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
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Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Sixteen—Another Interview
            This time, Harry found Malfoy in the kitchen. He had yet another numbered list in his hand, and was comparing it with a different one, frowning. His head snapped up when Harry stepped into the room.
            “You’ve come to confront me,” he said. “But not with lightning, I hope, because you waited this long.”
            Harry paused, trying to decide how he felt about that. At least part of him must have found it acceptable, because he shook his head and walked over to sit down at the table. “I was talking with Molly Weasley, actually.”
            “She let you?”
            Harry rolled his eyes. “I know you have no reason to like the Weasleys, but the rest of Ginny’s family isn’t always bad. And you know, my younger son is half Weasley. You seem to like him well enough.”
            Malfoy half-shrugged. “Someone who can see the value of Slytherin is already more sensible than the rest of them.” But all the time, his eyes stayed on Harry, and he seemed to have forgotten his numbered lists entirely.
            Harry took a deep breath. “Molly told me some of the same things, about how not disciplining Lily hurts her,” he said. “She even seemed to think that Lily might be a complete spoiled brat by the time she goes to Hogwarts.” He ignored Malfoy’s mutter that contained the words “already that way.” It wouldn’t work if he got upset right now. “And she told me that sending her to her room and taking away her flying privileges might work. I want to know if you had any suggestions like that.”
            Malfoy straightened up a little. “You would trust me to suggest punishments?”
            “I don’t have any idea what ones are good, because I’m too afraid of hurting her.” Harry shook his head a little, impatiently, when Malfoy just continued to stare at him in shock. “Even Molly said that. So I wondered if you could suggest something. If you can’t, that’s fine, but I thought I would ask.”
            Malfoy swallowed and looked at the floor. “I thought you would come and tell me to get out of your house and never bother you again,” he said. “I scolded you pretty hard.”
            Harry had to laugh. “Less than perfectly confident in your actions? You?”
            Malfoy lifted his head with a faint frown. “I know I’m not perfect. I’ve had that perspective rubbed in my face often enough, you know.” He touched his check, then brought his hand down again, apparently because he had remembered that he was also forbidden to rub his eyes like a normal person. “And you’ve accused me of harsh actions towards your daughter already.”
            “I want what’s best for Lily,” Harry said. “My children are my first priority, I keep saying, but I haven’t really showed them. I’ve just let them go along, and handle their discipline by themselves, and say some—pretty awful things.” He looked at Malfoy, wondering if he would interrupt, but Malfoy stood and watched him with hooded eyes. “I have to really make my children my first priority. Take time off from work, and talk with Lily, and talk with James about these thefts he keeps committing, and talk with Al about watching his games, as a spectator, not standing there under my Invisibility Cloak.”
            “You have to do other things, too,” Malfoy said, in a low, charged voice.
            Harry nodded, distracted by all the visions whirling through his head. “I know. Talk with Ginny, and see if we can come to some agreement that she’ll stop mentioning her suspicions about me being gay in front of our kids. Talk to Ron and Hermione and find out if I was driving them away from me, like you said.”
            Malfoy leaned forwards. “And you have to take care of yourself. Stop thinking of yourself as just a weapon, and a means to an end.”
            Harry blinked at him. “I think I’m doing pretty well at that. You were the one who told me that people are taking advantage of me as an Auror. I won’t be their excuse and their escape anymore.”
            “You already suspected that,” Malfoy said. “I put it into more open terms than you would, that’s all.” He leaned still nearer, again. One more step and he would be looming over Harry. “You have to value yourself enough to make the change, or you’ll turn from an Auror who spares your colleagues work into an overprotective father.”
            “So what do you suggest I do?” Harry asked, holding onto his temper as best as he could. He’d thought he was doing pretty well, and here was Malfoy, dumping another set of impossible standards on him to live up to. “Abandoning my children and going along my merry way is not an option.”
            “Nor was I going to suggest it be.” Malfoy’s voice was very quiet now. “I do have some concrete plans, if you’d like to hear them.”
            Harry drummed one fist on his knee. It was stupid, but he didn’t think he could walk away from Malfoy now, after having let him come so far to say what he had to say, and he also didn’t want to strike out at Malfoy.
            “Sure,” he said finally, and knew that Malfoy would be able to hear the sound of gritted teeth in his voice.
            Malfoy raised his eyebrows, but said nothing else, mercifully, instead merely reaching out and tapping one of the lists lying on the table. Harry waved his wand to Summon it and laid it down in front of it.
            Make a strict schedule of eating and sleeping times. Use alarm charms, if necessary, to remind one when to eat, and use Sleeping Spells if one cannot get to sleep on time.
            Talk to one’s wife and arrange a schedule for who keeps the daughter and when. If there is an emergency, then one of the parents may ask the other to take her, for as long as it takes to resolve the emergency. Deadlines at work and the daughter nagging her current guardian do not count as an emergency.
            Harry looked up. “Is there a reason that you keep referring to me as ‘one’ instead of ‘you’ or something?” he asked.
            “I thought it best to be formal after my last outburst.”
            Harry stared at Malfoy. That was about the last response he would have expected to hear. He did notice that Malfoy was avoiding his eyes, and a little understanding bloomed in him.
            He’s embarrassed about having lost control like that. Even if he told me the truth. Even if he does think that it was the best thing he could have done, and the only way that he was going to get through to me.
            Harry swallowed, and blinked, and returned to his list. At least he understood a little more about Malfoy than he had two minutes ago.
            Talk to one’s friends. Make them aware of the problems. Apologize if necessary. Do not take on extra commitments as a form of apology, or make them privy to everything that crosses one’s mind merely because one feels guilty.
            Make it clear to the Head Auror that one needs either another wrist-bell or extra help on the case of the Spiders. Expecting them to rely on one’s help and luck alone is clearly ridiculous.
            Harry looked up. “There were other Aurors assigned to work the case with me, you know,” he said mildly. “They were there on the day that we discovered the powder was probably from a Dark artifact, or a Dark artifact itself, and turned it over to the Unspeakables. And they did most of the work with trying to identify the body in Madam Malkin’s.”
            “Have you heard from any of them since?” Malfoy’s eyes glittered. “Even when you brought those Spiders into the Ministry?”
            Harry blinked. “There’s hardly been time for that to happen,” he complained. “I was locked away with the Head Auror for hours, and then I came back here with you.” To have the shock of my life. At least he could hope it would be a salutary shock.
            Malfoy leaned delicately against the wall; somehow, Harry found it hard to apply the word “slouching” to him, even though he wouldn’t have hesitated if it was Ron. “Allow me to rephrase, then. Did the Head Auror talk about anyone else handling the case with you, including any of those who were with you when you found the body and the powder?”
            “I didn’t find the body personally,” Harry began, and continued when Malfoy got a little dangerous look in his eyes. “No, he didn’t mention it. But I’m sure they’re still working the case. That trap in Knockturn Alley was just that, a trap. They weren’t called to it because the Spiders only wanted me, for some reason.”
            “Then he could have told you about it, and told you who would handle which responsibilities.” Malfoy gave him a little smile that made Harry breathless with how nasty it was. “Isn’t that how Aurors usually work? They subdivide a case, and work in partnerships to keep themselves safe, but they don’t all do the same thing?”
            Harry put a hand to his forehead. “Sure. I’m just—trying to remember the last time I worked a case all the way through to the end with anyone but Ron.” And he had to admit, he’d done a lot himself, at least with paperwork aspects and doing some routine sort of work to cover for someone who wanted to go home.
            “They’re not lazy,” he said, looking up at Malfoy. “I may have been letting them take advantage of me, but they’re not lazy. They just need a holiday sometimes. They’re human.”
            “The retort is too obvious,” Malfoy said, and made a big show of closing his mouth.
            “Fine,” Harry said, with a sigh. “I know I’m human, too. It’s just…I’ve always had more magical power than a lot of people. And I have more energy and time, too.”
            “Time that I believe you told me took away from your marriage and was probably one of the major causes of your divorce,” Malfoy said. “Not to mention not knowing your children well. Perhaps the other Aurors are not all lazy. Perhaps Robards is a good Head Auror. But they haven’t acted well by you.”
            “So you do think I ought to quit?” Harry heard his voice trembling, and looked down at the list. “No, wait. You said take a holiday.”
            “Yes,” said Malfoy, and his voice was simmering, but he had stood up again and had gone back to not looming over Harry, which Harry appreciated. “You can learn. You need not sacrifice your career. I wouldn’t want you to, and I don’t think your children would want you to, either, bar your daughter. But you need to make changes. If the Spiders case is dangerous, the Head Auror should give you help, not expect you to find them and ask them if they’re still helping you. If the Unspeakables find the powder and your wrist-bell too difficult to deal with, then you shouldn’t go out on the case until they have answers for you. Going alone into danger is foolish.”
            Harry raised one hand and tapped it against his right ear, cocking his head to the side as he did.
            “What are you doing?” Of all the things he had done and said, this was the one that made Malfoy look at him as if he was mad.
            “I’m trying to get all the wool out that apparently prevented me from saying that to myself,” Harry said dryly. “How come it makes so much sense when you say it, but I never thought of it before?”
            Malfoy arched his eyebrows. “Because an outside perspective is what you needed. I told you the reasons that others might be happy to leave the situation as it was, because it gave them someone to blame. And if it did not, they were held back by what I suspect are your friends’ scruples, that they did not want to tell an adult how to act, or by their age. Your children can hardly advise you to do what’s best.”
            Harry sighed, his humor flickering and dying again. “Yes, I know. I really fucked up there.”
            “And you have spent too much time concentrating on that,” Malfoy said. “It is the only thing in which I find your daughter sympathetic. You brood on the past and the gifts that you did not buy her, the moments you missed, instead of the gifts that you might still buy and the occasions you might spend with her. Concentrate on the future instead. And do something concrete and now.”
            “What?”
            Malfoy half-rolled his eyes, but Harry didn’t miss the smile he tried to hide. Good. Malfoy wanted to stay with Harry for the moment and help him wrestle his life into shape, if he could. “Contact your Head Auror and tell him that you’re taking a holiday. Effective immediately, lasting at least until he tells you who else is working with you on this case. And then buy a gift for your daughter.”
            Harry bit his lip. “She might think it’s trying to make up for the wrong broom I bought her for her birthday.”
            “She can freely reject it,” Malfoy said. “But it shows that you were thinking of her.” He paused. “Even if you weren’t thinking of doing that until I brought it up. I think I’ll leave it to you to choose the gift.”
            Harry thought about it. He wondered what receiving a special gift that was just for him would have meant to him when he was an unloved child stuck at the Dursleys’. Lily was far from stuck at the Dursleys’—he had to remember that, had to remember that her life hadn’t been all awful—but she might still want to think he was noticing her, remembering she was there.
            “That would make sense,” he murmured. “And I’m not going to give her a broom. It would remind her too much of what I didn’t get her, before.” He saw Malfoy roll his eyes, but ignored that; if Malfoy was going to leave this decision up to Harry, then Harry was going to pick the gift, and he would think aloud while he did it, because it pleased him. “I’ll give her a book.”
            Malfoy’s head tilted. “Her Aunt Granger doesn’t give her enough of those?”
            “It has Weasley in front of it now, you know,” Harry said primly, although he was absurdly pleased that Malfoy cared enough to have worked out what Hermione’s relationship to Lily would be, now that she was married to Ron. “And no. She gave Jamie books. I think she thought Lily was too interested in doing other things.”
            “Perhaps the number of assumptions that people around you have made about your daughter is one contributing factor to her rage,” Malfoy murmured.
            Harry winced and nodded. “That did occur to me,” he said. “But this book is a history of younger children and their contributions to the history of the wizarding world that I saw before. I was thinking about getting it for Jamie, but when I found out it was about younger children, I knew it wouldn’t do.”
            “It might be an interesting idea,” Malfoy said. Harry couldn’t figure out whether that was a neutral way of saying it would be a terrible one, and decided not to try. It was still up to him, as Malfoy had pointed out. “Now what?”
            “Now I contact Robards,” Harry said, standing up, “and tell him about that holiday.”
*
            “This is unacceptable, Auror Potter.”
            “I know the notice is short,” Harry said with dignity. He could feel Malfoy silently watching behind him. He had offered to leave the room when Harry opened the Floo connection, but Harry had asked him to stay. He had no reason to hide anything from him now, and part of him wanted Malfoy to see that Harry was trying his suggestions.
            Even though, looking at the fury that twisted Robards’s face, Harry was starting to suspect that this was the one that wouldn’t work.
            “It’s not that,” Robards said, in a low snarl. “You are in the middle of an ongoing case, one that became more urgent with the capture of some of the criminals this very day. Or did you forget that, in the way you rushed away with your paramour?”
            Harry’s brain jerked to a halt. His mouth flapped open as he stared at Robards, trying to remember what that word meant.
            “Excuse me,” he said. “You saw me leaving with someone you think is my lover?” His voice was weak, and he heard Malfoy shift behind him in a way that he thought meant he was going to say something, but he didn’t. Or else Harry couldn’t hear him over the near-constant roaring in his ears.
            “Who else could Malfoy be? Why would you keep him with you otherwise?” Robards shook his head back and forth. “I’d heard rumors you were gay before, with the divorce from your wife and your closeness with Weasley, but I could ignore it. It had no bearing on whether you were a good Auror. This does. You can’t take a holiday because you want to spend time with family, you can’t take it to spend time with a lover.”
            Harry was tempted to back up and stand, breaking off the Floo connection. He might as well. There was nothing else he could do here.
            But he recognized the impulse coiling in his muscles. It was the same one that had made him go for food and drinks in the pub rather than staying and talking to Malfoy. The same one that had made him walk away from or bury so many arguments with Ginny. It was just easier to get along if he ran away until the other person forgot about this.
            No.
            “I don’t think so,” he said, and didn’t understand the depth of his voice until he saw Robards freeze. “Other Aurors take time to spend with family. With lovers. You tolerated that bloody stupid affair between Aurors Pevara and Tozain that ended up splitting the Department, remember? And that was adultery. But I forgot. They’re not Harry Potter, are they? They’re just ordinary Aurors. Even when they were in the middle of ongoing cases, they could be excused.
            “This is the end of letting myself be walked on, Auror Robards.” Harry heard his voice from a distance, while the center of his chest felt hollow, and at the same time filled with a pounding chaos. “Either I can quit now, or you can let me have my holiday.”
            Robards said nothing.
            Harry bowed his head. “Then I’ll send you my resignation letter in the morning,” he said, and backed away from the Floo connection.
            He was shaking as he stood. He hadn’t wanted it to come to this. He thought it was stupid that it had. Surely Robards could recognize that he deserved some time off like everyone else, especially when he had done the most on this case so far and was the target of the Spiders’ trap? But he supposed Malfoy would say that Robards was one of those who had come to rely on using him as they liked.
            Malfoy…
            Harry turned around.
            Malfoy watched him for a long moment. Then he clasped his fist to his heart and bowed.
            “Well done,” he said softly, as he came up.
            There was no reason for that to make Harry feel like he could fly, but it did.
*
            delia cerrano: He’s trying his best!
            SP777: Molly isn’t sure what to think. But living with Malfoy does make her wonder.
            I just find it hard to be interested in weddings, I guess.
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Marathon