lomonaaeren

Thanks again for all the reviews! I know this chapter’s a bit early, but I won’t have as much time to write tomorrow as I thought I would.

Chapter Four—Draco’s Birthday Party

“The flowers are looking well.”

Narcissa started and looked over her shoulder, then came laughing to Draco and put her arms around him. “Naughty boy,” she murmured into his neck. “You know that you weren’t supposed to be here until tonight, and you definitely weren’t supposed to see the flowers I’d arranged until then!”

Draco embraced her with one arm whilst he critically studied the flowers hanging in a gathered knot on the walls every three feet. They were all pale—lilies, white roses, narcissus, and a variety of white snapdragons his mother had developed in the Malfoy gardens. Draco smiled, a little. The flowers complemented the décor of the Manor and the pale colors of Malfoy hair and skin, but they also spoke a very particular language that most of the people at the party would understand: Draco was pure in magic and bloodline, with no major scandals attached to his name since the Wizengamot had declared him innocent of willfully helping the Dark Lord twelve years ago. A fine husband, the flowers would suggest in their own, sly way. A fine father for children who would also be unspotted in magic and in bloodline.

Draco did wish there was a way to break with his father without hurting his mother. On the other hand, Narcissa’s choice of flowers showed why that was impossible. Narcissa had ignored hundreds of gentle hints in the last few months that Draco was uninterested in early marriage, and probably wouldn’t choose a bride, if he took one, purely on the basis of magic and family. Draco had spoken bluntly more than once when he found out gentleness didn’t work, and still Narcissa shut her ears and did not listen.

She had her vision of the perfect son, even as Lucius had his. Hers was less slavish than Lucius’s, but still didn’t include a Draco with an independent thought in his head.

“The flowers do look beautiful, Mother,” Draco said with perfect truth, and kissed her on the cheek. He stepped back and cast a glance at the door of the large ballroom that was kept shut up most of the year, other than for the house-elves’ weekly cleaning. Narcissa immediately stepped in front of the door and made a shooing motion at him.

“You go get yourself ready for the party,” she said. “Make sure your robes fit. Make sure your teeth are clean.” Draco rolled his eyes. He’d showed up to one dinner party when he was four with a piece of egg still stuck in his teeth, and his mother had never let him forget. “And make sure your date is on time.” Narcissa spoke those last words with a soft smile.

That was another thing, Draco thought, as he gazed steadily and sadly at his mother for a moment. He’d said more than once that neither of his parents knew the person he’d arrive with tonight, and yet Narcissa had somehow convinced herself it would be Pansy, mainly because Pansy didn’t dare take her Muggle lover out in public and Draco still spent some time at her house.

And because Narcissa wanted it to be Pansy so badly.

Draco loved his mother, but her desires and wishes did rather get in the way of reality.

“My date will be here on time,” Draco murmured, turning away to climb the back staircase that led from the ballroom to the upper floors of the Manor. “Which is to say, fashionably late.”

“Of course she will be, dear,” Narcissa said happily from behind him. “I’m sure her mother taught her well.”

Actually, I’m the one who suggested that, Draco thought, and let his mind caress and sweep over images of Brian, now that his back was turned and his mother wouldn’t see his smile.

*

Harry looked at himself in the mirror, and frowned. No, he didn’t like the hang of those dress robes after all.

And he was not being fussy, he told himself, as he cast off that set of robes and Levitated another out of the closet in his bedroom at Number Twelve Grimmauld Place. He simply wanted to make a good impression at a pure-blood party; no one should be able to accuse Brian of a lack of taste or class. He’d spent this much time before on costumes for meetings with other clients.

A whoosh from downstairs made Harry straighten, eyes narrowing. There was always the chance that this would be the day some reporter figured out a way past his wards, or connected Metamorphosis with Harry Potter.

But then Ron’s voice called up the stairs, “Harry? You there, mate?”

A flick of his wand, and Harry banished the robes to his closet, then concealed the closet door itself. In a moment, his bedroom looked like the ordinarily messy room Ron knew it as, and not a second Metamorphosis. Harry leaned out the door and shouted down the stairs, “Up here!” Ron grunted, and Harry heard him clomping up the steps. He cast a glance at the mirror, just to make sure he hadn’t already altered the lines of his face or changed his eyes to blue and then forgotten them—but he hadn’t. He relaxed.

Neither Ron nor Hermione knew he ran Metamorphosis; nor did Ginny, for that matter, though she had been with him long enough to see how fascinated he’d become with glamours and disguises as a way of hiding from the press. Harry had tentatively broached similar ideas with them a few times in the past, when he was just starting to run the business. Hermione’s disapproval had been immediate. “You should be yourself, Harry.” She’d even tried to urge him to come out publicly before she saw a few real examples of what his life would be like if he did. And Ron agreed with Hermione, as he did on most things that were not Quidditch.

Harry needed Metamorphosis—needed to be free to move away from the bland, forgettable, residual life he had as Harry Potter—but he couldn’t expect either of his friends to approve that need. It didn’t matter. When he was Harry, and he always was around them, he loved them dearly.

Ron entered the room, and Harry set the thoughts aside. He was not Brian at that moment, or the Manager of Metamorphosis, or anyone else his friends didn’t know. He was Harry Potter, recluse, former hero, unfortunately gay friend of Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. (Hermione had kept her last name even though she’d married; she’d said matter-of-factly that there were quite enough Weasleys working in the Ministry already).

“Hey, Harry.” Ron smiled at him and leaned against the doorway. “Mum wanted me to invite you for dinner tonight.”

Harry grinned at Ron. Ordinarily, he would have accepted; his assignment with Draco already looked to be more of a day-focused than night-focused job, because Draco wanted Brian to appear with him in public as often as possible and to as many people as possible, and visiting popular tourist sites would do that better than visiting isolated dinner parties. “Sorry, but I can’t, Ron. Already got an engagement to go over the legal documents for the Charity.”

Harry, so far as his friends knew, devoted most of his time to the Charity, an organization that tried to mitigate the worst excesses of the Ministry under Voldemort. In reality, whilst a good deal of the money from Metamorphosis entered the offices of the Charity, it almost ran itself; the people Harry had hired were more than competent and cared passionately about their work. But it was a convenient mask.

Ron rolled his eyes. “You do realize that normal people have a life beyond work and a few visits with friends during a week, Harry?”

Harry laughed, genuinely amused. “And you’d put me and ‘normal’ together in the same sentence?”

“Well, no, probably not,” Ron had to concede.

“And Hermione? You know she works even more than I do.”

Ron’s face broke into a grin, and he did a little tap-dance. “Well, she’s got more of a life now than she’s ever had,” he said, and winked.

Harry raised his eyebrows, then launched himself across the room at his friend and hugged him hard. Ron hugged him in return, pounding his back. Ordinarily they avoided touching so much since Harry had announced his orientation to his friends, but this was a special occasion.

“Congratulations!” Harry said, drawing back and grinning at him. “So Hermione finally decided her career was slowing down enough to have a baby?”

Ron nodded, flushed with obvious pride.

“When’s she due?”

“Six months from now.” Ron laughed, this time probably at Harry’s surprise. “You know Hermione. She used every spell and every test—even one of those Muggle things—to be sure she was actually pregnant. And she also found a spell that tells the baby’s sex.” Ron beamed at Harry. “We’re going to have a little girl.”

“Wonderful,” Harry said. “And let me guess. You’ll name her Lavender.”

Ron’s flush, in retreat, returned, and he rubbed the back of his neck. “Never going to let me forget that, either of you,” he muttered.

“It was one of your stupider moments,” Harry said comfortably. “Or should I say months?”

Ron snapped back, and they enjoyed a few more minutes of banter before Harry urged him gently out of the house. Then he turned, opened his closet, and reached for the set of robes he’d decided on as he was ribbing Ron about his obvious drooling over a blonde witch a few years before. He swept the robes around him, checked the hang in the mirror, and smiled slowly.

Yes. The robes looked even better when he’d acquired Brian’s eyes and face again. Draco hadn’t told him any specific color to wear, just to choose something tasteful.

“It is tasteful to have half the room panting after you,” Harry told the mirror, in Brian’s voice.

*

Draco glanced towards the ballroom with a small smile. Twice now Lucius had urged him to enter, no doubt hoping that Draco would fall over when he saw the number of guests his parents had invited and the effort the house-elves and his mother had put into decorations, but Draco had resisted on the very good grounds that his date wasn’t here yet. Lucius, grumbling, had finally taken Narcissa’s arm and entered, to the sound of aborted cheers as the crowd realized Lucius wasn’t Draco.

Draco was wearing a set of very pale blue robes, so pale they could be mistaken as off-white in certain lights. They were in a pure-blood cut that had been traditional when his great-grandparents were children. He knew he looked like an ice statue, and that he would impress some of the marriageable women no doubt gathered here to impress him.

I’ll just have to make it clear I’m taken.

Right on cue, a set of brisk footsteps advanced up the path that led from the gardens to the back of the house, where Draco had waited. He turned around expectantly.

Brian stepped out of the shadows.

Draco felt the breath blasted out of him. Brian had chosen dark blue robes, in a color that made his eyes shine with an almost unearthly glow. They were tight enough to hint at scandal, but not quite invoke it. At the same time, Draco could see the soft shine of built-in loosening spells; Brian could adjust them for dancing and no doubt for dramatic effect. At the moment, the dramatic effect mostly came from the cloak he wore, also a brilliant dark blue, edged with silver. Brian handled it with a grace that Draco had only ever seen rivaled by Severus Snape.

An unexpected nostalgia for his old professor struck him, but that quickly melted in the face of Brian’s quiet, delighted half-smile on seeing him. Severus had been dead for twelve years, and Draco had made his peace with the memory of him. This man in front of him represented the height and richness of life.

“I trust this is acceptable?” Brian said, and reached out to clasp Draco’s hand, lowering his eyelashes in an absurd parody of a shy maiden.

“More than acceptable,” Draco murmured, pulling him closer, “and you know it. Let’s have no false modesty, shall we?”

Brian grinned at him. They were almost the same height, a rare thing for Draco—he was a little past six feet—and to have those brilliant eyes only a few inches from his own shook him. He knew he didn’t show it, but for him to feel the emotion at all was startling and disconcerting.

“Of course not,” Brian said. “I know I have a lot to be proud of.” He ran his eyes down Draco’s body for a moment. “And I’m not the only one.”

Draco quirked a smile. Once again, it wouldn’t do to show how affected he was, but Brian did make him feel more than he’d felt around anyone in a long time, and there was no reason he couldn’t admit that—to himself, of course.

“Then I assume you are ready for our first venture into public as a couple?” he inquired, and held out his arm. Brian put his hand on his elbow and gripped firmly, a grasp that quieted any fears Draco might have had about Brian being less than masculine.

“Let’s go impress the shit out of them,” Brian said.

Draco bit his lip to stop laughter at the vulgar word combined with the neatly-cut robes and the glittering decorations of white and silver and ivory hanging around them, and led Brian towards the ballroom. They paused for one moment outside the door so Draco could tap out the code that alerted his parents he was about to enter, and he heard the thick, expectant silence ebbing back and forth on the other side, broken by excited giggles and hisses of admonitions to be quiet.

Brian stood relaxed and quiet at his side, as poised as a cat. Draco nodded at him and cast the spell that would fling the door open.

They stepped into the middle of a shout of, “Happy Birth—“

And then the shout died as they realized the robed figure striding along beside him was, in fact, male. Draco and Brian paced up an aisle of staring guests towards his parents, and except for the stamp and thump of dragonhide boots, the room was utterly silent.

Deliciously so, in Draco’s opinion. He raised his eyes to see how his parents were taking this, and nearly laughed aloud.

Narcissa had both hands clapped to her mouth, like a Muggle woman startled by a mouse. Lucius stared back and forth between his son and his son’s date with his jaw literally dropping, a sight Draco had never seen in his lifetime.

Then Lucius’s eyes narrowed and he stood taller, as poised in his own way as Brian. Draco knew the thoughts flashing behind those gray eyes, because he knew his father. Lucius would be thinking this was some kind of trick or joke. The “male” date on his arm was really Pansy Parkinson Polyjuiced. Or Draco had cast a complicated glamour and would remove it in a moment to reveal his chosen fiancée; this was simply his rather scandalous way of introducing her, to be sure his parents knew his choice was firm.

Something more would be needed to convince his father, Draco knew.

And then Brian’s arm curled around his shoulders, and Draco realized his thoughts had been anticipated. He turned, lifting his head in response and half-closing his eyes.

*

Mrs. Malfoy looked as though the roof of the ballroom had fallen in and the beautiful ivory-colored cake on the far table had begun to melt. Lucius Malfoy, on the other hand, looked as if he wanted to kill someone.

For a moment.

The very shortness of his reaction told Harry what kind of denial they were dealing with here. He’d seen it in Ginny’s eyes when he’d first confessed he was gay, even though she’d suspected. No, not really, Lucius’s brain was telling him. His son could not really be gay, to the destruction of all Lucius’s hopes for him.

Time for an undeniable demonstration.

Harry reached out and put his arm around Draco’s shoulders. Draco turned towards him, reading his mind, flowing in accordance with his thoughts. The feeling was extraordinarily eerie, but Harry allowed himself to dwell on it for just a moment. Then he was Brian, daredevil Brian, full of generous good-hearted ideas combined with a cool understanding and love of high culture, and with not a care in the world for his public reputation, because he aspired to neither political power or marriage.

Harry leaned in, thinking like Brian, moving like Brian, and kissed Draco Malfoy for the first time.

It was a perfectly aligned kiss, as Draco could not display any weakness before his parents and Brian would display no weakness before these people who would tear him apart if they had the chance. Harry’s hands cradled the back of Draco’s head. Draco’s hands rested along his cheeks. Neither of them appeared weak. Neither of them appeared as if he were simply leaning back and letting himself be kissed, as if he were the girl in the relationship—an outsider perception of gay relationships so prevalent that Harry knew he would have to combat it, no matter how untrue it might be.

Harry had intended a perfectly chaste kiss, too. Let Draco’s parents and guests understand that passion between men could be calm and dignified.

And then Draco’s mouth opened, and Harry realized the change in plans—Draco must have decided they were to play a couple so strongly joined that his parents would not have a hope of separating them—at the same moment as his tongue curled around Draco’s.

Thought drowned for a moment. Harry gloried in a taste that made his nerves greedy. He pushed closer without thought, and felt Draco stand firm and push back; he wouldn’t allow himself to be bent backwards. Draco’s hands had by now buried themselves in Harry’s hair.

Let them, Harry thought dazedly. It’s not a wig, it doesn’t matter—

Draco tugged demandingly and leaned forwards. Harry met him, angling his nose out of the way.

The taste rushed back into his mouth again, along with Draco’s tongue. It didn’t have a flavor that Harry could describe, though he had kissed some men who actually tasted like salt, like mints, like various combinations of fruits. It had the exciting, fleshy taste of the inside of a cheek, but Draco didn’t simply stand still and let himself be kissed. He strove, he dived, he twisted; he was kissing Harry as intently as he’d ever played Quidditch at Hogwarts.

Harry called on stern self-control as well as his hold on Draco’s shoulders to keep himself standing. Finally, slowly, they drew back, Harry licking his lips to make sure no strings of saliva connected them. Really, that would be all they needed now, when the silence had broken into furious shouts of protest.

He met Draco’s eyes, and nearly staggered at the heat in them. Draco had deliberately dropped the mask of control so Harry could see how the kiss had affected him. So far as Draco was concerned, Harry knew, the chances that they would go to bed together had just jumped.

And Harry’s own anticipation of his pleasure when they did so was so keen that he had to take a moment to recover Brian’s poise. When he did, he winked at Draco and turned cheerfully away, stepping forwards to extend his hand to Lucius.

“You must be Lucius Malfoy,” he said, dropping his voice into a husk a few degrees away from flirtation. “It’s obvious where Draco gets his good looks from.”

*

Draco had to work very hard to keep from laughing aloud when his father recoiled from Brian’s hand the way he would have from a reaching serpent. No, scratch that, Lucius would have been more pleased with the serpent; he had kept magical snakes as pets more than once.

And then Brian had said the perfect thing to convince Lucius that his son’s date was shameless about his sexuality. In fact, Brian stood there with the perfect little puzzled smile on his face, too, as if he could not comprehend why Lucius had refused the compliment.

Then he shrugged and turned to Narcissa. Draco met his mother’s eyes and felt a stab of guilt when he saw the tears in them. But he had known this would happen. If Narcissa had been a little more alert, a little less resistant to Draco’s hints that his future included more than a marriage exactly like his parents’, he wouldn’t have had to do this.

“You’re Draco’s mother, of course,” Brian said, and his voice was soft and gentle. He might not like women sexually, Draco thought, but he could care for them. “Draco’s told me so much about you. Can I shake your hand, please, if you won’t allow me to kiss it?”

Narcissa fell back on the social instincts that had served her so well in the past for surviving embarrassing situations. She held out her hand, and Brian, after a glance into her eyes, clasped it in both of his and shook it instead of kissing it. He knew that would be a presumption right now, Draco thought.

He knew an awful lot.

Including exactly the right way to kiss. Draco was grateful his robes were no tighter.

Where has he been all my life?

He stepped forwards and put a hand on the small of Brian’s back, turning him to face the others—old schoolmates, friends of his parents’, pure-blood wizards who had emigrated from the Continent to Britain when so many of their distant relatives died in the war and left houses and lands vacant. Their faces were without exception blank, or stunned, or filled with loathing. Draco wished, for a moment, that Blaise had consented to come to the party. Draco would have enjoyed the sight of one person laughing his arse off.

“This is Brian Montgomery,” Draco said, “my partner and my lover. I considered this night, a decisive one in so many ways, the perfect time for introducing him.”

He smiled blandly in the face of the increasing expressions of disgust. They only look like that because they’ve never kissed him. Even if it was only once. He tightened his hold on Brian’s waist a little.

“Are festivals normally this silent?” Brian asked in a loud whisper. “I thought this party was to celebrate your birthday, after all, not mourn it.”

And there was the perfect way to move past the awkwardness, Draco thought with gratitude. Brian was charging into the thick of things, taking the brunt of the guests’ dislike on himself. It was a Gryffindor thing to do, or whatever House he’d been in at the Five Dragons.

“You’re absolutely right,” Draco said. He turned his head to the side to slide his lips through Brian’s hair. Soft and clean and wild. Draco wanted to brace his hands in that hair and tug.

I’ll have the opportunity later, he promised himself. So far as he was concerned, Brian wasn’t leaving tonight before they did something to ease the tension throbbing between them and in Draco’s groin after that kiss.

“I promised you music, didn’t I?” Draco continued, though they hadn’t agreed on any such dialogue. It built naturally off the way they stood beside each other and the horrified silence around them—the shouts had died when both Draco and Brian refused to respond to them—and, yes, the tension. “I promised you dancing?”

“Yes, you did.” Brian caught his arm and grinned up at him. “What about the Estival?”

Draco’s mouth moved in a smile entirely without his permission. The Estival, named after a word for “summer-like,” was a fast, lively dance with a constant change of lead. Brian could have chosen nothing better to show that they didn’t care about the emotions around them.

“Done,” he replied, and flicked his wand. The first notes of the traditional Estival tune began to sound from behind the large mirror hanging on the far wall.

And then Draco took Brian’s arm and led him to the dance floor. Brian moved with an easy, rolling stride, his eyes brilliant. Draco gave up after a moment of battling and let his exhilaration consume him; he could always work it out in the dance, after all, and no one else would have to know.

I like him. I want him. I do not at all object to his presence at my side.

Of course, saying that was an impossibility at this stage. Brian was a skilled actor and liar; Draco could not forget that, no matter how many times he seemed to move in time with Draco’s secret thoughts. Draco had to find out more about him before he let him further into his affections.

And Draco was very good at getting truth from his dancing partners.

Now let’s see if it’s more than an act to him.

Chapter Five.