Chapter Two of 'How Noble in Reason'- Draco Malfoy Is HIding Something

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter One.

Title: How Noble In Reason (2/9)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Draco, background Ron/Hermione
Warnings: Flangst, a bit of sex, profanity. Ignores the epilogue.
Rating: mild R
Summary: The Head Auror thinks that there’s Voldemort-like magic in the cellars of Malfoy Manor. Harry agrees to investigate. The Head Auror thinks Harry should formally Court Draco Malfoy to get close enough. Harry doesn’t agree with this, but he doesn’t have a lot of choice.
Author’s Notes: This will be a short story, eight or nine chapters. In some chapters the angst is stronger than others, but it’s a light story for the most part. The title is a line from Hamlet.

Thank you for all the reviews!

Chapter Two—Draco Malfoy Is Hiding Something

The moment he stepped out of the fireplace at Malfoy Manor, Harry felt his scar begin to burn.

He caught his breath in surprise and stood still, glad that there was no one to see him in this small, dim entrance room except the house-elf who had taken his cloak. He pretended to rub his forehead and yawn so that anyone who came around the corner unexpectedly wouldn’t think he was specifically touching the scar. Yes, the skin was rougher and warmer beneath his fingers than it had been in years.

Fuck. Only now did Harry realize how little credence he’d given to the idea that there really could be something of Voldemort’s here. He took a deep breath to conceal his disappointment and looked up.

“Master Harry Potter is being all right?” the elf squeaked, staring at him in concern.

“Yes, is Master Harry Potter?” came a familiar, sarcastic, missed voice, and Malfoy stepped around the corner.

Harry could only stare. The voice was the same, and he had expected the face to be, too. Malfoy still occasionally got his picture in the papers for the sheer length and wildness of his parties, and whenever Harry had watched the photographs, it had had only a few superficial differences.

But now, seen close up, Malfoy’s chin was more pointed, his face thinner, and his face more precisely framed by the neatly-cut blond hair than Harry had ever seen it in school. He looked like a fox, rather than a ferret. Ron would probably have said that wasn’t much of an improvement, but for Harry, it was startling.

He’d been expecting the boy he knew in school, Harry realized as he held his hand out. This wasn’t him. It made him at once more curious—why had Malfoy accepted the Courting in the first place?—and more wary—Malfoy might have changed enough to want to resurrect Voldemort after all.

Malfoy caught his hand in a quick grip, eyes traveling down Harry’s body as if searching for concealed weapons. Harry gave him a weak smile. “Sorry for the dress robes,” he said. “I tried not to offend common decency too badly.” His robes were dark green and didn’t have any fucking lace on them the way that Ron’s robes in fourth year had, and that was about the best that could be said for them.

“You did better than I would have thought you could,” Malfoy murmured. Then his eyes came back to Harry’s, and a sharp smile twisted his lips to the side. He looked like he was in pain, Harry thought, and suspected Malfoy didn’t smile often. “Now. Where is my second Courting gift that I graciously allowed you to bring me?”

Harry bowed, glad that that was required, because it would hide the expression of distaste on his face, and then held out the wrapped present. Malfoy shredded the tissue paper as if he had claws and gazed down at the thing within expressionlessly. When he glanced up, Harry was surprised to see his face was flushed.

“Why. Bring me. This?” His words were separated by short, furious puffs of air.

“Er,” Harry said, wondering if he had deeply wounded Malfoy already. He had drawn on his memories of the Courting gifts Ron sent Hermione, but that might not have been enough. “The second gift is supposed to be a living thing, or a model of a living thing. That is.”

“This,” Malfoy said, turning the gift around as if Harry didn’t know what the intricately carved marble flower inside looked like, “is a narcissus.”

Oh. Harry relaxed a bit, though he had to admit that he was disappointed Malfoy hadn’t denounced the whole thing as a deception and thrown him out. He had the confirmation that something of Voldemort’s lingered here. He could have discovered enough to justify an arrest from the outside. “I know,” he said. “It’s in honor of your mother.”

Malfoy, Harry discovered, had acquired a trick of lifting his eyelids high so as to gradually show off the eye beneath. It was effective at signaling his feelings, and he did it now. Harry shuffled his feet.

“You dared,” Malfoy said, in what was not a question.

Harry nodded. “She helped me in the Forbidden Forest that day Voldemort tried to kill me—did kill me,” he said, watching closely to see if Malfoy flinched at all when he mentioned Voldemort’s name. “I thought it was appropriate.”

Malfoy only lowered his eyes to the narcissus again. His hands clenched on it convulsively. Harry did hope he wouldn’t throw it at the wall and shatter it. It had cost a lot of money, and if Malfoy wasn’t going to accept it, Harry would just as soon take it back to the shop he’d got it from.

But Malfoy touched the narcissus’s petals once, with what looked like indifference, and gave it to the house-elf with instructions to take it elsewhere. Then he held out his arm. Harry stared at it, then at him.

Malfoy sighed. “If you are Courting me, then you should escort me into the party,” he explained in a calm voice. “You won’t know the people there, but never mind. I don’t know half of them.”

Harry watched Malfoy covertly as he took his arm. Malfoy didn’t have perfect control over his feelings, Harry’d seen that already. And he could see the way Malfoy’s smile twisted again when he spoke about not knowing the people. He didn’t think the boredom that spread over his face like ice over a freezing pond a moment later was feigned.

So he holds these enormous parties, and he has Voldemort in his cellars, and he apparently isn’t happy about either one, Harry thought, then checked himself. I only have evidence for the first, not the second. But I do wonder what the point of these parties is, if not to entertain him.

The anteroom led out into a short corridor which flowed to two delicate doors ornamented with climbing bronze vines and leaves, life-like enough to make Harry believe in them for a moment. Malfoy nodded to house-elves standing on either side of the doors, and they swung them open to the accompaniment of a chord of faint, sweet music.

The room beyond that was so large Harry was surprised it fit in the house. It was oval-shaped, too, and the walls were covered with mirrors, which made Harry’s head swim for a moment. The people dancing and chattering and playing some kind of complicated game with darts in the corners turned to face them, and their reflections in the mirrors moved all at the same time. Harry clutched at Malfoy’s arm as at an anchor and heard Malfoy chuckle gleefully.

Most of the partygoers wore robes of bright colors: shimmering sapphire, brilliant scarlet, a pink that hurt Harry’s eyes. Only here and there was someone in black. One woman wore the mask of a bright bird-of-paradise, and the train of her robe blossomed into a peacock’s tail. The man with her had robes that mimicked the green of the tail. Harry saw witches who looked young enough to attend Hogwarts with plunging necklines and wizards of the same age with trousers that barely covered their arses. He shook his head in confusion.

“Ah, yes, you can’t be expected to play man of the world, can you?” Malfoy murmured. Then he raised his voice. “Please welcome Harry Potter, ladies and gentlemen. As you can see, he’s Courting me.”

Harry didn’t think it was that obvious, when they’d merely entered with their arms entwined, but the crowd made a wave of shocked gasping noises and promptly bowed or curtsied. Then they began to swarm them.

Harry had thought he would be out of place here, with nothing to say and no idea of what to do, but as they surrounded him with blank masks and blanker smiling faces, he actually relaxed. He did, in fact, know how to show to advantage in front of a crowd who all wanted a small piece of him instead of the truth. The Ministry still required it of him when he captured someone notorious, and every year on the anniversary of Voldemort’s death, everyone required it of him for twenty-four hours.

So he talked about the weather in sly ways, and hinted about the secrets of his job that he wasn’t allowed to talk of further in slyer ones, and made jokes when he thought he could get away with it about his superiors in the Ministry. People hissed and hooted and laughed in delight, and tapped him on the wrist and the elbow, and told him how lucky he was to be getting away with a notoriously choosy man like Draco Malfoy. And Harry beamed and nodded and talked about how he was lucky, absolutely.

Finally the crowd drifted away a little, and Harry could take a breath, and turn to see where Malfoy was. His biggest fear was that Malfoy might have taken the chance to signal to someone about the Voldemort magic, and he wouldn’t have seen it.

But Malfoy stood next to him as if nailed there, staring. Harry could make nothing out of the expression on his face, though he thought it better than the blankness so many of the guests showed.

“Yes?” he asked, when Malfoy had only gone on staring for some time.

Malfoy shook himself as if coming out of sleep and gave that twisted smile that, this time, apparently tried to wrap halfway around his face. “Upstaging me at my own party,” he murmured. “What will you think of next, Potter?”

“I did not fucking do that,” Harry said, reminded in an instant of all the reasons he had ever disliked Malfoy. “You were the one who insisted that I come to the party, and you know it’s as much of a social coup for you to be seen with me as the other way around. You must have known what would happen. So don’t complain.”

Malfoy once more raised his eyelids. Harry wondered where he had learned that. He could see ways it would get fucking creepy after a while.

Then Malfoy held out his arm and said, “Let’s dance, then.”

Harry winced. I hate this. I am going to think of some way that I can murder Binks without being detected and do it as soon as I get back to the Ministry. And then I’ll become a master criminal and no one will ever be able to track me down, and I won’t have to worry about things like hurting Malfoy’s feelings with a botched Courting.

He wistfully put the fantasy to one side and met Malfoy’s gaze. “All right,” he said. “But I’m not a very good dancer.”

Malfoy cocked his head. “You must have known you would be required to dance as part of the Courtship.”

Here was another moment where Harry would have given anything for Binks’s plan to have failed, because he had to pretend that he was sorry he wasn’t a good dancer and couldn’t give Malfoy the full experience, instead of hoping that Malfoy would be offended and allow him to end this ridiculous charade.

“Yeah,” Harry said. “But it’s not as though I decided to take dancing lessons when I decided to Court you. It was something I only thought of later.”

Malfoy gave him a slow, secret smile. Harry felt his stomach warm and drop a few inches.

Oh, shit.

Of all the problems he’d thought he’d have with this game, an honest attraction to Malfoy wasn’t one of them.

“Why did you decide to Court me?” Malfoy asked, and drew Harry towards the dance floor. Harry went reluctantly, trying to at least make sure he wouldn’t trip over his robes on the way there. There was no guarantee once he actually started dancing, of course. “I want to hear every detail.”

Harry winced again, but he managed to keep this one internal. He had thought of a few lies, of course, but that didn’t matter when he was a good liar and would discredit them as soon as he tried to tell them.

That left a bunch of things he had thought of that were true, but not connected with the Courting. At least he would be able to say them with sincerity. In the absolute fuckup this evening had become, he thought that was enough.

“Well,” he began, “I’d been curious about you for a long time since Hogwarts. I wondered if you’d changed at all.” They were in the middle of the dance floor now, and Malfoy had halted, reaching out to put his hands on Harry’s shoulders. Harry tried to mimic the same thing with him, and Malfoy gave him a patient look and readjusted Harry’s hands so that they were on his waist. Harry flushed, but tried to keep talking normally. “The newspapers said that you hadn’t, but you know how they lie.”

“Curiosity?” Malfoy asked. “That’s all?” They started gliding back and forth, and Harry hoped the whole dance was like this. Simple side-to-side steps, he could handle.

“I’d hardly base the whole Courting on simple curiosity, would I?” Harry demanded. “No. I think—I think that you must have changed. And I have to admit, my dreams are tangled up in this, too.”

“Dreams.” Malfoy’s face had a genuine smile on it for the first time. “The sort of dream where you wake up crying out my name?”

Harry coughed, flushing more, and then, just then, of course, because the universe hated him, the music changed and he found himself tripping over the hem of his robes. Malfoy clucked and wrapped an arm around his waist to keep him upright and steady. “You try to go too fast, and lead too much,” he murmured. “This is supposed to be relaxing music. Dance. Move gently. Let me.”

I’d be only too happy to let you, said Harry’s happy, exuberant, inappropriate mind.

Harry shook his head, sighed, and said, “No, not that kind of dream. Where we’re flying out of the Fiendfyre, and you’re leaning over from behind me and saying something. It was something important, but the dream wouldn’t let me remember what.”

Malfoy’s face changed and grew still, the way it had when he looked at the carved narcissus. Then he said, dryly, “In reality, Potter, I screamed. There. This way. Yes, that’s right.”

Apparently I’m attracted to his voice when it’s soft like that, Harry thought in despair as a thrill ran through him at the last words. “I know,” he said. “That doesn’t make any difference to the dream.” And it hadn’t. Harry had actually had that dream. He’d sat up in bed afterwards, but in puzzlement, not arousal, as he tried to work out what it meant.

Malfoy guided him closer with one hand in the small of his back. Harry tried desperately to ignore his groin. He’d never been attracted to suspects before, and so, although he saw no point in denying that he suddenly was, he also saw no point in letting to grow so that it interfered with his ability to act on this case.

“Besides,” Harry murmured, “I’ve learned well enough in the past few years that the people I sometimes think of as evil, aren’t always. I started thinking about what that meant for you during the war. You’re like them. You didn’t have much choice, or you made one decision you thought was for the best and found yourself on a road that you couldn’t turn back from.”

Malfoy looked as if he’d bite. “Don’t pity me, Potter.”

“But I do,” Harry said, heart beating rapidly. He hoped that was because he was excited that this particular disappointment might make Malfoy reject the Courting altogether, and not because of how close he was to Malfoy. “That’s part of it. Pity, and curiosity, and wanting to know more about you, and seeing your photograph in the papers, and thinking you might have changed, and having watched Ron use the Courting to get closer to Hermione. Yeah, a lot of modern pure-bloods use the Courting when they already know who they want to marry, but Ron told me it didn’t used to be that way. People would use it with relative strangers. It’s a good way to get to know each other.”

Malfoy stared some more. Then he put on that unreadable expression again. “Many people would say that you already knew more than enough about me,” he murmured.

“And I’ve told you why I think they’re wrong,” Harry said. “Will you tell me why you accepted the Courting? I didn’t think you would, to be honest.”

“Who wouldn’t take the option of being Courted by the great and brilliant Harry Potter?”

“Don’t,” Harry said in turn. He stopped in the middle of the dance floor, ignoring the music and Malfoy’s attempts to tug him on. He didn’t give a fuck if he got in the way of the other dancers. “Don’t give that brittle smile. It’s a lie.”

Malfoy blinked. “What?”

“You smile in this way like your face is about to crack.” Harry started to reach out, to demonstrate by tracing the curve of Malfoy’s lips, and then realized what he was doing and snatched his hand back. There were some boundaries he just wasn’t willing to cross, Binks or no Binks. “It’s false. It’s a lie. I know that you didn’t accept for that reason. Maybe some other people would feel honored, but you wouldn’t. Why?”

Malfoy caught Harry’s right wrist in a crushing grip, but Harry had dealt with worse, especially from people who had honestly wanted to kill him. He met Malfoy’s eyes and waited.

“You’re wrong,” Malfoy said, voice odd and deep. He cleared his throat and spoke more like himself—well, like the man Harry had heard so far this evening. “You’re wrong. I am honored.”

Harry sighed. “Look, if you won’t give me your honest reason, I don’t see why the Courting should go ahead.”

His throat burned as he said that. Yes. Honest reasons. Hah. But Malfoy surely couldn’t let the Courting go forwards. Surely. What would be the point? The whole reason Harry had expected him to refuse was their past, and Malfoy would have had no reason to find that neutralized, even if Harry did. Harry wasn’t his House and Quidditch rival anymore, but he was an Auror, part of the group that had chased Malfoy’s parents away.

Malfoy said something utterly unexpected, though.

“I dream of the fire, too,” he said, and another smile slid over his mouth, wild and sly. “And I wanted to find out what you tasted like.” He tugged Harry forwards with one hand behind his head.

Harry had time to think about what was going to happen, and make a decision. He had to go ahead with the Courting. Binks refused to see reason. Harry didn’t think Malfoy would believe him ever again if he backed out now. Malfoy was definitely hiding something in the cellars that had to do with Voldemort, whether or not he knew it, which meant Harry had to retain access to Malfoy Manor at all costs.

And he wouldn’t mind finding out what Malfoy tasted like.

So he opened his mouth, and their tongues brushed together. That sent a feeling through Harry so strong that he shuddered. He leaned in, wishing briefly that they were against a wall or something so he wouldn’t have to worry about falling, and got the first taste of Malfoy’s mouth.

It was wet, but not in the way that Cho’s kiss had been wet. This was the best kind of wetness, and Harry moaned, and he didn’t even care if everyone at the party heard him.

Malfoy gasped, and then pushed Harry gently away. Harry managed to go. He licked his lips and averted his eyes, aware that he was flushing, not knowing what to do about it.

He had never been a good liar. Never. So he had kissed Malfoy the way he would kiss someone he was honestly interested in, not knowing what else he should do, and now they were—here.

“Ah,” Malfoy said at last, and there seemed to be a whole world of meaning compressed into that little sound.

“Um, sorry,” Harry said, because he thought he knew what half that world of meaning was, and it was all bad. He wiped at some sweat above his eyes and then managed to focus on Malfoy again. “I didn’t—I should have asked before I tried to shove my tongue down your throat like that. I—is this in accord with the rules of the Courting? Ron didn’t do anything like that with Hermione.”

Malfoy grimaced horribly. “Please spare me the anecdotes about your little friends, Potter.”

Harry straightened, on the defensive again, and feeling as though he had emerged from a dream rather like the one about the Fiendfyre. Sure, it made sense in the dream for Malfoy to speak to him, and it made sense while he was kissing Malfoy to think he liked him, but outside certain special moments like that? “Fine,” he said. “You don’t need to hear about them ever again if you release me from the Courtship.”

Malfoy arched his head haughtily, looking at Harry down his nose with great effect even though there was less than an inch of difference in their heights. “Cowardice, Potter?” he whispered. “Second thoughts? Surely you know that, by this point, only my free choice can break off the Courting?”

“Yeah,” Harry said, glaring, “and if you despise my friends and despise the way I kiss, and know the horrible way I dance, I can’t think of any reasons that you would want to keep going.”

Malfoy shook his head. He had a look now, with his lips clamped shut, that Harry recognized from Hogwarts and the way he had looked before Quidditch games. He always lost those games, Harry reminded himself, but that wasn’t entirely comforting.

“I don’t deserve to lose time or sleep over your cowardice,” Malfoy said. “You’ll continue. And you’ll return tomorrow evening for a private dinner, just the two of us, at six. Bring the third gift then. I trust that you’ll know what to get me. It has to be a symbol of the bond we share, remember.” He raised an eyebrow and started to saunter away.

“You’re mad,” Harry said after him. He didn’t care if everyone in the party heard. It wasn’t like they would know what the argument was really about. Either none of them would know about the feeling of Voldemort’s magic in the cellars because Malfoy didn’t know, or they knew and were part of whatever secret plan Malfoy had and wouldn’t help him anyway. “This is really stupid for us to be doing.”

Malfoy turned his head without stopping his stroll. “Yes, but I have your attention focused on me now,” he said, so softly that Harry was certain he was the only one who heard.

While Harry was still gaping, Malfoy vanished into the middle of a group that included the woman with the peacock tail on her robe. A thrill of delighted laughter followed his passing a moment later.

Harry left to get his cloak from the house-elf, grateful they’d come such a short distance so that he wouldn’t get lost on the way back. He stifled the temptation to kick anything until he was in the waiting room again, where he kicked the poker. The house-elf leaped back and stared at him in a mixture of fear and disapproval.

“Master Harry Potter is not to be doing that,” it squeaked.

“Shove the poker up your arse,” Harry retorted, and threw the powder into the flames, yelling out his destination. As he whirled along, he thought of all the ways this situation was stupid and ridiculous and stupid.

He was spending a lot of money on Courting gifts. Binks would doubtless be delighted and think tonight was “progress.” He was lying to Malfoy, who, on the off-chance that he was sincere and had real reasons for accepting the Courting, would be hurt when he found out. Voldemort was coming back. He was attracted to a wanker. If Malfoy wasn’t sincere, then Harry had once again played into his hands and given him something to laugh at.

He staggered out in his drawing room and sagged into a chair, scowling at the wall.

I hate my life.

Especially because, despite all the reasons against it, including that Malfoy was probably lying, his mind kept returning to the kiss and Malfoy’s whisper about dreaming of the fire.

My body and mind both have no sense of what’s appropriate.