第5章 章節
stfights. This should have been a relief, but there is something alarming about this docile, faded version of Draco that leaves Harry feeling unbalanced, like he’d put his foot down expecting one more step on the staircase only to find he’d reached the top without noticing. Is this really how a seven-year rivalry ends? A fizzling out, and Draco nodding courteously and saying, “Potter,” with no inflection whatsoever as he sweeps past Harry on his way out of the library?
Draco is gone before Harry manages to get his jaw off the floor. He rounds on Hermione.
“When did you make friends with him?” he asks, trying and failing to sound offhand about it.
She rolls her eyes. “We’re hardly friends, Harry, but we’re civil. Our first week back at Hogwarts, he even apologized for calling me a Mudblood. Sometimes we trade Arithmancy notes.”
Harry slams his bag on the chair across from hers, but doesn’t sit. “What did he want?”
“He’s researching Hanahaki Disease. He’s done the basic reading but now he’s expanding his search, looking into other cases of physical deterioration linked to a wizard’s own magic turning on him, and he wanted to know if I’d read anything worth his time. I suggested a few titles.”
Hermione’s tone is light but her eyes watch Harry shrewdly.
“Is he looking for a cure?” he asks. He takes his time rummaging through his bag, pulling out some parchment and a quill and his books and then just standing there fiddling with the straps like a twit.
“He didn’t say so, but I think he must be,” she says. Well, that’s something; at least the git’s not just going to roll over and die.
“Right. Anyway,” Harry says, “I ot something. Watch my things, will you?”
He doesn’t entirely know what he’s doing as he leaves Hermione sitting there. He clears the library’s doors and finds himself breaking into a run as soon as he’s out in the halls, racing down the route to the dungeons, skidding around a corner—
He almost collides with Draco, who leans against the wall with his back to Harry, a spray of lily petals at his feet and his hand squeezing his throat as he raggedly pants for breath.
“Er,” Harry says. “Alright there, Malfoy?”
“Fine, Potter,” Draco says tonelessly, wiping pink-tinged spittle off his lips with that pretentious monogrammed handkerchief and trying to keep his face turned away from Harry’s.
“Why, er, why are you bleeding, aren’t they just flowers—” Harry starts. Draco snorts and shoots him that disdainful look Harry knows all too well, and he feels the familiar hatred rearing up in his chest.
“Potter,” he says, somehow turning Harry’s own name into a weapon without even having to straighten up. “There are lilies blooming inside my lungs. There are roots wrapped around my heart and leaves rattling inside my ribcage and broken stems lining my throat and seeds in my bloodstream. I can taste the petals every time I swallow. The scent follows me into my dreams.pared to that, is a little bit of internal bleeding really so shocking?”
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Harry tears
