Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

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.

Chapter List
- 25
- 26
- 27
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Twenty-Six—Clarifying
            Draco stepped into the Three Broomsticks, and smiled when he saw Harry staring at him from a table near the front door. Harry stood up and reached out a hand towards him, and Draco took it.
            “Miss me that much?” he teased. Normally, Harry never looked this anxious when they were separated.
            “I got an owl from Ginny saying she was going to talk to you. I didn’t know what would happen.”
            Draco gave a soft laugh and dropped his head forwards, knowing Harry would be there to catch and cradle it. He was. He drew Draco against him and draped his arms around Draco’s shoulders and just stood there, swaying, for a long, silent second. His huffs of relief broke like little waves around Draco’s ears.
            “I’m fine. She didn’t bring me far. Just to Honeydukes, and then we talked and—well, I think she’ll need to hear the truth of you dating me and never coming back to her from your mouth before she’ll accept it.”
            “Why is she having so much trouble accepting it? I never thought she was blind to reality before.”
            Draco suppressed the impulse to say something nasty about Weasleys and their tendency to ignore all sorts of reality, because it would be nasty, and unlike some people, he didn’t want to give Harry added pain. He let Harry steer him over to the table and seat him and order a butterbeer and lunch for him before he answered.
            “I think she really built more on this than you ever knew. The fantasy of her marriage was sustaining her or something.”
            “Maybe that’s how she got through this last year at Hogwarts with the Carrows. I never asked.”
            Harry’s voice was low and his eyes were fixed on the fire. Draco said nothing, only sipping from the butterbeer when it arrived. Just as he hadn’t been able to speak for Harry when it came to Weasley, this was a decision that Harry would need to make for himself.
            “I can’t just—give in because she wants me to.” Harry flexed and twisted his fingers.
            That surprised Draco into snorting. “Do you think I want you to? I told her that you were with me now and she kept asking me about your reasons, and I told her she’d have to ask you. But that doesn’t mean I want you to give me up and go crawling back to her.”
            “I wasn’t talking about giving you up. I meant more—being the sort of person she wants me to be. Indulging her fantasies.”
            “Do you have any intention of actually fulfilling them?”
            “Of course not!”
            “Then it would only be cruel to indulge them, anyway.” Draco took a long, satisfying pull of his butterbeer, and noticed the food already arriving. That was probably because he was with Harry Potter, and Harry didn’t even notice that sort of thing, but it was okay. Draco would take advantage of it for both of them.
            Harry linked his fingers together beneath his chin and brooded at the fire. Draco decided he would allow that to go on exactly as long as his meal, and then he was going to say something about it. For now, the soup Harry had ordered was exactly the kind of lunch he wanted and too good to waste.
            But Harry shook himself out of the brooding mood before too long and turned towards Draco with a faint smile. “You’ll understand if I go and talk to her?”
            “Depends. Do I need to put a fidelity spell on you?”
            “Of course not.”
            Draco grinned. “I just really wanted to see what your face would look like if I said that.”
            Harry reached across the table and shoved him in the shoulder. Draco could feel people tensing in the pub around them, waiting for the moment when they would explode into a fight. They seemed confused when Draco exploded into laughter instead.
            But Harry didn’t ask again. He understood as well as Draco did.
            Draco might not like it that Harry was talking to Weasley on a personal level again. He thought Harry had already done enough. But that was different from understanding why he needed to do it.
            Besides. It had been his idea, and the anticipation of Harry telling Weasley that rang in his head like a giggle.
*
            Harry met with Ginny, finally, at the Hog’s Head. It was as neutral a place as he could find. He thought the Three Broomsticks would be too public, after he’d been seen eating lunch with Draco there, and he didn’t want the Burrow or the Honeydukes room she’d Portkeyed Draco to or Grimmauld Place. He wanted to make this as equal as he could, to make it absolutely clear that they would never date again.
            When he stepped into the private room that a darkly scowling Aberforth showed him to, he wondered if he might have been a little too final in his letter. Ginny turned towards him with her cheeks glittering with tears.
            But on the other hand, apparently he hadn’t been final enough before, because she had thought bullying Draco would make him give up on dating Harry. Or Harry give up on dating him. Harry hadn’t been definite about what she’d wanted to accomplish by summoning Draco.
            He had to be definite this time.
            He swallowed air and nodded to her. “Hi, Ginny. Draco said you needed to hear some things from me.”
            “There’s only one thing I need to know. Why him? Why not me?”
            Harry bit his tongue against the temptation to say that was two things. He couldn’t simply joke with her and expect her to understand. That had been part—a little part—of how they had got into this mess in the first place.
            He looked around and saw two chairs in the room, made of thick, heavy oak. “Do you want to sit down?” he asked her. “This might take a while.”
            “All the more reason to stand.”
            “All right. Fine.” Harry half-closed his eyes, hoping he could hold onto his patience and just explain things with a calm and clear head. “It’s because I’m in love with him, in the way I wasn’t in love with you.”
            Silence answered him. Harry understood why when he opened his eyes. Ginny looked so stricken that it was as if someone had slapped her across the face. Her sobs were silent now. She simply stared at him.
            It was going to be up to him, then. Harry fastened his eyes on the table in the center of the room, which was scarred as though people used it to practice carving on, and kept talking.
            “I know—I know you wanted to be with me. I didn’t want to be with you the same way. I should have taken you with me on the Horcrux hunt. Then maybe we would have learned more about each other, and I’d have known that earlier. I’m sorry. I should have listened when you said you wanted to fight in the battle. And then I should have told you I didn’t want to get married when you got out of Hogwarts.
            “Some of it was that I just didn’t want to face up to it. It seemed so easy and comfortable to be with you, and I didn’t want to upset you and your family. And I felt as if I owed you a duty from dating you in my sixth year, which I should have either admitted wasn’t that much of a duty or fulfilled. So that part was my fault.
            “And some of it was that I thought I loved you. I did think that. I just didn’t realize—how far it had got.”
            “You make it sound like I had some sort of disease!”
            “I think we both had it. And it was called unrealistic expectations.”
            Ginny turned her head away. “So, basically, I’m a stupid little girl and you wish you’d never been stupid enough to date me.”
            Harry shook his head. “No. I don’t regret dating you. I regret letting you think it was going to turn into a love story for the ages. I knew it wasn’t pretty soon on—or I should have if I was thinking. I should have told you, too.”
            Ginny stared at her hands, tucked up under her chin. Harry watched her and wondered why he couldn’t be happier with her. She was kind, and pretty, and his best friend’s little sister, and adored him. He couldn’t have imagined even one of those things when he was living with the Dursleys. He couldn’t imagine being in love with someone then.
            He’d come a long way.
            But maybe he was too scarred by the war, too. Maybe everything had been doomed the first time he could have brought Ginny with him and didn’t. He shook his head a little.
            “Why did you fall in love with Malfoy?”
            That question was one Harry thought he could answer. He was even happy to answer it. “He needed my help. And then he started teaching me about politics and letting me make a difference. He makes me laugh. He wants me to be happy, and I want him to be happy. And he actually managed to overcome all the horrible things that happened between us. He helped me overcome the same things.”
            “It doesn’t matter that he’s a bloke?”
            Harry shrugged. “Honestly, I haven’t questioned that a lot. Maybe I was always drawn to blokes and I didn’t realize.” In fact, thinking about some of the ways he had reacted to Cedric now, he was almost sure of it. “That doesn’t mean I didn’t care about you, Ginny.”
            “It sure sounds like it.”
            “I don’t understand why, though,” Harry had to confess. “Do you think someone can only be in love once?”
            “That’s the way it was with Mum and Dad. And Bill and Fleur. They told me. And Ron told me the girls he dated before Hermione just weren’t right. He knew she was the right one the first time he kissed her.”
            Harry shook his head. “That probably does work out for a lot of people, but not me. And I don’t think loving one person means I have to stay with them for the rest of my life.”
            “So—if you left Malfoy, you would move onto someone else?”
            “Yes.” Then Harry realized where this was going, and he had to add, although part of him hated to, “But not to you, Gin. I’m sorry. I really do think that’s at an end now.”
            Ginny turned away from him and bowed her head. Harry watched her. He wanted her to feel better. He wanted to tell her that he wasn’t worth this and she would find someone else, someone who would love her the way she deserved.
            But there was something else, he realized suddenly, something that would be bothering her if she thought people should only fall in love once. “Do you think you’re not going to find someone else because you fell in love with me?”
            Ginny’s head jerked like a startled rabbit’s. Then she nodded slowly.
            “You’ll find someone else. All the things I liked about you are still true, Ginny. You’re still smart and pretty and good at hexes and Quidditch and making people like you. You’ll find someone.”
            Ginny turned to stare at him. “It would have been so much simpler if you had just fallen in love with me and stayed in love with me.”
            “Maybe,” Harry said. It was all he could say to that, since his real thoughts would only come across as insulting.
            “But you want me to not blame you. Or blame Malfoy.”
            “You have no reason to blame Draco. I’ve already told you what I think I did wrong.”
            Ginny only shook her head and turned away again. Harry watched her back, then added, “Don’t blame yourself, either. There was nothing you could have done to ‘keep’ me, or have me, or anything like that.”
            Ginny’s shoulders hunched. “You just want to not blame anyone.”
            “That would be best, if we can do it.”
            Ginny collapsed bonelessly into one of the chairs and turned to look at him with tears standing out in her eyes. Harry bit his lip ferociously and didn’t go over to her. He only stood still with his head bowed. The biggest problem with this, he thought, was that every gesture of friendship or kindness he could make had the potential to be misunderstood.
            “I wanted you so badly,” Ginny whispered. “I loved you so much.”
            “I know. It wasn’t your fault for any of the things that I just said.”
            “What was, then?” Ginny threw her head back.
            “The same kinds of miscommunication I had. I didn’t know you wanted to get married right away, either.”
            “I was clear about that!”
            Harry raised his hand. “I’m sorry. I didn’t come to start fights. I came to put to rest every thought about having more between us.”
            Ginny shrank, her chin resting in between her arms now. “You really don’t love me. Or you would care enough to argue.”
            Harry thought about saying he loved her as a sister, but he thought that would be unwise at the moment. He stood still, and Ginny sniffled and wiped some of the tears from her face.
            “Why couldn’t you just fall in love with me?”
            “I don’t know.”
            Ginny looked down and nodded. Harry spread his hands. He hoped he could at least appear friendly, even though he wouldn’t be going over to her or touching her or anything like that. “Are you okay?”
            “I don’t—you don’t have the right to ask that right now.”
            Harry nodded, accepting that. He knew she would probably be trying to heal any way she could, and if that involved being angry with him, he could take it. He did have to know one thing, though.
            “Are you going to try and hurt Draco at all?”
            Ginny hunched over further. “He’s the one you care about. He’s the one you’re asking about. He’s the only reason you’re here at all.”
            Harry nodded. She wasn’t looking at him, though, and he decided he didn’t want to leave any doubt in her mind. “Yes.”
            Ginny turned so she was facing the wall. “Please go.”
            Harry hesitated once, then turned and left the room. He had been about to ask her if she wanted him to Floo one of her brothers, but she was a more than capable witch. He would leave her to decide what she wanted for herself.
            And he hoped that had been enough.
            He thought so. For one thing, even though Ginny had asked them as questions, she had been the one to bring up Draco and see that he was behind all Harry’s thoughts. And she had been the one to say that Harry didn’t really love her.
            So Harry left the Hog’s Head, and Apparated to Malfoy Manor. He needed to see Draco right now, and kiss him, and hold him, and get rid of some of the desperate pity that had accumulated in his heart while he talked to Ginny.
            Maybe, then, he would feel like he had the right to feel so much lighter.
*
Green-Extreme-Ninjetti13: I doubt it. She would need a lot of time to recover.
Severus1snape: Well, you don’t have to like her, but I do hope you understand her.
Kain: I would set up the Ginny/Luna pairing if I thought there was time for it. Unfortunately, I think Ginny will need a long time to heal.
And you hit on one of the reasons this is so difficult for her. Ginny really did think that you have only one chance at love in your lifetime, and then this comes up and hits her.
SP777: I think Harry doesn’t get along well with either Ron or Hermione without the other, as evidenced by his experiences in canon.
erospandora: At least Harry now knows some of the reasons she was hanging onto him so fiercely.
- 25
- 26
- 27
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Acts of Life