分卷阅读22（1 / 2）

When the house clears, it is only him and Draco, alone.

They’re cleaning up the kitchen, throwing away bottles and evaporating the leftover food. Harry can tell that Draco is following behind him and cleaning the spots he missed, even though it really didn’t make a difference. It was still the cleanest house to have ever existed.

“You really think this will keep going?” Draco asks. His voice was so quiet that Harry barely heard him, but he felt it, too, the need to talk about important things in hushed voices, like it might make them less real. “More fighting?”

“I think we have to try.” Harry said, and it was ridiculous that they were talking about battle plans while he was holding a wash rag in his hand. “We can’t just give in.”

“You could.” Draco didn’t need to talk loud, now, because he was close enough that Harry was reminded of that almost kiss in front of Hermione’s apartment. We can’t, Draco had said, tearing himself away, and then Harry was left staring at empty air. “You could let someone else handle it, for once. Give them a turn to be a hero.”

Harry wanted to. He had wanted to feel what it was like to live a normal life, where the nightmares weren’t visiting him every night and he wouldn’t be wishing that all his friends would come home safely from a mission he had sent them on. “I can’t just walk away.” Draco’s hands had found his way to the pockets of Harry’s hoodie, and Harry didn’t know what to do with that. He wanted to push him away, like Draco had pushed him away. “That’s not who I am.”

Draco smiled, then, a beautiful and wistful expression on his face. “I know.” His hands reached out to smooth down Harry’s hair, trying to tame the wild tangle that it always forms, and then it fell away, disappearing. “I’m going to help you this time.”

Harry didn’t want that. He wanted Draco safe, at home, where Harry didn’t have to worry. But there was no cause for that kind of treatment, when Draco was insisting that they were nothing more than flatmates. “Okay.” He grabbed onto his hand, but Draco just shook his head. No, he had said and must have meant it. We can’t

Chapter 18

Draco

Winter is sliding into spring, a quarter of his probation sentence done, and Draco had found himself completely and hopelessly in love with Harry.

He probably had been at least interested in him for a long time, back before the war, but then it was always kept out of reach, some fantasy to visit late at night, one where they got along and Harry had never turned down his handshake that first year, where Draco had friends and Harry liked him and everything was going to turn out okay. It wasn’t a real thing, nothing that would ever be possible, but that’s why he thought it was okay to like him. As long as it could never be real, Draco would be safe.

Except now, it could be real. Now he cooks him breakfast in the morning and they eat it together, now sometimes they fall asleep on the couch together and wake up curled around each other, now Draco is around to hear him wake up from a nightmare at night and talk to his cousin Dudley on the phone. He watches him check in on George and on Seamus, sees him wrap Hermione and Ginny and Luna in a hug with the protectiveness of a brother. He’s up and close and personal now, and even though the flawed parts of him might be enough to make others turn away, it just makes Draco want him more.

(Like, the cracks are only places for the good things to shine through, testaments to all he had done and will still to do to protect the people he loves, to preserve what is right.)

“What?” Harry was leaning over the kitchen table, wax paper spread out in front of him. He was marking off names with a grease pencil and rubbing them away, creating a plan of attack to show to Kingsley the next day. It seems that even when he tries to walk away from the fight, the fight just wouldn’t let him go. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

Draco had been staring at him for too long. He hadn’t meant to, but Harry wasn’t looking, and watching him was much more interesting than penciling in information about death eaters that he only met once, at some benefit when he was eleven.

“I don’t see how this helps.” He shoved the journal away, where he had scrawled meaningless details he had picked up from one party or another—who they had an affair with, where their summer vacation homes were, which ministry official they had reportedly bribed, what they had sold to Borgin and Burkes. It was tedious work, but it seems that when Draco stopped to think about it, he had gathered more tidbits of gossip than he thought. “What’s it matter who some guy cheats on his wife with?”

Harry smiled at him, shaking his head so his hair falls out of his face. He’s always having a constant battle with his hair now, trying to keep it out of his way but also wanting it long enough to cover his scar. Fashion verses function, the eternal battle. “If you’re getting tired, you can get a break.” He was a natural leader, but Draco had noticed that he was more content to take all the responsibility on himself than the parcel out jobs to anyone else. “That doesn’t have to be done tonight.”

“Only if you do.” He wasn’t walking away and leaving Harry in here to puzzle out the problems alone. Hermione had specifically told him not to, that it would go faster if Harry had someone to bounce ideas off of, even if that someone was about as helpful as brick wall. (It doesn’t matter if you know what he’s talking about, anyways, he doesn’t take anyone’s suggestions even when they’re good.) “You can’t possibly still be thinking straight.”