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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 Nineteen—Apologies in the Middle of the Night
            Once again, Harry wasn’t destined to have a normal night.
            The Floo connection flaring to life apparently didn’t wake him, but Kreacher tugging and pulling on his arm and squeaking in agitation did. Harry sat up, wiping at his hair and his eyes and feeling wretched. At the moment, he actually missed his wrist-bell. He always knew within a few seconds of hearing it ring where he was and what he was supposed to be doing, and then he would get the ribbon printing out of it so he would know what to do, too.
            “What is it?” he asked, already reaching for the brown robe that he’d worn to the Ministry that day. “Did Malfoy have a nightmare?”
            “Master Draco is being fine.” Kreacher hopped up and down on one foot and tugged on his ears. “But Master James is being in trouble! Madam Juniper is being on the Floo!”
            Harry shot to his feet, dread kindling so fast in his stomach that it felt as if his whole body was on fire in seconds. “I see,” he said, and his voice had dipped down into a low register that he almost never heard from himself. “Well. That changes things. Is she still there?”
            Kreacher stopped hopping and nodded. He looked a little calmer now that Harry was in charge. Harry wondered for a second if he should tell Malfoy that, that taking on extra work was one way to make people shut up and do things instead of running around in circles.
            But the thought of Malfoy reminded him of something else. He frowned at Kreacher. “Let Malfoy sleep, all right? He might think that he should wake up and come with me, but this isn’t his concern. He was tired today.”
            Kreacher gave him a look Harry couldn’t interpret, but he nodded. “Master Draco Malfoy is needing his sleep,” he said, and it might be something he believed himself, rather than just the parody of his orders that Harry feared it was.
            “Right,” Harry said, and cast a quick Flattening Charm on his hair that he would pay for later. Then he ran out of his room and towards the Floo.
            He knew that it wasn’t just Jamie being in trouble, the way he had been over the theft of the mandrake, not if Madam Juniper was there. She was the mediwitch who had taken over from Poppy Pomfrey at Hogwarts most of the time now, although Madam Pomfrey was sometimes still in the infirmary. Harry had the feeling she didn’t want to retire.
            He hoped she was there now. He hoped. He trusted her experience more than the young Madam Juniper’s, and if there was a case of needing to save Jamie’s life, then he would take experience over supposedly up-to-date Healing magic every time.
            He ran into the drawing room, and saw Madam Juniper smile at him fretfully. She had her hair pushed back from her ears, and it looked as though she, too, had been running her fingers through it. Harry nodded at her. “What happened?”
            “Jamie fell off Gryffindor Tower,” Madam Juniper began.
            Harry closed his eyes, and felt as if he had fallen.
            “He’ll be all right!” Madam Juniper said hastily. “But we do have to regrow some bones, and he’s in pain. I thought…I thought it would help him to have you there, since Poppy said that you’d had to take Skele-Gro at one time. Your experience could help him, and reassure him that he’s going to be all right. He doesn’t think he is.”
            “He’s conscious?” Harry demanded, as he reached for the Floo powder on the mantle. “Talking?”
            Juniper nodded. “But in a lot of pain, and the Skele-Gro is going to put him to sleep almost as soon as it’s administered. He—well, he’s refusing to take the potion right now. He says that it has ingredients in it that could harm him.” Juniper shook her head. “I know that he’s a Potions genius, but a Potions genius should know that Skele-Gro is a tried and proven potion, and nothing is wrong with the hospital wing’s batch!”
            Harry chose to ignore those last words instead of snapping at her for them, the way he would have liked to. He knew that Madam Juniper was fond of Jamie and upset right now. The way he was. “Thank you. Please take your head out of the fireplace. I’m coming through.”
            She retreated, and Harry leaped into the fireplace. He arrived stumbling and covered with soot, as usual, but it didn’t matter. Jamie was waiting for him. His son needed him.
            At the moment, it was hard to remember that he had once considered himself a bad father. He was burned up with the realization of what it meant to be a father, really. He was alive and afire with it, and he would have fought Malfoy right now if he tried to hold him back, divorced Ginny if that was what Jamie wanted.
            Sometimes, I can do all right.
*
            “—and then I thought they would lose track of me if I climbed up the outside of Gryffindor Tower—” Jamie broke off and closed his eyes, his breathing shallow and quick. Harry knew he was trying to overcome his pain or not show it. He seemed to think he should be ashamed if he cried in front of his father.
            Harry squeezed his hand again and bent over him. “I’m here,” he whispered. “I promise, Jamie. It doesn’t matter what you say. I’m always here.”
            Jamie caught his breath, and squeezed back. His right hand was the only thing on his body that wasn’t broken, Harry thought. He didn’t see how Jamie was still conscious. Broken legs, broken ribs, a dislocated shoulder. Harry had suffered his share of injuries, but none like this. His son was incredibly brave, and Harry was incredibly proud of him.
            Not so proud of what had brought his son here, admittedly, which was Jamie climbing outside after another theft and trying to run away from the Ravenclaw who had found out that Jamie had broken into his trunk. But that was something Harry really felt they didn’t need to get into discussing. It was enough that Jamie had been humiliated and hurt, and his suffering was his way of paying for it.
            “—but I was wrong.” Jamie shut his eyes, and Harry gave his hand another squeeze. Something else had occurred to him, something that he thought Madam Juniper might have left out of the story in her eagerness to get Jamie healed, but which he couldn’t live without knowing.
            “Jamie,” he said, keeping his voice gentle so that his son wouldn’t have to answer the question if he was in too much pain to do so. “Did someone push you out the window? Was there ever a—a time when they came close to it? I need you to answer that if you can.”
            Jamie opened his eyes and stared at him, the first time he had managed to open his eyes fully since Harry arrived. Then he began to shake his head.
            “Lie still,” said Madam Juniper, who hadn’t looked up from running yet another diagnostic scan on the bones on Jamie’s right arm. “I’m almost done with this.”
            Harry touched his son’s cheek, and Jamie shut his eyes and turned his head that way. He whispered, “No, Dad. I was climbing—I’m sure I’m a good climber—and then I slipped and fell. No one cast a spell at me or pushed me or anything.”
            Harry leaned over and kissed Jamie’s forehead. “Good,” he whispered. “You’re going to be a good boy and take the Skele-Gro, right?”
            Jamie shifted and glared at the bottle that Madam Juniper was holding out. “It’s the wrong color,” he whinged. “I know that Skele-Gro isn’t supposed to look like that when you brew it.”
            Harry looked at the potion, frowning in concentration, and then moved it over so that light could sparkle on the bottle in the opposite direction. “There, Jamie. Does that look more like it should? The light was reflecting off the bottle. Maybe it made it look brighter than it should.”
            Jamie swallowed and closed his eyes, and then opened his mouth.
            Harry patted his cheek and stepped out of the way so that Madam Juniper could get the potion down Jamie’s throat on the first try. She then massaged until he swallowed. Jamie grimaced and gagged and made a show of pounding the bed with his good hand, but at least the potion was inside him, and Harry could see the way that his eyes were falling shut.
            Madam Juniper spelled him asleep the rest of the way, and then glanced at Harry with a smile. “Thank you for coming here, Auror Potter. I appreciate it. I thought there was no way I could get him to take it.”
            Harry gave her a mechanical smile, the only kind he could muster when his son was lying in the bed like that. He reached out and softly pushed Jamie’s hair back from his forehead, his hand lingering on his son’s cheek. Jamie moaned and stirred in his sleep, and Harry pulled his hand back reluctantly. Jamie was a light sleeper, and the last thing Harry wanted was to interfere and make it hard for him to rest.
            Juniper nodded to him. “Probably best to go home and let him get some sleep, Auror Potter. Thank you again for coming.”
            Harry turned towards the door of the hospital wing, only to collide with someone smaller than him, but still solid enough to rock him on his feet. He staggered back with an oof, and blinked a little as he watched his second son make his way to Jamie’s bed, where he leaned over and whispered appealingly, “Jamie?”
            “He’ll be all right, Al,” Madam Juniper said, and patted Al on the shoulder. Harry ached as he watched. That should be his place, to pat Al and reassure him, while Al looked at Jamie with a face that said he would have gladly fallen from the Tower in his brother’s place. “Skele-Gro takes some time to regrow the bones, and he’ll have to spend a few days in bed. But the potion’s improved wonderfully in the last few years, you know. It works faster now.”
            “Jamie would know that.” Al hadn’t moved his gaze from his brother’s face. “I don’t care.”
            Madam Juniper fell silent, blinking. Harry sighed. If they had been in a normal situation, he would have said something to Al about rudeness, but how could he right now? Al was worried about Jamie. Hell, Harry was, too. He thought about staying here until morning. He didn’t have any more pressing call on his time, now that his Auror job was gone. And God knew he wouldn’t sleep tonight, not after this.
            “Mr. Potter?”
            Harry turned around. Scorpius Malfoy was hovering in the door of the hospital wing. Harry nodded to him. “Hullo, Scorpius. Like Madam Juniper was saying, Jamie will be fine.”
            Scorpius gave him a small, tight smile. “Good. Al was so scared when he heard.” He hesitated, and Harry saw a further tightness to the lines of his face that had nothing to do with worry over Jamie, or even over Al.
            Harry wanted to sigh. He wanted to pretend that he didn’t see and turn away. Did everything have to depend on him? Wasn’t it enough that he’d saved Scorpius’s life and now was going through letting Malfoy pay back the life-debt because of him?
            But what he had told Malfoy was true. He liked saving people and solving their problems, and he wouldn’t let this go simply because someone else might notice. Maybe no one else would. Al had Jamie to concentrate on right now, and Harry had taken Scorpius’s father away from him.
            “What is it?” Harry asked softly, crouching down in front of Scorpius and waiting until Scorpius looked back at him to give him an encouraging smile.
            Scorpius peered at him. He didn’t really look much like Malfoy, Harry thought. Not now that he’d spent some time around Malfoy, and could picture the way his jaw stuck out when he was angry and the way his eyes flashed, instead of picturing the boy he’d known at Hogwarts. Astoria must have given Scorpius that wistful look.
            “It’s just—I’m grateful for what you did for me.” Scorpius rushed through the words as though he didn’t care about the life-debt, which warmed Harry’s heart. He was glad that someone could take his actions for the gift they were, instead of becoming obsessed with debts and who owed who what, the way Malfoy was. “But I want to pay my own debts, you know? And I know what my father has said about my birthday at the end of this month, but it doesn’t matter. I know exactly what kind of gift I could give you to clear the debt.”
            Harry blinked and cleared his throat. There was an odd fluttering in his stomach, one that had nothing to do with whether Malfoy knew that Scorpius would be raiding the Malfoy cellars to give him a gift. “Did you talk to your dad about what he was doing to pay me back?”
            Scorpius nodded, eyes intense. “And I don’t think he should. My mum says that people need to learn how to live on their own. No one can teach you.”
            “It sounds like she’s a wise woman,” Harry said, his heart dragging down. “You want me to ask your dad to step back and let you pay the debt?”
            “Please?” Scorpius looked even more wistful. “I tried to talk to him about it, but he’s just so determined that he’s going to pay it off and I’m going to go into my thirteenth birthday clear of it. He didn’t wait and listen to me, or see if I had any plan to pay it back. I think he wanted to do it this way, honestly.” Scorpius took a deep breath and straightened his back. “But I don’t.”
            Harry had so many things that he wanted to ask. Malfoy had offered him money at first. Why do that if he had wanted to stay in Harry’s house and fix his life all along?
            Then again, it made no sense that he would want that, either. And Scorpius was still only twelve. He could be mistaken.
            But Harry stopped himself from asking, because it would put an unfair burden on Scorpius. He didn’t have a divorce to drag Scorpius into the middle of, but he had wanted to stop putting such burdens on his own children. He would do the same thing with Scorpius and not treat him like an adult who should answer questions that might not be real.
            “All right,” he said. “And you don’t need to pay the debt by the time you turn thirteen?”
            Scorpius shook his head vigorously enough that his hair flopped into his eyes, and Al looked at them curiously from beside Jamie’s bed. “I know my dad thinks that, but I’ve read up on the ceremony. And Mum told me some things about it, too. Dad thought it was fair she should know about it when they were still married.”
            Harry blinked. He thought Malfoy and Greengrass had got divorced years ago.
            Then again, the hyper-organized Malfoy he knew might well have told his wife about some of the Malfoy ceremonies years in advance, thinking they would still be married then.
            “And I’m going to be okay.” Scorpius smiled at Harry. “Thanks for saving my life, Mr. Potter. I don’t think I said that before. Will you please write a letter to my dad and tell him to come home? It’s my debt.”
            Harry nodded. “Of course I will.” He could write the letter while he watched Jamie sleep. He thought Scorpius had to be very observant and smart if he had realized that Harry would rather stay here with his son than just go home and tell Malfoy he had to leave.
            Or maybe he knew Harry was a coward about emotional confrontations at heart, and would prefer to do it this way.
            “Let me find some ink and parchment, and I’ll start right away.” He pressed Scorpius’s shoulder. “You’re welcome to stay here with me and Al and Jamie if you want.”
            Scorpius nodded. “I’ll stay until Al wants to go back to bed. Thanks, Mr. Potter.” He flashed Harry another charming smile and sat down on the bed next to Jamie’s, leaning in to speak to Al.
            Harry sighed and went to find the ink and parchment he had talked about. This wasn’t going to be easy. But the debt really did belong to Scorpius. It didn’t matter that Harry might want Malfoy to stay or what he had promised Kreacher. Scorpius was the one who got to choose what to do with his own life.
*
            It was nearly six before Harry finished the letter, or thought he had it right, anyway. He leaned back and read it before he took it to the Owlery.
            Dear Malfoy,
            I got called to Hogwarts in the middle of the night because Jamie fell from Gryffindor Tower. Al came to see about his brother, and Scorpius came with him. Scorpius told me that he doesn’t mind still having the life-debt on his thirteenth birthday. He would rather pay me back himself. So you don’t have to stay any longer. I think I’m pretty good, anyway, now that you’ve taught me what was going on and I’m not working on the case with the Spiders anymore.
            Thank you for all your help. You have a good, responsible son.
            Potter.
            Harry sighed and rose to his feet. He hoped one of the school owls would be awake already and amenable to carrying the letter. The last thing he needed was pecked fingers this morning on top of everything else.
            He was already planning when he would have to leave in his head, if Jamie didn’t wake up and Harry couldn’t talk to him, when the Floo in the hospital wing flared. Harry turned around, curious. Both Scorpius and Al were back in the Slytherin common room, and Madam Juniper was snatching a little sleep on a cot in the next room. Maybe it was Madam Pomfrey returning. Harry had to admit that he would be glad to give Jamie into her care. He liked Madam Juniper; he just didn’t trust her as much as the mediwitch who had taken care of him.
            But it was Ginny who stepped out of the Floo and looked at him with her jaw twitching. A quick glance at the bed told her all the children were asleep, Harry thought, and she turned back to him.
            “Where’s Lily?” Harry whispered.
            “With Mum.” Ginny bit down on some of the words that Harry thought she wanted to say, and then she muttered, “I need to talk to you, all right? Outside.”
            Harry nodded and held up the letter. “I need to send this. Want to walk to the Owlery?”
            Ginny looked at him sideways as though she was considering why he was acting so ordinary, but she nodded back. “Okay.”
            They left, side-by-side, and with Harry’s spine prickling. He was a lot less calm than he was showing to Ginny at the moment.
            And what disaster is it going to be this time?
*
SP777: Well, the failure of his marriage has a lot to do with that.
Staycie: Thank you! I’m glad the story could help you. I hope it continues to do so.
delia cerrano: Harry is kind of addicted to helping people, so that’s part of the problem. But he does think that he understands himself a lot better, thanks to Draco. He’s worried about Draco, but he’s also worried about Ginny and now Jamie and Al and Scorpius. It’s a wide circle.
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Marathon