分卷阅读39（1 / 2）

In his head, Harry is thinking that all he needs is to find him, to clear the dust and debris off Draco’s face and crush him to his chest, hold him and never let him go. But when he does find him, half pulling him out of the disaster before Ron grabs Harry underneath the arms and pulls him away, it does not help, because even though Harry had seen a lot of awful things, this might have to be the worst.

Penelope is trying to talk to him. Harry knows that, dimly, even recognizes her words, but he doesn’t really listen. “This is a job for a healer, Harry,” She is saying, and Percy has grabbed him by one arm and Ron by the other and they are pulling him away, but Harry isn’t cooperating, because all he is looking at is Draco, with the blood snaking down from his temple and the dust on his face and his breathing so harsh and loud that it might be better if he could not hear the breath at all, because at least it would not sound like he was in so much pain. “Let me do my job.”

He only stops fighting when George joins him. He can’t say why, really, except for the fact that if there is one person in the world who knows what is like to lose someone that is so unbelievably vital to your own well-being, it is George. Harry can’t imagine that he would ask him to step away if there was a way for Harry to help.

“She’s going to take care of him.” Percy tells him, his jaw set and his face smeared with blood. Later, Harry would learn that it was Percy’s own. He caught him with an elbow to the face when Percy first tried to pull Harry away. “She’s the best at her job”

For the first time, Harry can truly appreciate Percy and what he can do. Despite all his pomp, he really is one of the rare people in life who are able to walk into an emergency and control a room, who can look at a situation and see what needs to be done. And he doesn’t lie, and he doesn’t have much patience for people he considers incompetent, so when he says that his girlfriend is the best at her job, it isn’t empty flattery, it’s the best words of comfort he can think of giving.

“Okay.” Harry says, and sinks down to the ground. There is a hand on his shoulder and he knows without turning that it is Hermione, because he can recognize the weight of it from so many years of her holding him back and holding him up. He raises his own hand up to meet her, and cannot find the energy to ask if she was alright, even though he hopes that she is. “Okay.”

“Hey.” Ginny throws herself down on the ground beside him. They’re back in some hallway in the ministry that Percy had led him to, promising to send someone when they have news. Draco was at St. Mungo’s in a magic induced coma, and was not likely to wake up anytime soon, so no one thought that it was important for him to head over there right away. “Thought you might want this.”

She’s holding his wand out to him. Harry hadn’t even thought to go after it. If someone wanted to hurt him, he would tear them apart with his bare hands, ruined as they were. “Yeah.” The weight of it makes him feel better.

“We’re going after them, if you want to come.” She is dressed in what George had named her battle armor—combat boots and an old jacket with a patch over the elbow, fingerless leather dueling gloves and her hair pulled up in a tight ponytail. “The people who did this, I mean.”

“You think we can get them?”

He wasn’t interested in it, if they couldn’t get them, if he couldn’t make one of them hurt like they hurt Draco.

“I think so. We got the one who dropped the chandelier. He told us a lot.” Ginny flexes her fingers, and for the first time, Harry notices the split skin on her knuckles. She is staring down at her hands, like even though she wasn’t sorry, she couldn’t quite believe that this was the person she had turned into. “I was very persuasive.”

Harry thought about it, and then thought some more. He could stay here, sitting in this empty hallway, and then switch to sitting in some uncomfortable chair in a slightly cleaner hallway in St. Mungo’s. Or he could go fight, make someone pay, make them hurt. He had his wand back, after all.

And he was done feeling helpless.

Chapter 31

Draco

Once, when Draco was seven years old, when he was small and scrawny and still hadn’t learned how to use the power sitting right beneath his skin, he had walked to the edge of his neighbor’s pond and walked right along the edge, toes skimming the surface of the mud and muck like it was some sort of game. His mother had told him not to go in it because it was dirty, and his father said that it was dangerous, just as derelict and infested as the neighbor’s house was, but Draco had thought that it would be fun to go to a forbidden place just once. And it was fun, until he stepped forward onto the bank just a bit too far, entranced by the wave of the otherwise still water that was only the beckoning of a grindylow and toppled in.

He could not swim.