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The Same Species As Shakespeare	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 16108 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor any of the characters from the books or movies. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 9
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- 11
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Chapter Ten�Therefore
To Be Won

�� Malfoy
lifted his head and smiled at him when Harry came towards his table. Harry
paused, arrested. The smile wasn�t the most brilliant or dazzling that he�d
ever seen Malfoy give, but it was only to be expected that he would smile at
his clients and at a man he�d kissed in different ways.

�� Will you
forgive me?� Malfoy asked, barely parting his lips.

�� For what?�
Harry sat down across from him, eyes never leaving him. One of Faustine�s girls
brought them a delicately etched tablet of beaten gold that served as the menu.
Harry pushed it aside. At the moment, he had no real appetite, and wouldn�t
until he�d figured out what Malfoy was playing at.

�� So all your friends warn you, and your
allies warn you, and you don�t take the warning seriously until Malfoy himself
does something? Hermione released a sound rather like a horse�s snort in
his head. That would fit with his
presence at the center of your world.

�� Malfoy
reached across the table to him. Harry let the other man take his hand, but
kept an uneasy eye on the way those fingers curved around his own. They looked
strong and gentle at the same time, as if Malfoy knew exactly what would be
required to maintain a hold on Harry. Harry clenched his own fingers to keep
from reaching back or drawing away, both of which would probably be unfortunate
moves at this point.

�� I haven�t
behaved as graciously as I could have since you saved my life at Palliser�s
party.� Malfoy bowed his head, the movement as slow and dream-like as the
movement of reeds underwater. His hair tumbled past his cheeks, leaving Harry
to watch his brow and the shape of the bones around his eyes. �I�ve insulted
you and argued with you and not thanked you often enough.� He lifted his head
and gave Harry a tense little smile. �I deal badly with my life being in
danger, even though I should have expected it. The past never really leaves you
alone.�

�� So you
suspect this imposter is hunting you because of something that happened during
the war?� Harry asked. His voice sounded loud and jarring after Malfoy�s
polished, soft tones. He didn�t care. Something had changed, something had gone
wrong, and if he didn�t know what it
was, then he couldn�t protect Malfoy, or possibly himself, against it when it
exploded.

�� Probably,�
Malfoy said. �Or he could have been hired by a disappointed client, though I
think most of the people I�ve worked for would avoid something so�crass.� His
fingers slid up and down the lines in Harry�s palm, as if admiring them. �The
point is that this place has made me realize you exist as more than a glorified
bodyguard to me, and I�ve been ignoring that in my determination to resent your
presence. Why should I resent it? You�re giving up your time and ordinary life
to protect me.�

�� Why would
this place make you realize it?� Harry glanced around, but scolding moral
lessons carved in gilt letters failed to emerge on the Imperatrix�s walls and
ceiling.

�� Malfoy
spoke slowly. He had let go of Harry�s hand and now folded his own hands on the
table in front of him, staring at his knuckles. Perhaps the moral message that
had convinced him was written there, Harry thought. His own breath was far too
short, his limbs liable to tremble. He crossed his legs and stuck his hands
beneath the table so that Malfoy would be less likely to notice.

�� I didn�t
know a restaurant like this existed,� Malfoy said. �I didn�t know you would
have access to it if it did, and yet you took the owner�s hands as if you were
at home here.�

�� I�ve been
here many times, and Faustine is fond of me,� said Harry shortly. His temper
was rising. He didn�t understand why. Was it only because he suspected Malfoy
of lying? Surely he�d lied before, about many things. One more deception
shouldn�t make that much difference. And he�d wanted Malfoy to be friendly,
hadn�t he?

�� That�s what it is, he decided suddenly. I want this too much. I want to believe this
is real, but I can�t.

�� But it
showed a different side of you.� Malfoy lifted his head with the same slowness
he�d used to bow it earlier, and his eyes shone with a pale, wary light.
Perhaps he was as afraid of rejection as Harry was of this being a trap, Harry
decided. �Someone who�s comfortable in the places of the great, someone who�s
learned to live with his name if not to like it. You have friendships with
people I didn�t know about, people who aren�t Weasley and Granger.� His voice
twisted on their names, and Harry frowned. Did Malfoy still retain that mad hatred for his friends? Maybe the feud between
the Weasley and Malfoy families accounted for it, but Harry had never
understood why he hated Hermione so much.

�� You�re
bigger than my mind can encompass, at least in one aspect.� Malfoy moved his
hands helplessly, as if he were trying to shape an outline of Harry in the air.
He�s more skilled at building houses than
he is at building people, Harry thought. �That means that I might have been
wrong in others. I�ve been treating you, and thinking of you, at least in part
as if you were the boy I knew.� He bit his lip. �Maybe you�re a man.�

�� I
certainly hope you think of me as a man for one
reason,� said Harry, unable to help himself.

�� Malfoy�s
eyes lowered demurely. �And that, too,� he said. �I was thinking of it as a
trick when you claimed you wanted to kiss me, and then as pure lust and desire.
There are people who look at me that way.� It was said without a trace of
bragging, and Harry nodded. Of course Malfoy would know how handsome he was.
�But�it�s sincere, isn�t it?� He looked at Harry with the caution in his eyes
increased.

�� Of course
it is,� Harry said. �Did you think I was lying?�

�� Let�s
say,� Malfoy said, his own fingers tapping the menu in front of Harry, �that I
couldn�t believe you weren�t lying,
before. Or I didn�t dare to believe it.�

�� Harry
narrowed his eyes. He could believe that, but at the same time, he didn�t know if
he should.

�� Of course you shouldn�t, Hermione hissed
in his head, sounding agitated. For God�s
sake, Harry, do you really think this sudden change in personality is sincere?
This is Malfoy. He�s talented and charming, I�ll give him that, but he only
uses both of those to get what he wants.

�� Is it really so impossible that he could
want me? Harry asked, abruptly tired of Hermione�s perspective. She was
probably right, but did she have to be right all the time? He touched the
copper ring, wondering if it was time to take it off again. And that he�d treat me well once he had me?

�� The second, yes. Hermione�s voice grew
gentle. I�m sorry if you think I�m
nagging, Harry, but I�ve seen the way you look at him. He has the power to hurt
you in a way that even Penelope didn�t, because Penelope never filled your
dreams as he does. If I can remind you of what he�s really like and stop you
from walking blindly off a cliff, then that�s what I�ll do.

�� Harry
nodded, resigned to his fate. For now, he would leave the ring on. His friends
cared for him.

�� It was just
that Hermione�s way of doing it was bloody annoying.

�� But Malfoy
had begun to speak again. Now he was looking at the Imperatrix�s ornamental
pillars. Harry wondered what he thought of them, since they served no important
architectural purpose. �There have been plenty of people after me in the last
few years who only wanted to say they�d slept with me for the thrill of
sleeping with a Malfoy, or a former Death Eater.� He laughed darkly for a
moment. �You wouldn�t believe how many of them wanted to touch the Dark Mark,
or asked me breathless questions about my mother�s death. Several of them I
threw out of bed the moment that happened and cast a charm that prevented them
from having sex comfortably for weeks.�

�� Harry felt
a stirring of sympathy that seemed to make both his bones and his blood vibrate
at once. Yes, he knew all about lovers who turned out to want him only for his
fame, even if they were often kinder than it sounded like Draco�s lovers were
to Draco.

�� None of
them have ever appreciated the art of my profession like you have.� Draco
looked up at him, and his eyes had acquired a gentle, vulnerable shine that
made Harry�s hands twitch with the urge to comfort him. �None of them have ever
made an effort to look into my soul in the same way you have. And I simply
can�t suspect you of seduction for the sake of sex, not when I make myself look
at my assumptions.� He licked his lips. �It�s a risk to trust you like this,
but I think I will.�

�� Harry took
a deep breath. �You can wait to make the decision,� he said. �We won�t be
having sex until the case is done, remember?�

�� But his
heart was beating with wild joy, in a way he thought might have leaked through
his calm words. Part of him is what I
always wanted him to be, always suspected he was: capable of more tender
feelings and open affection than the fa�ade he shows the world. And I was the
one to discover that. I�m honored.

*

�� Draco
snarled, but the snarl was buried so far back in his mind that he knew no trace
of it showed in his expression. He bowed his head again and murmured, �Of
course. I do keep forgetting that, especially when you look at me the way you�re
looking at me right now.�

�� For the
first time since they�d entered the restaurant, Potter reached out for him. His
hand took Draco�s hesitantly, as if he imagined Draco would pull away at any
moment, even after his humiliating confession. Draco held still and let his
hand be turned around and examined. He even managed a faint smile, though the
real source of his amusement was no more visible than the snarl. Potter was not
good enough at Divination to read the truth from the lines on Draco�s palm.

�� I�ll try
to stop looking at you with desire, if it makes you uncomfortable.� Potter�s
voice was low, his eyes wide and utterly sincere.

�� Draco
fought to keep from closing his fingers and crushing Potter�s hand in his fist
like someone crushing a butterfly. Instead, he allowed his grip to start out
tentative and slowly grow firm. �You don�t have to,� he whispered. �In fact, it
gives me something to look forwards to, once the imposter is stopped. I�ve been
alone for too long. I need sex with a lover who I know won�t betray me at the
first chance.�

�� He dared to
look up at last and found Potter watching him with adoration softening the
edges of his mouth. More important, though, was the belief written on his face, which Draco reveled in. If Potter
accepted his story, especially after the shaky beginning when Draco had said it
was Potter�s friendship with the Imperatrix�s owner that convinced him, then
Draco�s plan had begun to unfold.

�� Keeping
Potter at a distance wouldn�t work, not when Draco�s own desires were playing
into the situation. Treating him in a merely friendly manner would probably
encourage Potter to think he had the upper hand and could take advantage of
Draco�which was not conducive to making him realize, as Draco did eventually
mean to make him realize, that he was Draco�s utter inferior. But seducing him
with confessions and soft hesitations and apparent vulnerability would draw
Potter close and make him gentle. It would also make Draco seem helpless, or at
least that was the effect Draco hoped it
would have.

�� And the
effect would be all the more devastating when �soft, helpless� Draco turned on
Potter like a serpent and stung him.

�� Potter
might feel a certain fascination for him, but Draco needed more than that. He
needed belief, acceptance, and the desire to protect him without its becoming
the desire to dominate. He would have
all of that in the end, because he would keep showing Potter things to admire
about him and reeling him in closer and closer, rather like a spider drawing a
fly on the end of its string.

�� For now,
Potter nodded and whispered, �I�ve dreamed of sex with a lover who won�t betray
me, either.�

�� Draco bit
his tongue sharply to keep from laughing, and planted a shy kiss on Potter�s
knuckles. That made his face light up as if someone had placed a sun behind it.
Draco stroked his hand and leaned back in his chair.

�� What�s the
best meal to eat here?� he murmured, which gave Potter a chance to show off his
knowledge of the Imperatrix.

�� Draco
watched Potter throughout the meal with a smug knowledge growing inside him,
heavy as a weight of chocolate biscuits eaten all at once.

�� He�ll think he�s seducing me, but the
seduction works the other way. He�ll chase me until I catch him.

*

�� Lucius
reached out and brushed the cover of the book with trembling fingers. He barely
controlled the instinct to snatch his hand back and cradle it against his
stomach when the spark of a ward leaped from the leather and stung him. The
protections Narcissa had put on her diaries lingered still.

�� But years
after her death, and years after the first time Lucius had broken the wards in
his desperation to understand his wife�s final decisions, they were so weak
that a spark was the best they could give off. Lucius could have removed the
magic entirely, but he didn�t want to. A bit of pain was his penance for
reading these books in the first place.

�� He flipped
the cover open. It was leather rendered soft with a potion before being wrapped
around the book. Lucius knew it wasn�t human skin, and that it wasn�t softened
dragonhide, both of which he would have recognized. However, no expert he�d
shown the cover to had been able to tell him more than that. One did say that it looked like treated
unicorn hide to him, but Lucius had rejected the idea. Not even those who
wanted to make an enormous profit would take the risk of killing a unicorn and
incurring the curse that came from doing so, and it was unlikely that someone
would have come upon a unicorn safely dead but with the skin still intact
enough to use.

�� The pages
inside the book were made of thick, creamy paper, with frilled blue edges
stained with an ink that Lucius hadn�t managed to identify either. They looked
like new shadows on snow. Lucius touched the edges once, as usual, before
bowing his head and reading the dark words that he had memorized by now but
kept returning to as someone might prod at a loose tooth with his tongue.

�� I sometimes wonder what I am doing here,
locked in the Manor with a Dark Lord I never chose to follow, in the company of
a husband I learned to despise years ago.

�� Lucius
swallowed and closed his eyes for long moments. The pages of the book bent
beneath his clutching fingers, and he released his hold and once again ran a
hand up the cover of the book, wishing now that the ward was still active to
spark and give him some physical pain to counteract the mental one. He had read
these words many times, and yet with each reading they made his throat dry and
his stomach clench and twist within him.

�� Why did you start despising me? he
thought, as he opened his eyes. There were several possible answers he�d
discovered through his reading of the other books, but none in this diary.

�� I know the answer, of course. Duty. It is
the iron goddess I have followed all my life, from the first moment that my
mother sat down with me and told me what it meant to bear the last name of
Black. The clutch only grew firmer when Walburga�s sons turned out to be such
disappointments, one of them wild and rebellious, the other weak. My sisters
and I were the only generation left alive to bear children who would redeem the
family. Our own name might be lost in marriage, but our blood could never be,
and we would do that blood proud.

�� The chains grew heaviest on me when my
mother told me I would marry Lucius Malfoy, a boy I had looked at with
indifference all throughout Hogwarts. He was handsome, yes, but looks never
mattered to me. I told my mother that, and she took my hands, and looked
earnestly into my face and told me that it was my duty, that she had been to a
Seer and learned the Black blood would mingle best with the Malfoy. I was the
only chance to bear a child who would be a worthy heir. Bellatrix would be
childless, and Andromeda had already run away with the Mudblood. Even if she
came to her senses and returned without having borne a child, her womb was
defiled by the spilling of his seed inside her.

�� I sat alone among the ironwood trees in my
favorite garden and communed with the silence a long time, wondering if I was
making the best decision. I could run away, as Andromeda had. I might take
poison, as some maidens did in the old days when they would not defy the will
of their families but could not marry the men chosen for them. That death would
earn me honor at my funeral from Bellatrix, at least, although she would
probably scorn me for not having the strength to live.

�� More than that, I would scorn myself for not having the strength to live. I rose from
that garden and came away knowing the truth, that my life was devoted to duty
and there was no room for love.

�� When love grew, when I bore the son my
mother and the Seer had foreseen and saw the Black blood mingled with the
Malfoy, then I tied it in its proper place, under duty. My son must live not
because I loved him but because he was an heir to two powerful families, and
because my womb was so damaged with the difficult birth that he would have no
siblings. And, too, he was beautiful from birth, magically powerful and
pure-blooded. There are not so many children like that in our world that we can
afford to be careless with them.

�� And it is duty that drives me, now, towards
the only possible end. I have listened carefully to the Dark Lord�s words. I
know that he has not truly forgiven Draco for his failure to kill Dumbledore,
and that Severus Snape�s quiet intercession for Draco�s life is not enough now
that Snape spends most of his time on missions. However this war ends, it is
likely that our Lord will kill my son the next time he summons him into his
presence.

�� That cannot happen. Duty forbids it. The
heavy chain clasped around my soul rattles and drags me around to look towards
the future, where live the children who will never be born if I do not save
Draco. And, too, there is that love, that tendril of ivy winding around the
ironwood tree, which tells me I will not be able to live with myself if I do
not do all in my power to save him.

�� I know my power. Not magic; the Dark Lord is
much stronger than I am. Not family connections; Bellatrix has made it clear
that she despises Draco and thinks our mother wrong in claiming he would be a
fitting heir for both of the bloods he carries, and I cannot depend on Lucius.

�� Why
couldn�t you?� Lucius whispered to his dead wife. �What did I say, what did I
do, that drove you away from me? You know how much I love Draco. You know that
I would have cooperated in any plan to protect him.�

�� Not the power of words; Snape is not often
here, and I cannot bind him to another Unbreakable Vow. There is only one power
that is still mine, one devotion I can lay on the stern goddess�s altar and
hope she accepts.

�� The diary
ended there. It was the last entry Narcissa had ever made, though the rest of
the pages waited, white and blue and shining, for ink and words that would
never come. Lucius closed the diary and sat back, shutting his eyes.

�� He could
picture his wife as she must have looked when she laid the diary down on the
desk in this library, her eyes fixed on the far wall, her hair loose about her,
a shining glory. She would have risen to her feet slowly and deliberately. She
would have laid the quill beside the dairy and stood a moment gazing at it
before she cast the spell that sealed the cover shut and protected her words
from the sight of anyone else.

�� And then
she had turned around and left the library for the last time.

�� Narcissa, Narcissa, why did you do it? Lucius
thought, opening his eyes with tears on his cheeks. Yes, I know the answers: to protect Draco, to fulfill your duty,
because you thought it was your last chance. But none of that should have
overridden your common sense, and that common sense would have reminded you
that your sister was dangerous.

�� He came
here so often because he thought it possible that he would gain some sense of
his wife�s mind by sitting where she had sat, looking at what she had looked
at�the dim wood-paneled walls of this library, blankness relieved only by the
presence of a tapestry that depicted a winter forest�and tracing the words she
had written. He needed more than those bare words. He needed to know the emotions
that had driven her, the emotions that had turned her away from him and thought
the ultimate dishonor was a good idea.

�� So far, he
had not discovered them.

�� Lucius
sighed and opened his eyes. He could at least make one promise to the shade of
the wife who had despised him, whatever her reasons. She had died because she
loved Draco, and it was just possible that her death had helped their son make
it through the war. Lucius could protect Draco from the consequences of his own
folly, and make sure the obsession with Potter didn�t damage him.

�� I promise,
Narcissa,� he said aloud. �I promise that I�ll defend him. You�ll have no
reason to complain of me as a father, whatever you might think of me as a
husband.�

�� A rustle to
the side sent him spinning around, staring in hope, but the portrait frame on
the wall was empty, save for a blue shred to the side that might have been a
silken gown darting out of it�

�� And might
as easily have been Lucius�s imagination.

*

�� Mangacat:
There are so many ways for both Harry and Draco to lose this game, but not
nearly so many to win.

�� linagabriev:
Harry agrees with you that Hermione�s annoying! But he tolerates it because he
knows she loves him; she�s just not very good at expressing it.

�� Shakespeare
is mainly a reference for the chapter titles and because his plays have such
resonance that it can lead resonance to the story as well.

�� Harry would
have gotten angrier with anyone except Draco who talked of Dobby like that.

�� avihenda: Thanks
for reviewing!

�� Thrnbrooke:
Here it is!

�� minn yun: Yes,
Faustine and Snape would have an interesting meeting.

��
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The Same Species As Shakespeare