Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

It was better, still, than hearing the things Harry had said to him. Horrible things. Not that no one had ever flung insults at him before, but it was worse, coming from Harry. Especially since he suspected that Harry had been right about most of what he'd said.

"Draco?' said a voice in his ear. "What are you doing? Did you fall out of a tree?"

He knew that voice. He supposed he should not be surprised that she was here, but he burrowed his head further into his arms anyway, willing her to go away.

She didn't. "Poor baby boy," she said, her voice lilting with amusement.

Her breath tickled the back of his neck, and when she spoke again it was in a theatrical tone. "How art thou fallen from heaven, oh Lucifer son of the morning?"

Draco sighed, and rolled over on his back. Rhysenn was kneeling above him, her hair tumbling down, a tent of black silk around them both. She was cloakless, her shoulders bare and white under the moonlight. Draco spat snow out of his mouth, and sat up. "I'm hardly an angel," he said.

"Maybe a fallen one," she said, and smiled. "Now get up."

She stood, in a rustle of silk, and he got to his feet as well, mostly because he didn't want her standing over him. He had been right, she wore no coat, or any covering against the cold. She was dressed in black with her black hair loose down her back. Her feet, where the black dress ended, were bare on the snow, and where she walked, they left no marks behind them. The bodice of her dress was tightly corseted and above it her breasts and shoulders were very white.

"It is going to snow," she said. "Why did you summon me here, when it is going to snow?"

He looked at her, breathing hard, as if he had been running — he was exhausted. "I did not summon you here," he said.

"I heard you crying out for me." She made a little pirouette, her skirt flying out, and suddenly her clothes had changed — now she was wearing a French maid's outfit, complete with fishnet stockings, a feather duster, and a peaked cap. "I came as soon as I could."

Draco blinked at her, and took a step back. "So you came here to help me?"

She lowered her eyes. "Of course I did."

"Good. I know exactly what you can do to help me, then." She looked up inquiringly. "You take messages from my father, to me," he said. "I know you do. Now I want you to take a message back."

"Back?" she laughed. "I do not take messages back."

"You'll take this one," he said, and there was something in his voice that made her look at him sharply. "Tell him," Draco said, "tell the Dark Lord, and my father too, that I know that they had something to do with what happened tonight. They did this. And I will find out why, and how, and they will regret what they have done. They will regret what they did to my friends." He paused. "I will make them pay for it."

Rhysenn smiled her cool little smile. "Is there any more to that speech?"

she asked. "You could add a bit about drowning them in their own blood, or some stuff about cold vengeance — up to you of course."

Draco's voice was clipped. "No, I think it's fine as is, thanks."

"It's just a long list of unspecific threats," said Rhysenn, sounding disappointed. "Honestly, if you could add something about ripping out their spinal columns, or roasting them over an ever-burning fire of pitch and molten lava…"

"No," said Draco, coldly.

"Oh all right." Rhysenn looked vexed. "But it's a very boring message, if you want my opinion."

"The only thing I want less than I want your opinion, is syphilis," said Draco pleasantly.

"Well, your father won't like it."

"Fine. I don't like him."

"But he's your father."

"So he is.”

Rhysenn pouted. "You're very disagreeable tonight," she said.

"What, you didn't think that was funny? I thought it was rather funny. All right, the delivery was a little off, but chalk that up to the freezing temperatures."

"It was childish," she snapped. "Why are you in such a difficult mood?"

"I've had a hard day," Draco said tightly. "And you, with your ridiculous -

" he made a vague, irritated gesture in her general direction — "outfits, I mean what the hell do you need a feather duster for, it's ten degrees below zero out and there's nothing to dust!"

She looked annoyed. "I suppose you'd like it better if I wore a potato sack?"

"Knowing you, it'd be a see-through potato sack."

She rolled her eyes. "Well, then. There's always the outfit I wore to charm your little Gryffindor friend. Would you prefer pigtails and knee high stockings?"

Draco gave a short bark of laughter. "How do you know that's what Harry prefers?"

Her lip curled. "Just look at his girlfriend," she said silkily. "Saddle shoes, cardigan sweaters, short wool skirts. A little girl. So I expect, that's what he wants."

Draco's heart thumped hard and sickeningly against the cage of his ribs.

It had never occurred to him that she would have seen Hermione, or noticed her. But of course, she would have. "And what about me?" he asked, trying to change the topic. "What do I want?"

She smiled. "Only what you cannot have."

"That explains why I don't want you, then."

"Oh, very funny." She laughed, and shook her hair back. "You suffer," she said, "I feel it. Perhaps you are foolish to spurn what comfort I might offer you."

He looked at her then, as calculatingly as he could, and she looked back at him out of her oddly shaped gray eyes that were like his own. It was strange how she could look quite ordinary from some angles, even ugly, and from others so beautiful that despite his dislike of her he felt his own awareness of her beauty strike through him like a note of music sounded through the depths of sleep. "You offer me nothing," he said. "You never try with me, not like you try with Harry. Why not?"

She stepped away from him. "Are you insulted?"

"No." It was true. "Just curious."

She shrugged. "Why do you think?"

"I think my father told you to stay away from me," he said. "Apparently Harry's another matter."

"What I choose to do with Harry, or he with me, is hardly your concern," she said lightly.

"I don't think he's choosing anything," Draco said bluntly. "If he was, he wouldn't go near you. And what do you want from him?"

"Maybe I just like him," she said with another smile.

"A seventeen-year old virgin with skinny chicken legs? I somehow doubt that."

Rhysenn burst out laughing, and sat down, still gracefully, in the snow. As she sat, her short skirt fell away from her thighs, allowing Draco to see that, distractingly, she was wearing hot pink knickers. On the other hand, he supposed it could have been worse; she could have been wearing no knickers at all. "Harry's a virgin?" she said. "Oh, that's priceless."

Draco suddenly wondered if this had been supposed to be some sort of secret. Then he wondered if it was even true. He'd always assumed, but…

"I don't really know," he said, a bit stiffly, feeling somehow that he had lost ground here. "I was just guessing."

"That little girlfriend of his must not be much use," said Rhysenn, and there was a cool contempt in her voice that shot a bolt of ice up his spine.

"Leave her out of this," he said, his tone clipped. "As a matter of fact, leave them both out of this. Stay away from Harry from now on."

"But I like him."

"No, you don't. You just want something from him. Well, too bad. He's been through enough."

"Oh, I don't know," she said, tilting her head back as if she were bathing in the light of the moon. "I think you underestimate him. All that untapped power, it's attractive. And empirically of course — those eyes, that hair. He's very appealing on his own merits."

"That's great," Draco said. "I meant what I said. Stay away from him."