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Marathon	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 52456 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 5
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

Chapter List
- 10
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Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Eleven—One Hell of an Uncomfortable Conversation

            “Ginny.”
            Ginny came to the fireplace frowning, her fingers more stained with ink than ever, a long streak of it near her lips that she seemed to have forgotten to clean off. She paused when she saw Harry, and shook her head. “So you couldn’t even keep from arguing with Lily for two hours?” she muttered. “Somehow, I manage it most days.”
            “Lily told me what she really wanted,” Harry said.
            Ginny narrowed her eyes, and stepped back as if she needed to see more of him than his head floating in the fire. She might look, Harry thought. That didn’t mean she would see it. “What? I thought she wanted to go flying. Was that just a mask for the desire to go over to your house for some other reason?” Her voice changed. “I hope you didn’t get her a horse, Harry. I know she wanted one, but I don’t have the space and the food to keep an Abraxan, or even one of the smaller ones—”
            “No,” Harry interrupted, while his hear beat a strong, peculiar rhythm in his chest. He hadn’t had any idea that Lily wanted a horse. Was that another of the desires she’d mentioned that no one ever listened to?
            But he forced the guilt away, because the guilt wouldn’t help him when dealing with Ginny right now. He needed the support of his strength.
            “She told me that she wanted us to get back together,” Harry said. “And when I told her it was impossible because we argued too much and we were happier apart, she asked me if I was gay.”
            Ginny paused again, the way she had when Harry asked if Lily had her permission to come over earlier. Then she said, “You—did you say something about Charlie? There’s no reason for her to come out with it.”
            “As a matter of fact,” Harry said evenly, “Malfoy was over when Lily came. He’s paying me back for the life-debt that Scorpius owes me. I was the one who saved him when he fell, and Malfoy’s determined that he not turn thirteen with the debt hanging over him. Some Malfoy reason that I don’t understand. But more than that,” he added, because Ginny was opening her mouth, and he knew she would pursue this conversational tangent and turn everything else aside if she could. “Lily told me that you said I was probably gay.”
            There was a short, painful silence between them. Ginny’s face had turned scarlet. Harry could feel every heartbeat thudding through him.
            Part of him hadn’t believed Lily, had thought that maybe she was making it up for the attention or transferring her own suspicions to Ginny, but Harry knew full well that Ginny would have denied it immediately if she hadn’t said it. Instead, she swallowed and stared at Harry, laying a hand on her heart.
            “I never meant it as an insult,” Ginny said at last. “Just an explanation. And—and I’d forgotten I’d mentioned it in front of her. I was rambling to myself and she heard it. I’m sorry, Harry.”
            “You never mentioned it to me before,” Harry said. His heartbeat was still painful. He didn’t think he would like to try standing up now, or moving around. “Don’t you think you should have discussed it with me first, before you tried discussing it with our daughter?”
            “There wasn’t anything to discuss,” Ginny muttered. “It was just—an idea I had. Not one that made much sense, but one that I couldn’t let go of.”
            Harry licked his lips. “Then you don’t believe it?” That would ease some of the pain, if she hadn’t believed it, had just rambled on about it, as she’d said, and it had been one of the random, obsessive ideas of the kind that sometimes plagued Harry, like that he could have saved Fred if he had just noticed that the stone wall was about to tumble over.
            Ginny bowed her head.
            “Gin?” Harry wished he could crawl through the fireplace and take her in his arms, but the nickname seemed to break something in her. She whirled around and glared hard enough at him that Harry flinched.
            “What else was I supposed to think, Harry?” she snapped. “You spent all your time around other men! I never even heard you talk about an Auror who was a woman! You have Hermione for a friend, sure, but still. And you and I…when was the last time we made love, Harry? A few months before we got divorced? And how long before that?”
            Harry gestured helplessly. “I don’t know.” It was true that he couldn’t remember feeling very passionate towards Ginny lately, but he had assumed that had a lot to do with getting older and being so busy. Hard to want to make love when he was stumbling into bed, head still on fire from the sights he’d seen or the potions he’d taken to counteract the pain of multiple curses.
            “I thought…it was normal for marriages to get less passionate as people got older,” he tried, as Ginny stared coldly at him.
            Ginny laughed, and it was cold, too. “Have you noticed less passion with Ron and Hermione? With Bill and Fleur? Hell, even with my parents? With anyone except us? No, Harry, I just think that sex has never been very important to you.”
            “Then that’s it,” Harry said, who had to admit that it was a long time since he’d felt anything like the monster inside his chest that he’d felt when he was sixteen and Ginny was dating other boys. “That I’m not very interested in sex. Not that I’m gay. Not that you had to divorce me because I was.”
            “You think being gay is a bad thing?” Ginny tossed her hair out of her eyes, her face so brilliant a red that Harry didn’t even know if it came from embarrassment or anger. “I thought you would never say anything like that, not when one of your heroes was gay.”
            Harry opened his mouth to retort that he hadn’t known Dumbledore was gay until long after the man was dead—
            And then stopped. Because he was doing it again, said a voice in his thoughts that sounded more like his own and less like Malfoy. Letting Ginny take over the terms of the conversation, turn it around and make it about her instead of what he wanted to discuss.
            “This has nothing to do with whether I think being gay is a good thing,” Harry said, and his voice had lowered until Ginny had to take a step nearer the fire to hear him. “It has to do with the fact that you told our daughter that you thought I was gay, and never discussed it with me. And even if you only said it once, you made a large enough deal of it that she’s still thinking it’s the reason I won’t get back together with you. And since Malfoy was here, she thinks that he’s my boyfriend or something. You had no right, Ginny.”
            “You weren’t there for me, Harry.”
            “I was an Auror when you married me—”
            “That’s not what I mean!” There was a cascade of tears starting to slide their way down Ginny’s face, and she batted angrily at them, although she never took her eyes from Harry’s face. “You were never there emotionally. You just smiled absently at me and said that everything I wanted was fine. You were sympathetic when I had problems with my job, when I had to quit Quidditch because I’d had Lily and the Harpies got a new Seeker, but you never really cared about my problems. You just were absent all the time. Body in the chair, mind somewhere else. What was I supposed to think? I thought you had another lover, was what I thought. But since you never talked about spending time with any other woman, I thought you were gay and in love with a man.”
            Harry clasped his hands in front of him. Ginny had never spoken so openly about this before. He’d thought the reason they got divorced was almost all because of his job and the arguments they had.
            “Then I want you to tell Lily that,” he said. “That I wasn’t there for you and that’s the reason you divorced me, not that I’m gay.”
            “Why does it matter so much?” Ginny dropped her hands and glared at him, the tears still bright on her face. “Being gay isn’t a bad thing.”
            And Harry lost his temper. It had been so long since the last time that he didn’t recognize the strange falling sensation inside his head, or the way his own voice rasped when he started speaking, but Ginny did, from the way she started back and watched him warily.
            “You’re acting like I have to be,” he hissed at her. “Like there’s no other possible explanation for not being passionate enough for you. It couldn’t have anything to do with my childhood, could it, or using up all my emotions in my job, or trying to show sympathy for you and just not being good at it? No, it has to be that I was gay, that I never should have married you in the first place, that I was cheating on you with a male lover. It shows that you never understood me in the first place, if you think I would fucking cheat on you. And it can’t be that you were never all that interested in me, either, and we didn’t know each other well enough to get married. No, it has to be all my fault.”
            Ginny stared at him, mouth slightly open. Then she shut it with a click and said, “So, are you or not?”
            “It’s none of your sodding business now, is it?” Harry leaned back from the fireplace, his head whirling. “But I never cheated on you, and I never would have. Fuck, Ginny, if you hated me so much and you thought I was hiding everything and you never trusted me enough to talk to me about this, why not divorce me when the kids were small? Before we had kids?”
            “I was in love with you!” Ginny took a step towards the fireplace. “I thought you were cheating on me, fine, I should have talked to you about that. But I was in love with you.”
            “And I was the same way,” Harry said back. His voice sounded gritty, now, with all the yelling he was keeping back. Yelling might break the Silencing Charm and travel to Lily’s room, and she shouldn’t have to hear this. They’d already treated her too much like an adult, involved her too much in what should have been an adult affair. “Maybe I was shit at showing it, but I thought you were happy, and I was happy until the last few years, and I was never, ever unfaithful.”
            “Then why didn’t you ever want to spend time in bed with me?” Ginny’s eyes were wide and pleading.
            Harry rubbed his face with his hand. Shit, things would be easier if he knew the answer to that question.
            But he could only repeat what he had thought before. “I thought it was normal for the desire to—to sleep together all the time to fade as you got older. And I was tired, and there was never enough time. I just didn’t make time for it the way I should have.” He held back the temptation to apologize again, though. He’d never heard this before, that Ginny wished they’d spent more time in bed together. He wasn’t the one who needed to apologize.
            “And you can’t see why I thought you were gay?” Ginny was putting her hands on her hips.
            “No! Fuck, no.” Harry would have bolted to his feet and glared at her, but that would break the Floo connection, if he took his head out of the fire. He settled for just glaring at her on the level he was at. “I would never have thought you were gay because you spent a lot of time with the Harpies. Why did you think I was?”
            “For all the reasons I told you.” Ginny stared at him. “And I think that you denied it too quickly, and maybe you are.”
            “I’m not fucking gay,” Harry said. “I wasn’t fucking other men while we were married. And now, like I said, it’s none of your business anymore, so sod off.”
            “What am I supposed to tell Lily?” Ginny looked like she was on the verge of throwing her hands up in the air.
            “That’s your problem,” Harry said. “But you shouldn’t be bringing our bloody children into our bloody divorce, anyway.”
            “Don’t you swear at me.” Ginny puffed up like a sea urchin.
            “Listen,” Harry said. His mouth was dry and bitter, and he thought he would start panting in a second. “I’m not the one who kept secrets, who revealed those secrets to our children, who was so upset and so furious that I couldn’t even tell the truth decently to my spouse. Maybe we would have been better able to keep our marriage together if you’d told me about all this shit earlier, Ginny. But you didn’t, and it smoldered and made everything sour, and now it’s too late.”
            “What was I supposed to think?” Ginny turned her back on him, but Harry could still make out her muffled words. “You were gone all the time, you were tired when you got home, you could barely stand to touch me—”
            “Maybe think that you could ask me?” Harry shook his head. “Shit, I would have been willing to take Veritaserum if you’d asked for it.”
            “Not now,” Ginny said, turning around like a serpent.
            “Not now,” Harry agreed, staring at her. “Then.”
            “I didn’t know that.” Ginny breathed the words like a prayer. “I never knew—enough about you. I never got enough, I could never feel enough—”
            “And that was some of my fault,” Harry said. “I told you I wasn’t very good at that. But it was some of yours. If you’d told me—”
            “I don’t see that it’s any of your business why I wouldn’t tell you, any more than it’s mine if you’re gay now!”
            “It is if you talk about it often enough that our daughter thinks that’s the reason we got divorced!”
            “I didn’t know she thought about it so much.” From the way Ginny folded her arms, Harry suspected that was the closest he would get to an apology from her. “But I can’t change the fact that I said it. I’m not going to Memory Charm it out of her mind, or anything.”
            “Fuck, Ginny! Like I would ask you to do that.” Harry rubbed his face again. The argument was falling into the same stupid pattern it always did, he thought. It was like they couldn’t hear each other. Ginny didn’t know why he was upset at being called gay, and he didn’t understand why she couldn’t have told him..
            “It sounded like you might.”
            “Stop being ridiculous,” Harry said, the gritty tone creeping back into his voice even though he’d thought he was keeping it out. “Fuck. The thing is, I don’t want you to say that to Lily again. If she asks you why we’re not getting back together, tell her about the arguments or anything else, but don’t—don’t say that again.”
            Ginny squinted at him. “The more you deny it, the more someone could think you are.”
            Harry pulled his head out of the fire, and it spluttered and died, ending the Floo call. He stood up on shaking legs and folded his arms. He’d had to do that, or he knew he would have drawn his wand.
            His fights with Ginny had never got physical, even when they spent the whole evening in the same room, in freezing silence. He wasn’t sure why it had escalated so much, so fast, now.
            A moment later, he sighed. No, he did know why, and he wasn’t going to lie to himself. Ginny had been involving the children before the divorce started. Maybe she’d said the same thing to Al and Jamie, too. And she had refused to listen to him when he told her not to, or when he said he wasn’t gay.
            She just never listens.
            Harry swallowed. When they were still married, one of three things would have happened. They would have ignored each other until they felt ready to start talking again, but without things being forgotten or forgiven. Or he would have apologized, because the arguments were so stupid that they weren’t worth holding a grudge over. Or he would have left on an Auror mission and when he came back, Ginny would be a little softened, glad to see him again, and glad that he was still alive.
            He tended to feel a little guilty either way, because he focused so much on the mission when he was working that he almost never thought of Ginny, and the other ways—well, what mature adult gave someone else the silent treatment or had arguments that idiotic in the first place?
            But now, he didn’t have to feel guilty. He got to define himself. Ginny might have suspicions, but she didn’t get to tell him that he was gay and didn’t know it, or gay and in denial. Harry was himself. What he said he was was what he was. It was like if Ginny had suddenly decided that he really wanted to be a Quidditch player instead of an Auror, and had been secretly pining after professional Seekerdom all these years. Just because she thought it didn’t make it real.
            Harry passed his hand across his face. He might not have repaired things with his ex-wife, but at least he knew how to act now. And he was going to try and repair things with Lily, too. He went and knocked at her door again, calling out when she didn’t answer, “Do you want dinner?”
            Silence.
            Harry went to call Kreacher. He would have the little elf make Lily’s favorite food and leave it outside her door under a Warming Charm. That way, she would at least get something to eat if she came out. He would also set a charm that would warn him if Lily came out into the corridor, further than a few steps, and wake him up.
            Because right now, he was going to bed. His head still reeled from lack of sleep, from emotional exhaustion, and from all the things he’d done today, yanked one way and another.
            As he clapped his hands and summoned Kreacher, he had to shake his head. He was wondering if Malfoy would be proud of him.
            Like that matters. He might be happy that I’m closer to paying the debt off, and that’s the only thing that’s important.
            It matters a lot more if I’m proud of myself.
            Harry had to take a minute to consider it, but then he nodded. Yeah. I am.
*
            delia cerrano: I think Lily’s demand is a little selfish, but it’s understandable. She doesn’t understand why they’re not doing this, to her, very simple thing.
            And Harry is pretty sure that he’s not gay. Then again, he never thought he would have anyone but Ginny, and Ginny (in this story) has been his only sexual partner.
            moodysavage: Thanks! I think Lily would not be as annoying if Harry paid more attention to her. And I hope you enjoyed this chapter.
            BAFan: It may! But right now, Harry is mostly angry that someone else was so ready to proclaim him gay, without talking to him about it.
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Marathon