分卷阅读4（2 / 2）

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” Draco scrubs his sleeve over his mouth. The robes are hanging off him, Harry realizes, and when he gets to his feet he tilts a little as if he might fall over any moment. Still, he lifts his pointy chin and straightens up his bony frame and hobbles out of the room with as much grace as he can manage while a monstrous garden lays siege to his innards.

Harry, in his dark corner under the relative safety of the cloak, is reeling. Draco Malfoy —the stupid, slimy bully who never let an easy target go untormented; the one who’d been both Snape’s and Umbridge’s pet; the one who’d gone and got a Dark Mark slapped on his arm—is in love.

No, more than that.

Draco Malfoy is so in love not even the most advanced medical magic the Wizarding World has to offer can do anything about it. Draco Malfoy is so in love his body would shut down and die if that love was taken from him. Draco Malfoy’s love for this mysterious individual is foundational to who he is.

Harry’s head spins. None of this makes any sense, not unless Draco is in love with some Death Eater locked up in Azkaban right now. The thought sends such a wave of disgust roiling through Harry that he must have made a sound, because Professor McGonagall looks —he would’ve sworn on Gryffindor’s grave—straight at him.

Harry holds his breath, but he is suddenly as certain as he’d ever been about anything that she knows he’s there. But she says nothing, and after a few moments, she turns away. He lets out the breath he’d been holding—softly—and starts shuffling to the door, not wanting to push his luck any longer.

“Gentlemen,” McGonagall tells the Healers. “Thank you for making the journey, and for examining my student. Although, I must confess, your diagnosis leaves me heavy- hearted.”

“Hanahaki is a complex affliction,” says Healer Ross. “There is still much we do not understand. Tell me, is there no chance the boy’s beloved returns his feelings?”

Obviously not, Harry thinks, already halfway through the door. Otherwise he wouldn’t be sick, would he?

But Professor McGonagall’s cryptic response follows him out the room: “If it is who I think it is,” she says, dryly, “not even the beloved, as you put it, likely knows the answer to that question.”

Harry doesn’t know what bothers him more: the idea that Draco is capable of feeling so strongly about someone…or the fact that Harry, in contrast, hasn’t felt much more than numb since the War ended. In fact, the times he feels the most alive nowadays are when he’s flying, or fighting with Draco. Except Draco can’t fight back anymore.

It takes him one night of fitful sleep—less than that, truthfully—to decide he has to help Draco. Harry saved his life and spoke at his trial even after all he’d done wrong, because he knew there was something good in him. This is that something good, Harry thinks. This love he feels has to be the good in Draco, the thing that had kept him from being swallowed up by the Dark Lord and by his father’s mistakes. He shouldn’t be punished for the one good thing about him.

The last time he’d spoken to Draco had been the disastrous encounter near the library. This time, Harry seeks him out, determined things will be different. Hermione’s voice in his head says savior complex and Ron does not look impressed when he sees Harry with his nose buried in the Marauder’s Map, but Harry can’t be bothered to care. He’s on a mission.

Draco never seems to stay in one place. He makes periodic trips to the library to change out his books, but as for where he settles in to get his research done—he’ll commandeer empty classrooms, the Room of Requirement, various spots around the lake, the shade beneath the Quidditch stands, the kitchens, the astronomy tower. Harry doesn’t want to let on he’s been keeping an eye on Draco’s whereabouts, so he waits for his dot on the Map to turn up at the library again, and catches Draco as he’s emerging with a stack of books.

“Here,” says Harry, holding out his hands, “let me get some of those.”

Draco’s eyes are the only part of his face visible over the teetering pile, and they are glaring.

“I’m not dead yet, Potter,” he snaps. “I can carry my own damn books.”

“I didn’t mean it that way,” says Harry, with a wince. “Look, I’m sorry about what I said before.”

Draco sneers. He hoists the books higher and swerves around Harry to keep walking.