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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 Fifty-One—The Usual Place
            “What are we going to do about Scorpius’s birthday?”
            Harry glanced up with a grin. Since he and Draco had spent the morning in bed and most of the afternoon eating their faces off at the huge meal Kreacher had set out in the kitchen, he’d expected this question, but he wasn’t surprised it hadn’t been along sooner.
            And Draco was considering the bowl of fruit that Kreacher had set in the center of the table as if it and it alone should hold the answer to his question. He reached out and plucked a pear, waving his wand to cast a spell on it that peeled off part of the skin. He caught Harry’s eye and shrugged. “I don’t like the skin.”
            “It doesn’t even taste like anything—”
            “That’s why I don’t like it.” Draco leaned forwards insistently, and waved his hand when Harry started to open his mouth again. “Forget the bloody pear, Harry. Now. I know that originally I was only planning to stay until Scorpius’s birthday, and then I would leave. But you don’t want that to happen anymore, do you?”
            “No,” Harry said quietly. “I don’t want the life-debt between us anymore, if you feel like it’s been fulfilled. I would be glad to see that go away. Because I just want to have you, the way you are, without debts.”
            Draco’s face colored up in a brilliant flush, and it seemed that he was having a hard time taking his gaze from Harry. Then he looked down at the pear, cleared his throat, and took a bite of it.
            Harry reached across the table to take his hand. “Really. I know that we kind of spoke about this before, but—please stay as long as you like, Draco. I want you here. I want you to have a home here, if you’d like. Although I do plan to renew the wards on my house and move back there as soon as I know there’s no danger from the Spiders. And I want Scorpius to have a home here if he wants.”
            “I’ll still owe you so much,” Draco whispered. “The life-debts from the times you saved my life, and—”
            “I owe you for making me a functioning human being and Dad again,” Harry snapped, resisting the urge to flick his fingers against the side of Draco’s head, hard. “Okay? That’s why I can consider the debts equal. Saving your life was quick for me, and something I do for a lot of people. But what you did for me…not everyone would do that.”
            There was some more of that deeper warmth in Draco’s eyes as he inclined his head. “All right. Then I want to have a big birthday party for Scorpius. Thirteen is the age that a Malfoy inherits some of his ancestors’ heirlooms and a bit of their responsibility. Usually, he gets a house-elf bound to him,” he added, probably because Harry was looking at him blankly.
            Harry snorted. “Don’t tell Hermione.”
            “We can have the party here?” Draco was glancing around as though he was unsure that all the guests he wanted to invite would fit into Grimmauld Place.
            “Of course,” said Harry. He wondered if it would sweeten Al’s mood, if he got to see Scorpius having fun in Harry’s house with his friends and, hopefully, Harry’s children as well. “But you have to tell me what to get him for a gift. I don’t know him very well yet.”
            Draco turned around with a grin that made Harry groan. “It’s going to be expensive, isn’t it?” he asked wearily.
            Draco nodded, the grin not wavering.
            “Very expensive?”
            One more nod. Continued grin.
            “Something that you don’t want to buy him?”
            The grin vanished, and Draco leaned seriously across the table. “If you do that, then I’ll cast a curse that makes you impotent for a week.”
            Harry gaped at him, then lifted his hands when Draco reached for his wand as though he didn’t mind demonstrating right there. “Okay, fine. It’s just—what was that for? We were joking around and suddenly you want to do something that would impede your pleasure as well as mine?”
            “I can still enjoy myself well enough even if you can’t get it up.” Draco had that look on his face again that Harry had come to classify as his “Malfoy” one, with the corners of his nostrils turned up and the corners of his mouth turned down. “There are things called hands and fingers. And an arse.” He eyed Harry for a moment as though remembering the last time he had been in that one.
            Harry coughed. “Right.” Then he reached across the table to take Draco’s hand. “But seriously, Draco. I would never be that upset about birthday presents for any of my kids, even though there are things I might not want you to buy them. What is it?”
            Draco let Harry take his hand, but sat there considering, as if he didn’t know whether he wanted to respond further. Then he sighed, and his fingers curled tightly around Harry’s. “I just—I don’t know how well Scorpius is going to take to having another father. We’ve already seen that it was more difficult for Al than the rest of your children, and I suspect it would be much more difficult for Jamie if he wasn’t the kind of person he is. And Scorpius has had years to get used to me being divorced. He used to ask me a few times if he would ever have another mum, and I told him no. I couldn’t imagine loving another woman the way I loved Astoria.” He met Harry’s eyes. “And I did keep my word, but not in the way I intended to. And Scorpius isn’t the sort to be taken in by cheats like that.”
            Harry nodded slowly. “That makes sense. Well. If you don’t want me parenting Scorpius yet, I’m willing to wait.”
            “When you put it that way,” Draco said, and studied Harry from beneath one lowered eyelid.
            Harry shook his head. “I don’t mind you parenting my kids if they want to be parented. I don’t think Jamie minds, and you helped me understand Lily better.” He hesitated. “I’d just wait to try it with Al, that’s all.”
            “Believe me, I intend to,” Draco said, with a fervor to his tone that made Harry laugh in spite of himself. Draco caught his eye, smiling, and nodded. “Now that we understand each other, we can talk about the place you’re going tonight.”
            “The pub to meet with Ron?” Harry let go of Draco’s hand to pick up a scone that Kreacher appeared to have made of honey. No, on second touch, when Harry prodded it with a finger, there was bread under there. It was just hard to find. Harry avoided Draco’s gaze. “You can’t come along.”
            “You have a very useful Invisibility Cloak.”
            “Not even under that,” Harry said. “I’m afraid you would give yourself away by gasping or poking me at something Ron said, and then he would probably never trust me again.”
            “Is having his trust that important to you?”
            Harry had to lean back and look at Draco incredulously at that. “Oh, of course not,” he said. “We worked together for years as partners and we’ve been best friends for almost thirty years, but his trust isn’t important to me at all.”
            Draco smiled, but his eyes were still. “I didn’t mean it that way. I meant that he wouldn’t need to know I was there, and in the meantime I could guard you.”
            Harry put the scone down in the middle of his plate, hard, which resulted in a bit of a splat. “Ron’s not going to hex me, for fuck’s sake!”
            “I’m not worried about Weasley.”
            “Then will you make up your mind who you are worried about?” Harry shook his head a little when Draco stared at him. “Sorry. But you’re talking as though Ron is the only one who’s going to be there some of the time, and then as though I’m going to have enemies there to threaten me the rest of the time.”
            “Aren’t you going to have enemies there?” Draco whispered more quietly than any ghost of Hogwarts, staring at Harry intently.
            “Not this again,” Harry said. “I promise. There’s no way that anyone except Ron and I would know about that pub, and what we called it. I don’t think even Hermione knows. She always disapproved that we went out and drank when we needed to talk privately instead of, I don’t know—” He felt around for some activity that Hermione would have approved of instead.
            “Coming up with plans to steal house-elves from their families?” Draco had a mocking curl to his lips, but Harry felt able to grin back and nod.
            “Well, yeah, basically. She eats and breathes magical creatures’ rights.” Harry sighed. “But if you’re reduced to rhetorical questions about whether I believe enemies are going to be at the pub, then you probably know as well as I do that they’re not actually going to be.”
            “I don’t know that at all.”
            “Draco.” Harry reached out and placed his hand on Draco’s. “If there are enemies there, for some reason, if it is a trap, I haven’t shown myself exactly helpless against the Spiders before. But if you come with me, and it’s a trap, then I have to worry about protecting you, too. Or at least saving your life and subjecting you to another life-debt,” he added, in part to weaken the tight line Draco’s lips had worked themselves into. “If it’s just Ron, and you come, then I have to worry about what happens if he does sense that you’re there. Or lie to him if he asks and say that you’re not. I’d just prefer to go alone.”
            Draco stared at the tabletop. Harry kept his hand on Draco’s. He knew Draco hadn’t finished talking yet, but he was puzzled that Draco hadn’t already begun another plea to go with him, if that was what he was working towards.
            “If you go alone,” Draco whispered, “and it’s a trap, and they do manage to capture you with those innovative weapons that they bragged about having, and you get injured and you have to spend weeks in St. Mungo’s…” There was an odd clicking sound in the back of his throat as he swallowed. “Or if you never came back…I don’t want to lose you just as I found you.”
            Harry melted. He could feel the melting run down the sides of his face, and into his hands. Draco looked up at him, and Harry leaned across the table and kissed him tenderly. Draco made a noise that caused Harry to shift a little in his seat, and be very glad that Lily had exhausted herself running around after garden-gnomes earlier and was asleep in her room now.
            “I don’t want to leave you, either,” Harry whispered into Draco’s ear. “That’s the last thing I want.”
            “Then you’ll let me come with you tonight?” Draco hadn’t melted. If anything, his hand was strong steel as he gripped Harry’s fingers.
            “No,” said Harry, a little exasperated. “For all the reasons that I already told you about. They’re good reasons, you know.”
            Draco drew back and considered him. “Careful,” he said after a moment. “Someone else listening to this conversation from the outside might say you care more about your reputation as a good fighter than you care about me. Or that you care about Weasley more than you care about me,” he added, and Harry didn’t have to be a Mind-Healer to find the causes of the anxiety in the back of his voice.
            “I care about you,” Harry whispered. “And I refuse to compare it to the way I care about Ron and Hermione. Those are separate things, okay? Not the same.”
            It seemed to take far longer for Draco to nod than it should have, but at last Harry felt the nod, close against his throat. He pulled back, smiling, and kissed Draco on the forehead. “Thank you,” he murmured. “Thank you for understanding why I have to go alone.”
            “I still don’t like it,” Draco said. “I intend to keep registering my dislike until you leave.”
            Harry cast a quick Tempus Charm. They still had three full hours until he was supposed to meet Ron. “Pity,” he said. “Because I was imagining a way that you could show your liking for me as a person instead.”
            Draco’s response to that was a bit over the top—Harry had to check, later, to make sure that he hadn’t loosened any teeth—but it certainly wasn’t lacking in enthusiasm.
*
            Harry slipped into the pub, glanced around, and relaxed a little. This was a tiny wizarding pub, not up to the standards of the Three Broomsticks or even the Leaky Cauldron, but it had a common list of regular, and Harry recognized them now. They crouched over their whisky or ale or, in a few cases, their stranger brews, all more intent on getting drunk than reporting to someone whether the Boy-Who-Lived was coming in to drink there.
            Harry took his seat at a small table in the corner nevertheless. If he and Ron got loud, it was likely that they would disturb the other regulars.
            No one glanced at him more than once as he went up to the bar for Firewhisky for Ron, and a glass of butterbeer for himself. He wasn’t going to drink anything stronger tonight, not when he had to apologize to his best friend and former partner for betraying a lot of Auror secrets.
            Harry grimaced. There was fuzz on the back of his tongue at the mere thought of such a confession. Now that he thought about it, maybe there was a better way that he could have handled Robards and the determination of the Ministry not to leave him alone than just dumping the whole mess in the laps of the reporters.
            On the other hand, there was the reason he had thought of before as to why that wouldn’t work: Robards wouldn’t take it any more seriously than he had Harry’s resignation letter. The next moment there was another crisis, someone would come along and insist that he take care of it, and Harry had had enough of that shit.
            He sat down with the drinks in front of him and cast the charm to check the time again. He’d got there a full twenty minutes early, and there were still ten of those left. He sighed and settled back, sipping his butterbeer.
            The fireplace flared, and Ron stumbled out of the Floo. Harry blinked at him. Ron was almost never early.
            Then he straightened up, brushing soot off his cloak, and looked at Harry with a very red face, and Harry knew why. Ron had probably bitched for so long about this meeting with Harry, he’d probably been so angry, that Hermione had kicked him out of the house so she didn’t have to listen to it anymore.
            “Hey, mate,” Harry said, waving to Ron before he could look around too much. Ron caught sight of him and started a little, then came slowly towards him, studying him intently. Harry stared back.
            “Harry?” Ron asked, in a tone that seemed to indicate he didn’t know if he still had permission to address Harry by his first name.
            Harry nodded tensely. Ron was taking this a lot worse than Harry had thought, even knowing how bad a light Harry had painted the Ministry in. He had pictured, in his head, the Ron who constantly made jokes at the Ministry’s expense, but the one here was the Ron who cared about proper procedure.
            Ron hesitated one more time, then took the seat across from him and reached for the butterbeer. Harry put his hand over the top of the mug and shook his head quickly.
            “I’m drinking this. I bought the Firewhisky for you. Get your own,” he added, when Ron continued to stare longingly at the butterbeer.
            Ron reached for the mug of Firewhisky and picked it up, downing about half of it in one swallow. He promptly coughed and choked, dropping the mug on the table and raising his hand as though he was going to grab his throat.
            Harry stood up and rounded the table, his wand in his hand. His first idea was that someone had jinxed or cursed the drink because they’d thought that Harry would be the one to drink it. Then he thought of poison.
            Only a second after that did he think of the obvious, and by that point, “Ron’s” wand was under his ribs, and “Ron’s” eyes were peering into his. Harry stood still, silently cursing. Ron wouldn’t have reacted like that to Firewhisky, he was too used to drinking it, but someone who normally didn’t swallow such a fiery drink at a gulp would have. And “Ron” had moved a little carefully, like someone who wasn’t used to his own body.
            Like someone under Polyjuice.
            “We have spiders on the roof,” said the imposter casually. “And I think that you wouldn’t like to see most of this room spun into webs. Come quietly, and that won’t happen.”
*
CareLessLover: Or Polyjuice that could presumably give someone the right kind of handwriting, since no one caught Crouch disguised as Moody.
delia cerrano: Well, you were right.
Ciara_D: Draco would like to inform you that he is never bratty, he is only sometimes curt.
SP777: What do you mean, trying?
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Marathon