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Building With Worn-Out Tools	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 54266 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor any of the characters from the books or movies. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

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Chapter Twenty-Seven—Harry and Ginny

            “I don’t think you should stand.”

            “We’ve been over this several times, Draco,” Harry said. He tried not to shout, because what Draco had done for him really didn’t deserve shouting, but it was hard. He carefully swung his legs out of bed, grimacing when his feet touched the floor for the first time in a week and a shock went through them, but bore down with his weight anyway. It wasn’t his legs that had been injured, after all. And the mediwizards had tended him constantly, as much in the last two days as in the previous five, reassuring themselves that his internal organs were back in place and the skin on his back healing nicely.

            “Ginny won’t respect anything about me if she sees me lying down,” Harry continued. He turned to face Draco, who had a stubborn expression and tightly pursed lips. He’d won most of the arguments they had in the last few days, but Harry was determined he wouldn’t win this one. “I have to be on my feet and look perfectly healthy if I’m going to face her.”

            “I don’t see why you should face her at all,” Draco hissed. “We’ll see her in the courtroom, won’t we? And she lied to us, and she’s been a perfect bitch to you right along.” He stopped for a moment, as though considering whether he had insulted Ginny enough, then added, “And I don’t think she’ll be as welcoming as you seem to think she will be.”

            “I’m not looking for welcoming.” Harry gave his head an impatient little shake and pushed away from the bed. He wobbled, but he was sure he could have gained his balance in a moment even if Draco hadn’t caught his shoulder. “But she was the one who said she wanted to see me. She’ll at least be pleasant in an attempt to get her point across.”

            “That’s what I’m afraid of,” Draco muttered.

            Harry glanced back at him in puzzlement. “Why? You know you can outtalk her any day, Draco, and the beach should have proved you can outwit her.”

            Draco looked extraordinarily sulky for a moment. Then he turned his head loftily away and said, “Never mind.”

            Shaking his head—liking him hadn’t cured all of Draco’s bad habits, not by a long shot—Harry concentrated on taking the necessary steps towards his door, and not letting Draco see how heavy his breathing was. If he called Mediwizard Goode in here, Harry would find himself back in the bed before he knew what was happening. The older man had a twinkle in his eye that was like Dumbledore’s, and a similarly irresistible way of talking, so that Harry didn’t see how much of what he said was stuff and nonsense until long after he’d left.

            He made it to the door without trouble, and turned his head triumphantly back towards Draco, who had lingered, arms folded and lower lip stuck out childishly, behind him. “Do you see?” he asked, and carefully spaced his breath around the words. “I’ll be all right.”

            “I’m doing the Apparating,” Draco said, in a voice that brooked no argument, and marched past him.

            Harry thought about arguing with that, too, but decided it was more politic just to follow along meekly.

            Ginny had sent a message, through Kreacher, to say that she wanted to see Harry as soon as he could spare her some time. She had some things to say to him, was all the house-elf had related.

            Harry thought he could guess what those things were.

*

            Draco shivered as they stepped inside Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, then told himself not to be so stupid. This was only a house. It was, in fact, the house where his mother’s ancestors had lived, back to a time ancient even by the standards of English pure-blood wizards. He should be walking at his ease, feeling he had come home for the first time. This house was older than Malfoy Manor.

            But it felt less clean, and that wasn’t even counting the accumulation of dirt and grime and doxie eggs on the walls. Draco shivered again and turned his attention to Harry, who was firmly, stubbornly, limping up the stairs in front of him.

            Harry really had recovered well; his magic had traveled back into his body once he no longer needed it to defeat Lucius, and it had helped in the repair of the internal organs, as Mediwizard Goode had told Draco. He had his color back, save for a slight pallor in his cheeks, and his limp would slowly transform back into a clean step in time; he had not exaggerated the wound that he’d got from the Dark Lord’s snake, but he was tired. He wasn’t subject to sudden spasms of pain the way he had been in the first two days—that time spent entirely unconscious, with Draco at his side when he wasn’t at Narcissa’s.

            He would be all right.

            But he could have died, and even if his hindsight was fooling him with its clarity, Draco had just realized how gruesomely he might have passed. And at the hand of his own father, too.

            Should you feel better about having your lover kill your father than the other way around?

            Draco brushed the question aside impatiently. The fact was that he did, that he would have had a void in his life if Harry had died—even if it was to save him and his mother—and he still didn’t think the idiot realized that. Or even, from the cavalier way Harry treated mention of his own death and joked about it with the Healers, considered it at all important.

            “Kreacher said he was holding her up here.” Harry had halted in front of a massive dark wooden door, and he fumbled with a ring of keys. The weight made him sway on his feet, and Draco stepped smoothly up to take his elbow. Harry shot him a look compounded of both irritation and gratitude, and then found the right key and opened the door.

            Ginny Weasley sat on the floor of the room beyond, on a tattered pile of bedding Kreacher had probably made for her, her head bowed in utter defeat. A stream of light from a dirty window revealed the tears shining on her cheeks. Draco hissed. She chose to sit there, I’m certain, so she would look her best when he walked in.

            “Best” for persuading Harry was not necessarily beauty and self-confident poise, Draco knew; that attracted him, as he had ample proof of, but it might not convince him to help. If he saw tears and powerlessness, however, he seemed to assume he had to help. Perhaps he thought no one else would.

            He knelt down in front of Ginny now, with only a slight gasp that Draco knew probably meant he’d jounced the new skin on his back, and said, with a tenderness that made Draco long to snatch him back, “Gin? Are you all right?”

            Weasley’s eyes opened as round and wide as moons. Then she said, “No, I’m not,” and began to make a long series of little hiccoughing sobs, as though she were on the edge of losing her breath.

            Draco leaned on the wall and waited for what he knew was coming. His breath did not rush. His firsts did not clench, though he had folded his arms loosely over his chest. He had to see if Harry was strong enough to stand up to this. He would rescue him if he needed it, but he would prefer that Harry use his own strength.

*

            Harry couldn’t remember feeling so sorry for someone in the last five years. Ginny had been suffering, he knew, and not just because of the dirty surroundings and poor food Kreacher had inflicted on her.

            No, thatI inflicted on her. Did I have a right to do that to her, when I know that she’s pregnant and her health might not be as good?

            Sternly, Harry told himself to stop it. There hadn’t been a more secure place to hold her unless he wanted to put her in the Manor—which Draco would never allow—and dithering about to make sure Ginny was comfortable would have delayed them in casting the blood spell and finding Narcissa. He couldn’t regret what he had done because that would be a betrayal of the good consequences of it.

            But he could wish there’d been a different way.

            “What hurts most?” he asked, forcing himself to put an arm around her shoulders. His conscience argued it should be a full embrace; his mind remembered what she’d done to him and wanted not to touch her at all. This was the best compromise he could think of.

            “My heart,” Ginny whispered.

            Harry’s insides squirmed with uncomfortable pity. He didn’t know what to think about Ginny anymore. She’d been the strong one in their marriage for so long; she wasn’t afraid of going to Diagon Alley in case cameras snapped, she didn’t have a wound keeping her from a sport she loved, she could control her temper. And now he had to see her as a victim of Blaise’s, but how much she was one was still unclear.

            “In what way?” he asked her, trying to keep his voice low and soothing, but without a hint of personal affection. “Physically?”

            “No. My heart. My conscience—“ Ginny caught her breath, and then flung her arms around him. Harry sat stiffly in the embrace, unable to bring himself to return it, or do anything other than awkwardly pat her shoulder with the one hand he already had resting there. He heard Draco hiss behind him, and wondered if the sound was one of contempt or jealousy.

            He tried to imagine what he would feel if Draco was sitting with his arms around someone else, and jealousy assaulted him in a nearly pure wave, making it hard to listen to Ginny’s speech.

            “It hurts so much,” Ginny sobbed against his shoulder. “Knowing that what I did was wrong, and not knowing why I didn’t stop earlier. I hurt you, and I never meant to do that. I’m sorry, Harry. Can you forgive me?” She paused for a moment, then added, “That’s what hurts most of all, not knowing if you’ll forgive me.”

            Harry swallowed and moved backwards, trying to extricate himself from her grasp. It was hard, especially when she noticed the withdrawal and her hands tightened on his arms. “Forgive me,” she whispered. “Forgive me, please, and don’t leave me alone here, and—“ She caught her breath so sharply Harry imagined he must have hurt her, and stopped moving.

            “I have an idea,” Ginny said, and pulled back enough to look into his face. Her eyelids were puffy from crying, and at last Harry felt a familiar emotion: he’d never known what to do with his hands or his body when she started crying. “A beautiful, wonderful idea. But it will only work if you forgive me.”

            “Gin—“ Harry started. He hadn’t expected this. He had expected an apology, as well as a declaration that she wanted to stop the court case. But he didn’t know what the gleam in her eyes meant, and it frightened him.

            “Let’s not divorce,” she whispered. “Please, Harry? We’ll be a family, a family for the baby. Blaise—I can’t trust him anymore, I don’t think I ever really could, but I know he won’t make a good father. Please, can we just come together and be a family again? I know Mum would accept you back, and so would Fred and George. And then we can have other children. We can be just like what we were, what we always should have been, now that you’re more heroic and I’m more humble. Please?”

*

            Draco felt as if every muscle in his body were strung with piano wire.

            This was what he had thought would happen. The bitch could offer Harry one thing that he never could: a child who would be born into the family and could grow up around Harry from infancy. A child who might call him Father, and a wife he had once loved who could be its mother.

            And knowing that the miscarriage last year had deeply upset Harry, Draco knew he might be tempted to take the chance.

            If necessary, he would step forwards, remind Harry of everything Weasley had done to him and why accepting this second marriage proposal might not be such a good idea. But he’d done so much in the chase and the pursuit. He wanted to be chosen for himself; he wanted Harry to reject her on his own. So he waited, tensely.

            And he saw Harry give a little shiver, as though he’d just heard a voice call his name, and then raise his hands, grip Weasley’s arms, and gently push her away from him.

            Draco clamped down control so he wouldn’t move in. Perhaps Harry hadn’t refused for him. And in any case, did he want to reveal to Weasley how close he and Harry were, when the trial still might continue? He pushed the practical considerations to the forefront of his mind, trying not to feel the intense joy running through him.

            “No,” Harry said quietly. His voice wavered for a moment, and Weasley opened her mouth as if to interrupt, but he kept speaking, and his tone had already grown stronger. “I can’t—it’s not that simple, Ginny. The last few weeks have changed the way I feel about you and what I think of you.

            “I never thought you could do what you did. I know how it must have been: you went along with Blaise for a little while because you thought his tactics would work, and then discovered your conscience when he kidnapped Narcissa. But—“ Harry shook his head violently, and stood. Draco caught his breath, but his balance didn’t wobble. He was too involved in glaring at his wife. “How could you endorse sending Lucius to Malfoy Manor in the first place, to threaten and attack Draco, or steal my vault key, or accept Blaise trying to kill me?”

            His voice had risen, cracked down the middle, and admitted the anger into it. Draco saw some of his hair lift in an invisible breeze, and guessed the anger had influenced his magic to emerge. This time, Harry wouldn’t shut it down, didn’t feel afraid of it, and was lashing out at his wife with words that must have been cooped up in him for a long time. Draco bit his lip so he wouldn’t cheer.

            “You made me miserable for five years. I’m only accepting how miserable I was just now. You kept telling me that, to be any good, I had to do ‘something worthwhile’ or ‘something of note,’ that I had to be an Auror or a Quidditch player, and instead of trying to help me overcome what was keeping me from those things if you wanted me to be them so badly, you just dismissed me as lazy when I wouldn’t aspire to them. And then it turns out that you didn’t even have the courage to come to me and say you were tired of me and in love with someone else—“

            “I wasn’t in love with Blaise!” Weasley said energetically, standing and folding her arms across her chest. “I just thought I was, but I see the truth now. I’m in love with you!”

            Harry snorted, and Draco thought it made a fair bid for the most beautiful sound he’d ever heard. “Oh, come off it, Ginny. You can’t expect me to believe that, not when you separated from me, and got pregnant by him, and tried to take my money, and turned my surrogate family against me, and lied about the kidnapping of an innocent woman who had nothing to do with you! I don’t trust you any more. I don’t trust a single word that comes out of your mouth. ‘Be a family for the baby,’ you say. Well, sooner or later you’d find someone you like better, and I bet this would start all over again—except that you’d be a bit cleverer this time, because I certainly hope that this debacle taught you that much. And you know what?” Harry edged a few steps closer to her, his mouth pulled into a snarl from what Draco could see of his face. “If you’re telling the truth and in love with me again, or still, then I’m disgusted. Because your love isn’t worth having.”

            Yes! Draco’s mind hissed.

            Those were the words he’d been waiting for. Those were the words that told him beyond doubt that Harry had given himself into other hands, that he wouldn’t fall back into Weasley’s trap, either because it would make relations with the rest of the family easier or because he wanted a child. He had chosen, yes. And he had made the same choice Draco had.

            Draco exerted all the control he’d honed in the courtroom to keep himself motionless again. He wanted to go forwards, put his hands on Harry’s shoulders, and show Weasley that Harry’s choice hadn’t been her or no one; it had been her or him, and Harry had picked him. Let her wonder if she turned him gay. Let her wonder if their sexual life had been so unsatisfying not because Harry couldn’t excite her but because she couldn’t excite him.

            His mouth watered with the urgency of doing it.

            But he still thought their bond should remain secret until after the trial, if only for the sake of Harry’s publicity. So. He stood still.

            Weasley’s face had flushed. Perhaps her cunning told her that the most effective technique would be reaching out instead of getting angry, though, because she didn’t yell. Instead, she began to cry again, and spoke in a voice obscured by the tears, “And you’ll leave me alone without a penny to my name, Harry? Would you, really?”

            “Your family can support you,” Harry said distantly, running a hand through his hair. “They’re not poor, Ginny, not any more. And if the baby’s condition is real and Blaise won’t help you—“ He hesitated, and looked back at Draco then. “Where did you put Blaise?”

            “He’s in an enchanted sleep in the house where we rescued my mother.” Draco shrugged. “I was planning to return him to his mother today. We can take Weasley to Mrs. Zabini’s house as well, if you’d like.”

            Harry nodded, looking immensely relieved. “You’ll have to talk to him,” he told Weasley, whose tears had dried. “To decide whether you want to go on with the court case, or whether—“

            Weasley hissed, such a venomous sound that Harry fell silent, staring. Then she turned her head away and rearranged her dirtied robes around her. Nothing could make her look appealing, of course, and Draco sniggered to tell her so. Weasley gave another hiss in his direction.

            Then she faced Harry, lifted her head, and said, in a cool, even tone, “Of course we are going on with the court case. I may not love Blaise, but I would rather work with him to secure money for the both of us and our child than work with someone who refuses to part with petty material objects in recognition of the five years we shared together.”

            “Come off it, Gin,” Harry said in a bored tone. “That won’t work on me anymore.” He looked back at Draco one more time, and Draco concealed his thrill at how it felt to have Harry depending on his advice by raising his eyebrows. “You’re up to fighting the court case even though your mum is still at St. Mungo’s?”

            “Harry,” Draco said, and let enough affection into his voice that Harry’s eyes softened, “I would be up to fighting this court case if the world were falling apart around us.”

            Harry laughed aloud in delight, and faced Weasley again. “Then we’ll see you in court,” he said. “The day after tomorrow? That should give you enough time to discuss strategy with Zabini. What little strategy you can have left after this crushing a defeat, of course.”

            Weasley’s face looked like nothing human. “I don’t know what else to give you!” she whispered harshly. “If you don’t want a child, what is it?”

            “Nothingyou can give me,” Harry said, and put up his head, imperious, and strode from the room like a prince.

            Draco took a moment to study the air around Weasley, then told her, “The wards are down. You can go to Mrs. Zabini’s whenever you like. Blaise should join you in an hour.” The professional, cool tone hurt her more than the worst sneer would have, he knew.

            Then he went after Harry.

*

            Harry had nearly expected the hand that closed on his elbow and the tingle of magic that Apparated them to Malfoy Manor, but he had not expected the sudden, obliterating pressure of lips on his, a kiss that made him gasp and thrust forwards eagerly to meet it.

            Draco pressed him against the library wall, so intense and insistent that Harry lost all thoughts of struggling almost immediately. And it felt so good—much better than the snogging they’d shared when it was Draco trying to master him or Harry trying to prove this was just about sex. What made it important and special wasn’t the tongue sliding around in his mouth, dabbing expert licks at his cheeks and scraping his gums with elaborate patterns; it was who the tongue belonged to.

            Draco pulled away at last, leaned his head on Harry’s shoulder, and whispered, “We have to stop, or I’m liable to forget that you’ve only just healed and I’ve got to take Blaise to his mother’s house.”

            Harry laughed shakily, and embraced him. “Any particular reason for that kiss?” he asked the nape of Draco’s neck.

            “You had a chance to go back to her,” Draco said simply. “You refused.” His arms tightened. “You’re mine now.”

            Harry would have argued that one thing did not necessarily follow from the other, but he was too happy to do so.
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