分卷阅读9（2 / 2）

That’s a lie, Harry thinks. No, he knows it’s a lie. Of course he knows. The lily petals trailing down the steps and ending at Draco’s feet are proof enough of that. But something in him doesn’t understand it’s a lie. Something in him howls with pain and fury. His eyes sting, humiliatingly; he opens his mouth to retort, but then his eyes are stinging for a different reason altogether as he starts to cough.

These are deep, wracking coughs from a seizing chest; the skin over his ribs is too tight, and something rustles in his lungs when he gasps for breath, and he falls to his knees more out of surprise than anything else. He covers his mouth instinctively with his elbow until the fit subsides.

No one makes a sound, not Draco nor any of the witnesses Harry doesn’t dare look at right now. Instead, he looks down, blearily, at the dark spots on the grass, which—when his vision clears—turn out to be petals. Rose petals so red they’re nearly black. There’s a hot, coppery taste in his mouth and something sharp poking the back of his teeth; he spits out blood and a couple of thorns.

Horror claws its way up his spine. He tilts his face up at last, his gaze drawn magnetically to Draco.

Draco’s features are slack with shock; his eyes are wide and uncomprehending and fixed on Harry.

“You prat,” Harry tells him, climbing to his feet with the best attempt he can make at composure. “Should’ve told me you were contagious.”

“I’m not,” Draco says faintly.

“I know.”

Harry’s throat is closing up again and he feels another coughing fit coming on as Draco keeps watching him blankly.

The whispers at the top of the steps are reaching a crescendo. Narcissa pulls at Draco’s elbow, guiding him away toward the gates. Harry’s eyes cling to him, but there’s no room in his throat for his voice, no room to form words and call him back; he tastes roses in the back of his mouth. It’s not until Narcissa succeeds in turning Draco bodily around, and they lose eye contact, that he seems to wake from his stupor. He rips out of her grasp.

Harry is already reaching for him when Draco surges back up the path. He throws himself into Harry’s arms, a whirl of sensation: his bones crashing against Harry’s bones, the smell of lilies filling Harry’s nose, his hands strong against Harry’s back, his skin so warm Harry feels it from the inside first. Draco kisses him in full view of his mother and their friends and Merlin’s fucking ghost—and Harry—

Harry breathes.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time

I have been half in love with easeful Death,

Called him soft names in many a mused rhyme,

To take into the air my quiet breath;

—Ode to a Nightingale, John Keats