lomonaaeren (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lomonaaeren) wrote2023-11-22 03:52 pm
lomonaaeren) wrote2023-11-22 03:52 pm
[Songs of the Stormy Season]: Adoration Made Manifest, Harry/Draco/Astoria, PG-13
Title: Adoration Made Manifest
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Draco/Astoria, background Draco/Astoria
Content Notes: Ignores the epilogue, mild angst, flirting
Rating: : PG-13
Wordcount: 1700
Summary: Harry didn’t know exactly when he had begun to admire Draco Malfoy and Astoria Greengrass—together and apart. It was one of those facts of life he just existed within, bearing like his scars. He never thought they might want something more than each other, until one night at a Ministry dance.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “Songs of the Stormy Season” one-shots being posted between Halloween and the winter solstice.
Adoration Made Manifest
“May I have this dance, Auror Potter?”
Harry turned away from chatting with Ernie Macmillan, a fellow Auror, and blinked. Astoria Greengrass was standing in front of him, smiling at him, a vision in white with her blonde hair spilling over her dress. Her eyes were a bright hazel—well, he’d known that for years—and entirely focused on him.
“Of course,” Harry said, and abandoned Macmillan without so much as a nod. He took Astoria’s arm gently and guided her across the enormous ballroom to the dance floor.
His heart beat a lot more erratically than he’d allow himself to show, and he made sure to pay attention to the people circulating around them, so he didn’t bump into anyone and embarrass himself in front of Astoria. He was sure his hands were sweaty and damp and unattractive.
And he was also sure that Astoria had approached him for some reason other than attraction, so it didn’t matter anyway.
“You know how to waltz, Auror Potter?”
Harry almost choked on his own spit. He’d done his obligatory dance with Jennifer Rowle, the Head Auror, and they had smiled their mutual loathing at each other with such intensity that Harry had entirely ignored the music and the steps. He hadn’t paid attention after that, either.
“Auror Potter?”
Harry looked down at Astoria, the way her eyes shone with what seemed to be sincere concern, and found himself blurting, “Please call me Harry.”
“I will, then.” Astoria blushed like an opening rose. “Do you?” The music was already beginning, and Harry could see couples gliding around the dance floor out of the corner of his eye.
“Yes. I just—it’s more intimate a dance than I would have expected you to want to do with anyone except your husband, Mrs. Malfoy.”
“You must call me Astoria.”
Harry started to answer, but Astoria tugged on him a little more, and they were on the floor, and it was a good thing that Astoria seemed to know the waltz far better than Harry did, because he was so busy staring at her, someone could have detonated a Muggle bomb in front of him and he wouldn’t have noticed.
“Astoria,” he echoed stupidly.
“Yes,” Astoria said, and pulled him into a twirl that Harry was fairly sure wasn’t a standard waltz move.
But only fairly, and it wasn’t like he was going to be stupid enough to question her when he finally had her in his arms.
He smiled down at her and asked lightly as they turned in a circle, “So does Mr. Malfoy think that you need more exercise than he can provide or something?”
Astoria tucked her chin down. “Why don’t you ask him what he thinks?” And she turned subtly, guiding him off the floor before Harry even knew it, steering him towards a corner of the ballroom that he’d instinctively avoided looking too much at before.
“What—”
“Auror Potter.”
Draco Malfoy was smiling at him, and it wasn’t the complicated, twisted smile that he had given when they met after the war for years and years. For one thing, he had simply grown beyond the problems that had plagued him then. He’d actually changed his mind on blood purity, and Harry knew how long that must have taken.
For another, they’d apologized to each other, Harry for the Sectumsempra and Draco for the many things he’d done, including apologizing to Hermione for calling her a Mudblood.
“Um. Mr. Malfoy.”
“Draco, of course.”
“Uh. All right.” Harry glanced back at Astoria, who had moved so that she was bracketing him, her hand resting on his arm, and her eyes bright with amusement. “Is—is there a reason that you wanted to talk to me?”
“How long did you think we would go without noticing?”
Harry froze, staring into Draco’s eyes, which shone with amusement. Astoria reached out and grabbed a flute of something fizzy and blue from a tray floating by, and moved around to stand with Draco in front of Harry. She smiled at him as she sipped.
“Uh, excuse me?”
“Come, Harry,” Astoria said, voice pitched to a low that wasn’t good for Harry’s blood pressure. “You watch both of us with the kind of adoration that people would use love potions to incite, and you expected us not to notice?”
Harry swallowed. Sometimes he had thought they would notice, but he hadn’t expected anything more than a gentle brush-off—and that only because it wouldn’t have looked good for them to do something more aggressive because of his fame. “I—thought you wouldn’t—care?”
“Why wouldn’t we?”
Draco sounded genuinely baffled, so Harry tried to explain. “You have each other. That’s more than most people have. All most people want. You might find it flattering if someone else—likes you, but that doesn’t mean acting on it.”
Astoria smiled into her drink. Draco said, “We could always have more. We’ve had a few invitations over the years.”
“You have?”
“Of course, Harry. I can call you that?”
Harry took a deep breath and lifted his chin. “You can.”
“Thank you. And yes, we have. Or invitations for one of us, but the person making it asked both of us—not out of genuine desire, but because they thought that might make the one they were really asking more likely to agree.” Draco laughed a little. “I have no interest in leaving Astoria behind even for a night.”
“Nor I, leaving Draco,” Astoria added. “But we did agree early on in our marriage that we might try it if we ever found someone who wanted us both genuinely, not as a grudging addition.”
“How could you possibly tell that was me?”
“The way you looked at us.’
“The way you spoke to us.”
“The way that you accepted us when many people were still wary of what Draco had done in the war.” Astoria took a step towards Harry, not seeming to care about the bystanders who were staring at and muttering about them, or the way she had to look up into his face. “It would have been rational for you to ignore us as much as possible and spend years watching us before giving us a chance, to see if we would really turn our backs on blood purity.”
Harry blinked. “So you wanted me because I was irrational?” he asked slowly.
“I said it was rational for other people to doubt us, not that we preferred it.” Astoria glanced at Draco, and some wordless communication that Harry couldn’t define but desperately wanted to be part of passed between them. “And you would give us everything we wanted, if we let you. If we asked you.”
Harry swallowed. Yes, he would. And although sometimes he had dreamed of being brave and desperate enough to throw himself on their mercy, he’d never thought for sure that it could happen.
“Would you?” he whispered.
“Both of us?” Draco asked.
“Yes.” Harry looked up into his eyes. He had once thought Draco’s face pointy, and it still was, but there was a spirit of strong warmth hiding within it. “Both of you, exactly as you are. As you’ve proven yourself to be.”
Draco’s smile was as warm as Astoria’s, but more private. He glanced around the ballroom. Harry did the same thing, and blushed as he realized a lot of people had stopped dancing to simply gape at them.
“Let’s give them a show,” Draco murmured. He reached out and hooked his arm around Harry’s neck.
Harry swallowed again as he realized what was going to happen. But what was Gryffindor recklessness for, if not to take a risk when it was justified? He swayed a little towards Draco, and Draco closed his eyes and opened his mouth.
There were multiple gasps as they kissed. Harry heard them for a moment, and then he lost himself in the beat of his own heart, the brush of Draco’s breath, the way that his fingers crinkled the cloth of Draco’s robes violently.
Draco pulled back with a satisfying dazed expression, considering that Harry had felt like the dazed one for too long, and licked his lips while staring at Harry. Astoria stepped forwards with a smile. “My turn.”
“As you wish,” Harry said softly, which startled a little laugh out of Astoria. She reached up and laid a hand on his cheek, and Harry turned to kiss her palm before leaning in to kiss her on the mouth.
By now, the noise from the crowd was building up to a really unbearable extent, but it didn’t matter, not when Harry’s mouth was locked on Astoria’s and he was realizing how different her warmth was from Draco’s. He wouldn’t have traded one for the other.
He didn’t know how anyone could ever expect him to give this up.
When they pulled apart from each other at last, Astoria looped her arm through Harry’s and reached out to pull Draco closer. “We’re keeping him.”
“So soon?” And there was that effortless, wordless communication between them again, the way Draco’s eyes softened when he looked at her. This time, though, Harry could dare to hope that he would be part of the communication soon enough.
“Yes, so soon. I didn’t know what we were missing.”
Harry grinned and tilted his head back, taking his own stab at the wordless communication. It must have worked, even if he wasn’t entirely sure what he was saying, because both Draco and Astoria were smiling at him.
Harry turned around. He was in time to catch incredulous stares from Macmillan, Head Auror Rowle, and Rita Skeeter, whose fingers twitched in obvious search of a quill. He would get more when this story started spreading, he was certain.
But he couldn’t care about that.
Not when he cared far more about Astoria laying her head on his shoulder.
And Draco looping an arm around his waist.
And the sensation of happy fire running through him, opening up the perspective of a future filled with adoration that he hadn’t even thought about, that was no longer just his alone.
The End.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Draco/Astoria, background Draco/Astoria
Content Notes: Ignores the epilogue, mild angst, flirting
Rating: : PG-13
Wordcount: 1700
Summary: Harry didn’t know exactly when he had begun to admire Draco Malfoy and Astoria Greengrass—together and apart. It was one of those facts of life he just existed within, bearing like his scars. He never thought they might want something more than each other, until one night at a Ministry dance.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “Songs of the Stormy Season” one-shots being posted between Halloween and the winter solstice.
Adoration Made Manifest
“May I have this dance, Auror Potter?”
Harry turned away from chatting with Ernie Macmillan, a fellow Auror, and blinked. Astoria Greengrass was standing in front of him, smiling at him, a vision in white with her blonde hair spilling over her dress. Her eyes were a bright hazel—well, he’d known that for years—and entirely focused on him.
“Of course,” Harry said, and abandoned Macmillan without so much as a nod. He took Astoria’s arm gently and guided her across the enormous ballroom to the dance floor.
His heart beat a lot more erratically than he’d allow himself to show, and he made sure to pay attention to the people circulating around them, so he didn’t bump into anyone and embarrass himself in front of Astoria. He was sure his hands were sweaty and damp and unattractive.
And he was also sure that Astoria had approached him for some reason other than attraction, so it didn’t matter anyway.
“You know how to waltz, Auror Potter?”
Harry almost choked on his own spit. He’d done his obligatory dance with Jennifer Rowle, the Head Auror, and they had smiled their mutual loathing at each other with such intensity that Harry had entirely ignored the music and the steps. He hadn’t paid attention after that, either.
“Auror Potter?”
Harry looked down at Astoria, the way her eyes shone with what seemed to be sincere concern, and found himself blurting, “Please call me Harry.”
“I will, then.” Astoria blushed like an opening rose. “Do you?” The music was already beginning, and Harry could see couples gliding around the dance floor out of the corner of his eye.
“Yes. I just—it’s more intimate a dance than I would have expected you to want to do with anyone except your husband, Mrs. Malfoy.”
“You must call me Astoria.”
Harry started to answer, but Astoria tugged on him a little more, and they were on the floor, and it was a good thing that Astoria seemed to know the waltz far better than Harry did, because he was so busy staring at her, someone could have detonated a Muggle bomb in front of him and he wouldn’t have noticed.
“Astoria,” he echoed stupidly.
“Yes,” Astoria said, and pulled him into a twirl that Harry was fairly sure wasn’t a standard waltz move.
But only fairly, and it wasn’t like he was going to be stupid enough to question her when he finally had her in his arms.
He smiled down at her and asked lightly as they turned in a circle, “So does Mr. Malfoy think that you need more exercise than he can provide or something?”
Astoria tucked her chin down. “Why don’t you ask him what he thinks?” And she turned subtly, guiding him off the floor before Harry even knew it, steering him towards a corner of the ballroom that he’d instinctively avoided looking too much at before.
“What—”
“Auror Potter.”
Draco Malfoy was smiling at him, and it wasn’t the complicated, twisted smile that he had given when they met after the war for years and years. For one thing, he had simply grown beyond the problems that had plagued him then. He’d actually changed his mind on blood purity, and Harry knew how long that must have taken.
For another, they’d apologized to each other, Harry for the Sectumsempra and Draco for the many things he’d done, including apologizing to Hermione for calling her a Mudblood.
“Um. Mr. Malfoy.”
“Draco, of course.”
“Uh. All right.” Harry glanced back at Astoria, who had moved so that she was bracketing him, her hand resting on his arm, and her eyes bright with amusement. “Is—is there a reason that you wanted to talk to me?”
“How long did you think we would go without noticing?”
Harry froze, staring into Draco’s eyes, which shone with amusement. Astoria reached out and grabbed a flute of something fizzy and blue from a tray floating by, and moved around to stand with Draco in front of Harry. She smiled at him as she sipped.
“Uh, excuse me?”
“Come, Harry,” Astoria said, voice pitched to a low that wasn’t good for Harry’s blood pressure. “You watch both of us with the kind of adoration that people would use love potions to incite, and you expected us not to notice?”
Harry swallowed. Sometimes he had thought they would notice, but he hadn’t expected anything more than a gentle brush-off—and that only because it wouldn’t have looked good for them to do something more aggressive because of his fame. “I—thought you wouldn’t—care?”
“Why wouldn’t we?”
Draco sounded genuinely baffled, so Harry tried to explain. “You have each other. That’s more than most people have. All most people want. You might find it flattering if someone else—likes you, but that doesn’t mean acting on it.”
Astoria smiled into her drink. Draco said, “We could always have more. We’ve had a few invitations over the years.”
“You have?”
“Of course, Harry. I can call you that?”
Harry took a deep breath and lifted his chin. “You can.”
“Thank you. And yes, we have. Or invitations for one of us, but the person making it asked both of us—not out of genuine desire, but because they thought that might make the one they were really asking more likely to agree.” Draco laughed a little. “I have no interest in leaving Astoria behind even for a night.”
“Nor I, leaving Draco,” Astoria added. “But we did agree early on in our marriage that we might try it if we ever found someone who wanted us both genuinely, not as a grudging addition.”
“How could you possibly tell that was me?”
“The way you looked at us.’
“The way you spoke to us.”
“The way that you accepted us when many people were still wary of what Draco had done in the war.” Astoria took a step towards Harry, not seeming to care about the bystanders who were staring at and muttering about them, or the way she had to look up into his face. “It would have been rational for you to ignore us as much as possible and spend years watching us before giving us a chance, to see if we would really turn our backs on blood purity.”
Harry blinked. “So you wanted me because I was irrational?” he asked slowly.
“I said it was rational for other people to doubt us, not that we preferred it.” Astoria glanced at Draco, and some wordless communication that Harry couldn’t define but desperately wanted to be part of passed between them. “And you would give us everything we wanted, if we let you. If we asked you.”
Harry swallowed. Yes, he would. And although sometimes he had dreamed of being brave and desperate enough to throw himself on their mercy, he’d never thought for sure that it could happen.
“Would you?” he whispered.
“Both of us?” Draco asked.
“Yes.” Harry looked up into his eyes. He had once thought Draco’s face pointy, and it still was, but there was a spirit of strong warmth hiding within it. “Both of you, exactly as you are. As you’ve proven yourself to be.”
Draco’s smile was as warm as Astoria’s, but more private. He glanced around the ballroom. Harry did the same thing, and blushed as he realized a lot of people had stopped dancing to simply gape at them.
“Let’s give them a show,” Draco murmured. He reached out and hooked his arm around Harry’s neck.
Harry swallowed again as he realized what was going to happen. But what was Gryffindor recklessness for, if not to take a risk when it was justified? He swayed a little towards Draco, and Draco closed his eyes and opened his mouth.
There were multiple gasps as they kissed. Harry heard them for a moment, and then he lost himself in the beat of his own heart, the brush of Draco’s breath, the way that his fingers crinkled the cloth of Draco’s robes violently.
Draco pulled back with a satisfying dazed expression, considering that Harry had felt like the dazed one for too long, and licked his lips while staring at Harry. Astoria stepped forwards with a smile. “My turn.”
“As you wish,” Harry said softly, which startled a little laugh out of Astoria. She reached up and laid a hand on his cheek, and Harry turned to kiss her palm before leaning in to kiss her on the mouth.
By now, the noise from the crowd was building up to a really unbearable extent, but it didn’t matter, not when Harry’s mouth was locked on Astoria’s and he was realizing how different her warmth was from Draco’s. He wouldn’t have traded one for the other.
He didn’t know how anyone could ever expect him to give this up.
When they pulled apart from each other at last, Astoria looped her arm through Harry’s and reached out to pull Draco closer. “We’re keeping him.”
“So soon?” And there was that effortless, wordless communication between them again, the way Draco’s eyes softened when he looked at her. This time, though, Harry could dare to hope that he would be part of the communication soon enough.
“Yes, so soon. I didn’t know what we were missing.”
Harry grinned and tilted his head back, taking his own stab at the wordless communication. It must have worked, even if he wasn’t entirely sure what he was saying, because both Draco and Astoria were smiling at him.
Harry turned around. He was in time to catch incredulous stares from Macmillan, Head Auror Rowle, and Rita Skeeter, whose fingers twitched in obvious search of a quill. He would get more when this story started spreading, he was certain.
But he couldn’t care about that.
Not when he cared far more about Astoria laying her head on his shoulder.
And Draco looping an arm around his waist.
And the sensation of happy fire running through him, opening up the perspective of a future filled with adoration that he hadn’t even thought about, that was no longer just his alone.
The End.