very awkwardly, and held him up.
Harry let go of the chair instantly, and seized hold of Draco, his hands fisted in the front of Draco's shirt, so tightly that it was painful. He smelled of blood and metal and sweat and salt, and his grip pulled the shirt down and the collar cut into the back of Draco's neck but Draco didn't mind. He stood where he was and tried not to breathe too quickly because he was afraid that if he did, Harry would let go. As if they had been closed suddenly in a glass box, an utter and profound stillness seemed to have fallen over the small space that held them. The world, the sounds and colors of it, seemed muted and distant and far away. All that was real was the hammering beat of Harry's pulse in the wrist Draco held, and all he could hear was the rough sound of Harry's breathing and the water splashing into the sink.
Harry had begun to shiver. Draco was acutely conscious of how fragile the other boy was, how thin his shoulders were, how light his bones, how close the pulse ran to the surface of his skin — he could feel Harry's heartbeat through the hands against his chest. He could feel Harry again, as though some unprecedented alchemy of love and grief had worked a change in his blood: he could feel his desolation and his horror and his appalling guilt. He felt these emotions but they did not hurt him the way that he would have expected them to, because they were Harry's, and he had not realized how much he had missed knowing what Harry was feeling until he felt it again.
'I'm getting blood on your shirt,' Harry said. Draco couldn't see his face, but his voice sounded like his own voice again. 'I'm sorry.'
'I don't mind,' Draco said.
'I killed that man,' Harry said. His voice was affectless, stripped raw by shock. 'And I'll have to do it again.'
'Probably,' Draco said.
'I can't stand it,' Harry said.
'You can stand it,' Draco said. 'You have to.'
Harry didn't relax but his hands loosened their death grip on Draco's shirt. 'I'm a murderer now,' he said. 'Everything's different.'
Draco remembered Sirius holding him next to his father's grave, and stroking his hair and his back, and saying soothing things. He still couldn't think of a soothing thing to say but he put his other arm around Harry and lightly touched the back of his blood-and-water soaked shirt.
'Not everything,' he said.
Harry's voice was quiet. 'Thank you.'
'For what?'
'For not saying, No, you're not a murderer.'
Draco didn't reply. You're welcome seemed inappropriate, almost flip, but what else was there to say? He had never been taught that consoling words were anything more than lies, and he wouldn't lie to Harry. Harry trusted him not to. He couldn't say everything would be all right, because in some sense it wouldn't — the Harry he was holding was changing, even as he held him; he would never really be the same Harry again. If he could hold Harry together with his hands, keep him from breaking apart, from losing what he must inevitably lose — Draco would have given Harry any part of himself if he could, but what Harry was losing was something Draco had never had. He was not sorry himself that that man was dead.
He was sorry Harry had been the one who killed him. He wished he had killed the man himself, not because the idea gave him any pleasure, but because it didn't horrify him either, and it clearly horrified Harry. It was something he himself could have borne so easily, and for the first time, Draco began not just to know but to understand that there were things he could give Harry that Harry didn't already have and couldn't give himself.
He thought of what Dumbledore had told him, weeks ago, about Harry.
He is strong, and can endure much, and for what he cannot endure, he has you.
He remembered a few hours before, how determined he had been to cut the tie that bound him to Harry and walk away and never look back. He had not thought about what would happen after that: a sort of blank, clenched pain was all he had been able to imagine, going on and on with every beat of his heart until all heartbeats stopped. He had known that what he was saying was hurting Harry: he could see the desolation in those clear eyes, and he had liked it because it meant that Harry cared enough to be hurt. The idea of a Harry who felt nothing at all was more terrifying to him than a Harry who hated him. If he could make Harry hate him again at least that would have been something.
But Harry didn't hate him. He knew that now. You didn't cling like this to someone that you hated. You didn't trust them to carry you through nightmarish pain, to hold you up and not to let you fall. Maybe Harry didn't love him enough, or in the right sort of way, but he trusted Draco and he needed him and the line between that and love was so thin that Draco couldn't have drawn it himself. He could feel, through the tangle of desolation and horror that wound Harry like a net of wires, how much Harry needed him. He hurt, and he wanted, and what he wanted was Draco, because Draco would never lie to him and never tell him things were all right when they weren't.
'I could make you forget,' Draco said, 'easily enough, if that was what you wanted — is it what you want?'
Harry straightened up. 'No. No, I don't want that.' He paused. 'Unless you think — '
'Don't,' Draco said, 'ask me to decide. If you want to know what I think, I think that I wish it had been me who killed him, because I wouldn't have minded and I hate that you mind. But I also think that you're right, you'll have to do this again. And I can't keep making you forget every single time. I'm not saying it'll get easier, either, Harry, because maybe it won't.
But you've never chosen to do anything because it was easier, you've never expected things to be easy, you don't even like it when things are easy — I've told you that before. You're strong enough for this — strong enough even to do things you know are evil — you just don't want to be, is all.'
Harry was silent for a moment. 'I thought you were done being my friend,' he said finally.
'That doesn't matter,' Draco said, 'that doesn't have anything do to with this.'
Harry laughed shakily. 'Sometimes I wish you'd lie to me,' he said, 'just a little.'
'No, you don't.'
'You're right. I don't.' Harry let go of Draco's shirt entirely, but didn't move away from him. 'Malfoy…?'
'Yes?'
'What's the difference between being strong enough to do things you know are evil, and actually being evil, then?'
'I don't know.' Draco paused for a moment, thought about the difference between defeat and acceptance, and the blood on Harry's hands that had transferred itself to his own clothes and skin, and the fact that he didn't mind. 'I don't know, Potter. I really don't know.'
In the half-light all Ginny could see was a tangle of black fabric and a sprawl of slim, pale limbs; an arm flung out at an angle, legs bent towards the chest, a white throat splashed with black blood. No pulse in the throat. Fingers bent into claws. The wand clattered out of Ginny's nerveless fingers as she flung herself down by the corpse, put her hand on the shoulder, pulled -
It rolled towards her and Ginny jerked her hand back, a sharp cry escaping her throat. Bulging eyes stared at her out of a face so distorted with horror that it was barely recognizable, but Ginny would have known her anyway by the gaudy barrettes, the tangle of dark brown hair, the bitter little mouth: Pansy Parkinson.
There was no wound on her that Ginny could see, but the white front of her shirt was stained with red, and there was blood in her brown hair. For a moment Ginny thought of unbuttoning her shirt to see what Tom had done to her, but she quailed; what did it matter, anyway? What mattered was that she was dead.
