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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
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

Chapter List
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Thank you again for all the reviews! This is the last chapter of The House That Lovers Built. Thanks for coming this far with me.

Chapter Eighteen—Keeping the Watch

            “Shit!”

            Harry woke so suddenly that he almost rolled out of bed groping for his wand before he realized Draco had said that and not him. He sat up, blinking, and turned his head. His wand was in his hand now, and he used the Lumos to illuminate the bedroom. Draco was pale and clutching at his left arm.

            “What is it?” Harry asked, dismissing the immediate fear that something could have happened to the Dark Mark. He would have felt pain in his scar, then, too. He had plenty of nightmares about Voldemort returning, but he always told himself they were ridiculous without pain in his scar.

            “Someone broke into my lab.” Draco winced and touched his arm again. “There are wards there that require a physical link to the caster. I linked them to my Mark, because it seemed like a reasonable extrapolation…”

            “I don’t find anything reasonable that hurts you,” Harry said flatly, and took Draco’s arm, ignoring the way Draco stared at him as if he was a revelation. Yes, well, he did care about Draco, and Draco would have to deal with that sooner or later. He turned Draco’s arm over, and saw the Mark just fading from a bright red glow. “Do you think that whoever set the wards off knows you’re alerted?”

            “No,” Draco said, and rolled out of bed to begin dressing. “The other advantage of wards like this is that no one can sense them who isn’t the caster or has some other kind of link to them. My lab would have appeared unguarded to someone who managed to get past the wards on the outside of the house.”

            He paused to look over his shoulder at Harry. “And you know as well as I do that there are very few groups of people who could break through the wards in the first place.”

            Aurors. He didn’t have to speak the name, which meant Harry didn’t, either. He nodded and stood up, reaching for his own robes. “Let me get dressed. Then I’m coming with you to see what’s happening.”

            Draco paused again. When Harry looked at him, he still had his shirt in his hands and what looked like no intention of putting it on. “If it’s Aurors, and they decided to break into my lab after years of ignoring me,” Draco said, voice low, “then you know that it could look very bad for you if you go with me.”

            Harry gave him a hard smile. “It’ll be all right. I know all sorts of things about Auror procedure that you don’t.”

            Draco still hesitated, but put on the shirt when Harry scowled at him. “If you’re sure,” he said.

            “I’m sure,” Harry said, sweeping past him towards the door. “And don’t go out there half-naked. I don’t want anyone else seeing what’s mine.”

            He could feel Draco’s gratification heating the air behind him. Harry smiled as he held open the door. That was why he’d said it.

*

            Draco’s house, or at least the house that held this particular lab—after the cottage Draco had brought him to the first time they talked, Harry wasn’t foolish enough to think that this was the only lab Draco had—looked like an ordinary cottage from the outside. Harry touched Draco’s arm as they came out of the Apparition beyond the garden wall and held him there, while his wand flicked back and forth.

            He smiled at what he found. “It looks like Auror Vickerson’s work,” he said aloud. “Which means there are other people with him. Vickerson is a stickler for rules. If he’s on an investigation, then it’ll look good when they make the report, since they’re under the protection of his reputation.”

            “But they didn’t have any reason to suspect me,” Draco muttered as he opened the gate. “Or, at least, no more reason than they’ve had the last four years, when they didn’t raid.”

            Harry shot him a smile over his shoulder as he stepped in to go first. Aurors occupied with a search or not, Harry didn’t want them seeing Draco before they saw Harry. “Yes, well. I doubt they thought it all the way through.”

            Behind him came a thoughtful silence, and then a chuckle. Draco had worked out how Harry intended to challenge the Aurors on the raid, then.

            Content that it should be so, Harry made his way to the door and knocked. It was his best Auror knock, officious and presuming that he had the right to come in whether or not the person who owned the house agreed. He could only imagine what it would be like to hear it from the other side.

            There was a long, disconcerted silence from inside the house, which only then told Harry about the rustling and searching he’d been hearing. Then he heard footsteps, soft and creeping. Harry motioned Draco behind his shoulder, and held his wand ready. He didn’t think he’d have to use it, since the sight of him would startle whoever this was, but it was always a good thing to have it ready.

            Sure enough, the Auror who opened the door gaped at Harry and didn’t even appear to notice Draco hovering behind him. “Au—Auror Potter,” he said, and swallowed.

            “Good evening, Auror Donnic,” Harry said gravely. He recognized the man as someone who’d just stopped being a trainee last year. That would make this easier, since the older Aurors sometimes resented Harry for not being someone they could intimidate. But with someone this young, the intimidation flowed the other way. “Would you mind letting us in?” This time, he permitted the gesture to include Draco, to draw Donnic’s eyes.

            Donnic licked his lips. Then he turned and bawled into the depths of the house, “Auror Vickerson!”

            It didn’t take long for Vickerson to approach the door. He’d been an Auror for over twenty years, but he still maintained enough speed and skill for the field; otherwise, he would have been made to retire years ago. He had long grey hair, an even longer grey beard, and a proud, calm face that Harry had to respect. No one was going to embroil Vickerson in politics, at least not without his consent.

            “Auror Potter,” he said, and looked at Draco without much surprise. “Mr. Malfoy. How can I help you?”

            “I did wonder,” Harry said confidentially, leaning forwards in a way that could be seen as shutting out Auror Donnic and the others who were coming up behind him, “if you had permission granted by the Head Auror or the Wizengamot to raid here?”

            Donnic turned pale. But Vickerson couldn’t see him, which meant he was focused on Harry, and frowning slightly. “Of course we did,” he said. “We received reports that Mr. Malfoy had been brewing Dark potions, and we did find ingredients here that could not have come from any reputable apothecary.”

            Harry practically felt Draco draw in the breath that he would use to say something about apothecaries. He used one elbow to nudge backwards, and Draco coughed and lost that breath.

            “I just wondered,” Harry said, with all the politeness he didn’t bother to use most of the time. “Since it was the middle of the night, and I know the Head Auror resents being awakened for things like this. But it would take less time to reach him than it would to go through the Wizengamot.”

            Vickerson held out a hand behind his back without taking his eyes off Harry. “The grant of permission, please, Auror Donnic,” he said.

            “Uh,” said Auror Donnic.

            Vickerson turned his head by slow degrees. It was like watching a mountain wake up and regard you, Harry thought, and the old bastard did it entirely for effect. He could move faster than that when he had to. “Well?” Vickerson asked. “Did you misplace it?” His voice had gone soft, in the way that the first rumblings of an avalanche were sometimes soft.

            “I—we don’t have one,” Auror Donnic said. “Or, I mean, Auror Pulhaft probably has it.” He broke and fled further into the house, shouting for Pulhaft. Harry nodded a little. He ought to have known that the man most people called Pustule was leading this raid.

            Vickerson turned back to Harry. “If we do not have permission, then we committed an illegal act by breaking your wards, Mr. Malfoy,” he told Draco gravely. “I’m sorry. I would never have presided over something like this if I had known that they did not have the document that made it legal.”

            Draco inclined his head a little. Harry had been worried that he would take the opportunity to blow up, but he had some diplomacy after all. “Don’t worry about it. I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding.”

            “Would that I could be as sure,” Vickerson said, and faced Pulhaft as he came out of the back of the house. “Well? Where is it? And who signed it?”

            Pulhaft had a whining voice, and a cowering nature, and he looked at Harry and Draco over Vickerson’s shoulder now with so much hatred that Harry felt Draco step backwards. Harry didn’t. He simply smiled, and Pulhaft had to sniff and face Vickerson. “What are you talking about, sir?”

            Someone much stupider than Vickerson could have read that as the delaying tactic it was. “Give me the signed permission,” he said, and held out his hand, palm up, as though he was receiving someone’s wand.

            Pulhaft shook his head a little. “I don’t exactly know who has it, sir. You know how eager we were to get here, because we were afraid that Malfoy would flee with his ingredients—”

            “Mr. Malfoy wasn’t here when we showed up,” Vickerson said. “You know I suggested that as among the reasons that we could calm our haste and make a careful inventory of the ingredients here.” His hand remained outstretched. “Someone would have had to put it in a pocket or perhaps down on a table somewhere in the house. Go and find it.”

            Pulhaft stood there for a second, and Harry wondered if he would turn to go and search, pretending as long as he could that they had some sort of official sanction to be here. But then his head went up and his thin little moustache twitched.

            “We didn’t have permission, sir.”

            Vickerson looked older without moving a muscle, other than the hand he dropped to his side. “So we invaded a private citizen’s house illegally,” he said, “and dismantled wards that were there to protect him from enemies.” He turned towards Draco, and Draco made a little choking sound at the amount of tragic solemnity in Vickerson’s face. Harry hoped that he didn’t outright start laughing. “I am sorry, Mr. Malfoy. Something went wrong somewhere along the way, and it is something I should never have allowed.”

            “Perhaps,” Draco said, “if you leave and make sure that anything disturbed is restored to its original place, we can forget about it?”

            Harry reached back and pressed Draco’s arm. He didn’t want this forgotten, he wanted to see someone pay—

            But luckily, Vickerson was already shaking his head. “It never can be,” he said seriously, “unless we want to revert to what Aurors were during the first war with You-Know-Who. Given permission to use the Unforgivables, and unforgivable ourselves to anyone we suspected of being an enemy. I lived through those times, and nearly lost my soul. I don’t want to see what will happen to me if they come around again. I would retire first.”

            Draco at least knew how to accept a tribute like that with grace. He inclined his head. “Then do whatever you wish, sir. I’ll spend the rest of the night with Auror Potter, so I won’t be in your way.”

            Vickerson turned earnestly to Harry then. “He was with you? You can tell us for sure that he was not here immediately prior, removing anything else? The permission, perhaps?”

            Harry nodded, almost respectfully. Vickerson would try to exonerate the Aurors who had tricked him to the last, of course, because that was the kind of Auror he was, and the kind of Auror he thought the others were. “He was in my house, in my bed, sir. There’s no way he could have moved to come here without waking me up.”

            Unlike what Harry had thought might be the result of those words—Vickerson flinching or turning away from him—he simply shut his eyes and nodded, with a heavy sigh. “Then this was the result of a lie, and I owe an explanation to many people, my superiors not least of all,” he said, and bowed to Draco. “Our pardons, Mr. Malfoy. We will remove ourselves as fast as we can.”

            “How can you say that?” Pulhaft leaned forwards and looked poised on the edges of his toes. “When you know he’s a Dark wizard, when we found those illegal ingredients in his lab—”

            “We didn’t find anything sufficiently Dark to warrant breaking in without permission,” Vickerson interrupted. “If we had found Mr. Malfoy in the process of casting Dark spells on someone else in public, or forcing someone to drink a potion, then yes, we would have grounds for arresting him. As it is, we don’t.”

            Pulhaft simply gaped at him. Harry snorted. What kind of man had Pulhaft and the others thought they were bringing along? Vickerson really was as good and pure an Auror as people only thought Harry was. And he wouldn’t forgive someone deceiving him and committing abuses in his name.

            Pulhaft tried one more time. “But, sir, you know that he was a Death Eater—”

            “And exonerated,” Vickerson interrupted. “If we keep suspecting someone who was once exonerated, without proof, than our justice system means noting. We might as well lock up anyone we like and call it the end.”

            From Pulhaft’s stare, he didn’t see anything wrong with that, but Harry was already sure that Vickerson would make him think otherwise, and very soon. He half-bowed to Vickerson’s back and said, “We’ll go, sir.”

            “Very good,” Vickerson said, and then began his speech to Pulhaft. “Without the protections that we afford criminals, without the rules that we have in order to ensure they’re treated right, we’re no better than vigilantes—”

            Harry got Draco quietly out of the garden, and leaned for a second against the gate, shutting his eyes. Then he shook his head and stood up. He wouldn’t laugh, not this close to Vickerson, where he could interpret what Harry was doing as disrespect. They owed him too much for that.

            “Will you tell me what’s so funny?” Draco demanded in a whisper close to his ear.

            “Not here,” Harry said, and put an arm around his shoulders, and moved him far enough away that the remnants of the wards wouldn’t disturb them. They vanished, and landed in front of Harry’s house. Harry shut the gate behind them, and then the door, and only then collapsed against the fireplace and laughed, and laughed, and laughed.

            “You’re going to tell me what’s funny right the fuck now.”

            Harry eyed Draco’s raised wand, and conceded the threat. “All right,” he said, and wiped his streaming eyes. “Vickerson is going to ruin them. For lying to him, for dragging him along on an expedition that could have made Aurors look bad, for implying that you’re still a criminal, for threatening me, and for trying to make him take a side in Department politics, which he never does. That’s the end of their careers, basically. And they thought they were so smart. And I think I saw most of the Aurors there who were watching the other day when I talked to Iverson. So that’s it, Draco. We’re safe from a lot of interference on that angle.”

            Draco gaped at him, then slowly lowered his wand. “But what happens if I continue to brew illegal potions?”

            Harry met his eyes. “They’ll find a way to take you to prison eventually. Especially because now they hate you for corrupting their little hero.”

            Draco nodded. “Then the only thing to do is give up brewing Dark potions.”

            Harry reached for him, but although Draco caught his hand and pressed it, he was actually smiling. “I’m looking forward to it,” he added. “I have something else in my life that gives me power and recognition, now. I don’t need to keep doing this line of work—more dangerous than I thought, and with fewer rewards—just for my self-respect anymore. I have you.” He looked at Harry, and his eyes burned.

            Harry restrained the immediate temptation to ask what would happen if he and Draco broke up. What would happen to him, come to that? He would probably be fucked up for a good long while, and he wouldn’t want to date someone else right away, or for that long while.

            He nodded. “If you really want to. I don’t want you to feel like those Aurors pushed you into doing anything.”

            Draco shook his head. “I know Vickerson’s type. If I hadn’t felt those wards break, then they would have found something in my lab Dark enough to turn him against me. And you would always be in danger from my reputation and my activities. I don’t want you to get in trouble. I’m stopping.”

            Harry tried, but he couldn’t contain the smile that flooded his face, or the relaxation that did the same thing to his body.

            Draco stared, then leaned in towards him and said, “You thought I wouldn’t stop? You thought I would put my potions above you, and keep doing Dark things even though they could put—you idiot.” He kissed Harry softly on the mouth.

            “I thought you might not want to, and that’s sometimes the same as not doing it,” Harry said, and put his hands in Draco’s hair. “And it’s—I don’t know how to say this without sounding condescending, but you’ve had more than enough taken away from you. I thought taking this away, too, would be more than horrible.”

            “If I choose to give it up on my own, and I was already close to that, then there’s nothing you should worry about,” Draco said firmly, pulling away from him and beaming at him with his hands on Harry’s shoulders. “Really, Harry, nothing. Thank you for standing up for me. Thank you for knowing how to handle Vickerson and the rest of them. Thanks for being an Auror. Thanks for being with me.”

            He punctuated that speech with another soft kiss to the side of Harry’s mouth, and Harry flung his arms around him, and the kiss turned into something more interesting even than the conversation had been.

*

            “I know that Vickerson and a bunch of other Aurors went out on a raid last night.”

            “And they returned without a suspect or even any of the material that they went to find, right?” Harry didn’t look up from the report he was reading.

            Ron leaned on his desk, and waited until Harry reluctantly took his eyes off the report and looked up at him. “Harry.” Ron’s voice was gentle, but he was shaking his head. “You don’t care for rules like the one that the rumors say you used to defeat Vickerson. Don’t you think that makes you a hypocrite, to use it now to save Malfoy?”

            “I used a rule we’re supposed to obey,” Harry said. “And Draco has said that he’s going to stop brewing illegal potions and become a different kind of Potions master. It’s his decision. It was mine. Maybe we could both do with obeying the rules a bit more.”

            Ron took his seat and looked him over carefully. Then he shook his head. “If you’re in love, you’ve got the oddest way of showing it.”

            Harry smiled at him and cocked his head. “But why should that matter? I’m not in love with Draco the way I was in love with Ginny—if I was.” The more he thought back on it, the less he was sure what he had really felt for Ginny, and the better he thought it was that they’d both broken up, to go on to other people. “I’m not in love with him the way you’re in love with Hermione. But that’s what matters. That’s what makes the word spin, as Hermione would say. That we’re different from each other and go on loving anyway.”

            Ron’s smile was long in coming, but easy and warm when it did. He reached across the desk this time to squeeze Harry’s hand. “As long as you’re ready to obey the rules, and stand the consequences of not doing it.”

            Harry squeezed back. “Now, what do you think about this case? It looks like it’s connected to the one Winthrop and Daffodil buggered up, which means it’s on us to make sure that we handle it the right way.”

            Ron snorted. “Of course we will. We’re not those wankers.”

            And neither of us is a wanker like Iverson, either, Harry thought in contentment as the conversation passed on.

*

            “Harry? Come in.”

            Harry let the door fall silently shut behind him and made the way to Draco’s lab. The cottage was pretty large, he noticed, and there were intriguing-looking books on the shelves in each room that made him want to slow down and look at them. But instead he went to the lab, because seeing Draco was most important.

            He stuck his head in through the doorway. “Did they destroy anything?”

            Draco turned around and smiled at him. “Nothing I can’t put right with a few hours of labor.”

            His hands were covered with what looked like ground-in grass stains and ink stains. He had leaves in his hair. His elbows had patches on them that might have come from leaning on dirty cauldrons.

            Harry took a step towards him, then stopped.

            Draco blinked at him. “What? Did I do something wrong?”

            Harry said, “You’re beautiful, that’s all. And I love you.” He kissed Draco hard enough that Draco gasped, and pulled back to put his hands on Draco’s hips. “Is there—I mean, is there anything I can do to help?”

            Draco stared at him, then said, “I love you, too,” and thrust a broom into his hands.

            Harry turned to sweep the lab, happily conscious that he had never done something like this in the house, where they had both had to do the same task, and the house took care of most the chores.

            And happily conscious, too, that Draco was watching his arse as he swept. Harry bent down and put some elbows into his sweeping, to hear Draco shiver.

            This is different. This is what we’ll make of it.

            And I think it’ll last.

            The End.

*

            Bickymonster: Thank you!

Harry was really afraid of scarring Draco by not making everything clear, so that’s why he insists on being so specific.

delia cerrano: Most people aren’t as dependent on their partners as Draco is on Harry, though. I think there are legitimate reasons for Harry’s hesitation.

SP777: Yes, I do.

Makoto_Sagara: Thanks! Harry has learned all sorts of tactics to handle these people who want to interfere, now, which is a good thing.

Diana: Here’s the last update!

moodysavage: Thanks! Poor Draco, getting all flustered like that.
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The House That Lovers Built