分卷阅读20（2 / 2）

“I wanted to talk to you, too.” She streamrolls ahead, everything coming out in a rush. “Ron had no right, absolutely none, and I tried to talk to him, but he just can’t seem to see sense, you know how stubborn he is—”

“Hermione—”

“And I told him that we were friends and behavior like that would not be tolerated in the future, I have no idea what came over him—”

“Hermione—”

“It was inexcusable, and I just want to say that I, for one, am sorry that you were treated like that when you were a guest in my house.”

“Hermione.” He reached out and caught her hands in his own, stopping them from flying around her head along with her words. “It’s fine. What he did, is fine. I wanted you to know that.”

“It’s not.” She was breathing heavily again, angry as she always is at any hint of injustice. “Completely—”

“Don’t. He loves you.” He squeezed her hands, and she laughed shakily, her eyes brimming over with tears. She was always extraordinarily easy to make cry, but he no longer saw it as a weakness. “He loves you, and I stood by while you were hurt when I could have stopped it, and I was cruel even when it was simpler to be kind. I’d hate me, too.”

“He doesn’t hate you.” It was a pathetic and see flimsy excuse, and she began to falter as soon as the words left her mouth. “He’s only stubborn. He’ll come around.”

“I would act the same way.” Ron, at least, was someone he could understand. Hatred, anger, pain—these are languages that he knows well. “If someone hurt somebody I love like I did to you.”

“We were children.” She wiped at her eyes, and then smiled, wickedly, in a way that was shockingly similar to Pansy. “And who have you loved, anyways, Draco?” She laughed when he reddened. “Don’t be shy, who’s the lucky girl?”

“Boys.” He didn’t really mean to say it, except that forgiveness was a bitter pill to swallow and sharing his secrets was his only way of repaying it, of showing that he trusted her, too. “One boy, actually.”

Draco had surprised her. “Oh?” And then, when there was an exceptionally loud burst of Harry’s laughter from the doorway, accompanied by Seamus’ Irish accent (they were hanging out together for the first time since the incident), something in her face softened and the confusion cleared. She always had seen more than he wanted to show, had always known more than any one person should be able to figure out, and some flicker of the truth must have spread across his face. “Oh, Draco.”

She felt bad for him.

(That’s fine. She’s not wrong. Draco feels bad for himself all the time. It really is a hopeless situation.)

“I know.” He makes himself smile, and then squeezes her hand, once, twice. There’s a lump in his throat and he swallows it down, because this is another one of those times that makes him acutely ashamed of his past actions, when he realized that they could have been this good of friends from the very beginning. Maybe, with someone as brave and good as her in his corner, the story wouldn’t have ended up the same. “So I know. I would have reacted the same way.”

She makes another tiny noise like that pained her, and then she set out to smooth his hair down in a way that he had seen her do to Harry. Draco shakes her off, and sets about cutting up the goose liver for the new potion.

“Don’t worry about me.” His smile feels a little crooked. “We’ll just get the potions done, yeah?”

Her answering is smile is just as wobbly, but when she takes the knife from his trembling fingers, her hands are steady.