Chapter Forty-Nine of 'Changing of the Guard'- Epiphanies

[lomonaaeren]

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Chapter Forty-Nine—Epiphanies

Draco had to control the immediate burst of anger that filled him when he saw Weasley and Granger sitting on the doorstep of Harry’s home. He was glad he was behind Harry at the moment. He could clench his hands into fists and glare without having to fear that he would lose control and step forwards to curse them before they knew what was happening.

Granger immediately stood when she saw Harry and reached towards him with an anxious hand. Harry halted on the walk in front of the house and shook his head. His eyes were brilliant, and Draco was glad to see that, though he would have to watch hard to make sure the brilliancy didn’t transform itself into tears. He put a hand on Harry’s shoulder and they both halted there, waiting. The sky was cloudy, but here and there a ragged spot of sunlight fell through. Draco thought it most unfair that one of those spots should linger on Weasley’s hair, brightening it. At least it might be behind them in the eyes of Harry’s friends, rendering their faces dark and hard to see.

“Harry,” Weasley began. He halted, coughing. Harry gave him no help, which heartened Draco more than almost anything else could have at the moment. He waited with his arms folded, his eyes darting back and forth between his two friends. Given his control of his body language, Draco didn’t think the defensive gesture was accidental. Harry was telling his friends how very, very displeased with them he was.

“Won’t you say something?” Granger implored him at last. She was chewing her lip so hard that Draco was faintly surprised she hadn’t drawn blood already. “We missed you, Harry. And we haven’t understood, but you haven’t tried to make us understand. I was just trying to do what was best for you—“

Draco couldn’t allow that outrageous statement to pass unchallenged. “So you violated the trust he reposed in you and went to tell the Mind-Healers his story,” he said. He had both hands on Harry’s shoulders now, and he pushed down, a silent invitation for Harry to lean back if he would. Harry chose to, and Draco reveled in both the brush of crisp, curly hair against his throat and at the stunned expressions on the faces of Harry’s friends.

There was no disgust mixed into those expressions, he did note. Interesting.

“If someone’s about to kill himself, you don’t listen to his wishes to keep it secret,” Granger retorted. She swallowed. She looked mostly at Harry and not him, whilst Weasley divided his attention equally between the two.

“You thought he was suicidal and yet you left him alone?” Draco arched an eyebrow. “Oh, very intelligent of you, Granger. I can see why you earned high marks in every class you tried to take except Divination.”

“Leave her alone!” Weasley said, his voice coming out more as a bark. “She hasn’t done anything to you.”

“I’m grateful that you at least acknowledge the two of you did something to Harry.” Draco linked his arms together around Harry’s waist and nuzzled into his hair again. “And the pain you caused him did hurt me. I was the one who had to put him together again when I arrived not long after you got done breaking him into pieces.”

“Shouldn’t he speak up, if he resents us?” Weasley stooped as if to catch Harry’s eye, though the posture Harry had adopted didn’t put him at that much of a disadvantage in height. “Why are you letting him speak for you, mate?”

“For the same reason you sometimes let Hermione make the arguments in rows.” Harry’s voice was soft and mild, a feat Draco doubted he himself could have managed even with Narcissa, if she had hurt him as these two had hurt Harry. He took a step backwards and lifted his head, so that he no longer leaned so heavily on Draco but still stood close to him. “He speaks the same words I would.”

Weasley’s face crumpled, and then slowly flushed a deep color, as close to orange as Draco had ever seen human skin come (at least, human skin that was not stained with a number of highly dangerous and illegal potions ingredients). “Harry—you can’t be in love with him.”

“Life would be easier for all of us if you could accept that some of the things I’ll tell you, no matter how distasteful, aren’t lies.”

Draco smiled. He could hear the snap of anger in the back of Harry’s voice like lightning hidden in distant clouds. He could remain silent now, if Harry wanted to continue the argument in his own way. He had just needed to make sure that Harry didn’t intend to roll over and let his friends trample on him. He fell silent, stroking the back of Harry’s head and cupping his hands around the nape of his neck, offering a resting place if Harry wanted to take it.

*

Harry had felt panic when he saw Ron and Hermione waiting, though he doubted he could have admitted that to anyone but Draco. But the fear had drained out as he rested for a few minutes on Draco’s shoulder, not looking directly at his friends, and listened to them scolded.

He didn’t really want to antagonize Ron and Hermione. Seeing them again was like receiving a new flush of blood in a limb he’d sat on for long minutes. But Draco’s scolding reminded him that at least one other person in the world took his side, instead of theirs. And that was support enough.

At least for the moment.

“Did you come to apologize?” he asked. “I can offer you the truth and my own apologies—“

Draco’s fingers bounced against the back of his neck in protest. Harry tipped his head so that his hair brushed them in reassurance and continued without faltering. “—if you have, but if you only intend to nag me about giving up Draco or my participation in the rebellion, you’re wasting your breath and might as well leave now.”

Ron and Hermione exchanged a speaking glance. Harry felt a sudden stab of sadness. He could tell that the glance was speaking, yes, but not what it said. Ron and Hermione had lived so long with one another that they had developed their own language, and Harry had spent most of his time with them in the last few years practicing silence and the ability to be unreadable himself.

We argued because we don’t really know each other anymore, he thought, and admitting his own guilt no longer flayed him alive as it would have done at one time. Draco had taught him how to get past that. Harry spent a moment lost in wonder. Exactly what had he done, to deserve someone like Draco?

But Hermione was talking now, and Harry wanted to listen to her as he had never wanted to listen in the last ten years. “We’ll—accept who you are, Harry,” she said, with some difficulty. She reached up and scrubbed at a tear in the corner of her eye. Harry raised his brows. He couldn’t remember the last time Hermione had willingly shown weakness like that in front of someone else, let alone someone she had to still regard as an enemy. Maybe that was as good a sign of her honesty as her actual words. “We’ll try, at least.” She gave him a faint smile. “And I know you won’t give Malfoy up. I’ve never seen you stand so close to someone else before and depend on them so much. Not even me,” she added with a wistful little sigh, as if she were remembering their seventh year together and how many times she had saved Harry’s life.

“Good,” Harry said, with a little nod. “And what about my involvement in the rebellion?”

Ron spoke now, looking uncomfortable. “Shacklebolt told me that he’d never ordered the Aurors to raid those places.”

Harry suppressed the devilish little urge that prompted him to ask exactly what “places” Ron meant. If his friend found it hard to name the rebellion because of lifelong fear and loathing, Harry shouldn’t push him too fast or far in that direction. “Yes,” he said. “And that made a difference for you?”

“Of course!” Ron looked caught somewhere between surprised and disbelieving. “First I thought I had orders to do my bloody job, and now I realize I was a puppet in the hands of whoever played the Minister for a fool—“

“His name is John Grey,” Harry said, and saw Hermione’s lips tighten. Of course, Grey had probably also been active in support of some of the people she was fighting when she tried to gain equal rights for house-elves and Muggleborns. “Draco and I have hopefully given him something to think about other than opposing the rebellion for right now, but I wouldn’t count on that lasting forever. I think you missed the import of my question though, Ron.” He leaned forwards. “If it turned out Shacklebolt did order the Aurors on those raids, would that make it all right with you? Would you want to attack lots of people just like me for the crime of kissing and dancing with each other?”

Ron flushed a brilliant crimson. “They don’t need to do it in public,” he muttered.

Harry snorted. He could feel his stomach crawling up and down his throat, but he had Draco at his back, warm and steady, and this needed to be threshed out before he could decide what kind of relationship he could have with Ron. “The first meeting was held in private,” he said, “but never mind that. Do you think I deserve to be dragged off to Azkaban for kissing Draco in the middle of Diagon Alley, which I did?”

That made Ron stagger a little. Harry supposed he hadn’t realized until this moment the implications of that picture and the implications of Harry being “Brian.”

“It’s different for you, mate,” Ron said at last. “I know you. I know you’re a good bloke, and wouldn’t corrupt children or—“ He stopped. Harry suspected he’d caught sight of a dangerous narrowing of Draco’s eyes.

Harry reached back and ran a soothing hand up and down Draco’s arm. He was amazed at how strong he felt, how calm. But he had already gone through the shattering fall that resulted from Ron and Hermione learning the truth about him. If they rejected him again, he wouldn’t be alone. And he would walk away stronger for the experience, having trimmed off the fear and weakness that had made him avoid confronting Ron on this issue time and time again. “Ordinary gay wizards corrupt children? How interesting. I think I’ve known more of them than you have, and I’ve never heard of or seen any of them doing such things.”

“You know what I mean!” Ron thrust his hands into his robe pockets and rocked back and forth on his heels. “Showing them—telling them that it’s all right to be like that, there’s nothing different or strange about it—“

“I see,” Harry said, nodding wisely. “Children of good families might learn that gay and bisexual wizards are human beings like them, and then they might treat them normally instead of recoiling in disgust when they see one of us. We can’t have that.”

“That’s not what I meant!”

“Then explain it.” Harry stepped forwards. Draco moved with him, keeping one hand in place at the back of his neck and one arm looped around his waist. Hermione watched Draco with a strange expression, but Harry didn’t care. “I’ve listened to those words and others that are equally nonsensical from you for years, Ron. I’m tired of putting up with them. Explain to me how you know that gay wizards abuse children, or why it’s the end of the world for someone to prefer having sex with men to getting married, or why it’s disgusting to kiss a man in public but not disgusting for a man and woman to grope each other in public until there’s skin showing. Tell me what you think, not what you blindly accept, and tell me why you think it.”

Ron had his arms half-lifted, as if he wanted to fold them in front of his chest but thought he would be shutting Harry away forever if he did that. His fists opened and closed the same way, and he hissed between his teeth. “I can’t explain it,” he said. “It’s always been true, and it’s always—I wouldn’t have changed my mind if I didn’t know you, Harry, it’s not fair to say that I should change my mind—“

“You always believed that gay people were some vast evil monolith,” Harry said. He ignored the tears now slowly streaking Hermione’s face and concentrated solely on Ron. Ron had never been good at holding back his emotions for long. Harry would rather have a flood of vitriol from him than go back to the situation they’d existed in before, a limbo of silence in which Ron could say whatever he wanted whilst Harry had to watch his tongue and not show too much sympathy with people just like him. “Then you got to know me, and realized they weren’t. But you pushed the knowledge away.”

“You were my friend before you were gay!” Ron screamed. “That’s the difference! I know you! I don’t know them!”

“Really.” Harry leaned closer. “And does it make a difference to you at all that I’ve got friends in the rebellion, that hurting them causes me pain?”

“Harry.” Ron was shaking now, and either sweat or tears collected in the corners of his eyes. “Don’t.”

“Say it, whatever it is,” Harry said. He took another step forwards. He was exhilarated, his chest rising and falling with sharp gasps of breath. Draco hummed and murmured approvingly against his neck. Finally, this would be all out and done with, and Harry could make his mind up about Ron. “Say whatever you’re afraid to say, though why you would be afraid of driving me away now when you did your best to accomplish it—“

“I don’t like gay people!” Ron screamed at him. “I’m uncomfortable around them, I don’t understand them, I don’t understand why you would choose to sleep with a man when you could have a woman instead!”

Harry nodded. Draco had stiffened behind him, but Harry clasped his wrist and caressed his arm. “That’s it, Ron,” he said. “Say what you mean.”

“I wish I didn’t have to change my mind,” Ron moaned. “It’s so hard. Who cares about something like this, compared to the invasion of the Ministry by people who can order Aurors to do whatever they want?” He wiped his face with one hand and glared at Harry. “And then you have to date Malfoy, of all people, and you have to acknowledge him publicly as your boyfriend! Someone who hated me all through school. Someone who taunted and threatened Hermione. I don’t understand it, and I doubt I ever will understand it.”

“I don’t understand why you and Hermione stay together, either, given how fiercely you argue,” Harry retorted. “But I accept it.”

“It’s natural, that’s why.” Ron sawed a wild hand through the air. “It’s natural for a man and a woman to be together. It’s natural for Hermione to have a baby. It’s natural for a boy and girl who spend a lot of time arguing to have an attraction between them, a—a kind of charge that draws them together.”

“But not for a boy and a boy?” Harry exchanged a quick, amused glance with Draco, then looked back at Ron. His friend’s words did hurt, but he hadn’t yet decided that he would reject Ron completely. It would depend on what conclusion he came to about several things, including his final treatment of Draco.

Ron stared back and forth between him and Draco for several moments, then sagged against the door of the house and muttered, “Oh, bloody hell.” He buried his head in his arms.

“Can you actually name any differences beyond the obvious ones?” Harry asked him gently. “Tell me why your relationship is natural and mine isn’t?”

“We can have children.”

“I do hate to tell you this, Weasley,” Draco drawled, “but a gay man doesn’t lose the ability to have children. I happen to know that several of my ancestors who preferred men, long before it became as socially unacceptable as it is now to do so, had children with well-compensated surrogate mothers. They simply didn’t like women enough to marry and accept a designated spouse they had to be faithful to in their beds.”

“And not every couple has children, either,” Harry added. “If Charlie got married and then decided not to have children because he was too busy working with dragons, would you call his marriage unnatural?”

Ron whispered, “I don’t know what the difference is. I don’t have a reason to feel the disgust and loathing I do.” He whipped more tears away from his face with the heel of his hand and stared defiantly at Harry. “Is that what you want to hear? That I’ve been behaving irrationally for the last ten years where you’re concerned?”

“Yes,” Harry told him firmly. “Now that you know it was irrational, you can do something about curing it.”

Ron shut his mouth, looking ill.

“You have to decide,” Harry told him, lowering his voice to a whisper. “Would you rather be rid of any polluting presence of a gay wizard in your life? Or will you accept me as I am? I won’t be the perfect, compliant shadow I was around you for the last ten years because I was so afraid of losing your friendship. If you accept me and count me as a friend again, it has to be as an openly gay friend who dates Draco Malfoy.”

Ron moaned and put his hands over his eyes. Harry snorted in spite of himself. Draco buried his face against Harry’s back, and Harry knew he was laughing, though he managed to muffle most of it.

“Yes, it’s a rather unpalatable decision, isn’t it?” Harry asked, with no sympathy in his voice. “Understand, I’m not asking you to like Draco or to forget that he ever insulted Hermione.” Draco butted his head against Harry’s back in silent protest; Harry ignored him. “But you have to be civil to him and you have to realize that you can’t break us up or drive us apart by petty little schemes, the way you might like to. Are you willing to pay that price?”

Ron stood with his eyes downcast for long moments. Harry suspected he would never understand the intensity of the struggle Ron waged in his soul during those moments, and when he felt Draco’s mouth open, he pushed it shut again with the corner of his palm. This was something Ron had to choose on his own, and if he was influenced by a joke at the wrong moment—well, Harry didn’t want to lose his best friend because of something so stupid.

Finally, Ron looked up and whispered, “I’ll never like him, but I can accept it.” And then he smiled, a tremulous expression. “I missed you, Harry.”

Harry stepped away from Draco and went to Ron, embracing him. Ron shivered a little, as though he thought Harry’s hands would wander where they shouldn’t, but he hugged Harry back. Harry stood basking in the warmth until he felt Ron shift with serious discomfort, then let him go and punched him on the shoulder. Ron managed a shaky grin.

Then Harry turned to deal with Hermione.

*

Draco was rather disgruntled. How could Harry accept Weasley as a friend after the rubbish he’d spouted about anyone who didn’t fit his perfect little mold of marriage and children? But then, he’d never understood how Harry could have befriended a Weasley in the first place. If Harry could live with this, Draco supposed he could, as well. It was only his offended sensibilities that were tied up in this, after all, and not his emotions.

He turned to look at Granger and was by no means sure that reconciliation would come as easily. Weasley had expressed a prejudice Harry would almost be inured to by hearing it everywhere else on a daily basis, but Granger had betrayed his trust.

Harry walked towards Granger and considered her silently, until she lifted her chin and said, “I did what seemed to be the right thing at the time.”

“And that’s exactly what I need you to change your mind about,” Harry said quietly. He sounded smaller and gentler than he should have. Draco stepped up behind him again and hugged him, and Harry immediately straightened and spoke with strength in his voice. He needs me, Draco thought smugly. “You need to trust me, Hermione, instead of assuming you know what’s best. You need to ask me what you need to know when it concerns me, rather than looking in a book or sprinting off to an authority. I could accept that when we were children and you were a rather hidebound little Gryffindor who feared being expelled—or when there was a Dark Lord about and you wanted to check my broom for hexes because there was a real danger someone might have put them on it.” Granger flushed. Draco wondered what Harry was referring to. There were still many details of Harry’s private adventures with Weasley and Granger that he didn’t know but would demand to know soon, so that he might be on an equal footing with them.

“That’s changed now,” Harry said. “But you never changed your relationship to me with it, and you’ll have to. I want you to think about what I said to you about Metamorphosis, and my having hundreds of different identities.”

Granger went pale. “That’s true, then?” she whispered.

“I’m not going to tell you the truth yet,” Harry said, and Draco hugged him tighter in sheer delight of how stern he sounded. “That’s your test, as I tested Ron by seeing if he could decide what was more important to him, his prejudice or his friendship with me. I want you to refrain from finding out the truth. Trust that I’ll tell you when I’ve made up my own mind about it.”

“But, Harry, you lied to us for so long—“

“And I shouldn’t have done that, and I’m sorry,” Harry said, voice softening. “I’ll have to trust you more, too.” Draco frowned into his hair. “But first you need to show you can be trusted again. The reason I lied was to avoid the disapproval that was all you handed me when I tried to confess. Now I want you to restrain your curiosity for a little while. If you want to know what my life in the last ten years was really like, ask me instead of rooting around for the secret on your own. Accept that I won’t answer some questions. Accept that I might not agree with what your definition of right and wrong is—or what your definition of ‘healthy’ is, either, for that matter.” He leaned forwards, staring into Granger’s eyes. “Place me first, instead of your own curiosity.”

Tears trembled on the edges of Granger’s lashes. “I have, so often,” she whispered.

“Those times were all more than ten years ago, Hermione. As I said, I rested on the memory of those times when I spoke to you. And then you went to the Mind-Healers and ruined it all.” Harry shook his head and took a step back from her, one that Draco was more than ready to help him make. “So wait now. Let this question rest unanswered.”

Harry couldn’t have thought of a better torment for her, Draco thought in satisfaction, watching Granger writhe under the lash of her curiosity. When her eyes fell to the ground, she was biting her lip and clenching her fists in much the same manner Weasley had. Small grumbles and curses forced their way between her lips.

“Fine!” she burst out suddenly, jerking her head up. “I’ll be silent and let you take as long as you please to tell me!” And then she lunged forwards and grabbed Harry around the waist, most rudely displacing Draco’s arms. “Only please don’t go away again,” she sobbed, whilst Harry embraced her back. “I missed you so much, Harry, I didn’t know what was happening, I didn’t know how to save you—“

“Trust me to save myself,” Harry whispered as he petted her hair.

“I will, I will.”

And Harry was going to trust her to make and keep the promise, Draco saw. His part in the matter would be reduced to seeing that Harry didn’t make excuses for his friends, rather than helping to punish them.

He sighed.

Then Harry looked back at him and caught his eye, and Draco was reminded that Harry had told him the full secret of Metamorphosis first, that he was the only one who knew exactly why Harry had started the business in the first part, and that Harry fought with him like an equal instead of having to deal with him on the basis of a test.

He smiled.

Epilogue.

Comments

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much! Ron and Hermione are meant to come across as both weak and strong here- the same way Harry does.

[kluminia.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, I absolutely can see both strength and weakness...in fact, I actually thought I commented that way and was surprised to see that I left out the feeling of strength......It must have been the fact that I was in awe over your cleverness with Hermione!

You are definitely the 'thinking mans'(womens)writer.