分卷阅读30（1 / 2）

“Harry.”

Draco’s eyes are sad, and Harry didn’t want that, that was the exact opposite of what he wanted. “I mean,” He forces a laugh. “What kind of pretentious asshole builds a house like this and thinks, yes, I’m going to need to hold some prisoners captive for a bit, better build an old fashioned dungeon?”

“It was a very old house.” Apparently they were playing their game of pretending that everything was fine. “Maybe that was the fashion back then.”

“The fashion?”

“Yeah, you know, like…” He was casting around for words, for any distraction. “Like the pointlessness of your uncle’s fake fireplace? Like that kind of thing.”

Harry snorted, and maybe the reminder of his uncle and the memories in this room cancelled each other out, because suddenly he felt better. Two negatives making a positive.

“It’s ugly, whatever it was.” He reaches out a hand to Draco and is relieved when he took it. “Let’s get out of here.”

Draco

Maybe he hadn’t thought this through.

It would have been one thing to come here on his own, put things back in order, try to get it ready to be habitable again. It was quite another to bring Harry here, Harry who had almost died here, who was held captive and listened to his best friend be tortured, who escaped with seconds to spare, which Draco paid the price for. There was enough bad memories without making Harry want to punch him with every turn of the house.

“You need to go anywhere else?” Harry appeared at his shoulder like he was popping out of thin air, his voice so loud Draco half expected the dust to fall from the ceiling. Nothing happens, except some rats scurry away from them, and Draco feels sick.

“No.” He hears himself say it but doesn’t remember deciding to. The roaring in his ears was too loud. “I just need some air.”

He pushes away from him and out what used to be a window but is now just a crumbling hole in the wall. He trips over a chunk of marble but keeps going, out into the damp grass that has grown into tangles up to his knees, sinking down into the ground, tilting his head back to stare up at the sky.

“When’s it going to get better?” He’s not sure who he’s yelling at. Draco never had believed in God, but you had to blame something when your life has this level of shit in it, and he seems like a good a person as any. “Huh? When are you ever going to let me have some peace?”

He reaches out beside him and finds a chunk of stone, and then a crystal, pieces of his house that they had blown to kingdom come, and it’s the first time that he realizes it was not their investigation that made his house look the way it does. It was people, people who were hurting and angry and afraid, who stayed after their shift and blasted this place apart piece by piece and watched it all rain down into ruins.

It was a house, he though savagely. A really good house. The hell did it ever do to you?

He wants to stay out here forever, keep cursing at the stars, maybe burn the whole thing down and himself with it. Burn the whole world down just to prove that he could. But he doesn’t, because Harry is still there, walking across the lawn like he hadn’t noticed Draco’s tantrum and sitting down beside him, never mind that the ground was so wet it would soak through his jeans.

“We could fix it back up.” Harry’s tapping his wand against his knee, and Draco has to put his hand on his wrist to stop him from burning a hole through his jeans. “I’m good at fixing things.”

“I thought I would want to.” That was the other thing that was bothering, the sense of wrong that came from walking through the house, how every part of him was screaming at him just to board it all up and throw away the key. “But I don’t.”