分卷阅读34（2 / 2）

“Look at you.” There’s a voice behind him that sounds like gravel, and without turning around, Draco knows who it is, but he turns anyways. “Always were a hotshot.”

There’s Crabbe, standing in front of him. He had not seen him since the war, since that moment with the fire and Goyle’s screams and the burns tearing at their hands like white hot needles. Draco hadn’t thought he would see him again. He hadn’t even wanted to. Last time he talked to Pansy, he heard that he was in Azkaban, anyways.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” He cannot curse him. He knows that the moment he sees him, because the sight of him comes with so much guilt, the sense of knowing that even though they were bad people he had been the one who started them down that path, that the choices they made were in part because of him. He thinks about the first year on the train, about a rat’s teeth sinking into knuckles, about sulking along the walls at parties while their collars strangled them, and about stupider things, about the blinding moments of pure friendship, like the time where Crabbe was naming girls and Draco named a guy and neither of them skipped a beat, or when his father first went to jail and Crabbe beat up a third year to make him feel better, which was misguided, but it helped, because all Draco needed was to see someone made smaller than he was feeling.

“You like to show off,” Crabbe says, and there is no such hesitation in his movements, Draco can tell. He always was the brutal one, even if Draco planned it. He was the one who liked it just for the sake of hurting someone. Draco had his reasons, because he had been told to push others down in order to stay on top, but Crabbe never needed to ask why. “All flash and no power. But me?” He’s advancing on him, a hand reaching out, and Draco will not raise a hand to defend himself. He has debts to pay, and this one, this one little shred of guilt, will be one that he can wash away. “I’ve got nothing else.”

His hand is reaching out and grabbing Draco by the neck, and his wand is raising up, and Draco has just enough time to close his eyes and hope it does not hurt (he is still a coward, even if he is trying to stop) when another hand flashes out and hits Crabbe right in the head, sending Draco flying and Crabbe stumbling sideways.

Draco stares down at the now not-so-tough Crabbe, and then he stares up at Ron, who is panting and looking down at Crabbe with something like disgust.

“Jesus.” Ron stares at him, and Draco repeats himself, once, twice. “Do you ever remember that you have a wand?”

There’s a moment where they both stare at each other in disbelief, and then Ron laughs, then kicks out at Crabbe. “If I leave, can you handle this?” Draco doesn’t answer and Ron nods, kicks him again, and then sends silver ropes flying with a wave of his wand, making it impossible for Crabbe to move. “Come on.” He claps him on the back, and even though they are not friends, not even close, Draco can feel the truce that came about in all this magic and dust. “We’ve got others to fight.”

Don’t we always, Draco thinks, but he moves forward without a protest, because somewhere in there is Harry, and he will not stop fighting when there is someone like that to follow.

Harry

“Didn’t I tell you that I was done fighting?” George demands, but there’s no bite behind the words.

They’re all at St. Mungo’s, each of them nursing their wounds and waving away any actual medical help. He hadn’t wanted to come, and neither had anyone else, but Hermione had showed up when she saw the distress call and told the all that it was ministry protocol, and anyone who did not show up would be held in contempt of court, which Harry thought was a lie, but he can’t ever tell anymore.

(Whenever he thinks that she’s only bluffing, some small part of him that still remembers what it was like to be skinny and small and scared raises his head and reminds him of the time she kept a sadistic reporter in a jar just because she had crossed her, and then Harry decides to play it safe.)

“Sorry.” Harry’s got a cut over his eye, right through the eyebrow. The nurse could have healed it in a second, scar and all, but the stubborn part of him waited until he got home, where Luna could heal it from the safety of his bathroom. “We didn’t know they were going to explode your shop.”

“Yeah.” George is clearly upset about that, but they won’t talk about it now, not when there are so many other things that touches on. Like the idea that it was his home that they attacked, and that they were going after something that was just as much a part of Fred as it was a part of him. It had to hurt, to see the thing they created together torn down. “Not much point to it.”

“Of course there’s point.” Draco is leaning back against the window. The only one of them seriously hurt enough to warrant a bed was Ginny, who had broken her ankle in three places from where she apparently vaulted herself off a roof and had to wait for a specialist.

“And what’s that?” Ron wasn’t as awful towards him as normal, but there was still a certain snap to his voice whenever he spoke to him.

“Fear. Terror. The idea that nothing is safe.” Draco is staring at the ground, and he still looks beautiful, even if he’s covered in dirt and grime and blood. Harry remembers what he was going to tell him and is hit with a wave of gratitude that he didn’t, because he doesn’t think he could bear leaving him behind, ever, and not having the right to demand to know if he was okay.

(There was a moment, where Harry was fighting and he saw Draco get knocked down to the dirt, just one heart stopping moment where he thought he might not be getting back up. And in that moment, he realized how pointless it all was, to throw away what they have today for a tomorrow that wasn’t even theirs yet, to let something so perfect slip through his hands.)