分卷阅读55（2 / 2）

“What?” The word need throws him off a bit, this one thing that he had not been able to shake from the war, where you must be at the right time and right place or you find yourself losing the battle, where people needing you was not something to take lightly, because only merlin knows what the problem was. “What does he want?”

“Don’t know that, do I?” But he does, probably, he’s just angry and doesn’t know what to do with it. “Just go find him.”

Draco goes, faster than he probably needs to, weaving through the crowd and ignoring the people who are calling out happy greetings, ducking around the half empty glasses of champagne that the guests had left floating in midair so they could come back to it later. It only takes him seconds until he gets to the garden, but that’s long enough to let the panic set in, so when he catches sight of Harry, it’s the only thing that lets him really breathe again.

The garden was beautiful. Harry had said that it used to be a great big tangle of things, but that was before Luna got her hands on it. Now, everything was in its rightful place and there was even a walkway to the center of the garden, a little clearing with a stone bench right in the middle. You have to pass under an ivy covered arch way to get it, another one of her installments.

“Sorry I’m late.” He walks through the pathway and the flowers reach out to him like they know he is there. “George forgot.”

“It’s alright. You’re not late.” Harry takes his hand and leads him over to the bench. “I just wanted to talk.”

“You could talk to me out there.”

“Really talk. Without people listening.” Despite everything, Draco is hit with the niggling little thought that he might be about to be broken up with, which he really hopes is wrong, because Merlin would that be annoying. “Because I have something I want to tell you.”

“Me first.” The words jump out of Draco’s mouth just like they had the night before, without reason, without warning, with nothing except for a wanting, a need for Harry to know this, because he’s done with wasting time. “About last night. I love you. Without maybes or probablys or any type of percentages. I completely, totally, definitely love you.” Harry sort of looks like he’s been slapped, he’s that surprised. But in a good way. Thunderstruck, the snide little voice in his head that sounds like Pansy piped up. “I love you forever, Harry James Potter.”

“Good. That’s really, really good, Draco. Because,” And he slips down off the bench onto one knee, kneeling in the damp grass. His hands are trembling so bad that he can barely get the box out of the pocket of his jacket, and that’s when Draco realizes that it had been so long since his own hands were anything but steady. “Because I care about you more than I care about anything in my life, and I want to keep feeling this way for the rest of my life. I want to marry you, Draco Malfoy. All you have to do is say yes.”

“I told you,” Draco says, choking on tears. “I love you forever.”

“You gotta say it.” Harry’s eyes were shining, too. “I need to hear you say it.”

“Yes,” Draco almost yells the word and then he gives up on pretense and hugs him, the force of it knocking them both back onto the cold grass of the garden. It’s the most beautiful place he could ever have imagined this to happen, the moon high overhead and fireflies blinking in and out of sight and those flowers leaning in to form a sort of canopy around them, reaching, reaching, seeking out the two of them the same way that he and Harry are currently seeking each other out, until they are sharing each other’s air, breathing each other’s words. “Yes a million times over. Yes, yes, yes.”

Harry

They come out of the garden hand in hand, a ring shining on both their hands.

No one knows. No one sees, with the way they are both keeping it hidden under the cuffs of their jackets and behind glasses of champagne. And they aren’t telling. It’s nice, for a moment, to have something just to their own.

“You really love him, don’t you?” Ron says, his eyes tracking Hermione around the dance floor as she is passed between Seamus and Dean and George in some weird dance that Harry had never seen before and does not think actually exists. There would be a time where Ron would have been forcing himself to be included, terrified that she was having more fun with them, that she liked them better, but now he’s content to let her have her fun, confident that it’s always going to be him she’s returning to. “Draco, I mean.”

Ron was the only one that Harry had told. The only one that he had trusted not to tell anyone else.

“I really, really do.” He makes a fist just so he can feel the chill of his ring against his skin, even though it was quickly warming. “Forever.”