Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

Hermione remembered when the lake has been a frozen sheet of glass, the trees, stripped to bare branches, a skeleton orchard. She remembered standing on the front steps of the school, sugared with snow, waiting with Ginny for the boys to come back from Hogsmeade. And Draco walking up the hill, carrying Harry, who'd passed out from drinking too much, trying to forget how miserable he was. They'd all been miserable back then, for different reasons, everyone isolated in their little bubble of unhappiness.

But things were better now.

Weren't they?

She tried to duck under a low-hanging tree branch, but knocked it with her shoulder, sending a shower of pink, apple-smelling petals down on her head. She raked them out of her hair impatiently.

"You needn't do that," said a slow voice from behind her. A voice that, if it hadn't been so cultivated and careful, she would have said sounded almost slurred. She whirled around. Draco was lying on the verge of grass just at the edge of the lake, his boots nearly in the water, his silvery head pillowed on his right arm, bent under him. He was looking up at the sky meditatively, eyes half-slitted against the fading light. With his left hand, he described a lazy circle in the air. "It looks quite pretty, what with the petals being so pink and your hair being, all, you know…"

"Brown?" Hermione said with some asperity. "Are you drunk, Draco?"

He rolled over onto his stomach. Leaves were caught in his fine light hair.

"Perhaps," he said, with great dignity. "Just a bit."

"Did you get into the Archenland wine? That was supposed to be a present for Sirius!"

"I may have had a mouthful," Draco admitted. "But I'm sure my future stepfather wouldn't begrudge me a bit of a tick off his bottle. He probably won't even notice."

Hermione put her hands on her hips. "You uncorked it, didn't you?"

Draco ruminated upon this before allowing that he must have done.

"Fine. You owe me ten Galleons — that was my share of the gift." She sank down on the grass near him and stared out at the lake. "Drinking before supper, that can't be a good sign."

"I prefer drinking during supper, but Dumbledore says it sets a bad example for the innocent first-years."

"Draco, this is ridiculous."

"Oh, I agree, those first years are far from innocent. The other day I came into the common room and Ermentrude Braddock and a bunch of the first-year boys had gotten into the Lifting Lemon Fizzes. We had to hook them all down with umbrellas and they still spent the next six hours high as kites, if you know what I mean."

"I'm not sure I do," said Hermione, digging into the cool grass with her fingertips. She found a blown dandelion and plucked it. "And that wasn't what I meant when I said ridiculous. I meant this skulking around the lake business, moping and drinking. What on earth's the matter?"

"Nothing on earth," said Draco, looking up at her through his eyelashes, "specifically."

"Stop that," Hermione said crossly. "Don't look at me like that."

"Like what?"

"You know," Hermione said darkly. "Look, is this about Ginny?"

Draco sat up, raking grass out of his hair. His eyes were narrowed silver crescents. "No. It's not about Ginny."

"You know she's going to the wedding with Seamus — "

"Of course she is. I think she feels she has to keep a close eye on him in case he starts exhibiting signs of Evil."

Hermione giggled.

"What?"

"Oh, just thinking, all this work you've put in to reform yourself and Ginny goes and chucks you because you're not evil enough. Not as evil as Seamus, any road. Potentially evil, I should say," she corrected herself, with a flicker of conscience — Seamus was her friend too, after all, and what had happened to him was horrible.

"You're very amusing," Draco said darkly. "And she didn't chuck me. She was always with Captain Cardboard, really, if you think about it, except for that brief bit where he tried to kill everyone in England."

"He did not."

"Several of them, at least. Look, if she prefers a block-headed, mutton-footed cretinous vat of testosterone pudding to me, that is simply her bad taste."

"I think initially," mused Hermione, "she was looking for someone who was pretty much the opposite of you."

"Well, she succeeded. I'm clever, he's the mental equivalent of a mass of algae that's underperforming intellectually. I'm gorgeous, he's a hideous lump of — "

"That's hardly fair, Draco."

"Oh, I don't blame him for his looks. I blame his mother, the troll, and the bartender."

"I mean insulting him's hardly fair — it's not like he carried her off against her will. Anyway," she added, turning the dandelion over in her fingers, "I hear you're going to the wedding with Blaise."

He shrugged. "Why shouldn't I? Can you think of a reason? I like Blaise.

She's a good friend."

She squinted at him. "So all this — business with Ginny and Blaise and whatnot — that's really not why you're drinking?"

"It's really not," he said firmly.

"All right. I'm sorry for jumping to conclusions." She held out the blown dandelion to him. "Make a wish?"

"I don't believe in wishes," he said, but he blew, and the airy white seed heads flew up into the air between them, ticking Hermione's nose.

"Your wish'll come true," she said, looking at the bare green stalk. She tossed it aside.

"I told you," he said, standing up, "I don't believe in wishes." He held out a hand to help her to her feet. "Shall we walk?"

"What's wrong with wishes?" She let him draw her to her feet and then slid her hands into her pockets; her fingers were cold. The narrow path that led between the trees and around the lake was darkening, still sequined here and there with fragments of light from the sinking sun. The light lent a rosy cast to Draco's brown skin, caught the brighter threads of his silver hair and made them shine like metal.

"What do you wish?" he said, not looking at her, but through the trees, towards the lake.

I wish, she thought. I wish I knew what would happen to Harry and me after school ends. I wish I knew what would become of us. I wish I knew how to tell him what I know I have to say. I wish I didn't love him like I do. Sometimes I wish I had never met him at all. She said, "I wish I knew how to dance. I've been reading about how there are all this complicated fancy dances at a big wizarding wedding, and I've no idea what to do with my feet. I'll probably break Harry's toes."

He laughed. "That's easy enough." They had reached a small clearing; he turned and held his hands out. "I can help you with that."

Hermione didn't take her hands out of her pockets. "I thought you didn't like to dance?"

"I don't. But I know how."

"Are you good at it?" she asked teasingly. The cold wind off the lake was making her shiver.

"My father beat me until I perfected my skill, so yes."

Hermione gasped. "Draco, I'm — " she began, and saw that he was grinning.

"You're such a bastard," she said.

"Come on." This time she let him take her hands. His were warm, counteracting her chill, though she still felt like shivering. "Put your feet there and there — like that — and watch what I do. Follow me."

He was a good dancer — which didn't surprise her, he wouldn't say he was good at something if he wasn't. It was easy to follow him, the grass whispering under their feet, the wind blowing her hair across her face, the trees rustling in their own secret tree-language all around them. She thought they sounded surprised. Disapproving, maybe. Still, it was good to have warm hands in her cold ones and she found that her cheeks were burning, the cold air a welcome icy kiss against them.