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Acts of Life	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 21189 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Twenty-Three—Challenging
            “I need to talk to you, Harry.”
            Harry was still wrapped in blankets from the bed, barely sitting up and yawning. He thought it wasn’t the best time for George to sweep into Grimmauld Place and start marching around and waving his arms.
            But it was what George had done anyway, so Harry would have to put up with it. He pushed his glasses up his nose and said, “Okay. What do you need to talk to me about?”
            George swung around and pointed one finger at him. “I don’t like it when you act dumb.”
            “In this case, it’s not an act.” Harry rubbed his face and wished that he’d had the chance to get some tea inside him, or, even better, a Pepper-Up Potion. “I can think of a couple different things that you might want to talk about. Is this about Draco, or is the shop not doing well?”
            “Neither!”
            Well, that’s a surprise. Harry settled back against the pillows, rearranged the blankets so he was a little more comfortable, and shook his head. “Then I’m sorry, but I really have no idea what you’re talking about.”
            George stopped and glared at him in exasperation. Harry glared back. George finally sat down in the chair that Harry kept for looking through his post and admitted, “It’s about Ginny. So about Malfoy, but indirectly.” Then he scowled at Harry again, as if Harry was the one at fault for having forced him to say so many words.
            “Ginny is fine with things, I thought,” Harry said. “I mean, I wrote to her that I was dating Draco and she didn’t reply. And I’m going to make sure I’m careful around her and don’t make the Burrow uncomfortable for her by visiting when she’s there.”
            “How could you give up the chance at dating a great girl like Ginny to go out with a Death Eater?”
            Harry sighed. He hoped this wouldn’t be a conversation full of rhetorical questions. No one was going to learn anything, if that was the case. “Because it wasn’t working out with Ginny. She wanted to get married right away. She resented me for leaving her behind when I went out to hunt the Horcruxes. I, in the meantime, had no idea about her wanting to get married right away, and I was letting everything drift. Not confronting her. If I really cared about her, then I would have talked to her about marriage. Oh, scratch that, I would have known that this mattered so much to her. Don’t you think?”
            George didn’t seem to have thought he would get such a thorough answer. He waited. Harry waited back.
            Harry’s stomach rumbled. He rolled his eyes and muttered, “Fine. If you want more detail, I never really thought about getting back together with Ginny. But I only realized that when she confronted me about it. And I do think that you ought to realize how terrible we would have been for each other, George. We both wanted things from each other we couldn’t provide.”
            “Tell me one thing Ginny demanded from you that you couldn’t give her. Rich, generous fellow that you are.”
            “Loving her.”
            “But anyone could love Ginny.” Harry could tell George was struggling with having the wind taken out of his sails, but he also seemed to be struggling not to appear that way. “She’s the most lovable person I know!”
            “She’s your sister. It’s natural you should feel that way.”
            “And unnatural that you don’t.”
            “If you say something that ugly again, then I’ll just ask you to leave. And yes, I remember setting things up so that you could just Floo or Apparate in however you want,” Harry added, before George could say the words he was opening his mouth to speak. “It doesn’t mean things are going to stay that way if you insist on abusing the privilege. I want you to know that I didn’t love Ginny. It’s not unnatural that I don’t love her. It’s just the way things are.”
            George turned slowly more and more red, but he didn’t get up and leave. Harry was a little surprised by that. Maybe it meant George wasn’t as sure of himself as he sounded. Harry stopped counting the seconds until he would have to pick up his wand and watched George instead.
            “Ginny came to see me when she got your owl,” George finally said.
            Harry nodded. He had thought it was something like that. “Well, I understand why she doesn’t want to talk to me. But—”
            “That was another mistake, you know,” George said, and he was talking louder than normal even while he glared at the wall. “You should have told her personally the way you did Mum.”
            “If it was a mistake, then I’ll bear the consequences,” Harry said, holding up one hand. “But on the other hand, I didn’t know it was one. I thought it would be best if I told her by owl so she didn’t have to see me.”
            “You were wrong. Now she thinks you don’t care about her.”
            It would have been satisfying to just say that he didn’t, and get George out of here, then go and have breakfast. But Harry knew he would have ended up feeling guilty about it later. And he was really trying to avoid things he would have to feel guilty for later.
            “I care about her. The way I would a sister, or a friend. Not the way a lover would. And not the way that someone on the same political side would,” Harry had to add. He was thinking of how Ginny had joined that group that wanted a memorial on Hogwarts grounds and compensation when she’d never acted interested in politics before.
            Or maybe she was and I just never knew. That was another sign that he and Ginny weren’t good for each other.
            “You’re saying you sympathize with Death Eaters now?”
            Harry spread his hands. “Any answer I can give to that, you’re going to twist.”
            “You do.” George stood up and paced around the room, ending up facing the far wall. “You do. I can’t believe it. You sympathize with the man who gave my little sister a diary that almost killed her.”
            “I do not sympathize with Lucius Malfoy,” Harry interrupted, shuddering. Draco had asked him to come along to Azkaban and visit Lucius, but Harry honestly hadn’t been able to bring himself to do it. He could avoid saying anything bad about Lucius in front of Draco; that wasn’t hard. But he didn’t like Lucius himself, and he never would. “I just want to make sure that some of the ones who didn’t do things that were as bad can come out of Azkaban and get their lives back in order again.”
            “You still sympathize with a Malfoy.”
            Harry’s temper felt as though it was a little string someone had been pulling on, and now it snapped. “Are we going to insist that parents are the same as their children, now? Are you the same as that great-uncle of yours who murdered one of Draco’s aunts?”
            “That never—I didn’t know about that—”
            “And Draco didn’t know about his father’s plot to give Ginny the diary. I think it was a horrible thing to do. I’m still not going to stop dating him because his father did that. If you think I should stop dating everyone who was related to someone who did things I disliked, then I couldn’t date Ginny, either. Hell, she’s related to the Malfoys.”
            George stood there with a stiff back in response, and Harry looked at him and didn’t say anything. Finally George turned around, and said, “My sister doesn’t deserve you dating him.”
            It took Harry a second to work that out. Then he said, “We broke up, George. I’m not going to go around thinking about her opinion of everyone I date after that.”
            “You think you’ll date someone besides Malfoy?”
            “I don’t know.”
            “That’s not a very definite answer.”
            “‘I don’t know’ generally isn’t,” Harry pointed out.
            George turned his head away again. Harry watched him, and wondered what was going on. Was it just because George had lost Fred to Death Eaters? Even then, it seemed like a reason for him to be upset about Harry dating Draco, not upset because Harry wasn’t dating Ginny.
            Then something clicked, and Harry frowned. “Did you promise Ginny you would come here and talk to me? Because she thought you would have more success talking to me than she did, given that we’d broken up?”
            George jumped. It wasn’t a big jump, but it was a guilty one.
            “No,” said Harry firmly. “Maybe I shouldn’t have owled her. But she can fight her own battles. She can come and talk to me if she’s really upset about it. Go back and tell her I said so.”
            George turned around and said, with a quiet dignity, “I think the two of you should sit down and work things out on your own. I won’t tell her.”
            “Then you’re also sorry for showing up and harassing me like this?”
            “I wish I’d just stayed out of the whole thing,” George muttered with ill grace.
            Harry watched him as he left. No apology, but at least he didn’t linger and tell Harry earnestly how horrible Draco was and that he had to give Ginny a chance, either. He just left. A second later, Harry heard the Floo whoosh downstairs.
            Harry sighed. At least he didn’t think this was likely to be a lasting fight with George. And if Ginny wouldn’t actually come and talk to him, then he could avoid her easily enough. She was just being obnoxious at this point. Not threatening.
            Finally, he could get up and have a shower and breakfast and feel that he was facing the actual day.
*
            “He must be afraid of me, if he insisted on talking to you when I wasn’t there.”
            Draco knew that statement was a little mean, but at least it made Harry smile. And Harry needed to smile.
            They’d spent three hours at the Manor today, lounging in front of the fire, eating the cake and other sweets the “house-elves” had sent up, and discussing idle plans for the future, such as whether an apothecary would succeed if Draco opened it, or if people would stay away for fear of his reputation. But Harry kept trailing off and lying there with a grey face, and Draco had finally got him to confess why.
            “Sorry that we couldn’t talk to him yesterday.”
            Draco shrugged. That part wasn’t Harry’s fault. They’d gone to the joke shop, but it was shuttered, and no one answered their knock. In the end, Weasley’s brother had to decide who he was going to talk to, and it was probably never going to be Draco.
            Besides, Draco cared more about something else. “Are you going to talk to her in person?”
            Harry tilted his head back as if he wanted to examine the top of the mantel, as if it was vital that he do so. Draco held his breath, but in the end, shook his head and ate the last slice of chocolate cake. No need to hold his breath when there were more pleasant things to be doing.
            “I feel like I should,” Harry said, musingly.
            Draco just waited. Harry had to make this decision the way Weasley’s brother had had to make his decision.
            “But no,” Harry said. “Not unless she comes to me and requests it. I did something wrong by writing to her. Well, I couldn’t know that. If I tried to talk to her before she invited me to, that would be wrong, too. I just feel like I never know my footing when I’m with Ginny. I make too many mistakes through that ignorance. I’m going to wait until she comes to me and tells me what she wants.” He rolled over and smiled lazily at Draco. “But one thing you never have to worry about.”
            “Was I supposed to worry about anything?” Draco asked, in a voice that was stiff despite his best efforts.
            “I thought you might be.” Harry raised one hand and touched Draco’s chin, then his cheek, then his eyebrows, moving so slowly and carefully that it really did seem as if he just wanted to know about them, stroke them, see them. “I won’t get back together with her. Just the fact that I make so many mistakes tells me I would never have been a good boyfriend for her.”
            “Well,” said Draco. “Good.”
            Harry nodded to him and then curled up against his side. “Tell me whether you think opening an apothecary in Hogsmeade would work when one in Diagon Alley wouldn’t.”
            And Draco had to go on and talk about it, despite wanting to know more about Weasley’s sister and what Harry had really been to her.
            But as he spoke, his worries slipped away. It was hard to worry when there was a crackling fire nearby and a sleepy, smiling Harry at his side.
            If he had to fight for this, he would. But right now, he didn’t have to.
            And it made him happy.
*
moon: Thank you!
Severus1snape: Well, when he thinks he has a good reason to be polite, yes.
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Acts of Life