Кассандра Клэр - Draco Veritas

"Don't tell me you can't see it," Rhysenn said, tracing lines in the snow with a bare toe. "I so enjoyed watching you two fight just now… all that delicious tension. Tell me you didn't enjoy manhandling him about just a little bit."

Draco looked at her as if she had sprouted an eleventh toe. "You're a very strange woman."

She shrugged voluptuously. "You're fond of him," she said, "so why not?"

"I-" Draco spluttered, then paused. "You just really don't understand people, do you?" he said, sounding weary. "Have you never had a human emotion, or was it just so long ago that you forgot?"

An odd flicker came and went behind her eyes, and for a moment she looked almost angry. Then her expression smoothed itself out into a mocking half-smile. "I would have thought Lucius would have told you that it's hardly good manners to mention a lady's age like that," she said.

"He said I shouldn't mention a lady's age, sure," said Draco, finally fed up.

"I don't remembering him saying anything about demon bitches from hell."

She leapt to her feet, her eyes flashing. "How dare you," she said, and he shrank back — she seemed suddenly to tower above him, her eyes flashing, her hair whipped by an invisible wind. She came towards him and it took all his self-control not to step away. "Stupid child," she said, and her face had taken on the narrow, predatory look of a veela's. "Stupid, impatient little boy."

"I am not a child," he said hotly.

"Oh, you are," she said. "So painfully young, and that is why it is so sad," and she took his face between her long and narrow hands, not sounding sad at all. He did not move away — could not move away. "Are you cold?"

she whispered, and her breath stirred the hair at his temples. "Not now, but always? Do you wake up freezing from nightmares you cannot remember? Does your breath come short, does your heart pain you when you breathe? Does your vision begin to blur?" Her hand slid to cup his chin, and she drew his face up, until he met her gray gaze with his own.

My sick and beautiful angel-boy," she said, and her voice was like liquid silver. "Too pretty to go mad or blind, and die of it…but it is long past stopping, now."

"Die of what?" Draco said, and he heard the note of blind panic in his own voice. "What's long past stopping?"

She took her hands from his face and stepped back from him. "If you cannot guess, you will know soon enough," she said, and smiled like a devilish angel.

What is wrong with me? he wanted to ask her, Am I ill, and how ill am I? — but he knew that if he did, she would respond teasingly, with more questions; so instead he turned, and took a few steps away from her. It seemed to him that the horizon had lightened, a paler pewter blue ribbon between the black earth and the blacker clouds overhead. "Please leave him alone," he said, finally, without looking back at her. "Leave us alone."

He waited, but she did not reply. When he finally turned, she was, as he had known she would be, gone; the snow underfoot showed no marks at all where she had walked.

"Mundungus," he said, and the portrait door opened. Draco paused a moment to admire the irony of the fact that he now knew the Gryffindor password. Years ago, he would have paid good Galleons to know it. Now, it seemed trivial.

He stepped into the Common Room and the portrait swung shut behind him. The room was not empty: someone was standing over by one of the overstuffed armchairs, apparently putting something into a pocket. He knew immediately it was Ginny, even before she turned around, knew from the flaming-red hair that was currently screwed into a topknot at the back of her head. Curling tendrils escaped and wound around her face like licks of fire. She looked harried. "Draco, what are you doing here?"

"Delighted to see you too," he replied. "Nice pajamas."

She glanced down at her kitten-printed flannel pajamas, and pulled her robe closed around her. "Where's Harry?" she said.

"Not the faintest idea," said Draco. "Don't care either."

"What are you doing here, then?"

"Came to see Hermione," Draco said, rather shortly. "Unless you have a problem with that."

Ginny gave him an extremely superior look, as if he were a troublesome toddler. "I don't," she said. "But Hermione might."

Draco looked at her narrowly. "Meaning…?"

"Meaning Harry went to talk to her about a half hour ago, and she slammed the door in his face," Ginny said. "Then he took his cloak and left, and I haven't seen him since."

"Good for her," said Draco shortly. "Best thing for him."

Ginny looked very taken aback. "What on earth do you mean?"

Draco frowned at her and stalked over to the fireplace. There was a poker lying beside the grate; he bent and picked it up, and prodded moodily at the glowing coals with the pointed end. "Harry needs to grow up," he said.

"He's acted like a complete arse, and he might as well know it. The only thing that might do him the blindest bit of good at this point would be if she kicked him down the front staircase and he bounced down every single step."

"That sounds possibly fatal," said Ginny.

"Ah, well," said Draco, and prodded savagely at a coal. "You win some, you lose some."

There was a short silence. Draco raised his eyes to Ginny, expecting her to look angry, or appalled, or disgusted with him. Instead she looked merely sad. "I take it he got angry at you," she said.

"You could say that," Draco said, hearing the acid in his own voice. "He accused me of lying to him, and despising his best friend, and basically causing all this, which I apparently did by being a selfish, overbearing, snobbish and despicable bastard with no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

I asked him if there was anything I could do to help, and he indicated that he might perhaps feel a bit better if I were to swallow six pounds of lead and throw myself into the lake. So I left."

"Ah," said Ginny thoughtfully. "The lake's frozen over, you know."

"Thank you, I can always trust you to cut to the heart of the matter."

Ginny pushed a lock of red hair back from her eyes, and sighed. "I thought you couldn't lie to him," she said. "Not…mentally."

"Yeah, well," said Draco, in a flat voice, "He blocked me. I couldn't reach him at all."

"Nobody could have," she said gently, and put a hand on his shoulder.

The contact was strangely comforting, perhaps because he was so cold and her hand was warm. "You have to go find him."

"I don't have to do anything," Draco said. "Except, possibly, go back to my room, get unbelievably pissed on Archenland wine, and sleep until the middle of next week. Maybe when I wake up, the Boy Who Lived will have sorted out his hellishly complex love life without my assistance."

"Without your assistance," Ginny said in a quiet voice, "he'd be dead."

Something half-remembered from a dream chimed inside Draco's head, and he laughed, not happily. "He won't die of this. It's just a broken heart."

"I don't mean this. I mean all the other times you saved his life."

"Well, I'm glad you remember them," said Draco, and his voice was colder than the ice forming on the windowpanes. "Because I don't think he does."

"Don't be ridiculous."

"What would you know about it?" Draco said, and instantly regretted having said it. She looked startled, then hurt, and then annoyed. He didn't blame her.

"So what are you going to do, then?" she demanded sharply. "Go back to bed and see if you can sleep? I'm betting you can't. Not knowing that he's somewhere, needing you, and you didn't go and help him."

"He doesn't need me," Draco said. "I think he made that pretty clear."

Ginny sniffed. "You're scared," she said in a superior tone.

"What do you mean, scared?"

"As in 'frightened.'"