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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.

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Chapter Twenty—Apologia
            “What did you want to talk about?”
            Ginny shook her head and twitched a little. They were walking up the last staircase that led to the Owlery, and she had been silent all the way from the hospital wing. Harry sighed. He could appreciate that she wanted to stay quiet until they were in a place where no one could hear them, but this was getting a little ridiculous. Most of the students were asleep.
            “At least give me a hint,” Harry said. It was the sort of thing he would have said before, in their arguments, but he supposed he might not have said it like this, in the kind of tone that would make her turn and stare at him.
            “You don’t deserve to have a hint,” Ginny whispered. “I can’t believe what you did.”
            “Not telling you about Jamie?” Harry shook his head. He supposed he should have done that, but… “I’m sorry. I didn’t think about it at first, and then I thought waking you up in the middle of the night could make us argue.”
            Ginny spun around to glare at him. Harry couldn’t help contrasting her with Malfoy. She was dynamic, moving, volatile. Malfoy acted as though he had swallowed some emotion-repressing potion years ago.
            “So it’s leading to an argument now instead,” Ginny said in a clipped voice. Then she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “But that’s not what I came to discuss. I wanted to talk about what you said the other day.”
            “I don’t see what’s to discuss about that,” Harry said, his voice deepening to a hiss. He saw her flinch, but he couldn’t even feel bad about it. She flinched all the time when he sounded as if he was about to speak Parseltongue, due to her memories of Tom Riddle. But Harry had never actually spoken it in front of her since the war ended, and she ought to trust him not to do it by now. “You thought I cheated and thought I was gay. Now you know I wasn’t.”
            Ginny opened her eyes slowly. “We can’t fight like this. Our children need us.”
            “Our children also need you not to talk shit about me in front of them,” Harry snapped back. “Not to imply that I’m gay and repeat it so much that they repeat it to me. Stand up and take some bloody responsibility for your own faults, Ginny.”
            The words bubbled in his mouth like hot tea, and letting them out felt just as satisfying as drinking the tea. Harry blinked and nearly raised his hand to touch his mouth, but Ginny would find something to mock in that gesture, too, and he didn’t want to listen to her right now. Maybe there had been even better reasons for them getting divorced than he had thought of before.
            Ginny’s eyes narrowed, near slits in her face. But she caught herself back from whatever she was about to say, and just stood there panting instead. Then she turned around and climbed up the stairs, gesturing him to follow. Harry grunted and did. He reckoned the Owlery probably would be pretty private at this time of morning.
            Once he was back in the round stone room, the familiar smell of feathers and dust enveloped him. Harry swallowed a little and searched for an owl he could send the letter with. He avoided the white one that opened one eye and turned towards him. Yes, he wasn’t over Hedwig yet. So what? Unlike the way he treated his children and his ex-wife, that mattered to no one but him.
            He settled on a barn owl that hopped curiously to the edge of its perch and looked at him when Harry stood below. Harry gave it a rind of bacon that had been in his pocket for God knew how long, but the owl gnawed it eagerly enough, and extended its leg for the letter. Harry watched it leap into the air and carry the letter away, exhaling slowly. So Malfoy would know soon, and have to leave.
            It was for the best. It really must be, when Scorpius himself had asked for it. The life-debt was ultimately his.
            Harry sighed again, and sneezed as feathers went up his nose.
            “Harry.”
            He turned and looked around. Ginny had seated herself near one of the one other walls, at the bottom of it, her arms folded and hair cast down over the top of her knees. Harry made his way to her and sat down next to her, glancing at her curiously.
            Ginny was breathing as though she liked the smell of the Owlery, too, and couldn’t get enough of it. Or more as if she wanted to get her emotions under control, Harry thought. She wrapped her arms tighter around herself, and Harry cast a wordless Warming Charm on her. That relaxed the shivers, but not the tense muscles.
            Well, Harry had done all he could. He leaned back and raised his eyebrows, waiting for her to say something.
            Ginny swallowed and said, “I—I’m sorry that I said and thought those things about you. And sorrier that I said them in front of Lily.” She turned around and eyed Harry. “But you must know it was irresistible, the amount of time you spent around the other Aurors.”
            Harry rolled his eyes. “And did you think the same thing about Ron?”
            “Well, no. But he was married.”
            Harry stared at the white band on her finger where the wedding ring had been until lately, and opened his mouth.
            “Just let me say this,” Ginny whispered, holding up a hand. “Please.”
            Harry grunted and settled back. It was none of his business if Ginny wanted to be an idiot, he supposed. He needed to get along with her for the sake of his children. He could choose how angry to be as long as she wasn’t dragging them into it, though.
            “He was married,” Ginny repeated. “He cared about what his wife was doing. He talks about her all the time. And I know from Hermione that their sex life was more than vigorous.” She turned and stared at Harry. “Does that sound like us at all?”
            Harry could feel himself flushing. But he had to admit the truth. “No,” he said.
            “I never thought about you,” Ginny said. “Not enough. You never thought about me. We thought more about Quidditch and Auror work, and then reporting and Auror work.” She shut her eyes. “And the children. Maybe we would have concentrated more on each other if we’d never had children—”
            “You can’t wish them out of existence.” Harry barely got the words out. There just wasn’t enough breath in his lungs to really power them.
            “No.” Ginny opened her eyes again and gave him another shrug. “Not really. But maybe we would have concentrated more on each other if we were all we had.”
            Harry said nothing. He didn’t even know whether he could find the strength to agree. There was—there was just no way he could imagine his life without their children.
            “I don’t think we were really married.” Ginny rubbed the pale ring on her finger as if it were the real thing. “We weren’t meant to be married. And that’s why I thought you were gay, and cheating. I knew you had passion. I thought you were taking it and putting it somewhere else.”
            Harry took a deep breath and made himself move on from the moment. Ginny loved their kids. She did, or she wouldn’t have come here and said they had to get along for their sake. “No. I—I put it into my work, maybe. But I never took it away from you and deprived you of it deliberately, Ginny. I would never do that.”
            Ginny looked at him, eyes sad. “One way or the other, it happened,” she said, and stood up.
            Harry followed her, swallowing a little. “So you think we can get along for the kids’ sake?” he asked.
            Ginny closed her eyes and nodded. “But we need a schedule for Lily. She needs stability, and I can’t—I can’t have her with me all the time. It wouldn’t be good for her even if I could.”
            “I agree,” Harry said, feeling borne up on the waves of a liquid that felt like happiness. “I tried to take a holiday, and Robards told me that I should resign if I was that devoted to having time off. So I have more time now. What do you say to me having her half the week, and you having her half the week? I could take her Friday to Tuesday?”
            Ginny looked at him, mouth open. “You resigned?”
            Harry paused, then shrugged. That was another thing he might have told Ginny about, but in the rush of events, it had seemed even further away from his mind than telling her about Jamie. Ginny had an interest in Jamie; she couldn’t have any interest in his job, except that it would leave him more time to take care of Lily. “Yes.”
            Ginny was staring at him as if she had never seen him before. “Who?” she whispered. “Who could make you do that? I never could, and that—that leaves—”
            “Potter.”
            Harry snapped his head up. He hadn’t heard Malfoy come into the Owlery, and that in itself was remarkable. Not only would Harry have expected to hear the owls complaining about a stranger, but he’d thought he’d got rather attuned to Malfoy’s movements around his house the past few days.
            Malfoy was striding towards him with an absolutely white face that made Harry turn to the side, fearing a little for what he might do to Ginny. But from the way Malfoy came to a halt in front of him and stood staring, Harry decided that whatever had upset him wasn’t her.
            Then Harry saw the letter clutched in his hand. His letter. The one he had written with the news of Jamie’s fall and Scorpius’s willingness to assume the life-debt.
            “How did you get that so quickly?” he blurted. “I sent it out only ten minutes ago—”
            “I woke, and Kreacher told me where you had gone.” Malfoy moved a step closer, although they were already standing as close as Harry had thought Malfoy was comfortable coming. His hand shook where he clutched the paper, and Harry suspected he was a second from crumpling it. “I followed you here. And then to receive this…”
            His rage was a living, breathing thing between them. Harry straightened his shoulders. He’d let Malfoy overwhelm him with his rage and his critical complaints once before, but he couldn’t do that now. He had to show Malfoy that this was different, this was important. His son had asked it.
            “You read it,” he said. “So you must know why I’m asking you to move out.”
            “Move out?” Ginny asked from behind them. Harry didn’t need to turn around to know that she would be watching them with breathless interest. He did know her well enough for that, and then, she was a newspaper reporter, and interesting events like this were her job.
            Malfoy ignored her. “It doesn’t matter what my son wants,” he said, and enunciated each word so clearly that Harry had to believe him, even though he would never have thought Malfoy someone to ignore his son’s desires like that. “I have already begun to pay the life-debt. You cannot—you cannot pay half of it and leave the other half owing. Life-debts are not Galleons.”
            Harry shook his head and responded the only way he could. “But we have so many strange life-debts and connections swirling around us already that one more won’t make much difference. Besides, it’s Scorpius’s debt.”
            Malfoy leaned forwards and glared into his eyes. Harry felt himself try to coil up, but fought the impulse. He was done with running away. And this time, he had someone else’s interests than just his own to fight for. Scorpius’s interests were important.
            “You yield too easily to children,” Malfoy whispered. “To people in general, but most especially to children. Did my son given any reason for this extraordinary request? He knew what I was going to do, and he gave no sign of disapproving before now. Why did he say that he wanted to pay it back himself?”
            “Because he said that he didn’t care that much about still having a debt on his birthday,” Harry said slowly. Malfoy must know Scorpius better than he did. Didn’t he know the reasons already? More, didn’t he care about them? That was what confused Harry most of all. “He said that his mother told him that Malfoy ceremonies were just ceremonies, or something like that.” His head felt fuzzy. Another night without sleep was probably at least partially to blame for that. “I don’t—Malfoy, I wasn’t really paying attention, if you must know. It made sense to me at the time. It’s his honor, his debt.”
            Then he remembered something he should have remembered before. He leaned forwards and looked into Malfoy’s eyes, and their mouths were almost brushing and he was going to ignore that. “He said he wanted you back. You were spending too much time with me and not enough with him.”
            There was a silence of breathing chaos between them.
            Then Malfoy said, still without backing away, “I’ve made my choice. And it’ll be only a few weeks more. He can wait that long.”
            “But your son needs you.” Harry was a little ashamed of the way his voice cracked, but surely Malfoy could see that Scorpius was more important than any of them, more important than anything Harry could say. “Malfoy. Don’t you see?”
            “He might want me to visit him,” Malfoy said, without turning a hair. “I can do that this weekend. But at the moment, you need me more.”
            Harry stared at him. He tried to imagine saying the same thing about one of his own children, and couldn’t.
            Not that you didn’t do it before, said a poisoned voice at the back of his mind that Harry had had heard before, when he put his job ahead of his family. But you never admitted it so blatantly. You never thought about them when you took on all those extra cases and covered for those Aurors who could bloody well have done their own work.
            Harry strangled the voice. Yes, he had made those mistakes. Now he wouldn’t make them again, not now that he was aware of them.
            But he had to keep the man who had helped him to become aware of them from making a mistake of his own.
            “Malfoy,” he whispered. He wondered for a second if he should use his first name, but that felt like a step too far, one he shouldn’t make unless he meant it. “Please. Do you hear what you’re saying? You’re putting me in front of your son. How do you think he would feel if he could hear you?”
            “He would understand,” Malfoy said. “Unlike yours, my son can talk to me. I will visit with him tomorrow. I’ll explain why I want to pay the life-debt this way, and how we can’t stop with it half-paid. But he can’t have everything he wants. It’s a lesson my father should have taught me. I made sure that Scorpius learned it.”
            Harry winced at those comments about his children, but he wasn’t sure how he was supposed to respond to the rest of it. Malfoy was putting him in front of Scorpius, and he didn’t think Scorpius would mind?
            “I can talk to him, and he can talk to me, and make me understand,” Malfoy said, and then his eyes darkened and he shifted nearer still. Harry could feel a blush prickling up his face. It was just, Ginny was behind them right now, and what would she think? But Malfoy still hadn’t indicated that he’d noticed her.
            “But you,” Malfoy said, his voice a hiss that frightened Harry as it never had when they were students at Hogwarts. “You had no right to write that letter and ask me to stay away from you, to leave. If you were going to tell me that, at least have the courage and grace to say it in person.”
            Harry swallowed. “I didn’t want to leave Jamie. And having an argument with you—” He could feel Ginny staring, since the words were so similar to what he’d said to her, but he still didn’t look back. “I didn’t want one.”
            “You should have realized,” Malfoy said, his teeth bared just as hard as if he was going to bite Harry’s lips in half, “that there would be one either way. I made a promise, Potter, to help fulfill the life-debt this way. And what promises I make, I keep.”
            The words felt as though they were a cord around Harry’s neck, strangling him. Harry fell back an uneasy step, and Malfoy followed. He wasn’t as overbearing as he had been in the drawing room, but he was close enough to make Harry sweat.
            “I made this promise,” Malfoy said. “You accepted this way to break the life-debt. This is the way it is. Scorpius may be missing me, or he may have got something into his head that is a fundamental misunderstanding of the way that life-debts work. Regardless, I will correct it.” He lifted his head and looked for a second like a poised hawk ready to sweep down on his son. Then he met Harry’s eyes again, and frowned. “Besides, you once again missed your fair share of sleep. Is your son going to be all right?”
            “Sleeping for a few days, but he’ll be all right,” Harry said.
            “That’s more than you told me,” Ginny said.
            Harry turned around and stared at her. “The first thing you said when you came through the Floo was that you wanted to talk to me out in the corridor!”
            Ginny flushed, but didn’t say anything. Her eyes were darting between him and Malfoy in a way Harry didn’t like at all.
            “Look, Ginny,” Harry began, wondering how he could deflect what she suspected, and then deciding there was really no way and he might as well go for the direct approach. “I’m not gay.”
            “You give more of your passion to a man,” Ginny said. “You listen to him more than you ever listened to me.” She shook her head a little. “I believe you didn’t cheat on me now. Because I never saw that trapped look in your eyes before.”
            She turned and left the Owlery. Harry stared after her, and felt Malfoy’s hand on his arm.
            “We are going home,” Malfoy said, in a pleasant voice whose sweetness didn’t cover its steel. “I’ll send Kreacher to Hogwarts to talk to Madam Juniper and make sure that you get regular reports on Jamie. But you are going to bed.” The hold on his arm was hard enough to make Harry wince.
            “I had to do it,” Harry said. “I had to come.”
            Malfoy looked sideways at him. “You’re mistaken if you think that’s why I’m angry.”
            Harry just looked at him, wordless. He had said all he could about Scorpius, and it seemed he still hadn’t convinced Malfoy.
            “I am staying,” Malfoy said, and held his wand up. Harry thought he might cast a Sleeping Charm or try to break the anti-Apparition wards around Hogwarts, but instead, he just waited, looking at Harry.
            It finally struck Harry what he was waiting for. He swallowed and said, “I agreed to that. And if you think that it won’t hurt Scorpius…”
            “I can take away his pain.”
            So confident, so simple. Harry wished he could be like that with his own children.
            He nodded, and Malfoy set fire to the letter, then guided him out of the Owlery through the rain of ashes.
*
BAFan: Draco’s reasons for wanting to pay off the life-debt are, actually, the real ones. He and Scorpius just don’t have the same reaction to the Malfoy traditions and ceremonies.
delia cerrano: Well, you got your wish!
polka dot: Not in this wizarding world.
SP777: Draco’s motives are in fact the ones he explained to Harry. Scorpius is the one who doesn’t understand everything. Of course, he’s 12. No reason he should.
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Marathon