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
- 13
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- 15
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Fourteen—A Moment Alone
            “Why would they attack you in the middle of a pub?”
            Harry rolled his eyes, but kept his voice low and precise, the way that Robards preferred. “I don’t think they came there to attack me, sir. I did report that,” he couldn’t help adding, since he had spent over an hour working on the report that now lay on Robards’s desk. “I think the pub was a target of opportunity, and they were just as surprised to see me there as I was to see them.”
            “That doesn’t explain how you were able to take them down so quickly.”
            Harry sat still for a second, because he was afraid that he would say the wrong thing if he spoke right away. His tongue seemed to ache, and he could feel a sour poison in the back of his mouth. He licked his lips, trying to dispel it, trying to realize what it was.
            When the realization came to him, he was so startled that he almost fell off the chair.
            For the first time in a long time, he was feeling rage at another Auror. At Robards, specifically. He wanted to leap up and not just accuse him of not paying attention, but draw his wand. He wanted to leave the room by kicking the door open. He wanted to swear at him, and say things that would probably cost him his job, and he didn’t care that it would cost him his job. Maybe he would be glad to no longer be an Auror.
            He couldn’t do that, of course. It was out of the question. He needed this job. And he had to calm the rage and look at Robards as if nothing was wrong, and keep talking.
            “I was able to take them down so quickly thanks to the Ministry’s excellent training, sir.”
            Robards flicked his eyes so quickly at Harry that Harry almost missed the weight of his gaze. But he was more practiced at things like this than he used to be, and saw it, and smiled innocently. There wasn’t much Robards could say in response to praise.
            And satisfaction lay like a boulder in Harry’s chest. Normally, he didn’t like this kind of complicated byplay. People said things he couldn’t follow, and Hermione despaired that he would ever fully understand what irony was.
            And maybe this wasn’t irony, but he was saying something he didn’t believe in, something Robards still couldn’t criticize, and it had been fun.
            After cautiously examining him for another few seconds, Robards made a huffing noise, like a buffalo about to charge. “Very well, Potter,” he said. “If it’s as accidental as you say it was, then questioning the prisoners should reveal that.”
            Harry wanted to explode, again. He’d been an Auror for almost twenty years, and still his word wasn’t good enough for his superior?
            But instead, he leaned forwards and took control of the conversation again, saying, “Yes, sir. Is there anything else that you need me for?”
            Robards eyed him up and down as if that would tell him something about whatever hidden agenda he suspected Harry of maintaining. Then he shook his head and waved Harry away. “Go and make yourself useful.”
            “Sir.” Harry stood up and bowed, which made Robards stare at him again. Harry felt his head reel, though, and stood up straight again quickly. The last thing he wanted was to faint at Robards’s feet. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
            He stepped through the door and shut it behind him before Robards could start some other series of questions, such as when his wrist-bell would be repaired. For that, he’d have to talk to the Unspeakables, anyway, since they hadn’t let Harry know a thing.
            Harry leaned against the wall for a second and shut his eyes. He was starting to see what Malfoy meant about letting yourself go too long without food. He had a dark headache, a pounding and flashing of black lights behind his eyes, shadows stabbing in from the corners, and of course the pain.
            “Come on.”
            That was Malfoy’s voice, but Harry found it hard to open his eyes. Luckily, Malfoy didn’t make him. He just seized his shoulder and began to tow him along.
            Harry shook his head and locked his feet for a second, until Malfoy swung around impatiently. Harry held up his hand. “My head really hurts,” he said. “I need to sit down for a few seconds and—”
            “Eat.”
            Malfoy was pushing something into his hands. Harry fumbled around the sides of it, or rather the curves of it, and discovered it was a plate. He opened his eyes through main force and found that it was piled with food from the Leaky Cauldron, all of it greasy and all of it heavenly.
            He nodded to Malfoy and looked around vaguely. He had the impression that they weren’t far from his office, and if that was true, then they could sit down.
            “Eat,” Malfoy repeated, and slid his shoulder solidly up against Harry’s. “I’ll brace you while you do.”
            Harry stopped himself from gaping at Malfoy, but just barely. He dug into his food instead. Thick sandwiches, and bacon, and chips. He thought Malfoy hadn’t used a system, just grabbed whatever he thought would suit. That was fine with Harry. He ate, and he ate, and juice dripped down his chin, and all Malfoy did was silently hand him a napkin. He must have stolen that from somewhere else, Harry thought, as he wiped the grease away. There was no way that the Leaky Cauldron had ones that white and neat.
            “Thanks, Malfoy,” he said, when he was done, and the headache had calmed down to little transparent flashes like wild lightning instead.
            He looked at Malfoy, who looked back at him, unsmiling. “Now we are going to your house,” Malfoy said, his voice soft but penetrating. “We’re going to lock your doors and block your windows to owls and close your Floo connection. And then we are going to talk.”
            Harry swallowed, and not because some food still clung to the sides of his mouth. Malfoy seemed to have decided the same thing Harry did, that talking in public was impossible, because there would always be some distraction, some chance for Harry to prove himself a hero.
            But this meant there would be no running away, either.
            “All right,” he said weakly, and let Malfoy pull him along.
*
            Malfoy turned away from placing the wards on Harry’s Floo connection, and sat down on the couch in the drawing room. Harry sat on one of the chairs, holding his hands still to keep them from tapping on his knee. He felt more nervous than he had when the Spiders burst into the pub, or when he thought Robards was accusing him, subtly, of being involved with the Spiders somehow.
            Why?
            But Harry knew the answer to that, and he wasn’t ready to face it right now, either. He just shook his head and said, “All right, is the house warded to your satisfaction?”
            “Yes.” Malfoy’s word was bare and unadorned, and so was the way he was looking at Harry right now. Harry winced. He was becoming more and more convinced that this was a bad idea. Not so much shutting himself into a small space with Malfoy, but agreeing to talk about this. There would be no dodging this if Malfoy had his way.
            And Harry didn’t think he would like the questions Malfoy asked him, either.
            Malfoy nodded once, as if Harry’s question needed an extra answer. Then he said, “I want to know why you intervened when the Spiders came into the pub.”
            Harry opened his mouth, but a gape wouldn’t impress Malfoy. Harry could almost predict the way Malfoy would stare at him, instead. He sighed and gave the true answer. “I knew someone was in there, someone who intended harm to people in the pub. I could feel the change in the magic and the noise. And I reacted.”
            “Without thinking about it?” Malfoy sat with his hands folded in plain sight on his knees, like a Wizengamot judge without the desk.
            “Like an Auror,” Harry snapped. He hated the feeling that was racing back and forth inside him now, like the feet of real spiders running on his skin. “If there had been another Auror in the pub, they would have done the same thing.”
            “Maybe not,” Malfoy said. “Maybe they would have faltered. Maybe they would have looked around for backup. I doubt they would have noticed the change in the magic and the noise that you described.”
            “Maybe not,” Harry echoed him, on purpose, and had the satisfaction of seeing Malfoy sit up a little and stare at him. “It doesn’t matter, does it? That’s not the real question you wanted to ask.”
            “It was one of them.” Malfoy’s voice turned clipped. “Why do you place yourself in the situations that make others regard you as a hero if you hate being thought heroic?”
            It was another question that Harry could only snort in reply to. “So I should have let the Spiders just cast any spells they wanted to and terrorize anyone they wanted to?” he demanded. “I don’t think they came to the pub looking for me. That was just a coincidence. But once I saw they were there, I couldn’t just let it go and wait for someone else to do something.”
            Malfoy nodded, as if that confirmed a private theory. “If you keep acting heroically, don’t be surprised when people think you’re a hero.”
            “Fuck you,” Harry snarled, white fire cutting through the lingering remnants of his headache. “It’s not like I asked for that. And say I sat back and let other people get slaughtered just so that no one would think I was too heroic. That wouldn’t diminish the impact of me killing Voldemort. No one is ever going to let me forget that.”
            “It was impressive.”
            “No, it wasn’t!” Harry brought his hands down sharply into his lap. He couldn’t believe Malfoy was saying this, Malfoy, of all people, who ought to know better. “It was sheer coincidence that he had the Elder Wand and I’d become its master by conquering yours, just like it was coincidence the Spiders walked into the Leaky Cauldron! There’s no—so many things could have been different, and then I wouldn’t have won! It’s not like I won because I was more powerful or I knew some secret about the Dark Arts that he didn’t. I didn’t even win in a fair duel. The Elder Wand just refused to harm me, that’s all.”
            Malfoy laughed, a dark, choking sound, and stood up from his couch to come forwards. Harry remained seated, glaring at him. No one was going to intimidate him just because they were temporarily taller than he was. No, not even by leaning forwards into his face and gripping the arms of his chair, which was what Malfoy did a minute later.
            “You’re an idiot if you don’t see the impressive implications in that last statement,” Malfoy whispered. “The Elder Wand refused to harm me,” he mimicked in a lisping little voice. “How many other people in the world could say that? For how many has it ever been true?”
            “Every single master the Elder Wand has ever had?” Harry let his voice dip down, taunting a bit. “Even you, if you had known that it belonged to you long enough to take advantage of it.”
            Malfoy’s hands flexed on the arms of his chair, but didn’t reach for Harry. His voice remained maddeningly low and controlled, in fact, and the dark tone had left it. Harry hated feeling that he was angrier than Malfoy. He tried to breathe, but the choked feeling was still there in his throat and chest.
            “You didn’t win because of Dark Arts or because you’re so powerful, you said,” Malfoy murmured. “That just makes it more romantic for lots of people. Here’s the boy who sacrificed himself for everyone and then prevailed without killing in the traditional sense of the word. Here’s the boy so pure and good that he doesn’t even use the Elder Wand in day-to-day life, he put it away somewhere instead. You don’t see why you’re a figure of inspiration to so many? Why they would, as you said, look at you like you were a hero even if you never captured a criminal again?”
            Harry shook his head. He didn’t know what to say. It felt like his nostrils were clogged with hot dust that he couldn’t sneeze out.
            “Let me phrase it a different way,” Malfoy murmurs, his voice lower than ever, but more pointed. Harry didn’t even know that was possible. “If someone else had done exactly what you did—allow them as much help as you had, and as many coincidences—would you admire them? Or would you think that they shouldn’t be called a hero?”
            Damn it. Hermione had asked this question once, and Harry had left because he couldn’t answer it. He didn’t think Malfoy would let him leave. He shook his head and answered as honestly as he could. “Of course I would think that they deserved some gratitude and attention and praise for it. That’s not the same as thinking that people should still be drooling at their feet twenty years later!”
            “But you hate all attention directed at you, don’t you?” Malfoy’s voice was softer, again. He raised his hand, and Harry flinched a little, because it looked like Malfoy might take his shoulder and shake him. Instead, Malfoy touched Harry’s hair and examined it critically, as if its ragged state might tell him important things that Harry’s own words couldn’t.
            “Answer me,” Malfoy added softly, a few seconds later.
            Harry tilted his head back and stared into his eyes. Then he said, “I don’t hate all of it. I want my friends to ask how I’m doing and to notice when I’m sick, and I hate it when the Ministry just assumes I’m a machine that can do all of the work all of the time. And then I hate it when other Aurors assume that I’ll cover their holidays and their little sicknesses and so on when they would never do the same thing for me.”
            Malfoy sighed and clucked. “But you never ask for the same consideration,” he said. “Because you can’t have people paying attention to you and thinking that you’re stupid or ungrateful, can you? Just like you never disciplined your daughter. Just like you never—before now—told your wife off for her unfair assumptions about you. You don’t want them to take advantage of you, but you hate drawing attention to yourself by complaining or arguing even more. Someone might look at you. We can’t have that.”
            Harry slapped his hand away from the side of his head, the way he now thought he should have the minute Malfoy started touching him. “I do not bloody feel that way about myself!” he snarled into Malfoy’s face.
            “But you told me you did.” Malfoy wasn’t backing off. He just looked at Harry like he was a piece of stone that had started to talk. “You told me that you don’t want people looking at you. The people in that pub were giving you nothing but positive attention—not gossiping, not asking you for autographs. They looked at you like you were a unicorn dropped to earth among them, did you notice? Rare and interesting, yes, the way that they might look at you if they were just thinking of you as a hero who could answer their needs, but also beautiful.”
            Harry shoved hard, getting Malfoy to step back with a push directly in the middle of his chest, if no other way. Harry stumbled to his feet. His head was swarming, bustling, with the idiotic things Malfoy had said. He needed to get away.
            But Malfoy locked the drawing room door with a twist of his wand, and Harry spun back to face him.
            “You hate attention,” Malfoy said to him, sneering a little. “You’re modest. But you’re artificially modest, stupidly modest. That’s the root of it all, isn’t it? Why you don’t tell your colleagues to find someone else to cover for them. Why you don’t argue with the Head Auror when he’s keeping you from bed and breakfast. Why you didn’t tell your wife that she was wrong about you—”
            “I did!”
            “After a push that even you couldn’t ignore,” Malfoy said. “After you found out that your trying to stay meek and compliant and agreeing to divorce her when she wanted it hadn’t worked, that she was talking about you behind your back and thinking about you in ways that you didn’t want even while you were still married. That’s why you can argue with me, too. You think that I already hate you and nothing can change that, so why not do it?
            “But you’re afraid of your friends and your fans and your fellow Aurors. Afraid that they’ll turn on you, abandon you, think you’re asking for too much. Afraid that they’ll look at you and see something that they don’t want to associate with anymore.”
            Harry’s heart was going so fast that he hated himself. His face was flushed, and his throat ached. But he couldn’t do anything but stare dumbly at Malfoy as Malfoy took a single, long step towards him.
            “You’re so stupid that you can’t even see how much they love you.” Malfoy shook his head, his eyes bright and savage. “I would kill for a tenth of the worship and awe they’re extending towards you, Potter, and you don’t live with it, you don’t even stop acting like a hero, you just keep going and then wailing when they look at you. You could discipline your daughter and argue with your wife and convince everyone else to find another hero if you wanted to, but you’re too afraid.”
            Malfoy paused, and took a step backwards. He wasn’t panting, but he seemed to draw in on himself, and his voice was low and serious and patient as he held Harry’s eyes.
            “Who was it, Potter?” he asked. “Who told you that you were worthless, for so long that you still believe it?”
            Harry shook his head. He shut his eyes. It wouldn’t help him flee, it wouldn’t help him shut this out, but he still did it.
            “That’s what you have to ask yourself,” Malfoy said. “And what you have to answer. And you have to remember, if you don’t do anything to change things, why should anyone else? They like this state of affairs. They can have their hero and their husband who’s at fault and all the rest of it, and no one can blame them.”
            He stepped up beside Harry again. Harry heard his hand come to rest on the door beside his head, but he still didn’t open his eyes.
            “But some of them hate it,” Malfoy said into his ear. “Your daughter is being hurt by it, and I don’t imagine your sons are too happy, either. Your friends probably hate it. I wouldn’t know. I don’t think you have to be afraid that they’ll stop loving you because you ask for attention. I think you have to be afraid that they’ll get more and more bitter, and drift away from you, because you keep huddling up smaller and smaller and getting things wrong and insisting that people who love you are all wrong for loving someone so worthless.”

            And he unlocked the door and walked away.
            Harry shivered and wrapped his arms around himself. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t speak.
            He couldn’t do anything but stand there and feel the paralyzing fear that Malfoy was right.
*
            PoisonShadow: I do think that Harry filled Lily’s head with the images of the perfect family. It’s something I can easily see him doing, after his own childhood and his longing for something more. But you’re right that it’s become unacceptable, even though some of what Lily is saying is simply what she heard Ginny repeat.
            SP777: Malfoy thinks he should take advantage of it, but yes, ignoring it would be another option.
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Marathon