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Sanctum Sanctorum	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 28253 -:- Recommendations : 3 -:- Currently Reading : 4
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

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Chapter Two—In a Malfoy Flat

            Harry rolled his eyes when he read Malfoy’s letter, but that was what he should have expected of the man. Luckily, he doubted the visit would have to be long. He could go in, explain the truth, endure the questions that Malfoy would undoubtedly have, and leave again instead of lingering. He could feel himself cheering up as he thought about it. He even smiled when he sent the owl back again with a reply that he could make it at the appointed time.

            The owl gave him a weary look as Harry fastened the letter around its leg. Harry shrugged back, not as apologetic as he might have been if the bird was his.

            “I gave you a big fat mouse right before you took the first message,” he said. “That ought to be enough to keep you flying for right now.”

            The owl audibly sighed before it spread its wings and soared out the window. Harry leaned one elbow on the sill and watched it go, its nondescript feathers blending quickly into the dusk that was creeping up. Harry sniffed the scents of autumn for a while longer until he was sure it was gone, then shut the window.

            Luckily, he had no important cases in process and could take a holiday tomorrow. But he would have gone to the meeting even if he had a murder case squatting on his head. And the Ministry would have let him. There was a reward for holding your tongue—sometimes—and nodding your head obediently to the dictates of the Ministry—sometimes. Harry got his own way far more than anyone thought, because when they looked at him in random moments, he seemed to be the perfect adult doing the Ministry’s perfect bidding.

            I can wait. I can always wait.

*

            The knock that came on the door the next morning didn’t sound like Potter, Draco thought as he walked down the stairs to throw it open. On the other hand, he didn’t know what he would have expected such a knock to sound like.

            “Thank you for coming,” Draco said as he opened the door, because it seemed like a good idea to start this meeting off on the right note. If it went sour from there, it would be no fault of Draco’s.

            Potter leaned against the right side of the doorway, not dressed in scarlet Auror robes as Draco had expected, but casual dark trousers and a plain grey jumper that had been made by more expert hands than most of his clothes at Hogwarts. He had his head lowered as though contemplating how he would soil his feet by stepping across Draco’s threshold, but he jerked his head up and narrowed his eyes as Draco spoke.

            Draco paused, and blinked. Potter still had his glasses, but they were smaller and rounder than the ones he had worn in school, and he had actually done something about the thinness to his face and body. He stood taller than Draco remembered, in addition to better-dressed, and his jawline was firmer, more well-defined. His hair was still as wild and mad as ever, but it fit with these clothes in a way that it didn’t with formal robes. Perhaps that was the reason he had worn these casual clothes, Draco thought. Potter wouldn’t want to make a bad impression—

            Remember who he is, and who you are.

            Right. Potter would have no reason to make a good impression on him. Draco nodded and moved out of the way. “Potter. Welcome. I have some tea waiting, if you’d like it.”

            He expected a crack about poisons, or at least potions, considering his profession. Potter appeared to have forgotten that such distrust existed. He gave Draco a small, controlled smile, the same Draco had seen on his face in the photographs where he appeared at some memorial celebration of the war, and nodded. “Tea would be welcome, thanks.”

            Draco raised an eyebrow and turned to lead the way back up the stairs. So. Mature is how we’re going to play it, is it?

            He might get something more valuable than mere amusement out of this visit, after all.

*

            Malfoy was different than Harry had expected. He looked sober—not in the “lack of alcohol” sense, but in the “someone else in the world grew up and knows his place now” sense. He wore formal grey robes, but not, Harry thought, to be pretentious, the way that most people in the Ministry who affected them outside of parties did. The robes fit him well. He was taller, and he had cut his hair in the same severe, formal style as the robes, to make his face look less angular and more sophisticated. The way he moved said that he was in control of his body, and Harry admired that. One thing Auror training had given him was a keen appreciation of how much motion most people wasted. He found himself looking at men and women who were economical in the way they gestured, who took up less space than they should have, and who could fade into the background or fade out of it at a moment’s notice.

            He would probably never master that art completely himself. His face was too noticeable, and too known. But then, admiration for those things he wasn’t was probably the best sign that he’d grown up.

            Malfoy’s flat was different from the image in Harry’s head, too, but not as much. There was indeed expensive furniture, and a golden cauldron on a pedestal, and an enchanted window that showed a view of Malfoy Manor. But the carpet was a thick, deep blue, and the walls were a shade like ice, and Harry didn’t see silver or jewels anywhere. The most prominent features of the drawing room were the three chairs in a circle and the stool in front of one of them where Malfoy probably rested his feet. Harry sat down on the chair nearest the kitchen and craned his head around to watch Malfoy disappear into it.

            “You prefer Phoenix’s Brew?” Malfoy’s voice still had a slight drawl to it, but not nearly as irritating as it had been in school. Then again, Harry thought as he leaned back into the chair and luxuriated in the soft material beneath him, that was probably because Malfoy wasn’t talking about ways to get Harry in trouble.

            “I’ve never heard of that,” Harry murmured, closing his eyes. No, it wasn’t his imagination. The chair was reforming around him, sculpting itself to be more comfortable. He wondered if it was a spell or that particular brand of chair. “Bring it if it’s good.”

            There was a pause from the kitchen, as though Malfoy had expected more of an order than that, followed by clinking. Harry smiled, still sitting there with his eyes closed. If Malfoy wanted detailed orders, he’d have to get them another day. Harry was already far more relaxed than he had expected to be, convinced this visit wouldn’t be so odd after all.

            A shadow crossed his face, and Harry opened his eyes and reached out to accept the cup and saucer Malfoy was handing him. Malfoy’s stare was frank and assessing as he sat down on the chair that faced Harry and sipped delicately at his tea. Harry did the same thing, and choked. The tea was far hotter than he’d thought it would be, with a spicy, boiling aftertaste that reminded him more of Firewhisky.

            “It’s called Phoenix’s Brew for a reason, Potter,” Malfoy said, and his eyes were bright as he watched Harry spluttering.

            Still kind of a git, then. But Harry found it difficult to blame him for it when he probably did look pretty funny. He swallowed even more delicately this time, then set the tea on a table beside the couch to cool for a bit. “All right,” he said. “The Divination professor, Plumm, has been trying to give me a reading for a long time, but I only gave in because I thought that she might have been making a true prophecy. Her voice sounded like Trelawney’s the one time I heard her give a true prophecy.” Well, technically it was twice, given that he had heard Trelawney’s voice speaking the original one in Dumbledore’s memory, but Harry still didn’t really like talking about that one to anyone else. Too many bad memories.

*

            Draco raised his eyebrows. He hadn’t expected that much from Potter right away, or at least not without more wrangling. He leaned back, taking another small sip of his own, and watched the line of Potter’s throat, the shine of his eyes, the motions of his hands, all the things that might tell Draco if he was lying.

            But no, he didn’t seem to be. He looked at Draco with the same tranquil expression in his eyes no matter how long Draco studied him, and waited in silence. Draco wondered why he wasn’t telling the rest of the story, and raised his eyebrows higher.

            Potter shrugged, which was an uncouth habit of a piece with the poor manners he had displayed so far. “I thought you might not believe me,” he said. “I asked for a vision in the crystal ball, since I thought that would take less time than any other way.”

            “And your time is important,” Draco murmured, nodding wisely.

            Potter narrowed his eyes, but when Draco said nothing else, he shrugged a second time—Draco curled his lip—and said, “Well, it is,” with a lack of fuss that made Draco respect him a bit more. “I thought that she probably didn’t have anything to say and only wanted to gain attention for her ‘gifts.’ She did show me a vision, though, and it involved you. It showed us sitting together in a garden, holding hands and watching some children perform accidental magic. At least, I hope it was accidental magic. They were too young for wands, and anyway, I didn’t see any on them at the time.”

            Draco stared at him. Then he worked spit into his mouth and demanded, “You’re saying that we were married in the vision?” He wondered for a moment whether Potter really had come here just to make fun of him.

            “I didn’t see rings,” Potter said, which proved he had learned some precision since Draco had known him. “But we looked contented and happy to be together, and the way we held hands…” He shook his head, frowning. “We looked relaxed around each other.”

            “Are you sure it wasn’t a joke that this Plumm professor was playing?” That was the explanation that would have occurred immediately to Draco, although he reckoned that he shouldn’t have been surprised it wouldn’t immediately come clear to Potter. He was used to seeing himself as important, the stuff of prophecy, and wouldn’t accept easily that it was only a trick when it had proven true once before.

            Potter sneered at him. “It could have been. But she acted as if she believed it, and real or not, she could use it as a way to spread rumors. So I came and thought that I should let you know where they came from, if the rumors started flying.”

            “You couldn’t have written this in a letter?” Draco took another sip of the Phoenix’s Brew tea. “It seems simple enough.” If preposterous, absurd, and something that no one sane will believe for a second.

            Too bad that the general public is not often sane where Potter is concerned. They had believed, or some of them had, that he was a half-fairy for a fortnight last year, merely on the basis of Rita Skeeter saying so.

            “There are those who try to get hold of my post.” Potter leaned back in his chair and picked up his cup again. This time, he at least looked like he was sipping it properly and getting some taste out of it instead of spewing it everywhere. Draco watched him swallow. “I knew you wouldn’t appreciate it if someone else found that letter and decided to spread the rumor.”

            Reluctantly, Draco had to incline his head. Potter had shown good judgment and taste in that much. Regrettable that he could not do so in every aspect of his life. “All right. Was that all you wanted to tell me?”

            Potter nodded, sipped again, and stood as if he meant to take his leave. “You might make more credible threats to Plumm than I could.”

            He started to turn away, and Draco sat up before he could stop himself. “And that’s it, Potter? You come all the way out to my flat at eight in the morning to tell me that, and nothing else?”

            Potter turned around, raising his eyebrows in a way that Draco could appreciate. It was close to the way he would have done it, though filled with surprise rather than the disdain that Draco would have tried to add to it. “Well, yes. There’s nothing else, and you have all the relevant details. Besides, with Apparition a flat in the middle of Chemic Alley isn’t so far.”

            Draco hissed under his breath as he stood. He didn’t know, in one part of him, why he was reacting this way. A business meeting with one of his associates or suppliers would have gone in much the same manner: limited interaction, brief and clear statements, assurances that all facts were correct after a few questions. And Potter deserved less time from him than people Draco had worked with for years.

            But now…

            He felt his hands closing into claws, and it took quite a lot to wipe his face clear of that and maintain a pleasant expression. “I expected more details,” he said. “For example, do you believe the vision is real?”

            Potter snorted. “Merlin, no! It’s far more likely, as you said, that she was playing a prank. Or, if it was real, that it sprang from some property of the crystal ball, or that it means something else. One thing I did learn in Divination—Trelawney could hardly help teaching me—was that visions are often symbolic. For all I know, what it means is that you’ll invent a healing potion that benefits the children I’ll have one day.”

            “About that,” Draco said. “Haven’t you left it rather late?”

            “What?” Potter cast a glance down the stairs as if all he wanted was to escape Draco’s ghastly presence.

            “Having children. I expected to see you settled and married by now.” Draco edged a step closer, wondering as he went what he hoped for. More of the coolness leavened by appalling manners that he had seen so far, or amusement, or rage?

            This wasn’t a meeting with a business associate. He could accept that now. He wanted far more of Potter than he would have of that hypothetical associate, and his breath came fast and hungry with it.

*

            Well, damn.

            Harry had noticed Malfoy was attractive, when he first came in. He could hardly help it. If the bloke didn’t want glances like that and silent assessments made, then he shouldn’t wear those kinds of clothes, particularly at eight on a Friday morning, when most people might expect something rather more casual.

            But he hadn’t thought that Malfoy would ever respond to him with anything other than mockery, so he had put it out of his head. That was easy to do, since he didn’t find a mocking expression attractive on anyone’s face, Malfoy’s included.

            But there was something deeper sparking in his grey eyes now, which meant something deeper sparking in Harry. He looked back, and he saw so many layers that could be wrapped around Malfoy, glinting, under pressure. His cheeks had flushed for a moment; his hands had curled; he looked as if he wanted to grab Harry and shake him before he turned his glance aside slightly to hide it.

            Now, it only remains to be seen whether that pressure really has turned him into a diamond, or only coal.

            “I haven’t found the right woman yet,” he said, and shrugged. “I don’t want to settle for second best.”

            “Which a Weasley decidedly would have been.”

            Harry smiled pleasantly. The mocking expression was back, but he knew how to deal with that. “There was an Auror who taught us, in the training program,” he said. “Hazelwood. He had high and mighty opinions about blood traitors and people who were friends with them. He made remarks like that.”

            Malfoy gave him a glance as slow as the drawl in his voice. “And I imagine that you’ll tell me you converted him, since you’re here, a full-fledged Auror.”

            Harry shook his head, and held onto the smile. This was so much easier than it used to be, before he realized that holding his temper could still enable him to terrify people. “I ambushed him in a corridor one night. Broke all of his ribs. Then I set an enchantment on them so that they wouldn’t heal the first three times that someone tried to help him, but only break into smaller and smaller splinters. It’s hard to repair splintered bones, did you know that? Especially when your attempts to put them together again just make them break like matchsticks.”

            Malfoy stared at him. Then he said, “Why did you tell me that? That’s a Dark curse. You could have gone to prison for using it. You will if I tell anyone the truth.”

            Harry snorted. “Oh, yes. The respective power of our names is such that you could, of course, have put me in prison any time you wanted.”

            Malfoy’s chin went up and his eyes narrowed, but he said nothing. Harry knew why. Malfoy had made a life for himself, and done it in the teeth of all those determined to see him go to prison for his father’s crimes, but that wasn’t the same as achieving a spotless reputation. Accuse Harry, and a few of the papers would pick it up, but nothing else. Those who had known them both at school would dismiss it as just another manifestation of the Potter-Malfoy rivalry.

            Most of them would do the same thing if Harry accused Malfoy, but he saw no reason to, not when he could use threats instead, and Malfoy would probably be smart enough, unlike Hazelwood, to listen to them.

            “I could rely on testimony from this instructor,” Malfoy said, as if exploring the idea, “and the Healers who treated him. They would surely remember a case like that, and he would be willing to testify to have revenge on you.”

            Harry shook his head quietly, wearily. “Do you really think that I didn’t take precautions against that, Malfoy?”

            “What were they?’

            “Why would I tell you? Take the lesson I mean you to take from this, that insulting my friends is a bad idea.” In truth, he had cast the spell that made Hazelwood’s bones keep breaking with Hazelwood’s own wand, so the Healers had all the evidence they needed that Hazelwood had been playing around with dangerous Dark magic and done this to himself. He had that kind of reputation, and it was accepted without a murmur.

            And Harry had knelt on Hazelwood’s chest when he finished the ambush, stared into his eyes, and warned him about what would happen if he told anyone. He could still feel the words burning his mouth, his throat. He had never said anything like that before, and he had wondered, as he spoke, if he really should.

            Well. That was the trouble with ignoring inconvenient facts about himself for seventeen years, first because he lived with people who didn’t give him much time to think about himself at all and then because he was saving the world. Harry had a much worse temper than he had ever thought he had, and darker instincts.

            He had learned to control both since then, though. And he had learned when to take risks. It was no risk to tell Malfoy the truth, for example, because of the way he had covered his tracks and because Malfoy knew too much about the power dynamics between them to do something as blindingly stupid as use his knowledge.

            He came back to the conversation to see Malfoy studying him thoughtfully. “I’m less surprised that you don’t have a wife, now,” Malfoy said, raising his eyebrows again. He seemed to use that gesture to mean many things, and Harry didn’t know what all of them were. “You would have to keep all sorts of secrets from her, and that sort of thing can be trying for a marriage.”

            “Can’t it,” Harry said, not giving rise to Malfoy’s bait the way he probably wanted, and started to turn away again.

            “Wait.” Malfoy came up beside him, and touched his arm. Harry forbade himself to withdraw it, although it was hard. Touching someone who insulted his friends and family usually gave him the impulse to burn his clothing, or at least cast Scrubbing Charms. “I want you to leave by the door of the apothecary.”

            Harry met his eyes for a moment, then nodded. “Because leaving by the door I came in by might make people think we’re friends or lovers and give credence to rumors faster than Plumm can. I see.”

            Malfoy smiled slightly. “Why did I have you come in by that door, then?”

            “Because it was eight in the morning, and few people are up then,” Harry said. In a weird way, he enjoyed the testing remarks that Malfoy kept handing him, the minor challenges that played so little part in his world—he either had friendliness or lethal threats from Dark wizards surrounding him now—but he didn’t want the bloke to think he was stupid. “I can hear your assistants moving in the shop below now. Or apprentices?”

            Malfoy’s face softened and he let Harry’s arm fall. “The Potions Masters’ Council doesn’t think well enough of me yet to let me take apprentices,” he said. “A few years, perhaps.”

            “You would probably teach them well,” Harry said, to offer a chance at a truce if Malfoy wanted it.

            Malfoy eyed him sideways, but did nothing more than nod, which could have been agreement or acceptance or anything in between. “You have keen hearing,” he said, as he led the way across the flat to another door and Harry fell in behind him.

            “Which would be its own trial for a wife,” Harry said cheerfully.

*

            Well. This has been…interesting.

            He could still rile Potter as he had when a schoolboy, it seemed, but on decidedly different topics. And Potter responded with a gentler smile and charming threats. Draco would have sought him out more often if he’d done that in Hogwarts.

            Of course, his story of what he did to Hazelwood could be a fabrication.

            Draco didn’t think so, however. Not with the way that Potter’s eyes had deepened and his hand had made a small twitch to one side as if searching for his wand. Or a sword. And as he had no desire to have a spell like that inflicted on himself, he would refrain from insulting the Weasleys. It wasn’t as if Potter would stay long.

            Or as if the vision that the professor had is true.

            There was more than one reason he had wanted Potter to leave via the door of the apothecary, and that was the political capital it would give him if people saw the brightest star in the Ministry’s firmament departing as if after a business discussion. From the faint twitch that tugged at the corner of Potter’s smile, he knew that, when he saw the gaping, awed eyes and mouths of Draco’s assistants if not before. He even turned around and shook Draco’s hand as they stood in the doorway, his grip firm and his expression bright with suppressed laughter.

            “Farewell, Potions master Malfoy,” he said, in a perfect, stentorian voice. “Do contact me if you require further assistance.”

            Draco inclined his head back as gracefully as he had upstairs and kept his eyes on Potter’s. They had never shared a joke like this before, but Potter played his part, sweeping one impersonal glance around the room before he walked down the street. He made the plain, almost Muggle clothes he wore look better than formal Auror robes, Draco had to admit.

            He turned back and found that most of his assistants looked properly impressed—except for Campion Fipps, the newest, an awkward boy with hair and eyes the color of clay. He caught Draco’s gaze and immediately flushed and dropped a cauldron.

            A crush on Potter? Or something else, something like a reaction to an Auror? Draco made a mental note to investigate that later and then returned to his flat, intending to muse more on the unexpectedly prickly and delightful conversation.

*

            js: Thanks! Though I’m not sure either Harry or Draco would agree about Plumm being amusing.

            SP777: It’s Latin for “holy of holies.” Thank you!

            Silvry: It should come clear pretty soon. I promise that I won’t mind if you need to back out and stop reading the story.

            unneeded: I’m so sorry. I hope you feel better about your cat soon.

            Yes, definitely a new story.
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