Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

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-Five--An Unparalleled Opportunity
            Harry opened his eyes slowly. He was tangled around Draco, and that was one reason he was reluctant to look up. He just wanted to lie here, in the warmth they shared, beaming and radiating beneath the covers, and forget all the possible threats and dangers and people who would try to separate them beyond his bed.
            But he knew that someone else was in the room, and whether that person was Kreacher or one of his friends, he would have to deal with them. He sighed and turned his head.
            The next instant, he almost bolted out of the bed. Lily was standing in the doorway, one hand still on the door as though it had creaked open of its own free will, her eyes wide and her mouth forming an O shape.
            Harry held himself down until he was sure that he wouldn't get out of bed naked; it involved a little creative wand-waving. Then he got up and bustled towards Lily with a smile as warm and welcoming as he could make it. "Lils, are you all right?" he whispered, bending down towards her.
            "It's all right, Harry. I'm awake." Draco stretched his arms luxuriously from beneath the covers, and yawned. "You woke me up when you moved so fast out of bed, you great oaf."
            Lily gave a shocked little giggle. Harry glanced back to nod and scowl at Draco, then turned to Lily again. "Did you have to come through the Floo on your own? Did your mum send you?" He had thought Lily was going to spend a few days with her grandparents, as much as to give Molly and Arthur a chance to see her as to give Ginny some time by herself.
            "I came through the Floo on my own, and Mum didn't send me, and neither did Grandma Molly." Lily was looking up at him with a pretense of independence so fragile that Harry was touched. "I just wanted to see you. Is that okay?"
            "That's fine," Harry said firmly. He tightened his hold on her hands. "But did you leave a note for your grandmother? Are they going to know where you are, or are they going to assume that maybe you got lost outside the Burrow somewhere?"
            "How can you get lost outside the Burrow?" Lily put scorn into those words that Harry thought he would have been hard-pressed to match when he was her age. "That's like saying that you could get lost in here." She gestured around the house.
            Harry heard Draco snickering behind him. He didn't turn around to confront him, but he did frown mightily. "They'll still worry. Did you leave a note?"
            "No," Lily muttered. "But you wouldn't, would you? I mean, when you were my age and having adventures. You wouldn't leave a note. You would just run off and then come back when you won, right?" Her eyes were shining now, and she seemed to have forgotten her scorn for his questions as easily as it had come up. She leaned on his arm and looked up at him trustingly.
            This time, Draco's laughter seemed to conceal a muffled howl. Harry dealt with that summarily. "I didn't start having adventures until I was eleven," he said. "When I was your age, I just went back and forth between my aunt and uncle's house and school, and sometimes to the shops, and that was all I did." He took Lily's hand and turned towards the Floo that was the main one for the house, at least according to Robards and all the other people who tried to firecall Harry through it. "You're at least going to come with me and explain where you went and why."
            "I can't help it if they're worried," Lily muttered, and dragged her feet, but she came.
            "And you're going to firecall your mum after that and tell her where you are," Harry added. After the debacle with Jamie, he was done keeping Ginny out of conversations regarding their kids. It might not be entirely comfortable for either of them, all the time, but Harry thought it was preferable to becoming hostile when they still had three kids to share. "I don't want her to worry, either."
            "She'll be upset." Lily looked back and forth between him and the stairs as though wondering if it was too late to make a run for it.
            "Then you just explain to her that you left early, and you're all right," Harry said.
            "You could talk to her." Lily tilted her head back and dragged her feet again. "You know how to talk to her."
            "Your mum needs some time alone," Harry said, sidestepping that one. "And you should speak to her respectfully, you know. She hasn't had enough respect in her life."
            "If she needs some time alone, why are you going to make me firecall her?"
            "Yes, why are you?" Draco murmured from somewhere behind them. Harry hadn't even been aware that he had followed them to the ground floor.
            Harry dealt with that interruption with a severely quelling look--Draco at least pretended to look impressed--and turned back to Lily. "Because she might not need to hear from me, but she needs to hear from you. She loves you, Lils. Really," he added, when Lily stared at him. "I know that she's gone through a lot, and that might be why she's not always--why she argues with me, but she loves you. She'll want to know you're safe."
            Lily hesitated one more time, then nodded. "All right. But will you be there for the firecall to the Burrow?"
            Harry smiled. It seemed that Lily feared her grandmother's wrath more than her mother's. At least she had her priorities in order. "Sure."
*
            By the time that Harry had finished the firecall with Lily--Molly and Arthur had been worried, but calmed down right away--and seen her throw the Floo powder into the fire to make contact with Ginny, Draco had retreated into the kitchen. Harry entered to see him sipping tea and reading the paper.
            "Interesting news," Draco murmured, raising his eyes from the paper. Before Harry could ask what it was, he added, "I was waiting for you to ask if I minded having your daughter here."
            "Well, I wasn't going to," Harry answered, taking his seat on the other side of the table and picking up the cup of tea that someone had kept hot under a Warming Charm. "Any more than you would ask if I minded having Scorpius around in the Manor."
            Draco stared, then smiled. "Fair," he said, and turned the paper so that Harry could see it.
            Harry snorted when he saw the article on the front page of the paper. There were old photographs of him and Draco. It looked like the one of him had been taken at a Quidditch game: he was standing up on his broom, waving his hand in the air, and wearing Gryffindor Quidditch robes. The one of Draco might have come from a few years after the war. Draco was leaning against the stone wall of a building Harry didn't recognize, his arms folded, his sneer crooked and directed at something off in the distance. But whoever had arranged the page had placed the photographs so that it appeared Draco was sneering at the picture of Harry. Now and then, the Harry in his Quidditch robes turned to the side to frown as though he sensed Draco's look but didn't know what to do about it.
            "Right, we're dating, and the world is doomed," Harry muttered, skimming the article then. There was surprisingly little about his divorce from Ginny or Draco's divorce from Astoria, which Harry had thought would provide most of the scandalous interest. Instead, there was a lot about how Harry had represented the Good and Righteous side of the war, and Draco had borne the Mark.
            And then there was something about Harry resigning from the Aurors because Draco had "talked him into it." Harry laid down the paper with something more approaching irritation and looked at Draco. "Would you like me to talk to the press specifically about how quitting the Aurors was my decision? I don't want you harassed for something you didn't do."
            "But you would be all right with harassment for something I did?" Draco accompanied the statement with a faint smile.
            "The amount of defense I'd do would be proportional to the wickedness of the crime," Harry replied smartly. "Anyway. Wanker. Would you explain to me whether you want me to go talk to them?"
            Draco visibly hesitated, then shook his head. "No. They'd only twist your words around and find something else to blame me for. I think that setting up this tutoring business you were talking about, and announcing that soon, would give them something else to be excited about, and that's the only cure."
            Before Harry could reply to that, Lily ran into the kitchen. She slammed into the nearest empty chair, hopped up on it, turned it around, grabbed a scone from the plate, and said, "I firecalled Mum, she's okay, can I have breakfast now?"
            “And she’s okay with you being here?” Harry asked, even as he signaled Kreacher to come in with a tray of food. Kreacher swept into the room and immediately began unloading it onto the table, an expression of bliss on his face. He seemed to like serving people who demanded things of him, Harry thought. Maybe that was what he had been doing wrong with Kreacher all along.
            “She’s fine with it,” Lily said, rolling her eyes, and then she glanced at the tray and frowned. “I thought I could have cake for breakfast.”
            Kreacher froze, his ears quivering as he turned to her. “Mistress Lily is wanting cake?” he whispered.
            Harry knew that expression. Kreacher would start looking for the nearest wall to bang his head into soon. “We never discussed that,” he said firmly. “We discussed pie, and only later, and not today.” He raised an eyebrow at Lily when she opened her mouth to protest. “That’s what happens when you make an unannounced visit.”
            Lily seemed inclined to pout for a second, but then she shrugged and snatched the nearest bowl of porridge, starting to scatter salt and honey liberally on it. Harry had done nothing, as far as he knew, to form his daughter’s peculiar porridge tastes. He was just glad that he didn’t share them. “Fine. What are we going to do today?”
            “I’m going to test you,” Draco said suddenly, turning around to face Lily and giving her a look that made her stop eating and goggle at him. Harry nearly did the same thing, but he had a cup to hide his face behind. He did wonder what the hell Draco thought he was doing, and if he would have to intervene. “Do you know as much as someone who’s about to go to Hogwarts should know? I don’t think so. Jamie is a genius, yes, but Al still hasn’t learned some of the lessons that a second-year should.”
            “I’m not going to Hogwarts for more than a year yet!” Lily protested, looking around as though she thought Kreacher would offer her an escape.
            Kreacher was there to pour her some tea, but he shook his head at her sternly. “Mistress Lily is to be learning her lessons like a proper pure-blood mistress,” he said.
            Harry could have intervened at that point, because there were plenty of pure-blood things that he would be just as happy if Lily never learned, but he didn’t know what was going on, and there was no reason to stop Draco unless he actually hurt Lily’s feelings. So Harry kept sipping, and made his face as neutral as he could when Lily turned to him for help.
            “But why do I have to learn them, when no one else did?” Lily finally asked, turning back to Draco with the air of someone resigned to doing what she must, since no one would speak up and rescue her.
            “Because you want to be even more than a genius,” Draco said, and clasped his hands together, staring at Lily over the tips of his steepled fingers. “Don’t you? You want to be special. The person that everyone else flocks to during your first year at Hogwarts. The one who knows the secrets of the castle and has the ability to set everyone straight.”
            Harry watched carefully. That kind of challenge wouldn’t have worked on Jamie. He just didn’t care enough about other people’s approval. It was one of the reasons that Harry had been sure Jamie was destined for Gryffindor even before he got Sorted.
            But Lily’s eyes had begun to shine. “I would be someone special?” she asked, and then glanced sideways at Harry. “I mean, special because I’m me? Not just because I’m Harry Potter’s daughter?”
            Harry felt as though someone had hit him softly in the stomach. He did his best to keep that off his face, though. Lily really hadn’t meant to hurt him, speaking as she had. He shouldn’t be taking it personally.
            “You would be.” Draco smiled at her. “There are all sorts of ways you can be special on your own, of course. If you decide not to take this sort of test, then you could find one of them later. But I thought I would offer you a special chance before anyone else gets hold of it.”
            Lily bounced a little in her chair. “Yes! Yes! Give me the special chance!”
            Harry was glad that he had a newspaper, too, the one with the absurd story about him and Draco on the front page, and he could concentrate ferociously on that. It made him less apt to snort desperately at the way that Draco had offered it.
            He didn’t want to snort at the smile Draco gave Lily or the way that Lily lit up, though. Someone who paid special attention just to Lily, someone who wasn’t her parents, could be what she needed. Harry knew it was one reason she was always so anxious to play with her cousins. She wanted to do something special, something no one else could do, in their games. It was why she hadn’t rebelled at playing the damsel they rescued yet. She was just too pleased to be included.
            “First of all,” Draco said, “you have to think as hard as you can about what sorts of qualities you really have. Try to be your own Sorting Hat. Are you brave, or is that just something you tell yourself? Are you loyal, or do you have the urge to break away from the people who depend on you sometimes? Do other people say that you’re stupid, but you know you’re intelligent in every way that matters? Or—” Draco’s voice dipped, and he leaned his head towards Lily’s “—do you know that you’re destined to make yourself part of history, and never mind the louder part of you that says that’s arrogant, because the part of you that knows you’re destined is larger?”
            Harry didn’t roll his eyes, because he thought Lily might be looking at him, but he wanted to. Yes, of course he presents the Slytherin choice as the most attractive one.
            Lily hesitated, though. “Why do I have to know that?”
            “Because that way,” Draco said, “the Sorting won’t come as a surprise to you. You can stop thinking about what House you’ll be in and think about what you’ll do there. Do you want to make a lot of friends? Explore the castle? Be a good student? Win at Quidditch? Make people like you? Impress your professors? Read lots of books?” He paused and observed Lily carefully. Harry did the same. He realized he didn’t know a thing about how Lily would answer, and that struck him as sad. He should know at least that much about his daughter.
            Lily hesitated again, blinking a little. Then she said, “I don’t know. What if I want to do all of those things sometimes, and only some of them other times?”
            “Then that at least means you have ambition,” Draco said, and held up his teacup to toast her. “And you have a chance of knowing yourself before the Sorting, and deciding what you want to do. Hogwarts isn’t the end, you know. What do you think about being a Dragon-Keeper? Or a lawyer? Or a Quidditch player? There are all sorts of things out there you could do.”
            “But I thought Hogwarts was fun.” Lily was watching Draco as if he were a new kind of toy.
            “It is,” Draco said solemnly, nodding. “But you don’t just want to waste your time there doing nothing, do you? You want to do something more than that?” He paused. “I think that you know you’re destined to make history, right? As the famous Lily Potter, not just the daughter of the famous Harry Potter?”
            “Yes,” Lily said, and her eyes were glowing now. “Yes, that’s right.”
            Draco winked at Harry. Harry shook his head back, both overcome with admiration and wanting to chuckle. Trust him to choose this method of proving that Lily belongs in Slytherin.
            But Lily was questioning Draco eagerly now, about what fun things she could do at Hogwarts and the fun things she could do after Hogwarts, and Harry was content to lean back and let her do what she wished. He had his own papers to ponder and consider, anyway.
            Like the ridiculous one in front of him, and the lies it was trying to spin about his relationship with Draco.
            I don’t have to consider making the Ministry look bad anymore because of what I do. So, what exactly moral and slightly underhanded things can I do to make them shut up?
*
delia cerrano: Even Ginny has a hope of recovering, I think.
Harry is kind of addicted to the excitement too, though. I don’t know if he could give it up completely, or not want to use the knowledge he got in the Aurors.
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Marathon