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A Series of Malfoy Events	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 11225 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Sixteen—When They Went to the Leaky Cauldron
            “Oi, Harry! Mind explaining why you’re so l—”
            Harry had never walked in the middle of a spreading cloud of dismay before. Of course he’d seen it behind him, when Draco Apparated in and looked at the Leaky Cauldron’s front door and shuddered profoundly. But most of the time, when he walked into a crowded place like the pub, silence spread around him for a moment, and then roars of his name or good-natured jokes or requests for his autograph. This time, he might have been carrying a whole bunch of rotted meat.
            Ron shoved his chair back from the table. Hermione sat where she was, although it looked as if her eyebrows would fly off her forehead and go all the way up to the ceiling, but Ron aimed his wand. “What is Malfoy doing here?”
            Harry turned around as if he’d forgotten Draco’s existence himself, and then said, “Oh, that’s right. We’re here on a date.”
            He didn’t think there were many people who hadn’t heard that he and Malfoy were dating by now, but that still made several of the spectators reel in their chairs. Draco sank down in his own chair and folded his arms on the table in front of them, as if he needed a cushion for his head. Then he drew back his arms to stare at the elbows of his robe in horror.
            Harry didn’t snicker, because sometimes he had superhuman control. He just didn’t always choose to exercise it. He sat down primly next to Draco and leaned forwards to press his nose against the end of Ron’s wand. Unnerved, Ron drew his wand back and placed it on the table, shaking his head.
            “You didn’t really answer me,” Ron said.
            “Yes, I did. We’re on a date.” Harry noticed that Hermione looked as if she would expire of suppressed laughter in a second, and grinned and winked at her before he turned to Draco. “What would you like to eat?”
            “What has the least grease and dirt?” Draco’s lips barely moved.
            “Of course the great Draco Malfoy would find something wrong with ordinary plebian pub food,” Ron sneered, rolling his eyes.
            “The great Draco Malfoy” was about to faint from horror, rather than puffed up with arrogance, Harry thought. But he also thought that he was the only one at the table who could tell that. “The fish and chips are actually pretty good,” he said gently.
            “Harry! Why are you coddling him?”
            “Because we’re on a date,” Harry explained, and glanced at Draco. “You don’t have to have them. But I think they would be the best choice.”
            Draco took quick, shallow breaths, as if that would mean he’d let in the least amount of air to his lungs, and then turned his head and looked with glazed eyes at Harry. Harry tried not to think about how much he looked like a cat hit by a Muggle car.
            “Whatever you think best,” Draco whispered, and then drew his wand and cast a frantic spell in front of him.
            Ron dodged, bellowing, but Harry only watched, and grinned when a little whirlwind of white and green opened up in front of Draco’s mouth. Draco breathed it in, and then sighed and sat back. Of course, he had to immediately turn his head so that he could check the state of the stool under his arse.
            “What was that, then?” Ron still looked as if he’d have a lightning bolt striking down into the middle of the table any second. Or maybe as if he thought he’d have to raise a Shield Charm to hold back Draco’s lightning bolt.
            “It’s an Air-Freshening Charm,” Harry murmured. “The sort of thing you’d use in a closed-in building or tunnel.”
            “I’ll need another one in a minute,” Draco said. His head lolled. He gave Harry a pitiful look that Harry cheerfully ignored. This wasn’t one-quarter as mad as some of the things Draco had already done. He needed to get used to more sanity and less madness in his daily diet, anyway. “How can you breathe in here?”
            Ron opened his mouth to say something else, but Hermione spoke before he could, and her voice was earnest in a way that Harry knew meant she’d seen the possibilities to screw with Draco. “Oh, well, you see, we’re accustomed to living at lesser heights. We don’t set ourselves up on mountains often.”
            Harry grinned and stood to go get the fish and chips and the butterbeer that were all he was going to drink. He didn’t bother asking about a drink for Draco. It would be butterbeer, because anything else would just make him shudder anyway.
            Draco caught hold of his cloak, making Harry look at him patiently. Draco mouthed, “Don’t leave me here alone with them.”
            Well, no, he didn’t mouth the whole sentence, because Harry wasn’t that good at reading lips. Anyway, it made enough noise to cause Ron to growl indignantly from across the table and Hermione to say, sincerely this time, “What do you think we’re going to do to you, Malfoy?”
            “It’s not anything you can help,” Draco said, turning around and looking at them with a desperate, pale dignity that reminded Harry of a shaved poodle still trying to pretend it had all its fur. “It’s not—it just hovers around you all the time, and it’s no wonder you don’t notice it. It would be like asking fish to notice water,” he concluded, with a little chuckle that he probably meant to sound nobly self-deprecating.
            “What are you talking about?” Ron said.
            Draco leaned near and whispered the word as if he thought they would stuff it down his throat and make him try to eat it if they could actually hear it. “Vulgarity.”
            Harry thought that an excellent time to go get the food and drinks. Tom was staring hard from behind the bar, though, and moved his eyes only slowly back to Harry. “What is he doing here?”
            “We’re on a date,” Harry explained. “Two plates of fish and chips, please. And two mugs of butterbeer.”
            “And he’s going to eat that? And pay for it?” Tom was getting the mugs out, but he kept looking at Draco, even when Harry stepped in his way and he had to lean around Harry to do it. “Did you tell him that I’ve never had a Malfoy gracing my establishment?”
            “No, because I think he knows,” Harry said. “Butterbeer for both of us, right,” he added, because he’d seen Tom starting to reach for the bottle of Firewhisky.
            Tom pulled his hand back and looked Harry in the eye. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” he said, and lowered his voice coaxingly. “Come on. You may have to tell the papers all that nonsense about dating him, after he claimed you were his fiancé, but you can tell me the truth. What are you doing with him?”
            “Dating him,” said Harry serenely.
            Tom flung up his hands. “On your head be it, then,” he said, and paused when he saw the way Harry watched him pour the butterbeer into the mugs. “What?”
            “Butterbeer only in the mugs,” Harry murmured. “No saliva, please.” Then he met Tom’s indignant eyes and smiled. “But the mugs can be as dirty as you like.”
*
            By the time he went back to the table with the food and drinks, Harry had to fight to keep from chuckling. Honestly, he should have tried this before. Dating Draco gave him the ability to torment everyone, not just Draco.
            Ron and Hermione were squeezed together on their side of the table, studying Draco as if they thought he was still a Death Eater. Harry shook his head as he sat down. “He’s still mental, but not that kind of mental,” he assured them.
            Draco turned around to stare at him, face so long that Harry would have liked to spend some time measuring it. “What are you talking about, Potter? I didn’t know you were a Legilimens. Did you read their minds?”
            “Of course not. I just know them well enough to know what they’re thinking,” Harry said, and put his butterbeer and fish and chips in front of him. Draco glared at them as if he could, by the mere power of his eyes, transform them into some dish and drink with French names. Unsympathetically, Harry leaned over to whisper into Draco’s ear, “And I thought you’d agreed my name was Harry.”
            Draco almost swallowed a chip wrong, and turned to glare at Harry. Harry shrugged unrepentantly and leaned back, letting the tip of his tongue linger on Draco’s earlobe for a moment. When Harry turned around, his friends were staring at him, too.
            “What do you think you’re doing?” Hermione whispered. She seemed to have lost her sense of humor about the whole situation.
            Nor did she seem very reassured by the way Harry smiled at her and whispered, “Dating.”
            Hermione’s hand trembled a little, and then she said, “If you say that one more time, Harry Potter, I am going to throw this in your face.” She hefted her own drink, which Harry thought was Firewhisky.
            Harry opened his mouth to respond in good fun, and then realized Draco was on his feet, one arm trembling as he stood with his extended wand pointed right at Hermione.
            “Never threaten him when I’m around,” Draco whispered, swaying a little as he leaned forwards and stared Hermione down. “You don’t want to know what I’ll do to you.”
            There was a moment of thick silence, when Harry thought either Ron or one of the other people staring at their table with their mouths open would intervene. Then Hermione snorted, reached over, and pushed down Draco’s wand.
            “Sit down, Malfoy, you’re drunk.”
            “But he only has butterbeer,” Ron began, in a whisper that would have been audible even in a thunderstorm.
            “I said he’s drunk.” Hermione glared at Ron until he dropped his eyes, then around the whole of the Leaky Cauldron, filled with people who suddenly found urgent things to tend to on the other side of the room or on their own tables. Hermione turned back around. Harry pushed gently on Draco’s shoulder, then not so gently, and finally he sat down again.
            “Making up your own reality seems to be a popular sport around here,” Hermione said, her voice low but vicious. “Harry, you and Malfoy have made up a reality between you where you’re his fiancé and that’s not a pretense, not just for the sake of the case or not embarrassing Malfoy in public, but real—”
            “Not his fiancé,” Harry corrected her gently. “Dating.”
            Hermione’s mug swung up, containing the threatened Firewhisky; Harry shot his wand out and created a small shield; the Firewhisky swished down and splattered on the table. Harry saw Tom shaking his head from the corner of his eye. He grinned and cast a few Drying Charms. At least Tom wouldn’t be able to blame Draco for this particular problem.
            “I did warn you,” said Hermione, while Ron stood up, said something indistinct but distinct enough about this being “too weird for him,” and went to get her another drink.
            “That you did,” said Harry, and nodded at her. He turned to Draco and gently dried his sleeve centimeter by centimeter, pulling it away from his arm to do it. Draco only looked at him with eyes so wide that Harry wasn’t sure he was taking in. “What were you saying?”
            “Making up your own reality is a popular sport,” Hermione repeated grimly. “So I’m going to make up my own, where you know what you’re doing, Harry, and you appreciate that you’ve got, Malfoy. It’ll save me a lot of time worrying about things that I don’t want to concern me that much.”
            “That’s so sweet of you!” Harry gushed at her, and winked when Hermione caught his eye. She looked grim for long enough that Harry thought she was going to take back what she’d said, but then she leaned back and shook her head with some determination.
            “You are not going to get to me,” she said, and turned her back to take her drink from Ron, who was still looking as though he couldn’t even accept the reality of Harry and Draco dating, much less one where they appreciated each other.
            Harry turned to smile at Draco, who was staring at him as if he was the mad one. Harry put his hand beneath his chin. “Tell me what you think of the décor, Draco.”
            “It reminds me of the time I fed my Kneazle most of my sweets when I was three and he threw up all over my room,” Draco snapped at once.
            This wouldn’t be fun if he wasn’t at least a little reluctant to go along with it. Harry nodded gravely. “And the stools represent what? The chewed-up Chocolate Frogs? I think they look a little more like half-digested Cauldron Cakes, myself.”
            Draco stared some more, and then leaned forwards and rested his forehead against the table after all. Harry waited, but he didn’t jerk back with panicked commentary about the mug-rings he was doubtless getting on his skin. Harry blinked, mildly impressed. He was far gone.
            “You’re ridiculous,” Draco whispered. “And the tests that you insist on inflicting on me are ridiculous.”
            “Welcome to my perception of what you’ve put me through in the last few weeks.”
            Draco snapped his neck up so hard that something in it popped, and he immediately groaned and pressed his hand to his nape, arching as he tried to get rid of the ache. Harry nodded sympathetically. “I know. The truth hurts.”
            “Your tests and my tests are nothing alike,” Draco said. “I wasn’t trying to disgust you! I was trying to gift you with the most luxury that I could when you seemed on the verge of rejecting my ring every time I presented it to you.”
            “But you never thought your attitude and your possessiveness and your insistence on not telling the truth would disgust me?”
            “I only lied about the people who originally tried to kill me and about who originally hexed my broom! And you did your share of lying to me.”
            “I already acknowledged that,” Harry said. “I felt awful enough about it that I tried to give you back your ring, remember? But you still seem to think that what you did was the right thing. Is that because you don’t see what I find wrong with it, or because it’s your conduct, so therefore it ought to be excused because it’s you?”
            Draco was facing him on the stool now, and seemed to have forgotten the debate about whether it was more like a Chocolate Frog or more like a Cauldron Cake completely. He whispered, “What are you doing?”
            “Dating you.” Harry smiled at him.
            “I’m sorry that I ever taught you to be this exasperating.”
            Harry had the distinct impression that his friends were looking at them across the table, but since they had already decided not to pay attention to what Harry and Draco did, that wasn’t a problem. Harry mustered a dazzling smile and said, “Now you understand. If you find it so exasperating to be subjected to this treatment, how do you think I felt?”
            Draco looked away from him. “It had nothing to do with you specifically. It was about things I’d wanted long before you entered the picture.”
            “Then it really doesn’t matter whether or not I’m your fiancé. You can take back the ring and just never answer the questions the papers ask.” Harry nodded a little. Part of him was bitter, but a much larger part still wanted to laugh, and it was hard to be bitter when that was the case. “I hope you find what you’re looking for. I won’t be part of it, though.”
            Draco drew in a sharp, hurt breath. Well, Harry would have thought it was hurt if it was coming from anyone else. The problem with Draco was that he could never really be sure. Harry leaned back on his stool—it was more like a Cauldron Cake—and studied Draco carefully.
            Draco took some time to sit there with his eyes shut. Then he said, “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”
            “How did you mean it?”
            Harry knew, because he was precisely controlling his voice, that he didn’t sound mean or angry or impatient, but Draco still gave him an ugly look before he muttered, “I meant—I meant that I would have treated anyone I thought worthy of being my fiancé the same way. But there’s not anyone else who’s worthy of being my fiancé. There’s only you.”
            Harry reached out and slid his hand gently around Draco’s, grasping his fingers. “Good boy,” he whispered. “So it does matter to you which one of your lovers wins that battle, after all.”
            “It never used to,” Draco said. “They were all the same to me, never what I needed.”
            Harry shrugged a little. “If I’m not what you need, you can tell me to leave. But I’m going to reserve the same right when it comes to you.”
            Draco sat there looking…neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, actually, Harry thought. Merely as if he had never thought that someone would have that much power over him. He caught Harry’s eye and nodded once.
            “And it’s Chocolate Frogs,” he said.
            Harry kissed his fingers and smiled at him in silence. It seemed that he was, indeed, dating Draco Malfoy.
*
Severus1snape: Not so much that (although if Draco had backed out it would have told Harry he didn’t want to date him), as to get back at him.
SP777: Yes, that’s pretty much the way Draco feels now. ;)
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A Series of Malfoy Events