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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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Chapter Twenty-One—Among the Malfoys
            “My husband would like to speak you when you have the time, Harry,” Narcissa said around the newspaper at breakfast that morning.
            Harry licked his lips. His mouth was full, of saliva not food, and he couldn’t speak. He ended up nodding and going back to his plate as though there was nothing else that was important in the world. But even the pumpkin juice he managed to swallow tasted sour.
            “What is it?” Draco whispered to him, leaning over and nearly planting his elbow in the middle of the buttered toast Harry was trying to eat. “What’s wrong?”
            “What if your father wants me to leave, or doesn’t approve of what we’re doing?” Harry murmured back, when he had control of himself. He was sure that Narcissa was listening to every word, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. She was pretending not to listen, anyway. “You know that he’s the head of the Malfoy family, and you keep telling me how important that is.”
            Draco’s hand pressed down hard on his, for a second, and then his voice was clear in the next moment—clear and angry. “And you think I would listen to him and throw you out of the house? Or that he would go back on the payment of the life-debt and take his protection away from you before a year is done?”
            Harry hesitated. He hadn’t meant it that way, but of course he had implied it that way. And the more he thought about it, the more he decided that he was being a little paranoid.
            “Well, all right,” he conceded with difficulty. “But I thought that he probably wouldn’t like all the details of the plan we concocted to fool the reporters. I’m amazed that he hasn’t wanted to talk to me about it before.”
            “He would have,” said Narcissa. Perhaps she knew that maintaining her pretense of ignoring them was both stupid and harmful. She folded the paper up, folded her arms on top of it, and gave Harry an encouraging smile. “But he thought that speaking to you too short a time after the first deception would only strengthen those feelings that I understand you used to scare the reporters.”
            “He can’t make me turn away from you just by disapproving of you,” Draco said firmly. “Sure, there are things you could do that would strain—this—” And he made a vague little motion between them. Harry smiled faintly, a bit encouraged to see that Draco had no idea what to call it, either. “Like trying to steal from us, or something. But I can’t imagine that you would really ever do that, and it’s stupid for you to worry about it. Okay?”
            “Okay,” Harry whispered, and nodded a few times when Draco stared at him. “Does Lucius want to see me alone?” he added to Narcissa.
            “Yes,” said Narcissa. “Not so he can eat you, or bury the bones in an unknown place,” she added, perhaps seeing that Harry was still tense. “But he does want to discuss with you what this means for the future. And what will happen if you stay with us and in the wizarding world when the year is up.”
            “Right,” Harry echoed, frowning. The last thing he needed was someone else pressing him to make a decision right bloody now.
            “That’s the spirit,” said Draco, and only grinned when Harry glared at him. “Just remind yourself that you’ve defeated a Dark Lord, and my father’s a lot less intimidating, and you’ve got what you need.”
            Harry cuffed the back of Draco’s head, because he really did deserve it, and then nodded to Narcissa. “Where does he want to meet me?”
            “In the library with the magical books that comforted you before, is what he told me.”
            Of course it’s there, Harry thought. But the more he thought about it, the more he decided that Lucius probably hadn’t even meant to intimidate him. It was the sort of manipulation that he seemed to practice as easily as he breathed, to the point where he didn’t notice when he did it anymore.
            “All right,” he said, and sat back down to finish his breakfast, because Draco insisted, and Narcissa told him it would be good for Lucius to wait. She didn’t mention who it was good for. Harry did notice that.
*
            “Ah, Mr. Potter. Come in.”
            The Potter boy still hesitated before he crossed into the library, as if he thought that Lucius would have had time to trap the shelves to tip over on him. Lucius put down the book he had been reading—one the library had chosen for him—and put his fingers together as he watched the current source of his problems approach.
            Not all his problems, Lucius admitted. Most of those stemmed from the war and his own choices. But he had not been pleased when he realized how close this boy was growing to his own, what paths that opened, reaching into the future. And less pleased when he realized how they planned to dim the gossip of the reporters and the demands that Potter be released at once.
            “Well?”
            That was Potter, standing in front of him with so much fire in his eyes that Lucius had to change his mind on at least one point. This was not a boy who would tamely submit to whatever someone else planned to ask of him. Perhaps the tactics that he and Draco had chosen could be made to work, after all.
            “I presume you know what kind of future we planned for Draco?” Lucius asked, and deliberately didn’t specify whether he meant himself and Narcissa, or the whole family, with Draco in the basket with them.
            There was a fleeting frown from Potter, as though he had noticed the omission, but he went on without saying anything about it. “I think it was a future like the one you have. He would marry someone from another pure-blood family and have one child and—live in luxury, I suppose.”
            There was a little catch at the end of his words. It was hard for Lucius to tell if it came from the thought of Draco living a separate life from him or from the thought of losing the luxury that he must be growing used to.
            “Yes,” said Lucius. “Hopefully more than one child, and hopefully no more Dark Lords.” He had thought that a good joke, but Potter stared back at him without moving, and Lucius waved him to a seat in irritation. “You’re giving me too many flashbacks to duels, standing like that and looking at me.”
            Potter hissed under his breath in a way that made Lucius flinch visibly—it reminded him too much of Parseltongue—and took his seat with an ill grace. “How have I changed that life? You know he might still do that, after he falls out of his infatuation with me.”
            Lucius paused. Here was a course that he had not considered: convincing Potter that Draco would not want him for long, playing on his damaged vision of self-worth and prying them apart that way.
            But he suspected that Potter would say something about it to Draco, and Draco would be upset. And there was the sudden, terrible sensation, like a memory itself, of what would happen when Narcissa found out he had done something like that.
            Forging ahead, Lucius said, “I think you underestimate the amount of—interest that Draco has in you.” There were words that he could not bring himself to speak when he was discussing the matter with an old enemy, no matter how much Narcissa might argue, and Lucius privately agree, that they applied to the situation.
            Potter sat up, and Lucius didn’t miss the way his eyes brightened. Then they went hard again. “But you don’t like the idea of me—what? Knocking him away from his marriage?”
            “He would find some way to make sure the Malfoy line continues,” said Lucius. He had long suspected that Draco would not marry as young as he and Narcissa had. Not only had Lucius concentrated on other things during Draco’s years at Hogwarts rather than finding an acceptable bride for him, but Draco had never seemed taken with someone at first sight the way Lucius and Narcissa had been with each other.
            Except…who did he meet and talk about endlessly that summer before Hogwarts, without even knowing his name, until his mother had to ban the subject at the dinner table?
            Lucius grimaced a little. He did not like to remember that, or to settle yet another score in the long-running battle between them in his wife’s favor.
            “Then I don’t understand. Why are you so upset about it?”
            “Are you serious?” Lucius managed to keep the surprise out of his face and voice, he thought, as he sat up and focused on Potter, but it was more difficult than it should have been. “It puts my son in danger. The sort of danger that you always draw with you, and the danger that comes from people thinking that he’s the one who’s mutilated Harry Potter’s soul. Of course that sort of danger concerns me.”
            Potter leaned slowly back in his chair. His face was more speculative than Lucius liked.
            Of course, nothing about this meeting was to Lucius’s liking. He cast a glance at the book next to him. He was following its advice, the advice the library had picked out for him, but he wondered if all that advice was equally wise.
            “I will protect him,” Potter said. “I would guard him with my life.”
            “I know that you have the power to guard him,” said Lucius, and he let his voice be sharp. Narcissa would not be pleased, but he doubted Potter would describe the exact tone of his words to her, and he wanted to make this point. “But you cannot be everywhere at once, and all it takes is one person with a ready wand, a curse, and the temper to think they are avenging you. This deception makes things worse for him. Now, do you understand?”
            Potter was still, his head bowed as though he was listening to a distant wind. Then he nodded and said, “I think so.”
            Lucius relaxed despite himself. “Then you understand why you need to start a new rumor circulating, a new piece of gossip. That’s vitally important. The best way to protect Draco is to start a rumor that will take the heat off him.”
            “I thought you would know better than that,” said Potter, and had the cheek to look disappointed in him. “We’re confined by the bounds of the game we’ve already set up. We can’t just go back and announce that we were kidding, and Draco isn’t restraining me after all, and I’m sane. Isn’t that what you want us to do?” Again his eyes seemed to pierce Lucius, and Lucius thought irrationally that it was unfair for an enemy to have eyes that color, so bright.
            “You will think of something to do.”
            “How should I?” Potter held his hands out and turned them back and forth as if inviting Lucius to look at the broom-calluses on them. “I only came up with this way to fight in the first place because I happened to have magic that my rage had festered into. I couldn’t have done it without that. And we would still stand the chance of the goblins finding out the truth and coming down on us with all their wrath if we made a different announcement. No, we have to keep going.”
            “How will you keep Draco safe?” Lucius closed one fist on his lap, and let Potter see it. “You have condemned him to a life behind wards.”
            Potter laughed harshly. “No more than I’ve condemned myself. I would never have been safe after this, even if I’d served out the goblins’ slavery. That was why I planned to go to the Muggle world—the main reason. I was angry at the people who wouldn’t stand up for me, but I also knew that they would be afraid of me once they found out about my magic, and they would want me to save the world again if another Dark Lord came rising, and they might try to arrest me for some other ‘crime’ I committed during the war.”
            He stood up and paced towards Lucius, who tried his best to look as though he had anticipated this turn in the conversation. “The only way I can stay safe—from wizards or goblins—is to threaten them with my magic, make them know what I can do, and insist on being left in peace. Melt their cameras, burn their letters, disintegrate their wands. Threaten their money,” he added softly. “You might want to remove the Malfoy money from your vaults before it gets to that point. They might try to take it from you in revenge.”
            “They won’t want to leave you in peace if you continue this deception.”
            Potter rolled his eyes. “They don’t want to do that now. I kind of wonder how normal my life would have been even if I became an Auror and the goblins didn’t try to enslave me. They would send me Howlers, requests for interviews, demands for commentary on everything that happened in the wizarding world. They’d make me donate money and save them and live up to their standards, and yell at me when I fell beneath them. A Death Eater could try to take me down, or someone who wants revenge because I lived through the war and someone they loved didn’t.”
            Potter took a deep breath and stared off into the distance. Lucius wondered exactly who he felt guilty over.
            But Potter shook his head and turned back, and there was a savage spark in his eyes. “I know this isn’t easy for you to comprehend, Lucius, but Draco entered the fray of his own free will. He was the one who wanted to help me trick the reporter, instead of calling on you the way I did when the goblins visited. This is done, now. Hell, you might be in danger if the goblins tell other people the way you supposedly made me kneel to you.”
            That aspect of the situation had not previously occurred to Lucius, perhaps because he had become resigned to spending much of his remaining life behind wards. He let Potter see the arch of his neck, the fire in his eyes. “They will not find me easy prey.”
            “And you think Draco is easy?”
            Lucius blinked. That sounded harsher than he had meant it to be, the rational statement of his fears changed into an insult in Potter’s mouth. “I believe that he could very well be in danger.”
            “Then believe that I’ll also be protecting him.” Potter gave him a firm nod. “I know what you’ve done for me, but even more than that, I know what Draco means to me.”
            “And what does he mean to me?”
            “Something like home,” said Potter, and for the first time since Lucius had called him into the library, his voice wavered. “Something like affection. I don’t know how far it’ll go, what we can name it, but I do know that this is—something I want.”
            That Potter could fight fiercely for something he wanted, Lucius knew full well. He had seen the boy survive a war and bring down a Dark Lord to have the peace he wanted. And for the first time, it struck Lucius as a terrible pity that he should not have that peace before being flung headlong into another crisis.
            “I shall trust you as much as I can,” said Lucius. It was an admission for him, one that had a price, and while Potter might not appreciate the full extent of that price, at least he knew there was one. That knowledge was in his slow nod.
            “Good,” said Potter. “And I promise that I’ll show you as much trust as I can, and your son and wife far more.”
            He slipped out of the library. Lucius waited until he was sure that Potter was not coming back in to say anything else, and then turned and stared at the book on the chair beside him.
            Encouraging Trust was the title.
            Well. The library had fulfilled its promise.
*
            Harry shook his head once he stood in the corridor again. Had he actually spoken to Lucius Malfoy and had that kind of conversation with him?
            Yes, he had. And while Harry doubted he would ever be comfortable with Lucius, at least he had his blessing and permission to be comfortable with Draco.
            Who Harry now wanted to find.
            He left to do so, his heart considerably lighter than before.
*
staar: Ron and Hermione probably wouldn’t have urged that if they hadn’t found out about his relationship with Draco. That was what shocked them, not that Harry might not marry Ginny.
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The Long Defeat