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The House That Lovers Built	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 14853 -:- Recommendations : 4 -:- Currently Reading : 2
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Chapter Thirteen--When We Have Faces

            "Okay. Explain this to me."

            Harry scratched the back of his neck and shifted awkwardly around on the couch. He was glad, now, in a way he had never thought he would be, that Ron had guessed he and Draco had shagged before Harry could really say anything. That was embarrassing, but Hermione's cool, relentless stare was worse.

            "All right," he said finally, and leaned forwards to pick up the cup of tea she'd placed on the table. "But I don't know that it'll make any sense."

            "There's a surprise," Hermione told the world. She leaned back on her own couch, one leg drawn up and the other foot dangling on the floor. She hadn't moved it since Harry began the awkward dance around the truth that he had taken up most of the afternoon with, but now it swayed back and forth.

            Direct. You have to be direct.

            Harry nodded. It was the only way to get anything done, the only way to tell anything true, whether the person he was talking with was Draco or Hermione. (He did pause for a moment to wonder how they would feel about being compared like that).

            "All right," he said, and Hermione gave him a raised eyebrow to let him know that she didn't appreciate the repetition of what he had just said. But Harry had said it to reassure himself, more than to do the same for her, and he had at least started a road that he could walk down now. "The house seemed impossible to escape on our own. We tried meditating to bring our minds close together, and then Draco said he could brew a potion to help us escape, but neither worked immediately."

            Hermione frowned. "How did you get from trying meditation to fucking?"

            Harry winced. He still wasn't used to the new Hermione who would say things like that. Then again, he reckoned that years of struggling for house-elf rights with an unyielding Ministry changed a person.

            "The house started pushing us together," he said. "It made the bed smaller until we were sleeping on top of each other. We couldn't eat unless we were both in the kitchen at the same time, and that progressed to us having to feed each other with forks and holding hands to open the cupboard, and then us eating from each other's hands. We didn't have hot water in the shower unless we washed each other. We couldn't even use the bloody potions lab unless we were both in there and using the ingredients."

            One of the nice things about the person Hermione had become in the last few years was that she didn't scold him for language anymore. She just nodded. "All right, but that doesn't explain how you got there." She gave him a searching look. "Ron and I had just about decided that you needed a Mind-Healer."

            "For my virginity?" Harry snorted. "Perfectly normal Muggles make the choice not to have sex all the time, Hermione. Even some wizards."

            "They do that when they've been through trauma, or had their hearts broken." Hermione laced her fingers around her upraised knee and sipped from her own cup. "I know Ginny didn't leave you heartbroken. So I was trying to figure out whether something was wrong."

            "Nothing was," Harry snapped, then took a deep breath. The truth. "I told Draco--well, I told him the truth. I wanted someone who would love me for the person I was, and I was only running into fame-seekers. That wasn't something I could deal with. I finally gave up and just stopped seeking out sexual partners."

            Hermione watched him, eyes very wide. Then she nodded. "Good on you for knowing what you wanted."

            Harry relaxed against the couch so much it felt like he was melting. Sometimes he thought Hermione's approval shouldn't matter so much to him, but then, he had thought the same thing about Draco's approval. The fact was that he valued both of them, and wanted both of them to be happy with him, and that was it.

            "But I'm not sure that you'll get what you want out of Malfoy," Hermione went on thoughtfully, lacing both arms together around her knees now and almost knocking the teacup out of her hand. Harry hid his grin as she set it back on the table and cast a Cleaning Charm on the couch. "Does he know the real you? You told me that he didn't."

            "I think he's closer to it now," Harry said, although he shook his head when he thought of the glazed stare Draco had given him sometimes during their conversation. "He didn't understand how I could get along without sex for so long."

            "Because some people think of sex as more than mere pleasure?" Hermione shook her head. "I don't know, Harry. I won't discourage you from dating him, but I don't know that it's going to work out."

            "Neither do I." Harry grinned at her expression. "I mean it, Hermione. I don't. And that's what irritates him so much. He wants this extended commitment, and I don't know if I can give him that yet. I told him we just had to go along from day to day and see if we felt comfortable with each other."

            "That sounds sensible," Hermione said, and gave him a searching glance.

            Harry stuck his tongue out at her. "And when did I become so sensible? That house forced me to think about what I want, at least, and what I didn't want."

            Hermione sat up, and drew in a deep breath. "Harry...Ron won't ask you this. He wouldn't think to, probably. But I have to. Did Malfoy rape you?"

            Harry thought about it, because he knew only thinking would satisfy Hermione. Her face grew more and more strained the longer he was quiet, though, so finally Harry spoke. The truth, again. He seemed to be doing that a lot more often lately than his Auror career would encourage him to.

            "No," Harry said quietly. "The house gave us a limited choice about what to do, but it never intervened when we were fighting or arguing, except at the very last." He saw Hermione's hand twitch as if she wanted a quill at that last bit, but he didn't stop. "I could have thrown him off. Maybe not left the room until it was settled, maybe not had a comfortable sleep, but I could have resisted."

            "But he was the one who suggested sex." Hermione frowned.

            "Yes," Harry admitted. "But again, I was curious to see what it was like, and I kept going with it because it felt so good. I still don't know how much of that was real, though. I probably wouldn't have if there was someone else in the house with us, or if I thought there was a different way to escape. Escape was always my priority. I did it to give us a greater chance."

            "Your emotions now?" Hermione leaned forwards and peered at him.

            She was the only one who could have asked that without irritating Harry enough to retreat. He snorted, though. "How can I explain what I don't understand myself? I like him, sometimes. I think he's an idiot for apparently falling in love with me. I really like--sleeping with him." He cleared his throat and buried his flaming face in his teacup for a second. "I don't know how everything will work out. I think he's strange."

            "Not the best foundation for a lasting relationship." Hermione shook her head wisely.

            "Neither is sending canaries to attack someone, but look at you and Ron."

            Hermione turned bright red. Harry, he knew, was also the only one who could get away with pushing that far with her; she and Ron had apparently made some sort of pact to never discuss that part of their lives. Harry drank more tea, and grinned at her.

            "Just--be careful," Hermione finally said, shaking her head as though she was trying to see to the end of the road Harry was walking, and couldn't. "I don't know why I tell you that, since you never are, but--"

            "This time, I have to be," Harry interrupted. "Because there's so much in the house that could have been real, and seems like it was real to Malfoy, but doesn't look that way now that we're outside it. I don't want to mess up this time. I want something real, and it looks like he might give it to me. But I can give it up if he doesn't."

            Are you sure about that? asked his memories of the house, his sense-memory of the taste of Draco's skin and his lips and the way he had rolled Harry beneath him with his eyes glowing with passion.

            Harry nodded in response to the question. Because I would rather abandon something unreal than continue fooling myself. I've had enough lies in my lifetime.

*

            "So, what lies did your friends tell you about me?"

            Harry kept his back turned, his wand waving as he fried the bread on a flame, turning it gently over and over in the air. He had invited Draco to his house for dinner, but he had to admit that this might not work out. He kept his voice mild, too, though. "Nothing. Hermione wanted to know if you raped me, and she warned me that it might not work out, but I knew that already."

            "They are insulting me."

            Harry finished the bread with a little flourish of his wand, and sent it to a plate, but turned around, shaking his head. "You don't know them well. They don't know you well. At the moment, they're perfectly willing to let me date you. They aren't calling you a sneaky Slytherin or a horrible person. They're worried about me. I would be worried about one of them, too, if they were trapped in a house for a week with someone and came out talking about the things that had happened to them there. If those things were like what we endured."

            "Endured." Draco hadn't taken his cloak off yet. He looked down, running his fingers over the table. Harry wondered if he admired the wood, which was very different from the wood of the table the potion-house had had. "It wasn't endurance for me. It was the best time of my life, a time when I had your attention."

            Harry sighed and moved around the table towards him. "You're more than this," he said softly.

            Draco's eyes were as flat as Harry could have wished when he looked up again. "Excuse me?"

            "You're more than your pathetic longing for me," Harry said, and watched Draco flinch as if he'd been stung. "You haven't stalked me for years. You haven't followed me. You haven't pined after me and done nothing else with your life. Your life was normal for you until you got trapped in the house with me. Why? What made it so different for you than it was for me?"

            Draco closed his eyes and took a noisy breath through his nose. Harry waited.

            Finally, Draco said, "Imagine that you want something, the way I told you I wanted your friendship. There's no reason to think you'll get it, and you put it aside and don't think about it much. But suddenly you're in a situation where you get that, and more. And then the situation ends. Would you recover so quickly, once you were outside it? I don't think so."

            "What you want now is different than what you wanted from me before you went into the house."

            Draco opened his eyes and nodded. His face was miserable, but clear. "I was fine when I thought there was no way to get what I wanted. You were a wank fantasy, or a friendship fantasy, the same way I dreamed about Potions masters everywhere acknowledging me for the brilliance of my creations. You don't really get disappointed when a dream like that doesn't come true. But then it did. And now I realize that for you, it was a nightmare."

            Harry wanted to sigh again. He settled for shaking his head and saying, "If it was, I would have cut off all contact with you after we got out of the house. Instead, I find myself wanting to remain close to you in some ways. And I still want to know why the house simply fell apart like that, after all our attempts to escape it in different ways."

            Draco hesitated, grimaced, then said, "I can tell you my interpretation. I don't know if you'll agree with it."

            "I don't know anything about it right now. I'm as likely to agree with you as not."

            Draco gave him the sour look he had used when Harry wouldn't commit to saying they would stay together forever, either, and summoned a glass of pumpkin juice Harry had poured for himself earlier and then forgotten about. He poured the glass down his throat in one easy motion. Harry stifled the irritation--it wasn't as if he was going to drink it--and settled back against the counter, waiting.

            "I think the house wanted us to be lovers," Draco said, staring into the glass. "Or maybe assumed we were, as much as a magical building like that can assume anything. It tried to push us together, reconcile us if we were quarreling."

            "We never did see what it would do if we had intended to hex each other with major curses."

            "That's true." Draco rubbed his forehead. "I think--I think the house realized that it couldn't give us a lovers' relationship by keeping us trapped together any longer. Or else it sensed your uneasiness, and realized that sleeping together and eating from each other's hands wouldn't solve it. It let us go so that we could find something real, to use your word, outside its walls." He darted a hard glance at Harry. "So, if I'm right, you caused the walls to evaporate with nothing more than the force of your will."

            Harry faced the silent accusation, and shrugged it away. He had thought the house more amenable to Draco's wishes, but he hadn't spent a lot of time accusing him of it, so he was inclined to dismiss that now. "That's interesting. And I think you might be right. It happened right after you struck me, too, and neither of us had done anything like that before."

            Draco took another long gulp of pumpkin juice. "I'm sorry."

            Harry blinked. He had to throw his mind in a whole new direction every few minutes with Draco, it seemed. "For slapping me?"

            "Yes." Draco's hands were grinding into each other around the glass. "I thought--I don't know what I thought, anymore. I was just so worried that my dream was going to end and I'd have to wake up. That you'd laugh. That you wouldn't care."

            "Once I have sex with someone, I'm going to care," Harry said, and reached out to take his hand. "I just can't promise that I'll always care the way you need me to."

            Draco's hand gripped his for a minute. Then he stepped back and said, "I'll have to live with that, won't I?"

            Harry studied him. Draco didn't look at him right now; in fact, most of his attention seemed focused on a corner of the kitchen floor where it met the cabinets and there was a stain from tea that Harry had never cleaned up. Harry wondered if he should warn Draco about his housekeeping skills when they were in a building that didn't have the ability to do everything for them, but it seemed useless when Draco would find that out for himself in a little while anyway.

            So I can see us staying together for the length of this dinner, at least. I suppose I can find that reassuring.

            Finally, in as low a voice as if he had forgotten his audience and was talking to himself, Draco said, "I think--I think I can do this. I had the dream. I didn't have to resign it the minute we came out of the house. That was more than I expected, and if I refuse to accept anything less than you've already given me, then I stand the chance of never having it again." He looked up at Harry with fierce eyes. "I'll be happy to accept this."

            Harry didn't really like that note about less, but Draco had finally explained where he was coming from in a way that made sense, and so he nodded. "All right. If you understand why I don't want to share a bed or eat from your hand any time soon, then we're even."

            Draco half-smiled. "I'm not going to be invited to stay overnight, then? Damn."

            Harry blinked a little more and turned back to face the meal he was fixing, a thick salad and some buttered fish and the toasted bread. He wasn't deliberately trying to make food that would remind Draco of the house, but the house had taught him that Draco liked at least the bread and the salad. "I didn't know if you would want to. This house isn't as protected as the cottage you showed me."

            "I go there to make experimental potions, not to eat ordinary meals. The wards are more to protect against the consequences of something exploding than anything else."

            Hearing the desert dryness of Draco's voice, Harry glanced back at him with his eyebrows raised. "Did I say something to offend you?"

            Draco stared at him for a second, then sighed and collapsed against the table. "And I did it again," he muttered to himself, rubbing at his forehead with a hand. "No, Harry." Harry had to admit that he softened a little when Draco said his name, especially because it didn't sound like any of the ways he had pronounced it in the house. "I just meant--I just thought you were calling me paranoid. I'm sorry. We're going to have to say that around each other a lot, aren't we?"

            "At least at first," Harry said, and poured a glass of water for himself. Draco seemed content with his pumpkin juice right now. "And I want you to meet my friends. That'll be harder."

            "I've met them, thanks." Draco took a seat on the other side of the table with his glass clutched in front of him like a shield. Harry ignored that and held his hand out for Draco's plate until Draco reluctantly handed it over, then ladled it full of salad and two hefty pieces of bread. He didn't miss the way Draco's eyes brightened, even though Draco was looking more at him than the food.

            "I mean in close quarters." Harry handed the plate back and sat down to his own. "Where you can talk to them and they can talk to you, and you can stop thinking they're attack dogs and they can stop thinking you're a rapist."

            "We didn't do anything that you didn't want to do." Draco's face was mottled with annoyance. It was only when Harry picked up his own fork and started eating that Draco followed suit.

            "Hermione is afraid that the house would have stopped any attempt I made to throw you off," Harry said, and shrugged, then ate a tomato slice and at least three pieces of lettuce before he said anything else. "Since I didn't try, we can't know that for certain. But she is concerned about me since I didn't have a regular lover before. Thinks I may have gone off the deep end with lust."

            "She thinks that even knowing our history?"

            "Well, you have to admit that the house was an intense situation." Harry sipped some water. The conversation itself, not to mention the tension he was fighting down in his fingers and wrists, made him want to stalk from the room. But he sat there, and he didn't. "She doesn't think we'll last out here."

            "What business is it of hers?"

            "Because she's my friend," Harry snapped, feeling his hold over his temper fray at last. "Because she's going to be involved in my life for as long as I live, and so will Ron. If you want to be involved in it, then you're going to hear what she thinks. It doesn't matter if you value it or not. I'll still talk about her, and about him, and about what we do together."

            Draco stared at him with flat eyes. Harry concealed a sigh. And here they were again, right back to fighting, right after they had made a little peace.

            Still, maybe that's a good thing. The house never really allowed us to fight the way we needed to. This is real.

            Draco played with his salad fork until Harry wanted to take it away from him and stick him in the eye with it. Then he said, "What happens if they tell me that I'm a liar to my face? If they never give up this stupid idea that I raped you?"

            Harry took a drink before he answered. "Then I tell them not to say anything like that again, and that I don't want to hear it. They'll respect that, Draco, really. Ultimately, they care more about not hurting me than about expressing their opinions of you."

            "You know that?"

            "Yes, I do. These people are my bloody friends." Harry laid his glass down again and held Draco's eyes. "You don't know them. They don't know you. Fine. But I want to get myself out of this uncomfortable position of being the only one who knows everyone, because my reassurances don't mean anything to either of you without your own knowledge. So we have a fucking dinner together, and you be as polite as you can, and if they aren't polite, well, you have the satisfaction of knowing that you've proved me wrong."

            Draco ducked his head and pressed his hands over his eyes. "I'm sorry," he whispered, which made Harry stare at him. "I just--I'm still so jealous of them."

            "Neither one of them ever wanted to fuck me." Harry was sure Ron or Hermione had wondered, just like he had wondered about them and some other people he'd known. But that wasn't the same thing as the intense, desperate desire that Draco had.

            And maybe that I have. It was true he couldn't stop thinking about the house, whatever he thought of Malfoy now.

            "It's not even that I'm jealous of." Harry stared at him, and Draco flushed. "All right, a little. But I do think that I'm mostly jealous of them because you like them so much. If I'm going to agree to this, it would help to know you like me enough not to automatically side with them."

            Harry's first impulse was to say that he would side with Draco more often if he would stop saying such stupid shit, but he suppressed it. Draco looked as tense and miserable as he had when he'd admitted that being with Harry was a sort of unattainable dream.

            Harry nodded jerkily. "Fine. I like you enough to invite you to dinner, both with me and with them, and I can't stop thinking of the house. And you. I want--I don't want this to just collapse, and I can't ignore it. Is that enough for you?"

            Draco lowered his hands. "So that does mean that--you don't usually invite people to dinner just with you."

            "Just my friends." Harry toyed with his water glass, and waited.

            Draco took a look around the kitchen as though to reassure himself no one else was there. Then he looked at Harry, nodded once, and picked up his fork.

            Harry sighed. "Thank you." He reached across the table and gave a fleeting caress to Draco's hand, ignoring the way he flushed. It wasn't the right evening to either tease him about it or take advantage of it.

            Now there was only the ordeal of telling Ron and Hermione about the dinner to get through.

*

            delia cerrano: Draco may have changed in relation to Harry, but Harry doesn't think he's changed at all in relation to Ron and Hermione.

            SP777: Well, dinner at Harry's house may or may not be counted as a "date," but it was appropriately stressful and potentially humiliating, anyway!

            Diana: Here you are.

            Katlin Malfoy: Draco is still unhappy that their ending up together might not be permanent, but yes, he is moving closer to the place where Harry probably needs him to be.

            CareLessLover: Harry is not yet certain it's love.

            unneeded: Arguably Draco hasn't ever seen Harry relaxed yet. Harry isn't very much, not around him, when they fight all the time.
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The House That Lovers Built