Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

At last, she spoke. "I want you to make me a love potion," she said, avoiding Hermione's eyes.

Hermione's sympathy vanished in an wave of incredulous astonishment.

"You want me to make you WHAT?"

Ginny scowled. "A love potion."

Hermione dropped her book and, seizing hold of Ginny's wrist, yanked her down onto the windowsill beside her. The curtain fell closed around them. "Surely you're joking," Hermione said. "Tell me you got into the wine we bought for the wedding and you're reelingly drunk. That would be a relief."

"I'm not drunk. I know exactly what I'm saying."

"Clearly you don't. Do you have any idea how immoral love potions are?

How illegal?"

"Oh, like you care about legality," Ginny snapped. "I know all about the Polyjuice Potion — "

"That was in a good cause!"

"So is this!"

"Ginny," Hermione hissed, struggling to keep her voice down, "you cannot give Draco Malfoy a love potion, do you understand me?"

Ginny's mouth dropped open just as the curtain was pulled back and Harry stood in front of them, smiling pleasantly and smelling, as Hermione had predicted, rather strongly of lawn. "I was wondering where you'd got to," he said to Hermione. "You two plotting something?"

Hermione said a small prayer to the Relationship Gods that they would forgive her the lie she was about to tell. She could only imagine what would happen if Harry found out that Ginny wanted to give Draco a love potion. His head might actually fly off and bounce around the room like a Bludger. "We're talking about dresses," she said. "What to wear to the wedding."

"I was thinking of something simple and black myself," he said. "Maybe a nice pearl choker."

To Hermione's surprise, Ginny laughed, though her color was still high. "I think you could be a bit more adventurous than that," she said. "Stiletto heels are in right now."

Harry looked mildly interested. "I can never see how girls can walk in those — "

"Harry," Hermione said, smiling in a way that made her face feel stretched, "I think Ginny and I want to continue our conversation in private."

Harry's eyebrows went up. "Really?"

"Well," Hermione said, "I wouldn't want you to know what I'm wearing before the wedding."

"You know, Hermione," Harry pointed out, "it's not actually us getting married, so…"

"It's tradition," Hermione said firmly.

"Bollocks," Ginny muttered.

Harry looked at her curiously and seemed to notice her high color and agitated expression for the first time. "Heard Draco's going to the wedding with Blaise, have you?" he said, without malice and addressing both of them, though his words seemed meant for Ginny. Ginny's color darkened.

Before she could say anything, Hermione got to her feet and grabbed Harry by the shoulders, pushing him out through the curtain and into the common room.

"Honestly, Harry," she said, "do have some sense, won't you? And leave me alone with Ginny, we need to talk."

"I'll say," he said, and dropped a kiss on the top of her head. "See you at dinner, then?"

Her anger melted. "Of course."

"And if you wind up wearing some horribly unflattering meringue-type thing to the wedding, don't look at me. I tried to advise you."

"At least it'll match your powder-blue tux," she said, and let go of his shoulders. He dashed away upstairs as Hermione took a deep breath and returned to the window embrasure.

Ginny was hunched into the corner of the window, worrying at something that hung around her throat. She dropped her hand when Hermione appeared and glared at the other girl defiantly, her cheeks scarlet.

"All right, I didn't tell him anything," said Hermione. "But that's on the condition that you forget this stupid idea immediately. I mean, using a love potion on someone, it's — it's a violation. It robs them of their volition, their will. It's like Imperius, but worse in a way, because they don't even know what's happening."

"It's not an Unforgivable," Ginny said, her voice tight. "And anyway, I happen to agree with you."

"You — what do you mean, you agree?" Hermione stared at her. "Do you hate Draco that much?"

Ginny was shaking her head slowly. Red curls of hair bounced against her cheek, startling against its whiteness. "You really think I'd do that," she said flatly. "That I'd use a love potion on — on him?" She bit her lip. "It's not for Draco."

Hermione looked at her in astonishment. "Not for Draco?" she echoed.

"Then for who?"

"I should think that would be more than obvious," Ginny said. "It's for me, of course."

Harry had just reached the door of his room when he felt that tickling at the back of his mind — like a hiss or a whisper, but more insistent — that meant that Draco wanted to talk to him. He lowered his hand from the doorknob, letting his mind relax.

Potter?

Yes, I'm here.

You know how Weasley said Dumbledore needed to talk to us?

Yes. I know, I was just — The other boy sounded oddly constricted. Look, I think you'd better come here.

Harry felt suddenly cold all over. Are you all right?

Just get here.

Forgetting about his muddy sweater, Harry clattered back down the stairs

— as he passed the closed window curtains in the common room, he wondered just what it was that Hermione and Ginny were actually up to, he hadn't believed for a moment that they'd been talking about clothes — and ducked out through the portrait hole.

"Fizzwhanging snozzlefritters," he muttered to the gargoyle that guarded Dumbledore's office, and it obligingly let him through. As he rode upward on the wooden staircase, he felt that chill again, now centered in his stomach. He hadn't heard Draco sound like that since — well, not since January.

January. Sometimes when he closed he eyes he saw the blasted landscape of Romania, the gray earth outside the towering stronghold, the long lines of mountains marching away in the distance like jagged black teeth. He felt the chill in his bones again, that seeping cold and exhaustion. He saw the castle corridors lit up like high noon, and Draco lying in Hermione's arms, silver blood trickling from the corner of his mouth.

Sometimes in dreams he remembered the ones he had killed: the guards, the men at Viktor's flat. He remembered the hot water he'd scalded his hands with afterward, but he could not remember their faces. He'd told Draco that once, a few days after he'd gotten the antidote but was still in the infirmary — Snape had insisted, though Draco already looked like a completely different person. Draco had looked up at him, tousle-haired in pajamas. "Hell is murky," he said.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Don't think about what you can't change, Potter."

"I killed people, Malfoy."

Draco's eyes were brilliant. "You're the savior of the wizarding world," he said. "Let someone else be its bloody conscience."

The stairs stopped rising; Harry was in front of Dumbledore's door. He pushed it open.

The moment he walked into the beautiful circular office, the chill in his stomach constricted into a hard lump of ice. Not just Dumbledore was there, but also Lupin and Snape, sitting in chairs on either side of the Headmaster's desk. Both looked somber. Draco sat opposite them, slouched into an armchair. He was expressionless, but the skin around his mouth looked pinched.

"Harry," said Dumbledore — the light from the window reflected off his glasses, making it impossible to read his eyes — "You'd better take a seat."

Harry didn't move. "What is it?" he said, rising panic sharpening his voice.

"Is it Sirius? Has something happened to him?"

"No," Draco said, sitting forward, "it's nothing like that, Potter. Nobody's died. "

Harry looked at Snape. "It's not Malfoy's antidote, is it? It's not wearing off or something?"