分卷阅读2（1 / 2）

“You might want to come back in the afternoon. He’s more…present then.”

“Present,” Harry repeats shakily. He looks at Draco’s form and feels the guilt once again eating at his insides.

Three months in Azkaban. And he couldn’t do anything about it.

He closes his eyes, has to look away for a while. When he opens them, Narcissa is watching him carefully, and Harry speaks, just as careful, “May I stay until then?”

Narcissa is surprised, and it’s obvious how she tries to stop it from showing. She raises an eyebrow and then settles for, “Hiding from the Prophet, are you?”

Harry grins. It’s weak, but it’s real. He had spent the last three months trying to avoid every reporter and request for interview thrown his way. He thinks that Kingsley’s probably exasperated with him, but Harry doesn’t really care. He did his part. The wizarding world doesn’t have the right to demand anything from him now. “I reckon this’ll be the last place they’ll think to look.”

Narcissa chuckles. “I reckon as well.” She straightens her shoulders, and then glances at her son. “I’ll send Molly Weasley an Owl. Stay as long as you like.”

Harry starts to refuse, insist that she doesn’t need to, but the Weasleys know that he’s gone to the Manor today. Tried all tricks and tactics to get him not to, but in the end, relented with the promise that he was to take a Portkey in case of an emergency. He figures that Aurors storming the Manor isn’t an impossible idea should he be gone for an unusually long period of time.

“I…Thank you.”

It’s late in the afternoon when Malfoy starts to stir.

So far, Harry has spent his day engaging in small, polite talk with Narcissa and, when she had to leave due to a Floo-call, reading up on Potions with the book that Narcissa had Accio’ed from Draco’s trunk. He, Ron, and Hermione all decided to return to Hogwarts for their last year, jokingly referred to by Ron as their eighth year, and Hermione had been nagging at them all summer to read up lest they want to go for a ninth.

He is halfway asleep in the middle of chapter 4 when Malfoy stirs, as if waking up from a long nap, and Harry waits, nervously, as Malfoy raises his head and finally sees him.

His eyes are no longer glazed, but they squint at him, trying to remember who he is.

Harry hopes Malfoy remembers who he is.

“Potter.”

He releases a sigh of relief that he didn’t know he had been holding.

“Uhm,” he says, closing his book. “Hullo, Malfoy.”

A furrow forms between Malfoy’s eyebrows. “Right. Potter.”

Harry nods patiently. “Yes.”