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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-Five—Walking the Right Path
            Draco prepared carefully for his little visit to Ex-Weasley. He made sure that he had an impeccable cloak of soft grey, the sort he would usually only wear to the Ministry, at an official appointment. Then he checked his pockets and made sure that he had not only his wand but a Portkey, in case she turned violent.
            Harry, who was getting ready to leave himself for the office, paused and watched Draco preparing. His eyebrows rose at the sight of the Portkey. “You know she isn’t in the habit of casting the Bat-Bogey Hex anymore?”
            “Maybe not at you,” said Draco, and leaned forwards to kiss him quickly. Scorpius was at Andromeda’s house, returning Teddy’s visit, and Draco had no compunction about leaving him there for as long as this needed to take. “But I thought I ought to compensate for her dislike of Slytherins as well as the person you’ve moved on with.”
            Harry opened his mouth, probably to comment on his ex-wife not being all that bad. Draco held his eyes. Harry closed his mouth.
            “Yes,” said Draco. “Just leave me to handle this. You won’t ever have to worry about her again after today.”
            Harry rolled his eyes. “And that doesn’t worry me at all.”
            “I wouldn’t kill her, don’t worry,” said Draco. “It would be too merciful and earn too much sympathy for her from the public, after everything she’s done.”
            Harry snorted. “I wish I could believe that that wasn’t really one of your motivations,” he said, but he didn’t fall to his knees and beg Draco to reconsider. He just nodded to him and went out the door.
            Draco was glad. If Harry was going to fall to his knees, he had much better reasons for being down there.
            That image fastened in his head, he strode out, off the Manor’s grounds, and clearly pictured the house that the article in the Chimera’s Herald had described with such accuracy. Then he flicked his wand once, and Apparated there. He blinked a little when he found himself outside a stone wall that the article hadn’t mentioned, and then smiled.
            Well. They do have some notion of elementary defense, after all. Or maybe Corner added the wards after he started thinking what exactly his wife’s words sounded like.
            Draco strolled towards the wall, making his pace utterly casual. Despite his lack of invitation, he doubted that Ex-Weasley would send him away. She would be too concerned with “beating” him. Draco thought that was what this was all about: the concern with defeating Harry somehow by rubbing her happy life in his face.
            Draco was about to destroy that confidence. And he would take such pleasure in it that only making love to Harry could compare.
            No. Making love to Harry will always be better.
            Draco smiled at his own thoughts, and walked through the low gate without slowing down. He saw a single flash of a charm, one that he knew would take his image like a camera and show it to the people inside the house. But at the moment, no alarms were sounding, and they hadn’t armed any traps against him.
            He would take that as his being welcome, then. Or at least as welcome as Ex-Weasley, with her appalling lack of manners, was likely to make him.
            He was halfway up the pathetic little path—he wondered for a moment if Ex-Weasley had ever seen the Manor, and was trying to come up with an imitation of it—when the door of the house opened. A man Draco had to assume was Michael Corner, because he hadn’t seen him since Hogwarts and hadn’t paid much attention to him even then, came out and stood in front of the door. He had his arms folded.
            Oh, no, folded arms, Draco thought, and hid his smirk as he walked nearer and nearer.
            He was perhaps five paces away when Corner said, “That’s far enough.”
            Draco stopped tamely, and eyed him. He had to admit that he hadn’t anticipated Corner being here, but on the other hand, he didn’t really see why it had to affect him. Corner was irrelevant to his plans. He wasn’t the one harassing Harry, and while he was as pathetic as their little path, he hadn’t caused any direct harm to either Draco or Harry.
            “Ginny doesn’t want to see you.”
            “That’s too bad,” said Draco quietly. “I want to see her. She’s causing harm to my lover with her words, and you won’t interfere and stop her. Neither will her family. Everyone is treating her like spun glass. Why? Do none of you see what she’s doing as wrong? Do you secretly agree with her?”
            “No!” Corner flushed bright red. He was dark-haired, so it didn’t clash the way it would with a Weasley’s hair, but it was still not a good look on him. “I wish she would stop harassing him. I do. Harry—he did some things I can’t agree with, but in the main, he’s a good man.”
            “Then why don’t you stop her?” Draco was enjoying this conversation, unplanned diversion or not. It was fascinating to look into the mind of someone who would just step back and stare at the sky while someone did something wrong in front of them, moral beliefs or not.
            “Because what else can I do?” Corner spread his hands. “I spoke to her. She wouldn’t agree to stop. What else can I do?’
            “Tell her that what she’s doing is disgraceful,” said Draco at once, his mind going to what he would have said if Harry started doing this. “Tell her she’s an idiot. Tell her that you’d prefer to spend time with her and your child, and forget about the past.”
            Corner flushed even deeper. Draco supposed that someone who gave a shit could have told the difference on his face between an angry flush and an embarrassed one, but Draco didn’t give a shit. “I’m not going to call my own wife an idiot.”
            “What about the others?” Draco countered. “I merely suggested insults as a means of telling the truth, you understand. There are other ways.”
            Corner looked away from him. “You don’t understand the way Ginny is when she’s got her mind set on something,” he muttered.
            “And because of that, no one else can withstand her? Not her brothers? Not her mother? I understand her mother is rather formidable.”
            Draco made his voice gentle and mocking, so that Corner stiffened and looked at him suspiciously, but Draco just kept blandly smiling. Corner wouldn’t be able to prove mocking intent, and that was the important thing.
            Of course, Corner didn’t seem able to prove much of anything, or impose his will, either. But that wasn’t Draco’s concern. Getting in to see Corner’s wife and getting him out of the way was.
            Or perhaps he can watch me and learn. Draco had to admit that the expression on Corner’s face after he heard about his wife’s little plan for infidelity might be refreshing, like a draught of cool water for Draco after dealing with so many of both Harry’s and Ex-Weasley’s little quirks.
            “It’s a delicate situation right now,” Corner said stiffly.
            Draco snapped his fingers. “Of course! I’d forgotten that pregnancy turns a woman’s brains to mush and you have to support her upright and say, ‘Yes, dear,’ until she has the child, to prevent them from pouring out of her ears! Trust you to remind me of how true that is.” He gave Corner a blinding smile.
            Corner’s fingers clenched at the sides of his body, and he made a sharp, wrenching move with his head. “I don’t believe that.”
            “Then what do you mean? Why is the situation so delicate that you can’t possibly tell your wife she’s embarrassing all of you and she should just let Harry move on with his life, the way she has?” Draco leaned a shoulder comfortably against the wall of the house.
            Corner shook his head. “You wouldn’t understand. You’re not married.”
            “I was married,” said Draco, a little amazed. He didn’t think Corner was stupid—other than having that special kind of stupidity that anyone needed who was going to marry into the Weasley family—but he kept handing Draco all these arguments that Draco could break down without effort. “I’m divorced now. And do you know why?”
            Corner stared at him as if Draco was the least interesting flobberworm he’d ever seen, and didn’t reply.
            “Because it didn’t work out between us,” Draco told him. “Because my wife wanted to work on magical projects, and I wanted to raise our son to be a Malfoy, and we couldn’t simply maneuver around each other. We were in each other’s way. So we got divorced. We talked things out like normal people.” He paused. “Are you afraid that you’ll end up divorced from her if you oppose her?”
            Corner’s face flashed with some emotion that he probably wouldn’t name fear, but Draco would, before he looked away. “It doesn’t matter what you think, Malfoy,” he muttered, in a tone that didn’t sound like the defiance he wanted it to be, either. “Because you can’t hold her back, and you don’t have the right to try.”
            “I know what I want her to do,” said Draco. “I didn’t come prepared to offer her violence. Just to talk. That ought to be enough.”
            “Keeping me away from him isn’t something you ought to do either, Michael.”
            Corner turned, blanching, one hand reaching out as if he wanted to touch Ex-Weasley and stop her from coming to the door. But she stepped past him—the way she seemed to be doing on lots of issues, Draco thought snidely—and came to a halt in the doorway, staring at Draco with her arms folded over the top of her stomach.
            How many times can she remind someone looking at her that she’s pregnant? Draco even understood the impulse, in a way. It was a way to tell people that she was where Harry had wanted to be, the parent of a child on the way. A child who was of her own blood and not someone else’s.
            But it was still flaunting, not simply a woman telling her story and hoping to be believed. Not that she ought to have a stake in what Harry did with his body three years afterwards, anyway, but Draco knew her claim to be concerned with her new life exclusively was so much bollocks.
            He wouldn’t tell her that now, not when he might give up his chance to talk to her. “Weasley,” he said, nodding to her. “Or Corner, or whatever name you’re calling yourself. Should we talk?”
            “I don’t like the tone you’re taking with my wife, Malfoy,” said Corner, making a vague threatening motion with one hand.
            Draco stared at him in utter boredom. If he was threatening someone, he thought, they would have known it. None of this vague business. He shrugged a little and turned back to Ex-Weasley. “Can we talk?”
            “I told you to stay out of this, Michael.” Ex-Weasley’s eyes were glittering as she gestured Draco into the house. Draco caught a single glimpse of a large, open room with niches all along the wall that displayed vases and urns and small statues, before Ex-Weasley moved in front of him and pointed towards a spiral staircase. “We’re going upstairs where no one will disturb us. And it’s Corner, by the way.”
            Draco let one side of his mouth turn up in an utterly meaningless smile, and went the way she had pointed out. Behind him was a short, fierce argument he didn’t give a shit about, so he didn’t listen to it. The important thing was that he heard Ex-Weasley’s footsteps coming after him.
            She said nothing until they were upstairs, and in an anteroom that must lead to their bedchambers, because Draco could see the edge of a bed beyond one open door. He snorted a little to himself. So although Corner didn’t have the money to own and operate a huge house like Malfoy Manor, he followed the pattern of waiting rooms before the main rooms where the life of the house went on—as pointless as that was when he probably never had business visitors or guests that had to be entertained.
            “You never struck me as someone who would stand up for Harry Potter,” Ex-Weasley told him as she sat down, and drew Draco’s eyes away from the bed he could barely see. He didn’t want to think about Corner sleeping in it with the woman in front of him anyway.
            “Well, that’s strange,” Draco murmured. “You never struck me as someone who would divorce Harry Potter.”
            Ex-Weasley’s confidence disappeared. She had worn it like a smug mask before, and Draco had wondered whether it was real or not. Now he thought it was, but easily torn. She leaned forwards and narrowed her eyes. “That happened long before you entered the picture, so I’m not sure why you would bother having opinions on it.”
            “Three years,” Draco said in a musing voice. “That’s a long time, isn’t it?”
            “It is,” Ex-Weasley agreed, tone aggressive. “And if you would pay attention to me instead of Harry, you would take the good advice to stop interfering in what doesn’t concern you.”
            “Why should Harry’s family life concern you?” Draco asked. “Who he sleeps with, who he adopts children with? He didn’t make that announcement with any sort of reference to you. You’re the one who suddenly popped up and declared that he couldn’t go on with his life because you had some sort of bizarre persecution complex.”
            “Persecution complex,” Ex-Weasley whispered. “You don’t think that the secrets of the marriage I shared with Harry are worth defending?”
            “No.”
            Ex-Weasley had probably been prepared to launch into a tirade, Draco thought, but he’d effectively stopped her. She was staring at him with her mouth open. Then she gave her head a little shake, and leaned in with a haughty sniff.
            “You were never there,” she whispered. “You don’t know how it was. You don’t know how devastated I was, when I thought I would never have a family with Harry. He was the first man I loved. I would gladly have had his children.” Again her hands rested protectively on her belly. “But it wasn’t to be.”
            “If you’re resigned to it, then you ought to accept him moving on with someone else.”
            “Not when he broadcasts gossip about the end of our marriage all over!” Ex-Weasley folded her arms. “Our families were the only ones who knew why our marriage ended. It should have stayed that way. Not being able to have children is a very private thing.”
            “You mean your family,” Draco corrected, with soft maliciousness. “Harry didn’t have any family apart from yours until recently.”
            “He had Andromeda, and Teddy,” Ex-Weasley answered so quickly that Draco cursed himself for forgetting about them. Honestly, though, he thought of Andromeda and Teddy as part of the extended family that Harry had now, since they were related by blood to Draco. “And he would have had other people if you hadn’t shown up.”
            Draco cocked his head. He hadn’t come here to talk to her about Harry, not really, but he was curious what she would say if he let her run on. “What do you mean?”
            “He would have dated someone else,” Ex-Weasley said. “Some woman. He would have settled down and made a life with her. Maybe she would have had children, and he would have got to have children that way.”
            Draco chuckled. “It bothers you that he chose a man instead, doesn’t it?”
            “It means—” Ex-Weasley cut off what she would have said, and turned her head haughtily to the side. “It doesn’t matter what I think,” she said in a sniffy little voice. “It only matters that he chose to betray me, and probably just to get on your good side. You urged him to tell the truth about his state, didn’t you?”
            “I’m glad to think you can recognize it as the truth, and not just something he came up with to torment you.”
            Ex-Weasley turned on him, her eyes flashing passionately. “You have absolutely no idea what I’ve gone through, or what I continue to go through,” she whispered. “No idea.”
            Draco decided he didn’t want to waste more time discussing her drama. It was time to move on to the purpose of his visit. “Apparently your husband isn’t willing to tell you to stop talking about Harry, and your family are throwing their hands up the same way. I thought I should tell you that you’ll stop now.”
            “If you go to open threats,” said Ex-Weasley, and dropped her hands to cradle her belly again, “I don’t think either Michael or Harry will be very pleased.”
            “Probably not,” Draco agreed. “Good thing that it’s not open threats.” He paused long enough for her to give him a baffled look, and then added, “Do you think your husband would be pleased to learn that you wanted to stay with Harry, but cheat on him and sleep with someone else to get pregnant? Was he going to be the one? No, maybe not,” he went on thoughtfully while Ex-Weasley got paler. “Otherwise, I don’t think it would have taken three years for you to get pregnant.”
            “How dare you,” Ex-Weasley whispered, and then closed her eyes for a second and really looked as if she was fighting illness. “Harry told you that? He’s betrayed even more of my secrets than I suspected.”
            “He’s done what he could to move on with his life,” Draco corrected her. “And what he can’t do, I’m doing for him. Did you ever tell your husband what you were willing to do for a child of your own? That you wanted to stay married to the Great Harry Potter?”
            “Yes.”
            Draco sighed and pursed his lips. “You should be a better liar if you want to fool me,” he murmured. “I have more experience with this than you’ll ever know.”
            Ex-Weasley turned towards him, clutching her robes around her like the maiden she wasn’t. “Does Harry know that you’re a liar?” she challenged him. “Does he know he can’t trust you?”
            “He doesn’t trust me with everything,” Draco said simply. “For example, he wouldn’t let me use some of the wilder ideas for revenge that I had. He doesn’t trust me to stop if I put you in physical pain.”
            Ex-Weasley had nothing to say to that. Draco saw her face go absolutely blank, as if she was unable to even comprehend that someone would threaten her with that.
            Draco let it soak in, the image of what he could have done, before he went on. “But I do a spot of blackmail for him now and then. Say I believe you, that you told your husband you wanted to sleep with someone else while you were still married to Harry. Have you told the public? Would they have such a favorable image of you if they knew that you were all set to be unfaithful to the Savior of the Wizarding World?” He settled back and let that image sink in as well, hands folded primly before him.
            “You couldn’t tell them that.” Ex-Weasley sounded faint and sick. “It isn’t true.”
            “It’s true,” said Draco. “You would have been denying it from the beginning if Harry had lied to me about what you wanted to do.”
            Ex-Weasley found the strength from somewhere to sit up and glare at him. “This is why secrets like this shouldn’t be told! Because only the people in a marriage can understand the—the context. It wasn’t like that! I would have given Harry a family, and he would have raised the child with me, and we would have had—”
            “The memories of you fucking someone else,” said Draco pleasantly.
            Ex-Weasley was apparently gutted by the word. Draco examined her with sadistic delight. He wondered for a second what Harry would feel if he could see Draco now, and dismissed the thought with a sigh. That was why he had to be here alone, why he hadn’t brought Harry in the first place. He would go soft the instant it seemed that someone he had cared for was hurt, and that would ruin everything.
            “I already told you, only people in a marriage can understand,” Ex-Weasley mumbled, but her voice was a thread.
            “I think I understand well enough,” Draco said. He allowed some of his true anger into his eyes, but he thought perhaps he had already threatened Ex-Weasley too much. She simply stared at the floor, and didn’t look up at him. “You wanted a child, of course, but you also wanted your marriage to famous Harry Potter. And the lover on the side, that was a good thing, too. How many children would you have? He would always be there and willing to give you whatever you want, wouldn’t he?” He paused and made a show of considering. “Maybe I’m wrong about it not being Corner. He seems pretty bloody willing to oblige you now.”
            Ex-Weasley shook her head. She was still bleeding and trying not to show it, but Draco’s eyes could pick out weakness the way they could deceptions. “You have no idea what I wanted.”
            “Harry was trying to spare you,” Draco said. “To tell me that you were a good person, and both of you acted unreasonable because you were under the pressure of extreme disappointment.”
            Ex-Weasley lifted her head, eyes flaring for a second with hope.
            Draco rather delighted in taking it away. “But I still saw the truth. You sprang it on him the way you did, and kept fighting for it, because you thought he would agree, and you could have everything you wanted. You wanted more than him.”
            “I wanted my dreams to come true,” said Ex-Weasley. “And he wanted a child, too. He would have understood—”
            “You couldn’t agree, and so you divorced,” Draco interrupted. Time to end it. “He was willing to have children with you in some other way, but you couldn’t stand that. You clung to your fantasy of excess, and you only divorced him because you couldn’t bring him to agree to it.” He paused, eyeing Ex-Weasley’s breathing and body language and a hundred subtler signals that his father had taught him to read, and added, “You can protest all you want, but I know the truth. And if you persist in talking about Harry, so will the entire wizarding world.”
            “Exposing the truth about me will still hurt Harry.”
            Draco shrugged a little. “I can insulate him from that. It’ll hurt you more.” He smiled. “And what might it do to your marriage?”
            Ex-Weasley closed her eyes for a second. “I told him,” she said, but her voice stopped after that.
            “It doesn’t have to happen,” Draco said soothingly. “No one outside this house ever has to know. Your own husband doesn’t have to know. But you have to stop talking about Harry and refuse requests from reporters if they ask you for a story.”
            Ex-Weasley’s knuckles were white. That was fine. So was her face. Draco waited, longer than he’d thought he have to. He was a little impatient by the time she was finished considering. Why had Harry found her intelligent enough to marry? She didn’t seem to know her own best interest.
            Then again, he had known that. It was why she hadn’t stayed married to Harry in the first place.
            “You win,” Ex-Weasley finally whispered, and then snapped her head up and locked her eyes on him. “If I can get a chance for revenge, I will.”
            Draco smiled. “If I was foolish enough to leave myself open to that, then you might find it harder than you think.” He stood up, bowed once, and walked towards the stairs.
            “You aren’t staying to gloat?” Ex-Weasley sounded bewildered.
            “Reality will do my gloating for me,” Draco said, and walked down the stairs, unhindered by Corner, who had disappeared somewhere, unhindered, either, by the same weight of grim determination he had walked in with. He had got some revenge for Harry’s sake, and the peace and quiet Harry valued more.
            If she was foolish enough to persist, although Draco didn’t think she would when it could cost her the second man she’d wanted…
            Then Draco would take even greater joy in tearing her apart. He had only held back so far because Harry had asked him to.
            Harry is naïve sometimes, but he’s mine, Draco thought, and Disapparated the moment he was beyond the wall. He had a life to get back to.
*
moon: Thank you!
Anon: Thanks.
SP777: Harry is simply incapable of it right now. Although he did tell Ron that he isn’t going to just forgive Ginny a few chapters ago, so I think that counts.
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