[Songs of Summer]: Wellspring, Harry/Blaise, R, 3/5

[lomonaaeren]

Magical Madrid—which had a Spanish name Malfoy had refused to give Harry since he’d said Harry wouldn’t understand it anyway—was dazzling.

Harry could see seven different styles of architecture without moving his eyes, people arguing in a dozen different languages that only sometimes sounded like Spanish, and coins of all kinds changing hands. There were also people who seemed to be making exchanges based on promises or spells instead of money, sealed with a firm handshake and a wave of a wand. And there were magical creatures everywhere, from goblins bustling about their business in numbers Harry had never seen in Diagon Alley to tame—maybe—griffins walking on chains.

There were what looked like planes of colorful glass floating overhead that muffled the sunlight and reflected voices into music and sometimes dropped sweets for children. Harry tilted his head back, taking it all in.

“Stop that, you look like a tourist.”

Harry might have been offended a month ago, but that was before grief took the place of every other emotion. He turned and smiled lazily at Malfoy. “But I am.”

“You don’t have to look like it. I have a reputation to maintain here, Potter!”

“What do you do?” Harry asked in genuine interest, biting back the many, many comments he could have made.

For some reason, Malfoy turned a bright, shiny pink, snapped, “I don’t have to answer to you!”, and plunged into the crowd. Harry trailed him, raising his eyebrows and glancing back at Blaise.

He had decided it was too much effort not to call Zabini by his first name.

Blaise winked at him. “Watch,” he said, and then held the flap of a bright yellow tent that Malfoy had apparently disappeared into out of the way for Harry. His hand brushed against Harry’s right arm for a second in blatant appreciation.

Well, Harry might not have thought of it as appreciation, but he could see the heat in Blaise’s eyes. He smiled hesitantly back and turned towards the interior of the tent.

He had lost Ron and Hermione as well as Ginny, but he felt less ready to date again than he did for friendships.

“Draco Malfoy!” someone said, followed by a torrent of Spanish. Harry blinked and looked up.

A tall, brown-skinned witch in a long yellow robe was hugging Malfoy, talking to him softly now and flicking his nose once with a finger. Malfoy had flushed, but also seemed to glow under her words, so Harry was sure they must be praise.

No, no, wait a minute.

Malfoy was literally glowing.

Harry stared. Malfoy caught his eye and promptly flushed and faced forwards, reaching out to capture the witch’s hand and brush his lips down her knuckles.

He asked something in Spanish, and the witch nodded and flicked her wand. Harry tensed, but the soft pop that sounded around him was familiar from when he’d had to escort high-ranking members from other nations around the Ministry. It was just a Translation Charm.

“There, now I think everyone can understand each other,” Malfoy said, in what at least sounded like English to Harry’s ears.

“It is good,” said the witch, and turned to Harry with a tilt of her head back and forth that made her long piled hair slide without disturbing the pile. “But I think this one is wearing a glamour, which we should remove if we are to trust each other.”

Harry had put on a glamour that covered his hair like a hat and disguised his scar, as well as subtly changing the color of his eyes. It was the most fine-grained spell he’d been able to cast in weeks, with the way his magic had raged. He removed it now, and smiled a little as he watched the witch’s eyes widen.

“I see now why you wanted to hide him and keep him for yourself, Draco,” the woman said, ignoring the fact that Malfoy looked outraged about this. She held out her hand to Harry, smiling. “I am Doña Rosa García Torres, and of course you are Harry Potter.”

“I am,” Harry said, and managed to shake her hand without a wince. At least she sounded curious or maybe even delighted, instead of indifferent or hateful like so many people in his life had become. “Thank you for allowing us to visit your shop.”

Doña Rosa laughed and stood back with another tilt of her head. “It is a business transaction for me as well as for you! Draco Malfoy comes to my shop and brightens it, and I pay him some—in the end, I sell far more for his presence.”

Harry decided to blink and nod as if he had any idea what she was talking about. When she turned away to wave her wand at what looked like a tea set, Harry bent down near Malfoy and asked softly, “What is she talking about?”

“Shut it, Potter.”

“You glowed.”

“I did say shut it,” Malfoy muttered back, and went over to help Doña Rosa with the tea, even though she looked as if she didn’t need it.

Harry turned to Blaise and held his hands up. Blaise laughed quietly and moved near enough to Harry that probably no one could hear them from more than a few centimeters away. Harry tried to ignore the way that his pulse sped up when Blaise did that.

“He was hit by a curse that contributed to his decision to leave Britain,” Blaise murmured to him. “The curse eventually let him go, but it left him with something like a Veela’s allure. He can use it to make places feel more pleasant and welcoming to people. As you can imagine, any shop that he uses that on sells more than its neighbors.”

Harry blinked, then nodded. He thought perhaps he should have felt outrage over something that was almost like a trick, but. Well. Maybe that was the old Harry.

And maybe he was just glad to hear that someone had managed to twist a curse to their own advantage, instead of succumbing to it.

“Come!”

Harry turned around. Apparently the tea was ready—maybe Malfoy had helped a little bit after all—and Doña Rose was beckoning to him and Blaise. Harry went over, to sit on the softest cushions he’d ever sat on and eat the sweetest biscuits he’d ever had and be regaled with stories of how Doña Rosa claimed to have traveled to space on a glass airship that made Muggle rockets look clumsy.

Harry didn’t know how much he believed of that, but it really didn’t matter. He had fun. He laughed at the stories. He ate and drank and really tasted the food for the first time since he’d made his bargain with Death.

And if he was more aware than he should be of Blaise’s heat at his side and the way that Blaise’s laughter made both their stomachs rumble when he uttered it, that was Harry’s business.

*

Blaise couldn’t remember the last time he had lost himself so effectively in watching the expressions on someone else’s face.

Harry—Potter—was so open.

He had suffered grief and devastation the likes of which made even Blaise, who had been living with his own curse so long, wince. And yet Potter kept going as though the world were beautiful despite that. He talked with Doña Rosa, laughed at things Draco said, ate himself full to bursting with galletas that he obviously found delicious, and kept sneaking looks at Blaise.

Blaise found himself meeting those looks, smiling, tilting his head.

The first time he did it, Potter turned the red of a sunset and hastily faced back to where Draco and Doña Rosa were talking. The second time, though, he bit his lip and held Blaise’s eyes before ducking his head.

He didn’t blush much then, either. Or at least, not more than a faint tint around his ears.

Blaise wanted to touch him.

He hesitated, then shrugged. Of course he could, especially since Draco and Doña Rosa were chatting animatedly at the moment about people they both knew and Blaise didn’t. Blaise slid his hand out casually and let it come to rest on Potter’s right arm.

Potter whipped his head around to look at Blaise immediately, his eyes so wide that Blaise started to regret it. But Potter was certainly capable of moving away if he didn’t like it. And if he sat there like a frozen rabbit for more than a few more seconds, Blaise would withdraw his hand.

Potter didn’t move away.

He shifted closer.

Blaise concealed his triumphant smile, which wouldn’t serve anyone right now, and turned back to listen to Draco and Doña Rosa, keeping his hand in place. They would have to move slowly.

But it could be that what both he and Potter wanted would, in fact, come with time.

*

“You’re taking him to visit Millicent next?”

Malfoy just asked Blaise that question as if Harry weren’t even there. Although, to be absolutely fair, Harry had lingered behind to speak to Doña Rosa, and was just stepping out of the tent, blinking, into the sunlight.

“I don’t know,” Blaise said, and turned to face Harry. “What do you think, Potter? Up to visiting Millicent Bulstrode? I don’t know how well you two got along in Hogwarts.”

“Well, we didn’t,” Harry said, stung into truth. “But the only interaction I ever really had with her was watching Hermione wrestle her in dueling club our second year.” His chest filled with pain for a second at the thought of Hermione, and then he breathed past it.

She was alive. She didn’t like or know him anymore, but she was alive. That was the bargain Harry had made, and what he would have to be content with.

Blaise nodded, his eyes fastened on Harry. “All right. We can work with that. She’s one of my closest friends now, and she trains Granians in Italy.”

“Trains them for what?”

“There are races held on flying horses,” Malfoy interjected in a long-suffering voice. “Seriously, Potter, don’t you know anything?”

“I thought we established I was taught by Muggles who kept me away from the magical world,” Harry said, and turned his shoulder. He wasn’t yet friends with Malfoy and might never be, but at least the prat did make him feel alive. “Are you going to be all right going to Italy?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I—well, the conversation with your mother looked heated,” Harry said, silently scolding himself. Don’t reveal that you actually spied on him, genius.

Blaise’s face turned as smooth as stone for a moment. Then he relaxed and shrugged. “My mother lives in Florence. We’ll be in Sicily. Plenty of space and distance between us.”

“All right,” Harry said, and tagged along behind Malfoy and Blaise as they started talking about the restaurant they were going to eat for dinner that night, his gaze thoughtful on Blaise’s back.

Blaise Zabini was a lot more complicated than he had seemed at first.

*

Are you going to be all right going to Italy?

No one else Blaise knew would have asked that question.

Of course, part of that was because Draco and Millicent knew him better than Harry, his friends in Italy didn’t know the depth of Blaise’s problems with his mother, and Blaise wasn’t exceptionally close to anyone else. But still, Harry had asked.

The thought lingered with Blaise into the night as he lay by himself in his usual bed in Draco’s house, listening to the soft sounds of distant music and the waves crashing on the beach.

Maybe I won’t be alone for much longer.

*

“This is…something.”

Harry honestly didn’t have the words for the place that Blaise had Apparated them into. It was practically on the side of a mountain, with dense greenery falling all around them as if it was yearning for the valley below. Stone walls that looked like ruins, ornamented with vines and huge purple flowers, canted up the slope near them.

Blaise winked at Harry and led him a step forwards, despite Harry’s eyes insisting that they were about to step off the mountain.

Then the world wavered and snapped around them, and Harry found himself on a path of large flagstones shaded from the sun by a stone canopy. The purple flowers twined around the pillars of the canopy instead of on ruined walls, and the path led straight on nearly flat ground towards a small series of wooden buildings.

“Wow.”

Blaise nodded as he took the lead. “Millicent has to be as careful with her wards as they are around Hogwarts, really. No sense in letting Muggles see winged horses.”

Harry started to respond, but the flap of heavy wings above him made him stop and tilt his head. Blaise did the same thing, standing close enough that Harry could feel the heat of his body, the way that he had when they were with Malfoy and Doña Rosa.

Overhead soared a pure white pegasus that made Harry catch his breath. He found himself looking instinctively for the horn, since he hadn’t known flying horses could look like unicorns. The pegasus banked and turned back the other way against what must have been the edge of the wards, then tilted its head down and bugled a challenge.

“Enough, Starridden!”

The voice wasn’t one Harry would have recognized, and he turned to see the tallest woman he’d ever seen coming down the path. She nodded to them, but kept her eyes on the flying horse, holding up what looked like a whip made of gossamer.

“Don’t make me come up there.”

Starridden angled down towards them, coming so close that Harry would have sworn he could feel the brush of feathers against the back of his neck. Then the horse was landing on the path in front of them, curving so that he stood in front of Bulstrode and separated her from Harry and Blaise. Bulstrode gave a tired sigh and pulled the horse’s head around.

“I swear, if it’s not one thing it’s another,” she muttered.

Blaise cleared his throat, more noisily than Harry thought he needed to. “Millicent Bulstrode, may I present Harry Potter.”

“Yeah, I know who he is,” Bulstrode said, staring at Harry and squinting a little as if she would have preferred, unlike Doña Rosa, that he wear a glamour. “Well? Why are you standing there like warts on an arse?”

Harry leaned over to Blaise as they started to follow Bulstrode up the stone path. “Is she very familiar with warts on an arse?” he whispered.

“Don’t ask.”

Harry shook his head and concentrated on picking his way between the stones and the grass and weeds that grew up between them.

Sooner than Harry would have imagined, they reached the cluster of wooden buildings, which turned out to contain stables as well as what looked like a kitchen and something resembling a Healer’s ward. There was also a self-contained house that Harry assumed was where Bulstrode lived, although of course he couldn’t be sure.

Starridden nudged Bulstrode hard enough that Harry was braced for her to fall. But she didn’t even waver. She swatted the horse back beneath his right wing, which nearly made him leap into the air again.

“Not strong enough,” Bulstrode told the horse, and then gestured at the stables.

Starridden pranced in. Harry blinked. He could see some regular stalls, in which some of the winged horses rested, but the floor of the building was mostly open and covered with a kind of springy grass. And on the walls above the moss were enormous platforms also covered in the moss. Starridden flew up to one and lowered his head with a sigh.

“It’s a stable for winged horses, what did you expect?”

Harry turned to Bulstrode. She had a sardonic expression on her face, one hand on her left hip, and a waiting air. Harry wondered if she had been waiting for him to say something stupid or he was just imagining it.

“I’ve never seen a stable for either ordinary horses or winged ones, so I didn’t know what to expect.”

Bulstrode paused. Then she turned to Blaise with an odd expression on her face. This one did look like the one Malfoy had worn when Harry had confessed to growing up in the Muggle world, though. She pointed one finger at Harry and opened her mouth. Nothing came out.

“He grew up with Muggles,” Blaise said helpfully. He was grinning.

Harry might once have wanted to punch someone who wore a grin like that at his expense, but now he found himself smiling back.

“Muggles.”

“Yes, Muggles. Can you have your fit or whatever it is quickly so that we can get it out of the way and have something to eat? The breakfast we had with Malfoy this morning wasn’t a substantial meal.”

Bulstrode turned back to stare at him again. Then she said, “How did you survive?”

“Sometimes I didn’t,” Harry said softly, thinking of walking into the Forbidden Forest and preparing to die. The Elder Wand stirred in its holster, bumping sharply against his wrist. “But I do want to do better now.”

“Fine,” Bulstrode said after a long moment. “You can have your meal. In exchange for the story.”

She turned and vanished into the enclosed building that must be the house. Harry shrugged and went back to watching the winged horses in the stable. Some of them were looking at him, ears forwards. He didn’t know if that was a good thing or not, but he stood quietly, and gradually they went back to eating or sleeping or whatever they had been doing. They were beautiful, ranging from pure white like Starridden to a silvery grey to gold to purest black.

“What do you think of Millicent?”

Harry looked back at Blaise. Blaise was leaning intently forwards, eyes focused on Harry as if waiting for a particular answer.

“Uh. She’s tall?”

“And?”

“She’s strong?” Harry honestly didn’t know what Blaise was looking for.

Blaise waited, then blew out his breath. “I’ll have to tell Millicent that perhaps her curse doesn’t affect someone who has a half-giant for a friend.”

“What do you mean?”

Blaise took his arm and guided him towards the house where Bulstrode had disappeared. Harry tried to dismiss the way that his skin rippled and his hair rose under Blaise’s touch, but it was pretty impossible.

He had known for years that he was bisexual, but it hadn’t seemed very important to him. He had known that he was going to get married to Ginny. Being bisexual was abstract when he was never going to sleep with a man anyway.

But now…

“Millicent was cursed by a Death Eater who escaped the Battle of Hogwarts and didn’t like that her parents had withdrawn financial support from the Dark Lord,” Blaise murmured, lowering his voice as they approached the door. “She’s not really half-giant, but she grew beyond normal human size, and the curse makes everyone who see her think she’s half-giant.”

“And be prejudiced against her,” Harry muttered, remembering what had happened with Hagrid in fourth year.

“Exactly.”

Harry shook his head. “She’s not half-giant. I didn’t have that thought. Maybe it’s because I’m friends with Hagrid, but it could just as easily be because I know what a real half-giant looks like, and Bulstrode isn’t as tall.”

Blaise laughed in what sounded like delighted surprise. “There is that.”

Harry swallowed and turned to face him. “Can I ask you something?”

“If you want.” Blaise stood with one hand on the door of the house, holding it open, but Harry didn’t look inside. Plenty of time for that afterwards. And he thought that Bulstrode would probably want to show him around.

“Did you become friends with Malfoy and Bulstrode because you were all cursed?”

Blaise blinked fast, then licked his lips. Harry kept looking directly at Blaise so that he wouldn’t get distracted by the pretty bastard’s mouth. “I have to admit that I haven’t thought of it that way before.”

“But it was part of what drew you together?”

Blaise nodded slowly. “I’ve lived with my curse my whole life, but Draco and Millicent were only cursed after the war. I have to admit that I found it easy to sympathize with them and—well, to resist their curses. Essentially, my own is so powerful that it’s the only one that can have a hold on me. I can’t be affected by others.”

Harry swallowed and reached out to put his hand on Blaise’s wrist. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For taking a chance on me,” Harry said, and then ducked inside Bulstrode’s house before Blaise could say anything.