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The Conservation of Fame	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 22392 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, and I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Sixteen—Dancing

            Harry waited a day before he owled Draco. He thought that was a decent period, one that ought to allow Draco time to think over what he wanted and conceal Harry’s pathetic need to hear from him once again. And it did feel pathetic, this boiling, taking-over need, at least for Harry. Draco had been the one to freely admit that he didn’t like watching Harry walk away from him. Harry was the one who had played the high-handed, house-proud, reluctant one.

            But he did send a letter off with Perseus and a friendly little note, asking Draco if he wanted to meet up in Diagon Alley or Hogsmeade or Ottery St. Catchpole to eat and talk, and mentioning that he missed him.

            Draco sent back an actual package, with papers inside that rustled and which made Harry open them curiously, expecting anything from recipes for Draco’s favorite food to pictures of stone statues he had around the grounds of the Manor that looked quite pretty, actually, and how Harry shouldn’t mind if he was one of them. But in reality, only the top parchment had handwriting on it, Draco’s, which said, Ottery St. Catchpole sounds fine. We could be close to your friends there. What about Tuesday? And can you tell me if these are real?

            Harry set the letter aside and turned to the rest of the package’s contents, which were clipped newspaper articles, some of them yellowing at the edges or showing slowly-moving photographs. The Daily Prophet had never been printed to last.

            Harry paused and released his breath sharply when he realized what they were. Then he began to turn through them, slowly, like relics of another life.

            Yes. There was the first article on the break-ins, talking about how “youthful high spirits” had led some of Harry Potter’s “younger fans” to break his wards and flood into his house, where they were greeted with “an uplifted wand and uncomprehending snarls.” That was the Prophet’s way of talking about parents who had come in using their children as shields, and then tried to ambush Harry with curses or binding spells when he was talking to them. The uplifted wand and the snarls had been to create protections for the children as well as himself.

            And there was the article on the first person who had murdered someone trying to get to him, Skeeter’s syrupy words skillfully implying sympathy for the victim and the murderer, driven mad by “insane longing for Harry Potter,” with not a word for Harry himself.

            Oh, and the interview with a tearful witch who had “only wanted a lock of the Chosen One’s hair for her dying daughter.” No mention of how she had tried to use the hair against Harry in a sympathetic magic spell, and failed only because Harry had had the foresight to cast enchantments on his hair that would burn it up when someone tried that.

            And the interview with the witch who had tried to cut his throat but “only needed some of his blood for a healing potion,” and the wizard who had wanted to cut Harry’s intestines out of his belly but should be “treated gently” because “the cult of celebrity around the Boy-Who-Lived dazzled him,” and the teenage witch who had claimed that Harry was the father of her child and tried to drain his Gringotts account, but, well, she had miscounted the days since her last period, that was all, she wasn’t lying.

            Harry shook his head and shoved himself back from the table. He had to go work in the gardens for an hour before he could answer Draco, and then he sent back a terse letter acknowledging the idea for their meeting in Ottery St. Catchpole and adding a date and time, and one more paragraph.

            All of those things happened, but the paper’s perspective on it is…unique, to say the least. That’s not the way I remember those things happening.

            Perseus came back remarkably fast, and Draco’s letter said only, I understand. I’d like to hear about it. Two on Saturday sounds great. Do you want to invite any of the Weasleys?

*

            In the end, Ron and Hermione had agreed to come and drink and eat bad fish and chips with Harry and Draco in one of the small Muggle pubs in Ottery St. Catchpole. Harry got there first, with paranoia that he didn’t bother trying to hide from Draco when he showed up. He raised his eyebrows and glanced at Harry.

            “You don’t trust them, even now, do you?” he whispered, his lips barely moving.

            Harry shook his head and turned towards the pub door. “No,” he said shortly. “There’s no one who remembers me the way I was, but I’m always waiting for something to remind someone. Or maybe someone will get to know me well enough, the way you did, and break the enchantment. Or maybe someone’s stalking you because of what happened with the mirror. It pays to be safe.”

            Draco held the door of the pub for him and put a hand on his back, rubbing low and soothing at the base of Harry’s spine. “That’s another thing I’d like to hear about, too,” he said.

            Harry turned back to stare at him, then snorted. “If you don’t watch out, this is going to become an endless recitation of the bad parts of my life,” he muttered, and ducked into the pub, which was small and dark after the bright sunlight outside, but full of corners where he could sit facing the door, luckily. He chose his table, and Draco went up to ask about food and drink. Ron and Hermione came in a minute later.

            “But I want to know everything about you,” Draco said, when he came back carrying the food on a collapsible tray that Harry would just bet he’d brought with him. There was a slight hint of magic around the edge, balancing it on the tips of his fingers, but that was the type of thing you’d have to look really hard to see. “Your friends already do, don’t they?” He nodded to Ron and Hermione with a neutral face, even better than the one he’d managed when he met them in Harry’s house as they prepared to go on the wild flight with the decoy robes, and sat down.

            “Yeah, we do,” Ron said, and bit into a chip hard enough to send crumbs flying. Hermione rolled her eyes and handed him a napkin that Harry thought might have been conjured, so fast did she pull it out. Ron wiped his face and gave Draco a smile as neutral as his. “Including the parts he might not want to share with anyone.”

            “I mind talking about them only because they’re horrible and I don’t want to relive them,” Harry said shortly, and drank slow, long swallows of beer so he could give someone else a chance to speak. But no one did, and in the end, he put down the mug and stared straight at them. “I just—Draco, you know what one side looks like now, from the newspaper articles. Can you take my word for it when I say that it was awful, and leave it at that?”

            Draco splayed his fingers in front of him on the table, and studied them for a while. Then he shook his head, but not violently, and looked up to meet Harry’s eyes. “No,” he said quietly. “Not because I disbelieve you. But because I still don’t understand what was so awful that you want to keep the spell up. Do you believe it would start again, if you lowered it?”

            “Yes,” Harry said, glaring at him. “Of course. And all the worse for the years that they ‘missed’ because I was in hiding.”

            Draco leaned back in his chair and looked pensively at Harry. “That’s what I don’t understand, then,” he said at last. “That’s the core and crux of it. Why couldn’t you keep yourself safe? Why did the Ministry never understand how bad it was and help you?”

            Ron snorted bitterly, but it was Hermione who answered. “The Ministry was full of fans, too,” she said. “And people who hated Harry. And people who feared him, because of what he did to Voldemort.” She ignored Draco’s flinch so entirely that Harry thought she might simply have missed it. “And people who thought that he needed a good shaking up, or that this is what happens to wizards who save the world. No help would come from there.”

            Draco made a restless little movement, and then shook his head again. “You could have done lots of things,” he said. “Defended yourself with traps that would convince anyone trying to come after you that it wasn’t worth it. Obliviated the people who kept reporting on you. Used the Imperius Curse to command the worst offenders to spread indifference about you instead of rumors. Why didn’t you?”

            “You haven’t remembered some of the most important things about me, if you need the answer to that.” Harry didn’t find his fish appetizing, but ate steadily for a minute, waiting for Draco to fill in the connections himself. When he kept looking, Harry sighed and spelled it out. “I didn’t want to do anything that would actively hurt people, or get me sent to Azkaban. And Memory Charms do more damage to someone’s brain than a spell like the one I chose. I was still trying to make a compromise with my morals. The spell isn’t a perfect one, but it’s better than what you’re suggesting.”

            Draco’s lip drew up a little. Harry didn’t think it was in a smile. “You’re hiding,” he said. “You still want to avoid hurting people, even when they’re out to hurt you.” He shook his head hard, several times now. “I don’t know whether to admire you or to call you cowardly.”

            “You can do either,” Harry said evenly. “That’s not something I can control or prevent.” He started eating his chips. They were better than the fish.

            “And you won’t consider, even now, dropping the spell and returning to the wizarding world on your own terms?” Draco looked back and forth between Harry and Hermione and Ron, as though he knew they were part of the solution. “I wish you would.”

            “Why, though?” Ron asked, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, maybe just to see Draco flinch. “What’s the point of it? Harry’s happy the way he is. Why should he have to put his life in danger again, for the sake of some people who are never going to be happy no matter what he does?”

            “I was thinking that he might want the full freedom of the wizarding world, to which he’s entitled,” Draco murmured, and reached across the table to take Harry’s hand. Harry had been sure that wouldn’t happen with his friends here, and ended up blinking a little and shuffling in place, clearing his throat. Draco smiled at him and dipped his head to breathe a kiss across the back of Harry’s hand. “I was thinking he might want people to know who he is and give him the credit to which he’s also entitled.”

            Harry snorted. “You don’t know me well if you think that, Draco. I never wanted any of that attention.”

            Draco blinked and frowned at him. “Never? Not even back in school, when you played on your name all the time?”

            “That’s the way you remember it,” Harry snapped. He thought about taking his hand back from Draco, but it was possible that Draco really didn’t have any idea of the truth, that his memories were still slowly coming back from the spell, and in the end he left it where it was. “That’s not the way it was.”

            “No,” Draco acknowledged slowly, his fingers slipping over Harry’s skin and then going back to his own plate. “Maybe not.”

            “So,” Harry said, when a few minutes had passed in silence and it seemed no one else would break it. “Were there any other questions you wanted to ask me, Draco? I can tell you the specifics of the stories that you sent me if you like, but it’s not pleasant telling.”

            Draco leaned back in his chair and eyed him. Then he said, “You won’t drop the spell.”

            “Would it help,” Harry asked quietly, trying to forget that Ron and Hermione were there and watching him, “if I said again that I don’t want those things that you think I lost? I’m happy just being able to walk down the street and not have people stare at me. That matters far more to me than whether they know that I killed Voldemort or not. Sorry,” he added, when Draco flinched at the name again.

            “I think you should be able to choose,” Draco said, intense as though Ron and Hermione weren’t there, either. “That you should have the whole wide world at your disposal.” He formed his hand into a loose fist and touched the corner of it to Harry’s mouth. “Someone I like should have at least that much.”

            Harry smiled in spite of himself. It was nicer to think about it that way, as a gift Draco wanted to give him, rather than as something that Draco wanted to have him for. “Thanks,” he said quietly. “But I really don’t want it.” He hesitated, then plunged recklessly ahead. He had gone this far, he might as well continue. “What do you want, Draco? That I can give you right now.”

            Draco glanced at Ron and Hermione. “There are things I want to say that might not be for sensitive Gryffindor ears to hear,” he said.

            Harry saw Hermione open her mouth and knew she would suggest remaining with them, but Ron caught her arm and dragged her to her feet. “We’ll take a little walk, then,” he said, and dropped some Muggle money on the table. “If we don’t come back, this should cover it.” He winked at Harry and hurried away.

            Draco watched them go, shaking his head. “I would have said that I hated both of them,” he muttered. “Especially when I thought they were so much more famous in the war than they deserved to be. Now, I don’t.”

            “Maybe it’s because those memories, the real ones, are still returning?” Harry suggested.

            Draco swung his slow gaze back to him. “Maybe,” he said. “I don’t know.” Then he shook himself and leaned forwards again. “I still want an invitation back to your house, but I know it might be a while before you can give me that.”

            Harry nodded, eyes still focused on him, and grateful that Draco seemed inclined to accept the nod.

            “I want you to give me everything else,” Draco said. “Public acknowledgment that you’re dating me. The right to owl you whenever I like, and passage of the owl through your wards. An exception to the wards around the Manor, if you’ll take it.” He took a glittering little key out of his pocket and held it towards Harry. It looked like it was made of gold, with tiny diamonds set around the outside of a complicated loop like fragments of teeth.

            “That will get me in and out of the wards of the Manor?” Harry asked blankly, picking up the key and turning it over. It was perhaps the most beautiful thing he had ever touched that was purely concrete. Abstract things like freedom didn’t count.

            “Yes,” Draco said. “I can’t lower the wards for you. But this will permit you to step in and out of them as if they were a locked door you can open.” He leaned back in his seat, his legs stretched out before him, and if Harry hadn’t spent some time in close quarters with him, he might have missed the way that Draco’s fingers flexed anxiously open and shut, as though he wondered how the gift would be accepted.

            “Thank you,” Harry whispered. “Thank you. And everything else you want is yours.” He hesitated for a moment, not even sure what made him hesitate, and then continued, “If—if you’ll tell me why it means that much to you.”

            “Because you affected me,” Draco said. “Impressed me with your magic and made me think that you could publish on magical theory, before I knew who you were. Then it turned out you’d tricked me, and known all along who I was, while I had no idea about you.” He inhaled anger, exhaled frustration, and his fingers curled briefly in complex patterns on the table in front of him. “Made it turn out that I had something I’d wanted, and hadn’t known it. I’m enraged and baffled and fascinated. I don’t want someone who has that kind of impact on me to get away with me having no impact on him.”

            Harry smiled slowly. “That makes sense,” he murmured. “And now I can understand, how you’re different from the people who stalked me and wanted to own me.”

            Draco said nothing. He merely tilted his head to the side, waiting.

            “They didn’t understand anything about the impact I made on them,” Harry said. “If it wasn’t me, if it was someone else who saved the world, if it was Neville—and it could have been—it would have been the same to them. And they wanted their impact on me to be all-consuming. But you know if you consume me, there won’t be anyone left to return your desire.” He curled his fingers around the key and bent his head to kiss his closed fist, watching Draco all the while. “Thanks. I’ll treasure it.”

            Draco smiled. The expression was lazy and torn at the same time, as though Harry had pulled it up from his depths unwilling. Then he reached across the table and caught Harry’s face to bring him close for a kiss.

            Harry kissed him back, ignoring the way the pub’s residents stared. They were merely the first people who would know that Harry Potter was dating Draco Malfoy.

            For as much as that meant now. For a moment, just a moment, Harry felt a flash of regret that he couldn’t give Draco everything it once would have meant, the gasps of recognition in wizarding society that would have accompanied the joining of their names.

            But this way, he was free, in every sense of the word, to return Draco’s affections.

            And he thought that, ultimately, Draco would greatly prefer that.

*

            unneeded: Yes, especially now that the issues are out in the open and they’re talking about them, rather than Draco assuming Harry is lying to him all the time.

            polka dot: He offered the choice, but Draco picked the Muggle place, so he is trying to be accommodating.
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The Conservation of Fame