分卷阅读3（1 / 2）

Did he think that Malfoy was going to get out of Azkaban okay and they can go through their eighth year in peace and everything’s going to be alright and everyone’s going to finally be happy?

Or maybe, maybe he’s crying because of everything he hadn’t been able to prevent.

Remus. Tonks. Fred. Snape. Dumbledore. Cedric. Sirius. God, Sirius.

And now Draco Malfoy losing his mind in Azkaban.

He should have been able to prevent at least that, right?

The war’s over. Why are those around him still suffering?

Maybe he’s tired.

He’s tired trying to avoid the press, trying to avoid the Ministry, trying to avoid the Burrow and the Weasleys’ insistence that he’s family now, even though he’s not, not really, and he feels like an intruder to their grief when they see him and have to pretend that they’re not mourning a son, a brother.

He’s trying to avoid himself most of all, because he’s spent nights alone in Grimmauld Place and those nights were long nights, stretching impossibly further, as dark as a forest (dark as death), as quiet as the afterlife (like white noise) (the afterlife’s not that peaceful after all), with each tick of the clock echoing through the walls and counting all the people that he lost.

But seeing Draco Malfoy like that reminds him, forces him to see that avoiding the problem doesn’t really fix it, kind of makes it bigger and more daunting, and that yes, the war’s over, but that doesn’t mean that everything’s okay.

Everyone’s still suffering and he’s still suffering and maybe he’s not yet done losing people after all.

He manages to get himself off the floor and towards the fireplace in the master room, taking the liberty to Floo himself back to Grimmauld Place.

The night is still long and it is still dark and the house is still quiet, unbearably so, so he locks himself in his room and doesn’t emerge until Ron’s knocking on his door the next day.

A glance at the clock tells him it’s past lunch time.

During the night, exhausted and eyes swollen after crying so much, he had somehow fallen asleep, and for this, he is grateful. He doesn’t know how he could have survived that whole night awake.

“Harry,” comes Ron’s voice from the other side of the door, and it’s soft and careful, and Harry knows at once that Ron knows something.

“I’m up,” Harry says, voice cracking. He swallows the dryness down his throat, and then tries again. “I’m up.”

“Mum sent you food. Have you eaten yet?”

He has a headache, but he forces himself out of bed anyway. He thinks he looks awful, his face feels sticky, but there’s no point hiding it. Not from Ron, anyway.

And he’s too tired to even summon the energy to look for his wand.