Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

Draco, taking on a hunted look, burrowed deeper into the grass. "What do you think she's doing here?"

"I expect she came here to kill you," Harry said, retrieving his quill.

Draco glared at him. "You have no sympathy, Potter. No compassion.

That's your trouble."

"You know," Harry pointed out reasonably, "if you ever actually told me anything about what's gone on between you and Ginny this past year, maybe I would be sympathetic."

"As it is, lacking information, you fall back on mockery and slander."

"Yes," said Harry. "That's about the size of it."

Draco sat up, shaking grass out of his hair, and looked across the pitch at Ginny, a small bright-haired figure in the distance. Harry looked at him sidelong — sometimes, like a photograph in double exposure, he seemed to see another Draco, half-transparent, looking back at him — a Draco whose face had gone to bones and shadow, pale as etiolated lace, with lavender shadows under his eyes. A Draco so thin he looked like a gust of wind would blow him over, who seemed to stay upright only through sheer force of will.

And then he blinked, and like a ghost, that Draco vanished, and he was looking at a slim blond boy whose skin showed the first gold shadings of an early summer tan, whose eyes were clear and gray and unshadowed, who gave off a bright aura of health and strength and vitality that made Harry wonder if there hadn't been something perhaps a little extra in that antidote — something that hadn't just healed Draco but had brought him back stronger than ever?

"I think she's ignoring me," Draco observed, and bit down thoughtfully on a blade of grass.

"I think she hasn't noticed us at all yet," said Harry. "Who's that she's with?"

"Blaise," said Draco, gloomily.

"Oh, right. I keep forgetting she cut off all her hair. I rather liked it better before," Harry said, thoughtfully.

"Potter, you're practically a married man, you're not supposed to be noticing random girls' hair."

Harry rolled his eyes upward. "Malfoy…"

"I bet they're talking about me," Draco observed, sounding about as cheerful as a French aristocrat on the way to the guillotine.

"You know, Malfoy," said Harry, with some asperity, "not everyone, everywhere, is always talking about you."

"This is about Draco, isn't it?" Ginny said, turning to Blaise with her arms folded. The wind blowing across the Quidditch pitch was chilly; she hugged her arms around herself and shivered.

"Yes. Well." Blaise hesitated. "Oh, all right. It is. How did you know?"

"You had that look on your face," said Ginny with a grim certainty. "That only-Draco-Malfoy-could-annoy-me-this-much look."

"I'll take your word for it." Nervously, Blaise reached for a strand of hair to twist, didn't find one, seemed to remember she'd cut off her long locks, and dropped her hand. "All right, here it is. Draco's asked me if I'll go with him to the wedding on Saturday."

Ginny blinked; the wind suddenly felt very chill. "I — as his date?"

Blaise paused to think before she replied. "It wasn't stated explicitly either way," she said, finally. "But my guess is that he'd like a companion and there isn't anyone else he wants to ask, so I'll do. We get along still. I'd venture to say we understand one another."

Ginny shoved her hands into her pockets. "I suppose it isn't my business either way," she said. "I'm going with Seamus, of course."

"Of course." Blaise moved past this without addressing it. Nobody ever really did address the issue of her and Seamus, Ginny thought, rather as if they hoped that if they ignored it, it would go away. "But I didn't want to do anything that might upset you."

"That's thoughtful of you," Ginny said grudgingly. She thought of the wedding, which she had rather been looking forward to — one last celebration with all her friends before they scattered across the world, only one of them to return to Hogwarts in September. Herself. Now she thought of the shimmering ballroom at Malfoy Manor, and Blaise laughing in Draco's arms as they spun together under the floating chandeliers, and felt a sense of impending dread.

Blaise grinned. "It's not a question of thoughtful. I know what a temper you've got, I don't want you hurling a punchbowl at me in the middle of the vows."

"No, I wouldn't do that anyway," Ginny said. "Look, I've got a boyfriend.

I'm not still carrying a torch for Draco Malfoy."

Blaise raised an eyebrow. "You went through hell to save his life," she remarked. "That's more than a torch, it's a bloody bonfire."

Ginny shrugged. "That was months ago. If anything was going to happen between us after, it would have happened already. But I'm with Seamus. I told you."

"Yes, but do you love him? Seamus, I mean."

Unbidden, Tom's words rose in Ginny's mind. I am her love, I am her hatred. I am her joy and I am her loathing and her abhorrence. I am her unrequited passions. I am her guilt and her remembrance. I am her beautiful despair. I am the futility of all her wishes. Out of blood and tears and ink, she made me. And I will never leave her.

But he had been wrong, she thought, it was she who could not leave.

"Sure, I love him."

Blaise's lip quirked up at the corner. "Hey, do you remember that time in the Great Hall when Seamus just went totally mad and Draco — "

"No," Ginny said firmly.

Blaise looked dubious. "If you say so."

Ginny was lying, of course, she did remember. Quite well.

Once she'd been sure, quite sure, that Draco was going to live, she set about ignoring him as completely as possible. One school started again, she avoided him in corridors and after Quidditch matches, tried not to be around Harry or Hermione if they were going to see him, ducked behind pillars in the courtyard if she caught a glimpse of silvery hair or heard the sound of familiar laughter.

At least it was nearly impossible to bump into him alone. Other Slytherins always surrounded him. While the Gryffindors had tiptoed around Harry since they'd all come back to school — as Ron pointed out, it's a little hard to brag about your winter trip to Ibiza with a bloke who spent his Christmas holidays locked in a fatal confrontation with Voldemort — the Slytherins were sucking up to Draco like they'd just invented the fine art of sycophancy.

"A lot of them," Blaise explained to Ginny one evening in the library, "feel like they made maybe the wrong choice, you know, siding with the Death Eaters and that lot. Not because they were evil, mind you, but because they lost, and Draco's practically the only one in our House who's in really good books with the Ministry's current power players. Everyone thinks he just played it perfectly, you know, and no one wants to be on his bad side. He might sic Harry on them." She grinned.

"As if Harry could be bothered with them," said Ginny coldly, and meant it. Harry had reacclimated to normal life at school better than they'd all been worried he would, after what had happened, and the fallout of what had happened — Dumbledore had done a good job of keeping the Ministry away, forbidding them from holding a ceremony in which they bestowed the Order of Merlin on Harry until after school was over, canceling several tickertape parades through Hogsmeade, and forbidding all reporters from the Daily Prophet from setting foot on Hogwarts grounds on pain of being eaten by Fang. People still stared at Harry in the hallway, of course. But people had always stared at Harry in the hallway. That wasn't new.

What was new, perhaps, was the way he looked back — neither defensive nor challenging nor resentful nor shy. I know who I am, that look said, and if you don't, you're welcome to look — it doesn't matter to me either way. Ginny remembered the Harry of years ago, who ducked stares and bit his lip in furious pain at the appearance of POTTER STINKS badges.