分卷阅读37（2 / 2）

“No, Harry, I asked for a new wardrobe. I do it every year.”

And he gets it every year? Harry shook his head. He kept forgetting how much difference there was between Draco and himself in terms of wealth.

An excited squeal from Draco brought Harry’s attention back to the younger Malfoy as he watched Draco open part of the last present from his father. Without offering a word of explanation, Draco bounded to one of the ebony doors in the back of the room (one which Harry hadn’t seen him use yet) and disappeared down the stairs that this particular door led to. Harry followed at a slightly slower pace.

The stairway opened up into a large room with stone walls and floors, and long ebony tables. Harry blinked. A potions laboratory? Someone, somewhere, had to be kidding him. But no, there was Draco, setting up a bunch of equipment, looking now and then at a book that lay on the table next to him for reference as to where a particular piece went.

“So…what is it?” Harry asked as Draco stepped back to look at the contraption of glass and pewter.

“It’s a distiller.”

“A what?”

“A distiller. You know how when you use things taken directly from nature, sometimes there are anomalies in the substances because they were alive at one point?”

“I’ll pretend I know what you’re talking about. Go on.”

“Well, you put whatever solution it is you want to purify in here.” Draco pointed to one end of the equipment. “Then you heat it. It boils and the vapor goes through here—” Draco’s finger traced the glass piping, “-leaving behind any anomalies; and as it does it cools and condenses over here, back into solution.”

“Okay…but why haven’t we used this in class then?”

“Well, all the ingredients you get from a shop are already purified, but you don’t have any controls on it.”

“Controls?”

“You don’t know how it was done. It just leaves more margin for error.”

Harry nodded. “Right.”

“You really don’t like Potions, do you?”

“Not my favorite class.”

“That was apparent.”

It wasn’t until later in the day that Draco remembered that the present Harry said he might want to open was still sitting near the chair, unopened. Draco looked at it curiously. Why would Harry say that? Maybe it was a present from Harry? Draco remembered his own present for Harry was still sitting at the bottom of his trunk. For some reason he had held back giving it to the House Elves to give to Harry. He wondered if the present was really appropriate for his current…standings with Harry.