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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 Eighteen—Standing Tall
            “What do you like to eat?”
            Apparently he had done something he wasn’t allowed to again, because Malfoy stared at him as if he was the strange one. Harry shrugged. “I just thought that we seem to get ambushed when we go out to eat, and you’ve been making meals for me so far.”
            “Having house-elves make them isn’t the same thing.” Malfoy was still staring. Harry turned his back to walk into the kitchen. It was getting unnerving.
            “And I might not be able to cook what you want, but at least I could have my house-elf make it and spare you the labor,” Harry said over his shoulder. “Sometimes I can cook. It really depends.” The early lessons at the Dursleys’ house hadn’t paid off as much as Harry had sometimes hoped, but then again, it wasn’t like the greasy food Dudley loved then was in high demand in the wizarding world.
            “You’re strange.” Malfoy said that as though it being softer would make it more true.
            Harry turned and leaned against the table. He thought about folding his arms, but that might put Malfoy off, and Harry honestly didn’t want to put him off. He just didn’t understand him right now. “Why? Because I want to repay the favors someone keeps doing me? Someone who doesn’t have to, the first person in years to worry about me sleeping and eating and—other things I should have been doing myself? What’s strange about that?”
            Malfoy’s face had a tight cast to it. He looked around the kitchen as though he might find the answer in the wallpaper before he faced Harry again. “Because this is a life-debt that I’m paying back,” he said. “I’m supposed to do things for you, to take care of you for a little while as we agreed, or I can’t shed the debt. If it’s mutual, it might be a lot of things, but it’s not satisfaction of the debt.”
            “Oh.” Harry chewed the side of his lip. It made sense. It was just— “I didn’t think about that.”
            “Surely other people must have owed you life-debts.” Malfoy padded over to the table and sat down. “How did you handle them?”
            “Ron owed me some, but he saved my life in Auror work,” Harry said, thinking back. “So did some of the other Aurors. It was the natural way for them to pay it back. And I suppose I owe a life-debt to your mother, but she never wanted to collect on it. Or maybe she decided that testifying at your trial was enough.” He looked at Malfoy. “How does that one work into the mess of them that we have around us? Wouldn’t it have been enough to cancel out the debt you think Scorpius owes me? Because I already owed something to your family, I was just paying it back?”
            Malfoy shook his head hard enough that Harry thought he’d make himself sick. “No. It doesn’t work like that. A debt can only be paid back, or sustained, between the same pair of people, unless one of them takes on another’s, the way I did with Scorpius’s. My mother would have had to give her debt to Scorpius for your catching him to matter that way.”
            “Then it doesn’t reflect on what’s between us.” Harry shrugged and turned to face the kitchen cabinets again. “You never did tell me what you wanted to eat.”
            “I don’t want anything to eat!” Malfoy had shot to his feet, Harry could see from the corner of his eye. “How can you do this? You went through battle today, near-starvation, and an emotional confrontation that I forced on you, followed by two more, but you still want to—to wait on me!”
            Harry turned around and grinned a little. It wasn’t as good as actually feeding Malfoy, but maybe he could turn the tables. “You’re not used to someone caring for you,” he said. “You don’t count the house-elves. You’re divorced. Your parents no longer live with you. And Scorpius needs your help, not the other way around. So you’re not used to someone who likes you and looks to your needs.”
            Malfoy stared at him, so neutral now that he could have vanished into a shadow if Harry wasn’t looking right at him. He said nothing, and Harry finally realized that he wouldn’t, and it was up to Harry to continue.
            “I don’t think this has much to do with the life-debt,” Harry said simply. “I think you’re like this all the time. You got used to it, just the way I did, only I was more extreme. And now I’ve noticed, and I’d like to help you.”
            “This is your sacrificial martyr complex again, isn’t it, Potter?” Malfoy sounded as if he hissed the words, but he couldn’t. Harry took some pleasure in knowing he was the only Parselmouth alive in Britain right now. “You intend to prolong the debt and the period of service by lying down at my feet the way you do for everyone else around you.”
            Harry shook his head. “Believe it or not, I like to help people,” he said. “It’s why I made all those stupid bargains with my colleagues about taking over their cases, sure. But it makes me feel good to know that I helped them. That’s my selfishness, if you like. The feeling of pleasure I get from it.”
            “What they feel doesn’t matter?” Malfoy looked down at his hands as if realizing for the first time that they were white, the knuckles straining against his skin, and tucked them behind his back.
            “Of course it does,” Harry said, tolerant. “But not so much that I give up helping them. If you don’t want me to, you can ask me not to, and I won’t. But so far, all the reasons you’ve given me are based on the life-debt, or anger because you think that I’m lying down for you to trample all over. Do you not want someone caring for you? Say the word.”
            Malfoy closed his eyes and bowed his head. He looked tired, but even as Harry watched him, confused and concerned, he snapped himself back to straight-up, stern formation, his eyes fixed on Harry’s as though he thought Harry would sneak around behind him and hit him on the head to get him to relax. “I don’t want someone caring for me.”
            Harry blinked. “Oh,” he said, and felt the bottom of his stomach drop out. No, he hadn’t expected that, and he wanted to reach out and take Malfoy’s hand and beg him to reconsider.
            Instead, he turned away and said, “Kreacher will come in and provide dinner for us, then.”
            “That’s fine,” Malfoy said, cool-voiced and cool-faced. “You should take more advantage of your house-elf than you do, Potter. You have one who wants to help you, who is available to you, and who is older, which means that he’ll have more experience in making diverse kinds of meals. You need not go out to eat at all if you don’t wish to.”
            Harry couldn’t bring himself to answer that. He only nodded and called Kreacher, who took one look at Malfoy and squealed, then set about preparing a meal. The food was stuffed birds of some kind that Harry had never had before, and seemed acceptable to Malfoy.
            They ate in almost-silence, other than Malfoy sometimes telling Harry that he needed to contact Ginny tomorrow and explain what had changed. Malfoy’s idea was that Harry should keep Lily this weekend, because he had already said he would, but now they needed to establish a normal schedule. Ginny, he seemed to think, would always be firecalling Harry and demanding that Lily be allowed to visit, now that he didn’t have a job.
            Harry only closed his eyes as the words splashed around him, and nodded when Malfoy expected some answer from him. Malfoy finally pushed his chair back with a screech of its legs on the kitchen floor, and made a muffled noise under her breath.
            “Anyone would think that it was my own life I was fighting for so hard, Potter, and not yours.”
            “It’s your life-debt,” Harry said blandly, taking another bite of the meat in front of him. Malfoy had insisted that he have an extra serving of the meal Kreacher had made. He said it would keep them out of embarrassing situations, like Harry collapsing during his firecall with Ginny the next day. “I think that’s enough to explain your investment in the situation.”
            Malfoy narrowed his eyes. “If you had let me pay it back some other way—”
            “There was nothing you had that I wanted,” Harry interrupted. “And now you’ve made it clear that you don’t even want my friendship, or me to ask you ordinary things. I’ll accept what you’re giving me now because we already made the bargain. But if I had known it would turn out like this, I would have negotiated for something else.”
            Malfoy’s jaw sagged a little, but he recovered. “You do blame me for the loss of your job, then.”
            “Not that, you idiot.” Harry flung the fork back in the middle of his plate, and didn’t care about the way Malfoy’s eyes followed it. Harry wasn’t a pompous pure-blood, and didn’t have to abide by the code of manners that Malfoy thought was necessary for them. “You won’t allow me to be your friend, even though I thought I could. You’re still insisting on this silly separation. And yeah, it’s silly, because you can’t expect me to believe that you care about the way Lily behaves towards me, and that you want to praise me, and at the same time expect me to behave that you don’t give a fuck about me.”
            “I—care,” Malfoy said. “But—”
            “Then let me show you I care, too!” Harry slammed his hands on the edge of the table. “It’s not about letting me be a martyr! It’s about letting me be a friend. You so clearly need one. And you were the one who said that we were already involved in this huge tangled mess with life-debts and it was hard to say who owed who what now,” he added, remembering, belatedly, what Malfoy had said that night in Knockturn Alley. “How do you know that letting me be nice to you would really keep you from fulfilling this one?”
            Malfoy turned away from him so abruptly that Harry decided that was it, good night, the end, and he probably wouldn’t see Malfoy until the next morning. But Malfoy’s throat bobbed, and he turned back around. Perhaps he remembered that the debt caged him as well as Harry, and running away from it would do neither of them any good.
            “I—it’s hard,” Malfoy said thickly. He was rubbing his hand across his throat and staring at his fingers as if they had an independent life of their own. “I’ve never let anyone be this for me before.”
            Harry blinked, trying to remember who Malfoy’s friends from Hogwarts had been. Maybe Crabbe and Goyle couldn’t help him much because they weren’t his intellectual equals, and then there was the small problem of Crabbe being dead.
            “No one?” he asked. “Not Parkinson, or Zabini?” He hesitated, then decided he had to bring it up, because it would be cowardly not to. “Not Greengrass?”
            Malfoy kept his eyes shut, and let out a hard, long stream of breath that made the curtains flutter on the window next to the table. “No,” he said. “No one. I trusted them, but—I knew the limits of our bargains. I married Astoria so that I would have children and someone to share my life with. She wanted wealth and someone to share her life with.”
            Harry could imagine worse motives for a marriage. He and Ginny hadn’t thought about money or children that would exist only to continue a family bloodline, but they’d wanted a companion.
            And I wish it could have worked out, he thought. Even if it had been poisoned for a much longer time than he knew, even if he and Ginny had been mistaken in each other, he would still have liked to be with her, in a world where the poison was less and he and Ginny knew each other better.
            But that’s not this one, Harry decided, and shook his shoulders a little. He should be focusing on Malfoy right now, not Ginny or himself. “No one’s ever wanted to help you just to help you?” he asked.

            Malfoy opened his eyes. They had darkened, but he stood in front of Harry calmly now, not running or scrambling. “No,” he said, his voice clipped. “I have no objection to accepting it from you, however, now that you’ve convinced me you’re different from most people.”
            Harry eyed him. That seemed—sudden. “Because of the life-debt?”
            “This has little or nothing to do with the debt,” Malfoy said. “It cannot. As you pointed out, we have too many of them between us. They influence us in a manner I’ve never seen before and would be reluctant to try and name, precisely because there are so many of them. I must admit no particular liking for this kind of influence. But it exists, and I will have to study it carefully, with the help of some books that are not here, before I understand it. Therefore I will not attribute my desire for your friendship to the debts until I have some measure of comprehension, whereas right now I have none.”
            Harry experienced a strong desire to throw the table at Malfoy. But that would create a mess that Kreacher would probably be assigned to clean up, so Harry just leaned on the table and snapped, “Talk English.”
            Malfoy blinked several times. “I was under the impression that I was.”
            “No,” Harry said. “You’re hiding everything under all those complicated words. You’ve decided to accept my help. Is that it? It won’t stain your honor or your blood purity or whatever really matters to you?”
            A faint flush crept up Malfoy’s face, and he stood more haughtily than ever, gazing at Harry as if he would have liked to kick him. But this new—this older—Malfoy was too dignified to do that. He nodded. “You can help me.”
            “Good.” Harry stepped forwards and grasped his arm. “Go take a shower.”
            “Ah, yes, the famous Potter subtlety,” Malfoy said, and sniffed a little. “This is your way of saying that I stink and need to bathe myself.”
            “I think you need the relaxation more than anything else,” Harry said, and shoved him a little in the direction of the bathroom. “I would suggest a hot bath, but I know you’re too dignified and uptight for that.”
            Malfoy eyed him, seemed about to say something, and then settled for turning around. Harry smiled. Good. He hadn’t been looking forward to a comment about the Manor and the undoubtedly superior quality of the baths there that would mean he’d have to say something teasing back, and the conversation might keep Malfoy from ever getting into the shower.
            When he was sure that he’d heard the bathroom door shut and water actually running, he turned to clean up the table—only Kreacher had already done that. Harry sighed and leaned back, one hand rubbing his eyes. “Thanks, Kreacher,” he said.
            Kreacher bobbed his head anxiously. His eyes were fastened on Harry, and he looked as though he might bite through his lip, a gesture Harry had never seen on a house-elf before. “Yous is not sending Master Malfoy away?” he whispered.
            “What?” Harry asked, then shook his head. “Well, no, but he’ll be leaving for the weekend on Friday. I’m having Mistress Lily over, and I don’t think they like each other.”
            “Kreacher is not meaning that.” But Kreacher fidgeted back and forth, shaking his hands and wringing his fingers together, until Harry had to ask what he did mean.
            But Kreacher still didn’t answer for long seconds, just looked pensively towards the bathroom where Malfoy had gone, his fingers in his mouth. Harry sighed, then asked him again. “Kreacher, what is it about Malfoy that you want him to stay here?” It had to be that. Kreacher was acting like a house-elf on the verge of going against what his master wanted, and the only thing Harry had told him he wanted was for Malfoy to leave on Friday so that Harry could have time alone with Lily.
            Even if Malfoy would probably make the better housemate right now.
            Harry winced a little under the flood of guilt he felt about that. He should want to be around his daughter.
            But Malfoy would probably tell him that no parent wanted to be around their children all the time. What Harry should do was accept that he didn’t really want to be around Lily, and learn how to change that.
            “Kreacher is wanting Master Malfoy to be staying all the time!”
            Harry blinked and came back to the present. It wasn’t really an answer to the question he’d asked Kreacher, he thought, but Kreacher was distressed enough as it was. Harry nodded soothingly to him and made patting motions at his head. “It’s okay,” he said. “I’m not going to kick him out permanently. It’s just for the weekend.” And any other time Lily comes over until Scorpius’s birthday.
            “Master Harry is being promising?” Kreacher looked up at him with wet eyes and a trembling mouth that made Harry acutely uncomfortable. For fuck’s sake, he didn’t know how anyone could abuse a house-elf. The mere sight of Kreacher being upset made him wince all over.
            “I promise,” Harry said.
            Kreacher seized his hand and tried to slobber kisses on it, which made Harry have to take it back, which made Kreacher wail about how he was a bad elf, which made Harry have to soothe him, which made him take a moment to realize that the shower had shut off.
            Malfoy came out in a robe he must have brought with him, a pale one that made his skin look even paler than usual, and his hair soft and tousled. He stared at Harry and shook his head, once. Harry had no idea what he’d done and simply raised his eyebrows, not standing up from his crouch over Kreacher.
            “What is it?” Harry asked.
            “Thanks for suggesting I take a shower,” Malfoy murmured. “I do feel better. Good night.” He turned into his own bedroom and shut the door.
            By the time Harry looked around again, Kreacher was back at work cleaning up the kitchen, and humming contentedly. Harry frowned in bewilderment and went to take his own shower.
            It was strange to think about Malfoy’s hands on the soap—there was no sign that he’d used his own—and his feet in the same bathtub, and the same shampoo in his hair.
            But Harry reckoned he could get used to it. He had got used to stranger things.
*
polka dot: That might have been the reason he was laughing, yes.
delia cerrano: Harry thinks he knows that Draco is lonely and desperate to pay this debt back. Any more than that, he’s not sure of.
SP777: I get what you mean. The thing is, everyone seems to be forgetting that Harry did live with Ginny and love her and have three children with her. Hooking up with someone of the same sex doesn’t make him gay. It could make him bisexual.
JetlagLily: I’m not sure what you’re saying. No, this isn’t the end of the story.
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Marathon