Chapter Fourteen of 'Soldier's Welcome'- An Afternoon of Arguments

[lomonaaeren]

Title: Soldier’s Welcome (14/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Rating: R
Pairings: Harry/Draco preslash, Ron/Hermione
Warnings: Violence (and plenty of it), profanity, references to sex, takes account of DH but ignores the epilogue, heavy angst.
Summary: It’s the first year of Auror training for Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, and…Draco Malfoy, But with Hagrid, Snape’s second Pensieve, rogue Death Eaters, Auror classes, and someone trying to start a second war to worry about, Harry might not have the time to pay that much attention to Malfoy. At first, anyway.
Author’s Notes: This story is the first in a trilogy called Running to Paradise, which takes its title from a W. B. Yeats poem. Each story will be novel-length, and each will cover a year of Harry and Draco’s training as Aurors. Though there are a lot of fics out there about them acting as Auror partners, there aren’t as many about their training, so I hope to cover some original ground there. I’m indebted to a reader named SP777 for suggesting a training fic for me to write.

Chapter One.

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Fourteen—An Afternoon of Arguments

Harry paused outside his rooms and listened a minute. Yes, he could hear Ron and Hermione arguing in there, or at least agreeing loudly with each other. He sighed and wished or a moment that he didn’t have to face them both at once.

On the other hand, he thought Hermione was being so hostile to him because she only knew Ron’s side of the story. If he confronted her alone, then she would go away and talk to Ron, who would deny everything Harry said. It was probably for the best if they all spoke at once and Hermione got to compare their stories.

Harry lifted his hand to knock on the door.

Someone caught his arm and pulled it backwards. Harry turned around, already tense and reaching for his wand with his other hand. He no longer felt safe when people came up behind him and grabbed him.

He tried to relax when he realized it was Malfoy, but the tension had to go somewhere, and he dissipated it in a loud huffing sigh. “What do you want?” he asked, folding his arms and keeping his voice low. He wanted to choose the moment when he confronted Ron and Hermione, instead of having it forced on him.

Malfoy’s the one who taught me so much about the importance of choice, he thought, as he watched a bright flush break out on Malfoy’s cheeks. Strange to think of.

“You’re going to talk to your friends?” Malfoy asked.

Harry glanced at the door again. Ron and Hermione’s voices had risen, which was probably the only reason they hadn’t heard what Malfoy had said. Harry tried to set him the example by whispering. “I was until you interrupted.”

Malfoy narrowed his eyes. “I came in time, you mean. I should be with you when you talk to them.”

Harry knew his jaw dropped; he didn’t need the sidelong sneer on Malfoy’s face to tell him that. He coughed and said, “No, you shouldn’t! They’ll be more hostile in front of you than they would be otherwise.”

“They’ll be more truthful,” Malfoy said, as if that made sense. “And Granger will see how irrational the Weasel is about me. That’s what you’re hoping to do, aren’t you? Get Granger on your side and use her to tame the Weasel’s madness.”

Harry scowled. “Don’t call him that.”

“You’re failing to address the larger point.” Malfoy’s voice was bored, but his eyes had a sudden pale fire in them. “We need to be together.”

“No,” Harry said. “You have a place in my life. I understand that now. I won’t fight against it. But that place isn’t everywhere.” He leaned forwards, hoping that that, combined with the serious look on his face, would intimidate Malfoy.

He might as well have hoped to intimidate a thunderstorm, said Malfoy’s look of contempt. “It’s by your side in an argument I’m the cause of.”

“Not just you,” Harry said. “You helped me realize that. Ron and Ginny hope to have a place in my life that’s—I don’t know, controlling or something, for some reason.” Malfoy smirked at him, and Harry flushed. He knew he wasn’t a great speaker; did Malfoy have to rub it in? “That’s what I need to talk to them about. It’s the more important topic.”

Malfoy clenched one fist and then looked as if he wished that he hadn’t done it. Still, his voice was sharp enough to cut. “More important than I am. I see.”

“Shit.” Harry wondered briefly if pulling on his own hair would relieve some of his frustration, and then he thought of the way Malfoy would make fun of him for messing it up even more and managed to refrain. “I didn’t mean it that way, Malfoy. I’m trying to have both you and Ron and Hermione as friends, all right? For them, the petty little things they’re doing are the more important topic. For you, it’s different.”

Malfoy stared at him like an angry cat that had just been offered a plate of its favorite food. Then he said, “What are the important topics that you would want to discuss with me?”

Harry blinked, caught off-guard. Then he shrugged and said, “How to handle our compatible magic so that it doesn’t drain one of us. What you think the Death Eaters, if that’s what they were, were doing. How we’re going to keep our investigations into the Dark magic low-key enough that the instructors don’t notice.”

Malfoy half-lowered his head and gave him a secret smile. “You intend to take me along on more of those investigations, then?”

“Of course. They attacked you, too. And I think the red and black magic was aimed at you, not me. How could the caster have known that I would open your door just then?” Harry shook his head, growing more confident as the quiet pleased look made its way over more and more of Malfoy’s face. “You have a right to participate. You have a right to participate in a lot of what I do,” Harry added, driven to honesty by Malfoy’s expectant silence as much as anything else. “Just not everything.”

Malfoy glanced at the door behind Harry and hesitated. Then he gave a clipped nod and said, “If this turns out to be something that I should have been involved in, then I’ll blame you, Potter.” He turned on his heel.

Harry, in gratitude and because he really did want to offer Malfoy reassurance, reached out and touched his shoulder. Malfoy glanced back at him. Harry wondered if he knew about or understood the vulnerability in his own eyes.

“They’re not going to persuade me to abandon you,” Harry said. “I promise.”

“You think that now,” Malfoy muttered.

“You’re the one who taught me to be sure of that,” Harry said. “You’re the one who gave me the strength to choose you.” He produced a smile that he tried to put all his emotions into. He wasn’t sure he succeeded, because Malfoy stared as if Harry had punched him or vomited on him.

Malfoy turned in the next moment and walked away as though he couldn’t wait to reach the end of the corridor. Harry shook his head. He didn’t know if he would ever understand Malfoy, but at least he had managed to get him to leave.

That way, he could confront Ron and Hermione alone.

Harry knew it was the right thing to do. As he turned and opened the door, he could feel that determination bracing him up like a commandment.

But he couldn’t help wishing Malfoy could have been with him, all the same.

*

Draco went straight back to his room. He didn’t trust himself to appear calm and collected in the face of anyone he met right now, and there were still too few people he trusted to see him when he wasn’t calm and collected.

He flung the door open and let it crash shut behind him. A chattering chorus of voices in his head told him what his Malfoy ancestors would think of his dramatic little display.

For once, Draco told the Malfoy ancestors to go fuck themselves, and the chattering chorus shut up in surprise. Draco dropped into a chair and shut his eyes, putting his hands over them in the vain hope that it would calm his racing heart.

Potter’s smile had done this to him.

His bloody smile.

It wasn’t that Draco was incapable of controlling himself around the people he was attracted to. He had got over that particular bit of nonsense long ago, when he’d had his first crushes at thirteen and fourteen. But he had anticipated those crushes. His father had explained that Malfoys were like other people in a few things, and being at the mercy of the urge to propagate the species was one of them.

Likewise, he had come into the Auror program prepared for the idea that people would hate him. He hoped to find mentors, such as Dearborn, and those people who would recognize his talent and admire and promote him, however grudgingly they did it. Draco would have liked approval, but he did not need it with the same ardor that he needed the Malfoy name restored. Dearborn had been enough of a conquest for a few months.

He had not anticipated the compatible magic, but he had anticipated Potter’s reaction to it. He had assumed that would drag on for months and resolve itself into little more than sullen acceptance in the end. It was one reason his intense conversation with Potter had so shaken him. It did not fit into the possibilities for his future his mind had created the moment he felt the compatible magic coiling between them.

Instead, Potter had kept his promise. He had managed to send Draco off just now with words that he didn’t resent, words that made him feel as if he were part of a community larger than the Malfoy family for the first time in his life.

Draco leaned back in the chair and stared at the ceiling. His mind stretched and strained, trying to encompass the idea of what his life might be like now that Potter—Potter who had compatible magic with him, Potter who had fame and power enough to get anything he wanted done, Potter who was brave and beautiful—stood at his side.

Draco had thought through everything, planned everything, anticipated everything.

Except friendship.

*

Harry shut the door behind him in absolute silence. Ron and Hermione had both frozen the moment they saw him walk in and now blinked at him as though they expected that to make him go away.

Harry folded his arms and leaned on the door. He would wait for them to make the first move, since he couldn’t think of a comfortable way to approach the subject he wanted to talk about.

Hermione was the first to react. She licked her lips and leaned forwards. Her voice wavered at first, but quickly grew strong as she went on. “Ron told me that you had an argument over Malfoy, Harry, and that you were going to start being best friends with him instead of us. I tried to appeal to you in class today, and you used a spell on me that looked like a rejection. Would you care to explain exactly what you’re doing?”

Harry had to control the impulse to sigh. He hadn’t said that, of course, but he also knew it would sound like he had to Ron. And Hermione’s perception of what had happened in Auror Conduct was an odd mixture of reality and the fact that Harry had been playing a role and had to do what he thought would be appropriate to the imaginary situation.

This was the point in arguments with his best friends when he wanted to walk away. He used to despair of getting through the thick walls around Ron’s mind, and he knew that he couldn’t oppose Hermione’s relentless rationality.

But right now, he was remembering the way that Ron had set Ginny on him. Ron might allege a bunch of motives for that. He couldn’t deny that it had happened, though. So Harry would tell Hermione about it, because she didn’t seem to know.

“I told Ron that I didn’t appreciate his interference in my life,” he said. “Why can’t he argue with me about Malfoy, if he wants to? Why does he have to get you and his sister to do it?”

Hermione snapped her mouth shut and blinked. “What’s Ginny got to do with this?”

“Nothing,” Harry said, stalking over to his chair and flinging himself into it. He wanted to show that he wasn’t afraid of them and about to retreat out the door any moment, the way he might look if he was standing on the other side of the room. “In a sane world. But Ron set her on me, and she gave me a big lecture about how I have to stand up for myself and fight the instructors no matter how suicidal that would be and no matter how tired I am of fighting. Because I can do anything, according to her.”

Hermione twisted around to look at Ron, her mouth slowly opening like someone drinking in new knowledge. Ron crossed his arms and concentrated all his energy into a scowl at Harry. Harry waited for him to defend himself, but he didn’t say anything, so Harry cleared his throat and went on.

“I broke up with Ginny for a reason. I don’t think we’re good for each other anymore.” He had considered the idea of telling Ron and Hermione about his fits and rejected it again. He should do it, he knew, and maybe someday he would, but right now it felt too much like doing what Ginny had ordered him to.

And betraying Malfoy.

Harry frowned and shifted his shoulders. Malfoy shouldn’t be the only one who knew secrets about him, and Harry couldn’t understand his own desire to have it be that way. But he left those thoughts aside for the moment so he could concentrate on what he was talking about.

“To have her come in here like that and tell me that I was too weak and too strong at the same time—to have her think that I always want to be a hero—to have her accuse me of wanting power—” Harry’s voice was rising, and he didn’t care. The conversation with Malfoy had told him at least one thing. Didn’t he have the right to be angry with Ginny? Shouldn’t he be able to argue against what she claimed if he wanted to?

“Don’t talk about my sister that way.”

Harry surged to his feet, to stand opposite Ron. Ron was taller than Harry was, but Harry wouldn’t allow Ron to loom over him anymore.

“That’s what she said,” Harry said. “And worse. This is only the parts of her speech that I feel I can repeat without spitting in rage.” He saw the way Ron cocked his head and laughed bitterly. “What’s the matter, Ron? Afraid to deal with the consequences of what you did by telling your little sister about our arguments?”

“She didn’t mean to hurt you,” Ron said. “She wanted to help.”

“But she had no right,” Harry said. “How would you feel if I’d asked Seamus or Neville to talk to you because I was sick of your jealousy about Malfoy?”

Ron looked as though Harry had slapped him. “But they’re just friends,” he said. “They didn’t date you.”

“And now Ginny is just a friend,” Harry said. “I don’t give a fuck about what she used to be to me.” He saw Hermione holding her hand to her mouth and Ron’s eyes darkening, but at the moment, he just couldn’t care. “You didn’t have the right to ask her to do that. She gave me one of the most humiliating lectures and one of the most patronizing scoldings of my life. The Dursleys weren’t that bad, because I didn’t care that much what they thought of me after a while. But I care about Ginny. I cared about her,” he corrected himself, because right now he wasn’t sure what he felt for her anymore. “You shouldn’t have asked her to fight the battle for you. That’s the part I’m really angry about, Ron, not that you told her. You can complain to people, but you don’t tell them that they should go and have the argument for you.”

“What was I supposed to do when no one else could reach you?” Ron stamped his foot. Hermione’s eyebrows drew together, Harry was glad to see. Ron didn’t seem to notice, and leaned forwards as if he assumed that he could intimidate Harry that way. “You weren’t listening to me. I explained my concerns, and you just dismissed them by saying that you had something special with Malfoy, something that you wouldn’t give me the right to complain about—”

“That’s enough, Ron.”

Hermione’s voice had a steely ring of command that surprised Harry. He turned to look at Hermione along with Ron as she rose to her feet. Her eyes were sad when she glanced back and forth between them.

“Both of you are in the wrong,” she said. “You more than Harry, Ron. I didn’t know that you’d contacted Ginny.” She took a deep breath and ran her hand down the outside of her hair, as though running it through the middle was too much effort right now. “That was stupid. Of course Ginny would push Harry away from us. He doesn’t feel connected to her anymore.”

Harry set his jaw and said nothing. Hermione had questioned him thoroughly when he broke up with Ginny, determined to know why he hadn’t stayed with her. Harry hadn’t admitted the truth then, and he wasn’t about to do it now, either.

“What Harry has with Malfoy isn’t going away,” Hermione continued. “We have to learn to accept it, and not scold him about it.”

“But Hermione,” Ron said, and his voice whinged.

“Get out of here for right now,” Hermione said, turning back to face Harry. “You didn’t tell me about Ginny. We’ll have to have a private talk later about how you lied.”

For a long minute, Harry didn’t think Ron would obey. He clenched his jaw, and the veins in his neck stood out, while his face flushed. The grinding of his teeth was audible.

But in the end he turned and marched out of the room, tugging open the door so far it hit the wall, and then slamming it behind him.

Harry blinked and turned back to Hermione.

Only to find that she had collapsed into her chair and put her hands over her face. She was making soft sounds—not crying, Harry thought, but taking the sort of breaths that people took when they wanted to keep from crying.

“Hermione?” he asked uneasily.

“I’ve tried so hard,” she almost wailed into her hands. “The work here is harder than it was at Hogwarts. I can barely keep up. And sometimes I don’t know what I’m doing with Ron anymore. We have so many arguments. And he’s wrong, but I understand what he’s going through because he thinks he might lose you to Malfoy. I do.” She dropped her hands and stared up at Harry. “Because I feel the same way.”

Harry wanted to turn and stalk off. Hermione seemed to be doing the same thing Ginny had: throwing Ron’s problems at him and demanding that he solve them. Why couldn’t he ever be the overwhelmed one, the one who got to act like he wanted without caring what other people thought?

Two answers came to him at once, so quickly that he was ashamed. First, he would hate himself if he did manage to behave like that, no matter how good it might feel at the time.

Second, there was someone who could help him if he felt overwhelmed. Malfoy.

Or Draco. Harry wasn’t sure how long he could continue to call Malfoy by the chill distance of his last name.

For now, though, Hermione was watching him with tear-brightened eyes and obviously wanting an answer. Harry cleared his throat. “I didn’t know that you were feeling that far behind in your classes,” he said. “I’m sorry. I can try to show you some of the ways that I’m coping with it.” He bit his lip to keep himself from laughing, because he knew that Hermione wouldn’t understand. His offering to help her with study skills was ridiculous.

“That’s not what I need,” Hermione said, shaking her head. “I can handle the classwork when I get used to it. It’s just trying to do that and be calm and understanding for Ron at the same time that’s the problem.” She looked up at Harry again. “Do you think you could…spend a few days with Ron? Just give him time with you so that he doesn’t feel like he’s losing his best friend?”

Harry straightened his spine. He hated to refuse Hermione when she sounded as if she was pleading, but if he gave in to her demands, then Ron would feel like he’d won. And Harry no longer intended to let him get away with what he was doing.

“No,” he said.

Hermione drove her fingernails into her palms until it looked as though she was going to claw her skin open. “But Harry—”

Harry knelt down and took her hands in his, stroking and soothing them open. Hermione blinked at him in astonishment and seemed to forget about the tears that Harry knew she was about to shed.

“It’s hard,” Harry said calmly. “I know that. I know that you feel you might lose him. I went through that, too, in fourth year and during the Horcrux hunt and sometimes during this last year when he asked too many questions about Ginny. But, Hermione, you have to remember that you can’t be calm and understanding for Ron all the time. You’re putting an unnecessary burden on yourself, and on me. We’ll have to refuse to give in to Ron’s temper tantrums and instead do what we know is right. And I know that it’s right to be friends with Malfoy and Ron at the same time.”

Hermione was frowning, her lower lip sticking out in the closest thing to a pout that Harry had ever seen her make. “But how can we do that? Ron won’t accept anything less than complete devotion to him.”

“First of all,” Harry said, “I don’t think that’s true. Because if it was, then neither of us would ever have become friends with him in the first place. He would have been impossible to live with. But we have to be careful that we don’t turn him into someone like that by indulging him all the time.”

Hermione blushed. Then she said, “I would never have said that if I was feeling normal. But coming into the Auror program is overwhelming, and with Ron being upset all the time—” She closed her eyes and shook her head.

“We’ll get through it together,” Harry said, and squeezed her hands one more time before he stood up. “We’ll make Ron see reason. Slowly,” he added, and Hermione let out a reluctant laugh. “But he’s worth it, Hermione—both to make up with and not to pamper. It’ll take him a long time and it’ll be hard, but he’ll get used to my friendship with Malfoy in the end.”

Good God, I nearly said “Draco” just then. Harry twitched. Whatever he might privately feel, he didn’t think that Hermione was ready to hear him speak about “Draco.”

Hermione gave him a faint smile as she walked towards the door. “I would have thought of that myself,” she said, “if I hadn’t been struggling so much and didn’t want simple solutions.” She threw her shoulders back. “Well, no more simple solutions. We could never do that in Hogwarts. Why should we do it here?”

Harry gave her a smile of thanks. “Do you want to talk to Ron first?” he asked.

Hermione nodded briskly, once more the woman he remembered from the Horcrux hunt. “Yes, I think it’s best. He’ll take it better from me. Like you said, it’ll take a while to make him see reason.” She hesitated, then added, “What else did Ginny say to you, Harry?”

Harry shook his head. “Things I’ll find it hard to forgive her for, Hermione. But I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

“All right,” Hermione said. “And—don’t take this the wrong way, Harry, but are you sure that you want to be friends with Malfoy?”

Harry thought of the way that Malfoy had spoken to him after the conversation with Ginny—his unflinching, scathing honesty. He thought of the way the compatible magic coiled and eddied between them. He thought of the way Malfoy hadn’t even blamed Harry for the dangerous draining of his magic that could have cost him his life.

Contentment spread through him, different from the contentment that he felt when he was with Ron and Hermione. But why did that matter? His friendship with Malfoy was going to be different. He already knew that.

“Completely sure,” he murmured.

Something in his smile made Hermione smile back.

Chapter Fifteen.

Comments

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

In the next chapter, Harry does start standing up for his friendship with Draco more. On the other hand, he makes sure that Ron can't withdraw and then try to blame him for the way their friendship is crumbling. Harry can't just give up on Ron, even though there are times in this where I'm sure that he would like to!

Harry and Draco will both continue to grow throughout the story, I hope. Even when they stall (as Harry did for a while in his refusal to accept the compatible magic), it's only a temporary resting point on the way to something better.

And thank you!