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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-Eight—Ashfall
            “Daddy, there are a whole lot of people out here who want to ask you something.”
            At least Lily hadn’t come into the bedroom this time, and so, although Harry and Draco were naked under the covers, it was pretty easy to wave his wand and array himself in neat clothes. Harry did sit up and look at Draco, wondering if he was going to get up, but Draco only made an inarticulate noise and tugged the covers over his head. Wisely, Harry decided that he could let him sleep.
            He made his way to the bedroom door, and slipped out, closing it behind him, so Draco wouldn’t be disturbed. “What did you say, Lils?” He kept his voice low, although he thought that Draco wouldn’t be awakened by much of anything as long as the door was shut.
            Then he saw the anxious face that Lily lifted to him, and lost the impulse to smile. “What is it?” he repeated, more quietly still.
            “There’s a lot of people here,” said Lily. “I think they’re from the Ministry. They said that they want to talk to you.” She looked around, apparently to make sure that there was no one on the stairs who could make fun of her, and then slipped her hand into his. A second later, she leaned against him, too. She was shaking.
            Harry took a deep breath. He was glad that Lily had had the sense to stay within the wards. If she had tried to go out where those people, whoever they were, were standing, he thought Kreacher would have pulled her back inside, but he couldn’t be too careful with his children. “Did they say where they were from?”
            “Some of them look like the reporters that visited you the other day.” Lily was whispering now, too. “And some of them have Auror robes.”
            It’s come, then.
            Well, Harry had expected that the Ministry’s retaliation would be swift, and so would the reaction of some of those who would accuse him of being a traitor. He couldn’t sit around hoping things would go away on their own.
            “Come on,” he said, still calm and cheerful, for Lily’s sake. “Let’s go see what they want.”
            All the way down the stairs, while Harry Transfigured the simple robes he had put on into ones that looked a little like Auror robes but brown instead of scarlet, Lily didn’t release his hand.
*
            “Witches and wizards. Can I ask what the meaning of this is?”
            A few people who had been ready to fling curses, or maybe just hexes, against the wards, lowered their wands, or tried to put them behind their backs. Harry knew why. He looked calm and impressive, standing there in front of them, turning his head slowly from side to side and shaking it a little.
            Impressive enough that it was a whole minute before someone decided they were the spokesperson, and pushed to the front.
            Harry studied the tall man in Auror robes for nearly half a minute before he recognized him. He was Garrett Oldrun, an Auror Harry had only worked on cases with a few times. He was grim and bald, scowling, his sneer so fierce that it looked liable to disfigure him. Harry nodded, pleasantly enough, he thought, but someone behind Oldrun put a hand on his arm and tried to draw him backwards.
            Oldrun shook the hand, well-meant or not, off. “The honor of the Auror Department demands it,” he flung over his shoulder at the person who had tried to restrain him, and the person bowed and didn’t try to touch him again.
            Then Oldrun faced Harry. Harry didn’t flinch, because he wouldn’t let himself, and it would be fatal with this crowd, anyway, but he did want to, at the hatred in Oldrun’s eyes.
            “Do you have any idea of how difficult you’ve made our jobs?” Oldrun’s whisper was far more effective than a shout. “The amount of cases that you’ve messed up? The number of people that you’ve inspired to call for the dispersal of the Aurors?”
            “There’s someone doing that again?” That particular one was an old story, and Harry managed to put what he thought was the right mixture of surprise and venom into his voice. “I’m surprised that you’re still listening to them.” There were always people who argued that the Aurors using Unforgivables during the first war with Voldemort, and some of them doing the same thing during the last one because they were under the control of the Imperius Curse, was good as an argument for having no Aurors at all.
            “They never had the weapons they have now, before.” Oldrun didn’t seem to realize how inarticulate he was being—and after having to make numerous speeches for the Ministry, Harry could recognize inarticulacy, even if that didn’t keep him from doing it sometimes. “They never knew that we did—some of the things we did.”
            Harry’s eyes flicked to the reporters. He didn’t see Skeeter there, but he did recognize a few people from his conference the other day. “So you’re admitting that you do that kind of thing?” he asked.
            Oldrun either didn’t know those people were reporters or didn’t see the need to hold back from confirming what Harry had already said. “Of course I admit it,” he said. “Those kinds of measures are necessary to protect the public, who are the real victims that you’re creating with your stupid announcements.”
            Oh, it’s going to be that line of argument he takes, then. Harry managed to shrug, and look, he thought, unconcerned. He wished Draco was here. Draco would let him know if he was going too far, or looked the wrong way. Harry wasn’t always good at controlling his expression.
            But he did have a sort of weight and anchor at his side, and something that might prevent the people he confronted from going too far, too. Lily clung to his hand still, her eyes wide and wild, and Harry had to say things that would protect her and not scar her. It was holding him to a high standard, but one he thought he bloody well should have been held to in the past.
            “You think that leaving wards in people’s homes to spy on them after the case is over involves protecting them?” Harry asked.
            “Of course it does.” Oldrun was settled in his hatred, calm, cold. Harry didn’t think he would rattle him, much. The most he might hope for was making Oldrun look foolish in front of the reporters and the others who were here for the spectacle. “If another crime happens in their homes, we’re informed at once.”
            “There might be something to that,” Harry said, nodding in what he hoped looked like a thoughtful way. “If you’d told them about the spying wards, and they knew that they were being watched over. But they’re as likely to have their own innocent doings spied on as to have you come charging in to catch a criminal.”
            “The innocent have nothing to fear.”
            “Oh, really?” Harry asked before he could help himself.
            A few of the reporters snickered, and even some of the Aurors were looking uncomfortable now. A different person than the one before came forwards to bend over Oldrun’s shoulder and whisper into his ear. Oldrun just shook her off the way he had the first one, and went trumpeting on.
            “They do not,” Oldrun said, and his eyes never wavered from Harry’s face. He at least had the courage of his convictions. Harry could wish that he had less, because that would make things more convenient for him, but he had got an opponent who sincerely believed in the ways of the Aurors, and someone who wouldn’t back down. Wonderful. “Yes, we might arrest someone with information we find out from the wards, but most of the time, it’s going to be people who invade those homes or steal things, or maybe kill someone. And the same goes for the Veritaserum confessions. You really want to take that away from us?”
            “I think that we could do the same things with less pressure on people that we say we’re protecting,” said Harry. “And if these wards and the Veritaserum confessions are so innocent and useful, why are you angry that I told people about them?”
            “For the same reason I would be angry if you revealed some of the false names we have to work under,” Oldrun said. “This is an imperfect world. Not everyone will cooperate with us. I don’t always like doing things like this, but what does that have to do with it? The difference between you and me is that I accept reality and the state of reality, and you don’t. You want to be more ideal. You want to be different.” He spat the words heavily enough that some of the spittle landed on Harry’s face. Harry had moved instinctively, and he didn’t think any had landed on Lily. “Well, it can’t be. Maybe it’s a good thing you quit the Aurors.”
            “It was a good thing,” Harry said, still striving for calm. Lily was here. Draco was in the house behind him. He had to remember what he stood to lose, if he moved too fast. “Because the alternative is working with people like you.”
            “Can I ask something?” The woman who had come up behind Oldrun and tried to restrain him was watching Harry with a strange look on her face. She seemed uncomfortable, but she wasn’t trying to get Oldrun to leave anymore, either.
            “Ask me, or him?” Harry gave a rusty chuckle. “I don’t know if he’s going to feel much like answering you right now.”
            The woman gave him an utterly meaningless smile, and ducked her head a little. “Do you—do you want to destroy the Aurors because you left them?”
            Harry blinked. “You think these revelations could destroy the Aurors?”
            He didn’t think he sounded anything but blank and questioning, but he saw a few of the Aurors exchange glances and nods. The reporters pressed closer. They hadn’t asked anything yet, though. Maybe they were satisfied to listen to the argument until they had an explosion to write into their headlines.
            “I think they could.” The woman was clear-eyed and seemed steadier than Oldrun, although she was ignoring the way he pulled at her sleeve and hissed into her ear. “What happens if some of us die, now that thieves are forewarned about the wards?”
            “I don’t think that’s going to happen,” Harry said. And the more he thought about it, the more confident he felt. “They didn’t manage to detect those wards before, even though they often have good ward-breakers with them. The Aurors who cast them are more skilled and trained than the thieves, usually. And if the people who own the homes know they’re there,” he added, putting so much emphasis on the wards that not even Aurors like Oldrun could miss it, “then those people could help you. Instead of just evading and tricking the wards, the way you seem so certain they’ll want to do.”
            “It’s frightening,” said the woman. “It’s frightening, what you revealed.”
            “If those revelations can destroy the way the Aurors operate, then you’ve been depending on the same tricks for too long,” Harry told her softly. He was thinking of some of the trainee Aurors he’d worked with in the last year. They had seemed nervous, shy, hesitant, utterly reluctant to do anything but repeat the same routines over and over. They didn’t seem to learn as much in their training program as Harry had learned in his, almost twenty years ago. “You should pick up new ones.”
            “I’m talking about funding being cut,” said the woman. “Not our enemies.”
            Harry gave her a blank look. “But you were just talking about thieves finding the wards that you left to eavesdrop. I mean, what are you talking about now? The public getting outraged over what I revealed and cutting funding to the Aurors?”
            The woman looked around for help, and Oldrun charged in to give it to her. “The Auror Department, and the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, is in charge of protecting the wizarding public,” he said. “And you’re taking away every chance that we have to do that. Auror Potter.”
            Harry snorted in spite of himself. Some people left off the Auror title when they wanted to insult him, and some people added it. He didn’t know which response was the more amusing to him. “You can adapt. You can persuade people to take Veritaserum at the trial, where it was always supposed to happen. And you can find different ways of keeping an eye on people you think might be criminals.” He knew that some of the spells he had learned in his training program would let Aurors do that. He was vaguely curious to know why they had stopped using those spells, and started using the eavesdropping wards instead.
            Probably because it’s simpler. That was the answer to so many of the questions about the Ministry’s incompetence.
            “I didn’t reveal anyone’s undercover name,” Harry reminded him. “I didn’t reveal the details of any current cases. What I did was talk about things that were already kept secret—”
            “So we could have an advantage over our enemies!”
            “So that we wouldn’t feel the sting of the public’s disapproval,” Harry finished. “You know that’s the reason for the outrage now, the threat to cut the funding. We shouldn’t have been doing this. That’s the reason for the outrage against me, too. No one ever gets so upset as when they’re caught doing something really wrong.”
            Lily shifted behind him, and Harry wondered if she was thinking of some of the things she had done in the past, things that Harry had caught her at. Harry had been bad thinking up punishments that fit the crime, but there was no saying what guilt Lily might have felt herself.
            One of the reporters jumped in to get a word before Oldrun could say anything. “Auror Potter—”
            “I don’t deserve that title anymore,” Harry interrupted easily. He saw Oldrun bristle, and knew he’d caught the insulting implication.
            “Mr. Potter, then.” This reporter was a beak-nosed woman, kind of like Snape, who looked like she wouldn’t be swayed from her purpose. “Can you tell us what the Aurors had done that deserved exposing them like that? It is a big blow to the way they operate, you know.” She kept her voice admirably neutral as she said that last bit.
            Harry just gave a little shrug. “I quit because the Head Auror kept yelling at me for things that were none of his business. Who cares who I sleep with? It doesn’t affect my caseload. But the Head Auror decided it did. And he wanted me to spend hours in the Ministry when the Unspeakables could have done the work they needed to do with my malfunctioning wrist-bell in a few minutes on their own. And he insisted that I come back and face down the Spiders in the Department of Mysteries alone.”
            That caused a ripple among the reporters. Harry stared. Then he felt his smile widen, and into something that probably wasn’t pleasant for the Aurors.
            They didn’t know that. Harry had been pretty sure that the truth of his confrontation with the Spiders had spread, because Robards had wanted to show off that Harry was back and working with the Ministry. But it seemed that some of the details had been kept back.
            “You weren’t alone!” Oldrun shouted, his hands clenched into fists. “There are all sorts of Aurors who were there and would testify to that!”
            “Who went alone down the stairs into the Department of Mysteries?” Harry asked. “Who captured all the Spiders that the Ministry ended up with? Who faced giant spiders and their webs alone, and heard that they’d been trying to capture his attention all along?”
            “You did.”
            Another ripple. Draco had come out of the doorway and stood on the front stoop, surveying both reporters and Aurors with disdain that made Harry want to hug him. A second later, Draco turned to the hawk-nosed reporter. Maybe he was comfortable with her likeness to Snape.
            “You went alone,” Draco said, and his heavy gaze focused on Harry in a way that told Harry Draco hadn’t really forgiven him for that stunt yet, “despite the way that I was attempting to restrain you. Despite the fact that I wanted to be with you. Despite the fact that I didn’t want you to.”
            The hawk-nosed reporter was scribbling away, sure enough. Harry restrained an exasperated shake of his head. He supposed that he couldn’t stop Draco from saying things like that. Still, it was irritating to be reminded that he couldn’t control those words, and now they were out there, changing the public perception of him.
            “But Draco Malfoy is Harry Potter’s lover!” Oldrun was protesting, his voice almost a roar. “Of course he would say anything to clear him!”
            Harry took a step back, and let Draco wind an arm around his waist. They weren’t both wearing formal robes, but it didn’t matter. And Lily moved with them as if she’d had a long, long life to get used to the presence of both of them.
            “You could at least go and ask your sources again,” Harry told the reporters, pointedly ignoring the Aurors to address them. “Whether I was alone or not. Whether they’d been told not to mention that fact. What kind of tactics Auror Robards told them he used to bring me in, when I’d already resigned.” He paused. “Here’s a hint: it didn’t have anything to do with promising to address the issues that led me to quit in the first place.”
            That made most of the reporters Apparate away, and left a lot of Aurors shouting imprecations at them. Harry led Draco and Lily inside, and shut the door. He couldn’t hear them anyway, not with Grimmauld Place’s wards engaged.
*
SP777: Well, you were right that Lily did! Although maybe not for the reasons you thought she would?
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Marathon