Chapter Thirty-Eight of 'Starfall'- The Challenge of the Truth
Chapter Thirty-Seven.
Title: Starfall (37/50 or 52)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Draco, Harry/Ginny, past Draco/Astoria, Ron/Hermione
Rating: R
Warnings: Angst, manipulation
Summary: When the truth about a seemingly minor Dark hex Harry has suffered leads to the dissolution of his marriage with Ginny, Harry spins into a downward spiral. His private consolation is creating a fantasy life for himself in his journal as Ethan Starfall, a normal wizard with a big family. When he receives a random owl Draco Malfoy has cast into the void as a plea for help with his son Scorpius, Harry replies-as Ethan. There’s no reason, he thinks, for an epistolary friendship with Draco to go further. But Draco might have different ideas about that.
Author’s Note: This is likely to be a long story, updated fairly regularly. It is, however, very angsty.
Chapter One.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Thirty-Eight-The Challenge of the Truth
“That’s…something, Harry.”
Harry had to smile, as tense as he was feeling. It wasn’t often that he managed to stun Ron into sitting there with his mouth open and his eyes fixed on him like this. “Isn’t it?” he asked, with a lightness he was far from feeling. But he had to have some confidence in this, or his friends would think he wasn’t making the right decision. “I want to have a life again, though. This will get some people off my back.”
Ron shook his head in the next second. Harry could see the Auror office behind him, the desk teetering with paperwork as usual. Harry swallowed against a wave of something oddly like homesickness. He hadn’t always had it easy when he was a working Auror, either, but at least he had known he had a partner who would support him no matter what.
“But what about the ones it won’t?” Ron demanded. “Some people will think you’re lying. Some people won’t care. They’ll still think that you wanting to spend time with children is creepy.”
Harry licked his lips. “That’s another thing I thought of. I’ll have to start charging at least modest fees.” He didn’t really want to, because that would cut out people like Mathilda Patience who didn’t have any money to spare, but maybe for them he could work out a payment plan. “I’ll say that my time is limited and valuable.”
Ron gave him a look of real curiosity. “What’s going to limit it, though? I mean, they’ll think you don’t have much to do now that you’re not an Auror.”
“Because I do have children I like to spend time with,” said Harry. “I haven’t spent much time with Rose and Hugo lately. Or Teddy, but that was because of the argument between me and Andromeda.” He hesitated, wondering how Ron would take his next piece of news, but Ron only waited and blinked in the way he did when he knew Harry hadn’t finished his sentences yet. “And Scorpius Malfoy.”
Ron acted as if he would stand up for a second, but his legs didn’t appear ready to support him. So he only sank back down again and stared at Harry. Harry snickered in spite of himself. He was sorry Draco wasn’t here. He knew Draco would have appreciated the expression on Ron’s face.
“Malfoy is still having that many problems with him?” Ron asked, his voice small and almost scared-sounding, as if he thought that Harry would snap at the question.
Or, no, what he really wants is for me to give him an answer that means I’m not spending time with Draco for his own sake, Harry thought, and blinked at Ron in turn as he replied.
“Actually, I think Draco is really improving in the way he parents Scorpius.” He paused instead, but Ron made a gesture for him to go on. “What I mean is that I’m going to be joining in the parenting, so of course that means I’m going to be spending a lot of time with Scorpius.”
If Scorpius agrees. That was what Harry had to remind himself of, again, when he thought about it. Scorpius had already been through his parents’ divorce, and Harry was smart enough to realize no one had probably consulted him about it. Harry didn’t want to inflict another, perhaps unwanted parent on him without asking him if he wanted Harry.
Ron stared at him in a traumatized way, and then shook his head and shut his eyes. “If you wanted to spend even more time with Rose and Hugo, you only had to ask,” he whispered. “And I’m sure that Bill and Fleur would love to have you spend more time with their brood, too. You know Victoire always asks about you.”
Harry stared at him. This wasn’t what he’d thought Ron’s reaction would be when he began talking. “What do you mean?”
Ron’s gaze was full of pity. “I know you want a family, mate. But you have one. And we would be more than happy to share our children with you.” He leaned forwards as Harry opened his mouth. “And I know you were going to say that it wouldn’t be the same, but you must have got over that desire for blood children a bit if you’re thinking about joining Malfoy’s family. So you can join us more often, and that takes care of everything. Including being with people who care about you.”
Harry grimaced. All right, so it had been silly to try and keep the truth concealed from Ron. And anyway, he had always meant to tell him, so why not do it now?
“It’s more than that,” he said. Ron paused in the act of getting up, and looked at him as if wondering what he meant. Harry nodded to him and pulled a little on the collar of his robe. He didn’t think he would have any trouble saying this if Draco was right here, if only because Draco would insist on speaking the truth, but he did now. “I-I’m sort of-dating Draco. He’s invited me to live with him and Scorpius.”
Ron sat down again with such a thump that Harry was surprised someone didn’t come bursting into the office demanding to know what had happened. He stared at Harry in a silence so thick Harry wasn’t sure he should break it. It might hurt Ron if he did. But Ron only shook his head when Harry glanced at him and said, “I’ll be all right. As soon as you explain something to me.”
He hooked his hands beneath his chin and gave Harry an earnest glance that reminded Harry unnervingly of Healer Brandeis. “When did you find out you were gay? And is that the real reason you ended your marriage to Ginny?”
Harry spluttered for a second, but got hold of himself. He wasn’t going to get hung up on irrelevant things when something else mattered a lot more. “I’m not gay, Ron,” he said, and writhed a little from the suspicious glance Ron turned on him. “No, really, I’m not. I-I might be bisexual. I don’t know. I haven’t thought a lot about what it makes me if I’m dating a man.”
“I would have.”
“If you were me, you would have been dating your own sister,” said Harry tightly. “Let’s not use that as a basis for comparisons.”
Ron stared at him with an open mouth for a second, then laughed harshly. “Right. Good point.” He hesitated, then added, “But you need to tell me, I think. I was under the impression that your marriage really did end just because of the children thing.” And because Ginny wanted to sleep with someone else, Harry thought, but kept his mouth shut. “But if it was this…”
Harry shrugged. “What? You’d think badly of me for not telling you for three years?” Ron nodded, gaze fastened on him, and Harry pushed on. “You’d think I was a bad friend, someone who didn’t trust you, someone who was keeping secrets from you for no good reason? Because I valued being thought of well by Ginny and you more than I valued being honest with you?”
“That doesn’t sound like you,” said Ron.
“Because it’s not me.” Harry folded his arms and traded glare for glare. “Honestly, Ron, I’m messed up enough about what I am, all right? Without adding this to it. I didn’t even know if I could be attracted to Draco, but I’ve figured out I can. That I want to give it a chance. When I have a name for myself, I’ll tell you.” He hesitated, then added, because he couldn’t not, “And when I was married to Ginny, I loved her, and I didn’t want anyone else to come between us. Literally. Okay?”
“Well, that’s right,” said Ron, looking a little thoughtful. “You didn’t want her to sleep with some other bloke and get pregnant. I reckon you would have been relieved to have an excuse to get divorced if you were gay.”
“It wasn’t an excuse,” said Harry. He hoped that people would quit touching on the most painful part of his life soon. He was going to make a rule, he thought, to never talk about what his inability to have children had done to his marriage after the one initial interview about how it had ended things. And he wasn’t going to mention Ginny’s name at all. “It was the explanation. I’m not gay.”
Ron made a little clenching motion with one hand, as though he was gathering something in to himself. “But why Malfoy, mate? There’s all sorts of people who would be willing to share your life.”
Harry smiled without much humor as he realized the answer. “But none of them made enough of a push. I didn’t want to take too much of a risk, and I didn’t put myself out there, and no one came far enough with me. Draco has. He-he wants me, Ron. As part of his life and part of Scorpius’s life. And so he pushed past the barriers in a way no one’s done before. I’m going to date him because I want to but also because he’s made such an effort that I can see him, the way I couldn’t the people I tried to date before this. He isn’t blinded by the Boy-Who-Lived. I never have to worry about that with him.”
“There are other people you wouldn’t have to worry about it with, either.” Ron’s voice was muffled. He had his head against his knees when Harry looked at him again, his hands clenched in his hair as if he was trying and failing to understand against all odds. “This is-mate, I think you only chose him for his kid.” He looked up with a ravaged face. “Sorry, but that’s the way it feels. And if you just need someone with a kid, you could do so much better.”
Harry caught his breath and held it for a minute against the temptation to cry out. No, Ron wouldn’t understand why he was doing it if he did do that, and Harry wasn’t about to hurt his feelings with a scolding.
“Better than someone who cares for me?” he asked, when he had the self-control to really respond.
That got him a direct look and a jaw dropped so far that Harry had to smile. He could see, sometimes, what other people found exasperating about Ron, but there was also so much that was endearing.
I’ll just never ask Draco for a list, that’s all.
“Does he love you?” Ron asked. “I thought you said he-” He choked, but produced the words with a good deal of effort through a throat that sounded choked. “Wanted you. That’s a sight different from love!”
“So is what Ginny and I had by the end of our marriage,” said Harry. He was sorry to keep invoking her, but he could do it with Ron in a way he couldn’t with the wider public, he supposed. Ron had heard the story from both sides. “And yeah, he does want me. But he also wants me to live in the Manor, and he gave me rooms there, and he was upset that I never asked for an invitation to dinner, because he wanted me to do that instead of him just having to invite me over all the time.” He whipped a hand through his hair, a means of whipping up his courage, because Ron’s own incredulity was making him wish he could shut the Floo. “And maybe it’s not love, yet, but I think it could get there.”
“Are you ever going to tell me what really happened between you and Malfoy?” Ron shook his head when Harry opened his mouth. “And don’t give me that load of bollocks about how you contacted him for the first time when you wanted him to give Teddy blood. You wouldn’t be reacting like this if that was really the first time you’d talked to him since Hogwarts.”
Harry flinched a little. He didn’t know if he was ready even now to give up the secret of Ethan, but more because it would make Draco look so bad to Ron and Hermione than because he wanted to protect himself.
“I’ll tell you someday,” he said at last, and Ron sighed out, a huge sigh that ended with a snort.
“Fine, mate.” Ron leveled a finger at him. “I just hope that I won’t have to comfort you when you come crying to me some night and resist saying ‘I told you so.’”
“When was the last time I came over to your house crying over a broken heart?” Harry demanded, upset. “I didn’t do that over Ginny!” And none of the people he’d dated since her had mattered to him enough to merit a broken heart.
“I know, but that’s only because she was my sister,” Ron said, in a tone of voice that said Harry should already have known this. “I’m your best mate. I’d be insulted if you went to someone else to talk about your broken heart.” He reached out as if he was going to poke Harry through the flames, but he ended up just making a really expressive gesture in front of him instead. “Okay?”
Harry felt a smile quivering on his lips. He hesitated, then let it out anyway. Ron deserved to see it. “Okay. I’ll remember that.”
“See that you do.” Ron sighed and shook his head. “Blimey, mate, I almost forgot what you said about going to tell people that you can’t have kids when you broke the news about Malfoy.”
“I know.” Harry took in a deep breath. “I’m contemplating announcing both things at the same time. One of them might take the edge off the outrage about the other.”
“No, you’ll just get a lot of Howlers about him and impertinent questions about the other,” said Ron. “Probably from the same people, because they can be stupid in more than one way.” He glanced at Harry again and cleared his throat in a way that suggested he couldn’t quite believe what he was saying himself. “Listen, mate. Talk this over with him before you do anything, right?”
Harry blinked. “Of course. I would never say anything about dating him until I know if he’s all right with it.”
“Not just that. Both things.” Ron was struggling with something that seemed caught in his throat. “I think he has a right to know.”
Harry sighed. “I suppose. Maybe it’ll give him something to think about besides punishing Quillona.”
“He can only do that if George doesn’t get to her first,” Ron said ominously. “She’s pretty close to getting a nice big welcome package from Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes, wrapped up in ribbons with her name on it.”
“Ron,” Harry hissed. “Tell him to stop that. She would probably give it to her granddaughter, and Justice has been hurt enough. I don’t want her to suffer any more because of this.”
“George can attune it to just the person he wants to hurt,” Ron began, and then threw up his hands when he saw Harry staring at him. “Fine, fine, I’ll tell him. This is the day when I promise to do all sorts of things you want, isn’t it?”
“Only the important ones,” Harry said, and caught Ron’s eye, and smiled at him gratefully. “You could have been a lot worse about it than you were. Thanks.”
Ron wagged a finger at him. “As long as you remember who’s your best mate here, and who’s not.”
It was bad of him, after everything else Ron had done, but Harry couldn’t resist. “Of course Draco’s not my best mate,” he said meekly enough. “I don’t want to play chess with him, or go to him to sob over a broken heart. I want to do other things with him, like-”
Ron yelped, clapped his hands over his ears, and somehow managed to shut the Floo connection at the same time, even with his hands far from the fireplace. Harry knelt there and laughed until he felt laughed out.
Then he sighed and stood. It was time to move on to what might be the most challenging step of all, he thought: convincing Draco this was a good idea.
*
“No,” Draco said. He didn’t have to think about it. “The public doesn’t have the right to know that about you.”
“It would get some of them off my back.” Harry was sitting in the chair across from the fire, and he had a glass of wine in his hand, but just like last night, he wasn’t really drinking it. He was watching Draco, and he looked calm and reasonable, and Draco was instantly suspicious. Harry had behaved excitably enough when he was playing Exploding Snap with Scorpius earlier. Draco had thought it was normal. Now it seemed as if Harry had been turning thoughts and argument tactics over in his head as though he was playing chess instead. “And it might make some people understand why I opened this business, and come in to ask me to spend time with their children out of the kindness of their hearts.”
“But why do you need that, if you have Scorpius?” Draco asked, a little desperately. “If you have me?”
Harry lifted his head as though Draco had pulled on his hair. His eyes were cool and direct, which disconcerted Draco. He liked them warm and distant and hazy, for many reasons.
“Both of you are wonderful,” Harry said quietly. “But Teddy didn’t content me by himself, either, when it was just me being his godfather, or the Weasleys and Andromeda when I got along with them just fine and didn’t have the ghosts of my marriage or what Andromeda did between us. I need more than one family life, Draco, no matter how wonderful it is.”
Draco tapped his fingers on the arm of the chair. Yes, all right, he could see that. He just wished that this didn’t involve such a personally risky step for Harry.
“What if you tell them the truth, and nothing changes?” he asked, voicing his greatest fear. “And they send more Howlers, and letters, and stop you in the street and yell at you?” He shook his head when Harry opened his mouth to protest. “You have to consider it. This is what hurts you most, and they’ll pick at it again and again, just to get some attention from you or other people.”
Harry was silent for a long moment, head bowed and hand stroking the stem of his wineglass. Draco waited. At least there was no immediate denial, which meant Harry was thinking things through.
In a way, though, that was a bad thing. If Harry had thought it through and come up with good reasons for his actions, then Draco might have to go along with this.
“Do you know,” Harry said to himself at last, in tones of soft wonder, “it doesn’t hurt me as it once did.”
“What?” Draco leaned to the side so he could see Harry’s face through the glass of the goblet, in case the new angle made the words make sense. “Of course it does. You were fighting like mad to protect that secret just a few weeks ago, when you didn’t want to tell me about it.”
“The thought of other people knowing I can’t have children.” Harry sipped from his glass and set it down, then leaned forwards to take Draco’s hands, which was so enchanting that Draco was inclined to forgive any strangeness in his way of speaking. “And the end of my marriage. I got over it.” He hesitated, then corrected himself. “No, I mean, it still hurts, but it doesn’t hurt as much as it used to.”
“Why?” Draco would have liked to believe this, but he really couldn’t trust it, not when the pain had been so recent.
“Because of you, I think,” said Harry, smiling at him. “Because you’ve offered me something that’s solid and that I can work towards, even if I end up not being able to keep it.” Draco opened his mouth to say that it wouldn’t be his fault if Harry wasn’t able to keep it, but Harry’s words flowed on and over him again. “And you’ve offered me Scorpius. Does he seem like he might like to have another dad?”
“You know he likes you,” said Draco, when he got his voice back.
“There’s a difference between Uncle Harry, or Uncle Blaise, and another parent,” said Harry seriously.
Draco was starting to think that he had never known what a pessimist Harry was when they were back in Hogwarts. Then, he had seemed to eternally hope for things like a good mark in Potions class even when he had to know they couldn’t happen. Maybe it was just things like work as an Auror that had changed him.
“We can ask him,” said Draco. “But yes, you’re welcome to both of us.”
Harry smiled. “Is that so?” he asked, and suddenly his hands holding Draco’s were warm in a new way, and he was leaning in with a predatory little expression on his face that seemed to have grown out of the smile without Draco even noticing the transition.
Draco opened his mouth to respond, and Harry kissed him, grabbing his chin and manipulating Draco’s face so it was where he wanted it.
It was breathlessly hot and exciting, and Draco moaned and fell sprawling on his chair. Harry pressed his head against the back of the chair, hand still holding Draco’s chin, his tongue darting in and out as if so curious for a taste that he couldn’t really pause for a lingering one.
Draco reached out with one hand that he meant to touch Harry’s side, but it caught in his robe and flapped sideways instead, and hit Draco’s own glass. That fell, shattering, on the floor, spilling the last of his wine, and Harry leaped back with a startled cry.
They both panted and looked at each other for a second, and then Harry laughed and said, “Among the things that I have to learn how to control are my Auror reflexes.”
“Indeed,” Draco said, with a smile, and kept his hand extended. Harry looked at it for a second as though wondering what he should do with it, then took it and kissed it.
“I’m tired,” he said. “You agree that it would be best to tell the truth?”
Draco sighed. He knew when he was manipulated, and when he was allowing the manipulation.
“Only if you have me at your side when you make the announcement,” he said, and drowned in the brilliance of Harry’s smile.
Chapter Thirty-Nine.
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