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
- 16
- 17
- 18
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Seventeen—Aftermath
            “You didn’t expect him to sack you.”
            “No shit,” Harry said. He was looking around his room, wondering for a second what he would do now. He had almost no ordinary clothes aside from his Auror robes. He shook his head, wondering when that had happened. And why it hadn’t ended up on Malfoy’s list yet.
            “Language,” said Malfoy, his voice so weak that Harry turned to look at him.
            Malfoy was standing near the doorway of Harry’s bedroom, and he wasn’t giving Harry’s bed or bare walls the disgusted looks that Harry had expected. Instead, he stood with his arms folded over his belly as though he was the one who had taken an unexpected blow. Harry sighed. Now he had to deal with this, when what he really wanted was to get to Ron. He was the one who deserved to hear the news first.
            “What?” Harry asked.
            “A life-debt, settling a life-debt,” Malfoy said, in a slow and stumbling voice Harry hadn’t thought he was capable of, “is supposed to help you. I may have just cost you your job, and you’re not even getting upset at me.”
            Harry sighed and cast another longing look at the row of Auror robes hanging in the wardrobe. Then he decided that he was bloody well good enough at Transfiguration to change one of them into what he wanted, and snatched it from the hook. He cast a sharp spell at it, and the cloth writhed and twisted. In a few seconds, the scarlet color was brown. Harry nodded and slipped it on. It didn’t matter. He hadn’t tried to change the cut or anything, so the robes still fit him.
            “Potter? Why aren’t you upset?”
            “I think I’ll be upset eventually,” Harry said, turning around and staring at Malfoy. He reckoned that he couldn’t put off talking to him forever. “But, at the moment, there are other things to worry about. And you didn’t cost me my job. That was Robards. Bloody idiot,” he added, frowning at the far wall. “I didn’t think he’d do that. He’s never cared about who Aurors sleep with before, and he’s never told anyone that they can’t have time off to spend with their families. What the fuck is going on with him?”
            This time, Malfoy didn’t bother scolding him for language. He just continued watching Harry with big, absurdly frightened eyes, and Harry sighed again and put a hand on his arm.
            “Your honor or whatever else is tied up in life-debts is safe,” he said quietly. “I could have done something other than resigning. I didn’t. That was my choice. Neither you nor Robards precisely forced me into doing it, you know. It’s a combination of my hot temper and the way he wouldn’t yield. You didn’t cause either of those.”
            Malfoy still seemed to be struggling with words. Harry raised an eyebrow, and waited. He was surprised that this was affecting Malfoy so harshly. He’d seemed perfectly happy before ordering Harry around, and telling him what to do, and affecting his life in ways that could be seen as negative. Why this flinching?
            “I did something like this once before,” Malfoy finally whispered.
            Harry controlled the impulse to say, “You go around getting Aurors sacked often?” He didn’t think it would fit the mood.
            And whatever this was, it was important to Malfoy, as small as it undoubtedly was. Harry waited instead, eyes locked on Malfoy, and Malfoy licked his lips and bowed his head a little, as he struggled through to his own sort of understanding.
            “I did something that involved honor,” Malfoy whispered. “Only I didn’t understand it the way the—the other person did, and she blamed me for costing her her honor. She never forgave me. She never will.”
            “That would be Astoria?” Harry asked, fascinated despite himself. All the reasons he had imagined for why Malfoy’s wife might have left him, and they had never involved anything like this. He had thought it was because Malfoy was a git, or Astoria was one, or they disagreed about the right way to teach Scorpius to march down the stairs in the morning.
            Malfoy jerked back from him and stood as straight as an Auror trainee, clasping his hands behind his back. “It was my wife,” he said. “But I must ask you to refrain from repeating that.”
            Harry rolled his eyes. “My friends aren’t interested in pure-blood gossip anyway, and the only one of my children who needs to know the truth probably already does. Your secret’s safe with me, Malfoy.”
            Malfoy only looked at him again. Harry didn’t know what he was thinking this time. That Harry was untrustworthy. That everyone was interested in pure-blood gossip, because he was. That Harry’s friends would always hate him.
            It didn’t matter. What did was telling Ron the truth. Harry let his hand clasp Malfoy’s shoulder one more time, and then he turned around and began to move towards the door. He felt like Apparating rather than Flooing, though, really, there was no way that someone wouldn’t find out what had happened to his job and start spreading it around in a number of hours. Robards had probably raged to himself, and when that happened, it wouldn’t be quiet.
            “Come on,” he said, without looking back. “Let’s go.”
            He thought there might be nothing, but at last there came the quiet slap of footsteps following him. Harry smiled, but kept his eyes straight ahead. There was every chance that Malfoy would misunderstand that smile if he saw it.
*
            “What is Malfoy doing with you?”
            Harry restrained himself from rolling his eyes, but it was hard. That wouldn’t help to change Malfoy’s impression that he was centrally important to everyone and that Ron and Hermione would always hate him.
            “He’s staying with me to pay off a life-debt that he owes me because I saved his son,” Harry said simply, and sat on his desk, ignoring the paperwork. Right now, it wasn’t his problem. “But I have something more important to talk to you about, Ron.”
            “More important than Malfoy being in our office?” Ron was on his feet, the cup of coffee that he’d been drinking standing forgotten on his desk, and his hand had edged nearer to his wand. “I think he’s enchanted you somehow, mate. There’s no way that you would be so calm about this otherwise.”
            “How entertaining, Potter,” Malfoy said, in an absolute monotone that made Harry want to laugh in spite of the effect it was having on Ron. “Your superiors think that I’m your lover, and your equals blame me for enchanting you. Do not introduce me to your trainees. I don’t think I would be entertained by those speculations.”
            Harry looked over his shoulder, carefully. Malfoy had the same shut face and narrow eyes that he’d had most of the time since he started talking to Harry. Harry could relax a bit. Yes, it was fine. At least, Malfoy wasn’t in any worse of a mood than he’d been for a while now.
            “Your lover?” Ron did have his wand out now. Harry looked back at him and shook his head. Ron didn’t pay much attention. “This is changing too fast for me, mate. You couldn’t have told me about this?”
            Harry sighed, long and loudly enough that Ron looked at him. “Listen,” Harry said, speaking loudly, too. He didn’t care if someone passing overheard this. He needed Ron not to be mistaken more than he needed freedom from Ministry gossip, which he probably wouldn’t get anyway. “Malfoy is not my lover. He is staying with me to help pay off a life-debt. He’s saved my life a few times, too. On his advice, I told Robards that I needed a holiday from work because I need to work on getting my relationship to my kids right. Robards told me that I couldn’t do that, not in the middle of an ongoing case. Then he blamed Malfoy for it. Apparently everyone else can have a family and a lover, but not me. So I told him I was resigning.”
            Ron shut his mouth and lowered his wand. He looked from Malfoy to Harry with such piercing eyes that Harry squirmed a little. He really had been distant from his friends, if he’d forgotten the way that Ron used to look at him. When was the last time he had undergone a searching look like that? When was the last time that he had cared enough about anything other than the case or the crisis right in front of him to ask for it?
            He had probably just avoided another trap, he thought. If he had focused too much on Malfoy or Lily or any other one person once he quit, then he would have missed this, too.
            “You’re kidding,” Ron said at last, slowly. “But the look on your face says you’re not. And you were never a very good liar. What—Harry, this is crazy. What are you going to do?”
            “Find another job,” Harry said. “Eventually. Or maybe Robards will see sense and hire me back. It’s not that I don’t want to be an Auror, Ron. It’s that my family is more important. I’ve been saying that for years. It’s time that I finally started doing something about it.”
            “I can agree on that.” Ron propped his fist on his chin and eyed Harry. “You’d say something about that, and then go home, and the next time I heard from Ginny, she was complaining about how you ignored her.”
            Harry winced. Then he stood up and accepted it. Well, maybe Ginny had said that. She’d also said lots of other things, most of them hurtful. And Harry had lived with it, or got over it. They were divorced now. She couldn’t hurt him as much anymore.
            It did make him realize, though, how much of the family had really just been his kids. They were the ones he wanted to see and talk to and do things with. Ginny had been someone to avoid and argue with and be “adult” with, which seemed to mean talking about problems that degenerated into more arguments.
            There’s a reason we got divorced.
            Lots of them, but this one was the first that gave Harry some pain and yet reason to move on, too. “I know,” he said. “But maybe quitting for a while would be a good thing. I do want to find out who the Spiders are and what they’re doing, why they would want to murder someone who works in Madam Malkin’s and then set up a trap for me.”
            “We don’t know that that body was someone who worked in Madam Malkin’s,” Ron promptly interrupted to remind him. “We haven’t been able to identify enough of the remains for us to be sure of anything about them, really.” Then he blinked, and his eyes focused on Harry. “Wait, what?”
            So Harry had to explain the trap the Spiders had set, and how Malfoy had saved him from that. He watched Malfoy out of the corner of his eye as he did, wary about embarrassing him, but Malfoy seemed to feel differently about that when it came to Ron. He stood taller and let his arms fall down by his sides instead of folding them, while he gave Ron a smile that was almost lipless.
            Harry wanted to roll his eyes, but didn’t. Still, it reminded him of some of the stupid things he and Ginny had done to spite each other. He grinned a little as he wondered if Malfoy was gay after all, and had always really been focused on Ron. It wouldn’t be like he could admit he was attracted to a Weasley even if he was. Blood traitors and all that.
            I hope not, though. It would just make everything too complicated.
            Ron was clutching the edge of his desk by the time Harry finished the story. “Your wrist-bell still doesn’t work, and Robards wanted you to go on working?” he breathed.
            Harry nodded. “And I don’t know if any other Aurors are still working on the case with me, or not. Robards obviously didn’t tell you anything about this.”
            “No.” Ron stared at the floor for a second, and then he put his wand on his desk and walked forwards. Harry shifted a little. He didn’t know what Ron was going to do, but he would get in between him and Malfoy if it involved beating Malfoy up.
            Instead, Ron wrapped his arms around Harry and hugged him, hard.
            From the corner of his eye, Harry could see that Malfoy’s face had gone more exquisitely neutral than ever. He bit his lip hard and leaned on Ron’s chest, closing his eyes. Ron rattled and rocked him back and forth for a second, and then stepped back and searched his face.
            “Don’t do that to me again,” Ron whispered.
            “Do what?” Harry had to admit that he didn’t like being manhandled when he had done nothing wrong. Between the Spiders’ attempts and Malfoy dragging him around in the Ministry earlier and pinning him against the wall and now this, he thought he’d had his share of it for the day.
            “Leave like that again.” Ron clenched his hands in front of him. “You’ve been working on so many cases and trying to do so many things, I felt you were leaving me behind. But you were doing it so well that I thought it was what you wanted. Hermione was sure that you would come back to us. But I wasn’t so sure.”
            Harry just nodded, eyes on Ron, and waiting for the punchline—which he didn’t think would be an actual punch.
            “Now you’re back,” Ron said. “You came and told me this instead of being so busy that I had to find out some other way. And you’re doing something new with your life.” The glance he flicked at Malfoy said that he wasn’t sure about the worth of that new thing, but he would let it go for now. “And you can survive Lily. I know you can.”
            Harry relaxed and grinned. “That’s the hardest thing I’ll have to do, I think.” He eyed Ron carefully. “And you’re all right with me not being your partner anymore? Not right now, at least?” He had no idea if Robards would let him have his job back even if Harry asked for it.
            Ron made a sharp little motion with one hand. “Will you stop worrying about that? Or let me worry about it, at least, instead of being so concerned?” He finally let Harry go and went back to his desk to pick up his wand. “You’ve done what I’ve wanted for a long time, Harry. Finally, some acknowledgment.”
            Harry flushed. He should have reckoned that would be the hardest thing for Ron and Hermione to bear, if he just stopped talking to them.
            “I can handle it.” Ron grinned at him. “And there’s nothing to say that you can’t tell me things about the Spiders on the sly, as it were.”
            Harry put out a hand and gripped Ron’s. Ron returned the grip hard enough to leave little markings on his palm and the back of his hand. Harry took a deep breath, nodded once to Ron, and turned to Malfoy.
            Malfoy’s face wasn’t emotionally neutral anymore. His mouth was locked in a slit, and his eyes were on the floor.
            Harry stared at him. Then he thought he knew what was wrong, and nodded. After all, Malfoy didn’t have as much experience of friendship as Harry did. Crabbe was dead, and Harry had heard, in the unconnected way that he heard about all the Hogwarts people he still knew, that Malfoy hadn’t associated much with other pure-bloods after he divorced Astoria. So he was probably lonely, and here was Harry throwing the fact that he still had friendship into Malfoy’s face.
            “Come on,” Harry told Malfoy, as gently as he could. “Let’s go back home. I think we’ve done enough for one day.” It was hard for him to remember that his day had begun in the pub that morning, capturing the Spiders who had come in and tried to destroy everything.
            Malfoy lifted his head. His mouth relaxed as Harry watched, and his eyes became smooth and cold once again. “Yes,” he said. “That would be best.”
            He gave a little nod to Ron, which Harry supposed was the best he could be expected to do under the circumstances, and then marched away from Harry in the direction of the door. Harry glanced over his shoulder and shrugged at Ron. He wouldn’t pretend to understand Malfoy, and as long as he didn’t menace anyone else, Harry thought that was okay.
            Ron, for some reason, was grinning hard enough that he looked as though his cheeks hurt, and shaking with little restrained chuckles. He waved his hand at Harry to go on when Harry stared at him, and his face got red. Harry shrugged again and followed Malfoy. Maybe Ron just thought it was funny to see Malfoy longing for friendship and Harry wanting to do something about it.
            But, Ron notwithstanding, Harry still thought that Malfoy was lonely, and it seemed to him that he should be the one to do something about that, since Malfoy was giving up so much to help him.
            I could be his friend, Harry thought, glancing sideways at Malfoy as they walked down the center of the corridor, Malfoy’s steps swift and quick, more silent than Harry’s, as if he was the one who had received Auror training. That might not make up for whatever happened with his wife, but I think it would help him.
            Harry nodded. He didn’t have a job anymore, after all. He would have plenty of time.
*
            MirzeSnape: Thank you!
            polka dot: Malfoy didn’t actually advise Harry to quit, though, and Harry didn’t want to. All he wanted was a holiday Robards refused to give him.
            SP777: Harry might be remembering that.
            delia cerrano: Draco kind of thinks so too, and is kind of concerned.
            Tellnoone_Noonetells: Thanks!
            Probably because they are? ;)
- 16
- 17
- 18
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Marathon