lomonaaeren | Chapter Forty-Three of 'Changing of the Guard'- Conflicting Visions

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Chapter Forty-Three—Conflicting Visions

“I’m almost certain this is it.”

“That’s what you said about the last three spells you looked up,” Draco muttered, but he stood and walked over to lean on the back of the couch in Harry’s study, stifling a yawn. He hadn’t realized how badly the encounter with Lucius would drain him, or how much he’d been worried about the spell until it seemed unlikely it would actually affect him.

He would have been glad to forget his weariness by taking Harry to bed, but Harry had headed for the study as if they had only a limited period of time to figure out the spell’s true nature and dived into the books. Now and then, spontaneously, Draco could see Granger’s influence emerge in him.

This is the only way she should be able to influence him, he thought, as he craned his neck to make out the page of the book Harry was excitedly holding up. Indirectly and from a distance. Of course he knew that Harry would insist on reconciling with his friends eventually, but Draco didn’t have to hope for it soon. He had rather enjoyed having Harry to himself in private, even whilst they appeared in public as the two gallant leaders of the rebellion against oppressive tyranny.

The spell Harry had found was called the Lover’s Face Curse, and it was indeed supposed to become real on the appearance of the person being used as a trigger, or specifically as soon as the victim’s eyes met the trigger’s eyes. Draco felt his emotions changing as he scanned the list of the spell’s side-effects. By the time he reached the end—which mentioned permanent sexual enslavement, and the inability of the victim to achieve physical intimacy with anyone else—his anger had become something cold and dangerous. He reached out and squeezed Harry’s shoulder until Harry winced. Then Draco bent down and whispered into Harry’s ear.

“Does it say anything about how to reverse it?”

“Not on this page,” Harry said, his voice a bit breathless. “Maybe the next one.”

He started to turn the page, but Draco laid a finger on it, just above the end of the list, and prevented him. Harry shivered and tilted his head back. Draco recognized the shine in his eyes. He wasn’t frightened at all, as Draco had thought he might be, or angry about the pain Draco had caused him; he looked as if he were restraining himself from kissing Draco by his hold on the book alone.

Draco bent his head to take away that restraint, nipping hard at the shell of Harry’s ear and then at his neck. Harry snarled back and dropped the book on his lap, then shoved it irritably to the ground and grabbed Draco’s head. The next moment, Draco was losing his breath in the ferocity of their kiss.

“That’s it,” Draco gasped, when he finally decided he wanted to breathe more than he wanted to kiss Harry. His mouth was wet and sloppy with saliva, but his lips felt dry with the force of his desire. “Upstairs, now.”

Harry stood and walked backwards to the door of the study without taking his eyes off Draco. Draco followed, his anger surging into gladness. It soothed his pride to be regarded as if he were dangerous, and the implied compliment in Harry’s not wishing to remove his gaze from him didn’t hurt, either.

*

Harry had never had someone pin him to his own bed and kiss him until small red spots exploded in front of his eyes.

He had the feeling he’d rather missed out.

Draco had collapsed on top of Harry as if his legs couldn’t hold him anymore and begun kissing him, sucking his tongue, and nipping at his jaw. When he tired of one activity, he went on to the next and performed it with the same single-minded determination. Harry enjoyed them all, and he was squirming against Draco now, rubbing his erection against the knee planted between his legs, making tiny noises in his throat. So far, Draco hadn’t regarded the pleas as important enough to notice.

Harry planned to make him notice.

He wrapped one leg around Draco’s waist and pushed. Draco fell to the bed on his side, his mouth finally losing contact with Harry’s face. Harry whined in spite of himself, but he had more important things to contend with, such as Draco’s hands running up and down his chest, yanking at his robes and shirt, trying to get them both off without attending to either. Harry pushed the hands out of the way and focused hard, channeling as much wandless magic as he dared after what he’d done to Lucius earlier that afternoon.

Draco’s robes wavered about him and collapsed suddenly to the sides, lying like the shriveled skin of a worm. Harry only had enough time to blink and wonder why that simile had occurred to him before Draco grabbed him in turn and wrestled him to the bed. Harry tipped back his head and shivered as teeth scrapped down his throat, followed by a blast of breath that made the wetness left behind tingle.

“This time, I want to be inside you,” said Draco, his tone rendering it a request rather than a demand—just. The hand not holding Harry on the bed by his waist grabbed his erection and squeezed. Harry bucked and made an undignified squalling sound. Draco drew back and smiled at him, his hair hanging loose and fluffy around his face. “I’m so glad you agree.”

“I’d be more agreeable if you’d get the damn clothes off,” Harry huffed, and then ripped Draco’s shirt off. He hadn’t meant to; he’d meant to catch his hand in the collar and pull him close enough to start undoing the buttons. But the angle was wrong and Draco jerked backwards as if startled, which didn’t help. Harry suddenly found himself with a handful of cloth. Draco was fixing him with a slow, appraising stare.

Harry stared back, aware that his heart was beating frantically, and that Draco would be able to see it, since his shirt was pulled back enough for that and Draco had a good sight of the pulse in his throat.

“Well,” Draco said softly, at last, “you have no appreciation of the merits of teasing, or of going slowly, do you? I think that should be corrected.” And he bent his head and pressed his lips to Harry’s throat above his pulse for long, lingering moments before he began to strip off his trousers and pants as carefully as though he was undressing some scared idol.

Harry was going mad before the last button on his trousers had been undone. Draco paused every few moments to brush his thumb or his smallest finger against a patch of bare skin, and whispered to himself about the pleasure he intended to enjoy and have Harry enjoy as soon as they were both naked. Harry squirmed about and tried to bring one hand into play himself, but Draco caught it, kissed his wrist, and looked at him from beneath lowered eyelids with a sweet smile.

“Let me have this,” he whispered. “It’s so little, but it would mean so much to me. Please?” And he used his tongue to touch the underside of Harry’s wrist this time, tracing first the veins and then the bones. Harry gave a little involuntary jerk of his hips; he hadn’t realized before that being hard to the point of pain wasn’t just a metaphor.

“All right,” he said, because what else could he say?

Draco rewarded him with one more touch of the tip of his tongue to the skin of Harry’s wrist, and then he sat back on his haunches and began to undress himself. Harry reached out to touch as Draco’s trousers slipped past his knees, but Draco gave him a direct look, and Harry dropped his hand back to his side with a sigh. He fisted his fingers in the blankets to prevent them from digging into his palms. God knew what Draco might do if he drew blood from clawing at himself; probably stop the whole affair and request earnestly if Harry needed to be taken to St. Mungo’s to see the Healers.

Draco rose to his feet to kick the trousers off, and then touched his pants, running his fingers thoughtfully over the front and pausing as if surprised at the small wet patch that his cock had caused. He didn’t even whimper, but Harry did, the sound high and piercing. Draco peered at him with one half-shaded eye, smiled, and then touched his cock again, closing his thumb and index finger in a pinch and opening his mouth in a soundless gasp of pleasure.

“Damn it, Draco, now,” Harry whined.

Of course that made his pulling off of his pants slower than ever, and he was humming under his breath now, as if this were a show he were putting on in time to the music. He paused and went through a long passage when the cloth was bunched above his groin, just on the point of revealing his cock, as if he couldn’t remember how the song went. Harry uttered several pleading whispers, mostly so low that Draco couldn’t have heard what he was saying, before Draco consented to pull the pants down. His cock was gleaming, giving it an oddly soft look even as Draco arched his back and thrust several times.

Harry was panting and couldn’t catch his breath or wet his lips no matter how often he closed his mouth and swallowed. He made another restless movement, and Draco froze like a statue with the pants around one foot. He wavered, but Harry didn’t want him to either fall over or hold that position forever. He held still, his hands up to show he had no intention of grabbing anything, and at last Draco kicked away the pants and stood naked. He turned in a slow circle, his own hands also lifted, for Harry to admire before he approached the bed.

Harry was in a haze of drugged desire by now, his neck and hips and spine and fingers and mouth twitching with the longing to move. “Please,” he whispered, but didn’t dare put much voice behind it. He held Draco’s eyes instead, trying to show him exactly how much he wanted this. Words wouldn’t have been enough in any case.

*

Draco smiled at Harry in spite of himself, and decided that he might move a little faster. Harry had presumably learned part of his lesson, and Draco didn’t want him to become so sexually frustrated that he simply took himself in hand.

He let his fingers still stay in one place from time to time and smooth the skin as he pulled Harry’s pants completely off and his robes away from his body, and his eyes express his own appreciation. Harry was far from perfect, but he was handsome enough that Draco didn’t know why he had ever felt the urge to disguise himself to have sex with someone else. Shielding the scar and perhaps those distinctive eyes would have been enough. He’d certainly found Brian attractive enough with nothing else.

He kissed Harry’s hipbone and then Summoned lubricant from the corner where they’d left it. He held it up, dangling, and let Harry think for just a moment of the delaying games he could play with this, if he wanted to.

Harry met his eyes defiantly and spread his legs, canting his hips up in a gesture of trust and longing so absolute that Draco found himself kneeling on the bed without quite remembering how he got there. Harry smirked at him, but let his mouth fall open and a slight moan escape him the moment one of Draco’s fingers ventured inside.

Then he tilted his head back and gave himself up to it completely.

Draco shivered with what he couldn’t pretend was less than delight. Harry didn’t look weak; he looked as though he had forgotten what strength and weakness were. He was moaning openly now, panting between the sounds, his hands stretched luxuriously open at his sides, his head lolling back as though he fully trusted the support of the pillow. Once he opened his eyes and looked at Draco, and a single intense smile broke over his face before he closed them again and returned to moaning.

Draco used two fingers before he thought about it. Harry always made him do slightly more than he meant to, give things he had planned to hold back, speak words that he would have regarded himself as careless or at least unguarded for speaking a few weeks ago.

So strange, he thought, as he slid carefully into Harry. The magical connection between them didn’t exist this time—it had started to rise when Draco was stripping, but he had refused without thinking about it, and so had Harry—so he could concentrate more on the heat that engulfed him and the tightness that made him gulp back a sob. He leaned forwards and panted, his forehead resting on Harry’s chest. Two months ago, I wasn’t thinking about Harry, and I would have said the most important gift anyone could give me was my freedom from my father. And now I have that, that and more, and it’s only a small part of my life, not the most important. Why? Why did things change, and how?

But then he was rocking, and Harry was rocking beneath him, driving himself backwards with a faint amused smile on his lips, as though to say, “This is how you fuck someone.” Draco lost track of his thoughts, of most things except the definition of Harry’s muscles beneath his tracing fingers and the clench of legs around his hips and the need to breathe and thrust at the same time, which seemed impossible half of that time.

Release rushed through him like a curse that turned his blood to fire, but behind it was satisfaction such as he had never experienced with any other lover. He stretched out beside Harry after he pulled out and noticed the small pool of wetness trickling down Harry’s hip that meant he had also reached orgasm. Harry shifted towards him, covering Draco with it, too, before Draco could protest, and threw a leg over his body. Then he yawned and went to sleep, snoring before he drew three breaths.

The trust in the gesture made Draco catch his breath in his throat, and cough to clear it.

What he gives me. Is there any limit to it?

*

“Have you thought about what we’re going to do, when the work of the rebellion no longer consumes us as much as it does now?”

Harry looked up from his toast. Kreacher had insisted on cooking breakfast this morning, and the toast was perfectly brown and gold with melted butter. Harry had thanked him, only to have the house-elf retreat into the kitchen and emerge with fresh fruit, porridge drizzled with honey, milk, orange juice, pumpkin juice, and several strips of bacon popping and crackling with their own juices. Even Draco was licking his fingers over the food without any sign of shame.

But it seemed he’d finished licking for the moment and wanted to talk. As Harry watched, his tongue darted out to catch a gleam of wetness on the edge of one lip. Harry put away images of what else it could catch and answered the question.

“I was thinking about it yesterday, but no answer came to me,” he said, and deliberately licked a trace of butter off his own lip to prove that he could play the game, too. He saw Draco’s eyes darken and narrow, and smiled. “I don’t even know if you would wish to live here, and I can abandon everything here, except Kreacher, without much regret. But you have only a flat in London, don’t you?”

“You have other houses, too,” Draco said softly.

Harry raised an eyebrow. “And I have no wish to live in them, or draw more attention to them than I already have. We’ll probably need all of them in the rebellion before long, as safehouses for fugitives from the Ministry—especially if Kingsley decides that I was lying about the Aurors’ involvement after all, or if he can’t uncover Counterstrike—or as hosting places for festivals or as safe meeting places. And I’d prefer to keep the owners distinct as people from me. It makes our support seem even wider than it already is, and that will widen our support in reality.” One aspect of pure-blood culture Harry hadn’t liked as much once he began learning about it was the sheep-like tendency to follow the most powerful people in charitable donations and outwards, superficial behavior. On the other hand, if he could use that tendency to drum up more support for the rebellion, as well as to inspire more of the young pure-bloods to become more open about their own “objectionable” behavior, he might learn to like it more.

“I know, I know,” Draco said. He toyed with the sugar bowl for a moment, then pushed it away from him. “But I was thinking—well. Of other things. After the rebellion is over, you’ll still have me in your life.”

Harry frowned, puzzled. He would have feared that Draco was talking about leaving him, but his trust in him went too deep for that. “Of course I will, and I hope I will for years, if not for the rest of our lives.” Draco’s face softened in a particular way, especially around the eyes, when he was pleased by an answer he hadn’t expected; it did that now. Harry smiled and went on, “But I’ll also return to Metamorphosis, since it doesn’t seem likely that any of the Healers believed Hermione’s story or bothered spreading it. And you’ll return to Malfoy’s Machineries, I assume.”

“I was thinking of ways in which we could set up our own social circle,” Draco said, leaning forwards. “There are some people who would follow us but fear being cast out of society—“

“Even if they don’t enjoy it much?” Harry asked, thinking of the many bored faces, mostly younger, that he had seen at the parties and weddings and festivals he’d attended when he was acting in various personas.

Draco nodded. “What else do they have to do with their lives? But we could set up our own circle. Metamorphosis could help with that. There are some personas you could bring out of retirement briefly, couldn’t you? Simply to ornament the circle I want to set up and bring others to attend?”

Harry sucked in air between his teeth. “And you think that other people would be more likely to come to us, then, when they didn’t have to see the price for supporting the rebellion as utter exile?”

Draco nodded eagerly, a faint flush creeping up along his cheeks. His eyes were staring far away over Harry’s head, and visions made them move and gleam. Harry wasn’t sure what could explain the flush, though. “That isn’t the only use I want to put Metamorphosis to, but it’s the most important one.”

Harry narrowed his eyes. He was almost sure Draco didn’t see the gesture, since he was still staring at images that only existed in his dreams. But Harry managed to keep his voice light and casual. “What other things would be it useful for?”

“To promote my business. To spread rumors that would cause Lucius to pay attention to me, because wouldn’t they seem to be true rumors when they came from many sources?” Draco laughed and leaned back in his chair, and Harry understood the flush now. It was of mounting excitement. Draco had obviously seen a grand and glorious future that he hadn’t deigned to share with Harry until now. “To establish new contacts in parts of society where I don’t have many yet and to court skittish investors. To—“

“That’s not what I want to do,” Harry interrupted quietly.

Draco blinked at him, seeming astonished. Then he leaned forwards in the chair and examined Harry with careful attention for some time. Harry folded his arms and returned the stare. His heart was beating as fast as it had last night, but for more unpleasant reasons.

“Really?” Draco asked. “But surely you don’t object to aiding the cause of the rebellion?”

“Aiding the cause of the rebellion is one thing,” Harry said. “Even insuring that Lucius someday becomes envious enough of your success to demand you as an heir for the Malfoy line is one thing. That’s what you originally paid me seven hundred Galleons to do, after all,” he added, wondering if Draco had forgotten that. “But protecting and supporting your business…it’s not the sort of work I ever did, Draco. It’s not something I really want to do. I’m much more happy supporting gay wizards and witches and doing bodyguard or curse-breaking work.”

“But it’s me,” Draco said.

“Yes, I know.” Harry lifted his eyebrows. “What would you say if I wanted you to spend all your time supporting Metamorphosis instead of running your own business?”

“But you don’t have to give up Metamorphosis to help me,” Draco argued. His flush had deepened. “The parallel’s not exact.”

“But it’s also not something I want to do, any more than you would.”

Draco opened his mouth, then shut it again as if he were listening, or thinking, hard. Let him be thinking, Harry thought, one hand clenching beneath the table. He didn’t want to argue with Draco, but neither would he give him whatever he wanted simply to avoid conflict, the way he had with Ron and Hermione for so many years. That had been possible because they had seen just a single mask, and the other personas could do things they wouldn’t approve of, even laugh at and mock them if that was needed. But Draco saw all of him.

“Why don’t you want to help me?” Draco asked at last, his voice soft and plaintive. Harry was sure that tone must have won the consent of more than one lover before now.

“I do want to help you,” Harry said. “Not in that way.”

“And why not?”

“I don’t like it, I don’t understand it, and the primary purpose of Metamorphosis remains what it always has been,” Harry said precisely. “A place to give me outlets for my personas and to help many people. I want to help you, yes. But I don’t want to change the whole purpose of my life for you.”

Draco flushed once more. His voice was low and intense. “I want us to share most of our lives.”

“But not all of them,” Harry said. “There are things about you I can’t understand, such as why you love your father, and things about me you can’t understand, like this. We’re not going to become one person, Draco. We’re going to argue and pursue separate activities some of the time. This is one of those times.”

“I can’t understand why,” Draco said simply.

“Yes, you’ve made your incomprehension quite clear.” Harry stood and braced his palms flat on the table. “Are you going to accept my refusal or not?”

“If you could explain it more clearly—“

“I’ve given you the explanation,” Harry snapped, and swung on one heel. He was sure Draco would be looking at him in shock. By his own lights, he had been reasonable. But Harry detested that calm refusal to anger that he was using, that staring and speaking softly. It wasn’t meant to present his side of the argument clearly; it was meant to shame his opponent into giving up the argument altogether. “If you don’t like it, that doesn’t matter.”

He strode from the kitchen into the entrance hall and then up the stairs towards the study. His heartbeat was drumming furiously now, and he had to pause on the way up to lean on the banister and pant, as if he had released a great deal of wandless magic.

Every instinct he had accumulated as the broken Harry Potter and the Harry Potter who had been Ron and Hermione’s friend was screaming for him to go back downstairs and apologize to Draco immediately. Did Harry want to lose him?

But the instincts of Gerald, and Elizabeth, and Horace, and the Harry Potter he thought he had become when all his personas joined together, said that he couldn’t give in to Draco out of fear of abandonment, because Draco wouldn’t abandon him over a quarrel like this. It was a gesture of trust and the better thing for both of them if he stayed away until the temptation to yield vanished.

Harry breathed deeply for some time. Then he straightened up and went on climbing, and if he wasn’t calm inside, he knew no one gazing at his face at that moment could have told the difference.

Chapter 44.

Chapter Forty-Three of 'Changing of the Guard'- Conflicting Visions

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