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The Long Defeat	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 30612 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 7
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
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Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Twenty-Eight—A Rope of His Own Braiding
            “Harry,” Narcissa said, the minute she stepped into the breakfast room and found her husband glaring at the wall and her son-in-law scowling with his arms folded. And it was not because she thought Harry had somehow caused the latest argument between him and Lucius.
            Harry flinched, and then stood up. For a moment, Narcissa thought he would stalk past her, and she put out her hand to detain him. Harry paused and came back this time, but his gaze was miserable.
            “How much danger am I going to put him in?” he whispered.
            For all that Harry could get along in an uneasy way with Lucius, Narcissa knew he was not talking about him. She nodded and said, “Let me get some food, and then I will come along with you.” Even as she spoke, Ren appeared from the kitchens with a plate of foie gras and thick French cheeses. Narcissa smiled at him and turned to walk with Harry.
            Harry waited until they were in the corridor to ask, “Do you usually eat that stuff for breakfast?”
            “No,” said Narcissa. “They are extremely rich. I am going to eat them with you, if you want to go into the gardens and eat them.”
            For a moment, Harry watched her, blinking, as though even now she might do something that was hurtful for no other reason than that she could. Then he nodded and murmured, “All right.”
            Narcissa hid a smile as she followed him into the nearest garden. Rain had turned some of the ground into mud, but she cast a few charms that trimmed the mud back and dried the grass, and then conjured a blanket with a flourish. Harry watched all the time with eyes that were almost blank, then sat down on the blanket and stared at her.
            “Tell me what you fear about putting Draco in danger,” she said, and sat down next to Harry and began pulling out food from the basket. “I think you know that Draco is capable of taking care of himself, and all the more capable with the spells you’ve taught him.”
            Harry sighed noiselessly and watched the plate she pushed towards him, until Narcissa indicated her desire by tapping the edge of the plate with a nail. Then he gloomily started eating. Narcissa refrained from some of the things she could have said, and ate some to keep him company.
            “Something he—Lucius—said this morning reminded me that I can defend myself and even Draco from most of the danger that comes with defying the public,” Harry whispered. “But I can’t protect him from everything. And no matter what I decide to do, I know that Draco wants to stay in the wizarding world.” He fixed Narcissa with a desperate look. “Have I prevented him from doing that?”
            Narcissa shook her head and sipped from the glass of clear water that had come into her hand when the house-elves noticed she was eating outside. “No,” she said finally, because Harry hadn’t stopped staring. “Draco knows how to live well within wards, and within his friends’ houses, and he has that ability to defend himself that I spoke about before. There are places in the wizarding world where someone with Malfoy or pure-blood- heritage will always be welcome. And Lucius could, if he had to and there was no other choice, pull political strings to keep Draco from harm. He still has a few favors to call in. He’s been saving them for a disaster, which this is not. But if it became so, then he would do what he had to.”
            Harry closed his eyes and turned his head uneasily away. Narcissa went on eating until she thought the silence had stretched quite long enough, and then added, “Has Lucius been telling you that you’ve put Draco in danger? Why did you believe him so readily, when you do not about anything else?”
            She thought she knew the reason, but Harry gave it to her a moment later. “I didn’t think enough about that,” he muttered. “It struck me harder than it would have because it just didn’t—I didn’t think about it at all, when I should have. And it’s Draco. He’s different.”
            Narcissa hid a smile behind her plate. Harry probably wouldn’t understand any of the emotions in it except the amusement, and might take offense at the amusement. “Yes, I understand. But I can tell you that Draco will be safe.”
            Harry slowly opened his eyes. “That’s good,” he said, and his voice was steadier now. He took a bite himself. “I didn’t—I know it sounds horrible, but I didn’t want to stay here just to protect him.”
            “He would hate for you to stay for that reason anyway,” Narcissa replied instantly, knowing what she spoke was true, and thinking Harry should know it as well. But he was young, and as he had just proved, the thoughts of the young didn’t always match up with reality. “He would want it to be a free choice, and this smacks of pity.”
            “I didn’t mean it to!” Harry protested at once, opening his eyes and glaring at Narcissa as if this was somehow her fault. “I was only saying what I thought.”
            “Take my advice,” said Narcissa dryly, “and find some other way to phrase it to Draco.”
            Harry half-snorted, then sighed. “You’re right. He wouldn’t take it well.”
            “And that is an understatement,” Narcissa murmured, thinking of how Draco would react if he knew that the prize he had sought to win, Harry’s residence in the wizarding world, had only come about from fear.
            “Do you want me to stay?” Harry was watching Narcissa from the corner of his eye, and nibbling on some foie gras that stained his hands. He noticed a second later and wiped the stain away with an absent charm. “You’ve never said.”
            “And I won’t, because it would influence your decision unfairly,” Narcissa replied. “Draco is not the only one who wishes for you to make it of your own free will.”
            Harry gave a brief grin. “If you were opposing me, at least I would have something solid to fight. Otherwise, I really do have to make this choice all on my own.” He nibbled a wedge of cheese and put it down. “There are reasons not to stay.”
            “I know,” said Narcissa softly. “The way the public has treated you is unfair.” She had to talk about it softly, or she would begin to contemplate revenge. And she rarely allowed herself to do that, because the temptation of carrying it out would overcome her.
            “The way they treat me, yeah,” said Harry, staring into the distance with eyes that Narcissa knew had seen more than she imagined. “But also the way almost no one stood up for me when it came to the goblins. And the expectations. And the betrayal when I was twelve. Half the school—more—decided I was evil and the Heir of Slytherin based on nothing.”
            Narcissa half-smiled. “Draco tells me that you suspected him of being the Heir on much the same evidence.”
            Harry waved his hand. “Yeah, that does embarrass me. But I wasn’t spreading the story all around the school and embarrassing him the way that people were doing to me.” He sighed through his nostrils like a dragon and picked up another piece of cheese. “I don’t know. I thought, before the mess with Gringotts, that my life was finally normal and I could be an Auror and have a family and everything would be fine. But I’m wondering now if I wouldn’t have run into another problem where the whole wizarding world betrayed me and decided that it was better to leave.”
            “Very likely,” Narcissa murmured. The world was not rational on the topic of Harry Potter, she knew, perhaps because too many people trusted the Daily Prophet, perhaps because no one had ever done what Harry had done. Narcissa had read the most ridiculously passionate defenses of him and idolization of him as a god right next to the silliest accusations possible of crimes. The Prophet would publish anything, and swayed by the latest thing they read, the public could turn from welcoming to hostile overnight.
            But there was one thing she wanted to know. “If the reaction to you had remained positive, the way it was right after the war, would you stay?”
            Harry gave a full-body shudder that seemed to crawl up his spine and out again at the nape of his neck. “That wasn’t—it wasn’t worse, because people trying to assault me in the middle of Diagon Alley is definitely worse, but it was horrible. People were throwing themselves at my feet. People were creeping into my room and stripping naked until I put up the strongest wards I knew. There were invitations that—” He shook his head. “So maybe not.”
            Narcissa nodded, and they finished the meal in companionable silence. Harry grinned at her again as he stood up, probably going Draco-hunting. “How is it that you manage to reassure me so much?”
            “If you are comparing my reassuring skills to Lucius’s…”
            Harry laughed, and took his leave. Narcissa watched him go, and then twisted patiently around and regarded her husband. He had looked out several times from a window that opened onto the garden from a library, but hadn’t ventured out. In that, he was wise.
            He came out now, and stood frowning at her from a short distance away. Narcissa gestured with a fork, and Lucius grimaced and limped towards her, leaning on the cane more than he would want either Draco or Harry to see. He Transfigured one of the stones in a wall that edged a flowerbed into a chair instead of lowering himself to the blanket. Though Narcissa thought he could have borne the loss to his dignity, his leg kept her respectfully silent.
            Lucius folded his hands over the top of the cane, and regarded her. Narcissa regarded him back.
            “Do you believe that he can really keep Draco safe?” Lucius asked at last, voice as weary as though they’d already held a whole conversation.
            “Of all the things that might concern you about their companionship, that is the one that should give you the least concern,” Narcissa firmly. “Whether or not he can, you know that neither of us would let our son come to harm.”
            Then, for the first time all morning, Lucius smiled. “I don’t know why I forgot that, my dear,” he said, and reached out to take her hand. “I should have thought of it.”
            Narcissa turned his hand over and kissed the back as he had so often done with her, and they sat together in silence that reminded Narcissa of things she, too, had forgotten about their own companionship.
*
            “But I proved that I can get along with your friends!”
            Draco winced at the sound of his own voice a second later, but the damage was done. Harry pulled back from him and stood up, straightening his shirt as if he was going to walk out of the dueling room right there and then.
            “That’s not the only problem with me staying here,” he said coldly, and folded his arms and glared at Draco.
            Draco winced again. Things had been going well this morning. He and Harry had started a practice dueling session that turned into a snogging session—something that both of them didn’t need that much practice in, honestly—and they had sagged onto one of the couches here and kissed until Draco’s mouth was numb and his hands shaking with happiness. And Draco had murmured how glad he was that Harry was like this with him, because it gave Harry a stronger incentive to stay in the wizarding world with him.
            And then Harry had taken it all the wrong way.
            “It was a problem, though, right?” Draco asked, because now that he had begun this conversation he might as well pursue it. “And I’ve solved it.”
            “You solved it,” Harry conceded. He looked almost the way he had when he first began training Draco, before Draco knew there was or could be anything between them, and his arms clenched harder and harder as they stayed folded. “But there’s so many other things…I don’t want you to pressure me, Draco.”
            “I’m not pressuring you,” said Draco. Fine, he would defend himself, if there was no way of coaxing Harry back to the couch and into his arms. “I’m just telling the truth. You wouldn’t want to stay with someone who couldn’t get along with your friends. And I do now.”
            “Arguing with them is getting along with them?” Harry looked at him with an amused half-sideways glance.
            Draco shook his head. “We didn’t argue as much as we would have before you and I became lovers.”
            “That just proves that I could have both of you in my house at the same time.” Harry began to prowl back and forth again. “I’ve thought of it, you know. Having a house of my own. I know that it might not sound like much to you, but I slept in a cupboard when I was a kid. A space all my own is great.”
            “You don’t like your bedroom?” Draco didn’t think that was true, or Harry wouldn’t have chosen it. But he didn’t like the trend that Harry’s thoughts were taking.
            “Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Harry turned around and glared at him. “I do like my room! But I want a space of my own, too. What if I could have a flat in the Muggle world that was connected to Malfoy Manor and to Ron and Hermione’s house by Floo connections? Do you know how much it costs to connect a house to the Floo network?”
            “If you were living in a flat, then you wouldn’t be living with me,” said Draco. It was the only truth he knew in this confusing morass that their clear and uncomplicated relationship seemed to have become.
            “Not all the time,” said Harry. “But I could spend time here without anyone pounding on the gates and demanding to know if I was living with you, and I could come and go from the Muggle world to the wizarding one in peace.” He sighed and sat down on the couch near Draco, looking as drained as though he’d fought a duel with one of the people who had come up to him yesterday. “I love you, Draco.”
            Draco reached out and took his hand, but didn’t spring up and proclaim victory yet. It sounded as though there was a “But” coming.
            “But I don’t know if I want to stay in a world where some people are always going to hate me no matter what I did.” Harry fell limply against the couch back and stared up at the ceiling. “I was almost sick with worry for you this morning.”
            “And now you aren’t worried?” Draco couldn’t help asking dryly. “What did I do to convince you I was a competent duelist? So far, the best you’ll say is that I could defend myself against some people.”
            “No,” said Harry. “Your mother reassured me. She said that your father could protect you, and so could she, and the wards.”
            Draco paused. “That’s true.” He supposed he would rather Harry be reassured than constantly worried, at that.
            “And I know that we caused part of our own trouble with the lies we spread,” said Harry, and pulled his legs up to his chest. Draco touched his shoulder. Harry tilted his head so that he pinned Draco’s hand between his cheek and his shoulder. “But I don’t think that the consequences are justified or anything.”
            “You would have put up with what they’re saying because you think you deserve it?” Draco shook his head, appalled. “Maybe you should go live in the Muggle world. Just for a while,” he added hastily, when Harry stared at him. “I mean, just until you get your head cleared out and stop thinking you deserve pain because other people are idiots.”
            He meant it as a last-ditch plan, but Harry’s eyes shone, and he leaned in and kissed Draco softly. “Thank you,” Harry whispered. “I knew you would understand if I explained it to you just right.”
            Draco opened his mouth to say that wasn’t it—
            And then foresaw a repetition of the argument, and the destruction of his good understanding with Harry at the moment.
            And honestly, he would rather put the decision off for a while, and enjoy the benefits of Harry’s company in the same house while he had it.
            “You’re welcome,” he said, and then started kissing Harry again, as much to shut himself up as to get Harry’s tongue back in his mouth.
            Harry’s enthusiastic response more than justified his little plan, Draco felt sure.
*
staar: Harry can analyze their behavior better now, but that doesn’t mean he likes it any better.
Jester: Maybe they will, but Harry is through with waiting for it to happen.
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The Long Defeat