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The Long Defeat	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 30612 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 7
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Chapter Eleven—A Delicate Matter
            “So I’d really like more of an answer as to why it’s so important to you that I stay in the wizarding world.”
            Draco stood in the middle of their training room and folded his arms. “I came here expecting training, not an interrogation.”

            “You’re going to get both.” Harry prowled towards him, his wand hanging lightly against his leg. Draco wondered if he should watch that or his eyes. Harry had emphasized the importance of both in his training so far, but Draco had to admit this was a fairly unusual kind of training that he hadn’t expected to receive. “But first, I want to know why it’s so important. This time a month ago, I doubt you gave me a thought.”
            “I thought it was unfair that the goblins were going to enslave you,” Draco decided to correct him. “I didn’t know that my parents were going to come up with this plan to rescue you, though.”
            Harry snorted a little. “Question dodged.” A second later, a Stinging Hex, as painful as though Harry had hit him with a flung stone, blossomed on his hip. Draco hopped and yelped.
            “Every time you don’t answer,” Harry explained, stalking around him in a circle, “you’ll have to pay that kind of penalty.”
            Draco huffed a sullen breath and answered. “I saw you kneeling before my father and the goblins that first time they visited, and it struck me how unfair it all was.”
            Harry paused and gave him an unexpectedly distant stare, as if Draco was a kind of light showing him a path he didn’t want to take. Draco looked back, as unflinching as he could. Part of what he wanted to do was show Harry that path. Harry couldn’t make him back down just by staring and looking weird, either.
            Maybe Harry came to the same conclusion, because he shook his head in what looked like irritation and returned to his stalking. “You’ve thought about that, have you? Well, I’ve had a lot longer than you have to think about how unfair it is. And I agree. It’s terrible. I hate the wizarding world for abandoning me. So I decided to abandon it. Why would you think that I should do the opposite when you’ve only been considering it for a few days?”
            “Maybe because I haven’t obsessed about it and I’m not blinded by hatred like you are,” Draco said, his temper finally waking up. Harry was being so bloody patronizing. “And because I can see that the wizarding world owes you. The best response would be to stay and make them pay, not abandon them.”
            Once again Harry gave him that distant stare, but this time, Draco thought what he was seeing was the future. “I can’t change people’s minds. If anything could, Gringotts threatening to make me a slave would have. So the best thing I can do is preserve my own peace of mind and happiness.”
            “I agree,” said Draco. “Absolutely. But you can be a lot happier in a protected place in the wizarding world than you can be in the Muggle one.”
            “I still don’t want to stay here.”
            “Not in Diagon Alley, or Hogwarts, or Gringotts,” said Draco. “That’s fine. They don’t have the power to protect you. We do.”
            Harry hissed at him. “Have you considered what’s going to happen when the life-debts are fulfilled? When the year is up? There’s no way that your parents would let me stay here.”
            Draco snorted. “I think you’ve halfway persuaded my father into it already, just by being important to me. He wants me to be happy. And my mother accepts you. They wouldn’t kick you out if you wanted to make the Manor your home.”
            “Because of the prestige that my name adds to yours?”
            Draco rolled his eyes. “A second ago, you were convinced that the entire wizarding world hated you and nothing you could do would change that, and that my parents were among the people who hated you. Make up your mind, would you? Are we using you for our own gain or barely tolerating you?”
            “It could be both.”
            “Maybe,” said Draco. “But my parents take the life-debts seriously, and my father would never have given up a long-term advantage, like the vault, for only a temporary one. I’m afraid that you’ll have to resign yourself to being a wanted guest.”
            Harry glared. Draco would take that over the remote staring. At least it meant that Harry was fully engaged with both him and the world, this time.
            “Tell me why you decided that it was so unfair.”
            “Seeing you kneel is wrong,” Draco blurted. He hadn’t meant to be so blunt and straightforward, but Harry’s eyes were so astonished, and Draco thought he needed to hear this. “When you saved the world, and you were meant to be my equal. My rival shouldn’t kneel like that. Neither should my dueling teacher.”
            “But your slave does.”
            Draco waved his hands. “And we’re trying to fool the goblins by doing this! That doesn’t mean that I think of you as a slave in truth!” And he never would, even if Harry was being so exasperating right now that Draco could kind of see why someone might want to enslave him. Maybe then he would listen.
            Harry considered him with wild eyes. “But I would have thought you would enjoy seeing your rival humbled.”
            Draco grimaced. He wondered if he could explain that strange moment of revelation he’d had when he saw Harry kneeling and bending towards his father’s boots, and decided he would have to try. Harry would never believe him without it. “I thought that, too. Then it happened. Maybe I would have known this earlier if—if I had ever seen you really humbled at Hogwarts.” It galled him to admit that Harry had always beaten him there, but Harry didn’t seem ready to gloat about it. “You were made for better things, that was all. But maybe I can beat you fairly. That would be one thing, to knock you on your arse in the dueling room and have it mean something.
            “And it would mean something if I was the one who made you want to abandon the wizarding world, too,” Draco added, inspired. “But I wasn’t. It was the goblins, and the public who decided to turn their backs on you, and I don’t want that to be true. I want to be the one to affect you. To make you fall down or decide to stay. That’s the truth of it.”
            Harry stared some more. Then he said, “I can believe that, at least. You wanted to be my friend, and when I didn’t want to—”
            “I still wanted to be important to you.” Draco cleared his throat a little, because now that he had spoken the truth, he had to worry about Harry believing him but still finding it childish. “I know it doesn’t sound—adult. Maybe I should have grown up and learned something after the war. Maybe I should leave you alone. But I can’t.”
            “And if I go into the Muggle world…”
            “Then I’ll never see you again.” Draco folded his arms and tried his best to quell any joke at his expense that Harry might come up with. “And that’s simply unacceptable.”
            Harry stood there for a long time, and then lowered his head to stare at his hands. Draco watched him. This might be more important than the ultimate decision Harry would make about whether to stay in or leave the wizarding world. This was the moment when Harry would make the decision about whether he could believe in or trust Draco.
            Draco knew that he wouldn’t give up if Harry decided against him. He would just continue annoying him and training with him and talking to him and trying to persuade him until Harry either changed his mind or offered Draco some insult that made it not worth persisting.
            But it would sure be a lot easier if Harry made the choice now, and it was the choice to let Draco come in and continue with his meddling.
*
            What am I going to find in the Muggle world?
            Harry knew the answer even as he asked himself. It wasn’t like he hadn’t endured his friends’ questions in the past few months, as the fact that he was going to be a goblin slave became reality and all the ways they tried to fight it collapsed in on themselves. They wanted to know why he would give the goblins the “satisfaction” of going to the Muggle world. They said it was giving up. They said that he should shove the fact of his enslavement in everyone’s faces and make them ashamed of themselves.
            Harry had replied that he would have peace in the Muggle world, plenty of people who didn’t recognize him and wouldn’t care to try, and that mattered more to him than vengeance.
            That was still true.
            Now, though, he began to wonder if Draco was right, and it wouldn’t be peace so much as desolation. No one to bother him there because no one knew what had happened in the war—but no one to sympathize with him, either. How was he supposed to explain some of his scars and his reflexes and his strangeness to Muggles? If he could find the right sort of person here, they would understand without the need for endless explanation.
            But it didn’t mean that the Malfoys were the right ones to help him with that kind of peace.
            “I could stay in the wizarding world and still never see you again,” he pointed out, to see what Draco would say.
            Draco sneered a little. “I would make sure that our paths crossed again.”
            “Because you want to see if you can best me in a duel?”
            “You’re being wilfully obtuse,” said Draco, and managed to make that cut in a way that his insults about Harry and his parents had never managed when they were kids. “Because I want to know that I matter to you, the way I just explained. When you ask a question and I answer it, try not to ignore the answer.”
            Harry firmed his mouth and looked off to the side. He was thinking of something else now, the wizarding world’s wild adoration of him in the months before the goblins had made it clear what they wanted to pay Harry’s “debt” to them. “There are lots of other people who want to be important to me, too. My friend or my lover or…God knows what else. I don’t want them back.”
            “Yes, but I’m different from them.”
            “How?” Harry eyed him a little narrowly. “It seems that you started liking me and wanting to be important to me awfully suddenly, the minute your family made the decision to pay the life-debts to me. That’s like how some of them showed up after the war and said they wanted to help me fight it.”
            “Because none of them were me.”
            Harry snorted in spite of himself. “I’ll say one thing for you, Malfoy, you don’t lack self-confidence.”
            “Stop trying to shove me away like that.” Draco edged forwards, his face intense. “Or are you going to pretend that you regularly kissed these admirers of yours and plotted with them to find a way to free yourself from unwanted slavery?”
            Harry felt as though he had forgotten how to smile. “I kissed you because it was part of a plan. And sure, I would have cooperated with a bunch of them if they could have got me out of the goblin slavery, or even offered to do it. Only no one did.”
            “I didn’t, either.”
            Harry reached up and tugged harshly on his hair, hoping that would help soothe both his temper and his confusion. It didn’t, or at least not enough to matter. He leaned forwards and caught Draco’s eye. “Then why did you kiss me?” He was proud of himself for not exploding at Draco, or making Draco explode.
            “My parents were the ones who offered to help free you,” said Draco. “And if you think my kiss was only part of the plan, then you’re wrong. Otherwise, the second kiss wouldn’t have happened. I enjoyed it. I wouldn’t do something like that if I didn’t enjoy it. I would have come up with something else.”
            Harry shook his head. “But that doesn’t fit with what you said about wanting to be important to me!”
            “It doesn’t?” Draco looked as baffled as though Harry had told him he didn’t need a wand for his dueling spells. “Why not?”
            Harry bowed his head into his hands and gave a short, comprehensive, but muffled scream. “Because,” he said, lifting his head, “you were talking about rivalry or friendship or something. Not what a kiss implies.”
            “What does a kiss imply? Something for Gryffindors that it doesn’t for anyone else?”
            “It would imply that you loved me,” said Harry flatly. That ought to stop this nonsense. One thing he did know, with all his heart and his conviction, was that Draco Malfoy wasn’t in love with him.
            “Then I suppose you’ve loved a lot of people in your life,” Draco said instead, meditatively. “You were in love with Cho Chang, right? That was the rumor going around fifth year, that she was the one you kissed, even if she was crying during it.” Harry lifted his head and opened his mouth to ask who had blurted that out, but Draco was continuing. “And you must have been in love with Ginny Weasley.”
            “None of your business if I was.” Ginny had rather fallen by the wayside in the chaos of the year after the war, as Harry tried to get used to no Voldemort and starting Auror training and then dealing with the majority of the wizarding world betraying him. He wasn’t about to start talking about how complicated his feelings with Ginny were.
            “Were you in love with them?” Draco touched his fingers to his chin. “Or me? You did kiss me back, after all.”
            “That was part of the ruse,” said Harry, tiredly. His head really did hurt. Why had he thought talking to Draco would make things less confusing? Obviously, he was a fool. “You know that.”
            “So a kiss can mean more than one thing,” Draco replied instantly. “And I already told you what mine meant. I like you a lot, and I want you to pay attention to me. I don’t want you to go away, because I wouldn’t want to live in the Muggle world.” He paused, and raised both eyebrows, as though some interesting revelation had just come to him. “Any more than your friends want to, I suspect.”
            “None of your business what they do, either.”
            Draco sighed, and his face and voice were both more serious when he spoke again. “It’s to do with both of us. You know it is. Yes, perhaps I should have explained everything immediately and clearly up-front, like a Gryffindor that you’re used to, but I’ve done it now. You’re the one who has to accept it or not. Can you at least tell me that you’re reconsidering staying?”
            “That’s too big a decision for me to make all at once.”
            Draco nodded, as though he had known that would be the result but had thought he would ask anyway. “Then the only thing I ask is that you consider it carefully, and deeply. Don’t hold onto a decision that you made before you got to know me.”
            “And you really think that you’re enough to make me change my mind, when my friends couldn’t? All by yourself?”
            “I know I am.”
            Harry shook his head. For some reason, he was smiling, which didn’t often happen to him when he discussed his plans to leave for the Muggle world with his friends. “Fine. But right now, I think we’ve talked enough about it. Your dueling training is more important. How much do you know about spells that let you strike from ambush?”
*
            Narcissa touched the white roses that the house-elf had presented her with, and tilted them towards the light of the fire. Then she shook her head, and watched the elf’s ears droop. “I’m afraid they are not silver enough for me yet,” she said. “Add some small crystals to the soil, and see what happens.”
            The elf bowed to her. “Mistress.” Then it gathered the flowers in a tight bundle, lower lip set with determination, and disappeared.
            “Causing distress among the house-elves again, Cissy?”
            Narcissa looked up, smiling. Lucius had stepped into her sitting room and shut the door behind him, and she admired the way the sunlight coming through the window shone on his bright hair, making some small sparks leap from it. “Trying to help them breed me the perfect flower,” she said. “The silver rose. I think that the next try might do it. The flowers today really were close to it, but not perfect enough to keep.”
            “I don’t know why you want silver roses,” said Lucius, and crossed the room to drop a kiss on her lips.
            Narcissa turned and arranged herself on the couch so that Lucius could sit down and have room for his cane. “Because I want their particular beauty in the house,” she said. “We once knew how to grow them. My own ancestors, I mean. It is possible, even if the knowledge has been lost with the centuries.”
            Lucius snorted in a way that showed his mind wasn’t on the subject they were supposedly discussing. Narcissa, who knew him well, guided the conversation back to what he wanted to talk about. “So. What troubles you about Harry and Draco?”
            Lucius frowned at her. “It does not trouble me. It makes me wonder how long the charade we are deceiving the goblins with can work, if Draco becomes unwilling to push—Harry to take part in it.”
            Narcissa shrugged. “Then Harry can appear with illusions of Draco, and with you, or me. That is the least of my worries when it comes to our con on the goblins.”
            “You seem calmer about this than I would have imagined, when they have kissed each other.”
            “It did trouble you more than you showed at the time,” said Narcissa, with a little sigh of satisfaction, and reached up to run her fingers through Lucius’s hair. “I thought so.”
            Lucius pulled away and shook his head, putting a stop to the curls and tangles she was trying to create in it. “And this does not worry you? It does not concern you that our son may be tying his future to someone who cannot oblige him?”
            “If you would tell me what exactly it is you fear, then perhaps I could help,” Narcissa pointed out. “I have always been better with specifics than with cryptic hints.”
            Lucius nodded briskly, acknowledging the reference to the hints he had tried to give her when they could not communicate openly, while the Dark Lord was living in the Manor, but refusing to discuss it. “Fine. I am afraid that Draco will find himself romantically attached to the boy. I told Draco that I will understand if he wants to be happy outside the traditions, and I will. But I am afraid that the Potter boy will turn on him and not find a place for Draco in his life. As far as I know, he is still determined to leave the wizarding world at the end of the year.”
            Narcissa shrugged, unconcerned. “We have a year to change his mind, then.”
            “We?”
            Narcissa took her husband’s chin in her hand and smiled into his eyes. “Yes, we. After all, we can give Harry the indispensable experience of family. And he is still jumpy and skittish and reluctant to indulge in the pleasures that he could take here. If we treat them as ordinary parts of our lives and show him that we can enjoy them as well, perhaps he will calm down. I know that attachment to other people is his strongest driving motive, but that doesn’t mean he cannot enjoy the luxuries of life.”
            Lucius only looked at her, and looked at her, until Narcissa laughed and kissed him in the middle of his forehead. “I suppose you will ask me now why we should wish to give him that experience.”
            “Yes,” said Lucius. “Perhaps I was too hasty in bringing my fears about Draco to you. After all, just as there is an alternative to Draco appearing with Harry each time the goblins come, there is an alternative to him following Harry into the Muggle world. He may not fall in love with him. He may want something else. He may give up when he realizes that he can’t persuade Harry to stay in the wizarding world.”
            Narcissa sighed. “And do you think it would be fair if Harry was driven out of the world he helped save?”
            Lucius sighed back at her. “I am unaccustomed to considering fairness in relation to my enemies, even if they are former enemies.”
            “There is a certain kind of honor,” Narcissa reminded him quietly, “that we chose to serve when we chose to repay the life-debts. We could have paid them back with lesser services, or waited until his year of slavery was up. We were the ones who chose to do this. I wish to continue following that honor wherever it leads us.”
            Lucius looked sour. “If you imagine that I would be integral in persuading Potter—”

            “I want you to do only what you’re already doing,” Narcissa interrupted him, because she knew from experience that the course he was pursuing now would only lead him in tiresome directions. “Show that you love both Draco and me. Stay out of Harry’s way and don’t antagonize him. Show him that there is a family here, that we have this beautiful Manor and this beautiful life, and that it is attractive.”
            “There is a limit to how many luxuries of the Manor he can use. The elves are still uneasy about serving him because they’re uncertain about his status.”
            “And because they see that you’re uneasy about him.” Narcissa shook his head when he stared at her. “You forget always about the relationship between the house-elves and the master of the Manor, Lucius. Of course they’re going to take their cue from you, and to think that they don’t know how to treat him well if you don’t know how to treat him. You don’t need to break out in loving demonstrations of affection, but do try to relax a bit.”
            “You said I could stay out of his way.”
            “If you also relax.”
            Lucius placed his hand in his chin and stared off into the distance. “Even if we allow him to enjoy the place, he might be too noble a Gryffindor to do it.”
            “He might,” Narcissa allowed. “But we will not stand in his way, and we will let him make the choice for himself.” She paused. “Won’t we?”
            Lucius nodded. “You’re probably right,” he said. “You usually are.”
            Narcissa smiled, and drew his head down to rest on her shoulder. She wouldn’t dispute with the words in that particular sentence that she might take issue with. She knew Lucius was trying.
            And if he could be happy, and her son could be happy, even down to the healing of the silly but stinging wound he had received from Harry’s rejection in his first year…
            Narcissa saw no reason not to strive for that happiness.
*
SP777: And Lucius!
Jester: The book did help, although Harry doesn’t entirely trust it as yet.
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The Long Defeat