“Malfoy? I thought —“
“What did you think?”
“That you were busy,” Harry finished, a little lamely.
“I was,” Draco said. “Now I’m not.” He came over to the window, and Harry swung his legs down so that Draco could join him on the ledge.
They were opposite the library’s two great windows of colored glass, and the moonlight that came through cast alternating patterns of poison green, ice blue, and blood red across their skin. “So what is it that’s got you looking like you just found out that you and Professor Trelawny are the last two people left on the planet and you have to repopulate the earth?”
Harry frowned. “Professor Trelawny? Where do you come up with these things?”
“So it’s not that.”
“It’s not—“ Harry began indignantly, then checked himself. “It’s Hermione.”
“This is me,” said Draco, “falling off this ledge with astonishment.” He raised the lantern a little to cast more light on Harry’s face. “You do look like death,” he admitted. “What did she do?”
“It’s what I did. I asked her to marry me.”
At that, Draco was so honestly startled that his hand jerked and he nearly dropped the lamp. He caught it again by its thin wire handle, and it swung in his grip, sending a crazy-quilt pattern of shadows shooting around the room. “Why would you do a completely blockheaded thing like that?” he demanded.
The look Harry turned on him was distintly sour. “What’s wrong with asking people to marry you?”
“There’s a lot wrong with asking people to marry you. That implies you’re asking more than one person, and won’t they be annoyed when they all show up at the church at the same time? As for what’s wrong with asking Hermione: nothing particularly except that neither of you is old enough to get married. Do you expect her to be some kind of child bride?”
“Seventeen is adult in the wizarding world,” Harry muttered.
“Yes,” Draco agreed, “and that means you can get married, not that you should. Not everything that happens to be legal is a bloody brilliant idea.
Of course the converse is also true—“
“But I want to get married. I want to marry Hermione. There isn’t anyone else I can picture myself married to, and I can’t bear the thought of losing her.”
“Losing her?” Draco set the lamp down carefully. “Who said anything about losing her? It’s not an either-or, you know, marriage or nothing.
Besides,” he added, more gently, “you shouldn’t marry someone just to keep them tied to you. People stay because they want to, and if they don’t, there’s nothing you can do to make them.”
“My parents married young.”
“There was a war on. They knew they might die.” And they did, the obvious corollary, hung between them, unsaid.
“I feel like I might die,” said Harry grimly. “I feel like there’s nothing to hold on to.”
There’s me, Draco wanted to say, but was it true? Would it be true once the spell on them was lifted? He knew Harry was thinking the same thing, could tell it by the look on his face (and would he ever know someone like that again, be able to deduce their every thought from their slightest movement?), so he said, “Don’t be melodramatic, Potter. Did she say she never wanted to see you again?”
“No,” Harry admitted.
“Did she say it made her sick to look at you?”
“No.”
“What did she say?”
“She said no,” Harry replied. “She said ‘she couldn’t possibly.’”
“And what did you do?”
“I left,” Harry said, in a tone that indicated that this had clearly been the only sensible course of action. “I went looking for you or Ron, but Ron wasn’t around and you were — busy.”
“A delicate way of putting it,” Draco said. “Has it occurred to you to ask her why she said no?”
“Of course not! You just don’t do that. I mean, I have some dignity,” Harry added stiffly, looking suddenly very young in his elegant dress clothes, his glasses halfway down his nose and his tie coming unraveled.
“Dignity just gets in the way where romance is concerned,” Draco said thoughtfully. “I’d ask her. It’s Hermione. She’s probably got a reason.”
“But maybe I don’t want to know what it is.”
“It’s always better to know,” Draco advised him. “Otherwise you’ll rip yourself up wondering. And bore the hell out of me by jawing about it endlessly,” he added, in a helpful tone.
Harry put his hands up to cover his face; when he took them away, he looked resigned. “All right. But if it goes badly, Malfoy, I’m holding you responsible.” He slid down off the window ledge and Draco followed him, setting the lamp back down on the desk where he’d found it. They left the room together, both of them blinking in the sudden bright light of the corridor outside.
Draco looked sideways at Harry. “Do you need a drink to firm your resolve, Potter?”
“No. When I drink I just get stupid.” Harry squared his shoulders. “I’ll be all right.”
