第9章 章節
child decides who you are, in many cases. In most, I would say.”
“But your symptoms didn’t start until you were sixteen. Less than two years go,” Mrs. Malfoy protests.
“Because that’s when I realized we’d never—that there was no hope,” he says. “There was a point when not even my wildest delusions could have made me believe we’d—it doesn’t matter.”
Mrs. Malfoy opens her mouth to argue, but Draco swings his legs over the side of the bed. His throat works as if he’s trying to hold back a cough, but it escapes him in a puff of air and petals before he bends down and grabs for a small bin someone had left beside the bed. When the flood subsides, the bin is nearly overflowing with lilies. Draco rests his forehead on his knee and takes in a rattling breath. His voice, when he speaks, is hoarse.
“We’re wasting our time,” he says quietly, looking at no one. “They’ve said they can’t do it.”
“I suppose you’re pleased,” Mrs. Malfoy says, with a mixture of anger and worry that makes her sound startlingly like Mrs. Weasley. “You were looking for a reason to say no.”
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” Draco scrubs his sleeve over his mouth. The robes are hanging off him, Harry realizes, and when he gets to his feet he tilts a little as if he might fall over any moment. Still, he lifts his pointy chin and straightens up his bony frame and hobbles out of the room with as much grace as he can manage while a monstrous garden lays siege to his innards.
Harry, in his dark corner under the relative safety of the cloak, is reeling. Draco Malfoy —the stupid, slimy bully who never let an easy target go untormented; the one who’d been both Snape’s and Umbridge’s pet; the one who’d gone and got a Dark Mark slapped on his arm—is in love.
No, more than that.
Draco Malfoy is so in love not even the most advanced medical magic the Wizarding World has to offer can do anything about it. Draco Malfoy is so in love his body would shut down and die if that love was taken from him. Draco Malfoy’s love for this mysterious individual is foundational to who he is.
Harry’s head spins. None of this makes any sense, not unless Draco is in love with some Death Eater locked up in Azkaban right now. The thought sends such a wave of disgust roiling through Harry that he must have made a sound, because Professor McGonagall looks —he would’ve sworn on Gryffindor’s grave—straight at him.
Harry holds his breath, but he is suddenly as certain as he’d ever been about anything that she knows he’s there. But she says nothing, and after a few moments, she turns away. He lets out the breath he’d been holding—softly—and starts shuffling to the door, not wanting to push his luck any longer.
“Gentlemen,” McGonagall tells the Healers. “Thank you for making the journey, and for examining my student. Although, I must confess, your diagnosis leaves me heavy- hearted.”
“Hanahaki is aplex affliction,” says Healer Ross. “There is still much we do not understand. Tell me, is there no chance the boy’s b
