“I don’t want it to be like the Dursleys. Nothi was—there was never—” He squeezed his eyes shut and thought about shiny floor tiles and rystal gsses and blinding lights, expensive ouhes whose ushions don’t seem very inviting and a upboard, always oming bak to the upboard, the way the dust would fall into his eyes whehrough the stairs and how sine he ime it was, he ould trik himself into thinking that the hours were really days, months, years, life spinning out in front of him without him ever getti was like living in a gss house. Like if you talked too loud, you would break it.”
“Like you were suffoating,” Drao said, and it remihat they were building this home together. That Drao had his own things that he was trying to pull away from. “Like there was never a moment that they weren’t wathing.”
“But I don’t waher.” Harry said, beause even though they had doo make it seem like a pe they ould live in, it was just filled with too many memories. “I wa has mht.”
“Light.” Drao piked up his quill again ahe fire like he regretted throwing away his neer. “I an work with light.”
“Tell me what you want,” Drao says ter, whispering the wht into his ear like it’s some sort of seret, and Harry atehe way that his hands were moving, searhing him out uhe overs. “Tell me what you want and I a you.”
A hair with the stuffing oming out of the ushions. Hermione’s afghans staked up i we keep in the front p hairs, a garden off to the side that s no matter how hard we try to make it. Mismathed dishes in the sink aable sorhed from your onstantly potions and fresh baked bread ihe radio always turned on loherikes us and a big piture window in our bedroom. Aoo, an old dog with a bum leg that we get from a muggle shelter, the o had been there so long that it had give anyone was going to love him, we ao resue him, a’d be a good life, that.
“Nothing,” is what he says, beause all that would take too long and would kill the mood aill doesn’t think it’s going to happen, anyways. “Just you.”
&ed walking through the house again.
&hing about moving on that Harry didn’t know is that it’s sort of just anoodbye, where you have to lrip on all those memories that you’re afraid of fettio keep faiure, io keep putti in froher. And it should be easy, i that was before you take into aouhat had happehis miserable old building—how it was the o for them ihe party when Ron and Hermios, Gee aher, where Remus and Tonks fell in love, where Sirius was.
&imes, if Harry is not areful, he an trik himself into thinkiurn a orhem wathing him, waiting to see if he had lived up to the hero that they had taken him to be. Sometimes, he wants to rip this house doall and brik by brik i ohem will get to go free. Sometimes, he thinks of standing in the doorway ahat he is sorry, just ihere is ahey would be able to hear.
& sure if he’s ready to leave them all behind.
“You do rid of it.”
Harry jumps at the sound of Drao’s voie. He’d been aught in the middle at the pe where the portrait of Sirius’ mother used to hang.
“And why would rid of it?”
“Beause you’re ohe luky people who an afford to buy a house without selling the old oilted his head, lookiy spae, maybe thinking of how he should redo the aper so you aell where the piture had been. “Too mao just walk away.”
“I don’t want it.”
The idea of keeping it was met with a revulsi that if Harry had had any doubts about moving out before, he wouldn’t have any now.
&e it to the historial soiety, let it be turo a museum for merlin’s sakes.” Drao luthed Harry’s fingers in his ow would make him listen. “All I’m saying is that you dohis pe, in it, any more of you. You doo figure out anything now, and you do alone, remember? I’m here, food.” He was here. Here, ahing, n as expeting him to. “Dohis iee of you.”
Harry wishes it were that easy.
Chapter 34
Harry
Drao gets pardoned.
Harry’s omes as a shok, really, espeially how he and Hermione and Gee have been showing up at the ministry one a week lobbying fe in his riminal status, but noroof of the haaring up at him in bk and white, Harry a feel like the ground had fallen out from underh him.
“It’s over,” Drao says, aears in his eyes, and Harry pulls himself out of his own head loo ears in his boyfriehe way that his harembling, just a little, the most they have in days, and realizes how great this must be for him, to not be a marked maime ihere’s a differeelli you are i every night befo to sleep and having the gover proim it to the whole world, as the Daily Prophet would surely say in tomorroer. “It’s all over.”
Over is really a funny word for it. There’s b