分卷阅读50（1 / 2）

“It’s alright.”

“It’s not.” Harry turned to him, wanting him to make it better, knowing that he won’t be able to. “How could this still be a thing that scares me?”

Because that’s the worst thing about it, really, how after all he had done it was what the Dursleys had done to him that left the deepest scars, and Hermione could talk all she wants about childhood and formative years and repressed memories, Harry knows the truth: this is weakness, plain and simple, and all he ever wanted to be was strong.

“Because it’s scary.” Draco sat down beside him, but doesn’t touch him, and Harry is grateful. “Because Hermione is scared of failing a test and Ron is scared of spiders and I’m scared of heights and there’s nothing any of us can do about it, it just is. It doesn’t make you more or less than anyone else, it just makes you human.”

We knew a man who wasn’t human, Harry thought, and maybe that’s why he liked Draco so much, because out of all the people in his life, he is the one who really knows what Voldemort was like, how his mind worked. Who became obsessed with conquering his own fear, thought that it meant that he was weak. Don’t be like that man.

He could bring that up, now, if at any time, but he doesn’t. “But you played Quidditch.”

“What?”

“You said you were afraid of heights, but you played Quidditch.” Harry didn’t want to talk about Voldemort or the cupboard under the stairs or that cellar. “Why?”

“My dad wanted me to,” Draco said, shrugging, and Harry is reminded of another thing that Hermione said, about how all parents leave scars whether it’s intentional or not. He hadn’t bothered to ask what hers looked like, but now he wishes he had. “I’d do anything to make him proud.”

They sit in silence for a moment more, and then Draco speaks again. “You don’t have to hide it, you know. When you’re afraid. At least not from me.” Harry opened his mouth to speak but couldn’t find what he wanted to say, only that he wanted to argue. “I know you’ve got this thing where you want to protect everyone you care about, but please, love, let me take some of the blame sometimes, okay? Believe it or not, I can be helpful.”

The sentiment of it threatens to choke him, so he goes for a joke instead. “Love?”

Draco smiled, knocks his shoulder against Harry’s before standing up. “Don’t worry about this.” He waves his hand at the cellar. Harry doesn’t look at it. “I’ll come fill it in tomorrow morning.”

Stupid, Harry thinks, but doesn’t argue.

Chapter 40

Draco

He does not look like his father anymore.

For a moment, Draco thinks of turning around, because he must have been given the wrong cell number. This man huddled in the back of his cell cannot be his father, not when the man he remembered had stood so tall, so proud (was hiding behind a man who was not a man proud? Was he brave when he cowered under the lash of someone else’s wand, when he let the walls of his own house become a cage?). This man was a skeleton, his eyes sunken and the blades of his shoulders prominent even through his shirt, the skin stretched too tight over the bones in his face. It could not be the man he remembered, and yet—

“Dad?” He forced himself to talk, the words being strangled by the pressure building in his throat and takes a step closer, hands wrapping around the bars. He wants to yank it back, because it is so cold, the chill biting through his skin, but then the man in the corner turns toward him and he does not feel the cold anymore.

“Draco?” He drags himself to his feet and has to hold onto the wall for support, moving towards the gate in great, lurching steps. His hair falls around his face in strings, and Draco wonders why he has not bothered to cut it. “Is that you?”

His voice is barely above a whisper, strained and cracking. How long has it been since he had someone to talk to?