Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Acts of Life	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 21189 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
- 11
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- 13
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Twelve—Dressing
            Harry should have known he couldn’t even walk down the center of Diagon Alley without someone trying to shove a camera in his face. He halted and rolled his eyes, then looked patiently at the man who was trying it. He wasn’t someone Harry recognized. Eager hazel eyes fastened on him with a look of hero-worship that reminded him of Colin, though.
            Harry was too busy swallowing down the painful lump in his throat to evade the question. “We all want to know who you celebrated your birthday with, Mr. Potter!”
            “Oh, with the rest of Britain,” Harry said dryly. He was thinking about the fireworks exploding overhead until two in the morning, and how he’d had to rent a flat to deposit the gifts in, and the people who had sent him invitations to parties until Harry’s wrist had gone numb casting the spell that would copy his refusals.
            The young man looked confused, but launched immediately into the next question. “Are you happy to be nineteen?”
            A fortnight into August, and they have to keep asking me the same bloody question, Harry thought in irritation. He understood the reason, though. It was as if everyone needed to know that their hero was not only happy but grateful to have survived—as if they needed to be able to excuse themselves for not having helped him to survive enough during the war.
            Because he understood, Harry made his tone softer. It was probably his second mistake, the first being not to bolt away instantly. “Of course I am. And happy to live in a world not dominated by the Dark Lord Voldemort.”
            He wasn’t a saint. He got some of his own back by watching people flinch. But this one was made of sterner stuff than some of the others, and promptly bounced back. “When are you going to make your run for Minister?”
            “Never.”
            The reporter flinched this time as though Harry had done something to hurt him, not merely frightened him. And they were drawing unwanted attention. Of course. Harry rolled his eyes and cast another Lightening Charm on the basket of purchases over his arm. The first one had worn off in the time it had taken him to be ambushed again and again, and have people talk to him in awed and admiring tones as though he was the lone war hero they imagined.
            “I’m never going to make a run for Minister,” he said, raising his voice so the people who’d been drifting by and pretending not to listen could hear him. “And I’m never going to ask people if they want to follow me and serve me in an army. And I’m never going to be a Dark Lord. I’m ordinary and rather boring, and I would appreciate it if you would all leave me alone.”
            Of course, a moment after that Harry was wondering if he should have spoken so harshly, if he had irritated some people he would need to work with later and if he should speak soft and conciliatory words now. But he was just so finished with the constant attempts to make him into a hero, the only one who mattered. People wouldn’t help the centaurs or the merfolk or the goblins anyway if they only saw his reflection.
            “Surely rumor can’t be wrong.”
            That voice touched such a chord inside him that Harry began to smile before he even consciously recognized who it was. And the crowd pulled back like Muggles rushing away from a downed power cable as Draco sauntered towards him.
            He had a basket over his arm, too. It was white. So was his cloak, and his hood, and his robes. Harry felt his smile change a little, although he didn’t think anyone other than Draco would realize how exasperated it was.
            White didn’t suit Draco. It made him look like he was made of salt and porcelain. But he paraded around in it anyway.
            “Surely not,” Draco went on, stopping in front of Harry and meeting his eyes as solemnly as though they were still enemies. Or almost. But Harry didn’t think anyone else would manage to see past the sneer to the way that Draco’s mouth twisted a little during it, or the narrowed eyes to the exact placement of the wrinkles alongside them. “Surely you’re not an ordinary man standing in the middle of Diagon Alley with your shopping. Surely you’re planning a run on the Ministry next week, and you’ll be declared Supreme Mugwump on the shoulders of the cheering crowds.”
            Glares flew Draco’s way. Harry still wanted to laugh aloud. Draco was drawing all the focus of the crowd as well as the most ridiculous gossip onto himself, and now there would be some people who declared they didn’t believe it because they didn’t want to be associated with the Malfoys’ tainted name.
            Well done. And it’s brave of him.
            “I think it was Minister,” Harry murmured. “Not Supreme Mugwump.”
            “Do excuse me,” Draco said, and bowed a little to Harry, an absurdly graceful motion with one knee tucked beneath him. “Future Minister.”
            “I’m not, I tell you!” Harry yelled, but this time it was a game, and he saw the answering gleam in Draco’s eyes before he shook his head and tapped his hand thoughtfully against his chin. Harry couldn’t help thinking that gesture would have worked better if Draco had had more tastefully manicured nails than he did now, but it was still effective. Angry murmurs started to sound behind them.
            “I’m not sure I believe you,” Draco said. “After all, you won the war and you probably believe that you deserve to be Minister. I can tell it by the way you strut down Diagon Alley.”
            “He does not strut!” the young reporter tried to jump in, but Draco was in full flow now and Harry didn’t think much less than an avalanche could have stopped him.
            “And the way you wear those robes.” Draco eyed Harry’s ordinary robes with an odd expression. Harry couldn’t tell whether it was part of the pretense or just contempt for cloth below the level of silk. “As though you think a Minister can get away without wearing satin and velvet.”
            For the first time ever, someone was shouting defenses that Harry looked fine in ordinary clothes, which was certainly not the opinion of the public most of the time. Harry tried to stand there and look offended, although he knew amusement was probably creeping into his expression no matter how hard he tried to hide it.
            “The way you look.” Draco reached out and flicked a finger against the side of Harry’s hair. “Your grandfather would be ashamed to be seen with you in public, and he had horrid hair…”
            Harry admittedly lost track of Draco’s rant for a second. The flash of lightning that had cut through his blood when Draco touched his hair had left him breathless. But he thought he blinked and came back before anyone could notice his distraction and accuse Draco of Confounding him.
            “…don’t take advantage of your eyes at all. You have these green eyes that other pure-bloods would kill for, and what do you do with them? Hide them behind ratty glasses.” Draco stomped his foot. “It’s as though you exist specifically to get all the pure-bloods who would kill for your looks angry.”
            There was an undercurrent in his voice, and a strangeness in the way he kept his eyes fastened on Harry’s face, that Harry didn’t understand at all—and by now, he’d thought that he knew most of Draco’s expressions. Harry made a mental note to ask Draco about it later, even as he adopted his blandest expression and pushed his glasses up his nose.
            “Maybe I don’t want to be stared at,” he said.
            “Ha!”
            That exclamation was masterful, Harry had to admit. Everyone turned to yelling at Draco about how could he call Harry’s glasses ratty, and in the meantime, Harry was able to fade gently into the background. He watched, meanwhile, the way that Draco fended off accusations with sneers and little flips of his hand, all things that pressed close to the line while not provoking someone into aggression that Draco couldn’t fight off with first-year spells or Harry would have to intervene in.
            But there were questions Harry would have to ask later. Oh, yes.
*
            “You didn’t drop by just to ask how Pansy is doing in her Astronomy study.”
            Draco had known that as soon as he’d received Harry’s very abrupt owl about coming over this morning, but he’d thought Harry would come around to the real purpose of his visit before this. Instead, they’d gone through lunch, tea, and an extra cake that “the house-elves” had thought Harry might like without Harry talking about anything except Pansy and politics, and Draco was tired of it.
            (The house-elves, ha. It was a good thing Harry was so oblivious to some things, because Draco’s mother was not as subtle as she thought she was).
            Harry took off his glasses and rubbed at his eyes for a second. “No,” he admitted. And then he turned and looked at Draco, and Draco braced himself. Harry’s expression was the same one he had used to announce bad news a couple of times, like when he had told Draco that the Wizengamot was lengthening his father’s prison sentence.
            Now, though, all Harry said was, “You need to start wearing different clothes when you go out in public.”
            “Huh?” Draco glanced instinctively down at his robes, which weren’t the white ones he wore in public, but were made of much the same material. They were a delicate combination of blue and green that Draco liked, though. “What’s wrong with these? I mean, them?”
            “These? Nothing.” Harry reached out and toyed for a second with the gold-embroidered cuff of Draco’s sleeve.
            Draco didn’t gasp and huddle back in his chair with the spark that leaped through him at Harry’s touch, but only because he was half-prepared for it. It had happened before, although never with this intensity.
And he had his reward, beyond the touch itself. He saw, because he was watching Harry instead of caught up in his own reactions, the slight flush on Harry’s face and the way his eyes snapped back and forth between Draco’s face and his own fingers. The way he withdrew his hand was a little too casual to be normal.
But Harry did clear his throat and go on as though everything was normal. “These robes are fine. The other ones make you look washed-out, though. I thought you should know.”
“I wear them because white is the color of innocence,” Draco protested, dazedly, telling the truth when he would have concealed it from almost everyone else. “And I need all the help I can get in that department.”
Harry shook his head. “The way that you danced through those people yesterday? I don’t think you do. You have a talent for knowing when you’re annoying them too much.”
Draco sat there and tried to decide whether the compliment pleased or annoyed him, considering what it was conjoined with. Then he took a deep breath and said, “All the fashion advice can’t go one way, you know.”
            “And here was me thinking that you only made those statements about my glasses and hair to irritate the others.”
            Harry was smiling, but he had retreated somewhere behind the smile. Draco knew what that looked like even if he couldn’t tell why.
            And he didn’t care why. He struck out to swim after Harry. “I did. But I meant it when I said that you have nice eyes.” His face was probably on fire. Draco willed himself not to feel the tingling blush in his cheeks and press on. “And you could wear—slightly nicer robes. Not dress robes all the time, but you don’t have to look as if you’re wearing a sack.”
            Harry blinked. “I’m not wearing a sack—”
            “You stand like you do,” Draco interrupted him. He was going to finish this, and then Harry would see that Draco wouldn’t allow everything to flow one way only, and condemn Harry to the duty of taking care of him without getting anything in return. “I think that’s not a matter of what you’re wearing. You just weren’t used to robes when you were a child, and it shows. It’s a way of standing and walking. I could teach you that.”
            Harry cocked his head. His eyes glinted. “You think I’ll be able to learn a brand new way of standing and walking simply by watching you?”
            “Not so much watching.” Draco’s nails were cutting into his palms. He uncurled them, and not just because Harry would feel bad if he saw Draco doing that. “It’s going to take showing, sure. But I might also have to—touch you sometimes to get you stand in the right way. And maybe make sure that you have more comfortable robes.”
            Harry paused. The air between them was buzzing, Draco felt, as though someone had tapped his bones with a Vibration Charm.
Which was impossible, but it was still a good description of what was happening, so Draco ignored the impossibility. He was waiting for Harry to make the next move, and he hoped it was forwards.
Harry cleared his throat a little and looked down. “I suppose that wouldn’t be—objectionable.”
It was forwards. Draco smiled and reached out to take his wrist, turning it back and forth more boldly than he actually felt. “Even ways of gesturing. I could teach you that.”
Harry didn’t bother pausing this time. He simply looked Draco straight in the eye and smiled.
“Yeah,” he breathed. “I’d like that.”
Draco paused to savor the strength of feeling in his throat before he smiled back.
*
starr: Thanks! And Harry would probably agree that the Auror is an arse, but really, he doesn’t want to be an Auror anymore, and that’s a sincere feeling.
SP777: That might be a lot of them, then! My no-dialogue story was quite a while ago.
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Acts of Life