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lomonaaerenChapter Two.
Title: How Noble In Reason (3/9)
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 again for all the reviews!
Chapter Three—Harry Potter Is Trying Hard
Harry leaned back in his chair and stared at Binks. He had just described what he’d done and said at Malfoy Manor last night, and he had expected Binks to agree that he was right and there was no way the Courtship could go ahead. They knew enough to send in Aurors, didn’t they? Malfoy might not cooperate, but they didn’t need his cooperation with a simple search.
Yes, Harry had thought he’d need to keep Malfoy’s trust last night, which meant not sending in a raid, but the more he thought about it—and he’d thought about it for a long time before he fell asleep—the more he’d decided that a small breach of trust was better than a large one. There was nothing between him and Malfoy yet but one dance, one kiss. Harry could end it now, and they could both walk away unscathed.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Binks, with a shake of his head. Then he stuck his head under the desk—because, Harry reckoned, a criminal spider might be hiding there. He straightened back up and tapped his wand on the desk as he stared at Harry. “You’re obviously making progress. Got Malfoy eating out of the palm of your hand. What do you want to stop for?”
“We’d get more answers and preserve better relations if we told him the truth instead of lying,” Harry said.
“I don’t see that,” Binks muttered. “Don’t see that at all. He’d just resent us for forcing the Courtship on him and shut the door.”
“We didn’t force it on him,” Harry said sharply. “He accepted for hidden reasons best known to him.”
Too late, he realized what Binks had maneuvered him into doing, and scowled as Binks beamed, reaching across the desk to shake his hand.
“Just what I felt,” Binks said happily. “You go on doing what you’re doing, Auror Potter.” He only called Harry “Auror Potter” when he wanted to flatter him. “I’m sure that you’ll know how to do that best.”
Harry left Binks’s office with a headache that didn’t diminish when he saw Ron jogging towards him. Ron paused and gave him an intensely sympathetic look, but still made the announcement Harry could practically see burning his mouth.
“Hermione’s pregnant, mate!”
Harry blinked, and then reached out and pounded Ron on the back. “Congratulations!” he said, with only a single wistful thought (no more than that) about the family he would probably never have. “When’s the baby due?”
“Next year,” Ron said, smiling as though he already held it. “In March, probably. Mum’s over the moon. Dad’s beside himself. And Percy is trying to give me advice.” He rolled his eyes. Percy had married his latest girlfriend, Audrey, long before Ron and Hermione had worked through their Courtship, and had two daughters. He had also changed his tendency to lecture people about the Ministry into one to lecture them about their children. Harry knew he was a good man, but he thought he’d liked him better the other way.
“Ignore him, that’s all you can do.” Harry flung an arm around Ron’s shoulders and steered him back to the office, hoping he could forget his own problems with Malfoy for a little while in Ron’s happiness. “I hope Hermione’s looking forward to it?”
Ron smiled. “Well, she will be, when she gets over the morning sickness.”
They stepped into the office, and Ron gasped. Harry looked around in concern, wondering if someone had sneaked in and left anti-child propaganda on his desk or something.
No. Someone had left a huge bouquet there instead. Harry stared at the tall white flowers in a glass jar of water for a long time before he realized they were lilies. He stepped away from Ron and extended his hand to touch them as if in a dream.
“Don’t, mate!” Ron snapped. Harry looked back and saw that he’d whipped out his wand and was aiming it at the flowers. “They could be dusted with some sort of mind-control potion, and you’d miss it in all the pollen. We had a case like that the other day.”
Harry sighed. “I doubt that’s it. I have wards around the office that react to things like that, you know.”
Ron blushed. “Oh, yeah.” He’d helped Harry put the wards up. He cautiously slid his wand back into his pocket, ducking his head and squinting as though he assumed the lilies would reveal their dangerous nature from a different angle. “Then what are they?”
“A present from Malfoy, I think.” Harry moved around the vase, and yes, there was a card attached to the side of it. He pried it off and noted the silver filigree letters on the front, as well as the snowy strength of the paper, which probably cost more than he made in a week. He flipped the card open.
To Harry Potter, who honored my mother. May these flowers do the same for him.
Harry shut the card and stared at the lilies. Yes, of course they were from Malfoy. He recognized the handwriting, but really, he had known the minute he saw the flowers. He reached out and completed the gesture Ron had interrupted this time, and the white petals whispered against his fingers, even softer than he had imagined.
“Malfoy shouldn’t be giving you presents,” Ron said in bewilderment. “You’re the one who gets him things, and he lies back and accepts them. Or boots you out on your arse,” he added in a more hopeful tone. He turned to Harry. “Has he booted you out on your arse yet?”
Harry shook his head. “I don’t understand,” he admitted quietly. Yes, the rules of the Courting were strict, and if they were at all important to Malfoy, it didn’t make sense that he was violating them.
On the other hand, he thought, his Auror senses coming to the forefront now instead of the part of him that was charmed and touched by the gift, maybe this is a sign that he knows it isn’t real. He wants me to play along. He’s counting on me not noticing the violation of the rules, or what it means, but instead wants to trap me with kindness.
Harry had to admit that it was a trap that would work better than many others. But he didn’t intend for it to succeed.
“What are you going to do with them?” Ron had his head tilted to the side and one eye squinted, as though he wanted to imitate Binks’s paranoid habits.
“I don’t know,” Harry said. “But getting rid of them might look suspicious. I can’t believe that Malfoy doesn’t have spies in the Ministry that would tell him how I received the flowers.”
Ron stared at him. “I didn’t think of that,” he said. “Maybe this is a test, then? To see what you do?”
“It’s as likely an explanation as anything else,” Harry said irritably. He wished Malfoy had been obviously evil or obviously innocent; he was beginning to wish he had never taken this bloody case. Malfoy’s behavior might have a bunch of explanations or none. Maybe he just wanted to fuck with Harry as revenge for what Harry had done to him during school. “I’ll keep them for right now.” He cast a Preservation Charm and moved the vase to one side so that he could get at his paperwork.
“Are you sure that you can handle this, mate?”
Harry looked up in surprise. Ron was lingering by his desk, and he sounded…concerned. Harry wasn’t used to hearing that from Ron unless he was injured or obviously in distress. He shook his head. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I saw that letter,” Ron said quietly. “And you’re continuing with the Courtship despite all the objections against it.”
“Binks didn’t give me much choice,” Harry pointed out, wondering if Ron’s happy news had blotted the knowledge of what Binks was really like from his mind.
“You could fight it,” Ron said. “You’re probably the Auror in the Department who would have the best chance, since you have standing and fame outside it. You could make the papers listen to your story.”
“And expose what we know about Voldemort’s magic in Malfoy Manor,” Harry said flatly. “No, thanks.”
“You could tell the story without that,” Ron said. “Just Harry Potter being forced to do something against his will would make a good story, and there are reporters out there more reasonable than Skeeter, who would let you set the terms. If you really wanted to end the Courtship, that would be the way to do it.”
Harry narrowed his eyes. “And you think the fact that I haven’t done that yet is a sign of—what? That I want the Courtship to keep up?”
“I think you’re happy to have an excuse to be close to Malfoy, yeah.” Ron shook his head, probably about whatever had appeared in Harry’s face. “Listen, mate. I agree that you weren’t panting after him. But now that an excuse to be close to him has crossed your path, I don’t see you giving it up, either.”
“I’m just doing my job,” Harry muttered, and tried not to think about the private dinner that Malfoy had invited him to that night. Technically, that was within the rules of the Courtship; the man or woman being Courted would determine when they wanted to see the person pursuing them, and they could ask for other specific things, although the rules mandated the formal gifts. Harry already knew what he would buy, and Binks had said again that morning that the Ministry would compensate him. That wasn’t the problem.
No, the problem was how much he was looking forward to that bloody dinner.
I have to prevent Voldemort from coming back, Harry told himself firmly, and this is the best way to do that. If I like it, or if I’m anxious because I feel as though I’m really auditioning for a part in Malfoy’s life instead of only pretending, it’s natural. Malfoy is mostly innocent now, I think. I don’t want him to get hurt.
But even that could probably be more evidence for the attraction that Harry had noticed the night before.
He rolled his eyes and dived into his paperwork, where, even when he had to rewrite a report and submit it for the fourth time, there was less to annoy and harass him than in the thought of the Courtship.
*
“Ah, Potter. Right on time.”
Harry nodded and handed his cloak to the inevitable house-elf. It might have been the same one who’d welcomed him to the house last night; Harry didn’t know. He’d never been good at telling elves apart, with the obvious exceptions of Dobby, Winky, and Kreacher.
He clenched his teeth against the thought of Dobby and reached out to shake Malfoy’s hand. Malfoy didn’t offer it. Harry raised an eyebrow and spoke his thoughts, because that was what Malfoy would expect from the unsubtle, boorish Harry Potter. “What, changed your mind about welcoming me?”
“Of course not,” Malfoy said in a quiet, intense voice. They were in a small dark room that Harry couldn’t see well past the glow of the fire, but he didn’t think it was the room where they were eating in; it wasn’t formal enough. That meant Malfoy could have changed his mind. “I want you to do something other than shake my hand.”
Harry opened his mouth to ask what, and then stopped. He knew perfectly well what. He took a single deep breath, leaned forwards, and kissed Malfoy gently on the lips, wondering if Malfoy would pull away from a kiss that he hadn’t initiated himself, wondering if he had made a mistake after all, for so many reasons.
Malfoy parted his lips at once instead, and Harry found their tongues sliding together. He took a lurching step forwards, since being so distant from Malfoy was putting him off-balance, and Malfoy chuckled and dragged him closer with a firm hand on his back.
Harry decided in an instant that he didn’t care if Malfoy was trying to trick him. He was going to kiss honestly, as he had done the other night, the only way he could. So he was the one who locked his hands behind Malfoy’s back and pulled them closer still, as close as they had been when they were dancing, and took control of the kiss, bending Malfoy back towards the table in the center of the room.
Malfoy gasped as if he was surprised, and his hands scrabbled at Harry’s spine and shoulders before relaxing. Harry touched Malfoy’s cheeks and gums and teeth and palate with quick, flickering motions of his tongue, and then licked at Malfoy’s in turn, trying to get him to follow the pattern into Harry’s mouth.
But Malfoy only shuddered and pulled back, using an elbow on the table and one in Harry’s gut to support himself. Harry grunted in discomfort and stepped away, though only after he made sure that Malfoy was actually standing upright and wouldn’t go crashing to the ground. Then he scrubbed at his face and tried to readjust his hair, futilely.
“Didn’t expect that, did you, Potter?” Malfoy asked, with a shaky laugh. Harry told himself to remember that, that the laugh was shaky, when he glanced up and found Malfoy studying him with what looked like a perfect, composed mask.
“No,” Harry said. “It’s against the rules of the Courtship that say you’re supposed to hold back and let the other person beg for a kiss and a touch long before you give in. I know that you’re breaking the rules already, since you set those lilies to my office, but I don’t know why.” He paused, then added, “All I can do is the best I can, and that means playing my part in the Courtship and being honest at the same time.”
His stomach squirmed as he spoke those words. He wasn’t being honest. He should tell Malfoy the truth right now, apologize, leave the gift he’d brought tonight with him, and then march out of this house and tell Binks that he wasn’t doing this anymore. It was what he would do if he had the slightest bit of integrity.
Except…
Except that his scar was still burning. And it wasn’t the soft, slight twinge that he sometimes got when he passed through a place where Voldemort had spent a lot of time, such as certain parts of Hogwarts. This was a steady, real burning. Harry had glanced into the mirror last night and seen his scar flaring redder than it had been, the center of a large scarlet patch that, luckily, his fringe mostly covered.
This was serious, and he would just have to swallow what he hated and keep on working on it.
Malfoy was silent for a few minutes, watching Harry as though he expected another speech, another revelation. Then he shook his head and said, “You did study the rules of the Courtship before you started it.” His voice was dazed.
“I had an advantage because I saw Ron and Hermione using it,” Harry said. He felt oddly defensive, though he shouldn’t have. Malfoy was giving in, believing his lies, and that was what he wanted, wasn’t it? “And anyway, it doesn’t matter if I’m not pure-blood. This ritual matters to you, and it was the one I chose.”
“Indeed it was,” Malfoy said softly, and then stepped closer with a fluid movement that Harry resolved to keep in mind, just in case they had to duel later. “I’d like my gift now.”
Harry grinned. This was the one part of the evening that he thought he’d genuinely enjoy, especially since it seemed that Malfoy wasn’t going to say anything about the lilies or why he was breaking the rules. He dug into a pocket and opened the silvery paper of the package before Malfoy could do so.
Malfoy started at the Snitch lying in Harry’s palm without expression, then glanced up at him with lowered eyelashes. “This symbolizes the relationship that we shared in Hogwarts, I suppose? Because we both played Quidditch?” There was something that might have been disappointment beneath his voice, crushed so flat that it was difficult to make out.
Harry shook his head. “It symbolizes the relationship that we have now. Try to touch it.”
“Try,” murmured Malfoy derisively, but he reached out towards the Snitch.
It sprang into the air and loosed an angry buzz. Then it began to swoop around the room. Malfoy waited until it came near, like a cat who didn’t want to waste effort running after an energetic mouse, and lunged out.
It avoided his hand easily, twisting in midair to do so, and then buzzed back until it hung above Harry’s head. He reached up to it, and the Snitch jigged sideways and flung itself up to hover underneath the ceiling.
Malfoy turned to Harry, though he kept one eye on the Snitch as if he expected it to attack the back of his head. “Explain, Potter.”
“We’re never going to entirely understand each other,” Harry said softly, holding those cold grey eyes. They weren’t as cold as they wanted to appear, or as emotionless. Harry wondered if Malfoy was aware of that. “We avoid confession or simple contact—being caught. We’ll dodge and weave around each other, and if we land or meet, it’ll be unpredictably.”
As if proving that, the Snitch suddenly dropped and landed on the back of Malfoy’s hand for the briefest moment. Then he it flew off again before he could even reach out to grasp it.
Malfoy watched Harry for a bit longer, as if he trusted that the Snitch would avoid him. Then he smiled and reached out one hand. Harry grasped it, glad that Malfoy would actually let him shake it now.
Instead, Malfoy bowed his head and kissed Harry’s knuckles.
Harry gasped. He hadn’t known that the skin on the back of his hand would be sensitive. Why should he? It never had been before.
But lots of things were different with Malfoy than they ever had been before.
Malfoy raised his head and stared at Harry with bright eyes, one thumb moving over his knuckles in an absent way. Harry shook his head and cleared his throat, deciding to speak when Malfoy kept silent. “What are you doing?”
“Trying to lessen the unpredictability of our meetings,” Malfoy said, and slid a strong, confident hand around his wrist, leading him to the table. Apparently they were eating here after all.
Harry sat down in a daze, which he only partially woke up from when Malfoy clapped his hands and had house-elves deliver the food to them. It all seemed to be sweet, Harry noticed, from bread that they dipped in honey to fluffy meat pies with large flaky crusts that broke apart and shattered in his mouth. He licked his lips and shook his head, patting at his mouth with a napkin. He hoped Malfoy wouldn’t insist on another kiss before he left tonight. Harry was certain that there would still be bits of the food stuck in his teeth.
Malfoy ate in silence, only pausing between bites to watch Harry intently. Harry was reminded of the time that he’d had to sit down and eat with a Potions master who’d brewed several draughts that reduced people to madness. It was a necessary delaying tactic until the rest of the team could get there, and in any case it hadn’t harmed Harry, but the Potions master had watched him the same way, as if every bite contained a different potion and he was waiting to see when Harry would collapse or start foaming at the mouth.
Maybe this was a test, like the lilies and the kiss and breaking the rules in general. Harry continued eating stolidly, and had to admit that he enjoyed the meal other than the silence. The Malfoy house-elves knew how to cook.
When he’d put his plate aside, Malfoy suddenly leaned forwards and asked, “You know what the end of the Courting is?”
Harry was able to give him a withering stare, strengthened by the minutes that had passed since Malfoy last touched him. “I told you I had some familiarity with the rules. I wish that you would trust me that far.” Guilt woke up in the back of his head to whisper, Even if you can’t trust me any farther.
Malfoy gave him a faint smile. “And you really think that you could marry me, Potter? It’s one thing to dally with me, or buy me pleasant gifts, and another to decide that we’d share the same house and bed for years on end.”
Harry winced, and hoped that he’d concealed that well enough. Of course he hadn’t thought about that, because he never intended to let the Courtship get that far. It would cut off before the end, when Harry either discovered the source of the burning behind his scar or couldn’t fight against his conscience anymore and told Malfoy the truth.
“I hadn’t considered marriage,” he admitted, playing with his cup and staring at the tablecloth. “I thought—I wanted you, but I didn’t think all that much about the end of the Courting and what would happen then.”
Malfoy rose smoothly to his feet and moved around the table. Harry stood up to meet him, not wanting Malfoy to think that he was simply passive and would accept whatever Malfoy offered. The Snitch had been a warning against that, but Harry intended to reinforce it any way he could.
“Honest, as well,” Malfoy breathed. “Do you know how long it is since I met someone attractive and honest? The people who come to my parties have sometimes spoken of Courting me, but they give me pretty gifts—which I keep, of course—and then tell equally pretty lies. They act as though it would be no hardship to be married to me, and hide the ways in which they flinch back from the idea. You make it clear that it hasn’t become real to you.”
“And you find that attractive?” Harry spluttered. He knew that he had just learned something important about Malfoy and why he was bored at his parties, though Harry still wasn’t sure why he kept hosting them in the first place. Perhaps he thought that he was likely to find someone he wanted if he kept at it long enough.
“Yes, of course I do,” Malfoy said. He was stroking the inside of Harry’s right wrist, and Harry was shivering, and that was not the way it was supposed to work. He had never been sensitive there before Malfoy, either. “It may not have been what my parents taught me to value, but I am more than they were. I’m more than the way they raised me.” His eyes had a diamond-like cast for a few minutes. “You must believe that as well, or you would never have initiated the Courtship in the first place.”
Before Harry could answer, he bent down and fastened his mouth in the place on Harry’s wrist where his fingers had just been stroking.
Harry gasped and stuttered. This wasn’t—it shouldn’t feel so good, it was just a bit of heat and moisture, but it did, and Malfoy’s tongue stroked and lapped again and again. Harry’s right foot stamped in spite of himself, and he could feel his cock rising to the point that he was absurdly afraid it would bump into Malfoy’s chin.
I can’t simply lie back and take this. I have to show Malfoy—
No, I can’t lie back and take this because I don’t deserve this. It’s the kind of tribute that should be offered to a genuine lover, not a liar.
With an effort that seemed to involve transforming his body from jelly to bone, Harry broke free. He stepped back and lowered his hands to his sides, breathing hard. Malfoy lifted his head and licked his lips as though removing the last traces of a delicious dessert, his eyes unguarded and not cool at all now.
Harry wanted to back further away from the fire in those eyes that might incinerate him.
“Shy?” breathed Malfoy. “How wonderful.”
“N-no.” Harry hated the fact that he stuttered over words then. He took a deep breath and said, “Uncertain. Look, I told you, I jumped into this, and now I see that I really shouldn’t have. I need to think more about marriage as the end of this. I want you, yeah, I like you a lot, but I didn’t think enough.”
Malfoy’s mouth lifted in one of those smiles that went sideways, but this time it looked natural rather than twisted. “And yet, you can’t break off the Courtship unless I agree. How marvelous. I do enjoy power.” He turned his back in a leisurely manner, as though showing off his arse, which Harry ogled before he thought about what he was doing. “I’ll see you again two days from now, at that party for the opening of the new library.”
“What?” Harry demanded. “I just told you that I don’t think I can marry you, and your response is to meet me in public?”
“Hmmm, yes.” Malfoy’s eyes absolutely shone as he glanced over his shoulder. “By way of forcing the issue, you see. And the fourth gift? It must be the most beautiful thing you can buy, Potter. Not what you think will match my tastes, but what will match yours.”
“Which are horribly underdeveloped compared to yours,” Harry muttered, hoping desperately that having to be in contact with Harry’s hideous definition of taste would influence Malfoy against him. How was this all going so wrong? Malfoy was supposed to be snappish and suspicious and not take this seriously, so Harry could find a different tactic instead. He wasn’t supposed to act as though Harry was desirable. The Courtship had come out of the blue for him. How could he know that Harry was what he wanted?
Malfoy laughed. “Perhaps they are,” he said. “But I’ll teach you better when once we’re married. The elves will show you out. Good night, Harry.”
He strode out of the room, and Harry tried to drop back into his chair and put his head in his arms.
He missed and hit the floor, since the elves had already removed the chair.
He sat there until the elves prodded at him to get up, because he felt this was painfully symbolic of his whole life right now.
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Date: 2010-07-10 01:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-10 04:01 pm (UTC)