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The Long Defeat	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 30612 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 7
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Fifteen—A Web of Stories
            “Breathe for a second. Just breathe.”
            Harry wanted to snap that Draco bloody Malfoy didn’t have the bloody right to tell him what to do, but that was the flame of anger roaring in him, the one that would do no good if he let it out now.
            Instead, just for the novelty of it, he tried doing what Draco told him to do of his own free will, and not because they had to put on a pretense to fool someone else. He turned around and leaned on the library door, breathing.
            He could feel Draco beside him and hear him softly clearing his throat, but Draco didn’t try to reach out and touch his shoulder. Harry thought that was wise. He shifted his balance and concentrated on nothing but the way his chest fluttered with his breaths. In through his nose, out through his mouth. Slow and steady, like the turtle in the Muggle fairytale. He needed to think about that, about the slow plodding rhythm of a turtle’s legs. It got there in the end. And he didn’t need to race to the end on this particular track. He had someone right here who could alert the house-elves if he started hyperventilating, and they would probably come around and throw water on him or something.
            That thought made Harry smile, and he decided that he was probably ready to face up to reality again. He turned around. Draco hovered next to him, head darting a little as though he thought it would help to examine Harry’s face from several different angles.
            That made Harry smile, too, and he put out one hand, as much to hold Draco still as anything else. “I’m all right. Stop making me dizzy.”
            “If you can make that kind of remark, then you are,” Draco said, contented, and straightened up. “Now. Where was the book that you found with the story that calmed you down?”
            Harry frowned. “It was right on the podium there…”
            But there was no podium, and no book open on it. Instead, Harry saw a lazy swirl of golden light and dust in the middle of the room, as though the library was considering them, and what to do now that there were two of them.
            Draco frowned imperiously and lifted a hand to face the light. “I am a Malfoy and a member of the bloodline that built this house, and I order you to show us what we need.”
            The golden light winked out.
            “I don’t think that’s the way it works,” Harry said, rolling his eyes a little. Maybe the charade had gone to Draco’s head and he thought he could just order around anything he wanted.
            “It should be the way it works,” said Draco. “There’s a magic library in our house that just does whatever it wants? How do my parents put up with that?”
            He sounded genuinely horrified. Harry had to shake his head, though. He had no idea what kind of relationship Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy had to this library, if they had one at all. Lucius had sounded as though he didn’t visit it much, anyway.
            The golden light began to shimmer above them again. This time, it bent away from Draco like a drifting spiderweb and landed on Harry’s head in a halo of radiance. Draco folded his arms and leaned back on the nearest shelf.
            Which meant it was up to him, Harry supposed. He cleared his throat. “I’m still…rattled by something that happened to me this morning,” he said. He knew he could probably speak about it more openly than that, but he just couldn’t, not in front of Draco. “Is there something you can show me, tell me, that will help me calm down?”
            For long seconds, glittering lights raced around the halo, and Harry thought it was going to flash. He flinched a little, since it was right above his eyes, but the lights calmed down even as he thought that. Then a golden finger of light snapped out of the halo, pointing straight ahead, at one of the shelves.
            Harry turned his head. One of the books was caught in the beam, the flaking letters on the binding catching and holding the light.
            “Thank you,” Harry said, and stepped forwards, placing his hand firmly on the book. Almost at once, the halo on his head disappeared. Harry pulled out the book and looked at it dubiously. He couldn’t read the title, the letters were so far gone, and the weight of the book was the kind of thing that suited Hermione more than him.
            “I wonder why a Malfoy library answered to you and not me.”
            Draco looked as if he was brooding. Harry bit his lips firmly to keep from smiling. “Maybe because I was the one who asked nicely.”
            “The way I asked was nice enough.”
            Harry ignored that, too, and instead opened the book. It lay awkwardly across his hands. He finally carried it over to the nearest table to read it, bending down to make sure that he could see all of the pages equally well.
            The dense text ran across the pages in huge paragraphs that seemed to have no break. Harry finally just flipped back to the beginning and plunged into it.
            To tame the horrible temper and cure bad dreams, it is necessary to be absolutely honest.
            Harry wrinkled his nose a little. It was true that he sometimes still had nightmares from the war, but they didn’t have anything to do with why it was so hard to face that reporter and hear those awful things from her mouth. And he knew that honesty wouldn’t help with his anger. He had been honest with his friends about wanting to reduce the goblins to grey sludge, and they still hadn’t been able to help him cope with his temper.
            But on the other hand, he didn’t think this library that had helped him once before would show him a book that had nothing to do with his current predicament. He turned a few more pages and once more jumped in at random, hoping that would help more than targeted searching. Well, it might. You never knew if the library had predicted he would do this and so given him a book that would reward it.
            Absolute honesty can let other wizards know when they are in danger from your magic and your temper. It can let you know when you must go apart from others in order to calm down. And it can let you know when you need company.
            Harry hesitated. It was true that he had wanted to run away, to get away, the moment Draco and the reporter were done talking, but on the other hand, it was also true that Draco had been right: he probably shouldn’t spend much time alone.
            On the other hand, he didn’t know how to follow the rest of the book’s advice. He had been honest with the Malfoys about the dangers of his magic, and he didn’t feel that anger so much anymore. And he had been honest with them about wanting revenge against the goblins. It wasn’t their fault if that felt so difficult as to be impossible.
            He stood there holding the book and staring down at it, and so didn’t notice when Draco moved up beside him, fingers trickling over Harry’s shoulder blade. He finally started and looked back, and Draco met his eyes evenly.
            “I think you ought to think about what else it could mean,” he said.
            Harry snorted. “Did you read this over my shoulder?”
            “This part.” Draco reached out and let his finger fall delicately onto the very line Harry had been contemplating. “And you haven’t been honest with us about everything, you know.”
            Harry folded his arms. “Name one thing that’s important that I’ve lied to you about.”
            “People might think very different things are important.” Draco’s eyes were liquid as he gazed at Harry. “I thought that the rooms you lived in in the Manor were important, and you didn’t agree until you finally made that choice to move into the rooms with the waterfall. And you think that your friends are more important than I think they are.” Harry rolled his eyes, but Draco persisted in a calm, careful voice. “What else could you be honest about? What upset you the most about that reporter?”
            “That she assumed I was just a slave,” said Harry, and felt his anger begin boiling in his stomach again. He hastily removed his hand from the book and stepped away from Draco, just in case his magic dangerous to organic beings decided this was a good time to return. “That I was an object she could talk to you like that in front of, and I wouldn’t notice or care.”
            “But doesn’t that make sense?” Draco followed him, making Harry’s moving away useless. He cast Draco an irritated look, but Draco didn’t seem to notice. “We wanted her to think that, and she isn’t very smart. And you went from being a slave to the goblins to being a slave for us, as far as most people know. Isn’t that what you want anybody to think? Why does it make you so angry? It would be worse if they didn’t think it.”
            “I know that,” said Harry, and felt as if the illusory chain that they had used when the reporter was here had become real. “I know all of that.” He shrugged against the feeling of constriction and turned his head aside when he noted how intently Draco was staring at him. “I know all that. I should be used to it by now. I know that.”
            “But you don’t like it anyway,” Draco said.
            With that much understanding, Harry thought he wouldn’t have to explain himself, but apparently he was wrong. “Why?” Draco added a second later.
            “It makes me feel like nothing’s ever going to be enough,” Harry said, when he had waited, and Draco had waited, and he decided that he’d like to give Draco the answer. “I could give up my life for the wizarding world, and that’s not enough. Someone’s always going to demand something else. I could maybe get used to that when I was a kid because I thought it would end someday, but—”
            He hesitated. Draco did, too, before he finally asked, “Do you mean that you could get used to it when you were a kid at Hogwarts fighting the Dark Lord?”
            Harry grimaced at the book. If this was what it wanted him to be honest about, then he didn’t much like its advice. But the book just lay there, in a silence Harry thought was smug.
            “No,” Harry said. “The way I was when I was a kid at my relatives’ house, and I had to cook and clean for what they told me was my keep. They kept stressing their charity in taking me. I thought I’d never get away. I didn’t know anything about my parents or Voldemort or the wizarding world until I was eleven. Then I could get away. But this? How can I get away from this?”
*
            Draco winced. He understood what Harry meant now when he said that he really didn’t want to have to do household chores.
            Stupid Muggles. As if there weren’t plenty of families in the wizarding world who would have been happy to have Harry Potter growing up in their households.
            Draco was politically knowledgeable enough now to admit that growing up there might not have been much better for Harry than growing up with Muggles. Someone would surely have tried to use him. But he didn’t think they would have worked him to death.
            “That’s what the book was recommending honesty about?”
            “Yeah, I reckon.” Harry hunched his shoulders. “I don’t like being restricted.”
            “Or told to obey curfew, or other rules,” Draco muttered. He could see a whole different side to Harry now as he thought about that information. He had thought at school that Harry was always breaking the rules because he wanted to show off how much braver he was than anyone else, and since the war, he’d considered it might have been because he was fighting the Dark Lord. But it seemed it was really something else.
            “Yeah, maybe.” Harry turned and stared at him. “And I don’t know what this has to do with the charade we had to put on with that reporter. Because I know that we’ll just have to put on another one, and it’s not going to matter much if I hate it. I’ll do it because I have to.”
            “I think I understand what the library is trying to do,” Draco said, and ignored the tingle of golden light from behind him. He thought he did, and if the library disagreed, then it would just have to respond to him the way it should have in the first place. “Come up with more things that you’re doing because you want to, not because you have to.”
            “What more is there?” Harry shook his head. “I have rooms I like, and I can go outside now, and I can have my friends visit. You keep me busy. The food’s fine. What else is there that I can do?”
            Draco would have liked to say something about how he would never be content with such a limited lifestyle, but he knew that he didn’t have the words to say it the way he meant. It would only come across as insulting Harry.
            “You don’t want anything more than that?” he asked. “Even to be free from the desires of the wizarding world, which you were saying you did a second ago?”
            “That’s why I was going to go to the Muggle world. Why I have to go to the Muggle world.”
            Engaging with Harry on that topic promised nothing good, either, so Draco likewise ignored it. “What if we could do something to get you free of it and let you stay here, too?”
            Harry looked at him suspiciously. “Stay in Malfoy Manor, or the wizarding world?”
            “Both,” said Draco. “Anything. Whatever you want. Like you said, you gave up enough for them. They shouldn’t have the right to demand anything else. You should be able to do whatever you want.”
            Harry bowed his head and shuffled his shoulders as if he was cold. “But nothing will make them do that. Even if we frighten them away like we did with this reporter, that’s only temporary. They’ll just come along when they’ve got over the fear and request something else.”
            “You know,” said Draco, after a few minutes while he thought and Harry stood there gloomily, “I thought your magic was pretty scary.”
            “Yes,” said Harry. “But if I actually used it against someone, it would just get me locked up in Azkaban. And I don’t want to.”
            Draco nodded. He knew that if Harry had melted someone or turned them to ash, it would only ever have been an accident. “There’s no law that says you can’t keep the threat of it hanging over their heads, though.”
            “Yes, there is,” said Harry, jumping as though Draco had pricked him with a pin. “There must be. There are laws against threatening people in the Muggle world.”
            “There are?” Draco stared in wonder. The only thing he could think was what stupid laws those must be. “Well,” he said, after thinking for a second, “just telling the reporters how dangerous your magic is and how you suppressed it for the good of the wizarding world, but you won’t hesitate to let it out now, would probably do it.”
            “But someone wouldn’t believe me, and they would challenge me, and then I would have to either become a murderer or get besieged by them again,” muttered Harry, looking miserable.
            “That’s when you melt their books, or their paper, or their clothes, or whatever else they bring with them that’s subject to your magic,” Draco explained patiently. He thought of something. “You could probably destroy their wands, couldn’t you?”
            “Yeah,” said Harry. “But there’s a law against breaking someone’s wand unless they’re a criminal, too…isn’t there?”
            “What matters is the way you do it,” said Draco, happy now. “If you steal someone’s wand and snap it, yes, that’s a crime of the highest order. But if one of your wards breaks the wand of someone who was trying to sneak into your house uninvited, that’s not your fault. And you could probably create wards like that. Maybe empower them with separate bits of your magic. You might as well make the problems that you have with your temper work for you,” he added, because Harry was blinking.
            “I suppose,” said Harry. His tone was so distant that Draco might have bristled, but right now, he wanted Harry to think about what he was going to say. So he waited, and eventually Harry blinked and looked at him again. “You don’t think that would make them call for me to be sent to Azkaban?”
            Draco smiled grimly. “They’re already ignoring a lot of laws in the way that they were ready to let the goblins enslave you. And so was the Ministry.” He had thought of something else, something that might not appeal to Harry, but Draco was willing to mention everything he could if it would get Harry to stay. “You know how people like my father managed to live untouched for a long time even though everyone knew they were probably guilty? Because he had money and power?”
            Harry nodded. He was scowling a little now.
            “Well,” said Draco, deciding to ignore recent history because they’d already done so much ignoring of it so far, “your magic and your celebrity status would probably protect you the same way, if you wanted to actually use them. Set up a protected place and spend most of your private time there. When you do go into public, make sure anyone knows what will happen if they get too close to you with their notebooks and their quills and their wands. And I think people will start leaving you alone.”
            Harry bit his lip. “That would mean I’d be pretty lonely…”
            “You were willing to go into the Muggle world and leave everyone except your friends behind. At least this way, you would be around some sympathetic people.”
            “That’s true,” Harry said, looking struck, as if he had never thought of it that way before. Draco had to smile. Of course he hadn’t. It took the genius of a Malfoy to think through things that, sometimes, were right in front of you.
            “Now,” said Draco, when he had let some silence pass, “we could also try to get some more direct revenge on the goblins, if that would help.”
            Harry was alert and intense in seconds, focused on Draco in a way that told Draco how badly he’d like that vengeance. “But you and your mum said that I should stay in the house and enjoy myself privately and take revenge that way.”
            He is a lot more vengeful than most people think. It just takes a Malfoy to see it. Draco smiled at him. “But when the year is done, they can’t do anything to you.”
            “They could take my money.”
            Draco snorted. “Then you remove your money from the bank before they can. That might be enough by itself, in fact,” he added, thinking about that, the image of other wizards scrambling to imitate Harry, either slavishly or because they thought he knew something they didn’t. “If you think about it.”
            “I want something more than that.” Harry’s eyes were bright as a hunting hawk’s.
            Draco nodded, pleased. “Then that gives you a goal to work towards, and something else to want. Think about it. What else can we do?”
            Harry started stalking back and forth, waving his hands, consumed by private thoughts. Draco glanced back at the book, lying open on the table.
            Thank you, he thought to the magical library.
            A small twinkle of golden light shone above his head in answer.
*
SP777: Draco would almost be glad if he did.
Amber: Thank you! The updates are every Saturday.
Jester: He definitely wouldn’t be willing to enjoy it right now! But maybe someday.
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The Long Defeat