分卷阅读4（1 / 2）

He forces a tumblr full of the potion into Harry’s hands. It is cold, and the color of lavender, so unlike the calming droughts that Ginny would sneak up to him at night during the first days after the war.

He wants to say thank you, but what he says instead is “cheers” and hopes it is enough.

Chapter 4

Harry

In the end, things really only start to fall into place because they start yelling about Dobby.

Harry’s not sure whose fault it is. He had intended to let everything in the past stay in the past, to never bring up the times that Draco taunted him over his family or called Hermione a mudblood, or any other shitty thing, because he’s sure that Draco would have plenty to throw back at him. But maybe that wasn’t the best, because it all just sort of stayed boiling right under the surface, and then all it took was an offhand comment about comparing Kreacher to his own house elf to have Harry standing up and screaming.

“He told me he used to shut his ears in the oven.” Harry said, gripping his spoon so tight that his knuckles were turning white, seething. Draco looked like he had just been slapped in the face he had been caught so off guard, and maybe he had, because he had spent all day preparing dinner and Harry just walked in here and ruined it. He knew that, knew that he was being an arse, that he was burning bridges more than he was mending them, but cake all over the kitchen and scrubbing for hours to clean it up, you shall not hurt Harry Potter, wrestling with Draco for his wand while Dobby got them out, such a beautiful place to be with friends and he just couldn’t stop himself. “I used to have to stop him from punishing himself, yank the lamp out of his hands or force him away from the fire because it was so ingrained in him.”

“That wasn’t because of how we treated him.” Draco said, desperately. “That’s just a house elf, any house elf, even Kreacher, he does it too.”

“I asked him if you would notice he was gone.” Harry said, and now he really was angry, and he was upset all over again, because in the confusion of the war and all the other people that had died, he had sort of just locked this part of his pain up inside him, because despite all of McGonagall’s talk that they died for the cause and not for him, Harry knew that this one, this one innocent being, died only because of him. He couldn’t stand that, so it was much easier to blame Draco for his past mistakes. “He told me you wouldn’t, because you encourage him to do extra punishments and wouldn’t notice a few extra bandages.”

“That wasn’t me.” Draco said, and now he was angry, too. Harry could almost cry at that, because it looked like they were finally going to stop walking on eggshells around each other. “That wasn’t my father, I would never have told him that, I liked Dobby! He was my friend!”

“A friend you let slam his head in the oven twice a week?”

“I was a kid!” Draco yelled, and this was the whole heart of the matter, wasn’t it, that they were both children made to grow up too fast, and then they ended up standing on different sides of the same awful divider? “What was I supposed to do, let him take it out on me?”

“I was a kid, too!” He’s gotten tired of having people use that as an excuse for their mistakes, like Harry wasn’t a kid that should have grown up to be awful, like he didn’t wake up screaming because of what he was forced to do. Like he hadn’t seen too much, too fast, and still made the right choices. “Only I was fighting for people like Dobby! I actually saw them as people worth fighting for! What did you fight for, Draco? Your own skin.”

“It wasn’t just me.” Draco was up in an instant, now, hands shaking, and Harry is very, very grateful they had left their wands on the counter. “It wasn’t just me and you know it, you said that you were there that night, it was do what they asked or watch my mother be tortured. Call yourself a savior, sure, but you’ve never had to choose between the people you love and the right thing. Because trust me, it gets a whole lot harder after she’s been threatened by Greyback.”

He was spitting, that’s how mad he was, actually trembling. We said we were friends, Harry thought, watching Draco’s fingers tremble against the table. But we aren’t, really. Maybe it’s not possible, after everything we’ve been through.

Draco was the first to move away, standing up so fast his chair falls to the floor with a bang, leaving Harry alone in the kitchen with Kreacher, feeling sickeningly like he had been the one to do something wrong.

Draco

He had been my friend.

That was the truth, about Dobby. In a house where his mother was always out entertaining and his father had little patience for him, Dobby was the one who had played with him when he was little, was the one who taught him to tie his shoes and ride a broom, the one that Draco went to when he had nightmares and he knew his father wouldn’t approve of his crying. But then one day he came home and Dobby wasn’t there, leaving Draco even more alone than he had been, and the only explanation he had been given was that he chose Potter over them.