Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Acts of Life	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 21189 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
- 31
- 32
- 33
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Thirty-Two—Excluding
            “I don’t want to get up,” Harry said, his voice muffled by Draco’s neck. He knew he was behaving ridiculously. But from the way Draco chuckled and stroked his hair, he minded less than he would with some other people.
            “You have to,” Draco said reasonably. “If you don’t, then you’ll miss the wonderful breakfast the house-elves have prepared for us.”
            “Does it have chocolate? I can’t smell chocolate.”
            There was a small pop, a groan like the overloaded table beside Draco’s bed had just got another addition, and then another pop. “Now it does,” Draco said.
            Harry opened the eye nearest to the table. Sure enough, an elf must have popped in to add a small mug of steaming hot chocolate, and a plate with pieces of bread that had small chocolate chips baked into the crust.
            “It’s probably a bit immoral to enjoy slave labor this much,” Harry said, and sat up and reached for the hot chocolate.
            “What are you—oh.” Draco shrugged. “I’m willing to keep the house-elves out of sight and fetch things myself if Granger ever comes over, you know. And I wouldn’t ask you to use Kreacher if we were both visiting you at the same time.”
            “I know that,” Harry said. “At the moment, I don’t think the first one is ever likely to happen. The second one, I appreciate.” He bit into the bread and sighed as the chocolate seemed to melt in his mouth around the soft, slightly cinnamony taste of the bread itself. “But Hermione wants me to go further than that.”
            “I can see why you’d want to.” Draco sat up and leaned against the pillow. There was a banana and some almost transparently thin slices of orange on the plate in front of him. He looked transcendently happy, and Harry smiled at him. “But how much of Granger being able to do without house-elves is just her growing up without them? She would probably feel the same way I do if she’d grown up in a house with elves.”
            “I think she would have treated them more kindly than your family treated Dobby.”
            “That was my father,” Draco said clearly, looking into Harry’s face, “not me.” Then he turned red and swallowed a piece of banana so large that he started choking. Harry had to reach over and pound him on the back.
            “I know,” Harry told him quietly, by the time that Draco had managed to get his choking under control. “I’m not bringing that up to throw it in your face. Just to mention the limits of identification. Hermione would do lots of things differently if she didn’t have Muggle parents, but I think there are some things that would always be the same.”
            “Maybe you’re right.” Draco didn’t sound like he was convinced, but he shook his head when Harry started to open his mouth. “I don’t really want to argue about it, either.”
            “Okay,” Harry said simply. He supposed it wasn’t really worth arguing about, anyway. Either Draco would believe him, or he wouldn’t.
            “I don’t think you have to feel guilty as often as you think you have to feel guilty.” Draco was peering at him, touching one finger to his temple as if he was going to play with his hair there. “Or as often as your friends think you should.”
            Harry smiled and shook his head, putting aside the anger that immediately wanted to spring up the way Draco thought he should put aside the guilt. “That’s not my friends. That’s all me. I have an advanced sense of conscience.”
            “But your friends haven’t been enthusiastic about us, have they?”
            “Not yet,” Harry had to agree. “I think the Weasleys are still hurt over Ginny.”
            “Well, how long are they going to be hurt?” Draco demanded, putting down his hot chocolate and leaning forwards. “It’s childish, if they’re really going to hold you responsible for not loving her back.”
            “I don’t know if they do or not,” said Harry simply, and sipped slowly from the hot chocolate. “Because I haven’t talked to them about it.”
            Draco stared at Harry with his mouth slightly open. “Avoidance?” he choked out at last. “That’s extremely mature.”
            Harry rolled his eyes a little. “I’m trying to avoid hurting them more. In time, the wounds will heal. I don’t think my friends might ever understand why I’m with you, but then again, maybe they will. I don’t think they’ll ever be as enthusiastic about me dating you as they would be if I was dating Ginny. But I don’t need that from them. Just like Ron and Hermione wouldn’t need me to approve if they broke up with each other and decided that they wanted to date other people.” He reached out and ran a gentle finger down Draco’s cheek. “What’s really upsetting you about this?”
*
            Draco lowered his head. He had to ask himself the same question. He ought to have been ecstatic that he and Harry had finally made love. Giddy about the wonderfulness of it. Intent on returning the favor as soon as possible.
            Instead, he could feel the churning misery creeping up his throat, poisoning even the food he’d eaten already.
            He lay back on the bed, turning his head sullenly away from Harry, and felt Harry’s arms close around him with gentle strength. Harry lay there, waiting, and finally Draco whispered, not knowing what the words would be as they came out, “I don’t know how much of your life I can share. Knowing that they’re always there, waiting to take you away from me. You say that you don’t care what they think about us, but what if you’re wrong? What if you do, and you drop me to appease them?”
            Harry sighed a little and brushed Draco’s hair back from his eyes. “Draco. Listen to me. I can’t tell you just how much I love you. I can’t tell you just how much I love my friends.”
            Draco winced. Harry had put his finger on the heart of it. Draco did want to hear, now, how much he was loved, and that Harry loved him more than his friends. Not that Draco hated the Weasleys and Granger, not anymore, but if Harry didn’t love him more, how was he supposed to be sure?
            “It’s not about how much I love you compared to the others,” Harry whispered into his ear. “It’s about what I told you before. This is my life. And the life of anyone I choose to share it with. And the person I’m dating shares the dating part of my life and has the right to know about it. No one else.”
            Draco blinked.
            “Ron and Hermione wouldn’t thank me if I tried to tell them they should do something about getting married soon or break up or whatever,” Harry said softly. “Neither would Bill and Fleur. They’re welcome to dislike you as a person, but if they try to tell me that I shouldn’t date you, I’m going to just ignore them. They’re no more entitled to talk to me about my love life than I would be to talk to them about theirs.”
            “How can you be sure you won’t change your mind, though?” Draco whispered back.
            “Because I won’t,” Harry said, and his voice was softer and heavier, now. “This is an extension of a principle I’ve believed for a long time. Or, if you want, cursed bloody stubbornness.”
            “I don’t know what you mean.” Draco rolled over and stared up at him. Harry stroked Draco’s hair back still, with a soft, rhythmic motion.
            “I mean,” Harry said, “that I’ve never liked people telling me what I should do with my life. Who I should date. Thinking they had some right to comment on it, when it was only me and the other person I dated who should be affected.” He looked at Draco and gave a savage grin that might have frightened Draco if he hadn’t known Harry better by then. “I hated it when you were spreading rumors to Rita Skeeter and she was writing about me dating Hermione, and I hate it now.”
            “So the only way that you would stop dating me—?”
            “Is if we fell out of love, or you decided that you didn’t want to date me anymore, or something like that.” Harry put his chin on top of Draco’s head and closed his eyes. His voice was deeper and lazier, now. “And even then, I wouldn’t come back and date Ginny, which is what they wanted me to do. We just want things that are too different. I realized that in time. I think we’ll both be happier now.”
            Draco lay still and marveled. He wasn’t sure he would have had the strength to say what Harry did, and really not care what other people thought concerning his love life.
            Well, at least if his father was out of prison. Draco thought that he might have been okay with his mother. She was going to approve of Draco’s actions no matter what happened.
            “What let you become this way?” Draco asked, and touched Harry’s shoulder. “I know you’ve been different since the war, more political, but I didn’t know you were this firm.”
            “I died.”
            Draco’s heart kicked for a second, as it insisted on interpreting the words as “I’m dying,” but then he calmed down and said, “You mean when you went into the Forest?”
            “Yes.” Harry rolled back and looked at him, eyes just a few centimeters from Draco’s and face absurdly soft. “It made me realize that there are some things that are more important than my life, sure, like the world being saved—but also that some things should only be important to me. And since I got a second chance at life, like hell was I going to waste it bowing to people who thought they knew better than me.”
            “Even your friends?” It didn’t sound to Draco like Harry’s friends usually fit in that category, although maybe he was wrong.
            Once, he would have liked to be wrong. But now…
            Well, they weren’t bad people. They were just people that didn’t like Draco very much and who he felt neutral on, except for the fact that they didn’t like him very much.
            “Friends can make mistakes,” Harry said calmly. “Hermione was mistaken when she thought I should go back to Hogwarts. Ron made a mistake when he told me I should marry Ginny. But most of the time, they don’t think I should live to please them. It’s just taking longer for them to get over this than it is for them to get over my not going to Hogwarts. For understandable reasons.”
            “I’m the understandable reason.”
            “And Ginny.” Harry’s arm tightened around him. “Honestly, I think the reaction would have been pretty strong no matter who I started dating instead. We were going to get married. That was the thought in everyone’s head, and when I decided not to, I broke more expectations than just hers.”
            “Good. I don’t think you would have suited each other at all.”
            Draco tried to keep his voice neutral, but Harry still started laughing. “Of course, but you also have understandable reasons of your own.”
            Draco lay there for a moment, adjusting his reactions again. He could more than live with a Harry who was like this, someone who could accept people’s reactions and just go on doing what he wanted anyway. He accepted that Draco might break up with him someday. Likewise, he accepted that people were angry at him for not marrying Weasley.
            More than live with him.
This was the Harry who hadn’t existed before the war, the Harry who hadn’t existed before he walked into the Forbidden Forest.
And Draco loved him.
Draco rolled over further. Harry was watching him with tender eyes.
Draco kissed him and whispered, “Let’s do something that matters more than worrying how people will react to this.”
*
Severus1snape: Yes, it is. At least Harry didn’t take offense. ;)
And there’s probably not that many chapters left.
SP777: Thank you!
- 31
- 32
- 33
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

Acts of Life