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Marathon	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 52456 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 5
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

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Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Forty—Powderkeg
            “Hello, Harry.”
            Even if Harry hadn’t recognized Molly’s voice, he would have known her hug anywhere. He smiled and leaned into the embrace, and she seemed perfectly happy to prolong it. Harry thought that it was still hard to feel there was anything wrong in the world when she was hugging him. His younger self had been onto something when he felt so comforted here.
            Then Molly let him go and stepped back, and Harry caught himself with one hand on the kitchen table before he could embarrass them all with a tumble to the floor of the kitchen. Molly wouldn’t have caught him. She was entirely too focused on the second person to step through the Floo. “Hello, Draco.”
            Harry turned quickly around. He hadn’t ever thought that Molly would call Draco by his first name. Maybe Mr. Malfoy instead of just Malfoy, but not this.
            From the way his eyes had widened, Draco was startled enough that Harry thought he might sprint screaming into the afternoon. But he controlled his reaction, and held out his hand instead. “How are you?” he asked. “Shall I call you Molly or Mrs. Weasley?”
            “Oh, now you’ve done it,” Bill said. He was wandering through the kitchen with a handful of glue and wood pieces, probably for Louis, who seemed passionately interested in building little Muggle planes, a hobby that Arthur had introduced him to. “Look at the way her eyes are snapping. She would never want someone she invited over to call her Mrs. Weasley.”
            Technically, Ron invited us, Harry thought. But he also wasn’t stupid enough to make a comment like that.
            “Do call me Molly, dear, like all the rest of them,” said Molly firmly, and clasped Draco’s hand. Harry wondered if it was his imagination that she held it a moment longer than normal, staring into Draco’s face. What was she looking for? Some resemblance to his parents and other ancestors who might have feuded with the Weasleys? Some sign of what had made Harry fall for him instead of going back to Ginny?
            Whatever it was, she didn’t make Draco uncomfortable. She turned away from him briskly enough, and clapped her hands. “We’re going outside in the garden for the party,” she said. “I didn’t know if the weather would be nice enough, but it is.”
            “Of course it is,” Harry muttered to Draco. “It wouldn’t dare rain on a day like this.”
            He heard Ron choke from off to the side, and Draco gave him a look of uncertain wonder, apparently doubting this was a joking matter. But Molly only nodded and smiled, and began to wave her wand at a series of full plates on the kitchen table. Much like the weather, they didn’t dare disobey and all rose from the table in a smooth sweep, proceeding towards the door.
            “Come on, then,” Molly added from over her shoulder, with royal condescension that Harry thought Lucius Malfoy couldn’t have bettered, and followed the plates out. Bill followed her, and Arthur, who had been standing off in a corner, coughed and stepped forwards.
            “I wanted to say thank you for coming,” he said, and put out his hand for Draco to shake in turn. “And that I hope we can let bygones be bygones.”
            “I’m willing to do that for Harry’s sake,” Draco said. Harry caught his breath. He was so proud of the flash in Draco’s eyes, the way he was willing to adopt Gryffindor behavior for at least one afternoon. “But I have to know. Did you decide to invite me over because I’m dating Harry? Or for some other reason?”
            “Of course because you were dating Harry,” said Arthur, frowning at him as if he didn’t understand the question. “The feud between our families is silly, and I wish it would die out, but…well, we just wouldn’t have asked you without it, that was all.”
            Draco accepted that with an easy nod of his head. Maybe because he wouldn’t have wanted to be invited without me, Harry thought. “I meant, did you just do it to be nice? Or did you do it to pull your family together by force?”
            Arthur spluttered a little, then said, “You’d have to ask Molly,” and retreated out the door. Ron held his breath, face turning red, until he did, and then collapsed into a massive fit of the giggles.
            “You really put him on the spot, Malfoy,” he gasped when he straightened back up, mopping at the tears on his cheeks. “Oh, Merlin. He always tosses it in Mum’s lap when he can’t figure out an answer.”
            “It seems a simple enough question,” Draco said, his head lifting in the same way it had when he was confronting Harry about his lie to Ginny. Harry thought he was the only one who knew to reach out and take Draco’s hand, squeezing it to inspire comfort. Draco leaned on him in return, closing his eyes.
            The fact that he was willing to do that in front of Ron—and Hermione, coming around the corner with Rose and Hugo and a plate of the healthy food she favored lately—said a lot. Harry saw the way Ron and Hermione traded glances, and knew they’d seen it and understood at least part of it. Rose and Hugo just gave Draco wary looks and then darted outside. Harry knew Draco was less interesting right now than a chance to see their cousins.
            “You okay?” Harry whispered, stroking Draco’s hair.
            “Waiting for an answer to my simple question, but yes,” Draco said, and opened his eyes to stand up straight. He nodded to Hermione as though he’d heard her enter the room, which he probably had, and then turned to face the sunlight coming in through the door to the garden. “But resigned to the fact that I may not get one.”
            “I already told you the reason,” Ron said, starting to chase them towards the door as if he’d appointed himself native guide for the day. “It’s to make everything blow up and clear off all at once. After today, no one will be able to say that you’re not part of the family or have this long-simmering grudge. It’s going to boil over or boil away.”
            “That’s a rather clever way of putting it,” Draco said, in a tone that made it clear he didn’t think it was at all. Harry reached out and clamped hold of his arm, firmly. Draco swallowed and edged closer to him. Harry forgave him when he felt the tremors through that arm, and realized how incredibly nervous Draco was.
            “Yes, it is,” Ron said, either not noticing or determined to ignore the snipe in Draco’s tone, and led the way outside.
            Harry stepped out into the garden, squinting—the sunlight that Molly must have had on special order was so bright—and smiled once he began to catch sight of faces. Not everyone in sight was red-haired, given that Fleur and Hermione and Angelina and Percy’s blond daughter Lucy were there, but there was still an incredible number of them. And they were all talking at once, or so it sounded like. Except the children, Harry corrected himself, who sounded as though they were talking enough for two people each.
            “Dad.”
            Harry turned around. Lily stood before him, shifting from foot to foot. Harry hugged her and kissed her on the forehead. “Are you all right, then?”
            “Yeah, of course,” Lily said, and then turned and glanced expressively at Draco.
            “Your grandmother invited him,” Harry said. That was all that needed to be said. Lily glanced half-fearfully over her shoulder, to where Molly stood guiding at least six pieces of meat through their turns over cooking fires, and then nodded.
            “It’s her house, she can do what she wants,” she said. That sounded like something Ginny would say, but Harry didn’t get to stand there and wistfully reminisce, because Draco was at his side, and Lily was turning back around and staring at him. “Are you going to talk to Al today?”
            “About what?” Harry honestly wasn’t sure how much Lily knew about the argument Harry was having with Al.
            “About fame, and that kind of thing,” Lily said, and made her disgusted face, the one Harry usually saw when he asked her to do chores. “He’s been writing to Mum constantly, demanding that she do something about it. I don’t think she answered the letters, though,” she added, leaning forwards. Her eyes almost twinkled as she stared up at Harry, and Harry repressed a start. He hadn’t realized that Lily was so interested in gossip, though with the way she’d repeated all the things Ginny had said about Harry’s sexuality, he should have known.
            Draco stirred next to him, and Harry glanced over. All Draco did, though, was catch his eye pointedly and mouth, See? Slytherin.

            Harry nodded and faced Lily again. “That’s the kind of thing I’ll have to talk to Al about myself,” he said. “Why don’t you go talk to Molly? I think she’s trying to get your attention.”
            Lily whipped around. Percy’s daughters wouldn’t always play with her, and Harry knew that the thrill of having one of them call her over would distract her faster than anything else could. From the toys that were grouped around the girls, Harry thought they probably wanted Lily to be the maiden they would rescue or something, but Lily didn’t care. She ran over, and Molly and Lucy welcomed her with chattering and cheers that had the words “soldiers” in them. Harry nodded.
            “You have more than a bit of Slytherin in you, too.”
            Harry grinned back at Draco. “Sure I do. The Sorting Hat wanted to put me in Slytherin in the first place.” He leaned nearer, lowering his voice. “But to make that the more literal truth, we’ll have to wait a while.” He swept his eyes down towards Draco’s groin.
            He enjoyed the way that made Draco’s eyes widen and his mouth drop open a little, so much so that he didn’t hear someone approaching.
            “Harry!” Charlie clapped him on the shoulder and swept him up in a hug while Harry was still trying to recover from the shock of his appearance. “Glad you could make it. I haven’t seen you in forever.”
            “I didn’t know you were coming in,” Harry said, hugging Charlie back hard enough that he grunted a little. Harry smiled. It was good remember sometimes that he was a fit Auror, and could challenge a Dragon-Keeper in contests of strength. “Meet my partner, Draco Malfoy.”
            “You do work fast,” said Charlie dryly, and nodded to Draco. “I’m here because one of my partners finally decided to do some work for once and actually supervise the junior Dragon-Keeper he’d been leaving up to his own devices. And those devices resulted in crushed eggs. He was trying to smuggle them out.”
            Harry gaped at him. “And you’re letting him stay?”
            Charlie half-grinned. “He managed to get close enough to the dragons’ nests to take them without a fuss in the first place, which isn’t common. There’s no denying he has a way with them. We just want to teach him a different…set of manners.”
            Harry nodded, appreciating that. Charlie had told him once that they had a terrible time finding skilled Dragon-Keepers. They had too many people come to the sanctuaries who were more interested in the romance of the dragons they’d built up in their heads, as wise and beautiful creatures, rather than the bloody great dangerous beasts they actually were. They would want to keep someone who knew how to act around dragons, and just teach him to have better goals than smuggling dragon eggs out.
            “How do you know he didn’t become a Keeper for a crack at the eggs and nothing else?” Draco demanded. “You could be wasting your time and effort trying to use someone who won’t be useful to you at all, in the end.”
            Charlie considered him, head on one side. “Oh, that could have happened,” he agreed easily. “People come in with all sorts of misconceptions and nonsense in their heads about dragons and the success they’ll have working with them.” He winked when Draco continued to stare at him. “But just because he came in with that set of goals doesn’t mean that he’ll be leaving with them.”
            “You’re going to—what? Torture him into compliance?” Draco’s face was white and strained when Harry glanced at him, although it took Harry far too long a moment to remember why that might be so.
            “No,” he said quietly, reaching out and squeezing Draco’s hand. “Nothing like that. Nothing like what you went through.” He turned to Charlie. “Right?”
            Draco caught his eye, then turned his head away. Charlie was blinking, but he said readily enough, “Of course, no torture. But he came for an intensive training course in the manners and ways of dragons, and that’s what he’s going to get.” Charlie scratched the shoulder where Harry knew he had a tattoo of a Hungarian Horntail, grinning lazily. “If the training is a bit more rigorous than usual and he has to have a guard going with him whenever he’s allowed out of the preserve, that’s only a minor extension of regular procedure.”
            “Whether he wants that extension of regular procedure is a different matter,” Harry said.
            Charlie shrugged. “Considering who we could have turned him over to, some of those people who punish smugglers, he got off easy.”
            Draco was looking unruffled again now, Harry saw. He squeezed his hand once, and Draco caught his eye and nodded. He was all right, and Harry thought that meant he could turn to Charlie and ask, “What do you mean, I move fast?”
            Charlie let his eyes pass back and forth between the two of them, until Harry thought Draco couldn’t be any tenser than he was. Then he shrugged and said, “Not that long since you divorced Ginny, is it? And you always struck me as someone who was really committed and didn’t ask Ginny to marry you lightly. If you’re describing Malfoy as your partner, that means you made a commitment faster than I thought you would.”
            Draco hissed under his breath, but Harry nodded. It was very straightforward, very Gryffindor reasoning, and he could see why it would bother Draco. Still, it heartened Harry, if only as evidence that Charlie didn’t think that Harry had been cheating when he was with Ginny.
            “Thanks, Charlie,” he said. “If my family can welcome my new partner, it’ll mean a lot to me.”
            Draco stiffened a little beside him, but that could have been for almost any reason, and Harry didn’t want to ask him what it was in front of Charlie, in case it was something he was sensitive about. Charlie just nodded and murmured something vague and then walked away, towards Bill. As he went, he was yelling something about a bet. Bill shook his head vigorously and pulled out what looked suspiciously like a Wheeze from one pocket.
            “Are you okay?” Harry asked Draco, since for one second no one was paying attention to them.
            “He threw me off-balance,” Draco admitted slowly, under his breath. His eyes were still fixed on Charlie and hadn’t gone elsewhere, although Harry had thought he would be on the alert for who was approaching them next. “I didn’t think a Dragon-Keeper would be so…vicious.”
            “Well, he’s right about the kind of legal punishments that someone who was caught smuggling dragon eggs could get,” Harry said. He finally spotted the table laid with biscuits and fresh fruits that Molly usually had at these gatherings, off to the side this time, and started herding Draco towards it. He thought they could both use some food. “By those standards, what they’re doing, keeping and training the bloke, is kind.”
            “By those standards,” Draco said, in a voice like sand.
            “Well, yeah,” Harry said, and ducked his head a little when Draco looked at him. “What I mean is, there are all sorts of laws on the books that I don’t really support, since I didn’t help make them, but which I have to enforce, since I’m an Auror. And some of those laws are…sort of archaic. I don’t think the punishments should be as bad as they are, but that’s what the Wizengamot thinks. And dragon eggs have got more valuable than ever as dragons become rarer. I know that Charlie told me most of the dragons he works with in Romania are having trouble breeding, and they don’t really know why. But smugglers disturbing their nests don’t help.”
            “It doesn’t sound like this one disturbed their nests.” They had arrived at the table, which was as long as a dragon’s tail itself, and Draco was looking around. After a minute, Harry realized what he was looking for, and shook his head.
            “They don’t bring out the Firewhisky or anything stronger than butterbeer until the kids are safely in bed.”
            Draco snorted in disgust and waved his hand at a glass pitcher of water. “Then I’ll have some of that. Pour for me?”
            He didn’t have to ask. Harry had already picked up the pitcher and Summoned a glass, and he poured with a flourish, handing it to Draco. He didn’t realize he was holding his breath until Draco drank it straight off, and then he relaxed a little. He had been afraid that Draco would make some remark about the dirt of poverty, or just refuse to drink it at all.
            “What’s he doing here?”
            And of course I don’t get the chance to celebrate the victory, Harry thought, and turned around to face his second son.
*
SP777: The title of last chapter was a reference to the way Harry felt when Ginny got done with him, in Chapter 38.
Aw. That’s sweet. As for Valentine’s Day, I did a Veela one-shot, but that’s posted on LJ, and I can’t post it anywhere else until the Valentine’s Day fest it was written for is over.
Light of the Life That Is will be updated in the next few weeks, I hope.
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Marathon