lomonaaeren

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Eighteen—Harry On Display

“And you think this necessary?” Lucius’s voice was deep with skepticism. The last time he had sounded like that, Draco thought as he leaned against the wall and rolled tension out of his neck, was when Draco had insisted that he needed the newest Firebolt model for a Potions mastery demonstration (there were some potions that could only be brewed at high speed flying upside down and backwards).

“I do.” Draco kept his voice cool and patient. Lucius responded best to purely intellectual appeals. “One person asking will not have the force of two people doing so. And considering that your acquaintances know more about your past with Harry than they do about mine with him—well.” He shrugged and smiled. “They are more likely to pay attention if you write to them.”

“I am not at my best at the moment.” Lucius made a slight gesture towards his chest, leaving Draco to admire the understatement. “They may disregard my pleas altogether.”

“I’m not asking for pleas,” Draco said, surprised. “Questions only. Bargains.”

“We do not have so much money that—“

“Bargains to be fulfilled with potions,” Draco interrupted smoothly.

Lucius paused, then chuckled. “Ah, yes,” he said. “At times it is reassuring to remember that I have a Potions master for a son.”

When you remember it, Draco wanted to say, but he saw no reason to be impertinent. He was asking his father to do a favor for him: writing to the other members of Hogwarts’ Board of Governors and asking them to do what they could to give him access to Harry’s student records. Draco himself had written to friends from Slytherin House and a few of the more politically connected Potions mastery students he worked with. Both those routes might produce information on Harry’s Muggle family in time, but neither was as direct.

Besides, with Potions mastery students able to brew their own potions, Draco thought their aid was likely to be more expensive.

“Very well,” said Lucius. “I will write.” He paused. “Not that I see a need. Harry Potter seems to me to be a normal young man, when one adjusts one’s mental parameters to remember that he was raised outside the pure-blood families.”

“It’s more than a lack of knowledge of our customs,” Draco said quietly. “It’s a resistance to them. He doesn’t think that he deserves the food and the comforts we want to give him. And I saw his house, Father. He was living in the middle of a ruin, with minimal improvements. I’m sure he would say it was because he spent so much time in hospital, but a wizard who neglects his home—“

Lucius grimaced and nodded. Draco looked around again at the big, beautiful bedroom his father had long since claimed for his own. A wizard’s home was the thing that kept him alive, kept his family alive. A warded manor house or even a room, strongly protected enough, could resist enemies, contain supplies of food, and allow the captive wizard or wizards time to research their way out of their predicament. A wizard who neglected his home was neglecting his own bodily and mental health.

“I will ask,” said Lucius. “It’s ludicrous that he should die of neglect before he has a real chance to become part of our family.”

Draco smiled.

Someone knocked on the door, but the rhythm and the confidence of it told Draco it was his mother. Lucius asked her to come in anyway; most of the time, his parents maintained courtesies between themselves, despite their constant contests.

“Someone in St. Mungo’s wanted to harm Harry,” Narcissa said, as she closed the door behind her. “He had a headache curse on him, one that could have flared unpredictably at any time and no doubt debilitated him from getting proper work done.”

Draco felt his jaw clench. Lucius made a soft, thoughtful noise, probably to cover his own surprise. Draco felt no need to do so; his parents already knew the way he felt about Harry. “Why didn’t you notice that at once?” he demanded.

Narcissa gave him a long, slow look that said she fully understood her own negligence and saw no need for him to comment upon it. “Because I had other things to think about,” she said, “and because your father’s wounds had unnecessarily distracted me. It will not happen again.” She looked at Lucius and began to speak before Draco could request more reassurances. “Given how much hostility towards Harry appears to exist in St. Mungo’s, perhaps it would be wise to tell him about your conflicts with the hospital administrators.”

“The headache curse was of long duration?” Lucius asked, lifting himself against his pillows.

“Yes,” Narcissa admitted. “At least three months, quite possibly longer. I do not believe Harry would be able to pinpoint a beginning to the headaches, based on his manner when I asked him. He had no idea they were caused by a curse; he spoke as if they had always been a part of his life.”

Draco growled under his breath. Of course Harry would think that. He had never cared enough about himself to go and seek out magical cures to his problems. Perhaps his relatives had done that to him, or simple years of growing up as a Muggle. Draco would never know.

Of course, I can still punish the Muggle relatives for it if we can’t catch who did this, he thought hopefully.

“I’ve placed my memory of removing the curse in a Pensieve,” said Narcissa. “I should be able to identify the magical signature soon, and if it was someone I met in hospital, I will know.”

Draco looked at his mother admiringly. He had never been able to manipulate a Pensieve memory that way, so that it would show traces of magic as well as sensory input. On the other hand, she couldn’t create a life-saving potion out of seaweed and orange peels, so perhaps it balanced out.

“And if it was someone you did not meet?” Lucius asked, who had apparently sprung ahead to some conclusion Draco hadn’t reached. He was frowning slightly.

“Then I will need to disguise myself and return to St. Mungo’s,” Narcissa said, as if she were telling the house-elves what to prepare for dinner that night.

“You cannot,” Lucius said with some authority.

Draco leaned forwards, just enough so that Lucius could see the corner of his upturned lip and his meticulously narrowed eyes. “Father,” he said, in the tone that he usually used for addressing people far younger than himself.

Lucius looked at him with a blank, composed face.

“Father,” Draco repeated. “You would let a crime committed on a member of our family go unpunished? You know the law would not be on our side, and would take too long in any case. For months—for years—Harry has suffered. Would you have his new family be like his thoughtless friends and refuse to notice that?”

“I would have us be sure of how long he has suffered, first, and match the vengeance to that length,” said Lucius, and turned to Narcissa. “Investigating the Pensieve memory of the curse would tell you that?”

“It would.” Narcissa inclined her head, not deigning to notice the way Draco looked at her.

“Well, then,” Lucius said. “I insist the investigation be conducted first, before another member of our family ventures back into danger. One family member must not be sacrificed to save another.”

And to that, Draco had to accede. The same logic that had saved Harry’s and Lucius’s lives when they used the family blood magic must prevail now. Draco sighed. He would have to content himself with private fantasies of vengeance until his mother finished her research.

Someone knocked on the door.

Draco lifted his head, blinking. It had to be Harry, of course, because the house-elves would simply spring into the room and no one else was in the house—

Or it was one of the enemies, with the wards fallen.

Draco stepped smoothly closer to the bed, his mother mimicking him on the other side. Lucius drew his wand openly; Draco and Narcissa slipped theirs into their hands, out of their sleeves. Harry, if it was only him, was more likely to understand Lucius’s paranoia than theirs.

Lucius spoke the spell that would cause the door to open on its own in a breath that was little more than a sigh. Draco tensed, aware that he might be fighting for his life in moments, dreamily aware that it was hard to think so. And yet, that dreaminess would explode into swift action if it needed to. He knew himself.

The door opened, and Harry stood framed in it. He stood blinking at them for a moment, as if he were as surprised as they were by his presence here. Then Harry lifted his chin and practically swaggered into the room.

A nod to Lucius, a bow to Narcissa, and a smile to Draco—tepid as birdbath water—followed. Draco was sure he had practiced the motions, and wondered at the change even as he delighted in it. Harry must have decided to try to appear more confident in front of them, but why? Had he decided that he needed to?

“Lucius,” he said, as though the name were saltwater on his lips. His eyes flicked for one moment to Draco’s, then to Narcissa’s face. She was smiling, Draco saw, with that sideways glance that, combined with long knowledge, told him what his mother was doing more accurately than the most open stare. “I want you to try and remember if any of the Death Eaters you worked with had Healing talent.”

Draco blinked. Yes, perhaps the enemies Father has in hospital administration are linked to the ones who attacked him, and perhaps it would be better for Harry if he knew about Father’s quarrels with the board of St. Mungo’s. Of course, that is his information to reveal, and not mine.

“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 grinned. Draco found himself pleased about that. If Harry liked his father’s sense of humor, he might also come to like Draco’s, which Draco had been told was similar.

“I didn’t plan to accuse Lestrange,” Harry 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.”

He did indeed, Draco thought, and fought the urge to trace the scars on his chest, invisible under the line of his shirt.

“Who?” Narcissa demanded.

“Severus Snape,” Harry answered.

His mother flinched. Draco concealed a sigh. Though Narcissa had saved several lives by going to Severus and demanding his protection for Draco, and Draco himself could not conceive of what would have happened had she not asked for the Unbreakable Vow, she still carried a burden of guilt over it. Or, at least, a burden of self-loathing; she should have been more clever, more foreseeing, Draco knew she believed. Never mind that she had been fighting the horrors of close contact with Voldemort, having her husband in prison, and knowing that he would ask an impossible task of her son at the time.

“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 made sure to fling sharpness into his voice. Harry had to know that Draco would always react sharply to news that he had been in physical harm’s way.

Harry turned and stared at him for long moments. Draco looked back, and, after a moment’s hesitation, let the hurt he felt at knowing Harry had been in danger for months, for years, show in his face. Harry blinked and half-lowered his head, mouth pursed as if he’d have to think about this.

Do, Harry, Draco urged him silently. Think about what kind of person would want you to be safe, would worry when you hurt yourself, and would want you to accept gifts. Is it such a stretch that I might love and value you? Can you judge me by my actions instead of your preconceptions?

“Someone had cast a headache curse on Harry,” said Narcissa, her voice soft and sweet to keep up the deception that Harry had betrayed himself instead of the curse being previous knowledge. “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.”

Harry gave a small shiver of his shoulders, as if he disliked the way Narcissa took the blame for not noticing the curse on herself, and then turned back to 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 waved his wand, and the image of the sideways Mirror Maze he had used just before the attack of the Dark magic on Lucius appeared again. “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.”

Bitterness scored his voice like acid working on iron. Draco shifted his weight invisibly from one leg to the other. What could teach him to think better of Dark wizards?

“I have heard of the Hunter’s Curse,” Lucius said. There were slight lines around his eyes to give him the impression of hard concentration—habit, Draco knew. His father rarely showed his full intelligence in front of anyone. “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.”

Harry’s mouth set in a small, hard line, like someone condemned to chew on oysters for three days, but he continued speaking without inflection. “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. Draco blinked. It was a tactic he would not have thought of, confronting Harry with the symbol of what he hated so that he could choose to accept it or snarl and leave. “Yes.”

Harry nodded, though his eyes flicked across the Dark Mark as rapidly as a dreamer’s closed ones. “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, “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?”

And he spoke that line without a tremor, giving up knowledge that he had denied to Draco when Draco asked him. Draco kept his eyes on the bed to avoid tossing him a sour glance. He does not favor Harry over you, he reminded himself. He’s doing what he needs to win Harry’s trust and loyalty. God knows that you don’t need sibling rivalry to complicate the issues between you right now.

“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 Harry with a new respect and interest. Draco understood the feeling. He had not realized that Harry could plan so well about things that did not concern his patients’ health. Or could he plan this because he felt it concerned Lucius, and his Healer’s mind would turn backwards and forwards seeking a way to eliminate the danger? Draco shook his head slightly. Every time he thought he understood Harry, had grasped his essential nature at last, Harry would do something else that disrupted that impression.

“Very well,” Lucius continued. “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. There was a tenderness in his eyes that made a hook catch at Draco’s insides. God damn it, he didn’t want to be jealous of his father either.

Lucius smiled at him, the way he had smiled at Draco when he was eleven years old and excited about going to Hogwarts. “Thank you for your concern,” he said. “You are behaving just as a son should to a father.” Harry stared at him, nostrils flaring slightly, but didn’t break out in protest. Draco reckoned that should be accounted progress. “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 as if searching for the truth of that, whilst Lucius Summoned a house-elf and an owl and prepared to write his letters. Draco only hoped that his father would remember his promise to write to his friends on Hogwarts’ Board of Governors as well as the ones in Azkaban.

Then Harry turned and slipped out of the room with a nod to Narcissa. Perhaps he would have nodded to Draco and left him behind, too, but Draco followed him too closely to permit that to happen.

He had to correct Harry’s course only a few times; Harry did seem to have learned the path through the maze of corridors and rooms to Lucius’s chambers well. Harry, though, bristled and tensed all over, his head twitching like a captive horse’s, and he turned around at the door of his own rooms to snap, “What?”

“May I come in?” Draco asked quietly.

“What can’t you say to me here in the corridor that you can say in my room?”

Oh, yes, Harry. If you can learn to value possessions of your own, there may yet be hope for you. Draco bestowed a softened look upon him, and Harry stared at him as if that had put him out of countenance. Then he seemed to realize why he had received that softened look. He scowled and folded his arms across his chest.

Greatly daring, 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.” He wondered if Harry would notice his return emphasis.

Harry hissed under his breath like a kitten with scalded feet, and then moved his hand in a sweeping, elaborate gesture into the room. “If you will,” he said.

Draco laughed. He hadn’t exactly meant to laugh—of course Harry would be sure Draco was only making fun of him—but he saw no reason to hide the joy of the sound once it had started. Or his desire, for that matter, so he gave Harry a quick look and then let his arse sway a bit as he went into the room. He was sure a smile had darted across Harry’s face, swift and unwilling.

It made him feel as though he had found a source of permanent leprechaun gold.

Harry followed Draco into the library and sat down behind a desk piled high with books. By now he was frowning again, but he raised an eyebrow like a pure-blood wizard cornered in his private rooms by an overly obsequious half-blood.

Draco sat with a nod and looked around the library for a moment, giving Harry the time to feel the strength and ease of the library wrapping around him, to settle into it and feel it as his domain. Then he sighed deeply and stared into Harry’s eyes.

“Don’t let me force you to tell me anything,” Harry said.

Draco looked down with a faint smile, in part to mask his surprise at Harry’s sarcasm. “Being honest is harder than I thought it would be,” he said. “And yet you did it all the time in school.” Though it went against every instinct he had, Draco remembered Narcissa’s advice and spoke a little faster, which betrayed, will-he nill-he, the discomfort in his tone. “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 to dismiss the idea, and then it grew heavy and he had to stop. “You know what it’s like.”

He had hoped Harry would say something, but he didn’t, only shifted in his chair as if bored. Draco ground his teeth inaudibly and carried on. There would be some sacrifices, he could practically hear his mother murmuring to him, before Harry would be his.

“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, wincing internally and wondering if weakness would plague all his gestures now that he had admitted it into some of them.. “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, his voice weary with the ring of old annoyance. “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 whispered, and turned back, fighting against the inches of his pride that encouraged him to continue to stare elsewhere. If he looked at Harry now, Harry was likely to see too much reality in his eyes, and Draco was accustomed to people using reality to forge weapons. “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.”

Draco flinched against the sharp edge of his voice. It doesn’t sound very flattering, does it?

“You were right then,” said Draco. He clenched his fists beneath the table—lightly so as to betray no tension in his muscles—and let the words come. “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, his face soft and lost. Draco had hardly dared to hope the mood would last when Harry narrowed his eyes and said, “And you thought ordering a house-elf around after me would make me like you more?”

This time, the truth was easier. “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.” There is a kinship between us, Harry, a determination to succeed, an ambition that would have served you well had you followed me into Slytherin. Can you see it? Can you grant that it exists?

“I don’t have an exam to pass.”

Draco felt free to narrow his own eyes now. Harry was ignoring their basic similarity in order to cling to semantics. “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. “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. His voice was the remote, lofty thing that made Draco want to shake him. “It’s about what I can accomplish.”

Draco seized Harry’s wrists before he thought about what he was doing. Harry promptly tugged to get free. Draco stared into his eyes instead, his pulse and the words beating in his temples. Yes, the Muggles did something to him. They had to have done it. Even an ordinary hero would think he was entitled to feelings. He would get angry at his enemies and rejoice in their downfall. All the other Gryffindors I know do. Something is wrong.

And the twit refuses to listen to himself and hear the wrongness in his own words.

“You’re more than a hero,” Draco said, pitching his voice so Harry would listen. “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. Harry’s eyes squirmed and darted in an effort to avoid his.

“You’re still family even when you don’t end the day with some daring achievement,” Draco said. “I still like you even when you’re at your most exasperating. I can live with your affection for Weasleys and Grangers.” He couldn’t help but smile. Compared to all the other exasperations that Harry had put him through in the past week, those affections were hardly noteworthy. “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 couldn’t help adding. That quality is attractive only in the abstract.

Harry shook his head.

“What now?” Draco asked. He was glad he had managed to hold back the snappish tone that had immediately welled up in his throat.

Harry looked to the side. “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.”

He’s not pure-blood, he’s not pure-blood, he’s not pure-blood, Draco reminded himself quickly, when indignation and rage made him want to throw Harry’s hands aside and stalk out of the room. He doesn’t know what he’s saying.

“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 and wondered if the mention of one of Harry’s old friends would be sufficient to catch his attention. Lucius had ranted more than once about how a twelve-year-old had tricked him out of a house-elf. “Not like that son of his, that Dobby.”

Harry whipped back as if someone had offered him a case of dragonpox to cure. “Dobby was Rogers’s son?”

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

“I put the question aside as not worth reconsidering,” Harry snapped. “You can’t—“

“The first time my life changed suddenly was when you rejected my friendship,” said Draco. He shivered for a moment, feeling cold and damp. He had never meant to dig this deep and bring up these reflections, but he thought Harry was worth it. He thought. “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. The sight of his teeth on flesh—which Draco had imagined in the last few days, though never as they now were—made Draco harden in seconds.

“Stop that,” he whispered, because he had to say something. 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, deliberately open, against Harry’s lips. Harry swallowed and sat still, of course not opening his mouth.

That didn’t matter. If there was one thing Draco was confident he knew how to do, it was kiss. He kept his own mouth open, and his eyes, and used his tongue in soft, delicate lashings against Harry’s lips and the corners of his gums. Harry sat frozen until Draco had pulled away and strolled towards the door, stroll carefully casual so that he could conceal his erection.

He paused with his hand on the library doorframe 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; he could not help it, with Harry’s taste inside his mouth for the first time. “Any other questions?”

He remembered, later, that he really shouldn’t leave openings like that, because if it were possible to embarrass them both, then Harry would do it.

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

A spasm of pain. Harry was trying to see him as an evil Death Eater, heartless enough to ignore, even after—even after—

But just as his mother often did with his father, as he sometimes managed to do with her, Draco seized the moment and changed it about so that he was the one in control. He reached teasingly towards the sleeve of his robe. Harry sniffed air like a llama and leaned forwards.

Draco dropped his hand and 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.

His body was abuzz, and his mind was aflame, presenting him with vision after vision of their bodies striving together in bed, tongues tangling fiercely and their breath mingling between them like dragons’.

How sweet to have him in bed. How much sweeter still to lure him and tempt him until he cannot help himself, and comes of his own free will.

Chapter 19.