Кассандра Клэр: Draco Veritas

“It’ll buy me a little cottage, any road,” said Remus, “somewhere nice and quiet. I don’t need much — a teapot, a place for my books, and a good quantity of dog biscuits for when you come visiting.”

“And a desk to write at.”

Remus was silent for a moment, looking thoughtfully down at his hands, scarred by so many transformations. “I had thought I might write a real book,” he said. “A story about four friends and how differently their lives turned out than they thought they would when they were children.”

“A real book,” echoed Sirius, and then, “Don’t you think it’ll hurt, writing about all that? Aren’t you afraid you’ll remember it all?”

“I am much less afraid to remember,” said Remus, very quietly, “than I am to forget.”

Ginny opened her eyes slowly and blinked up at the ceiling in confusion, for a moment forgetting entirely where she was. She could have sworn that the ceiling of the guest room had a pattern of fleur-de-lis on it, where this ceiling seemed to be embossed with a design of curling snakes…

Memory hit her with a jolt, and she sat bolt upright. She was in Draco Malfoy’s bedroom, and that was his ceiling. It wasn’t the first time she’d looked at it, either. She put her hand over her mouth and glanced down; Draco was sleeping peacefully in the bed beside her, sheets tangled around his waist. The moonlight outlined him in patterns of shadow and frost, silvering the already-bright hair and etching the lines of muscle along his back. For a moment, she sat quietly, enjoying the view. Then she slipped out of the bed and went to retrieve her gown and wand. She dressed quietly, so as not to wake Draco, and wound her hair into a neat, if unglamorous, bun at the back of her neck. Her butterfly clips were gone — probably under Draco’s bed or lost in the sheets, but looking for them would only wake him up, and besides, it wasn’t as if she planned to see anyone. Or be seen.

She made her way down the steps barefoot, pausing only to retrieve something from her bedroom. It took her several tries but she eventually found the door that led to the rose garden outside.

The air was perfect: cool without being cold, and scented like roses and lavender. Since Christmas she had hated roses, the color and smell of them, but now she found it no longer bothered her. Some of the white petals from the previous day’s ceremony still ghosted by on the wind, tickling her cheeks and catching in her hair.

She made her way down one of the paved paths until she stood a distance from the castle. Then she drew out the flask of love potion Hermione had given her and looked at it meditatively for a moment. She pulled the stopper free. The smell that rose from the flask was like the smell of rotted flowers, the corruption of something transient and sweet. She ran her finger slowly around the flask — it was slightly warm from the liquid inside it, and from being held in her hand — and then, with a set face, she upended it, spilling the love potion onto the leaves and flowers of a nearby rose bush. The liquid ran down the bush in threads of silver and sank into the earth.

“What are you doing?” said a masculine voice, just behind her.

Ginny whirled in surprise, half-expecting it to be Draco — perhaps she’d woken him after all — but the eyes that looked back at her were blue, not gray, and the hair was gold and not silver. He was dressed in jeans and a light sweater, and the freckles on his face were visible even in the dark.

“Seamus?” she whispered. She could feel the hand that held the flask trembling. “What — I mean, I thought you had gone.”

“I told you I was going to come back.”

His voice was even, almost toneless. She felt her hand tighten on the flask — it was solid silver, very heavy, a formidable weapon — before she caught herself. This is Seamus, not Tom. Seamus would never hurt you.

“I didn’t know you meant you’d come back in the middle of the night and skulk around the Manor grounds,” she said.

A faint smile touched his mouth. “I came by broomstick, actually. I was about to knock on the door when I saw you sneaking down the path into the garden. I couldn’t help wondering what you were up to.”

Ginny glanced down at the flask, and then back up at Seamus. “Watering the rose bushes?” she ventured.

“Watering them with love potion,” said Seamus. “Are you sure that’s wise?”

She gaped at him. “How —“

“Hermione told me about your plan.”

I knew she was lying. Silently, Ginny called Hermione any number of profane names. Out loud, she said, “Is that why you left?”

“Not precisely. That was part of it, I suppose,” he said, reflectively. “I can’t say I was pleased that you felt you needed to drug yourself to care about me.”

“Seamus,” she said, wretchedly. “I do care about you. I honestly do. That’s why I wanted to — you know — use the love potion. Just to give myself a little push.”

“Interesting,” said Seamus. “And even more interesting that you seem to have changed your mind.”

“I thought you weren’t coming back,” she whispered.

“But I am back.” In the moonlight, his blue eyes looked almost blue-black, the color of dark pansies. “So what are you going to do now?”

She lowered her head. The sense of guilt and gnawing defeat was like a pain in her chest. “Whatever you want me to,” she said. “I can get more love potion — or if you don’t want that, maybe we could try something else. We could go away together. Maybe if it was just us —“

“Is it that you could never have loved me?” he asked, flatly, “or is it that you can’t love me as I am now?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I made you as you are now.”

“If I told you to pack your things and come with me, would you do it?”

“Right now? Tonight?” She stared at him.

“Yes. Tonight.”

“And go where?”

“Does that matter?” he demanded.

“No,” Ginny said numbly. “I suppose not.” She glanced down at herself; her bare arms were bumpy with gooseflesh. “I’d need to get my clothes — and write a note to my parents.”

Seamus shook his head slowly. “All this just for guilt, Ginny?”

Her head came up quickly. “I told you. I care about you.”

“But you don’t love me,” he said, and took a step towards her, and another, and now she was pinned against the rose bush, the thorns catching in the material of her dress. “And you never did. It was always Malfoy. You would have done anything he told you to, because you loved him. Me, you only pity.”

“I don’t pity you, Seamus,” she said, struggling to keep her voice even.

“Not at the moment,” he said. “At the moment, you’re afraid of me.” She saw his mouth twist into a bitter line. “I suppose we’ll never know now, will we?”

“Know what?”

“If it ever could have worked out. You, and me the way I was. I won’t be that way again. I still have some of him in me. Like a residue left behind.

His soul is gone, but the shadow it cast is still there, inside me.”

“Seamus —“

“No. Let me finish,” he said, so sharply that she tightened her grip on the flask. “I know him, Ginny, better than probably anyone other than you ever did know him. And he loved you. In his twisted, backward way — something about the way you brought him back, your tears mixed with his blood, you were part of him. He couldn’t get free of you. He killed shadows of you to try to burn you out of his head, but it didn’t work. You obsessed him.”

“But you’re not him — we were together before any of that happened —“

“That doesn’t matter,” said Seamus. “He took my love for you and fed it into himself. He couldn’t escape it, so he transformed it. He was in hate with you. He dreamed of killing you the way I might have dreamed of kissing you. Once.”