分卷阅读48（2 / 2）

“Want to talk about it?”

“It’s just that he’s not here.” Draco didn’t need to ask who he was. “He’s not here, and he would have loved this, to be with her, to see her. She’s got this line of dances, like the father daughter dance, only one with each of us brothers, and there’s—there’s only five dances. There should be six.” He is gripping onto the tabletop so hard that Draco is half afraid that he is going to rip a piece off. “It’s like he’s being forgotten by everyone but me.”

“That’s not true,” Draco starts, but George cuts him off just as fast.

“I know it isn’t true. But it’s not fair, because it’s like when he died, he ripped away a part of me that I’m never going to get back, this whole huge chunk of my life that I’m never going to be able to fill, no matter how much I try to love the people I have left, or how much I invent, or work, or sleep, or drink.” He looks on the verge of panic, like he’s going to run away, and Draco knows that it is only love for his sister keeping George in place. “I know they all loved him, that they’re all trying to fill up the parts of themselves that belonged to him. It’s just the part of me that belonged to Fred is so much bigger for me than any of them.”

It was the first time that Draco had heard him say Fred’s name out loud. Draco wonders if it’s the first time he’d said it at all.

“It just sucks,” George says finally, looking around the room. “Doing everything alone when I thought we were going to do it together.”

“You aren’t alone.” Draco sucks at this, at grief, at comfort. He wants Hermione to be here. She pops up every other time someone needs her, but tonight she is too tipsy for that. “You’ve got all of us.”

“And what a treasure it is, to be around you wankers,” George says, but he is smiling now, no matter how bitter it might look. “Now drink up, Malfoy. No one said that we had to do this sober.”

Draco drinks, and so does George, but he does not think there is enough butterbeer and firewhiskey in the world to make Fred’s absence easier to bear. It’s strange, how much heavier a person can be when they aren’t there at all.

He tries to find his way back to Harry and comes face to face with Lavender instead.

“Do you know,” She says, bubbly, pleasantly, like she hadn’t ever sobbed from the witness stand while talking about a man that Draco used to eat dinner with, like those scars crossing her body were not in some part done by his hand. “That you’re the first person not to stare at my scars?”

The fact that she points them out makes him want to look at them just as a reflex, but he forces himself to look at her face instead, at the eyes, which are just as the same as they were in school. I’ve got my own scars, he thinks of saying, and yours aren’t so different, or maybe I live with Harry, he’s griped enough about the stares that I’ve learned not to do it, but what comes out of his mouth is, “Well, I have seen you before.”

She stares at him for a moment, like she can take the measure of him just by looking at him, and Draco squirms.

“Yes. You did.” She brushed past him and grabbed a drink from George before turning back, something blue and sparkly. “How’s the house hunting coming?”

“House hunting?” He stumbles over the words, breath knocked out of him, and Draco has to fight the urge to vomit, because Luna’s perceptions were one thing, but having Lavender Brown just knowing was a bit uncanny. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, come on. You know the department I work in. And I’m sure you remember me from school.” She walks away, and Draco trails after her like he’s on some sort of leash, sliding into the booth beside her. She has chosen the darkest corner of the room for them to sit in. “I was horribly nosy.”

Draco stays quiet, watching her arms instead of her face, at those shining, silver marks. He’d heard they took weeks to heal, the skin trying to peel away from the bone, a side effect of the fact that Greyback wasn’t changed but still infected. She was healed now, but the pain must have been terrible.

“So, the whole you and Harry thing isn’t working?” She puts air quotes around the “you and Harry” bit. “I heard that you are in love.”

“It is,” Draco says, too insistent. “We are.”