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Light of the Life That Is	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 3154 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Three--Meetings at the Burrow
            "Harry. I don't believe...no, I believe it. I just don't believe it."
            Well, that's promising, Draco thought, but he kept his face bland as he stepped back and let Ginny Weasley come up to Harry. She was staring, and Draco wondered if she realized she was doing it. Harry, who was almost exactly her height, took her hands, giving his own wry smile. Draco relaxed a bit. He thought he would know if Harry became intolerably uncomfortable, and then he could intervene.
            There were other people in the room who might already be that way, of course. Ginny herself. Her husband, standing back with a glass in his hand and a very hard expression on his face. The Weasley matriarch, who stood with her hand pressed to her mouth and tears in her eyes. Weasley the Original and Granger, who looked as though they desperately wished no one would ask them about why they'd known first.
            "Yeah, it's me, Ginny." Harry squeezed her hands. "I can't promise that I'm exactly the same. Six years guarding part of Voldemort's soul changes someone. But I'm me, and I'm back."
            Ginny abruptly hugged him. Draco, his patience honed further by teaching even than by Potions training, remained still, and saw Harry close his eyes. But he could easily have got away if he wanted to, and he didn't want to.
            His choice, his desires. For Draco, those were still paramount. Harry had wanted Draco to come with him to the Burrow even though Draco had been sure that he would rather meet the Weasleys alone. And as long as he wanted to be embraced and kissed and questioned and shaken, then Draco wouldn't intervene.
            "Harry." The Weasley matriarch seemed to have overcome her doubts, and she staggered forwards now and embraced Harry in turn. Luckily, Ginny had let him go first. Draco thought he might have been smothered otherwise. "It's really you?"
            And she began to cry into his hair.
            Draco held back a grimace and turned to Ginny's husband. Dean Thomas gave him a pale, strained smile. "It's strange, isn't it?" he asked quietly, his eyes going back to Harry's face. "I used to dream about this. Wondering if it was possible that Harry hadn't died after all. But I never thought I would actually see it."
            "It's not that strange," Draco said. "I used the Elder Wand to bring him back exactly as he looked then. There wasn't much else I could do. It's remarkable enough that the Wand had the power for that. If I'd asked it to age him, I don't think it could have complied."
            Thomas gave him a faint smile. "Sure, but it's still strange to see him looking exactly the same. Younger, and everything." He seemed to decide he had said too much, and turned away to commune with his glass.
            Draco considered not intervening, once more, but in this case, he thought he could make things more comfortable for Harry later, without Harry having to do much himself. "He doesn't want to take her from you."
            Thomas's head twitched towards him. "What?"
            "He doesn't want to take her from you," Draco repeated patiently. Sometimes he thought he would lose his temper with Gryffindors not because of their wild emotions, but because of how many things they needed repeated. "He was eighteen when they were in love. But he's not that now in mind, no matter how he looks. I promise, he won't care that you're married. He might even be glad. It'll resolve some questions that would otherwise be awkward."
            Thomas spluttered, and his cheeks turned red. "You can't just say something like that, Malfoy!"
            Draco did have to smile then. Sometimes, acting like a Gryffindor could be gratifying. "Why not? Because I'm a Slytherin and the lot of you don't expect it? There doesn't seem to be a reason otherwise."
            "Because no one talks about first love and lost love like that!" Thomas's hand was tight around his glass now. "Do you know how long it was before I could talk to Ginny about Harry? And now I have to accept that she's going to feel conflicted."
            "She can feel conflicted all she wants," Draco said coolly, "but she'll stay married to you. Harry's not about to demand she get a divorce. He doesn't want her to. He doesn't want to be married to her."
            "Why not?" Thomas asked simply. "Anyone would be."
            Draco paused, and chose his reaction. He chose to regard this as a touching proof of a husband's devotion and one that upped the chances of Thomas and Ginny staying comfortably hooked, rather than self-evident idiocy. "He doesn't think the same way anymore. You heard him. Six years guarding a shard of soul..."
            Thomas shivered, but his gaze was still wondering on Ginny's back, as she sat down as close as she could get to Harry with her mother still hugging him and began to chatter to him. "She always had a crush on him for being a hero, then. And you don't get much more heroic than giving up six years of your life to save the world."
            "I agree," Draco said mildly. It, after all, fit with his wish to have Harry honored for what he had done, so he wouldn't tell Thomas that he also thought it foolish almost beyond endurance. "Still, she's had, what, four years of being married to you?"
            Thomas nodded. "This might push everything awry again, though." He had decided to brood, from the gaze he fixed on his cup. "It was two years before she would agree to marry me. She said she was still in mourning."
            Draco silently asked the ceiling with his eyes why he had been chosen to play Gryffindor relationship counselor.
            But he knew the answer. Because this should make things easier for Harry, and I would do anything for Harry. It doesn't matter if it makes sense. It matters that it might help him.
            "She hasn't been in mourning for all those years, though, right?" Draco asked. He knew the answer, but Thomas was staring at him as if this was an entirely new concept, so Draco also knew he had to go slowly. "She doesn't wake you up in the night sobbing about him?"
            Thomas's face flushed, but he grinned almost in spite of himself, it seemed. "You don't need to know what she wakes me up in the middle of the night for."
            Draco held up his hand in a warding gesture. "I agree, but you can tell me without needing to offer a lot of detail. She doesn't do that?"
            Thomas shook his head, still weirdly focused on Draco. Well, if he wasn't watching Harry's every movement for some sign of an intention to grope Ginny, that would do its own bit of good.
            "Then she won't suddenly do it now," Draco said softly. "Let her have the pleasure of welcoming her friend and lost hero back to life. Don't interfere in that, and don't tax her with being jealous. It'll resolve itself."
            Thomas looked reassured, but he still muttered, "Easy for you to say," as he turned back to the embracing marathon. "You don't have someone here who's your whole life."
            It's not easy, Draco thought, and leaned back against the wall, blending into the wood again as he watched the Weasley family converge on Harry.
*
            Molly finally let go of Harry, wiping her eyes. Harry smiled at her. He wasn't sure that he would be able to breathe anytime soon, but for her to still love him that much, and not panic or wring her hands the way that some people in the Ministry had...that was wonderful.
            "I'm going to go make you some treacle tart," Molly told him, and bustled off to the kitchen.
            Harry grinned, and turned to George, who had a bell in his hand and a contemplative look on his face. Harry rolled his eyes and held out his hand for the bell. "Only because I've been gone six years, and it's you," he told George.
            "Thank you," George said, with a prim little smile belied by the gleeful tone in his voice, and touched the bell to the center of Harry's palm.
            Harry's whole body seemed to ring, his teeth jarring in his head and his ears rattling and bouncing. He leaned back, wincing and gasping, and shook his hand. "What's that? A prank to turn Death Eaters' heads around on them?"
            "I've never got the chance to test it on an actual Death Eater," George said, "but good guess. I invented it mostly because I wanted to know what it was like to be inside a bell, and then rung. I think it succeeded, don't you?"
            He looked up at Harry, his eyes bright and blazing--and a bit of sadness along the edges of them. Harry reached out and clasped his wrist so hard that George winced, but didn't stop looking at him.
            "I would have brought him back for you if I could," Harry said quietly.
            George sucked in enough air to make his lungs scream, and then nodded without releasing the scream that Harry thought he'd been preparing. "It's all right," he said with equal softness. "I know you would have, and that means I can forgive you for not being him."
            He leaned forwards and knuckled his hand into Harry's hair until Harry's eyes watered. "Welcome back, little brother."
            He walked away to the kitchen, where his mother was calling for help, and Harry smiled and turned back to Ginny, who he still hadn't had a proper conversation with.
            Ginny looked at him with a trembling lip and an even more trembling smile for just a second before she looked away.
            Harry sighed and reached for her hand. She gave it to him, but she kept her face averted, her breathing low and slow and regular. Harry knew that she was trying to control her tears, although he hadn't heard her do it more than once or twice when they were together.
            "I'm sorry I couldn't come back earlier," he told her softly.
            Her head snapped around, and her eyes focused on him. "I tried," she snapped, as if Harry had accused her of something. "I went to the Forbidden Forest and cast every single spell I could think of on that stupid shade, trying to stop it. I researched necromancy and tried to call up your soul. I clipped a lock of hair from your corpse and tried to summon you back with that. I tried."
            "Is that why I feel like a hank is missing on this side?" Harry muttered, and tugged on his hair on the left. But Ginny refused to look up or smile, and Harry sighed. "I would have come back for you if I could. But Malfoy was the one who had to figure out the exact right combination of things to do, and then that the Deathly Hallows were involved."
            Ginny glanced up, blinking. She was still lovely when her face shone with interest, Harry thought absently. "He found them? But no one could find the Resurrection Stone."
            "He found it," Harry confirmed. "I don't know exactly what spell he was using to find it." That was one of the things he hadn't asked Malfoy yet because everything else had been so much more important. "But he did."
            Ginny bowed her head. "Then I could have found it if I had searched harder."
            Harry's mouth tightened a little. He had done his share of reassuring and coaxing, but he didn't know what to say to this.
            His gaze crossed Malfoy's. Malfoy still leaned against the wall, and his stance was as relaxed, his face as open, as they had been when Ron and Hermione were in his rooms at Hogwarts and discussing the way that they should handle Harry's resurrection. He nodded to Harry without much moving his head.
            I can do anything when he's here.
            Harry turned back to Ginny. "You couldn't have, not without the right spell," he said gently. "And then you would still have to have the knowledge of necromancy and the conviction that my shade was more than just a remnant of the battle. Hell, McGonagall herself never managed to get me back. I think Malfoy only managed because he wasn't used to the shade and more prone to question it."
            "I should have tried harder," Ginny said. "Instead of giving up."
            Harry caught and held her hands. "I wouldn't have wanted you to give up on living your life because you thought you should only try to bring me back," he said softly. "The same way I wouldn't have wanted you to never marry Dean because you thought you should be faithful to me."
            Ginny's lip trembled again, and her head bowed. That was the heart of the problem here, Harry knew. Ginny had been perfectly happy in her marriage to Dean, but now she had to question herself and wonder if she could have had Harry back, the one she had been in love with, if she'd just pushed a little harder and questioned more.
            What bothered Harry was that he just didn't care that much.
            He wanted Ginny to be happy, but he had given up on the notion of her only being happy with him. He hadn't thought about much other than Voldemort and guard duty and the way he'd died in the last six years, but some emotions had come roaring back to life the minute he opened his eyes here, as if they had been doing nothing but stay frozen like rivers under ice, and had assumed their proper place when he had resources to think about anything else. His friendship with Ron and Hermione and his pleasure in seeing the Weasleys again were like that.
            But some emotions just hadn't come back. He would always wish Ginny well, but she had moved on and married someone else, and he had moved on in his head to become...
            Well, someone else. Someone different. He thought he still deserved to be called Harry Potter, but he didn't know how much else he could claim as an identity with his past self.
            "You did what you needed to do, to be happy and live," Harry told her. "I could never resent that."
            Ginny snapped her head up and gazed intently into his eyes. Harry smiled back. He and Ginny had always understood each other, even if Harry sometimes hadn't realized the source of it, as when Ginny reminded him that he hadn't been the only one possessed by Voldemort. They could understand each other now.
            Ginny sniffled. "I don't deserve a friend like you."
            Harry did shove her, this time, and almost sent her spilling off the couch because she hadn't expected it. "There's a level of self-deprecation beyond what I'll put up with," Harry told her firmly, as she looked at him in surprise. "And this is it."
            Finally, that convinced her to smile and lean over to kiss his cheek. "Thank you," she whispered. "You have no idea how much this means to me."
            "I might," Harry said, and squeezed her hand before she moved away and let Bill and Fleur come up to him. Harry hadn't had a chance to meet their children, and he thought the night would probably be full of learning names and stories about first words. Victoire was six now, but evidently still shy, from the way she hid behind her mother at the sight of him. Four-year-old Dominique seemed much bolder, wavering up to Harry and examining him as if she had heard there was something different about him and wanted to see what it was.
            Harry picked her up and made faces at her until she giggled, and even Victoire leaned around Fleur to look at what was happening. Then he turned back to Bill and Fleur, and started catching up.
*
            "I don't know how to thank you for bringing him back."
            Draco had suspected this was coming for some time, the Talk with Weasley. Dinner had finished, and Harry was still in the kitchen with the rest of the family and Granger, most of them talking a mile a minute now that the initial constraint was past. Draco could understand why and how they wanted to catch Harry up on all their lives, but it was a little overwhelming to be in the middle of, particularly when he didn't share most of their memories.
            Therefore, when Weasley had glanced at him and motioned with his head towards the garden, Draco had been glad enough to walk out with him, even knowing what was coming.
            Now, he cast a Warming Charm on his hands and turned away from his inspection of the frost on the grass to an inspection of Weasley's profile. "You don't need to thank me beyond the ordinary words," he said mildly. "I know why I did it, and it wasn't for you."
            Weasley walked a few steps further, his face locked in a frown so deep that Draco knew more was coming. He refrained from staring up at the sky and sighing, but he wanted to. He managed to restrain it to a single stamp on the frost-ruined grass, which crackled and bent in response.
            "You might consider what it would do to Harry if he heard you saying things like that," Weasley said. "I know we aren't your friends, but it would help if you behaved like we were."
            Draco turned around and stared at him. "And are you going to act that friendly towards me?" The question was spontaneous and open, the way that Gryffindors were always urging him to be, and from the side of him that only Harry had seen up until this point. There was no reason, Draco thought, for Weasley to turn that red and start stammering.
            Draco snorted and shook his head. "No, you aren't. You just think that I should grant you the benefit of the doubt for anything you want to do."
            "I didn't say that at all," Weasley snapped. "I only want to make it clear that we aren't going to disappear from Harry's life."
            "I think it should be clear, in turn, that I'm not asking you to," Draco said, and lowered his voice. The thing he could think of that would hurt Harry the most at the moment was coming out the back door and hearing this conversation. "I stayed out of the way while Harry had his reunion with you. I didn't even mean to sit beside him at dinner, but he was the one who decided I should." He paused, but Weasley looked at him with a blank face that could have concealed a multitude of sins, so Draco nailed the point home. "I'm not going to disappear from Harry's life, either."
            Weasley squinted at him in frustration. Draco squinted back.
            "You have a job," Weasley said. "A job that I know you haven't been neglecting, because I wrote to Harry. How do you think he feels sitting in your rooms all day?"
            "He's not sitting there and staring at the walls," Draco said. "He's reading books and back editions of the Prophet to catch up on all the history he missed, and he's ordering all sorts of food from the house-elves to get used to having a sense of taste again. He even takes baths and sleeps because he couldn't do that where he was." He sighed when Weasley didn't move. "I know that he talked about that in his letters to you, so don't act like it was a surprise."
            "You read his letters?"
            "No, of course not," Draco said. "He reads them aloud to me, and talks about what he's writing about. He wants to."
            Weasley stared at him with his mouth slightly open. Draco managed to clasp his hands behind his back and turn his face away before Weasley could notice the smile sneaking across his mouth, but it was a near thing.
            "What does he want with you?" Weasley whispered, not sounding as if he really had much expectation of hearing that answered. "Why are you so important to him? I'm never going to understand that."
            Draco rolled his eyes. "Funny. You understood it well enough that your sister had a crush on him after Harry rescued her from the basilisk."
            There was silence, and spluttering, and then Weasley began, "That's entirely different. Harry doesn't have a crush on you!"
            Draco laughed. "Trust you to pick up on the least important thing about that statement. I don't know what Harry's feelings about me are, exactly. When he's ready, he'll tell me. But I saved his life, and I don't think that he's had many people play the hero for him, instead of the other way around." He turned back and spoke seriously, since Weasley seemed to require that, no matter how silly Draco thought it was. "Don't drive me away, Weasley. He needs me, and I won't stand for being driven away, anyway."
            Weasley sighed so moodily that Draco expected to see a great cloud of steam rising up from him, but at least he shook his head and gave in--with bad grace. "We worry about Harry."
            "So do I," Draco replied promptly. "He hasn't even wanted to go and get a wand yet, even though he talked about that more than once. And it's an overwhelming situation for anyone to get plunged into."
            Weasley considered him from the corner of his eye. Draco turned his head as the door from the back of the Burrow opened.
            Harry stepped out into the night, looked around for them, and smiled. The soft, melting, tender smile that overwhelmed his face when he was reading a letter from his friends, or looking at Draco while they spoke together at one of their private meals.
            "Fine."
            "Hmmm?" Draco turned his head towards Weasley, a little, without taking his gaze off Harry.
            "When you look like that at him," Weasley grumbled, "I reckon I can't disapprove too much."
            Draco shrugged and went on looking at Harry whatever way he was looking. Harry was the most important thing here, not either of them.
            Harry strode across the garden to him, nodded to Weasley, and took Draco's arm, steering him familiarly towards the Apparition point outside the garden. "Goodbye, Ron. I already said goodbye to the rest of your lot. Tell your mum that I don't need sixty pounds of treacle tart, all right? She'd have to borrow owls to carry it, anyway."
            Weasley's face relaxed, and he called, "I'll be sure to tell her."
            Draco closed his eyes. He had Harry's warmth and close presence moving beside him, the sureness of his stride, even the height of his head exactly at his shoulder. All of it was what he wanted.
            "Malfoy? Is something wrong?"
            Draco opened his eyes, smiled down at Harry, and said, "Nothing at all."
            Harry blinked a little, and then smiled back.
*
BAFan: Thanks! He’s not perfectly mature, but he’s pretty close to it.
delia cerrano: Yes, that was one reason Ginny feels guilty. She thinks she should have done it if it was easy.
SP777: Thank you!
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Light of the Life That Is