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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 Sixteen—Long-Term Revenge
            “I understand the last charade was distressing to you, Mr. Potter.”
            Harry sighed and stared at his plate for a second. He supposed he should have suspected that Narcissa would talk to him about this, and he ought to have suspected it even more when he saw that they were the only ones at breakfast. She probably wouldn’t have talked about it in front of Draco.
            “It was embarrassing,” he told his plate. When he leaned back, the food vanished. The house-elves had already learned that he never ate much in the mornings. He looked across the table at Narcissa, who sat with her own still-loaded plate and an arrested look on her face that made her look like a living portrait. “And I can’t stand it that someone thinks I’m just this cringing little thing.”
            “Because you have more courage than that?”
            Harry studied her for a second, but she seemed genuinely interested, not just asking to ask, so he finally shifted and muttered, “That, but also because it’s—the most humiliating interpretation of slavery that we could come up with.”
            “That makes it all the more likely to be believed,” Narcissa countered, as though reassuring someone of their fitness for a position as servant in the Manor. Her face and voice were both calm. “They want to believe that we are treating you badly, that you are not only a slave but an object.”
            Harry closed his eyes. “That’s probably the hardest of all.”
            “Why?”
            The calm voice made Harry answer before he thought about either his language or who he was talking to. “Because it means they never did give a shit about me, ever. It means that they’re more interested in all the stories about me, the scandal, than they are in the real person I am.”
            Then he did remember who he was talking to, and winced and opened his eyes. “Sorry, Mrs. Malfoy.”
            “Call me Narcissa.” Narcissa was, currently, looking highly entertained as she ate a few last delicate bites of the salad she seemed to prefer in the mornings.
            “Then call me Harry, not Mr. Potter.” Harry folded his arms and scowled at her.
            Narcissa laughed aloud. “If they could see you now, they would decide you were more intriguing as your real self. You never look as if you’re going to destroy anything in your cringing persona.”
            Harry glanced away. “Maybe I should want them to see the real me, but I don’t. I don’t care about them seeing me as I really am, if they’re so ready to believe all sorts of false shit about me.” It did feel good to swear, to let things out like that.
            “Draco did mention something about how you might let them see a more savage side of you.” Narcissa tipped her cup at him. “If this is the beginning of that, I approve.”
            Harry regarded her warily. “Even though I’m swearing at you and you might have to worry about me destroying your house?”
            “Some people value other things more than property,” Narcissa said. “Like honor, and life-debts, and watching those life-debts well-repaid.”
            Harry made a little noise and flopped his head down into the middle of his arms. “I’m not just a life-debt.”
            “I know. For my son, you have become more than that.”
            She kept doing that quicksilver thing, where she would shift the subject Harry thought they were discussing in a totally new direction. He looked up and blinked. “And you don’t mind that, either? Even if it would mean Draco not holding onto all the Malfoy traditions?” He didn’t know yet what he and Draco would end up being to each other, but he knew that he wouldn’t put up with someone who would just turn out like another Lucius. He didn’t know how Narcissa dealt with that bastard.
            “I don’t know yet what will happen,” said Narcissa, sipping her drink. “One never does. But we made the choice, took the risk, to bring you into our house, and I am not unhappy with the results so far.”
            She gave him another gentle smile, and flipped open the book that lay beside her plate, which looked as if it had illustrations colored like some of the pictures in medieval books. For all Harry knew, it could be medieval. The Manor might have older things in it.
            He escaped out the door, glancing over his shoulder. Narcissa never looked up, never acted as though she was interested in anything but the contents of the book and the cup.
            And he had thought Draco was weird. He didn’t even know for sure what the subject of that conversation had been, but once again, he had the impression that he had learned less from Narcissa than she had learned about him.
*
            Narcissa had long ago mastered the trick of concentrating on one thing, or appearing to concentrate on it, while her mind whirled down different pathways altogether. It had served her well when the Dark Lord ruled in the Manor and wanted constant attention from all his followers.
            Now, she had a more innocent purpose, but she did not know if Harry would be much less distressed by the object of her focus than the Dark Lord would have been by a lapse of attention.
            She was beginning to wonder if they should not only shelter Harry, and help him resist and fool the goblins, and countenance what he and Draco did together as long as Draco was not hurt, but also help him specifically with his revenge outside the walls of the Manor.
            Lucius would be against it, she knew. But Lucius was against many things that did not matter. On that score alone, it was not enough to dissuade her from the decision.
            She picked up her water and sipped a little more, thoughts of the book slipping away from her mind. Of more concern was the fact that Harry might not have many long-term plans for revenge, and the ones he did have would probably be inchoate. Possibly not likely to work, either.
            Narcissa smiled a minute later. She knew that Harry didn’t trust her without reservation, the way he seemed to trust Draco, but he would at least listen. She could make some more suggestions for revenge, ones that might be appropriate, and if he challenged them, it would be with respect.
            With that, she turned her mind to the much more pleasant task of coming up with strategies.
*
            “You aren’t paying attention,” said Draco. “You need to focus.”
            Once, that would have made Harry spring to his feet radiating indignation and determined to show him what was what, Draco knew. Now, Harry gave a sort of exhausted sigh and sagged onto the couch in the dueling room. “I know,” he said. “Those last few hexes weren’t meant to go around you. Sorry.”
            He shut his eyes, which meant he missed Draco’s gape. Just as well, Draco decided a moment later. He didn’t want to show Harry less than confidence if he could help it.
            “What are you thinking about?” That was his second impulse, to say that. The first one had been to go over and kick Harry, but it probably wouldn’t help. Draco conjured a second couch across from Harry and settled on it to watch.
            Harry sighed and stared intently at the ceiling. “The fact that I want revenge now, I’m even starting to think I deserve it based on what you’ve said to me.”
            “Yes?” Draco asked a moment after Harry stopped speaking, puzzled. If Harry had started to accept that he deserved revenge, then Draco saw no reason for mourning that. Celebrating, rather, that Harry was starting to behave like a normal human being who thought he deserved good treatment.
            Harry turned his head towards Draco, and there was a glitter of frustrated tears in his eyes that made Draco wince and then sit very, very still.
            “But I can’t think of anything that doesn’t backfire,” Harry whispered. “Except what you said, letting them know how dangerous my magic is so that they don’t come near me with their wands and their quills, but even that could backfire. Someone could decide that I was a new Dark Lord and kill me from a distance. How do I keep someone from doing that? How do I keep the goblins from deciding that I haven’t suffered enough when my year is done, particularly if they ever find out about our con?”
            “But the bargain was that they have to leave you alone,” Draco pointed out, a little uneasy now. He had to admit that he had only ever thought in terms of fooling the goblins for a year, not permanently defying them. “Even if you had stayed in Gringotts, they couldn’t do anything to you after a year was done.”
            “If I really served it,” Harry said softly, standing up and walking over to the wall. An enchanted window opened in front of him, showing a field of corn; Draco knew it meant the Manor was sensing his need. If that alarmed Harry, he didn’t show it. He leaned on the new sill and stared out the window, instead. “But what happens if they find out that I didn’t keep my word?”
            Draco swallowed. Well, yes, the revenge of goblins could be terrible. He didn’t really know what exactly they would do, since most of the time their vengeance was on thieves and not people who had broken promises to them, but it was probably going to be terrible.
            “Sure, I could terrify them with my magic the same way I could wizards, if I got hold of them.” Harry was talking softly to himself, leaning on the sill and smoothing one hand up and down as though he wanted to stroke the imaginary corn. “But they aren’t foolish enough to come near me, the way some wizards are. They would hide behind all those walls of stone and metal where I couldn’t get to them. They don’t have wands. They wouldn’t want to interview me. They would just want to destroy me. They could do it, couldn’t they?”
            Draco bit his lip firmly and shut his eyes. Something was coming, he thought. Some thought, bubbling up from the depths of his consciousness and spreading out across the surface of his mind with aching slowness and smoothness. He would have it in a second. He just needed Harry to be quiet about it so he could get hold of it.
            “And besides—”
            “Shut up for a second,” Draco said, and ignored the surprised stare that he could feel moving up the side of his face. Sure, maybe he shouldn’t say that, but wouldn’t it be worth a little temporary discomfort if he could grasp hold of his idea and come up with a good vengeance for Harry?
            Maybe Harry agreed, or was curious enough about what was going to happen next to wait. He was still standing there, head canted to the side, when the idea coalesced fully in Draco’s mind and he opened his eyes with a little gasp.
            “Why does your magic damage only organic things?” he asked Harry.
            Harry hunched like a dragon over a clutch, as though he assumed the question was somehow an accusation. “I don’t know,” he snapped. “I never thought that I particularly wanted to damage—”
            “You don’t know how it works,” Draco summarized, rising to his feet and beginning to pace back and forth. He felt happy, the way he had when he started making plans at Hogwarts on how to take someone down or win a Quidditch game. He hoped that these plans worked out better than most of those had, though. “You didn’t wish for that power. It just showed up one day when you got angry enough, right?”
            “Right.” This time, the long, considering stare Harry gave Draco seemed to say that he would at least indulge his speculations.
            “Then what you have to do is shape and fold and train it,” Draco said, spinning around. “The book in the library already gave you some ideas on how to calm it down. I told you about using it to scare people instead of destroy them, and you agreed. So you must believe it can be tamed.”
            “Right,” said Harry. “But I would prefer that it was gone altogether.”
            “What you need to do,” Draco said, grinning maniacally, “is train it to destroy inorganic things, too. And then you can let it loose on the goblins’ precious money.”
            Harry looked at him with a softly open mouth, which Draco enjoyed for the few seconds it took Harry to snort skeptically and fold his arms. “But I still can’t actually destroy anything unless I can get into the bank,” he said. “And they probably have wards they made specifically to keep me out put up.”
            “You can reach out from a distance with your magic,” said Draco. “At least, I think you can. I know that the Dark Lord was studying that sort of ritual. Legilimency from a distance. Torture from a distance.”
            “No, thanks.”
            Draco blinked, brought out of his gleeful trance by the utter disgust in Harry’s voice. “Oh,” he said. “I mean, it wasn’t inherently Dark. You could Heal someone at a distance, too. It’s just a kind of ritual.”
            “It must be complicated.”
            Draco shrugged. “It is, and you need a powerful wizard to stand at the heart of it, which is the reason that not just anyone performs it every day. But I don’t think that’s really going to be a problem for you, is it?” He let his voice drop, and looked Harry boldly in the eye.
            “Well, no.” Harry toyed with a string dangling from his sleeve. Draco wondered how that had managed to happen, in a house where elves cared for all the clothes, and then shook his head. Harry probably carried his own private chaos field around with him. “But it doesn’t mean that I can actually get into the bank.”
            “Through the wards? You can practice,” said Draco. “All you need to do is affect a small amount of money to terrify them.”
            Harry abruptly turned away and looked out the temporary window again, but Draco had seen his face, the unconscious flinch from deep inside his body, and he stepped up and laid a hand on Harry’s shoulder. “What is it?” he whispered.
            “It just never ends, does it?” Harry sounded tired. “I can’t have any peace except by scaring people. I can’t just be myself and have them accept me as someone who’s normal and gets angry sometimes and deserves privacy. I can’t walk away from all this.”
            Draco held his breath. That sounded like an acknowledgment that Harry needed to stay in the wizarding world after all.
            But Harry said nothing else, and Draco abandoned the thought of convincing him for now. He rubbed Harry’s shoulder soothingly. “I know, but you’re something better than normal,” he said.
            “What?” Harry looked at him in a way that told Draco he’d have to be careful about what he said next.
            “You’re you.”
            That worked. Harry slowly let his shoulders slump back down. “And I suppose if I was normal, then I wouldn’t be caring about revenge in the first place,” he muttered. “I wouldn’t need it.”
            Draco grinned. “No, you would have thought about it a long time ago if you were ‘normal.’ But you wouldn’t have the resources that you do to carry it out, either.”
            Harry leaned a thoughtful arm on the sill this time. Draco moved up beside him, and waited patiently until Harry stirred and looked at him again.
            “I suppose that freedom and privacy based on terrifying people is better than not ever having either one of them again,” he said carefully.
            “A lot better,” Draco agreed. He made sure to put enough fervor in his voice that Harry smiled.
            Harry traced a finger along the grain of the windowsill. “And you think that I would really have enough power to use these rituals? If Voldemort didn’t have enough to use them and he was studying them…”
            Draco shook his head. “The Dark Lord didn’t use them because he had a thousand and one other calls on his time.” He braced himself and managed to say what he needed to say in a light and joking tone. “It’s not easy ruling Death Eaters and torturing people and trying to conquer Britain and study ancient magic all at the same time, you know.”
            Harry stared. Then he leaned forwards and put a hand on the back of Draco’s neck, and drew him into a kiss.
            Draco went willingly enough, gasping a little. He hadn’t actually expected Harry to initiate a kiss for a while, and he didn’t understand why it was happening now—
            But the thoughts drowned in the sheer feeling of rightness of Harry’s tongue in his mouth, and he slumped witless in Harry’s arms near the end of it, his eyelashes fluttering and his breath coming fast enough to be disgraceful if he was ever going to worry about Malfoy dignity in front of Harry. When he could manage it, he stood upright and stared at Harry in wonder.
            “Thank you for being you,” Harry whispered. “I needed to hear a joke then, and I know it’s not easy for you to joke about him.”
            Draco leaned his forehead on Harry’s shoulder, utterly content. Yes, it had taken courage, but he didn’t know many people who would recognize that.
            Harry stroked his back in silence for a little while, and then asked, “And you would help me study these rituals?”
            “Yes,” said Draco firmly. “You have a long time to study them, you know. It’s only been six weeks. We still have most of a year.”
            Harry’s hand went motionless for a second. Then he said, “Of course we do,” and resumed stroking.
            It would have been wrong to confront Harry before this, perhaps, but Draco saw no reason not to do it now. He caught Harry’s hand in a firm grip and said, “And we have more than a year, if you want it. You can stay here. Or you can stay in the wizarding world. It makes no difference to me where you are. I’ll find you and be with you.”
            Harry swallowed. “Your parents might have something to say about me staying in the Manor for more than a year.”
            “You mean my father would,” Draco corrected him. “You should know my mother well enough by now to realize that she would be pleased to have you.”
            “Right,” said Harry. “I just…Draco, I don’t know.”
            “Ten minutes ago, you didn’t know how you would get revenge on the goblins.” Draco put his hands on Harry’s arms to hold him still when Harry made a little withdrawing movement. “We can always settle it later. I just want you to know that you don’t need to make up your mind to walk away because of it.”
            Harry bit his lip and looked down. Then he nodded. “We study the rituals, and I teach you dueling, and my friends visit, and I write to them, and you go on showing me the kinds of luxuries that Malfoys live with,” he said, as though he was outlining a timetable to a student at Hogwarts.
            “Exactly,” Draco said, and moved forwards again, so that he could stand with his head on Harry’s chest and listen to the thundering of his heart.
            Harry’s hand settled lightly in the middle of his back, and he whispered, “Okay. That sounds good.”
            Draco smiled, closed his eyes, and basked some more in the rightness of it.
*
delia cerrano: The problem with other people feeling guilty is that the news stories are controlled by people who either want to write about the scandal or are hostile to Harry. So it’s hard to get an unbiased perspective.
SP777: She intended to, but Draco beat her to the punch.
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The Long Defeat