第13章 章節
drive Harry mad. He’s smarter than Harry ever gave him credit for—the only person with better marks is Hermione. When Harry’s in a mood, he seems to know when to let him be and when to needle him until Harry realizes what a wanker he’s being and snaps out of it. Sometimes, Harry loses long seconds staring at the curve of Draco’s jaw or neck, the dip of his collarbone, the line of his shoulders and spine, the angular grace of his hands. He’s striking to look at, that’s all, but if Hermione spent too much time with them she’d— she’d misunderstand.
But Hermione is still the person he goes to when he has questions he can’t ask Draco. Questions like:
What’s the longest someone has ever lived with Hanahaki Disease? (Not long.)
Or: Are there spells to stop someone from losing weight? (Yes, but none that would counteract the side effects of Hanahaki.)
Or: If we got the victim’s beloved to drink love potion, would that get rid of the symptoms? (“Harry!” “Only as a temporary—” “Are you mad?” “We’d ask them, of course, they’d consent—” “Run that by Malfoy and see what he says about it.” “…”)
Or: Why lilies?
That particular question doesn’t ur to him right away. At first, he’s too busying to terms with the concept of a person throwing up flowers to worry about what kind of flowers they are; later, he perhaps assumes—without ever consciously thinking about it— that it’s random, or linked in some obscure way to the victim’s personality.
“No,” says Hermione. “The lilies are significant, either to him or to his beloved. That’s how it usually works, with Hanahaki. It’s always a flower that has meaning to one or both of them.”
That sends the gears in Harry’s head spinning. He’s been trying to avoid speculating about who the “beloved” is. Draco doesn’t want him to know. Harry himself doesn’t think he wants to know, most of the time. But he can’t help it. Every clue he unearths is another crack in his facade of disinterest, and before long, he’s wracking his brains for an answer.
It’s someone Draco’s known since he was eleven, at least. Maybe a fellow Hogwarts student; that’s the obvious and most likely possibility. But it could be someone who doesn’t attend Hogwarts, a glamorous friend Draco sees during his family’s holidays in France. It could even be a teacher, which, eurgh.
It’s someone whom Draco associates with lilies, or for whom lilies have some kind of significance. Of course, as Hermione tells him, lilies are flowers of death and mourning, used in funeral services and memorials…and just about everyone Draco knows came of age in wartime. If lilies hold meaning to the beloved, that doesn’t narrow things down much at all.
It’s someone whose relationship with Draco changed, irrevocably, when Draco was sixteen. Maybe he’d had a falling out with the object of his affection. Or maybe that person had fallen in love with someone else. This event, whatever it was, triggered Draco’s disease.
Harry runs through a mental checklist of all the Slytherins and the o
