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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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Chapter Forty-Three—The Soot Settles
            “Can I talk to you for a moment, dear?”
            Harry looked up. Molly was standing in front of his and Draco’s table, deliberately drying her hands with a towel. Draco was giving her a narrow look, as though he thought she would suddenly draw her wand and curse Harry.
            “Sure,” Harry said, and shot Draco a look of his own as he stood up, silently asking if Draco would be all right on his own with all the Weasleys around him.
            Draco nodded back, and turned to observe the rest of the Weasleys as though waiting for them to wander up to him. Jamie was already coming over again, Harry was glad to see. For once, he thought, Jamie’s invincibility to good social behavior was coming in handy. He and Draco could chat about Potions for hours, and all Jamie would think was that Draco was really good company.
            “Harry?”
            Molly was waiting. Harry obediently turned away and walked over to the house with her. Molly shut the door firmly behind them, if quietly, and the hum of voices and other noises cut off. Harry turned and sat down in a chair at the kitchen table. Molly stood across from him, a look of deep consideration on her face.
            Harry swallowed. It had been easier to be sure that he was doing the right thing when Ginny’s was the face he was looking into. Ginny had a fiery temper, easier to catch than Molly’s, but she also tended to let it burn out more quickly. Harry knew she had left the party this time, after Molly had talked to her, but he didn’t know what they had said to each other.
            “I’m sorry if that was more…brutal than you expected,” Harry said, after he had sought for another word and found none, and Molly had continued to just stand there and look at him in silence.
            Molly sighed and looked away. “I had hoped that she would come early and you would talk in the house,” she admitted. “Or that she would remember the children were there and keep the accusations to a minimum because of that. But most of all, I hoped this would be the end. I’ve been listening to her talk for years about how you must love other people more than her, although only in the last year did she start talking about you cheating. I’ve listened to her complain about the kids, and I didn’t say much because of the same reason I didn’t say anything to you about them.”
            Harry nodded. He understood that if Molly started interfering in her children’s families, she would never do anything else.
            Molly sat down in a chair at last, and flung the towel on the table. “I got so tired of the complaining,” she told Harry quietly. “Nothing ever changed. I thought she would find something to prove her suspicions and blow up at you, if she looked long enough. And then the rest of us would blow up at you, too.” She gave Harry a sharp look. Harry just shrugged. If he’d been cheating, they would have, and he would have deserved it. “Or she would find that there was nothing to support them, and stop talking about them. But she didn’t, and finally—I’m afraid that I was the one who first suggested the divorce, Harry.”
            Harry swallowed. “It’s not your fault,” he said thickly. “Part of it is mine. But you didn’t make Ginny divorce me, anyway.”
            Molly nodded, gazing ahead. “But I may have put the idea in her head at a time when she wasn’t seriously considering it. And I’m not sure that my attempt to put an end to things this time went where it was supposed to go.”
            “She talked to you,” Harry said. “She got to know that at least one person in the family still sympathizes with her.”
            Molly made a little impatient move with her hand. “Charlie has been sending her post for the last six months where he tries to comfort her, and he’s asked her to Floo out to Romania to meet up with him so they can talk. She responds to him, but I’m not sure she will after today. She seems to have decided that no one can be on her side unless they believe you cheated on her.”
            Harry shook his head, lost. Molly nodded back at him. “I know. I feel sorry for her, Harry. This hasn’t been easy on her.” Her eyes flashed for a second. “You didn’t always make it easy for her.”
            “Believe me, I would change that if I could.”
            Molly nodded again, face already abstracted. “I think—she became so invested in this notion that you were unfaithful. I think that might have been what made her decide on the divorce, when she couldn’t live with the suspicion anymore and it was consuming her. But when she began to realize that most other people didn’t agree with her, and that you wouldn’t admit to it, she began to wonder if the divorce itself was a mistake. If she destroyed her marriage for something that isn’t even true.”
            “We both destroyed it,” Harry said. “I would have said that today, but…”
            Molly looked down at the tabletop. “I know. I think that she’ll need time and sympathy, but an argument with you isn’t going to resolve anything. I’m sorry, Harry. I did think it would. I thought that she would handle it differently, that it would be in private, and that she wouldn’t get so angry about Draco’s mere presence here.”
            “You could have held back from inviting him,” Harry said quietly. “But then I wouldn’t have come.”
            “I know that, too.” Molly looked up with a faint smile, although the lines in her face were distorted by pain. “I can see now why so many Weasleys and Prewitts before us were reluctant to go through divorces. They hurt, and not just the people in the marriage involved.”
            Harry nodded and stood up. “I think I should go out and speak to my children. If they want to talk to me in private, then they can. But I don’t think anything is going to be settled no matter how much Ginny and I argue about this.”

            “She’s starting to wake up,” Molly said. “I know it won’t ever be the same, but maybe someday you can be friends again.”
            “I won’t listen to her accuse me of cheating again,” Harry said. “Anything else, I’m willing to talk about.”
            “I don’t think it would do any good if you did listen to her. It would just get the notion more and more settled in her mind, and what she needs right now is to get it pried loose so she can start thinking about other things, making other plans.” Molly wrapped a hank of red hair in one hand and tugged on it, something Harry had never seen her do. “I’m so sorry. If I had known…”
            “We can keep saying that,” Harry said, squeezing her shoulder. “But we couldn’t know. It would have worked if I’d had as fiery a temper as Ginny, or if she hadn’t dwelt alone with that suspicion for so long. Maybe then we could have started working together on the means to get past that.”
            Molly gave him a weary smile, and Harry went outside to talk to his children.
*
            “You and Mum are never going to be married again.”
            Al spoke it staring at the ground, moving his toe back and forth in such a regular pattern that Harry was compelled to nod, even though Al wasn’t looking up and so he missed it. A second later, Harry knelt down and lifted Al’s head so that Al could see his expression.
            “I know. I’m sorry you had to find out in such a painful way, though.” He squeezed Al’s shoulder and waited for more. Jamie had just shaken his head and said there was nothing to talk about, and Lily was still with her cousins, so it was just him and Al for now.
            “It was—it was—” Al did some more struggling, then burst out, “Why doesn’t this happen to other people?”
            “Ask Scorpius about it,” Harry invited. He highly doubted that Scorpius knew the real story of why his parents’ marriage had ended, but he would know what it was like to grow up as a child of divorced parents in a society where that was fairly rare. “He can probably tell you some ways to get used to it.”
            “Scorp was a baby when it happened.” Al stared up at him challengingly. “He won’t remember anything. Why couldn’t you wait until we were older to do this?”
            “I don’t think there’s a right time,” Harry said. “I didn’t know a divorce was coming, and I didn’t want to get one. And I don’t think your mum could have stood it any longer.” He winced a little, but he thought that was true, and could tell Al a lot about why Ginny had blown up today, without betraying any of Ginny’s secrets. “Do you think it would have been better if you were seventeen when we got divorced?”
            “I don’t know,” Al told his feet and the ground.
            “I know,” Harry whispered back, “and it wasn’t really fair to ask you.” He waited until Al was looking at him again. This was too important not to be meeting his son’s eyes when he said it. “I think that there are certain things I’ll never be able to do. I can’t get back together with your mum, and I can’t stop people from thinking that I’m famous and worth getting an autograph with. But if there’s something that you do want other than that, tell me, okay? Then we’ll see if I can do them.”
            “Breaking up with Mr. Malfoy?”
            Harry shook his head. “There’s another impossible thing, I’m afraid.”
            “But you and Mum weren’t together forever, so you and Mr. Malfoy might not be, either!” Al pointed a finger at Harry as if he had figured out a great secret. “Just think about it, and you’ll see that it’s true!”
            Harry held back his own irritation at the pointing. That was something rude that he would have to talk to Al about, but later. “I know that Draco and I might not be together forever, but if we break up, it won’t be to please anyone else. It’ll be because we don’t want to be together anymore.”
            Al stared at him, and slowly lowered his hand. “You mean that you might—you might be together for years?”
            “I certainly hope we will be,” Harry said. He didn’t say the obvious: that if they were, Al and Draco would either have to get along better or avoid each other all the time. There was no way that that wouldn’t come out wrong.
            Besides, if he and Draco were together for years, Al and Draco would have plenty of chances to get used to each other, and plenty of chances to talk about what didn’t work for them, and what they could tolerate from each other, and what they couldn’t. Harry doubted the adjustment would go all one way. There were things he might find endearing about Draco that his children wouldn’t. And if Al had admired Draco before all this started, that was still as the father of a school friend. Rather different from when he was dating your dad.
            Al gave him a complex look that Harry didn’t know how to figure out. There were all sorts of emotions mixed in there, and Harry wouldn’t be surprised if Al also had trouble separating them out or defining them. Harry couldn’t demand a full accounting from Al of what he didn’t understand himself.
            “I’m sorry that you had to hear me and your mum fighting,” Harry offered. He couldn’t say that he was sorry for dating Draco, but this was one apology that Al would probably accept. “That was unacceptable.”
            “Well, yeah,” said Al, but he didn’t seem all that interested in the words. He just seemed numb. “I have to—I have to think about this for a while.”
            He wandered off, towards his cousins. Harry watched him go with pity welling in his heart. Draco could say whatever he wanted about Harry having been through a war when he was Al’s age and Al having it easier, but in a way, Harry had never suffered from normal teenage problems like this. He just hadn’t had time for them.
            And no parents to inflict their problems on me, either.

            He sighed and turned to face Jamie, who had come up to his side during the talk with Al, but hadn’t intruded. Harry had thought he might want to talk to his brother, because, after all, this affected them both equally. But Jamie just looked him in the eye and shook his head.
            “He’s good to talk to about Potions,” Jamie said. “He says things that make sense. I don’t mind if you date him.”
            “Good to know I have your blessing,” Harry said dryly. He knew that irony would be lost on Jamie, so he might as well indulge in it himself, and leave Jamie to figure it out later. Sure enough, Jamie blinked but said nothing. “Could you tell Lily I’d like to talk to her?”
            Jamie turned away, but paused. Harry waited. Maybe Jamie was going to say something deeper than had appeared on the surface after all.
            “It never would have worked out,” Jamie said. “Maybe Al understands now, where he didn’t before. I always knew, but now he knows.”
            “You always knew?” Harry repeated, a little baffled. He had known that Jamie was the one of his children the least affected by the divorce, but he had thought that was because Jamie had Potions to take up his attention, and give him something else to concentrate on. Al had his friendship with Scorpius, and school and Quidditch, but he’d been affected anyway, and Lily had no chance to forget, living with both of them the way she did.
            Jamie glanced back at him, and smiled a little.
            “You keep saying that I’m a genius, and so smart,” he said. “Mr. Malfoy was the one who let me know that that I’m not always smart. But sometimes, give me credit for noticing more than Potions, and the best ways that I can get something valuable away from someone.” He turned and walked over to the far side of the garden, bending down to whisper in Lily’s ear. She nodded awkwardly and came slowly towards Harry, scuffing her shoe in the mud.
            Harry shook his head a little. He had to concentrate on Lily, here and now, and not think about some of the things that Jamie must have been aware of that Harry would never have exposed him to if he had thought…
            If he had thought that Jamie was paying attention.
            Harry grimaced. He needed to stop being so oblivious around his children, and while he was doing better now than he had in a long time, and thought he could give himself some slack for that, he still wanted to do better.
            Lily came over to him so slowly that Harry wondered if she thought that he would yell at her, too. She didn’t say anything when she stood in front of him, either, the way Al had started talking right away. She just focused on the small hole that she was digging into the grass with her shoe.
            “I’m sorry,” Harry said.
            That at least got her attention. Lily lifted her head and stared at him a little blankly, then shook her head. “Why are you sorry?”
            “Because I didn’t realize that the argument I had with your Mum would hit you that hard,” Harry said. “I should have, but I didn’t. You’ll never hear us argue like that again.”
            “That doesn’t mean you won’t.”
            The sharp suspicion in Lily’s eyes made Harry wince, but he nodded. “You’re right. But all we can do is make sure that you’re protected from it. It’s not right to make you bear the burden, when we ought to do it ourselves.”
            Lily continued watching him, blinking a little now and then. “You think—you think that you can get along with her?”
            “I’ll try,” Harry said. “Because you deserve parents who get along with each other in public, not fight in front of you.”
            Lily sucked on her lip. “But if you still fight, isn’t it the same thing?”
            “I don’t know,” Harry said. He knew that he couldn’t promise her not to fight, or that rumors of the fight wouldn’t get back to her. Ginny might still talk to the kids about their problems even if Harry promised that he never would again. “I’ll try not to make it the same thing.”
            Lily looked at him with an aching in her eyes. Harry hugged her, hard. He wanted to ask her if there was anything she would like, if there was any way he could make this up to her, but he knew better than that, when he really thought about it. He’d done that too often in the past, and then gone away, satisfied that everything was better because he’d given her a gift. Gifts didn’t make up for things like this.
            “I’m sorry,” he said again. Maybe apologies didn’t make up for it, either, but he thought he should be focused on the future at this point, the way he was going to be in his relationship with Ginny. “Do you want to come over this weekend?”
            “I thought this was my weekend with Mum.”
            “You can spend it wherever you want,” Harry said, pulling back and smiling at her. “I would love to have you.”
            “Would Mr. Malfoy?”
            “I don’t know,” Harry said. He really didn’t know what Draco thought of Lily now, whether she was less spoiled in his eyes or not. “But it doesn’t matter. We’ll get along, okay? You and I can do and go things on our own, if that’s what you want. Or we can do things with him.”
            “I’d like…I like hearing stories about you,” Lily muttered. “Would you tell me more of them?”
            Harry hastily flipped through his memories for some that he could either tell to a ten-year-old or edit suitably, and then nodded. “Sure. If you want.”
            “Good,” Lily said. “I’d like to come, then. Can I come on Friday afternoon? And have pie for dinner?”
            “Yeah.” Harry kissed her forehead. “Are you okay?”
            “I think so,” said Lily. She hugged him for a second, not long, and then darted back over to her cousins.
            Harry watched her go, but turned around when he heard footsteps behind him. Draco smiled at him and reached up to touch his shoulder. “Are you ready to go home?” he murmured.
            Harry didn’t fall into Draco’s arms, but he wanted to. He nodded. “Yes. Let’s.”
*
SP777: Sort of.
BAFan: Molly certainly hopes that Ginny believes Harry now, if only because that would provide a healing way forward for Ginny as well as the rest of them.
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Marathon