When You Turn Your Back [Drarry]

[18] Human

The rubbish was cleaned out with just one wave of the wand, although the magic still hovered around longer than Draco's guess, cleaning out the remnants of his research paper bit by bit as he watched them dissolve into the thin air of unknown. Silence prevailed amongst the occupants of the flat like a thick sheet of glass hanging above their necks with an ominous sway. But they still didn't speak, yet watched Draco banishing things or rearrange them away from the their ways in the same straight face Hermione had woken up to. It was disturbing.

“Will anyone speak?” Harry was the one to break it. “I have got a feeling that I'm the only one that knows nothing about what's going on.”

“Technically, you are right.” Draco lowered down on the chair opposite to the couple, sparing only a mere glance at their clasped hands.

“Then enlighten me, please.”

“You remember the time I told you they are hiding something?” Draco nodded towards Ron and Hermione.

“Yes, are they?”

“Oh, they most certainly are. Only it's your choice if you want to hear — ”

“Yes, as if Harry knows everything you.” Hermione cut in with a bite.

“Alright, if you want to do it like that, then why don't you tell him yourself. Let's give him a chance to decide for himself.”

“Oh, you don't know — ”

“I know what you did, how you did it, and why you did it. Is there anything else I need to know? Any more that you have done for the sake of — ”

“I sent you to a different timeline — before eighth year could start.” Hermione let out in one breath, choking on the aftermath of a secret that had been buried long enough to suffocate a being to death.

Draco couldn't look at Harry only because of the look of deception that morphed over the curious eyes. It was hard not to think of the face back in the building staring right into his eyes, asking questions that he knew he couldn't answer. Because there weren't any other than blind rage and silly actions, none that could have been explained in plausible words.

“Is this a joke?” it was hard for Draco to look Harry in the eye. the sheer hurt that flashed in his eyes were enough to turn his head in shame that he had hidden even the merest bit of information from him.

“I wish it was.” Draco interrupted with a grunt of building sorrow. “The man behind all of this — it was you — your past trying to get back to his own life, trying to find a way to snatch his world back that he deserved.”

“You are joking!”

“No, I'm not! Ask them, the people who did it just because they were too blinded by their rage of loss to rethink their actions. Hermione lost her parents, never found them after she erased their memory, and Ron lost his brother, Fred. They clearly don't understand time very well. Thought if the war never happened they would get back what they had lost.” Draco held his hand in his head, silent tears dripping on his lap.

“It was a mistake. We made a mistake — ”

“An irreversible one at that.” Draco reared up from his fatal position. “You sent a man away from his life, from the world he knew to right under what he dreaded the most. You left a man alone with a person who he had to lose everything to defeat. Do you understand what you have done? Do you have any idea what he must have been through all these years!”

“I — we know we did a mistake. It was completely irrational. I am — sorry —”

“Sorry for what?” Harry asked, his voice completely calm from some unrecognisable emotion he refused to let out.