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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 Thirteen—A Visit of Friends
            “Ron. Hermione.”
            That was all Harry could get out with his throat feeling so strangled, and anyway his friends were hugging him a second later and driving the breath out of his lungs.
            Hermione stepped back and eyed him critically when the hug was done. Harry raised his eyebrows at her, only to have Hermione shake her head with her lips pursed. “You look really pale, Harry. I’m not sure that staying inside the Manor all the time agrees with you.” She seemed to utterly ignore Draco, who was sitting at the far side of the room Ron and Hermione had entered by the fireplace, watching them.
            “Well, until recently I did have to stay inside all the time,” Harry said. “But we worked out a compromise where I can go outside.” He looked at Draco, who gave him a small smile. Harry had to look away hastily. Looking at Draco brought up the most unaccountable and distracting memories of that kiss.
            “Compromise,” Ron said, and hissed like an angry dragon, turning to face Draco after all. “When you should just have your freedom to do anything if you want, if that’s what you want.”
            “We rescued him from having to compromise his freedom in a lot worse ways.” Draco kept his hands folded in his lap. “Apart from that, I agree with you, Weasley. It’s why I keep telling him that he needs to stay in the wizarding world. He won’t get his revenge on the goblins or other people if he leaves. And they won’t get to see it even if he does.”
            Harry rolled his eyes at Draco. “Yesterday, your mother said that I could get revenge even if I did it during most of this year, and inside the Manor. What happened to that?”
            “Oh, I still agree with you,” said Draco, and his small smile grew wider. Harry thought that probably had a lot to do with the fact that Ron was glaring at him, although he wished it didn’t. “I just think that you can have both, so there’s no reason for you not to have both.”
            “Harry, can we talk to you?” Ron’s hand was closed crushingly on Harry’s wrist.
            And this means that there’s something else I’m going to have to explain. But Harry nodded obediently and turned around. “Sure. I’ll see you in a while, Draco, all right?”
            Draco inclined his head and snapped his fingers. A house-elf popped up, and Draco turned to speak to it. Harry knew the little creature would probably be detailed to watch them while they were still in the Manor.
            Hermione looked a bit ill at that, but Ron dragged Harry out of the room before she could start speaking, into a corridor decorated with dark blue tile outside. Harry was grateful for that. He wasn’t looking forward to meditating between Draco and Ron, but he was looking forward even less to hearing Hermione’s opinions about the Malfoy house-elves. He knew it would upset her that they served him, too, even if it was just doing things like bringing his clothes to him sometimes.
            “How could you?” Ron hissed, close to his ear, once they were out in the corridor and he’d firmly shut the door behind them. “They’ve enslaved you!”
            A few days ago, Harry had considered that a good argument, too. Or maybe he still considered it a good argument, but he disliked having Ron tell him that living with it was wrong. He yanked his wrist away and stepped back. Ron stared at him in surprise, blinking a little.
            Oh. Right. The last time they’d seen each other, Harry had been fighting every expression of his anger, afraid of melting someone. Ron had thought he would be quiet and cold, not fiery, when he responded.
            Another thing I owe the Malfoys for. And he did, whether or not he wanted to owe them.
            “I know they enslaved me, but only to free me from the goblins’ slavery,” Harry hissed, trying to decide as he did so whether or not he wanted to get into this right in the corridor. “And I still resent some of the restrictions that are popping up because of that, but they’ve done their best to be good to me. And even to ensure that I could get some revenge.”
            “Revenge on the goblins?” Hermione spun a curl of hair around her finger as she considered it. “But I don’t know how you could do that without bringing down the whole wizarding economy like they already threatened to do.”
            “Revenge that they don’t have to know about,” said Harry. “Learning to enjoy the kinds of luxuries and so on that they would have denied me is revenge.”
            He got such a deeply skeptical look from Hermione that he threw up his hands. “What did you want me to do? Brood on this and slowly go insane? Just leave the wizarding world at the end of the year and never change my mind? I thought you would be happy that Draco is trying to get me to stay!” They had certainly talked to him about staying often enough.
            “I would be happy if it wasn’t Malfoy who was doing it.” Ron looked more thoughtful now, but he still flicked a look of dislike at the closed door. “He’s doing it for his own reasons, right, mate? You can still see that?”
            “Of course he is,” said Harry, and apparently surprised Ron again, if the way Ron lifted his eyebrows up was any indication. “He wants me to pay attention to him. He’s admitted that.”
            “Then why…” Ron let the words trail off.
            “Because Harry needed a friend, and there was no one else here,” said Hermione, understanding more quickly than Harry would have thought she would. She still stood there and gave him the kind of thoughtful look he had learned to associate with house-elves, though, so he braced himself for an interrogation. “Have you considered whether you want to go along with someone who only wants your attention, though?”
            “If it’s someone I want to pay attention to, that’s different.” Harry knew she was thinking about the endless shrieking crowds who had wanted his autograph, his time, his kisses, his money, in the days before the goblins announced what the penalty would be for stealing from Gringotts. “And Draco’s kept me from going insane.”
            “By giving you something to do.” Hermione’s eyes were soft and understanding. “But what happens when the year is up and you have to make your final decision about whether or not to stay in the wizarding world?”
            “He wants me to make a decision about that as soon as possible.”
            “Of course he does.” Ron folded his arms. “He probably wouldn’t want to communicate with you if you lived in the Muggle world, the way we would.”
            “I don’t know if he would or not,” said Harry. “I know he’d try, but he’s not very good with phones and such.” Not that Ron is, either. But that was something his deference to his best friend’s sensibilities would keep him from saying.
            “I just want to know,” said Hermione quietly, “where his kissing you came into it.”
            Harry’s face burned red, but he replied staunchly. He had known their questions would get there eventually. “He wanted my attention. And he’s attracted to me. And he wants me to be more than a friend.”
            “What about Ginny, mate?”
            “What about her,” said Harry, not a question, and closed his eyes. He had been with her, he had dated her for a brief, wonderful month before the goblins had started pressing him, and now he had no idea what she thought of him. He hadn’t even thought about her much in the last few weeks. “I don’t know.”
            “You should tell her if you’re going to be dating Malfoy, or whatever. It wouldn’t be fair to keep her hoping.”
            “Has she said anything about me?” Harry asked, and opened his eyes. He would be honestly surprised if Ginny had. He hadn’t communicated with her at all in the last few months. “Has she started dating anyone else?”
            “I think she still thinks about you,” Hermione volunteered.
            “But she hasn’t said anything about me?” Harry pressed.
            Ron and Hermione exchanged what Harry thought were reluctant glances, and then Ron turned back to him and shook his head. “No. She hasn’t started dating anyone else, and she seemed pretty upset when you were going to be enslaved by the goblins, but she hasn’t said anything. She didn’t even say anything about you being enslaved by the Malfoys instead.”
            Harry sighed and closed his eyes again. “Then I don’t consider myself bound to her.”
            “I don’t think you have to consider yourself bound to her.” From the sound of it, Ron was trying to be careful about his words, something that didn’t always come naturally to him. “I mean, you just have to think about dating someone who can you give you real things.”
            Harry smiled, although he didn’t open his eyes yet. “The money and the gifts that Draco says he wants to give me aren’t real enough?”
            “I mean,” said Ron, and from the sound of it, looked helplessly at Hermione, because she started talking right after that.
            “I just think that you need to decide carefully what you’re going to do,” she said. “Not make a decision on the spur of the moment, because you feel angry or happy or pressured right now.”
            Harry nodded slowly. “That’s good advice. And Draco would even agree with it.” He thought. Draco did seem to want him to make a choice about staying in the wizarding world or not soon.
            “Why don’t you have Malfoy show us around?” Ron suggested, in a way that made Harry think he and Hermione had discussed this before they came over, maybe as a distraction from a conversation that was growing too uncomfortable. “There’s probably places in this house that really are beautiful. Not just rich.”
            “I hope that we don’t see too many house-elves,” Hermione muttered. Harry finally opened his eyes and saw her frowning.
            “I’ll ask Draco to keep them out of our way,” said Harry, light-headed from relief. This conversation with his old friends about his new—friend, he decided—hadn’t gone too badly. “And I haven’t been everywhere in the Manor. Maybe we could find something that could entertain us for a while.”
*
            It was obvious to Draco that Weasley and Granger had come to his house with the intention to disapprove of everything.
            Draco wasn’t sorry to disappoint them. He escorted them through dozens of beautiful rooms, playing bland tour guide. His ancestors had already disappeared from their portrait frames, not wanting to look at someone whose family they’d had a blood feud with, and there was nothing else to make Draco blush. The walls were always of fine stone, the rooms were free of dust even when no one had been using them regularly, and there were pretty views from the enchanted windows or fresh flowers growing indoors or something small and surprising all over the place. The way Weasley and Granger gaped was satisfying.
            Less satisfying was the way Harry did it.
            This is his home, Draco thought as he opened a door to another bedroom and watched Harry stand in the middle of it, turning slowly around, watching with wide eyes the enchanted waterfall that flowed down one wall to vanish into an invisible sounding pool beneath the floor. He ought to know it better by now.
            Of course, Harry had really shown no interest in going to any place other than the dueling room, the dining rooms where they ate their meals, his own chambers, and the gardens. And there was the excuse that he’d had to have a small room and coarse possessions when he first came to them, to fit in with the stated objective that he was a slave.
            But if they could take the risks of letting Harry communicate with his friends and go outside, they could certainly take other risks, ones that would improve the way he lived.
            Draco decided to put the plan into action, and eased up alongside Harry, resting his cheek on his shoulder for a second. Harry was enthralled enough with the room that he just gave Draco a quick glance and a smile, before he went back to staring around.
            “Do you like this room?” Draco asked softly.
            “Well, it’s pretty,” said Harry, abruptly easing back and turning around as if he wanted to examine the walls. Draco knew he would get no distraction there, no confirmation that the room wasn’t a place of beauty. After all, the walls were made of deep, glowing brown stone with black flecks embedded and gleaming in it. Now and then, one of those walls showed a fleck of gold, too. “But I don’t know what it was used for. Some sort of study?” He looked around as if expecting bookshelves to appear out of thin air.
            “It can be converted into various kinds of rooms by the needs of the owners,” said Draco. “If you want it, it could be your bedroom.”
            Harry’s muscles stiffened up as though Draco had tried to stab him in the back with one of the spells he’d learned from Harry himself. “There’s no need for that.”
            Draco put a hand on his shoulder. Harry shrugged it off.
            “Why do you keep denying yourself things you want?” Draco asked. “Whose interests are served by it? Yours? Or your enemies’?”
            Harry exhaled hard enough to blow his fringe up. Worse, his friends were now taking an interest in the conversation, turning around and staring at the way Draco stood so close to Harry. Well, Draco assumed that was what the staring was about. He wasn’t interested enough to actually ask them.
            “Harry?”
            Harry flexed his hands. “You’re sure that there’s no chance you’ll change your minds?” he asked abruptly, turning to stare at Draco. “You and your parents?”
            “About what?”
            “About my being able to use some of the things you give me to achieve revenge. Live better. However you want to categorize it.” Some of the blood had returned to Harry’s cheeks in an impatient flush, one that Draco thought he understood now. Harry didn’t know how to articulate things like this; he didn’t know how to respond to kindness from anyone except his friends after months of not receiving it. He was frustrated because he didn’t have the words. “You’re not going to decide it’s too much work or not worth it?”
            “No,” said Draco.
            Harry considered him a second longer, and Draco could see the way his cheek twitched with the prodding of his tongue. He probably didn’t even realize it. Draco settled himself to wait, and shot a sharp glance at Harry’s friends when they would have spoken. Harry had to make this decision on his own.
            Just like he has to make so many others.
            Draco might wish that Harry would get on with it. But if he forced him to make the choice just when Draco wanted him to, then he would probably lose Harry’s trust. So he waited, and wished that each second didn’t feel like it was breaking apart next to his heart.
*
            This is so weird.
            But he didn’t know why.
            Harry felt around in his mind, the way he’d sometimes felt around on his body after Dudley beat him up, looking for broken bones. What was the big deal about letting the Malfoys help him? They’d said they wanted to. Why would he distrust them now? He didn’t really distrust them.
            It’s because I would be getting what I want. And that feels weird and dangerous.
            It did, after the way that the wizarding world had almost sold him into slavery and after the way that he hadn’t had any choice about fighting Voldemort or going after the Horcruxes or walking into the Forbidden Forest. Well, maybe he could have turned his back and run away if he wanted to be a coward and live with the guilt. But he didn’t want to. He couldn’t. There was a choice about facing Voldemort, yes, just like there had been about going along with the slavery the goblins wanted to inflict on him, but only the choice that was none at all.
            And when he put it like that, it was ridiculous. He should have what he wanted, as long as he didn’t hurt anyone else.
            “Yes,” he said abruptly, and Draco cocked his head at him, and Harry became aware of Ron and Hermione watching him with curiosity from the other side of the room. “I decided. I do want the rooms.”
            Draco gave him a smile so smug that Harry’s hand itched. But he turned around and nodded to Ron and Hermione. “Aren’t these beautiful rooms?” he added, moving his head around in a circle so that they couldn’t doubt what he referred to.
            “They are,” said Hermione, and to his disbelief, she was watching him with a small smile, as if she liked the way that he was changing, and changing his mind, while living with the Malfoys. Then he scolded himself for being so surprised. Why shouldn’t a true friend be happy if he was happy?
            “There isn’t going to be that problem with the house-elves that you talked about?” Ron asked, looking back and forth between him and Draco.
            Draco sniffed. “There are all sorts of deceptions that we thought would be necessary that turned out not to be, Weasley,” he said. “It might confuse the house-elves at first, but give them clear orders and they’ll settle into it. And it’s not like the goblins would get a chance to question the house-elves without our permission.”
            “About that,” Hermione began.
            “Don’t, Hermione,” said Harry.
            “Why not?” Hermione stared at him. “I thought you would understand even better after you were made to live under slavery yourself! What’s going on with these house-elves is no better than slavery! It never is!”
            Harry shut his eyes. “I don’t think that’s how it works,” he whispered. “At least, that’s not how it works for me. What it did was narrow down my sympathies, and make me less kind. Before, I cared a lot about the wizarding world. Now, I want to leave them behind and start over again.”
            Draco made a little sound.
            “Maybe leave them behind and start over again,” Harry said, with a slight smile over his shoulder. Draco appeared content with that for now. Harry looked at his friends again. “But either way, I don’t give a shit about them. They wanted me to suffer for them again? Fine. But that’s the end of it. I don’t want to know about fighting for them again or founding orphanages or donating money or doing anything they want me to do.” He took a deep breath. “And right now, I don’t want to care about house-elves, either. I won’t mistreat them, but I won’t try to free them. I just want to get on with living my life.”
            “If you let them serve you, you’re mistreating them,” Hermione began.
            “No, I’m not,” said Harry. “Did you notice the way that Winky and Kreacher got upset when they had no one left to serve, Hermione? Did you notice the way that Dobby still wanted to serve people, even though he wanted to be paid for it? Service by itself isn’t the problem. Ordering them to bang their heads into walls or burn their fingers is.” He glanced sideways at Draco. “And I’m sure that the Malfoys don’t order their house-elves to do that anymore. Right?”
            “Not since we found out that it mostly results in them running away rather than obeying better,” said Draco, with what Harry thought was probably honesty.
            More honesty than tact. But that wasn’t Harry’s problem, either. He faced Hermione again. “One of the ways that I can take revenge and make myself immune to the guilt that they’ll try to inflict is to stop caring so much about what other people think of me,” he said. “And this is the way that I have to do that.”
            Hermione caught a wavering breath. Tears filled her eyes. “But you won’t mistreat them?” she whispered.
            “I just told you I wouldn’t.” Harry sighed when Hermione looked back and forth between him and Draco. “Draco isn’t corrupting me, Hermione. It’s just—this is what I want to do. Okay? Concentrate on myself rather than elves or goblins or anyone else. Only fool the goblins when I have to, when they actually show up here. Not give a shit about the people in the wizarding world. Maybe not let them influence what I do anymore, either.”
            “Bang on,” said Draco, in such a low voice that Harry suspected he was the only one who could hear it. Draco’s hand was gripping his a second later, down low at his side where his friends didn’t have to look.
            Hermione sniffled a little and dashed tears out of her eyes with the back of her hand. “I just can’t bear for you to suffer like this, Harry, and lose so much of yourself to the demands of the situation.”
            “The Malfoys have already helped me come back,” Harry said, and held out his hand for her to see. “I would have been in danger of collapsing the wooden walls and turning Draco here to ash a little while ago. But I found a book in a magic library that’s supposed to give the people who read in it what they need, and that book calmed me down. I can get angry now and not worry about turning things into ash.”
            “You can?” Hermione immediately lost the tears and leaned forwards. “How does that work?”
            “The library gives people what they need, but it’s up to them to apply it.” Harry shrugged. He would like to go back to the library and consult with it on ways to make sure that he didn’t tumble right back into getting angry and turning things to sludge, but right now, other things were more important. “Maybe if you come back here and ask Lucius and Narcissa, they’ll tell you.”
            Hermione hesitated.
            “It’s okay,” Ron was the one to say in a soft voice, taking her hand and squeezing it. Harry started when he found that sharp gaze turned on him, and realized Ron had been watching him all the time. “Really, Hermione, I think it is. I think Harry’s happy here, even if it’s a kind of happiness that’s hard for us to understand.”
            Draco sniffed. “He’ll be even happier once he’s moved into his new rooms and your visits here are routine instead of times for him to get tense and jumpy,” he said, and turned to Harry. “Won’t you?”
            Harry looked again at the rooms that would be his, the beautiful brown walls and the slow-tumbling waterfall. This was a kind of sitting room; he hadn’t even gone in yet and looked at the bigger room that he thought would contain the actual bed, or any cupboard space, or the bathroom. But he could see himself being happy here.
            “Yeah, actually,” he said, and while he slapped Draco on the shoulder for the smug look he sent Ron and Hermione a second later, he couldn’t deny the sentiment behind it. Draco wanted him to be happy here. He would give a lot to make sure Harry didn’t suffer.
            He also wants me to stay.
            But even that decision, momentous as it seemed, was easy to put off under the realization that so many things could be had for the asking.
*
BAFan: Thank you!
sparklewitch182: Thank you! I update this story every Saturday, usually in the evening.
You can go to my Yahoo! Group, which I update when I post a new chapter of every story. It’s called lomonaaerensstories, and you can subscribe to it with any e-mail address.
SP777: I think it has several meanings! But yeah, the battle against Harry’s reluctance is one of them.
CareLessLover: Draco would like to make it less chaste, but he knows Harry isn’t ready for that yet. ;)
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The Long Defeat