touched it, her own blood pooled on the library floor. "Will you really be all right?" she whispered.

The last thing she heard before sleep took her was his voice. "All right is relative," he said, "but I'll still be here in the morning, thanks to you." She felt his hand against her forehead then as he brushed her hair back with gentle fingers, light as a butterfly's touch. "In the meantime, close your eyes, Ginny Weasley. You've done enough and it's time to rest now. Close your eyes, pretty girl. Close your eyes…"

I thought my dear must her own soul destroy — Yeats

Slowly, Ginny closed her copy of Trousers, Arise! and set it down on the windowsill beside her bed. It was the last of the three books in the Trousers series that Draco had given her for Christmas. She'd stretched out reading them as long as she could, but it was May now and she'd just turned the last page of the last book. That's all there is, she thought, bringing her knees up to her chest and hugging them with her arms. She felt indistinctly morose, unsettled even, as she often did when she'd finished a favorite novel. Even when the ending was happy, it was like a death or at least a going-away for a long time, this having to say goodbye to characters she'd come to know and love.

In fact, she wasn't sure if the happy ending didn't simply make her feel worse. It was the sort of happy ending that tied up everything neatly and never actually turned up in real life, where endings, if they happened at all, were messy, and love wasn't always rewarded or punished: sometimes it just faded away into the background, part of the great clamoring mass of unanswered questions that eventually you just had to learn to live with if you wanted to grow up.

Feeling sad and perhaps a trifle wise, Ginny leaned a little way out the window: it was a gorgeous early summer day, cool and breezy, the sky like a hollowed bowl of blue porcelain. Students were out on the lawns, lying on blankets spread out over the grass, savoring the first warm days of the year. She could see figures down by the lake, the black-clad silhouettes of strolling students, mostly boys and girls walking together, hand in hand.

She hadn't been down to the lake herself since the winter; it brought up too many memories that were better avoided.

A knock on the door brought her out of her reverie, and she hopped off the sill, catching a brief glimpse of herself in the mirror hanging next to her bed. Her hair had grown since the winter — she hadn't had it cut at all

— and now hung to her waist, curling red tendrils escaping from unruly plaits. "Yes?"

"You decent?" A head popped around the door; it was her roommate, Elizabeth. "Someone's waiting to see you down at the portrait hole."

"Oh? Who?"

Elizabeth grinned. "A certain Slytherin," she said.

"Must you grin like that?" Ginny pulled on a cardigan and buttoned it up.

She'd gained back some of the weight she'd lost over the winter, she was pleased to note, and the cardigan strained a bit across the chest. "All right, I'm coming."

The windows of the common room were thrown open, and breezy May air spilled in, carrying with it the smells of new grass, upturned earth, and budding flowers. Neville Longbottom sat ensconced in one of the plush armchairs, engaged in a game of Floating Scrabble with his toad, Trevor the Second.

He waved as Ginny crossed the room and ducked out through the portrait, ignoring the Fat Lady's desultory mutterings about the shortness of her skirt and the tightness of her sweater. "Oh, hello," she said, straightening up as the portrait shut behind her with a bang. "I rather hoped it would be you."

"Of course you did," said Blaise. Ginny wondered if the Fat Lady had had a go at her — her pleated skirt was shorter than Snape's temper, and the V of her sweater showed the lace edgings on her bra cups. She'd cut off most of her hair at some point in April, and the soft waves of it cupped her chin and curled at her temples in fiery strands. "Look, do you want to walk down to the lake with me? I need to talk."

"Not the lake," Ginny said quickly.

Blaise raised an eyebrow. "The rose garden then?"

"No! Not that either." Seeing Blaise's surprised expression, Ginny cast about for an alternative. "The Quidditch pitch? I doubt anyone will be there now."

Blaise shrugged gracefully. "Wherever you like."

"I thought you said nobody was likely to be here now," Draco complained, rolling over in the grass and propping his chin on his hands. He squinted.

"That looks like somebody to me."

"Ignore them." Harry, sitting cross-legged in the grass, was doing his best to follow his own advice where Draco was concerned, but it was difficult.

Draco was not someone you could tell to shut up and be quiet because you were trying to think; Draco was someone who felt that his brilliant discourse could only serve to enhance your thinking process, no matter how badly you needed to concentrate on something else. "And shut up."

"You know," Draco said, "I don't really see why you brought me out here, if all you wanted me to do was sit here and look pretty. Not," he added, "that that isn't one of my particular talents, of course."

"It's not a talent, it's an annoying habit, and I brought you out here for silent moral support. How do you spell everlasting? One word or two?"

"One, and that doesn't sound very promising. Tell me you aren't going to natter on about everlasting love, I couldn't take it."

Harry threw his quill down. "It's a wedding. Aren't I supposed to natter on about everlasting love? What do you expect me to talk about in my toast, then?" He squinted. "Also, isn't that Ginny?"

"What? Why bring her up? She's not in your speech, is she?"

"No," said Harry, in a tone that indicated he felt Draco was being exceptionally slow today. "She's over there, by the stands."