Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

"I've seen you sleep on concrete floors," Harry pointed out. "Surely this can't be less comfortable?"

"It's not an issue of comfort," said Draco irritably, took his coat off, flung it on the bed, and lay back down on top of it.

"You're such a prima donna, Malfoy," said Harry, who had curled into his favored sleeping position — on his side, with his head pillowed on his left arm. His green eyes watched Draco with friendly amusement. "I can't believe you didn't bring your own 350 thread count cotton percale sheets on this little camping trip."

"I could Summon them," said Draco agreeably, but Harry leaned quickly across the space between them, and caught at his wrist.

"No," he said. "No more magic — please. Especially not wandless magic. I really don't want to be noticed."

"I was just joking," said Draco, and Harry let go of his wrist slowly, and lay back down. "They're satin sheets anyway," Draco added, very quietly, a few minutes later, but Harry couldn't have heard him regardless; he had fallen fast asleep.

"So Harry is the Heir of Gryffindor?"

"Right," said Ginny.

Seamus sat still a moment, re-digesting this information. "And you….you're the Heir of Hufflepuff?"

Ginny nodded. "Right," she said again, cocking her head worriedly.

Seamus, sitting on the end of her bed, had picked up one of her woven throw pillows and was busy pulling threads out of it at a rapid pace. She doubted he realized what he was doing, but was beginning to worry that the story she was telling was a bit too much for him. He looked as if his mind were running in circles.

"And Malfoy…" Seamus paused, his blue eyes clouded. "Malfoy died?"

"Only briefly," Ginny replied, as helpfully as she could. "He got better right away."

Seamus shook his head as if to clear it of cobwebs. "And… Harry and Malfoy can talk to each other telepathically? They like each other?"

"That last part's up for some debate," Ginny said with a sigh, "but basically yes."

Seamus stood up hurriedly, dropping the pillow as he did, and began to pace barefoot up and down at the foot of the bed. Ginny sat up against the pillows and watched him, with some anxiety. She hadn't meant to tell him quite so much, but once she'd started talking it had all come out in a headlong rush. And she couldn't deny that there had been an intense pleasure in finally telling someone else everything she'd been holding inside for so long.

"Seamus," she said finally. "Talk to me. Are you all right?"

He glanced at her, almost as if he were surprised she was still there. "I don't know what to say. About any of it. Malfoy… saved Harry's life?"

Ginny laughed. "Which time are you asking about? They're always saving each other's lives. Look…" She sat forward on the bed, fixing Seamus with a hopeful look. "They're not like other people…" she began.

"What about Quidditch?" Seamus said suddenly.

Ginny blinked at him, caught off guard. "What?"

"Do they talk…in their heads…during matches? Because I'm pretty sure that's cheating."

Ginny was outraged. "Of course not! Harry would never do that! Neither would Draco!"

Seamus gave a dry laugh. "Sorry," he said. "I'm not exactly used to the image of Malfoy as a paragon of virtue."

"He's not," Ginny said patiently. "He's just changed, that's all. He's still arrogant, and stubborn, and mean sometimes, but…he wouldn't lie, or cheat, or do anything underhanded like that. He has a rigid moral code, in his own weird way. Look, if you knew him…"

Seamus gave another dry laugh. "I can't believe this," he said. "You're defending Malfoy. To me."

"But Seamus…" Ginny sat back on her heels. "You said you wanted to know what happened between us."

"But that's because I thought…" Seamus raked a hand through his tangled dark blond hair in exasperation. "I thought he'd done something awful to you! Followed you around, tried to force himself on you, seduced you, betrayed you…"

"I see," said Ginny coldly.

Seamus looked as if he knew he'd just said something stupid. "I wasn't-"

Ginny's voice was like ice. "I'm sorry that the reality isn't colorful enough for you, Seamus. I'm sorry I wasn't abused, or abandoned, or — "

"It's not that…" Seamus interrupted urgently. "I thought I could help you -

"

"Well, I don't need your help!" Ginny almost shouted. "I don't need you to race in on your big white horse and rescue me, Seamus Finnigan. In fact, I don't need you here at all. I let you in here because I thought you would make me feel better. But all you're doing is making me feel worse!"

A hurt look flashed across Seamus' open, gentle face. He came and sat down on the bed next to her, and tried to take her hand. She allowed him to lift it, but let it lie there in his grasp like a dead fish. If she'd had a real dead fish on hand, she would have whapped him across the head with it.

She wasn't sure why she felt so annoyed with Seamus, but she did. The Weasley temper…

"Ginny," Seamus said after a long silence. "I..I really like you. I do. But I get this feeling that you don't really want me around. So…" He laid her hand down on the bed. "So I'm just going to go. Unless…" He stood up, his hands stuffed in his pockets. His wide blue eyes pleaded with her to say something — to ask him to stay. "Unless you want me not to."

Ginny took a deep breath. "Just go, Seamus," she said wearily, picking up her damaged throw pillow and cradling it to her chest. "Ashley and Elizabeth will be back any minute and it would probably be better if you weren't here."

He nodded, and bit his lip. "Will you be — "

"I'll be fine."

She watched him walk to the door with an odd ache in the back of her throat. If someone as kind and sweet and generous as Seamus couldn't be understanding about this, then maybe she'd been right — there was nobody who could. He opened the door and paused there, looking at her, handsome in a boyish way with his tousled hair and tired, sleepy blue eyes. "I won't repeat anything you told me," he said, his voice very serious. "I promise."

She nodded, holding her pillow, not trusting herself to speak as he went out and shut the door behind him.

"Potter! Potter, wake up!"

Harry struggled groggily into a sitting position. "Are we there?" he demanded, reaching into his pocket and pulling his glasses out. He put them on, and blinked as the blur in front of him resolved into Draco, sitting on the end of his bed looking agitated, and waving something in his hand…a rolled-up newspaper. "You going to hit me with that?" Harry asked, hauling himself into a sitting position. "If so, what did I do exactly?"

"I want you to look at something," Draco said, pulling up his legs to sit cross-legged on the bed, and spreading the newspaper open on his lap. He jabbed at an article with his finger. "Stupid Muggle papers…the photos don't move…but I recognized it anyway."

"Recognized what?" Harry cocked his head to the side, examining the indicated article, capped by a prominent headline:

The Art of Art Theft

Art theft is no longer just an elitist crime funded by unscrupulous collectors, but has become a billion dollar industry linked to crime cartels and illicit arms dealing. The theft of a collection of priceless medieval antiques, including a mirror, reportedly valued at as much as £500,000 (pictured, at left) and believed to have belonged to Louis X of France, from Sotheby's earlier this week is believed to be the latest incident in this trade, now worth more than £3 billion annually.

There have been a spate of raids on European art collections in the past year, with the total value of art and antiques stolen estimated at 300 to 500 million. The raids have often been violent; early last year robbers tied up the night watchman at Frankfurt's Schirn Gallery before taking paintings with a combined value of… ("Okay," Draco interjected, "I'm skipping this bit because it's boring…")…By contrast, the robbery at Sotheby's apparently took less than ten minutes to execute and was entirely bloodless. Within a ten minute period between routine sweeps by security guards, the priceless artifacts simply disappeared. The prevailing theory remains that either the robbers must have been very organized, or they must have had help from inside. "We will be questioning our staff very closely," asserts Sotheby's head of security Keith Fraser, visibly distraught by the recent events. "It is impossible that these robbers could have evaded our security systems without considerable assistance from someone possessing inside knowledge." When asked if there was another way the security could have failed, Fraser was indignant, "Well, I suppose they could have used magic!"