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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-Nine—A Difficult Man
            “You’re sure you want to do this?” Hermione was the one asking him, darting her glance back and forth between the parchment full of notes in front of her and the front of Grimmauld Place, as if she had imagined some other setting for Harry’s announcement that he couldn’t have children.
            “Yes,” said Harry quietly. He checked the wards that would keep the large gathering of wizards out of sight of the Muggles who lived in the neighborhood. The wards marched along the edge of the street and circled both the front step and the back garden. There was the chance that someone would land a broom there or Apparate to that point, although they had better be one of Harry’s good friends if they did that.
            “It might have seemed—well, homier if you did it from a place that you’re actually living,” Hermione mused. “Less formal. More a secret that you’re telling because you want to tell it, the way you say you want to.”
            Harry snorted. “Formal is what I want. I’m allowing them this far into my life. No farther.”
            “They’ll ask, you know,” said Hermione. Her gaze was haunted, and Harry was sure this was the heart of her objection to his plan, although she had mostly brought up other things when they talked about it. “They’ll want to know more, and they’ll argue that you have no right to keep other things secret, when you revealed this.”
            “Too bad,” said Harry. He glanced at the notes in front of Hermione, and then shrugged and turned away. They concerned the reporters that had been invited, and the food ordered. None of that was Harry’s responsibility. He had what he was going to say as firmly in his mind as though he had spent hours memorizing it.
            That wasn’t true, of course. It was simply carved on his heart, where he couldn’t escape it.
            “Will this really change anything?” Hermione went on, gloomily. “You’re taking a risk, and it might only bring you more questions and more nosiness in the end.”
            Harry nodded a little. “Well, I’m making an investment of trust in them. The people who might ask me questions, I mean. I’m trusting that some people will feel protective of me and sorry for me after this, and that will mean a reduction in the letters. And I’m making another investment at the same time.” He felt Hermione’s stare, and finally turned around and smiled at her. “Those wards you urged me to get, the ones that bounce Howlers and filter letters? I’m going to do that. And I’m hiring a secretary to filter the ones that’ll get through. And charging fees for my services.”
            “Who’s the secretary?” Hermione looked as if she could suggest several candidates if Harry didn’t already have someone in mind.
            “Mathilda Patience,” said Harry, and nodded when Hermione opened her mouth. “Yes, the one who accidentally brought Quillona to my door. But she does need a job that pays better than the ones she had, and she feels terrible about her part in this and wants to make up for it somehow. This is a way to.”
            Hermione leaned back and openly studied him. Harry kept his gaze on the wards. A few people had arrived just inside them and were milling around, but no one seemed inclined to take advantage of the rows of neat wooden chairs, Transfigured from pillows and tapestries from Grimmauld Place, set up in front of the table where Hermione and Harry sat. They just milled and stared and whispered.
            Harry was waiting for one in particular, and then he would be strong enough to counter any number of hostile stares.
            “You’ve changed,” Hermione murmured. “Not enough that it makes me worry someone has hit you with Imperius, but enough that I have to wonder.”
            Harry nodded to her. “Well, Draco played a large part in that. I had to finally start wondering if I was going to brood on the past forever, or if I was going to move forwards and take something I could have.”
            “The past and the thing you can’t have being blood children?” Hermione winced when she spoke the words, as if she was touching an open wound.
            “Yeah,” said Harry. “And the marriage with Ginny. I mean, that was horrible, the way that ended.” His throat burned a little, and he swallowed. “But I was looking for a specific person to replace her. I finally realized that’s not going to happen. How could it? But I could find someone else, someone who was right under my nose and had different things to offer, if I just stopped deciding the past was always the best.”
            “Malfoy is still pretty different from Ginny.”
            “That’s part of the appeal, though,” Harry pointed out, and stood as he watched Draco finally Apparate in. He strolled through the crowd of watchers as though they were more chairs to be avoided, and Harry smiled.
            “I don’t know if I want to ask you to explain that,” Hermione muttered, and leaned back to watch Draco come in.
            “No, you probably don’t,” Harry agreed, with a faint smile in her direction. He went to meet Draco, and heads immediately turned. Harry was growing resigned to the fact that that would probably always be the case. What he needed to work on was not letting himself be intimidated or upset about that.
            “Hello,” said Draco, and leaned in towards Harry, his eyes bright with mischief. Harry raised his eyebrows. They hadn’t discussed kissing in public, but since Draco had agreed to announce they were dating, it wouldn’t surprise Harry if he wanted to do it.
            In the end, though, Draco drew back and only wrung Harry’s hand once as if they hadn’t seen each other in ages, and then accompanied Harry across the short expanse of stones and grass to the table. The crowd behind them had gone silent, but now questions were exploding, especially when Harry held the chair out from the side of the table so Draco could sit down.
            “Mr. Potter! Have you been seeing a man?”
            “Is this why you wanted the children? To kidnap a playmate for Mr. Malfoy’s lonely son?” That was Rita Skeeter, her quill poised trembling above her parchment. Harry gave her a look of scorn. He was sure she was the one who had come up with the gossip that he was using the children’s body parts in a Dark ritual, even if she wasn’t the one who had written the actual article.
            “I won’t explain before the hour that we appointed,” said Harry decisively, and sat down next to Draco. Draco nodded to him. He had a flush on his cheeks that was slow to fade. Harry was sure it came from what Skeeter had said about Scorpius.
            A few more people tried to ask questions, but Harry simply and quietly ignored them, although he did lean over to murmur to Draco, “What did Zabini say when you told him why he needed to watch Scorpius for the day?”
            “He said that it would be fine, of course,” said Draco, and rolled his eyes back at Harry. “What would you have expected him to say?”
            “Well, from what you told me about him before,” Harry said truthfully, “I would have expected him to roll all over the room laughing.”
            “There may have been some laughter,” said Draco, with a dignity that Harry found charming. “There may have been. And then Scorpius came into the room, and explained about Uncle Harry, and I think Blaise was jealous.” He grinned at Harry.
            “Of you?” Draco’s relationship with Zabini sounded strange enough to Harry that he wouldn’t be surprised if it included some flirting.
            “Of you,” said Draco, but before Harry could nod to himself, Draco went on. “Because he’s no longer Scorpius’s favorite uncle, it seems, and of course he can’t let that stand.”
            Harry laughed quietly to himself, and then looked up when he felt the pressure of an intense gaze he couldn’t ignore on him. Hermione was clasping her hands tightly as she sat on the other side of the table, working them together so hard that Harry was surprised she hadn’t hurt her fingers.
            A second later, she pointedly turned her head away, and left Draco to blink in confusion and murmur, “What did I do to make Granger disapprove of me this time? I know why she disapproves in general, but this is new.”
            “I know that she thinks you’re very different from Ginny,” said Harry neutrally.
            “Good God, I should hope so.” Draco turned his head to the side in a way that puzzled Harry at first, but in a (fairly unwelcome) flash, he grasped it. Draco was looking down between his own legs to reassure himself that his cock hadn’t gone away.
            Harry nudged Draco hard with his elbow. “Stop that,” he hissed, feeling as if his face was about to catch on fire.
            “No one else will catch on to what I’m doing,” said Draco, and gave him a broad, toothy grin. “Except someone with a mind as filthy as yours, and in that case, they deserve what they get.”
            Harry shut his eyes and shook his head, and managed to refocus on the upcoming meeting. A few more reporters were due to arrive, and Ron had said he would come along for moral support. Harry would have to—
            His mind skidded hard off its rails when he saw who had just Apparated in near the wards, and was striding rapidly towards a seat in the back row.
            He looked at Hermione, but Hermione held up a hand and shook her head, disclaiming responsibility. At least she hadn’t invited her.
            Harry took a deep breath and faced front again. He supposed technically, no one had to invite anyone to this. After all, it was a public meeting open to a bunch of different kinds of guests, and reporters.
            But as he looked into the blazing eyes of his ex-wife, Harry did wish there was a way that he could hide immediately afterwards without looking like a coward.
*
            Ginny Corner was looking—pregnant.
            Draco tried to keep his face from showing what he thought, but a moment later, he realized that he needn’t have bothered. She gave him the briefest, tiniest glance. A second later, her gaze was back on Harry, scanning him as though she thought he would fall over just to please her.
            Or maybe he’s looking too happy for her tastes, Draco thought, and hatred coiled and snapped viciously in his gut. He would control himself. He wouldn’t say anything aloud to her. He would keep his distance. If she said anything to him, he would turn his head and walk away.
            But no one could keep him from thinking what an idiot she was, that she’d held the world in the palm of her hand, and she’d given it up.
            Harry’s hand was tight on Draco’s wrist. Draco gave him a sweet, compliant look, and that only made Harry snort and shake his head.
            “Don’t start something,” Harry breathed. “That’s the only thing I can ask. We can’t do anything much if someone decides to ask the inevitable questions.” His gaze went back to Skeeter, and he laughed without making a sound. Draco couldn’t mistake the bitterness in his face. “Which I’m sure they will.”
            Draco just nodded passively, and Harry twitched and frowned at him. “You weren’t going to do that, were you?” he added.
            “One of the things that my parents trained into me is social graces.” Draco let himself smile, and made sure Harry could see the smile was directed towards him—because, after all, Harry was the important one here, not his ex-wife. “I may not like it much, but I can behave politely towards people when I have the need.”
            Harry scanned him once, closely, as though he expected to surprise a hostile intention on Draco’s face, and then nodded and sat back. Granger stood up a minute later, and if she mouthed something to Harry that she shouldn’t have, Draco couldn’t see it, given the way she was standing on the other side of the table and studying what was obviously an agenda.
            “Thank you for coming,” Granger announced to the reporters. As if this were a fucking charity event for one of her pitiful organizations, Draco thought, but once again, he was capable of keeping sentiments like that to himself. He had to be, if he wanted to keep Harry. And doing that was worth far more than the chance to sneer at Harry’s friends. “You know that Harry has some announcements he wants to make.”
            “Yes,” said Harry, and stood up. He looked more graceful and dignified than he would ever believe, Draco thought, looming behind the table while he studied his “guests” with narrowed eyes. Draco couldn’t help looking at his ex-wife again, but if Harry was aware of how much she’d like to burn him up with her eyes, he didn’t look as though he would let it trouble him. “So. One rumor that’s been going around is that I want to spend time with children to use them in Dark rituals.”
            Draco held back a snicker. Said like that in broad daylight, not printed down and gossiped about in eager whispers, it sounded like the ridiculous tripe it was. A few people looked at Skeeter, but most simply looked ashamed of themselves.
            “No,” said Harry. “I started this business because I can’t have children of my own.” He kept talking, without hurrying his pace, only raising his voice a little above the tide of murmurs that surrounded him. “I was hit with a combination of hexes years ago that made it impossible. I kept that secret, because I didn’t think the wizarding world should intrude on my privacy. But it does mean that I’ve been pretty lonely.”
            He drew breath to go on, but Skeeter interrupted, waving her quill frantically. Draco could see her eyes gleaming like two coals even from here. It seemed Skeeter was even more interested in those stories that had the ring of truth and came from the mouth of the person she was stalking.
            “Wait, wait, Mr. Potter!” Draco could have wished, for a minute, that Harry hadn’t resigned from the Aurors. Skeeter sounded so disrespectful referring to Harry like that. At least she would have had to use the Auror title if he was still with the Ministry. “Are you saying that you’re infertile?”
            Draco was confident the reporters, even as experienced as they were, couldn’t make out the minute flinch that trembled through Harry’s body. But Draco could. On the other hand, he was also sitting very close to Harry’s side.
            Harry stood up straighter and inclined his head proudly. “That’s what I’m saying.”
            The questions exploded then, mostly variations of “Who did this?” and “Can’t you reverse it?” and “How long have you known?” Harry only stood there through all of them, wearing a tolerant expression that Draco had to keep biting his lip to avoid snickering at. Finally, the reporters seemed to realize that they couldn’t hear Harry’s answers even if he was giving them, and shut up a little.
            Harry nodded and said, “I don’t know who did it. I was in a battle, and the combination of hexes was what hit me. That’s why it can’t be undone, either. They can’t trace back the exact combination and untangle it all.”
            “Use Veritaserum on the people who hexed you!” someone yelled.
            Harry rolled his eyes back. “And if it was that simple, I would have done it years ago,” he said. “But Veritaserum can’t make you tell what you don’t remember. And this is long enough ago now that they wouldn’t.”
            “How long?” Skeeter was trembling with her quill poised, as if she only needed the number of years before she dashed off to write the article.
            “Three years,” said Harry, and then paused as if he was bracing for something, although Draco didn’t know what that could be. He shifted a little. He should know everything about Harry, at least when it came to something as private as this.
            Skeeter was the one who showed him. She slewed around like a weathervane to point straight at Harry’s ex-Weasley, sitting in the chair with her arms cradled around her pregnant belly as though she assumed someone would try to snatch her unborn child away from her and give it to Harry. She flushed at the way Skeeter regarded her, but didn’t run away or back down.
            “The end of your marriage,” Skeeter whispered. “That was the real reason for the end of your marriage?” She sounded delirious.
            Ex-Weasley stood up. Her arms were still folded in front of her belly. “Harry’s not telling the whole truth,” she said. “He had no right to drag this issue out now. It’s been three years. It should have been settled.” She looked straight at Harry, and the raw pain on her face made Draco want to sigh. He could have told Harry that it wasn’t as simple as making the announcement and not having people contest it. Weasley was always going to contest it. That was just the way things worked between them, apparently.
            “It hasn’t been settled because people have accused me of wanting to use children in Dark rituals,” said Harry, and Draco was close enough to see the convulsive way his hands opened. “It would have been settled, if not for that. I wouldn’t have had to bring it up, except certain people won’t leave it alone and assume everything that I do has an evil motive.”
            Skeeter didn’t look affected, of course, but a few of the other reporters had the good sense to look ashamed of themselves. Ex-Weasley apparently didn’t like attention off her, and snapped, “It involves my secrets, too, Harry. You could have told me that you were planning to do this.”
            Harry looked at her with a calm that Draco thought he was probably enforcing on himself, rather than assuming because he wanted to. “Since I didn’t, I’m curious how you knew enough to show up here.”
            “I heard that you were going to make an announcement, and suddenly, to combat some of the rumors,” said Ex-Weasley, and folded her arms again. It made her stomach jounce and sway, and Draco wanted to hurt her for what that did to Harry’s face as he looked at her. “Of course I knew that had to concern me. You had to say something in response to all those rumors.”
            Harry only shrugged, in the end, and tore his gaze away from Ex-Weasley. “This is the announcement,” he told the reporters and others who leaned forwards as though hungry for his words. “I couldn’t have children. My wife still wanted them. As you can see, she married someone else who could give her what she couldn’t have with me.”
            Draco could feel his face and throat burning. Fucking sense of honor. Fucking Gryffindor nobility. He knew it was more than that, and if Harry revealed the whole truth, he would make his ex-wife look intolerably bad.
            But that was the whole point. Harry said that he didn’t want to do that, which meant revealing only enough to make it seem as if he was the sole cause of his marriage falling apart, and let her walk away.
            The knowledge that Harry would do the same thing for him, if they had ever had a quarrel so severe, was no sop to Draco’s anger. Harry ought to have the ability to hurt someone who had hurt him so badly. And even if Draco didn’t know all the details, he recognized the look of intense pain on someone’s face.
            I just don’t understand how he can want revenge that much and hold himself back. Draco was glad that he had been raised with the notion of restraint in matters of vengeance, yes, but only enough restraint to make sure he wouldn’t get caught. He would never have this notion Harry apparently did of hurting himself by not seeking it.
            “Did she cheat on you?” Skeeter demanded, her voice wavering up and down the scale. She must have a glut of gossip to feed on right now, Draco thought, and gave her a disgusted glance. At least that kept him from glaring at Ex-Weasley.
            “No,” said Harry so calmly that it left no room for doubt. Even though Draco sat there and let the doubt run through him and warm his chest anyway. “She wanted out of the marriage. So did I, in the end. It simply couldn’t survive what was brought to bear on it.”
            Draco shifted slightly in his seat. He might not be able to do anything about Ex-Weasley—since Harry emphatically wouldn’t let him—but he could make sure that Harry remembered what else they’d come here to announce.
            Harry’s eyes fell on him and softened. He reached out a hand, and Draco nodded, took it, and climbed to his feet.
            “But now,” Harry said, his gaze on Draco instead of the crowd, and Draco’s gaze on him instead of his targets, “thanks to the generosity and daring of someone who was willing to take a chance, I can find a family of my own.”
            There was a confused humming of voices. Draco basked in that for a moment. No one had thought he was up here for this, although they must have wondered.
            “Yes,” said Harry, and faced them again. “I’m dating Draco Malfoy, and if his son Scorpius agrees, I’ll also become his joint parent.”
            Once again, there was a burst of such shouting that finding one voice in the middle of all that, and listening to its question, was impossible. But no one seemed inclined to shut up and let one person go first this time. People were leaning forwards with their hands waving and tears of urgency running down their faces.
            Then, abruptly, they all fell silent. Draco thought for a second that Harry had performed a Silencing Charm on them, but Harry’s wand wasn’t out. It took him a second to track the culprit down, since he had turned instinctively to Granger, but she looked as shocked as he felt.
            “Listen,” said Ex-Weasley, her voice all the shriller for the silence. “This is the way the marriage ended. It must have been. He was gay, and that’s the reason he—” Her voice caught, broke, and for a moment, her eyelids came down as though she was shielding her eyes from sight. “That’s the reason he’s dating a man now,” she said.
            “You have the right to say what you like, Ginny,” said Harry, his voice deep and calm. “But that’s not true. It ended for the reason I said, and I’m dating Draco now because I want to.”
            “No,” said Ex-Weasley, and stared at him.
            Harry shrugged, and stepped out from behind the table. A wave of his wand removed the Silencing Charm on the reporters, and instantly they were clamoring again.
            “Are you only with Mr. Malfoy for his child?”
            “Do his parents know about this?”
            “What are people going to say when they find out that you’re dating someone who used to be a Death Eater?”
            Harry smiled and began to answer. In all the commotion, Draco thought he was the only one who saw Ex-Weasley turn and walk away with slow, ringing steps.
            Like a death knell, he thought, and drew close to Harry’s side. He was going to protect him from whatever vengeance she might try to dish out.
            If there was any. Maybe her family would persuade her not to enact it. Or maybe it would hurt too much for her to do it, or she would have Harry’s noble restraint and hold back.
            But honestly, Draco hoped she didn’t.
*
delia cerrano: Scorpius is testing Harry’s limits right now. And Harry is hurt, but he’s also learning to get over it.
Severus1snape: Thank you!
SP777: I sort of did?
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Starfall