分卷阅读35（1 / 2）

(Besides, if the universe was ever going to send him a sign to tell him that he was making a momentous mistake, having a fight break out just before he could choke out the words was a pretty good one.)

“When nothing is sacred, no target to small, everything becomes a place of uncertainty.” Draco is still talking, still staring out the window. “Everything is something they can destroy, even the things that don’t seem to matter much, outside of what they mean to the people who care about it.”

“We should have known.” Ginny is white faced with the pain, and she has to speak through gritted teeth. Luna has not left her side since they got here, her hands fluttering from her shoulders to her hair to hovering over where the breaks were, but it wasn’t enough. “We should have known the fight wouldn’t end with him. There’s always something left over.”

How could we have known? Harry thinks, when they all nod, grim faced with their fear and the resignation of the battles yet to come. We’re kids playing at a war we don’t know how to fight.

“What’s coming will come,” He hears himself say, because he is the leader, always, always had that thrust upon him even when he did not want it, and he has to say something to ease the fear. “And we’ll meet it when it does.”

Chapter 27

Harry

Considering that Harry had lived in a dormitory with our other boys for most of his life, he had had his share of moments where he walked in on someone doing something they shouldn’t, or that they didn’t want others to know about. Like Neville writing in his diary that catalogues the well-being of his plants, or when he catches Ron reading the paperback romances that Hermione had originally bought for him as a joke birthday present or that one time when he walked in on Seamus and Dean kissing before they were ready for anyone to know about.

So he gets the protocol. About how sometimes people living together still want their space, and that the other person sometimes barges in on a private moment without meaning to. That there are things, sometimes not even bad things, just private things, that the other person does not shout to the world. How you have to fight past the embarrassment to make your excuses and exit the room, and a few hours later, you’ll both be over it.

It’s what Harry should be doing right now, only he couldn’t figure out what Draco would be doing that he’s embarrassed about.

“Hey.” It was late, which meant that he was already asleep. Harry hadn’t expected him to be awake—Harry had intended to stay the night at Ron’s house after going out to the pub, afraid that he would be too drunk to apparate safely, but by the time the night was over, he found that he was still just as sober as he had been when the day began, so he came home, anyways. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

“No, you didn’t.” Draco said, and then smoothed wrinkles out of the sheets instead of looking him in the eye, mostly because they both knew that he was lying. The only reason Draco had woken up was because Harry had tripped over a pile of books when he walked in and sent them all tumbling to the floor, him along with them. The noise had scared Draco so bad Harry just counted himself lucky he hadn’t been hexed. “What are you doing home?”

“Wasn’t as late a night as I was expecting.” Harry tried to smile, but he couldn’t, because something was definitely wrong. It sort of felt like how Harry would have expected the tension to be if he had ever caught someone cheating on him, which is a weird comparison, because there was neither any agreed upon romantic attachment or another person in the room. “Thought I’d come up here.”

I meant to stay over but then I was stretched out on their couch with its lumpy cushions and realized that there was no way that I could fall asleep, not without the sound of your breathing to assure me that everything was okay, that we were safe. I thought that you felt the same way. I thought you’d be happy to have me back for the night. You told me that this helps you sleep, too, or was that just something to make me feel better?

“Yeah.” Draco still wasn’t moving over, not like he always did. He was just sitting there, staring. “Good. Great.”

It takes an embarrassingly long time for Harry to get it. Time where he thinks about how this was all about him, all from some fault he did not know he had, an offense that he had not meant. It takes him through changing his clothes and brushing his teeth and washing his hands twice just to feel the cold water run over his wrists until he turns back to the bed and realizes that something was different.

Draco was wearing a short sleeve shirt.

The fact alone shouldn’t have meant anything. It’s weird, now that Harry stops to think about it, that he had never seen his roommate in a short sleeve shirt before, now that it is approaching spring and the house gets unbearably stuffy. That he would choose to be completely covered when he wraps himself around Harry and gets buried underneath all the covers.

(This is one of those moments where he can hear Hermione’s voice in his head, moaning on about boys and how impossibly obtuse you are, Harry, I can’t believe it and you’ve got the emotional range of a tablespoon, Harry, which is better than Ron but not by much.)

It means that for the first time during their stay together, Harry can see the dark mark.