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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
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Chapter Twelve�Out of
This Nettle, We Pluck This Flower

�� Harry
stretched his muscles and leaned over backwards to ease a kink at the base of
his spine. The conjured bed in Draco�s room was comfortable enough, but sitting
in a chair in front of Kingsley�s desk whilst he was lectured on the latest
business of the Auror Department�Kingsley having decided that Harry could do
paperwork on other cases even if he couldn�t move far from Draco�s side�always
made him uncomfortable.

�� He had left
the Manor reluctantly, carrying a silver ring with a simple enchantment that
would make it heat up if Draco�s life was in danger. Kingsley had even agreed to
lower the wards around his office so that Harry could Apparate back to the
Manor immediately instead of rushing down to the Atrium and Flooing. Harry had
looked at the ring many times during the meeting with Kingsley, admiring the
way that the silver looked beside the copper of the one that let him
communicate with Hermione.

�� But nothing
had happened, and Harry was beginning to think that perhaps the imposter had
given up and left the country when he realized that nothing he did would let
him snatch Draco�s life away. That was perfectly fine with him. He could remain a few days longer in Draco�s company before
Draco, who was still involved in his research, would grow suspicious and begin to
think he was lingering for unprofessional reasons.

�� And who knows? Harry thought, as he
walked slowly across the moonlit lawn towards the Manor. Maybe he will decide that we should pursue the desire that sprang up between
us in his office and�go to bed together.

�� The words
had too pressing a weight in Harry�s mind; he could almost taste the breath
that he would use to form them, and he could
feel anticipation gathering around his heart, in his lungs, at the base of his
brain. He had told Hermione he would be content if he could have sex with
Draco, fulfilling the physical desire that plagued him.

�� He had been
lying, though at the time he hadn�t known that.

�� His
fascination with Draco had deepened and cooled over the past few days, turning
from fleeting fiery passion into a rooted, growing flower. He watched the way
Draco bent over a sheet of parchment on which he was drawing the plans for the
Keller house and he could nearly glimpse the thoughts that flew beyond those
bright eyes. He knew the way Draco looked now when he was planning an
improvement to the design that he hoped would particularly surprise or delight
his client.

He understood that Draco�s way of
looking demurely away from the house-elves when they carried dinner in from the
kitchens concealed suppressed laughter. It seemed that Draco had never got over
finding house-elves slightly ridiculous, a quirk which made Harry like him
more.

He understood now that Draco liked
to go to bed so early because he preferred to lie awake in bed an hour or so
before he had to face the day. Hermione would no doubt say it was due to
laziness, but Harry had listened to Draco�s relaxed breathing in the morning�the
sunlight coming through the windows, the air between them thick and still and
silent�and he thought he understood. Draco wanted time to collect his thoughts
and calm the whirling of his brain. Most people did that before they fell asleep,
or over a glass of Firewhisky or butterbeer in the evenings, but Draco seemed
to collapse straight into slumber from a high. No wonder he needed some time in
quiet before he was ready to act again in the mornings.

And Draco drank his tea in the morning
with a gentle, absorbed expression, as if his thoughts had left behind
beautiful patterns on the back of his eyelids that he needed to memorize before
they disappeared.

�� No, Harry
wanted more than the bare minimum of sex and desire from Draco.

�� And maybe it would be better to have nothing
at all than too little.

�� Harry
paused and tilted his head back to stare at Malfoy Manor. He had Apparated to
such a distance from it so that he might have some solitude of his own to calm
his whirling brain, but also because he had wanted to see what it looked like
in moonlight. Maybe Draco had taken some of his inspiration for his other
houses from it, and so the glimpse of the house like this would let him
understand Draco better.

�� Harry
caught his breath when he saw it now, the stones glinting with separate small
sparks of light, the roof and walls a continuous silver stream of radiance even
though they were made of easily discerned separate pieces. Yes, Draco had taken
some of his ideas from this place. But even those ideas had been bent and
reformed and reshaped into new pieces, so that the other houses he made were
not imitations of Malfoy Manor anymore than a child is an imitation of its
parents.

�� Someone
moved in the moonlight near him. Harry turned around casually and saw Draco
standing at a short distance, watching him with an intense gaze and a faint
half-smile on his face. He looked once at the Manor, and then back at Harry.
The faint smile widened.

�� You wanted
to see where I get my inspiration from?� he asked. His voice was soft, as if he
thought speaking loudly would disturb the wrong ghosts in the moonlight.

�� Harry
nodded. �It�s�wonderful,� he said, and left it at that, because he couldn�t
think of a better word to describe it.

�� Draco faced
the Manor again, and Harry made out a stark expression of naked yearning on his
face. It surprised him. He hadn�t seen Draco so open with his emotions since
they�d come to the Manor. Even the gentle expressions in the morning that now
told Harry so much weren�t understandable in the same way that a smile from
Hermione or a clasp on the shoulder from Ron would have been. Harry knew them
because he had learned to speak Draco�s language. But this looks liked
emotional English.

�� I wonder
sometimes what it would be like,� Draco whispered, �to have that gift of
creation in my hands. To make something like�that.�

�� Harry felt
absurdly honored. Draco could only mean that he considered Malfoy Manor better
than any house he�d built. The admission couldn�t have been an easy one to
make, and that he was allowing Harry to see it�

�� I can only
know the faintest shadow of it.� Draco�s voice had acquired a sharp edge that
made Harry wonder if he was scolding himself, because that was usually the way
he sounded when speaking to idiots. �Who would have thought it was so hard to
learn? As much time as I spend with books and walking on prospects and watching
the way that people react to other homes, there�s a substance to it that
escapes me.�

�� I�m sure
you�ll build a house as good as this one someday,� Harry murmured. He fought
the urge to step forwards and lay a hand on Draco�s elbow. In the past week, he
and Draco hadn�t touched at all. Harry was afraid it would send mixed messages,
and Draco seemed too occupied with his quest to find a real answer to the
mystery of the impostor to notice.

�� Draco bowed
his head and sighed. �I don�t think so,� he said.

�� Why not?�
Harry did move closer this time. The moon really was brilliant, perhaps aided by
an enchantment the Malfoys had added to the outside of the Manor; Harry hadn�t
had occasion to be in this part of the grounds before and wouldn�t know. �I�ve
seen you work. You have at least as much talent as the builders of this house
did. Not the same kind, perhaps, but the degree isn�t different.�

�� Draco
stiffened for a moment, as if Harry�s long speech had reminded him that someone
else besides him was here to witness his disgrace. Then he gave a weary little
laugh and shook his head. �I don�t even know why I�m telling you this,� he
said. �You know all of it already.�

�� No,� Harry
whispered. �I might have suspected it, but I didn�t know it.�

�� And
hearing it from my mouth makes it so much more real to you?� Draco stepped
towards him, head lifted and eyes wide. Harry thought he looked as if he were moving
in a dream. He wondered if he shouldn�t wake him up.

�� But Draco�s
hand fell, weed-light, on his arm, and then he leaned forwards, and Harry
decided that he didn�t care how dream-like Draco felt right now. Maybe he�d
found the answer he needed. Maybe he thought as Harry did, that nothing else
was likely to happen now and Harry would be removed from the case any minute.
Either way, Harry wanted this to happen too much to stop it. He curved his arm
around Draco�s waist and pulled him close, then closer still, full of warmth
and sudden harsh breathing and quickening heart�

�� And without
the familiar vibration of the hawthorn wand.

�� Harry held
Draco still for a moment, though Draco made a little frustrated sound under his
breath and strained towards his lips. Harry felt his thoughts tumbling and
reorienting, and he swallowed.

�� What�s
wrong?� Draco asked, opening his eyes and staring into Harry�s. �You can�t have
changed your mind in the last week, can you?� A jeering, incredulous tone
entered his voice, which suited the Draco Harry was familiar with much better. �You
can�t have decided that you didn�t want me?�

�� I want
you,� Harry said, and thought for a moment that Draco might have left his wand
in his room. He could consider the family grounds safe enough to walk without
it�

�� But no, he wouldn�t. Not after the imposter
bypassed the wards so easily. He might have been incautious at times, but he�s
not stupid.

�� Harry
debated asking if Draco had the wand with him, and then discarded the notion. His
Auror instincts had forbidden him from revealing that he could hear the wand
even to Draco so far, and he certainly couldn�t chance revealing it and
forfeiting his advantage in front of a man who might not be Draco.

�� Then what�s
the problem?� Draco made another straining motion, intent on getting to Harry�s
mouth. Lines crimped around the edges of his lips, white lines of frustration
that Harry had seen when Draco stared at a plan moments before crumpling it
violently up and flinging it into the bin.

�� He almost kissed
him then. The lines were Draco, the voice was Draco, the air was Draco; this
was Draco in his arms.

�� But there
was the wand that Draco should have carried and Harry should have felt but didn�t.
And there was the confession to him in the open air. Harry wondered now if the �gift�
that Draco had spoken of not having wasn�t the gift to build a house like Malfoy
Manor, but instead the talent for architecture at all. The imposter could feign
much, but Harry doubted he could feign an instinct like the one Draco had for
houses.

�� Come on.� Draco leaned nearer still, and
there was sweet desperation in his voice and his fingers squeezed Harry�s arms
and his teeth snapped a few inches from Harry�s throat.

�� I want
Draco Malfoy,� Harry told him, going with an instinct he couldn�t have named
aloud, purely to see what would happen. �You�re not him.�

�� Draco�s
head appeared almost to split, so wide did his mouth open in a snarl. He jerked
back from Harry, flying, and he screamed wordlessly, and this time Harry could
hear the difference in his voice. He�d probably spent those days he was in
hiding perfecting his imitation of Draco�s intonations and manner, but he still
wasn�t Draco.

�� Harry went
for his wand.

�� Before he
could, blinding pain ripped down his side. He screamed. He could hear the skin parting, being slickly
slit open, popping and ripping. He dropped to one knee, still trying to lift
his wand and strike back, but the pain of the wound�which felt as if it ran
from his collarbone to his waist�was too great.

�� He
collapsed. The imposter stepped towards him, trembling and blazing and holding
his wand as if he intended to use it like a knife to open Harry�s throat.

�� You don�t
know who I am,� he said. �No one does,
and no one shall, until the day when everyone in the world knows.�

�� Harry,
panting, his hand soaked with blood where he�d placed it over the wound without
even realizing he was doing so, told himself he would remember this riddle, and
that he really should untangle it. But he couldn�t, not when cold was pouring
into him where the blood had flowed out and a low, dull, persistent ache had
settled into the middle of his body. He had never realized he could feel so
empty, he thought absently. Well, there was that time Alecto Carrow had cast
the Scooping Curse and torn half his guts out of him before he blinked, but
then�

�� What the fuck is going on here?�

*

�� Lucius
cursed as the air in front of him turned thick and red with a haze like blood
or anger, and as his hands began tingling fiercely. He sprang to his feet,
seized his wand, and stormed towards the entrance of the house.

�� He met Severus
on the stairs, and Severus nodded to him. �Intruder,� he said, and then opened
the front doors and sailed out onto the lawn without pausing to wait for Lucius.
Occasionally, Lucius thought as he ran after him, he was reminded that Severus had
qualities he used to admire. Being as no-nonsense as a Dark Lord could desire
was one of them.

�� The potions
to tell them of a breach in the wards had worked better than expected, if they
had caught the intruder in the open, Lucius thought as he raced behind Severus,
who could move like a sprinter even in his long black robes. Severus had been
sure they would alert them the moment the imposter appeared within the physical
walls of the house, but the gardens and lawns of the Manor were wide, and
protecting them completely probably impossible, given the recent development of
Severus�s potions.

�� And then he
saw the blaze of moonlight on fair hair that made Lucius want to call out for
his son. He shook his head. No, here there would be only the intruder and not
Draco. Draco was still in bed for the evening, as far as Lucius knew, having
retired early the way he usually did on nights when an architectural problem
was bothering him.

�� What the fuck is going on here?�

�� That was Severus.
Lucius nearly lost a moment staring at him in astonishment, but the attacker
seemed to react with anger only. He snarled and launched a curse at Lucius, a
burning green one shaped like an arrow that Lucius hadn�t seen since the
nastiest days of the Dark Lord�s occupation of Malfoy Manor.

�� He cast the
proper countercurse to deflect it, a glittering yellow net that swept up the
arrow and tore it to shreds with a dozen clamping, clapping mouths. Then he
cast a spell of his own devising that would cause painful bites to spring out all
over his opponent�s body. He suspected it would be fairly quickly matched, but
he could use even a momentary diversion to appease his curiosity about what
Severus was doing.

�� Severus had
fallen to his knees and was moving his wand in rapid passes, chanting urgently.
Lucius saw the spread of blood in front of him then, and felt sick, wondering
if the attacker had managed to lure or smuggle Draco out of bed, before he saw
that the wound was on the body of one Harry Potter.

�� You had better be saving him, Severus, and
not ensuring the murderer was successful, Lucius told his old friend
silently. If the Boy-Who-Lived dies on
Malfoy property, I�ll be in Azkaban faster than I can blink.

�� The
attacker recovered then and roared back at him in a whirlwind of magic and
screaming, and Lucius was forced to pay attention to him instead. Lucius�s respect increased as the moments passed and
none of his spells could convince the other man to back off. This was a wizard
who had studied, and who had probably
managed to achieve some unique effects in his time. The idea that he had
somehow contravened the bloodline wards on Malfoy Manor was less puzzling now.

�� Given that,
Lucius was all the more puzzled that
he should have chosen to waste his time on a series of petty crimes designed to
discredit Draco.

�� Finally,
one of Lucius�s other self-made spells, which tore the kneecaps apart, got
through, and the attacker snarled again�it made his face look as if it would
split in half when he did that�and Apparated. Lucius stood with his head bowed
and his arms swinging for long moments before he sighed and rose to make his
way towards Potter and Severus.

�� Nice of
you to help me,� Severus snapped as Lucius crouched down next to Potter.

�� I figured that,
by now, his life was either saved or spent,� Lucius explained simply, and then
looked at Potter. His face was so pale that Lucius would have suspected him of
vampirism if he didn�t know the cause. Potter�s lightning bolt scar and the
dark lashes of his shut eyes lay like wounds against that papery skin. Above
the long rip in his side�which made the edges of his skin and cloth both
flutter like ragged paper�hovered a half-dome of purple light. Lucius turned
and stared at Severus. That was another spell he hadn�t seen since the war, and
when he had last seen it, it was enclosing blonde hair and legitimately pale
skin.

�� The silence
asked his question for him. Severus hated Potter. And yet he�d done this, using
a powerful healing spell that always exhausted him, to save him.

�� Severus
only glared at Potter through a dangling mop of hair and refused to answer
Lucius with either word or gesture.

�� Lucius
sighed and said, �Apparently the imposter attacked Potter. Can you tell with
what spell?�

�� I can,�
said Severus coolly. �And since I have already healed him, I do not think the
attack matters so much as knowing how the attacker managed to get past the
wards in the first place��

�� I thought
we had agreed that we couldn�t know that yet��

�� Potter
managed to communicate to me,� Severus said, his lip curling. Perhaps flecks of
spit from Potter�s tongue had touched his robe when it happened, Lucius thought
in faint amusement. �Whilst I was�casting on him. He said that he had been talking
with this pretender for at least five minutes before the attack. And the attack
was what alerted us.� He swung his head to look at Lucius, and Lucius stifled the
impulse to tell him to push that ridiculous mane of greasy hair out of the way.
He could have done it at one point, when he was friends with Severus, but that
friendship had died with Narcissa. �I specifically constructed the potions to
warn us of any intrusion, not only a hostile one, so he cannot have triggered
their warning merely by the use of hostile magic. What is the difference, Lucius? What about the attack was so different
that it brought us out here?�

�� Potter
didn�t say anything else?� Lucius asked, holding back his private wonder that
Potter had managed to say anything at all with a wound so fierce. Of course,
Severus had always despised Potter, and so he wouldn�t have been particularly gentle
with his healing. It was more than likely that Potter had awakened when he felt
the harsh magic on his injury and gasped out the words that he thought might
make Severus back away.

�� No.�
Severus sighed and rose to his feet, levitating Potter�s body along with him.
Lucius watched him covertly as they made their way back to the Manor. Potter could
have jolted and jounced along; that was common enough with even the most
skilled levitation. But perhaps Severus didn�t want to have to do all the work
of his healing over again if Potter�s wound tore open, because this levitation was simple and placid. �And
I fear that examining the broken wards will not tell us anything, either, if he
managed to slip through the net without alerting us.�

�� Lucius
firmed his mouth into a thin line. The imposter�s attack on Potter, if Draco
was his real target, confused him, but perhaps he sought to eliminate the most
formidable defense Draco possessed, since he had shown the wards were nothing
to him. Either way, Lucius thought it advisable to protect Potter.

�� And maybe
he would be more persuadable in a sickbed than he was stubborn and healthy.

*

�� Harry
remembered little of the time immediately after he was wounded. He did remember gasping out the truth to
Snape, so that someone besides him would know that the imposter wasn�t an immediate
arrival. Someone had to protect Draco.

�� He
remembered Snape�s answer, too, snapped and hissed at him just before
unconsciousness claimed him.

�� You are a protector, not a hero.�

�� He couldn�t
remember it without a feeling of confusion, especially when he woke and found that
Snape had done a first-rate job of healing him, but still the memory sat in his
mind and refused to be moved.

*

�� Draco
looked down at Potter, and then away. But the sound of the other man�s troubled
breathing pursued him even so, as did the realization of how easily silence
could have claimed and ended that breathing.

�� And where
would Draco have been? Powerless, inside the house, considering different
variations of spells to banish the intruder back to his own time, not realizing
that death had come and gone on the Manor grounds.

�� He claimed
he was obsessed with Potter, and yet he didn�t even know for certain when he
was being wounded.

�� Draco�s
hands clenched into fists on his knees. He had come close to forgetting his
desire to destroy Potter in the last few days, because the new problem of
banishment had occupied his attention, along with the wish to build the Keller
house correctly. He had assumed without thinking that Potter�s own fascination
would keep him within reach, and when Draco wanted to reach out and wrap his
hand more firmly around his soul, Potter would be there.

�� Now he had
received proof that might not be so. Lucius had told him, with a raised eyebrow
at the demanding tone of Draco�s question, that Potter had gone to the Ministry
for an Auror briefing.

�� Potter felt
able to venture away from him, under the conviction that the danger was not so
great after all. How long would it be before his superiors assumed the same
thing and yanked him off the case? And then all of Draco�s delicate, clever machinations
might smash like the instruments in Dumbledore�s office that Potter had
destroyed at the end of his fifth year, and Potter would be beyond his reach
again, surrounded with people who would struggle to diminish his obsession with
Draco.

�� No. He
could not allow that to happen. Regardless of the pace at which the imposter
acted, he was not Draco�s true enemy. The only person who had ever challenged
him for possession of his freedom lay in the bed in front of him.

�� Death would
have been kinder for him. Death would have been an escape from Draco�s vengeance. It was not surprising Potter should
prefer it, but Draco could not allow him to flee into it.

�� And at that
moment, his lips contorted as the vengeance was chosen and sealed in his heart
with a snap like a steel wire taking a hare�s neck.

�� Nothing like the shock of the familiar to
damage you, he thought, and leaned back in his chair to wait for Potter to
wake up. He knew that his eyes on the other man�s face were bright with rage.

*

�� Linagabriev:
Hmm. Well, why would he have to kill Draco to do that? Why not just warn Harry
or Lucius that he was trying to prevent Draco from hurting Harry?

�� And no, in
this AU Harry didn�t have to die to rebound the Killing Curse. Of course, this
doesn�t mean that Snape is any less of an asshole.

�� Harry was
deceiving himself in thinking he could have sex with Draco and then forget the
whole thing.

�� Thrnbrooke:
Here it is!

�� fallenangel1129:
Don�t worry about it! I intentionally kept some detail out of the section on
alternate timelines, because I�m not familiar with the scientific theories that
purportedly allow it and just prefer to use magical explanations.

�� Mangacat:
Well, I wasn�t entirely sure from your review why you thought the imposter
might have arrived from another timeline, but I wonder if this chapter has shaken
up your theory at all?

�� GrimWriter:
Well, I was a bit slower with this one than usual!
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The Same Species As Shakespeare