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The Optimal Balance	By : TheMightyFlynn Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 17124 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: The Harry Potter universe and characters belong to JK Rowling and associates. This was written for fun. I make no money from it.

Chapter List
- 1-The Optimal Balance
- 2-Ch. 2
- 3-Ch. 3
- 4-Ch. 4
- 5-Ch. 5
- 6-Ch. 6
- 7-Ch. 7
- 8-Ch. 8
- 9-Ch. 9
- 10-Ch. 10
- 11-Ch. 11
- 12-Ch. 12
- 13-Ch. 13
- 14-Ch. 14
- 15-Ch. 15
- 16-Ch. 16
- 17-Ch. 17
- 18-Ch. 18
- 19-Ch. 19
- 20-Ch. 20
- 21-Ch. 21
- 22-Ch. 22
- 23-Ch. 23
- 24-Ch. 24
- 25-Ch. 25
- 26-Ch. 26
- 27-Ch. 27
- 28-Ch. 28
- 29-Ch. 29
- 30-Ch. 30
- 31-Ch. 31
- 32-Ch. 32
- 33-Ch. 33
- 34-Ch. 34
- 35-Ch. 35
- 36-Ch. 36
- 37-Ch. 37
- 38-Ch. 38
- 39-Ch. 39
- 40-Ch. 40: Epilogue
- 34
- 35
- 36
A/N: Wow, ok, there is a lot to address in those comments, much more than I am actually allowed for an a/n. So, what I will say is this: thank you all for the reviews, whether you agree with the way I am writing this story or not. I know for a fact that I cannot please everybody and I honestly can't aim to. But I do hope you all do enjoy this chapter to some extent. :)

When Draco's alarm began to blare the next morning at the usual 5am, he groaned. The incessant beeping seemed to be making his temples throb along with it, the sound vibrating through his skull. He swatted blindly in the direction of the bedside, hoping to turn it off quickly. When he managed to actually hit it, the bloody thing fell off the table and crunched down onto the carpet. After giving one final, half-hearted beep, the alarm fell silent and Draco sighed.
It had been months since he had woken feeling this shitty, but he knew he should have been expecting it. His body had never dealt with stress well and, with the fight with Harry the day before piled in on top of everything the boys had been up to over the past few weeks, Draco knew exactly what had caused the throbbing in his head: stress. Knowing that Harry would have slept straight through his alarm – he had long since gotten used to it – Draco figured that if he wanted a headache potion, then he was going to have to get it himself. Pushing with his arms, he managed to make it up onto his elbows, but that was as far as he got before nausea washed over him. Collapsing back onto his face on the bed, he groaned again. It was clear that he was not going to be able to make it to the bathroom where the headache potion was kept as long as his stomach was roiling as much as it currently was. Focussing solely on his breathing in order to keep whatever was still in his stomach from making a reappearance, Draco took several deep breaths and let them out slowly. As focussed as he was on himself, it came as a total shock when a warm hand came to rest softly between his shoulder blades. Draco jumped and immediately let out a pained moan.
“Sorry, I thought you’d heard me.” Harry’s voice was pitched low. “Here, drink this.”
Trusting that Harry knew what he needed, Draco opened his mouth when the lip of a vial was pressed to his lips. The taste of one of his own headache potions flooded his mouth and he let out a relieved breath. He swallowed quickly – none of the pain potions ever tasted nice – before collapsing back down onto the bed again.
“How?”
His voice was croaky, but it seemed that Harry understood him perfectly. The hand resting between his shoulder blades moved a little and Draco imagined that he had just felt Harry shrug.
“I know you and the reactions you have to stress.” It was a few seconds before Harry spoke again, in which his hand slid over Draco's back, kneading a little in different areas. “Right here?”
Harry’s hand came to rest again in the middle of Draco's back, just beneath the bottom of his shoulder blades. He pressed his fingers into Draco's muscles, eliciting yet another groan from Draco, although this one was of pleasure.
“Up a little.”
Draco rolled his shoulders before pushing the pillow beneath him away so he could lie flat on the bed. Harry seemed to take that as his cue, as he shifted his position from the side of the bed. Moving so he was squatting just over the small of Draco's back, his knees either side of Draco's ribs, he settled in and began to massage away some of the tension that had built in Draco's back. Lying face down on the bed with Harry’s fingers slowly relieving the stiffness in his shoulders, Draco allowed his mind to drift.
Yesterday afternoon had helped him to clear a bit of the confusion and anger that had been flowing through him, but he knew there was still a lot he and Harry had to discuss. And discuss was exactly what he wanted to do. He had had more than enough of disagreeing and fighting, especially when it came to Harry. Their relationship so far had been so easy – discounting, of course, the outside influences that had caused so much tension in the beginning – that fighting with him these days felt unnatural. But then…
“To the right.”
Draco moaned again when Harry obeyed his instructions, earning himself a low chuckle. They hadn’t spoken any more about what had happened the day before after Draco's little meltdown, but the time spent both on his own and with either Harry or Astoria yesterday afternoon had given Draco a little perspective. He was still unhappy about Harry’s treatment of him and there was no way he was going to stand being treated that way by the man he was supposed to be marrying the very next day. This was the point in which Draco was getting stuck, though. He wasn’t going to just let Harry go and he didn’t want to postpone the wedding, but… He sighed.
“Harry?”
“I know.” The pressure on Draco's back increased a little as Harry leant forward to place a soft kiss on the back of his neck. “Believe me, I know.”
Harry let out a large sigh as he rolled off Draco and collapsed onto his own side of the bed. Testing to see whether the pain potion had taken full effect, Draco shoved himself up onto his elbows. When there was no jab of pain, he drew his knees up beneath him so he could sit up properly, rucking the sheet up at the same time. In the small sliver of early morning light that was making its way through the crack in the curtains surrounding the bed, it appeared to Draco as though Harry was watching him with an incredibly wary expression.
I can’t lose you…
The words flittered through Draco's mind, accompanied by a vision of Harry looking so lost that Draco's chest ached in sympathy even now. If the fight they had had the day before had been due to Harry’s fear that Draco was going to leave him over this, it may explain the intensity that Harry had fought him with. However, it didn’t excuse anything that had come before the fight. Crossing his arms across his chest and lowering his gaze so he wasn’t looking at Harry, Draco took a deep breath.
“Do you?”
The silence following the question was so complete that Draco was forced to raise his head. Harry was still watching him with that wary expression, but it was mixed with something else now; something Draco couldn’t quite make out.
“Tell me.”
“Excuse me?”
“Tell me, Draco. If you want me to fully understand exactly how you and Astoria have raised Scorpius, then you have to explain it to me because I can’t read minds.”
“Why–” Draco cut the question off before he could complete it. Raising a hand, he pinched the bridge of his nose. “Why are you so focussed on how we raised Scorpius?”
“Because that is what the problem is here.” Harry held a hand up when Draco met his eyes again and opened his mouth to respond. “That didn’t come out the way I wanted it to, so please don’t. What I meant was that there are obvious differences in the way we parent the children and if I know how you and Astoria have raised Scorpius, then that will make life a whole lot simpler.”
Rubbing a hand across his face, Draco sighed. “Harry,” he began slowly. “How is you knowing how we parent Scorpius going to change what happened?”
The bed shifted a little as Harry adjusted his position, sitting up against the bedhead. “It won’t.”
Watching him as he was, Draco could see just how awkward Harry was feeling just from the way he was holding himself. “So…”
Harry shifted again, this time closer to the edge of the bed, almost as though he was preparing to run if needed. “Alright, look. I’m not trying to make excuses here, but just hear me out. My entire life has been about conflict, even from when I was a child and had to defend myself against Dudley and his gang. After the War, I went straight into being an Auror, which only honed the skills that had, up until then, been rudimentary. I have seen the very worst of the worst, not only when it comes to adults, but also when it comes to children. Seeing you grab Scorpius and get right into his face like that brought back some of those memories and, because I was already on guard due to the protection charms that had been set off, I reacted automatically. Casting that shield to prevent you from going after Scorpius was a purely instinctive reaction.”
Harry paused, but Draco kept his mouth shut, needing to know if there was anything else to this explanation. Draco, of course, already knew all about Harry’s childhood and some of what he had had to face down during his time with the Auror Corps. He could, technically, see what Harry was saying and how that could have produced such a strong reaction in him when seemingly confronted with it again. However… Draco shook his head. Harry had had absolutely no right to prevent him from going after Scorpius, not only because Harry wasn’t one of Scorpius’ parents, but also because there was simply something about the action that told Draco that he wasn’t fully trusted.
It was that that had played on Draco’s mind much more than anything else the previous day after his anger had subsided. Did Harry trust him as much as he said he did? If he didn’t, then why was he seemingly so desperate to go ahead with this marriage? Then, of course, there was also a small voice in the back of his mind asking whether he actually thought Harry capable of deceit of that kind. From all appearances, Harry was quite a simple man to understand: treat him with respect and don’t go after anyone he considered family and you were pretty much guaranteed that he would treat you fairly. With how closely they had been together over the months of their relationship, Draco couldn’t see how he could have missed something that could have been hidden about Harry and, therefore, simply couldn’t accept that there could be something more to his personality than what he had seen. He was fiercely overprotective of the people he saw as his own and Draco knew that these days, ‘Harry’s own people’ included him, Scorpius and Astoria. But, again, that didn’t excuse his actions.
“Draco?”
Draco's head snapped up and his eyes met with Harry’s in the gloom. Sitting on the edge of the bed with his legs crossed beneath him and his hands folded in his lap, Harry looked the very picture of contrition.
“I fucked up. I am fully aware of that fact and am prepared to accept any consequences that come along with it. Scorpius is your son and I should never have interfered, it’s as simple as that. But there are obviously things that we need to work through between us. Not just when it comes to the children and how we treat them, but also to how we react to each other. Like I said yesterday, this relationship has happened so fast that nothing has had time to develop like it should have. You know we haven’t even been together for eleven months yet? If any one of the children ever got into a relationship that moved this quickly, I’m pretty sure I would be calling in any contacts I still had within the Aurors and having whoever it was they were with thoroughly investigated. We have packed years worth of relationship into ten and a bit months. To be totally honest, it’s probably a bit of a miracle that we haven’t completely combusted yet.”
Draco nodded slowly when Harry fell silent yet again. Not because he was agreeing with what he had said, but more just to let him know that he had been heard. There was a certain amount of sense to what Harry was saying, Draco knew; he had proposed after only two months, after all. Harry was also correct about their apparent lack of communication skills within the relationship. Their children were one of – if not the – biggest parts of both of their lives and neither of them had given being a stepparent even a second thought before attempting to mash their families together. When it came to that part of their current problems, it seemed that they were both to blame. That could be worked on and fixed, however, given time. Draco sighed and ran a hand through his hair.
“I don’t trust people easily, Harry.”
“I know.”
“I do trust you.” A small rush of breath reached Draco's ears and he had to smile. “But I don’t want to go through life wondering whether that trust is misplaced–”
“Use your Legilimency on me.”
“What?” Draco recoiled, his stomach lurching in disgust at the very thought. “No!”
“Yes. Look, I know that by reacting to you the way I did – that by treating you like one of the criminals I used to chase – I…” Harry cleared his throat and glanced away, staring intently at the pillows at the head of the bed. “I know you are doubting that I trust you in return. And that thoughts like that can lead to you questioning whether… Whether you even love me at all, because of the seeming lack of trust on my end. So…” Taking a deep breath, Harry closed his eyes and turned back towards Draco. When he reopened them, there was such an intense look to them that Draco found himself transfixed. “Use your Legilimency on me. I won’t resist or throw up barriers of any kind. If you want to know just how much I trust you, then this is your opportunity to find out for yourself.”
Draco's eyes slid shut of their own volition. This wasn’t what he wanted. Hell, this wasn’t even what he had been aiming for when he had brought the subject of trust up simply because he knew he didn’t need actual proof that Harry trusted him. Sure, he had had his moments of doubt, just like anyone else does within a relationship; that was perfectly normal and reasonable. But invading Harry’s privacy like that, even with his permission… Draco shook his head.
“No, I don’t need that.”
“Does that mean… No, wait, don’t answer that.”
Draco reopened his eyes so he could raise an eyebrow in Harry’s direction. “I shall, of course, endeavour to keep my opinions on that incredibly fascinating and complex subject to myself.”
Harry rolled his eyes. “Funny.” He ran a hand through his hair before meeting Draco's eyes again. “So, what does that mean? For us, I mean.”
“Are you asking what does it mean that I don’t need proof that you trust me?”
“No. I’m asking what it means that you don’t want that particular type of proof. I can’t keep you out if you choose to use it; you know that.”
“Yes, I do and that is exactly why. You can’t keep me out; don’t have a chance, in fact. I don’t need that type of proof because it would be a violation.”
“Alright.” Harry nodded, although Draco was fairly certain that he didn’t fully understand what he was agreeing to. “So… Look, fuck it, I’m just going to come out and ask. How the hell do we fix this? I know that parenting issues can be resolved relatively easily in comparison, but this seems too big to be able to overcome in a small amount of time. Draco, we are supposed to be getting married tomorrow and…”
Pausing again, Harry let out a gusty sigh. It was clear to Draco that Harry was having issues seeing past their current problems and, really, he figured, who could blame him? This did seem like a major issue to have to work through the day before their wedding. But perhaps this was simply the way things were with them. They had done everything so fast in this relationship, really sped through all of the important parts, that dealing with things last minute might simply be the way their relationship worked. Taking a steadying breath, he moved so that he was resting back against the headboard.
“Talk to me.”
“Excuse me?”
“You asked how we are going to deal with this. Talk to me. Tell me what the issues are and we will start working through them.”
Harry let out a disbelieving breath before shaking his head. “You’re serious? The day before the wedding and you what to just start all over again?”
“Not all over again, obviously. But there are things that need to be addressed. If this is the way to do that, then that is exactly what we will do.” Patting the spot beside him on the bed, Draco offered Harry a smile. “Come here and talk to me.”
It took a few seconds, but Harry eventually joined Draco at the head of the bed. Summoning a house-elf, Draco settled in for what he knew was bound to be one of the strangest conversations he had ever – and hopefully would ever – had.
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The Optimal Balance