Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Parsimony	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 14122 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

Chapter List
- 27
- 28
- 29
Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Twenty-Eight—Detentions Towards the Future

            “You will be writing lines for me, Mr. Potter.”

            It was an easier detention than Harry had expected, and he sat down at the desk that McGonagall had put in front of her own in the Transfiguration classroom with a feeling of relief. He had ink and parchment with him, but McGonagall motioned him to put them away; apparently she would rather he use what she had on the desk. Harry lifted the quill waiting there, too, and stared obediently at her.

            “You will be writing me an essay,” McGonagall said, folding her hands in front of her. She had another odd expression on her face, but this one didn’t make Harry think she was about to scold him. It looked more…fond to him. “Actually, two, over the series of several detentions that we will have together. In the first essay, you will explain why you broke school rules—in as much detail as you can without betraying Mr. Malfoy’s secrets,” she added, anticipating the real reason that his mouth was opening.

            “All right,” Harry said, nodding. He had done this before, writing about what had possessed him to turn in essays late or play “dangerous pranks” on his friends. He could probably do this one in his sleep.

            “And the second essay,” McGonagall said, “will be telling me some of your plans for your future after you leave Hogwarts.”

            Harry blinked, and the kind of answer he would have given Ron or Hermione popped out unexpectedly. “You mean, things like trying to stay alive and avoiding Rita Skeeter?”

            Only someone who knew his Head of House as well as he did would have known that the curve of her mouth was trying to hide a smile. “I rather meant, Mr. Potter,” she said gently, “that you will write about whether you want to be an Auror, or something else. Try to choose several options. I know you, and trying to chain yourself to one at this point will give you all the more incentive to ignore it.”

            Harry blinked again. “Why are you doing this, Headmistress?” he asked. “Really. It doesn’t sound like a punishment, and at the moment, I don’t know for sure what I want to do anyway.” He tried to remember who he had mentioned wanting to be a Healer to. He thought only Ron and Hermione, but his life had been so scattered and random lately that it was possible he might have told Draco, too.

            McGonagall’s eyes glinted. “For many teenagers, I rather think that being told to think seriously about their futures at this time of life is a hardship,” she said. “For the rest, I am curious to know if you still want to labor as an Auror now that you have glimpsed, through Professor Klein, what Aurors have to put up with in their chosen jobs.”

            “Yeah, a load of bollocks,” Harry muttered, scratching the back of his neck.

            “Ten points from Gryffindor for language,” McGonagall said, and leaned forwards. “You have little concern for the future, Harry. I can understand that. You are only recently coming around to the notion of having one. But I am still a teacher, and this is still my school. I still wish you to think.” She tapped an hourglass sitting on her desk, and it turned over and began to pour sand through the bulbs. “The first hour on the essay explaining what you thought, and then the second one on the essay that explains what you will think,” she said, voice already distracted as she drew a pile of scrolls towards her.

            Harry stared at her some more. McGonagall looked up and arched an eyebrow. “I can add as many minutes to that time as needed,” she said mildly.

            “No need,” Harry said hastily, and started writing. He already knew the first things he would say in the first essay, which would be the easier of the two to write. He didn’t trust adults that much, he had learned during the war that you had to keep promises and that he could keep promises, and he wanted to give Draco chances that he knew most other people wouldn’t give him.

            But the second one would be a hard task, and one that unsettled him more, the longer the sand poured and the nearer it loomed.

            Who else was going to make him think about that kind of thing? Did he have to make the decisions right now? He should have the future to plan, as well as the present. To hear Hermione talk, planning for the future was something you did in the small holidays between preparing for the NEWTS.

            And finding your parents.

            Harry felt his shoulders relax as he wrote on, though, and worked out why McGonagall was probably doing this in his head. She saw him go straight from the war to another thing, to helping Draco and fighting the Death Eaters. She might wonder what he would do with himself when both those things were done, since he couldn’t make a career out of either of them unless he wanted to become an Auror.

            Maybe I could open a special agency for helping Malfoys, and do that for the rest of my life. Sometimes I think Draco might need it.

            But then he remembered who his other two clients would be, and shuddered, hastily pushing the thought aside like the joke it was. No, no, thank you. He would do something else.

            Writing, even the second essay, was strangely pleasant in the soft silence of the Transfiguration classroom with the shushing of the sand in McGonagall’s hourglass and the scratching of her own quill over the essays. Even knowing that his own essay was probably on her desk didn’t dim Harry’s enthusiasm. He found himself going up to Gryffindor Tower sorry to leave the silence behind.

*

            “I don’t care, Ron. I have to try. I have to try anything that I can to find them.”

            Harry raised his head from his breakfast and turned towards Hermione. For the last few days, he’d left her and Ron alone, because they seemed to be making good progress on the Memory Charms, and it wasn’t as though Harry had much time or attention to spare.

            But he thought it sounded as if they might need help now. Hermione’s hands were clenched around the big book she held in front of her, and she was staring at it, but not as if she was reading it. Her eyes were half-closed, her nostrils flared, and Harry had the distinct impression that she would already have whipped her head around and bitten Ron, but that it was too much trouble.

            Ron sat close to her and stared at her anxiously—too anxiously, Harry thought, seeing the way that Hermione’s hand twitched on her book. She turned the page mechanically, but he knew that her heart wasn’t in it.

            And then he heard what Ron murmured in reply to her statement.

            “I know you want to. Of course you do. But you haven’t had any luck so far, and every weekend you come back with your heart more torn up. Let me go in your place, just once. I can use the spells that you found. Most of them don’t require a blood connection. Teach me the ones that don’t, and make sure I have them right, and I can go.”

            “And you think that it’ll be any better when you’re out there searching and I’m just sitting uselessly here?” Hermione turned her face up to him, and Harry was a little appalled by how hard she was trying not to cry. “No, Ron. I can’t do this. Leave me alone, or help me research. You can’t do anything else.”

            “So you thought I was just sitting here uselessly while you were in Australia searching?” Ron’s voice had become a sharp hiss.

            Harry winced, and thought about abandoning them to their argument the way he had last time Ron had attracted Hermione’s irritation. But he leaned forwards instead, until both of them could no longer pretend he wasn’t, and asked quietly, “Can I help?”

            Hermione shut her mouth with a snap and looked away. Ron turned towards him and gripped Harry’s arm hard enough to make him wince. Ron noticed, let go, and started gripping the table instead. “Tell her that she can’t do anything to find them right now, and she might find them faster if she let me help,” he snarled.

            “Yeah, right,” Harry said, seeing the way that Hermione shut her eyes and bowed her head as if praying for strength. “I’m not going to say that. It sounds like you did a great job of saying it yourself, really.”

            Ron followed his gaze, and winced, and reached out to put a hand on Hermione’s shoulder. “I didn’t mean it,” he whispered. “Really. I just—I get so sick of seeing the way it hurts you, and you won’t let me help.”

            “Because you can’t,” Hermione said, and scrubbed at her eyes. For a moment, Harry thought she would bang the book down and run out of the room, but she seemed tired of people getting to see her arguments end in public. She bit her tongue, sat up straight, and laid the book firmly down in front of her. “I’d like you to help if you could, Ron,” she continued, staring straight ahead, her fingers plucking out a nervous little tattoo on the pages. “But you can’t. So please don’t ask again.”

            “Then give me something to do,” Ron said. “The names of books to look up in the library. The names of spells that don’t work, so I can go figure out why they didn’t.” He put a tentative hand on Hermione’s shoulder. Harry blinked as he watched the cautious way Ron touched her. He wondered if that was waiting for him and Draco in a few years. “Please. There’s nothing I want more than to help you.”

            Hermione shook her head and opened her mouth to say something that would probably start the argument again, but Harry jumped in first. “What about a ritual? Have you tried that?”

            Hermione looked at him as if he had taken up speaking Bulgarian. No, wait, she would understand Bulgarian better, Harry thought. She’d probably studied it when she was dating Krum. “A ritual can’t work,” she said patiently. “There’s no way—it can’t reach across that distance, and I’d have to have some object of my parents’ that I could use as fuel for it. I don’t have anything of theirs.”

            “I saw that you have one of your mother’s old rings on your finger sometimes,” Harry said quietly, stirring his spoon around in the porridge. “I think you said you took it from their house after you removed their memories. You couldn’t use that?”

            “Living material would work best,” Hermione said. “Hair, or blood.” But her eyes were wide open, and when she picked up the book and paged through it again, Harry thought she was looking for something specific. Then she jumped up, shook her head, said, “It’s not in here,” and ran out of the Great Hall.

            Harry became aware Ron was watching him. He raised an eyebrow and waited until Ron snorted and glanced away.

            “I’m torn between being grateful and being a bit irritated that you’re the one who suggests the ideas she accepts,” Ron muttered, and then sighed and shook his head. “What am I saying? Of course I’m bloody grateful. There’s a chance she could find them now.” He held his hand out, and Harry took it. “Just—try not to be so great at everything all the time, okay?”

            Harry was grinning so hard his cheeks hurt by the time he left the Great Hall, and it only increased when he saw the black owl swooping towards him. The owl’s distant gaze and slightly disgusted head-bobs told him who it belonged to before it landed on a small shelf in the stone beside him and extended its leg.

            Snape’s handwriting stabbed his eyes as Harry took the letter out of the envelope, but it didn’t matter, not when he had so much else to hope for.

            Potter—

            The potion is nearly ready. However, in the absence of a stone from Azkaban—which I will not venture near enough the prison to obtain—I need something that will allow me to connect the potion with the one it seeks. I must ask you to obtain a piece of Mr. Malfoy’s hair and send it to me. As close as you are, this should not be an impossible gift.

            Your contact.

            Harry snorted and shook his head, crumpling up the letter to stick it in his pocket. Snape was still paranoid enough not to sign his name to a letter? Well, since he would probably be tried if he was found alive, that was good policy, actually.

            “Is that about our dilemma? Or just another letter from a lover or a fan?”

            Harry spun around. Draco was leaning against the wall behind him, watching him so carefully that Harry wondered what he had done. On the other hand, it was probably impossible for Draco not to be careful around him after their scene in the hospital wing the other day.

            “Our dilemma,” Harry said, and flicked his eyes at some of the students passing by. “Shall we go to a private room where we can explore it more fully?”

            “It’s like that, then.”

            Harry turned, and his hand was on his wand before he even thought about it. Zabini stood behind him, studying him with an elaborate show of interest before he turned to Draco. The rage and pain that appeared in his eyes then made Harry sure that Zabini didn’t give a fuck about Harry himself. This was still about the best way to make the friend who had tortured him and controlled his mind pay.

            And phrased like that, I can see why he would want payment. But Harry didn’t, frankly, have the patience to let Zabini take his revenge out on Draco.

            “That was what you betrayed us for,” Zabini said, taking a long step forwards and staring at Draco. “Because you could finally get the boy who you always wanted as a friend to notice you. You didn’t give a shit about your real friends next to him.”

            “Oh, yes, good try, Blaise,” Draco said, his face set and cold and his voice back in the drawl that Harry was most used to hearing from him. “Because I somehow knew that Potter would be sympathetic to me during the summer, when I cast the spell, and not turn away from me in disgust when he heard what had happened.” He glanced at Harry, then away. “The whole thing was to obtain him, and not because I made a mistake, and snapped when you questioned me.”

            Zabini shook his head, his face grey. Harry wondered if the memories of the summer and the school year were still drifting and settling, and he honestly didn’t remember that Harry hadn’t joined Draco until after the school year began. Perhaps it hurt too much to think about that night Draco had cursed him head-on, even now.

            Another thing I can’t blame him for. Harry eased his hand onto his wand. But which I still won’t let him curse Draco for. Draco made the only atonement he could.

            “You want to shag him,” Zabini said, turning back to Harry.

            Remember that you’re just a tool in his attempts to hurt Draco. That kept Harry from reacting the way he would have if Zabini had said that to him alone. He met the other boy’s eyes and shrugged a little. “So what if I do? I don’t see you lining up to do it.”

            Draco’s mouth fell open, Harry noticed from the corner of his eye. He also noticed there were no other Slytherins around. He relaxed. That made it more likely that this little confrontation was Zabini’s idea, and that meant he probably either really wanted reconciliation with Draco or wanted to scream his heart out without being heard by the rest of Draco’s friends. Either way, it said nothing about what Goyle and the rest of them might want.

            “You know what he did,” Zabini said. “And you’ll let someone like that into your bed.”

            “He’s watched me kill twice, now,” Harry said. “Once with a curse that left me spattered with blood.” That was the closest he could come to telling the truth about Fenrir Greyback’s death, given the Ministry cover-up. From the way Zabini frowned at him, he might recognize the truth in Harry’s tone despite everything. “I did worse things than he did during the actual war. I didn’t have someone holding a wand to my throat and telling me to do them, either. Yeah, I’ll shag him if he wants, and be bloody grateful that there’s at least one person who doesn’t want me for my fame and won’t flinch from me for my magic.”

            “You’re both as mad as each other,” Zabini said, trying to sound the way he had when he first began his accusations, and not succeeding. He turned away.

            “That was a weak insult, Blaise,” Draco said, not raising his voice. “And you know what we always said about weak insults.”

            Zabini flinched and sped up. Draco turned away and began walking, with a stride that didn’t quite hide how badly his hands were shaking. But he thrust them in his pockets so no one could see. Harry checked over his shoulder to make sure that Zabini wasn’t going to hex them, and then followed.

            “What do you say about weak insults?” he asked Draco, when he sensed they were far enough away for him to ask it.

            “That you don’t mean them,” Draco said, and shoved open the door of a storage room used for extra desks. He stepped inside, beckoning Harry after him, and shut the door. Then he said, “Tell me.”

            “Snape needs some of your hair,” Harry murmured, drawing the letter from his pocket and holding it out. “He thinks that can establish a connection to your father and let him brew the potion so we can see past Azkaban’s wards.”

            Draco took the letter and studied it for a moment. Then he nodded. “I can certainly give him that.” He drew his wand, took a strand of his hair, and murmured a cutting charm that Harry could barely hear. When the fine tendril pulled free, he held it out to Harry with a solemn look.

            Harry took it, and then reached out and tugged Draco closer. Draco came, but with that tense holding-back in his body that he’d done during the confrontation with Zabini.

            “What is it?” he snapped. “If Snape is right and he really does have a potion that can see through the wards into the prison, then there isn’t anything more he should need from us.”

            “I want to know,” Harry whispered to him, “how you’re doing. And why you’ve been avoiding me since that night in the hospital wing.” He let his fingers trace Draco’s collarbone and creep around to the pulse in his throat. Draco didn’t pull away, although he did flush hard enough to make Harry feel the heat under his palm.

            “Of course you would remember the night that way, and not as the night that I performed the ritual that freed my friends,” Draco muttered, rolling his eyes.

            “So sorry that it wasn’t the first thing on my mind,” Harry murmured, feeling a delightful roll of anger and impatience and exhilaration pass through him. Draco had wanted him to stop being a saint, hadn’t he? Well, Harry could do that now. “But now, I am concerned that you might be regretting telling me the way you felt. You’ve gone out of your way not to look at me or talk to me or be alone with me the last few days.”

            Draco turned his head away and stared broodingly at a point on the far side of the room. Harry just waited. It wasn’t that easy to ignore someone with their hand in your shirt and their other hand on your collarbone.

            Draco finally whispered, “I don’t know that we can do this. You keep talking about the things I can achieve, but you don’t know that I can.”

            “I don’t,” Harry said, raising his eyebrows and letting his hand on Draco’s neck fall into a regular, gentle press of warmth against his shoulder. “But I think you might be able to. I didn’t realize that you were allergic to statements of faith in you.”

            Sure enough, as he had thought might happen, Draco snapped his head around, and his eyes burned. “You have not the slightest fucking idea what it’s like to be me,” he said.

            Harry shook his head. “No. I spent too long ignoring you, and then our fates since the war have been very different. What’s it like?”

            Draco gaped at him, and then spent a moment eyeing him sideways, as though he rather suspected Harry was taking the piss but couldn’t figure out how. Harry smiled at him and said nothing, fingers still playing with the cloth of Draco’s shirt. He wanted to hear more about Draco’s life, about his perspective, and Draco wanted the chance to talk. They both got to be selfish, and they both got to win.

            Draco finally grimaced and said, “All my mother does is wander around the Manor and make vague plans and then abandon them. I only came back because—because I thought I could remove the spell on my friends somehow, and because it was the only thing I could think of to do. Not because I wanted to get my NEWTS and do something with my life.”

            Harry nodded. “Then the first thing you need is a goal. And it doesn’t matter if it’s a stupid goal, or one that you change your mind about later, because, at the very least, you can focus your mind on something else once you’re out of this desponding mood.”

            “What should I focus on, then?” Draco demanded, shoving at him.

            “A couple things,” Harry said, and refused to step away. “These problems that you’re still trying to solve, seeing if it is your father in charge of the Death Eaters and trying to get your friends back. Me. And your Potions talent. You’re the best in the class, Draco, and even Slughorn knows it, when he isn’t trying to heap praises on me. You could do a lot with it, if you wanted to.”

            Draco frowned. “I don’t know if I want to.”

            “But you should investigate it now,” Harry said firmly. “Until you come up with something else that you’d like better.”

            “Or what?” Draco sneered at him. “What consequence could you bring down on me that would convince me to—”

            Harry leaned forwards and kissed him, softly, warmly, and with conviction. Draco’s mouth fell open, and his tongue darted out with an eager moan that Harry felt more than he heard.

            “Pick something,” Harry said, leaning back at last and smiling at Draco. “Or I won’t kiss you like that again until you do.”

            “Threats?” Draco’s eyelashes drooped down to shade his eyes. “Bribes? You’re talking like a Slytherin, Potter.”

            “Good,” Harry said. “Some of the best people I know are Slytherins. And this way, I know it’s your native language.”

            Draco shoved at him again, but there was a thin smile on his face, and Harry closed his hand tightly around the strand of hair and grinned back.

*

            LeaniaSTL: Thanks! At the moment, they’re not sure, either. Harry, of course, wants to go faster than Draco.

            SP777: Thanks!

            unneeded: Yes, they do. Harry keeps pulling Draco out of self-pity, and Draco keeps pulling Harry out of his unthinking sainthood.

            Makoto_Sagara: Draco was so rattled that he didn’t know how to keep silent in that chapter. On the one hand, that’s a good thing, as it meant that Harry didn’t have to tiptoe around him anymore, but on the other hand, it means that Harry does have a lot to talk to him about.

            ChaosLady; Thank you!

            Sneakyfox: Thanks for reviewing.

            jgood27: Thanks!
- 27
- 28
- 29
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

Parsimony