分卷阅读7（1 / 2）

“Not that bad!” Ron threw himself back down onto the couch. “You could have died, mate.”

“Do you know,” Harry said, teeth gritted, eyes closed, maybe because of the pain, maybe hoping for patience. “how many times you’ve said those exact words to me?”

“But this time you could have died because of pure stubbornness!” Hermione said, and her hair was flying out around her like it had been electrified, she was so frazzled. “You could have died, and all because you hadn’t been able to sleep and then thought it was a good idea to come to training!” She knelt down on the ground in front of him, took his hands in her own. “I know it’s hard Harry.” Draco wanted to look away, because this was such an obviously private moment, a moment between this family he would never be a part of. “We’re all having trouble with it. You can’t expect to just be fine. None of us, and I mean none of us, are fine, Harry. You need to learn to ask for help.”

“I can ask for help!” Harry protests, pulling his hands out of hers. “Draco makes me a sleeping potion every night!”

Draco had thought that the yelling had been bad before, but it’s not until Harry mentioned the sleeping potion that all hell really broke loose.

Draco can see the reasoning behind it, honestly. Sleeping potions are very dangerous things to play with, normally, because they can ruin both your physical and mental health, make you completely dependent on them to function, ruin any chance at a normal sleeping schedule. There would be no moving forward if Harry was turning to a sleeping potion every night. But that only applied to the regular way to make it, not to how Draco makes it, which, if he was right, would have no ill side effects at all, short or long term.

And he was very rarely wrong about his potions.

Not that that seems to matter to any of them, he thinks, and then he doesn’t really think anything at all, because Ron was on his feet and coming towards him, grabbing by the arm and hurling him backwards, back into the wall, where there would be no escape.

“You make him one of those every night, huh?” He asks, and there is something dangerous waiting here, in these hands and these eyes. Draco had never quite managed to notice how big Ron was back at Hogwarts, but that was back when he had Crabbe and Goyle guarding him every hour of the day and his father’s reputation to hide behind. Now Ron had him pinned to the wall, towering over him, keeping him there with a forearm across his throat. There was no one to protect him now. (No one but Harry, anyways, and he wasn’t in any position to help.) “Trying to be helpful?”

“It’s addictive!” Hermione shouted out, and her voice was on the verge of tears again. She always had been rather easy to make cry. Then she turned on him, and she did not seem weak anymore, she seemed terrifying. “How could you let him do this?”

After all he’s done for you, Draco heard, and he knows then that that’s going to be the line that follows him around the rest of his life, this guilt that comes with every heartbeat, the debt that stacks up with each second that he stays here. He tries not to look at Harry, but then he does and the sight makes him want to sink to his knees and beg everyone to take him away, to send him to the ministry, to stick him in Azkaban for the rest of his life if that’s what it takes to protect him. Because Draco will ruin him eventually. In the end, he ruins everything.

“It’s not,” He croaks out instead, looking past them all at Ginny, because Ginny was safe, Ginny was strong. “Not that way that I make it.”

It seems to shock them all, even Ron. Confidence tends to do that. “That’s impossible.” Hermione says, faintly, but she looks interested too. “You would have had to find your way around a dozen principle laws, at least. It would be revolutionary.”

She does not believe him, but she wants to. That was the problem with everyone in this room: they always wanted to see the best in people.

Draco shoves Ron away and stands straight, tries to make himself look what he believed a Malfoy should be, because this, at least, is something he knows. “Watch me.”

Harry

Even back at Hogwarts, there were times when Harry had to admit that Draco was smart. He was very good at magic, especially transfiguration, and even as much as he despised Snape and the favoritism he showed Draco, even Harry could see that the praise wasn’t always unjustified.

“Is he actually right?” He asks, watching as Draco talked in muttered voices with George and Hermione, going over notes and explaining steps, the smoke from the cauldron filling up the kitchen. Ron had left to report back to the auror department about Harry’s condition, but other than that, no one seemed very concerned about the morning’s incident anymore. This was clearly something important, something exciting, and George and Hermione and Draco were caught up in the craze of academic achievement that Harry had always associated with Hermione and her studying habits.

“I don’t know.” Luna was slumped over the table, watching it all with might be interest but could easily just her staring off into space. “I never was much good at potions.”