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Water from a Stone	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 14851 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and I am not making any money from this story.

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Chapter Eleven—A Confused State of Affairs

            Every time Harry thought he understood something about how the world should be, it changed on him.

            He’d thought things would be different after the war, more peaceful, with no one deciding to attack anyone else for at least a few years. That had been wrong.

            He had thought, if it was going to happen, that the violence would come from people who were Death Eaters or Slytherins, upset that they hadn’t won the war, or that Harry still existed. He’d expected attacks on him specifically. Why not? He was the one who had killed Voldemort and disappointed all their hopes. Attacking random Gryffindor students wouldn’t have made sense. Why did attacking random Slytherin students?

            He had been wrong about that.

            He hadn’t thought much about dating—he was trying to appreciate being alive this last summer before anything else—but he had thought about dating Ginny. And then she turned out not to be interested. So sometimes he had fantasies when he wanked, and that was about it. It wasn’t as though he wanted to be deeply committed right now, on the brink of marriage the way it sometimes seemed Ron and Hermione were.

            That had been wrong.

            But he still didn’t really know why he had been wrong.

            I mean, he thought as he sat in the Gryffindor common room that night, frowning at the fire, and ignored most of the questions directed at him by the Gryffindor girls who wanted to gossip, why would anyone think that I would be? Who would have anticipated that Malfoy wants to date me, for some weird reason?

            Hermione snapped her fingers in front of his eyes. Harry jumped and then sat up, trying to look as though he had anticipated that even as he gave Hermione a dirty look. Hermione rolled her eyes in response and then dived right into the question she’d probably been dying to ask him.

            “What happened in the hospital wing, Harry?”

            Harry shook his head. “We didn’t make it to the hospital wing. It turned out that Zabini and Parkinson were angry at me for Stunning Malfoy, and they brought him back to life and yelled at me in one of the corridors. Then Malfoy said that he was angry at me, too, and walked away with them. They should be safe enough on their way back to Slytherin,” he added, because he thought Hermione was worrying about that.

            Hermione sighed impatiently. “You came back looking as though someone had just taken your puppy away.” Over Harry’s incoherent protest, she leaned forwards and stared into his eyes. “What happened? Did you have a row?” And then she suddenly stopped, and nodded understandingly. “Of course. You look just the way Ron does when I tell him that I want him to go away and stop bothering me so I can read.”

            “I don’t look like that!” Ron said.

            At the same time, Harry flushed and stayed silent. It would be good to let Hermione think it was a lovers’ quarrel, he told himself. That would account for everything and also give him an excuse not to talk about it, which he didn’t want to. How in the world was he supposed to tell his friends that Malfoy did genuinely want him, and Harry might want him back? (Harry didn’t think he was ready to commit to anything beyond “wanting” yet. Lust was easy to understand; anything softer and warmer made him want to cast Freezing Charms on himself until it stopped).

            Hermione continued to try to tease the information out of him until he went to bed, but at least she didn’t get upset when Harry didn’t answer. To Harry’s shock, though, Ron tried as they were climbing into bed.

            “Did you argue with Malfoy, mate?” he whispered. Harry started to open his mouth, but Ron shook his head. “Not the thing you told us about. Something else? Something…intimate?”

            Harry rolled over and eyed Ron, trying to figure out what in the world he was saying and why he was interested in this. “You could say that,” he hedged. Maybe his friends wouldn’t be surprised out of their minds when he revealed his attraction to Malfoy if he could prepare them a bit first.

            “Ah,” Ron nodded. He leaned over to the point that he almost fell out of his bed and whispered, “If he has the bigger cock, you ought to let him top first, mate. That way, you’ll get used to it.”

            Harry knew his mouth was open, giving Ron an unattractive view of his tonsils, but maybe that was a good thing at the moment, considering how unpredictable Ron was becoming. He might just fling himself at Harry and suggest they compare penis sizes next. “Where did you learn that?” he demanded.

            Ron promptly turned red enough that he seemed to blaze like a beacon even in the dark. “I, um, nothing,” he stammered. “It’s n-not meant to be anything in particular. I mean, I might have picked it up from Oliver and blokes like that. Or, you know, the twins used to t-talk about it. N-nothing. I mean, n-nowhere.” Then he turned over and buried his head beneath a pillow the way that Harry wished he could do.

            Harry stared at his back for a few moments more, then turned around with a snort and flopped into bed, shutting his eyes.

            No wonder that the world didn’t make sense and didn’t go the way he would have thought it would after the war. No one around him made any sense after the war, either. Next, Hermione would probably declare that books were overrated and she wanted to learn her subjects from Harry’s and Ron’s notes instead.

            But there is something I could ask Hermione to do, Harry thought drowsily as he closed his eyes. Research how long this bloody oath is going to last, based on the wording I used and other oaths like it.

*

            Malfoy was holding court at breakfast the next morning, surrounded by what looked like half the Ravenclaw table as well as the Slytherins. After a few minutes of staring, Harry figured out they must have heard of the Defense class from Robinson and the other Ravenclaws who had attended, and so wanted to talk with the Slytherins both about the spells and other ways to use those spells.

            It made sense. Malfoy was the main one talking, but not the only one. Harry ought to be grateful to have a small island of sense in the middle of a world so strange and changing so rapidly.

            He ought to have felt that way.

            But his feelings had joined the rebellion of things, and so he ate with a sour sensation in the back of his throat and left breakfast as soon as he could. When he got outside the Great Hall and was able to take a few gulps of clean air, he felt better, and his mind showed him the image that was burned into his brain, the image that had made him have to leave breakfast in the first place.

            Robinson leaning over and putting his hand on Malfoy’s arm, looking at him with big, worshipful eyes. Malfoy leaning towards him and nodding as he listened intently to words Harry couldn’t make out.

            You would have thought he’d forgotten Robinson never did anything to help them, Harry thought resentfully, scrubbing at his face, and only showed up for the first time last night.

            So. He felt jealousy over someone else male touching Malfoy. That was helpful in clarifying his feelings and pointing out that he hadn’t imagined them and they probably weren’t only lust, but not helpful in anything else.

            How was he going to get Malfoy?

            Harry frowned up at the ceiling of the entrance hall. He wasn’t a genius at anything except the way to combine Defense spells, so coming up with some clever plan to woo Malfoy, the way Hermione would have, was out. (Although, come to think of it, maybe Hermione wouldn’t have been able to do it, either, given the way she’d danced endlessly around Ron. That made Harry feel a bit better).

            He could march up and kiss Malfoy in the middle of the Great Hall, but would Malfoy like that? He might look at Harry with cold eyes and say that it was vulgar to kiss in front of so many people.

            He could ambush Malfoy in a hidden corridor and do the same thing, but Malfoy would probably be upset then that they didn’t have enough of an audience.

            He could write some kind of blazingly romantic love letter, but Malfoy could as easily mock it. And anyway, that part of the plan depended on Harry being blazingly romantic in the first place, and also a good writer, which he wasn’t.

            Harry groaned. Malfoy’s taught me to think in impossibilities, but that’s no help when I want a solid idea.

            He started to go to Potions, but paused when he heard a familiar voice from behind him. It was hopeful, which it shouldn’t have been, and although he didn’t think it was one that would make him have to do something about the oath, it depended on who she was talking to.

            “So, I thought…since you’re the second most handsome bloke in school after Harry, you might let me date you.”

            Harry turned around slowly and peered over his shoulder, trying to make it look as though this was something he did every day and utterly unremarkable.

            Romilda Vane stood in front of Malfoy, who was leaning against the wall outside the Great Hall and regarding her with a dumbfounded expression. Harry was grateful to her that he’d got to see that, at least. It helped to know that he wasn’t the only one suffering from such confusion.

            “Because Potter didn’t want to date you,” Malfoy said at last, slowly, as though he assumed the speed of the words had something to do with their meaning, “you think that obligates me to give you a chance?”

            “Not obligates!” Vane said, sounding horrified. She made a little motion as though she was catching something and throwing it away. “Never that! I would never use that word! I just thought you might consider it.” She ducked her head and then brought it slowly up, eyelashes fluttering in a way she probably imagined was cute.

            “No,” Malfoy said, and put so much rejection into the word that surely not even someone like Vane, Harry thought, could mistake it for anything less than what it was.

            He was wrong. Harry was glad that there was someone in the world who could make him feel less dense. Vane leaned forwards and cooed, “But you haven’t even kissed me. You haven’t touched me. You don’t know. I might be the one you’ve desired all your life, and what kind of life are you going to lead if you don’t become involved with me?”

            Malfoy’s lip curled. He reached out as if he would grab Vane’s shoulder and push past her. Harry looked about for some sign of Zabini and Parkinson, or Goyle, who followed Malfoy around like a shadow these days, but didn’t see them.

            Vane seized Malfoy’s hand when it touched her shoulder and kissed the back of his hand, her expression fervently adoring.

            Harry went out of his mind.

            Literally. His mind seemed to retreat to the back of his skull and become a small, whimpering thing, while his body seized control and propelled him across the entrance hall with a few quick strides. He grabbed Vane and dragged her away from Malfoy so hard that she didn’t even have time to shriek.

            Then he turned and planted her in front of him, so that she would have no choice but to see every expression on his face, every line of his scowl and every angry tooth he was showing in his sneer. He didn’t place his wand against her throat. He didn’t think he needed it. She was frozen just from his expression, staring up at him with her mouth slightly open.

            “Draco Malfoy is dating me,” Harry said. All his words were clear, and loud, and people who were coming out of the Great Hall paused and looked over their shoulders. “He’s only dating me, and will not accept your invitations to kiss you or touch you ‘just in case.’ He will not be accepting any chocolates that might be laced with love potions. Do you understand, Vane?”

            Vane made a few gulping noises, but Harry suspected that trying to make her speak after such a close encounter with someone she desired might be impossible. The message was more for other people, anyway.

            But this one was just for Malfoy, Harry thought, as he let go of Vane and spun around to face Malfoy. The git had no expression on his face, as if thought this was just another moment of play-acting and Harry would come up with some excuse not to kiss him.

            “I’m not that great an actor,” Harry told him, answering the thought, and then drew him into a kiss.

            It wasn’t as violent as their other ones. Harry just grabbed his shoulders, not his face, and he didn’t push him flat against the wall except on accident, and he didn’t openly rub his knee between Malfoy’s legs the way he would have liked to. But he did use plenty of tongue, and he didn’t conceal his moans, and he did close his eyes when the sensation became too much.

            Malfoy’s mouth tasted just as good as it ever did. His hair was just as soft. And Harry had to admit that Malfoy probably hadn’t designed these things on purpose to entrap and snare Harry; they were just the way he was.

            Harry kissed as long as he could without needing to draw back for air, stroking Malfoy’s cheeks with his tongue and trying not to think about their audience. The audience didn’t matter. That was the whole point. He had come after Malfoy when he had seen Vane trying to touch him, rather than because there were people in the entrance hall right now. That would have to be enough.

            He stepped back and opened his eyes.

            Malfoy blinked and then touched his lips as if he thought Harry’s were still attached. He gasped in deeply, nodded, and said, “That will do for a beginning. Come back when you think you can do better.”

            Then he brushed past Harry and walked towards Potions with a straight and steady stride, as if the kiss hadn’t affected him at all. And Harry couldn’t remember now if he’d felt Malfoy’s erection; most of his attention had been on the git’s mouth.

            Harry loosed a short but intensely satisfying scream. He didn’t care whether that would make the students around him think he was mad. They probably already thought he was for dating Malfoy, or dating a Slytherin, or kissing him in the middle of the entrance hall where everyone could see, or putting up with Romilda Vane for that long.

            There were all sorts of things they could think, and increasingly, Harry was finding them unimportant.

            He did find Vane still standing behind him when he turned around. Harry stared wearily at her, not wanting to deal with the load of bollocks that he knew she was going to say next. “What?” he snapped.

            “I was wrong,” Vane said, in a weak but clear voice. “You’re both better kissers than I am, and each of you is the only one that the other should be with. Um. Excuse me. I have to go…do something.”

            She hurried away with an odd limp. Harry stared after her, wondering if he’d hurt her, or Malfoy had, and didn’t realize it.

            Then he saw the way her skirt swung as if it was soaked, and a different cause came into his mind, enough to make him shudder violently and have to lean against the wall as he went to Potions.

*

            It wasn’t working.

            Harry had tried standing around outside the Slytherin common room door and waiting for Malfoy to go in or out, or getting someone to carry a message to him. That didn’t work. Malfoy only walked faster when he saw Harry, pretending he didn’t see him and hiding behind the shelter of his friends. The people Harry asked to carry messages pretended not to hear, either, and Harry couldn’t hex them the way he wanted to because of this bloody oath.

            He had tried sending a letter to Malfoy that apologized and asked for a date. Malfoy had ripped it up while staring at him, mouthed the words, “Not good enough,” and then turned his back with magnificent calm.

            He had tried speaking to Malfoy in classes, in the corridors, in the Great Hall, near the Quidditch pitch after practice. Malfoy turned his back each time and busied himself with the cauldrons, or his books, or his broom.

            He had tried simply catching Malfoy and snogging him senseless again, but Malfoy had melted out of his arms as if he were made of air and floated away.

            So, Harry thought on the sixth day, when he’d been distracted for most of the Slytherin defense class watching the blond git on the other side of the room, I reckon that he wants to make me suffer as much as he did when I was ignoring him. Fair enough.

            But if he thinks I’m going to wait around for him for six years or however long he suffered from not having my attention, he’ll have to think again.

            Harry turned his head away and started paying attention to the people he was actually trying to teach, a group of fifth-year Slytherins who were having unusual trouble with the Patronus Charm. He nodded to the girl in the middle, a Susan Sage, who was frowning at her wand as if it was the source of the problem. “You have to think of a memory that’s sufficiently happy,” he told her. “A memory that only makes you feel content or irritated does no good at all.”

            “But that’s what I was thinking of!” Sage glared at him from between two strands of sandy hair that seemed to fall in between her eyes no matter what she did.

            “You told me that you were thinking of a time your sister got punished and you didn’t,” Harry said. “That’s not strong enough, and you can see that because it doesn’t work. So try something else.”

            “That’s the only happy memory I have,” Sage muttered, and looked as if she was on the brink of folding her arms and stomping away. Harry would be glad to let her go if she did fold her arms, but she hadn’t done it so far, and he would keep on trying to reach her until she did.

            “I know that’s not true,” one of the other fifth-years said. Harry thought his name was Geoffrey Freewell. “What about when you took a broom up for the first time? You told me that that was your happiest memory.”

            “Shut up, Geoffrey, that was private,” Sage said, but she did look a little pleased that someone had remembered. Harry shook his head. The Slytherins kept insisting that they didn’t need other people and were happier when others didn’t pay them any attention. But they were hurt by indifference almost as much as insults. Harry didn’t see how everyone around them could be expected to know that they needed encouragement when they said they didn’t.

            He cast another glance at Malfoy, then remembered what the fuck he was doing and refocused on Sage. “Try it now,” he said.

            She frowned, face twisting up, and waved her wand while shouting, “Expecto Patronum!”

            For a second, Harry thought it wouldn’t work because she hadn’t used the right wand movement. Then a shimmering silver shape manifested next to her wand and drifted up until it was right in Sage’s face.

            “An eel?” she asked, staring at it. “Why did it have to be an eel?”

            Harry laughed. “We don’t get to choose what our Patronus is. But see if you can make it swim to the end of the room and come back to you, and later we’ll try to make it carry messages.” That was the best way, he’d found, to start small. Several Slytherins had got frustrated not because they couldn’t create a Patronus but because it wouldn’t do everything they wanted it to on the first try.

            Sage nodded and then stuck her wand out in front of her. The eel shot away to the far side of the room, swimming in circles, and looped back to her, tilting its head a little before it vanished.

            Harry applauded along with several other people, and turned to help the boys and girls in the group who still hadn’t produced a Patronus. Halfway through trying to make Freewell realize that he had to use a happier memory, too, he became aware of someone’s gaze resting heavily on him. He finished what he was saying and then casually turned his head.

            Malfoy was watching him directly and openly for the first time since the night when he’d walked away. Harry nodded to him, not sure whether to read this as a hopeful sign or not. It might be, but he’d thought Malfoy letting Harry snog him last week was a hopeful sign, too, and it hadn’t been.

            Malfoy started and whipped around as if he hadn’t realized he was staring, and someone might see. Harry rolled his eyes and carried on with his teaching.

*

            “You have to do something, Potter.”

            Harry sighed. Once again, he’d been cornered by Zabini and Parkinson as he left the Slytherin defense club. Malfoy had gone on ahead, and Harry had been grateful. Maybe tomorrow he would come up with some other way to get the git to pay attention to him, but for now, he wanted an evening where he didn’t have to think about him or the impossibility of making him look.

            “You have to,” Parkinson said, with a sharp nod of her head. “He’s whinging again, and you have no idea how unpleasant it is to listen to.”

            Zabini clapped a hand to his chest and leaned back against the wall, his head tilted up and his eyes rolling back in his skull. “Why don’t I have my Haaaarry yet?” he wailed. “Why isn’t he coooooming?” He lowered his head to fix Harry with a demanding gaze. “It’s intolerable.”

            “You can tell him I’m coming plenty of times, in plenty of different ways, just without him,” Harry mumbled.

            Parkinson laughed, the first time Harry had ever heard a sincere sound from her that didn’t have to do with mocking him. “We could tell him that, yes, if we want to get whinged at even more,” she said.

            “I don’t know what the fuck else to do,” Harry said. “If he ignores me every time I try to make a move, what am I supposed to do? Catch him in some kind of trap and then refuse to let him go until he agrees to date me?”

            “You can do more of what you were doing tonight,” Zabini said. “Helping us. He likes to see that.”

            “But it’s not enough to make him even say something to me,” Harry said. “It won’t make him stop whinging. What else do you suggest?”

            Zabini looked briefly helpless, and exchanged a look with Parkinson. Her laughter had subsided, and she was shaking her head a little. She opened her mouth as though she would give a suggestion.

            Harry never knew what it would have been, which irritated him when he thought about it later.

            He saw a movement out of the corner of his eye, and the scar on his chest lit up like a firework at the same moment. So he did what came to him as most natural, and stepped in front of Parkinson and Zabini, turning to face the attacker.

            He had time to see a face he wouldn’t have expected before a spell that must have already been underway caught him in the chest. It felt like a kick from a hippogriff, and he heard ribs snap. He waved his wand and raised a wordless Shield Charm over Zabini and Parkinson even as he sagged to his knees.

            Then the person cast again, and Harry knew, as fire consumed the side of his neck and his face, that this was going to be bad.

*

            Rin: I think you can argue that it’s ended now, since he does feel that he’s trying with Draco but not really getting any input.

            Eros: Thanks! I don’t know how many stories I’ve written that are similar to this one, but you can look.

            The story doesn’t come to a complete conclusion, just a resting place.

            kohanka: Thanks!

            Wölkchen: Thank you! I think choosing Harry as a narrator really helps; other stories couldn’t be as humorous because the narrators were different.

            And Harry thinks he realizes now, but with Draco avoiding him…

            anonanon: Thanks!

            Night the Storyteller: The oath would only forbid that if doing so would somehow cause clear and direct harm to Draco.

            polka dot: Thank you!

            lpnightmare: Harry is just feeling really frustrated now, because going to Malfoy is his natural course but Malfoy seems to be want to be courted in other ways.

            angelmuziq: The main problem with that is that Harry really isn’t so thoughtful or romantic, and he knows it.

            dannigurl; Thank you!

            luvlustblood: Thank you!

            I_Will_Change_the-World: Thank you! What’s your opinion on a stubborn Draco?
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Water from a Stone