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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 Five—A Malfoy Who Won’t Leave

            “Look. You can’t stay here.”

            Harry was proud of himself. His voice didn’t shake with fury, and he didn’t attack Malfoy with either a punch or a curse. Malfoy didn’t look impressed, but Harry hadn’t expected he would. He had only thought he would sniff, turn around, and walk back through the Floo.

            Malfoy stood there, arms tolerantly crossed. “Why not?” he asked. “You have the room.”

            “No, I don’t,” Harry snapped. He was glad that he didn’t feel the same obligations to Malfoy that he did to other people, because that would keep Harry from showing his temper with him, and he thought being horrible and ungracious was the only way to get Malfoy to leave. “I have two bedrooms here, and one is mine and one is my daughter’s. Plus I’m supposed to have her this weekend. You can’t be here.”

            Malfoy rocked a little on his heels in the face of Harry’s voice. Harry held his breath. That would work, wouldn’t it? He wouldn’t have to resort to curses, would he?

            Then Malfoy said, “That’s obviously the first thing that needs to change. No room for guests, not even those red-haired mustelids you call friends? That’s one reason that you have no life.” He took out his wand.

            Harry was faster. Malfoy looked at the wand leveled at him and cocked his head, as if Harry was a strange animal who wasn’t behaving according to the rules for its species. “Why do you want me to go?” Malfoy asked. “This is the means I’ve chosen of paying the debt, and you can’t fairly object to it, the way you did to the other payments I tried to arrange.”

            Harry rubbed his face. He caught a glimpse of Malfoy’s sneer of disgust, probably because he had smeared at least a little snot and sleep around. Well, good. Maybe that would contribute to Malfoy deciding that he didn’t need to be here right now. “You’re going to make my life more difficult, not better,” Harry said evenly. “I need this weekend to focus on my daughter, and whatever time I can get away from my job to help my children and try to be a better dad. Not to—not to entertain you.”

            Malfoy’s jaw dropped a little. “I wasn’t counting on you to entertain me,” he said. “I brought more than enough books for that.” He patted one of the trunks. “No, what I want to do is enlarge your house so that you have enough room for me and for guests, and then perhaps you might have a life.”

            “What do you think my daughter is going to think, when she comes and finds you here?” Harry asked quietly. “She’ll think that I’m once again not focusing enough on her, that I don’t care about what she wants.”

            “I can help you find out what she wants,” Malfoy offered. “I know how to act with witches, and you don’t.”

            Harry cast him a glance that he hoped was withering, although since Malfoy kept standing there, it obviously didn’t work as well as Harry had hoped. “Lily isn’t the kind of fashion-obsessed pure-blood witch you’ve lived with, Malfoy,” he snapped.

            “You shouldn’t speak about my mother or my wife until you know them,” Malfoy said. “Which I hope won’t happen, frankly. If I have to bring in help to straighten your life out, you’re worse off than I thought.”

            “I’m worse off than you can imagine,” Harry said. “You’re not bringing anyone in. You’re not bringing yourself in. Leave.”

            “But I have to pay this life-debt,” Malfoy said. “By the end of the month. Or Scorpius turns thirteen with that hanging over his head, and there’s a chance that he might have to pay you for his life later. I won’t have that happen.”

            Harry shut his eyes. Damn it. So it was live with Malfoy for a few weeks and risk disappointing and alienating Lily, or forbid Malfoy to help him and risk disappointing and alienating Al, who would be upset that his friend couldn’t go through an important ceremony the way he wanted to.

            Well. There were still a few days until the weekend, and Lily’s arrival. That meant Harry had time to write an owl to Al and ask how important this was to Scorpius. Harry had assumed it must matter to Scorpius if it mattered to his father, but he should know better than anyone that the father’s preoccupations often weren’t shared by the children.

            “Fine,” he said. “You can have my bed. I’ll sleep on the couch.” He turned to wave his wand and enlarge the couch near the Floo.

            “Are you mad?” Malfoy said, taking a step towards him. Harry assumed that was a rhetorical question, but Malfoy continued. “You look ready to collapse, and you’ll probably go out on your job and get yourself killed in this condition, leaving me with no way to pay back the debt. Plus anyone calling on the Floo can reach you if you’re here, and you need to sleep, not speak to people.”

            Harry stared at him, but Malfoy seemed immune to irony. “Take your bed,” Malfoy continued, pushing Harry towards his bedroom. “You have a corner of your drawing room that leads off to the outside of the house, I can see that. That’s where I’ll put my room.”

            Harry opened his mouth to say something, but Malfoy had cast a nasty little spell, nonverbally, that Harry only recognized when he felt the effects stealing over him. It made his eyelids droop and the air in his chest feel loose and warm, then rush out to expand all over his limbs. Harry tried to object, but he couldn’t.

            Then there was a pillow beneath his head, and blankets pulled up and over him, and he was utterly gone.

*

            Malfoy is a berk.

            At least Harry woke clear-headed enough from the nasty, underhanded sleep spell that that was his first thought.

            He rolled over, making sure that his movements were smooth, the same ones he would use if he was waking up from a sleeping spell cast by an enemy, so that he could waste the least amount of time. He cast a Tempus Charm, and then cast another that would print the current date beside the time.

            Seven-o’clock in the evening. The same day.

            Harry closed eyes that were too heavy to hold open for a second, then stood and cast a Cleaning Charm on his robes. He wasn’t about to waste time washing them. Malfoy—if he was still here and hadn’t gone to the shops for food that suited his stuck-up tastes—didn’t deserve the acknowledgment of clean robes.

            He strode towards the kitchen, realizing even as he did that his earlier thought had been ridiculous. Malfoy wouldn’t go to the shops, he would send a house-elf for what he needed.

            Malfoy was in the kitchen, all right, sitting at the table and sipping tea that had a delicate, precise smell from a tiny porcelain cup Harry knew he didn’t own. In front of him was a long scroll on rolls of wood that smelled like cedar. He made a small grimace of disappointment as Harry came in, and scratched out one of the many tiny items on the list.

            “Get out of my house,” Harry said, halting in front of the table. He had already made his mind up about what spells he would use.

            “No,” Malfoy said. He leaned back and watched Harry from a critical distance. “Would you describe your current relationship with your ex-wife as a problem that needs to be solved, or an inconvenience that you can put up with?”

            Harry snapped his wrist down, hissing the spell out between his teeth. It made the wards that usually guarded the exterior part of the house show up right here, inside, thus pushing Malfoy through the walls and into the street.

            Malfoy caught his breath as Harry’s magic washed over him, but the force of the power stunned Harry—by dissipating. When the spell passed over and Malfoy should have been gone, flung through the wall, he still sat at the table. Even the tiny porcelain cup hadn’t been harmed.

            “Oh, poor fool,” Malfoy murmured, when he’d had time to catch his breath. Harry hated to be caught staring at his wand, but that was the way it was, and he jerked his head up to glare. Malfoy just sat there, one hand stroking the side of the cup with the tips, only, of his fingers. “You ought to have known that you can’t do that with someone you owe a life-debt to. At least, not someone who’s in the process of paying you back.”

            “What do you mean?” Harry hit the back of the nearest chair with his wand. He was pleased when the chair became a goat the way he’d meant it to, and promptly tried to eat his shirt. Another whack of the wand Transfigured it back into a chair. “This isn’t something I want!”

            “Yes, it is.” Malfoy’s eyebrows crept a few inches higher on that perfect face. “You want your life to be calm again, and you want to have better relationships with your children and your wife, and more time for yourself. You just don’t want me to be the one providing it.”

            Harry swore at him.

            “Release of tension,” Malfoy said, and wrote a new word on his scroll-list. “That’s another thing we need to provide for you. Tell me, do you meditate?”

            “Listen,” Harry said, leaning forwards so that this time the chair creaked under his touch, “I don’t need this. I need to focus on my children. I need to make them the center of my life again. I’ve let my job become too important. I know what I need to do, I just have to get the will and the time together and actually do it.”

            “You need help,” Malfoy finished, nodding. “But your children aren’t the only things in your life. Your ex-wife is, as well. I just need to know whether you want to get back together with her or achieve a cordial, distant relationship with her.”

            Harry laughed in spite of himself; he’d never thought he’d heard Draco Malfoy say the word “relationship.” “Why? Is that the sort of thing you have with your wife?”

            “You won’t speak of her.” Malfoy’s voice was low enough that Harry felt it more than heard it, a throb in his veins. “But to answer your question, yes, we are cordial. We don’t fight or argue. Scorpius has what he needs from both of us.”

            “And what made you divorce?” Harry decided to press ahead. If he couldn’t force Malfoy out of his house with magic, doing it with words was the next best option. “You don’t have a job, so it couldn’t have been spending all your time away on it, the way it was with me and Ginny. Does your coldness extend to the bedroom?”

            Malfoy was on his feet, flashing into fire, and flashing across the distance between them, before Harry could draw his wand. But he had Auror instincts that caught up then, and he was still the trained one, while Malfoy wasn’t. Harry whirled once, to the side, and captured Malfoy with the bastard’s throat against his wand.

            “Listen,” Harry whispered to him. “I won’t say that kind of thing to you if you’ll leave now. I don’t want this gift that you’re going to give me. Find something else to give me. The next weak or stupid thing you come up with, I’ll happily accept.”

            Malfoy half-turned his head. He had gone cold again, the flush already fading from his cheeks. “Listen to me,” he whispered in return. “You aren’t going to cajole or threaten me into leaving. I’ve already made my decision that this is what I want to give you, and it’s something you need, and the only reason that you’re trying to persuade me to leave is that you don’t like someone else prying into your life.”

            “Would you?” Harry countered.

            “If my life was as much of a mess as yours is,” Malfoy said, stepping back and laying a hand on his throat as he watched Harry, “then I’d be glad of the intervention.”

            Harry shook his head. “I told you, I know what I need to do. My children have to be the focus of my life.”

            “The way your job was in your marriage?” Malfoy murmured. “You know as well as I do that that won’t work. You’re an adult. Your world can’t always revolve around your children. You have to care about other things, like paying your bills. And your debts.” His smile slid into Harry’s confusion like a thin knife around the edge of a door. “You didn’t give up your job when it cost you your marriage. What makes you think you would give it up now?”

            “I changed my mind about the Galleons you offered me,” Harry snapped. “Give me the money, and I’ll retire from the Aurors for a while and concentrate on my children.”

            Malfoy shook his head. “That wouldn’t improve things. It just gives you more hours to sit across the room and stare helplessly at your brats.”

            “Don’t insult my children.” Harry was astonished to discover how much of the way he spoke came from hurt, as though Malfoy had plunged another of those thin knives into his belly.

            “Your oldest child is a thief,” Malfoy continued. “Your youngest is a brat so famous that there’s jokes out there about hiring her if you want a banshee.”

            Harry shook his head again, not understanding. “Why would anyone think that about Lily? She’s not—she doesn’t have tantrums like that.”

            “It only takes three or four in Diagon Alley for a child to get a reputation.” Malfoy folded his arms. “And your middle child, although on the surface more respectful, makes you hide under an Invisibility Cloak when he wants to see you. Why is his embarrassment at your fame more important than your right to come and watch his Quidditch games?”

            Harry felt as though someone had encircled him with burning sticks and now was poking them at him repeatedly. He shook his head, dazed, drunk. He wanted Malfoy to go away, and he wanted the answers to the questions, and he wasn’t going to get both things at the same time. He had to remember what was most important here, his children, and not let himself be dazzled by all the words that Malfoy flung at him. Harry wasn’t that great with words, but he hoped that he could be good with actions.

            “It’s practical for me to stay under the Cloak,” Harry said, deciding the most important thing to do right now was defend Al’s decisions. “Otherwise, people keep mobbing me for autographs, and they take attention away from the game.”

            “Meaning that your son isn’t admired the way he should be.” Malfoy’s smile was a slow, sleepy thing, and slid along his lips too softly. “How sad for him.”

            “Your son wouldn’t be admired, either, if everyone was looking at me,” Harry retorted sharply. “I thought that meant you would want me to stay under the Cloak.”

            “What you’re doing is ridiculous,” Malfoy said. Harry opened his mouth to ask which of the many, many crimes he had committed according to Malfoy was the ridiculous one, but Malfoy struck straight past him, at what he obviously thought was the heart of it. “This attempt to shrink yourself down and be what they all want. What everyone wants. The perfect father—but not Harry Potter, who’s famous. The understanding father who never has to discipline his children—but someone who has perfect children at the same time. The close husband—but the great Auror. You’ve never learned to say no to anyone who asks you for something, and it’s painfully obvious that’s where your problems come from.”

            “How many times do I have to say no to you?”

            Unexpectedly, Malfoy smiled. “It’s a good beginning, that you recognize you don’t have to do everything someone wants just because he has a claim on you,” he said. “And your divorce was another one. You couldn’t reconcile the demands of your job and your wife, so in the end you chose one.”

            Harry just stared at him.

            “I’m here to help you learn how to say no,” Malfoy continued. He caught Harry’s gaze, and it was like being subjected to a burning beam focused through a prism. “You hate me right now, but I don’t want you to love me. Spend three weeks with me, until the end of the month, and I promise, you’ll have a better life than you do right now.”

            Harry took a deep breath. He still hated the way Malfoy had marched in here and insulted his kids and Ginny and told Harry that everything he did was wrong.

            But…

            It was true that, in all the months and years he had been promising himself he would, he had never sat down and focused on his children.

            It was true that Harry had no idea how to give Lily what she wanted, and James was a thief, and Al was great but kept asking for things that made Harry feel as if Al cared more about avoiding Harry’s fame than having Harry watch his Quidditch games.

            It was true that being an Auror consumed his life, and he didn’t want it to.

            “You promise that you’ll do that?” he asked Malfoy, in a voice that sounded odd to his own ears. “You won’t stop until you do?”

            Malfoy reached out and placed a hand on top of Harry’s arm, pressing without closing his fingers, until Harry thought there would be a bruise from the pressure alone. He nodded.

            “I can be persuasive when I want to, and determined when I want to, and strong when I want to,” Malfoy said, barely moving his lips. “And my son matters more to me than anything in the world.”

            Harry didn’t see the relevance of that last statement for a bit, until he remembered Malfoy saying that he was doing this to fulfill Scorpius’s life-debt. In a strange way, Harry was now under the same protection as Scorpius, at least until the month was up.

            And even stranger, that was a comforting thought.

*

            Timeangel93: Draco is determined to make it destructive of the obstacles in Harry’s life, if not smooth.

            kit: I don’t know if Harry will ever have effortless relationships with them, but he might have better ones.

            moodysavage: And it seems Harry will let him!

            SP777: This is epilogue-compliant but one year further on, so Harry is actually late thirties, thirty-eight.

            And yes, I know what you mean. ;)

            delia cerrano: Sorry, but it’s kind of inevitable in epilogue-compliant stories.
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Marathon