Chapter Forty-One of 'Starfall'- Answering Back

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter Forty.

Title: Starfall (41/50 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 Forty-One--Answering Back

"I'm sorry I wasn't there, mate. Got wounded in the middle of that last chase." Ron waved a hand at his bandaged leg. Harry had to admit, he snickered a little when he saw it.

"So you have a death wish too, right?" he asked, and poked Ron's ribs. "Because the last wound you had was also on the same leg."

They were sitting outside Ron and Hermione's house, on a sheltered wooden porch that Hermione had constructed using her own magic, as part of a project to show that wizards didn't need house-elves for building work. The roof that arched overhead had a few gaps in it, but not enough to make the slow, steady rain falling a nuisance. Ron sat in a chair with his leg propped up in front of him on a stool, and Harry lounged in a normal one next to him.

Ron didn't laugh. Harry looked at him, ready to apologize if Ron had taken his teasing about the death wish seriously, and saw Ron turning a stern gaze on him. He squirmed a little, uncomfortably.

"I still think I was right," said Ron. "You didn't have anything to live for, except your job. We weren't enough. Even Rose and Hugo aren't enough." He sucked in a bitter breath and went on. "But Malfoy's son is?"

This had been coming for a while, Harry reminded himself, to quell the immediate impulse to snap. He put down his cup of mango juice--Hermione's latest healthy obsession, recommended by her parents--and focused on Ron. "It's different when I can have a huge part in raising him," he said.

"You've had a huge part in raising Rose and Hugo!" Ron tried to sit up, and fell back with a little groan as his leg twinged.

"Do I have to firecall Hermione?" Harry asked sternly. Hermione had told him to do that if Ron seemed to be in pain or was showing signs of being agitated.

"No," said Ron, and hauled himself up and around again. Harry cast a Pain-Relieving Charm on Ron's knee without being asked. Ron was stubborn about not asking for things like that. Ron shot him an exasperated glance, and Harry simply blinked back at him. "Listen, mate. Why aren't our children enough for you? Why isn't our family enough for you?"

And there it was, the question that Ron had wanted to ask and hadn't. Hell, maybe even the question Andromeda had wanted to ask and hadn't. Harry sighed out a slow breath and turned so he was looking Ron in the eye.

"This is going to sound pretty bad," he said. "But it's the truth. There are some things about me that are true, but I've only figured them out recently."

Ron nodded warily. He was alert, his eyes fastened on Harry as though Harry was the criminal who was going to charge him waving a wand. But Harry couldn't blame him for that, either. He sighed again and continued.

"I want a family that's mine. Just mine. Not shared with a bunch of other people. I have to share Teddy with Andromeda and a lot of people she talks about that I don't even know. I didn't know Ted that well. I didn't even know Tonks as well as I would like. And she talks about Black ancestors, and I have to sort of nod along. I can never know them from books and tapestries and portraits the way she knows them."

"But you know us," said Ron immediately. "And you know any of us would be willing to share anything with you."

"Even after Ginny?" Harry asked.

Ron hesitated.

Harry nodded. "Exactly. If I'd asked your mum to invite me to the Burrow as often as she did before the divorce, it wouldn't have been fair to anyone else. It would have made your family have to choose between me and Ginny, and you can't be expected to do that. And neither of us is mature enough not to fight at family dinners."

"When you told me that you were going to say some depressing things about yourself, you were right," Ron muttered.

Harry winced a little. "Yeah, but I think it's better to know it and say it than to end up being surprised by it." He leaned his chin on his fist and looked steadily at Ron. "You know what I mean?"

"Just because you were cautious about Ginny didn't mean we couldn't have helped you," said Ron. "She doesn't even come over here and visit us all that often."

"And how much of that is because I do?" Harry countered at once. "You might not care that much about seeing Corner, but won't you want to see your new niece or nephew? How are we going to arrange things when she has a child you want to see, and you don't want to hurt either her or me?"

Ron hesitated. "Does that mean you're going to stop considering us your friends when she has the baby?" he whispered.

Harry rolled his eyes at him. "Of course not. It only means that I know how difficult it's going to be for you, and I don't want to spend the rest of my life tiptoeing around because you're my family and hers. I want to have a house I can go to where I know I'm not going to be intruding. I want to have someone to spend time with who isn't related to Ginny by blood, and isn't only part of the Black family, either. And Scorpius likes me, and Draco..."

"Yeah, you don't need to make it explicit," said Ron hastily, which made Harry grin. "All right, I reckon I can see that. But how are you going to be able to consider Scorpius yours more than you can with Teddy, or Rose and Hugo?"

"Because Draco wants me there without divided loyalties," Harry said simply. "His ex-wife visits sometimes, but not often, and from the way Draco describes her, she doesn't care that much about raising Scorpius. She might be offended if I tried to describe myself as Scorpius's blood parent, but Merlin knows I can't do that anyway. I'm not a woman. And precisely because she cares less, it'll make any scenes that do happen less awkward than they would be with Ginny."

"My mum would always welcome you," said Ron stubbornly.

Harry held his eyes. "When a grandkid's in the picture?"

It took a moment, but Ron's gaze wavered and fell. "Yeah, well," he muttered. "If you were both more mature, this wouldn't have happened."

"I know that," Harry said, as patiently as he could. "But right now, I'm the one who's trying to move on with my life and be happy, and Ginny's the one who's showing up at my announcements and trying to drag me down again. Why can't she go and be happy with the life she has?"

"Because revealing that you can't have children is kind of revealing one of her secrets, too," Ron said.

Harry snorted. "What? That she divorced me because she cared more about having children than about having me as a husband?"

"You can't blame her for that!"

"I didn't reveal anything that she had to have anything to do with," said Harry tiredly. He could see why Draco had raised his eyebrows at him when Harry had told him he was going to Ron and Hermione's house this morning. Yes, his friends meant well, and they would never hate him, but Ron simply couldn't resist the impulse to defend his little sister. "The newspapers have always been more interested in me, anyway. She could have stayed home, and then Skeeter wouldn't be writing about her."

"But they still asked her questions about the divorce. Someone would have written about her." Ron leaned down and picked up a battered Prophet up from the floor next to his chair. "Did you see what they said about her?"

"Not really, no," said Harry coolly. "I was a little more engaged reading what they said about me."

"They said some pretty awful things," said Ron, although he was hesitating now, as if the Hermione-voice he had sometimes described as his conscience was telling him to hold back. "I wouldn't be surprised if she's angrier than ever now."

"She didn't need to come there," said Harry. "Why did she?"

"Because it did involve her, if you were talking about the reason for your divorce."

Harry put one hand up and turned his face away. Ron shut up, but still watched him warily. Harry stared at the far side of Ron and Hermione's garden, a wall of climbing yellow flowers that he didn't think either of them had planted, until his eyes blurred from tracking the motion of raindrops past the blossoms.

Then he turned back, and said simply, "I don't give a fuck what they write about her. Either way. I'm not going to try and make it better, and I'm not going to try and make it worse. Tell her whatever you like. I don't want to talk to her, I don't want to see her, she can do what she wants, but she'd better stay away from me, Draco, and Scorpius."

"That sounds like a threat," said Ron, squinting at him.

Harry raised his hand and tugged deliberately, once, at his hair. Then he said, "She didn't give a fuck about me for three years. She can go right back there. And yeah, you ought to know that if she tries to drag my name through the mud, or Draco's, or Scorpius's, she'll get attacked. I know she's your sister and you love her, but this is exactly why I need another family I can live with and love."

"You think it'll last, then?" Ron was sitting back against the chair, one hand on the Prophet as though he planned to use it for a shield against the words Harry was going to say.

Harry shrugged. "My marriage to Ginny didn't, so you think this won't? Who can say, Ron. I'm going to try." He stood up. "And I think I'm going to go away now before one of us says something we'll regret."

"I only want to tell you that you'll always have a place with us," said Ron, his voice low.

"Maybe later," said Harry, keeping his head turned away. "Not right now."

And he strode out of the house. He could feel himself shaking as he went. He knew that Ron and Hermione had no reason to like Draco, but they had no reason to insist that Harry forgive Ginny, either. If Ron had only expressed doubt about Draco because he was a Malfoy, Harry could have accepted that and argued back against that.

But fuck no, he was not going to forgive Ginny and accept her accusations and take back the truth about him not being able to have children because a few people wrote nasty things in the paper about her. It would blow over--for her--by the time she had her baby. And hopefully, if she didn't like the results of this exposure, she could shut the fuck up and remember that the next time she was tempted to speak out in public.

Listen to how much you sound like Draco.

Harry shrugged a little. That was another way Draco had been good for him, pointing out to him that Harry could demand at least as much as anyone else. And if he wanted to be left alone and have other people respect his privacy, then he should be able to have that. The newspaper reporters, no, not right now, because Harry had been the one to reach out to them.

But Ginny? She had what she'd always wanted. Go and rejoice in it, Harry thought as he Apparated, and stop bothering me.

*

"Thank you for making the time to see me."

Draco kept his head down as he moved into Anne Quillona's home. Or one of her homes, he knew. She had a house in London where she was raising her granddaughter, but she had told Draco to meet her in a tiny cottage on the outskirts of Hogsmeade, where she said they could "talk in private."

The woman slammed the door shut behind her and turned to face him, folding her arms. She was as sharp and spare as Draco had imagined she was from the pictures in the paper, and from what he remembered seeing her occasionally in his childhood. And she was just as aggressive. She tried to loom over him, and when Draco gazed back at her in a posture of perfect indifference to that particular intimidation technique, she turned away with a huff and began slamming cabinet doors closed.

"You'll have to excuse the lack of tea, but I don't keep house-elves here," she said over her shoulder.

Of course not, Draco thought. That would be too polite. But he didn't need tea. It wasn't like he intended to stay.

He quietly took out the signed document his father had given him, and held it in one hand until her hostile staring and restless movements had died down, and she was facing him with folded arms and a slight sneer. Then he held it out to her.

"What's this?" Quillona took the document and turned it around. "The agreement not to bother my granddaughter and to apologize that I've been waiting for Potter to deliver? Strange that he would do it in writing and not himself, but--"

Her voice simply ended, her eyes locked on Lucius's neat handwriting. Draco clasped his hands behind his back and smiled a little. He was going to enjoy this.

Quillona looked up, and her body and face were both tensed as if she was going to charge forwards. "What is this?" she whispered harshly. "Do you think anyone is going to believe this farrago of nonsense?"

"First of all, it's true," said Draco helpfully. "Second, even if it was nonsense, why not? After all, the papers believed everything that you threw at them about Harry, even though it had no basis. They only want scandal. That's what everyone who tries to use the press against him forgets. The papers are just as eager to turn on them as on him. They only want victims. The reporters don't care who they are."

Draco paused, and then took a single step forwards, enough to make Quillona bristle at him without having the justification to attack that Draco knew she was looking for. "What everyone forgets," he said softly, meeting her eyes, "is that he has someone who's going to fight for him now. He forbore to turn the press on his enemies out of kindness before. But I have none, not where his enemies are concerned."

Quillona folded the paper hard enough to cut her hand with its edge. She was still engaged in snarling at him. "You can't think that anyone is going to believe this?"

"That's the same accusation you made, and which I already answered," said Draco, pausing and giving her a languid smile. "Would you like to try a different one? That might give you an escape. Probably not, but one should always have hope."

"I never met someone called Fox in my life," said Quillona in disgust, and made as if to tear the parchment.

Draco shrugged. "Strange, because my father signed that document in the Ministry's Department of Law and Records, and the parchment wouldn't have taken the signature if it wasn't true. And another copy exists in the Ministry department, where we can get at it if something unfortunate happens to the first one. Like an accidental tearing, for example."

Quillona paused. Her eyes rested on Draco, who only looked back, smiling slightly. He wondered for a moment why Harry had found this woman so intimidating. It had to be his terribly earnest feeling for her granddaughter, because she wasn't tall or smart enough to really cow him.

"I can dispute this," said Quillona carefully. "I can go to the Ministry Department and write down and sign my own version of events."

"You could do that," said Draco. "If you are sure, you know, absolutely sure that the truth-charmed parchment would take your version of events the way it took my father's. And since Miriam Fox was right there to add her signature to the bottom of this particular document, then you might have trouble disputing it."

From the way Quillona jumped and turned the parchment around, Draco knew she had totally missed Fox's signature before this and hadn't simply been ignoring it. Her eyes when she raised her head again were poisonous, but Draco didn't miss the slight tremor in her fingers where they clutched the parchment. Quillona saw him looking and immediately closed her hand down, eyes shutting at the same time.

"Yes," said Draco quietly. "Perhaps you shouldn't have been as obsessed with the family honor as you were. Perhaps you should have raised your daughter's 'base-born' child honestly and openly for the world to see."

"You can have no conception of how it was," said Quillona sullenly, without looking up. "If you did, you would not stand here and scold me like the self-righteous idiot you seem determined to become."

Draco clucked his tongue. "I can have a pretty fair conception of how it was, from what my father explained to me. Your daughter had an illegitimate child. You didn't want to raise it. You gave her to this Miriam Fox, a friend of a friend who had wanted a child. And then you decided that merely concealing her existence wasn't enough. You had to erase it. You--"

"I did not."

Draco chuckled, and said nothing. Quillona knew as well as he did that the parchment might have taken Lucius's version of events if it was merely something he believed to be true, without it actually being so, but in that case, Fox's signature--the signature of someone who did know the whole truth--would have dissolved the words and the parchment itself. For them to exist on the same piece of paper, they both had to be real.

"So," said Draco. "Do you want this to be blazoned forth? There's the very real chance you would be arrested, you know, as well as have your reputation destroyed."

Quillona's eyes opened, staring and pale. "And if Miriam believed this, why hasn't she gone to the Aurors before this?"

"Because," said Draco, and he let his voice drip his contempt, "she had the same scruples that my Harry does. She wanted to spare the rest of your family suddenly being deprived of their mother and grandmother. And since your other granddaughter came to live with you, she's hesitated even further. She didn't know whether the Ministry might not take Justice from you and place her with someone who would be worse for her, since Miriam saw no chance that she would get to adopt the child."

Draco came a step forwards and whispered, "I have no patience for that kind of thinking. I wouldn't feel safe leaving a child with someone who sent her first granddaughter a dish of poisoned sweets, for the enormous crime of being born outside a marriage."

"I did not," Quillona said. "There is no proof. If the girl got sick and there was no chance of Fox affording a Healer, that is not my fault."

"Just enough lack of proof and hesitation and Gryffindor intentions to hold Fox back," said Draco quietly. "Not to mention not having the money to hire an advocate if she had to. But not for much longer. If you don't back up, I think Fox is going to positively revel in bringing you down now that she has the support of a powerful family behind her. Watch out, Quillona."

This time, the woman at least said nothing. Draco turned towards the door, and then snapped his fingers a little and turned back. Quillona looked up at him, her face dull and blank with hatred.

"You should hope Harry never finds out about this," said Draco. "He's hell on people who mistreat children."

Quillona's fingers closed down again. Draco smiled and slipped out the door.

He was sure of his victim, after spending only a few minutes with Quillona. No, she wouldn't be able to hold herself back, not after indulging her temper and spite for so long. She would attack either Fox or Harry again, or possibly Draco himself, and then justice would be served for a murder that should, Draco thought, have been brought to trial long ago.

There are days I have no patience with Gryffindors, he thought, and went home to the Gryffindor who was worth having patience with.

*

"You were right."

Draco looked up into Harry's eyes, his own eyebrows rising. "That sounds like a good thing, but I'd like to know what I was right about," he said, and set his napkin aside.

Harry looked down at his hands, resting next to his plate, and wondered again if he should say something about this. It was fine to discuss it with Ron, to make it clear that he would prefer never to talk about Ginny with his friends again, but did that give him the right to abuse her in front of Draco?

"What is my dad right about?" Scorpius asked, leaning one elbow on the table and watching Draco out of the corner of his eye. All Draco had to do was raise a particular eyebrow at his son and the elbow came off again.

Harry had to smile, and remember that Scorpius didn't know a thing about this debacle with Ginny, and Harry would honestly rather it stayed that way. But he could still talk to both of them at once, without leaving Scorpius out of the conversation or denying it to Draco.

"Something we discussed the other day," he said, looking back at Draco. "Sometimes I don't know if I should get even with someone who hurt me or not, you know? Getting even can be a bad thing sometimes."

"I know," said Scorpius, with a world-weary air that made Harry laugh a little before he could stop himself. But Scorpius was too caught up in his role to notice. "Daddy tells me all the time that I can't get even with the elves, and Uncle Blaise says that I can't get even with the Muggles when they bump into me." He shook his head. "And I can't get even with Teddy. He's bigger than me."

"It sounds," said Draco to Scorpius, while keeping one eye openly on Harry, "that you just don't have the chance to get even with them. Uncle Harry had a chance, and he was going to reject it."

"Really?" Scorpius stared at Harry as if he had been told Harry was going to reject dessert. "Why would you do that?"

"Because revenge doesn't always make you a good person," said Harry simply. "And I want to be a good person."

"Huh," said Scorpius, in the tone of someone thinking about it, and not finding anything to admire in that viewpoint.

"But Uncle Harry said I was right," Draco murmured, glancing rapidly back and forth between Harry and Scorpius as if he didn't want to miss a fleeting expression on either of their faces. "So I persuaded him to take a little revenge."

"I still don't want to hunt someone down and get even," said Harry, to which Draco made a face. "But I realized I could defend myself when someone talked about that person, and walk away if I wanted to."

Draco's face relaxed into a smile. Harry attended to that so much that it took him a moment to realize what Scorpius was saying.

"That sounds like a pretty boring revenge."

Harry laughed despite himself. "It sort of is. But at least it means that I can do what I need to do and be happy." He reached across the table and ruffled Scorpius's hair before he could duck. "And I can be here with you, and not wonder whether it's the right thing."

Scorpius asked a question that Harry answered, but he could never afterwards remember what it was. All his being was absorbed with the contented glow in Draco's eyes.

Chapter Forty-Two.

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