𝐅𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐑 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐍 𝐒𝐏𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆

Chapter 9

Memories

Stay close to me

while the sky is falling

I don't want to be left alone.

~ Sarah McLachlan

"Harry!"

He turned back at Ron's choked exclamation, his lips still tingling from their brief contact with Draco's, and squinted in the dim tunnel. "Yeah?"

But Ron didn't seem to know what to say beyond that. He only sputtered for a moment, glancing from Harry to Draco with a look of profound horror. Hermione tugged at Ron's arm and muttered something Harry couldn't hear, and Harry turned to Draco. For a moment, no one seemed to be able to move, and Harry lifted his lit wand to see the group more clearly.

In the wand light, everything was distorted.

Ron's eyes were flashing with disbelief, and he looked imploringly at Harry, as if waiting for Harry to laugh and tell him it was a joke or to perhaps morph into someone other than Ron's best mate. The jagged shadows didn't hide the pink tinge in Ron's cheeks nor the mildly disapproving look on Hermione's face as she gave Harry a small frown and squeezed Ron's arm.

Closest to Harry and Draco, Snape loomed like a specter, looking at once exasperated and bored. His lip was bleeding - from the scuffle with the guards, Harry presumed - and his face, pasty and worn, looked very much like a skeleton. His cheeks were hollow and his shadowed eyes were black pits and with the darkness behind him, he seemed to have the viscosity of one of the Hogwarts ghosts. He, at least, did not seem terribly surprised to see Harry and Draco acting so ... friendly.

Harry tore his eyes away from Snape - Snape, for whom he felt a mixed sense of affinity and resentment, for there were still so many unanswered questions - and looked at Draco. Where the golden light illuminated Draco's face, its planes and curves were sharpened. His smile seemed darker and his hair seemed paler but his eyes were fixed on Harry, and Harry gave him the slightest nod of reassurance.

And behind Draco, cast half in shadows, Harry saw Ginny. Her slack face made her seem far older than her sixteen years, and the laugh lines looked more like tear tracks, and her eyes, too, never left Harry.

Harry felt a stranger flutter in his stomach - sympathy, perhaps, or guilt, or embarrassment. He knew he ought to feel regret, ought to apologize, but his mouth wouldn't form those words. He could not apologize for caring about Draco.

He looked away.

"What the bloody hell --" Ron finally sputtered, and Harry turned to his best friend.

"Leave it alone, Ron," he warned quietly. "None of us is an enemy here." The adrenaline of the past hour was finally draining, and he let out a weary sigh. "If we're going to survive, we'll do it together, and that includes Draco from now on. Got it?"

Ron started to say something and then bit it back, darting a glance at his sister. But Ginny had composed herself now, and though her arms were folded tightly against her chest and her throat worked silently, she regarded Harry with a brave smile. Harry pretended it didn't waver and returned her smile and willed away the sinking feeling that he had just broken her heart, irreversibly, thoughtlessly.

"So," Hermione cleared her throat and, at long last, released her iron grip on Ron's arm. "What's the situation in there?" The question sounded stilted, as though Hermione were trying to believe that nothing out of the ordinary were happening and that this was just another mission for the Order.