Кассандра Клэр - Draco Sinister

Wait for the apocalypse."

"Jokes?" Ginny echoed faintly.

Draco leaned his head back against the chair. The firelight threw the hollows under his eyes into relief, the angle of his cheekbones, painting his face with its own colors of gold and darker gold. Making him almost hurtfully beautiful to look at. Certainly, something inside her hurt. "Sure. Jokes. For instance, how many Malfoys does it take to change a lightbulb?"

She stared at him as he held up a finger.

"Just one. But in the good old days, a hundred servants would change a thousand lightbulbs at our slightest whim." He grinned mirthlessly, sliding down in the chair. "One of my fatherś, that one.

Maybe you have to be a Malfoy to think itś funny."

Ginny wrinkled up her nose. "You´re drunk," she said, suspicion crystallizing into certainty.

"I am not," he said in injured tones, brushing back the silver-fair hair that was falling into his eyes. "I´ve only had four Mai Tais and they haven´t afflicted me at all."

"You are," she snapped. "Look at you. You haven´t even asked me how I got here."

"That would presuppose an alternate universe in which I cared."

"I used a Time-Turner," she said shortly. "Itś a long story. We came through time into the adamantine cell to get you and Harry."

"Only," he said softly, "I wasn´t in the cell."

"Oh, yes. You were."

He sat back. The lovely lazy half-lidded eyes looked up at her thoughtfully. "You were there? Just now?"

She nodded.

"You said we," he remarked. It was a question.

"I came with Ron. And — Hermione," she added, a bit reluctantly, knowing the effect this might have on him. She saw the pupils of his eyes dilate slightly, his hand tensing on the edge of the chair. But other than that, his reaction was minimal. "We were under the Invisibility Cloak."

"Really." There was a secretive faintly wicked inner brilliance to his eyes that unnerved her. "An invisible peanut gallery. And I never guessed. I must have looked fairly stupid to you."

"No." She suppressed a shudder. "Stupid? You didn´t look that."

"So you came to rescue Harry," he said, flatly. "Why aren´t you busy rescuing? What is this? Coffee break? Thought you´d come by and say hello?"

"We came to rescue both of you."

"But as you see," and he leaned back, managing to indicate with a single compact gesture of his hand the room, the fire, the empty glasses on the table, "I don´t need to be rescued. I´m just fine."

"Just fine? You do not seem just fine to me."

He sat forward with a sudden violence that surprised her. "Were you watching, back there in the cell? Did you see me?"

"I saw you."

"Did you see me slice up Harry? Your beloved Harry, who you´ve had a crush on for six years now? Did you hear what I said to him?"

Ginnyś voice was steady. "I saw you cut him by accident. I saw you say a lot of things you didn´t mean."

"How do you know I didn´t mean them?"

"I just know." This, she knew, sounded unconvincing. She raised her chin defiantly. "I know more about Dark magic than you think I do. I can sense when people aren´t acting of their own free will. You weren´t."

"Wasn´t I?"

"Why do you keep answering me with questions?"

"Am I answering you with questions?"

"Now you´re just trying to annoy me," she snapped, irritably.

"Yes, I am," he said. "And behold my success."

She glared at him. He had sunk farther into the depths of the armchair, and was regarding her with a weary, irritable expression.

"Itś easy to annoy me," she said. "Too easy for you. Like pulling the wings off flies. A bit like what you were doing to Harry, back in the cell."

Now he looked away.

"I figured it was all part of some bigger plan for you," she went on.

"I could tell you were acting. But you don´t seem to have much of a plan. Unless full-time sulking factors into it somehow."

"My current plan is to get very drunk and wait to see if Harry decides to kill me. So far I have, but he hasn´t. If that makes sense."

Ginny understood only part of this diatribe. She made a face.

"Thatś your plan? Thatś pathetic."

His eyes sparked again, this time with more energy than he had displayed during the course of their entire interaction. He got to his feet, swaying only very slightly as he did so. He might be drunk, but he didn´t show it the way, for instance, Fred and George did when they crept home after drinking several bottles of Ogdenś Old Firewhiskey. He seemed to be articulating his words even more precisely, constraining himself even more tightly than he usually did.

"I´m pathetic?" he said, his voice soft and dangerous. "I wouldn´t start that competition, Ginny. Not if I was you." He took another step closer to her, and reached out to touch her hair, winding a loose tendril around his fingers. "What did you think was going to happen when you saw me, Ginny? Did you think I´d fall into your arms, follow you home like a rescued puppy? Did you think I´d be grateful?" His hand left her hair, and touched her cheek, and shocks ran through her skin like lightning. Up close, she could smell the alcohol he had been drinking, laid over the smell of him that she remembered: spice and leather and smoke from the fire. "Maybe you have less imagination than I thought."

She heard her brotherś voice in her head. It takes imagination to credit you with having a soul in the first place, Malfoy.

"I don´t understand," she said. She pulled away from him, from his touch, and turned her back. It was easier when she couldn´t see his face, and she didn´t want him to see the tears in her eyes. "Are you saying you won´t come with me? I have the Invisibility Cloak — it won´t be dangerous — "

"Dangerous," he spat. She shuddered, unable to see him she could still visualize the look on his face, his anger. "Is that what you think this is? Cowardice?"

"Thatś what it looks like."

For a moment he was silent, and she nearly turned around. Then she felt his hands close about her upper arms, and he pulled her back against him. She felt the muscles of his chest and shoulders pressing into her back, and blades ran through her nerves where he touched her. "Let me tell you something," he hissed into her ear.

"You don´t know me. You think you do, but you don´t. You don´t understand what I really am."

"And you do?"

"Damn right I do. I´ve seen it. You´ve heard of the Mirror of Erised?

Well, Slytherinś got another mirror just like it. Only this one doesn´t show you what you want. It shows you what you really are."

He took Ginny by the shoulders, and spun her around in his arms.

She stumbled backwards, and he followed her until she was backed up against the wall, Draco standing over her, still so close to her that she could feel his breath stirring her hair. "Would you want to see what I really am, Ginny? Is that something you think would interest you?"

She spun around in his arms and met his eyes with her own steady gaze. "I don´t think it would be that bad."

He laughed, a laughed that snapped in the middle, as brittle as an icicle. "You know what I saw in that mirror?"

She shook her head. Her breath had gone out of her, but her eyes begged him. Tell me.

"I saw my family. I looked in that mirror and I saw my father looking back, and his hands were covered in blood and standing behind him were generations of Malfoys, stretching back to Slytherin, who made us what we are, and all their faces were like the faces of devils. And I knew — thatś what I am. All those generations of evil have left their stain on me. Even if they aren´t my actions, itś in my blood: dark wizardy, murder, necromancy. The blood of innocent people is on my hands. Everything good that I have ever done has been a lie — "