Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

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-Four—Afterdark
            Ginny’s face was hard and white, her voice low and rasping. “I hope you don’t think that I had anything to do with those spiders coming after you.”
            Harry rolled his eyes. He didn’t think she would be more angry at him than she already was, even if she noticed. “I know you didn’t. They’re connected to the case I was working when I quit the Aurors. For some reason, they can travel through the Floo in the darkness, but it was humans who had to surround the house and quell the lights in the first place, and probably send them through. I just wanted to let you know that we’re both all right, and that I’ll be a little later in fetching Lily than we originally planned on. But I’ll be there.”
            Ginny went on looking at him. Harry raised his eyebrows. “What?” He wondered for a second what she could find to criticize in what he’d said so far, and then rolled his eyes at himself. She could always find something to criticize in what he’d said.
            “Who are we?” Ginny asked, and sent Harry into reeling confusion all over again—although part of that was probably just adrenaline aftermath—until he recalled what he’d said.
            “Oh,” he said. “Draco and me.”
            Ginny gave a slow, regal nod, but her eyes were distant in the way that they’d always been when she was trying to conceal tears when they were married. A second later, she glanced to the side, and raised a hand as if she was going to either pull her hair or wipe away the tears. It ended up dropping back out of sight, though. “I see,” she said.
            “Oh, come off it,” Harry snapped. The memory of the kiss churned in the back of his head, but he managed to push that away and focus on Ginny. She was being ridiculous. “You know that Draco isn’t some kind of replacement for you, right? He came along and I instigated this stupid life-debt long after you and I decided to divorce.”
            Ginny shut her eyes. “I worry about the way you’re taking him to heart so quickly, Harry,” she whispered. “So effortlessly, you might say. I wonder what I did wrong, that you exiled me from your heart instead of embracing me like that.”
            “If you’d ever been the object of an attack near me, I would have worried about you in the same way,” said Harry brusquely. He was getting tired of this. They had decided to divorce. Ginny had made it clear that she’d thought he was not only gay but cheating the entire time they were married, or at least a good portion of the time. Why would she care who or what he did now? “As it was, remember that time you fell off your broom and I thought you’d been injured by that lunatic who was stalking the other Harpies? I broke two laws getting to your bedside.”
            A faint smile touched Ginny’s lips, but it faded in the next instant. “That was only one time.”
            Harry clenched his teeth and spoke in the calmest and most reasonable voice he could. “What do you want, Ginny? Some kind of acknowledgment that you’re always right and I’m always wrong? We’ve moved on. We should have, at least. I said that we’re both all right because the attack struck Draco, too. One of the spiders attacked him.”

            Ginny eyed him sideways. “And I’m sure that you saved him with your usual heroic skills.” She paused. “And I notice that you’re calling him Draco and not Malfoy, now. That’s new.”
            For a moment, Harry’s jaw hung open. He hadn’t noticed that, honestly. He supposed it was natural to call someone who you’d kissed—who had kissed you, he corrected himself, because that was what had really happened there—by their first name. Not that Ginny knew anything about that.
            And that was the way it would stay, if Harry had any control over it. He didn’t want Ginny to crow that she knew she’d been right and he was gay all along. And he didn’t want her to conduct some kind of investigation into Draco’s married life, which Draco had the right to keep private until he wanted to tell someone.
            If he ever does.
            Harry banished his own curiosity to the cupboard under the stairs and faced Ginny again. “So I am,” he said evenly. “This has nothing to do with the attack, or with the fact that I’m going to keep my promise to pick up Lily tomorrow. We can even be in the house, if she wants, but it might be safer to bring her to Grimmauld Place.”
            Ginny shuddered a little. “You know she hates that house.”
            “She hasn’t been inside it in years,” Harry said. “And what she wants and likes seems to change from day to day. I’ll ask her and see what she says.”
            Ginny looked at him straight on, with such a wondering expression that Harry was tempted to pat himself down. He wondered if signs of having your world turned upside-down, the way Draco had done with that kiss, could be on his face or robes.
            “Fine,” Ginny said, at last. “I’m glad you’re all right. And even Malfoy. I’ll tell Lily that you’ll come at eleven tomorrow?”
            “That’s right.” Harry smiled at her, glad the important part of it, the hour he was going to pick up his daughter, had been easy to agree on. “Thank you, and good night.”
            Ginny shook her head at him and muttered something. It wasn’t until the fire flickered out and settled again that Harry realized he’d head it properly, and it had been, “I’m sure you’ll have a good one.”
            Which meant she thought he was having sex with Draco.
            Harry got up and slumped into bed, absently casting Cleaning Charms on his hair and teeth. He was too tired to find pyjamas. His mind was more occupied with the twin puzzles of why the fuck Ginny cared about what he did and with who when they were divorced and she didn’t want him anymore, and why the fuck Draco had kissed him.
            But the notion about Ginny faded soon enough. He thought he understood that. She was obsessed now not with having him back but with being proved right about him being gay, especially since he had denied it when she asked.
            The other mystery wouldn’t be solved that easily.
            He has no reason to do it, not really. But he did it for some reason. I wish I’d asked him about that. Harry shook his head. He couldn’t have done it to annoy Scorpius or his family. Scorpius isn’t here, and he’ll never know about this unless Draco tells him. I’m certainly not about to do it.
            He couldn’t think that I would tell Ginny, either, so he didn’t do it to annoy her or prove her wrong. If it was the same strange reaction that he sometimes has to adrenaline, he would have done it before now, when we were fighting the Spiders in Knockturn Alley.
            I suppose—And Harry could feel the revelation creeping up on him, on slow feet because it was so strange that he felt compelled to fight it—that he did it just because he wanted to.
            Which only led back to the strange conclusion that Malfoy must want him for some reason. Or like him. Or be attracted to him. And he had spoken so many times about Harry being stubborn and not understanding things that Harry wondered what could possibly have attracted Malfoy to him.
            He fell asleep still worrying at it like a dog with a bone, but, perhaps because he was concentrating so intently on something else, an idea about something different, a plan for what to do with and for Lily, came to him instead. If he didn’t understand the man whose life he had saved and who had saved him, there was at least the chance that he would understand his daughter.
            He fell asleep smiling.
*

            “I wondered where you were.”
            Harry ignored the soft accusation as he took his place at the breakfast table. Lily sat next to him, staring at Malfoy as if she could make him leave with the sheer power of her eyes. Harry wasn’t surprised when he didn’t. Lily had chosen to come to Grimmauld Place when Harry went to pick her up, but Malfoy had agreed to leave Harry’s house, not Number Twelve. “Sorry. I told Kreacher to tell you where I’d gone, but you must not have seen him before you started eating.” He nodded to Malfoy and began to eat the bowl of cornflakes that Kreacher had provided for him, watching Malfoy surreptitiously out of the corner of his eye.
            Malfoy looked as though he had been through hell, or at least a sleepless night. He sat with his hands clasped on the cup of steaming tea—no, wait, it was coffee—in front of him. Other than a nod when she sat down and one pair of crossed stares, he had yet to look at Lily. All his attention was reserved for Harry.
            I wonder if he’ll bring up the kiss in front of her?
            But either Malfoy knew it would make Lily upset or he had more consideration for Harry’s sensibilities that didn’t want to be revealed as gay, because he sipped the drink and said nothing, his mouth settling into a thin line. Harry turned to Lily. She had been shoveling her eggs down her throat as if Harry took food away from her the way the Dursleys had with him, but she put her fork down at once and lifted her head defiantly when she met his eyes.
            “Are you going to send me back home to Mum?” Her voice quivered a little, and Harry felt his face soften. Yes, Lily was the brat who had screamed insults at him and told him what Ginny said in front of her that Ginny had no right to say, but she was also ten years old. It was easy to forget that when he was irritated at her, that was all.
            “No,” Harry said. “I was just thinking. Other than from Mum and your grandmother and other members of the family, you’ve never been to school. And I’ve never taught you before, and I have a lot of free time now. Would you like to learn from me?”
            Malfoy sat sharply up on the other side of the table. Harry thought he knew why. Harry was demonstrating ideas that Malfoy hadn’t tutored him in, and that wasn’t supposed to happen.
            Harry ignored him. If he wasn’t pleased to see Harry demonstrating an independent spirit, he could take it up with him later. For now, Harry was watching Lily, who played with her eggs and rubbed her eyes like someone waking up from a dream.
            “Are you only volunteering because you have some time now?” she whispered.
            Harry knew the courage it must have taken for her to ask the question, and he smiled at her again. “I’m volunteering because I only thought of it now,” he replied. “Rather slow of me, really.” He hoped that would get a smile out of her, but Lily just watched him with wide eyes again. Well, time to soldier on. He’d had to do it when his jokes failed to get a laugh out of Auror trainees, too. “But I must know lots of things that you’d like to learn. Auror tactics, or history, or Defense Against the Dark Arts. Maybe even some Transfiguration. I’m pants at Potions, so I can’t promise that. But what would you like to learn?”
            Lily stared down at her plate. Harry forced himself to sit still, even though she looked like she was about to cry. Was he that intimidating? He’d never thought so.
            Then Lily looked up and licked her lips and said, “Sometimes—sometimes you said things about your childhood that—that scared me. I want to understand. M-mum says that facing your fears is important. And Grandmother says that, too. C-can you give me your history?”
            Harry breathed out. Strange that he’d never thought of that, was his first idea.
            The second one was that it wasn’t strange at all. What had happened to him with the Dursleys and with Voldemort was bloody awful. He had no reason to want to explain that to his children, and they were better off sheltered from it.
            Really? Sheltered the way Dumbledore sheltered you?
            Harry wanted to roll his eyes at himself, but he didn’t, because there were too many people here who would misunderstand him. He just leaned forwards and put a hand on Lily’s shoulder. “I can tell you, but I need you to tell me if you get scared or don’t want to hear something, okay? Some of what I went through is pretty bad.”
            Lily straightened up and looked more like herself for the first time since she had arrived at Grimmauld Place. “I know that,” she said. “I can make my own decisions about what I want to hear. I’m not a child.”
            Harry probably had the wrong expression on his face, because Lily huffed and folded her arms. “I’m not of age,” she said, pronouncing the words a lot like Ginny or Harry had when they told her that she could do something when she was seventeen. “But I know what I want to hear. And I want to hear about you.”
            “All right,” Harry said, wondering now why he had never offered to tell her before. Probably because he had just assumed that she would be scared, or not all that interested. Or maybe he had been relying on Ginny to tell her.
            All those excuses were gone now, so Harry started talking. Malfoy sat motionless on the other side of the table. Harry ignored him. He hadn’t forgotten about him, but he had to concentrate on Lily now, and the kind of conversation they needed to have wasn’t one that could be had in front of her. Malfoy could wait his turn.
            “I grew up with my uncle and aunt. You knew that?” Lily nodded, rapidly, not moving her eyes from him. “Well, you know that Grandpa James and Grandma Lily were killed, of course. And Aunt Petunia didn’t like magic, but that wouldn’t have been so bad. What happened was they got obsessed with being normal. They were afraid of me because I could make them look abnormal.”
            “Because they were Muggles?” Lily interrupted.
            Harry nodded. “And because Aunt Petunia, at least, knew a little about Voldemort and what happened the night your grandparents died.” He had never been sure of how much Uncle Vernon had known, or Dudley before the end, and so he had decided to stick as close as he could to the truth he was sure of. “So having me was frightening for them. But they didn’t tell me anything about magic, so I did certain things—like Apparating myself onto a roof—when I was growing up and I had no idea why I was being punished.”
            “But you can’t punish someone for accidental magic!” Lily was red in the face. “You didn’t punish me when I used to Summon things when I was a baby!”
            Harry cocked his eyebrow. “But we punished Al when he made all those blocks fall on your head because you wouldn’t stop crying and he wanted to go to sleep.”
            “Well, but that was deliberate,” Lily said, after giving that due consideration. “It wasn’t accidental.”
            “My relatives couldn’t tell the difference between the accidental magic I did to save myself and anything I might have done to deliberately hurt them,” Harry said, and paused over the trace of bitterness in his voice. No, he decided a second later, it was okay. It wouldn’t frighten Lily, and she was unlikely to ever meet the Dursleys anyway. “They didn’t know anything about magic. Like I said, I didn’t know I was a wizard until Hagrid came and got me.”
            Lily gaped at him. “But—you must have known there was something different about you!”
            Harry felt something in him uncurl and relax. Seeing that his daughter didn’t know even that basic fact about him told him how different their childhoods really had been. That was good, that she’d had so much love and casual acceptance of magic that she couldn’t imagine things being different.
            But it did mean that it was no wonder she didn’t understand some of the things he did or said. He ought to have told her about his childhood long ago.
            He banished the thought as soon as he had it, though. That would only lead to him blaming himself again, and he wasn’t ready for that. He held Lily’s eyes and said gently, “I knew there was something different. I didn’t know what, though. Muggles don’t know about wizards—most of them. They don’t believe in magic, except as a fake entertainment that some people do. And then they like it because they enjoy being entertained and trying to figure out how it works. They would be scared if they thought it was real.”
            “What did they do?”
            The question was low, but it came from the other end of the table, not from Lily. Malfoy. Harry tightened his shoulders.
            “They didn’t tell me about it,” he said, still keeping his eyes focused on Lily, not missing the way the lines of her face pulled taut. She wanted his full attention, and she had been appreciating it until then.
            “No, Potter.” Malfoy stood and moved around the table towards him, but halted when Harry glanced at him. Harry had no idea what was in his eyes, but it seemed to act as a barrier. “What did they do? Besides not tell you that magic existed. That’s something they didn’t do. Tell—us—what they did.”
            Lily perked up a little, hearing the “us.” Harry held Malfoy’s eyes, though, engaging in a silent battle of wills that he doubted Lily could sense.
            “They didn’t like me,” Harry said. Damn it. He had only wanted to give Lily the general outlines, not make her think that his childhood was horrific. And the last thing he needed was to make Malfoy feel sorry for him, too.
            On the other hand, Lily was right there, her eyes appealing. If he lied now, she’d know, and she might never trust him again.
            Harry took in a breath so deep that it seared his lungs, and turned back to face his daughter. “They told me that I was a freak,” he said. “They put me in a cupboard. That was my bedroom until the first letter from Hogwarts. They told me magic didn’t exist, and that I wasn’t normal, and I had to do chores all the time, and my cousin beat me up.”
            Lily’s eyes were big enough to consume her face. “But Hugo and Rose would never…” she whispered, and trailed off.
            Harry nodded. “I know. I wanted things to be different for you. I hope we succeeded, your mum and I.”
            Lily stood up and came around the table towards him, then stopped and stood there as if she didn’t know what to do. “It—that was different,” she said.
            Harry held her eyes. “You’re old enough to hear it now. It’s up to you what you do with it.”
            There was a hard thump of footsteps beside him. Harry turned his head and saw that Malfoy had walked out of the room.
            “Dad.”
            And Harry turned back, and Lily had her arms open, and he forgot about whatever the fuck Malfoy’s problem was in hugging his daughter.
*
goldfish: Thanks! I hope you enjoy this chapter.
polka dot: The Spiders is the name of the group, but they also use real spiders.
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Marathon