Title: Daydream Romance

Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

Pairing: Harry/Draco, Lucius/Narcissa

Warnings: Light angst

Rating: PG-13

Wordcount: 4000

Summary: Most problems Harry tries to solve after the war are not simple. But the Malfoys, unexpectedly, are. Even when Harry finds himself falling in love with their son.

Author's Notes: Another of my Advent fics, for an anonymous prompt: The Malfoys did not suffer any repercussions after the war, unlike most pureblood families. But why not? Did Harry have something to do with that? I'd love a story explaining how and why Harry saved the Malfoys...and please, a happy ending? (I only read H/D anyway, but I'd love something very romantic. Thank you!) So this is as light a romantic story as I can be capable of given the prompt.

Daydream Romance

"Well, I mean, I'll help your mum because I owe her my life. And you're not such a bad sort. And you saved my life when the Snatchers had me. But I can't really think why I should help your father."

"Because you can."

Harry caught his breath. He and Malfoy were sitting outside Hogwarts near Dumbledore's tomb, and there was faint, grey sunlight streaking over them. It was near dawn. Malfoy had asked Harry to meet him here then because he had trouble meeting Harry alone otherwise.

Harry had thought it would be an uncomfortable conversation. Malfoy had the right to ask for his help, but he would probably be loud and taunting and difficult about it, and Harry would have to sit there and remind himself that the git had saved his life, and so had his mum.

But now Malfoy was looking at him with this faith. Not the demand that Harry save all of them that Harry had seen on so many faces by now. Not with anger that Harry hadn't done things during the war to save more people. Not the greed that people had when they wanted Harry's money or an interview or autographs or for him to promise to marry them.

Just faith.

"Father will agree to whatever you ask," Malfoy continued after a second. His eyes still held that faith. "Make it difficult if you want. Make it humiliating. I know Mother thinks he needs to be humbled." Malfoy stared at his hands for a second, then looked up. "She said the same thing about me, then took it back. She thought it would be so hard for me to come and ask you for help that it would count as humiliation."

"Was it?" Harry had to ask. He didn't think Malfoy looked humiliated at the moment, but it could be hard to tell.

"No."

His voice was soft, and his eyes were fervent. Harry sat up. He didn't feel like a hero, but he felt—better than he was. Larger than life. And like he really could do something, not just "do something" in that vague way everyone talked about.

"I don't know what it is about you," Malfoy whispered. "But you make me a better person. I think you could make everyone a better person, if you were allowed to do it."

Harry stirred a little, and thought about standing up from the chair he'd conjured and walking away. Now Malfoy was sounding more like the people who thought he could fix everything. It was just a matter, those requesters kept saying, of having the right people "on his side" or "by his side" or something like that.

"Listen to me. Please."

Harry had never thought Malfoy would ever say "please" in his life. He sat back because that was amazing, and turned to see Malfoy leaning towards him, holding his hand out.

Harry let his eyes meet Malfoy's. He knew the significance of the gesture for Malfoy. It was brave of him to be offering his hand when it had already been rejected once before.

"Let's be allies," said Malfoy. "If that's all you want to be. I'd rather be friends, but that's up to you." His voice was shaking a little, but he didn't stutter. He still went on watching Harry as though he was the center of the universe.

Harry swallowed. "Why do you want to be friends with me? I can try to get your family out of trouble, but you don't know if I can do all of it. Your father's going to be the hardest, assuming I decide I want to help him at all."

Malfoy nodded. His hand never wavered, although Harry thought he'd been holding it out long enough to at least get tired by now. "Because you're better than other people. I meant that. You can forgive people I never thought you could forgive. You have better friends than I do." For just a second, Malfoy looked bitter, but then he burned away the expression and just looked earnest again. "If you can forgive Professor Snape for killing Dumbledore—" he looked at the tomb for a second "—then I think you can forgive me. And I need a friend."

That last sentence was as honest as the sunlight around them. It was cloudy, maybe, but it would never hide itself.

Harry reached out. For a second, he touched Malfoy's damp, sweaty palm, before Malfoy curled his fingers in.

He looked ravingly happy. But he didn't jump up and down and say that. Instead, he sat there, and kept it all inside. All he did was breathe a little harder and tilt his head back so that the sunlight fell more fully on his face.

That might have been the moment when he fell in love with Draco, Harry decided later. It was hard to tell, because by the time he knew he was in love, it was hard to go back and say when the fact began. Or when the fact started mattering to him. After all, he held back for a little while, sure that Draco wouldn't care to know.

But it was a good candidate for a moment like that, when Draco was still Malfoy but looked happy.

"Draco told me to ask you something difficult and humiliating in return for your help. So I came up with the most difficult thing I could think of."

Lucius Malfoy nodded. He sat on the other side of bars so heavy that Harry could hardly see him through them; they were buzzing with magic. The Dementors hadn't come back to Azkaban, so the Ministry seemed to have decided they needed a lot more enchantments.

"I want you to apologize to the Weasleys," said Harry. "For things like giving the diary to Ginny especially, but also for trying to get Arthur sacked, and for all the stupid comments you made about them to Draco. Draco was the one who carried on that ridiculous feud you have between the two of you in school, with his remarks to Ron."

Lucius didn't respond to that, simply stared at him through the bars. Harry was about to repeat himself, assuming Lucius hadn't heard him, when Lucius whispered, "That is all you want?"

"Well, no," said Harry. Lucius nodded. "You'll also have to pay for the specialized Mind-Healing that Ginny wants to get. She's tired of having the echoes of the diary hanging around in her head, but she can't pay for it herself. And there's a special fund George set up in memory of Fred. He died in the Battle of Hogwarts, and George wants to make sure that never happens again. So he's paying to set up a special kind of spell around Hogwarts that means no one can cast offensive spells that strong there again."

"Could that not be rather a problem with Defense Against the Dark Arts?"

"It permits the countercurses, just not the curses," Harry said, a little dryly. He wondered how serious Lucius actually was about that objection, or if he was just saying it to maintain his reputation as a "real" Malfoy. "A future professor, assuming they find a good one, can always go outside the school to show those spells to their students. But it's the same kind of spell they have up at pubs like the Hog's Head and some of the shops in Diagon Alley. There's no reason it wasn't already at the school except stupid objections like yours."

Lucius didn't even object to that characterization of his objections. He just lowered his head a little, and said, "I agree."

"What, no conditions?"

Lucius looked at Harry again, his head twisted as if there was an invisible chain around his neck. "My wife has already been here to discuss my options with me thoroughly," he said. Harry felt his lips twitching in sympathy. "I can have no conditions, not if I want you to help me." His eyes were bleak suddenly. "And more to the point, if I want you to help my wife and son."

Harry shook his head. "I owe them life-debts. I'm only helping you because Draco begged me to. You're the one I'm helping under protest."

"But even with life-debts, I might make you a little less forgiving or willing if I set conditions, and then Draco or Narcissa might end up with severe penalties. So I won't set them."

Harry rolled his eyes. "I wouldn't do that to them."

"I do not say that you would do it consciously. Only that it might happen, the same way that tiredness might slow your reflexes in a Quidditch game, and I do not wish to see my family suffer for my intransigence."

Harry only shook his head again, but he supposed that insisting on airing his (wrong) opinion was one of the conditions Lucius was setting without even realizing it, so Harry could accept it. "Fine. Then I need you to explain to me where this money to pay Ginny and George is going to come from, and what you plan to say in court."

Lucius stared at him. Harry stared back. It went on long enough that Harry was about to ask him what in the world his problem was, but then Lucius whispered, "Thank you. You seem to have planned the rescue of my family thoroughly."

Harry shrugged. His cheeks burned. "I haven't had much time to think about it yet. You should concentrate on giving me the answers."

"Thank you," Lucius repeated, but at least this time, he was moving on past those words. "There is a Malfoy-owned business in Germany that most of my enemies don't know about, so the profits have never been touched. Tell Narcissa to look for the records behind the largest bookshelf in my study. She'll find the means of accessing the Gringotts account there. That should help pay for Weasley's healing. As for the memorial fund…"

Harry relaxed slowly as Lucius went on. He had had the feeling that Lucius would try to trick him, or at least delay him and argue about some of the things Harry wanted him to do. But it seemed Lucius was as whole-hearted about doing what Harry was asking him to do as Draco was about asking for his help in the first place.

Draco…

Harry smiled. He had to admit that he couldn't wait to see Draco's face when he learned that his father had agreed without holding back.

Hell, he couldn't wait to be with Draco just in general.

"You admit that you are aiding us because of life-debts, Mr. Potter. What will happen when those life-debts are fulfilled?"

Narcissa Malfoy sat so upright that it looked painful. Not that Harry intended to say anything about it, because he reckoned she knew how painful she wanted to make things for herself. He just nodded and sipped a little at the tea that the Malfoy house-elves had brought him. He'd managed to negotiate the Ministry into agreeing that Narcissa and Draco could stay in the Manor after their trials, and Lucius would join them in a few days.

"Then you decide what more you'd like me to do to help you," Harry said. "If there are things I'm not willing to do, then I'll tell you. And we'll work something out. Maybe you can make your own payments or apologies to people you hurt." He paused. "I'd like one for the part you played in arranging Sirius's death."

Narcissa inclined her head slowly. "I did not know to what use the Dark Lord would put the information I gave him. And part of that was Sirius's fault for never treating Kreacher correctly."

Harry just looked at her. Narcissa glanced away after a moment. "I did not know that my cousin would go there, or die," she murmured.

"Fine, you didn't mean to, but it happened anyway." Harry leaned insistently forwards. "So we'll talk when you feel the life-debts are paid."

"And Draco?"

Harry smiled. In some ways, even though he didn't much like her personally, he had to admire Narcissa. She'd had the bravery to defy Voldemort, and then she'd noticed that Harry was saying "you" about her only.

"Draco can ask whatever he wants of me."

Narcissa turned around with her face looking even more bone-white than usual. Shock, Harry assumed. "How? I know that he did more to try and hurt you during your time at Hogwarts than Lucius or I ever did."

"Things have changed."

And those things he tried to hurt me never succeeded the way he wanted them to, Harry thought as he walked towards the front door of the Manor, a few minutes later. Maybe they would have, if Draco had landed the Cruciatus on Harry before Harry had managed the Sectumsempra. But he hadn't, and things had changed.

"Harry?"

They've really changed, Harry thought, as he turned and smiled up at the boy climbing down the stairs towards him. Harry still thought of Draco as a boy, even though he didn't think of himself that way anymore. Then again, Draco still had wide eyes when he wasn't thinking about it, and sucked his lip when he was nervous, and did things like ask silly questions.

"Did you really tell my mother the truth?"

"I don't know what you want to call what's happening between us, so I didn't tell her about that." Harry held out his hands to the sides and hit Draco with the most important fact. "But I told her that you can ask whatever you want of me, and that's true."

Draco flushed, a pretty pinkness that started with his throat and expanded down until it was lost under his robes. Then he shook his head and asked, "But you're going to keep doing things for us past the trials?"

"For your parents, no more now. For only you, past the trials."

"I don't understand why I'm the one you made the exception for." Draco frowned at his hands. "I hurt you worse than my parents."

"No, you didn't," Harry said. "And I did ask you to apologize to Ron and Hermione, remember."

"Can I apologize in a letter?"

"Yes. I never said you couldn't."

Draco folded his arms. "You implied it."

Harry found himself smiling again. He knew, because of the terms Draco had approached him on, that he didn't have anything to fear from the Malfoys the way he did from the press, the Ministry, the people who praised him today for Voldemort's defeat but might turn on him tomorrow for some imagined sin, and some of the former Death Eaters and people who had worked for Voldemort unwillingly during the war. This was simple. This was straightforward.

"I thought it would be best if you could do it that way," Harry corrected him. "But I think a letter would be best now that I've had time to think. Then they can choose when they want to read it, and it'll prevent Ron from trying to punch you in the face."

Draco's eyes widened. "You think he'd do that even though I'm trying to prove I've changed?"

"Think about all the years of stupid feuding between your families," Harry said patiently. "And yes, I can call it stupid because I'm not part of it, you've told me that before. But what really matters is that I want you able to get past this."

"I'm apologizing because of you. Not because of them."

"And your father is apologizing and giving money to Ginny and George because I intervened for him," Harry said, rolling his eyes a little. "I know that. I'm not expecting charity from you and your parents."

Draco paused. Then he said, "You don't sound as if you expect very much of us."

"Only what you said you would give me in return for my handling the trials. Which you've done."

"It's not as much as I'd like to give."

Harry caught his breath at the promise in Draco's eyes, then shook his head a little. He knew why he liked helping Draco: it had taken Draco an enormous amount of courage to come after his help in the first place and Harry admired that; it was a simple problem instead of a hideously tangled one; he liked to see the way Draco's eyes lit up when Harry managed to suggest solutions. But he hadn't yet asked Draco this.

"Why do you look at me like that?"

"Because," said Draco, "at first it was just hope that you could help us. And now, I've been doing a lot of thinking. Mostly, that it should have been easy for me to just talk to you from a distance after you started helping, or at least only have a few conversations with you face-to-face. But now…"

He seemed to be wrestling with something. Harry waited. Draco came a few more steps down and finally stared at him from eye level.

"It's like having a fantasy fulfilled," Draco whispered. "I hoped we could be friends. It went on so long that I had all these ideas about how it could happen. And then I hoped you could do something to rescue my family and me from the Dark Lord. And now it's happening."

"So it doesn't feel quite real," Harry said, understanding at last. "Like a dream is coming true."

"Yes." Draco flushed a second later, harder and brighter. "Which sounds silly, but it's true." He moved one more step nearer and looked Harry in the eye. "But I don't want to start dating until after the trials. Or even kiss you or touch you," he added, probably because Harry had reached out with one hand.

"Why?" Harry tried not to feel hurt, but it was hard to be told you were the fulfillment of someone's fantasy one minute and then to have them act like you were a leper the next.

"Because I want to have something I can offer you. Not just life-debts. Not someone you want to help and smile at and then forget about when the next person demanding your help comes along. Not just a crisis."

Harry smiled, and couldn't stop smiling. "Draco Malfoy," he said, "that sounded like a proposition."

"You bet your arse it was," Draco said calmly.

"This isn't real, is it?"

Harry leaned back and enjoyed the expression on Hermione's face as she read Draco's letter. They were sitting around the table in the Burrow, with plates of biscuits and scones and full bowls of porridge in front of them. Even though Harry thought Mrs. Weasley was starting to be able to handle her grief at Fred's death, she still did nearly as much cooking as she had right after the funeral.

"As real as Lucius Malfoy donating for Ginny's Mind-Healing, and the letter he sent her." Harry swallowed once, and wiped at his mouth with a napkin rather than his hand. Hermione would glare at him if he used his hand, and Harry wanted to see her keep glaring at the letter instead. It was funnier. "I asked him to apologize, and he did."

Hermione looked up. "Then this wasn't something he came up with on his own."

Harry shook his head. "No."

"That makes it less real, then."

Across the table, with Draco's letter to him in his hand, Ron just snorted. "When is the last time you can remember bloody Malfoy doing anything that Harry asked him to? I mean, he didn't even lay down his wand when he came after us in the Room of Requirement, and that was a time when he really should have."

Hermione frowned at the letter, obviously trying to twist her conceptions of Draco Malfoy to conjure up a world where this letter could exist. Harry sat back and let her try. It was a pretty morning, with clouds barely obscuring the sunshine and birdsong pouring in from the garden.

"I don't really understand this." Hermione looked directly at Harry, her eyebrows arched in puzzlement and her hand clamping hard on the parchment Draco had used to write the letter. "Why does he want to get into your good graces so badly?"

"It's part of the payment for me testifying during his trial," Harry explained. Which was true. Anything else he and Draco would have between them, they'd agreed to put off until after that. Maybe even until they went back to Hogwarts in the autumn. Headmistress McGonagall had promised she would have the school back open by then no matter how much rebuilding they had to do and no matter how many hours she had to spend talking over stupid things with the Board of Governors.

"Oh." Hermione turned back to the letter again, and seemed to be thinking about it. "Then maybe I could write back to him."

"Why bother?" Ron tossed aside the letter Draco had written to him and stood up. "Don't waste time, I say. Just accept the apology the way he means it. We have more important things to do. Like Quidditch."

Hermione didn't even pay attention, and Harry didn't think it was only because she didn't want to go play Quidditch. Ron rolled his eyes expressively at Harry before he gestured outside, and Harry nodded and stood up to follow him.

"Girls," Ron said, when they were tossing the Quaffle back and forth between them. "I mean, sometimes. Just. Right?"

Harry smiled, although he didn't think it was for the same reason that Ron wanted him to. He was avoiding the company of girls, but not because they were incomprehensible. "Yeah."

Ron dived after the Quaffle. Harry followed him, and put aside ethical considerations and future ones for this moment of laughter.

"You really don't want to hide."

Draco's voice was a little dazed. Harry sat down beside him on the shore of the lake, sighing in pleasure. He'd missed Draco during the past few months. They'd both come back to Hogwarts at the same time, of course, but he hadn't had the chance to see much of him during the first hectic week.

"My connection with you? Of course not." Harry leaned back on the lake and folded his hands behind his head. Overhead, clouds drifted, reminding him of the sunny day in the Burrow when Ron and Hermione had read the letters Draco had written to them. "Unless you want to."

"No," Draco said hastily. He was silent then, and Harry finally rolled over to look at him.

Draco was staring at Harry with his lips parted and his eyes a little glassy. He finally shook his head and looked away, his lips moving. "It's still a dream."

Harry reached out and took his hand. Draco jumped like Harry had been carrying lightning with him and stared down at their entwined fingers in turn.

"I do like being here," Harry told him. "Because I know what you want, and I know what I want."

"Well, I already told you about those foolish fantasies I had." Draco's voice was a little strained. "What are yours?"

Harry only had to think about it for a second before he chose one. "Well, I used to think about sitting next to the lake and kissing the person I liked."

"Person?" Draco's voice was so squeaky Harry thought he was frightened. But then he clarified. "Not girl?"

"No," Harry said. "For a while, it's been person."

Draco sat watching him with that same courage in his eyes, and the same boundless faith that had let him come to Harry and ask for help in the first place. Harry got his hand up and carefully turned Draco's head into maximum kissing position.

Draco sat there and didn't help him or stop him. He seemed to be daydreaming.

Harry leaned in and kissed him, and with the faint sunlight rippling off the lake water, and Draco coming to life beneath him and locking his hands on Harry's shoulders and kissing him back with warm, dry lips, and the grass softly waving around him, it was like a fantasy.

Only infinitely better.

The End.