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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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Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Twenty—Finding His Place
            “You should see the stories about you, mate.” Ron’s voice was somber, and he started digging through the pockets of the Auror training robe he still wore as though he had a folded-up newspaper somewhere that he wanted Harry to read.
            “I’m staying away from them.”
            Ron paused in mid-dig and stared at him. Hermione, who was seated next to Ron on Harry’s bed, clasped her hands and looked at the floor to hide what Harry thought was a cross between a smile and a concerned frown. Ron didn’t notice. “What?” he demanded. “But how are you going to counteract the rumors when you don’t even know what they are?”
            “Because I don’t care what they are, and I don’t intend to counteract them.” Harry leaned back against the wall again, and let the waterfall soak his hair. He had to smile at the identical expressions Hermione and Ron now wore, expressions that suggested wordless horror. “Why should I? There are always going to be rumors about me, do what I can. I might as well spend the time that I would otherwise spend on counteracting them really living.”
            “And that might be great as long as you’re going to just stay inside the Manor!” Ron’s jaw was jutting forwards. “But what happens when you want to go outside and rejoin the wizarding world when your year is up?”
            “Then I’m going to ask Draco for help,” Harry said steadily. “We can pretend that he cured me, and that might get him some credit with some people. But the main plan is still what it always was. We’re going to make people terrified of my magic, and carve out a place for me in that way.”
            “Oh, Harry,” Hermione whispered. “Does that mean that you’ve decided to stay in the wizarding world?”
            Harry moved his head impatiently and then stood up and walked over to the window. At a flicker of his will, it changed so it was showing a vision of the Forbidden Forest, a clearing right below the sill and images of aisles of trees leading away under a full moon. Harry leaned on the sill and let his mind fix on that moon, the serenity of it, and the stars shimmering all around it.
            “I haven’t decided yet,” he finally said.
            “But if you’re going to use the rumors of your magic to protect yourself, then you’re not going to the Muggle world. You can’t.”
            Harry turned around and let his elbows support him as he glared a little at Hermione. “Yes, I can,” he said. “Why not? I might just use those rumors to stop goblins or people from the wizarding world from coming after me, and leave anyway.”
            Hermione shot a nervous glance at Ron. Harry made a go-on gesture. Ron didn’t know the full extent of Harry’s relationship with Draco yet, but it wasn’t like Harry really intended to hide it from him. That would be both stupid and impossible, considering how close he and Ron were.
            “It’s just,” Hermione whispered, “that I think you should make up your mind soon. I thought you were going to make up your mind.”
            “Sure,” Harry said. “Someday.”
            “Harry…”
            “No,” said Harry, harshly enough to make Hermione jump and Ron look at him with a frown. “Sorry,” he added belatedly, looking down at the handprint he had made in the marble of the sill. The only bad part about awakening magic that could damage inorganic things was that it was the magic that sometimes responded now when he was angry, instead of what could damage organic things. “It’s just that people keep pressing me and pressing me. Draco did it, but now he’s backed off. And everyone was pressing me to become a slave when the goblins first announced what they wanted. I want to make up my own fucking mind. Okay?”
            Ron still looked a little askance at him, but Hermione slowly nodded. “All right. Just, make the right decision, Harry. Stay because you really want to. Or go to the Muggle world because you really want to. Don’t let anyone else influence what you choose.”
            Harry chose to respond to that with a snort and nothing else. Hermione was mental if she thought Harry could make the decision in a completely free frame of mind. He would have his friends tugging him to stay in the wizarding world even if he had gone through the goblins’ slavery, and he had the quiet freedom of the Muggle world calling him even now, when things were so much better.
            And then there was Draco.
            Am I in love with him?
            Harry found it hard to say that he was, and he found it hard to say that he wasn’t. He had only been in love once before, with Ginny, and this was so different that he questioned whether they were the same experience.
            “How’s Ginny?” he asked abruptly, turning around. At least that was one way to dismiss the subject of Draco and his potential exile from the wizarding world and slavery and rumors and magic from his mind.
            Ron and Hermione exchanged sour looks. Then Ron said, “She’s fine. She says now that you never write to her.”
            “She hadn’t been writing to me,” said Harry, and he knew he sounded silly and defensive, but honestly, it was true. “I think that—well, the idea of me being enslaved by the goblins for a year got in the way of our being together the way that it got in the way of the rest of my normal life.”
            Ron leaned forwards, hands squeezing his knees as if he thought that way he would manage to get past the really awkward part of this conversation. “When you get out of Malfoy slavery, you can start dating her again.”
            “No,” Harry snapped before he thought about it.
            “What?” Ron looked honestly surprised, and Harry turned away and ran a hand down his face. This was one reason he hadn’t wanted to discuss Ginny with his friends, and he was going to discuss Draco, but it was hard.
            “It just isn’t going to happen,” said Harry and rapped his fingers on the windowsill and stared at the moon rising above the Forest without any feeling of peace, this time. Maybe he did need to make it clear where he stood on Draco for his friends’ sake, even though it wasn’t going to change the way that he and Draco interacted. “Listen. I don’t know if I’m going to stay in the wizarding world. I don’t know exactly how people will react to me when this is done, or what the goblins will do. I know what Draco and I are going to try to manipulate them into doing. But that’s all.”
            “Right,” said Ron cautiously.
            Harry took a deep breath and said, “But I know one thing. I’m not going to stop being grateful to the Malfoys. I might not even stop living with them, if I choose to stay in the wizarding world. And Draco and I are lovers, and I can’t see that changing unless we have a spectacular fight or he absolutely refuses to accept you lot or something. He won’t just let me go, because he’s possessive like that.”
            Ron’s mouth hung open, and his face turned crimson. Then he looked off to the side and muttered something Harry couldn’t make out.

            Hermione was the one who put a hand on Ron’s shoulder and reached out her other hand to Harry, her face serious and steady. “Harry. You know we’ll support you whatever decisions you make.”
            “But,” said Harry.
            Hermione blinked. “What?”
            “There was a ‘but’ coming up in there,” said Harry, even as he took a step forwards to clasp her hands. “You’ll support me, but you think that it would be better if I started dating Ginny and lived with you, right?”
            “In a place of your own, but yes.” Hermione sighed when Harry shook his head at her. “You’ve said how Malfoy is, but not how you are. Are you going to want to stay with him when this year is done?”
            “I don’t know yet.”
            “Harry.”
            “It’s nothing more than the truth.” Harry shook his head, rolled it, stretched his arms. He wished that everyone would stop trying to sit on him and pressure him into an answer right away. “But I do know that I’m not going to move into my own house and stop dating Draco and start dating Ginny just because it would be the normal thing to do.”
            “She loves you.”
            “She has a funny way of showing it,” Harry snapped, and this time, he met Hermione’s eyes in his anger. “We didn’t even talk about the goblins’ slavery, as important as that was in my life. Maybe there were good reasons for that. But I think the best reason, the real one, is that we aren’t that important to each other. We never were. Maybe without the war, we could have been. But that’s not the way it worked out.”
            A second later, a tide of relaxation seemed to flow up the center of Harry’s spine and through his chest. He sighed in relief. He had finally made a decision, come to the kind of firm choice they were always pushing him to make. And it felt fantastic.
            “You’re sure that you won’t change your mind about Malfoy?” Ron’s voice was small.
            “Do you mean, I’ll be his lover for the rest of our lives?” Harry raised his eyebrows in somewhat mocking response, and Ron flushed and looked away. “I don’t know, for the reasons that I just told you. But I’m sure that I’m not going to dump him in favor of Ginny.”
            “You don’t know how much that relieves me.”
            Harry turned around abruptly. Draco was leaning against the doorframe, his face so set that Harry wondered how long he’d been there, and what he’d heard.
            “You have to eavesdrop on our private conversations, Malfoy?” Ron was holding his wand, at least if his hand grip on his side through his robes was any indication. Harry sighed, shook his head, and jogged over to stand between Draco and his friend.
            “I wish he wouldn’t, either,” Harry said, and gave Draco a look that meant they would have words later. “But at least he knows where I stand, and I know where he stands, and we don’t have to worry about betrayal from each other.”
            “Except the betrayal of him listening to private conversations,” said Hermione, her arms folded.
            “Yes, that,” said Harry. “But we’ll be discussing it in private. I think you ought to leave now.” It struck him hard enough to flinch, the expression on Ron’s face, but this conversation wasn’t going to go anywhere good if they tried to have it now, and he wasn’t about to scold Draco in front of his friends. He softened his voice. “If you came hoping to persuade me back to Ginny’s side for Ginny, I’m sorry, but it’s not happening. If it was for any other reason, it still isn’t happening. I’m sorry.”
            “You don’t need to apologize for desiring what you want,” Draco whispered, and leaned into Harry, and kissed the side of his neck.
            Harry turned around sharply. “And you don’t start anything with them,” he warned. “I want everyone to get along as best they can. That means none of them cursing you, and none of you deliberately provoking them.” He looked deep into Draco’s eyes. “Do you understand that?”
*
            Draco wanted to squirm. He wanted to say that he did understand, and defuse the fire in Harry’s eyes. He wanted to resist, and make Harry say outright what he wanted.
            But he didn’t do any of those things, because he also cared for Harry. And it would upset Harry if he felt like Draco was making him choose between Draco and his friends. He touched Harry’s shoulder instead.
            “I understand,” he said. “I only came to listen to the conversation because one of my Monitoring Charms went off.”
            “What?” Harry stepped back and turned around, looking at his friends as though he assumed they had cast an illegal spell.
            Granger was watching him, though, and with a clever and cynical eye that disconcerted Draco a little bit. “That would be because you had a Monitoring Charm attached to Ginny’s name, right?” she asked.
            “What?” Weasley was spluttering as usual. Draco had to wonder how Harry could find someone interesting when spitting barrel-loads of spit was their main expression.
            Draco nodded. “When Harry mentions her first name inside the Manor, I set up a charm to go off.” Only her first name, because the number of times that Harry spoke of the Weasley family was frankly too much to deal with.
            “Why?” Harry was staring at him with not much better an expression than Weasley’s this time.
            Draco leaned on Harry and made him meet and hold Draco’s eyes, until he was quietly sure that there was no room for flinching in Harry’s expression. “Because I would have to worry about her being a rival, otherwise, and whether you were discussing her with your friends without me knowing about it. And I couldn’t stand that.”
            Harry shook his head, but Draco didn’t think it was in denial, or even in misunderstanding. “She’s not a rival. We—maybe there would have been something between us without the goblins enslaving me, but there’s nothing now.”
            “You’re going to say that about my sister, mate?” Weasley was coldly disapproving. “When you know that she would welcome you back into the family along with the rest of us when this year is done?”
            “It was never about family, Ron.” Harry turned around, and Draco grabbed his arm to make sure that he didn’t go too far away. Harry ignored the gesture utterly. Draco hoped that was because he was coming to treat Draco like part of his own body, and not because he was thinking too much about the conversation he was having with his friends. “Or not the kind of family that you mean. I considered making a different kind of family with Ginny, once. Now I’m not.”
            Draco whistled without sound. Now he understood why it had been so hard to persuade Harry to show interest in Draco himself, when Draco would have thought his own interest was long past obvious. Harry had never had sex with Weasley’s sister—Draco was pretty sure of that—but he had still flung himself headlong into fantasies of a family. That was obsessively monogamous, really.
            A second later, Draco smiled. That character trait could have been annoying, but it was going to work for him instead. Because there was no way that Harry would betray him casually or back away from him without a powerful motive.
            Of course, the hatred of goblins and other people in the wizarding world might provide that motive. So Draco would have to be careful and make sure that he was helping Harry to combat it and giving him love and a comfortable place to live at the same time.
            “What are you plotting, Malfoy?” Weasley demanded. “You’re always plotting something.”

            Draco lifted his head in silent disdain. “I was thinking about the best way to protect Harry, actually,” he said, which was perfectly true. “We’ve spent enough time researching those distance rituals that I think he could threaten the Gringotts money if he wanted.”
            Once again, Harry turned to stare at him. Draco basked in it. Even if the emotion Harry was looking at him with was less than positive, he would rather be the center of Harry’s attention than the focus of anyone else’s adoration.
            “I thought that you said my control over inorganic magic wasn’t perfect yet.”
            “It isn’t,” Draco said. “But I do think we could reach into the bank. And maybe that’s all we’ll need, for a convincing demonstration.”
“And maybe not,” Harry countered. “Once we succeed, they might strengthen the wards so that we can never try again. So I’d rather practice somewhere nearby first, and only try it when we know that it’s going to work.”
Draco took another smug glance at Weasley and Granger, one that he was careful not to let appear smug. See? he wanted to say. He’s planning with me. I do have his best interests at heart. It wouldn’t be in his best interests to marry Weasley’s sister and raise a horde of red-haired brats with her. I can give him what he needs.
“Let me be there when you try for the first time,” said Granger almost reluctantly, her gaze going back and forth between him and Harry. “You might need someone else to measure the magical effects.”
“Sure, you can be,” said Harry, and then came down from standing on the balls of his feet, which Draco thought he might be the only person to realize Harry had been doing. “But you understand why I’m not going to come rushing back to the Burrow the minute my year is done and marry Ginny? Or even write to her first? I’ll write to her if she writes to me, but we’ve gone this long without a letter. I think the silence has said most of what we would otherwise.”
Weasley grumbled and whinged, but he didn’t say anything convincing, and Draco had the feeling that he knew when he’d lost. Granger was the one who gave pointed glances back and forth between them, and then a special pointed glance at Harry, who ignored it magnificently.
He did give Draco a single pointed look of his own after they left, though, and said, “You needn’t think that this means I’ve made the decision to stay with you permanently, either. I haven’t yet.”
            Because Draco was smart, and a Slytherin, he knew when not to push. He just nodded meekly and asked, “So where do you want to try to reach with your magic first?”
*
delia cerrano: Harry has already plotted out a way to have himself “recover.” As far as he’s concerned, people were going to harass him forever anyway. If he can make them afraid of him, the way Draco suggested, then he can at least keep them from interfering with his day-to-day life.
staar: Thanks!
SP777: Maybe, but Harry would rather live with the consequences of that than anything he didn’t choose. And nothing else would keep reporters from pestering them.
Jubbles: Thanks! I have a Yahoo! Groups list called lomonaaerensstories that you can join.
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The Long Defeat