Кассандра Клэр: Draco Veritas

When he pulled the door of the room open he found Harry sitting on the floor in the corridor, idly playing with a feather that must have drifted down from the Owlery. Harry looked up in surprise when the door opened, and scrambled to his feet. “You’re all right?” he said breathlessly, making it more a question than a statement.

“O ye of little faith,” said Draco. “I’m fine, thank you.”

Harry looked at him hard. “Your face looks a bit strange —“

“Lots of dust,” said Draco. “Made my eyes water.”

Harry raised an eyebrow. “So?”

“So we should probably head out,” said Draco, squinting down the corridor, “We’re burning daylight here, Potter.”

“You’re not going to tell me what you saw?” Harry looked so dismayed that Draco nearly laughed.

“Oh, I saw myself,” he said casually. “Just as I am.”

“Bloody hell — you can’t be serious. Just as you are?”

“Maybe a few inches taller.”

Harry shook his head slowly. “Jammy bastard,” he said, and grinned. “I meant to ask you before, is that a girl’s barette you’ve got clipped onto your sleeve?”

Draco glanced down at the butterfly clip he’d found on his floor the day after Ginny had left. “What of it?”

“Bit peculiar, don’t you think?”

“Not really,” said Draco, with the air of one whose good humor could not be ruined.

“I suppose as long as you don’t take to wearing it in your hair,” Harry said with a shrug. “You know, maybe I should have a crack at that Mirror. I mean, if it worked out for you —“

“No,” said Draco firmly. “I don’t think Dumbledore’s lenience is going to extend quite that far.”

“All right, all right.” Harry looked at Draco with some amusement. “I guess what you told Snape was the truth.”

“What do you mean?”

“That you’re content. You must be.”

“I suppose I am,” said Draco, as if this were still something of a revelation.

Harry grinned. “You don’t even mind being my shadow?”

He said it as a joke, but to his surprise Draco looked at him long and steadily, without humor or annoyance or anger, only with a sort of level consideration. If I am your shadow, he said, silently and at last, it is only because you are my light. And the one cannot exist without the other.

He said it without affect, as if it were simply and obviously true, and Harry thought that after all, perhaps it was. “It’s a good thing we don’t have to, then, isn’t it?” he said. He glanced around, as if noticing the fading light for the first time. “If we don’t head out, we’ll miss the boat,” he observed, heading towards the stairs.

“I’m not the one who’s trying to get another crack at the Mirror,” Draco pointed out, falling into step beside Harry. “I said we should leave ten minutes ago.”

“It was not ten minutes. It was more like five. And how would you know?

You won’t even wear a watch.”

“I refuse to be constrained by someone else’s idea of what time it is,”

Draco said, but his mind was hardly on their good-natured arguing, which was, as usual, about nothing in particular. They had reached the ground floor now, and the sun was streaming in through the open double doorway that led outside, laying a glinting path along the worn flagstone floors. And as Draco set his feet on that path, he thought for a moment that he could see the shape of his life stretching out before him like a shining line, and for the first time, he knew with surety that it would be a life that was well worthy of living.

THE END.

REFERENCES:

Last Buffy quote ever: “So you tripped and fell on his lips.”

“Hell is murky” —Macbeth

ART:

You’ll find the work of several artists in this part of the Trilogy. The illustrations in chapters 1–9 are by Monica Starling (monstarling@gmail.com), except the illustration of Hermione kissing Daco in Chapter Seven, which is by Ali. You may also recognize some of the art from the calendar created by Starling, Magsby, Alicey, and Priscillie. The illustrations in Chapters 10–16 are by Alessandra Sunk. The illustrations in the epilogue are by Cambium (http://cambium.deviantart.com/). The frontspiece is by Bhanesidhe (bhanesidhe@gmail.com).