Dark Marks and Manicotti

Disclaimer: NOT MINE


Harry was thinking again.


He was thinking of how dreadfully bothersome it was, all this hiding and running, running and hiding. It was all Ginny Weasly’s fault, and Ron’s, and Draco’s, too, but Harry didn’t blame him for that. After all, how could he? It wasn’t his fault that Ginny was resentful and Ron was intolerant and because of that, now Harry and his Death Eater lover were fugitives.

He supposed he shouldn’t have been shocked to discover that his fiancée (ex-fiancée, as it were now) and her older brother were none-too-thrilled to hear of Harry the Boy Who Lived’s illicit and illegal affair with Lord Voldemort’s second-in-command, the boy who took over for Lucius Malfoy, the boy responsible for six of the nine Weasleys’ deaths, the Boy Who Killed…a lot. (Draco had once tried to claim that he was not, in fact, the Dark Lord’s second-in-command. It was still early on in the relationship, but Harry had nonetheless thanked him not to trot tales to his face. They simply hadn’t spoken about it since.)

What Harry hadn’t expected, however, was for the remaining Weasleys to be so angry as to denounce Harry to the media as plotting to overthrow Voldemort in order to become the next Dark Lord. What Harry certainly hadn’t expected was for the public to believe Weasley, but, after all, he was favored to win the next election for Minister of Magic, (due to his friendship with Harry, ironically enough) so his words, however falsified, carried some weight. So he had betrayed Harry in a personal vendetta; betrayed him after disappointing him time and time again, as he repeatedly broke his promises to Harry about affecting change within the Ministry concerning the war with the Dark. So as Harry had fought, bled, and died bit by bit on the battlefield, Ron had sat in the political war room gaining weight and politicking in a most ineffective way. And then, when the time had served him, he had backstabbed his best friend and said best friend’s pregnant lover as well, Death Eater that he was. Harry had been wrong about what he had said in seventh year. Ron had turned into the perfect politician.

So as a result, Harry and Draco had been on the run for the last eight and a half months, and Harry had watched as every area of Draco’s body, (including his Dark Mark clad arm, which burned so often Harry had to worry that it would have some effect on their baby) swelled up like a poisoned dog. And this is what Harry thought of tonight, as he tried to cut the frozen marinera sauce from an equally frozen TV dinner of manicotti, because Draco’s aristocratic stomach found marinera to its distaste. Harry knew subconsciously that he should be thinking about deeper meaningful things, but he was tired, and this one carton of manicotti was all they had managed to salvage today from back alleys and the whatnot.

So he listened as he sliced into the manicotti with a broken plastic knife, listened as his eight-month pregnant lover sat around the trashcan fire with the other failed wizard squatters, ranting about pureblood superiority even now, with the knowledge that most purebloods would love nothing more than to find the renegade Malfoy heir and torture him in new and creative ways. Draco would never again be accepted into the “Inner Circle” (good riddance, Harry would say) despite his attempts to fight for the pureblood cause even now, as Harry had to stop him from torturing muggles, if not for their sakes, but for the sake of the three-quarters pure-blood child Draco was carrying within him; the same child that had damned Draco among his fellows, had resulted in their expulsion from society, and the freezing of their collective financial assets. (Once again, Ron Weasley’s doing…)

To be honest, Harry was shocked Draco hadn’t demanded to abort the fetus upon first finding out about it. After all, he and Harry had managed to convince themselves that they were still enemies and that the sex meant nothing, nothing at all. Nothing was keeping them together, right? And surely Draco wouldn’t wanted to be hindered or jeopardized by such an occurrence as this; he was pregnant with the child of the very man he was hell-bent on destroying. It would be bad for business, right? But no. Instead, he had taken Harry’s hand, and they had portkeyed into hiding, until Ron gave their location away…and when the authorities had come, Draco had taken his hand, and they had apparated again. Draco had still not let go of Harry’s hand; at least in the proverbial sense.

And it shocked them both, that the Head Death Eater and the Boy Who Lived were now together, planning a family together, (provided they ever find safe shelter), and undeniable in love. Harry had come to realize that his side had forgotten somewhere along the way that fighters on both sides of the war were human beings, and as such, they had feelings: the ability to love, to care, to hurt, to worry. To show compassion. Nobody, not even Voldemort, was one hundred percent evil. The moment Harry had realized this, the absurdity of war hit him. Hard. He had first tried to liken it to ants trying to kill other ants, but that hadn’t worked, because often times, different ant tribes did war against each other. So Harry had to relate it to something sillier.

Human war. Human war was nothing more than humans killing other humans. It was like if a group of llamas began killing other llamas. If there was suddenly a bloody and dramatic llama war, humans would think it silly. Yet it was of little difference. Human war, even this war, was nothing more but the conscious choice of a bunch of animals to begin killing other animals.

Ron wouldn’t see it this way. But Harry and Draco did, so it was of little concern as to whether the war continued or not. To them, it was pointless, for they would always be fugitives, and they were quite content to stay out of it, having been tossed aside by their respective sides. No matter. They had a child to raise, and enough divided them without having to actually fight each other on the battlefield. Eventually, the public would realize that prophesy and destiny had stated that only Harry Potter could defeat Lord Voldemort, but Harry Potter had enough problems to deal with without thinking about that.

So he thought about mundane things like Dark Marks and manicotti as he sat down next to Draco and handed him the dish, ignoring the pain of hunger in his own stomach as he did so. He thought of the baby, and of Draco shivering next to him despite three coats, and he slid his own jacket off to wrap around his lover. He didn’t think of the fact that he was only wearing one layer of clothing now; instead, he thought of the baby and what it would look like blue and shivering, and of his blonde lover and what he looked like shivering and blue.

“The baby has a warming spell, you know,” Draco whispered in his ear, as Harry scooted closer to the trashcan fire.

“But you do not,” he pointed out. At this statement, Draco shot Harry a look.

And suddenly, it was worth it. The exhaustion. The hunger. The cold. The homelessness, the stress, the arguments over blood and war…they were all worth it, for one gaze of Draco Malfoy’s eyes, as he looked
at Harry with pure, undisguised and unadulterated adoration. Love. Harry reveled in it for a moment, before Draco turned to pick at the still mostly frozen manicotti.


It was worth it.

fin