&ill in the room, but now they are mostly quiet, almer, w their way through apologies. It’s fuhey should be, but when you peel away all the bigotry and eh year, it really just was two kids beiy.
“Do you remember,” Drao hoked out, wheeziill goihey reouories of Hagrid’s agial reatures ss. “Those badges I made for the triwizard tod, I spent ages w on fi spell, made them all myself, and you were so mad at Ron that you barely eveo are.”
“I ared,” Harry admitted, remembering the w arouions ssroom. “But they were funny.”
&hing was funime that Ron ursed himself into belhing up slugs, but it was also sort of sad, ohey wh their problems and got to the legay underh. “Do you remember whehe train?” Harry asked quietly. “With d Goyle?”
“Yeah.” Drao sobered up and stopped ughing. “Ron’s rat bit o it?”
God, he did, Harry thought, a was ahing, how maer was brought up in Ron and Harry’s hildhood. “And you offered to show me the right sort of wizards.”
“I was a git.” They’d lost trak over how mahey’ve admitted that to eah other over the past hour, but this time he said it fierely. “Yht. You were the o he was doing. And I was the idiot that believed everything my father said.”
“So let me show you now.” Harry barely had a he was , but all he khat he had to offer, to help Drao pull himself out of his pe he had found himself in. “Ihe right kind of people.”
“Okay.” Drao held out his hand, and for one, Harry atually shook it without feelihem would try to kill the other in the proess. “I’m in.”
Chapter 5
Drao
&aken wandering around the house when Harry isn’t there.
Drao isn’t sure why he does it, other tha without shool or a job or any responsibilities he’s got hours’ worth of free time and nothing to fill it with, uually wants ter up oeahing him how to rohet. Kreaher had bee it, showing him rooms that he ould around to leaning beause of his khe pes that he won’t go ahey hold too many memories, and all of a sudden he ing doer in bathrooms and wiping away the dust that has piled up in the library, like he ould srub away the darkried hard enough.
He fis of the past whe expets it. That’s part of it, too, ohe reasoo take these walks through the house and stik his Harry ft out refused to put foot ihered up khey’re treasure —a baby photo of his auer from his father tuked into a drawer—but it’s not uo pull himself up ihat he uands why Harry seems to want to fill this house up with en.
It’s to hase away the ghosts.
All Drao had done was move a box, and all of a sudden photos were p out, flooding the floor, a huhe same faes fshing up at him, wavihere is a muh younger Professor Lupin with his arm ed around a lean shaven Sirius Bk, a man who looked like Harry with his arm ed around someone who had Harry’s eyes, Professor Moody wheill had both eyes. He thinks it is o past, at first, but thehrough some more and fihings—Nyphmadora Tonks holding out her hand with the smallest e ring he had ever seen er, Ginny and Hermione leaniher to pose for the piture, the Weasley family gathered arouable as someo be their mother yells at them. There are people he dnize and people he does—Fred Weasley, Gee rofessors, Dumbledore, Hermione, and Harry, always Harry at the ehings, happy and ughing.
A lot of these people are dead, He thinks, and it is not for the first time that Drao begins to fully appreiate how young they all were, how muh they had to lose just a year ago. All the things that they did lose. Muh too young to be soldiers.
That’s how Harry finds him, sittier of a sea of photographs, looking at all these faes that he knows he o an nnize. Drao looks up at him like he is lost and Harry is his light house, hands full of memories, photographs full of the urrent dead and dying.
& knoas going to happen,” He says finally, after Harry has sat down aross from him and reahed fraphs of his ow his knees were pressed up against Drao’s. They have gotten to a box that is just full of the twiogether at diwins in their room, the twins holding out their haheir piture from beiwins pying exploding snap with Roeaming up against Bill fame of Exploding Snap, all the ti piled up while they were livihey were together, and safe, ahey didn’t know how short it would all be.”
“Ginny took most of these.” Harry was rying, tears slipping down from his heeks. The death of Fred had hit him the hardest. They were all hard, but it eially awful to wath the shok waves that the grief sent through the Weasley family. “Her dad bought this muggle amera from a poroid. Spent the wh pitures.”
“You all looked happy.” Drao had always bought into his father’s idea that he was the luky o what it took to make a great man oket full of gold and a big house, a beautiful