”

She stares at him for a moment, like she can take the measure of him just by looking at him, and Draco squirms.

“Yes. You did.” She brushed past him and grabbed a drink from Ge before turning back, something blue and sparkly. “How’s the house huntinging?”

“House hunting?” He stumbles over the words, breath knocked out of him, and Draco has to fight the urge to vomit, because Luna’s perceptions were one thing, but having Lavender Brown just knowing was a bit uncanny. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh,e on. You know the department I work in. And I’m sure you remember me from school.” She walks away, and Draco trails after her like he’s on some sort of leash, sliding into the booth beside her. She has chosen the darkest corner of the room for them to sit in. “I was horribly nosy.”

Draco stays quiet, watching her arms instead of her face, at those shining, silver marks. He’d heard they took weeks to heal, the skin trying to peel away from the bone, a side effect of the fact that Greyback wasn’t changed but still infected. She was healed now, but the pain must have been terrible.

“So, the whole you and Harry thing isn’t working?” She puts air "es around the “you and Harry” bit. “I heard that you are in love.”

“It is,” Draco says, too insistent. “We are.”

“Then why are you leaving?”

Her eyes are kind, and he is the person that she sought out just because he did not stare at her scars, and this girl who used to turn heads everywhere she went has now chosen to hide herself in the darkest place she can find, so Draco finds himself telling her, about everything, how he doesn’t belong and how he is forever indebted to Harry and the offhandments that Harry makes, how he is not sure where the limits are or what lines he is crossing or if he is expected to go. “And I’m terrified,” He ends with, cursing himself from saying so much to this girl he barely even knows, but at least she is not thinking about the stares or her skin or the war, just him and his troubles. “Terrified that he doesn’t want me, still, that I read this all wrong, and I can’t even ask him, because I’m scared the answer is no.”

“So it’s better to run away?”

“It’s better to be the one who leaves.” The words are ringing hollow, but they are true, he knows it. “Leave before you can get left.”

“It’s not my place,” She says, just like every other person who gives advice without being asked. “But he loves you. I know he loves you, because I’ve watched him, watched the people that he cares about, and he looks at them all the same way, like he would burn away anything in his path to get to you. And when a man loves you like that, he’s not going to want to leave you behind for anything in the world.” Lavender reaches across the table, and she is so much smarter than he remembers from Hogwarts. “There’s nothing for you to be afraid of.”

“But there’s so much left to lose, when you know what it’s like for someone to love you like that.” Draco said, the words cracking in his mouth, blistering his tongue as he says them. “It’ll burn you up.”

“Trust me.” Her left hand reaches up her right arm and traces the scars wrapping around her, like she had them memorized them. “There are worse ways to go.”

It’s another hour before he finds his way back to Harry.

“Dance with me.” He drags Draco to him, out onto the dance floor.

“It’s not a slow song.” Draco laughs, but he still wants to sit down, because this night has been exhausting. “And you said you hate any other type.”

“It sounds like a slow song to me.” It wasn’t a slow song. It was heavy metal. Ginny was three feet away from them and actually head banging, with Luna swaying beside her, a vaguely bemused expression on her face. “I don’t know what you’re listening to.”

He loves me, Draco thinks, and here the two of them are, slow dancing in this room, and it’s like the rest of the building is falling away, burning away, Luna and Ginny and the rest disappearing because they just don’t matter, really, only the two of them do.

“Are you alright?” Harry looks concerned. “Or, I mean, are we alright? Because Luna said that you seem sad, and I’ve learned that Luna is normally right about things.”

Draco thinks about the house in London, about the worry that’s made a home in his stomach. He thinks about how he is afraid to leave what he isfortable with, how Grimmauld Place was not a home but it feels like theirs, like they both have an equal share. He thinks about how worried he is that he will always be in Harry’s debt, no matter how much they love each other, because you cannot be saved by someone and not feel a bit like you must make it up to them in any way you can, and how much he does not want that hanging over his head for the rest of his life.

But he also thinks about Lavender, about their scars, her insistence that theirs is a burning love, that there are worse ways to go than out in a flash of fire and maybe how it is worth it, that they’ll get past those things, because they love each other and maybe its stronger than this mess that the world has left them in.

(Maybe. Most likely. But that had not mattered the night before, when he packed all his clothes with a wave of his wand and got ready to sneak out of the house without warning just because it would hurt less, but he could only get halfway down the stairs before he turned around and crawled back into bed, shoulders heaving with silent sobs, hot tears streaming down his face and dripping down into the sheets.)

“Of course I am.” He knots his fingers in the fabric of Harry’s shirt. “We’re golden.”

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