[one-shots]: The Inner Lands, 2/3

[lomonaaeren]

*

Harry appeared in the abandoned house again, and looked around for the Pooka, sure that Malfoy would take the chance to taunt him by sending his slave again.

Instead, he found the house gone, swept up, transformed. The walls were a soft blue color now, and so faint that Harry thought they might have been sketches from the center of the sky against a harsher black background he could barely see. The floor beneath his feet was no longer bare and half-rotted planks, but shining wood. Harry bent down and placed one hand on it and one hand on the iron, but no matter how long he stayed there and felt, it stayed shining.

"This isn't glamour."

Malfoy's voice, the lower-pitched one that sounded more like the human Harry remembered. He straightened up but didn't turn around. "I don't see why it shouldn't be," he said. "In fact, the more you tell me that it isn't, the more license I have to assume it is. You'd want me to believe that you were capable of creating all these wonders and horrors, but you're not, really. I know the legends of Sidhe and fairies a lot better than I used to."

Malfoy chuckled, and moved around in front of Harry. Harry blinked. For the first time, he wore something like human clothes, and he had toned down his beauty so that they didn't look unnatural on him. White robes, high-collared, and a silver comb or clip in his pale hair that held it back and out of his eyes. When the robes stirred and swirled, Harry caught a glimpse of high white boots, with silver toes.

"Do you like it?" Malfoy asked softly, cocking his head to the side and showing a pointed ear through the raised hair. "If you don't, tell me what you would prefer to see me in, and this shall never be spoken of again."

Harry took a deep breath and kept his eyes on the smug git's smug face. That much hasn't changed. You know that he still likes fucking around with you, and that he'll go through other people to do so. How many times did he say something horrid about Ron, not because he had to, but because it was the best way of making you both react? "Technically, you haven't spoken of it at all," he pointed out. "Just showed up and shoved it in my face."

Malfoy changed. His hair blurred and then fell, hanging down loosely around his features; his white robes shortened and flowed, and became a white tunic clinging to his chest and stomach; his boots became simple sandals. He looked like a Greek statue now. Only his eyes were the same, purest silver, metal set in metal. "What about now?" he asked, his voice a gentle breath. "Could you love me now, Harry?"

Harry curled his lip. He barely needed the iron, he thought, as long as Malfoy kept breaking his cheap glamours on his own. "Of course not," he said. "I don't love someone who harasses my friends and thinks that I need protection from a dueling student who couldn't defeat me even if he had two wands."

Malfoy took a single, gliding step closer, and bowed his head so that he was peering into Harry's eyes. "You don't like it?" he asked, and then answered himself, voice winding low and cold and tugging at Harry like the winds of winter sometimes did. "You don't like it."

"Of course I don't," Harry said. "I just told you the reason why. Do all Sidhe get deaf after a while?"

But Malfoy remained in frowning abstraction, and he shook his head and went on murmuring without appearing to have heard Harry. "Why should I care what you don't like? What matters is what I like." He blinked, and then began to smile. "You have introduced something else new to me."

Harry didn't ask. It was only too obvious that he wouldn't know the answer to whatever riddle Malfoy would choose to present him with this time, either. "Fine," he said. "Can we get on to whatever business you summoned me here for? Is the Wizengamot's lack of a decision going to make you storm us tonight?"

Malfoy touched Harry's shoulder with a single cold finger that seemed to collect frost in the tip, and held it there until Harry, grudgingly, shivered. Then Malfoy traced the finger down Harry's arm, picking up more of his warmth as it traveled, until by the time he touched the web between Harry's thumb and the next finger, his hand felt almost human. His fingers lingered there, playing.

Harry sighed loudly enough to catch his attention, and Malfoy smiled, a sharp, dazzling, dangerous look. "This has nothing to do with the Wizengamot. I wanted to see you."

Harry snorted and turned towards the fireplace that had brought him here.

"If you leave, then the inner lands will march across the wizarding world tonight."

Malfoy's voice wasn't loud, but Harry heard the threat, all right. He turned back, rolling his eyes. "You would really make a threat like that--a threat of, of war, of something worse than war--just because I'm refusing to stay with you?"

Malfoy blinked as though considering that idea in a new light, too, and then nodded and said, "Yes."

Harry sighed and glanced around the cavernous room, really taking in, for the first time, the huge golden wood table in the middle and the chairs clustered at one end of it, and the side-table that looked as if it was made of slung vines. "Fine. I assume we're going to have dinner?"

"Yes, we are." Malfoy stepped towards him with his hand held out flat again. Looking at it, Harry made out claws appearing and disappearing at the ends of his fingers, and flashes of what looked like silvery fur, there and not there. He didn't know how much of that was glamour, how much reality. "Come and sit down. The first course is particularly fine."

Harry stared into Malfoy's face for a moment, and then snorted. Well. He was here, and retreating would have consequences, even if he didn't really believe that they would be the consequences Malfoy claimed they were. "All right," he said, and took Malfoy's hand. Smooth-rough-smooth skin beneath his touch, and long-short-long fingernails pricking at the skin on the side of his wrist, but always cold. "What is it?"

*

The first course turned out to be gold. At least, that was the only way Harry knew how to describe it. He assumed when the dishes--marble one moment and wood the next--came out that they were covered with sliced peaches, themselves smothered in some sort of gleaming sauce, but then he took a bite and heard the hiss as the sauce scorched his lips, and realized he had no idea what it was.

Malfoy smiled when Harry asked him, and shook his head. For the longest part of the meal, he leaned against the side-table and watched him eat it. Then he moved to his chair and sipped a glittering crystalline drink from the air; he opened his mouth and tilted his head back, and the drink poured of the slit that opened in thin air in front of him and down his throat. Harry grew distracted enough watching that he let his fork, heavy as though the sauce really was molten gold, drop to his plate.

Malfoy caught his eye and made a soft sound like a tiger coughing in the jungle. "Remember what happens if you don't eat," he said.

"You make it sound as though I agreed to finish everything on my plate," Harry complained, and picked up the fork again. It was light this time, and it flew up so fast when he tugged on it that droplets of bright gold flew over his shoulder and splattered the walls behind him. Harry didn't turn to see whether they disappeared. Once again, he didn't think he could trust the evidence of his senses, and so there was no point in exposing them to the finicky behavior of Sidhe food. "You just said that I had to have dinner."

"Have means finish," Malfoy said, and the food leaped off his plate and down his throat. He didn't chew, because it thinned to a small, glittering stream like soup. He closed his lips when it was gone and smiled.

"In what dictionary?" Harry muttered, and examined the spiraling glass standing beside his plate. It reminded him of the longest horn that the unicorn made of light had threatened him with, it was so turned back on itself and corkscrewed around. Harry had thought the liquid inside was a cloudy white, like milk, but when he turned the glass to the side, he saw that it had thinned and changed to a pale blue.

"In the dictionary that they use in the inner lands," Malfoy said, and his voice was as thick as the sauce Harry had swallowed. Harry glanced at him as he finally figured out where the glass ended and lifted the mouth of it, like a half-trumpet, to his lips.

Malfoy's face looked as human as it had when Harry met him in the circle of thrones, but the glint in his eyes was not. They were pure lion. Harry froze with the glass touching his lips, and for the first time, a conviction about what the Sidhe wanted lanced through him, all the way from his mouth to the bottom of his stomach.

No games. No riddles. No guesses about what they meant.

Malfoy wanted him.

Harry tipped the glass a little more, his mind already working over this new information. Sincere. Not a Sidhe game. That meant it was up to him how he chose to react to it, and how he would use it.

If I can. Harry was sure that the Sidhe had a lot more experience at intrigues than he did, and if Malfoy was right about the way his sense of time had changed since he'd transformed, it could be dangerous for Harry to try and compete with him in this arena.

Then Harry grinned. Since when had something being dangerous ever stopped him?

Then the liquid in the glass touched his throat.

It was cold and sharp, like swallowing a burst of pure winter air, but sweet all along the edges, and fiery enough to bite in the middle. Harry coughed in surprise, and found that he was spilling drops down the sides of his face. He lowered the glass to the table and felt around for a napkin, flushing in humiliation.

But Malfoy reached towards him and gestured with a little twisting curve of his hand in air, and Harry's face was utterly dry. Harry wondered if he could take the food out of Harry's stomach in the same way.

Or the blood from my veins.

Harry raised his eyebrows, said, "Thanks," and then sipped again, more slowly this time. "What do you call it?" he added, staring at the liquid, which had changed until it was transparent enough to reflect the golden shine of the food on the plates.

Malfoy said nothing. When Harry glanced at him, he had his head cocked to the side, his hair sliding away from his pointed ears this time.

"I believe," Malfoy said, dragging the words out as though the fate of worlds depended on him pronouncing them correctly, "that we call it a cup."

Harry scowled and decided not to say that he had deserved that, because he hadn't. But if he could remember that Malfoy was still Malfoy, somewhere under all the marble-like features and polished, gleaming words, then he would do better with this. "I meant the drink inside it," he said, and nudged the glass against his lips again.

This time, nothing came out of it, and Malfoy said seriously, "What drink?" Harry turned the glass upside-down on the tablecloth, although he felt a prickle of anticipatory fear up his neck when he thought of how stupid he might feel if it turned out that it was full after all and he caused a mess. But nothing happened, and a moment later, cup and plates, forks and knives, table and tablecloth, vanished into thin air. Harry stood up just in time to keep from falling on the floor as the bench melted beneath him.

Malfoy stepped towards him, studying him, this time, like Harry was an essay assignment from a class he wasn't certain he understood. Harry lifted his chin and bore up under the stare. It was no worse than the way some of the reporters looked at him, even now, when they'd had ten years to get used to the fact that he wasn't a performing Dark Lord killer.

"What do you want?" Malfoy whispered.

Harry paused. "Is this the part where I say ‘to go back home' and you laugh evilly?" he asked.

Malfoy shook his head, and not the faintest trace of a smile touched his lips. "I want to know what you want," he repeated. "Something you desire that wizarding magic can't give you. Something wild, something beautiful. Sidhe magic can do anything, can take you anywhere in the inner lands."

Harry wondered if he should ask for a way to tame those lion-creatures that Malfoy had threatened to unleash on the wizarding world before, but dismissed the thought. He was already learning that the Sidhe could change their minds in the whirl of an instant, and if he learned how to defeat one of their weapons, they would just use another one.

And if Malfoy was really asking Harry to choose what he wanted, instead of what the savior of the wizarding world wanted. . .

"I want to ride something," he announced. "Something that's going to carry me and fight me at the same time."

Malfoy paused in his slow glide forwards, and then gave his most human smile. "Was this inspired by an experience with a winged horse a few years back?" he asked.

Harry grinned at him with all his teeth. "Partially, but also with brooms," he said. "Do you remember how exhilarating it is to be on a broom in a high wind, with the broom fighting you all the way?"

"I remember something of the sort," Malfoy murmured. "Of course, I have other ways to fly now."

"Then show me one of them," Harry said, and snapped his teeth. "Something that's extraordinary, something no one else could show me, something I'll never forget."

Malfoy abruptly snatched him, his hands curving under Harry's elbows, and bent down and kissed him. Harry kissed him back, because he was entirely in the sort of fey mood in which he would, and Malfoy tore his head back with a gasp, his hair flowing and falling around him and his eyes narrowing.

"I think you've practiced this," Malfoy said.

"Kissing? Well, yeah," Harry said, and pushed at Malfoy's shoulders, impatient for the ride that he'd mentioned. "I've had lovers, you know. And partners, and girlfriends, and boyfriends, and people that I picked up for one night and then never saw again. Not any of those for a while, but that was because I decided I liked my bloody privacy rather than someone who was around to peer into my corners all the time and count all the dust that accumulated there and bitch about it."

"You've done this before," Malfoy repeated, and now he looked like a statue someone had carved out of birch wood.

"Yes," Harry said, and kicked Malfoy in the shin. "What's the matter? Do the Sidhe prize virginity? All those people you've lured away to dream themselves to death at your dances and your tables had be pure as the driven fucking snow?"

Malfoy stared at him, and then gave a bark of laughter, his mouth opening wide, and snatched Harry around the arms again. Harry arched to the side so that he knew he had a little freedom of movement and could feel his wand against his ribs, and then relaxed again. His heart was beating like a bee's wings in flight and he could feel the smile that stretched his face without his willing it to.

This was. . .

This was excitement. The kind of thing that he had started his dueling instruction business to feel, when he watched a pupil perform an offensive charm or hex correctly for the first time, and the kind of thing he had escaped from the Ministry to feel.

"Harry, Harry, Harry," Malfoy whispered against his mouth, and shook his head each time he said the name, as if he didn't understand what prompted him to speak like that any more than Harry did. "You don't know what you do to me. You simply don't know what you do to me."

"Careful," Harry said. "You sounded human there."

"Sometimes I have human memories," Malfoy said, and held him closer, so that Harry could feel his heart as warm as the molten gold of the food under his cold chest. "Like riding on a broom."

And then they twisted, and something huge and bright and hot was beneath Harry, and he yelped, his fingers flying down to dig into soft fur. The beast turned its head and snarled at him, lazily, and then turned it back to resume its flight forwards.

The beast was a white tiger, but instead of dim grey stripes beneath Harry's fingers, there were stripes of a blinding, blazing blue, and wings the color of peacock tails beat up and down on either side of him, and beyond that were the burning gulfs of air.

Malfoy laughed from his left, and Harry turned his head in that direction to see Malfoy riding on his own tiger. This one had stripes and wings that were closer to the green side of the peacock spectrum, but Harry didn't know what that meant, if anything. Malfoy leaned forwards, lightly poised on his heels and fingers in the tiger's fur and connected to it by nothing more than that, his eyes bright as he watched Harry.

"You wanted to ride something that would fight you," Malfoy said. "This one's going to."

Harry opened his mouth to ask what he meant, and then the tiger beneath him spread its wings, and roared, and began to spiral towards the ground, if there was any ground beyond those piling clouds.

Harry gritted his teeth and dug his fingers into the thick half-ruff around the tiger's neck, feeling his balance rock with the pounding of the wings and the lashing of the tiger's tail behind him. He looked around frantically for a sign of reins or bridle or something else that could control the tiger, but found nothing.

The cat turned its head back to watch him, snarled again, and then spun upside-down. Harry opened his mouth as he wrapped his legs--as much as he could--around the tiger's barrel and wondered if he would scream or choke.

In fact, what emerged was a sound much closer to a laugh. Harry shook his head to get his fringe out of his eyes and watched the ground below as it came into sight for a moment, the clouds tearing to reveal a long sweep of blue-green. Land or ocean, Harry wasn't sure, and he knew full well that it might be something stranger than either, given where he was and who he was with.

The tiger twisted as though it hated him for admiring the scenery and wanted to throw him. Harry dug his fingers even further in, and then yanked, so that a few tufts of white came away and stuck under his nails. This time, the tiger tried to scrape him off its back with one wing.

Harry shook his head and said, "You won't be able to do that," casting a spell that blunted the edge of the hooked pinion when it scraped at him again. The tiger roared and dived, but the roar did Harry more damage than the dive, really, since it left his ears ringing. He blinked and shook his head and clung on again, and then found that they were flying just above the ground, under a thick canopy of trees with dazzlingly green fronds. The trees floated in water, Harry thought, rather than standing on solid ground, or at least he thought that was what they seemed to be doing, given the little that he could see through the thick trunks.

The tiger soared towards one of the trunks, obviously intending to use that to peel him off its back.

Harry turned sideways, the way he would on a broom that had been enchanted to buck, and molded himself to the tiger's back, uncomfortable muscles and hunched shoulders and all. The tiger nearly bent its wing against the trunk, and lifted up again, straight up and fast, causing branches and fronds to bounce off Harry this time. Harry snorted with laughter, and made sure that his face was buried, so that the tiger would find it hard to hear the sound.

"You haven't impressed me yet," he shouted, although he knew the wind would lose his words.

The tiger either heard and understood them, or knew enough of the sentiment behind them to want to hurt Harry. A roar, and a lift, and a convulsive bang of the wings down, and Harry felt himself start to float away from the tiger's back. Again he dug his fingers deep, and again he tilted his body to the side to somewhat balance the way that the tiger veered into the wind.

And again he laughed.

This was the kind of challenge he had missed, when he had worked himself free of the Ministry and had to justify his choices only to those who would never be satisfied anyway, and went on asking him questions that he had answered years ago. His life had become far smoother, and of course in one sense he had wanted that. He had fought for the right to make his own decisions, to turn his back on other people's idiocy if he wanted to.

But sometimes it was too smooth. That was when he wanted something like this, a challenge that would fight him and not care who he was and what he had done. A bucking broom would throw him off as readily as someone who hadn't saved the world. Ordinary people who might want his money would try to steal it no matter what, and for that purpose, Harry had sometimes staggered through Diagon Alley, pretending to be drunk, a full purse of Galleons on his belt and the sweat of excitement on his skin under the clothes.

Sometimes he wanted this. Not all the time. Most of the time, he would be content if he could just stay in the human world and have people stop asking him for ridiculous things.

But sometimes, sometimes, sometimes. . .

And then the tiger straightened out beneath him and began to fly smoothly, and Harry realized they were out of the forest and back in the middle of the calm cloudy sky again. He sat up, frowning, and arranged his hair into place, glancing around for Malfoy. The git had probably realized that he was enjoying it too much, and had decided that of course Harry's source of fun had to be taken away from him.

Malfoy loomed up beside him on the back of his own tiger. It didn't look as though he had moved since Harry's began to twist, and Harry thought that was probably true. It would trouble a Sidhe too much to move.

"You have enjoyed yourself?" Malfoy asked in a calm, considering voice, on the far side of cool.

Harry caught his breath and nodded. "I think you knew I would," he added, and frowned. His voice was breathless, and Harry was sure that he hadn't told it to be that way.

"I want to know what will make you enjoy yourself," Malfoy said, with a seriousness that would have come across as ridiculous, except Harry understood the ignorance of humans--or at least forgetfulness about them--that was making Malfoy talk that way. "And I want to do it. I want to give you gifts until you give in to me."

Harry blinked at the air ahead of him as he resettled himself on the tiger's back, in the dip between its shoulder blades. That was--weirdly direct, compared to the kind of round-about proposals that he usually got.

And weirdly refreshing, too. Harry didn't have to pretend to politeness, or think about his audience. There was no audience here as they rode high above the world, whatever bloody weird world it was.

"Why do you want me to give in?" he asked, looking back at Malfoy. "You already know that I don't want you to take over the wizarding world, and if you crushed the people I love with the inner lands, then that wouldn't make me any more likely to give you what you want."

Malfoy shook his head, a faint, secret smile on his face. "I did not mean about that," he answered, and then went on staring at Harry, his hands only lightly touching the tiger's ruff, braced on the outermost extreme of the tips.

"You mean about having sex with you?" Harry asked at last, because it was the only other thing Malfoy had mentioned that it might make sense to bring up now.

"Yes," Malfoy said, and leaned across the gap between them.

The tigers dissolved into melting snow. Harry found that he was standing in a field of it, in fact, and that the clouds had turned into icebergs drifting in the distance on a mirror-bright sea. There were crooked trees nearby that might be apple trees, but he didn't know. He couldn't see anything at the moment but the snow clustering on their branches. He shivered, wrapping his arms around himself, and glanced from side to side.

"This is the place that I intended to bring you," Malfoy said, standing in front of him, and touched a white flower to Harry's lips. When he opened his mouth to protest, his breath blew across the flower and melted it like a snowflake. "So much that I intend to give you, Harry, that I intend to gift to you. . ."

He leaned forwards for the kiss. His own breath was cold.

Harry reached out his hand to cover Malfoy's mouth, and the Sidhe kissed his palm, all the while staring at him. Harry found the sensation distracting. He gritted his teeth and said, "Does the threat still hold? Are you going to make sure that you conquer the wizarding world tonight if I don't give in to you?"

Malfoy's life leached from him, and once again left him a statue made of white wood. "No," he said at last. "You have made it clear that you would not thank me for such a thing. And I wish to give you gifts."

Harry nodded, not entirely certain he understood, but willing to grasp that much reassurance for the moment. "All right. Then take me home."

Malfoy put his hands on his shoulders and turned him irresistibly about. Harry went with the motion, and found himself staring up at what he thought was another iceberg at first, though a square one. Then his perspective seemed to twist to the side, and he realized it was an enormous manor house of white marble, with lighted windows all along its length.

"This is home," Malfoy said, and rested his head near Harry's face. "The home you will have if you consent to me."

Harry raised his eyebrows and shook his head. "And I already know that you know that I said I wouldn't do any such thing."

"You implied it," Malfoy said, moving up beside him and gazing at the manor house as though it was something he had conjured out of thin air for Harry's benefit. Hell, for all Harry knew, it was. He turned and watched Harry, his eyes glittering so that it was difficult to tell where they ended and the light reflecting off the snow began. "Humans say things with lots of implications that you don't think about."

For a moment, panic gripped Harry and shook him in the way that the flight on the tiger's back hadn't managed to. What if he had given permission to Malfoy to hold him and fuck him, in some odd way? If he had said a careless word, and he could hear Hermione's warning in his head like a tolling bell, then he might very well have committed himself to something that he hadn't meant to. And if--

With an effort, he seized that line of thought and cut it off at the root. He knew Sidhe couldn't lie, and at the moment, Malfoy seemed to be in a pretty direct mood. Harry would ask him.

"Did I actually say something that makes you think you have the right to command me to stay here?" he asked.

Malfoy reared his head back and frowned. His hands tightened on Harry's arms, where he had put them without Harry really noticing. Harry vowed to try and notice in the future. That lack of observation might kill him here.

"You do not have to say it," Malfoy said, and his voice had lowered to the point that Harry thought he could hear the creaking of the icebergs more easily than he could hear it. "I can smell the desire all over you."

Harry smiled and stepped towards Malfoy, watching his eyes brighten with a light that seemed to rise from the back of them like a morning sun. Interesting that some Sidhe signs of arousal were different from the human ones, then. But they seemed to have it in common to hold the object of their desire tightly and breathe like a running camel.

"I can't smell it," Harry said. "That means that, for me, it doesn't exist. And that means that I don't have to yield to you." He reached down and into his pocket, past the small lump of iron that Hermione had given to him and to a weapon that he had manufactured for himself after Malfoy's summons today, before he went to the dinner.

"For you, it must exist," Malfoy said, and he bent his eyes on Harry, and sparks of magic flew around and away from him, a dancing mist of white that Harry could easily imagine becoming as dazzling as the fog that had surrounded the circle of thrones. "I command that it exist for you. I say--"

Harry didn't find out what he would have said, because he spun the small cold iron chain out of his pocket and coiled it smoothly around Malfoy's wrist.

Malfoy's scream was anguished and immediate, and as piercing as the cry of a bat. Harry stepped back, casting a hasty charm to protect his ears, and then a charm that made his clothes leap into the air, flip themselves inside out, and settle back on his body. That gave him an unpleasant and chatter-toothed moment of cold when he was standing there naked in the icy air, but when Malfoy had managed to pick up the chain in a pair of obsidian tweezers and threw it away, it also gave him a moment of satisfaction to see Malfoy look wide-eyed around.

And straight past him.

What do you know? Harry thought, moving a shuffling step back in the snow, careful not to disturb it too much. He didn't know how a simple trick like this would affect motion or sound. It worked.

"Harry," Malfoy said, and his voice was a sweet, lulling thing, a chime rung by a harsh wind, as he paced forwards and looked around him. He shot one hand out, but in the wrong direction, and Harry cast a quiet little charm that lifted him above the snow and let him hover there so he wouldn't leave tracks. "This is ridiculous. This is unlike you. I offer you excitement and danger, a change and good food, and you would vanish like this?"

Harry bit the inside of his cheek to stifle a chuckle. It showed Malfoy's priorities, when he thought good food would be enough to make Harry abandon the wizarding world and forget about the threats the Sidhe had issued against it.

Then again, it was really good.

And sometimes Harry thought the wizarding world as a whole, minus his friends and a few other people, deserved the kind of danger that the Sidhe threatened them with, if only to shake them out of their complacency and their belief that someone else would always, always save them.

He gripped that desire and shook it a little to make it quiet down. He wasn't here to think about that. He was here to watch Malfoy, and learn some more about him, and then get away.

"I will find you," Malfoy breathed. "Not all of your friends have such protection against me as you do."

Harry raised his eyebrows. There it was, a threat of the kind that was personal and he couldn't ignore or turn aside.

Well. Let him try. Hermione and Ron already their house warded against the Sidhe thanks to her research, and Harry knew she had given similar charms to Molly and Arthur at the Burrow, and Ginny and George at their flats, and Percy in his house, and Bill and Fleur at Shell Cottage, and even Charlie in Romania. Harry didn't know if they had used them yet, but he would make sure of that when he went back home.

"Harry," Malfoy said, and Harry blinked when he realized that Malfoy had changed the tone of his voice yet again, from threatening to searching. Lost. He was stumbling forwards in the snow, all his Sidhe grace gone, his hands groping out in front of him as if he thought he might find Harry on his road to the winter manor house. Harry used his wand to swirl aside again, and although Malfoy cocked his head and listened hard, in the next moment his shoulders slumped and he drew a hand over his face. "Harry," he whispered. "I never wanted to lose you this way. I wanted to find you."

Harry saw no reason why he should say anything, and remained still, the wind parting to go past him. Malfoy wanted many things, it seemed, and he changed his mind from moment to moment. He would probably want something else tomorrow, or whatever division of time that the Sidhe chose to think of as "tomorrow."

Malfoy sat down in the snow, folding his legs beneath him. The falling flakes soaked his robes the way that they would have on a human. Harry cocked his head, wondering why Malfoy didn't simply conjure a throne like the one that had supported him the first night they met.

"I wanted to find you," Malfoy told the air. "I didn't think much about it before I changed--and those memories are sometimes dim and dusty to me anyway, but then sometimes like dust floating in a beam of sunlight. But when I became a Sidhe lord, I became a creature of pure desire, desire and its fulfillment. And one of my first desires was you."

Harry watched him, blinking. Malfoy had said that Sidhe couldn't lie, and this certainly didn't sound like a lie--

But on the other hand, why confess it? Harry shook his head in irritation and touched the lump of iron in his pocket again, expecting the snowy world to flicker around him like a glamour. Malfoy had moved them here too fast, and this supposedly large house all for Harry was a lie.

Nothing happened. Harry kept himself from cursing just in time. His clothes, turned inside out, made Malfoy oblivious to him, but he might not be to a stream of breath emerging from empty air.

This must be one of the inner lands. Not a glamour.

"It's true," Malfoy said, as if he could feel the pressure of Harry's doubt. "I dreamed about making you pay attention and respect me, now that I was a Sidhe lord." He snorted and shook his head. "I should have known that was an impossible dream. But it changed, too, and I dreamed about other things. Threatening you, so you would at least have to pay attention. Stealing you away from your friends and showing how much richer and more exciting and changeable a life I could offer you."

Harry sighed soundlessly, breathlessly. Malfoy's life, and what Harry had seen of it so far, was netted in illusions and glamours, lies and shadows. Why in the world would Harry want to abandon solid reality, drinks and dinners and conversations and laughter with his friends, for something like that?

"But all of those are smaller than I imagined them," Malfoy whispered, and sat up straight suddenly, his teeth showing past his lips. Harry looked at them carefully, but couldn't see any jagged edges or points that would make them unlike human teeth. They were sure whiter, though. "That means that I'll have to find new desires. I refuse to have small dreams, ones that crumble when I reach out and try to touch them. That is an insult to the pride of the Sidhe."

Harry pressed a hand over his heart in mock relief, because some gestures were important, even if Malfoy couldn't see them. Of course. They couldn't have someone else mocking the pride of the Sidhe. That was the reason Malfoy might think about changing his mind, not Harry.

"I think I want you to come to me willingly," Malfoy said, and stood, and held out his hand. The manor house, with all its lights, faltered and turned dark, and blew down into his palm. Malfoy considered it for a moment, and then closed his fingers down and crushed it. "I want to find out what you want, and see if I can give it to you. It's rare for any of the Sidhe to subject themselves to a human's desires. But I want to."

Harry rolled his eyes, and remained hovering in the air until the world changed around him and he was alone, once more, in the abandoned house that still had a connection to the Floo network. Then he stepped hastily into the fireplace, glad that he was finally being whirled back to his home.

As he stepped out of his hearth, he looked up to make sure that the bottles filled with salt and iron and slivers of rowan wood were still in place over his doors and windows. Then he glanced behind him, and noticed the fallen soot on the floor forming letters.

Do you really want to risk your life for them time after time, Harry?

Harry used his foot to crush and then smudge the letters beyond recognition. Then he went and firmly fetched the broom that Hermione used more often than he did, propping it up against the mantle and using a Sticking Charm to make it cross over the entire grate. That was supposed to be a charm to ensure that no creature of Faerie could venture down the chimney. It ought to work for a Floo connection, too.

Malfoy could talk all he liked, but Harry knew what lay behind his words: pride and his belief in his own superiority. As bloody always.

*

"I'm afraid that there is no other option."

Harry didn't move or stand up or scream, because that would be the beginning of the end as far as his power to convince the Wizengamot was concerned. But he wanted to, and he thought some of that might be visible in the way that he closed his eyes and massaged his forehead. When he looked again, they were watching him while perched on the literal edges of their seats, their bodies canted away from him as though they could avoid his magic explosion that way.

"I've seen the Sidhe lords since the night I told you about," he said quietly. "There is no way that they could have accomplished some of what they did except by pure magic, and not glamour. Not even the touch of iron saved me or freed my senses from it. If they bring creatures from the inner lands to our world and unleash them, then we can't stop them."

The Wizengamot members turned to look instinctively at the one who seemed to be behind this decision, Marcus Allona. Allona sniffed and rearranged the papers in front of him.

"I have done a great deal of research on the Sidhe, Mr. Potter," he said, his voice lingering over the name as though to remind Harry of why he wasn't entitled to any different form of address. "All the records agree that we drove them away before because they could not stand iron, or the rowan, or salt, or any of a number of other simple remedies that we can easily employ. More easily than we can change the age of adulthood in our world, at any rate."

"Really?" Harry asked, with a smile that, stupidly, made Allona relax for a moment. "Because the same records, which I studied, made it clear that we were losing the war to the Sidhe until they abruptly withdrew."

Allona sat up and glared at him. On the other side of the room, Hermione was shaking her head in warning. Harry ignored her for the moment, though, focused on Allona, who had his glare sharpening rapidly into a sneer as he watched Harry.

"I don't think," Allona said, into the silence that seemed sudden, although Harry had seen his wand move beneath the table and suspected he had spelled a few people into shutting up, "that you know as much about the history as I do, Mr. Potter. Your education was--disrupted, and since the war, you have chosen to work outside the Ministry." He paused, to let those words fall into the ears of the people listening and lie on their minds, and then continued, more delicately than Harry would have thought he was capable of. "In fact, perhaps we should consider who you would be more likely to sympathize with here. There are many instances on record of you fighting for the rights of magical creatures while ignoring the rights of the wizards who owned them or had to coexist with them."

Harry felt like applauding the grand idiot, despite everything. That was a genius way to characterize the way that Harry had joined Hermione's fight for house-elf rights and intervened when the Ministry wanted to remove the centaur herd from the Forbidden Forest "for the good of the children" and opposed the mandatory registration of new werewolves within twenty-four hours of the bite. Too many people wouldn't think about things like, oh, the new werewolf being in such shock and so hurt that it was only humane to give them more than a day before requiring them to register. They would think about times they had been afraid, or tales they had heard about magical creatures, and apply them, applicable or not, to the situation with the Sidhe.

Which meant, perhaps, that nothing would be done.

Hermione gathered up and rustled her papers. Harry let her do it, never breaking out of his staring contest with Allona. He wanted to see the face of the man who might just have doomed them all.

"I'm sure that Mr. Potter doesn't mean to put the interest of the Ministry last," Hermione struck in, and her voice was calm and neutral. That was what made her a good reformer, Harry thought, and that was good, since she was the one committed to working on the system from the inside. "I'm sure, in fact, that he only brings up another perspective. Mr. Potter, how powerful would you say the Sidhe are?"

Harry moved his eyes from Allona to Hermione. "I have no idea," he said briefly.

Hermione practically hissed at him, but before she could do anything more than open her mouth, Harry continued, "Their power--to move from world to world with no visible transition, to conjure flying beasts where there were none before, to conjure food that actually nourishes someone--is so great that I don't think any of our conventional methods of measuring it would work."

Hermione visibly swallowed and made a small mark on the parchment in front of her. "Thank you for that estimation, Mr. Potter," she said stolidly. "Then you would estimate that we're in danger from them?"

Harry smiled at her. This was one reason he loved her, the way she tried to balance between doing her job and giving him--and Ron, when he was involved in a case where he had to bring evidence before the Wizengamot--a chance to speak his mind. She was trying. It wasn't her fault that her colleagues were a bunch of idiots.

"Yes," he said. "In fact, I think the only reason we haven't been blown off the map yet is that they're more interested in the children we can produce for them than destroying us. But they could change their minds at any time, if they don't see imminent cooperation."

In fact, after being so close to Malfoy and his unique brand of "courting," Harry thought they might change their minds at any time whether or not they saw the cooperation. But he was doing a balancing act of his own, between telling the truth and inducing the Wizengamot to move their arses along. There was a limit to what he was willing to say.

"And we don't believe you," Allona said, deciding that delicacy was out of fashion, apparently, and that he might as well hit Harry across the face with the full force of his disbelief. "We agree that you were the emissary chosen by the Sidhe, but it is all too obvious, now, to us, that they would have done better choosing anyone else."

Harry folded his hands in his lap and smiled sweetly. "Because you don't like what I have to say?"

Allona stood up and leaned across the table. He had an aquiline nose, the way that Snape had had, and he all but poked it at Harry as if it was going to stab his eyes out. "They would not say this with a different emissary," he hissed. "We cannot permit magical creatures who fled from us such a part in the running of the wizarding world. It will not happen."

Harry watched him fixedly for a moment, and then turned and looked at Hermione. She flushed, but gave him a small shake of her head to tell him that she thought this battle was lost, and they would do better attacking later, when they might be able to win something.

"They've issued their threat," Harry said quietly. "You know how powerful they are if you've been reading the historical records--"

"Ha! Defeated by a bit of iron!"

"So are we, if you want to get technical," Harry pointed out, so exasperated that his voice grew sharp despite Hermione's second warning shake. "Push iron through our hearts or our throats, and we don't live any longer than they do."

Allona narrowed his eyes at Harry and said nothing for long moments. Then he strode out from behind the table and came around in front of him. Harry didn't rise to his feet, just continued sitting in his chair and giving him a look of quiet, hateful competence that he knew would rattle the man.

"I want to see your memories," Allona said loudly, holding out his wand. "I want to know what the Sidhe really said, because your words are contradictory and cannot be real."

"I'll put the memories in a Pensieve if you want me to," Harry said. He thought about excepting the memories of last night when Malfoy had tried to seduce him, and then decided to edit them instead. That might convince the Wizengamot that the Sidhe were clever and powerful and also capricious, instead of the tame little magical creatures they seemed to think they were dealing with. "But it isn't going to tell you anything that isn't already there. They made the threat to turn us into one of their territories if we don't change the age of adulthood. That's all there is to it."

"Excuse me," Allona said, his sneer distorting his mouth in a way that Harry thought he really ought to get looked at, "but I think that the finest legal minds in the wizarding world ought to find the complications in the case."

"So you can avoid them," Harry said, and touched his wand to his temple, closing his eyes as he extracted the memories. He didn't pay attention to Allona's irate screech, but turned towards Hermione, who was already presenting him with the Pensieve that the Wizengamot always kept in the corner of the Grand Chamber for those memories that witnesses might be too distressed to talk about. Harry deposited the silvery liquid there and stood up, sighing at Allona. "The saddest people are the ones who refuse to see the truth when it's sunning itself right in front of them."

Allona tightened all over, and for one moment Harry was sure that the bastard would strike out at him, but he controlled himself with nothing more than a small shake of his head and a glare of contempt. Harry laughed under his breath as he placed more memories in the Pensieve and nodded to Hermione. He wished her luck in trying to find some other solution to the problem through the Sidhe's intransigence and the Wizengamot's idiocy. He was done here.

*

"Harry!"

Harry was rolling out of bed before he thought about it, his hand on his wand and his mind flying towards identifying the voice. Ron, he decided at last, and rushed towards the fireplace. The broom was still attached over it, somewhat obscuring Harry's view, but he was sure it was Ron. No Faerie creature would be able to get past the charm of the broom.

"What is it, Ron?" Harry knelt down next to the fireplace, his mind filling with images of a Sidhe attack on someone in the Weasley family, even though he had warned them all about the charms they needed to protect themselves. They could have got busy and forgot, especially Bill and Fleur, who had three little children now.

Ron stared desperately at him from beyond the broom, and said, "Harry, mate, the Sidhe are sending their armies in."

Harry froze for a second, and then nodded and Summoned the robes he'd worn that day. They were fine and easy to move in, and this way, he wouldn't have to worry about pulling out clean ones. "All right. Where?"

"We saw them on those winged tigers Hermione told me about, riding over London," Ron whispered, as if now that he had imparted the worst news to Harry, he could only talk about the rest in a lowered voice. "And--one of them laughed, and called down in this voice that filled the whole sky that they were going to start the invasion by morning if they didn't receive a different answer from the Wizengamot."

Harry smiled grimly and wriggled his toes into his socks, ignoring it when his nails scraped against the cloth. "They told the Sidhe that they wouldn't change the age of adulthood, didn't they? Just sent an emissary with an announcement, like a bunch of idiots?"

"Yeah." Ron swallowed noisily. "And after they made that announcement, the Ministry started receiving reports of creatures near the Channel. The witnesses didn't make much sense, they were too frightened, but it sounded like those lion-creatures that you warned us about, and Sidhe on white horses."

Harry nodded. "All right. First of all, I need you to get out of the fireplace, Ron. I'll join you as soon as I can." He turned and Summoned a piece of bread from the kitchen, crumbling it up and dropping it into one of his robe pockets.

Ron stared at him as if he had gone mad. "What? Harry, we need to stay in communication! Hermione was planning on having you come through right now--"

Harry shook his head, and met Ron's eyes, and smiled. "No. I might know a way to halt this invasion in its tracks, but I need to contact one of the Sidhe, and I think that the fireplace is the best way to do it."

Ron carried on staring at him for a few moments, and then gave an abrupt nod. "In the end, you always know what you're doing, mate. All right." He hesitated, then added, "Just tell me that you're not going to sleep with Malfoy to save the world or something."

Harry smiled again, and the expression felt savage and glinting on his face, as if he had grown extra teeth, unknown to himself. "No. I think I have something to offer him that he'll like better."

Ron nodded, stuck out a hand as though he and Harry could clasp hands through the flames, smiled in an embarrassed fashion, and disappeared. Harry promptly tore the broom from the fireplace and took some satisfaction in sending it spinning into the wall so hard that the shaft broke into splinters and the bristles scattered in all directions.

Then he bent down in front of the hearth, at the same time as he began to tear the charms from his doorway and windows, and roared, "Malfoy, come forth!"

There was a longer pause than Harry would have thought, given what he was offering and who was speaking. He found himself waiting in tense silence, his hands clasped in front of him and his pulse thudding so hard in his ears that it was painful. Then a swirl of color stirred to life in the fireplace, dancing among the ashes there as though born from them. Harry stood straight and nodded when Malfoy's face formed.

"I wanted to talk to you," he said. "You wanted me to come to you willingly, I think. That was what you said, wasn't it?"

Malfoy stared at him and said nothing for long moments, his mouth slack. Then he reached out as if he was going to take Harry's hand and bring him into the fire. "Harry," he whispered. "You invited me."

"Yeah, I did." Harry could feel the crumbs of bread shifting about in his pocket, and Malfoy squinted at him as though he had walked into a brilliantly sunlit room. That would be the bread, Harry knew, which could act like the protection of turning clothes inside out when dealing with one of the Sidhe. "Does that matter to you? After all, I could disinvite you if it would make you feel better."

"You invited me," Malfoy repeated, and shook his head, and closed his eyes. That was how Harry discovered the expression of delight on a Sidhe face didn't look all that different from one on a human face. Or maybe it mattered that Malfoy had been born human, and had turned Sidhe only a few years ago. Harry wondered what the others would be like, if this little gift he was offering would convince one of them.

Then he shook the idea loose and ignored it. It didn't matter. He didn't necessarily have to convince those Sidhe or make them think that he was going to yield. Only Malfoy.

"Yeah," Harry said. "Are you going to come through the fire or not?"

There was a blurring motion, and then Malfoy was climbing out of the hearth and into Harry's room. He made it look odd, as though he had grown bigger by the mere fact of enclosing himself in walls. But he made it look more ordinary, too, in contrast, and his storky gangliness was easier to deal with against them.

"I can hardly see you," Malfoy said, his eyes narrowed and his voice strained. "Are you--you have bread in your pocket."

He could hardly have sounded more horrified if Harry had been carrying a nuclear missile. Harry smiled at him, and made sure that all his teeth showed. "That's right. I don't want to take it out until I know that you'll agree to my terms."

"That's not willing," Malfoy said, and pouted unselfconsciously. Well, the Sidhe seemed to have different standards for dignity than humans did.

"I am still offering," Harry pointed out. "And you can choose whether to accept my offer or not. I can hardly compel you to do it."

Malfoy paused, and then said, "You're brave. You make grand gestures. You speak with a color about you that does not mingle with the other colors of the world." He stared over Harry's head towards the far door, as though seeing someone else about to walk through it. "What a Sidhe lord you would have made. What an opportunity was lost when Voldemort marked you."

Harry shrugged. "I can't change that, but I can change this. I'll come with you, for one night. You can show me whatever you want to show me. You can try to persuade me to have sex with you, even, if you want to."

Malfoy nodded, rapt, his eyes on Harry's face.

"But you call off the invasion." Harry folded his arms and pressed down against the bread crumbs with his elbow, and Malfoy craned his neck to the side. "You don't let the other Sidhe hurt my friends. You understand?"

Malfoy twisted his head further to the side and looked at Harry like an owl. Harry wondered for a moment what that had done to the bones in his neck, and then gave up on the thought. He knew that Sidhe bodies didn't function like human ones, and for the moment, that would have to be the extent of his answer.

"You think I have that kind of power?" Malfoy whispered, low and breathy. "You think that they'd listen to me, the youngest of them?"

"I think that Sidhe power structures don't function like human ones," Harry said shortly. "So far, the others haven't objected to you contacting and courting me, or using me as a toy, or whatever it is you're doing. You can stop them if you want to, and I'd think that the bargain I'm providing is worth your while."

The very tip of an icy pink tongue appeared between Malfoy's lips, and then he stepped back and looked at Harry with his silver eyes. "I know that your friend Granger must have told you never to bargain with the fey," he murmured.

"Yes, she did," Harry said. "And isn't it remarkable that you can change and apparently grow in power and wisdom, but nothing will persuade you to pronounce Hermione's name with anything other than contempt?"

Malfoy didn't appear to notice that contribution. He continued to watch Harry with his eyelids drooping, and then he said, "We have a Queen. That much, human legend has correct."

"Does it? I'm shocked." Harry folded his arms and leaned back against the wall, using his elbow to jostle the bread in his pocket.

"You should not mock," Malfoy said, and his voice had gone hard and distant, his eyes filling with visions of stone towers. "It is hard to win her attention, harder to win her approval."

"But you have to go to her to get permission about stopping the war?" Harry asked.

Malfoy stared at him. "Of course," he said. "Why else would I mention it?"

"I don't know," Harry said. "You do everything so differently from humans, bringing up random conversational topics doesn't seem beyond you."

He reckoned he ought to feel a little more afraid than he was, bargaining with one of the distant and powerful creatures who had the strength to destroy the wizarding world. But he didn't. This was a Sidhe lord, yes, and it was a war and an invasion, but it was also Malfoy. Harry knew how to deal with bloody Malfoy.

Perhaps his smile or the expression on his face, or just a similar trend of their thoughts, told Malfoy that, because he smiled, a grave movement of his lips that nevertheless brought out the boyish angles of his face.

"I would not bring this up randomly," he said. "Even speaking her name without cause is dangerous."

"You haven't spoken her name," Harry felt compelled to point out.

"She is called the Queen," Malfoy said, and yes, now that he was concentrating on it, Harry thought he could hear the tolling of a bell when Malfoy mentioned it. "She has no other name, no other position, no other title. And she always knows when she is mentioned by one of her subjects."

Harry waited to see if there would be more than that, but Malfoy was staring over his head as if towards Harry's buried, nonexistent Sidhe self again, and didn't respond when Harry gave a little deprecating cough. So Harry sighed and said, "How do we find her?"

Malfoy whipped his head around. "You would seek the Queen?" he asked, his voice like the gasp of a harp.

"That's what you're implying we need to do to stop the invasion," Harry snapped, and resisted the temptation to hit Malfoy over the head with something very heavy. It probably wouldn't help, and he might not see it coming with the bread in Harry's pocket, anyway. Then Harry would have to answer to the rest of the Sidhe for a murder, and he'd rather not. "So, yes, I want to seek her."

Malfoy gazed at him with the same expression of wonder that he'd worn before. Then he reached out and took Harry's hands in his, running his long, slender fingers over Harry's and gazing down at Harry's knuckles as though there was a divine revelation in the offing there or something.

"You could have been so great," he whispered.

"Well, I'm pretty bloody contented with the way I am now, thanks," Harry snapped, and took a step backwards. Malfoy's hands remained immovably fastened on his, and Harry rolled his eyes and stopped moving. "Anyway. Are you going to take me to see the Queen, or not?"

Part Three.