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A Year's Temptation	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 28515 -:- 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
- 1-A Year of Temptation
- 2-February
- 3-March
- 4-April
- 5-May
- 6-June
- 7-July
- 8-August
- 9-September
- 10-October
- 11-November
- 12-December
- 10
- 11
- 12
Chapter Eleven--November

Somehow Harry wasn't surprised that, when Snape finally contacted him, he did it in such a way that the letter slipped past the Aurors entirely.

   Kingsley had indeed partnered him with a trainee new to the Hermes Corps, a young woman named Melinda Jones, one of Hestia's cousins. She watched him with a bit too much hero-worship in her eyes at times, but she was a genuinely talented witch who would probably do much better once she stopped thinking Harry could do anything.

   One morning in early November, she came back from fetching herself tea with a frown on her face. "I found this in my teacup between one moment and the next," she said, holding out a letter towards him. "I only looked away for a second, I would swear it. It's addressed to you."

   "Did you check it for curses and hexes?" Harry asked, making no motion to take the envelope himself.

   Melinda blushed and hastily pulled out her wand, running it over the envelope as she muttered several common detection charms. The letter flashed on none of them, but, as Harry told her, that didn't necessarily mean anything. He taught her the incantation and wand-movement for another of the charms, one practiced by higher-level Aurors, and her naturally pink cheeks turned almost red with gratitude.

   None of the charms revealed a spell, however, and Harry took the letter away at last and slit it open with his thumb.

   "Should you tell Kingsley that you received a letter, sir?" Melinda ventured then. She considered the regulations binding Harry to paperwork for the next few months silly, Harry knew, but she also heard daily lectures from other Aurors on the importance of sticking to Ministry rules so those they arrested had no ground to challenge them. Harry had a plausible lie ready, luckily.

   "I shouldn't be telling you this," he whispered, "but this is from my wife, Ginny. She said that she might write to me. And if I tell someone else, well--" He grimaced and shook his head as if it didn't bear thinking about. "It'll be all over the Daily Prophet at once, and the best thing they'd accuse me of is having an affair with two people so I can be doubly unfaithful."

   Melinda's nostrils flared. She had views, apparently, on the Prophet and their never-ending permutations of the story that surrounded Harry and Draco. "You don't need to worry, then," she said earnestly. "As long as it's not dangerous. I'd never intrude on your privacy, Harry." She still flushed sometimes when she said his name.

   Harry gave her a noncommittal smile and turned away so that she couldn't accidentally read the letter over his shoulder as she went back to her desk.

   November 4th, 2005

   Potter:

   You have been a nuisance to me since the day you were born. I suppose I should have realized that your irritation value would not diminish simply because we have assumed rather different positions in life.

   I require a meeting with you. You have made several mistaken assumptions with regards to me, and it appears that I have done the same, once, with you. If you are important to the man I swore a vow to Narcissa Malfoy to protect, then I do not wish to clash with you.

   Do me the courtesy of meeting me on the corner of your street at seven this evening, without any of your bodyguards about. I am sure that someone so skilled in mischief as you are can manage this plausibly. I will be dressed as a Muggle. I give you a Wizard's Oath to show you no violence.

   Severus Snape.

   Harry stared at the letter for several long moments. His first impulse was to disregard it altogether, even though the sharp, spiky handwriting across the paper was the same sort he had seen on his Potions homework, and in nightmares, for years. His second was to send the Aurors after Snape, but he had no idea where the man was right now, and if he waited until this evening and tried it, he was certain Snape would see them coming.

   His third impulse was simply to go alone--and then he was brought up short by the promise he'd made to Draco not to take insane risks anymore.

   Hissing through his teeth, Harry leaned back. "Melinda?" he asked.

   She jumped and looked at him over her shoulder; she must have been deeply interested in the report she was writing. Harry himself had missed out on the 'painfully earnest about paperwork' stage of a trainee Auror's usual development. "Yes, sir?" she asked, and then blushed. "I mean, Harry."

   "Ginny wants to meet with me tonight," Harry said quietly. "Trouble is, I'll have two of the nosier Aurors with me, and I can't trust that they won't talk about it to someone, which will result in it getting back to the Prophet. I don't know how to shrug off the bodyguards and go, though."

   "I don't think you should shrug off the bodyguards," Melinda said hesitantly.

   "It would only be for a short time," Harry said. He was sure of that, at least. He and Snape had always been so volatile in each other's presence that their conversation, assuming they managed to have one, couldn't last much longer than the battles. "Could you help me? I know a glamour that could make you look like me for a short period, just two hours or so. And if you remained with my guards until then and then Apparated out, I would be the one who got into trouble. They'd think I was acting out, trying to get away from them. No one would suspect you."

   "I--I don't know…"

   "Please?" Harry looked at her with a begging expression on his face, and could see her intense flattery that the Savior of the Wizarding World would ask her for a favor. "It would be easy enough to slip away from them. I could go to the loo, and you could meet me there and come out with the glamour on."

   "I couldn't talk like you, though," Melinda faltered. "And I wouldn't know anything they expected me to know."

   "An auditory glamour for the voice," Harry said glibly. "And, well, you wouldn't have to say much. The Aurors on duty tonight know I don't like them, and they'll expect you to brood and not talk. I could key you into my wards so that you could pass easily into my house."

   "But what if something happens?" Melinda insisted. "What if someone attacks you while you're in the street? I don't want you dead."

   "I won't be alone," Harry assured her, and grimaced wryly. "Much as I don't like it, Draco Malfoy has insisted on being with me every time I meet my wife from now on. So he'll be there. I give you my word of honor on that. I'm sure you've heard how he killed Mulciber. I feel sorry for anyone who attacks me, frankly."

   "I--" Melinda drummed her fingers against her desk for a moment. Harry thought that was more from the fact that she didn't know how to feel about the situation with both Draco and Ginny than because she was really deciding against helping him. "What if someone suspects me before the two hours are up?"

   "Then you send me a Patronus with the message," Harry said. "You know how to do that, don't you?" Melinda nodded; the communication technique the Order of the Phoenix had once used had come out during the war, and was now a standard part of Auror training. "What's your Patronus?"

   "A seal."

   Harry nodded. "Then just send it to me, and I'll know that you had to leave, and I have to return as soon as I can."

   Melinda smiled wryly, a more knowing expression than Harry had seen so far entering her eyes. "You're very persistent when you want something, aren't you?"

   "I am," Harry said, unable to sound apologetic about it. "And you can even watch me write my letter to Draco, if you'd like."

   "All right," Melinda gave in.

   "Thank you," Harry said, leaning across the distance between their desks to squeeze her hand impulsively.

   "Just see I don't regret it," she said, but the smile had a tinge of excitement to it now, and it occurred to Harry that having her as a partner wouldn't be so bad. At least she didn't show a tendency to blame him as Ralph had. Ralph would have gone along with this only if he knew it had Ginny's approval.

   Well, Harry didn't intend to do this without Draco's approval. He turned hastily to pick up parchment and quill. It was not nearly long enough before he had to meet Snape, and he doubted Draco would appreciate being summoned by the pull of the claiming mark when Harry entered danger.

*

            Draco thought about raging when he received Harry’s letter, but quite apart from the fact that there were photographers for the Daily Prophet just waiting to snap a picture of him leaving in a fury and he’d frighten the house-elves, he knew it would do no good. The only choice he had now was whether he would go with Harry and perhaps manage to settle accounts with Severus, or whether he’d forbid Harry to go and end up settling them much more unpleasantly at some other time.

            He wrote a curt letter back, telling Harry he’d be on Grimmauld Place an hour beforehand, under a Disillusionment Charm, and that if Harry even thought of going to the meeting place without him, he’d Apparate straight to Kingsley Shacklebolt and tell him all about Harry’s little escapade. It was the best he could do. That, and try not to go mad for the rest of the day while he paced in rooms far apart from the front windows and scowled into mirrors.

            He dressed carefully enough, in pale blue dress robes, as if he were going to one of the parties he’d refused all invitations to since throwing Pansy out of the house. He made sure to keep a cold and utterly disdainful expression on his face as he strode down the walk outside the Manor. He hoped the photographers took some pictures of him looking like this. Perhaps they would make it to the front of the paper, and those who might think of bothering him about being a Veela, or troubling Harry, would think again.

            He just barely remembered to cast the Disillusionment Charm before he Disapparated, and drew his wand as he landed. His head jerked slightly to the side, and he realized he could feel Harry’s presence. Also under a Disillusionment Charm, he thought, a few paces to his right.

            Draco edged in that direction, watching out for danger. There was nothing as yet. Grimmauld Place looked like what it was, a dirty and poor street in the heart of Muggle London. Draco curled his lip. He would insist that Harry come to live in the Manor when they were finally bonded. It was out of the question that he be separated from his mate by more than a few hundred feet in the first few months, and he was certainly not coming to live here.

            He reached out and felt cloth under his hand, just a moment before he also felt the tip of a wand pressing against his throat. Draco grimaced and whispered, “Harry. It’s me.” The final stages of the Transformation should have made his mate subconsciously familiar with his scent, but a fine thing that would be if Harry struck out defensively.

            “Oh,” Harry whispered, and then reached out, drawing Draco close to him. This near, Draco could make out the blur that concealed Harry’s movements, though nothing of his facial features. His scent was stronger, soothing Draco’s instincts and making him draw in a few deep whiffs of it, so as to reconcile himself to the danger his mate probably stood in. “Why did you insist on coming an hour early?” Harry added.

            “Why do you think?” Draco muttered at him. He cast a nonverbal spell that should alert him of the presence of anything human on the street, and how much magic those humans had. It only made three dull sparks glow in his mind, though, which would mean there were three Muggles nearby. “In case Severus set a trap for you, of course, or in case you decided to sneak off and meet him early.”

            “I said I wouldn’t do that any more.” Harry’s voice was full of indignation. Draco wished he could see his eyes. That would help him determine whether Harry simply looked angry, or vaguely guilty, the way he did when he was planning something he’d been caught at. “My death is your death. I know that, Draco. I wouldn’t go into danger without you.”



            “But apparently staying out of it is too simple for you,” Draco muttered, and leaned against Harry’s shoulder.

            Harry made an exasperated sound at him, and then turned his head so that his breath was falling on Draco’s ear. “Snape’s letter said that he’d explain himself, and he swore a Wizard’s Oath to use no violence.”

            “Wizard’s Oaths only matter when they’re in words, and face-to-face,” Draco muttered. “They’re not binding when they’re written on paper.”

            A long pause, and then Harry said, “Oh.”

            “Yes, oh.” Draco leaned back against the house behind him and clucked into Harry’s ear. Let him shiver as Draco’s breath assaulted his ears—and from the way he squeaked in startlement, it was working. “We have really got to get you some wizarding education. I don’t know how you’ve lived in this world for twenty-five years and not learned the simplest thing about it.”

            “Being raised as a Muggle for ten of those years had something to do with that,” Harry said in an acid tone.

            “But you knew you could use magic,” Draco pointed out in a long-suffering tone. He liked playing martyr, if only because Harry always reacted so beautifully. “You said the Muggles were relatives of yours. They must have told you about being a wizard, what it meant—the family history. Not the Potters’, of course, but your mother’s history.”

            Harry snorted, and when he spoke next, after a pause, his voice held the bitterness of truths denied a long, long time. “They never said a word about it, Draco. They hated magic. Loathed it. Wanted to pretend it didn’t exist. I spent my first year with my parents, of course, but I couldn’t remember it. Then,” he added, with a catch in his voice. “I only learned about it when my Hogwarts letters started coming, and then I was too busy trying to keep up in school and save the world from Voldemort to do much research about obscure laws or whether Wizard’s Oaths are worth the paper they’re printed on.”

            Draco blinked into nothingness. It was his turn to say, “Oh,” now, probably, but he didn’t want to sound as inarticulate as Harry had. Instead, he found and gripped his mate’s hand in silence.

            He thought for a moment about what he could say. An apology would be out of place, but a heartfelt conversation now might drive Harry away from the sharing that Draco wanted to encourage in him. They hadn’t managed yet to talk about anything personal without exploding into an argument. Perhaps this had to be the same way, at least on the surface.

            He made his voice as snotty as he could while still keeping it soft enough that they couldn’t be overheard from a few feet away. “Well, I’ll have you know that I understood what it was to be a wizard from the time I was two.”

            He could picture the astonishment on Harry’s face; the shoulder leaning against his stiffened, and the hand in his cramped as though Harry were about to pull it free. And then Draco heard him snort under his breath, and felt the crisp rustle of hair against his temple as Harry shook his head.

            “Yes, you understood what it was to be a wizard,” Harry mocked lightly. “That would be why nothing ever took you by surprise in Hogwarts, and you managed to show me up without trying each and every time.”

            Draco hissed, but had to smile. They had barely talked over their pasts, either, even Dumbledore’s death or Draco’s time in the Inquisitorial Squad. If they were ever going to understand each other, they had to discuss it and move beyond it somehow, and this was as good a way as any.

            “I understood the important things,” he said. “How to address someone at a state dinner, for example.”

            “Because there were ever so many of those at Hogwarts.”



            “At least I knew other wizarding schools existed before Durmstrang and Beauxbatons appeared in fourth year. I even speak a little French myself, you know.”

            “What do you know how to say?” Harry shoved his shoulder. “’Please help me, my hair is mussed and I’ve broken a nail?’”

            Draco made a mock outraged sound. “I’ll have you know that I can ask for seven different kinds of complete meals and thank the servers politely each time.”

            “That’s why I prefer plain food, and no house-elves. No one to thank.”

            “You’ll need to get used to having house-elves again.” Draco leaned over to kiss the side of his neck. “It shouldn’t be hard, since you were oblivious to their existence for most of your career at Hogwarts. That was the real reason Granger’s SPEW never took off, wasn’t it? The house-elves ceased to exist for you as soon as they left your presence?”

            For a long moment, Harry’s shoulder tensed again, and Draco wondered if making a joke about Granger had taken him beyond the pale.

            And then Harry laughed, a long, gusting, tension-releasing laugh, as if he had been waiting for the day when he could look back at his memories of his best friends and joke about them with someone. He would never have dared that with the little Weasley, Draco thought with an odd sense of pride. Yet another sign of how much better he was for Harry.

            “Meanwhile,” Harry said, with an odd sort of relish, “your mother’s side of the family is the one that hung up house-elf heads on the walls of their home. I suppose they didn’t want to chance forgetting about them.”

            Draco shoved him in turn. “Take that back,” he said. “The Blacks did nothing so horrid.” He thought that was true, at least. He couldn’t be entirely sure, since he did remember the empty places where hunting trophies might have hung in Harry’s house, and he had only ever visited it once before that, when he was too young to remember anything concrete.

            “I will not,” Harry said. “Had to haul the lot of them away. The nastiest damn job I ever did, not counting hunting the Ravenclaw Hor—“ He paused for a long moment, then finished, “Well, this object of Voldemort’s.”

            “I did not need to know there was a Ravenclaw whorehouse, Potter,” Draco said, with a fastidious shudder, wise enough to know that now was not the time to pursue whatever Harry had nearly revealed.

            Harry laughed again, and returned to the conversation. Draco followed patiently, soaking in what tidbits Harry revealed and letting bits of his own past slip through his fingers, drifting into Harry’s ears and mind, where he knew they would be well taken care of.

            Perhaps someday they would both feel comfortable enough to talk openly about their pasts. For now, this would have to do. And given how much Harry seemed to enjoy it, Draco would have said it more than did.

*

            Harry knew it the moment Snape showed up. He could feel a sudden increase of magic on the street, and the wards around Grimmauld Place, still keyed to him even though he’d also tied Melinda into them, suddenly spluttered and flared. He narrowed his eyes and stood straight, his hand curling inside Draco’s to alert him. Draco stopped dead in the midst of another reminiscence and looked around, then moved his free hand in a pattern that Harry knew meant he was drawing his wand.

            “Where?” Draco breathed into his ear. Harry took a moment to enjoy the pure sensual pleasure of Draco’s breath sliding across his skin, as out of place as it might have been to do that.

            “Corner, just like he promised,” Harry whispered back, and began to move down the street. He could see the figure standing on the corner now, the tall man he would probably have taken for just another Muggle if he hadn’t felt the powerful magic. Snape glanced quickly in several directions, then consulted his wrist and sighed, apparently just irritated that someone he had come to meet hadn’t met him.

            Harry cast a quick charm to divert the eyes of Muggles elsewhere, and then removed his Disillusionment Charm. Then he murmured to Draco, “Maybe you should stay hidden.”

            “Fuck that,” Draco snarled softly back at him. “We don’t want to make him nervous by thinking you didn’t keep your word not to bring the Aurors. Besides, he might have guessed that I’d come anyway.” And he made himself visible before Harry could argue further.

            Snape’s eyes focused on them and narrowed. Harry lifted his head and met that dark gaze coolly. Once, it would have intimidated him; Snape seemed to have seen so much of life, and when Harry met his gaze, he was reminded that he was only a very little boy, after all.

            Now, though, he’d been in the Aurors for four years, and he could see the way Snape adjusted his posture and used his height and the narrow thinness of his face to stare someone else down. He was still formidable, not least for the magic crackling through his body and his wand, but he was not invincible. Harry told himself to remember that, and to keep a firm grip on his wand as he halted five feet away from Snape.

            “Potions master Snape,” he said, since the man had never gone back to teaching and therefore didn’t deserve the title of “Professor” any longer.

            “Draco,” Snape said, and nodded to Draco first, simply to insult Harry, he knew. He held his peace. Such a tactic would have done damage to Ralph or any other of several Aurors, but Harry knew his target. Only then did he turn, and gave Harry that same coolly dismissive look that he’d used whenever they met during the war, touched with disappointment, as if he had expected better of Harry even when he should not have. “Mr. Potter.”

            Harry said, “You believe I’ve made several mistaken assumptions about you. Correct them now.”

            Snape gave a short sound that was not a laugh. “Demanding, are you not, Mr. Potter? It would be worth your while to be polite.”

            “Shove your politeness, Severus,” Draco said, in a voice that made Harry glance at him in surprise. He found that Draco seemed several inches taller than usual and more present, the way he had when Harry had first seen him after the Transformation, but this was meant to impress rather than allure. “You tried to kill him the last time you met. Tell us what you came to tell us, and let us leave.” He put an arm around Harry’s shoulder and moved closer to him, radiating protectiveness. His free hand never let his wand go, and that wand was pointed straight at Snape, Harry saw.

            He felt a brief wash of surprise, which pleasure immediately followed. He had someone who would watch his back—not just in the way of an Auror partner, the way Ralph had chosen, but because he was Harry. Because of friendship, and love.

            When Harry faced Snape again, he found that his fear had vanished entirely. He raised an eyebrow and chilled his tone. “You heard him. Severus.”

*

            Draco studied Severus in silence. He had lines on his face that hadn’t been there when Draco had seen him last, but since it had been seven years, that wasn’t surprising. On the other hand, Severus lacked the tension that had infected him during every Death Eater meeting, and even while he brewed when Draco was still under his guardianship. He simply watched in every direction and pointed his wand at every suspicious sound, which was practically normal in someone who had been Head of Slytherin House.

            You let me think you were dead. You tried to make me think my mother was alive the last time we met. You tried to kill my mate.

            So many things that he wanted to say to the bastard, but probably none of them would win them answers. So Draco waited as best he could, and let Severus ponder what he wanted to say.

            When he finally answered, his voice dragged, as if he had to choose his words more carefully around Draco than he would have done around Harry alone. “After the battle at Azkaban, I considered it worth my while to disappear for a time. I left enough evidence to make it seem as if I were dead so that I would not be pursued.”

            He lifted his head, and that gesture was familiar enough to Draco; he had seen it time and time again when Severus felt himself ill-used, even if the suspicion that fell on him had been entirely self-incurred. Draco clenched his teeth against the memories. No matter what Severus had done for him in the past, his allegiances had changed enough that Draco no longer felt comfortable trusting him.

            “I had served masters for more than twenty years,” Severus said patiently. “I wished to have the freedom that so many children around me took for granted and used to so little effect, and the only way that I could have it was by convincing both the Dark Lord and the Order of the Phoenix that I was dead. So I did. I established myself not long after the war was won as a supplier of rare potions to those who requested them from me.”

            “Including illegal potions, I suppose.” Harry was trying to sound bored, but Draco could feel a fine tremor traveling up his arm from the point where he held his mate. Harry, of course, as an Auror, would feel he had the right to be outraged about this. Draco was not so sure he did.



            “Many of the potions the Ministry has made illegal have no side-effects that harm more than the wizard who takes them,” said Severus, and curled his lip haughtily enough that Draco felt tempted to tell him it would freeze that way. “So, yes, I made them.

            “And then I made contact with Death Eaters who had done the same thing I had, and faked death to escape being hunted by the Ministry.” He gave a sharp laugh. “You have no idea how many of us came away alive from that field where you were convinced the best of us were destroyed, Potter.”

            “But not my mother,” Draco said, undercutting Severus’s mockery as effectively as he could.

            Severus cocked his head and regarded him for a long moment. His voice was gentler when he replied; of course, Draco had always suspected that Severus had something of a soft spot for his mother.

            “No,” he agreed. “She would not stop trying to reach Lucius, no matter what I told her. And by the time I might have reached her side and stopped her, the Aurors were on the field, and I had to leave to save my own life.” His voice had a trace amount of regret, but it vanished in the next moment. “I was explaining to you what kind of life that was.

            “I awed those Death Eaters who found me alive, such as Mulciber, and used them to control the ones who had survived the war but had no idea that I lived, such as the Carrows. I used them for as long as their innate—tendencies—did not outweigh their usefulness, and then directed the Ministry towards them by means of subtle hints that looked more like carelessness on the parts of the brewers.” He nodded at Harry. “Mulciber was a different class of servant from them, however, which is why I did not at first interfere, and even lent him my own magic, when he tried to rid the world of you. Alas, it cost him his own life instead.” And this time he looked at Draco.

            Draco lifted his chin and refused to look away. Severus wasn’t the only one who had changed, or the only one who had found a life that he wished to live.

            Severus was the one who turned away after a moment, clearing his throat and focusing on Harry.

            “Indirectly,” he said, “I am the one who has led to many of your best arrests over the years, by being in such a position that I could give you those I no longer had a use for.”

            “And how many innocent people did you hurt?” Harry asked, in a voice that rose like a growl from the middle of his chest. “How many suffered from your potions and the depredations of the Death Eaters before you decided to rein them in? Fenrir Greyback has infected at least three dozen people in the past four years. You don’t care for what they suffer, do you?”

            “And who has cared for what I suffered?” Severus asked, barely moving his lips. “I was telling you only why it might not be in your best interests to remove me from my position, Potter, since I am the one who can funnel new arrests towards you, and since I control what would otherwise be a dangerously disorganized form of business. I shall leave you alone from now on, now that I know you are important to Draco. You need not worry for your safety at the end of my wand, nor fear that any of my servants will hunt you other than in the ordinary course of battle.”

            The offer sounded fair to Draco, actually, especially since it had the potential to make Harry look better as he made more and more arrests. He tightened his arm around Harry’s shoulders, silently urging him to take it, and hoping he would understand.

            “I can’t let you do that,” Harry said softly.

            That was the only warning Draco had before his mate twisted away from him and began to fire curses.

*

            Snape was prepared, of course, and managed to conjure a Shield Charm in the right place to deflect Harry’s first curse. But Harry had planned out the battle in his head as he listened to Snape’s rambling excuses, and he used the spells in the exact sequence he’d chosen, an unpredictable one that didn’t resemble any he’d regularly used in battle for the past few years. If Snape had been watching him and knew his usual tactics, Harry planned to deprive him of that advantage.

            Therefore, Snape was taken by surprise when Harry flung several burning curses at the same weak point of the Shield Charm, fracturing it, and making one of them dive through to him at last, on the wand hand. His wand went flying, and Harry swiftly scooped it up with a Summoning Charm. He saw Snape’s eyes narrow slightly, and knew he was probably reaching for a potion next, or attempting some wandless magic. Harry didn’t plan to give him the time.

            He flung a Body-Bind with the same will behind it that he used to resist the Imperius Curse. The Body-Bind settled on top of Snape, tying up both his body and his magic. He collapsed to the ground, his arms wrapped around himself, his eyes rolling back in his head. Harry cast a Stunner at him just to make sure. He could be feigning unconsciousness.

            He stood in silence for a moment, or at least as much silence as his own rapid heartbeat and breathing could offer. Then he heard Draco shifting his weight, and he came a bit nearer. Harry turned to face him, expecting a lecture for having dared to fight his own battle.

            “Harry,” Draco said, his voice as soft as a falling feather. “Let him go.”

            “No,” Harry retorted, without even having to think about it.

            Draco reached out and ran the back of his hand over Harry’s cheek. Harry ducked the lulling gesture, insulted. Did Draco think he really turned into pudding every time he was touched?

            “Harry,” Draco whispered. “For the sake of what he once meant to me. For the sake of what he’s done for the Ministry in the past. For—“

            “You heard him,” Harry snarled. “He didn’t care what harm his minions did as long as he could discard them when he wanted to. It’s the exact same philosophy Voldemort had.”

            Draco stepped back as if Harry had struck him, and spent a short moment looking as if he were counting under his breath to keep from getting angry. Harry stooped over Snape again and looked at him carefully, his wand still at the ready in his hand. The man’s eyes were rolled back in his head, but with as many tricks as Snape had pulled in the past to convince Voldemort he was still on his side, that meant nothing, either.

            “I suppose this is the self-righteousness that Weasley scolded you for?” Draco said at last.

            “I suppose it is,” said Harry, and Levitated Snape into the air. He knew there would be no hiding it when he took him into the Ministry; Kingsley might well sack him. But he would rather be sacked than let someone like Snape, someone who was probably responsible for half the Potions distribution the Ministry dealt with if what he said was true, remain free.

            “You don’t care at all, do you?” Draco asked.

            “About his excuses? No.” Harry paused and looked at him. “About what you said? Yes. But only because you said it.”

            Draco now looked as if he couldn’t decide whether to be pleased or irritated. “Things will be easier when we bond,” he breathed, in what sounded like the first part of a mantra.

            “Not less argumentative,” said Harry. “Never that.” He cocked his head at Draco. “Assuming that Kingsley lets me out of the Auror equivalent of detention within the next few days, I’d like to see you again. I enjoyed the conversation—well, the argument that we had before Snape appeared.”

            Draco opened his mouth, then shook his head and gave Harry a resigned smile. “All right, yes. Come to dinner at the Manor, if you don’t mind entering a place where you can’t Apparate out easily.” He lifted his head, as though he were prepared for Harry to refuse.

            “Now that your wife isn’t there to give me dirty looks, I accept,” said Harry, with a mocking little bow of his head, and then Apparated away with Snape in tow. He was pleased that Draco, Slytherin ethics though he might have, at least understood what Harry valued—and why he valued it.

*

            Draco opened his door himself the evening that Harry was due to arrive, and had to laugh at the hangdog look on his mate’s face. It was only partially caused by the raindrops clinging to his hair, courtesy of a sudden shower. “Kingsley more difficult to appease than you expected?” he teased, taking Harry’s cloak himself so that he had an excuse to touch him. Harry, wet or not, still radiated a warmth and strength that made Draco want to wrap himself around him.

            “Yeah.” Harry tilted his head back and nestled the nape of his neck briefly into Draco’s hair. “I’m on parole, essentially, for six months. He couldn’t do much more than that, though, since I had the bad taste to actually capture someone whom the Ministry wanted pretty badly.” He twisted around so that he could kiss Draco, and Draco felt a frisson of even deeper warmth move through his belly. “It turns out that we have known Snape was alive, under different names,” Harry murmured into Draco’s mouth. “Kingsley knew any punishment he gave me would be all over the papers in a matter of minutes, and God forbid that we give the idea of a rift in the Auror Department to any outsiders. So I can work again, as long as I have the bodyguards with me most of the time, and as long as I understand that one more mess like that will result in my training new Aurors for the next ten years.” His voice slid into a gruff imitation of his superior’s on the last few words.

            “It sounds like you need to forget,” Draco murmured back. “Dinner is ready, but the house-elves can keep it warm. Come to bed?”

            Harry smiled up at him, eyes brilliant with more emotions than just lust. “Don’t mind if I do,” he breathed.

*

            Harry was starting to wonder just how many ways he and Draco could be together in bed. He didn’t tend to separate the times he and Ginny had been together; they blurred into one great blob of satisfaction and cheer and giggling lust. Humor had always been a part of their sex. Ginny hadn’t been afraid to joke with him in bed, and that had been one of the things Harry best loved about her, the fact that she didn’t have much of a temptation to take herself seriously.

            With Draco, it was different each time—more serious, but never simple, and each encounter stood out in his mind. There had been the urgency he’d felt the last time they made love, the simple animal glut of it, when his own orgasm and sharing pleasure with Draco had been equally important goals in his mind. There had been the heated rebellion of the time before that, as he tried to show both Draco and himself that Ginny couldn’t tell him what to do any more. There had been the time before that, when he simply yielded himself to Veela allure in hopeless weariness with everything else in his life.

            And this time—

            This time, there were more smiles than ever before. Draco touched him more gently, gaze fixed on his face, cupping his cheek as Harry sucked him off. He let his back arch more naturally, his eyes widen, gasps escape his mouth that Harry knew would have been shut up and imprisoned just a short time before. And Harry knew him now, and understood his body, including the way his muscles began to tremble just before he came. Harry sucked a little more strongly then, flicking his tongue delicately over the head of Draco’s cock. Much as he had learned to enjoy this, he’d already been at it for several minutes, and his jaw was starting to ache.

            “Wait,” Draco croaked suddenly.

            Harry stifled the flare of fear that he’d done something wrong. Draco wouldn’t be shy about telling him so; he’d already cursed Harry several times for using his teeth. He sat back and looked up at him.

            Draco watched him in silence for long enough that Harry was tempted to squirm. He didn’t. He held his peace and his posture, kneeling naked on the fine carpet of Draco’s bedroom. Draco lay on the bed above him, his legs still hanging over the side and sprawled wide open, but his upper body propped high with his elbows now.

            “I want to try something new,” Draco murmured, and reached for him. Harry rose to his feet hesitantly, watching in suspicion that he couldn’t hide even from himself.

            “No penetration yet,” he said sharply. “I’m not ready.”

            Draco grinned at him, and murmured, “Ah, but part of the point of this is to make you ready, to get you to enjoy it, isn’t it?” And before Harry could respond, he drew him down and started kissing him with force.

            Harry made himself relax and kiss back. He trusted Draco not to push anything on him before he was ready.

            He trusted Draco Malfoy.

            Sometimes, when he thought about it, the oddness of his life truly galled him.

            Draco rolled them over so Harry was beneath him, and Harry gave a small grunt of satisfaction. He wasn’t ready to admit it, yet, but he did enjoy Draco’s weight on top of him, sheltering him in warmth, surrounding him in heated skin until he found it hard to think about anything else. He grabbed Draco’s hair and tugged it several times, maneuvering his mouth back down for a more successful kiss.

            Draco resisted, though, and turned his head so that he could breathe into Harry’s ear. “Turn over.”

            Harry froze.

            “Not for that, I promise,” Draco said. He rubbed soothing circles on Harry’s shoulder. “I simply want to show you something. Something that should feel very good and ease your nerves, without requiring the full bonding as yet.”

            Harry took a deep heft of a breath, reminded himself yet again that he trusted Draco—though God knew why—and rolled over. Draco lay down on top of him again, and Harry bucked in pleasure. For some reason, the same warmth and weight he enjoyed on top of his chest felt even better this way, with Draco’s elbows sliding sweat-slick along his ribs and his erection—

            His erection butting up, gently rubbing, against Harry’s arse.

            Just rubbing.

            Harry thought he might understand what Draco wanted now. He gave a breathy groan, and then Draco gripped his hips, holding him in place, and heaved him up the bed so that just his head emerged from the cocoon of heat that gripped them both.

            Draco began to thrust, gently at first, but picking up speed. Harry wondered for a moment why the pressure as well as the speed seemed to change, and then realized he was thrusting back against Draco, arching his shoulders and twisting his head in encouragement.

            His face flamed. He might have stopped if he had been able to think clearly. But Draco’s cock pushed against him, again and again, and each time it did, it sent clear thought scattering. Harry dug his elbows into the mattress to give himself more purchase and once again pushed back, and pushed, and pushed.

            Why shouldn’t he be uninhibited, if he liked? Why shouldn’t he act like a slut, if he wanted? It was not as though there was anyone else here to see him do this.

            And from the sound of the moans and near-sobs in his ear, Draco certainly wasn’t complaining.

            Harry raised himself a little further and snaked one hand under his body to get at his own cock; the pressure from the front wasn’t quite enough to get him off. And then one of Draco’s hands slid off his hip and underneath him, joining him in pulling, tugging, jerking.

            Their motions sped up by some silent agreement that Harry didn’t remember making, and then Draco gasped and stiffened, a warm stream of liquid splattering Harry’s bollocks and arse. Harry hoped Draco didn’t realize it was that, more than the hands on his cock, that carried him over the edge a moment later. He dropped bonelessly to the bed when the pleasure ceased to wrack him, and tried to remind himself that dinner was waiting, so he couldn’t go to sleep. He had been hungry when he arrived, but his eyelids insisted on dropping anyway.

            Draco kissed his shoulder. “I love you,” he murmured.

            Harry managed to open his eyes, and he rolled over, trying not to care about the mess he’d just smeared across the sheets. Draco probably didn’t care, he reminded himself as he stared into his partner’s eyes. “God, I love you,” he said, and couldn’t help the note of wonder and surprise that crept into his voice. Once again, he was trying to think back on his perspective several months ago, when the mere prospect of doing anything more than jerk Malfoy off while avoiding eye contact would have disgusted him. Now, he couldn’t find his way back to that place; now, his love for Draco simply seemed natural.

*

            Draco felt a shimmer of heat travel through his belly, and regretted that his body wouldn’t be up to another go so soon. He kissed Harry, lingeringly, then pulled back. “The house-elves will probably be upset if we stay away from dinner much longer,” he murmured.

            Harry nodded and stood, looking around for his robes and his wand, probably to spell the come off him. Draco, who had his wand to hand, flicked it and removed the mess, but pulled Harry in to his side when he would have reached for clothes. “You don’t need them,” he said. “I’ve put wards up so that Pansy can’t enter the house, and no one else ever comes here without my permission.”

            Harry blushed. “So you want us to eat naked?”

            “Why not?” Draco pushed him gently back into the rumpled bed. “And we can have dinner in bed, too, if we’d like.”

            “I just—“ Harry ran a hand through his hair. “That feels decadent, somehow.”

            Draco laughed and folded his arms beneath his chin as he snapped his fingers to summon a house-elf. When one appeared, he gave it orders to bring the meal into the bedroom in manageable, limited portions, while Harry shielded himself with a sheet. Draco snickered when he looked at his mate again. “They don’t actually care about human nakedness, you know,” he had to point out. “We aren’t at all physically attractive to them.”

            Harry scowled at him over the top of the sheet.

            “And, yes, it’s decadent.” Draco picked up Harry’s right hand and began to kiss the fingers, watching the way Harry’s eyelids fluttered languidly as he licked down and in between them. “Think of it as something essential about me, something you can’t change. You’re the heroic Auror who rescues wizarding society from itself, and I’m the decadent aristocrat who does things like eat fifty Honeydukes chocolates a day if that’s what he wants.”

            “Ugh, that’s it, that’s the end of our match,” Harry declared dramatically, withdrawing his hand as the elf reappeared with trays of soup. “We’ll never be compatible enough. The most I can eat is forty.”

            Draco laughed at him, and watched in interest as Harry very obviously attempted to conceal another erection. “But I’ve always wanted a lover with your stamina,” he murmured. “Do you want to wait on the meal?”

            “No,” Harry said, and picked up his spoon, sipping his soup in a large and obvious slurp that made Draco shudder. “I have to keep up my energy, you know.” He grinned at Draco and then licked his lips.

            Draco attended to his own soup with a will at the reminder, telling himself sternly that he could throw Harry down and have his way with him in a little while.

*

            “What’s that?”

            Harry turned his head to grin at Melinda. They’d had something of the closeness of co-conspirators ever since she managed to impersonate him successfully; Kingsley was convinced that Harry had simply used an illusion or a Confundus charm to convince the Aurors that he was still in the same place when he’d actually escaped, rather than using someone to impersonate him, and Melinda seemed to enjoy the thrill so much that she didn’t mind he’d lied about meeting Ginny. “A gift from Draco,” he said, and held it up so that she could admire it.

            “It’s very…silver,” Melinda said diplomatically. She seemed to have lost her awe of him at last, and Harry liked her better for it. Her cheeks remained flushed, though, since she was Hestia’s cousin, and pink cheeks seemed to run in the family. Now her frizzy black hair bobbed as she examined the gift Draco had sent by owl post that morning with a slight frown. “What does it do?”

            “I have not the slightest idea,” Harry said, and set it in the middle of the desk. “The prat didn’t include a note with it.”

            The silver thing seemed like a machine, with a number of curving pipes that flowed into one another and small knobs that could be twisted. Harry twisted one of them. A small gush of steam rose from another part of the machine, and several tempting clicks echoed from inside it. Then a tinny music began to rise up from the center of it. Harry leaned closer, but he didn’t recognize the tune.

            “I know that one,” said Melinda, looking surprised. “I heard one of the mothers we rescued not long ago singing it to her baby.”

            “A lullaby?” Harry muttered.

            Just then, probably as the result of a time-delayed spell, a note materialized in thin air over the largest tube and drifted downwards. Harry caught it and read it, at the same time absently catching the white Veela feather Draco had included with it. It rubbed gently against his skin, warm and sweet-smelling.

            Harry:

            I know that you don’t rest well some nights, especially when I’m not there to comfort you and hold you and soothe you to sleep. So I sent you this machine that always soothed me when I was a baby. The music is a lullaby that my mother used to sing to me. I would demand to hear it twenty times a night, so she finally enchanted this thing—one of the Malfoy family heirlooms that was terribly expensive but not terribly useful—to sing it for her.

            Don’t worry about what the other knobs and tubes are for. Most of them don’t do anything. Once you figure out how to make it sing—as you should have if this note appears, though it might also appear to help you if you’re completely backwards and stupid about it all—then you’ve learned its major purpose.

            Consider it a permanent gift.

            Love,

            Draco.

            The song had stopped in the meanwhile. Harry twisted the knob to start it again. He didn’t know what Narcissa Malfoy’s voice had sounded like when she sang; he didn’t know, therefore, if the music was actually a good approximation.

            He didn’t care.

            “You’re grinning like a fool,” Melinda informed him gently.

            “Don’t care,” Harry said simply, and listened until the song ran out before he returned to work. Draco had told him he intended to enter a period of intense courting once Harry was no longer in danger from Snape.

            Harry intended to keep up with him as best he could.

*

            Draco regarded the envelope from Harry curiously. It felt a little thicker than normal, but he couldn’t make out more from the outside than that the unusual thing inside it was square. He slit the envelope open and shook it into his hand, already nearly dying of curiosity.

            It was a photograph, a wizarding one. In it, a red-haired woman and a black-haired man whom Draco knew at once must be Harry’s parents stood holding a green-eyed baby. Harry gaped at the camera, stretching his arms, struggling to be let out of his mother’s arms as if he knew instinctively that it wouldn’t hurt him.

            Draco swallowed a lump in his throat and looked at the letter. It was very simple.

            I know that you’ll take good care of this for me, love.

            Harry.

            No mention of trust or confidence. Apparently, Harry’s trust was so deep that he saw no need to refer to it directly.

            Draco propped the photograph up on the mantle and sat back to watch it, trying to ease the delightful shivers that gushed up and down his arms and seemed to meet in his belly. When a message from the private Healer that he’d hired to look after Pansy arrived, he answered it as swiftly as he could, in irritation, and then returned to staring at the picture.

            He wished he could have met James and Lily Potter. As it was, the most he could do was murmur, “I’ll take care of him. I promise.”

            It occurred to him, about an hour later, that he might, just possibly, be in danger of becoming sentimental.

*

            “You don’t really need to watch him any more. I’ll escort him home.”

            Harry’s Auror escort—consisting of Tallow and Selene, again—only had time to blink before Draco had gently but firmly taken Harry’s arm and Apparated them away. Harry relaxed, leaning into the Side-Along Apparition despite the fact that it made his stomach feel as if it had turned inside out, and glanced around curiously as they landed with a bump in a familiar room.

            “The Phoenix’s Nest again?” he asked, mildly impressed. “Draco, you shouldn’t have.”

            “Well,” Draco said, and guided him towards the table, where he pulled his chair out for him as if Harry were a girl, “we never did get to finish the last meal we had here, due to Severus’s unfortunate interruption, so I wanted you to see that I do know how to treat a bloke.”

            Harry considered glaring and refusing the courtesy, but Draco’s eyes were shining, and if the appreciative gaze on Harry’s face was any indication, he really didn’t want a woman to be here with him. So Harry sat down, let Draco push the chair in, and didn’t even object to the napkin that Draco tucked into his collar before retreating to his seat on the opposite side of the table.

            He did object when the food arrived.

            “Oysters?” Harry shoved his plate away from him. “Oysters should stay on the bottom of the sea where they belong and stop polluting the tables of decent people.”

            “Hmmm.” Draco picked up the nearest oyster and waved his wand at it, casting a spell that Harry assumed was nonverbal, since he prided himself on his hearing. The oyster’s shell neatly opened, what was inside slid out, and Draco caught and ate it, merrily ignoring Harry’s disgusted glance. “It’s really very good.” He glanced up, and though he was smiling, it didn’t reach his eyes. “Certainly much better than the food I had to eat after I refused to kill in the Dark Lord’s service and he imprisoned me.”

            Harry’s eyes widened. Then he picked up the next oyster and cast a spell that weakened the shell and allowed him to pry it open. Not nearly as elegant as Draco’s solution, of course, since he still had to scoop out the meat inside, but it was important to show that he took this seriously.

            “Hmmm,” Draco said again, and smiled at him, a smile rich with promises for later. Then his face cleared and his eyes turned inwards. “I don’t think you knew that, did you? That I was little more than a disappointment to the Dark Lord, who ignored me after Severus lied and bargained to spare my life. But one day, he decided he’d had enough of me. I was to kill one of my schoolmates, who would be an easier target than Albus Dumbledore and someone more on my level. Supposedly an easier task.” Draco licked his lips. “He couldn’t have found anything harder.”

            Harry, who had been forced to kill two of his own Gryffindor schoolmates who’d turned traitor, reached out and clasped his hand. Draco turned it upwards, meeting Harry palm to palm and entwining their fingers.

            “It was Mandy Brocklehurst, from Ravenclaw,” he said distantly. “The Dark Lord pretended it was a mercy, not to have me kill someone from Slytherin. He made me spend an hour talking to her before I tried, and then I was supposed to pick up my wand and speak the Killing Curse. That was supposedly a mercy, too, that he wouldn’t make me torture her first, or kill her with some nastier spell.

            “I looked into her eyes, and that was the moment I knew I wasn’t a killer. Maybe I could have excused it with Dumbledore, due to shock and excitement, but I’d had all the time in the world to prepare, I could take all the time to kill her I liked, and I still couldn’t do it.”

            Harry wanted to apologize, again, for forcing Draco into killing when Snape and Mulciber had attacked them, but he held his tongue. He sensed Draco simply wanted to tell this story, without interruptions.

            “I threw down my wand and simply knelt there. I thought I’d die. But evidently the Dark Lord believed he could still use me as a bargaining chip with my father. So he simply tortured me.”

            Draco used his free hand to undo the sleeve of the hand Harry held. Harry looked down and saw an old scar tracing steadily up his skin, along the vein. He’d seen it when they made love, but assumed, without thinking about it, that it was an old Quidditch wound; he had a few like it himself where splinters had dug in.

            “He made me bleed nearly to death numerous times,” Draco said softly, “and cast a spell that kept me conscious and watching. That’s where I learned to live with helplessness, I think, and why I managed to put up with being a Veela so much better than you did at first.” He smiled humorlessly at Harry. “Do you know what it’s like to see death coming for you, and know you can’t do a thing about it? I learned.”

            “I had no idea,” Harry breathed. He wished there was something he could do to make up for the pain Draco had suffered. If the bastard had been in front of him, he would have murdered Voldemort all over again, with a brand new hatred in his heart. “I knew—I knew you weren’t there when I killed him. I just assumed you’d spent the entire war under Snape’s protection.”

            “Not quite,” Draco said softly. “Most of the beginning. I was with Avery in the few days before the end, when he finally grew bored with me and gave me back to Severus.” He hesitated, then added, “I was scheduled to be executed the day after you stopped him.”

            Harry kissed Draco’s palm, unable to say anything. They sat in silence until Draco delicately flexed his fingers, coughed to attract Harry’s attention, and sat back again.

            “Now,” he said, “you know what would make me feel better?”

            Harry leaned towards him with eager eyes.

            “If you ate an oyster,” Draco said, and his face lit with an expression of humor that showed the old wound had mostly healed, “smiling like you mean it.”

*

            Draco had known the confession was coming. Harry had spent the past several days peering at him earnestly and then looking away whenever he caught Draco’s eye, as though he hardly dared contemplate what he was contemplating face-to-face.

            Harry had an innate sense of fairness, Draco knew. He could hardly let someone confess an intimate secret to him and believe that he shouldn’t confess something in return—at least, not someone who had treated him decently.

            Draco had told the story because he truly wanted to tell it, but also because he had known he was likely to get a story from Harry in return. There was nothing wrong with having multiple motives, he told his conscience whenever it started to agitate about things.

            It was still the last day of November before Harry gave in and told him, though. They were sitting on the couch in front of the greatest fireplace in Malfoy Manor, beneath a series of family portraits turned to the wall. Most of them had started jeering when they saw Harry was male, and the rest when they had learned that he was a halfblood. Draco could still hear their muffled voices, but he ignored them. There was no reason that he should have to put up with his ancestors taunting his partner.

            Now Harry, who’d been lying with his head on Draco’s shoulder and one arm around him, stirred. Draco let him go, let him sit up, let him turn and take Draco’s hands and stare intently into his face, and all the while tried to act as if he didn’t know what was coming.

            “I have something to tell you,” Harry began.

            As it turned out, he really didn’t know what was coming.

            Harry quietly and hesitantly told him what his childhood with the Dursleys had really been like. Now and then he hastened to inform Draco that they’d never beaten him, never tortured him, never thrown him out of the house into cold and wintry weather to fend for himself. No, it had been mostly neglect. And insults, and forcing him to sleep in a cupboard and constantly compare himself to their son Dudley, and a persistent starvation that Harry tried to leave out of the story but which crept in anyway when he referred to food now and then.

            Draco listened in silence, as Harry had done him the courtesy of doing, and then lifted Harry’s hands to his mouth and kissed them on the wrists when he had finished. He could feel Harry’s pulse going very fast beneath his lips. He rearranged them on the couch so that Harry was lying fully on his back and Draco was on top of him. It hadn’t escaped him that that position relaxed Harry and made his face open up, though he knew Harry didn’t want to show it. They would be equals in the bedroom once the needs of the bonding had passed, but Draco didn’t think he’d ever tire of showing Harry that he was not only loved, he would be thoroughly pampered and taken care of.

            “Thank you,” he said quietly. “Thank you for trusting me this much.”

            Harry ran a hand through his hair, and Draco closed his eyes and purred, one of the few remnants of the Veela left to him. “Of course I trust you, Draco.” He sounded faintly surprised.

            “I mean,” said Draco, opening his eyes, “that you both trusted me with one of the most painful parts of your life, and trusted that I wouldn’t hunt them down and kill them when I heard.”

            Harry’s smile opened up another world of emotions for Draco, and he leaned down and kissed him thoroughly, giving them both something else to think about.

            But not to forget. Draco never intended that either of them forget anything they learned in this courting phase.

            After all, this was one of the reasons that what they were building together would last.
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A Year's Temptation