Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

“And there you have it,” he said. “The truth. I take it by your astonished expression that you had expected something different?”

She said nothing. She couldn’t find her voice; she had imagined this moment so many times, imagined his voice, saying those words, but she had never imagined her own response, what it might be. Her dreams had ended with him. They always did.

He put his hand against the wall as if to steady himself. “I suppose I deserve that,” he said, “your silence.”

She still said nothing, and he looked away from her, towards the window.

The stars were just visible through the thick glass, like faint blurs of light.

She could see herself in the dark glass as if it were a mirror; see her own white face, the bright flame-color of her dress, the metallic shine of the clasps that held up the straps. She lifted her hand to the clasps and undid them, one by one. The dress slid with a whisper of silk to the floor at her feet; she stepped out of it, and walked across the room to Draco, and put her hand on his arm.

He looked at her with what was, for that moment, the purest astonishment she had ever seen or imagined on his face. “Ginny…”

“That dress comes off more easily than any other piece of clothing I’ve ever owned,” she said. “Did you think of that when you bought it?”

“Perhaps,” he said, slowly, his eyes never leaving her face. “Ginny, you don’t have to—“

She put her hands, flat, on his chest. She could feel his heartbeat against the palm of her right hand, through the stiff white material of his dress shirt. The emeralds at his wrists winked at her, though he kept his hands at his sides. “I want to,” she said.

He reached for her then, but stopped mid-gesture, his fingers millimetres from her face. She could feel the warmth of him, radiating from his skin, but they were not — not quite — touching.

“What’s wrong?” she whispered.

His expression had not changed, but his light eyes had gone so dark that they were nearly black. Dark with desire, she thought, and felt an odd burst of something like triumph, or delight, mixed with desire of her own.

“You have to ask me,” he said. “I told you I wouldn’t touch you — unless you asked.”

She raised her chin. “Please,” she said.

His fingers touched her then, hands cupping her face as he bent to kiss her — a kiss that started out gentle and quickly flared into a near-ferocity that left her mouth feeling bruised. Her nerves sang as he kissed her cheek, her jawline, her throat; she pulled at his tie, the buttons of his shirt, snapping some of them off in her impatience and haste to get it over his head, to feel his skin against hers. The scar where the arrow had gone into his shoulder gleamed like a silver crescent. She kissed it, and heard him laugh, say something she couldn’t quite hear, and then his arms went around her, lifting her up, and she realized he must have whispered Nox because the room went dark and there was only moonlight as he laid her down on the bed, only moonlight and through the window, the faint, changeable illumination of the stars.

The moon was out in all its brightness, and to an eye less trained in observing its every alteration, however slight, it might have looked full.

Remus Lupin knew better. He felt the stir of the moon’s cycles in his blood now, like an old sailor intimately familiar with the changing course of the tide. Three days, he thought. Then it would be full, but it wasn’t yet, and that was fortunate because he was enjoying himself where he was, sitting at the top of an old and crumbling stone stairway that led down to a patch of thick grass and rocks that had probably once been some sort of private garden. The air smelled of grass, and faintly of roses.

“Contemplating your old enemy?” said Sirius, who had come up behind him with the silent grace that had earned him his nickname among his friends at school. He sat down on the step beside Remus and cast a considering glance at the sky. His tie was loose and his cuffs unsnapped, and in the darkness it was impossible to see the grey threads in his black hair.

“We’ve come to something of an understanding,” said Remus, “the moon and I. I wouldn’t call it an enemy.”

“It looks full,” Sirius observed.

“It isn’t.”

“Obviously.” Sirius moved his considering glance from the moon to his old friend. “So where are you off too now, Moony? Teaching over the summer again, like last year?”

“No,” said Remus. “Not this summer, I don’t think.”

Sirius cleared his throat. “You know, Narcissa and I have talked.”

“That’s good,” Remus observed, “since you married her.”

“Talked about you, I mean,” Sirius clarified. “And we’d both be happy — perfectly happy — if you wanted to live here, you know, in the summers.

There’s plenty of rooms. And the dungeons have cells in them, you know, if you wanted to lock yourself up.”

“That’s very thoughtful of you.”

“I’m not joking, Remus. You know how James and Lily always said their house was ours too. I never thought I’d have a house to offer my friends

— I never thought I’d live that long, and then, when I was in Azkaban, I never thought I’d get out. But now I have a home, and I want you to know it’s yours, too. Whatever’s mine — is yours.”

Remus rubbed the back of his hand across his tired eyes, and smiled. “I know. And when I was at school, I remember how we used to say we’d all live in a house together when we grew up, and we’d have Ministry jobs together and do everything together. It was comforting at the time. But I’m too old for that now, Sirius. I need my own house. My own life.”

Sirius was silent for a moment, toeing a pebble in the dirt with the tip of a shoe. “If it’s money you need then —“

“I don’t need money.”

“I thought you wanted to buy a house.”

“I do.”

“Teaching suddenly paying better these days?” Sirius inquired.

“Perhaps.”

“Those books of yours doing pretty well, too.”

“Yes, actually —“ Remus began, and stopped, realizing. “My … books?” he said slowly.

Sirius was grinning. “I do know, you see. I’m not a complete idiot.”

“You mean you know —“

“That you’re Aurora Twilight? Of course.”

“But — how? I didn’t — I mean, I don’t —“

“I remember when you used to tweak Lily for reading those books,” Sirius said good-naturedly. “You always said you could write one yourself in a week and make a million galleons.”

“Did I say a million? I may have been slightly overestimating…”

“You used to say all you had to do was give yourself a stupid pen name like Rosamunde Moonlight and churn out some mindless pap and all the witches would go mad for it because after all, you’re a man and you know what women want.”

“I did NOT say that.”

“You did actually. Ah, sweet confidence of youth.”

“Optimism, I would say. I suppose I actually thought by this time of life I would know what women wanted.” Lupin propped an elbow on his knee and rested his chin thoughtfully on his hand. “Even the writing part turned out harder than I thought. It seems even mindless drivel requires some work.”

“Oh, it’s not all drivel, Moony. I found some parts of it surprisingly good — the part where Tristan thinks he’s going to die so he declares his undying love to whatserface, that was quite moving, I thought.”

“Yes,” said Remus drily, “I’m sure the love of Tristan and whatserface is one for the history books.”

“Anyway,” said Sirius, with a grin, “I thought it was quite well done.”