分卷阅读8（1 / 2）

“You’re right. I don’t know why I thought I could help you,” he says, voice shaking. He is blazingly mad, and there is a dangerous lump in his throat, and he does not want to look directly at Draco for fear of what he’ll see on his face. His eyes land instead on Draco’s sagging collar, where he can just see the thready silver-white end of the sectumsempra scar, almost the same color as Draco’s hair. “But it’s ridiculous you’d think I’d go out of my way to make you sicker,” Harry continues, “when the truth is I don’t care whether you live or die. You don’t matter to me. At all.”

Harry spins around and gets about three paces away before he hears Draco choking behind him. He wavers, waiting one, two, three seconds to see if Draco will stop. But this is a bad one. He keeps coughing, harshly and with his whole body by the sound of it, and Harry can’t leave him like that.

He drops his bag and turns, but the sight of Draco makes him freeze where he stands. Draco is not just coughing. He is vomiting a steady stream of flowers, swallowing hard and gasping for breath every time he has a chance, only to sputter and cough out another wave of lilies as the disease fights him. Most of what he expels are whole flower heads, the rims of their petals and the tips of their inner filaments streaked with bright red blood. Draco is hunched almost in half, one hand flat on his chest where the scar Harry made is hidden under his robes and the other hand clutching his throat, and he is still not stopping, he’s not breathing, and Harry falls at last to his knees and latches on to Draco as if he could somehow hold him together.

His eyes fall from Draco’s open mouth and closed eyes—as though he were screaming— to the carpet of lilies forming around their knees. Somehow that’s what does it, the lilies, before he even gets around to remembering the look on Pansy’s face when Harry had asked her for a name, or McGonagall’s resigned, weary voice as he’d fled the hospital wing.

Harry had actually told Draco he didn’t care if he lived or died.

Harry will never forgive himself for being so stupid.

By the time he kisses Draco’s lips, they’re turning blue. Draco is taking a much-needed, too-shallow breath, his throat already working around another surge of blossoms. Harry pulls him up straight and gets his hands on that sharp, smooth jawline. His hands feel too big and clumsy against Draco’s delicate features, but Draco blinks watery eyes at him and Harry swipes his thumb over his lips, wiping off the blood as best he can, and covers that soft hurting mouth with his own. Everything within him attunes to the places where their bodies meet; everything sleeping sits up and pays attention; he is electrified from the inside out.

It lasts no more than a second or two. Draco fights him. Harry loses his head for an instant and tries to hold on, resisting when Draco’s hands push hard against his chest. Harry tastes blood and feels the silky texture of lily petals and his every instinct tells him to deepen the kiss—

And then he realizes what the hell he’s doing, and he lets Draco go.

Draco falls fully away from him, sprawling on the ground. The flowers have stopped coming, but Draco is still gasping, this time apparently from rage. Harry reaches for him but does not touch.

“Let me,” Harry begs.

“How dare you,” Draco says, voice shaking so hard Harry can barely make out the words. “I don’t want your pity. I’m not just another victim for you to save.”

“It’s not like that,” Harry says.

Draco claws his way to his feet, scoops up a handful of lilies and presents them in vicious, morbid triumph.

“I think it is.”

“It’s because you don’t believe me,” Harry says. “Draco. Please. I didn’t know before, I didn’t understand, but I want—”

“Fuck you,” Draco says, and then he picks up his bag and his book and is gone before Harry can make another move.

When Harry sinks down next to Hermione on the couch in front of the fireplace, she takes one look at him and does the unthinkable: puts down her quill and closes her book.

“Oh, Harry,” she says.

At the sound of her voice, he slumps. He props his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands. He can still taste Draco. He can still hear his voice, stripped raw, can still see the desperately fearful expression he’d worn as he’d shoved Harry away.