a grave for flowers | drarry

chapter 6

chapter 6

Draco saw Harry Potter coming this time, walking up the pathway hesitantly. He rang the doorbell, even though he could easily unlock the door with a quick Alohamora. Draco stood there for a moment, staring at Potter through the curtains from a sideways angle. He could just choose not to answer. God knew how much better that decision would be.

(Since when had Draco started saying "God" instead of "Merlin?" Anymore of this and he'd be going to church with Agnes on Sundays.)

But Draco opened the door anyway, and Potter was standing there, looking awkward and short as always. 

"You don't have to come inside if you don't want to, you know," Draco told him.

"Is that your way of saying I'm not welcome?" Potter asked him with the hint of a smile, and let himself in.

Draco let him.

"Your flowers are nice, you know," Potter said, squatting down to look at a pot of herbs Draco kept on the windowsill. "They started wilting a bit, so I asked Luna—Luna Lovegood, you probably don't know her—what the hell I was doing wrong."

"Water does help, you know," Draco said. "How is she, by the way? Luna?"

Potter turned to look at him in surprise. It was one of the things that infuriated Draco, back in school. Potter wore his heart on his sleeve and his emotions on his face, and it was so easy for him. He could look awkward or uncomfortable or sad, and he was justified because he was a tortured hero and an impassioned Gryffindor. All Draco ever got for crying was a beating from his father and a Sectumsempra from Potter. 

"How do you know Luna?" Potter asked. It sounded accusatory, and Draco's pulse quickened.

"We talked," he muttered. "At Hogwarts."

"Why would she talk to you?"

Draco felt a bit woozy. He remembered this. He remembered what it was like, to hear that brash, reproachful tone come out of Potter's mouth. And he remembered how he would argue back, so bitter was he that Potter chose Ron Weasley over Draco. 

But he didn't argue back now. It had been years since Potter rejected his handshake. Draco might as well get over it. They had chosen their separate paths, and Draco would suffer for his. 

"I don't know," Draco replied truthfully. Because he really didn't know why someone like Luna Lovegood would talk to him.

"Don't give me that bullshit," Potter snapped. He looked so irritated, but so casual, leaning against the wall with his arms loosely crossed, instead of leaning forward in anger like he had in school. Like he was telling Draco that he was nothing to him. Nothing more than a harmless Muggle.

And Draco's worst fears came true. Potter could have him thrown into Azkaban in a heartbeat, if he wanted. Draco had tried so hard to be courteous and passive, terrified of making one wrong move and stepping on a landmine that was Harry Potter. But now he'd gone and done it.

"Luna was my friend," Draco tried to tell him. 

"You know, you've got some nerve, telling me a lie that big," Potter said. "You had Crabbe and Goyle, remember?"

Something in Draco's chest constricted painfully. "They weren't my friends," he said quietly. Even as he said it, Crabbe's tortured screams echoed in his ears.

"Sure looked like it to me," Potter snorted. "Why would Luna hang around a wannabe Death Eater like you?"

It was true that Draco had not taken the Dark Mark—he had narrowly escaped that curse, and it was partly the reason why he had gotten such a lighter sentence than his father. But "wannabe Death Eater"... well, that about summed him up.