Кассандра Клэр: Draco Veritas

“Once?” Ginny said faintly. “You don’t want to kiss me … any more?”

Looking down at her, he shook his head slowly. “How do you think it feels,” he said, “to look at the one person you love most in the world, and dream about killing her? Not because you want to, because you can’t help it. I used to think about how beautiful the curve of your shoulder into your neck was. Tom just thinks how your neck would look with blood splashed all over it.”

Ginny made a faint, sickly sound. If she brought her hand up quickly enough she could catch him on the temple, and —

“I know you’re thinking about hitting me with that flask,” said Seamus.

“Don’t bother. My reflexes are better than yours.”

“I could scream,” she said. “They’d come running.”

“Probably,” said Seamus, sounding suddenly tired. “But I wouldn’t bother.

I’m not going to hurt you, Ginny. I came here to let you go.”

“Let me go?” she echoed, puzzled.

“You stay with me out of guilt,” said Seamus. “Don’t bother arguing, I know it already. I appreciated that in the beginning. I did. It was a help to have you with me. But as time went on I started to realize that being around you was keeping that part of me that was Tom Riddle still alive.

He feeds on your proximity. I need to not be near you, Ginny, for that part of me to die forever. You think you’re being kind by staying with me, but actually, your presence tortures me. I’m sorry, but I need to be away from you. Do you understand?”

“Seamus,” she whispered. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“I didn’t really understand it myself,” he said. “Hermione made me understand it — she said she could tell from watching me what I was going through, that you’d never understand it because you couldn’t see how I was when you weren’t there, how different I was. And she said you’d bleed yourself out trying to help me when all along being away from you was the only thing that would help us both. I mean, I thought it was just that I was never going to get rid of that part of me that was Riddle, but when I talked to her I realized that when you weren’t around, I didn’t have those thoughts.”

“If I’d taken the love potion—“ Ginny began, suddenly transfixed with horror at the thought.

“Then we’d both be miserable. You’d love me, I couldn’t stand to be around you. And I suppose Malfoy wouldn’t have been too happy, though you never can tell with him. He’s a strange one.”

Ginny could only agree that this was true. “Where will you go, Seamus?”

He moved back, freeing her from the rose bush. She pulled her dress away from the snagging thorns.

“I don’t know,” he said, “and I wouldn’t tell you if I did. When you hear from me again, it will be because I know there’s none of him inside me any more. Without you around, I’m hoping he’ll die of starvation.” He shook his head, and turned to retrieve his broomstick from where he’d stashed it behind a tree. She wasn’t sure if she was imagining it or not, but it seemed to her that the set of his shoulders was more confident, relaxed even, than she had seen it in months. “Quite a pair of right stupid prats we’ve been, thinking we were being heroically self-sacrificing when actually we were just putting the other person through hell,” he added, mounting his Cloudburst with the ease of long practice. “So much for suffering in silence.”

Ginny agreed that this was true. Her knees felt weak with relief, and she wondered for a moment if she was going to pitch forward onto the grass.

“Good luck,” Seamus added, more gently. “And I hope Malfoy makes you happy.”

So do I, Ginny almost said, but she stopped herself, knowing it wasn’t what she really meant. “I am happy,” she said. “But not because of Malfoy.”

“Good,” said Seamus, and before she could say anything to that — before she could even wish him good-bye — he had kicked off from the ground and was flying, a bright speck in the dark sky that receded swiftly until it was lost among the clouds. She stood a long time after he had gone, staring up into the dark sky, before she headed back to the Manor with a determined stride.

Harry woke up early, with a faint and gnawing sense of dread in his stomach. It didn’t help that it was a beautiful day, that beams of yellow sunlight were spilling into his room through the window, or that he was quite sure he could hear birdsong. He still had the sense that something was off-kilter, not quite right. It wasn’t Hermione, he thought, swinging his legs off the bed. They’d worked things out. And the wedding had gone off well. And he’d worked out what he wanted to do for at least the next six months of his life — provided Malfoy was amenable — which was something of an accomplishment. Maybe he was just hungry.

He threw on some jeans and his Puddlemere United shirt and padded downstairs to find some breakfast. Narcissa had completely done over the enormous Manor kitchen, which had once sported a terrifyingly huge cast-iron stove that looked like you could bake a troll in it and stacks of burnt-black pots and pans. It was still huge of course, but much friendlier-looking, with a long wooden serving table that at the moment was laden with all sorts of breakfast items — meusli and milk, toast and eggs, bacon and kippers. Harry snagged a sweet roll and a yogurt and sat down to eat.

There was a hot pot of coffee floating above a Heating Charm on the table, but Harry eschewed it. Coffee made him jumpy.

He could hear a murmur of voices from the dining room — so he wasn’t the only one who was awake — and was considering getting up to check it out when Draco staggered into the room in his black pajamas, his hair sticking up, looking remarkably like the Ghost of Christmas Past as portrayed in a secondary school theater production. Harry choked on his sweet roll.

“M’foy,” he said, around a wad of roll, when he caught his breath, “wha’ on urf —“

Draco threw himself down into a chair opposite Harry and stared at him with large, tragic eyes. “A terrible thing has happened,” he announced.

Harry swallowed. “What?” he demanded. “What terrible thing? Are you all right? Is Hermione all right? Ron —“

Draco waved an impatient hand. “I’m not talking about them,” he said impatiently. “I’m talking about me. A terrible thing has happened to me.

Ginny,” he announced, “has left me.”

Harry felt his eyebrows shoot up. “She left you?”

Draco nodded.

Harry reached for his yogurt. It was quite possible that he was going to need protein to get through this conversation. “You know,” he said cautiously, “I always though that for someone to leave you, first they had to be…” He paused. “With you. You know?”

“She was with me!” Draco snapped. “Where have you been? Get with the program, Potter.”

“I thought I was with the program,” Harry pointed out. “She was dating Seamus right up until yesterday afternoon.”

“Exactly,” said Draco, although, Harry felt, he had not made the kind of observation that merited an ‘exactly’ as much as it merited, perhaps, further explanation. “And after that she was with me.”

Harry blinked in befuddlement. “So what makes you think she’s left you now?”

“Because when I woke up this morning, she was gone.”

Harry choked on his yogurt, which was nearly as unpleasant as choking on a roll. “From your bedroom, you mean?” he said finally, when he got his breath back.

“Well, where else would we have been sleeping? Be reasonable, Potter.”

“So you — you mean to say that you —“

Draco heaved an elaborate sigh. “All right, look. Maybe you should just read this. It’ll clear up your confusion.” He tossed a folded bit of parchment at Harry, who caught it with a Seeker’s expert reflexes. “It’s the note she left on the pillow when she LEFT ME, to forestall your inevitable question.”