第4章 章節

” he says in a rush, before she can open it. Her hand slides off the knob.

“Don’t be. He’s going to get better,” she says, in a tone that dares him to contradict her.

Harry bites the inside of his cheek. “Do you have any idea who…?”

“Yes.” She’s still facing the door.

“Well, who is it?” Harry asks, impatient and dropping all pretense of tact.

“That’s none of your business.”

“But—if it’s someone I know, maybe I can help. Bring them together, or something.” Harry cringes to hear himself. Is he offering to play matchmaker for Draco Malfoy? The thought sort of makes him want to throw up.

“No,” Pansy says.

“Why not?”

“Don’t you get it?” she shrills, whirling on him with her small, jeweled fists clenched. “You never speak the name of the victim’s beloved.”

“What? Why?” Harry stammers.

“It doesn’t do anyone any good,” she says, furiously. “You can’t make yourself love someone else, not even to save their life. Knowing would only make the beloved suffer. And if the victim finds out, having confirmation that their feelings aren’t returned makes their condition worse.”

“If he’s sick,” Harry argues, “then doesn’t he already know they’re not—”

“It’s the rejection, you dolt. Rejection makes deathe faster.”

Harry’s hands ache to clench into fists, mimicking Pansy’s posture, but he shoves them into his pockets instead and affects a careless slouch.

“S’pose that makes sense,” he mumbles. “Sorry, okay? I’m not trying to make him sicker. I wouldn’t tell the person. I just—”

Advertisement

“For once, Potter,” Pansy says, “mind your own business.”

That weekend, Harry trudges into the library, expecting not to emerge for the next forty-eight hours. Though he’d never admit it to her face—that’s just asking for a lecture— Hermione wasn’t wrong about him falling behind on his studies. Now he’s got three separate papers due early next week, and between classes and his ongoing D.A. lessons, which are more popular than ever, his homework needs to get done now or not at all.

He rounds a bookshelf, finds the table he usually shares with Ron and Hermione, and stops dead in his tracks. Draco is leaning over the tabletop, scribbling something on a piece of parchment and nodding along while hispanion rattles off what sounds like book titles. Thepanion in question is none other than Hermione.

She sees him before he can walk away. Draco follows the line of her sight to Harry, and grimaces. A flicker of his eyelashes and then his gaze drops as he shakes out his parchment to dry it. There are smudges of ink on his pale, spindly hands. Harry is close enough to make out the delicate ridges of his knuckles and the blue of the veins in his wrists.

He hasn’t been this close to Draco in weeks. Once it came out that Draco was dying, he’d stopped fighting with Harry. Stopped acknowledging him altogether. No more name- calling in the hallways; no more petty sabotage in potions class; no more sniping at one another when they crossed paths on their way to the Great Hall; and absolutely no more fi