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lomonaaerenSecond part of a really, really long chapter. Don't start reading here.
Harry didn’t know whether he wanted to cast curses or wander around the room with a huge and silly grin on his face. It made no sense, but then, it made no sense that Malfoy had fucked him and made him like it without chains, either.
Should that be so surprising? We did make promises to each other that suggest it could happen.
Harry shrugged and kept his eyes determinedly fixed on his hands as Malfoy dressed. Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising, but it still was. He didn’t know what to do next, especially because he hadn’t had an experience like that before. They were either completely dedicated to stress relief or they were ordinary sex without even a mention of the bonds, like a few of the fucks he’d had with Bradley.
It was strange to think that he wouldn’t see Bradley again. Harry didn’t think Malfoy would want to share.
“Here, then.” Malfoy had the “glass” globe that Harry had taken from the fireplace in the Slytherin common room balanced in his hands. He lifted, bounced it thoughtfully on his palms for a moment, and then dropped it.
Harry winced, but the globe didn’t actually shatter when it met the floor. Of course not, Harry thought, and relaxed a little. The material would never have survived the heat of the fire or the weight of the stones if it was simply glass. “It looks like it’ll take something else to make it open,” he remarked, and knelt down.
Malfoy laughed, a high, cheerful sound that made Harry jerk. He could imagine Ron laughing like that, or Hermione. Not Malfoy. “I know that. We’ll probably both have to touch it at the same time to make it open, like the others. I wanted to see your face when I dropped it, and this way, I got to.” He smiled with a touch of viciousness and reached out to stroke the globe.
Harry shook his head. Perhaps he shouldn’t have expected Malfoy to change that much in such a short period of time, but the words had still disconcerted him.
But he put his hands to the globe anyway, because to hold something like this against Malfoy would have a waste of time. Harry knew that he would have many, many more insults to revenge in time against Malfoy, and it was just as well for him to get used to the git’s manners, or lack of manners, quickly.
The globe came unhinged along the top like a few Muggle Easter eggs Harry had seen, and then they were lifting out the entwined pieces of parchment. Malfoy undid the first and sneered slightly. “Hogwarts lake is the keyword to unlock the wards,” he murmured. “Of course.”
Harry didn’t see what the “of course” had to do with it, but he was holding the riddle, and he had better things to do than ask Malfoy what one sneer or another meant.
Fire above and fire below,
Rising while rooted,
Bright in eternity,
Dark in memory.
Harry blinked and turned the parchment over. That seemed to be all there was. He supposed it wasn’t that much shorter than the first riddle had been, but he had still expected something more substantial. He extended the paper to Malfoy, frowning. It was possible Snape had used some enchantment that would reveal hidden words or invisible clues.
Malfoy cast a few spells, but to no avail. “It seems this is our only clue,” he murmured. “One would expect a location like the rest, within Hogwarts grounds and not visited by many in the years since the school was closed. But ‘rising while rooted’ and the references to fire above and below make me wonder if this is within the Forbidden Forest again.”
“Why?” Harry asked. He’d never heard of fires or references to magical creatures that breathed fire in the Forbidden Forest, and he was sure he would have, from Hagrid if nothing else. Hagrid would have been thrilled beyond words if a dragon had lived near enough to them to be seen.
“Severus used an analogy with those of us in Potions who had trouble seeing the magical properties of certain trees,” Malfoy said, staring at him. “A tree combines all four elements. ‘It rises into the sky, it is rooted in the earth, it eats the fire of the sun, and it drinks from rain.’ Extend that a bit further, and one can say that a tree is close to the fire of the earth since magma lies in the earth. You never heard of that analogy? You don’t remember it?”
Harry gave a harsh laugh. “If you’re going to start complaining about the amount of attention I paid in Potions, we’ll be here all day.”
Malfoy studied him closely for a few moments, then smiled. Harry didn’t think it was the smirk or sneer he was expecting, though it had an edge to it. “You’re right. I suspect the visions I have had about you will prove true.”
“What visions?” Harry said, with a frown. Malfoy gave a small shrug and turned back to study the paper again. Harry leaned forwards and clutched his wrist, which at least had the merit of making him pay attention. “What bloody visions?” Harry insisted.
Malfoy sighed. “I’ve had flashes of you kneeling on the floor of my lab, your arms bound behind you and your face flushed with attention,” he said. “I had them even before I knew for certain that you liked to be bound.” He gave another smile, this time the kind that made Harry’s flesh shudder and feel as if it would melt from his bones. “I see they were prophetic in another way as well. Clearly, you need instruction in Potions.”
Harry coughed uncomfortably and turned his head away. “It isn’t—Malfoy, you wanker, this isn’t the time or place to talk about that.”
“All times and places around us are fine to talk about that,” Malfoy said. “Why not? We do not stop being ourselves because we are considering a riddle at the moment. We do not stop feeling our needs and our desires because we may need to put off slaking them.” He reached out in turn, but his touch on Harry’s wrist was too light, making Harry want to press his hand more firmly against Malfoy’s than Malfoy allowed at the moment. “I want you to accept that,” Malfoy added, and it sounded like an order.
Harry breathed deeply. He didn’t want to get into an argument about this right now, and he wasn’t going to. For fuck’s sake, they’d just slept together. It wasn’t as though he owed Malfoy anything.
“Later,” he said, and plucked the riddle from Malfoy’s slack hand. “So what would the last two lines mean, then?”
“Obviously, a place in the Forbidden Forest where something happened.” From the lightness and steadiness of Malfoy’s tone, Harry’s disagreement hadn’t affected him. Harry highly doubted that, but he deliberately didn’t look up in time to catch the expression on Malfoy’s face. “We would have to remember that it couldn’t be a moment specific to us. Dumbledore and Severus couldn’t know we would be the ones to track these riddles down.”
Harry grunted acknowledgment and looked up. “Assuming you’re right and something happened in the Forbidden Forest that we need to investigate, what are the best candidates for it?”
Malfoy waited long, lingering moments before he answered, as though to prove that he could look at Harry as well as anyone else could. “I think we should put Granger on that. She’ll go through records with a speed neither of us can match, and she’ll need something to do as she sits by Weasley’s bedside.”
Harry couldn’t stop his smile, though he knew it was reluctant. Well, that was all Malfoy deserved right now, anyway. “She’ll like that, and it’ll help take her mind off Ron. Thanks, Malfoy.”
“I didn’t do it for her sake,” Malfoy said. “I did it for yours. You seem to have a need for others to feel consideration for your friends, as if they were delicate striplings, though I have to admit that I don’t know why.”
Harry ground his teeth and held back his slowly rising irritation. He had been honest with Malfoy, and this was what it got him. But he had to think that what they had—he thought he could call it bondage more honestly than a bond—was stronger than a petty argument. Someday it would be, anyway. “It’s not their delicacy. It’s that I’m just reconciling with them right now, and it wouldn’t take much to tear us apart.”
“You weren’t as firm in your interview with them as I imagined you would be.” Malfoy had lazy eyes, deceptive eyes. Crocodile’s eyes. “You didn’t demand everything I’d thought you’d demand. Why is that?”
“Because you’re you, and not me?” Harry asked in exasperation. He didn’t know what to say about this. Malfoy wanted to discuss this subject now—why, exactly? And why was it his concern? Harry’s efforts to secure his friendship with Ron and Hermione could proceed without oversight from Malfoy. “Because we think it’s reasonable to ask for different things?” he added a moment later, in a slightly softer voice, when Malfoy simply continued to gaze at him. “Seriously, Malfoy. It’s not that complicated.”
“It is,” said Malfoy. “When what they do affects you, and that affects me.”
Harry sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “I promise that I wouldn’t refuse to have sex with you because of something Ron and Hermione said to me. So that’s settled, isn’t it?” He picked up the riddle again.
Malfoy reached out and hooked his hand beneath Harry’s chin, turning his face back and forth as if he were seeking the answers to hidden questions in it. Harry froze and glared at him. It was hard to maintain that glare against Malfoy’s patient, searching look, and the questioning gleam in his eyes.
“You have no idea what I’m really like,” Malfoy whispered. “You have no idea what I want from you. It’s more than sex. It’s more than not walking away at the end of a fuck, though that is nice compared to what happened the first time. I wish to know you, and what affects you, and for you to do the same thing with me.”
Harry bit his lip, feeling himself flush. He had known—well, maybe he’d known—that things like this would happen if they had an actual relationship. But he hadn’t counted on it. Or he had thought Malfoy would wait a while before engaging in it. Malfoy didn’t seem soft or Gryffindor enough for that.
“I want to ask for the harder things later,” Harry said, telling the truth. “It was the first meeting. I thought I’d want to be demanding, but seeing their eyes and the way they reacted to me…that was enough for that moment.”
Malfoy considered him in silence, as if evaluating the answer. Then he nodded and let Harry go. “I’ll write down a list of suggestions that Granger might want to look into,” he said. “Though I’m sure that she’ll discover more than enough on her own.”
Harry nodded back, more relieved than he could say that Malfoy had accepted his explanation and dropped the interrogation mode he’d been using for a few minutes. Then he paused and licked his lips. He felt as if he owed Malfoy something for dropping it, though Malfoy would probably—well, might—say he didn’t.
He leaned in and kissed Malfoy briefly on the mouth. Malfoy muffled an exclamation against his lips, then reached up and caught his hair, holding him in place as he thrust his tongue determinedly past Harry’s lips. Harry accepted it and snogged him gently, pulling back when Malfoy tried to insist on more.
“Thank you, Draco,” Harry said.
Malfoy—Draco who was to be—flushed and slowly inclined his head, not looking away from Harry’s eyes. Harry shuddered, but not in revulsion. That clinging gaze felt more intimate, in some ways, than Draco’s hands on his body.
*
Granger seized the list of suggestions from Draco’s hand with a crow of glee, which Draco had been sure she would, and then scanned it from top to bottom with a quick flick of her eyes. Although she looked up at him immediately after, Draco was sure she had memorized them already. “What am I looking for?”
“Events that occurred in the Forbidden Forest since Dumbledore was Headmaster,” Draco told her, glancing once at Weasley, asleep in the hospital bed. He looked disgustingly healthy. He ought to be up tomorrow, Draco thought. There was no need for as much worry as Granger was showing. “Preferably, events that also occurred since Professor Snape came to teach here. Something dark that would have impacted both of them.”
Granger nodded seriously, considered the list again, and started to write notes down on the margins of the paper. Draco was glad to make his escape. He wanted to find Harry again and carry on a more interesting discussion.
Of course, since that was what he wanted, he was prevented from carrying it out. He met Covington on the stairs coming down from her office, and she smiled and held out an arm as though they were the best of friends and it was trivial for her to bar his passage. “Potions master Malfoy. I must speak with you.”
“I have nothing to say about Potter,” Draco murmured peacefully. “Or the philosophical reasons that Potter left the Ministry. You are better served by taking those up with him, as I already suggested.”
“I know that.” Covington had hawk’s eyes suddenly. “I wish to speak to you about a matter of some import to the both of us.”
Draco waited. He did nothing so casual as lean against the wall, and nothing so defensive as to fold his arms. Why should he give an enemy anything definable about his state of mind? Draco had never been a connoisseur of handing over weapons that someone could use to stab him, though Harry was.
That is something else we will have to work on. Draco had no intention of watching Harry hurt himself again and again. He might not be able to order him to stop it—Draco didn’t yet know how much control he had outside the bedroom, if any—but he would offer sarcasm, suggestions, gentle advice, and anything else that might stand a chance of making an impression.
“Do you know,” Covington asked the air, “how fragile the reputations of Potions masters may be? Constant discovery and research is necessary to maintain them. I wonder what would happen if it turned out that some of the discoveries made by a Potions master in the last few years were fraudulent, claiming the credit for others’ work. I wonder what the people who pay those discoveries attention and send the Potions master letters of adulation, praise, or argument would do.”
Draco felt the breath catch in his throat for a moment. This was a tactic that he hadn’t thought Covington would take, partially because he didn’t know that the Ministry bothered to keep up on the activities of Potions masters. Their incompetency at everything else was so great, why would they?
Then he smiled and said, “It would be a disaster for him. Even if he managed to clear his name, there would always be lingering doubts about his priority for the next discoveries. He would become involved in petty disputes when he should be moving forwards, making his name known in other areas and new fields. And those who chose to ally with him would receive withering scorn. Posterity might not know or remember him. Names of potions or histories of brewing with his name in them might be changed.”
“I am glad to understand the consequences,” Covington said, and smiled back at him. “It’s a subject that I’ve been interested in, but I never had enough time to study the specifics.”
“I find that I make time for subjects I am truly interested in,” Draco said. “One might never know, otherwise, the basic concepts or whether someone had got there first and claimed credit for what one wanted to study.”
Covington’s eyes went slightly wary. She didn’t know where he was leading the analogy, and it showed. “Of course,” she said. “One would not want someone else to snatch the prize one dreamed of winning.”
“I study people as well as books,” Draco said conversationally. “I have several such studies in progress right now.”
“Do you?” Covington gave him a pleasant smile. “I hope you will realize that some people’s characters are a reflection of what most interests them and what institutions they serve, rather than of their worth as individuals.”
“Such constrains are well-implanted in my mind,” Draco reassured her. “This study is very old for me, although the subjects of the study aren’t.”
Covington nodded. “Well, then, I can safely leave you to it. I trust that you’ll let one subject of your study know if another one is about to come into conflict with him.”
Draco shrugged with one shoulder. “I might do that if I thought it necessary. Or I might let it happen. I must do some experiments in all the fields of study I undertake, after all. It’s essential for my nature as a Potions master. Watching explosions and collisions teaches me more about my subject than all the descriptions in a textbook ever could.”
“I wish you luck,” Covington murmured, and then turned and went up the stairs again with so much grace and conviction that Draco could have told himself he’d imagined the momentary flash of fear in her eyes.
But he knew he hadn’t.
*
Harry looked up when he heard the door open. He’d agreed to remain here while Draco took the list of suggestions up to Hermione because—well, because he wanted to avoid seeing Hermione and Ron with the flush of sex still on his cheeks. Draco had agreed with nothing more than a curious glance, and if he guessed what the motive for the action was, he didn’t seem inclined to deprecate it.
Harry had entertained himself by studying the alterations to Snape’s rooms and comparing them with his memories of the bastard the man had been. He never would have allowed this if he was still alive. Harry wondered if he should think of this as latter-day revenge or not, and if it was psychologically unhealthy to do so. That led him further away into other questions, and he hadn’t noticed time passing.
Now, when Draco gave him a direct look and Harry glanced down at his watch, he realized it was late evening. He rose to his feet with a cough. “I should be getting back to my rooms in Hogsmeade,” he said.
“Yes, you should,” Draco said, in a light, deceptively pleasant tone.
Harry stiffened. He hadn’t been “with” Draco for long, and already he recognized one of his favorite tactics: saying nothing on the surface, implying everything beneath, and irritating someone so badly that they had to ask what he was talking about.
“What do you mean?” Harry snapped. “Say what you mean.”
“I thought I had.” Draco stepped past him and started to arrange a pile of papers Harry had glanced at earlier but thought nothing of. They were covered with equations and directions, and that probably meant they were about potions. Harry and potions had an agreement: he stayed on the other side of the room, and they didn’t lunge viciously out of their vials at him. “You should return to your rooms. The Three Broomsticks will serve dinner soon, and you look as if you could use some more to eat.”
Harry let one hand fall defensively to rest on his ribs before he dropped it and flushed again. He told himself that he had so grown up past the near-starvation the Dursleys tried to inflict on him, and it didn’t matter what Draco thought or said, that childhood mistreatment didn’t show now. “Well, I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” he said, and started to edge past Draco.
Draco turned around and gave him a faint smile, an enigmatic one, as he leaned against the table where the papers were now neatly piled and cocked his head.
Harry ground his teeth. He wouldn’t be tricked into responding. He would walk out the door, up the path to Hogsmeade, into the Three Broomsticks, and eat his dinner and go to bed on time like a normal person.
Normal. That word tolled in the back of his mind, and Harry remembered the conclusion he had come to this morning: that he wasn’t normal and would just have to get used to living with that. Draco’s voice snapped in his head at the same time, telling him to stop using that word.
In another life, that reminder would have been another reason for him to walk out. He didn’t need to do everything Draco said just because that was what he did when they had sex.
But he didn’t want to resist what could possibly be good advice just because of his stubbornness, either. And Draco’s expression was driving him mad with curiosity. He had to learn what Draco thought he should do.
He turned around with a huff and folded his arms. “Well? What do you think I should do instead of going back to Hogsmeade?”
“Did I say that you should do anything?” But Draco stepped forwards with an alacrity that told Harry he had indeed been waiting for just this. He wrapped his fingers around Harry’s wrist and turned his hand back and forth as if admiring the different patterns of marks his fingertips could leave. “I think it would be more comfortable for both of us if you stayed in my bed tonight.”
“Your bed probably isn’t big enough,” Harry retorted, seizing the first excuse that came to mind.
The smile Draco gave him was deep, and dark, and lovely. “You haven’t seen it yet. An unanticipated benefit of having fucked in the chair.”
Harry felt himself flush again. It was one thing for him to think words like “fucked,” but Draco appeared to say them effortlessly. Harry didn’t know whether to feel silly and embarrassed or excited that he could do so. Probably neither response was appropriate.
He tried for a coolness that matched Draco’s tone. “I need some time and space from my friends. Maybe the same thing applies to you.”
Draco leaned closer, and Harry swayed towards him without even thinking about it. “I would ordinarily let myself be persuaded by that,” Draco murmured, “except that I know you have a past pattern of retreats from your lovers. I don’t want to give you the chance to begin that again. Stay with me tonight. You can go back to Hogsmeade tomorrow night, assuming we are unfortunate enough not to solve the riddle tomorrow.”
Harry exhaled. He wanted to say he wouldn’t retreat this time, but Draco had no reason to believe him. He could say that he wanted to be alone after the tumultuous events of the day, but that wasn’t really true. He wanted to think, but if he was by himself, he would brood instead. Events of the past few years had taught him brooding was no substitute for thinking.
Draco ran the fingers of his free hand lightly down Harry’s arm, from elbow to wrist.
Harry shivered. He did want to get used to this, he told himself. And he would have to get used to this if Malfoy insisted on being so free with all the touching.
“All right,” he muttered. “But it doesn’t mean that I’m going to spend each night pressed against your body.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to,” Draco said, while his eyes laughed from deep down. He reached out and drew Harry against him, holding his wrists with a grip that Harry thought would have tightened immeasurably if he had tried to break away, but, just at the moment, felt rather pleasant. “I would expect that you’ll be bound to the headboard some of the time, and I may choose to press against you or not, as I like.”
Harry wrenched away instinctively. Or rather, he got one wrist free, and then Draco seized the other one exactly as Harry had thought he would, his frown light and scolding. “I wouldn’t do such a thing, Harry, if you want to go on feeling my touch,” Draco murmured. “I can understand your motives for an immediate rejection, but I won’t take it well.”
Harry took a deep breath. It wasn’t—he didn’t know how he could explain it. He wanted to be bound when he was sleeping—not an idea that he’d considered before, but one that sent sparks dancing along his nerves. But how he could stand to have someone else do that to him? How could he stand to be with someone who would look at him in the daylight and know that it was happening?
But it was find a way to do that, or give up being with Draco completely. Draco could tolerate anything but his cowardice and the desire to be normal.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll come with you for tonight, and we can see later if we’ll have to do anything else.”
Draco drew a hand over Harry’s throat, along his collarbone and up, with his eyes so dark that it was hard to read them. When he spoke, his voice was thick and languid. “I am pleased.”
Harry decided he might as well flush, since there was no one else in the room to see it, and followed Draco into the bedroom without even a prompting tug on his wrist.
He did look to make sure that the portrait frame was still covered up before he followed Draco, though. There was a limit to the show that he wanted to put on for others besides Draco.
*
Draco swam out of sleep with the vague conviction that something was wrong. Only when he turned over did he realize that the wrongness was a change from what he had done and how he had slept since he came to Hogwarts. And in this case, it was a very great rightness instead, although still a change.
Harry slept, head bowed on the pillow as though he was surrendering to some invisible enemy. He hadn’t rolled far away from Draco; he hadn’t tried to stand up during the night and leave the bed, unless he had stepped out briefly for a trip to the loo. Draco smiled and ran his fingers along the part of Harry’s neck where his hair ended.
He felt the small shock jolt through Harry’s body as he came awake. For a moment, Harry too-obviously tried to remember where he was, who he was with, and why, and then he blew out his breath. Leaning to look over the side of his face, Draco could see that he had his eyes shut.
“Do you do this often?” Draco asked idly, continuing to play with Harry’s hair. “Wake up in strange beds?” That would be another thing changing soon, if it was the case, but he didn’t think it was, given how uptight Harry had been in the past about his particular needs.
“No,” Harry said. “You wanker.”
Draco grinned. “But you didn’t know where you were for a fraction of a second,” he said. “I heard.”
“You would be the one to notice something like that,” Harry said tiredly. He rolled over and held out his hands. “Will you untie these, please?”
Draco took a moment to admire his handiwork, instead. Harry’s hands were tied together with a series of black, knotted cords, so thickly wound that in some place they completely hid the skin beneath. The appearance was deceptive, however; rather than actual cords, Draco had enchanted an old pair of gloves to wear the cords and act as embracing, limiting bonds on Harry’s movements. He didn’t want to cut off blood to Harry’s hands during the night, because he would have to deal with the complaining about that in the morning.
He glanced up. Harry glared back at him, though of course he was flushed, and of course he looked away when Draco held the stare.
“Did you like that?” Draco asked softly.
“I—don’t know,” Harry said, which was a better response than the blustering one about normality that Draco had feared. Harry stared at the ceiling, brow furrowed, and then shook his head. “I don’t know if it’s something that I would want to happen every night,” Harry said. “As routine. But it’s the first time that I’ve ever used bonds like that when I wasn’t already killingly angry. Maybe I could become used to it over time.” He turned and extended his hands to Draco more commandingly this time.
Draco undid the gloves and then massaged Harry’s fingers for a while, not letting him pull his hands back until he was sure there was no damage. When Harry began to flush and fidget, Draco summoned a house-elf to give them breakfast.
“What do you like in the mornings?” he asked Harry. Harry sat on the edge of the bed with his hands tugging at his hair. Draco bit his tongue against the temptation to tell him that he would neither look better nor be smarter if he pulled all his hair out.
“Like?” Harry glanced up. “Oh. For breakfast. Toast is fine. And eggs.”
Draco nodded and gave his own somewhat more substantial order to the house-elf, then turned around and sat with his legs folded beneath him on the bed while he watched Harry. Harry had insisted on wearing a shirt and trousers to bed last night, but for all that, he was still lovely, with his rippling muscles and wild, wary movements. “Something on your mind?” he asked. He didn’t know if Harry would be able to voice his concerns even if he had them, but Draco thought it only right to ask.
“I’m thinking about that riddle,” Harry muttered. “I have to assume that Hermione didn’t find anything new during the night, or she probably would have burst in on us, waving the parchment and chattering.”
With a sigh, Draco resigned himself to discussing how to free Hogwarts from those protective wards. It was, in a way, what they were here for. “Yes, I think you’re right. It may not be the Forbidden Forest. There are other trees on the ground.” He paused and cocked his head. “Didn’t something happen during our third year near the Whomping Willow?”
Harry appeared to levitate into the air as he turned, so that he ended up facing Draco without having moved his legs. “Yes!” he breathed. “I can’t believe that I would have been so stupid as to miss that.”
“Well?” Draco gave him a patient look.
“The Whomping Willow hides an entrance to the Shrieking Shack,” Harry explained, his hands in constant motion, one still combing through his hair, one waving randomly through the air as he explained. The elf reappeared with their tray of breakfast, and Draco accepted it and dismissed the elf while he kept a keen eye on Harry. “We cornered Wormtail there during our third year and forced him to admit that he’d betrayed my parents—”
“We?” Draco interrupted. He handed Harry a plate of toast and eggs, which he accepted but only balanced on his knees instead of eating.
“Ron and Hermione and Sirius and Remus and I,” Harry said in distraction. “Everyone thought that Sirius had betrayed my parents, but they changed Secret-Keepers at the last minute, and it was Wormtail. Peter Pettigrew,” he explained, because he had finally seemed to understand the message behind Draco’s patient look.
Draco nodded. He had heard the Dark Lord speak of Wormtail a few times, but he had never been sure if that was the same person as Pettigrew or not.
“We were coming out with Pettigrew, but it was a full moon night, and Remus started to change, and Pettigrew escaped,” Harry said. “Snape was there too. That could qualify to make the event a dark memory. I know that—seeing Remus there would have frightened him.” He sounded oblique, and his eyes were shifty. Draco sighed. He would tell Harry later that he wasn’t a prefect anymore and couldn’t get Harry in trouble for things that had happened to violate Hogwarts’s rules a decade ago. “The tree would be the place where he remembered all of that. Probably.”
“Hmm,” Draco said, and decide that he should let it go for now. He had plenty of time to get to know Harry, after all. “The Whomping Willow is a good choice. We’ll investigate later, when Weasley gets out of the hospital wing. Is there anything else that comes to mind? I must admit that the third line of the riddle troubles me.”
Harry looked up from a mouthful of eggs, which dangled past his teeth like a chewed moustache. “The third line?”
Draco gave him a tolerant look—it was so obvious that Harry was trying to hide his lack of memory—and said, “Bright in eternity. The problem with guessing any tree for this part of the riddle is that it doesn’t fit. Trees are mortal, and die. I don‘t know what that part of it means, but perhaps Granger will have a suggestion for us.”
Harry nodded and returned to his meal. Draco ate as neatly and quickly as he always did, not taking his eyes off Harry. Harry began to fidget long before Draco had finished, and at last looked at him with a rather desperate expression and muttered, “Do you have to examine me all the time?”
“Examine you in what way?” Draco inquired, patting delicately at his mouth with the napkin.
“I just—you’re looking at me like everything I do matters,” Harry muttered, and set his plate aside. It vanished at once, telling Draco that the house-elves were watching them. He didn’t think the elves reported to Covington, though, so that was fine. “I’m not used to that. I spend a lot of time on my own, when I’m living in my house in the Muggle world.”
Draco smiled. “If it makes you uncomfortable, then we’ll work out a compromise,” he said. “But lovers do usually look at each other.” He stretched one arm up and turned his neck, so that Harry could have a fair peek.
Harry’s cheeks turned pink, and he fumbled his fork onto the plate. Draco thought it was adorable. He didn’t know that he would have thought that of anyone else, but then, he had gone through rather unusual exertions to win and keep Harry, which he couldn’t imagine applying to other lovers.
To no other lover ever again, if I have done my work right.
“I—I’m not used to it yet,” Harry said, and Draco reckoned that was fair. He wasn’t used to this yet himself, either, and he didn’t want to drive Harry away before they had a chance to get on an even footing.
“Fine,” he said. “Tell me when you are.” He winked at Harry and finished his breakfast, dividing his attention between Harry and the riddle in his head. The more he thought about it, the longer he was certain that it wasn’t a tree.
But there seemed so few other things that fit the clues, and Severus had spoken so often of the tree as a perfect symbol of all four elements, that Draco thought he would keep that observation to himself for now. Granger would certainly have more than enough to say when they met up with her this afternoon.
*
“I’ve thought about it, Harry, and I think this is harder than the previous ones.”
Harry had to refrain from rolling his eyes. Of course Hermione would think that, because she wasn’t the one who had solved the last riddle; he and Draco had.
Then he told himself not to be so uncharitable, and leaned over to look at the list of suggestions she’d placed on the table beside Ron’s bed. Ron was up, looking much more cheerful than he had yesterday, and eating a frankly disgusting breakfast from the tray on his lap. Harry tried to avoid being splattered by flying food as he squinted thoughtfully at the suggestions.
The Whomping Willow was on there, a few names that Harry didn’t recognize—Hermione explained that they were precise locations in the Forbidden Forest that she’d learned about when she first came here to be a professor—and several classrooms. Apparently some of those had decorations that Hermione thought might be what the riddle was referring to. Harry couldn’t dispute that, not when he didn’t have better ideas himself.
“Could you stop doing that, Malfoy?”
Harry tensed and raised his head. Ron’s voice didn’t have the extremely hostile tone he thought it would have a few days before, but it was still loud enough and rude enough to make Harry anticipate a pitched battle.
Draco was sitting on a chair beside Hermione’s, his face abstracted. He had already studied her list, and Harry didn’t think he knew any better than Harry did which was the right one. He wasn’t doing anything in particular, Harry thought, staring off into space while his fingers twitched now and then.
Except that his hand was resting on Harry’s hip, stroking up and down in the same absent manner that he might stroke a dog.
Harry coughed, turned red, tried to decide if it was the manner of stroking or the fact that Draco was touching him at all that had made Ron angry, gave up, and said, “It’s all right, Ron. I don’t mind.”
Draco came back to the conversation then and lifted his eyebrows. His hand closed down on Harry’s hip for a moment in a possessive gesture, as if he assumed that someone would come around the corner to drag Harry away. It loosened almost at once as he began to smirk, but that little moment of lost control had reassured Harry. Draco wasn’t as perfect and flawless as he looked. He might still, as silly as it was, assume that Harry would leave him.
Harry needed that, to know that he wasn’t less important to Draco than Draco was to him. He might be trying this new business of having a regular lover, but he didn’t intend to give himself up for anything but a full-time commitment in return.
“Oh, Weasley, are we doing something that offends your delicate sensibilities?” Draco asked in a croon. “I forgot that you’ve probably only been with one person, and then you were a virgin until marriage.”
“Malfoy,” Hermione said in a deeply annoyed manner, and glanced at Harry. He knew the silent look was a plea to control his errant lover. He sighed and turned to touch Draco’s hair and his chin. The touches got Draco’s attention at once, which was what Harry wanted.
“Let it go,” Harry mouthed.
Draco regarded him with such an intense stare that Harry thought he had drifted off into contemplation again. But then he shook his head. “No, why should I?” he asked loudly. “He’s bothered by something normal and natural, although he would think it strange if we objected when he snogged his wife. I’m doing less than that. He can ignore it if he wants. I’m not stopping.” And he immediately began to stroke Harry’s hip in large, suggestive motions that included his leg. Harry caught his breath.
“We’re supposed to work together,” Hermione said, voice a little shrill. “You’re making that harder, Malfoy. It’s not such a big thing that Ron’s asking you for.”
“It starts out that way, and it gets bigger,” Ron muttered. “I know him. I know the liberties that he’ll end up taking.”
“Stop it.”
Everyone fell silent, blinking. Harry looked around for the iron-voiced person who had decided to interfere, half-thinking that it might be Madam Pomfrey, who would want silence and peace for Ron as he recovered.
Then he realized it was him, and that even Draco was regarding him with lifted brows. Harry coughed and accepted the fact that he had intervened, and that meant he had to keep going. He sat up straighter, captured Draco’s hand, and carried it into his lap, where he held it. That ought to satisfy the impulse in Draco to connect with him while at the same time stifling Ron’s objections.
“I came to you because I want you for my friends,” he said. “I brought Draco along because he’s my lover. I would have a harder time leaving him right now than I would leaving you, when our reconciliation is so new. Ron, if it bothers you that much to think about what I do in bed with Draco, look away.”
Ron opened his mouth and then looked away. His jaw was clenched tight with humiliation, and Harry winced, sorry for it. But he took a deep breath and refused to relent even when Hermione looked at him with pleading eyes. What could he say? He wanted to be with his friends again, to joke as they used to, and perhaps he would be able to help them free Hogwarts from the Ministry’s clutches.
But no matter what he said, something about his sexuality always seemed to bother them. That it existed, that he was possibly sleeping with other people in a certain way because of psychological issues, that he had chosen a certain lover…No matter what he said or how much he gave in, he didn’t think Ron and Hermione would be satisfied. It would be best if they agreed beforehand on what they would disagree on and then didn’t bring the subject up again.
Ron finally shut his mouth and whispered something to Hermione; close as he sat, Harry couldn’t hear it. She took his hand and nodded, then looked back at Harry alone and said, “We’ll investigate several of these places today. Why don’t you and Malfoy go to the Whomping Willow, and Ron and I will look at a few places in the Forbidden Forest?”
“Will you be all right, mate?” Harry asked, nodding to Ron’s leg.
“I think so,” Ron said. His voice was thick, but he was making the same effort Hermione was, to ignore Draco and keep going, and Harry smiled at him in thanks. Perhaps Ron caught the smile, because his voice became a bit warmer. “I mean, I’ve only got one of the smartest witches in the country with me, and I was only going to be teaching one of the Defense Against the Dark Arts classes here when the school opened.”
Harry nodded, squeezed Ron’s shoulder, and turned to Draco. He’d been sitting suspiciously still, which Harry hoped meant he wasn’t preparing some nasty surprise in the near future. “Are you all right with this division of labor, Draco?” He wouldn’t let Draco overturn all their plans, but he deserved to be consulted in an endeavor he had joined.
Draco looked at him calmly, and let a faint smile play along his mouth. Then, before Harry could stop him, he lifted Harry’s hand to his mouth and kissed the knuckles with a sharp sucking sound. Ron gagged. Harry thought he heard Hermione gasp, too, but since he had a hard time looking at anything but Draco’s face and the deep, intense gaze that was sucking him in and down, he didn’t know for sure.
“I will be,” Draco said, and no more.
Part Three.
Harry didn’t know whether he wanted to cast curses or wander around the room with a huge and silly grin on his face. It made no sense, but then, it made no sense that Malfoy had fucked him and made him like it without chains, either.
Should that be so surprising? We did make promises to each other that suggest it could happen.
Harry shrugged and kept his eyes determinedly fixed on his hands as Malfoy dressed. Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising, but it still was. He didn’t know what to do next, especially because he hadn’t had an experience like that before. They were either completely dedicated to stress relief or they were ordinary sex without even a mention of the bonds, like a few of the fucks he’d had with Bradley.
It was strange to think that he wouldn’t see Bradley again. Harry didn’t think Malfoy would want to share.
“Here, then.” Malfoy had the “glass” globe that Harry had taken from the fireplace in the Slytherin common room balanced in his hands. He lifted, bounced it thoughtfully on his palms for a moment, and then dropped it.
Harry winced, but the globe didn’t actually shatter when it met the floor. Of course not, Harry thought, and relaxed a little. The material would never have survived the heat of the fire or the weight of the stones if it was simply glass. “It looks like it’ll take something else to make it open,” he remarked, and knelt down.
Malfoy laughed, a high, cheerful sound that made Harry jerk. He could imagine Ron laughing like that, or Hermione. Not Malfoy. “I know that. We’ll probably both have to touch it at the same time to make it open, like the others. I wanted to see your face when I dropped it, and this way, I got to.” He smiled with a touch of viciousness and reached out to stroke the globe.
Harry shook his head. Perhaps he shouldn’t have expected Malfoy to change that much in such a short period of time, but the words had still disconcerted him.
But he put his hands to the globe anyway, because to hold something like this against Malfoy would have a waste of time. Harry knew that he would have many, many more insults to revenge in time against Malfoy, and it was just as well for him to get used to the git’s manners, or lack of manners, quickly.
The globe came unhinged along the top like a few Muggle Easter eggs Harry had seen, and then they were lifting out the entwined pieces of parchment. Malfoy undid the first and sneered slightly. “Hogwarts lake is the keyword to unlock the wards,” he murmured. “Of course.”
Harry didn’t see what the “of course” had to do with it, but he was holding the riddle, and he had better things to do than ask Malfoy what one sneer or another meant.
Fire above and fire below,
Rising while rooted,
Bright in eternity,
Dark in memory.
Harry blinked and turned the parchment over. That seemed to be all there was. He supposed it wasn’t that much shorter than the first riddle had been, but he had still expected something more substantial. He extended the paper to Malfoy, frowning. It was possible Snape had used some enchantment that would reveal hidden words or invisible clues.
Malfoy cast a few spells, but to no avail. “It seems this is our only clue,” he murmured. “One would expect a location like the rest, within Hogwarts grounds and not visited by many in the years since the school was closed. But ‘rising while rooted’ and the references to fire above and below make me wonder if this is within the Forbidden Forest again.”
“Why?” Harry asked. He’d never heard of fires or references to magical creatures that breathed fire in the Forbidden Forest, and he was sure he would have, from Hagrid if nothing else. Hagrid would have been thrilled beyond words if a dragon had lived near enough to them to be seen.
“Severus used an analogy with those of us in Potions who had trouble seeing the magical properties of certain trees,” Malfoy said, staring at him. “A tree combines all four elements. ‘It rises into the sky, it is rooted in the earth, it eats the fire of the sun, and it drinks from rain.’ Extend that a bit further, and one can say that a tree is close to the fire of the earth since magma lies in the earth. You never heard of that analogy? You don’t remember it?”
Harry gave a harsh laugh. “If you’re going to start complaining about the amount of attention I paid in Potions, we’ll be here all day.”
Malfoy studied him closely for a few moments, then smiled. Harry didn’t think it was the smirk or sneer he was expecting, though it had an edge to it. “You’re right. I suspect the visions I have had about you will prove true.”
“What visions?” Harry said, with a frown. Malfoy gave a small shrug and turned back to study the paper again. Harry leaned forwards and clutched his wrist, which at least had the merit of making him pay attention. “What bloody visions?” Harry insisted.
Malfoy sighed. “I’ve had flashes of you kneeling on the floor of my lab, your arms bound behind you and your face flushed with attention,” he said. “I had them even before I knew for certain that you liked to be bound.” He gave another smile, this time the kind that made Harry’s flesh shudder and feel as if it would melt from his bones. “I see they were prophetic in another way as well. Clearly, you need instruction in Potions.”
Harry coughed uncomfortably and turned his head away. “It isn’t—Malfoy, you wanker, this isn’t the time or place to talk about that.”
“All times and places around us are fine to talk about that,” Malfoy said. “Why not? We do not stop being ourselves because we are considering a riddle at the moment. We do not stop feeling our needs and our desires because we may need to put off slaking them.” He reached out in turn, but his touch on Harry’s wrist was too light, making Harry want to press his hand more firmly against Malfoy’s than Malfoy allowed at the moment. “I want you to accept that,” Malfoy added, and it sounded like an order.
Harry breathed deeply. He didn’t want to get into an argument about this right now, and he wasn’t going to. For fuck’s sake, they’d just slept together. It wasn’t as though he owed Malfoy anything.
“Later,” he said, and plucked the riddle from Malfoy’s slack hand. “So what would the last two lines mean, then?”
“Obviously, a place in the Forbidden Forest where something happened.” From the lightness and steadiness of Malfoy’s tone, Harry’s disagreement hadn’t affected him. Harry highly doubted that, but he deliberately didn’t look up in time to catch the expression on Malfoy’s face. “We would have to remember that it couldn’t be a moment specific to us. Dumbledore and Severus couldn’t know we would be the ones to track these riddles down.”
Harry grunted acknowledgment and looked up. “Assuming you’re right and something happened in the Forbidden Forest that we need to investigate, what are the best candidates for it?”
Malfoy waited long, lingering moments before he answered, as though to prove that he could look at Harry as well as anyone else could. “I think we should put Granger on that. She’ll go through records with a speed neither of us can match, and she’ll need something to do as she sits by Weasley’s bedside.”
Harry couldn’t stop his smile, though he knew it was reluctant. Well, that was all Malfoy deserved right now, anyway. “She’ll like that, and it’ll help take her mind off Ron. Thanks, Malfoy.”
“I didn’t do it for her sake,” Malfoy said. “I did it for yours. You seem to have a need for others to feel consideration for your friends, as if they were delicate striplings, though I have to admit that I don’t know why.”
Harry ground his teeth and held back his slowly rising irritation. He had been honest with Malfoy, and this was what it got him. But he had to think that what they had—he thought he could call it bondage more honestly than a bond—was stronger than a petty argument. Someday it would be, anyway. “It’s not their delicacy. It’s that I’m just reconciling with them right now, and it wouldn’t take much to tear us apart.”
“You weren’t as firm in your interview with them as I imagined you would be.” Malfoy had lazy eyes, deceptive eyes. Crocodile’s eyes. “You didn’t demand everything I’d thought you’d demand. Why is that?”
“Because you’re you, and not me?” Harry asked in exasperation. He didn’t know what to say about this. Malfoy wanted to discuss this subject now—why, exactly? And why was it his concern? Harry’s efforts to secure his friendship with Ron and Hermione could proceed without oversight from Malfoy. “Because we think it’s reasonable to ask for different things?” he added a moment later, in a slightly softer voice, when Malfoy simply continued to gaze at him. “Seriously, Malfoy. It’s not that complicated.”
“It is,” said Malfoy. “When what they do affects you, and that affects me.”
Harry sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “I promise that I wouldn’t refuse to have sex with you because of something Ron and Hermione said to me. So that’s settled, isn’t it?” He picked up the riddle again.
Malfoy reached out and hooked his hand beneath Harry’s chin, turning his face back and forth as if he were seeking the answers to hidden questions in it. Harry froze and glared at him. It was hard to maintain that glare against Malfoy’s patient, searching look, and the questioning gleam in his eyes.
“You have no idea what I’m really like,” Malfoy whispered. “You have no idea what I want from you. It’s more than sex. It’s more than not walking away at the end of a fuck, though that is nice compared to what happened the first time. I wish to know you, and what affects you, and for you to do the same thing with me.”
Harry bit his lip, feeling himself flush. He had known—well, maybe he’d known—that things like this would happen if they had an actual relationship. But he hadn’t counted on it. Or he had thought Malfoy would wait a while before engaging in it. Malfoy didn’t seem soft or Gryffindor enough for that.
“I want to ask for the harder things later,” Harry said, telling the truth. “It was the first meeting. I thought I’d want to be demanding, but seeing their eyes and the way they reacted to me…that was enough for that moment.”
Malfoy considered him in silence, as if evaluating the answer. Then he nodded and let Harry go. “I’ll write down a list of suggestions that Granger might want to look into,” he said. “Though I’m sure that she’ll discover more than enough on her own.”
Harry nodded back, more relieved than he could say that Malfoy had accepted his explanation and dropped the interrogation mode he’d been using for a few minutes. Then he paused and licked his lips. He felt as if he owed Malfoy something for dropping it, though Malfoy would probably—well, might—say he didn’t.
He leaned in and kissed Malfoy briefly on the mouth. Malfoy muffled an exclamation against his lips, then reached up and caught his hair, holding him in place as he thrust his tongue determinedly past Harry’s lips. Harry accepted it and snogged him gently, pulling back when Malfoy tried to insist on more.
“Thank you, Draco,” Harry said.
Malfoy—Draco who was to be—flushed and slowly inclined his head, not looking away from Harry’s eyes. Harry shuddered, but not in revulsion. That clinging gaze felt more intimate, in some ways, than Draco’s hands on his body.
*
Granger seized the list of suggestions from Draco’s hand with a crow of glee, which Draco had been sure she would, and then scanned it from top to bottom with a quick flick of her eyes. Although she looked up at him immediately after, Draco was sure she had memorized them already. “What am I looking for?”
“Events that occurred in the Forbidden Forest since Dumbledore was Headmaster,” Draco told her, glancing once at Weasley, asleep in the hospital bed. He looked disgustingly healthy. He ought to be up tomorrow, Draco thought. There was no need for as much worry as Granger was showing. “Preferably, events that also occurred since Professor Snape came to teach here. Something dark that would have impacted both of them.”
Granger nodded seriously, considered the list again, and started to write notes down on the margins of the paper. Draco was glad to make his escape. He wanted to find Harry again and carry on a more interesting discussion.
Of course, since that was what he wanted, he was prevented from carrying it out. He met Covington on the stairs coming down from her office, and she smiled and held out an arm as though they were the best of friends and it was trivial for her to bar his passage. “Potions master Malfoy. I must speak with you.”
“I have nothing to say about Potter,” Draco murmured peacefully. “Or the philosophical reasons that Potter left the Ministry. You are better served by taking those up with him, as I already suggested.”
“I know that.” Covington had hawk’s eyes suddenly. “I wish to speak to you about a matter of some import to the both of us.”
Draco waited. He did nothing so casual as lean against the wall, and nothing so defensive as to fold his arms. Why should he give an enemy anything definable about his state of mind? Draco had never been a connoisseur of handing over weapons that someone could use to stab him, though Harry was.
That is something else we will have to work on. Draco had no intention of watching Harry hurt himself again and again. He might not be able to order him to stop it—Draco didn’t yet know how much control he had outside the bedroom, if any—but he would offer sarcasm, suggestions, gentle advice, and anything else that might stand a chance of making an impression.
“Do you know,” Covington asked the air, “how fragile the reputations of Potions masters may be? Constant discovery and research is necessary to maintain them. I wonder what would happen if it turned out that some of the discoveries made by a Potions master in the last few years were fraudulent, claiming the credit for others’ work. I wonder what the people who pay those discoveries attention and send the Potions master letters of adulation, praise, or argument would do.”
Draco felt the breath catch in his throat for a moment. This was a tactic that he hadn’t thought Covington would take, partially because he didn’t know that the Ministry bothered to keep up on the activities of Potions masters. Their incompetency at everything else was so great, why would they?
Then he smiled and said, “It would be a disaster for him. Even if he managed to clear his name, there would always be lingering doubts about his priority for the next discoveries. He would become involved in petty disputes when he should be moving forwards, making his name known in other areas and new fields. And those who chose to ally with him would receive withering scorn. Posterity might not know or remember him. Names of potions or histories of brewing with his name in them might be changed.”
“I am glad to understand the consequences,” Covington said, and smiled back at him. “It’s a subject that I’ve been interested in, but I never had enough time to study the specifics.”
“I find that I make time for subjects I am truly interested in,” Draco said. “One might never know, otherwise, the basic concepts or whether someone had got there first and claimed credit for what one wanted to study.”
Covington’s eyes went slightly wary. She didn’t know where he was leading the analogy, and it showed. “Of course,” she said. “One would not want someone else to snatch the prize one dreamed of winning.”
“I study people as well as books,” Draco said conversationally. “I have several such studies in progress right now.”
“Do you?” Covington gave him a pleasant smile. “I hope you will realize that some people’s characters are a reflection of what most interests them and what institutions they serve, rather than of their worth as individuals.”
“Such constrains are well-implanted in my mind,” Draco reassured her. “This study is very old for me, although the subjects of the study aren’t.”
Covington nodded. “Well, then, I can safely leave you to it. I trust that you’ll let one subject of your study know if another one is about to come into conflict with him.”
Draco shrugged with one shoulder. “I might do that if I thought it necessary. Or I might let it happen. I must do some experiments in all the fields of study I undertake, after all. It’s essential for my nature as a Potions master. Watching explosions and collisions teaches me more about my subject than all the descriptions in a textbook ever could.”
“I wish you luck,” Covington murmured, and then turned and went up the stairs again with so much grace and conviction that Draco could have told himself he’d imagined the momentary flash of fear in her eyes.
But he knew he hadn’t.
*
Harry looked up when he heard the door open. He’d agreed to remain here while Draco took the list of suggestions up to Hermione because—well, because he wanted to avoid seeing Hermione and Ron with the flush of sex still on his cheeks. Draco had agreed with nothing more than a curious glance, and if he guessed what the motive for the action was, he didn’t seem inclined to deprecate it.
Harry had entertained himself by studying the alterations to Snape’s rooms and comparing them with his memories of the bastard the man had been. He never would have allowed this if he was still alive. Harry wondered if he should think of this as latter-day revenge or not, and if it was psychologically unhealthy to do so. That led him further away into other questions, and he hadn’t noticed time passing.
Now, when Draco gave him a direct look and Harry glanced down at his watch, he realized it was late evening. He rose to his feet with a cough. “I should be getting back to my rooms in Hogsmeade,” he said.
“Yes, you should,” Draco said, in a light, deceptively pleasant tone.
Harry stiffened. He hadn’t been “with” Draco for long, and already he recognized one of his favorite tactics: saying nothing on the surface, implying everything beneath, and irritating someone so badly that they had to ask what he was talking about.
“What do you mean?” Harry snapped. “Say what you mean.”
“I thought I had.” Draco stepped past him and started to arrange a pile of papers Harry had glanced at earlier but thought nothing of. They were covered with equations and directions, and that probably meant they were about potions. Harry and potions had an agreement: he stayed on the other side of the room, and they didn’t lunge viciously out of their vials at him. “You should return to your rooms. The Three Broomsticks will serve dinner soon, and you look as if you could use some more to eat.”
Harry let one hand fall defensively to rest on his ribs before he dropped it and flushed again. He told himself that he had so grown up past the near-starvation the Dursleys tried to inflict on him, and it didn’t matter what Draco thought or said, that childhood mistreatment didn’t show now. “Well, I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” he said, and started to edge past Draco.
Draco turned around and gave him a faint smile, an enigmatic one, as he leaned against the table where the papers were now neatly piled and cocked his head.
Harry ground his teeth. He wouldn’t be tricked into responding. He would walk out the door, up the path to Hogsmeade, into the Three Broomsticks, and eat his dinner and go to bed on time like a normal person.
Normal. That word tolled in the back of his mind, and Harry remembered the conclusion he had come to this morning: that he wasn’t normal and would just have to get used to living with that. Draco’s voice snapped in his head at the same time, telling him to stop using that word.
In another life, that reminder would have been another reason for him to walk out. He didn’t need to do everything Draco said just because that was what he did when they had sex.
But he didn’t want to resist what could possibly be good advice just because of his stubbornness, either. And Draco’s expression was driving him mad with curiosity. He had to learn what Draco thought he should do.
He turned around with a huff and folded his arms. “Well? What do you think I should do instead of going back to Hogsmeade?”
“Did I say that you should do anything?” But Draco stepped forwards with an alacrity that told Harry he had indeed been waiting for just this. He wrapped his fingers around Harry’s wrist and turned his hand back and forth as if admiring the different patterns of marks his fingertips could leave. “I think it would be more comfortable for both of us if you stayed in my bed tonight.”
“Your bed probably isn’t big enough,” Harry retorted, seizing the first excuse that came to mind.
The smile Draco gave him was deep, and dark, and lovely. “You haven’t seen it yet. An unanticipated benefit of having fucked in the chair.”
Harry felt himself flush again. It was one thing for him to think words like “fucked,” but Draco appeared to say them effortlessly. Harry didn’t know whether to feel silly and embarrassed or excited that he could do so. Probably neither response was appropriate.
He tried for a coolness that matched Draco’s tone. “I need some time and space from my friends. Maybe the same thing applies to you.”
Draco leaned closer, and Harry swayed towards him without even thinking about it. “I would ordinarily let myself be persuaded by that,” Draco murmured, “except that I know you have a past pattern of retreats from your lovers. I don’t want to give you the chance to begin that again. Stay with me tonight. You can go back to Hogsmeade tomorrow night, assuming we are unfortunate enough not to solve the riddle tomorrow.”
Harry exhaled. He wanted to say he wouldn’t retreat this time, but Draco had no reason to believe him. He could say that he wanted to be alone after the tumultuous events of the day, but that wasn’t really true. He wanted to think, but if he was by himself, he would brood instead. Events of the past few years had taught him brooding was no substitute for thinking.
Draco ran the fingers of his free hand lightly down Harry’s arm, from elbow to wrist.
Harry shivered. He did want to get used to this, he told himself. And he would have to get used to this if Malfoy insisted on being so free with all the touching.
“All right,” he muttered. “But it doesn’t mean that I’m going to spend each night pressed against your body.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to,” Draco said, while his eyes laughed from deep down. He reached out and drew Harry against him, holding his wrists with a grip that Harry thought would have tightened immeasurably if he had tried to break away, but, just at the moment, felt rather pleasant. “I would expect that you’ll be bound to the headboard some of the time, and I may choose to press against you or not, as I like.”
Harry wrenched away instinctively. Or rather, he got one wrist free, and then Draco seized the other one exactly as Harry had thought he would, his frown light and scolding. “I wouldn’t do such a thing, Harry, if you want to go on feeling my touch,” Draco murmured. “I can understand your motives for an immediate rejection, but I won’t take it well.”
Harry took a deep breath. It wasn’t—he didn’t know how he could explain it. He wanted to be bound when he was sleeping—not an idea that he’d considered before, but one that sent sparks dancing along his nerves. But how he could stand to have someone else do that to him? How could he stand to be with someone who would look at him in the daylight and know that it was happening?
But it was find a way to do that, or give up being with Draco completely. Draco could tolerate anything but his cowardice and the desire to be normal.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll come with you for tonight, and we can see later if we’ll have to do anything else.”
Draco drew a hand over Harry’s throat, along his collarbone and up, with his eyes so dark that it was hard to read them. When he spoke, his voice was thick and languid. “I am pleased.”
Harry decided he might as well flush, since there was no one else in the room to see it, and followed Draco into the bedroom without even a prompting tug on his wrist.
He did look to make sure that the portrait frame was still covered up before he followed Draco, though. There was a limit to the show that he wanted to put on for others besides Draco.
*
Draco swam out of sleep with the vague conviction that something was wrong. Only when he turned over did he realize that the wrongness was a change from what he had done and how he had slept since he came to Hogwarts. And in this case, it was a very great rightness instead, although still a change.
Harry slept, head bowed on the pillow as though he was surrendering to some invisible enemy. He hadn’t rolled far away from Draco; he hadn’t tried to stand up during the night and leave the bed, unless he had stepped out briefly for a trip to the loo. Draco smiled and ran his fingers along the part of Harry’s neck where his hair ended.
He felt the small shock jolt through Harry’s body as he came awake. For a moment, Harry too-obviously tried to remember where he was, who he was with, and why, and then he blew out his breath. Leaning to look over the side of his face, Draco could see that he had his eyes shut.
“Do you do this often?” Draco asked idly, continuing to play with Harry’s hair. “Wake up in strange beds?” That would be another thing changing soon, if it was the case, but he didn’t think it was, given how uptight Harry had been in the past about his particular needs.
“No,” Harry said. “You wanker.”
Draco grinned. “But you didn’t know where you were for a fraction of a second,” he said. “I heard.”
“You would be the one to notice something like that,” Harry said tiredly. He rolled over and held out his hands. “Will you untie these, please?”
Draco took a moment to admire his handiwork, instead. Harry’s hands were tied together with a series of black, knotted cords, so thickly wound that in some place they completely hid the skin beneath. The appearance was deceptive, however; rather than actual cords, Draco had enchanted an old pair of gloves to wear the cords and act as embracing, limiting bonds on Harry’s movements. He didn’t want to cut off blood to Harry’s hands during the night, because he would have to deal with the complaining about that in the morning.
He glanced up. Harry glared back at him, though of course he was flushed, and of course he looked away when Draco held the stare.
“Did you like that?” Draco asked softly.
“I—don’t know,” Harry said, which was a better response than the blustering one about normality that Draco had feared. Harry stared at the ceiling, brow furrowed, and then shook his head. “I don’t know if it’s something that I would want to happen every night,” Harry said. “As routine. But it’s the first time that I’ve ever used bonds like that when I wasn’t already killingly angry. Maybe I could become used to it over time.” He turned and extended his hands to Draco more commandingly this time.
Draco undid the gloves and then massaged Harry’s fingers for a while, not letting him pull his hands back until he was sure there was no damage. When Harry began to flush and fidget, Draco summoned a house-elf to give them breakfast.
“What do you like in the mornings?” he asked Harry. Harry sat on the edge of the bed with his hands tugging at his hair. Draco bit his tongue against the temptation to tell him that he would neither look better nor be smarter if he pulled all his hair out.
“Like?” Harry glanced up. “Oh. For breakfast. Toast is fine. And eggs.”
Draco nodded and gave his own somewhat more substantial order to the house-elf, then turned around and sat with his legs folded beneath him on the bed while he watched Harry. Harry had insisted on wearing a shirt and trousers to bed last night, but for all that, he was still lovely, with his rippling muscles and wild, wary movements. “Something on your mind?” he asked. He didn’t know if Harry would be able to voice his concerns even if he had them, but Draco thought it only right to ask.
“I’m thinking about that riddle,” Harry muttered. “I have to assume that Hermione didn’t find anything new during the night, or she probably would have burst in on us, waving the parchment and chattering.”
With a sigh, Draco resigned himself to discussing how to free Hogwarts from those protective wards. It was, in a way, what they were here for. “Yes, I think you’re right. It may not be the Forbidden Forest. There are other trees on the ground.” He paused and cocked his head. “Didn’t something happen during our third year near the Whomping Willow?”
Harry appeared to levitate into the air as he turned, so that he ended up facing Draco without having moved his legs. “Yes!” he breathed. “I can’t believe that I would have been so stupid as to miss that.”
“Well?” Draco gave him a patient look.
“The Whomping Willow hides an entrance to the Shrieking Shack,” Harry explained, his hands in constant motion, one still combing through his hair, one waving randomly through the air as he explained. The elf reappeared with their tray of breakfast, and Draco accepted it and dismissed the elf while he kept a keen eye on Harry. “We cornered Wormtail there during our third year and forced him to admit that he’d betrayed my parents—”
“We?” Draco interrupted. He handed Harry a plate of toast and eggs, which he accepted but only balanced on his knees instead of eating.
“Ron and Hermione and Sirius and Remus and I,” Harry said in distraction. “Everyone thought that Sirius had betrayed my parents, but they changed Secret-Keepers at the last minute, and it was Wormtail. Peter Pettigrew,” he explained, because he had finally seemed to understand the message behind Draco’s patient look.
Draco nodded. He had heard the Dark Lord speak of Wormtail a few times, but he had never been sure if that was the same person as Pettigrew or not.
“We were coming out with Pettigrew, but it was a full moon night, and Remus started to change, and Pettigrew escaped,” Harry said. “Snape was there too. That could qualify to make the event a dark memory. I know that—seeing Remus there would have frightened him.” He sounded oblique, and his eyes were shifty. Draco sighed. He would tell Harry later that he wasn’t a prefect anymore and couldn’t get Harry in trouble for things that had happened to violate Hogwarts’s rules a decade ago. “The tree would be the place where he remembered all of that. Probably.”
“Hmm,” Draco said, and decide that he should let it go for now. He had plenty of time to get to know Harry, after all. “The Whomping Willow is a good choice. We’ll investigate later, when Weasley gets out of the hospital wing. Is there anything else that comes to mind? I must admit that the third line of the riddle troubles me.”
Harry looked up from a mouthful of eggs, which dangled past his teeth like a chewed moustache. “The third line?”
Draco gave him a tolerant look—it was so obvious that Harry was trying to hide his lack of memory—and said, “Bright in eternity. The problem with guessing any tree for this part of the riddle is that it doesn’t fit. Trees are mortal, and die. I don‘t know what that part of it means, but perhaps Granger will have a suggestion for us.”
Harry nodded and returned to his meal. Draco ate as neatly and quickly as he always did, not taking his eyes off Harry. Harry began to fidget long before Draco had finished, and at last looked at him with a rather desperate expression and muttered, “Do you have to examine me all the time?”
“Examine you in what way?” Draco inquired, patting delicately at his mouth with the napkin.
“I just—you’re looking at me like everything I do matters,” Harry muttered, and set his plate aside. It vanished at once, telling Draco that the house-elves were watching them. He didn’t think the elves reported to Covington, though, so that was fine. “I’m not used to that. I spend a lot of time on my own, when I’m living in my house in the Muggle world.”
Draco smiled. “If it makes you uncomfortable, then we’ll work out a compromise,” he said. “But lovers do usually look at each other.” He stretched one arm up and turned his neck, so that Harry could have a fair peek.
Harry’s cheeks turned pink, and he fumbled his fork onto the plate. Draco thought it was adorable. He didn’t know that he would have thought that of anyone else, but then, he had gone through rather unusual exertions to win and keep Harry, which he couldn’t imagine applying to other lovers.
To no other lover ever again, if I have done my work right.
“I—I’m not used to it yet,” Harry said, and Draco reckoned that was fair. He wasn’t used to this yet himself, either, and he didn’t want to drive Harry away before they had a chance to get on an even footing.
“Fine,” he said. “Tell me when you are.” He winked at Harry and finished his breakfast, dividing his attention between Harry and the riddle in his head. The more he thought about it, the longer he was certain that it wasn’t a tree.
But there seemed so few other things that fit the clues, and Severus had spoken so often of the tree as a perfect symbol of all four elements, that Draco thought he would keep that observation to himself for now. Granger would certainly have more than enough to say when they met up with her this afternoon.
*
“I’ve thought about it, Harry, and I think this is harder than the previous ones.”
Harry had to refrain from rolling his eyes. Of course Hermione would think that, because she wasn’t the one who had solved the last riddle; he and Draco had.
Then he told himself not to be so uncharitable, and leaned over to look at the list of suggestions she’d placed on the table beside Ron’s bed. Ron was up, looking much more cheerful than he had yesterday, and eating a frankly disgusting breakfast from the tray on his lap. Harry tried to avoid being splattered by flying food as he squinted thoughtfully at the suggestions.
The Whomping Willow was on there, a few names that Harry didn’t recognize—Hermione explained that they were precise locations in the Forbidden Forest that she’d learned about when she first came here to be a professor—and several classrooms. Apparently some of those had decorations that Hermione thought might be what the riddle was referring to. Harry couldn’t dispute that, not when he didn’t have better ideas himself.
“Could you stop doing that, Malfoy?”
Harry tensed and raised his head. Ron’s voice didn’t have the extremely hostile tone he thought it would have a few days before, but it was still loud enough and rude enough to make Harry anticipate a pitched battle.
Draco was sitting on a chair beside Hermione’s, his face abstracted. He had already studied her list, and Harry didn’t think he knew any better than Harry did which was the right one. He wasn’t doing anything in particular, Harry thought, staring off into space while his fingers twitched now and then.
Except that his hand was resting on Harry’s hip, stroking up and down in the same absent manner that he might stroke a dog.
Harry coughed, turned red, tried to decide if it was the manner of stroking or the fact that Draco was touching him at all that had made Ron angry, gave up, and said, “It’s all right, Ron. I don’t mind.”
Draco came back to the conversation then and lifted his eyebrows. His hand closed down on Harry’s hip for a moment in a possessive gesture, as if he assumed that someone would come around the corner to drag Harry away. It loosened almost at once as he began to smirk, but that little moment of lost control had reassured Harry. Draco wasn’t as perfect and flawless as he looked. He might still, as silly as it was, assume that Harry would leave him.
Harry needed that, to know that he wasn’t less important to Draco than Draco was to him. He might be trying this new business of having a regular lover, but he didn’t intend to give himself up for anything but a full-time commitment in return.
“Oh, Weasley, are we doing something that offends your delicate sensibilities?” Draco asked in a croon. “I forgot that you’ve probably only been with one person, and then you were a virgin until marriage.”
“Malfoy,” Hermione said in a deeply annoyed manner, and glanced at Harry. He knew the silent look was a plea to control his errant lover. He sighed and turned to touch Draco’s hair and his chin. The touches got Draco’s attention at once, which was what Harry wanted.
“Let it go,” Harry mouthed.
Draco regarded him with such an intense stare that Harry thought he had drifted off into contemplation again. But then he shook his head. “No, why should I?” he asked loudly. “He’s bothered by something normal and natural, although he would think it strange if we objected when he snogged his wife. I’m doing less than that. He can ignore it if he wants. I’m not stopping.” And he immediately began to stroke Harry’s hip in large, suggestive motions that included his leg. Harry caught his breath.
“We’re supposed to work together,” Hermione said, voice a little shrill. “You’re making that harder, Malfoy. It’s not such a big thing that Ron’s asking you for.”
“It starts out that way, and it gets bigger,” Ron muttered. “I know him. I know the liberties that he’ll end up taking.”
“Stop it.”
Everyone fell silent, blinking. Harry looked around for the iron-voiced person who had decided to interfere, half-thinking that it might be Madam Pomfrey, who would want silence and peace for Ron as he recovered.
Then he realized it was him, and that even Draco was regarding him with lifted brows. Harry coughed and accepted the fact that he had intervened, and that meant he had to keep going. He sat up straighter, captured Draco’s hand, and carried it into his lap, where he held it. That ought to satisfy the impulse in Draco to connect with him while at the same time stifling Ron’s objections.
“I came to you because I want you for my friends,” he said. “I brought Draco along because he’s my lover. I would have a harder time leaving him right now than I would leaving you, when our reconciliation is so new. Ron, if it bothers you that much to think about what I do in bed with Draco, look away.”
Ron opened his mouth and then looked away. His jaw was clenched tight with humiliation, and Harry winced, sorry for it. But he took a deep breath and refused to relent even when Hermione looked at him with pleading eyes. What could he say? He wanted to be with his friends again, to joke as they used to, and perhaps he would be able to help them free Hogwarts from the Ministry’s clutches.
But no matter what he said, something about his sexuality always seemed to bother them. That it existed, that he was possibly sleeping with other people in a certain way because of psychological issues, that he had chosen a certain lover…No matter what he said or how much he gave in, he didn’t think Ron and Hermione would be satisfied. It would be best if they agreed beforehand on what they would disagree on and then didn’t bring the subject up again.
Ron finally shut his mouth and whispered something to Hermione; close as he sat, Harry couldn’t hear it. She took his hand and nodded, then looked back at Harry alone and said, “We’ll investigate several of these places today. Why don’t you and Malfoy go to the Whomping Willow, and Ron and I will look at a few places in the Forbidden Forest?”
“Will you be all right, mate?” Harry asked, nodding to Ron’s leg.
“I think so,” Ron said. His voice was thick, but he was making the same effort Hermione was, to ignore Draco and keep going, and Harry smiled at him in thanks. Perhaps Ron caught the smile, because his voice became a bit warmer. “I mean, I’ve only got one of the smartest witches in the country with me, and I was only going to be teaching one of the Defense Against the Dark Arts classes here when the school opened.”
Harry nodded, squeezed Ron’s shoulder, and turned to Draco. He’d been sitting suspiciously still, which Harry hoped meant he wasn’t preparing some nasty surprise in the near future. “Are you all right with this division of labor, Draco?” He wouldn’t let Draco overturn all their plans, but he deserved to be consulted in an endeavor he had joined.
Draco looked at him calmly, and let a faint smile play along his mouth. Then, before Harry could stop him, he lifted Harry’s hand to his mouth and kissed the knuckles with a sharp sucking sound. Ron gagged. Harry thought he heard Hermione gasp, too, but since he had a hard time looking at anything but Draco’s face and the deep, intense gaze that was sucking him in and down, he didn’t know for sure.
“I will be,” Draco said, and no more.
Part Three.
