Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

“Yes,” he said.

Hermione went white, and swayed on her feet. She put out a hand and steadied herself against the wall; she seemed to be beyond speaking.

Harry, however, was not. “You're in love with Hermione? You've…been together?” he demanded, his voice hard and sharp.

Ron nodded. “Yes, like I told you.”

The skin of Harry's face seemed to have tightened, pressing back against the bones. But his voice was steady. “How many times?”

Ron flushed. “I don't know. A lot…I can't count…almost every night.”

“Where?”

Ron ducked his head, struggled, and said, “The prefect's meeting room.”

Harry's breath was coming quickly now, but his voice was still expressionless. “And does she love you?”

Hermione found her voice. “Harry —”

“Shut up,” said Harry, his tone cold and flat. He was still looking at Ron.

“Does she love you?”

“She said she did,” said Ron. He was looking down at his hands now. “She said she did.”

“She said she loved me too,” said Harry and there was nothing in his voice: no anger, no pain, no love and no hate. Just a terrifying emptiness.

He raised his hand and pointed it again at Ron, “Finite incantatum.”

Ron jumped. The pain faded out of his eyes, although the tension remained apparent in every line of his body. Very slowly he began to rise to his feet, his hands behind him, flat against the wall. “I'm sorry,” he said, and looked at his feet. “I'm sorry.”

Harry raised his head, and looked at Ron. Somewhere inside his eyes was the eleven-year old boy he had been, begging his best friend to say that he lied. Behind that child, the man that Harry had become knew that he did not.

“How could you,” he said, his voice flat and utterly toneless. “How could you do that to me?”

Ron said nothing. He couldn't seem to meet Harry's eyes with his own. All the color in his face had gone, and he stood stock-still, his back pressed against the wall. At the base of his throat his pulse beat, fast and hard and visible beneath the skin.

“Harry.” It was Hermione, her voice a thin shell of itself. “Please. It isn't true.”

Harry turned on her. “Don't talk to me.” His voice was fierce, his eyes like chips of green ice. “Don't talk to me, don't look at me. Don't ever come near me again.”

Hermione's face crumpled. “Please listen—“

“I said don't talk to me!” Harry yelled, his composure cracking at last.

“He's telling the truth, how can he lie under the Veritas curse? Tell me that, since you're so goddamn clever! How is it possible that he's lying?”

“Harry!” Hermione said, her voice a half-scream, and then Harry's hand went to his wrist and ripped away the watch she had given him, and he flung it at her, so hard that she cried out when it struck the arm she had raised to protect her face.

“Get away from me,” he said, and his voice cracked, through and through like glass shattering. “Get away from me before I hurt you, because I will if you come near me, I swear to God I will.”

Very slowly, Hermione bent down and picked up the watch. When she straightened up, there were tears on her face, although she did not move to blot them or wipe them away. She looked not at Harry, but at Ron, and her face was very white. “I hate you,” she said, “I will always hate you for this,” and then her voice broke and she turned and ran to the portrait hole, and it swung open and let her through.

It was a cold walk from the prefects' bathroom back to his bedroom in the dungeon, but Draco was not in a mood to hurry. He'd washed off the sweat of fencing practice, and had been soaking meditatively in the bath when he'd noticed that the blood that seeped from his injured arm, as it washed away down the drain, was slightly phosphorescent — it was glowing.

This had killed his enjoyment of his bath. He'd gotten out and toweled off, and left the bathroom without bothering to dry his hair. He shivered in the cold air of the unheated dungeon, and turned the last corner on the way to his room with a feeling of relief — relief which faded quickly as he saw that the hallway in front of his room was not deserted. A cloaked figure stood there, hood pulled up, almost but not quite melting into the shadows. The figure was slender, and obviously female. She straightened up as he approached.

Draco paused, and sighed. “Blaise?” he said. “Look, it's been a long day —”

He broke off as the figure raised two slender hands and pushed the hood back: a cascade of brown curls tumbled out, framing a white face.

Hermione.

Draco gaped at her, all clever commentary flying out the window. “What are you doing here? Someone might see you.”

She looked at him blankly, as if he were speaking another language.

“Malcolm Baddock already saw me,” she said. Her voice was distant, and very calm. “He let me in. I told him you'd kill him if he said anything.”

She paused. “I think you should let me into the room now.”

He looked at her more closely. “Does Harry know you're here?”

Her reaction to this question was unprecedented: she flinched violently, and her eyes filled with tears. Shocked, he reached out for her, then thought better of it, and unlocked the door instead. He pushed the door open, and ushered her into the room; with a last look up and down the corridor, he followed her in and shut the door behind them.

He threw his towel over the back of a chair, and studied her. She had taken a few steps forward and now stood very still in the center of the room, between the bed and the fireplace, her hands at her sides. He felt vaguely relieved that he was generally a neat person — the room was extremely tidy: his fencing clothes, tossed across the back of an armchair, the only sign of mess. Then again, she didn't seem as if she would have noticed if he'd been collecting garbage on his floor since the start of term.

She stared around her like someone in a distracted dream.

Draco shifted his feet, wondering what to say, which rarely happened. He was also increasingly aware that he was wearing damp pajamas which were sticking to him. “Hermione,” he said slowly. “Would you mind telling me what this is about?”

She turned slowly and looked at him. Her face, above the white-lined collar of her blue cloak, was very pale, her eyes like huge black coins.

“Your room is very nice,” she said. “You never said you had such a nice room…”

“Hermione,” he said, more sharply.

“You have a fireplace… I wouldn't have thought you'd have a window… oh, the rooms are built into the cliff, aren't they? That's so —”

“Hermione.” Without thinking about it, Draco crossed the room to her, and caught at her wrist. She looked away from him, her eyes wide and blank. A sudden horrible thought assailed him, and he tightened his grip on her wrist involuntarily. “Did something happen to Harry? Is he all right?”

“I don't know,” she said, meeting his eyes finally. “Draco, do I seem…mad to you?”

“Do you seem what?”

“Do I seem like I've gone mad?” Her breath was coming quickly now, in ragged gasps. His hand where it held her wrist was slippery, and he was suddenly even more conscious of his damp, half-dressed state. “Lost my mind?”

he opened his mouth to say her name again, then realized it was becoming repetitive. Instead, he took her by the shoulders and propelled her towards the bed. She sat down obediently on the edge of the bed and folded her hands in her lap. He stared at her, and she stared back.

“I need to change my clothes,” he said. “Sit right here and don't, uh, don't turn around.”

She nodded dully. Any fears he might have had that she would be tempted to swing around and sneak a peek were relieved by her expression. She looked about as interested as if he'd just told her he was about to go work a very dull Arithmancy problem backwards in Japanese.