Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Acts of Life	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 21189 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Eleven—Speechifying
            Harry nodded a little at Jackson, the Auror who had come to talk to him that morning. “I know it’s an honor,” he said. “I never intended to say it wasn’t. But I’m still not doing it.”
            Jackson straightened his back. He was a tall man, and probably used to looming over other people, even if he was standing in the drawing room of their homes. Harry gave him a peaceful look, though. It was a little harder to intimidate Harry these days.
            “You wouldn’t need to pass many requirements,” said Jackson. “Your NEWTS, which you must be confident of passing, since you haven’t studied for them.”
            Harry had to grin. And because Jackson was the only Auror there and they weren’t in the Ministry, he dared to say something about it. “But you don’t really want me admitted to Auror training on the basis of that, do you? You think it’s disgusting that I didn’t study and that they might want to admit me anyway.”
            Jackson ducked his head and frowned at Harry. “No one told me that you were a Legilimens. Or you that Legilimency is illegal without granted Ministry permission, I imagine.”
            Harry snorted aloud. He had to admit that while most of the time he wished Snape rested in peace and didn’t feel a grudge towards him anymore, he did wish Snape could be alive to witness this moment.
            “I not only have no talent in Legilimency,” he said, when Jackson was radiating offense like a cat passed over for feeding, “I failed miserably at learning Occlumency the one time someone let me try. I can only tell what you’re thinking because it’s written so visibly on your face.”
            Jackson raised one hand as if he thought he was going to trace the shape of actual letters on his face, and then dropped his hand back to the side and frowned at Harry. Harry spread his arms and grinned.
            “Why don’t you want to be an Auror?” Jackson finally asked a sensible question, watching Harry all the while as though he expected Harry to burst out in anger. “The papers have reported it as your only ambition from the time you were in fifteen.”
            “And the papers are such a reliable guide to anything.”
            Jackson finally smiled. Harry nodded at him. “I knew you could do that if you just tried!” he said, in the cheery tone that Professor McGonagall would have used with him.
            Jackson flopped down in the chair across from Harry and shook his head. “I was worried that I would have to train you, or someone I knew would be pulled away from active duty to do it. But you’re really not interested?” He was scratching at his long black beard now, watching Harry with real curiosity.
            “No,” said Harry, as calmly and clearly as he could. “I’ve found what I want to do instead.”
            Jackson’s eyebrows twitched a little. “Run around interfering in politics.”
            “It’s funny, isn’t it, how many people only call it interfering when it’s someone working for a side they don’t like? Otherwise it’s just politics.”
            Jackson nodded, but not as if he was acknowledging Harry’s point. He was examining him instead, in a critical way that Harry thought he probably used on trainees a lot. “You look like a good duelist.”
            “I never got much practice in formal dueling, though. Just firing around corners and running for my life, mostly.”
            “That’s what an Auror does more often than formal dueling.”
            “You’re trying to convince me to change my mind?” Harry put his hand on his chest. “Be still, my heart.”
            At least that made Jackson snort again and shake his head. “Not so much that as trying to decide whether you would have been any good at it. The papers do report your strengths as defensive magic and quick dodging. Were they wrong about that?”
            “Probably not, but I don’t actually know that many separate defensive spells. I knew a few that I used all the time, and I could do a Patronus Charm pretty young, and I had the bravery or the knowledge that Voldemort wouldn’t stop coming after me which let me walk into the Forest and ask him to kill me.”
            Jackson winced. “Well. Aurors aren’t required to be suicidal, you know.”
            Harry grinned at him again. “Another fact disqualifying me from becoming a trainee.”
            Jackson hesitated, then said in a rush, “It’s like this. There are some Aurors like me who didn’t want you in training because we did think you would require all this babysitting, and there are some who want you there because they think you would help the Aurors’ reputation. It’s at a low point, still, with some people not happy because we got infiltrated by You-Know-Who and some people not happy because we arrested Death Eaters instead of killing them.”
            Harry shrugged. “I don’t mind using my reputation to benefit people, but I’m not going to spend my whole career rescuing the Aurors from trouble.” Some of which they got into on their own. But Harry hadn’t needed Draco’s advice or anyone else’s to tell him that that wouldn’t be a wise thing to say. “I could make a few speeches about how deep Voldemort’s infiltration in the Ministry went, though? If that would help?”
            Jackson narrowed his eyes a little. “I haven’t done anything for you except insult you. Why would you help me that way?”
            Harry wondered for a second if he could even explain how the war had changed his sense of the world. So many of the things he used to worry about—like the Quidditch Cup—seemed so petty now. He wasn’t keeping track of scores and who owed him what and using that to punish his enemies. He just wanted to live and get along with other people and help them if he could, because he could and because he didn’t have to watch over his shoulder for Voldemort all the time now.
            But attempts to explain everything to people except Ron and Hermione had never gone well, so he said, “I’m not helping you. I’m helping the Aurors. And there was some real corruption, you know. Like the way you arrested Pansy Parkinson. So I want to help with that.”
            Jackson nodded, his shoulders untensing. “That makes sense.”
            To you, Harry thought, a little sourly. Why is it that cynicism makes more sense to so many people instead of just wanting to help each other?
            It wouldn’t be fair to expect Jackson to provide that answer, though. Harry ended up shrugging lightly and saying, “All right, so what kinds of speeches would help, and when?”
*
            Draco checked the hang of his robes again. Then he looked at his reflection in the mirror and made sure he didn’t have any leftover lunch in his teeth. Then he checked the watch that his mother had given him not long ago.
            Then he told himself to stop being stupid, and he chucked the Floo powder in the fire and called out, “Pansy’s Corner!”
            He managed the long step down from Pansy’s hearth to the floor easily enough, but did have to pause in silent surprise at who else he found there. Harry was sitting in the chair next to Pansy in the middle of the lavishly crowded drawing room, talking to her in a low voice and touching her hand now and then.
            Draco stood for a second, fidgeting. He looked around at the books and furniture and small treasures Pansy had hauled with her from her parents’ house after the Ministry seized the property to “go through at their leisure.” There were clocks that didn’t work and broken china cups and a few disapproving, staring portraits. Draco went over to polish one bronze frame and ended up sitting down next to Pansy on the other side.
            Harry gave him a gentle smile. Draco began to breathe again.
            “I can do several things,” Harry told Pansy then. His voice was as quiet as the crackle of the flames in the fireplace Draco had come through. “The problem is, I can’t do them without knowing what you choose. What would you like me to do? Think about it. Not what your parents might want, or the Aurors, or your ancestors. What do you want?”
            Pansy sat looking into the fire with a hopeless expression. Draco stirred again. This was the kind of thing he had come over here hoping to prevent. Pansy had been hit hard by Azkaban, almost the way Draco had been, but she didn’t have a career in Potions or free family members to help her. Her mother had fled, her father was in prison.
            That could have been me, if not for Mother and Harry.
            But Draco told himself he didn’t have to think about it. Could have been, but wasn’t. He had to think about Pansy, now.
            Pansy finally whispered, “I want the life I always should have. Enough money to keep me happy, someone to marry who would take care of me, and some children.” She turned and cast Draco a defiant look. “But I know that you were never going to marry me. My parents told me. Something about your parents betrothing you to Astoria Greengrass.”
            “They discussed it,” Draco said, because that was true. “I doubt it’ll happen now.”
            “Pansy.” Harry’s voice was low. “Would you really not care who you married? I mean, you wouldn’t care if he was older, or not handsome, or not a pure-blood? Even a Muggle? You don’t care about anything else?”
            “What choices do I have?” Pansy turned to him now, and Draco saw the same trapped expression in her eyes. “I’m not clever. I don’t have NEWTs. And I won’t. I don’t have a family. What can I do except persuade someone to take care of me? And do the kind of things every woman can do with my body.”
            “I need to know what you really want,” Harry said. “Not what you’re panicked into wanting.”
            The flash of spirit Draco had expected to see from Pansy long before this showed up in her eyes then. She sat up and folded her hands in her lap. “The one who has all the options in the world presumes to lecture to me?”
            Harry smiled and leaned back in his chair as though he was used to this. Maybe he was, Draco thought, watching him in wonder. Draco’s mouth was dry, but Harry spoke easily enough. “You still have to decide what you’re going to do. Do you want to go to another country? Your reputation as a convicted criminal might matter less there. Is there someone who owes your family a favor that you could call on? Would you want to go to the Muggle world?”
            Pansy hesitated once, then said, “No Muggles. I couldn’t bear to leave magic behind, even if they’ve restricted me to third-year spells only.”
            Lucky, Draco thought, and then realized abruptly that he might not have told Pansy about his plan to use different generations of textbooks. He opened his mouth.
            Harry gave a little shake of his head and said, “That’s one decision made. What about the others? Is there nothing you could see yourself doing? Nothing you want to do?”
            Pansy’s cheeks flushed a little, and she sat up some more. When she answered this time, it was with more determination. “I could—the only thing I really enjoyed at Hogwarts was Astronomy. But I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with that.”
            “Neither do I, but I have some friends at the Ministry who could help me find out.” Harry grinned at her. “And some contacts among the centaurs.”
            “And there are ways around third-year spells,” Draco added helpfully. “Using different books for third year than what Hogwarts requires now, for instance.”
            Pansy was already looking better. “There’s that,” she murmured, thoughtfully. “I think—you could look into it for me, Potter?”
            “I will,” Harry promised, and smiled at Draco across Pansy.
            Draco smiled back, and thought, Now I know why Potter enjoys helping people. It’s its own kind of rush.
*
moon: Thank you!
moodysavage: Good point.
SP777: Is the other scene you’re talking about without words in my story that doesn’t have any dialogue at all?
ChaosLady: Thanks!
starr: He probably should have had the guts a lot earlier. But at least all isn’t lost, and they can both move on to have their own lives.
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Acts of Life