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Starfall	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 32486 -:- Recommendations : 3 -:- Currently Reading : 4
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Thirty-Three—On the Town
            Draco spent a moment considering whether he should firecall Potter or owl him, but in the end, the decision was easy. Draco wanted to firecall him. He wanted to see his face and hear his voice, and it was easier to judge Potter’s reaction to his tone face-to-face, too—a tone that Draco didn’t always get right in a letter.
            The notion he might want to do so for other reasons—
            It was plausible, but Draco didn’t know how much time he wanted to waste on it. He didn’t even know if he was attracted to Potter, for Merlin’s sake. He only knew that he had reacted negatively to Potter’s attempt to put distance between them, and claimed friendship. Friendship wasn’t exactly the right name for what lay between them, but maybe that name didn’t exist.
            It was silly to worry about when he had a firecall to make.
            Draco sat before the hearth and worried about it anyway, until it dawned on him that no one had come to answer Potter’s Floo in an absurdly long time. He hesitated, wondering for a moment if Potter had gone over to his friends’ house.
            He could have. He could be visiting the entire Weasley clan, for all Draco knew. Or Andromeda, if he had got over his anger with her.
            There were lots of reasons that he might be missing from home on a Friday night. None of them were worrying.
            But Draco cast in the Floo powder that would call Grimmauld Place anyway, and kept waiting long past the time when the Floo had chimed enough to annoy a human there. Possibly Potter’s house-elf would be there. Possibly not, since Potter had said that he spent most of his time at Hogwarts, but he was the only one Draco could think of who might be able to tell him where Potter was, apart from Andromeda if Potter had gone to her.
            At last, the Floo opened, and the dirtiest house-elf Draco had ever seen popped his head through and scowled at him. “What is Master Malfoy wanting?” he asked.
            Only Potter would keep a house-elf that ungracious, Draco thought, and hid a wince at the thought of what would have happened if Potter’s ambition had been to be accepted in pure-blood society instead of to have children. “I wanted to know if Potter’s there. I tried to firecall him at home, and he didn’t answer.”
            Kreacher flapped his ears with a rapid shake of his head. “Master Potter is not being here.”
            Draco hesitated. He knew that perhaps he was being silly to be concerned, but this time, it wasn’t so easy to dismiss the fears as groundless. “Do you know where he went?”
            “Master Harry is not being here for many days,” said the house-elf, in a voice that closed the matter, and started to close the Floo, too.
            “Wait!” Draco cried, and maybe because he was of the blood of the Blacks who had once owned the house, Kreacher stopped and gave him a glare instead of simply vanishing behind the shut Floo. “I know that my house-elves can find me if someone really needs me, even if I’m out of the house. Can you do the same for Potter?”
            “What is this message that is being so urgent?” Kreacher asked, sounding as if he was interested in spite of his sullenness.
            “It concerns family,” said Draco, which was perfectly true so far as it went.
            Kreacher squinted his eyes shut. “If Master Malfoy is referring to the disgusting Mistress Potter, Master Malfoy is being as stupid as house-elves wanting freedom.”
            Draco blinked, wondering how in the world Potter had had time to start dating and find a “Mistress Potter,” but then realized Kreacher was probably talking about Potter’s former wife. A traditional house-elf would find a blood traitor disgusting. “No. It’s about—it’s about Andromeda Black, who visited a while ago with her grandson.”
            Kreacher squinted even harder, although Draco had previously thought his eyes had disappeared as much as they could. Draco held his breath. It was true that this wasn’t so urgent that he couldn’t give the message to Potter later, but he wanted to know now.
            And he wanted to know where Potter was. The idiot was probably out getting himself into trouble, and Draco would have to deal with it anyway. He might as well know where he’d have to go, too.
            “Very well, Kreacher is being not so busy,” the elf finally muttered, and turned away from the fireplace and waved his hands up and down. Draco hadn’t ever seen one of his own elves trying to locate him—of course not, since he would be out of the house at the time—and he watched curiously.
            But whatever Kreacher did, Draco couldn’t make out a pattern to it, any more than he could understand how a house-elf appearing the way it did was like Apparating. As far as he could tell, Kreacher just twitched his dirty fingers and murmured to himself, and then he spun around and stared in disbelief.
            Fuck, Potter, have you found trouble already? Draco held his face bland, and asked, “What is it?”
            “Master Harry Potter is being in the Muggle world?” breathed the elf, barely paying attention to Draco.
            Draco stood up too quickly, and nearly knocked his head on his own mantel. He sat down again and said with the kind of quiet viciousness that commanded attention from his own elves when they were being difficult, “How can you sense that? And where is he?”
            “He is being in a dark Muggle building with stains on the walls,” Kreacher said, and sniffed. “Yes, the smells of drinks,” he added, in disgust. “Muggles drinks.” He sniffed again, listened again, and then said, “It is being in a street that is having a fountain of a rearing horse not far from the entrance. The horse is having a green saddle. And there is a sign above the door that is having a red hammer on it.”
            Draco nodded. “Good. Thank you, Kreacher,” he remembered to add. Kreacher had done him a favor, he technically wasn’t Draco’s elf, and this might mitigate Potter’s irritation, if he got upset about Draco coming after him in the Muggle world.
            But the thought of that irritation, and even the knowledge that Potter was probably all right if he was in a Muggle pub, didn’t move Draco. He was going after him. And he would ask Potter what the hell he was thinking.
            Why? Because he wanted to, that was why.
*
            Harry had to admit he wasn’t having as much fun as he had hoped, but on the other hand, he was surrounded with voices and laughter and jokes he couldn’t understand. And these were people he didn’t know.
            Harry would get used to being around them, he silently vowed to himself. He would come back here, probably. It was the first pub he had wandered into, one entirely by chance, but the people here didn’t stare in the way that they would if he had his scar visible or his glamours were failing.
            He could get to know some people. With time, he might get to understand the games showing on the telly and the laughter that had nearly killed a few people when someone asked how Sam’s wife was. He could accept, without flinching, the slap that someone had given his back because that other person was happy and drunk and just wanted other people to share his happiness.
            This was the life that normal people lived, and the life that Harry had been ignoring by holing up in his house and writing as Ethan. These people had an advantage over the ideal life he’d imagined for himself. They were real.
            He sipped his drink again. He didn’t even know the name of it, just that it was strong and dark and made his eyes tear up a little like Firewhisky would. The barkeep had simply given it to Harry without much of a glance, and Harry thought he’d probably been mistaken for someone else who came in often.
            So far, Harry couldn’t say he was disappointed with his results for the venture. He had barely spoken, only grunted and nodded, and laughed a few times when people around him laughed and it seemed appropriate.
            But he was the one who had chosen to hold off on talking, wasn’t he? He was the one who had decided that he would only observe on this first evening out. Maybe he would speak if someone talked to him, but he didn’t want to make friends yet.
            Coward.
            Hidden behind the drape of his cloak—which he had Transfigured into a heavy coat as soon as he realized how much it would stand out in a Muggle area—Harry winced a little. Yes, he wasn’t at his best right now. He was only now climbing out of the cocoon that losing Ethan had cast him into.
            He would get better. And hiding inside his house and sullenly staring at the walls wasn’t the way to do that. He had to go through these awkward first steps before he could ever set foot on the road.
            The door of the pub opened, and Harry glanced towards it out of habit. He had already decided that maybe if he saw someone who looked friendly and like they were searching for a place to sit, he would talk to them. Or someone who seemed unfamiliar with the rest of the pub and like they didn’t come here often. It would be easier to speak to another stranger.
            The person who stepped in seemed like they were searching, all right, but not for a place to sit. There was Malfoy, his eyes snapping from face to face. He wore a shirt and trousers for once instead of robes—maybe he’d done the same thing as Harry and Transfigured them from his ordinary clothes—but he was getting glances even for that. For one thing, the clothes were way too nice for his surroundings, a crisp white shirt and black trousers that looked as if he were wearing them to a masquerade party.
            Harry blinked and gaped and lowered his head over his drink. What is he doing here?
            Of course, a second later he knew, and felt a little annoyed. Whether Malfoy had used magic to track him down or asked someone—although Harry hadn’t told anyone which pub he was going to—then he was here to bother Harry. Harry turned determinedly back to his drink. He might be failing to blend in much, but he wasn’t going to single himself out by responding to Malfoy’s sweeping gaze, either. The whole point was to make new friends. Or at least acquaintances.
            “I’m looking for someone,” said Malfoy, and his voice made a lot of people around Harry go quiet. It was too loud for the atmosphere that Harry had already noticed in the pub. Yes, it was noisy here, but that came from the combination of voices, not one alone. “His name is Harry Potter. Is he here?” And he went on standing there with his head turning slightly from side to side, as though he didn’t see the stares that fastened on him.
            Maybe he didn’t, Harry thought with a slight sense of despair. To Malfoy, Muggles weren’t part of his daily existence. He would stare in much the same way if he saw one in the wizarding world, but to him, he was the normal one and the one who ought to be home in any situation. Stares would probably register as compliments.
            “No one by that name here,” said a hulking man in the corner who looked as though Malfoy had woken him up. “Go ‘way.”
            Similar mutters succeeded him. Malfoy didn’t flush red and back out the door, which Harry knew was what he would have done himself—assuming he was even enough of a fool to come to a pub like this in the first place and name who he was looking for, which he wouldn’t have been. Malfoy only frowned and shook his head.
            “No, I tracked him here. I’m certain he’s here.”
            At the word “tracked,” a different kind of mutter ran around the room, and Harry saw a glint and flash from something metallic. He sighed. He doubted that any Muggle would actually try to knife Malfoy in front of the entire room, but on the other hand, he could be setting up a less than pleasant reception for himself later, when he left.
            It didn’t seem like he would leave without his prey, either. His mouth was set in a frown that Harry knew could twist to petulance. He and Scorpius were a lot alike that way.
            Harry lumbered to his feet, trying to make it seemed like he was heavier and drunker than he actually was, and wavered his way up to Malfoy. “No trouble, right?” he said, and droned the words out as he turned Malfoy towards the door. “No trouble.”
            The response he got was still a mutter, and there were people watching Malfoy intently, but it was calmer. Malfoy let himself go with Harry’s touch, but there was a turn of his head and a slight smile that said he knew perfectly well who Harry was.
            “So,” he said, when they’d got outside the door of the pub and Harry was shaking the light rain off the hood of his coat, “why did you come here of all places?”
            Harry thought about ignoring everything, both the words and the disdain in the words, and going back inside the pub. Malfoy would—
            No, actually, Malfoy probably would follow him, and keep asking him questions in a loud voice that would draw everyone’s attention and make Harry’s attempt to blend into the crowd and have a normal evening out useless.
            Harry sighed and threw his coat back. Malfoy raised an unimpressed eyebrow, and Harry thought it was at the coat, or maybe the state of Harry’s hair, until he said, “Interesting glamours. But far inferior to your real face, I find. Remove them. Now.”
            “You’re a git sometimes, you know that, right?” Harry asked roughly as he waved his wand and banished the glamours that clung in front of his eyes and scar. Malfoy only stared at him in something that looked like pleasure, and Harry swore and caught his arm. “Listen, this is stupid. I came here because I wanted to go to a place where no one knew me and I could lose myself. And maybe make some friends.”
            Malfoy jerked back as though Harry had scalded him. Harry watched him hopefully. Maybe he’d thought better of his project of tracking Harry down, and now he would go elsewhere, and Harry could return to the pub.
            Or another one. He would probably get teasing about being queer if he went back in now.
            “Why do you need to make new friends?” Malfoy asked, and his voice hissed. “I thought the ones you had were enough for you.”
            Oh, fuck. Harry shook more water off his head. “Ron and Hermione are great. But they’re busy tonight, and I was lonely, and I finally started thinking how pathetic it was that I was sitting around mourning the loss of Ethan and not doing anything else.” He moved out of the rain under another nearby building’s slanted front roof, and Malfoy followed, his eyes still darker with outrage than Harry’s simple little problem merited. “I wanted to get my life back on track.”
            “And you never thought of me? Your other friend?”
            Harry blinked. “Of course I did.”
            “And?” Malfoy set himself in the same stance that he would use if he was about to engage in a duel.
            “It was late,” Harry said, and shrugged. “I thought that you were either putting Scorpius to bed or probably had a party with some of your friends over.”
            “You thought.” Malfoy seemed to grow two sizes, even though Harry knew that was impossible without magic that he would have felt Malfoy casting. “You don’t have much luck with assumptions, do you? Assuming that you could just live past your memories. Assuming that two friends were all you needed. Why—”
            The rising tone of his voice was starting to attract attention, at least if the people slouching through the streets were turning their heads in Malfoy’s direction the way Harry thought they were. He gripped Malfoy’s arm to quiet him. “Let’s take this off the street,” he suggested, and drew further back into the shadows. Malfoy, surprisingly, came with him.
            When Harry was sure that no one was looking at them, he Apparated home, through the wards, and turned around with a little sigh of exasperation to look at Malfoy as they landed with a bump in the dining room. “Now, will you tell me what has you so upset?”
*
            Draco could feel the boiling emotions in him boiling up. It had seemed so simple a matter, when he followed Potter into the Muggle world, to find him and give him Andromeda’s message and go home. And somehow, it had turned into this situation in the Muggle pub where Potter tried to hide from him, as if they were still enemies, and then Potter had said that he didn’t want to bother Draco.
            And now Potter looked at Draco and spoke that bloody little sentence, as if he didn’t know perfectly well why Draco was upset.
            Draco boiled over.
            “You fucker,” he snarled, and strode up to Potter so that he was in his breathing space and Potter was staring almost at his own hands trying to keep Draco’s in view, “did it ever occur to you that if I was entertaining friends, you would be welcome? Because you’re one of them? And even if Scorpius was going to bed, he’d be thrilled to see you, and the only problem would be to get him to stop chattering and stay in bed once I’d put him there?”
            Potter lifted his head, and a complicated stubborn expression crossed his face. “I didn’t want to interfere with that,” he retorted. “The things you choose to do for your son. His bedtime, or the way you discipline him. If I would have interfered, then it’s a good thing I didn’t choose to show up.”
            Draco seized Potter’s shoulders and bent towards him. Potter didn’t appear impressed that Draco was breathing fast enough to rival a dragon himself. He simply stared, and Draco supposed that that kind of stare would have knocked people back on their heels when Potter was an Auror.
            “You are such an idiot,” Draco whispered. “It isn’t interference. I would never have called you over and asked you to help me with Scorpius if I thought it was.”
            “You didn’t know who you were writing to, remember?” Potter’s eyes were almost red in the firelight.
            “You—” Draco was so furious it was hard to form the heat into words. “I meant, the time that I wrote to you and told you to come over to my house and help me with Scorpius. And you came, and you stayed and had dinner with me and him. Are you only ever going to think yourself welcome when I explicitly invite you? Am I ever going to get a request for a visit, or are you going to hold up this fucking beacon of virtue every time and tell yourself and me that you’re only doing it for our own good?”
            Potter gave him an honestly bewildered glance, and Draco swore under his breath. He released Potter and turned his back, kicking at some of the ashes that had fallen from the fireplace onto the floor. They scattered, but that didn’t make Draco feel much better.
            “Listen to me,” Draco breathed, not looking at Potter this time. If he looked, he would get overwhelmed again by how idiotic Potter was and just want to grab him and shake him again. As tempting as that was, Potter couldn’t listen if he was grabbed and shaken. “Friends can ask favors. I want you to. I want you to ask to come over and have me listen to your woes sometimes, as well as you doing it for me. I want you to ask to play with Scorpius as well as help him. He adores you, you know.”
            “I don’t—I don’t know why,” said Potter, and then he made what he obviously thought was a joke. “Careful, Malfoy, or I’ll think you adore me, too.”
            Draco spun, and this time the temptation was too strong. He walked back to Potter, the slow, deliberate, stalking steps that he had never used with anyone after he was out of Hogwarts. Potter blinked and stared, and didn’t try to move away when Draco reached out and put a hand on his chest, above his heart, although that could have been shock rather than longing.
            “Yes,” Draco whispered.
            “Yes, they could think it,” said Potter, and arched his neck back like a nervous horse. “I know that, I think that, because I just said it, remember?”
            Draco watched him with a sardonic smile. He had been the uncomfortable one and the vulnerable one for a while, wanting a closer connection with Potter without knowing what kind of connection he wanted or what to name it or how to get it. But now, even if Potter rejected him, he knew he would be the stronger. At least he knew what he wanted, and he wasn’t flailing around in Muggle pubs where he had no business being to try and find it.
            “Come on,” said Potter suddenly. “I tricked you. I lied to you. You can’t possibly—”
            He fell silent, staring at Draco. Draco just shrugged. “I had perhaps the most dysfunctional marriage of anyone I know who was married,” he said. “Pansy complains about her husband all the time, but at least she’s stayed married. Do you know how little Astoria and I cared about each other? And I could have destroyed my relationship with my son for all I knew about raising him. I don’t think that it’s nonsense to like the person who saved me from that.” He paused. “Maybe adoration is a little strong.”
            “And you saved Teddy,” Potter said. “It’s not like you owe me anything.”
            “Hard as it may be for you to believe,” Draco said dryly, “this isn’t about debts and owing. This is about wanting.”
            “You only think—surely part of this comes from school and the obsessions we had with each other then?” Potter sounded like he was pleading.
            “Maybe it does,” Draco said. “I find myself uninterested in tracking emotions to their origins. What matters is that I want you to come over when you find yourself in need of a friend. I want you to play with Scorpius because you’d like to, because you want to be around children, rather than just because you think that he needs someone to heal him. I want to get to know you and talk to you about something other than the parts of our pasts we already knew about.” He would be interested in getting to know more about the parts of Potter’s past that he wasn’t familiar with, the parts Potter had talked about in Healer Brandeis’s office.
            Potter still looked as though someone had hit him on the head with a fairly large hammer, minus the probable leakage of blood and brains. Draco wasn’t putting a leakage of common sense past him, though. “I never—I never even thought of this.”
            “I know,” Draco said. “Start thinking.”
            “You didn’t,” said Potter, and swallowed loudly, “say anything about more than friendship just now. But I thought you were implying it.”
            Draco stepped lightly back, not taking his eyes from Potter’s. “I’d like that,” he said. “But I want it returned willingly. I demand friendship, because you agreed to that. Anything else can wait.”
            Potter’s face became slowly more thoughtful. Then he nodded. “I—I did think of coming to you,” he said. “Honestly.”
            “Then what you need to do,” Draco said slowly and deeply, “is to get beyond the thinking.”
            Potter studied him, and then nodded again. “Whatever’s here,” he said. “It’s not going away.”
            “No,” Draco said, able to relax now it seemed that Potter was acknowledging that. “It won’t.”
            Potter leaned back against the wall, then smiled a little. “All right. Thanks, Malfoy. Even if you did spoil my chance of picking up a date or something in that pub.”
            “Why wouldn’t I want to ruin it?” Draco drawled, and had the satisfaction of seeing Potter blush almost as fiercely as Draco had spoken, before.
            “All right,” Potter repeated. “Thanks.”
            It wasn’t entirely clear where they would go from here, any more than it was what Potter was thanking him for, but Draco was satisfied that at least they were on the road.
*
Meechypoo: Yes, at least Harry does have Huggins’s support.
Draco has realized how much he’d like to have Harry in his life, but he’ll only have it if Harry sincerely agrees. The last thing he wants is Harry agreeing because he thinks that it’s some duty he owes Draco.
SP777: Harry won’t use that disguise again. He may at some point tell someone, like his friends or Healer Brandeis, about it.
Jester: At some point that would probably have been an ideal solution, but I think Harry would feel too old to be adopted. And he does still have that yearning for a blood child, not an adopted one.
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