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Near Hurt and Havoc	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 1330 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
- 1-Near Hurt and Havoc
- 1
Title: Near Hurt and Havoc
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Established Harry/Draco, mentions of canon pairings
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Angst
Wordcount: 2700
Summary: It’s the little things that sustain you, especially when the entire world appears to be splintering apart around you.
Author’s Notes: An Advent fic for facecat, who requested an H/D pairing with the prompt: Preparing for the holiday and everything goes wrong (that darn Murphy) but it all ends up perfect in spite, or because, of it all.
Near Hurt and Havoc
            “You wouldn’t believe what Granger said about me…”
            Draco lowered his head so fast his forehead nearly knocked against the table at the little café in Diagon Alley where Pansy had suggested they meet. When he sat back up, Pansy was staring at him, one hand pressed against her mouth.
            “Are you sick, Draco? Oh, I should have known better than to trust the food here!” She turned around to glare through the shimmering walls of the place’s permanent Warming Charms, probably to find someone to complain to.
            “No,” said Draco, and sighed. He could explain things, but then he would have to deal with Pansy’s tirade and the disgust from that, and he just didn’t think he could. He stood up and threw a few Sickles onto the table to pay for what little he’d eaten. “I forgot an appointment I have to shop for a gift Harry wants. Do excuse me.”
            “He’s taking all your time, isn’t he?” Pansy had a way of narrowing her eyes that made her seem far more dangerous than she’d ever managed to look in school. “I knew it! It’s probably all the fault of that Granger bitch!”
            “I don’t want to listen to any more of this now,” Draco said, breaking his silent promise even as he’d made it. He had a ferocious glare of his own, and he turned around and used it on Pansy now. She sank back down in her chair with a little motion of protest as she realized she wouldn’t be able to change his mind. Then she scowled and looked away.
            “I don’t see why you have to spend so much time with your stupid boyfriend and not enough time with me,” she whispered.
            “Because my boyfriend doesn’t do things like this.”
            “His friends hate me and Blaise and Theo as much as we hate them.”
            “Luckily for me,” Draco said dryly as he turned and walked out of the café towards the nearest Apparition point, “I’m not going to spend time with them today.”
*
            “I don’t understand what she wants, mate.”
            “Neither do I, hearing you explain it like this,” Harry muttered under his breath, but he quickly transformed it into a sympathetic smile when Ron turned to stare at him. “Have you tried talking to her about this?”
            “No. Because every time I try, she turns it into some other conversation about how I ought to spend more time at home.” Ron leaned on the table of the Leaky Cauldron and stared at his hands. “I would if I knew why me being an Auror trainee irritates her so much. I mean, Hermione knew I was going to spend lots of time in classes and on missions. Why is she complaining now?”
            Harry suspected he didn’t understand because he was only getting half the story, but he couldn’t say that, or Ron would get upset. He added, “I’ll get you some more Firewhisky,” when Ron started to open his mouth to shout for some more.
            Ron’s return look was so grateful that Harry flinched a little. “Thanks, Harry. You’re a true friend.”
            Harry sighed, stood up, and crossed over to Tom. He shook his head when the man looked at Ron with one eye and Harry with the other. “Can you water it down?” he asked, barely moving his lips as he laid a Galleon on the counter. “Make sure that he can actually get home without Splinching himself?”
            “Yeah.” Tom’s eyes moved from Ron to Harry and then back again. “Difficult time?”
            “You could say that. It’s difficult for him, being him.” Harry shrugged. “And difficult for me, listening to him.”
            “Ahhh,” said Tom wisely. “Yes, I’ve had more than a few of those myself.”
            “I’m sure you have,” Harry said, as he gratefully accepted the mug of watered Firewhisky and took it back to Ron, who grabbed it and swallowed half the contents before setting it down with a bang.
            “I just don’t understand what she wants. What’s the point of marrying a woman if you can’t ever understand what she wants? I thought she wanted to get married, and now…”
            Harry listened, and listened, and listened. It was only when Ron began to talk about divorce that he shook his head and stood up. He knew that Ron’s Auror instructors had already let him go for the day because they could see, just like Harry, that it was sort of useless to expect him to do anything right now. But that meant Ron still had to get home, and that was currently Harry’s responsibility.
            “Come on, Ron. Let’s go.”
            “I really think we might have to get divorced. And near Christmas, too.” Ron followed Harry gloomily out the pub’s door. “Mum will be devastated.”
            Harry drew a harsh breath and began to speak soothingly about how it could wait, maybe Ron and Hermione would have a happy Christmas, and they didn’t want to make hasty decisions so close to the holiday anyway. And he knew he would have to listen to more later in the evening, when Hermione Flooed him to complain in turn.
            At the moment, he was glad that he had a dinner with Draco to look forward to.
*
            “You don’t have any of them?”
            The shopkeeper shrugged helplessly, and moved backwards a little from Draco’s glare. A tiny part of Draco, one he shouldn’t be so proud of, nevertheless was proud when it noted that he still had the Malfoy intimidating glare down pat.
            “I’m sorry. White Kneazle kittens are really popular this year.” The shopkeeper glanced around again; then she grabbed a white rat from the corner of a cage and plopped it on the counter. “What about this? If you cast some charms on it and…”
            Her voice trailed off in the face of Draco’s second scowl, and she bowed her head over the rat, stroking it. Her hand was trembling a little.
            Draco sighed and turned away. He couldn’t blame the woman for trying to do her job, even if it was a ridiculous suggestion.
            And he knew the kittens would be popular, and probably sold out around Christmastime. It was only recently that someone had managed to get a Kneazle dam to birth a white kitten at all. Draco wouldn’t have considered getting one, except he had seen the way Harry’s eyes lit up when one of his friends showed him a photograph of one.
            He’d laughed the next second and started saying that he didn’t need a white animal, he’d had a snowy owl, that was enough. But he hadn’t ever replaced his owl, either, and it was so rare Harry asked for something like this, something that would be just for him, just because he wanted it. His usual requests were for tough, useful clothes, or something else that made Draco want to shake him for never being frivolous.
            “No white rats then, sir?”
            Draco sighed. “No.” Snowy owls would be off the list, too. He knew Harry had never wanted to replace Hedwig with an exact replica, because it would never be exact enough.
            And so he resigned himself to looking for another gift other than the perfect one, or going on a wild search for breeders by post. As he turned out of the shop and into the crowded, chilly alley, the thought of having dinner with Harry that night was the only thing sustaining him.
*
            “For the last time, no.”
            Harry knew he shouldn’t have gone home. He had had to drop Ron at the house he shared with Hermione, and then he’d come back to change his clothes, simply because a quiet, relaxed dinner with Draco didn’t involve the robes of a trainee Healer. And then, when the fire had flared, he had thought it would be Hermione, and he’d felt compelled to remain there and let her tell her side of the story—although he planned to cut her off and leave if she started to monopolize his dinnertime with Draco.
            Instead, it was Lucius Malfoy, with the same offer he always made: piles of glittering Galleons and Harry’s very own tropical island if he would only break up with Draco.
            Harry didn’t usually cut Lucius off so suddenly, though, and he was staring at Harry now with an expression that reminded Harry of Draco’s in first year, when Harry had rejected his friendship for a Weasley’s. Harry shook his head.
            “Sometimes I don’t care that you’re Draco’s father,” he told Lucius. “I only let you run on this long because it would hurt him if we argued all the time.”
            “Run on?”
            Lucius was spluttering, a good look on him. Harry smiled grimly at him and continued. “But respect has its limits. And I’m going to go and enjoy a good dinner with him, and you can take your Galleons and cram your arse with them. If you have room with your head already up there.”
            “If you don’t leave him, how is he to have children? How is he to have a family? We will—”
            Harry shut down the Floo call, only a little sorry that he couldn’t see Lucius’s face on the other side when he did that. Then he stood there and leaned his head on the mantel and slowly sighed out a long, hard breath.
            He loved Draco. He could put up with Narcissa, who, although she might share Lucius’s attitudes, was gracious to Harry if only because Draco loved him.
            But he couldn’t stand Lucius, and Lucius’s attempts to bribe him, and his shock when it never worked. Damn it. He hadn’t ever told Draco about this. He didn’t want Draco to suffer from feeling like he had to choose between his father and Harry, or from the knowledge that his father was an enormous arse.
            With Galleons shoved in it.
            Harry winced. He had probably crossed a line with that remark, too, and he would pay the price for it in the future.
            He went about changing his robes in a considerably more somber frame of mind, wondering why he always blurted out things like that without thinking of the consequences.
*
            “Harry?”
            “Draco.”
            Draco smiled a little grimly as he leaned over to hug Harry. “You look as though I had as awful a day as I did.”
            “Yeah.” Harry sighed and sat down at the table in the small restaurant he and Draco had chosen. It was an exclusive place, but that meant, to Draco, that the people who frequented it had good manners and no one would stare at them. “Draco, I have to tell you that Christmas at the Manor might be uncomfortable.”
            “Why?” Draco sat down in his own chair, pouting a little. He always meant to pull out Harry’s chair for him, but he could never do it before Harry did it for himself. “Was it something you did?”
            “I insulted your father.”
            Draco paused. “For a good reason?”
            Harry opened his mouth, then closed it again. Draco recognized the gesture. Harry had acted like he wanted to tell him something about Father before, then had held back from it, and it was irritating.
            “Tell me.”
            Harry sighed. “He was trying to bribe me to leave you.”
            Draco sat still for a moment. Then he said in a voice he knew was even smaller than he meant it to sound when it came out, “I didn’t know that he valued me at so little.”
            “It was a huge pile of Galleons and my own tropical island, apparently.” Harry saw Draco’s face in the next instant, and reached out a hand to take his. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told you.”
            “If you hadn’t, Father would. He would have loved to use this against you.” Draco swallowed some more sour air and whispered, “Why can’t he see that I love you and I’m never going to leave you?” His chest ached as though someone had plunged a sword through it.
            “I don’t know.” Harry’s voice was clear and his eyes were absolutely still and bright. “But I did think of something that might make things better. I mean, if you want to do it. I know how important family tradition is to you.”
            “And the tradition of having a family,” Draco muttered. He knew that was the crux of it. Lucius wouldn’t have cared if Draco was dating a woman—well, he would have if she was a Muggleborn, but in general, what he wanted were grandchildren. He didn’t want Draco to have what he wanted. He wanted him to get married as young as Potter’s friends had and start producing children as fast as possible.
            But Draco no longer thought of himself as simply the embodiment of Malfoy customs. He had responsibilities and choices other than simply continuing the line and handing on a store of bitterness and some Gringotts vaults.
            “What did you think of?” he added, when he noticed that Harry was still patiently waiting, and realized he had never heard Harry’s suggestion.
            “Having at least one Christmas by ourselves,” Harry said. “Whenever you want. I know we’ll still need to go to Malfoy Manor so your parents don’t die of anxiety, and see the Weasleys so they don’t start thinking that you killed me and buried the body.”
            “As if I would bury your body anywhere anyone could find it.”
            Harry relaxed and smiled, and it was the most beautiful thing Draco had seen all day. “What do you think? We could eat whatever we wanted, including those ridiculous biscuits Molly will make us. And we can give each other whatever gifts we want, and think of our own ridiculous traditions to start next year.”
            “And then always put off starting them,” said Draco happily. He knew Harry had wanted Christmas traditions as a child, had craved them when the Dursleys never did anything with him, but as an adult he found both the ornate way Malfoys did things and the crowded way Weasleys did things a bit stifling. “Yeah. I’d love that.”
            Harry leaned across the table to kiss him. “Good.”
*
            “…And I couldn’t find a white Kneazle kitten for you. Sorry.”
            Harry leaned up to kiss Draco again as they walked slowly away from the restaurant. The night around them was bright with stars. A full moon. And the fire that Harry could feel burning between them always, contented and slow at the moment, but able to blaze up again.
            “It’s all right.”
            Draco opened his mouth as if he would disagree, and then sighed and closed it again. Harry watched him from the corner of one eye as he guided Draco around a patch of icy cobblestones.
            “Yes,” Draco said slowly, apparently as surprised by that conclusion as he was relieved. “After this—I suppose it is.”
            Harry smiled, and turned around to face him. He’d talked about his fears that Ron and Hermione might divorce during the meal, and Draco had confessed his feelings about his friends and their constant quarrels with Harry’s friends, and Harry knew they had eased each other’s minds.
            But there was a difference between contentment and joy.
            Harry kissed Draco slowly, watching the moonlight in his eyes, until Draco closed them when he kissed back. Then Harry curled his fingers in Draco’s robe collar and tugged on them until Draco bent down a little closer to him, and Harry could kiss long enough to start doing things with his tongue that he knew drove Draco wild.
            Then he could whisper, “Let’s go home.”
            And Draco smiled, and there, there was the joy.
     The End.
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Near Hurt and Havoc