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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-Five—Exchanging
            Harry stepped out of the meeting, quietly satisfied with himself. He had got five family names crossed off the list, compensation arranged for four of them and with the fifth one admitting that they didn’t want his money. They would have preferred an apology from the Carrows themselves, but since they couldn’t have that, they would just concentrate on healing their son instead.
            Harry looked around as he got out of the gates. He had known Draco was going to Hogsmeade today to try and arrange lodging for his apothecary business, and he’d planned to meet him for lunch.
            I hope he didn’t have more trouble than he thought he would. It was the only reason Harry could think of for why Draco wouldn’t be waiting on the path outside Hogsmeade.
            On the other hand, maybe he got finished early and decided to go to the Three Broomsticks already.
            Harry had just begun to turn down the most direct route to the pub when he heard a flutter of wings overhead. Harry quickly shook his wand into his hand. There were a few people who had tried to assault him with owl packages in the year and a half since the war. It paid to be cautious.
            But the owl only landed on his arm and offered the letter calmly. Harry hesitated again before opening it, because this time he recognized the handwriting, and checked it for hexes and jinxes.
            It came back clean. Harry tore into it.
            Dear Harry,
            I think you know as well as I do that I have to solve problems on my own. And if I just talk to everyone who dislikes me with you there, it’ll only deteriorate into you fighting their battles for them. So I sent a Portkey to Malfoy with an invitation to meet me. We’ll talk about things ourselves. You don’t have to worry.
            Ginny.
            Harry swore, not calmed by the bright, cheerful tone to the letter. There were times in the past he had thought Ginny was perfectly calm, and then she’d broken out into hexes. He dropped it and looked around frantically, wondering if there was a way to follow the owl back to her.
            But the owl had already disappeared. She had probably decided he would think of that, and also that she wasn’t going to leave him to do it.
            Harry wandered further into Hogsmeade, ignoring the whispers and stares he attracted. He finally went into the Three Broomsticks, ordered a butterbeer, and sipped from it while he stared at the wall.
            He and Draco had been supposed to meet here. He would wait until Draco came back, if he could.
            Well, no. I’ll give it an hour. And then I’m going and contacting Mrs. Malfoy and Molly.
*
            The Portkey deposited Draco in a wide, bright room. He caught his breath and looked around. Everything he could see was polished and gleaming, he thought. The walls looked as though a house-elf had scrubbed them. The floor shone, too, probably because there was barely any furniture to cover it. Draco noted one red rug in the center of the room, about a meter from him.
            It paid to note details like that, he had realized during the war, details that didn’t fit.
            Ginny Weasley was standing on the opposite side of the room, next to a door that opened on a set of stairs and an enchanted window that opened on brilliant blue sky. She regarded Draco in brooding silence for a few seconds, then said, “You’re really here.”
            Draco shrugged. “You sent me the invitation.”
            “Yes, but I thought you’d discard it like the coward you are.”
            Draco sharply bit his lip. Then he said, “What did you want to discuss first? I assure you that I’ll just leave if you try to imply that I’ve enchanted or corrupted Harry. You’re angry that I have him and you don’t.”
            “You can’t have a person, you egotistical wanker.”
            “That means you wouldn’t try to brag that you had Harry if our positions were reversed?”
            “I wouldn’t be bragging to you. Since I would hardly know you existed if Harry had only done what he was supposed to!”

            “Supposed to?” Draco felt a long, slow, delicious stirring of pleasure in the bottom of his belly. Was he actually going to get the confirmation he’d wanted for a long time that the Weasleys had been horrible friends to Harry and been angry at him for not giving them everything they wanted after the war?
            Then Draco sighed a little. No, he couldn’t even hope for that, could he? Because it would make Harry feel horrible if it was true, and his gentle edginess with the Weasleys would dissolve into true estrangement.
            That’s how I know I’m in love. I can’t even hope for something to come true that would benefit me and shame people I’ve hated all my life.
            “I mean that he promised himself to me in school.” Weasley’s voice was ragged. She wasn’t looking at Draco at all now, he thought. She was looking at some tormented inner vision that, at least to her, justified doing anything she had to if she could just get her place in Harry’s affections back. “He didn’t—he couldn’t have known what I would suffer if he left.”
            “Did you explain it to him?” Draco wondered why she’d summoned him here, instead of Harry. He was also curious about the timeline. As far as he knew, Harry had left Weasley at the end of their sixth year. Was she still suffering, three years later? Why?
            Of course, this is Weasley. And a Gryffindor. I can’t expect her to get over it to spite the person who abandoned her, the way I would have.
            “He should have known. He should have known I was in love with him and wanted to get married. People compared us to his parents.” Weasley turned her head and gave Draco a fever-bright glance. “Didn’t he want the perfect love that they had?”
            Draco said nothing. He didn’t know what she wanted him to say. And there was probably no response he could give and be right, anyway.
            “Instead, he has you. Someone who was his enemy all through school and who his parents would have hated. A boy, even.” Weasley laughed as if there were broken nails in her throat. “He might never have children. I thought he wanted them!”
            Draco had nothing to say on the subject of the war. He’d paid his price. And he hadn’t known Harry’s parents—hadn’t even known anything much about them, except that they’d gone into hiding and Harry’s mum had died to save him—so he couldn’t comment on them, either.
            But he could say something about children. “Harry and I can still adopt, if he wants. I haven’t thought far enough ahead, or asked him. But he isn’t exiled from having a family forever, the way you seem to think he is.” Draco had to add that because he couldn’t believe the way Weasley sounded so wrapped up in herself.
            “He isn’t even exiled from my family,” Weasley muttered, as if confessing a horrible truth. “Mum told him he can still come to the Burrow.”
            Draco shrugged. He had nothing to say on the subject of internal Weasley family debates, either. He was even more sure of going wrong there than he was on the subject of the war.
            Weasley had been pacing back and forth, staring out the window as if she thought she would see someone riding to rescue her through it. Now she swung back and stared at him, and it was as if Draco had newly enraged her. Her face flushed with color, and her nails flickered at him. “Do you have the slightest idea of what family means to him?”
            “Given what he lost and what he grew up with? Yes.”
            “He grew up with us! My brother’s his best friend! My mum was his mum!”
            This time, Draco was annoyed enough that he said one of those things he probably shouldn’t have. “Wouldn’t that mean that you were his sister, then? Tsk, Weasley. Even the most decadent of the pure-blood families you despise gave up marrying siblings to each other ages ago. The Blacks only got as close as cousins.”
            Weasley’s face was so red Draco worried about her having a heart attack, or at least apoplexy. He would get the blame if someone found her dead on the floor and him in the same room, he just knew it.
            “You have no idea what it was like between us, Malfoy,” she whispered. “No idea how he loved me or I loved him.”
            “I know what this is like, though.” Draco waved his hand between them. “Tedious. Suppose you make your point, Weasley, and then I leave? I’m supposed to meet Harry for lunch.”
            Weasley’s hand twitched violently, but somewhat surprising Draco, she didn’t draw her wand. Maybe she knew it would escalate things to a point that she didn’t want to reach.
            Of course, that was still surprising, because Draco hadn’t expected her to have that much good sense.
            “I need you to tell me what you really intend with Harry.”
            And then Draco did another thing he maybe shouldn’t have, and laughed. “Maybe I was wrong,” he said, when he managed to subdue his chuckles. “And you’re not his sister, but his mother.”
            Weasley moved a step towards him. Draco immediately estimated the distance between them. He couldn’t use as many spells as she could, but he was sure he would make better use of them. For one thing, he knew exactly which ones he would use first.
            “Tell me your intentions!”
            Draco shook his head. “You don’t deserve an answer to that if you’re speaking as Harry’s ex-girlfriend. I don’t owe you an answer. And if you’re speaking as a member of Harry’s family, that’s still something you don’t need to know. Harry is an adult. He makes his own decisions.”
            “So you suspect he might dump you and come back to me!”
            “No,” Draco said slowly, baffled. He wanted to know what the hell she meant, but on the other hand, it probably wouldn’t be worth the time he’d waste to trace her thought processes. “I think that we’ll go on being with each other.” Then he pinched his lips shut, because he would be doing what she’d unreasonably demanded and giving her an answer if he didn’t watch out.
            “You have to be worried about me, Malfoy. Otherwise, you wouldn’t hesitate to tell me everything that’s brewing in that head of yours.”
            Draco only shook his head again. Now he was regretting coming, but not for any of the reasons he’d imagined as he stood there in the room he’d rented holding her enchanted Sickle. “No. You don’t need to know.”
            “Harry is still important to me.”
            “And if you’re part of his family, then he’s the one who should tell you, not me,” Draco said firmly. “You’re not his lover, or his partner. He’s the one who chose to commit to me. I don’t have to break his confidence or my own privacy to tell you anything just because you feel like demanding it.”
            Weasley’s flush had faded, and she turned and stared out the window again. Draco wondered what she hoped to see. An owl from Harry, telling her everything had been a mistake and they would start dating again?
            Draco knew she would never see it. Or, well, if not never, he knew she’d never see it before Harry had a serious conversation with Draco himself about why he didn’t want to continue dating him.
            “I had dreams about getting married. He behaved badly. He owes it to me to conclude things and—explain things.”
            “Then he’s the one you should be talking to, not me. You shouldn’t be sneaking around behind his back hoping I’ll spill secrets he chose to keep.”
            Weasley turned to him, a look of loathing so clear on her face that Draco flinched before he could stop himself. “I’d never make you do that, Malfoy. I’m not a Slytherin.”
            Draco said nothing, and just watched her. Weasley gathered herself, blinked away what might have been tears, and then said, “But I still deserve to know what’s going on with him.”
            “No,” Draco said. “You don’t.”
            She stared at him, and Draco decided to elaborate. “You seem to think everyone owes you something. We don’t. I’m nothing to you. And Harry and you broke it off before he started dating me. Why do you keep acting as though I’m the one who’s at fault, and I betrayed some loyalty I had to you? I might owe you the courtesy of not hexing you or dueling with you, but that’s because we’re both human beings, not because you were with Harry at some point. Honestly, the sooner you start thinking of yourself as someone other than the person who used to date Harry, the better off you’ll be.”
            “You can’t tell me that.”
            “Someone has to.” Draco shook his head. He didn’t know if he would simply go back to where he had been if he touched the Sickle again, but he wanted to. “Are we done now? I don’t think we have anything more to say to each other.”
            “No.” Weasley was almost vibrating. “You must—you must realize that it’s not going to last between you and Harry—”
            “I know no such thing,” Draco interrupted, quietly but firmly. He’d had enough of Weasley’s nonsense, he thought. “Weasley, honestly, if Harry and I had never started dating, you might have had a point. But that’s not this world, and you’re not going to make me think that your dreams and wishes are anything more than fantasy. Talk to Harry again if you don’t believe me.”
            “I don’t.”
            Draco shrugged. “Good, then.”
            He wondered, for a second, as he walked towards the door, if she would let him by. But although she hesitated and looked as if she would grab his arm, in the end, she snorted bitterly and turned her head.
            Draco stepped out into the corridor and looked around. A faint grin lit up his mouth. He was on the first floor of Honeydukes, a place he had seen only once before, when the owners had decided to put sweets up here instead of living there for a year. They seemed to have switched things back so that there were bedrooms here again.
            God knows how Weasley convinced them to let her meet me here. Maybe her status as a war heroine was enough.
            As he made his way towards the stairs and down them, he could hear what sounded like a single, solid thump, as if Weasley had leaned her forehead on the wall beside the door. Draco shrugged. Hexes hadn’t come flying after him. That was good enough for him.
            As for whether he should have come to meet her…
            She didn’t hurt me, and she has to know now that there’s no way she can make me back off and let her “have” Harry. That’s good enough. Anything else, she would have to discuss with Harry anyway.
*
            Victoria: Well, Ginny made mention of something that George would have had to convey to her in her initial letter (fighting her own battles), so it wasn’t that much of a risk.
Thanks. Although I’m really not good with Hermione romance subplots, so writing her as with someone other than Ron would be a time commitment I probably wouldn’t want to make.
Kain: Draco intends to run the apothecary himself. It’s going to be a small business, and ordering ingredients from people is something he already does, so anyone who really objects to selling them to him is already not doing so.
I think the conversation went well—for both of them, although Ginny might not realize it. It did confirm that she has no hope of getting Draco to back off because he doesn’t really love Harry or is afraid of her.
Severus1snape: Draco knows exactly what he wants; Ginny, not so much. That was his big advantage.
moon: Thank you!
rigger42: He did, but he thought it was worth the risk.
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Acts of Life