Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

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
- 11
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Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Twelve—Settling the Matter
            Harry opened his eyes and rolled over. For a second, he thought it was because the ward outside Lily’s room had tripped, which must have meant she was coming out. He sat up, licking his lips and running his fingers through his hair to try and get rid of some of the messiness.
            Then he became aware that, instead, an owl sat on the table beside his bed, staring at him. It was the same owl that had delivered Malfoy’s letters to him other times, so Harry assumed it was here for the same reason this time. He blinked and frowned a little. Had something happened to delay Malfoy? Did this mean that he wouldn’t be coming back next week, the way he had said he would? Or had he decided that he just didn’t want to have anything more to do with Harry, and the life-debt wasn’t that important after all?
            Harry rolled his eyes at himself a minute later and held his hand out for the letter. No, Malfoy wouldn’t decide that, after the big deal he had made about the life-debt and finding a way to pay it. He might do stupid shit, but he wouldn’t give up on this.
            The owl handed him the letter and then looked slowly around his bedroom. A second later, it focused on him, and all its feathers fluffed out.
            “I just moved in!” Harry protested, then sighed. Now look at me, defending myself to owls instead of listening to my children.
            He shook his head and tore the envelope open.
            Potter,
            I find that I don’t trust you to conduct yourself with good sense in the time that I’m gone. I will not come this weekend, as that is the private time you wish to spend with your daughter, and I understand this. But I will come back later today. I presume that she will be gone back to her harridan mother by then, as the visit was supposed to last only one evening.
            Draco Malfoy.
            Harry shook his head again. It wasn’t up to him, but if Malfoy wanted to spend time shuffling between Harry’s house and his much richer Manor, Harry reckoned it was his choice.
            There was no reason for the ridiculous feeling of warmth in his chest, he thought. It was just because no one had done something specifically for him in a long time, and he could guess what it meant that Malfoy was putting himself to this degree of inconvenience.
            But that’s just the life-debt. It’s not like it means anything.
            Harry sighed. Sometimes he wondered what it would be like to live with a conscience that didn’t deflate all his pretensions.
            He carefully set the letter aside and looked up to tell the owl there was no reply, only to find it flapping out the door of his room. He snorted. Of course it knew there was no reply. When Draco Malfoy ordered, what could the rest of the world do but obey?
            The thrum in his ears let him know that Lily had tripped the ward this time. Harry stood up and cast a Flattening Charm on his hair. Later in the day it would stick up like maddened pine needles in reaction, but right now, it made him look a little more natural, and that was the important thing.
            He came around the corner, and Lily, who was standing in the middle of the corridor with her hands on her hips, glanced up and sniffed at him. “You look like you just went and had a shag with someone,” she said.
            Harry gaped at her. Then he swallowed and said carefully, “Is that another thing your mum said in front of you?”
            “It’s just something I heard.” Lily’s eyes were bright and mutinous. “I want to go home now. And I don’t want you punishing Mum for what I said.”
            Harry thought about that for a few seconds, and then decided to say nothing. He thought it was the only fair way he could act, or otherwise he was dragging his kids into the divorce as much as Ginny had. “Fine,” he said. “Did you want anything to eat before you leave?”
            “The food you left was enough,” Lily said, turning towards the drawing room. She stopped for a long second, though, which made Harry wonder if she’d forgotten something in her room. Then she added, ungraciously, without looking over her shoulder, “Thank you.”
            Harry nodded, and then said, “You’re welcome,” since Lily had started walking without turning back to him.
            Lily fidgeted for long moments in front of the Floo, playing with the powder and letting it run through her fingers. Harry waited, his heart feeling as though it might beat its way out of his chest. If she was thinking of apologizing, or just saying something else that might clarify things between them and help them both to heal, then he was all for it.
            But in the end, Lily turned back to him and shrugged, then started to toss the powder in the fireplace.
            Of course that was the moment the flames chose to turn green and spit Malfoy out.
            Malfoy caught his balance gracefully despite the lack of room between the hearth and the floor, and despite Lily standing there. He eyed her in silence before he turned to Harry. Harry shrugged himself. He hadn’t told Malfoy to come this early, when Lily might still be here. The git could bear the consequences of showing up, if there were any.
            “Oh, great, he’s here again,” Lily muttered, and tossed her Floo powder in in turn and vanished while Harry was still opening his mouth. Whether he would have scolded her or not, he didn’t know.
            Malfoy turned to Harry. “Ah,” he said, based on either Lily’s behavior or invisible signals in Harry’s face, Harry couldn’t be sure. “So the first thing we need to work on is your relationship with your daughter.”
            “I thought the first thing was saying no,” Harry snapped. “And we had a perfectly lovely time without you, I thought you should know.”
            Malfoy gave him a weary look, and turned towards the kitchen. “I hope you were never in charge of hostage negotiations for the Ministry,” he said over his shoulder. “You would give yourself away in a minute.”
            “You’re saying that I’m an awful liar,” Harry muttered as he trailed along behind him.
            “If you must put it in the baldest words possible, yes,” Malfoy said, and paused and stared into the kitchen. Harry wondered what he was looking at this time. Kreacher had either washed all the dishes and put them away or taken them back to Grimmauld Place to be washed, so it wasn’t like there was a problem with it being clean. Malfoy turned back towards him with a complex expression. “What happened?”
            “Nothing,” Harry said. “Especially not an explosion in the kitchen,” he added. Maybe he was a horrible liar, but that meant he might distract Malfoy by pretending to hide a different kind of truth.
            Malfoy’s eyes were as hard to face as the sun. “Tell me,” he said. “How can I help you regain your confidence and balance with your family if you don’t tell me anything?”
            Harry lifted his hands. “I thought you were upset about the state of the kitchen,” he said. “Surely teaching me regular habits is important, too?”
            Malfoy hissed under his breath. “You are childish,” he informed the kitchen, and walked over to the cabinet that he’d put that spell concealing the fresh food in the back of. “Childish, and you would probably perish without me to take care of you.” He darted another look at Harry, as if daring him to disagree.
            Harry took a seat at the table and beamed at him. He had to admit that it was nice to have someone prepare food for him who wasn’t a house-elf and thus wouldn’t cause Hermione to yell. And Malfoy seemed to have given up going after Lily and what had happened when she was here.
            “Potter.”
            Harry flinched a little when Malfoy rounded on him. Maybe not.
            “You agreed to this arrangement, and I thought it was working so far.” Malfoy’s voice was intense, his body wavering as though he was leaning out a window. “Now you’re turning your back on it. I could perhaps help you even if you were ignoring me. I could speak, and hope some of the words got through. But I can’t help you if you are lying to me.”
            Harry closed his eyes, the familiar sense of helplessness assailing him. What was the right thing to do? On the one hand, he had to let Malfoy repay Scorpius’s debt, since he’d already agreed to that anyway, but on the other hand, speaking about Ginny and Lily would betray them.
            Well, I can at least tell him about Ginny. And what Lily said, without actually complaining about her. He didn’t feel that he owed Ginny any more loyalty than he would a stranger passing in the street.
            He opened his eyes, and started when he discovered Malfoy only a centimeter away from him, staring raptly into his face. Harry leaned back and looked away and cleared his throat. He had always been uncomfortable with attention that focused, whether it was coming from a fan or a friend.
            Or someone who had been an enemy at one point and was now…what? A helper? Harry wondered if he could classify Malfoy that way without making him angry.
            Well, screw that. I have the right to think of him the way I want to, as long as I let him pay the debt.
            Harry stood up, to put some distance between them nonetheless, and said over his shoulder, “Lily told me that she wanted me to get back together with Ginny. I told her that wouldn’t be happening.”
            “In words exactly that blunt and forthright, I’m sure,” Malfoy murmured, but he held up a hand when Harry turned on him. “I won’t comment again while you tell the story, Potter, if it’s so important to you. Just remember that you should tell the story.”
            Harry sighed, and spoke on, feeling for the words. “Lily—wasn’t happy. She said that no one listened to her, and then she decided that since I wouldn’t, I must be gay. Apparently Ginny had said that in front of her, and it was a theory Lily picked up.”
            He glanced over when Malfoy made no comment; despite what he’d said, he’d anticipated something at that. Malfoy had a puffy blush on his throat, and Harry wondered if he was gay or suspected himself of it. It would certainly be a reason that he was reluctant to speak of his divorce from Greengrass.
            Harry opened his mouth to offer some kind of apology, and Malfoy cleared his throat and waved his hand. The blush faded as if it had never been. “Continue.”
            Harry shrugged. “So I talked to Ginny. It turned out that she’d thought I was gay for a long time because I spent so much time with the Aurors and had male friends, other than Hermione.” He shook his head. That still seemed so strange to him. Ron had mostly male friends, too; in fact, he might have fewer female friends than Harry, since Hermione was his wife. “And she thought I cheated on her. We yelled at each other, and I…” He sighed. “I feel a lot better about the divorce than I did. If she keeps thinking that I’m cheating on her, then I’m better off out of there.”
            “Yes, you are.”
            Harry cocked his head at Malfoy, who had leaned across the table and was watching him with an almost scarily intense look. “Is that what you wanted to know? Because that’s all that happened, bar some arguments with Lily that we don’t need to get into.”
            “You stood up for yourself, Potter,” Malfoy said, voice low and soothing as if he thought Harry might throw him out now, instead of when he’d first shown up. “That’s all I wanted.”
            Harry snorted. “Really,” he said dryly. He thought Malfoy had wanted a great deal more than that.
            Malfoy shrugged smoothly. “It will do for a beginning,” he said. “In the meantime, when was the last time you ate?”
            Harry had to think. “I had tea with Lily yesterday.”
            “Describe what you had for tea.” Malfoy took out parchment and ink and looked at Harry the way he thought Rita Skeeter would have at one time.
            “Hot chocolate,” said Harry, and ignored Malfoy’s stare. Really, what the fuck else was he supposed to say, besides the truth? Although he supposed Malfoy wouldn’t appreciate it if Harry swore at him.
            Malfoy gave a negative little hum under his breath and wrote something down. “And the scones that we brought here from the Ministry? Or the food in the cabinet?” He glanced over his shoulder, making Harry realize only then that he hadn’t taken any food down from the cabinet, even though the door still stood open. Presumably he’d been checking to see if there was any gone.
            Harry rolled his eyes. “Look, I know that I don’t get hungry as often as I should. I didn’t get a lot to eat when I was a kid, and I don’t get to eat often when I’m working on Auror cases.”
            Malfoy dropped his parchment on the table and uncoiled as though he was the snake on Slytherin’s banner come to life. “Really,” he whispered. “Remind me to write a letter of complaint to the Prophet as soon as possible, asking for higher taxes.”
            Harry stared at him. Sometimes he thought it was him, that he was just stupid, and other times he knew it was Malfoy, that the git wouldn’t make sense even if Harry knew six other languages and had Ron’s brilliance at chess.
            “I didn’t realize that the Ministry was so poor that it couldn’t afford to buy tea for its Aurors,” Malfoy continued smoothly.
            Harry rolled his eyes again. “Come off it, Malfoy. Of course I know that they would let me have food if I asked them. I just need to start asking more often. I get busy and I forget.”
            Malfoy’s eyes were hooded. “You’re doing rather well in standing up for yourself and saying no,” he said. “In the meantime, you could use practice of another type. Stand up and get your cloak.”
            “Without breakfast, even?” Harry asked in a fake horrified tone, but stood up and moved to the pegs by the door.
            “Where I’m taking you, there’s plenty of food.”
            And that seemed all he was going to say about it. Harry shook his head as he draped his cloak over his shoulders. Malfoy stood waiting for him, his arms folded loosely. He never looked anywhere but at Harry. It was unnerving.
            I don’t know how you’re going to make me more mindful about my eating habits, unless you attach a different bell to my wrist with orders to go off every few hours, Harry thought, but he didn’t mention it. With his luck, Malfoy wouldn’t have thought of it, and Harry’s words would be just the push he would need to do it.
            Malfoy bowed Harry out the front door, so Harry decided they wouldn’t be Flooing to this mysterious place. Then Malfoy held out his arm, haughtily. Harry blinked at him. “How can I Side-Along you when I don’t know where we’re going?” he asked.
            Malfoy closed his eyes and shook his head a little. “I’m going to Side-Along you,” he said. He didn’t say the word “idiot,” but Harry could feel its ghostly presence hovering all around them.
            Or maybe not so ghostly, given the way the muscle in the side of Malfoy’s jaw was ticking. Harry swallowed cautiously and took his arm. The muscles shifted under his grip, and Harry thought they would start ticking, too.
            But instead, Malfoy spun on the spot and vanished, and Harry had to admit, in the middle of his usual nausea over the pull through space and darkness, that he was good at Apparition, strong and controlled.
            Harry opened his eyes in a place he definitely recognized. It was the same small alley off Diagon where he and Malfoy—uninvited—had Apparated the other night when the Spiders had tried to trap him.
            Harry looked at Malfoy. “Do you think I need to see the crime scene or something?”
            “No,” Malfoy said simply. He looked at Harry for a second, and narrowed his eyes. Then he pulled Harry’s hood back from his face.
            “Hey,” Harry protested, and not just because that made his hair, bereft now of every trace of the Flattening Charm, stand up even more. “I have to keep my face hidden when I visit Diagon Alley and it’s not on official Auror business.”
            “Why?” Malfoy asked.
            Harry glared at him, but Malfoy seemed to be made of stone, and not understand how weird his lack of knowledge was. Harry finally snorted and answered. “Because people mob me when they see the scar, that’s why.”
            “That’s the thing I want you to face,” Malfoy said, taking his arm. “You need to build up your own sense of self-worth. You need to face the worship they project at you, and the slavering adoration, and find the true worth they’d accord you at the bottom of it.”
            “They wouldn’t accord me any worth at all,” Harry snapped, pulling back on the hold. But just like when they’d Apparated, Malfoy was too strong to break from. Harry slumped back with a little hiss. “You don’t understand. It’s all false. All of it.”
            “Would you say that your marriage with Weasley was entirely false because she believed you were gay?” Malfoy asked.
            His voice had jumped on the last word. Harry looked at him with narrowed eyes and saw that his pulse was, too. Huh. Malfoy probably was gay, then. Harry wondered if he didn’t want to admit it because he thought Harry would go all funny about it. But Harry had no problem with it. He just wasn’t, that was all.
            “Of course not,” Harry said. “We had good times. And we have the kids.”
            “And their adoration is not entirely false because some is slavish and some exaggerated,” Malfoy countered quietly. “Come on. I’m going to take you to meet the people you saved.”
            Harry hesitated. But Malfoy’s eyes were implacable, and there was a frightened, frustrated stirring at the bottom of Harry’s stomach, something new but compounded of emotions he’d felt before. What would it be like to walk Diagon Alley as an ordinary person?
            “All right,” he finally agreed, and won a brief but genuine smile from Malfoy before they stepped out of the alley.
*
            delia cerrano: Draco is determined to get Harry standing on his own feet in every way, not just with his wife. That’s his investment.
            polka dot: That really doesn’t matter to Harry.
            moodysavage: Thanks! Harry wasn’t really surprised at the circles their conversation went in. That’s what had been happening for most of their marriage.
            Cesumiss: Thanks.
            SP777: I don’t know if their argument lasted fifteen minutes. ;)
            And Harry will be a bit humiliated, too.
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Marathon