Chapter Five of 'How Noble In Reason'- Draco Malfoy Is Unfairly Seductive

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter Four.

Title: How Noble In Reason (5/9)
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.

Chapter One.

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Five—Draco Malfoy Is Unfairly Seductive

They got to Malfoy Manor. Harry couldn’t actually remember whether it was by Apparating outside the wards and then walking up the path through the gates, or whether Malfoy had found a Floo connection somewhere and brought them in that way. Malfoy was kissing him most of the way, and he couldn’t look up or around without being drawn back into the kiss.

By the time he was fully conscious again, Harry found his back against the doorframe of a room he hadn’t seen before, while Malfoy ripped single-mindedly at his clothes. He’d already popped three buttons and torn a long strap of cloth from Harry’s robes.

Harry gasped and caught Malfoy’s wrists. “It’s all right,” he said. “We’re inside now. You can relax.”

“And what about you?” Malfoy murmured, biting Harry’s shoulder where he had pulled the robe back far enough to do so. “Do you get to stay tense and stare at me when I’m spread out on the bed, waiting for you?”

Harry shuddered helplessly and kissed Malfoy beneath the ear, his fingers reaching out without his permission to clasp Malfoy’s robes. And then he thought again of what it would mean for Malfoy if Harry slept with him under false pretenses. Harry wasn’t truly worried about getting hurt himself. He had been and weathered it. But for Malfoy to have opened his heart to someone like that and then be fooled—

No. Harry couldn’t do it, even for the sake of finding out what that magic in the cellars was. There were other ways to do that. He never should have let Binks talk him into this one.

He stepped back, although Malfoy’s restless hands had already located skin on his arms and chest, and shook his head. “I can’t do this,” he said. “It’s not—it’s unfair to you.”

Malfoy stopped dead and stared at him. Then he said, carefully, “Are you dating someone else?”

Harry shook his head. His throat hurt with the pressure of his heart against it. “No. And I’m not planning to any time soon. It has to do with my motives for starting the Courtship in the first place. You see—”

Malfoy wore an odd expression now, one of mingled satisfaction and contempt. “We’ve been over that,” he said. “And we’ve established that I didn’t care. Why would you bring it up again, on the brink of satisfying our desires? Did you think that I would be able to forget or forgive you for backing out now?”

Harry blinked. He hadn’t looked at it that way. And he couldn’t, because that would mean drifting into deception again, taking the easy way out, letting Malfoy believe what he needed to until the moment when Harry had to tell him the truth. Ultimately, his pain would be worse then, no matter what he might feel now.

“I don’t expect you to forgive me,” Harry said. “But you really need to know why I did this in the first place. There was an accusation made that—”

“And you thought you could protect me,” Malfoy interrupted. “Yes, yes, very sweet. But it doesn’t matter. I would have been able to tell if you were still only acting on that motive. I’m a good reader of emotions, and you’re a poor liar. Look me in the eyes and tell me honestly that you’re only here because of the Ministry.”

Harry hissed under his breath. Of course he wasn’t going to be able to do that, with his poor lying skills. But Malfoy was making this more complicated than it had to be.

Harry did try. He leaned forwards, so that he could stare into Malfoy’s eyes from a few inches away, and said, “The Ministry sent me to Court you, and that’s the only reason I’m still here.” But his eyes slid to the side, and his tongue stuttered over the words, and he blushed the way he always had when McGonagall caught him in the middle of a lie at Hogwarts.

Malfoy laughed. “Yes, of course you are. And why would someone send you to Court me, anyway? Much easier to ask me questions in a different way or arrest me on the spot, wouldn’t you agree? The Courting is unnecessary. The Ministry’s always dealt in a high-handed way with my family, and there’s no reason for them to stop.” Bright bitterness sparked in his voice.

“Right, there isn’t,” Harry muttered, and tried to think of a way to say that the Courting was his insane Head Auror’s idea in such a way that Malfoy would believe him. Then he realized he didn’t need to do that. He was such a bad liar that Malfoy would have to believe him if he told the story as it had happened.

Harry looked up, fully intending to do that. His head was full of good intentions, in fact. He was really going to do it. He had no other thoughts in his mind. He was the pure and perfect paragon, the fantasy hero and dream lover, that Malfoy so badly needed, although he would rescue Malfoy without touching his skin.

His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth and his good intentions fled.

Because Malfoy was slowly but surely stripping, and Harry watched him with desire that flared up and burned through him like a wildfire, making him shake. His emotions never got that out of control, not since he was a teenager.

But now they did.

Malfoy smiled at him, peeling his lips back from his teeth like a hunting cat. Harry had no idea why even that was wonderful, but it was. Malfoy was lean beneath his robes, as if he never saw or took advantage of the rich food that abounded at his parties. His limbs were bony, his skin too pale and stretched taut over the bones and tendons in some places, his stomach flat with planes of muscles that made him look unhealthy.

Harry didn’t care. Because that lean body belonged to the man who had said that he trusted Harry, and his eyes were the same, and his smile was, if not the same, the kind of challenge Harry had never been able to resist.

“I don’t believe you that the Ministry made you Court me,” Malfoy said, and took a step forwards, naked now, rocking on the balls of his feet as if he wanted to test the floor for sturdiness. His voice never varied from its cool, assessing tone, and Harry realized that he also found that arousing, that Malfoy could talk as if nothing had changed when he was naked like that and Harry was still mostly clothed. “I believe that you came of your own free will, and you’re frightened now because getting into bed with me constitutes a new step for you, a step that you can’t back away from.”

Harry scowled at him. He could feel sweat breaking out under his arms and the way his hands itched. His skin felt too hot and packed under the clothes, as if they were ropes that bound that him instead of very nice robes. “It’s a new step. I don’t mind admitting that. But it’s not frightening. I’m not frightened.”

“Yes, you are,” Malfoy said, and his voice twisted and became mocking. “Poor little Potter, who can face down a Dark Lord armed with the Elder Wand but not one naked man asking for his touch. Poor little Potter, who’ll turn around and march away, secure in his chastity and good intentions, instead of taking what he really wants. Poor little Potter, who’ll lay awake tonight, wanking him, and thinking of me in the embrace of someone else, because I would go there, if only for the pleasure, if you walked out of here—”

Harry’s resolve broke.

He dashed forwards, and Malfoy laughed at him before Harry sealed their mouths together again and sent them stumbling into the room they stood at the door of. He’d already seen an immense bed covered with cobalt-blue sheets, so he knew it was all right for them to be in here, that it was Malfoy’s bedroom or at least a bedroom, and right now Harry wouldn’t have been adverse to stumbling into a hayloft, as long as it would bring their bodies together.

Malfoy laughed again as Harry clawed at his own clothes, pulling them off and shredding them with a spell when they didn’t go fast enough. He pulled himself up on his elbows and watched Harry’s chest, then looked down at his cock with critical eyes. Harry realized he was holding his breath, which was ridiculous.

Malfoy reached out and stroked a finger down Harry’s cock as if he wanted to test the weight and warmth. Then he looked up, back into Harry’s face, and gave him a cool nod. “You’ll do,” he said.

He couldn’t hide the delight in his eyes any longer, and Harry accepted that as permission. He pushed Malfoy flat and straddled him, gathering up Malfoy’s cock in one hand and then his own with it, shoving them together, closing his eyes as smooth skin rubbed against smooth skin.

“Oh,” Malfoy said, and had his eyes closed as if he were looking into a bright light when Harry next looked at him. He pushed his hips up languidly again and again into Harry’s hold, and his face was pink with pleasure and his chest was slowly flushing, too. Harry traced one bony shoulder with his finger, but had to grab on to Malfoy’s hip in the next moment so that he could keep balanced. “I don’t—that’s not complicated, but it’s just right.”

He fell silent then, panting and grunting, and Harry felt free to let his hand move faster and faster. Their skin was slick and sticky, and his fingers ached from his tight hold. But there was warmth between his fingers, too, pressing against them and leaking through them, and Malfoy had arched his neck back at an impossible angle.

Staring at him, Harry thought that this was another kind of vulnerability Malfoy was trusting him with, that he could see into his body at the moment the same way he’d seen into his heart when Malfoy spoke to him at the library ceremony—

His joints seemed to thrum. Harry knelt up further and stared into Malfoy’s face as he gave a few particularly hard jerks.

Malfoy’s eyes fluttered open and he stared at Harry in surprise. Then he reached up, dug his fingers bruisingly into Harry’s shoulders, and came with a series of stifled yelps from his throat and knocks from his knees.

Harry held out a few moments longer, admiring the curve of Malfoy’s throat, the click of his swallowing, and the sudden sodden mess between his fingers. Then he bowed his head back until he almost touched his shoulders and gave in.

It felt like someone yanking his orgasm out of him, maybe because Malfoy had reached down to join in, fist squeezing and pulling in an unfamiliar way. But it was good, and it left him weak, and Harry fell panting across Malfoy’s chest and mindlessly kissed his shoulder without a thought of what would happen next.

“That was something, Potter,” Malfoy said into his ear, and his hands smoothed up Harry’s back and then down again, as if he wanted to absorb all the warmth and weight of Harry into his body and readjust it to his liking.

Harry wished he could speak, but his throat was dry and his head aching. He settled for another kiss and turning over on Malfoy’s chest to look into his eyes. Malfoy’s face was open, dazed, satisfied, and happy.

The guilt returned with the sight, settling heavily in the middle of Harry’s chest. He reached out and shifted Malfoy’s head into a new position so that he could more easily lie on the pillow beside him.

What the fuck am I going to do?

Harry didn’t know. He hurt again with the thought. He should have held out against Malfoy’s seductions, because this would make the inevitable betrayal worse. And what exactly would he say when Ron and Hermione accused him, rightly, of having slept with Malfoy of his own free will and made things worse on his own? “Well, when I saw him naked, I just couldn’t resist?”

That was more information than they would want.

It also happened to be true.

Harry felt the pulse of a new headache come to life in his right temple. He kissed Malfoy again, half-frantically, and Malfoy fended him off with a push, licking a promising stripe up from Harry’s neck to his ear.

“We’ll have plenty of time for that,” Malfoy murmured. “We’ll have plenty of time for discussing what this means, for that matter.” He dug his fingers into Harry’s arm as if he wanted to feel the weight and texture of the flesh and reassure himself of that. “For the present, I think we should both try to sleep.”

Harry swallowed and nodded. And it was very hard not to fall asleep cradled in Malfoy’s arms and the warmth that seemed to spread out from him like an aura. Harry fought the descent of his eyelids several times, but the real enemy was the temptation to simply lie there, count Malfoy’s individual hairs and individual perfections, and not think of the future.

But it ended. It had to end.

Harry began to shift himself upwards, climbing over the bed’s massive headboard. It wasn’t easy, but he’d done harder things, and it helped that the bed stood some distance from the wall. He slithered slowly enough that Malfoy’s arms fell limp and empty without waking him, and then Harry twisted around and landed carefully on the floor, wincing in anticipation of creaks.

There were not. Malfoy Manor was an old house, but expertly maintained and cared-for by house-elves, Harry thought. He had never expected to feel as grateful for that fact as he did now.

Harry dressed with quick, expert motions. He avoided looking at Malfoy as much as he could, but that was no good, because he kept bowing his head to find some other scattered article of clothing, and that meant that he could see the bed. Malfoy still lay in the same position, never changing, as if his post-coital doze was deep and dreamless. Harry fervently hoped he would remain there until Harry came back, and not just because it would give Harry more of a chance to do what he needed to do. It might be the last moment of happiness he would enjoy for some time.

If ever.

Harry shook his head and grimaced. He wasn’t worried that Malfoy would go suicidal or never recover. That would be attributing more power to himself than he possessed and more delicacy to Malfoy than he possibly could have. Harry didn’t think Malfoy would consent to die of a broken heart. He would be more likely to hunt down the person who had hurt him and cause them to die in some slow, painful way.

Harry would be willing to do that for him.

Stop thinking in clichés and find the dungeons.

Harry picked up his wand and glided out of the room. It was only when he was halfway down a set of descending stairs that he realized he could have cast a charm to keep Malfoy safely asleep while he searched.

And also that he couldn’t have done it. His honesty had failed so far, but from now on, it wouldn’t be permitted to. Harry was going to stand or fall by what naturally happened as a result of his own stupid actions.

*

There was no problem in finding the way. The minute he entered the dungeons—which seemed to begin immediately below the floor with Malfoy’s bedroom on—his scar flared like a bonfire. Harry hissed, cast a slight Numbing Charm on it so that he could keep his feet and follow it at the same time, and followed the tug of the pain and heat towards a large iron door with bronze hinges.

It was locked, and from the amount of dust on it, it appeared not to have been opened in years. Harry examined it with a frown. How had an artifact that could resurrect Voldemort got in there, if it hadn’t been opened?

And then Harry remembered that the amount of dust that could have built up simply since Voldemort was living in Malfoy Manor was quite substantial, and blushed in the dark. It was far from the most embarrassing thing he’d done that day, but it felt like the last possible straw to the building mound of stupidity he was carrying around with him.

He tried several unlocking charms, and none of them worked. Then he had what was probably another idea that wouldn’t work, but at least the flush had died from his face now and he felt prepared to encounter more embarrassment. Harry stepped forwards and pressed his forehead against the door, so that his scar came into contact with the metal.

The pain knocked him down. Harry had to lie there panting for a few minutes, flashes of white light glowing in his head, until he could sit up.

Then he realized the door was ajar.

Gingerly, Harry pried it further open with a spell and then stood, braced against the walls, ready for some horrible guardian to come rushing out at him. Nothing happened. Harry picked his way forwards, prepared to see a room full of Malfoy heirlooms that he would have to spend hours searching for a Horcrux.

The room was empty, however, except for a hole excavated in the middle of the floor, and something large and white that lay inside it. Harry blinked and examined it. A huge diamond? It glowed like one in the dim light of his wand. But no, it didn’t have facets. It was oval-shaped, and had a narrow end and a wide one, and—

It was an egg.

In an instant, Harry understood what must have happened. Nagini had been female. She was a Horcrux, and she could either have made the unborn snake one, too, or simply left a residue of the evil Voldemort had tainted her with on her eggs. Harry wondered why no one had ever noticed it before. Perhaps the magic had increased recently as a sign that the snake inside was getting ready to hatch.

Whichever was true, it had to be destroyed. Harry raised his wand and incanted a curse that Binks would frown sternly about and that the other Aurors would pretend they didn’t know Harry could perform.

The fire that burst into being in the heart of the egg was nearly as brilliant a white as the shell of the egg itself and completely silent. Harry had to take a step back as the sheer heat of it threatened to burn his eyelashes. Then he watched the fire burn, taking care that, whenever one of the flames reached towards the outside of the pit, he could wave his wand and head it off.

The Caustic Curse was an excellent means of getting rid of Dark artifacts and the bodies of twisted magical creatures, but it would burn without stopping anything it could get a hold of. Harry had to contain it until the original fodder was gone and the final spark shone, tried to reach out, couldn’t get a grip, and died.

Harry took a deep breath and turned around.

Malfoy was standing in the doorway behind him, his face ashen.

Harry winced and locked his elbows against his sides, trying to brace himself as best he could. He had planned to go back upstairs the instant he was finished burning the egg and tell Malfoy the truth. Perhaps it was just as well that Malfoy had come seeking him, so that he wouldn’t have a chance to put his confession off.

“That was what you came here for,” Malfoy said, his voice dead. “It never had anything to do with me.” He looked at the pit where the egg had lived and died as if he wanted to crawl into it and pull it in after him. “Not with me,” he whispered.

Harry waited a moment before replying. Yes, the pain in his scar had died, and the burn was fading as if following the Caustic Curse into oblivion. The source of Voldemort’s magic was gone. Harry didn’t think there was another one inside the walls of Malfoy Manor or anywhere nearby.

Which made him feel even more foolish and depressed and angry and stupid. If it was something so small, why couldn’t they have approached Malfoy in the first place, asked about it, and then got his help in destroying it?

You didn’t know it was small, Harry reminded himself, but it sounded like a poor excuse.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Malfoy’s eyes snapped back to his face, and his sneer deepened. “Oh, yes? And that makes it all better, does it?”

Harry shook his head. “It doesn’t. I just wanted you to know that at the beginning.” He took a deep breath. “My Head Auror, Benjamin Binks, wanted me to Court you because he thought it was the best way to get into your House and gain your trust. He wanted me to investigate the source of Voldemort’s magic that we could feel here—”

“There was none of his magic here.” Malfoy had drawn himself up, and he looked so dignified that it took Harry a long moment to realize that he was only half-dressed, with pants and a slightly shabby pair of older trousers on. “I would have known.”

“What I just burned was one of his snake’s eggs,” Harry said. “I believe that you weren’t keeping it hidden purposefully. But I couldn’t be certain of that until I found it and knew what it was. And it did exist. I could feel my scar burning the minute I stepped into the Manor that first evening.”

Malfoy went pale. For a moment, his tongue tangled around his teeth without sound, as if he couldn’t decide which question he wanted to ask first. Then he snapped, “And you couldn’t simply come to me and tell me this?”

“Binks said, and I agreed, that you wouldn’t have a reason to cooperate with Aurors,” Harry said simply, never looking away. His chest apparently had a large shard of some kind through it, a shard of bone or eggshell, or so he thought from the way his heart hurt. But it didn’t matter. He had to go ahead with the truth. “I didn’t want to use the Courting as a way of getting close to you. I thought you would refuse my first letter and gift. But I should have fought harder to avoid hurting you. I’m sorry.”

Malfoy shut his eyes. “Your denials make a lot more sense now,” he whispered.

Harry nodded. “I’m sorry.” Such inadequate words, and he wasn’t sure why he kept repeating them. Did he want Malfoy to believe them and give him another chance? But that wasn’t going to happen even if Malfoy did believe them. Why should he accept someone who hadn’t fought hard enough for him?

“Why did you continue to go along with the Courting?” Malfoy’s eyes sprang open, and now he spoke in a cold voice, the voice that Harry had heard Ron use when he was trying to avoid getting emotionally involved in the details of a hard case. “Why didn’t you want to do it in the first place?”

“I thought you would have changed from the boy I knew in school,” Harry said. “I didn’t want to hurt you—”

Malfoy interrupted him with a low, ugly laugh that seemed to have pieces of flesh floating in it.

Harry looked away and winced. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“Then why go along with it?” Malfoy’s voice was even flatter now, and looking at him, Harry could practically see him building up the cold wall to withdraw behind it. He wanted to say something about that, to implore Malfoy not to do that, but how could he? Malfoy had every right, and maybe it was the only thing that would keep him safe in a world of people determined to use him for their own purposes.

“I couldn’t think of any better plan, I kept hoping that you would wake up, and I was attracted to you,” Harry said. “That’s really the truth.”

“Yes, you’re a bad liar, aren’t you,” Malfoy said. “So my only alternative is to believe that you were reluctant, but that being a good Auror mattered more to you than being a good lover. That you slept with me because you’re attracted to me, and because you weren’t strong enough to hold yourself back.”

Harry was the one who wanted to crawl into the pit in the floor, now. He had to keep standing there and nod, though, because it was what adults did.

Malfoy stared blankly at the wall. “It was you,” he whispered.

“What?” Harry wouldn’t have asked if he could have avoided it, but the word sprang past his lips without permission.

“When I dreamed of a lover who could rescue me, and then when I changed my mind and just wanted someone honest and attractive.” Malfoy was rubbing his mouth with the back of one hand. “It was you. It was always you. I told myself to be content with someone else, that I could be content with someone else, and not to trust you when you began the Courting. But I had no choice. What would you do if one of your dreams came to life and acted exactly as you always hoped he would? You would reach out and hang on with both hands. I’m not in love with you—and thank Merlin for that—but I kept thinking you would be perfect, in the way that fantasies always are. And then the fantasy seemed to be coming true.” Another ugly laugh. “I can’t even trust my own perceptions or my own dreams anymore.”

Harry didn’t think anything he could say would be profound enough for the pain in Malfoy’s voice. He moved forwards, arms reaching out, not sure he would be allowed to embrace Malfoy, but wanting to, to show—

Malfoy snapped around to face him. “Get out,” he said. “If I see you in my house again, I’ll kill you.”

Harry remained still a moment longer, wondering if he should try to atone, to heal Malfoy, or at least apologize.

But he’d hurt him enough, and there wasn’t a hint of yielding in Malfoy’s demeanor that indicated a secret yearning for Harry to comfort him. Harry nodded and left.

The pain accompanied him all the way, and all through his report to Binks, and to bed at night.

Comments

[ellie]

I feel sorry for Draco. That had got to hurt.

[mathsnerd]

Poor, poor, poor Draco.