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The Night With Stars	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Lucius Views: 9544 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 3
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Thank you for all the reviews!
Chapter Two—Blazing
            “Thank you for seeing me at such short notice, Mr. Malfoy.”
            Lucius nodded without taking his eyes from Potter. They were in the private room of one of the restaurants in Diagon Alley that catered to anyone with enough money. Lucius had seen the golden curtains around him, the smooth and polished wood of the tables, the comfortable chairs overflowing with charms and cloth, before. He hadn’t seen Potter in such an environment.
            In fact, he had rarely seen Potter since the war, and Lucius found himself pleased with the changes. Potter had acquired a habit of standing taller and moving through the world with the kind of gravity that meant he was paying attention to his own importance. The magic around his shoulders lay on them like snow on the flanks of a mountain.
            Potter wore blue dress robes, tastefully done. He took the seat across from Lucius and studied him in much the same manner before he reached out and tapped his finger against the small crystal sculpture of a swan in the middle of the table.
            The swan at once stretched its wings and turned intelligently glinting blue eyes on them. “What will you have, sirs?” it asked in a delicate voice.
            “The veal special,” said Potter.
            “Tea only for me,” said Lucius, since tea came with its own platter.
            The swan rose at once and flew through the curtains, disappearing in the direction of the kitchen. Potter leaned back and cupped his hand around the glass of water that had already soundlessly risen from the bottom of the table. “Do you agree that we can have a productive alliance, Mr. Malfoy?”
            “If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have come. I don’t waste my time on non-productive alliances anymore.”
            Potter nodded, if barely. “We’ll both have to discuss some of the limits the other one shouldn’t cross, of course.”
            “I would like to know what your goals are, first. I assume you know what mine are.”
            “To increase your personal power, leave your family in a position of importance when you die, and have an easy life while you’re still alive.”
            Lucius paused with his own glass of water on his way to his lips. “You are under a misconception, if you think the work I do is easy. And you will be sorely disappointed if you enter politics thinking that your name or power should win things for you without labor.”
            “Oh.” Potter frowned. “I didn’t mean that you didn’t have to work. Just that you don’t have to wonder how you’ll eat that night or which roof you’ll sleep under.”
            Lucius blinked. “You are starting from a further point below the Ministry hierarchy than I thought you were, Mr. Potter.”
            “Given what you know about my background, that surprises you?”
            It shouldn’t have, and Lucius acknowledged the hit with a nod. “Of course, if you have grown up with starvation, I imagine that distinction does become more important.”
            “It does,” said Potter quietly. “Anyway. I now have an easy life as well, but one I don’t mind putting at risk. I can donate any of my money that you think the purpose needs, as long as I’m assured it’s going for a good cause. And I don’t mind moving or traveling or giving my food to others as a publicity stunt.”
            Lucius leaned back to study him some more. He remembered Potter as a walking sack of bones. He had filled out now, but Lucius thought his strength lay in the spirit burning behind in his eyes, far more than in his muscles.
            “You intrigue me, Mr. Potter. Achieving this is more important to you than anything else?”
            “Yes.”
            “Why? Pardon my bluntness, but you’re safe now.” Lucius took a sip of water after all. “You never have to go back to your Muggle relatives again, and you don’t have family in the wizarding world that might be existing in abusive homes. Do you care that much about strangers that you haven’t met?”
            “Why not? You do, too. And you’ve spent years hating people you know nothing about. Caring about strangers seems more productive to me than hating them.”
            Lucius choked a little. He put down the glass, since it would only serve to get him further into trouble, and studied Potter. “Forgive me, Mr. Potter, if my interest in you seems unusual. But this is…blunt enough that I wonder at your purpose in seeking me out.”
            “I don’t need to like you personally to know how good you are at accomplishing your goals.”
            “But you would have to trust my allies as well. Including the Wizengamot members I imagine you are fairly frustrated with, since they’ve let people like me walk free.”
            Potter shrugged. “In that case, I can have them on my side if I get you there.”
            Lucius had to smile. He was accustomed to thinking of himself as the only one in a room with such ruthless practicality. Many of the pure-bloods he worked with really did hate Muggleborns and Muggles and sometimes anyone who wasn’t of their families as much as they said they did. Lucius could use hatred, understand it, but he didn’t want to surrender to it.
            And it seemed Potter had come to the same conclusions.
            “Do your friends like you working with me?”
            “They don’t yet believe I would seek you out.”
            Lucius frowned. “Someone may have seen us come in here, given the interest you provoke. You should tell them before they see it in the paper.” He could build even on Potter’s connections with the Weasleys, and he didn’t want Potter to lose those connections in a moment of misplaced pride.
            “I did tell them.” Potter leaned back a little as the swan returned, bigger than before and made of transparent magic, with their plates balanced on its wings. The minute the plate landed in front of him, he began to cut into the veal and the delicate sliced vegetables scattered across it, but his eyes never left Lucius’s face. “They didn’t believe me. Ron thought I was making a joke. Hermione shook her head and said I would never be that desperate, and that’s where we left it.”
            Lucius sipped his tea and ate one of the small cucumber sandwiches that had come with it in silence. He had to ask, finally, because matters might become more disturbing than he wanted them to if he didn’t. “Are you doing this to get back at them for some perceived slight?”
            “No. I love Ron and Hermione. I would never want to hurt them. But I don’t mind hurting myself, and I did warn them. They ought to know by now that I mean what I say.”
            Lucius nodded slowly. They should, he thought, with years’ more of experience than he had of the quiet, stern man in front of him.
            The man with magic boiling around his shoulders, sparking and dancing blue and black. Sometimes white when Potter was attending more to the conversation than the food. Lucius would have at least paid respectful attention to anyone who walked in with that magic riding him, magic powerful enough to be visible. Not to mention tangible.
            Perhaps the years of familiarity Potter’s friends had with him had worked to their disadvantage rather than their advantage in this instance.
            “So,” said Lucius, and tried another delicate sip of tea. At least Potter was saying nothing right now that would make him choke. “Tell me what you have in mind.”
*
            I did judge him correctly.
            Harry wanted to shake his head in the next second. Of course he had. There would have been no point in approaching Lucius Malfoy if he wasn’t absolutely sure that the man cared more about everything else than about blood purity.
            It was nice knowing it anyway, though. Harry took a few more bites as he thought about the best way to phrase this. Lucius didn’t get impatient, instead sitting still and looking at Harry’s mouth as if it was interesting.
            Finally, Harry said, “I want to pursue a gentler version of the policy I outlined in my letter to you. That the Muggleborn numbers are increasing in the wizarding world, and so are the numbers of magical parents who marry Muggles or go back to their world to live, sometimes even work. I want to remind the pure-bloods, gently, that they represent collections of knowledge and facts that could be lost, and those collections are more important than who marries who.”
            “You cannot phrase it the way you did in the letter to me.”
            “I know. That’s why I said a gentler—”
            But Lucius was shaking his head. “Trust me when I tell you, Mr. Potter, that for some of them it won’t matter. There are, honestly, men and women out there who would rather see their culture die out than pass one bit of help to Muggleborns. They would think of it as dying for their principles if they couldn’t live for them.”
            Harry closed his eyes and fought to keep from shaking his head. “All right. If you can tell me their names, and the names of the ones we should approach, I’d be grateful.”
            “Practical,” Lucius murmured, in a tone that left Harry in no doubt about what a compliment he thought it was. “All right. Starting with the people you might have known at Hogwarts, I would say that we should leave off approaching the Crabbes, the Goyles, and the Parkinsons. It would also do no good whatsoever to involve Draco.”
            Harry snorted. “At least he has you as his father struggling to win some respectability for him, because he won’t do it himself.”
            “No,” Lucius agreed placidly. “But I have high hopes for my grandchildren, once Draco settles down to produce them. Now. I would also leave out the remains of the Flints, the Selwyns, the Vaiseys, and the Rosiers. Anyone who followed the Dark Lord recently and willingly.”
            “With you the only exception?”
            “I am the only one of them who used the defense of being under the Imperius Curse during the first war and managed to survive the second one. Or to survive it free. After all, the last I knew, Rabastan Lestrange and Avery were still doing well in Azkaban.”
            Harry had to grin. It was his testimony that had helped to place the surviving Lestrange brother there. “Good. So. Who are the ones we should approach?”
            Lucius put down his teacup and folded his hands in front of him as he shut his eyes. Harry watched, mildly impressed. It was as if Lucius was sorting through a mental pile of paperwork in front of him. Harry always had to go back home and put his memories of important meetings in a Pensieve to make sure he wouldn’t miss anything.
            “Among those you know personally, Greengrass, Nott, and Zabini would be amenable. So would Bulstrode, Smith, and perhaps Montague; I would have to make sure that the rumors of the Montagues having business ties to the Muggle world are accurate. And there are any number of people with pure-blood ancestors on one side and Muggleborns on the other who would jump at the chance to gain power for themselves.”
            “Instead of simply going along with pure-blood politics they don’t agree with?”
            Lucius nodded and opened his eyes. “Although—I hope to say this without disappointing you—they dislike them because of the aspersions such politics cast on their own lack of completely pure blood. Not because they have a grand crusade or love for Muggleborns the way you do.”
            Harry had to snort again. “I don’t expect anyone except people who already agree with me to do this because they have a grand crusade or love for Muggleborns.”
            Lucius relaxed for some reason. Harry wondered if he’d actually anticipated Harry making protests the way Hermione would have if someone told her they didn’t really support increased rights for house-elves but were going along with her for some other reason.
            Well, he could ask that later. He asked now, “Would any of them be willing to put funding behind orphanages and the like?”
            “We can ask them. But not as the first thing we ask them.”
            Harry nodded. “Then we should talk to them first about the preservation of magic and knowledge that only pure-bloods know?”
            Lucius’s mouth quirked in a faint smile. “As long as you remember that for most of them, these things are things that only pure-bloods deserve to know. At least some of our work will have to be in convincing them to pass on such knowledge to the Muggleborns.”
            “I think I can do that with some of the children that I fully expect to find abused and needing removal from their homes. If they want to adopt those children, then they’ll have to share the knowledge with them.”
            Lucius paused. “You think they’ll willingly adopt Muggleborn children?”
            “The statistics I told you about in the letter I wrote aren’t the only ones I’ve noticed. Few of the pure-blood families you’ve named have more than one child. Some of them have two, like the Greengrasses, but not all of them are magically talented, or likely to have important positions in society. Some pure-bloods will need Muggleborns simply to survive. Maybe they’ll make them legal heirs later in life instead of adopting them, but—”
            “Remember what I said about some families wanting to die out rather than pass on anything.”
            Harry nodded. “But how common is that attitude? Really? I know it exists, but among how many families?”
            Again Lucius performed that silent calculation Harry couldn’t match, and finally said, “Perhaps around ten percent of the ones I’m most familiar with.”
            “And among the ones that you think are our likely allies?”
            “Perhaps only the Notts.”
            Harry smiled. “I want to concentrate on the easy allies for now anyway, and only try to recruit the harder ones later. The ones who would never pass on knowledge to Muggleborns, who would ignore me anyway because I’m a nosy upstart half-blood, we might as well pretend don’t exist.”
            Lucius chuckled. Harry sat back and cocked his head. “What’s the matter?” He couldn’t afford to ignore laughter or other doubting noises about this project right now, although maybe later he could.
            Lucius smiled at him. “I simply see the fittingness of returning the lack of notice they would give you with your own complete lack of notice.”
            Harry hadn’t thought about it in terms of fittingness—he didn’t, usually—but now that Lucius had pointed it out, he supposed he could see it. “Will that make anyone more eager to join us?”
            “Oh, undoubtedly.” Lucius almost purred the words, in a voice that could be distracting if Harry let it, and then hunched forwards. “Now, let’s plan our strategy.”
            Because Harry let nothing distract him when he was thinking of Muggleborn children and the ways to save them if they were abused, he put aside thoughts of Lucius’s voice and began to speak.
*
            Lucius lingered in the restaurant for a long time after Potter was gone, sipping from his cup of tea and watching the dancing fire with a smile he knew he hadn’t worn for years.
            What a fascinating specimen Potter was. Magical power, which Lucius had seen before, but rarely with such a focused goal behind it. Mighty wizards tended to either be theorists, who wanted simply to withdraw from politics and attend to their research, or, well, Dark Lords.
            On-point and willing to play dirty with politics, something the young weren’t known for. Younger wizards usually needed longer in reality to temper their idealism.
            On the other hand, Lucius thought, as he touched the swan, which had gone back to being crystal in the middle of the table, and ordered more tea, I suppose a war is the best cure for idealism.
            And Potter had name recognition that was greater even than Lucius’s, and the ability to listen. He had accepted the proposed changes Lucius had wanted to make to his strategy without demur, but when Lucius asked why, Potter had simply shaken his head and said, “You know these people better than I do.”
            So strange, to find someone who can say that and not make me think he’s weak.
            When Lucius finally went home, his mind was lingering on something else, densely enough that he nearly bumped into another wizard on his way to the Apparition point. And he was still thinking about it when he finally shut the doors of the Manor securely behind him.
            Potter had beauty to go with everything else.
            Not just the beauty of the magic sparking around his shoulders, sometimes flaring into a crown around his head, although that was intriguing enough. But the way he stood and moved and gestured had a bluntness that Lucius had never before seen married to elegance.
            Which Potter had. Lucius had heard from Draco what a good flyer Potter was, but he had expected to see him somewhat clumsy on the ground, even so. Many skilled flyers were. Witness Viktor Krum.
            And those eyes. Lucius didn’t wish to fall prey to common admirations, but those eyes were something else, particularly when lambent with intelligence.
            Lucius sighed and paused in the dark corridor before his lighted study to assemble his thoughts. He had promised himself when he entered politics again after the war that he would not let material considerations draw his attention from making the family great. It was one of the reasons he had separated from Narcissa, other than the plain fact that he and she had very different ideas about what kind of life Draco should lead.
            Lucius did not have time for squabbles, or musings on the beauty of people, although he could still appreciate the beauty of a well-crafted plan. He had things to do.
            More than ever, now that Potter had brought him this delicious bargain.
            But because he knew himself, Lucius allowed his brain one more moment of thought on what could never be, his imagination filling in new gestures for Potter to make and new ways for his eyes to widen, before he strode firmly into the study and set to work writing the letters they would need for next week.
*
            JezeBelDK: It will be continued until it’s finished.
            staar: Thank you!
            CullensDarlin: Thank you!
            lusting_for_snape: Thank you! In this case, Harry wants to change the culture of the Ministry definitely, but he also wants the pure-bloods to feel non-threatened enough to help. You’re right that I think someone raised with a different family in the wizarding world would be part of that family, not their Muggle family.
     phoenix-rob: Even more than that, simply refusing to admit the world as Harry is painting it could exist.
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The Night With Stars