分卷阅读38（1 / 2）

And also, he was a Malfoy. And Malfoy’s don’t run away, no matter how much they may want to.

“Of course we’re going.” He makes himself smile, but Harry just rolls his eyes and ducks down for one more kiss. “It’ll be fun.”

You really were the perfect son, when you went to these. Draco thought sourly, even as he leans further into the arm that Harry had put around his shoulders to guide him through the crowd. They had said hi to everyone and dodged all the waitstaff that were attempting to be the one to serve The Boy Who Lived, and now Harry was dragging them both in a beeline towards Ron and Hermione. The perfect heir, the perfect Malfoy, the creator of the perfect legacy. You could have been something great.

He trips, just a little stumble over the edge of someone’s dress robes, but Harry’s arm was around him and he did not fall, just felt the tightening of Harry’s fingers around his waist, a silent reminder that they were in this together.

“Draco!” Hermione wrapped him in a hug so tight that it knocked the air out of his lungs, and Draco found himself with a mouthful of bushy hair. He could see Ron from over her shoulder, shrugging at Harry exasperatedly while balancing a plate piled high with cookies. “I didn’t think you were coming!”

“Of course I came!” Draco pried herself off with some difficulty and passed her onto Harry, who was a bit more practiced at suffering through her hugs. “You think I would miss this?”

Beside them, Ron shrugs. “She’s been like this all day.” He has his voice lowered to mutter in Draco’s ear, apparently deciding that they’ve come to a momentary truce until Hermione gets a grip. “I just hope she doesn’t freak when she gets up there.”

“You kidding? She’ll be fine.” He snags one of the cookies off the plate just to test the boundaries and then considers it a good sign when Ron keeps the plate within his reach. “We just have to hope that she doesn’t sneak in something about spew.”

Ron laughed, and then clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t give her any ideas.”

Voldemort was great, Draco adds, slightly calmer, like this little piece of conversation was all it took to snap his skin back into place, to let him stop feel as if he was too big for his body. His father would not have been able to talk to people like that, as if they were friends. His father would never have known how great they were because he was blinded by his own bigotry. He was great and he did horrible things and he made people bow down to him because the only other option was to die and he never knew what it was to be loved, not really. Sometimes being great isn’t the best thing, if the only memories you leave behind are scars.

He’s sitting between George and Harry, two tables away from Hermione, so when she gets called up to the podium by Kingsley, he has to bend around George to reach out a hand to her. She pauses just long enough to hold on, long enough for three squeezes, their little sign that everything will be okay, that they will figure everything out.

(It had started back with the potions, when Hermione would get to frustrated with not knowing the answers that she seemed ready to throw it all out the window and let all her potions burn to nothing but a caustic heap. Draco hadn’t known what to say, but he had known enough to do this. It’s become their thing, ever since.)

“You’re going to be great.” Draco whispers, in the time it takes for those three pulses to travel from him to her, one, two, three, and then she lets go, climbing the stairs to stand beside the minister with a sense of grace Draco thought would be hard to miss, even though he had missed it for seven long years. It’s easy to see what you want, when you’re blinded by hate.

He’s not staring at her like everyone else is. They’re all watching her with rapt attention, but Draco is looking around at everyone else, all the other tables, so he can tell her who laughed when she made that joke in the opening (he helped her come up with it. It took them three hours. neither of them were that funny.) and if anyone cried when she talked about those she had lost. She had been at his house (Harry’s house? He can probably say it’s his house) until after midnight last night, practicing the way she enunciated every word and the dramatic effect held in each phrase, making sure she knew when to pause for eye contact. They had even made up a bunch of signals for Draco to give her, should he be watching and see people looking confused, for her to know if she is too loud or too quiet, too fast or too slow.

He’s listening, but he isn’t watching, which is why he sees it before anyone else does.

How the entire catering company had seemed to melt away into the shadows when the speech started, but there was still one man dressed in their uniform edging towards the front of the crowd. How his wand was dangling from his fingers, even though they had been made to check their wands at the door for what they claimed to be security measures. How even as Hermione was still speaking and the crowd was still watching, the chandelier above her started to sway, just a bit, enough to send scattering of light reflecting off the crystals and dancing over the faces of those watching.

One of the beams of light catches Hermione across the eyes, bright enough that she loses her focus and half raises her hand to block it. It’s the only reason that anyone notices it at all, and there is an awful sense of de ja vu, the way Draco can hear Ron screaming for Hermione to move out of the way and how the chandelier was falling, falling, falling down to her, and she would not get out of the way in time, and it was just like that night at the manor only there was no Dobby to save her now.

There was no one to save her, actually. Ron was too far away, and no one had their wands, and even Kingsley was not close enough to save her. Caught off guard, none of the others had even started to move yet.