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lomonaaerenThanks again for all the reviews!
Chapter Seventeen—What Harry Potter Offered
“House-elves are a guarantee of traditions and stability,” Draco was telling Hermione, who listened with a curled-up lip that Harry recognized as her expression when she wanted to express disdain but felt politeness had to keep her back. “I feel connected to my ancestors because of them. And to their ancestors, as well, of course. The house-elves I own are mostly descendants of the ones my ancestors owned.” A note of pride entered his voice. “Some families squandered their house-elves’ lives due to temper or magical experiments, but we never did.”
Harry squeezed Draco’s thigh under the table. He doubted that Draco’s new argument would change Hermione’s mind, but the fact that he was making it at all—and without insulting Hermione—was amazing.
In fact, Harry thought, looking happily around the central room of the Valiant Friends’ meetinghouse, this dinner was amazing altogether. No one had walked up and punched Draco in the mouth yet. Most of Hermione’s supporters watched him with perplexed expressions instead, as if they knew he was up to something but couldn’t imagine what it was. Ron considered him gravely some of the time, and the rest of the time gave Harry a mixture of dubious looks and lecherous winks.
Seeing that reminded Harry that he hadn’t told Ron about his encounter with Draco yet. He grinned and leaned forwards. Ron raised an eyebrow back and leaned towards him, too, so that their heads met in the middle of the table.
“I’ve finally experienced that thing we always used to joke about,” he said. Ron looked puzzled, which would make it all the better when the sense of Harry’s words finally dawned on him. Harry cocked his head to the side and slowly licked his lips, and Ron’s expression began to change. “It was wonderful.”
Ron sat there looking as if someone had slammed him in the face for a moment. Then he gave a dramatic shudder and whispered, “Malfoy didn’t happen to feed you a mysterious-looking potion with potentially mind-changing substances in it just before that, did he, mate?”
Harry laughed, and ignored the curious glances he was attracting. Ron was resolutely straight, and he would never understand why someone would want to do what he referred to as “that.” But Harry still had fun teasing him, and knew that behind Ron’s refusal to believe him was incomprehension, rather than disgust.
He’d spent so much of his life longing for a family, for people who would love and support him against all the odds. And now he had it, though not quite the way he’d envisioned. Once, he’d thought the Weasleys all by themselves would be that family, with Ginny involved, When he realized he’d fallen in love with Draco, he’d been dismayed, not understanding how he could reconcile his best friends with someone who had tormented them so much through Hogwarts.
Not once had he realized that they might try their best to get along with each other because schoolboy insults mattered less than the happiness all of them could contribute to Harry’s life right now. Harry still wasn’t very good at thinking of himself.
“No potion,” he said, joy blowing through him like a summer gale. “No hypnotism. No Legilimency. Just the pleasure of two bodies thrusting together—”
“I believe you,” Ron said quickly.
Harry snickered again, and felt Draco’s hand on his shoulder. He turned and looked up at him.
Draco’s eyes were a bit wide, the skin around his nostrils a bit pinched, but he nodded to Ron, and the hand he stroked up Harry’s arm was only absently possessive, rather than the tight clutch Harry knew he would have used if he were feeling threatened by Hermione. “Are you ready to leave?” he murmured. “Granger threatens a dessert course as lavish as this one, and I honestly don’t think I can hold that much.”
Harry held out his hand at once, smiling. Draco took it and almost simultaneously pulled him to his feet and used Harry’s strength to haul himself up. Harry reveled in the movement. It was a shame that not every minute they shared together could be as perfect as that one.
He shot a glance at Ron, who was watching their joined hands with a glint of understanding in his eyes. Then he looked up and nodded, smiling. “Good on you, Harry,” he said.
Harry almost floated out the door of the meetinghouse, more content than he remembered being in years. His mood wasn’t even dented by Draco’s arm winding around his waist and Draco’s voice hissing into his ear, “Now that I’ve braved your social circle and shown what I can do, it’s time for you to brave mine.”
*
Draco smiled and leaned back against his chair, lifting a glass of wine in toast to himself. He’d got through a dinner with Harry’s best friends and killed no one, nor insulted them mortally.
And the chocolate mousse that his own house-elves, including Flopsy, were carefully cleaning up had tasted better than the food the Valiant Friends had.
Feeling thoroughly smug and full, Draco turned his attention across the table. Harry was licking his lips and scraping his fork across his plate in search of more sweetness. Draco rolled his eyes—Harry’s table manners would have to improve before they went out into public at a place Draco was well-known—but he smiled more widely anyway. In private, at least, Harry’s thoroughness in chasing what he wanted was charming.
“I have considered,” he announced. Harry looked up, licking his lips again, and contributing abruptly to Draco’s growing store of fantasies concerning him. Draco cleared his throat and forged on. “I think it only appropriate to take dinner at Merlin’s Tor, where you made such a point of trying to foist Astoria off on me, and in the company of my friends.”
Harry nodded, seeming unsurprised, and finally put his plate and fork down so Flopsy could take care of them. “Your friends from Hogwarts?” he asked. “Political allies? Both?”
Draco blinked, and then reminded himself that his surprise was ridiculous. Harry was an Auror, had been for years, and at least touched on the circles that Draco was determined to place him in. There was no reason to believe that Harry must automatically think “friends” meant the same kind of Hogwarts-style friendships as his own. “Both,” he said. “Including a selection of the people I have striven to impress since the war.”
Harry’s eyes took on a deep, thoughtful cast that Draco hadn’t seen since Spain. “And I’m part of the program to impress them,” he said.
“I didn’t pursue you because of that.” Draco lowered his voice to emphasize his seriousness. “But as matters stand…yes. You are my partner, and inevitably, they will evaluate you, and me in the light of my choosing you.”
Harry reached across the table and laid his hand on Draco’s. Draco let his breath out in a rush. He hadn’t realized until then just how worried he was that Harry might take offense to his words.
“This is part of you, too,” Harry said, as though in answer to his thoughts. “The political maneuverer, the thinker, the fighter to safeguard the Malfoy name. If I couldn’t stand that, I should never have paid attention to you in the first place.” He tossed his fringe out of his eyes and leaned closer. “And as much as I love that part of you with all the rest, I’m not like that. How unnatural will I have to act?”
Draco stared at Harry, his lips slightly parted. His mind had stuck on the word “love,” even though this wasn’t the first time that Harry had said it.
Harry rubbed his thumb over Draco’s hand, and chuckled. “The first bargain between us,” he said. “You don’t look at me with that expression of wonder in your eyes during the dinner, or I won’t be responsible for what sort of sights your guests might get treated to.”
Draco half-lidded his eyes, as much to give himself time to adjust as to conceal the emotions that Harry had already seen. “Quite,” he said. “And to answer your question, I believe that will depend on how much you know of pure-blood manners already. If you have a modicum of knowledge, we can scrape by without extra training.”
“I know where the knives and forks go,” Harry said. “Kingsley insisted that I learn to dine ‘like the powerful man which you are.’” He rolled his eyes and popped his voice out of the imitation of the Minister it had sunk into. “But I’m not good at controlling my emotions, or pretending that I don’t hear insults directed at me. Or at my friends, for that matter.”
He looked directly at Draco again, and Draco nodded. “I can’t promise that there won’t be any of those,” he said. “What we need to settle, before we go to the dinner, is the degree of response you’re going to give.”
Harry smiled. “Pure-blood social codes help me there.”
“They do? How?” Draco frowned. If he, who had lived in this society all his life, couldn’t think of a possible way for Harry to defend himself or his friends and still retain the important polish of impeccable discretion, it was a good sign that such a way didn’t exist.
“I think I should surprise you,” Harry said, and fluttered his eyelashes at Draco.
Draco drew himself up, his shoulders already so tense that he thought of calling Flopsy to give him a massage before he retired for the night. “Don’t,” he said sharply. “Unless you want me to make a fool of myself because I’m awaiting the moment when you destroy my chances to succeed in my world.”
Harry blinked, then grimaced and shook his head. “Sorry. I’ll tell you.” He took both of Draco’s hands this time and wound them around his neck, deliberately tangling Draco’s fingers in his hair. Then he explained his plan.
Draco was not only calm by the end of the explanation, but hard at the thought of what would happen should one of his friends be stupid enough to challenge Harry. He leaned across the table and hauled Harry towards him, kissing him deeply enough to make him dizzy. Or at least that was his goal, and that was the way Harry looked when Draco leaned back again.
“Bed, now,” Draco whispered. “Merlin’s Tor tomorrow.”
“You can arrange a party that quickly?” Harry tugged Draco towards the stairs, moving so quickly that he kept Draco off-balance constantly as he tried to renew his control of the motion. “I’m impressed.”
“It’s amazing what one can do,” Draco said, finally managing to pin Harry against the wall of the staircase for a moment, “with money and fame.”
And magical power, he thought but didn’t say, though the thought alone made him grind his cock into Harry’s leg.
Harry broke free just then, tossed Draco a challenging wink, and ran up the stairs. Draco scrambled after him, eyes locked on his arse.
*
Merlin’s Tor was far more impressive than Harry remembered from the time when he’d come here under his Invisibility Cloak, telepathically connected to Astoria. Of course, then he had only cared about the setting as an appropriate one for Draco and the woman who would soon become his lover. Now he knew it was going to be the place of a humiliating failure that Draco’s set would never forgive him for—
Or for a triumph as great, though the triumph would have to be defended and proved again and again as the failure never would.
Like walking a bloody tightrope, he thought as he and Draco strode in side-by-side. Draco had rented the entire restaurant, and that meant there was an attendant to sonorously announce their names at the door. Heads were already turning. All it takes is one mistake to doom you, but at every successful step people gasp and then stare eagerly, waiting to see if you fall on the next.
And these people would be more than usually eager to see him fall. Harry didn’t think he had ever performed for such a hostile audience, not even when a bribery scandal had broken out in the Auror Department right before his annual speech on the anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts.
No matter.
It really didn’t matter. Harry had been in situations like this all his life. There was always someone who hated him and wanted him to crumble. Harry had always refused to oblige them, and he didn’t see why that should change now, just because a few of these people had the good luck to be Draco’s friends and the rest were political contacts.
He lifted his head the moment he judged enough eyes were on him. Some people deliberately weren’t looking, but then, they were trying to impress him with how small he was to them. Too bad for them that such tactics had stopped working on Harry when he was eleven years old and began to realize that, for most people, he was bigger than he could ever comprehend.
He folded his hands behind his back, away from his wand, to show that he thought most of the people staring at him now no threat, and gave a considered, cold glance at several parts of the room. Once he started to bow. Then he stopped himself with an almost imperceptible shake of his head and turned towards Draco, following the slight motion of hand and arm Draco gave to a chair at a central table, under the shining ceiling. He strolled over to the chair and drew it himself. He and Draco had agreed to avoid gestures such as his taking Draco’s arm or having his chair pulled out for him, which might convince some stupid watchers that Harry was only a substitute for the women Draco had dated until this point.
The atmosphere swirled around him and turned more hostile yet. Harry smiled slightly and kept his eyes on the fiery letters of the intangible menu that had sprung up in front of him. The audience now thought that he considered them too inferior to bow to.
So far, so good.
“Wonderful,” Draco hissed into his ear as he passed Harry to sit on the far side of the table. It was only a stray breath, but Harry could hear the truth in it—and feel the truth in the hand Draco used to brush his ribs, in the moment when his floating cloak shielded the touch from everyone’s sight.
That bolstered Harry’s resolve as nothing could have. He sat up straighter and turned his attention to the first person who had decided to approach them. This was Allison Crowley, as he remembered from Draco’s descriptions. A tall woman, the silver of her hair shining with added glamour charms, she had hands like claws and an expression that would have done credit to a hawk at the kill.
“Mr. Malfoy,” she said, and inclined her head to Draco. Then she turned to face Harry, and he heard the frost in her tone that was supposed to put him in his place. “Mr. Potter. Can I ask why you are intruding into a pure-blood sanctuary?”
“Funny,” Harry said lightly. “They must have forgotten to put up the charms on the door that would sting me if I really was of dirty blood.”
Crowley’s face showed a massive struggle to suppress some emotion, which was as revealing in its way as full-out hatred. Harry smiled sweetly at her. There had been a great campaign after the war to create “pure-blood sanctuaries,” public and private places where only those of guaranteed heritage could enter. Protective charms supposedly guarded the entrances, doors and fireplaces alike, hexing any half-blood or Muggleborn who showed up. But there was no difference in wizarding “blood” great enough for charms to recognize, and Harry had proved that by disguising himself and walking through several sanctuary doors like he owned the place.
“Allison,” Draco said, his voice tempered with gentle apology, “I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse Harry. He isn’t used to the rarefied air on our heights yet.”
Crowley turned to face Draco. She gave a little blunt nod in acceptance of his apology, and then jerked as his words caught up with her. “Harry,” she said.
“Yes?” Harry leaned inquiringly towards her. He thought of fluttering his eyelashes, but caught Draco’s warning glance and refrained.
Crowley ignored him with a truly heroic effort and went on speaking to Draco as though Harry wasn’t there. “Do not tell me that you have taken him to your bed,” she said. There was real distress in her voice. “Or worse, to your heart. Oh, Draco, the last descendant of a noble line should avoid such ignoble mingling.”
Harry had to work hard to swallow his anger. Yes, there had been hostile people at the Ministry receptions, too, but at least they usually harassed him about not having done enough or having done the right thing, not about his heritage.
You knew this would be a factor, he reminded himself. You knew it. You could have backed away if it disgusted you that much.
Instead, he took an invisible deep breath—something he’d learned in Auror training, when his instructors emphasized that he must never let his enemies know they were getting to him—and settled himself. He had all the outrage Hermione could ask for when it came to judging people, and magical creatures, on what they were born with. But his tactics were different from hers. Hermione wanted to persuade people, and with some of them, she’d managed. But her own hardened mindset made it impossible for her, on this one issue, to listen to logic or concede the faults of her direct approach. Harry could, and so that meant he could support his ideals in a sneaky fashion.
Besides, it was up to Draco to answer now.
“I have taken him to my bed,” Draco said. “And to my heart.” It was said so lightly that Harry didn’t realize, for a moment, what it implied. Then Draco’s hand slid across the table and his fingers closed around Harry’s wrist like a manacle, in a caressing, possessive gesture that reassured Harry at once. No matter how great the change in Draco’s emotions, he still kept the basis for them that Harry understood. “Because some things matter more than blood.”
“Like what?” Crowley’s voice was almost a wail.
“Like beauty,” Draco said, and his voice dipped, simulating the lick across the center of Harry’s palm that Harry knew he would have given if they weren’t in public. “And fame, and power.”
He turned to Harry with a brilliant smile, which had its dark edges and no sweetness. But that lack of sweetness hardly mattered, not next to what he’d said.
Harry gave him a heated look in return, unmistakable to anyone watching, especially someone standing as close as Crowley was. Draco’s eyelids drooped, and he gave the slightest shiver of pleasure. Crowley practically stumbled as she left the table behind and went back to her own.
The meal came soon enough, the most delicately spiced soup Harry had ever tasted, followed by pies of seasoned game and huge wheels of bread and cheese. The specialty of Merlin’s Tor was Dark Ages wizarding food, which, from what Harry had read, was not so different from Muggle food at the same time. He ate his way through even the bread, which was thick and sweet and deserved great chomping chews, with delicate nibbles, and used his cutlery correctly every time.
Now and then Draco reached out and held his wrist again, but not to restrain him. Harry understood that perfectly well. No, he wanted to claim Harry in front of the room, and express his own intense delight in owning someone who was a half-blood but a match in his manners for the highest pure-blood.
And now and then someone did come up to talk with Draco—and in staring at Harry, goggling as though he were an orangutan who had inexplicably been taught to use a fork and spoon, they gave away more than they meant to. Draco won some concessions more easily than he might otherwise have done. They’d planned on that, too. Harry gave them innocent or blank looks and hid his smile in his napkin.
And now and then he pulled his hand back whilst Draco held it in his restraining grasp, just to see how far away he could get. Each time, it brought Draco’s gaze back to him without fail, bright and piercing, and Draco intensified his hold.
Not going to let you go.
The message was written openly in his eyes. Harry smiled back and lifted his glass of wine in a private toast, and then he turned and scanned the room idly, wondering where the first attack would come from.
As it turned out, it was Acheron Flint, whom Harry had tried several times to arrest on charges of smuggling dragons without success. Harry was surprised when he saw the lean wizard, impeccably attired in dark robes, rise to his feet; surely he would goad someone else into fighting for him rather than being so open. That wasn’t like him at all.
But like him or not, he strode forwards now and halted next to their table. He didn’t even pretend to talk business with Draco, unlike some of the others who had used that as an excuse to gape at Harry. He simply planted his hands on his hips and stared.
Harry smiled back blandly. He knew as well as Draco—whose clasp had tightened slightly on his wrist—that staring contests had been used as old rituals of status in pure-blood society when wizards were still using sticks as wands. He didn’t intend to look away, and a time-delayed charm he activated now with a subtle motion of his unclaimed hand kept his eyes moistened so he didn’t have to blink.
Flint curled his lip when he realized that Harry had become wise to his tactic, and jerked his head a little to the side. “I’m surprised to see you without your Mudblood friend tagging at your heels, Potter,” he said. “Isn’t it rather uncomfortable to go without her for someone like you, who keeps his brain outside his skull?”
Harry gave him a friendly smile and stood. “Challenge given and accepted,” he said clearly. “Do I await your seconds, or shall we meet now?” He raised his eyebrows.
Flint stared at him. “What?”
“The challenger gives up right of choice, then,” Harry said, still speaking so that everyone in the room could hear him. “It falls to me to declare my preference, and my preference is for an immediate settlement.” He stepped away from the table, Draco letting him go slowly so that his fingers could trail along and caress Harry’s skin, and drew his wand. The attendants, forewarned this might happen, rushed out and began to clear the tables from the center of the room. Harry paused and courteously awaited Flint.
Flint stayed where he was, his hand lingering a few inches away from the robe pocket where Harry had seen the line of his wand. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, and by dint of great effort it seemed that he was trying not to spit the words.
“A wizard’s duel, of course,” Harry said, and this time pitched his voice as surprised. “What else would I be talking about? It is an ancient custom, honored by all right-thinking wizards, that says one can duel to settle insults.” He spread his hand invitingly to the patch of floor in front of him.
Flint flushed. “An ancient custom, honored by all right-thinking wizards” was taken directly from one of his speeches.
Harry had wondered if it would be enough to make him rush into the battle. But he seemed to remember—as did most of their watching, tense audience, Harry was willing to bet—that Harry was a trained Auror, and he could feel the soft throb of Harry’s magic now that Harry had lowered the shields on his power. He would be stupid to do so.
“You withdraw the challenge?” Harry asked, never taking his eyes from Flint’s.
Flint swallowed and nodded.
Harry smiled brilliantly. “Then you must also withdraw the insult.”
Flint froze. Harry was correct, of course, according to pure-blood social codes, but he obviously hadn’t expected Harry to know that.
Harry cocked his head. “What’s the matter?” he asked, and he kept his voice soft and solicitous, rather than taunting. That would be enough of a taunt all by itself, for those in the know. “Are you confused?” He knew better than to ask if Flint was afraid. Honor would demand that he duel Harry then, no matter how bad an idea it was.
“I—apologize,” said Flint in a strangled voice, and turned back to his chair. Harry waited a few moments, watching, before he put up his own wand, nodded at Flint’s back, and walked back to Draco’s side. The attendants started putting the tables they’d moved back into place.
Draco caught his wrist again as he sat and held it up so that everyone could see his fingers in place, holding, possessing, the Auror a powerful pure-blood wizard was afraid to duel. Harry watched him, gently amused, certain that he wouldn’t show everyone the erection he also had.
Then he leaned forwards for a kiss.
Harry leaned in to oblige him. It was a chaste meeting of lips, as it had to be in such a cold and judgmental place, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that Draco had done it, and that his free hand curved around the back of Harry’s neck, staking an even more undeniable claim.
And any worries that Harry had still entertained about Draco’s sacrificing him to the whims of his political contacts fell away.
I love him.
He pulled back and looked into Draco’s eyes, soft and brilliant with passion, satisfaction, and pride—the first time Harry had seen him display pride in someone else, rather than in his family name or himself.
It was a far more effective message than even the words would have been.
And he loves me.
Chapter 18.
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no subject
Date: 2009-05-11 06:12 pm (UTC)I love this story and all of the hidden messages between Harry and Draco :)
no subject
Date: 2009-05-12 01:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-11 06:40 pm (UTC)Harry is soooo cool and I just want to squish Draco! *bounces happily*
This story is so WIN!
no subject
Date: 2009-05-12 01:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-11 06:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-12 01:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-11 07:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-12 01:06 am (UTC)And no, knowing Ron, he probably won't. Or he would be, but for Malfoy!
no subject
Date: 2009-05-11 08:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-12 01:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-11 09:27 pm (UTC)God, I love this!! I'm literally dance in my chair in the library when I should be working on my finals. I very much look forward to the next chapter.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-12 01:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-11 10:59 pm (UTC)Cute! As are all of Harry's interactions here with Mature!Ron. I also love how Harry and Draco play the purebloods' own game and win (although if I were Harry, I'd still be rather peeved about the need for Draco to act quite so much like a master over him for this crowd, with all of his gestures!). I also like how you spin out the canon depiction of pureblood society into post-war developments like the "sanctuaries."
I really appreciate that about all of your stories - that you seem to have charted out logical (and yet often quite creative as well) progressions and back stories for all of the characters / societies / events even when you won't be delving far into them, rather than leaving great voids around your central plots. It makes the characterizations and story lines feel much more real. A lot of fan fiction writers don't bother doing that, or can't.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-12 01:08 am (UTC)Harry is more tolerant of Draco's actions in public than he would be in private, or for that matter in public with his own friends. He knows that Draco needs to establish himself as not diminished by the power and fame of Harry Potter. And anyone who thinks that Harry is some kind of slave or poet is obviously not paying attention to what just happened with Flint.
I'm glad you like the little details. They're one of the things I enjoy adding to the story the most.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-11 11:23 pm (UTC)dang, that purebloods club, hmmm, interesting how harry made it through the wards. he's that powerful, eh?
sounds like you're about to wind down the story, no?
no subject
Date: 2009-05-12 01:09 am (UTC)And the point Harry was demonstrating is that the pure-blood wards didn't actually work. You can't distinguish between one type of blood and another.
Yes, next chapter.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-12 12:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-12 01:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-12 04:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-13 01:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-12 03:17 pm (UTC)(and with Ron, earlier)
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Date: 2009-05-13 01:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-12 09:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-13 01:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-13 03:56 am (UTC)Lovely chapter.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-14 01:27 am (UTC)