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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-Nine—A Confrontation With the Weasleys

            “Ah,” Draco said, and stared at the bird on Harry’s arm as if he could make it combust with the sheer force of his stare. This was Bill’s owl Astraea, however, and therefore a calmer owl than Pigwidgeon had been. She ruffled her wings and stared back as Harry carefully took the letter from her leg. “I should have known a Weasley owl would arrive on the heels of their daughter’s defeat.”

            “They did wait until the next morning,” Harry said absently, and then shook the letter out with a quick motion of his hand. His mouth was sour with apprehension, not that he was about to tell Draco that. Of course, since Draco could probably see it on his face, there wasn’t much point in telling him that.

            Judge Witherbone had not yet declared him and Ginny divorced. If Ginny did want to begin the entire process of the trial all over again, she had three days in which to do so. Perhaps Zabini would yet persuade her to return to the courtroom. Draco didn’t think so, but Harry didn’t know that for certain.

            And, in the meantime, the Weasleys could bring down pressure on him that they would not if he and Ginny were completely separated.

            Sure enough, Bill’s letter, though courteous, conveyed that.

            Harry:

            We’d like to speak to you before much longer, to talk about the process of settlements on Ginny and her daughter Lily. She feels inadequate to confront you alone, and I can understand her point. Therefore we are inviting you—and you alone—to the Burrow this afternoon, so that you can explain matters to us, and in particular why you decided the way you did regarding your possessions and vaults. Think of it as a reconciliation.

            Please come at one.

            Bill.

            Harry sighed and stared down at the letter. He couldn’t help thinking it was a bad sign that Arthur wasn’t writing the letter. Of course, perhaps he had to work today, but Bill normally did, as well. If one of the Weasley men had taken a holiday from his work and the other had not…

            Harry did not know who the “us” was, whether there would be a single friendly face there or not.

            “Let me see,” Draco said, in a demanding way, and Harry handed the letter to him across the table and started eating again, slowly forking bits of egg into his mouth as he considered what to do.

            He couldn’t decide, he realized abruptly. There was simply so much he didn’t know. If Ginny were there, he would have to say decidedly different things than if she weren’t. He would have to be softer so that he didn’t lose his adopted family over this. And he wanted to know if he would be required to face another display of tears like the ones that had marked the end of Ginny’s court appearance yesterday.

            “Of course you’re not going,” Draco said, tossing the letter aside as if it were so much rubbish. “Tell him so.”

            Harry narrowed his eyes. His uncertainty reared up and formed itself into a sturdy resolution quite suddenly in the face of Draco’s opposition.

            “I should be the one to make the decision on that,” he said sharply.

            Draco blinked at him for a moment, expression almost blank with, Harry supposed, sheer surprise. Then he frowned and sat back. “It’s a legal matter, Harry,” he said. “It must be, or they wouldn’t try to get you alone and away from me. They want to intimidate you into backing down on the matter of giving nothing to your wife.”

            “That might be part of it,” Harry said. “But I don’t know that it’s the whole of it. I’m going to owl Bill and ask him whether Ginny will be there, what they want me to explain, and a few other things.” He nodded to Astraea, who had remained in the middle of the table to pick at a slice of bacon on his plate. “She’s waiting for a reply. Bill must have known that I wouldn’t agree just because he asked me to.”

            “Then I’ll come with you.”

            Harry drew a deep breath, but releasing it wasn’t as hard as thought it would be. “No.”

            “I am your Arguer—“

            “And if I need you to moderate and separate me in all my confrontations with the Weasleys from now on,” Harry cut in, “then I’ve essentially lost them forever. I want to show that I can potentially trust them, if they’ll tell me a bit more about who should be present. I can’t go everywhere under your protection, Draco.”

            Draco’s lip curled. “And you’ve done so well when you face the Weasleys on your own in the past, haven’t you?”

            Harry planted his palms flat on the table. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “I have. Ron and Arthur didn’t know you were there in the Burrow, remember? It was me they reacted and responded to. And I faced Ginny on my own yesterday.”

            Draco curled one hand into a fist, and then drummed it sharply on his leg. Astraea turned to stare at him. “I don’t like the thought of you on your own,” he said, “without the ability to reach me if you should need me.”

            “I know you don’t,” said Harry, and managed to soften the harsh buzz in his voice. “But I’ll be stirring needless conflict if I bring you with me. The Weasleys will think I don’t trust them, and I’m sure Ron, at least, will assume that you influence my thinking and that I would say something different if he could just get me alone. And I have to be able to do this. I’m sorry if you don’t trust me, Draco, or think I’m an expert in legal matters. I’m not. But I won’t say anything legally binding.”

            “You don’t know what’s legally binding.”

            Harry laughed, thinking of Ginny’s aborted performance in the courtroom yesterday. “And you think Ginny does?”

            Draco set his jaw. “No. But she might have a brother who does.”

            Harry shook his head. “The only reason any of them would have to know legal terms would be the ones that relate to magical artifacts—or the twins, if they’re taking Pansy to court over her attacks on their shop.” He sat back in his chair and cocked his head at Draco. “Will you trust me to go by myself?” He hoped he didn’t let those words ring as wistfully as they sounded in his head. He wanted to convey that he would go to the Burrow anyway, because he thought he needed to, but he still wanted Draco to trust him.

            Draco stood up and came around the table. Harry sat back further to watch him, and wondered for a long moment which side of him would win. There was a struggle going on behind Draco’s face.

            But in the event, all he did was stoop down and kiss Harry’s forehead.

            “Be careful,” he said quietly. “You just got out of hospital. I don’t want to see what the headlines would look like should you go back in immediately. ‘Potter Injured in Struggle With Prank-Playing Twins,’ I’m sure Skeeter would say, or something else equally inane.”

            Harry grinned at him. “And do I have your permission to tell them about your mother being kidnapped?”

            “Not unless Weasley brings it up first.” Draco’s eyes had gone flat. “I want to save that revelation for a few days hence.”

            “What happens in a few days?”

            Draco smiled like a shark, and Harry nodded. He supposed that, if he could make plans of his own, Draco could certainly do the same. “All right.” He turned to call Seeky to bring him ink and parchment, so that he could write a letter back to Bill. He wondered now how he had lived without the convenience of house-elves.

            He would not, of course, tell Hermione that.

*

            Harry appeared outside the Burrow, and squinted at it thoughtfully, slinging his cloak around his shoulders. Due to delays in owl post between the Burrow and the Manor, he had not arrived until four that afternoon, after Bill had confirmed that Ginny would be present, and so would most of the rest of the family.

            Harry had to restrain himself from glancing over his shoulder, to the place that Draco would have stood last time they had come here. That was exactly what his problem had been for five years; he had allowed himself to become too dependent on Ginny, Ron, and Hermione. He couldn’t replace that with another dependence, or every change he had tried to make in the past few weeks would have been for nothing.

            He lifted his head and walked forwards, not allowing himself to tense even when he saw that Molly was waiting for him in the door of the Burrow. He simply stopped a few steps away and nodded to her.

            “Hello, Mrs. Weasley,” he said softly.

            Molly sighed. She had red-rimmed eyes, he saw, as if she had spent most of the morning crying. “Oh, Harry,” she whispered. “How could you break our hearts this way? I was sure that you and Ginny would be married forever, and now—“ She shook her head sadly.

            Harry gave her a thin smile. He’d be happy to reconcile with her and consider her his mum again, but he wouldn’t just take whatever she wanted to say without objecting, as he’d done whenever she reminisced in the past about what a wonderful career he could have made as an Auror. She had understood the physical limitations that kept him from playing Quidditch, but she had never accepted that he couldn’t really control his temper.

            And of course I could have. But Ginny couldn’t provide sufficient motivation on her own.

            “I thought we would be, too, at one point,” he said. “But I’m almost glad that this happened. I could have wished for less heartbreak to go along with it. But she hasn’t been in love with me for a long time, and she deserves someone in her life who will make her happy and give her what she wants.” He had to work not to spit as he spoke the words—and Draco, he knew, would have spat if he’d heard them—but they were what Molly needed to hear. “And I haven’t been in love with her for a long time, either.”

            “Why not, Harry, dear?” Mrs. Weasley leaned forwards, as if she wanted to hug him but a gaping abyss separated them. “Ginny was perfect for you. You were always so happy together, and of course Ginny’s dreamed of you since she was a child, and you always seemed so at home in our family—“

            “But those aren’t good reasons to stay married without love, Mrs. Weasley,” Harry replied. He found that his voice got quieter as he talked on, which was a relief, as he hadn’t been sure how he would avoid yelling at first. “And now I have found happiness outside my marriage. I can control my magic much better now, and I don’t just sit at home anymore.”

            “Tell me why you weren’t willing to do that for me,” Ginny said, her face appearing suddenly behind her mother’s shoulder. “Tell me that.”

            Harry met her gaze, and felt most of his resolve to be kind and intelligent and say nothing hurtful dying away. Ginny already knew the answers to those questions. Did she want him to say them again, in front of her family? Very well, he would.

            “Because you weren’t willing to support me in doing anything but what you wanted me to do,” he said sharply. “And I had already told you how little interest being an Auror or a Quidditch player roused in me. I have different ambitions, Ginny.”

            Ginny snorted. “It certainly didn’t seem like it when he’d spend an entire day talking to Ron and Hermione, and then come home and talk to me,” she remarked to her mother, though she kept her eyes on Harry.

            Harry shook his head. “I’ve told you and told you the truth. It’s your fault if you want to ignore it.” He looked over Ginny’s shoulder into the house. “Is the rest of your family home? I’d rather talk to you in the open air, now that I think of it.”

            “Now he’s insulting your housekeeping skills,” Ginny told Mrs. Weasley.

            “No,” said Harry. “Frankly, I don’t trust you not to attack me at such close quarters.”

            Ginny contrived to look hurt, but Bill’s voice said from beyond her, “If he really wants us to come outside, we will. I don’t think his explanation is going to sound a bit different depending on where he makes it.”

            Harry stepped backwards and waited. Ginny paraded out with one arm around her swollen belly, staring at him all the while. Harry didn’t care. Draco had forbidden him to reveal Narcissa’s kidnapping, and he doubted that Ginny would bring it up herself, but he could explain about other things that had happened during the divorce process, and see what the Weasleys thought of their “loving daughter” and her perfect marriage then.

            Bill came out with Fleur at his side, followed by the twins, Ron, Hermione, and Mr. Weasley. Harry wasn’t surprised that neither Percy nor Charlie was there. Percy wouldn’t let his work at the Ministry be disrupted over something like this, and it was extremely likely that Charlie hadn’t left Romania during the last month.

            The Weasleys—and the Weasley-Grangers—ranged themselves in a half-circle, all facing him. Ginny had her arms folded. Mrs. Weasley was still sniffling slightly and dabbing at her eyes with an apron. Arthur put one arm around his wife’s shoulder, looking torn between sympathetic sorrow and pity for her. Bill and Fleur stood side-by-side; Harry remembered Hermione telling him that they felt any married couple should do something to work their problems out, rather than separating. The twins wore identical frowns. Ron and Hermione gazed at him with identical looks of concern.

            “Here’s the simple fact,” said Harry. “I’m not going to take Ginny back. I’m not going to marry her again. I’m not going to give her extra money to care for the baby, which was conceived with another man. Her family is doing well, and can support her—the way you’ve done so well throughout the divorce.” He met the twins’ eyes, in particular. “I don’t see why I should have to honor commitments to a woman who violated them first, and who has variously gone along with a man who tried to kill me—“

            “What?” Mrs. Weasley asked, sounding faint.

            “Blaise Zabini sent me a Poisoned Missive in the first days of the divorce trial.” Harry made a dismissive gesture with one hand, secretly pleased at the looks of shock on most of their faces. Ginny hadn’t told them, then. “It was the main reason I left the house and moved into Malfoy Manor. Stronger wards.”

            “Ginny,” Molly said, turning towards her daughter.

            “We needed money for the baby,” said Ginny, but she had her head turned away.

            “I learned that, if I had died while Ginny was still on my will, she would have received everything automatically.” Harry shrugged. “That was the reason for the Poisoned Missive. She also stole the Black vault key—which she still hasn’t returned to me—and the twins attacked Draco in the middle of Diagon Alley. Then Zabini contacted Lucius Malfoy, who was driven mad by his stay in Azkaban, and he appeared at the Manor and tried to kill Draco. I fought him, but didn’t manage to kill him, since he Apparated away. Draco has paid large amounts of Galleons over the years to protect his mother, who was a victim of Bellatrix Lestrange, and to keep his father at bay. And Zabini simply invited him into the country, despite knowing he might kill Draco, because he wanted money. And Ginny approved of it.”

            The expressions on the twins’ faces had changed. They looked uncomfortable now. Arthur was shaking his head again and again, and Molly had started crying. Ginny wouldn’t look anyone in the face.

            “And you never thought of meeting with Ginny to try and talk this out?” Bill asked. It was evidently his turn to frown. “Everything could have been avoided if you and Ginny had managed to come to a settlement out of court.”

            “And it could also have been avoided if Ginny had simply waited to enter Blaise Zabini’s bed until after she divorced me,” said Harry. “Who bears the greater part of the blame?”

            “When couples fight,” said Bill, in the voice of a man who had been married exactly one year longer than Harry had, “the fault lies equally on both sides.”

            “Forgive me if I consider it slightly different when my opponent is trying to kill me,” Harry said dryly.

            “But you could have talked,” said Bill, with an expansive gesture of his arm. “Kept your head and spoken to her like an adult. You wouldn’t even see her, though. She told me that she tried to send you a few owls, and they were all rebuffed by the wards around your house or Malfoy Manor.”

            Harry snarled, his anger and his magic both surging up, so that the grass under his feet sizzled slightly. “What do I have to do to prove to you that I had good reason not to trust her?” he asked. “Of course I didn’t want to receive letters from her or Zabini when the last one nearly killed me! And of course I warded the house against her when she tried to sell it out from under me. The worst thing I did in return was a newspaper article full of gossip about Ginny—and that was, in any case, compiled by Draco. What did I do that I deserved my wife cheating on me and blaming me for the loss of our child, and then claiming the money and the broom and the Invisibility Cloak I inherited from my parents, and claiming she would name her baby Lily just to manipulate me?”

            Bill blinked. Then he said, “I didn’t know all that. But you could still have talked it out—“

            “I spent the last five years talking to her,” Harry said bitterly, “thinking I knew her. And it turned out I didn’t even know when she was cheating.” He shook his head. “No. As much as I still want to consider you as my friends and surrogate family, I can’t if the price is listening to you preach at me about Ginny. I’ve made my decision. I won’t change it. I don’t trust any word that comes out of Ginny’s mouth, and I don’t trust Zabini as far as I can throw him. I can’t say how much it hurt that most of you took her side at first, but I can forgive—if you can stop telling me that, yes, it was all my fault, and the one who cheated and conspired to kill me and stole my property and tried to manipulate me in court instead of Arguing honestly was in the right.”

            He was panting by the time he stopped talking. He had not realized how much the Weasleys taking Ginny’s side had bothered him. Draco was right; it was much better to speak honestly, to say what one really meant, instead of avoiding it the way he had with Ginny in the months after her miscarriage, for fear of saying something that would upset her.

            Bill let out a sigh. “I still wish you could reconcile,” he said. “But I see it’s hopeless. You’re still welcome at family gatherings as far as I’m concerned, Harry, as long as you don’t insult Ginny.”

            Fleur gave a stiff shrug when Harry looked at her. Of course, he didn’t really know her, and so her approval meant less to him. He turned and faced the twins. Ron and Hermione were already smiling in support, of course.

            Fred scratched the back of his neck, coughed twice, and said, “I suppose, mate, we didn’t really think—“

            “How much we owe you for everything,” George said. His voice was an embarrassed mumble, and he had acquired Ginny’s need to avert his eyes, as if by osmosis. “After all, you gave us—“

            “The money to start the shop,” Fred finished, nodding. “And everything you told us does put—“

            “A different spin on it,” George muttered. “Malfoy was just trying to help you, I suppose, the way any Arguer would.”

            Harry bit his tongue to avoid saying You don’t know the half of it.

            “We’re sorry,” they finished together.

            Harry nodded, and looked at Molly.

            Her eyes were bright with tears. “But, Harry, dear,” she choked out, “what will you do?”

            “I’ve thought of something,” Harry said. And he had; he just didn’t know if Draco would agree to it, after the fuss he’d made about Harry being in hospital. “I’ll tell you about it in a few days. I’ll have a lot of news to tell in a few days.” When the divorce is finalized, they can learn about me and Draco, for one thing.

            “I wish—“ Molly said.

            “Don’t say it,” Harry murmured.

            She sighed, and nodded. “Then come back and have tea with me in a few days,” she said, still trying to smile. “There are some things I need to say that never did get said.”

            Harry nodded back, then turned to Ginny. She was meeting his gaze with open loathing, but she flinched when he extended his hand. He supposed he would never know how much of her blather about being afraid of him was true and how much lies.

            “I’ll need my vault key back now,” he said.

            Ginny gave a gusty sigh, as if the request were too troublesome for words, and dug in her pocket. She made sure to emphasize how much the motion inconvenienced her, with her pregnant belly, but Harry, who had seen more heavily pregnant witches in Diagon Alley carrying weighty purchases with them, was not sympathetic. In the end, she held out the silver key to the Black vault, and then tossed it to him as he reached to take it. Harry simply waved his wand and cast the Summoning Charm, letting the key settle gently into his palm.

            He Apparated away, because he thought he had said everything he needed to, and he did not want to stay for the family confrontation that would follow when the Weasleys properly digested what they’d just learned about Ginny.

*

            Draco felt Harry’s sudden presence at the edge of the anti-Apparition wards around the Manor, and smiled, a faint twitch of his lips. “Seeky,” he called, and the house-elf squeaked in acknowledgment. “Send Harry to me the moment he comes into the house.”

            The elf squeaked again, but Draco didn’t pay attention to the exact wording of the response. He was far too busy gazing in delight at the pile of information in front of him, which he would send to Skeeter for a Daily Prophet article a few days hence.

            His investigation into Blaise’s past had finally paid off. And he would release the information about it on the same day that he released the news about his mother’s kidnapping and how Harry had acted like a hero to save and defend her, and let the world know the more intimate news about him and Harry.

            The wizarding world would explode into flames around them.

            Draco imagined it in his mind’s eye, and chuckled.

            It would be so beautiful.

*



            Mm mm good: I don’t think you can say Harry has been good for Draco in the same ways; Draco already had his self-confidence, after all. But, as Harry noted in the last chapter, a pair can be equals without being identical.

            BloodyRoseBlack: Well, that might have to wait for a few chapters.

            The Shadow Bandit: Not quite yet, as you can see.
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