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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Chapter Forty-Nine—Bad Mouthing
            “Are you going to be all right, Dad?”
            The way that Lily asked that question made Harry pause. It was dinner of the day that the Aurors and the reporters had come to the house, and Lily hadn’t asked anything else about them all day. She wanted to stay in the library and read the book Draco had fetched down from the high shelves for her, and then she wanted to play with Draco’s wand in the back garden. Draco had let her on the stipulation that Harry would Summon it back right away if someone showed up who wasn’t supposed to be there.
            And here I was thinking that this morning didn’t affect her that much, Harry thought wryly to himself, but the wryness went away when he saw the wideness of her eyes. He put down his fork. “What do you mean, Lils?” he asked. “I’m all right now.”
            Lily swallowed and looked at her plate. “It’s just, that book said sometimes the Ministry put famous witches in Azkaban,” she muttered. “And some of them did things against the Ministry that were—some of them were bad, but some of them only told the truth, like you. And they got put in Azkaban for it, anyway. Are you?”
            Draco quietly picked up his plate and walked out of the kitchen. Harry smiled after him, and then scooted his chair closer to his daughter. He took her hands. Lily was so focused on him that she might not have noticed Draco leaving, except her eyes darted after him and then came back to rest, anxiously, on Harry’s face.
            “I might be,” Harry said. “But I don’t think they will. The truths I told are going to make people angry. The truths the witches told didn’t always do that, did they?”
            “They made the Ministry angry.” This time, Lily had the tone of someone being patient with stupidity.
            “But this time, I made other people angry at the Ministry,” Harry said. He thought pointing out the truth would probably work to soothe Lily’s anxiety. It did to soothe Draco’s and Al’s, and it was becoming obvious that Lily was more Slytherin than Harry had ever thought possible, even for one of his children. “That makes a difference. They want to cut funding for the Aurors.”
            Lily’s mouth pulled tight. “Like Uncle Ron?”
            Harry sighed and folded his arms around Lily, pulling her tight against his chest. He understood now what the real problem was. “Yes, he’ll probably be angry at me,” he muttered. “But I think those things had to be said. The Aurors wanted me to come back and work for them, but they were breaking the laws and putting me in dangerous situations.”
            Lily went stiff in his arms, but Harry didn’t know why until she said, “The situations that mean you have to have powerful wards around the house?”
            Harry pulled back and smiled at her. “Right. And the enemies who broke through the wards on my last house were some of the ones that the Ministry wanted me to fight alone.”
            “Uncle Ron says Aurors always have partners.” Lily was considering things. “Why did you have to work alone?”
            Harry had to shrug. “I don’t think Head Auror Robards liked me very much. And he wanted me to—” He floundered. He didn’t really want to try and explain the complicated politics behind the Boy-Who-Lived name, not because he thought Lily was too young to hear them or they wouldn’t affect her life, but because he didn’t feel like he understood most of them himself. “He wanted someone famous working for his Department, but he didn’t want to feel like he owed me anything. Do you understand?”
            Lily frowned fiercely. “Like I didn’t want Victoire to get me that gift for my birthday because I knew she didn’t want to buy me one?”
            “Yes, kind of like that,” Harry said, relieved that she had found a metaphor that would work for her. Victoire and Lily had fought right before her last birthday, and Victoire had said that she didn’t want to buy Lily a gift. Bill and Fleur had made sure there was a gift there on the right night with Victoire’s name on it, of course, but everyone had known about the deception, and Lily had said some things that Harry had only heard about later, after he’d left the party. “She didn’t want to buy you a gift, but she didn’t want to feel sorry for not buying you one, either. That’s sort of like me and Robards.”
            Lily nodded, scowling. If she was placing Robards in the same category as the way she had felt about Victoire that night, then Robards had a newly formidable enemy, Harry thought, suppressing his smile. Well, if Robards wanted to carry on his struggle with a second generation of Potters, that was what would happen.
            “But what about Uncle Ron and Aunt Hermione and the others?”
            Harry sighed and kissed Lily’s forehead. “I think Aunt Hermione will fine. She always thinks there’s too many secrets in the Ministry. I told the truth about some of them, and about the Aurors breaking the laws. She’ll be fine.”
            “And Uncle Ron?”
            Harry shook his head. He couldn’t hide from himself how angry Ron would be. That he hadn’t contacted Harry yet either meant that he was working hard on a case and hadn’t read any of the papers—unlikely—or that he was trying to hang onto his temper so their friendship could survive. “I don’t know, Lils. I think that he’ll be okay, though. It’s not right, and he’ll be able to see that eventually.”
            “Will you be okay?” Harry blinked in surprise, and Lily burrowed her head against his chest again. “I want them to be okay, too, but I don’t want them to get angry at you and—and yell at you. I hate yelling.”
            Harry held her closer. He was only realizing now how much she must have hated the way he and Ginny fought. Well, that made it clear that it was the best thing for him and Ginny to get divorced instead of staying together. “I don’t know if they will. But I promise you won’t have to hear it, either way.”
            “I don’t want you to get yelled at.”
            Lily’s voice was so plaintive. Harry kissed her forehead. “I’m sure that your Uncle Ron and I can discuss it like adults,” he said firmly.
            Lily just nodded, not looking very secure. Harry sighed a little. “I want the Ministry to leave me alone,” he said. “That’s really why I did this. Not because I wanted to hurt your uncle and aunt and the rest of the family. Just because Head Auror Robards won’t stop trying to make me work alone on cases and do dangerous things. I’ll stop when he gets the message.”
            “Will the Aurors who came and yelled at you get the message?” Lily leaned her head on his shoulder.
            Harry stroked her hair. “I don’t know yet. It might take them a while.” He was more grateful than ever that he had held onto his temper this morning, instead of yelling the way he had wanted to. It meant he had done Lily good instead of frightening her. “But you can stay inside the house. You don’t need to come and get me. The wards will tell me if they try anything.”
            For a second, it seemed like Lily was going to argue, maybe because she thought she should be there if he was going to face up to enemies. But then she bit her lip—Harry could feel her doing it against his jumper—and nodded seriously, her hair rustling.
            “Good,” Harry said, and kissed the top of her head. “Are you all right now?” He didn’t know for sure if she was. Then again, he hadn’t known lots of things about his children, and the only way to know was to ask.
            Lily nodded again, then more strongly, and jumped to her feet. “As long as Uncle Ron doesn’t yell at you,” she said firmly, and snatched up a book that Harry hadn’t even noticed her bringing in and ran out of the kitchen.
            Harry sighed, ate as much as he wanted of the rest of the gleaming trout that Kreacher had prepared, and then went to find Draco.
*
            Draco, unusually, wasn’t in the bedroom or in the small side-study he had taken over and appeared to be turning into a potions lab. Harry spent some time wandering before he heard voices, and found Draco in the library, standing in front of the Floo. Harry hadn’t heard it open or the Floo call begin, either.
            “You would have to ask him that,” he heard Draco say as he got closer to the door. “I can’t say.”
            Harry groaned silently. He hoped that Ron hadn’t firecalled and started an argument with Draco. He sped up his pace.
            It wasn’t Ron. It was better or worse, depending on how one chose to take it. As Harry rounded the corner, it was to hear Al’s voice saying, “I want to talk to my dad about it! Not you!”
            “Then why ask me at all?” Draco murmured.
            Harry stepped hastily into the room. He knew why Draco was speaking like that, but he did want to make sure that another argument didn’t erupt between Al and Draco. Things between them were hard enough already.
            Draco stepped back when he saw Harry, and spread his hands towards the hearth, as if inviting Harry to make what he could of his wayward son. Harry paused when he saw Al’s face. He had thought it was something ordinary that had made Al firecall, or Harry would have received some notice from the school, the way he had of Jamie’s fall. But Al’s face looked desperate and tear-stained, and Harry felt his heart melt as he moved forwards.
            “Al?” he whispered, kneeling down in front of the fireplace. “What’s wrong?”
            Draco didn’t leave the room, the way he had when Harry spoke with Lily that morning, but stood with one hand braced on Harry’s shoulder. Harry wondered why for only a second, before he grimaced in understanding. Draco trusted Lily now, but he thought Al might still try to twist Harry around his finger.
            “Is what’s in the papers true?” Al demanded.
            Harry relaxed a little. He could see why this would hit Al, and hit him hard. Al had sometimes talked about being an Auror, and he looked up to a lot of people who worked in the Ministry, both his relatives and the people he had heard Harry tell stories about. “Yes, it’s true,” he said. “They—we—really did leave wards in people’s houses, and encourage people to confess when they didn’t legally have to, and all the rest of it.”
            To his surprise, Al shook his head and made a dashing motion with his hand at his eyes. “Not that. Skeeter, she’s saying, she talked to some people and they said that you took over for them when they wanted holidays or they were tired of work or they were nervous about a case or something. Did you do that?”
            Harry stared, his mouth slightly open. He supposed he should have known Skeeter would do that, but he honestly hadn’t anticipated it. He would have thought she would have looked for weaknesses, things she could use against him, not bits to add to the story that would make him more sympathetic.
            Then he snorted. It was Skeeter. Past or not, trapping her in her Animagus form or not, a story was a story. If she investigated and found she could put a different spin on it that would sell papers and make people pay more attention to the Prophet than anybody else, she would have done it.
            “Yes, I stood in for a lot of people,” Harry said. “They talked to me about it, they didn’t make me do it, but I did it a lot. I wanted to.”
            Al lowered his eyes. For a second, Harry thought he would end the firecall, but instead Al burst out, “Then—you didn’t—you didn’t love us enough, did you? You would have stayed home and been with us if you did!”
            Draco squeezed down on Harry’s shoulder once, at that, and slipped quietly out of the room. Harry didn’t look back and nod at him in gratitude, although he wanted to. He would have to find Draco later and ensure that he knew how much Harry appreciated his discretion.
            “I do love you,” Harry said quietly. “You kids are the best things that ever happened to me. Not always a blessing I deserve, but I promise, you are the best things.”
            “Then why didn’t you want to spend more time with us?” Al was shaking, now, or at least it looked that way through the flames. Harry sometimes found it hard to read someone who was green and peering into the fire. “You could have stayed home and been with Mum and us and been happy, and instead you just—you just went to hospital again and again, and you worked all the time! Why?”
            Harry settled himself. He hadn’t told the others this, because neither of them had asked the question in exactly the same way. Or maybe he hadn’t been ready. But he was able to say it, now.
            “Because I knew that I wasn’t being a good dad, and not spending enough time with you from the beginning,” he told Al. “I knew I was good at my job, and it was easy to bend over backwards for everyone when people expected me to, and sometimes praised me for it, and sometimes told me that I wasn’t being a good Auror or a team player if I didn’t. I thought I could be good at my job and protect you that way, because I would have plenty of money to buy you what you wanted and I would be able to fight well for you if someone ever attacked you directly and—and the more I stayed away from you, the harder it was to go back.”
            Al spent some more time staring. Harry didn’t say anything. He wanted to respond to Al’s questions, to answer them, and not interject his own questions and ideas and opinions in where they weren’t wanted. He waited until Al shut his jaw with a snap and pressed eagerly forwards.
            “What did you think you were doing wrong?”
            “Nothing. Everything.” Harry shook his head. “I knew something wasn’t right, but not what. Not really. Just like I knew that I was unhappy about my job, but I couldn’t bring myself to face the real reason. I kept telling myself that I would retire early and focus on you kids. Or I would stay home all weekend and focus on you. Or that I would come to your next Quidditch game and tell you how much I loved you and how proud I was of you. But I put things off, and when I was there, I made you uncomfortable. I didn’t know how to get out of that bind. I was always hurting you by staying away, but when I showed up, I hurt you, too.”
            Al stared some more. Now and then he wiped at his eyes, but it seemed as though he didn’t really know what to do with his tears. He finally took a deep breath and asked, “Does that mean that you’re going to have more time for us now that you’re retired?”
            “I hope so.” Harry smiled at him. “I’ll set up another job for myself eventually, but I want some time to get to know my kids and spend time with them first. Do you want me to come to your next Quidditch game?”
            Al shifted around. “I just—I just think it’s so embarrassing when they go up to you and act like you’re a living legend,” he muttered.
            To many of them, I am. But Harry knew what Al meant. Even when he had tried his hardest to understand the way people saw him, Harry couldn’t exactly put himself in their shoes, because he would never act like that around someone he admired. He never had with Dumbledore, or the Aurors he looked up to, and the mere thought of acting like that with Robards made him want to laugh. “I know,” he said. “But I can’t promise they won’t, and I don’t want to come to your Quidditch game under the Cloak. Can I come just as I am?”
            Al hesitated. “Would you hex someone who tried to do it to you during the game?”
            “Not without getting into legal trouble.” Harry could just picture it now. Someone would probably summon the Aurors for the sheer pleasure of making a scene, and the Aurors would probably come if they had grudges. “But I can tell them to be quiet and stop bothering me, because I want to focus on my son. Would that help?”
            Al bit his lip and nodded a little. “But—I need to think about it. I haven’t given you permission yet.”
            “Well, your next Quidditch game is a few months away, anyway,” Harry said easily. “So think about it.”
            Al nodded once and retreated from the fire. Harry stood up and groaned. He had to put in a bench or chair in front of this fireplace. His knees were too old to be kneeling down and then rising from the floor all the time.
            He turned around, and found Draco leaning in at the door. Harry had to grin. “Well? How did I do, Quidditch Captain?”
            Draco came towards him with light in his eyes and lightness in his step, kissed him, and said, “Well,” with satisfaction enough to make Harry feel as if he might fly.
*
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Marathon