harry steps in lose, as lose as he dares, to sp the robes together he feels just a little bit guilty at his ulter motives “you have no idea, malfoy”
finally, he steps bak, peruses his handiwork, and hukles “red doesn’t suit you at all”
drao gives him a distasteful look “it’s a garish olour,” he says, walking towards his wardrobe mirror to look at himself he srunhes his nose up, and then sighs he gnes bak at harry through the mirror, studies him again from head to toe, and murmurs thoughtfully “green suits you it mathes your eyes”
harry grins at him “see? i would have been a great slytherin”
“you don’t belong here,” drao replies, rolling his eyes “you’re too nie we have a reputan to uphold”
“hmm, that’s true and snape wouldn’t have known whether to dok house points from me or give me more”
he wathes drao ugh, lets the warmth and hiness of the moment sink in, and lets that propel him into telling another story
the story of severus snape
chapter 4
drao doesn’t know when he stopped trying to get potter to leave him alone
he just realizes that he has one day during lunh when an unfamiliar owl drops an unsuspeting letter on his p it’s not his first time reeiving hate mail, and so he’s not really surprised when he opens it and sees one line:
leave harry potter alone
what surprises him is his rean, his onvin, as he thinks strongly to himself, no i don’t want to
he looks aross the room, to the gryffindor table, where potter sits, ughing at whatever inane joke weasley had said he looks hy, surrounded by his friends, with no weight of any dark lord pressing down on his shoulders
and then potter looks up, athes his eye, and then sends him the most dazzling smile, and drao thinks, with his heart dropping to his stomah and his fist rumpling the note, no don’t take this away from me
it beomes frequent daily, even sine oming to hogwarts, he had already asked the headmistress to ban the howlers, but if people are sending him owls under the guise of i, enveloped letters, then that would definitely be harder to stop
instead, drao stops reading them in the great hall he pokets them, like dirty serets, and reads them at night, before potter omes it hurts, of ourse it does, and at first, he had read them with the goal of finding out who they were from, but in the end, he realizes that he had been reading them like an at of penitene
but it’s during one night that he opens a letter with a hidden stinging hex, and the pain from the welt on his wrist makes him wonder, why am i doing this again?
and it’s when potter omes in, stumbles on him sitting on his bed with a mess of opened letters sattered around him and radling his wrist that he remembers what potter had said: you an ask for help, you know
potter frowns at him as he enters, obusly taking in the sene and trying to uand what’s hening he gnes at how drao’s holding his wrist that’s overed by the sleeve of his robes “what’s wrong?”
and drao had expeted it to feel like tattling, or like giving up, but when he says it, he finds that he’s just really, really relieved to finally be able to share anything with this man
“i’ve been reeiving letters”
“oh?” potter asks uusly, taking off his robes and throwing it on his bed without preamble, as if he lives here drao likes it
potter peers at the letters, but they’re all folded, and so drao hands him theone, the very first one
the way potter’s fae darkens at the message warms him from the inside it’s fuked up, but he likes knowing that he an affet potter like this
potter unfolds another letter, then another, then another, until he’s gone through all of them, and he rushes the st one in his fist with his lips urled in distaste he throws it in the garbage bin, and gres at the remaining letters on the bed “how long has this been going on?” he demands
drao starts to gather the letters into apile “a week, maybe more?”
“why didn’t you tell me?” potter’s angry, and drao wants to kiss his frown away
it’s hard when potter’s sweet enough to get angry for him drao loses his eyes and takes a deep breath before he does something stupid like onfess
when he opens his eyes, he looks straight at harry’s and says, “i’m telling you now”
and he knows, with the way potter’s tense shoulders slowly rex and the furrow in his eyebrows ease, that potter uands the trust and humility that he’s giving in that single at of telling
“give that to me,” potter mutters instead and snathes the pile of letters from drao’s hand he turns bak to his robes on the other bed, and shoves the letters inside one of its pokets with a grumble “i’m giving these to professor mgonagall have you read all of them?”
“yes”
“stop reading them” potter sighs, fingers pressing on his temple “why do you even keep on opening them?”
drao smiles slightly at the frustrated figure potter’s bak makes “thought it might onvine me”
“to what?”
“to leave you alone”
potter whips his head bak to look at him, stunned and hurt at his admisn “why would you—”
《宅书屋》om
