Chapter Eighteen of 'Acts of Life'- Complaining
Chapter Seventeen.
Title: Acts of Life (18/?)
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 Eighteen-Complaining
“Thank you for coming to hear my proposal.”
Harry stood in front of Hogwarts, in front of Dumbledore’s tomb. He had a Sonorus Charm on his voice, and he hoped it would be enough. He’d never seen such a large crowd here, not even right after the Battle of Hogwarts.
Parents were there, and current Hogwarts students, and war heroes, and people from Ginny’s organization-released now from their cells, although Aurors were keeping a sharp eye on them-and professors, and Ministry people, and Kingsley, and reporters, and shopkeepers from Diagon Alley, and Hogsmeade villagers. There might even be a few Unspeakables. Now and then, Harry thought he could see a grey robe from the corner of his eye, ducking and hiding among the crowd.
“First of all,” said Harry, and turned as McGonagall walked up beside him, “the Headmistress of Hogwarts has agreed to place a memorial to the fallen students on Hogwarts grounds.”
McGonagall didn’t get to make her speech for a second, because the roar of approval overwhelmed her voice. At least, Harry thought, listening closely, he thought it was a roar of approval. There might have been questions and shock mixed in with it.
But that was the whole point of this exercise. They would listen to people, but they had to make their voices clear, not just scream.
“Now,” said McGonagall when some people in the crowd finally began hushing the others, “I want you to know that I was never opposed to the concept of a memorial. I only thought it could wait, given that it has been barely a year since the battle.” She sent a sharp look at someone in the crowd, although Harry couldn’t see who it was without craning his neck. “And the way it was asked for was not the most polite.”
Silence. Harry stepped forwards and took up the narrative. “But we have an idea what it might look like, don’t we, Headmistress? Taking in feedback from survivors and families of the fallen, of course.”
“Yes, we do.” McGonagall turned around and nodded at Flitwick, who was a little behind her. He beamed and cast a complex charm that made colored smoke rise from his wand.
Harry watched in pleasure. He had never known how good Flitwick was at illusions until he’d worked with him to plan this memorial. The smoke churned, solidified, and formed into a replica of how the memorial would look-at least right now, when they had spoken with several dozen people.
A white marble plinth appeared to rear from the ground, almost ten feet high. Its transparency was the only reason that anyone might not think it was the real thing, Harry decided. On top of it was a cresting, rising wave, which gradually turned into the bodies of a lion, snake, badger, and eagle. On top of them, in turn, balanced dozens of people, all rendered in skilled miniature.
Harry shook his head. Flitwick said it was really only a process of memorizing what the illusion should look like, but it was still complex magic beyond what Harry thought he would be capable of.
There was Colin Creevey with his camera. There was McGonagall’s herd of thundering chairs that she’d directed into battle. There was Severus Snape, standing off to the side with his arms folded and his hood shielding most of his face. There was Trelawney with a crystal ball in her hands. There were Remus and Tonks, close to a madly grinning Fred Weasley. All of them had their wands in their hands, but expressions of peace on their faces.
Around the base of the plinth was the first inscription that Harry had spent hours hammering out with the professors and survivors and representatives of various families yesterday. THIS MEMORIAL IS RAISED TO COMMEMORATE THE BATTLE OF HOGWARTS, MAY 2ND, 1998. THEY GAVE THEIR LIVES SO THAT THE WIZARDING WORLD COULD LIVE.
There was so much silence as the crowd shifted and elbowed and stared at it that Harry wondered if someone was going to object, as he and McGonagall had thought they would. And then someone did.
“Where are we going to put this memorial?” called a steady voice that Harry knew well. He turned a little, and there was Ginny, standing in front of the crowd. She gave Harry a hard smile and switched her attention to McGonagall, her head tilted so that her hair was clear of her eyes. “That was a point of contention.”
“It was,” said the Headmistress. Her voice wasn’t flexible at all. Harry found himself grateful that she was always so fair and neutral when it came to Gryffindors and former Gryffindors (except maybe in Quidditch). “But in the discussion last night, we figured out that it would stand near Headmaster Dumbledore’s tomb, or the gates.”
“There’s a difference between those two places,” said Ginny sweetly.
“There is,” said McGonagall, with a nod. “That’s why we’ll need to hold further discussions to decide which place is better.”
Ginny blinked a little and took a step backwards. Harry found himself ungraciously glad of that. He’d made sure to send an owl to Ginny telling her about the meeting where they’d discussed the memorial, but she hadn’t shown up, although Seamus and a few other people from her group had.
“And also,” Harry added, “we’ll need to hold further discussions to see about the matter of compensation for students tortured by the Carrows. I’ve decided that I’ll pay for the compensation.” There was a stunned silence, which made sure Harry was able to go on speaking before people started questioning him. “Of course I need to make sure that the payments are fair and that I haven’t left anyone out. So I’ll need people to start sending me letters describing their situations and coming to meetings with me to iron it out.”
“You can’t pay it!” Ginny shouted. “The Ministry should pay it!”
“The Carrows weren’t Ministry employees,” said Harry, quietly enough. He wished that he wasn’t on the opposite side of the issue from Ginny. It made his heart ache. But it seemed that he had to be, at least for right now. “And there’s really no one else who could pay it, since most of the Death Eaters are dead or in Azkaban.”
Ginny’s mouth shut tight enough that she looked as if she was strangling words. She turned away from him and stared down at her hands. Harry looked helplessly at her turned head. He could do things that would make the people in her group happy. He could do things that might help heal the breach between Slytherins and other students.
But he didn’t think he could do anything that would make her happy.
Someone else finally asked a question then, about how they would apply for this compensation, and Harry could turn around and respond to it. He felt McGonagall pat his shoulder for a second. Since Draco couldn’t be here, and the rest of the Weasleys had wisely chosen not to come to this meeting, Harry accepted his best support, and began to outline his plan in more detail.
*
“Harry?”
Draco looked around the sitting room that he always Flooed into, frowning. Harry always met him here with smiles and, lately, a cup of tea or a glass of wine, depending on the kind of day that it had been. But he was nowhere in evidence now.
“Oh, Draco. Excuse the mess.”
Draco turned around, mouth already open to make a light remark about the dirt Harry would probably be covered with; after months and months of work, cleaning Number Twelve was still a huge task.
He didn’t expect blood, and the long strip of skin hanging from Harry’s cheek as though someone had clawed at it. Harry smiled tiredly at him.
Draco was across the room in a second, gently tilting Harry’s head to the side so he could examine his cheek. He spoke because he had to, because the words bubbled up in his throat like a hot spring and he couldn’t force them down. “Did she do this? Because she wanted some kind of revenge on you for breaking up with her?”
Harry shook with something Draco thought was suppressed tears. He prepared to comfort him, and then he realized it was silent laughter.
Draco drew away and glared, offended.
Harry straightened up with a little gasp and a shake of his head. “I needed that,” he said, then caught Draco’s eye. “Oh, don’t be angry, please. No, it has nothing to do with Ginny directly. But I did make the announcement about the memorial and the compensation today, and she challenged me, and-” He shrugged. “I was thinking too much about that and not enough about defending myself when I found another doxy nest.”
“Master Harry is not being thinking in general,” said Kreacher’s grumbling voice from the corridor.
“Yes, I heard that,” Harry muttered, then winced and touched his cheek again. Draco gently drew a vial of paste from his pocket. Harry focused on it and blinked. “You’ve taken to carrying healing potions around with you now?”
“I thought it might be useful,” Draco retorted, opening the vial, “given who I’m associating with now.”
“What a great sense of humor,” Harry said, but he stood still and even swayed a little towards Draco as he dabbed the thick unguent on his cheek. Then he added some to the shallow cuts on Harry’s hand. He couldn’t do anything about the blood on his clothes, but Kreacher undoubtedly would.
“Thanks.” Harry sat down on the couch, and called, “Kreacher, some tea, please?” Kreacher disappeared, and Harry sighed and said, “I just-I hate seeing her that way. I know she has her own kind of political involvement, but I think she’s doing this particular action just to spite me. And I don’t like that. It diminishes her.”
Draco considered saying that he thought it reflected the smallness of soul that Weasley had had all along, instead of adding to it. Then he considered the argument that would result from that, and discarded the words.
He chose to murmur sympathetically instead and lean against Harry’s shoulder. Harry wrapped an arm around him and continued. “Now that the group has what they want, I think they’ll probably disband. Ginny will find another cause. Maybe it’ll be a better one, and she’ll feel like she doesn’t have to oppose me so directly. I hope so.”
Draco grunted, kept silent as Kreacher popped in with the tea, and then disappeared, and spent a moment examining Harry’s face again. No, the scratch wasn’t dangerously close to his eye, the way Draco had thought it was. Good.
But Draco was restless, both from seeing Harry injured and from hearing Harry talk that way about Weasley. He knew Harry just wanted someone to listen to him at the moment. Draco didn’t need to offer suggestions. He did that all the time, and Harry listened to him.
He wanted to do something, though. He might not be able to protest Harry’s attitude towards Weasley-it would be a little much, Draco grumpily supposed, to tell him that he was being too generous and forgiving-but he could do something else.
He tugged at Harry’s robe. Harry broke off from his brooding and blinked at him. Draco said, “Your wearing those clothes bothers me.”
“The blood?” Harry looked down. “What, you don’t have a Cleaning Potion in your pocket?”
Draco bit his lip and tried not to flush, because he did, actually. He shook his head, though. “I know Kreacher can wash them just fine. I want to get rid of them, though. And you’ve seen more of me naked than I have of you.” He narrowed his eyes at Harry.
Harry gave him a slow smile. Then he stood. Draco found himself rooted to the couch, his tongue and hands as frozen as though he wasn’t the one who had suggested this in the first damn place.
“Come here and take them off,” Harry said softly. Then he held out his arms like he was a model at a fancy robe shop.
Draco stood up and came forwards, and while his hands moved shakily at first, soon he was taking Harry’s clothes off with increasing confidence. Harry tilted his head back and offered him a searing kiss to seal the confidence.
Yes, I can do this.
Chapter Nineteen.
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