Chapter Eleven of 'Bloody But Unbowed'- Flexilbility and Patience Are the Greatest Tools

[lomonaaeren]

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Chapter Eleven—Flexibility and Patience Are the Greatest Tools

“Rogers!”

Harry judged he had sounded sufficiently peremptory in his call, because Rogers appeared in the library before he got halfway through the name. Harry still finished speaking it, because stopping would have made him look and sound stupid, and then leaned forwards to fix Rogers with a stern eye. The house-elf’s ears twitched a little. Good. Harry wanted to keep him off-balance.

He had been the one off-balance since he came to Malfoy Manor. It was time to cure that. Perhaps he was only a mediwizard and not a Healer, but some aspects of the training were the same between the two professions. Harry needed a certain amount of authority, or his patient might doubt whether Harry had the skill to cure him.

“Draco said that you were to give me basic instructions in being a Malfoy,” Harry said.

Rogers bobbed his head. “Master Harry Potter is wanting these instructions now?” he asked, the slightest tinge of a hopeful tone to his voice. “Master Harry Potter’s sense is improving hour by hour.”

Harry gave him a tight smile. It was late afternoon, several hours after the elf had fetched him books on Dark Arts from the library downstairs and Narcissa had cured his headache. Harry had learned enough about Dark magic to concern him, but also enough to give him a good idea of why the Mirror Maze binding Lucius was so complicated and what that might indicate. He could pause in his research to attend to his uneven footing.

How could I ever be Draco’s lover if I’m only a child to him?

“Being a Malfoy is at once the simplest and the noblest thing you will ever know,” Rogers began. Harry was slightly shocked to realize his voice had changed. It had the timber and cadence of a human voice now, and a sharp drawl about the vowels that made Harry sure he was imitating a Malfoy, though not one of the three now alive. “The first law is family. Honor your friends, do what you can for your allies, and hold your enemies in holy hatred, but remember that family is the source of all obligations. When no one can shelter or protect you, family will. When you lose love in other places over disagreements or fundamental incompatibility, the family waits with open minds and walls. When the world batters and beats against you because you are a Malfoy and they do not understand this, then remember that you are the strength of others and they are yours. You will earn support by offering support. There is no place for selfishness in family, except for one.

“The earner of that selfishness is also the family. Never risk your life, unless doing so would save the lives of other members of your family. Never sacrifice your life, unless you would save more than one of your relatives by doing so. Give up honor and give up pride and give up freedom before you put the Malfoys at risk. If you are the last Malfoy left alive, your duty is to flee and find sanctuary where you may sire, bear, or adopt children to come after you and continue the blood.”

Harry felt himself twitch. It must have shown on his face, because Rogers paused and then asked in his own voice, “Is Master Harry Potter misunderstanding something? Shall Rogers be explaining it again?”

Harry took a deep breath, and then realized he didn’t even have the words to express his disgust. Wordlessly, he gestured for Rogers to continue. Rogers bowed, and his voice once again assumed the aristocratic Malfoy tones. Harry decided that he would think of that voice as Abraxas Malfoy, Draco’s grandfather, until it was proven otherwise.

“The second law is beauty.”

Of course it is, Harry thought, and barely kept himself from rolling his eyes. I knew there had to be a reason they were obsessed with it.

“Whilst the family must sometimes be reduced to the most basic level in order to survive, when we are above that level, we should be able to afford beauty in our lives. As food nourishes the body, beauty nourishes the soul, and makes us more refined and responsive, traits I should not need to explain the usefulness of. Within the walls of the home, gather what beauty you can. When you have guests, introduce them to the treasures of your heart and soul that you feel will best benefit them and at least not endanger you. Rejoice in as many different forms of beauty as possible—in knowledge, in wisdom, in art, in color, in sound, in form and feature.”

Harry barely concealed a snort. Does Draco realize he’s breaking the second law by associating with me?

“The third law is strength. Never willingly introduce weakness into the family, except in obedience to one of the first two laws.”

Another rule Draco hasn’t obeyed, Harry thought, and idly tossed his wand from one hand to the other—beneath the table, so that Rogers wouldn’t notice. He might argue that I am family now, but his first loyalty should have been to Lucius and Narcissa.

“Bow and bend when necessary, so that you will not break and thus leave a hole in the wall of your family. Glide in harmony with the world, in harmony with the great laws and changes that sweep across you. Amass wealth, magic, connections, and talents so that you will have many different sources of strength. If the family survives in power, we can afford to lose our pride.”

And Lucius isn’t a very good Malfoy, either, considering how he tried to stand against Dumbledore and with Voldemort. Harry sighed and laid his wand down.

“Master Harry Potter is being tired?” Rogers lifted a hand—to Apparate him back to the bed, Harry thought.

“No!” Harry said hastily. Rogers looked at him with narrowed eyes. “I, ah, I’m fine. But I need time to think about what I just heard.”

Rogers examined him closely, even taking a step nearer the table, as if that would reveal secrets about Harry he hadn’t noticed before. Then he inclined his head gravely, said, “Master Harry Potter is thinking swiftly,” and vanished.

Harry clasped his hands behind his head and did indeed start thinking swiftly. There had to be some way that he could use the knowledge he’d just gained to hold his own among the Malfoys. Narcissa would be harder to deal with than Lucius or Draco, but put that aside for now, he thought—just as he’d had to put aside the idea of disappointing Healer Pontiff before he took the Potions exam, for fear that that one worry would consume him. Think. Family, beauty, strength. He’d seen displays of all three in the Manor. What attack would they not be expecting?

The truth came to him, and Harry shifted in his chair and grumbled under his breath. They expected defiance from him, a childish, sulky resistance to their gifts and attentions and care. If he yielded for a moment, he might take them off-guard for long enough to gain back his self-respect.

The tactic didn’t appeal to Harry. He preferred honesty. But he’d been as honest as he could and got nowhere. In fact, Draco appeared to frown harder when Harry told him the truth about the way he thought and felt.

He half-closed his eyes and tightened the grip of his hands to his head. And then he started grinning.

Well, let’s see the way they react when I tell them what I’ve learned about Lucius’s chances for surviving, in a perfectly Malfoy fashion.

*

Harry knocked briskly on the door of Lucius’s rooms. Though Rogers had offered to escort him, Harry had politely put him off. The elf looked as if he didn’t know whether to approve of the way Harry was becoming at home in the Manor or worry that Harry wouldn’t have proper attendance. Harry had reminded him that the bed in his rooms should be made, though, and that he didn’t have the first idea about how to do it, which made Rogers give him a withering look. Presumably at the idea that a human should make a bed at all. He’d hurried off to do it with his ears flapping against his cheeks.

And Harry had managed to find his way to Lucius’s rooms with only a wrong turn or two along the way. Well, why not? He’d learned Hogwarts quickly, and St. Mungo’s. And whilst he might not be able to remember every corridor and every turning, he could remember the impressions the rooms left on him. Thus he knew he was on the right track when his eyes stung and burned in the corridor that resembled a desert, and next he plunged through a study that, merely by being filled with the smell of dampness and a rustling green quiet, suggested a forest where no humans had ever walked. And in the end he recognized the glossy window, blue as sapphires, that was set in the wall across from Lucius’s door.

No one answered his knock for long moments, and Harry tensed, wondering if he had chosen the one afternoon that Lucius had decided to walk about in the gardens or some such thing. Or maybe he was lying helpless on the floor, bleeding from another of those strange wounds, reaching desperately towards the door—

Harry was about to draw his wand and try to dissipate the wards covering the door when it swung open on its own. Lucius, his wand in his hand, lay propped up on his pillows. Draco stood on the right side of his bed, Narcissa on the left. Both were staring at Harry with identical startled expressions; Harry had never realized before how much Draco looked like his mother. Lucius had the same smile he’d shown Harry during his previous visit.

The first show is in front of all three of them? Wonderful.

But Harry put up his chin and stepped into the room as though he had expected nothing less, and in fact as if he were fully prepared to deal with this. Strength, he reminded himself as he nodded to Lucius. Beauty, and he made a graceful bow to Narcissa, the kind he had once practiced sarcastically in front of Emptyweed until the man had noticed it was sarcastic and made him stop. Family, and he gave a temperate smile to Draco. He found Draco much more attractive than he had a few days ago, since he seemed willing to spend time on Harry instead of fading into the background the moment he realized he couldn’t get Harry promptly into bed. But in the end, Harry wasn’t in the Manor to ensure they became lovers. He was here to cure Lucius.

“Lucius,” he said, though the name tasted strange on his lips. Strength, he reminded himself. At least he could see the surprise openly on Draco’s face; Narcissa had already covered hers with a warm smile that she could pretend came from Harry choosing to address Lucius by his first name. “I want you to try and remember if any of the Death Eaters you worked with had Healing talent.”

Lucius’s face went blank. Draco blinked at Harry as if he couldn’t believe the words he’d just heard. Narcissa chilled her smile a touch and looked back and forth between her husband and Harry.

“Rodolphus Lestrange did,” said Lucius, and cleared his throat. “But I think you will find that he is firmly in Azkaban, and unlikely to be in a position to curse me. My visits to Azkaban have been of long duration, but few in number.”

Harry found himself grinning. He liked it that Lucius could still respond with dry humor even after being startled.

“I didn’t plan to accuse Lestrange,” he said. “But I wanted to know if someone could have known both several spells that a Healer would and also the Sectumsempra curse, the spell that almost cut your heart out of your chest the other day. A Death Eater seems the likeliest candidate. At least, I know a Death Eater invented that curse.”

“Who?” Narcissa demanded.

“Severus Snape,” Harry answered, and saw her flinch. More untold story, no doubt. He wondered for a moment how many blanks they left in their conversation to him even now, when they considered him family. They hadn’t tried to mention the Death Eaters since he’d been in the house, for instance.

“You intrigue me, Harry,” Lucius murmured. “Please do tell me what made you think of my old associates.”

“The Sectumsempra curse was the first clue,” said Harry. “And then I realized that various parts of the Mirror Maze do require knowledge of Healing magic—but most of the spells that compose it are reversible.” He nodded to Narcissa. “I actually owe my realization to a comment Narcissa made about the headache curse she found on me.”

“Headache curse?” Draco spoke as if someone had driven a needle into his arm.

Harry turned and stared at him for long moments. Draco looked back, his face white and his mouth pinched. The pain Harry had suffered seemed to hurt him.

A guard Harry hadn’t realized he was keeping up relaxed. Yes. He could accept, now, that Draco’s motives for courting him were deeper than they had appeared, even if Harry didn’t really understand them yet. Draco could feign coolness, helpfulness, maybe even lust, but Harry trusted his own estimation of pain. That on Draco’s face was real.

And maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to get to know him better, Harry reflected. He’d always stood up again from the ruins of his relationships and gone on; it seemed stupid to him to mourn what could have been for years and years. And Draco was, at the very least, different from Xavier. I could try it and see what happens. And I could always leave it behind if it didn’t work out.

“Someone had cast a headache curse on Harry,” said Narcissa, her voice soft and sweet and not fooling Harry for a moment. “I should have banished it the moment he stepped through the Floo. I can only attribute the fact that I did not to the excitement over his arrival.”

No mention of an apology this time, Harry noted. Well, good. Apparently the forgiveness he had given her laid that to rest. He relaxed and continued, looking at Lucius. “So your enemies don’t have to have a Healer to cast that particular Mirror Maze. They only need someone who can cast the curses, the harmful magic, that’s beneficial if reversed. Looking up the reversals would be easy enough for anyone with a modicum of talent at research and access to some books about the Dark Arts.” He cast Hermione’s modified spell, and the image of the sideways Mirror Maze once again appeared on the parchment hanging in midair. “For example, the spell that maps your body and exposes vulnerabilities? That’s the one Healers use. It’s considered a benign spell because it only creates the map to tell them where a disease or curse could spread next. But it exists in the opposite form as the Hunter’s Curse, Aucupo. That greatly increases the chance of something going wrong at the weak points of the body. Dark wizards like to use that one to soften up their enemies before attacking from ambush.”

“I have heard of the Hunter’s Curse,” Lucius said. “I did not realize its connection to the body-mapping spell. But, as you said, it would not be difficult to discover that.”

“Have you used it?” Harry asked.

Lucius looked at him without flinching. “Yes.”

“Did other Death Eaters?”

Lucius gave him a smile that had a tinge of approval to it and moved the sheet out of the way, so that the dark skull and snake on his arm showed obscenely. “Yes.”

Harry nodded. “Then what we want to look for are connections to the Death Eaters and uses of their research, rather than the involvement of Death Eaters themselves. No insult intended to present company,” and he raised an eyebrow at Lucius, carefully not looking at Narcissa and Draco, “but I think if any of them were actually involved, they would have revealed their presence by now. Patience was never their strong suit.”

“They would have the more reason to destroy me, because it is mine,” said Lucius. “Very well, Harry. I assume you’d like to know where some of the refuges were?”

“Yes,” said Harry. “Along with a list of what you think might have been stored there—books, wands, weapons—and the people who frequented them, so we can learn who had a chance to pick up on the knowledge. I’ll also need to know how to secure records of visitors to Azkaban. It’s possible someone spoke to Lestrange and gained the knowledge he or she needed to cast the curse that way.”

“Almost certain.” Lucius was looking at him with a new respect and an interest that Harry hoped was for his ideas and not for him. “Very well. I didn’t leave Azkaban without making a few friends. If they remember the obligations of friendship—and very few forget such things when it comes to a Malfoy—then I should have the records of visitors to all former Death Eaters’ cells within a day. In the meantime, I will make lists of the information on the refuges.”

“You’re well enough to do so?” Harry asked, remembering now what he thought he should have from the beginning, that Lucius was sick and perhaps in no condition to stand this much labor.

Lucius smiled at him, and this was a softer and warmer expression yet. “Thank you for your concern,” he said. “You are behaving just as a son should to a father.” Harry eyed him, but detected no sarcasm in the words. “But I can sacrifice a small bit of strength in the short term for a more secure footing in the long term.”

Harry studied him critically, and had to admit that sounded like the truth, rather than mere obedience to the Malfoy laws. He had color back in his face, a more relaxed set of lines around his eyes, and less abrupt movements when he Summoned a house-elf and ordered an owl and a stack of parchment sent to him. Harry cast a few surreptitious spells, but they revealed no new wounds and no new complications from the Mirror Maze.

Speaking of which, I should study the way the spells connect again, Harry thought, and nodded to Narcissa as he stepped out of the room. She was watching him with a speculative expression that could have related to the headache curse, the way he’d explained what he thought the connection of the Death Eaters with her husband’s condition might be, or a million other things. Harry would be obedient to the tenets of his new family and not waste strength trying to figure it out.

He had meant to nod to Draco and leave him behind, too, but instead he found himself with company as he walked towards the far side of the house where his rooms were. Draco seemed content to confine himself almost to silence, only murmuring a few words of advice when Harry started to wander out of the true path. On the other hand, his eyes almost never left Harry, and there was in them a warmth to match Lucius’s smile. Harry turned when he was at the door of his bedroom and asked, “What?”

“May I come in?” Draco asked quietly.

Time to test whether they meant it about respecting my privacy, as the wards seem to imply. “What can’t you say to me here in the corridor that you can say in my room?” Harry challenged, emphasizing the possessive pronoun just to see what Draco would do.

Draco gave him an encouraging look instead of reacting with either anger or hurt, as Harry had expected. Then Harry remembered that Draco had wanted him to take possession of the rooms and treat them as his own. He scowled and folded his arms across his chest.

Draco put a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Nothing,” he said. “But I have a fairly lengthy speech to make. It’s easier to do that sitting down in your library.”

Harry hissed under his breath. He felt much less out of his depth than he had—if nothing else, Draco was treating him like an adult now—but he still thought he was losing their private contest. He couldn’t think of a good reason to refuse.

When in doubt, try to take them by surprise, he thought, and stepped out of the way, gesturing into the room. “If you will,” he said.

Draco laughed, a quick delighted sound that Harry thought he hadn’t meant to let escape, and moved past him, giving him another look of brilliant desire from under lowered eyelids. Harry smiled without realizing he would and found himself watching the way Draco moved, his body in perfect balance, his arse swaying enough to attract attention but not to seem blatant.

And why shouldn’t I enjoy myself? he asked himself as he shut the bedroom door. Flexibility and patience are the greatest tools, Healer Pontiff says. I’ve been practicing too much of the latter and not enough of the former. I kept my personal life and my professional life in balance when I dated Xavier and Jennifer, and they were the ones who consumed the most of my time. Why couldn’t I do the same thing whilst dating Draco?

Harry frowned as he followed Draco into the library, trying to decide if those thoughts were more practical or more self-serving. He took the chair behind the desk piled high with books and raised an eyebrow that Draco could take as encouraging if he wanted to.

Draco sat with a nod and appeared to spend a moment inspecting the library, though Harry thought everything looked more or less as it had the last time he was present. Then he sighed deeply and stared into Harry’s eyes.

“Don’t let me force you to tell me anything,” Harry said. It was the sort of thought he wouldn’t have voiced a week ago, but a week ago he hadn’t been living in Malfoy Manor and continually mystified by Draco’s flirtation tactics.

Draco looked down with a faint smile. “Being honest is harder than I thought it would be,” he said. “And yet you did it all the time in school.” His voice sped up, and Harry could hear the sharp edges of discomfort on his words. “I was attracted to you at first only because you were there, and fit, and it’s been a while since I shagged. The pressures of work, of studying.” He gave a shrug that he stopped halfway through, because, Harry thought, he’d started it as a casual gesture and then it acquired more weight than he’d meant to give it. “You know what it’s like.”

Yes, I do. I didn’t expect to date anyone else who did. Harry shifted his weight and reminded himself that a similarity in their goals wasn’t a good enough reason to like Draco, just as his taking the trouble to learn something about Healing wasn’t. But Ginny hadn’t had a job whilst Harry dated her, and Francis had never taken his seriously, and Julius weathered the pressures of being an Auror with casual grace, and Xavier had never chased an idea to its conclusion…

“But I saw—I saw that you were what you always presented yourself as.” Draco tried to wave a hand, but it dropped limply to his side. He looked away, and Harry wondered if he was seeing the far wall. “The hero. The noble and self-sacrificing man who would do anything for anyone, even a man he hated.”

“I wasn’t that way when I was a teenager,” Harry began. He’d met many people who’d thought he was a hero from the time he could walk, and the speech was automatic by now. “You were righter about me than I like to think, when we were both teenagers. I only started learning dedication and real heroism when I became a mediwizard.”

“But you know it now,” Draco said quietly, and turned back to him so slowly Harry thought he was struggling with pride that would have made it easier for him to avoid Harry’s eyes whilst they talked. “And that’s what I decided I wanted for myself. I wanted to bind you more closely to the family, in case you got tired of taking care of Father whilst he was still sick.”

Harry stared at him. “It’s not flattering to hear that I was right.”

“You were right then,” said Draco. “But your speech the night you were taken off the case, before you left for hospital, convinced me. You wanted someone you could like. That made sense to me. And so I tried to become the kind of person you would like. Softer. More open with my emotions. That was easier when you were family and I didn’t have to assume I was teaching one of our enemies curses that could be used against me later.”

Harry ran a hand through his hair, a bit overwhelmed. Draco spoke the truth as simply and naturally as he had spoken the orders to Rogers, forcing him to watch Harry.

The memory roused his anger again. Harry narrowed his eyes and said, “And you thought ordering a house-elf around after me would make me like you more?”

Draco didn’t blush. “You need help, and that must balance indulging you,” he said. “No one can pour their strength, their courage, their being, down a well forever without encouragement. You need replenishing. You look the way I did when I was studying for the first exam that would advance me in my mastery. I made myself sick and nearly failed because I was so certain I could pass it if I only stayed up and studied for a few more hours.”

Harry ignored the familiar reasoning. “I don’t have an exam to pass.”

Draco narrowed his eyes. “From what I’ve seen of you, you treat every case you take on as an exam you’ll be killed for failing.”

Harry folded his arms and glared at him. “Do you have anything pleasant to say? First you assure me my suspicions of you were correct and then you claim I’m in so much need I have to be coddled and taken care of like a child.”

“Only because you were acting like a child,” Draco said. “You obviously haven’t been in the past few days. You let my mother take away your headache curse. You’ve talked to Rogers about how to behave as a Malfoy. You found out the information you’ll need to cure Father without insane amounts of time spent studying.” He smiled smugly. “And you’ve got the correct amounts of food and sleep. You feel better, don’t you?”

“It’s not about what I feel,” Harry said. He seemed to understand about the studying, about the drive to achieve more than mediocrity. Why is he contradicting himself now? “It’s about what I can accomplish.”

Draco leaned forwards and caught his wrists. The gesture reminded Harry of Narcissa once more. Uneasily, he tried to free his hands. Draco wouldn’t let him go, instead staring into his eyes.

“You’re more than a hero,” Draco said fiercely, but softly, in a voice Harry didn’t think someone would have heard if he was on the other side of the room. “You’re more than a mediwizard. I’m attracted to those qualities, of course I am, but if you were a self-sufficient monolith, I wouldn’t be. I want to be useful to you, too. I want to give you what you need. A day ago that was better physical health. Now I think it’s a sense of greater self-worth.” He released Harry’s right wrist, but only to fold two fingers under his chin and tilt his head to the side. His eyes were worse than Lucius’s as far as piercing quality went, Harry thought.

“You’re still family even when you don’t end the day with some daring achievement,” he said. “I still like you even when you’re at your most exasperating. I can live with your affection for Weasleys and Grangers.” He spoke those words with a faint smile. “I’m sure we’ll argue, as we’ve already done, but I’m prepared to put up with that. And I can’t wait to bring out more of those parts of you I’ve only seen in passing: your sense of humor, your cleverness, your quickness at improvisation when something goes wrong. Though I hope to train you out of sacrificing your life at the first chance,” he added dryly.

Harry shook his head.

“What now?” Draco asked. His voice was gentleness itself.

Harry looked to the side. There was a horrid stinging about his eyes, but when he concentrated, it went away. “This is mad,” he whispered. “People’s lives don’t change like that, this suddenly. You couldn’t have formed an attachment to me this deep over a few days, and if you did, it was only because of gratitude, because I saved your father’s life. It won’t last.”

“You haven’t been a Malfoy all your life,” Draco said. “You still don’t understand what we see in blood. Ask Rogers to tell you about that. He’s a good source of information, because he’s served several generations of the family and understands us well.” He paused reflectively. “Not like that son of his, that Dobby.”

Harry turned back so suddenly a faint tinge of headache returned to haunt him. “Dobby was Rogers’s son?”

“Yes,” Draco said, and frowned at him. “Don’t tell me you never wondered where little house-elves came from.”

“I put the question aside as not worth reconsidering,” Harry snapped, and returned to the main subject of the conversation. “You can’t—“

“The first time my life changed suddenly was when you rejected my friendship,” said Draco. “Then my father went to Azkaban. And suddenly I was forced to save my family because the Dark Lord would kill them if I didn’t. After a long year of terror, I discovered I couldn’t kill and had to flee Hogwarts. Then there was another long year of terror, punctuated by constant little revelations, like the fact that my aunt was mad or the fact that I didn’t want you to die. And then I decided to be a Potions master overnight, and that turned out to be the best decision I could have made. And then Father got sick, and you saved his life.”

He paused for effect. “My life has been all sudden choices for the last few years, Harry. Most of them related to you in some way. If I hadn’t developed the ability to adapt to those choices, and accept that the feelings born of them were lasting and real, I never would have survived.”

Harry worried his lip. He was sure there was a flaw in Draco’s logic somewhere, but damned if he could see it.

“Stop that,” Draco whispered. He leaned in and pushed his thumb against Harry’s teeth, urging them backwards and off his lip. “If you want it bitten, let me do it.”

And then he brushed his mouth, open to expose his teeth, against Harry’s lips. Harry swallowed and sat still, not giving in to his first impulse to gape. Draco would probably have seized the chance to snog him (unless that didn’t fit with the Malfoy code), and Harry didn’t think he was ready for that yet.

Draco’s mouth didn’t taste supernaturally sweet. His kiss didn’t inspire Harry to fling himself to the floor and beg for sex. But he kept his eyes open as he kissed, and the intense, burning stare he used pinned Harry in his seat even after Draco had pulled away and strolled towards the door.

Draco paused with his hand on the doorframe where the library became the bedroom, and murmured, “I’m going to have you if you’ll have me. I’m going to do my best to help you and show you why you should like me. I’ve made that as clear as I know how.” His smile deepened. “Any other questions?”

For some reason, Harry could only think of what Lucius had showed him earlier. Perhaps his mind had fled in self-defense to the memory he could conjure up on a moment’s notice that was most opposite the kiss.

“Do you have a Dark Mark?” he blurted.

Draco reached slowly towards the sleeve of his robe. Harry found himself sucking in his breath and leaning forwards.

Then Draco’s hand dropped, and he winked. “I think,” he said, “that this is something you should find out for yourself, when you have occasion to look more closely at my skin.” And he bowed and left the room without looking back.

Harry glared after him. There was something cosmically unfair about the existence of a person who managed to turn a reference to the Dark Mark into flirtation.

Chapter 12.

Comments

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

"maddeningly" and "insanely"...good words for this part of the story and what Harry feels about it. :)