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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 Forty-Three—Blended
            “Can I have a moment of your time, then?”
            Harry turned around and leaned against the door of his office. He had kept limited hours since his confession that he couldn’t have children, and he hadn’t really expected anyone to approach him this soon after it, either. Or else he’d thought they would track him down in Malfoy Manor.
            Harry snorted a moment later as he remembered Draco’s magnificent wards. Yes, well, perhaps he should have anticipated an ambush a bit like this.
            “If you want,” he said indifferently to the brown-haired woman approaching him. She had large blue eyes that sparkled with a charm, Harry was sure. They looked too much like Dumbledore’s, and Harry thought Dumbledore was the only one who could ever manage that twinkle naturally. “But I don’t have anything to say except what I’ve already said.”
            “My name is Kalina Drumwell, working for the Chimera’s Herald,” the woman introduced herself quickly, waving around her parchment and quill as if Harry needed more confirmation that she was a reporter. “I only have a few questions.” She sidled towards Harry and lowered her voice. “You see, Mrs. Corner gave me an exclusive interview.”
            Harry held his face straight, and didn’t let the emotions he wanted to show out. At least Ginny giving an interview to a small paper like the Chimera’s Herald, known for publishing things only slightly less strange than the Quibbler did, was better than going to the Prophet.
            But his heart still struggled, and not because he was really that afraid of what Ginny had said. He was afraid of what Draco might claim in retaliation.
            “Won’t you come in?” he asked, and opened his door. Drumwell trailed him inside, looking around as if she expected to see photographs of children all over the wall and Harry giving them longing glances.
            The tame inside of the office must have disappointed her, because she turned back to Harry as soon as she’d taken a seat and poised her quill in the air. “So. You must want to reply to what Mrs. Corner said, of course.”
            “How can I do that?” Harry asked, taking his own chair and stretching out so that he would at least look lazy and contented if she took a picture of him. “I have no idea what she said.”
            Drumwell blinked and looked around again. Harry hid a smile behind the cup he’d picked up. He had cold tea from the other day, and he heated that up rather than preparing new tea for his “guest.” Drumwell was going to have a hard time dealing with him, he thought. She might as well get used to that from the beginning.
            “You didn’t read the interview?” Drumwell asked, finally.
            “How could I? I have no intention of keeping up with every bit of coverage about myself.” Harry gave her the cup and sat down, this time, with his hands folded in front of him. He was trying to look like a passionate but deferential administrator. He had no idea how well he’d succeeded, honestly. His only model for this sort of thing was McGonagall, in some of the interviews she’d given after the war when Hogwarts reopened. “It would be a full-time job. I have better things to do with my time.”
            Drumwell studied him. Harry studied her back. Drumwell seemed more intelligent than the majority of reporters he’d dealt with, or at least more capable of considering other perspectives. Maybe she would see that Harry wasn’t panting to have his name on the front page.
            “Well,” said Drumwell at last, with false brightness, “I do have the interview right here, so you can read it for yourself.” She pulled out a copy of the Chimera’s Herald, which had a big, bright chimera dancing on the top and coiling all the letters along the length of its serpent tail, and handed it across the desk.
            Harry sighed and picked up the paper. There was nothing he wanted to do less, at the moment, than spend time with Ginny’s words and get reminded of how she saw him. On the other hand, he had to know what she’d said so he could know how strongly he’d have to hold Draco back later.
            Or maybe you won’t hold him back at all.
            Harry ignored that impulse. He was still going to try to prevent Draco from taking horrible revenge on Ginny and her child and Michael Corner. Of course he was. He had moved on, he had a new life. She should be able to have one, too.
            If Draco pranked her or something, that was one thing, but Harry doubted that he would only go that far.
            The interview started with Drumwell gushing about how pretty Ginny was and how nice her house looked and how softly her pregnant stomach swelled, and the baby was due in a few months. Harry managed to ignore that last detail, and he certainly wasn’t going to lament over it, when he had Scorpius and the other children he had ignored so deeply in his desire for a blood child.
            Ginny responded to Drumwell’s question about whether she regretted her divorce with what Drumwell called a “bitter laugh.”
            “Of course I don’t,” said Mrs. Corner, and rearranged her teacup so she could hold it less awkwardly, over the curve of her belly. “Harry couldn’t give me children. I would have hesitated to say that before, but since he made the announcement himself, I don’t have any reason to hold back.” She wiped a tear off and looked into the distance for a moment.
            Harry shook his head. He wondered how much of this was Ginny posing for the papers and how much was Drumwell’s interpretation, the way that Skeeter used to write things like Harry “pausing tragically” when he was only trying to get his bloody thoughts in order.
            “Do you feel he betrayed you?” I asked her gently.
            “He betrayed one of my secrets,” said Mrs. Corner, and her eyes were wide and tear-stained. “I had a right to privacy. We never told anyone why the marriage had ended. I thought he would keep silent for the rest of his life. Why not? I was always planning to. I didn’t blame him for getting struck by that Dark hex, even though it was him putting his Auror job above the safety and trust that are so important to a marriage.”
            Harry held back his desire to rip the paper in two, knowing that Drumwell was watching for such a reaction. He only sighed and shook his head as though greatly saddened by this, while his stomach churned.
            Ginny had never thought that while they were married, any more than he had seriously feared that she would take a sharp dive into the ground while chasing the Snitch. Yes, their jobs had a certain element of danger, but they’d always managed to thrive on that. Harry had never thought she would resort to tactics this low to convince others that—
            What does she want? She wouldn’t want to take me back and marry me now that she has Michael.
            Harry shook his head again and went on reading.
            “But it wasn’t his fault, surely?” I had to ask that, because Mr. Potter, though appropriately candid in the speeches he gave the other day, had never insinuated that he had been deliberately struck by the hex.
            “No, it was an accidental combination they couldn’t trace back.” Mrs. Corner’s hand was white on her teacup. “But it still cost us our future. It turned out that our marriage wasn’t strong enough to survive a strain like that. I proposed several solutions for our lack of children, and Harry proposed several to me, but neither of us liked the other’s solutions. So in the end, it was simpler to get divorced and for me to seek out someone who could give me what I wanted.”
            Mrs. Corner lifted her head and looked at me so directly that I could see the strength and sincerity of her words. “But otherwise I would never have left him. Never.”
            Harry wrung his hand along the edge of the paper, the edge that was carefully out of Drumwell’s sight. Of course. The strength and sincerity of her words.
            There wasn’t much more. Drumwell had asked Ginny a few questions about her baby and the timing of her pregnancy, seemingly probing for as much of a scandal as she could, but Ginny knew something about the way that papers twisted words, after years of living with Harry. She gave her nothing except the bland facts that might make a human interest story a little more intriguing.
            Harry sat back and studied the paper for a moment. All of this was probably as deliberate, as played, as controlled, as Ginny could make it. Which only made it all the more disquieting that she had decided to speak up in the first place, of course.
            What was the reasoning behind that choice? Was it just a message to me? Some way to defend herself before other people could start asking her questions? Or did she really feel that vulnerable?
            “Your response, Mr. Potter?”
            Harry looked up. Drumwell was trembling like a Crup who needed to be housebroken, her quill no longer fluffing through her fingers but poised over a piece of parchment. Harry snorted. He knew that eagerness, but for him, it was associated with a case and a chance to save people, not print incriminating truths about their lives.
            “That I hope she’s happy, of course,” he said, carefully folding the paper and putting it aside. “I’m sorry she feels the way she does, but the truth is out there now and I can’t take it back. And I hope that the rest of her pregnancy goes well, and her new marriage is everything she wants it to be.”
            Drumwell had started to write, but had slowed down somewhere near the middle of what Harry said. When he finished, she gave him a definitely disapproving look. “And it’s nothing more than that? No words in response to her claim of betrayal?”
            “I’m sorry she feels the way she does, but the truth is out there now, and I can’t—”
            “Nothing more than that?” Drumwell leaned forwards and drummed one of her legs against the side of the chair. “I can’t—she went to the papers and told them something about your marriage, and you don’t want to rebut it?”
            “If you think of it that way,” Harry said, and held Drumwell’s eyes while he smiled, “I went to the papers and revealed something about our marriage first. Can you blame her for wanting a little of her own back?”
            Drumwell spluttered at him. Harry leaned back and folded his hands behind his head, shaking it and sighing a little.
            “Sometimes,” he said, “marriages end for reasons like this, that aren’t anyone’s fault. It’s useless to assign blame. We simply have to keep going, and try to find new reasons to live in our new partners. I’m very happy with Draco Malfoy. I think Ginny is happy with her new husband, too, and especially with the new life that’s about to share theirs. I wish her well,” he concluded, with enough sincerity that Drumwell bounced out of her seat and waved a hand at him.
            “You could—you could say something,” she said, and she was almost spitting. “You could make it clear that she’s not ever to speak like that again. That she’s irritating and presumptuous and taking advantage of your announcement. You could say something.”
            “Are those all things you feel?” Harry stared at her and touched a hand to his chest. “I must say, Miss Drumwell, you have a lot of feelings about a complete stranger’s marriage. Maybe you should have interviewed me immediately after it ended. You would have found me angry then. Now…” He shrugged and spread his arms.
            Drumwell stood there and glared at him. Then she tried desolate eyes and a sigh and a dropping of her head.
            “You don’t know how hard it can be to get ahead in this world of reporters,” she whispered. “There’s a few stars, like Rita Skeeter, who have all the attention and glory. And with the others, it’s all dependent on chance. You have to find the spectacular stories, and keep finding them. No one remembers you in a month if you’ve only found one good one.”
            Harry widened his eyes. “Wow. I never thought of it that way.”
            Drumwell began to perk up and smile at him, but Harry put his hand over his heart again and nodded at her. “It’s yet another thing that my private life can be transformed into to please the masses! Or one person, in this case. Or the masses through one person.” He fell back in his chair and waved his hand languidly. “I’m losing track of all the transformations, honestly.”
            Drumwell narrowed her eyes and stood there long enough that Harry thought he might have to escort her out of the office. Then she did turn and stomp towards the door, calling over her shoulder, “Remember it, Mr. Potter. I did give you the chance to retaliate. You might have eased your troubles by going along with me.”
            “Miss Drumwell.”
            She acted for a second as if she would keep walking, but Harry flicked his wand, and she had little choice but to stop when the door shut in her face. She turned around with folded arms and lifted chin that didn’t hide her fear. A lot of people were afraid of Harry when they got into close quarters with him.
            One of the things Harry was grateful for was Ginny’s lack of fear, and since her, Draco’s.
            “If you act against me,” Harry said, and held her eyes, “then I’ll consider that different from just informing me of something you’d already printed and trying to advance your career. Trying to stand out among the other reporters, I can grasp. But threats are over the line.”
            He thought about telling her that he probably wasn’t the one who would explain things to her, but let it go. Draco needed to be stopped if he went too far, and he also needed the advantage of surprise if he did come up with a harmless revenge to use. Either way, Harry didn’t want to use him as a club.
            “You have a responsibility to the truth,” Drumwell whispered, although she still looked back and forth between him and the locked door before she spoke. “You told some of it. Now you need to tell the rest.”
            “What makes you think that forgiving my ex-wife isn’t the truth I want to speak?” Harry gave her a patient smile. “Do you think I must want to hate and destroy her because she did something a little silly?”
            Drumwell said nothing, but stood there with her quill in her hand. Harry finally shrugged and unlocked the door. “Consider it, Miss Drumwell. I don’t have the Aurors to embarrass anymore. You can spin a story out of this if you think of it the right way. That’s really what separates reporters, in the end: how they use what they have, not the stories they find. Skeeter could make a story out of this without trying.”
            “Not a good one,” said Drumwell bitterly. “Not a true one. That’s what I was trying to give you a chance at, to have the truth printed.”
            Harry’s eyebrows went up, and he decided he must have misjudged her a little. But then he remembered the threat, and snorted.
            Only a little.
            “A word of advice,” he said, “You can’t print the truth if you tell people to their faces that you don’t believe them when they tell you what is the truth.”
            Drumwell glared at him once and then walked out the door. Harry leaned back in his chair, thought about it, and then stood up and gathered his cloak again. He wanted to make sure Draco didn’t do anything drastic before he got home.
*
            Draco looked up, smiling, when Harry stepped through the door into the dining room. Harry paused and eyed Draco for a second, and an answering smile worked its way across his face. Draco could see the moment when he decided to lie.
            “How was your day?” Harry asked, coming across to kiss him on the forehead. “I only had one client today, but at least it was someone who just wanted advice, and I could give that without ever leaving the office. She brought her nephew with her. Cute kid.”
            Draco gave him a bigger, wider smile, and turned the paper around. Harry paused in sitting down on the couch when he saw the interview with Ex-Weasley that was on the front page. Draco went on smiling as he leaned back against the cushion, and watched Harry flick through the pages, muttering and shaking his head.
            Then Harry lowered the paper, met his gaze head-on, and said, “She didn’t reveal anything horrible about me. And it’s in a minor paper, anyway. We didn’t even know about it. I didn’t know about it until the reporter came to my office today and tried to coax more ‘truth’ out of me. Ginny didn’t go too far.”
            “She went,” Draco said softly. “You remember how we clarified that I wasn’t talking about physical attacks when I said that I would hurt her if she went after you again? I said that if she went to the press and made some stupid announcement, then she was mine. And you agreed.” He leaned forwards and held his hand out, catching Harry’s wrist and squeezing hard enough to hurt. “Are you going to break your word and fight me on that now?”
            Harry gave a rapid, nervous toss of his head, his nostrils flaring. At least he looked a little less shocked, Draco thought. Ready to fight this battle instead of simply letting it steam past him. “You said that you would do it if she announced I was unfaithful to her or something like that. She didn’t. She was just trying to get some sympathy.”
            “And that means, of course, that you have no right to any,” said Draco, and let his fingers play along Harry’s wrist in a way that he knew very well Harry would find harder to resist than a concentrated stroke. Draco beamed into his eyes and murmured, “She had to know the consequences. Did she think she would get away with it?”
            Well, of course she had. Draco knew the answer to that question as soon as he asked it. She had thought she would get away with it because Harry wasn’t the sort to react instead of curling up and letting the world trample on him.
            Draco had never been that type, and he didn’t intend to start saying he was now.
            “Draco…” Harry closed his eyes. “When we made that bargain, I never thought she would say something,” he admitted. “I never thought it would be so hard to keep this bargain. But keep in mind that she has a husband and a child.”
            Draco cocked his head and clucked his tongue again. “Quillona has a dependent granddaughter. A child old enough to feel embarrassed by her grandmother’s actions, whereas Ginny’s never has to know about it if she doesn’t tell it.” But Harry’s words were itching at the back of his mind, and the next second he sat up and chuckled.
            “What?” Harry watched him with wary eyes.
            Draco touched his face and kissed him once, then Summoned a piece of parchment and a quill. There was already ink on the table next to the couch, where Scorpius had been practicing his letters earlier. “You’ve given me an idea. We keep talking about her child, who isn’t even here yet, but her husband very much is, and everyone has been forgetting about him. We’ll just write to him and inquire what he thinks about this, shall we?”
            “We,” Harry said, and reached out to take the shaft of Draco’s quill as he dipped it into the ink, “will do nothing of the sort.”
            Draco looked him peacefully in the eye and said, “I knew you cared more about her than me.”
            Harry bucked, once, for all the world as though someone had aimed an invisible foot up from the couch cushions and kicked him in the arse. “What?” he whispered, lips pale as he stared at Draco.
            “It’s all right,” Draco said in a voice of what Harry would probably think was ridiculous melancholy any other time, leaning back on the couch and sighing. “I know that she came first and she’s female and you already knew you liked her. You were planning a future with her. Whereas I just sort of burst into your life and you’d never been attracted to a man before and this family we have with you and me and Scorpius now was almost an accident. It’s all right if you want to go and kneel at her feet again—”
            Harry shook him and moved down in front of him with a scowl that said more shaking might be on the menu. “You berk,” he whispered. “You know I would never think of you like that.”
            Draco ducked his head and looked up through his long lashes. “What was I supposed to think? Of course you would still care for her.”
            Harry stared at him. Draco held up the quill and twirled it around again. “And of course you would stop me when I want to get revenge for you,” he added lightly. “Because you care more about preserving her peace of mind than mine.”
            It took a long moment for Harry to acknowledge that he’d heard, but at last he sat back with a harsh exhale and released Draco’s wrist. “Right,” he whispered, looking off to the side. “I didn’t—I never meant to indicate you would be—you’re right.”
            “Am I?” Draco was perhaps being greedy, but he wanted to hear more than Harry’s begrudging acceptance of his revenge, wanted to hear Harry admit that at least part of what he’d wanted from Draco had been wrong.
            “She did do something,” said Harry, staring out the window for a long moment before he turned back. There was a painful expression of determination on his face. “I promised, and even if I did it mostly because I thought she would never go to the papers, she did something. What you want to do isn’t terrible and won’t ruin her life.” He squinted at Draco. “Right?”
            Draco snorted. “As much as I think this needs an answer, I wouldn’t do it in a way that would cost me you. You’re more important to me than revenge.”
            Harry’s face lit with an almost painful glow. Draco stared back at him, and blinked a little. Remember that, he told himself. Harry still needs reassurance, and it would be a terrible thing to forget that.
            “Yes,” said Harry, and reached out and stroked Draco’s wrist. “Then you could at least write to Michael and ask him what he thinks about all this.”
            “He is strangely absent, isn’t he?” Draco agreed, and began to write. “From the conference she came to and from this article she published.”
            He wrote away happily, conscious of Harry’s eyes on him at all times. Scorpius was still taking a nap, worn out by Quidditch practice in the garden earlier, and the fire flickered, and it was peaceful.
            And Draco handed the letter to Harry for approval when he was done, and Harry read it with various shadows of amusement dancing over his face, and they watched the owl fly out the window together before they went to wake Scorpius and have dinner.
            Together.
*
starr: Harry will reconcile with Ron. But it’s going to be hard right at first.
SP777: It was time for them to have a sex scene or it was time for me to write a sweet one? ;)
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Starfall