分卷阅读55（1 / 2）

He is trying for a joke, but her face bites down in a frown, just for a moment, and he feels bad. “Don’t be stupid, Harry.” Everyone keeps telling him that. Her, Ron, Hermione, Draco. You would have thought, after all this time, he would have managed to get smarter. “You’re one of the most important people in my life. Just as important as those idiots.” She jerks her head towards her brothers, who are all roaring with laughter at something that Hermione had said, who was bright red and probably spouting off about the rights of some obscure magical animal. “I love you, Harry Potter.”

“Ginny.” He wants her to stop. He wants to hear this when he is not standing in front of so many people. He wants, for a moment, to go back to fifteen year old Harry Potter sitting at the Dursleys on the first day of summer reeling from the fresh cut of Sirius’ death and promise him that yes, it does get better. “Don’t.”

“I need to say it. I love you, and for as long as we are on this earth, we’re always going to be fighting for each other. Because that’s what people who mean something to each other do.” She is fighting back tears, and it seems impossible, that she could make it through her vows but is now crying over him. “I know you have Ron, and Hermione, but I don’t—didn’t —have many people to count on outside of my family. You were a first for me, Harry Potter.”

“I think friend love is better, sometimes.” Harry does not want to say that he loves her. Cannot make himself say it. He’d said it before, and then it had changed right in front of his eyes, like water through his palms, and he hadn’t even missed it. “Can break your heart just as bad.”

“It’s the same.” Her eyes are blazing again. “But different.”

It shouldn’t make sense. It shouldn’t make sense, but it does, because this is Ginny, and above all things he has always been able to understand what Ginny means. It makes him sad for a moment, because this is the last time it will be like this, his one last chance of being part of the Harry-and-Ginny show until they go off on their separate ways. That’s the price of getting older. So often moving on tends to look like letting go.

(Though maybe that’s the whole point of this. Maybe that’s what she’s trying to tell him, that they won’t let themselves fade away from each other, because she will reach for him and he will reach for her and they’ll never let go, not really.)

“We never were right for each other,” Ginny said, the two of them revolving in a circle one last time as the song dies down, the faces of the people who loved them flashing by as they make their circle. “But I think we’ve finally got it figured out don’t you?”

Yes, he thinks, but cannot say, because there are so many people staring and he is too busy going into a mock bow for Ron and Charlie’s benefit, pressing a kiss to her temple before leading her back to Luna. I think we have.

Draco

He’s standing with George. Again. It’s become such a common occurrence that he’s actually starting to believe he’s some type of babysitter, like the Weasleys had decided that every time George was going into one of his slumps they would just push him towards Draco and hope that he was able to deal with it, because he doesn’t think it’s a coincidence that they keep finding each other and George looks like he’s in no shape to be actively seeking someone out, friend or not.

George has spent the whole day swiveling between perfectly okay and standing right at the edge of a cliff, and this time, it had been Draco who edged him a little bit closer, having suggested a walk and then found himself standing right in front of the empty chair that Ginny had insisted needed to be there in memory of Fred, just to keep her from feeling like she had forgotten him.

“That’s all he gets. He dies, and life goes on, and they don’t even say anything about him.” He is glaring at the chair. Draco is looking for Ron or Ginny or the brother with the dragon tooth earring, someone to help him calm the storm before it boils over. “They just give him a chair.”

“She probably didn’t want to make people sad,” Draco finds himself saying, floundering, so out of his depth it’s almost laughable. “On her wedding day, you know.”

“Still. He deserves better. More,” And he kicks out, hard, hard enough that one of the legs of the chair snap. Draco repairs it, but that does not stop the scarlet ribbon that had been wrapped around it from floating into the air and out of reach, taking away the only sign that it was a place reserved for someone special. “Than a stupid.” Another kick. “Chair.”

Draco just watched him as the fury rolls over him and then fades back into nothing, leaving George standing there looking like a little kid who had just thrown a tantrum and didn’t get the response he wanted. “You need to move on.” He says, hardly daring the words are leaving his mouth but knowing that they must be said by someone, because Merlin knows none of his family are going to do it. You need to be a special kind of heartless to say what Draco is saying. “It’s the only way you’re ever going to get a life of your own.”

“Why should I get to move on?” He kicks out at the chair again, but lighter this time, so it’s more of a nudge. “Why should I deserve to have a life when he doesn’t?”

“Because you’re the one whose still here, and that sucks, but you’ve got people who love you, who so desperately want you to be okay again.” Draco reaches out to him and George does not shrug him away. “Isn’t that enough? The fact that you still have them, even when he’s gone?”

“It would be better if he were here,” George mutters, so quiet that they can both pretend Draco did not here, but then he straightens and forces out a laugh, shifting in the blink of an eye to the George who was okay. “Speaking of people who loved you. I was supposed to tell you earlier. Harry needs you in the garden.”