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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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Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Twenty-Eight—Talks, Both Good and Bad
            “Dad, can I talk to you a minute?”
            Harry turned from talking with Ginny, who had arrived at the Hogwarts hospital wing within minutes after he firecalled her and so far had kept her eyes away from Malfoy and her conversation exclusively to care of Jamie. Al was the one, now, who stood at Harry’s elbow, and his eyes darted back and forth between him and Malfoy in a way that told Harry exactly what this conversation would be about.
            Harry thought he hid his sigh fairly well. He nodded to Ginny, squeezed her hand once, and then turned around and walked with Al to the far corner of the hospital wing. Scorpius had joined the crowd around Jamie’s bed, and his eyes followed both of them, but when Harry caught his eye, he smiled and made a little shooing motion with his hand. Glad to know that he wouldn’t try to interfere in the conversation, or confrontation, Harry needed to have with Al, he turned back to his son.
            Al stood facing the fire with his arms wrapped around him as if he was cold. Harry silently cast a Warming Charm, and Al jerked and looked at him. His mouth and eyes were both as vulnerable as though he was a baby.
            “I know that you put Scorpius up to trying to claim the life-debt,” Harry said. He wouldn’t lie to Al, and he thought it was highly likely that Al knew the truth already, with him and Scorpius being such good friends. “And if you need me, Al, more than I’ve been there so far, you need to ask. I’m bad at just realizing things. That’s one reason Mr. Malfoy’s been such a great help to me.”
            Al might as well not have heard that little speech, from the mutinous face he raised to Harry a minute later. “Scorpius said something—and Jamie said something—are you dating Mr. Malfoy? Or not?”
            His voice soared, and Ginny turned to look at them. Harry looked so steadily back that she frowned and turned to bend down and plant a kiss on Lily’s head. Harry nodded. He didn’t intend to hide it from his ex-wife if he and Malfoy did start dating, but he didn’t need to talk to her about it right now.
            “Not yet,” Harry said, turning back to Al. He wondered if he had ever looked as sulky as Al did right now, had such shadows in his green eyes. Maybe not. Not at this age, anyway. He was much sulkier when he was fifteen, he thought with a little amusement. “We’re thinking about it, but we haven’t started yet.”
            “You can’t,” said Al, with such seriousness that Harry found himself starting to fold his arms. He dropped them back to his sides and crouched down to Al’s level, hoping that would help, just the way it had helped when Malfoy bent over Jamie’s bed.
            “Do you want to tell me why?” he asked quietly. “Do you want to tell me if you would react this way to anyone I started dating, or if there’s something special about Mr. Malfoy that makes you dislike him?”
            “I don’t dislike him!” Al snapped, bristling. “I’ve been to his house and stayed over with Scorpius, and you never have!”
            “Calm down,” Harry said. That was the kind of thing Al normally said to him all the time, and he usually permitted it, but now, he was listening partially with Malfoy’s ears, and good Merlin, it sounded rude. “I know I haven’t been, but I might someday. Meanwhile, I asked you a question. You don’t dislike him. Fine. There’s no reason you should, since he’s Scorpius’s father. But is there some special reason that you don’t want him dating me?”
            Al ducked his head. He mumbled words, but they were too low to make out, and after a moment of waiting to see if he would repeat them on his own, Harry put his hand on Al’s shoulder.
            Al turned a desperate face up to him that nearly made Harry promise to do whatever Al wanted, just to ease the pressure of that look. But he shook his head and recovered himself in time. No, he couldn’t in good conscience promise that. What if it contradicted something that Lily or Jamie or Malfoy really needed?
            Or yourself, said the echo of Malfoy’s voice in the back of his head. Harry tried to give Al an intent, listening look, and at the same time promise nothing with his eyes.
            “He’s so intense about you,” Al whispered. “I saw that in his face, when I’d talk about you. I thought he hated you, but maybe now it’s something else, or it’s turned into something else. And I don’t want you that intense about him! You need to focus on us. You need to focus on me.”
            Harry blinked slowly. He knew this was another sign of his inadequacy as his father, coming back to confront him, but he honestly didn’t know what Al was talking about. “I know I’ve neglected you,” he began, intending to ask if Al thought that neglect would increase if Harry was dating Malfoy.
            Al leaned forwards and gripped Harry’s robe and shook him a little. “I—I want a father who’s normal,” he cried, his voice low but not the less striking for all that. “I want a father who can just watch my Quidditch games instead of being mobbed all the time! I want a father who doesn’t have to live behind wards that are even higher than Mr. Malfoy’s! I want a father who doesn’t date someone who looks like he’d like to devour him alive, my best friend’s dad! This isn’t normal. I want you to be normal, and you just never can!”
            Harry sighed and hugged Al, ignoring the way that Al ducked his head and squinched his eyes shut. He was probably trying to block tears. Perfectly ordinary, Harry thought, with an echo of irony that he knew Al wouldn’t catch because Harry didn’t intend to tell him about it. Harry could remember being Al’s age and longing to be normal, too. No Dursleys, no lightning bolt scar or Heir of Slytherin or Parseltongue, only what every other wizarding child except maybe Hermione and the other Muggleborns had.
            So he understood the desire, and it hurt all the more to know that in his case, no one (except Voldemort) could have helped the way he was singled-out, but he was the one who had caused Al to be singled-out.
            He caught Malfoy’s eye. Malfoy had stepped away from talking to Scorpius and was watching him with folded arms and eyes narrowed as if they could see into the center of his soul. Harry kept himself from snorting, but it was hard. What exactly did Malfoy think he was doing? Yes, Harry was talking to his son. And yes, if Al needed something, Harry would sacrifice a lot for him.
            But not everything.
            That was perhaps the lesson that Malfoy thought he was in danger of forgetting. Harry smiled at Malfoy, in a way he hoped was reassuring, and looked back at Al. Al was gazing steadily at him, waiting.
            Harry laid a hand on his hair and ruffled Al’s fringe, so like his own, but concealing no lightning bolt scar. Sometimes, Harry was glad that he had fought in the war.
            “I can’t do much about the way that I’m attacked by mobs at Quidditch games,” he said gently. “And I’m sorry that you didn’t get a normal dad, the way so many people do. But I’m not going to stop dating Mr. Malfoy, or avoid dating him, because it would make you feel better. We can try to have as many normal private evenings as you want over the holidays. And you can tell people who ask you if you can get them interviews with me or autographs to piss off. But I can’t change who I am.”
            “You could stay under the Invisibility Cloak,” Al muttered. “You could move somewhere that you wouldn’t need as many powerful wards.”
            Harry saw Malfoy open his mouth from the corner of his eye, and cast him a freezing glare. Malfoy shut his mouth, but a muscle worked in his jaw, and he started talking to Scorpius again a second later, as though he had to do something with all the words that had been building up.
            “No matter where I went, my enemies would find me,” Harry said. “I have people attacking me now who I don’t think are Death Eaters, but I don’t know why they’re attacking me, either. They managed to get through the wards on my new house, and I had to go to Grimmauld Place with Mr. Malfoy and Lily.”
            Al stared at him. Then he shoved Harry, hard, in the middle of the chest. Harry wavered on his haunches, nearly losing his balance, but managed to retain it. He knew that the glance he cast Al was angry and bewildered, but he couldn’t help it. That had hurt, and not physically.
            “Why can’t one thing in my life be normal?” Al was whispering and wailing at the same time. “Why can’t I have parents who are married, and a dad who isn’t an Auror, and a brother who isn’t a Potions genius and a bloody thief?” He raised his voice on the last word, and Harry caught both Ginny and Jamie staring over from Jamie’s bed. Ginny bit her lip, but didn’t come over to interfere, which Harry silently blessed her for. Al whipped back to Harry. “I just want to be normal.”
            A desire Aunt Petunia would sympathize with, too. Harry took a deep breath. “I’ve quit being an Auror. I sent my resignation letter. But I can’t stop these people from attacking me yet, Al. Not until they’re found and arrested. I’m sorry.”
            Al shook his head, his green eyes dim with tears, and ducked around Harry and ran. Scorpius tore himself away from his father with a murmured apology and went after him. Lily was watching everything with wide eyes.
            “What’s wrong with him?” Ginny had the sense to keep her voice down so Madam Juniper didn’t come bustling out of the back of the hospital wing, at least.
            “He’s a spoiled brat.” Malfoy didn’t bother to keep his voice down.
            Harry jerked around. Malfoy eyed him as unpleasantly as though they were still schoolboys and enemies, and Harry nodded sharply to Ginny, Lily, and Jamie. “I’m glad you’re all right, Jamie. I’ll try to find Al and talk to him. Lils, do you want to stay with me and Mr. Malfoy or go back home with your mum?”
            Lily hesitated, and then stepped back towards Ginny. Harry looked to see if Ginny had any objection, but Ginny gave him a strained smile and put her arm around Lily.
            “We’ll be fine,” she said.
            Harry strode out of the hospital wing. He didn’t know if he could truly find Al; probably only if he hadn’t gone far. Al might have gone to the Slytherin common room, and Scorpius with him, and Harry had no admittance there.
            But whether he could do it or not, it served as a fine pretext to get Malfoy out of the hospital wing. Harry swung sharply around the instant they were beyond the corner, and grabbed his shoulders. Malfoy’s face whitened a little, but he didn’t make any attempt to get away.
            “Al isn’t spoiled any more than Jamie or Lily are,” Harry said quietly, his voice low. “Probably less, since Jamie wanted to take advantage of my fame and Al just wishes it would all go away. How dare you say such a thing?”
            “Because it’s true.” One half of Malfoy’s upper lip lifted in a sneer, something Harry hadn’t even known was possible. “It’s true that he doesn’t want to be the son of a famous father, but he’s accustomed to making you do everything he wants by railing at you. That rather does suggest that he’s spoiled. Don’t you agree?”
            “No. I don’t.”
            “Of course you wouldn’t.” Malfoy looked at him with eyes that really appeared almost alien. “Because the person affected by his outbursts is you, and you’re not worth the effort, are you?”
            Harry nearly stepped back and walked away. But Malfoy himself was the one who had taught him better than that, and so after taking a quick breath, Harry grimly pressed to the attack. “He isn’t spoiled. He wants to be normal. There was a time when I wanted nothing more than that. I know now that I can’t be, but he doesn’t know that. As you told Jamie, neither of them has lived my life.”
            Malfoy’s mask slipped, and Harry saw the passion beneath, in his eyes, that he had felt during the kiss, and seen in the way Malfoy looked at Al. Malfoy had held himself so successfully in check when he was speaking to Jamie that Harry had nearly forgotten it existed. He blinked, staring, and Malfoy moved smoothly to take over from him, his voice dripping emotion. Harry couldn’t tell exactly what kind at the moment.
            “Yes, by all means, understand him. By all means, sympathize with him. Feel sorry for him that you gave him such an awful name. I feel all those things for Scorpius, and that’s perfectly fine.
            “But too much sympathy for your eldest son is what made him feel that he could trade on his name. It hasn’t gone that way with the second one, but he thinks he can trade on you. Or trample on you, perhaps is more like it. All he has to do is whinge and look at you with big eyes, and you’ll provide him with whatever he wants.”
            “That’s not true,” was all Harry could think to say. “He’s asked for plenty of things—like new brooms—that I can’t afford.”
            “And yet you refused my Galleons,” Malfoy murmured.
            Harry nearly sighed with relief. Good. This was the kind of tack that he wanted to pursue. It would keep Malfoy from insisting that Al was spoiled, an insult to his child that hurt so much it made Harry feel as though he was drowning. “I make enough. Just not enough that we’re as rich as my kids sometimes think—”
            “Don’t think you can distract me.” Malfoy reached up and took both his wrists, holding Harry’s arms out wide, to the sides, as though he was going to brace him up against a wall. Maybe he was. Harry glared indignantly at him. “What matters most is not Galleons or brooms, but the way that Al thinks he can make demands of you.”
            “You have no idea what you’re saying,” Harry whispered to him. His mouth felt numb. “I understand him, that’s all. I know that he can’t have a normal life. That’s what I was trying to say. To tell him that. That I understood, but I can’t change the need for wards or the way people mob me at Quidditch games.”
            “You were making excuses for existing.”
            “I was not.” Harry wondered for a crazy second how it had come to this, Malfoy holding him in a Hogwarts corridor, in such a way that it would hurt if he tried to break free. But he put it out of his head. He’d spent too much time thinking about Malfoy and himself and not enough about his children. Time to change that. Hadn’t Malfoy taught him so? “Didn’t you listen to me? I was trying to comfort him, yes, but I wasn’t apologizing. I was just saying—”
            “Sorry.”
            “I said that once,” Harry countered firmly. He lifted his head, and he thought Malfoy blinked a little at the strength in his eyes. Good. Harry wanted to hold back the tide of remorse and sorrow flowing through him, and he wanted to remember what Malfoy had taught him, even if he had to use the lessons against his teacher. “I’m sorry, actually, if it sounded like more than that. But I think that’s why he ran. He realized that he wasn’t going to get what he wanted from me, and he couldn’t handle it.”
            Malfoy blinked a few dozen times. Harry bit his lip so he wouldn’t laugh. Malfoy would be sensitive about Harry making fun of him. Harry wasn’t, but Malfoy had already misunderstood a lot today.
            “You—you think that’s all it is,” Malfoy said slowly.
            Harry nodded. “And while I could try to find Al, I don’t think I’ll succeed. I mostly spoke that way to get you out of the hospital wing. I don’t need you upsetting Ginny and the other kids.”
            Malfoy flushed and dropped Harry’s hands. “It’s all about them,” he said, voice tinny and hollow.
            “And you.” Harry shoved him lightly, in the middle of the chest like Al had shoved him, but he made sure Malfoy saw that he was smiling. “And me. I don’t like hearing you blame my kids. And it’s clear that you don’t like hearing Al blame me. This was for both of us, all right? All of us. I’m sorry about what Al is suffering, but it was still irresponsible of him to try and get Scorpius to intervene and take back the life-debt, and if I’m going to talk to him, I’m not going to back down on that. I don’t think he even had any concrete ideas about what I could do to make it better for him. Just change things, but what things? I’m not going to drop my wards so that Al can be more comfortable.”
            Malfoy looked steadily at him. “And what about coming to Quidditch games under an Invisibility Cloak?”
            Harry flushed and shrugged. He found the way the balance of power kept shifting between them interesting, but disconcerting, and he turned back to face the hospital wing. “It’s the best solution I’ve found so far.”
            He’d taken one step when Malfoy seized him by the shoulder. Harry found himself spun back around, his personal space invaded, and Malfoy bending down towards him, his face so intent that Harry’s mouth dried up again.
            “It does hurt me to hear the way your son speaks to you,” Malfoy whispered into his ear. “And it hurts to hear you disregard yourself, instead of coming up with another solution that would make you happier than it makes everyone else. I want you to be in the open and getting along with your children and happy. That most of all.”
            He kissed Harry then, so intensely that Harry gasped. Immediately Malfoy’s tongue dived into his mouth.
            And this time, Harry thought as Malfoy nudged him back towards the corridor wall, it seemed as though there was a high chance that Malfoy wasn’t interested in stopping.
*
            delia cerrano: Ginny is restraining herself for right now.
            BAFan: Jamie is actually a Gryffindor; Al’s the Slytheirn. What happened was the cult of genius. Everyone assumed that anything Jamie did was a result of his genius, and they had to foster that instead of curb it. He’s only gone this long without it being discovered how entitled he is because he’s not actually a bad kid. It would have shown up a lot earlier if he had tried to claim more privileges based on it.
            CareLessLover: Ginny already isn’t reacting well. And the divorce was finalized in the first chapter. Harry’s main fear with Ginny is that she’s going to claim she was always right and Harry is gay.
            SP777: Problem in this chapter isn’t a redhead!
            polka dot: Harry’s not an Auror anymore.
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Marathon