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Sympathy for the Predators	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Lucius Views: 14907 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and I am not making any money from this story.

Chapter List
- 1-Sympathy for the Predators
- 2-Tiger
- 3-Cheetah
- 4-Wolf
- 5-Fox
- 6-Falcon
- 7-Jaguar
- 8-Killer Whale
- 9-Lion
- 10-Dolphin
- 2
- 3
- 4
Thank you again for all the reviews!

Part III. Cheetah.

One burst of swiftness.

            Harry sighed and rolled his eyes at the mirror. He’d had a long nap this afternoon, because he needed it after being up half the night reassuring Gaheris Brandywine that his paintings weren’t shite, but his hair was always unmanageable after hours of being smashed flat against a pillow.

            And who are you trying to impress? he asked himself wryly as he began to cast the several dozen straightening charms that were necessary to make his hair behave when it was like this. Ginny’s ghost?

            The truth was, he wouldn’t have bothered about his appearance at all if not for the formal atmosphere of most of the gatherings he attended. His artist friends would be embarrassed if he showed up looking half-dead, and the Daily Prophet sometimes carried vaguely realistic stories that stood a chance of getting more publicity for people Harry wanted to promote. For that, he had to look good.

            Always for others and not myself, he thought, but without resentment. He had long since accepted that he was that way in most areas of his life. Trying to change would have been more trouble than it was worth.

            Finished, he looked in the mirror one last time and cast a charm that changed the color of his robes. Then he started for the door of Number Twelve Grimmauld Place in resignation.

            He wasn’t looking forwards to the gathering tonight. The centerpiece of it would no doubt be a beautiful statue, since all of Luke Thornsley’s work was beautiful, but it would remind Harry of a broken friendship. He had found someone to laugh and joke around with in Thornsley—until he had refused to model for him.

            Harry didn’t model for anyone, for the same reasons he’d given Rossetti. He hadn’t thought Thornsley would take it personally. But he had, and the next piece of art he’d made was a deliberate mockery of the people who had died in the war. Harry hadn’t spoken to him since.

            But you’re going for the sake of other people, Harry reminded himself as he locked the door tightly behind him. Concentrate on those people and not on Thornsley, and you might have a pleasant evening.

            He stepped off the doorstep, then stopped with a glare when he saw what lay on the walkway. A bunch of flowers, rue and clematis tied together with a ribbon that had a card dangling from it. The card had gilt lettering. That couldn’t make up for the horrible smell of the rue, and Harry grimaced as he Vanished the whole thing.

            Cale Willowwand knew he couldn’t get through the wards surrounding Number Twelve, but that didn’t stop him from regularly leaving love tokens just outside them.

            Harry whirled away from the place and took a few more steps, striving to calm his anger. It wasn’t a good idea to Apparate while angry.

            What the fuck does he want? Sometimes I think this goes too far for an ordinary case of hero worship, but I’ve dropped all these hints about things he could do to get on my good side, and he refuses to take them. It’s as if he wants to win me his way or not at all.

            As Harry spun in place and disappeared, he found himself wondering if Lucius Malfoy would be at Thornsley’s exhibition.

*

            Lucius smiled at himself in the mirror and cocked his head. The mirror was enchanted so that it couldn’t offer compliments—Lucius found them inane compared with the words he was accustomed to let grace his ears—but it would shine if it found him especially appealing. Silver sparks emerged and ran around the edges of the mirror now.

            Lucius had chosen golden robes, not his usual color, but one that he knew warmed his skin and made him appear less like the marble statue his past lovers had liked to compare him to. Potter would need some warmth to entice him.

            His hair was pulled back into a single braid that divided near his shoulders into three, each tied with a black ribbon. Lucius liked the touch of whimsy, and thought Potter would like it, too. His cheeks had more color than usual. Meeting his own eyes in the glass, Lucius could not tell if that was the effect of the robes or of his own excitement.

            He had decided on the best way to court Potter, and that meant he could move.

            The only negative part of the evening, Lucius thought as he strode down the stairs, the robes unfurling behind him like wings, is that I must be subjected to the welt on the skin of creation that is Luke Thornsley’s idea of good art.

*

            “Remarkable, isn’t it?”

            Thornsley wasn’t tall, but you forgot that when you were near him, Harry thought, not for the first time. He had dark hair and eyes, and a sharp, jutting nose, and a crackling vitality that he seemed to infuse into his statues directly through his hands.

            “Indeed,” Harry said, and glanced again at the statue that took up the center of Marley Hall. The roof of the place was high, like most pure-blood buildings', but the walls themselves were wooden, with alcoves containing purchased and protected works, making it seem far more intimate than the last few shows Harry had attended. The platform in the middle where Thornsley’s statue crouched was still meant to display its occupant in grandeur, of course.

            The statue showed a figure falling and dying, dissolving into a mass of snakes. A phoenix swooped down on it from above, beak open and flames raging around it, in particular rising around its head like a crown. Thornsley had made it entirely of wood, but carved so skillfully that the dying figure was much darker, while the flames around the phoenix contained warm shades of brown that almost became red and gold.

            Harry knew it was meant to be a representation of Voldemort’s defeat, and the phoenix the collective Order of the Phoenix. This was Thornsley’s latest way of trying to hurt him, by insisting that it wasn’t really Harry who had killed Britain’s nemesis.

            He makes the common mistake, Harry thought idly as he shifted his gaze back to Thornsley, of assuming that I define myself by that one moment.

            “Very pretty,” he said, and started to move away.

            Thornsley actually started and hissed as if someone had jabbed him with a hot needle, and hurried after Harry. Then he had the gall to put one hand on Harry’s shoulder. Harry paused and stared at it. Thornsley retreated immediately, wringing his hand. Harry smiled. There were times he enjoyed his reputation as a wizard powerful enough to fry someone’s limbs off with a glance.

            “You have to think more of it than that,” Thornsley insisted in a low voice. “Do you know how much effort I put into that thing?”

            Harry cocked his head, his amusement turning into quiet enjoyment. “I don’t think,” he said, “that you should expend effort on your art for the sake of someone else’s admiration. You cannot command that admiration. You should do the work primarily to embody your vision.”

            “Very well put, Mr. Potter,” said a voice from beyond him. “And yet, I cannot agree.”

            Harry turned to meet Lucius Malfoy’s eyes, doing his best to make the movement smooth as tearing silk. I will not allow him to surprise or hurt me.

            Besides, if the bastard thought he could shame Harry by showing off his superior knowledge about art, he was in for a surprise.

            “Would you care to explain what you mean by that?” he asked, with a motion of his hand that signaled a waiter to approach from beyond Malfoy.

*

            Oh, very good. Lucius had not been sure, when he contemplated a swift dash on Potter, what would happen. It was the best plan he could think of, and yet Potter might turn and walk away. Lucius must risk it anyway.

            He could not remember such uncertainty in dealing with another person in years. It was like drinking mulled wine.

            Instead, Potter had hurled himself straight into Lucius’s jaws.

            “One may command admiration, if one tries hard enough,” said Lucius. He had known that the way to seduce Potter was through the intellect, long before the body—Potter’s own words and his flinches when someone touched him made it clear enough that that would not be a feasible route—and he could not have asked for a better opportunity. “One may create a piece of art that molds and shapes the mind of another. Would you say—”

            Then he sensed someone behind him, and tensed and stepped to the side instinctively. The waiter swept around him and offered a platter of drinks to Potter with a deep bow.

            Potter’s eyes glinted. Lucius realized the lazy gesture of his hand, which he had taken before for some sort of warding motion to force him away, had been designed to construct exactly this sort of situation, with Lucius’s own temporary awkwardness.

            My prey does not mean to yield himself, Lucius thought, even as he bowed and forced all his irritation out in a soundless breath. A moment later, the irritation was genuinely gone, replaced by coiling excitement that played across his muscles like delicate fire. He straightened and smiled at Potter, who frowned uncertainly back. That makes him the more delicious.

            “Your pardon,” he murmured to the waiter, reaching deftly across to take a glass of champagne from the tray. “I did not see you standing there.”

            Potter’s frown grew more pronounced, but even when the waiter became round-eyed and almost ran away, he couldn’t blame Lucius. He gave his head a tiny shake and apparently sought to draw the conversation back to the right track. “You were saying?” he asked, politeness in his voice like frost.

            That I think you beautiful, Lucius longed to reply, but the time had not come for that, and might not for months or years. “Would you say it is impossible to touch minds through artwork?” he asked. “I must admit, such a comment would indicate a broader knowledge of the subject than I can pride myself on possessing.”

            “Not to touch them,” Potter said, voice low as though he could hardly believe he was agreeing with Lucius. “But you were arguing for something different than a mere touch.” He hadn’t moved, but the slightest changing of lines in his face was enough to give Lucius the impression of a guard defending a fortress against enemy intrusion.

            Lucius felt his stomach tightening as though he hadn’t eaten in hours. He did not reply until he was certain his voice would be balanced, cool, effective. “To command admiration? Yes, I suppose I was.” Again Potter’s brow furrowed as he admitted his fault. Lucius wondered how many other times he could surprise Potter in the course of the conversation. “But I believe it. One can put such beauty on canvas, in stone, in wood, that the reader’s mind is compelled to offer allegiance despite itself.”

            “I reckon you would know all about compelling allegiance.” Potter seemed to mean his words to travel no further than the two of them.

            Lucius smiled. “A poor being I would be if I could not face my own mistakes,” he said. “Yes, I have used the Imperius Curse. Yes, I saw and committed torture under the Dark Lord. But you are mistaken if you think I confuse those things with art, Potter. Torture is not beautiful, and I admire only things that are—the beauty that steals one’s breath, the rapture that falls like lightning from the skies. Did you know that the word 'rapture' comes from a Latin root that literally means ‘stolen away’ or ‘seized’? I admire the art that makes me feel like that.” He paused, then added, “It is also the root of ‘ravish,’ or so I remember reading.”

            Potter’s eyes widened again. The sight of the emotions swimming in them was, in and of itself, enough to pay Lucius for his trouble in starting the conversation.

*

            What is he doing?

            Harry was aware of surprise slashing like a whip against his skin. He had the urge to fall back from Malfoy until he was on the other side of the room, and even that might not be enough.

            He briefly contemplated at least putting Thornsley’s sculpture between them, because, if Malfoy valued beauty, he would stand there forever carping at and criticizing it for not being beautiful enough.

            The ridiculous thought steadied him. Harry gave his head a small shake and stood up straighter, locking his eyes on Malfoy’s face. Malfoy tilted his head in response, his gaze darkening. Harry didn’t know why Malfoy's face wore a shadow of disappointment now, but he thought it was a good thing. What had the world come to when Malfoy looked at him the way he’d been looking a moment ago, and spoke in a low voice?

            But you’ve been looked at it that way before, and spoken to in softer voices, with prettier words, and gentler smiles.

            Yes, he was steady now. It was only the utter unexpectedness of the occurrence that had caught him off-balance, Harry thought defensively. Of all the people he had thought might try to seduce him, Lucius Malfoy was not one of them.

            “Linguistic knowledge is interesting, too, of course,” Harry said in the most polite and neutral voice he had, as neutral as the tones of grey in some of Risa’s paintings. “But I find it incompatible with most discussions about art. So few of the artists that I value use words in their designs, you know.”

            “Is that so?” Malfoy’s response was immediate, his expression full of nothing but intense interest no matter how hard Harry stared at him. “You must not have seen Leomund Kaczynski's Wall of Words, then. There is an artifact to command admiration. The woven words among the chiseled ones, the wooden plaques among the bronze ones…I think that even you would have to admit that linguistics has a place there.”

            “Does he include dictionary definitions, too?” Harry asked, and wished he had taken a drink from the waiter who had come by after all. It would have given him something to do with his hands. He was prone to make nervous gestures with them, and he hated that. “If so, I can see why you would find it fascinating.”

            Malfoy laughed softly, with his mouth open and his eyes shining so deeply that Harry could feel the pull of his charm. Wasted on me, but I suspect that he would not like to hear that. “I think you will find that I do not offer dictionary definitions,” he said, or practically whispered. Harry realized abruptly just how close they stood together and how softly Malfoy was speaking. He stiffened his muscles against the temptation to take a large step backwards. That would make him look afraid, and he didn’t want that. “I offer definitions that have been lived, and turned over in the mind, and worked as carefully as any sculptor wields his instruments. Definitions to savor.”

            Harry glanced over his shoulder, and had the satisfaction of noticing that a painting he had watched the creation of, Giles Burne-Jones’s Blue Sunrise, hung on a wall nearby. He had the excuse he needed for stepping away from Malfoy and up to the canvas. Streaks of blue exploded across it, so many different shades—cornflower, cobalt, cerulean, cyan, azure, and some that Harry suspected didn’t have names—that they tricked the eye, and one forgot about the missing sun in trying to number them. “I’m more akin to art like this,” he murmured, touching one of the larger streaks of deeper blue in the bottom right-hand corner of the painting. “This is what I savor. Wordless beauty that makes me think.” He gave Malfoy a glance from the corner of his eye. “What good is it thinking about where words came from when you’re confronted with this, or with the actual natural event it’s modeled after? Your knees weaken and tears come to your eyes, but there’s no rational reason for that. It can’t be put into words.”

            Malfoy raised an eyebrow and strolled after Harry. Harry tensed, but Malfoy took up the opposite corner of the painting to examine. Harry relaxed. He hadn’t been exactly subtle about the signals he had sent Malfoy to back off. He appeared to be someone who could recognize such things and who preferred not to embarrass himself by ignoring them.

            Harry had put an extra temptation to stay away in his last words. Malfoy would probably be thinking, as so many other unwanted suitors did when Harry admitted things like that, I don’t want someone so weak that he gets teary from a sunrise.

            But Malfoy turned to him with a faint smile that had been old when crocodiles were embryos drifting in the mud, and said, “Not easily put into words. But how many times have you read poems or heard songs about the sunrise and the sunset, Mr. Potter? Would you deny them the right to capture any beauty at all?”

            “I’m not nearly as familiar with songs and poetry as I am with the other branches of art,” Harry said, relieved. Here’s another reason for him to think I’m vulgar. “I told you, I prefer almost everything to words.”

            “Really?” Malfoy leaned nearer again, and though there was plenty of space between them, he somehow pitched his voice so that Harry could hear it better than he could the buzz of mindless conversation a short distance away.

            “‘This is a sunset in glass and air,’” Malfoy intoned, “‘full of unnamable and radiant shades. The sky as the world below is fair; the sky as the world below has its woods and glades, made of cloud and streaked with gold rarer than wine, dashed with orange that has a destiny as blue. Lift your eyes to observe a world more fine, often, than the thick buildings and people we cannot see through.’” He leaned back again and waited.

            Harry stayed silent in return until he was sure Malfoy would say no more, and had the satisfaction of seeing his eyes narrow. Then he shrugged and said, “It takes more than a few references to colors and incidental rhymes to make me think something is art.”

            “I am sad to find you a person of such limited culture,” Malfoy said, straightening up and moving away from Blue Sunrise as if he could no longer bear to be near a painting that Harry liked.

            Harry smiled. But his triumph was short-lived when Malfoy turned towards him again and said, “But I appreciate that not everyone has had the benefits of a full personal library. From what I understand, the library at Hogwarts is particularly poor in books that are not either nonfiction or the most limited and popular wizarding novels.”

            “You say ‘popular’ as if you believe that appeal and art are mutually exclusive,” Harry said mildly. He had no wish to talk over libraries or education with Lucius Malfoy. It could lead too easily to the subject of childhood, and Harry did not wish to have someone kill him or try to kill someone in the middle of an exhibition like this.

            “Not often,” Malfoy said, his eyelids drooping as if he wanted to look like a lazy cat lounging on the hearth before a bright fire. “When the public takes kindly to a piece of art, it is an indication, often, of a grain of genius somewhere within it. But what they think they are responding to is most often not that genius, but the superficial aspects of it that plague one artist after another. That is when I become wary, when someone surrenders to the popular taste and decides they would rather be popular than beautiful.”

            “Does beauty matter to you that much?” Harry asked. He was tired of the conversation and wanted to join one of the people he could see drifting around the edges of the exhibition, several of whom were his friends. The only way he could see to do that was to take control of the discussion and push it to a premature conclusion.

            “It matters to me as air matters,” was Malfoy’s response, brief but not short, while his eyes opened and widened like a cat seeing prey.

            “Then you can have little interest in me,” Harry said, intending the words to be double-edged, and turned away from Malfoy.

            He nearly ran into Giles Burne-Jones, who smiled at him and then looked at Malfoy as if trying to determine why he was in a room that didn’t echo with the screams of maimed prisoners. Giles was a tall, heavyset man with shaggy dark brown hair that he changed the style of every time Harry saw him. Right now, it clung around the sides of his face and barely swayed when he moved his head.

            “Harry,” Giles said, and took his hand with a casual assurance that Harry admired. So few of his other friends had the same kind of ease around him—except Ron and Hermione, who had known him so long, and Risa, for whom it was a case of not caring more than anything else—and too many people reached out with a cautious hand to touch him, in a manner that reminded him of Willowwand.

            Harry wasn’t delicate. He wasn’t porcelain, to crack or shatter. It was just that he didn’t want to be touched by very many people, and they mistook his fastidiousness for fragility.

            “I heard you’d bought Risa a new studio,” Giles said. “No one deserves it more.”

            Harry grinned at him. “I’m glad you think so. What favor do you have to ask me?”

            “Me?” Giles touched his hand to his chest and widened his eyes. “What makes you think that I have something to ask you?”

            “Because you never mention someone else’s good fortune without wanting to increase your own.” Harry took his hand back and folded his arms. “Well?”

            “In this case, it honestly isn’t for me,” said Giles, speaking in a serious tone. That was another thing Harry approved of: Giles didn’t hint and flirt and dance around corners, either. He knew what he wanted, and he spoke of it with admirable directness. “It’s for a friend of mine who’s had a spot of trouble recently. Supplies stolen, his best piece ruined in transport, that kind of thing. Perhaps you’d like to meet him?”

            Harry nodded. “I always want to meet someone before I promise help.” There had been a few—not many, but enough that he was wary—deceptions aimed at him in the years he’d been patronizing artists. Harry thought that he could judge someone better by looking in their eyes and listening to their story face-to-face.

            “Great,” Giles said, clapping him on the back. “His name is Ernie Macmillan, and—”

            “Really?” Harry interrupted, not trying to conceal his pleasure. “He was an old acquaintance at Hogwarts. I didn’t know he’d become an artist.”

            “He felt the call late,” Giles said solemnly. Harry rolled his eyes. If there was one thing that exasperated him about Giles, it was this tendency to treat art as a mysterious process, rather than a business. Harry knew there were sometimes inspirations and mysteries in art, but he was much more comfortable with the practical side of things. “But yeah, he’s taken up the chisel in concert with the wand now.”

            “The wand?” Harry cocked his head, intrigued. There were many magical forms of art, including wizarding portraits, but most of the artists he knew felt that such things were cheating. It was no effort to make something beautiful if you cast a spell.

            “Yes. He sculpts in ice.” Giles grinned at him. “You can see why he might need some help to keep his material from melting as he works on it.”

            Harry blinked. The first thing he thought of were the sculptures in ice that he had sometimes seen when he walked past a shop in the Muggle world that had tellies in them, but he suspected that Ernie’s art would be considerably more complicated and realistic. “Yes, I can see that,” he said. “Tell him I’d like to meet him in the next week.”

            Giles blew out a breath of relief that made his cheeks redden. “He’ll be grateful to hear that, Harry. I can’t tell you how worried he’s been that he’ll never get a chance to show the world what he can do.”

            Harry nodded to him as Giles swept off to interact with a patron, and then turned around. He expected to see Malfoy lurking behind him, ready to continue their conversation at a moment’s notice. So many people did that, fuming quietly all the while about not having exclusive claim to Harry’s time and attention.

            But Malfoy was on the other side of the room, speaking with a tall blonde woman in silver robes. Harry squinted. He knew her by sight, he thought. Probably Rowan Fedele, the experimental sculptor.

            Fedele laughed and shook her head, then walked off. Malfoy leaned on his cane, which Harry knew he didn’t need, and watched her in a frankly admiring way.

            Harry waited, but Malfoy still didn’t turn to face him. He took a glass of wine from a passing waiter instead and went to look at the portrait of a dragon on the opposite wall. Harry saw him spend two minutes in front of it, examining it minutely, before he drifted off along the wall of artworks. He appeared to be making the tour of the room.

            He’s ignoring me, Harry thought. He’s trying to make me feel bad about not being the center of his attention.

            Except that Malfoy didn’t walk with the tension that signaled someone trying to make Harry feel bad. He didn’t glance over his shoulder. He didn’t hurry. He lingered over works Harry would have dismissed with a glance and spent less time on others than Harry thought they deserved, but every piece of art he paused and studied had some merit.

            Harry discovered that he was holding his breath, awaiting the moment when Malfoy would turn around again, and shook his head in irritation. This is ridiculous. He sought my attention. I shouldn’t give mine now.

            He forced himself to look for Giles, who was done speaking with his patron, and engage him in conversation again.

            It felt as though the skin on his back was constantly aware anyway, waiting for a look from Malfoy.

*

            Lucius smiled at the picture of the beautiful woman in front of him, a blue-robed witch who stood with one hand on a crystal swan, gazing steadfastly at the real swan on the pool in front of her. Such was the artist’s skill that it seemed as if the carved bird was about to spread its wings and the living bird was artificial.

            Is Potter getting a bit impatient?

            Lucius had established what he wished, a claim on Potter’s attention. He knew when to move swiftly and when to back away, as he had done when he saw Potter truly involved in the discussion with Burne-Jones. Pressing further than Potter wished would lose him ground, as would showing signs of possessiveness, touching him uninvited, and a number of other mistakes that Lucius had noted Willowwand or those people who stared at Potter in public making.

            Because he had not yet gained Potter himself did not make this run useless. Lucius always enjoyed a chance to stretch his legs in the hunting dash and see how his prey reacted.

            Besides, it was hard to think of a talk he’d enjoyed more lately. Potter was intense, and though he might try to hold back behind coolness and disdain, he could hardly help charging everything he did with that intensity. Lucius had stood in the presence of lightning and felt less certain it would strike.

            This is good for me. I needed someone after Narcissa died, but until now, I felt as if I had no chance of gaining anyone worthy of me.

            Lucius permitted himself one glance. Potter once again stood before Burne-Jones, but he had his head canted to one side as if he would look in Lucius’s direction.

            Lucius smiled. I wonder if he knows he does that.

            He certainly does not know he is beautiful, if his reaction to my comment on his features is any indication.

            Lucius’s eyes narrowed slightly. He could think of only one reason that someone would go ignorant of his beauty in a world where everyone—from Aurors like Willowwand to the mindless editors of the papers—tried to reflect it back to him. Others had made the mirrors so bitter to him that he saw only smudged glass.

            I will give you what you need, Potter. It will be my pride and pleasure to do so.

            A thought came to Lucius before he left the hall, a thought that had never come to him before and which stole his breath as it danced before his mind’s eye like some glorious wild animal.

            Perhaps Potter is not prey after all, to be eaten and then discarded.

            Perhaps he is a hunter who can run beside me.

*

            Koru: Yes, exactly! Hence Lucius's realization in this chapter. Harry has to get something he wants, too, or else he really has no reason to give in to Lucius any more than any of his other suitors.

            Harry investigates ways that he can counter Ministry abuses, when he can. But since he thinks the Ministry is corrupt top to bottom except for a few individuals like Ron and Hermione, he concentrates most of his efforts on decentralization—creating alternative ways through art that people can be independent from the Ministry.

            KillingProphet: Thanks! I think there's no doubt that Lucius is stalking Harry, and Harry is not going to be happy when he finds out.

            purple-er: Thanks! As you can see, Lucius’s plan is to show Harry respect and attention for his opinions about art first, and engage him in intense conversation.
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Sympathy for the Predators