Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

She hesitated, looking at him. The moment seemed poised on a crystalline point, sharp and diamond-like. "You think I'm beautiful?" she asked.

He looked down at his hands, and then back up at her. When he spoke, it was in a toneless voice, made all the more sincere somehow by its lack of affect. "You are so beautiful it is hard to look at you for very long," he said.

There was a long silence. The moment stretched out between them, sharp and tense and elongated. He was looking at her, and in his eyes she could see the reflected moonlight, and she remembered the drowning pleasure of his mouth over hers, so she did something she had never done before, and kissed him.

He was sitting and not standing; they were at almost the same height. She did not have to stretch upward to kiss him. She had only to lean forward to cover his mouth with hers. She had never initiated a kiss. Others had always kissed her first. She could not believe she was doing this, and yet she was. The proof was there: his mouth against her own, tense and ungiving at first, then softening as he leaned into the kiss, reaching forward to pull her towards him. His arms went around her and pressed her tightly against him, so tightly that the clasp of his cloak dug sharply and almost painfully into the base of her throat. She could feel his hands on the velvet of her dress, sliding up to touch her bare skin. His fingers burned, ten slender wands of fire, and she felt her blood singing in her veins.

And then it was over. As quickly as he had drawn her towards him, he pulled back. His hands were on her shoulders now, pushing her away as adamantly as a moment before, he had pulled her towards him. "No," he said, his voice a little ragged, and then more firmly, "No."

He let go of her. She sat where she was, certain that she was scarlet with humiliation. It was a moment before she realized that the burning behind her eyes was tears. When she spoke, her voice shook. "Damn it, Draco," she whispered. "What are you playing at?"

He raised his face. The dark moonlight silvered the shadows under his eyes and cheekbones. "You asked me," he said. "I said you were beautiful -

that's all."

"You can't say things like that to me," she said. "And not mean them."

"I mean everything I say. It's my besetting sin."

"Then why?" The words seemed torn out of her throat. "If you like me, if you think I'm beautiful, then why?"

He knew what she meant, of course. He looked away. "Harry likes you. He probably thinks you're beautiful, too. Why not ask him that?"

"Because it's not like that with us; he's in love with someone else," she said, and then stopped herself. "And — and you are too, aren't you?"

He didn't say anything. He was looking down at his hands with a fierce desperate intensity. He seemed to be holding himself back, as tightly as if he were trying to prevent himself from hitting her.

"Blaise," she said. "How can you? She's horrible."

Draco looked away.

"Or not her — oh, of course not her," Ginny whispered. She felt as if she were being cut apart inside. "You — "

"I don't want to talk about this," he said. His voice cut with an edge like diamond. His eyes were unreadable again. He had wanted her. She knew he had wanted her; she was not stupid, or blind. But he had pushed her away, and was doing so still. "There is no point."

Ginny stared at him. For some reason, she was hearing Hermione's voice in her head. It had been months ago when she had told Hermione that she was beginning to have feelings for Draco. And she had complained that Draco would not tell her that he returned those feelings. What had Hermione said? "It means he likes you enough not to want you to have unrealistic expectations of him. You have to understand — he won't lie. Not about how he feels. He's always painfully honest."

Finally, Ginny understood exactly why Hermione had characterized that honesty as painful. She thought she had felt all the pain she could feel where Draco was concerned. But apparently not. "No point — there's every point," she said, her voice very quiet.

"No," he said, firmly. "There isn't." He looked away, out over the rose garden, drenched in moonlight as bright as unicorn blood. "If we keep on like this, you'll start to hate me."

"I could never hate you, Draco."

"Oh, yes you could," he said, and his voice held a weary knowledge. "And you would. Because you're like me. You could never be happy with second-best, or half of what you want. And you would fight it, and so would I, but we'd just end up fighting each other. When you're like us, you don't just give up when it goes wrong. We would tear each other apart until one of us couldn't take it. We couldn't just… forget."

There was a long silence. Ginny was concentrating so much of her energy on not crying, that it took her several moments before she could speak.

Finally, she said, "You're wrong."

"Am I?" Draco's expression gave nothing away. "Wrong about what?"

"I can forget about you," she said. "And I will. Starting now."

He looked at her. He had withstood everything else she had thrown at him, but it seemed even Draco had a breaking point. His eyes gleamed for a moment with their old provocative malice.

"Try," he said.

She had nothing to say to that. She turned and walked away, conscious to the moment she reached the castle doors of his eyes on her back.

Hermione did not know how long they had been standing there. They were still kissing, if it could even be called that; she felt more as if they were trying to bridge the gap that had sprung up between them over the past weeks and months, and fuse themselves into one person.

Harry had frozen the moment she had kissed him, and she had been for a second afraid that he would push her away — but then his hands had gone to her waist, and he had lifted her up — she had been dimly aware of him kicking the empty butterbeer cartons out of the way, and then she was pressed up against the wall of the Three Broomsticks, the stones digging into her back, and he was kissing her as if both their lives depended on it.

His sudden explosive passionate reaction had first stunned her, and then galvanized her own response; she felt great shocks, as if of cold or heat, tearing through her nerves, burning away rational thought. They had had kisses before, sweet and gentle kisses, passionate kisses as well, but never anything quite like this — there was something messy and unguarded about the desperation of the way Harry clutched at her, his hands tight around her arms (the next day she wound find five bruises on the circumference of each arm, like an unfolded flower, where his fingers had been), as if he never expected to see her or touch her again.

She felt as if she were falling and there was no end to her descent. She remembered the first time she had ever kissed him and it had been like a strange miracle, all that known familiar country she had seen so often now being learned by touch: the feel of his mouth, the slight roughness of his skin, the taste of him. But it had been nothing like this, with this desperation: this clash of teeth and tongues and kisses like bites, her frantic snatching at the clasp that held his cloak together, hers falling as well, Harry kicking both garments aside and pressing her up against the wall with the force of his body, his hands busy elsewhere. Her own hands were on the hem of his sweater, tugging it up over his head, and it came off with his glasses and she dropped it on top of an empty carton. He had only a thin cotton shirt on underneath — Harry was very strong for someone with such a lean frame, and as he moved to hold her more tightly she could feel the muscles in his back move under her hands. He was shaking, his hands trembling where they touched her face, her throat, cupped her breasts through the material of her dress. "Are you cold?" she whispered against his mouth, "Are you all right?" but he didn't answer her. "Harry," she whispered again, and this time he covered her mouth with his again, silencing her. She closed her eyes, willing herself not to worry — and then a sudden lancing cold struck her skin, and she opened her eyes in surprise. Somehow Harry had managed to get the front of her bodice undone, and it was open to the waist, the frigid air breaking against her bare skin like dashes of cold champagne. "Harry," she said, more urgently, a sudden nervousness gripping her as he slid his hands under the material of her dress. The dizzying feeling of falling was leaving her, the alley and its environs coming back into focus — the lighted windows, the gate to the north, the open street beyond. "Harry, we should stop — someone might come, and see us — "