分卷阅读50（2 / 2）

“It’s .” There are tears building in his eyes. Draco had promised himself that he was done with tears. “It’s , dad.”

“What are you doing here?” They are inches away from each other. Draco could reach through the bars and touch him if he wanted to, but he doesn’t.

“I wanted to see you.” It sounds like a question. “I got permission from the minister.”

“Good of you.” His hands are trembling. There are no dentors, but it is still not a happy place—it’s cold, and damp, the water from the waves soaking in through cracks in the stone and spilling out over the floor, the only forts a lumpy mattress and threadbare clothes that do nothing to keep out the chill. He’s heard that a few have still gone crazy, left alone for as long as they are. “But you shouldn’t have e.”

He turns his back on Draco, a move that would have once devastated him, but it does not have the sa affect now, not when he is so weak from disuse that he stumbles as he moves back towards the bed, almost sending himself sprawling. I did not deserve this, Draco thinks, looking at his father, looking at this cell, rembering when he sat in front of the Wizengamot and did not even fight, but nothing he did was bad enough to warrant living this kind of life. But his father—Draco had long stopped making excuses for the things he had done. If I were here, it would be because of him, not because of .

“I wanted to talk to you.” He throws his voice through the bars, but Lucius does not move. “To tell you things. About—about Harry Potter.”

There’s a hiss from the cell beside them. Draco doesn’t flinch.

“I’ve heard about you and Harry. The guards showed a newspaper clipping.” It’s funny, how even when you are the better man, even when you are standing on the right side of the bars, how easily it is for soone else to make you feel small. “The two of you at a dance. Should I be expecting a wedding invitation any day now?”

It stings, but not as badly as Draco had thought it would. “I love him.” The words buoy him a little. His father moves, one jerk of the arm like he is reaching out to him, but does not look up. “He loves . And I think we’re going to be really happy together.”

“You think that?” His voice was silky again. It was his fake polite voice, his talking to the minister voice, his this man is a mudblood and we need to put him in his place voice. “You think that he could love you after everything you’ve done?”

“I didn’t do much.”

“You hated him. You hated his friends, the Weasley boy and that little mudblood you were always so enamored with.” The hissing starts up again, louder, joined by soone else three doors down. He wants it to stop. “You killed Dumbledore, let death eaters into the school. You think this will last, when he wakes up each day to see that mark on your arm? Or do you try to hide it?”

He knows , Draco thinks, dully, distantly, reeling a bit, because even though he had not known what to expect, he had thought that his father would be happy to see him. But I do not know him.

“I don’t use that word anymore,” He says, keeping his voice light. “Mudbloods. Very distasteful.”

“I see.” He sounds beaten, like even that attempt at reclaiming who he used to be has exhausted him. “A change of heart.”

“I just wanted to tell you. Before you really did hear about wedding invitations being sent and you don’t get one.” Draco tightened his grip on the bars again, wondering why he had ever thought this man was so special, so scary, and why it still hurts, to see the man he had loved turned into this. “Because if you’re going to make choose, dad, I’d choose Harry over you every ti. I wouldn’t even have to think about it.”

Harry loved him. Harry saved him. Harry is what kept him from finding a place to rot in this cell, when all his father did was bury him in more and more chains.

“Then maybe you should leave.”

His back is still turned to him. Draco can’t see his face, but that is okay. He doesn’t want to rember him like this.