Chapter Thirty-Four of 'Acts of Life'- Baring
Chapter Thirty-Four.
Title: Acts of Life (34/35)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Ginny, Ron/Hermione, eventual Harry/Draco
Rating: R
Warnings: Angst, some violence
Summary: That Harry returned Draco’s wand to him was only one small act in a life, one thing that he might have done or not done. But more acts succeed that one, and Harry and Draco find themselves sharing more and more of them.
Author’s Notes: Despite the angst warning, this story is more fluffy than anything else, and is episodic. It will be updated every Monday.
Chapter One.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Thirty-Five-Baring
“…And then Malfoy said we should talk to you if we felt that you were ignoring and avoiding us.” From the way Hermione braced herself, she thought Harry was going to lash out when she finally got to her question. “Are you?”
Harry shook his head slowly. He could feel an enormous pride and warmth swelling up from the bottom of his chest, like a growing fire. “No. I didn’t know you felt that way, or I would have done something about it sooner. I only thought I was giving you enough time to calm down from me dating Draco, and Ron enough time to calm down over Ginny.”
Hermione sighed a little and seemed to droop all at once. “I think Ron’s calmed down over Ginny as much as he ever will. He seems to believe now that you’re not suited to each other. That’s good, right?”
Harry nodded. “I never wanted to stop being friends with you,” he said. “I just didn’t want to be scolded over Draco or Ginny, either.”
“Oh, Harry. We wouldn’t have done that.”
Harry held her eyes, and waited. Hermione winced. “All right, immediately after you said that you were breaking up with Ginny, we might have done that,” she admitted. “Or dating Malfoy. Yes, I can see where you got that impression.”
“So it’s just been a comedy of errors and misunderstandings all around,” said Harry, who was glad to learn it was that rather than something more serious. “Then maybe we can get together for dinner soon?”
“Yes.” Hermione looked as though she was struggling with some other revelation, and Harry waited patiently for her to spit it out. Finally, she did. “I told Malfoy we would invite him over to the dinner.”
“That’s wonderful. I’d like to see you and Draco all in the same room.” And watch both Draco and Ron struggle not to explode. Although Harry suspected Draco would have an easier time than Ron.
“Well, then.” Hermione hesitated only a few minutes more before she gave Harry a dazzling smile. “Is there some special dish Malfoy likes?”
“I think Draco will eat just about anything,” said Harry, and watched Hermione file that fact away with a determined little nod.
“Then tonight,” said Hermione. “Six-o’clock. And you can tell Malfoy yourself. I think he might want to hear from you.” She hesitated one more time before she pulled her head out of the Floo, though, and Harry got rewarded for his patience with a mumbled, “Please make him understand the invitation is sincere.”
Then she was gone, and Harry stood up, smiling slowly into the cold fireplace and the empty room where Hermione had struggled with her own worries.
“Letting people work things out on their own is better after all,” he said aloud. The first thing Hermione had told him when she Flooed him was that she’d already Flooed Draco, and what he’d said about Hermione and Ron needing to work things out with Harry on their own.
It was proof of the way Harry had tried to handle people since the war, giving them their own chances and trusting in their decisions-unless they proved that they were going to be silly about it. Then he would move in or do something different, but only then.
He stood there and let a feeling of warm sunlight bathe him in quiet rejoicing.
Then he smiled, and Flooed Draco.
*
Draco adjusted his robes with a muttered curse. Harry had said that wearing too-formal robes over to Granger and Weasley’s house would be a mistake, and Draco could see all the reasons why that was so. But casual clothing was also out of the question for him, and he was actually more awkward in the informal robes, which he didn’t wear often enough to practice with, then he was with dress ones.
“You look fine.”
Harry had come through the Floo and stood watching him struggle without any excess of sympathy. Draco glared at him. “You would say that,” he snapped, and tugged at his robe’s collar, which didn’t itch enough.
“Yes, I would.” Harry reached over and put a hand on Draco’s arm, catching his eye. Draco found himself calming down almost without wanting to at the faint smile on Harry’s face.
“What will really make you in their eyes isn’t the robes you wear,” Harry said. “That’s why I told you not to wear dress ones. It’s what you say and the way you behave.”
“Because those were so efficient at helping me in the past,” Draco muttered. Harry tapped him on the shoulder a little.
“We’ve all changed since the war, although I think you have most of all,” Harry disagreed, and then he smiled. “Don’t tell me you feel afraid to come to their house now.”
“Not afraid,” said Draco. He knew it was true. He had said the right things to Granger, and Harry had said the right things to her and Weasley. Draco no longer thought they would take Harry away from him. He no longer desired to take Harry away from them. “Only wary. I don’t think they really want to see me there.”
“They do,” Harry said. “I know that much. Hermione might want it more, but they take you seriously and don’t want to exile you from my life. And they know exactly how much you mean to me.”
Draco blinked. That wasn’t something he’d foreseen. “Because you explained it to them?”
“No,” said Harry. He squeezed Draco’s hand once, and then let it go, to fall gently back to Draco’s side. “Because Hermione’s a smart woman, and she’ll have seen how hard I fought for you, harder than for anyone else who wanted to date me or who I wanted to date.” He reached out and tweaked Draco’s nose this time, and Draco pulled his head back with a faint splutter of displeasure. Harry being Harry, he didn’t seem to take notice of that, only watching Draco with a faint smile.
“So you have my friends on your side as long as you don’t do something massively inappropriate,” he said. “And I can’t imagine you doing that. Want to go now?”
“Lead on,” Draco said, and Harry led the way to the Floo without even a smug smirk of the kind that would have irritated Draco.
*
“Hello, Malfoy.”
Hermione would have a long struggle to call Draco by his first name, Harry judged, but she was doing better than he’d expected. Her smile was stiff, but he couldn’t fault her for that. She shook his hand once, and then turned and escorted Ron forwards as if she thought he would run out of the room and up the stairs if she didn’t have her hand firmly pressed in the middle of his back.
“Hello, Malfoy,” Ron said, in the tones of a child told to recite the words the right way or else at some boring ceremony. Harry had seen the same things in children whose parents led them up to him at Ministry galas. He held out a limp hand, shook for as short a time as possible, and pulled it back as soon as possible.
“Hello, Weasley,” Draco said, and his smile was polite and normal, the kind he’d given people at the Ministry ball.
“Good,” said Hermione, and clasped her hands. “Now that the introductions are out of the way, we’ll go into the kitchen and eat.”
Draco assumed a different sort of polite expression, and Harry knew he was wondering who had made the food, and if it would be as good as the kind his house-elves made. Harry pinched him a little in the middle of his back, and shook his head when he caught Draco’s eye. “It’s Ron’s turn,” he whispered.
“Does that mean it’ll be inedible, or would that be when it’s Granger’s turn?” Draco muttered, with a trick for seizing on the things Harry hadn’t said that only exasperated Harry some of the time.
“It means that it’ll be good,” said Harry firmly, and pushed Draco ahead of him.
Despite what he’d said, it was likely that Ron had got the food from the Leaky Cauldron or something, which would mean they were really eating Tom’s cooking. Harry didn’t care. The smells that wafted out of the doorway were delicious, at least to him, and even Draco had stopped complaining by the time they sat down at the table.
There were roasted potatoes, and small carrots that simply fell apart when Harry tried to cut into them, and steaming gravy to pour over all of them. There were crumbly cheese sandwiches-the cheese pushed into the bread-that made Harry’s mouth open a little wider just looking at them. And there were pieces of what Harry thought was chicken until he bit into it.
“Is this duck?” Draco sounded astonished. Harry tried to kick him under the table, but he was afraid of accidentally hitting the wrong person.
“It is.” Ron smirked at Draco as if he knew exactly what he was thinking, and took a large bite. He might, for all Harry knew. Draco wasn’t nearly as hard to read as he’d sometimes been before the war, when Harry hadn’t known what he was thinking.
*
After their delicious dinner, they moved into the drawing room, and Weasley brought out a plate of small, coconut-dusted chocolates, his eyes challenging. Draco sipped from his tea and met Weasley’s stare.
Here it comes, the interrogation.
“How long are you planning to date Harry?” Weasley asked, as if that was a perfectly normal question, and made sure Draco took a chocolate from the plate before he began to pass it around the little circle.
Draco’s neck twitched with the desire to look at Harry, but he didn’t. He would have to handle this on his own. And Harry, from the stolidity he used to sit by the fire and suck on his sweet, didn’t see anything wrong with it. Probably he wouldn’t as long as Weasley wasn’t outright rude.
“As long as I want to,” said Draco. “And as long as he wants to date me, too, of course.” There had been a sudden, dangerous gleam in Weasley’s eyes that made Draco add that second thing.
Weasley eased back and studied Draco for a second. “That’s sort of cheating,” he said.
“I don’t see how. Unless you would give me a different answer as to how long you’ll be together with Granger?”
Weasley turned red. “You have no right to ask that.”
“Then what right do you have to ask how long I’ll date Harry?” Draco looked Weasley in the eye and did his best to radiate sincerity which, admittedly, was something he didn’t have much practice in. “I’m trying to behave well, Weasley. I don’t want to have the same argument I did with Granger through the Floo. I think the only people who have the right to decide how long we’ll date are me and Harry.”
Weasley reached over and picked out a chocolate, but it seemed to be mainly for the sake of having something to do with his hands. He was turning it over and over in his hands, smearing his fingers with coconut. “But you want to keep us happy.”
“Because you’re his friends, and your opinion matters to him.”
“And if I tell you that we’d be happier if you’d never met?”
Draco shrugged. “You would have to go back in time to when we were eleven years old and in Madam Malkin’s shop. I don’t think they’ve invited a Time-Turner that can manage that yet.”
Weasley choked a little. “You know what I mean.”
“Yes, but I think it’s ridiculous.” Draco shook his head when Weasley started to turn even redder. “But to answer the real question, your happiness only matters to me if it matters to Harry. And he’s not going to walk away from me just for your asking. If he was going to do that, it would have happened already.”
Weasley turned to Harry, and Draco finally let himself do the same thing. Weasley was giving Harry the sort of pleading glance Draco had held back earlier. “Mate? What do you say to this?”
Harry took the chocolate from his mouth and said, “That Draco is absolutely right, and you’re being a little ridiculous, Ron.” He popped the chocolate back into his mouth and sat there smiling at Weasley.
“I like that.” Weasley’s tone made it so obvious that he didn’t like it that Draco wondered why he was trying to fool anyone. “My best mate thinks I’m being ridiculous when I try to make sure of his happiness…”
“It’s because you can’t make sure of it that way, Ron,” said Granger. Her voice was calm, and she kept her hands crossed in her lap. She smiled at Draco. “You want Harry to be happy. Malfoy is trying to make him happy. Maybe we can’t trust Malfoy completely yet, but we can make a start on it.”
She doesn’t trust me enough to use my first name, for one thing, Draco thought, but that was okay. It was about the same comfort level he had with Weasley and Granger themselves.
“If you think we can,” Weasley muttered, sinking back. Draco blinked at him, a little astonished that Weasley had that much trust in Granger.
“I do.” Granger studied Draco for a second, then turned back to Weasley and murmured something. Weasley nodded slowly.
Draco wished he could have heard what it was, but in the end, it didn’t matter. Granger took a deep breath, turned, and held out a hand to him. “Then you’re welcome over to our house whenever Harry comes, Malfoy.”
Draco shook her hand. “Thank you.” Weasley didn’t offer his hand, but that was okay. Draco also didn’t look at him and embarrass him about it.
Instead, he looked at Harry.
Who was smiling.
Chapter Thirty-Five.
This entry was originally posted at http://lomonaaeren.dreamwidth.org/816091.html. Comment wherever you like.