Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Running Battle	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Lucius Views: 2860 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
- 1-Running Battle
- 2-Part Two
- 1
- 2
Thanks for the reviews! This is the end of this story, but not of the series; there will be one more entry, one of the Advent fics I’ll be posting in December.
            “I don’t know how you can interrogate something that simply screams and spits blood at you.”
            “You’d be surprised. At least this one isn’t trying to vomit its organs all over me.”
            Lucius paused. Harry wasn’t looking at him, but at the silver cage he’d conjured and the vampire who kept trying to bend the bars and get out. It didn’t matter. He could feel that pause, and the relentless curiosity that followed.
            “When was that?”
            “Oh, it wasn’t a vampire. It was some sort of vulture-monster thing. Some vultures vomit as a defense. This one tried to vomit its organs. That’s all.”
            “What an interesting life you’ve led.”
            Harry grinned back at Lucius once, and then approached the cage. The vampire inside, the one he’d had under the Harmless Curse, spat again and clawed at the bars. It snatched its hand back a minute later and cradled it against its chest. Harry shook his head. Whatever intelligence they had when alive and then for a little while after they’d turned, a lot of vampires ended up pretty bloody stupid. They seemed to rejoice in handing over all their brains to a Lord or to their predatory instincts or whatever.
            “Now,” said Harry, and made a small cut on his wrist with his wand. The vampire sat up at once and traced his movements with eyes so wide that they looked as if they’d fall out. Well, weirder things had happened when Harry was confronting vampires.
            “For you,” said Harry, and held out his wrist towards the bars. He had to achieve the right angle, not in between them, or the vampire would haul at him and probably break his arm, but not far away, because the vampire would simply burn its hands on the silver again—
            He’d done it right. The vampire grabbed his wrist and started greedily sucking on the wound. Harry hid his grimace and cast a spell that probably only a vampire Lord would have known how to resist, anyway, but it certainly was good that the vampire was too caught up in its feeding to notice.
            “Mentis effigia.”
            The Mental Image spell could only work when there was a powerful connection between the caster and the person whose mind he wanted to see into, and it didn’t work on someone who was an Occlumens. On the other hand, it was excellent at piercing, as Legilimency could not, through barriers that were formed by sheer masses of nonhuman instinct.
            Squinting, Harry saw the shadowy images form up behind the vampire’s eyes and troop out to line up in front of its face. They were blood-tinted as well as bloodthirsty, of course, but that wasn’t a surprise when he’d used blood to form the initial connection anyway.
            The first few didn’t help much: the vampires squirming through the Manor’s defenses, dancing around their lair where Harry and Lucius had confronted them, waving their hands under a full moon. Then he saw one that did. The vampire Lord he and Lucius had fought stood in front of an inhumanly still mass of other vampires, hands raised, and roared out words that sounded like someone retching through a mouthful of meat.
            “Got you,” Harry muttered, grinning. The vampires had always pretended they could barely negotiate with the Ministry, that they would react on a hair trigger and eat anyone who didn’t obey their odd and constantly changing customs. But here was one that was intelligent enough to speak of its plans.
            That might only be because the Lord had fed on the blood of all its minions, of course. Harry remembered hearing that mentioned once as a theory for why some Lords acted intelligent and others didn’t. But either way, it meant the defense that vampires were essentially animals had been shot to pieces.
            The plans were elaborate ones. The Lord talked about foiling Ministry Aurors who were trying to capture vampires and a war with werewolves before he got to the topic of Lucius. But when he did, Harry had to pause. Because the plans involved him, too.
            “Destroy them both. The negotiator who would not negotiate and the Auror who humiliated us. The negotiator will summon the Auror soon, and then you may move. Go through the doorways that need no invitation. Dig in the earth until you find them. The negotiator comes from a kin that will make such traps.”
            Harry grimaced. No one had betrayed the existence of Lucius’s escape tunnels, after all. The vampire Lord had simply used psychology to decide it was likely they would exist, if Lucius was who he presented himself as. And he had been right.
            “Potter? Potter!”
            Harry winced as something ripped him free of the vampire’s fangs and whirled him away from the cage, and around. His wrist was still trapped in place by the feeding vampire’s mouth, and having his skin shred and tear was unpleasant. So were the screams as the vampire reached after him, burned its hands on the silver again, and began to steadily howl.
            “What?” Harry asked in irritation, casting a spell that would clot his blood faster and another one that would seal over the wound. Lucius was staring at him as if Harry had stepped out in front of the Hogwarts Express. “I don’t know if you could hear and see the images from the spell, but I was gathering valuable information there.”
            “You were standing still as a vampire drained you to death. You look as if you are about to faint from blood loss.”
            “Oh, look.”
            Lucius glared at him in a way that made Harry want to laugh, except Lucius would probably be unhappy about that, too. Harry sighed and cast a spell that cleaned up the blood that had spilled from the wound onto the bars and the carpet. “The vampire Lord waited to send his people in until you summoned me to talk about the letters—the letter. He’s cleverer than we thought, and he wanted to get both of us at once.”
            “Take a step.”
            “Beg pardon?” Harry looked up. He would have thought Lucius was more interested in hearing about the vampires who could have killed him if Harry wasn’t there. On the other hand, maybe he wasn’t getting much because of the vampire’s moaning howl.
            “I want to see you walk.”
            “This is about wanting to judge the length or strength of my legs, is it?” Harry straightened up and moved away from the cage. “I promise, they’re more than long enough to wrap around your waist if I decide that’s what I want to do with them—”
            Abruptly he sagged. Astonished, Harry tried to catch himself, but he ended up putting his hand on Lucius’s arm because that was what was there. Harry shook his head and tried to look around, but Lucius was fussing over him as if he was a baby who’d hurt his head.
            Or as if he was Aunt Petunia and I’m Dudley. The thought was so horrifying that Harry tried to push Lucius away, but Lucius only leveled him with a glare that would have done Snape proud.
            “You’re weak from blood loss,” Lucius snapped. “You stood there for minutes while he drained you. And then you have the gall to refuse my concern and decide that banter is more important than resting—shut up!”
            He cast a spell that silenced the vampire. Harry looked over and saw there was a bow wrapped around its neck, cutting off sound. The vampire clawed at it, but Harry wasn’t worried. It wasn’t like the damn things needed to breathe.
            “As I was saying,” Lucius continued, in a voice he seemed to deliberately lower now that he could, “you are going to rest. In the most luxurious bed I have. And then you are going to eat whatever the house-elves bring you. Including beef broth, if that’s what it is. And orange slices. Do you understand me, Mr. Potter?”
            “It’s Auror Potter, you know,” Harry muttered. He did feel kind of weak and dizzy, although he told himself he leaned more heavily on Lucius’s arm just to annoy him. “I did earn the title and everything.” He swayed, and Lucius made a disgusted sound and cast a charm on him that let him scoop Harry off the floor.
            “You earned it with blood, I suppose you will tell me,” said Lucius, as he stepped efficiently through the door that had opened up in front of them. Harry blinked, wondering where the house-elf was that had opened it. Or maybe that was part of the magic of the Manor.
            “Of course I did. Well, and pain, and training, and experience.” Which didn’t include many experiences with being carried around like he was a slab of meat, Harry had to admit. “Put me down,” he added.
            “No, I don’t think I will. You need someone who can be trusted to recognize when you’re dying of blood loss.”
            “You can be trusted, obviously. Can you be trusted to put me down?”
            “No, because you can’t be trusted on your feet.”
            “That joke is played out now, Lucius,” Harry objected, in the moment before Lucius paused before a heavy oaken door, frowned at it, and turned abruptly away. Another set of stairs and a mahogany door later, Harry snorted a little. “Did you get lost in your own house?”
            “No, I simply changed my mind about where to put you,” Lucius said, as he nudged open this door with Harry’s feet. “The guest rooms are well-protected, but not as much as these.” He smugly put Harry down on a bed that felt like a cloud and gestured around. “Where do you think you are, Mr. Potter?”
            Harry blinked around. He could tell nothing from the colors of the walls, he thought, or the paneling used on them. It was clearly expensive, but so was most of the paneling in the whole house. He did know there was a faint blue and red tinge to the paneling that kept it from being as dark as the wood might otherwise be. And there was a window in the wall that showed nothing except a gigantic, floating silver M.
            “The theater where you show your guests the glories of the Malfoy family in days gone by?” Harry finally asked, gesturing at the window with one hand. It shook, and he scowled and lowered it into his lap. Damn vampires.
            Lucius nodded slowly. “Judicious use of humor, Mr. Potter. But no. These are my rooms, the most comfortable and well-guarded in the whole house.”
            Harry froze again, the way he had a terrible habit of doing with Lucius. It seemed Lucius would say something that ought to be ordinary and condescending. Harry had dealt with any number of condescending pure-bloods since he became an Auror. He knew how to smile and nod and keep his comebacks to himself.
            But with Lucius, he just didn’t have any comebacks. He turned abruptly towards him and found his nose almost pressed to Lucius’s chest, he was so close to the bed and Harry in it. Harry leaned further back and tried not to think about the fact that Lucius might sleep pressed up close to these silky pillows every night. “And you don’t mind blood in your bed?”
            “You won’t be shedding any while you sleep here,” Lucius said, and again paused, the way he had before the door of the guest room. Then he shook his head. “No, not even if I did decide to take you the way I might like to. I am gentle and considerate enough that no lover of mine has ever bled.”
            Harry stared blankly at Lucius. He had expected sly innuendo, not a blatant declaration.
            But he could handle that mode, too, if he had to. “What makes you think you’d be the one doing the taking?”
            Lucius smiled, a flashing thing like an unsheathed blade. Harry found himself wondering for a moment why Lucius didn’t use this smile more often when he was trying to reestablish himself in the Ministry and the wizarding world. It would make a better weapon than the habitual sneers.
            “Why, Mr. Potter,” Lucius whispered, easing closer, “the fact that I’m an excellent lover and have never had any complaints might have something to do with it.”
            “An excellent lover is someone who does equally well on top and bottom.”
            “Well, of course,” said Lucius, as if he hadn’t expected any other answer, and so equably that Harry eyed him in suspicion. “That’s why we should definitely try both. It’s not what we do first, it’s what we do in the long run.”
            He turned away before Harry could say anything and added, “I think you might as well rest for a while. I’ll have a house-elf bring you some food, but I doubt you’ll go to sleep that fast. I’m sure you don’t mind if it takes a few minutes.”
            “What happens if the vampire gets loose, or someone else tries to break into your house?” Harry yelled at his back. “And you didn’t have much sleep, either!”
            “Why, I’m going to make arrangements right now for the further securing of the vampires you captured and the tunnel they came through. And then I’ll come back and sleep here with you, of course. Do try to eat quickly.”
            Harry spent a minute staring at the door after Lucius left. Then he buried his head in his hands and laughed and laughed.
            The elf who appeared a few minutes later, holding a tray that, yes, had a steaming bowl of beef broth on it, and some orange slices, regarded Harry with something close to terror. Harry, his eyes streaming with tears and his stomach shaking too hard to say anything, just pointed at an elaborate carved table next to the bed. The elf brought it closer in silence, arranged what looked like a spoon made of pure silver and a tiny peeling knife on the tray, and then vanished with a little squeak and pop.
            When Harry managed to calm down, he reached for the food. He had to admit he was hungry. Dinner seemed like a long time ago, as elaborate and inventive as it had been.
            He ate slowly, savoring the steaming mouthfuls, but by the time he had finished, Lucius still hadn’t reappeared. Harry licked the last of the orange juice from his fingers and lay down thoughtfully, looking from the door to the ceiling.
            He would probably have trouble getting to sleep, no matter what Lucius thought. Sleeping in general was bad enough, with his mind’s tendency to run around like a squirrel in a cage; sleeping in a strange place was worse. And he honestly couldn’t remember the last time he had spent a night with someone in the same bed. Probably one of the times he had been bringing a criminal out of wilderness surrounded with anti-Apparition spells into which he’d tracked them.
            But maybe it was the place, maybe it was the laughter, maybe it was the blood loss, maybe it was drugs in the food. Harry found himself sliding swiftly closer and closer to sleep, not lifting his head in the direction of every tiny noise the way he usually did.
            When Lucius slid into bed behind him and pressed one hand on his shoulder, apparently the only way he planned to touch Harry, Harry didn’t start, either. He shifted away sleepily, and felt the pressure behind his ear that was probably a kiss without caring what it was.
            He couldn’t remember the last time he had been so comfortable, either.
*
            “Good morning.”
            Harry had actually been lying awake for a few minutes, staring at the ivory-colored shell of sheets above him and trying to figure out where he was without taxing his brain too much. He rolled over until he was face-to-face with Lucius, who looked smug enough for five Ministry politicians.
            “Good morning,” Harry said, and waited. The only thing that happened, though, was the smugness fading from Lucius’s face, until he looked almost normal. Harry waited some more, and finally Lucius spoke.
            “You didn’t ask me if I secured the vampires and the tunnel.”
            “I know you wouldn’t have come to bed until you finished business.” Harry propped himself up on his elbow and reached out to trace a finger around Lucius’s nose. Lucius didn’t try to follow the path of his hand. He just lay there and looked steadily into Harry’s face. “I think you always put business in front of pleasure. That might be one reason we’ve managed to get along so well, don’t you think?”
            “If the business was negotiating with the vampires, I will remind you I failed at that.”
            “I was thinking about the business of saving your life.”
            “I am hurt, Mr. Potter,” Lucius said evenly, raising one hand so he could entwine his fingers around Harry’s, “to learn that you do not regard that as a pleasure.”
            Harry had to smile. And this time, with them meeting eye-to-eye, both conscious, both wanting it, he bent down and kissed Lucius.
            Lucius gasped in so sharply and thinly that it sounded like someone whistling instead of breathing. He lifted his hands and held them hovering over Harry’s head as though he was going to bring them down, but couldn’t force himself to do it. Harry kissed as long as he wanted, thinking about the little flashes of warmth that stabbed him, and the way Lucius’s hair spread out around his face, and how wide his eyes got when he was surprised.
            Then Harry pulled back and rested his chin on one hand and waited to see what happened next.
            What that was, apparently, was Lucius swallowing and sitting up. “I never thought you had that kind of boldness in you, Mr. Potter.”
            Harry shook his head sadly. “And you’ve been with me in a battle situation against vampires and seen the way I fought Death Eaters. I don’t know, Lucius. I think you might have a problem defining boldness.”
            Lucius narrowed his eyes in a way that made him look like a cat offended by the fish it had been offered. “Do you think I should give it another try?” His left hand had sneaked behind Harry’s hair and touched his neck here and there as if looking for hidden defenses.
            “You probably should.” Harry rolled bonelessly to the side and closed his eyes as Lucius smoothed a thumb up the nape of his neck. “Ahhhh.”
            “You seem fully-recovered.”
            “You and your house-elves do good work.”
            “I suppose you will want to leave and report to the Ministry.”
            “If you feel the threat is resolved,” Harry said, his mind clicking with a groan back into work-related thoughts. “I don’t want to leave you alone if more vampires could come through the tunnel or if—”
            Lucius stopped him with his thumb on Harry’s lips. Harry blinked and thought about sucking the finger into his mouth, but he didn’t think this was the right moment for that.
            Or the right mood, given the intent way Lucius stared into his face. Harry wished he could show him what he was looking for, but Harry had no idea what that was. All he could do was return the stare, open and honest and intense.
            Lucius finally nodded and leaned in. But he didn’t kiss Harry, instead whispering against his mouth, “You will need to go back to the Ministry and tell them what you learned from our captive. They are the right ones to take charge of the vampires you captured and decide what should be done about the danger to one of their best Aurors.”
            Harry nodded without taking his gaze from Lucius.
            “But you should also,” Lucius said, and touched his slightly wet thumb to Harry’s chin, drawing it across, “not leave right yet.”
            And he kissed Harry slowly, fingers splayed out across the wet streak on his jaw, pressing him back into soft pillows.
            Harry went with it, little jolts of heat stabbing him again. He doubted they would do more than kiss today. He also didn’t think he minded that.
            He had earned the right to lie here and let Lucius be as confusing and pleasant as he wanted to be. And he had earned the right to think about the future and what the future might contain, too.
            More of this, Harry thought, as the heat intensified, and wrapped his fingers in Lucius’s hair.
            The End.
*
autumngold: Thank you! There will be one more story in the series that should bring them closer together.
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Running Battle