Chapter Twelve of 'Providence'- What Draco Malfoy Revealed

[lomonaaeren]

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Twelve—What Draco Malfoy Revealed

Harry woke slowly and spent some time looking around the bedroom Draco had assigned him, shaking his head.

It was an alien place, mostly because of the coldness. Harry thought that marble walls and floors might be all very well in the estimation of Draco’s ancestors, but he flinched when he walked on the second and winced when he looked at the first. He had conjured a series of red rugs and hangings last night to cover them.

The windows were as large as the bed, which was large enough that Harry felt rather absurd sleeping in it. He stood up and wandered slowly towards the windows. He hadn’t had time to look out of them the evening before, since by the time Draco had finished showing him around the Manor it was dark. But now sunlight poured through them, and he thought the view looked rather promising.

I wonder if I really love Draco? he thought, as he leaned an elbow on the sill and stared out. I thought I did. But maybe his mask fooled me all this time, and even the parts I thought I loved were only part of the mask. Maybe compassion was never one of his motivations. Maybe he tried to coexist with people only to gain revenge on them later. I simply don’t know, and it does seem as if I ought to demand less from him if I was in love.

His thoughts occupied him so much that it took a moment for him to concentrate on the view outside the windows, and then he blinked and paid attention when he realized how beautiful it was.

The windows looked out on a garden that was contained within glass walls but opened on the sky. Harry thought the weather unnaturally beautiful, but surely conjuring sunshine was a better use of pure-blood magic than enslaving house-elves. Ferns climbed the edges of those walls; tendrils twined around trellises; enormous drooping red flowers spread their petals to the light. Harry could see small paved walks winding between the plants and sheltered benches that he’d like to sit on.

He couldn’t smell the plants even when he inhaled hard, but that was all right. He could imagine the smells, and they were all delicious.

As he went on gazing, absorbed, and noticing blue flowers and yellow ones, purple ones and silver, to complement the red, he saw a figure sitting on one of the benches. Harry frowned and peered closer. The figure was obviously a woman with long pale hair. He swallowed. Did Draco have someone living with him all this time who Harry didn’t know about? He had assumed he knew everything about Draco, but he had already been proven wrong.

Then the woman raised her head, tilting her face into the sunlight, and he recognized Narcissa Malfoy. Harry let out a sharp breath and shook his head, ashamed of his jealousy. Her face was pale with the marks of long suffering, and her hands trembled as though she had that shaking disease Muggles got.

Of course. I forgot that Narcissa stayed with him after he got her out of St. Mungo’s.

Then Draco appeared, walking into the garden down one of the paths that led from the house. He leaned on the back of the bench, and though his mother looked nervous, she turned her head happily, confidently, towards him. Draco started speaking to her, his hand touching her hair now and then. His face had relaxed to an extent that Harry knew he had never seen, and it didn’t matter how long he’d observed Draco.

But still, he had seen traces of it. When Draco brought his mother out of hospital and protected her from the reporters, for instance. When he appeared at the trial that the Ministry had insisted on forcing Pansy Parkinson into because she’d recommended turning Harry over to Voldemort, although she’d never been a Death Eater. When he arranged a private meeting at a restaurant with a man Harry didn’t know, shoved a bag of Galleons into his hands, and then stood up and abruptly left again.

He hides it. Pretty well, in fact. Harry stared in fascination as Draco straightened up, leaving his mother to lean back in the sunlight again, and headed back to the house. His mask slipped over his face so imperceptibly that Harry knew he missed some of the changes due to his blinking. But the compassion is there. The ability to help other people. Along with the self-satisfaction and the arrogance.

Harry stepped back slowly from the window and spent a moment pacing back and forth between it and the bed, his head lowered. New thoughts tumbled up and down, and unfortunately each one ended in a question he didn’t know the answer to.

Some of what I saw in him is real. But how much?

Is it enough for me to love him as wholly as he deserves someone to love him, as I have to if I’m going to spend the rest of my life with him?

Is it enough to overcome the arrogance that’s tied to his beliefs in blood?

Harry halted and rubbed his head. Making up his mind about Draco was hard work, but it always had been. Maybe he’d had the worst delusions about Draco not during Hogwarts or when he was first following him and trying to decide what kind of character he had, but in the last two years, when he’d finally felt certain.

He deserves hard work. And no matter how long Harry waited, thinking patiently, no question followed that solid answer.

I do want to stay with him. That’s certain, too. What I’ll need to do, for both of us, is make an honest evaluation in the next few days. Ask questions he might not like me asking. Watch all his actions, not just the ones that he does for the sake of propping up his reputation. Show him how important Ron and Hermione are to me, and that I can’t stay with someone who won’t at least tolerate them.

There was no reason, Harry told himself around the twinge of panic, that he couldn’t do those things. Hermione probably would have approved of them. If he couldn’t display any sense when he first fell in love, then he would display it afterwards.

It’s not the most comfortable thing in the world, trying to decide if you were a fool and your love has any basis at all. But I want to know. I won’t continue in the mindless vein that made me propose that letters plan, and I won’t simply love Draco if the qualities that made me fall in love don’t exist.

Harry smiled when he heard footsteps in the corridor outside his room, pausing and then continuing on their way. Draco had seen the shut door, and probably assumed that meant Harry wasn’t awake and ready for breakfast yet.

And in the meantime, let him try to seduce and court me if he can. The steps he adopts should tell me still more about him.

*

When Potter came down to breakfast that morning, Draco knew at once that something had changed. Potter often carried his head half-ducked, as if he assumed that letting his hair fall across his scar would keep anyone from recognizing it. He stared at the ground and muttered. When he was angry, yes, then he looked you in the eye, but otherwise it was rare.

Now Potter was looking him in the eye, but the glance was calm, almost meditative. He nodded in response to Draco’s “Good morning,” and then sat down in the seat across from him with not much more than a sidelong look or two at the wonders of the dining room—delicately carved wooden walls and a great floating golden curtain of beads to separate it from the kitchens, the curtain enchanted only to convey pleasant scents. Instead, he seemed much more interested in watching Draco.

“Did you sleep well?” Draco asked. He would play it polite and safe until he knew what had changed Potter’s mind in the night and whether it was catching.

“Of course,” Potter said, and then laughed in a way that made the corners of his eyes crinkle. Draco had to fight the temptation to become fixated on his face. “I don’t know how anyone couldn’t, when the bed was that soft.”

Draco sniffed. “Soft beds aren’t the only factor in a comfortable night’s sleep.”

A shadow crossed Potter’s face, though so lightly that Draco could see how his friends would have missed it, if they weren’t in the habit of studying him closely. “What others do you think of first?” he asked, reaching for the plate of sliced fruit in the middle of the table.

Careful, Draco. Draco sat back and picked up the plate of bread and butter, pretending that he hadn’t heard the question. Of course he wanted to explain right away that unpleasant company could ruin any night’s sleep, and then detail that unpleasant company. But he thought he understood Potter’s strange manner now, and it meant he had to be more careful. Potter would be waiting for him to say something like that, and probably to start talking about Mudbloods. Then he would feel free to stand up and walk out of the house.

Draco was not prepared to let that happen. In fact, he startled himself with just how intent he was on preventing Potter’s departure.

He’d had a long, silent struggle during the night, thinking about Potter’s ultimatum and what it would mean for his behavior. Specifically, he’d fought past the pride that drove his first reaction—his father had always said, “Pride is preservation in small doses, poison in large,” and Draco thought he should have paid more attention to that advice, even if Lucius hadn’t taken it himself—and tried to analyze the demand more rationally.

How much difference would it make to him? Really? He had acted in public for years as though he thought all blood differences fit to be abolished, and he had cautioned other pure-bloods he knew to do the same thing—and distanced himself from them if they wouldn’t. He had enjoyed his spirited debates with the people he allowed to “persuade” him, and he valued some of their argument tactics. He used them himself, in fact.

He had lived behind a mask, he thought, and dropped the barriers in private with people he trusted. But there were so few of those, other than his mother. He had dreamed of a wife in part because he had imagined he would find someone who shared his opinions and would console him on the rest of the blinkered world.

But he didn’t have a congenial wife, and with his standards he had to admit it was unlikely he would find one. Instead, he had Potter, and he had the passion he felt for him, and he had the deep desire to extend their alliance further than mere physical lust.

He had spent more time in the last few years acting the way people would expect him to act, behaving as they thought he should, than behaving the “natural” way. And that made him wonder how much of the act was an act, and how much of nature was left to him.

Brewing potions didn’t require rigid beliefs about blood purity. Neither did running his healing house for veterans of the war; Draco had never cared what kind of guest he welcomed into the place, because they would give him money and might give him some insight into speeding up his own coping process. And spending time in bed with Potter practically demanded the absence of those beliefs.

Draco had weighed what mattered most to him against what he had only thought mattered most, and discovered that the beliefs his father had taught him concerning blood were firmly in the latter category.

It’s at least worth the effort to change. And Potter might value the willingness to change as much as he does the final results.

Draco blinked, startled by the insight contained in those last words, and then jumped as Potter snapped his fingers in front of his face.

“Did you hear my question?” Potter demanded. “You’ve been sitting there and staring at nothing. I think that butter’s going to melt on your fingers.” With an impatient jerk that made Draco curl his lip—surely Potter could mend his manners if Draco mended his—he pulled the plate of bread and butter away.

“I think many things can add to a good night’s sleep,” said Draco. “For example, not having nightmares.”

Potter paused and shot him a keen glance. Draco weathered it, though he objected silently to the way it searched out the corners of his soul. It was no wonder that Potter was such a good interrogator of criminals; whilst Weasley intimidated them with his explosive temper, Potter would dig all their secrets out of them before they knew what had happened.

“You have them, too,” Potter said, and his measured words rendered it a statement instead of a question.

Draco controlled the impulse to change the subject or snap viciously at Potter, the way he often did when he felt vulnerable. Potter won’t hurt you. Of all the people you’ve dined with in the last five years, only Mother is less likely to hurt you.

“I did,” Draco said. “I’ve made a point of controlling them with Dreamless Sleep, and of taking advantage of my own convalescent home.”

And just like that, Potter smiled a little and looked down at the plate he held, and Draco knew he had passed the first test.

The feeling that rolled through his stomach didn’t have a name, but it decided him on one thing. Yes, it was worth it to give up his beliefs on blood purity and strive to become the kind of man Potter could date comfortably, because Draco was not deeply invested in those beliefs anymore and so they were no great loss—

And because the prize was so far beyond anything he had ever dreamed of winning.

*

Harry couldn’t hide his amazement and delight when Draco escorted him into what he called the instrument room, so he didn’t try.

There were musical instruments of every kind in every direction. Most of them rested on pedestals of marble and silver, but for this once Harry could forgive the ancestral Malfoys, because this was the right way to display such precious objects. Several also had cloths of blue or settings of purple velvet, but they were never too ostentatious. Harry wandered past drums, flutes, a piano, a thing with hammers that he thought must be a dulcimer—Hermione had tried to take lessons in playing that—a long-necked instrument that resembled a guitar with spikes on the top, and a harp. He paused near the harp and ran his fingers lightly down the strings, smiling at the sound.

“That can be commanded to play by itself,” Draco said softly in his ear. Harry jumped; he hadn’t heard Draco come up behind him. “Would you like to hear it?”

Harry hesitated, but curiosity got the better of him. He’d never heard a Muggle harpist play, and his initial reaction, that being able to play by itself made the instrument somehow lesser, was silly. They were wizards, after all, and Harry should have known the harp would be magical. “Yes, please,” he said.

Draco stepped up to the harp’s frame and swept his fingers over it in a rough half-circle. Harry couldn’t keep track of exactly which spots he touched, but they must have been the right ones. Lively, rippling music began to spill out of the harp, more like the tune that Harry would have expected a drum to play. His foot tapped, and he didn’t try to stop it.

Then Draco turned towards him and extended a hand. His eyes were wide, the pupils grown to enormous proportions. His jaw was clenched shut, as if to keep it from falling open. His fingers tightened on air. Harry swallowed a gasp. Yes, Draco was a perfect picture of lust at the moment, but for God’s sake, he didn’t have to gasp.

“Dance with me?” Draco whispered.

Harry shivered, and decided at the last moment to let Draco see it. Draco’s pupils got more dilated. Harry held his hand out in turn, and watched it almost creep across the air until the fingers closed over Draco’s. Strangely, Draco remained motionless, and it wasn’t until several beats had passed in silence that Harry understood.

“Yes,” he said.

Draco yanked hard, and Harry stumbled towards him. He managed at the last moment to turn the stumble into a smooth step; he’d had much the same thing happen during Auror training, though the yank hadn’t been a prelude to dancing. He lifted his head and stared into Draco’s face, making sure to keep his expression defiant. Being this close to Draco was overwhelming, yes, but if he thought he could simply overwhelm Harry’s objections, he should think again.

Draco lowered his face towards Harry’s. His nostrils flared, as though he were trying to memorize Harry’s scent—or detect the scent of anyone else who had ever touched him. He must have liked what he found, because his mouth expanded in a lazy, predatory smile, and he moved into the dance.

Harry entertained one terrified memory of the Yule Ball before he banished it. He’d become considerably more graceful since then, and he’d learned how to follow instructions, too. He trailed Draco’s movements awkwardly for a minute or so. Then he started anticipating them, and they swirled across the floor in a loose back-and-forth pattern, sliding and shuffling in a way that Harry reckoned would look formal enough to anyone watching them.

He didn’t have the time to think about how it would look, because he was more occupied with Draco’s face. Draco’s hand had taken up residence on the small of Harry’s back, and his mouth twitched every time he pressed Harry closer. His other arm was around Harry’s shoulders, his fingers lightly playing with his hair. Harry could see the breath traveling through Draco’s half-parted lips in rhythm with those fingers. And his eyes were lidded, like a cat staring fascinated into a fire.

Except this time, Harry was the fire.

Or perhaps the shimmering tension between them was, which built higher and higher with every turn across the floor they made, with every spark of the harp’s notes. Draco didn’t dance close enough that Harry could feel his body, but the tantalizing closeness was there all the same, like the feeling Harry had when he tried to grope his way through a darkened house. He knew he would encounter an erection if he pressed his hips forwards.

At least, I damn well better. Because he’d feel mine.

Draco danced as if the outside world had gone away, as if Harry was worthy of all that focus he usually brought to business deals or arguments. His mouth had fallen open by this time, and Harry could hear the breaths passing his lips now; they made a throaty sound. His hair dangled loose around his head, not disheveled, but unattended to. And Harry knew that was a first, at least for him. He’d never seen Draco so unaware of his appearance.

The harp’s notes swept up a final cadence and then stopped. Draco halted them, too, standing in the middle of the instrument room and staring into Harry’s eyes. Harry felt a choking sensation creep through his lungs. It was an effort to keep his own breath moving the way he should.

Draco bent down and held his lips an inch or so away from Harry’s. The tension built up to the point that Harry swayed. He could tell himself he was dizzy with the dancing, when he had gone backwards and in circles as much as forwards, but he’d stopped being a fan of self-deception when he got out of Hogwarts. He shivered and resisted the temptation to initiate the kiss for long moments.

Then he broke, because the tension was like a cord pulling him into Draco now and he wanted the kiss badly enough not to care, and made up for all Draco’s hesitation with a hand around the back of his neck.

Draco uttered a surprised sound, which was even better, but better still was when Harry silenced him with his tongue. Ah, God, he’d forgotten already how eagerly Draco’s tongue sought out his and the way that Draco’s hands drifted up when he got lost in the kiss to cup the sides of Harry’s face. How could he have forgotten already?

Harry twitched a leg forwards, wrapping his heel firmly around Draco’s knee. Draco hopped to keep his balance. Harry pulled again, and they fell to the floor with Harry on top. Draco said something that could have been a complaint, but Harry pinned him with his hands on his shoulders and thoroughly licked behind his teeth until he moaned in surrender and opened his mouth wider.

Harry finally drew back, shutting his eyes to savor the richness of the silence between them, the feel of Draco’s chest having under his hand, the foreign taste in his mouth.

*

Draco lay quiet, trembling. He flattened his palms on the floor and silently begged for some small part of the strength of the spinning earth beneath him. He needed it, because at the moment he simply didn’t have the force of will inside himself not to flip Harry over and take him here.

But he didn’t know enough about having sex with a man yet. Humping each other was one thing—he’d done that with women—but Draco hadn’t studied lubrication spells in detail and he realized that he would need them. Making Harry laugh at him the first time they had proper sex was not a possibility.

Besides, he hadn’t had enough of seduction yet. It would be worth it if he could wait and tease and tempt Harry into offering himself, the way he’d teased him into the kiss.

His body throbbed at him, telling him that nothing could be worth this. Especially with Harry sitting back and bringing his arse into contact with Draco’s groin.

Harry seemed to understand, because he chuckled into Draco’s ear and then rolled off him. Draco licked his lips. At least a sideways glance showed him that Harry was walking cautiously.

And all this from a kiss. Draco swallowed against the realization. He’d been able to excite women that much with just a kiss, but usually they wanted him already and he was gratifying their desires. He at least had to touch their breasts, or see them with their hair unbound, which always affected him, before he was so ready.

Harry didn’t have long hair, which was a pity. But he had a challenge—already his eyes were direct again, his smile wry, as if he were thinking about all the changes he had asked Draco to make yesterday—which more than made up for it.

Draco managed to stand by placing his hands flat on the floor and bringing his knees up little by little. He still bent awkwardly at the waist when he was upright, but Harry gave his groin a whip-quick glance and suddenly started walking a little more awkwardly himself. That was as it should be, Draco thought. He didn’t want Harry to be too easily submissive, but neither did he want to be outdistanced.

“I reckon I’ll see you later, then.” Harry’s voice was gratifyingly breathless.

“Much later,” Draco said, to imply a nice, long wank, and Harry’s eyes deepened in color until Draco thought they might have their roll on the floor after all. But then he caught his breath and rushed out of the room.

Draco retired slowly to his own chambers, mind already fastened on the image that he would use to bring himself off: Harry, braced against his hands in the dance, body locked in tension that felt like quivering resistance—whilst his eyes shone with a dark fire that Draco thought could immolate them both.

If you can make the changes. If you are only patient.

Chapter 13.

Comments

[qumabh.livejournal.com]

Another brilliant chapter. I loved them dancing. It conjured up a very nice image in my mind. As always, I love your writing. Looking forward to the next update. :D

~Mab

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[nimue-8.livejournal.com]

That was exciting and new!
The instruments and the dance were great.
I like to discover the man behing the mask.
I love where this is going.

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

Well, thanks! I felt like their dancing together was a bit overused, but I literally couldn't think of any better way to have it work.

[ura-hd.livejournal.com]

This was hot! I loved the dance!

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[aubergineautumn.livejournal.com]

hmm. Sort of an in-between chapter, where both the characters and reader switch modes. I kind of like it.

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

Yes. This story is not exactly following the pattern I originally planned on, where it concluded soon after Harry's identity was revealed. I didn't realize they would have so many deep-seated issues with each other.

[beatnikspinster.livejournal.com]

That was a very sexy scene! I loved it.

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[kawanale.livejournal.com]

oh yes, draco may not be gay, but he definitely is harrysexual. i've seen that a lot, dracosexual, so why not harrysexual? the attraction IS there, but harry still has his doubts and draco would be wise to take his time and heed harry's actions.

excellent chapter to read, but rather disheatening about narcissa. i wonder how you will portray her in this story.

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

I've seen Harrysexual a few times, too. :)

And thanks. Narcissa is scarred from the war, and basically is recovering over a long period of time, much like a cancer patient.

[fantasyfruitbat.livejournal.com]

I'm glad Draco's allowing himself to change his beliefs (and not thinking that Harry is at fault) and this chapter was hopeful and hot and sweet! Draco does seem to be seeing Harry very much in a female role, though. Is he going to get a surprise when they finally get to sex or will he have changed his attitude by then?

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

He'll have changed his attitude by then. Harry has noticed and will not let Draco treat him like a woman.

[invincible-sum.livejournal.com]

Very interesting dynamics in the dining scene, and very sexy dynamics from the dance scene to the end of the chapter. I find the mental image of Draco hopping around while Harry tries to bring him to the floor quite amusing! Your Dracos are usually very tactile and olfactory in their possessiveness, and I like that very much - it's sort of animalistic. (Squee!)

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

And I have never noticed that about my versions of Draco before; it's interesting. Thanks for commenting!

[cassie-black12.livejournal.com]

Draco's certainly coming to terms with his attraction to men, or Harry, at least.

I love Harp music; my cousin had it at her wedding. So I really enjoyed the scene in the instrument room. Good on Draco for holding back and making Harry initiate the kiss.

Lovely chapter.

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

Yes. In part because he knows Harry is also trying to accommodate him.

And thanks!

[star-faerie.livejournal.com]

Wow. Fantastic chapter. I'm blown away. It's fun to watch/read Harry and Draco seduce each other.

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

I think, in this case, more than most others, it's really a mutual seduction, since both of them have traits that highly irritate the other one.

[elisebanana.livejournal.com]

I don't think I've commented since the first chapter! Please forgive me!!

I've been following along and enjoying it immensely! I'm still mad at Draco's arrogance, but I trust Harry will cut him down to size? (read: please let Harry top their first time!)

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

That's all right! Thanks for commenting now.

'Fraid I've already planned to have Draco top (it's one reason Harry was "on top" during their first kiss and this one), but in a somewhat unusual way.

[hogwartshoney.livejournal.com]

MMMmmmmm, we'll need some artwork of that dance, Lo.

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

Well, thank you! I certainly would like to see it.