分卷阅读11（1 / 2）

“But we’re not muggles, love,” Ron said gently, like they had this conversation before. And maybe they had, just different versions of it, about animal welfare and muggle relations and house elf rights. “We don’t have any of that.”

“Well, we should. I bet I could do it. It’d just take a little applied science and potions.” And then suddenly Hermione is turning to him and reaching across the table to grab at his arm, like he hadn’t called her mudblood and spat in her face and watched as his aunt tortured her for information she would never give. “You’ll help me, won’t you?”

Later, Draco would look back on this moment and be grateful for it. At the moment, he was only mortified that she would even think to ask, horrified at all the faces that had suddenly swiveled to look at him. He didn’t know what to say.

But then he thought of Harry and his sleeping draughts. Of George and the empty spaces on the shelves. Of Seamus’ ripped up arm, of Luna’s nightmares, his own incessant cleaning of a house that was not his to care for. He thought about all of that was sort of his fault, in a warped sense of the world, and maybe it was time he try to make up for it.

And he found himself saying yes.

Harry

They take the night bus home, because they are afraid to apparrate, and find themselves stumbling through the front door at three in the morning. He’s tripping over his own two feet, and he hears Draco knock over that stupid umbrella stand he couldn’t bring himself to even move, and then a pair of hands was covering his, helping him peel of his jacket.

“Let me.” Harry couldn’t really see him, but the whisper came from close by. He thought about reaching out, but then the hands were gone and so was his jacket, and he knew that Draco had stepped away, leaving as fast as he came.

“I could have done it.”

“No, you couldn’t have.” Draco was snickering at him, but it was different from the way Harry expected it to sound. It wasn’t taunting anymore, just fond, like Draco couldn’t believe he got to be friends with someone who acted like this. “You’re actually pretty drunk.”

And maybe he was. Harry’s been told that he never knows he’s drunk until he’s really drunk.

(Hermione calls it social drinking, says it’s a bad thing. Ron calls it a good time.)

“Good.” Is he slurring? He’s not. Maybe Draco’s the one who can’t tell when people are drunk. “I wanted to be.”

Silence, a beat too long, because even though they were just happy, Harry went and brought the bad thing back to the front of their minds. He didn’t want to do that, because that meant thinking about Dean and Seamus, of Dean holding Seamus’ limp hand, the way he let his thumb trace over the freckles on Seamus’ knuckles without looking. He didn’t have to look to know where they were.

It makes a lump form in his throat but he swallows it down, blinks just in case there were tears. He does not cry. He will not cry over this, when Seamus is not dead, when Seamus is going to be perfectly fine as soon as the potions kick in.

(He will not be fine, he was never fine, will never be fine, none of them ever were or will be fine. He does not know what okay is supposed to feel like.)

“I’m sorry about your friend.” Draco’s voice cuts through the silence, and it is obvious that he is fumbling, trying to make this better. “It’s shitty.”

Harry sort of liked that, even though he knew that Draco was probably wracking his brains to come up with something better. No blame, no demands, no nothing. For once, here was someone who was not turning to Harry to fix it, and just wanting to see if he was okay.

“Yeah,” Harry clears his throat to make his voice work and claps Draco on the shoulder, trying to make this feel like it was a conversation between two mates, boys who are just friends and don’t want to be anything less. It hasn’t felt like that in a while. “Shitty.”