分卷阅读36（2 / 2）

“Do you need help?” Harry is shrugging off Draco’s coat and yelling hello to the others at the sa ti, and it’s one of those monts that make sothing inside Draco pull tight, because it’s a reminder of how easy this thing could be. How it would be like breathing, like knowing the lyrics to a song that you used to love but hadn’t heard in news, like knowing all the steps on a path you’ve walked every day for a year. “I can do it.”

“No, no.” Percy waves him off with a chuckle, but Draco can see how he wavers. “Penny and I have got it. Go. Relax. Enjoy yourselves.”

Draco’s never quite sure if enjoynt is the right word.

Like, sure, it’s fun. Normally, the nights pass by without anything pletely horrible happening, and if it did, he could always retreat to hide behind Harry, anyways. Still, he doesn’t like the balancing act, where he’s taking part in the conversation while still excepting it to be taken away.

“Horrid, isn’t it?” George had dressed up for the occasion, in a button down with actual cuffs on the sleeves. It’s a change from the old jeans and wash warn t-shirt that he normally shows up in when dinner is at his parents’ house, but Draco supposes there are different rules when you go to Percy’s. “Having to sit here and pretend to be fine.”

His voice is bitter, but he doesn’t look like he’s upset. Just separate sohow. Other. Not like the rest of his family, who have fallen into their places without question and picked up where they had left off the last ti they had seen each other, pulling a board ga off the shelves and sitting cross legged around the coffee table without Percy inviting them to do so.

(Maybe he can’t do that anymore, Draco thinks, watching him settle back into the leather couch cushions and stare past the rim of his beer bottle. Maybe there’s no way to find your place, when you only occupy one half of what it used to be. Maybe all the good parts, the parts that belong, got cut away with the part that left and now he’s left with this.)

“It’s not terrible.” There’s a particularly loud burst of laughter from the floor, and Draco watched as Ginny bent double over with laughter, leaning into Harry for support. Her hair is thrown over his shoulder, like their edges have blurred so they bee one person instead of two. He’s surprised to find that he wasn’t jealous. “We just need ti to ease our way into things.”

It was the best description. Draco liked to think of when he was little and just started wading into the pool, how, even when all the other kids could jump off the edge into the deep end or dive head first into the lakes and ponds and rivers, he took his ti, standing on the edge, whatever it might be. He would wait on that sand or stones or steps as the water lapped up over his ankles, his shins, his knees, because as small as he was, he could not stand the feeling of all that cold washing over him at once. He would have to wade in step by step, mont by mont, breath by breath, until he could no longer pinpoint which parts of him were water and which parts were skin.

These dinners were kind of like that.

Beside him, George snorts and then stands up, patting at the pocket of his jeans until he locates his cigarettes. He pauses long enough to bend down and tap his bottle against Draco’s. “Cheers, mate.” He’s undoing his cuffs, and Draco knows that this is one of the tis where he cannot take it. Where he has to leave. “But I was always able to dive right in.”

Dinner is stifling. At the Burrow, dinner is bowls spilling over with food and old stains on tablecloths, elbows knocking into each other and extra servings you didn’t want being heaped onto your plate without asking you first, Molly’s admonishnts and Arthur’s questions and Ginny’s never ending laughter. It is always out in the garden, too, with umbrella charms cast over their heads when it was raining, because with all the extra guests, they no longer fit in the kitchen. It was not the kind of al he had grown up with (that was a long table with only three seats taken, his father at the head and his mother picking at her food, pinching off tiny portions, his hands tense at the thought of what might happen if he were to spill sothing, this was not a house ant for sses and mistakes), but it was one that he had gotten used to.

This—here at Percy’s, with his dull-colored decorations and fancy plates and girlfriend who was trying too hard to play the hostess—was sothing that clearly none of them were ready for. In a strange twist of events, it was Draco who was carrying on the conversation, peppering each guest in turn with small talk when the talking died down, plinting Penelope on anything he could think of, even starting a debate on Quidditch in the lag between dinner and dessert. Everyone shoots him grateful looks, especially when he pulls Percy away from the topic of the ministry and when the al was done, Penelope took a break from clearing the table to stand beside him.

“Thank you so much.” Now that it’s just them, she has relaxed—her smile is not so wide and her voice is not so loud, like she has stopped using her stage persona. “I’ve only ever had the one sibling, and I’m still not used to all of them. And it isn’t, well,” She inclines her head towards Percy, who is desperately trying to interject himself in Bill and Charlie’s conversation but is clearly failing, like every ti he thinks of sothing clever to say, the topic has already moved on. “It’s never been easy for him, and especially not after last year.”

Last year. The war. The Battle. Draco’s heard it called a lot of nas, but it all boils down to the sa thing, like they are stretching out their arms to the invisible carnage and saying: look at us. Look at this past still written on our skin. this is the thing that ruined us.

“It wasn’t a problem. It’ll get easier. First dinner party is always the hardest.” He pats her on the shoulder, tries to toe the line between forting and snobbish. Sotis, he doesn’t know when to stop. “You did fine.”

He ans to tell her other things—that her pork roast was cooked just the right amount, where it practically fell apart on her fork, that there was a place that rents out house elves, a full staff of them where she could pick one to hold on retainer for nights like this, that the wine didn’t really match with what she was serving but that her choice in art work was impeccable, all these lessons he had learned without aning too—but then Percy stood up, clearing his throat and tapping a fork against his glass, like this was so Jane Austen novel and he was their lead man.

“If I could have your attention.” He says it like he’s conducting an orchestra, but maybe that’s what it took, to make a family of nine pay attention to you. And Luna. It was hard to grab Luna’s attention. “I didn’t just call you here for a family get together. I call you here because I have an announcent.”