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Under the Manor	By : WillGirl Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 13318 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: Disclaimer: I make no claims to Harry Potter, either books or movies, and all rights belong to JKR. No money or other recompense is being made from this story.

Chapter List
- 12
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Harry hadn’t thought about Draco Malfoy at all since that day he had crossed his path in Diagon Alley and, it occurred to Harry, he hadn’t been trying not to, either; the other man simply hadn’t crossed his mind.

What Harry had been thinking about was how happy he was, and how strange it was to think such a thing—and, even stranger, how it actually wasn’t strange, because he had been thinking that, quietly and in the corner of his mind, for quite a while.

It had suddenly struck Harry how happy he was, and how much he wanted to spend the rest of his life like that: being that happy. And right after that revelation, it had struck Harry that he actually had a “rest of his life,” which he had never really processed before, even after Voldemort had died.

But, now, he did, and he had been, for the first time, really thinking about that, and what it meant. It meant quite a lot, of course—there was a whole life there to think about—but it really boiled down to one crucial thing, and that was what he had been thinking about.

In point of fact, Harry had been specifically contemplating a potential conversation he might have with Ron. It had occurred to him that he might think about asking Ron, just hypothetically, what Ron might think about the idea—just to see what Ron would have to say on the matter—of Harry asking Ron’s little sister to marry him. Harry wanted to find out if Ron might be okay with that idea, maybe, at some point in the distant future...or maybe not all that very distant, really, now that he thought about it...

And, much more frightening, he wondered what Ginny might have to say about the idea.

But even while that thought made Harry positively shiver with nerves, it made him grin, too.

He was still grinning, somewhat sheepishly, when he ambled out of his office to get a fresh cup of tea. He had spent the whole afternoon doing paperwork, although if Ginny asked, he planned to make up a suitably heroic story about rescuing puppies, or maybe pygmy puffs, so that she wouldn’t be able to tease him about lazy desk-work.

(She would know he was lying, of course; Harry couldn’t lie to save his life, most days, but it was a game they played, and she pretended to let him get away with it, for the sake of the game, and maybe a little bit for his ego; it was hard, sometimes, after spending what felt like his entire childhood fighting a war, to admit that the world didn’t need saving all the time, and some days the dustbins really were just dustbins.)

So Harry grinned, and started making up a tale to tell, about his heroic last-minute rescue of the helpless pygmy puff, and he paid very little attention to his co-workers as he paced over to the tea kettle and coffee pot, and the crowded tray of cups and sweeteners.

Harry stirred his tea and whistled to himself, very quietly, off-key.

“Nah, I didn’t hear anything like that,” Martins was saying, a half-eaten sandwich dangling from one hand.

“Well, all I know is, apparently they’re kicking up quite a ruckus with the Transportation Office,” Hughes replied. “Jack’s boyfriend works for that lot, and apparently he was griping about it all through lunch.”

“Well, that’s pure-bloods for you, isn’t it?” Martins smirked. “Can’t get what they want, they cause a ruckus—or a war.”

Both Aurors laughed, in the grim manner of old soldiers who have seen too much to do anything but joke in the face of those horrors. “Gallows humor,” it was called, and there wasn’t an Auror serving the Ministry who didn’t dabble in it, at least on occasion.

Harry, certainly, was used to it enough—engaged in it often enough himself—that their bleak reference didn’t even cause his distracted grin to flicker. He tapped the drips off his spoon, dropped it into the bin, and took a sip to make sure he had gotten enough sweet—and not too much—into his cup.

“Well, with pockets as loaded as the Malfoys’ are, I can’t imagine it’ll take them more than a day to get the office to cough up an emergency Portkey so they can dash back home and dote on the boy,” Hughes was saying, his smile wry.

“What boy?” Harry asked, mildly curious; what could the Malfoy family be doing that they would need an emergency Portkey? It didn’t sound like them.

“Their son, the brat you were stuck in school with,” Martins explained. “Seems he was carted off to St. Mungo’s this morning, only mummy and daddy are out of town on holiday or something, so now there’s a big fuss over them trying to get back right away to run to his bedside, because the Portkey office is all backlogged over the Cup.”

Hughes shook his head. “Bloody rich wankers,” he observed sourly, “so sodding entitled; makes a fellow sick, doesn’t it?”

Harry had a hard time swallowing his tea. He must have used too much sugar. “What happened?” he asked, his voice hoarse from the over-sweetened tea.

“Didn’t get the details,” Martins said. “Just heard the news through the rumor mill—you know how it is,” he grinned. “Ministry might as well be run by a bunch of old crones, the way we jabber.”

Harry nodded automatically. “Right,” he said, “yeah. Well...better get back to work, eh?” He forced his stiff face into a grin and walked away. Harry was halfway across the room before he remembered that he’d done his tea wrong, but he didn’t bother to go back. For whatever reason, he was no longer thirsty.

He pushed the cup to the far corner of his desk, and forgot it while it cooled.

Harry drummed his quill idly, staring at the folder in front of him without seeing it, or any of the words he was meant to be reading over. Instead he saw a pale, pointed face, with very haunted gray eyes and a thin lip that trembled with fear. He saw heavy shadows, and deep scars, and a pair of delicate, dexterous hands, richly decorated with ornate silver rings.

He wondered if he should put in a call to St. Mungo’s, or maybe just ask one of the portraits in the hallway to flit over to the hospital and check on Malfoy for him. But no, he couldn’t do that; such concern would look suspicious, wouldn’t it? People would wonder why he was interested in Malfoy’s condition; would wonder why he cared.

It occurred to Harry, with a bit of a jolt, that what he had done with Draco could technically be considered cheating, at least a little bit. He frowned, and tried to decide whether or not he should tell Ginny. But Harry knew that she would forgive him and, honestly, she might not even consider it to be cheating at all, not under the circumstances. He and Ginny both had scars, after all, and not all of them were the visible sort. They both understood that healing could be a winding process, and that one has to do what one has to do, for the sake of body and soul and nightmares. And if Harry explained everything that had happened—which he certainly didn’t want to, but if he did—well, then she would understand, he was absolutely certain of that.

But what she wouldn’t understand was why he went back to Draco. It wasn’t the rape, or that unwelcome arousal experienced during it, or even Harry’s attempt to work the uncomfortable desire out of his system, that she would be upset by; all of that, Ginny was sure to understand, and even to sympathize with him over. Even that drunken night, mistake though it had been—on many levels—and Harry’s compulsion to revisit the issue, to revel in the memory and echo of the original pain, she would understand and forgive. Harry knew that.

He also knew that she would never forgive Draco for being forced to do that to Harry, and she would never understand why Harry didn’t blame him; would never understand why Harry pitied and sympathized with the broken, guilt-riddled man who had hurt him so, rather than hating him. Ginny wouldn’t understand that Malfoy had had no choice; that he had done it to spare Harry from a worse fate, because he couldn’t think of any better way to save him.

Ginny had never really understood that sometimes, just because someone is too scared to do the right thing, that doesn’t make them evil. She had gone through that horror herself when she was eleven, and there had been a diary eating her soul. She strangely had no sympathy, now, for anyone else going through similar difficulties, but that was because she held no sympathy for herself, for what she had done under Tom Riddle’s control and coercion. For Ginny to forgive someone else for being weak, she would first have to forgive herself, and that was something she was never going to do.

She certainly would never, ever forgive Draco Malfoy...any more than she would forgive Harry for forgiving him.

So maybe it would be best if Harry didn’t tell her, at least not unless she asked him to. It wasn’t lying, then; not if she didn’t ask, right?

There were things they hadn’t told each other, things they couldn’t tell each other; there were nightmares that couldn’t be shared, no matter how much you loved someone. Sometimes all you could do was hold one another in the darkness and weep, and not say why. Horrible things had happened to and around the both of them; some war stories could never be told. With some fears, some screams, some scars, talking about it helped. With others...it didn’t. Harry understood that; so did Ginny. As mutual survivors, they knew when not to pry.

So Harry knew that she would never ask.
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- 14
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Under the Manor