分卷阅读7（2 / 2）

“What do you mean you didn’t leave?” Harry asks twenty minutes later when Draco’s back and the pancakes and the mess on the table had disappeared with a pop. Two steaming mugs of tea have replaced them.

Draco looks at him wearily, as if he’s weighing whether he should agree to engage in civil conversation with him. In the end, he sighs and talks. “It’s…hazy. But I still know what’s happening. Sometimes. Don’t think I didn’t see you wiping my face like a child, Potter. Don’t ever do that again.”

“Should I have just left the syrup on your face?”

Draco snorts. “You should have just left, period.”

“The pancakes weren’t going to eat themselves,” Harry defends.

“Don’t you have enough pancakes with those weasels? I’m sure the Weaslette would love to fall all over your feet and hand feed you.”

It’s an attempt to get under his skin, and it works, because everything that Draco says works, but Harry tries his best to stamp down his irritation. “Don’t call them that.”

“I’ll call them whatever I like.”

Harry sighs loudly. He has forgotten what it’s like, to have Draco Malfoy be such an irritating git. He almost wants to rise up to the bait. “Pancakes were Fred’s favourite. They haven’t cooked them since…Well, you know.”

He looks at Draco then, and isn’t prepared for the shame that’s evident on his face.

He isn’t surprised when, moments later, the expression on Draco’s face melts away and his body goes slack.

“Fred isn’t your fault, you know,” Harry says, an hour later, when Draco comes back.

He’s figured it out, somewhat. The things that make Draco disappear. But although Draco doesn’t seem to like talking about the things that he did or the things he thinks that happened because of it, Harry thinks that maybe, Draco needs to talk about it.

“I know.”

“Do you?”

Draco doesn’t answer. He looks away. “So that’s why you’ve been coming here, because of the lack of pancakes?”

Harry shoots him a grin. “You got me.”

And that’s how they spend the rest of the morning. When Draco’s gone, Harry writes a letter for Hermione. He tells her that she’ll be proud of the fact that he’s been studying. He also tells her, for the first time, that Draco Malfoy is out of Azkaban and that Harry’s been looking after him.