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Acts of Life	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 21189 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 2
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Chapter Twenty-Two—Chatting
            Ron stood up when Harry and Draco walked into the kitchen of Grimmauld Place. His face was pale instead of red, which Harry thought was a good thing at first.
            Then he got a close look at the expression on Ron’s face. He sighed a little and said, “I’ll tell you the same thing I did last night, Ron. I wasn’t dating Draco before I broke up with Ginny.” He squeezed Draco’s hand. Draco stood straight behind him; the slight tremor Harry had felt working its way up his arm eased.
            “I believe you.” Ron’s voice was still a whisper, and he looked back and forth between Harry and Draco as though he was expecting one of them to burst into flames. Harry had to smile. That would have been an accurate fear only a few years ago.
            Or at least us cursing each other would have been.
            “Good,” said Harry, and smiled at Ron before he sat down in the chair next to the fireplace that he’d sat in yesterday when talking to his friend. Draco hovered for a second. Harry pulled another chair up next to his and gestured Draco there. If things had been less tense with Ron, Harry would have suggested that Draco sit in his lap, but he didn’t think it was the time for that.
            Ron sat down and put his hands on his knees. “All right. Tell me why.”
            “Draco and I got closer over the last year,” said Harry, watching Ron. He had got a bit more red, although that also meant a little closer to normal. “He started teaching me more about politics, and I helped him get a lesser sentence in Azkaban—”
            “I know that!”
            “Right.” Harry wondered what else he could say. “Well, that’s still true. That’s how we got to know each other.”
            Ron nodded, but he still looked as if he was preoccupied. “Fine. Then—what’s going on? Why did you go from getting to know each other to deciding to date?” He turned to Draco. “And I’m—I want to hear your perspective.” Ron did manage those words with a straight face.
            Draco looked down for a little while. Then he looked back up. Ron held still. Harry closed his eyes a little, amazingly proud of both of them.
            “Harry is one of the few people who’s been kind to me. Amazingly kind, considering what we—went through.”
            “I already know that.”
            “I’m trying to explain, Weasley,” Draco snapped, and Harry nearly put a hand over his eyes. But Ron might have freaked out if Draco had called him by his first name right away, anyway. “He was kind. He was also smarter than I thought, and he did all these little things for me.”
            “What little things?” Ron was glaring at Draco now as if he thought maybe he meant blowjobs. Harry coughed and hoped his own face wasn’t turning too red.
            “Little things like bringing me gifts. Making sure I could have a career. Making me feel useful and important.” Draco suddenly gestured. “I want—I think that’s one thing that should be changed about Azkaban. They don’t do anything to make sure people can have careers when they come out. They just assume that people are going to live or die, and they don’t have to do anything to help them.”
            “You were a criminal.”
            “But they’ve let me go now,” Draco insisted. “They should have kept me locked up if they thought that I didn’t deserve to get my life back.”
            Ron turned to Harry. “This is something you’ve talked to him about, mate?”
            Harry didn’t know why that question was so important, but from the look in Ron’s eye, it was. He shrugged and answered. “A little. I was talking more to Parkinson. She was in Azkaban for a few months, too, you know, and she didn’t know what to do either. We’re helping her make up her mind.”
            “Parkinson? Even her?”
            “Yes. I thought it was important.”
            Ron clutched the arm of his chair, then turned back to Draco. “Are you grateful to Harry?”
            “Well, yes, but not only that. I think something’s gone wrong when one lover has to speak of gratitude to the other.”
            Harry smiled at Draco and took his hand for that. He agreed. It wasn’t something he would have wanted with Ginny, either, despite them breaking up for appreciably different reasons.
            “You wouldn’t consider letting him date someone else to show your gratitude?”
            “Ron.”
            “No, Weasley.”
            “I was only joking!”
            “Well, it wasn’t a funny joke.” Harry sat back, almost unable to believe that he was the one who had objected, and Draco who had sounded so calm. Draco lightly touched his arm, then pulled his hand back. Harry nodded to him and then faced Ron again. “I don’t want to date anyone else. So if he did that, I would have to severely question his sanity.”
            “Especially since people who want to date me aren’t exactly falling all over themselves to show up at my door,” Draco added.
            “Don’t put yourself down that way,” Harry told Draco, and turned the glare on him until he nodded. “That wasn’t a funny joke, either.”
            Ron had gone silent. Harry turned to face him and saw Ron looking gloomily at the fireplace. Harry looked with him, but couldn’t figure out what was so fascinating.
            “It’s real, isn’t it?” Ron asked.
            “Good of you to acknowledge that,” Draco muttered, but Harry thought Ron hadn’t heard that, so he was the one who answered. “What do you mean?”
            “You never looked at Ginny the way you looked at him just now, when you told him to stop putting himself down.” Ron sighed, paused, then sighed again. “I wanted to pretend you were getting into that sort of rebound relationship Hermione talks about all the time. You aren’t.”
            “I would hope he doesn’t look at me the way he did your sister.” Draco sounded more than mildly horrified.
            Ron scowled. “And I wish he did. Then I could think it was just some kind of fling against his better judgment and he was going to move on.”
            “Your sensitivity stuns me,” said Draco wryly. “When your best friend is sitting right here.”
            “It’s not a fling,” Harry said. He had wanted to leave Draco and Ron alone and let them discuss it, but that seemed to be asking for trouble at this point. “It’s not something I’m going to regret any time soon, or decide is wrong for me. I’m sorry if you were hurt, Ron. I’m sorry if Ginny was hurt. I did some things wrong there. But I’m not going to reverse myself and say I’ll date her now out of guilt.”
            “Fine,” said Ron. His face had shut down into hard, sour lines. “Then I accept that, and I accept Malfoy’s with you now, and I won’t try to talk you out of it even though Merlin knows I wish I could. Now, are we done here?”
            Harry started to nod, but Draco reached over and pressed down hard on his knee. Harry glanced at him. Draco had a strange, cool expression on his face, one Harry realized with a start that he hadn’t seen since before the war.
            “What a gracious acceptance you’ve made of someone who’s going to be a permanent part of your best friend’s life,” Draco said.
            Permanent? Harry tried not to laugh giddily.
“You want to be more gracious?” Ron snapped. “After everything that you and your family tried to do to mine?”
            Harry wondered whether Draco had even known about his father, Ginny, and the diary, but before he could say anything, Draco continued. “No. I expect you to feel about me however you want to feel, and if you want to despise me, then go ahead. But acting the way you do to Harry is unacceptable. Why should he have to coddle you and be sorry that he can’t have the feelings for your sister that you wish were there? He can make whatever apologies he wants to your sister. But what do you have to do with it?”
*
            Draco reined himself in abruptly. He had gone as far as he could at the moment, he thought. Any more and he would just sound like the ungracious bastard he had accused Weasley of being.
            Weasley’s face was red with astonishment. But it was always red, Draco thought, no matter what the emotion. Sometimes he thought that they were just born that way. He didn’t understand why Harry didn’t find them more boring to look at.
            Harry’s hand tightened on his. Draco smiled at him and faced Weasley again, softening his voice.
            “Listen, Weasley. I do understand some of what you’re feeling. If my best friend started dating a Gryffindor, I would probably feel the same way.”
            “What best friend?”
            His tone made Draco remember Vincent, dying in the Fiendfyre. He stiffened for a moment, but Harry’s hand was on his knee, pressing firmly, calmly, kindly down, and Draco softened his own impulses and inclined his head.
            “You never really knew them,” he said. And that was true. His best friend had sometimes been Pansy, sometimes Blaise, even Theo, depending on the circumstances and how helpful they felt like being to him today. And Vince and Greg had always been there, to the point that it was still hard for Draco to imagine life without them. He probably would have been worse off if he hadn’t been confined in the Manor the vast majority of the time.
            “That doesn’t matter.” Weasley had turned an even deeper shade of red. “I just don’t trust you to be good to Harry.”
            “Then trust Harry to protect himself,” Draco said. “You might not have paid close attention to how he handled the political contests he’s been subjected to, but I did. He did magnificently.”
            Weasley simply stared at him, although Draco didn’t know if it was the words or the praise that he disbelieved. Draco snorted a little and glanced at Harry. “Do you want to handle this from here?” he whispered.
            Thankfully, Harry took over. “Ron, you have to admit that I didn’t hesitate to break up with Ginny when it became obvious we wouldn’t work out.”
            “No,” Weasley conceded, although the words sounded thick. “But it’s still—it’s just not something I ever envisioned for you, Harry.”
            Draco held back the temptation to reply, bitingly, that Weasley sure didn’t seem to have envisioned much.
            “And I didn’t envision becoming a politician after the war, either.” Harry sounded as if he was shrugging even though his shoulders didn’t move. “It was something I fell into because I saw that people needed me.”
            “Then why couldn’t you do what Ginny needed of you?”
            “Because her need wasn’t one I wanted to respond to.”
            Draco had thought Weasley would explode after that, but for some reason, apart from an odd glance at Draco, Weasley didn’t appear as though he knew how to answer. He raised one hand, let it slump back to his side, and shook his head a little.
            “Fine,” he said. “I—I’m reconciled to it as much as I can be, Harry.” He stood up, nodded grudgingly to Draco, and walked towards the fireplace.
            Because it was Weasley, Draco was sure there would be one confrontation more. And there was. Weasley turned around and cocked his head.
            “Is it going to be permanent, Harry?”
            “I think so.”
            Draco didn’t grin as Weasley left. It would have felt like punching an opponent who was already down.
            “Thank you, Draco,” Harry said a second later, as he lifted Draco’s hand to his lips and kissed it. “You did really well.”
            Draco ducked his head and let himself watch Harry from beneath his lashes. This was—an interesting way to gain praise for his actions.
            And he was starting to think that it would also be the more amusing way.
            Harry would be astonished to see how polite Draco could be when they confronted Weasley’s brother.
*
Severus1snape: So should I apologize or not? ;)
ChaosLady: Thank you!
moon: Thanks very much!
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Acts of Life