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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.

Chapter List
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Chapter Thirty-Four—Arrangements
            Harry opened his eyes the next morning to an irritated pecking noise. He sat up, shaking his head, and reached for his glasses. He couldn’t remember the last time he had slept this late.
            An owl hovered just beyond the windowpane, tapping again, and hooting in anger. Harry stood up and slowly made his way over to the window, opening it with a feeling that the owl would dissolve just as he touched the message on its leg and it would reveal itself as nothing more than a realistic dream.
            Instead, though, the owl soared into the room the moment the window was open and ruffled its feathers hard, staring at him. Harry let it land on the perch and stood there, blinking slowly, until he saw the owl extend its leg. He didn’t want to try and relieve it of its burden until then. He was dazed, his sleep tattered across his mind by the sudden awakening, and he didn’t need a peck on his head like the window glass had got.
            The note was from Malfoy, and Harry hated the telltale way his heart quickened the moment he read it.
            Potter, in all the excitement yesterday, I forgot to give you the message from Andromeda that was the original reason I sought you out in the first place. She wants you to come back and visit her and Teddy. I believe she’s ready to apologize, although she didn’t confess her deepest heart to me.
            Malfoy hadn’t signed it. Harry scowled. The arrogant git had no right to assume that Harry would simply recognize his handwriting, even though it seemed that was exactly what he’d done.
            The owl gave a threatening hoot and stare. Harry didn’t know why Malfoy wanted a reply to a message so simple, but he must, or the bird—as arrogant as he was—would already have gone on its way. He sighed and plodded into the next room to retrieve parchment and ink.
            He couldn’t think of what to write at first, but finally, he decided that it would be something as simple as Malfoy’s message to him had been. It wasn’t as though Harry owed him any more than that.
            Thank you for letting me know. I’ll stop by Andromeda’s house as soon as I can.
            He tossed the letter at the owl, which caught it and sat staring at him for a minute longer. Harry stared back, then reached for his wand, which was on the bedside table where he kept it most of the time.
            Before he could touch it, the owl was skimming out the window, wings widespread and feet tucked under its tail as though it had always meant to go in that direction and had only stayed so long out of an obligation to him.
            Harry managed to grin, once. But the next second, he felt as though he had been plunged into cold water, and awakened out of sheer shame. Had he really been about to curse an owl? Really?
            Harry shook his head and turned away. He had things to do. A shower. At least a few hours in the office, because there were some people who would come if only to have the prestigious Harry Potter treating their children. A visit to Andromeda that afternoon. But first a trip to the shops, so he would have a little gift for Teddy, a small apology for neglecting him for so long.
            Any thinking about Malfoy—especially, any thinking about Malfoy and the conversation they’d had last night—could wait.
*
            “This is rich.”
            Draco buried his head in his hands. He should have known better than to make any confession of his problems to Blaise, he thought. He did know better. What had possessed him, that he’d told Blaise about Harry? And then Blaise had looked at him with that little frown he had and asked why it was Potter in particular that Draco was having these problems with, and then the rest of it had come out.
            Since then, Blaise hadn’t stopped laughing.
            Draco turned violently away from Blaise and stared out the window that looked into the gardens. There was a lot of mud there and few flowers, right now. The elves were replanting the flowerbeds and were busy darting back and forth, waving their hands and floating bulbs and pots in the air and making small shovels dig frantically under their command. But at least it was something to watch that wasn’t Blaise’s laughing face.
            “Are you done yet?” Draco finally asked between gritted teeth, when the whoops behind him had lessened once, and then broken out in helpless snorts once again.
            “No,” Blaise gasped, and whooped again. He did sound as though he’d tried to stop, Draco acknowledged rigidly, still staring out the window, but that wasn’t the same thing as actually managing to do it. And Draco was losing patience.
            “I’m so glad that finding your best friend has conceived a hopeless passion for a Gryffindor is so amusing to you,” Draco finally said, when Blaise had reached for a handkerchief and started cleaning up the tears of laughter that had gathered around his eyes. “Instead of sympathy, you offer me this.” He waved his hand at Blaise.
            “I’m sorry,” Blaise gasped, and Draco could have believed that if he hadn’t shot a sly glance at Draco and immediately had to look away again as his lips started twitching. “I don’t enjoy laughing at you, Draco. It’s just—”
            “Bollocks.”
            “Yes, all right,” said Blaise, and held up a hand that vibrated a little with his amusement. “But you have to admit that it is pretty bloody funny. All this time, I thought Theodore was imagining it.”
            “Imagining what?” Draco’s hands closed into fists. He hated the thought that his best friends had been talking about him behind his back.
            “This attraction that he insisted you had to each other.” Blaise glanced at him with glinting eyes and then hastily lowered his eyelids again, looking far too pleased with himself. “He says that he saw it in the way you couldn’t let go of your enmity against Potter in school, and then the way you discussed Potter with him a few weeks ago. I laughed at him, because you’ve changed a lot since school, even though Theo hasn’t been here to see it happen. But I reckon—I reckon he was right.”
            Blaise looked as if his throat was trembling again, and Draco broke in with an icy smile. “How inconvenient for Theo that Potter had no idea of being attracted to me at all until I spoke to him.” And inconvenient for me, as well. But Draco wasn’t about to confess that aloud, not when one revelation had provoked this idiotic response from Blaise.
            “Oh.” Blaise flopped his hand around again. “He said something about Potter following you during sixth year, and that was the basis of Potter’s attraction. And if Potter keeps coming over to your house now and talking to you, it has to be strengthening.”
            Draco sighed and got up for more tea. He could have had a house-elf fetch it, but they were all busy in the garden, and he needed a short holiday from Blaise. “He comes for Scorpius. That’s the truth that Theodore’s missed out of that farrago of gossip.”
            “Why?”
            Draco waited until he was back out with the tea to answer that. He could hardly tell Blaise about Potter’s inability to have children. “Because he divorced his wife without a child. Honestly, I think the only reason they stayed together as long as they did is because Potter wanted children, and when Weasley didn’t want them within the same amount of time…” He shrugged, keeping his face bland.
            “You’re keeping track of how long they were together?” Blaise wagged his eyebrows at Draco. “He’s told you the intimate secrets of his marriage?”
            Draco rolled his eyes. “The first is public knowledge. As for the second, no. But I did ask him for help with Scorpius, once I saw how good he was with my little cousin. He’s been perfectly pleased to come over and shower Scorpius with love and attention.”
            He broke off a second later, flushing, but the damage was done, if the way Blaise winked at him and crowed was any indication. “And you wish he would shower you with some love and attention instead, right? Right?”
            Draco sighed. “It’s not that simple.”
            Blaise shrugged. “When you spend your formative years watching desire overcome lots of men’s good sense, it seems simple enough.”
            “No,” said Draco. “Not even because of our pasts. I do know—I’ve made him understand, now, the kind of connection I want. But he looked at me as blank as an unfinished wall. He’d obviously never considered dating a man before, never mind me.” He tugged at his hair again, ignoring the fact that it would tell Blaise a lot about his mood. “So it’s going to take a long time, if it happens at all.”
            “You could make it happen,” said Blaise.
            Draco narrowed his eyes at him. “If you’re going to suggest some of the seduction potions your mother used, forget it.”
            Blaise put a hand over his heart. “Would I suggest seduction potions when it came to the love of your life, Draco? Of course not!”
            “Stop it,” said Draco, and this time he put enough force in his voice that Blaise broke off and nodded soberly.
            “No, I meant it a different way,” he said. “He comes over here for Scorpius? Invite him over more often. Pretend that it’s just for Scorpius. And then when he comes and your son is behaving beautifully—if he does—then you can say you just wanted him to be able to spend time around a calm child. Then romance him.”
            “You think I know what romance is?” Draco shook his head. He had grown up with parents who were quiet about their love for each other; Draco knew it was there, but it burned like lava far underground, not a fire on the surface. Narcissa and Lucius would have considered that vulgar. And as for his marriage, it had been arranged like a business contract, and ended much the same way. “Scorpius is the only path to his heart that I know.”
            Blaise put a dramatic hand over his eyes. “How many times did we make fun of Gryffindors and their longing for romance, Draco? You must know something about what they want, what they like. Think of it. Then romance him.”
            “Harry’s different,” said Draco, and looked into his tea, away from the mocking, breathless look on Blaise’s face. “No, I mean it, shut up, he is. I don’t think he would care about most of the things that are stereotypical, like flowers and sweets. He might think the less of me for sending them.”
            “But what about a romantic candlelit dinner?” Blaise swung his foot and bit on his scone, which Draco had offered him out of some misguided hospitality, in what looked like an excess of delight. “You have to admit that you can’t go wrong with a romantic candlelit dinner. Here, to make it more special. You could lead him in and take away his cloak, or whatever else it is he wears when he comes over here. Maybe it won’t be much.”
            “Blaise,” Draco interrupted, and his face was on fire. He hoped to make his tone warning enough that Blaise would drop it, but he evidently was too taken with his little “vision” to do more than give Draco a distracted smile.
            “So then you could sit him down at a table, and flutter your eyelashes at him the way I’ve seen you do at me and Theo a few times.” Blaise shook his head in what looked like amusement, and which Draco thought was much more dangerous than that. “There are times I’ve thought about giving it a go, but that would ruin a most excellent friendship. And then you would put a steak in front of him. No, wait, slices of cut fruit. Because that way you have an excuse to feed it to him with your fingers. A bit messy to do that with steak—”
            “That’s enough,” said Draco. This time, he made his voice quiet instead of snappish, and that seemed to work. Blaise turned and looked at him attentively. “I’m not going to do any of those things.”
            “You don’t want to romance him, then?” Blaise clucked his tongue and looked, for a moment, extremely like his mother, an impression Draco could have done without. “That’s an opportunity lost, then.”
            “You don’t understand,” Draco said, and could have bitten his tongue a moment later. He sounded like a wretched, whiny teenager, and he no longer wanted to be that. Or didn’t ever want to be that. It was hard to change the past, though. “Listen. First, I would need Potter to get over this utter blankness he has at the thought of dating a man. He would only run if I tried to romance him when he’s not over that. Second, it would be nice if he asked to come over here sometimes, instead of waiting on an invitation.”
            “Oh, I see.” Blaise leaned his elbows on the table and smiled at Draco. “You want him to be more forward. You don’t want to do all the work.”
            “Blaise…”
            “I can’t blame you,” said Blaise. “Those high-maintenance people who demand that I do all the work are no fun, either.”
            “You’re the high-maintenance one,” Draco snapped, his spine tingling with the unfairness of this remark. It wasn’t as though Harry was even high-maintenance. If anything, he was the sort of tedious person who would claim that he was satisfied with a lot less than he deserved. “You were the one who told me that you made Belinda go and get you cut rose petals in December.”
            “It would have proved she really loved me,” said Blaise, and his face became mournful. “If she’d done it. Alas.”
            Draco groaned and leaned back, shaking his head. “Why are you teasing me like this?”
            “Because,” said Blaise solemnly, “it’s utterly hilarious.”
            “I don’t find it so,” said Draco. And it seemed that he’d finally managed to hit the right tone, because Blaise leaned back in his chair and looked at Draco with a kindlier eye.
            “I know,” said Blaise. “But you’re taking on like a schoolboy with his first love—”
            “I am not taking on.”
            “And it’s hilarious,” Blaise continued blithely. “You know what you have to do. You never did it with Astoria, and you probably wouldn’t do it if you were courting a Slytherin, but you have to do it with Potter, and you just don’t want to. That’s all. That’s the only problem.”
            “What do I have to do, then?” Draco muttered, unable to stop feeling sulky and like he was struggling against a binding, but it was all very well for Blaise to smile at him like that, and he wasn’t the one who was in the position of explaining the notion that men could date to a Gryffindor.
            “You have to romance him,” said Blaise. “Forget about candlelit dinners, if you want. And flowers and sweets and House stereotypes and all the rest of it. You can best romance him by showing him that you’re date-worthy.” He picked up his teacup and bowed to all corners of the room as though an invisible crowd was ready to surge to its feet and applaud.
            “Date-worthy,” Draco said flatly.
            “Date-worthy.” Blaise took a coy sip from his teacup and then ducked his head, watching Draco with wide eyes. “Do you like that word? I just made it up myself.”
            Draco felt his mouth crack in a smile, and then he couldn’t hold onto his temper. He had to shake his head and say, “Yes, Blaise, you would know how to go about it. But you still don’t have the history that I do with Potter, and he doesn’t seem all that interested in getting to know the real me.”
            “Say that you have to invite him over once more,” said Blaise. “Then ask him what he wants to do—and don’t let him just sublimate it in playing with Scorpius, or whatever else he would suggest. Ask him. It has to involve spending time with you, so if he plays with Scorpius, then he has to play with you, too.”
            Draco’s face heated a little, and Blaise leered at him.
            “Yes, I thought that would appeal to you,” said Blaise, and his voice trembled as if he was about to laugh at Draco again. He managed to swallow it down, and continued softly. “The worst he can say is no, right? And then you do something else. You decide that it’s worth waiting for him to ask, or you ask for his advice about Scorpius, or you decide that he’s not worth it after all and go and find something else to do.”
            Draco sat back and thought about that. He did want Harry to show more of an interest in him; it wasn’t in Draco’s nature to pursue someone unwilling, even someone he rather admired. But one question wouldn’t hurt, and once he got Harry in his house and away from Scorpius for a while, then he would be able to judge better exactly what he was feeling.
            “Yes,” he said, and smiled at Blaise. “I’ll ask him. Occasionally, you have a good idea and earn your keep for all the other days that you don’t have one and I have to invite you over anyway.”
            Blaise laughed and finished his tea. “You would have gone mad with boredom before now if you didn’t have me around, Draco.” He flicked an elegant finger at Draco. “And you would have never decided what to do about Potter. You would have sat here until the Manor fell in around your ears, and always wondered if you should ask him or not, and whether it was worth doing.”
            Draco narrowed his eyes, but said nothing, because there was no way that he could express what he was feeling without Blaise twisting his words. Draco thought they’d had more than enough of that for today.
            As it turned out, he never had the chance to ask Harry the way he’d planned to, but only because something wonderful happened instead.
*
            “You don’t seem here with me.”
            Harry turned to Andromeda, wondering what she wanted him to say. He had come over with the gift for Teddy, a book it turned out he already had, but had nodded at and thanked Harry graciously for anyway. And then Andromeda had said she had to brew a potion that couldn’t wait, so they were standing in her lab. Andromeda was picking through a collection of flat red and purple roots on the table in front of her and chopping them up, although Harry didn’t know how she kept track of what one she needed at the moment or even which one was which. They all looked the same to him.
            “I’m sorry about getting the wrong book for Teddy,” Harry said stiffly. He’d already apologized twice, once to Teddy and once to her, and he was getting tired of it. “I’ve had a lot on my mind, but I did come here because I wanted to see Teddy. And you,” he added, when Andromeda’s waiting silence grew heavy.
            “It’s not the book,” Andromeda said, and gave him a glance as she tossed another handful of shredded red root into the cauldron. “Or not only the book. There’s also the fact that you keep staring off into the distance and giving me the wrong answers to my questions.”
            “I’m not good at Potions, all right?” Harry jammed his hands into his pockets and wandered off towards the golden cauldron hanging on the wall. He could at least make faces at his reflection in the side.
            “They weren’t about Potions.”
            Harry shut his eyes and leaned his forehead against the cauldron. It was cool and soothing against his skin. “I don’t know what you want me to say,” he whispered. “That I’m sorry? That I shouldn’t have let your remark about family hurt me the way it did? Those aren’t things I can say.”
            “Tell me what you’re thinking about.” From behind him, Harry heard a tapping sound like an egg being shelled against the side of the cauldron.
            Wondering for a moment what she had that could sound like an egg, but not caring enough to turn around and check, Harry exhaled hard. “Lots of different things.”
            “What’s making you so distant? Now, specifically. What were you thinking about when you came over and barely responded to Teddy?”
            Harry sighed again. “Malfoy told me something strange, and I don’t know what to do about it.”
            A pause. “What could he have told you? I only asked him to give you the message about me wanting to see you.”
            Harry hesitated. But if he and Malfoy had an argument, or started dating, or anything in between, it would be impossible to hide it from Teddy and Andromeda.
            “He said that he wants to—that he feels something romantic for me,” he said. There. Now it was out there, and someone else could help him deal with it.
            Silence, a silence so long that Harry finally turned around to see what Andromeda was doing. She was leaning with her hands on the edges of the cauldron and staring at him, was what she was doing. Harry felt a brief satisfaction that he had at least shocked her the way that Malfoy had shocked him.
            “Really?” Andromeda whispered, and then straightened herself up with a shake. “No, of course I can see that’s true, but what are you going to do about it?”
            Up until now, Harry would have said, “Nothing,” or, “Sit and think.” He still didn’t know what to think of Malfoy’s wild ideas, and it would take him a long time to pick them out and untangle them.
            But he rather thought that he’d like to make his own decision, and there was a shadow of judgment in Andromeda’s eyes, or maybe her face, or maybe the way she angled her body away from him. Or maybe it wasn’t there at all, and Harry was just imagining it.
            What mattered was that he thought it was there, and in the meantime, he wanted to make a stand for himself. Maybe he had to think about it some more, maybe he had to wait on Malfoy’s invitation, but he and Malfoy should be the ones who decided that, not someone who had made a mistake and might make another one.
            “Ask him if I can come over for dinner,” Harry said, and he felt better the instant he said that. He knew that it might all go horribly wrong. But at least it would be an action that could go horribly wrong. It wasn’t the same as the sitting and staring at the walls that he had done for a few evenings before yesterday, when he’d gone out.
            Andromeda hesitated, then said, “That might be good,” and started brewing again.
            Yeah, Harry acknowledged for the first time, looking sideways at himself in the golden cauldron and wondering what he might look like if someone was standing next to him. It might be.
*
Meechypoo: Especially now that they’ve got over some of their angst about it.
Jester: You mean Andromeda would be thrilled if Harry started coming over more often?
SP777: I thought about it, but I think his anxiety about the new situation would be too intense.
pokegirl1005: He understands, but he had no idea what to do about it. He was stunned.
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Starfall