分卷阅读30（2 / 2）

“Course you don’t, it’s got rats in it.” Harry still wasn’t hearing him. He liked to fix things, Harry did, and this was the biggest project he could possibly undertake. “But we can fix that, too.”

“No, I mean.” Draco’s crying and laughing at the same time, leaning into Harry for support, and even with everything, he still has time to wonder how they aren’t dating yet. “I don’t want to. Like, I can imagine nothing more likely to make me want to stab my eye balls out.”

“Oh.”

Yeah. Oh. “I thought I’d walk in here and fix it up and when the year ended, I’d come back here with mother and everything would be the same. But it’s not the same. Nothing is. Not you, not my family, not this house. And definitely not me.”

They’re both quiet for a moment.

“Moving on isn’t so bad. But hanging on isn’t completely terrible, either.” Harry stood up, and they faced that crumbling place together, a house that he can no longer call his home. “We don’t have to decide now.”

“I want to burn it down.” Draco decides, and he feels better with a plan. “Build something else in his place. Somewhere he never touched.”

“Or we could keep it. Just needs a little TLC.” Harry grins down at him, making Draco notice for the first time that he was officially the shorter one. “But whatever we—you— decide, I’ll be there every step of the way. You won’t be doing it alone.”

“Together, huh?” They’ve still got their hands linked together. “I like the sound of that.”

“Yeah.” Harry squeezes his hand, and they are off, picking their way through the tall grass, going home, even though suddenly, Draco wants to stay. To show him the balcony that let him look out over the old wood, to take him out to the old fountain, show him the tree house that Dobby had magicked together for his sixth birthday. The good things, but there would be time for that later.

Chapter 24

Harry

He can’t say no.

He’s tried to think of ways to say no without losing face ever since he got the owl. And the owl after that. And the owl after that one, all of them formally requesting his presence at the ministry event that was going to be celebrating the official start of Kingsley’s time in office and where they would be honoring some of the people who made this new era possible. Harry knew that other people would be invited (Ron and Hermione, Dean and Seamus, Ginny and Luna and Neville, just among his friends) but that still didn’t make the idea of voluntarily putting himself in the spotlight any easier.

“What’s the big deal?” Draco was leaning over his shoulder, reading through the tenth owl they had sent him, this one even more desperate than the last and written in red ink so vivid that Harry thought it was likely to combust. “It’s just a party. I used to go to those all the time.”

Draco’s finding it easier to talk about what used to be ever since they had gone to the manor, like now that he had seen his past in ruins he had no problem with moving forward. Like maybe he was finally going to stop punishing himself.

“The big deal is that they’re going to ask me to talk.” Harry buried his hands in his hair, because there would be no good way to get out of this. Part of him must have thought that he could just ignore it and it would go away, the way he used to ignore the invites to go to Hogsmeade from giggling groups of girls back at Hogwarts. This time, though, he would have to give them an answer, and now that there was nothing to fight against, Harry was finding that he had trouble telling people no. “And I’m going to have to stand in front of everyone and say thank you when they present me with some award, even though they never wanted to help me back when I needed it. And I’ll have to talk to people I’ve never met, and fend of reporters, and—Merlin, I’m going to have to dress up, aren’t I?”

(It’s black tie. Of course he’s going to have to dress up, which means that he was going to have to go shopping, because there was no way that those dress robes from fourth year still fit him, and God knows running away from the worst wizard in history didn’t leave you time for dressing up.)

“I’m pretty sure I have something you can wear.” Draco sat down across from him and started slurping up his cereal. Ever since they started sleeping in the same bed, Draco hadn’t woken up in the middle of the night and been forced to fill up the empty hours, which means there is no home cooked breakfast waiting when Harry comes down the stairs. He thinks it’s a fair trade. “You’re running out of excuses, Potter.”