分卷阅读2（1 / 2）

“Oh, he hasn’t done that since he was twelve.” Ginny breaks in, snapping impatiently at the two of them, and Harry starts laughing the way he does when Ron makes a teasing comment at him. “And that was only one grate extra. Just go already, you two, I can’t distract the press forever.”

Harry arches an eyebrow, and refusing would not just be silly, it would also feel like Draco was admitting defeat. Everything between the two of them was still a constant competition, and he was determined to win at something.

He took his hand.

Harry

When the idea first came to him, he didn’t really think it through at all. He had just seen someone who needed help, and thought of his big empty house stuffed full with Sirius’ shadow, and thought that an extra person would help fill it up with something living. So he had stood, and then it was all happening, the age old saying that it only takes five seconds of courage to change your life.

And now Draco Malfoy was standing in his living room.

The stupid thing was, that as the two of them look around at his house, Harry is actually embarrassed. It’s still the same furniture, so it’s dark and gloomy, and Harry isn’t always the best at housekeeping. He knows that its nothing like what Draco had gotten to go home to every night.

“Well, this is home.” Harry breaks the ice first, because he’s a Gryffindor and bravery is kind of his thing. “My bedroom is on the first floor, but I can show you a couple and you pick where’s best? Kreacher can take you around.”

“You don’t have to do this.” It was really the first thing that Draco had said to him, besides the jibe he made in front of the floo gate, where the smile split his face apart and Harry could see the old Malfoy underneath. “Why are you doing this?”

“I don’t know.”

“I deserved it.” Draco’s hands were shaking. Harry knew the feeling, had been dealing with Ron’s bouts of unexplained anger since the war ended, all the pain and terror and grief bursting out of all of them in unexplainable ways. Harry goes on walks in the middle of the night. Hermione cleans and writes petitions, depending on the mood. “I made my peace with that, okay, and I was ready, I was ready for it, to have some peace for once, and then you came along and did this, so I want to know why.”

This was more like the Draco that Harry knew, the one who thought he deserved things and made his own demands. “Because I didn’t think you deserved it.” Harry would never think that Malfoy deserved a cold cell in Azkaban, not after all the blood that seemed to be coating his own hands. “And I don’t think you should let yourself locked up just because you’ve decided that you feel guilty, alright?”

He was tired, all of a sudden, the bone aching exhaustion that comes upon him sometimes. “Just pick a room, okay? I’ll see you in the morning.”

Harry walks away, up the creaking stairs and to his room, and he hopes that Draco really, really doesn’t decide to murder him in his sleep.

It’d be just his luck.

Chapter 2

Draco

That first night, he didn’t sleep at all, just lay under the stiff sheets and counted the cracks crossing the ceiling, listening to the creaking of the house and trying to convince himself that there were no monsters sleeping in the closet. He hadn’t slept easy in ages, not since he was in Hogwarts with the sound of other people’s breathing beside him, and in this new, strange place he was sharing with a boy (man, really, they’re adults now) that should by all rights hate him.

He doesn’t hate him, though.