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His Actium	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 9606 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
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Chapter Three--Tactics Chosen

            "Rose is about to go on a flight," Harry said confidentially, his nose a few inches from Rose's. "Isn't she?"

            Rose giggled at him, but she was trying to smother the giggles. She seemed to be Hermione's daughter to the extent that she wanted to be solemn and follow the rules about not making too noise, but her real personality kept breaking out at the edges.

            "Yes, she is," Harry continued, in the same calm, normal, nice, easy voice. "And she's about to do it now!"

            He tossed her up, nearly to the ceiling, and Rose flailed her arms and legs and screamed in delight. Harry whirled around beneath her, holding his hands up, and she dropped neatly into them and buried her head in his chest, giggling now without restraint. Harry laughed and tickled her along the sides to rouse more laughter, although he didn't think she was very ticklish yet.

            "My heart half-stops every time you do that, mate," Ron commented from the door of the drawing room.

            Harry grinned at him over his shoulder. "Really? Even though you know I've never failed to catch her?" He put Rose back on the floor, and she promptly toddled over and brought him back a rubber brick. Harry nodded and examined it gravely, then gave it back for her to add to a pile of them.

            "Yeah," Ron said. "I trust you, mate, but sometimes you see someone in flight like that and you just can't be sure that they're going to land safely, you know?"

            Harry knew he was talking about more than just Harry tossing Rose in the air. He caught Ron's eye and nodded. "Yeah, I know," he said. "But when someone's older than Rose and they've chosen to make their own leap and they're sure they can control the landing, then you just have to stand back and let them do it."

            Ron stared at him, then cracked a reluctant smile and nodded back. "You're right," he said. "If that person ever wants help changing the path of his flight, though, he just has to ask."

            "He knows," Harry said, and his hand rested hard enough on Ron's shoulder for a moment that Ron actually winced. "Believe me, he knows."

            Ron picked up Rose, shook her back and forth for a second in the way she liked, and then took her into the kitchen, where Hermione was making breakfast, a chore that she and Ron traded. Harry followed.

            Hermione looked up from the pan of eggs she'd enchanted to fry themselves, and from the large book that lay on the counter in front of her and which Harry knew was her real focus of attention. Hermione and Ron had a rule: no books at the table or in the bedroom. But the rules said nothing about books at the kitchen counter, in the drawing room, in the bathroom, or basically everywhere else, and so Hermione got around the corners that way to continue studying for her solicitor's exam.

            "Harry," she said, leaning up to kiss his cheek. "You came to have breakfast with us?"

            "If there's room for one more." Harry dropped into place at the round wooden table scrubbed to a bright shine, a present from Hermione's parents. He had given up on offering to help with the food after Hermione had taken that as an insult to her household charms. Ron would accept help gladly, which was one reason that Harry usually tried to come over on the mornings that Hermione was cooking.

            "Always," Hermione said, and turned around and gave him a warm, exasperated look that seemed to have been a present from Molly.

            Harry shrugged and grinned back at her. He and Hermione had had their share of disagreements about his chosen career, sure. But it had never escalated to the level of personal insults, which was the main reason that Neville wasn't speaking to him. She had simply force-fed Harry psychology, complaining gently that he wasn't treating himself right if he thought he had to have sex to be worth anything. That would be the part where Harry told her that he didn't think that, but that he would never be "normal," given his notoriety. Rather than trying to do something where that notoriety was a hindrance and could actually hurt other people--which had happened when he was trying to be a "normal" Auror--he could parley that into ultimate gains for the process of justice, and have a lot of fun at the same time.

            Harry liked having sex, and didn't actually get to do it as often as his reputation would suggest. After all, some of the time he had to be home writing reports and studying his targets and making sure that Fovea didn't die of not having a human servant to lord it over. And other times he seduced but didn't get all the way to bed. He'd chosen the way he lived as one that would answer most of his needs, the need to be with people and the need to help them, and it seemed to be working.

            Ron had been bewildered for a while, then upset, when Hermione had convinced him that Harry was doing it because of his childhood. But he had come around. What was important to him was that Harry was his friend, and that he was happy. Since both were still true, he didn't spend a lot of time worrying about Harry or hinting that he could be different.

            Hermione turned around with the pan full of eggs and dashed them neatly onto the plates, followed by toast that she'd set cooking a short time before. Then came the jars of marmalade and a whole plate of butter, floating over by themselves from the fridge, and the pumpkin juice that Ron still favored and the special milk that Rose had to have and tea for Harry and Hermione. Harry gathered in his tea and closed his eyes while he sipped.

            Hermione was waiting anxiously for his verdict when he opened his eyes. She always did. Harry grinned at her. "I'm looking for a word," he said. "What's the word? Oh, yeah...perfect."

            "Arsehole," Hermione muttered, and then looked humiliated when Rose cooed and waved her hands. "It's her uncles, is what it is," she said hastily, and started eating.

            Harry snickered at her behind his hand. Of course Hermione would be mortified that her daughter was picking up bad language from her, which wasn't enough to stop her from using it before she remembered.

            Hermione shook her head and struck out for the "higher moral ground" that most parents among Harry's friends seemed to find sooner or later. "And when are you going to have children, Harry?"

            "When I find a man or a woman who wants them, too," Harry said.

            Hermione sighed and pushed her hair out of her eyes. "Who are you dating now? Any new prospects?"

            "Actually," Harry said, drawing out the word as he watched both Ron and Hermione pick up their cups, "sometime soon I'm going on a date with Draco Malfoy."

            He timed it for maximum effectiveness, so that both pumpkin juice and tea sprayed across the table.

*

            "I need you to get moving on this, Potter."

            "Sure, Head Auror," Harry said absently, without looking up from the stack of newspaper clippings about Malfoy that he was revising. He knew that not meeting his eyes while they talked drove Robards mad, but the real reason he couldn't look up was that Fovea was sitting on the back of his couch, over to the side, out of Robards's line of sight. She was jumping back and forth excitedly along the couch, flaring her yellow crest up and down and spreading her wings out. She stopped and struck a dramatic pose whenever Robards spoke, then carried on with her dancing. Harry would burst out laughing if he caught more than a glimpse, he knew he would. "I have a date."

            "When is it?"

            "I don't know. He's setting it."

            "Look at me when I'm talking to you, Potter!"

            Harry looked up, just as Fovea swept her head down in a curve to the right and bobbed it up and down forcefully several times. Harry closed his eyes and pinched his lips firmly together, denying the giggles that bubbled in his throat like boiling water.

            "Something funny, Potter?"

            "No, sir," Harry said, and he thought his voice was appropriately strangled. "I'm feeling a bit sick, that's all." He went back to holding his mouth closed as Fovea turned around, pointed her tail at the fireplace, and wriggled it disdainfully.

            "You have to make sure that you're feeling better by the time Malfoy contacts you," Robards hissed. "And you have to do it soon."

            There was more in the same line of shit, which Harry didn't pay much attention to. He was too busy considering what he should wear for the date with Malfoy. Green, to emphasize his eyes? Red? Or would that convey too much of the "Gryffindor" mentality, perhaps even remind Malfoy of Auror robes? It was an important decision, and not just because Harry didn't want to antagonize Malfoy and frighten him off. He'd told Malfoy the truth about the kick of heat in his belly, after all.

            "Potter, are you listening to me?"

            "Yes," Harry said, without looking up. "And you can't set guards on the date, and you can't specify questions that I can ask him. Sir, I know what I'm doing. I wouldn't have managed so many arrests if I didn't. But it's going to be damaged if you insist on doing something to damage it." He looked up then and hit Robards with a stare that made him hesitate, at least a little. "Do you want evidence that holds up in a trial, or evidence brought in badly-mangled?"

            "I'm worried about what you might do without consulting me," Robards muttered, but at least he sounded as though he was calming down.

            Harry shook his head impatiently. "This is my job. Take it away from me and give it to someone else, if you don't want me to handle it. But if you leave it with me, then I have to continue as I began, or Malfoy will be suspicious."

            Robards muttered some kind of agreement and shut down the Floo call. Harry continued watching the fireplace for a moment, trying to smile, but he knew his eyes and face were both hard. He had to consider Robards a dangerous enemy, not because of any magical skill or intelligence but simply because of the sway he had in the Department as Head Auror. That meant he might get in Harry's way without telling Harry he was doing it.

            Robards usually wasn't like this. Although he worked Harry too hard, and made snide comments, he was willing to step back and let Harry do what was needed to ascertain someone's guilt or innocence. Harry feared that he was different this time only because of his personal investment in bringing Malfoy down.

            Which meant that he might easily interfere, under the impression that he was doing good.

            Harry would have to watch.

            His hard look faded a moment later, when Fovea flew over to the mantle, crouched down and shook herself, and shat all over the hearthstone. Harry laughed and held out his hand, and she flew to him, dancing triumphantly up and down his arm, singing Whoo! Whoo! Whoo! as though she had just defeated an invading army.

            "Yeah," Harry told her, scratching down her neck as she closed her eyes in bliss, "I'd like to see the army that could keep going through a rain of cockatoo shit."

*

            "Interesting robes that you chose, Potter."

            Harry grinned. He'd gone with the scarlet robes after all, knowing they would provoke a reaction from Malfoy but deciding that he probably needed the reaction. They couldn't avoid their history forever. "Interesting place you've chosen to eat," he retorted, and slid into the seat across from Malfoy's.

            Malfoy leaned back in his chair and looked at Harry with the same intensity he'd showed in his office. Harry looked back at him, never losing his smile. It would take far more than Malfoy to make him do that.

            Because Malfoy didn't seem inclined to conversation right now, though, Harry took the chance to look around the room. It was the inner chamber of the restaurant; he'd had to pass through three others to get here. They were all egg-shaped, though the walls only swooped down in a breathless way near the doors. This one was blazing blue, the sapphire color of the walls and ceiling nearly painful to the eye. Harry especially enjoyed looking at the floor. The blue made him feel as though the table was floating atop a glassy pool of water, covered with transparent ice.

            The designs on the walls, carved or chipped into the faceted sapphire (if it was sapphire) itself, also made Harry stare in appreciation, and not just because of the delicacy of art visible in those curve-necked swans, and flowing fish, and leaping dolphins. They contained defensive wards, the telltalle blue lines hidden by the general color of the walls.

            And their table was the only one in the room, sprawling languidly along one wall. They were seated close to each other, a fact Harry was privately grateful for, and the food occupied the rest of the table. The servers began to bring it to them the moment Harry was seated, the first course a soup that didn't steam. Harry peered at it and found out it was gazpacho. He did a private toast to Malfoy's taste with his wineglass and began to eat.

            "The robes you were last time would have made a better complement to the room," Malfoy said, when they had been eating peacefully for three minutes.

            Harry toasted him this time and made sure that he had swallowed all the gazpacho before he spoke. "I'm sorry. The next time, owl me with the details of your private restaurant decorating scheme, and I'll make sure that I take them into account."

            Malfoy leaned back in his chair, fingers wrapped around the stem of his glass, and stared at him over the rim of it. Harry hadn't seen him take a single drink yet. Cautious, curious. Harry would have to hope that the curiosity could overcome the caution. "You're very confident, aren't you," Malfoy said.

            Harry ate silently, and then smiled in the moment before he knew Malfoy would have burst out with something. "I'm sorry, was that a question? I leave declarative statements alone. That's a lesson that the Prophet reporters took hard when I first taught it to them, but I think you're more intelligent."

            Slow amusement crossed Malfoy's face, with behind it the look of a watching predator. Harry shivered and took a sip of his soup to hide his face. That had not been the response he would have expected.

            "Tell me," Malfoy said, "in detail, what you'd like to do to me." Now he put his wineglass away and lifted a calm hand, signaling the servers forward. They had a platter of fish, Harry saw, the scales carefully arranged on top of the flesh and gleaming so brightly silver that they looked artificial. At a whisk of the lead server's wand, the scales flew away and left the shining fish beneath.

            Appropriate. From the way Malfoy was staring at Harry, he would have enjoyed stripping him in much the same way.

            "With this audience?" Harry asked. He would accept the challenge Malfoy seemed intent on tossing him if Malfoy meant it, but he wanted to make sure that Malfoy understood all the nuances of his request.

            "Of course." Malfoy looked at the servers and turned back to Harry, dismissing them from existence. "They won't tell anyone."

            Harry sat up and gave him a hard smile. You think you can frighten me? He licked his lips and spent a moment making sure his voice was at maximum huskiness.

            "I'd like to begin with arranging you," he said. "Laying you back on your bed, undressing you so slowly that your limbs seem to flow and melt like water, until you're relaxed and yet so excited that your breath is coming fast and your hair stands on end." Malfoy stared at him, and Harry nodded, took a bite of his fish, and closed his eyes as the taste of marlin burst over his tongue. When he looked back, Malfoy had a faint frown on his face, as if he didn't think much of Harry eating in the middle of the conversation--or monologue.

            Well, so be it, then. Harry pushed the fish aside for the moment and continued speaking at a slightly lower level, though not so low that the waiters couldn't hear if they wanted to. Malfoy was the one who had chosen this. "I'm good with my hands. I'd start out with your face. I don't think many people dare to touch you there, do they? Probably afraid of being cut, or slapped aside, or flinched away from. I'd begin behind your ears, rubbing the skin there. It's delicate. I like tracing it, watching the flush begin.

            "I'd work my way forwards soon, stroking up and down your cheeks, but spending a lot of my time on your chin. Most people have more sensitive chins than they give themselves credit for. And I think I'd enjoy touching yours." Malfoy had no stubble at all, as though he had cast spells that ensured he wouldn't grow it. Well, perhaps he had. Harry could work with that as well as with men who had some. "But I'd spend a lot of time on your eyelids. Press them closed at first, and they'd flutter. But I'd hum in your ear and ask you to trust me, and sooner or later you would, as the time passed and I didn't hurt you. That's all I can ask for."

            "Most of my lovers would ask for considerably more than that," Malfoy said in a hoarse voice.

            He was trying to break the mood. Harry smiled at him and didn't let him. "Your throat next. I love learning how hard I can bite before I make someone whimper." He paused, watching the way that Malfoy's chest traveled up and down beneath the pale robes he had chosen for tonight, so light that Harry found it hard to determine what color they were. Not the best look on him, he thought. Perhaps they were meant for the surroundings of his office rather than this place. "You'd grunt, though, I think. Trying to deny yourself to me. Keeping your lips shut, your head turned away as much as possible. But I'd coax you back around, and we'd kiss for the first time.

            "I've imagined that several times now." Of course he had, especially during one spectacular wank this morning that he'd luckily finished before Robards interrupted him. Harry felt the heat rising in his groin as he spoke, which was all right. He knew the way it affected him, and it was nothing he couldn't handle. "You'll kiss forcefully, I think, urgently, determined to show me how much you don't want this. But I'll only pull back if you do that, and keep my tongue lazily in play until you relax. Then it'll be slow, learning your taste. I've had lovers with a different taste in every corner of their mouths. I want to see if you fit that category. Dark, coppery, salty, merely warm, sweet...I can't decide which taste fits you best. Or which combination. I hope that I'll be able to settle my curiosity soon enough." He sipped his wine this time and carried on smiling at Malfoy, letting it all bleed through, the challenge and his delight in the challenge and his own flung gauntlet to Malfoy and his honest desire, because he wanted Malfoy and he knew it made him beautiful.

            Malfoy made a small noise, and then looked furious at himself for having made even that. Harry nodded. He knew how that could be. Malfoy would have a stronger tendency, after Zabini, to be guarded, and to hate himself if he was not. Harry had lingered in that untrusting hell for nearly six months after the first time that someone close had betrayed him--a Ministry flunky who had pretended to be a friend and then scurried away to sell someone Harry's secrets--before he accepted that he couldn't judge every situation correctly and therefore he would just have to put up with being wrong some of the time.

            "You have no idea who I am, what I like," Malfoy said, and pushed his fish around on his plate with the tines of his fork. "This is all...adapted. Something that you might say to almost anyone." He looked ill, though, flushing with red that only made it clearer than ever how bad his pale robes looked on him. He seized his glass and took a reckless swallow of wine.

            "Yes, I do," Harry said. "I can see the way you move. I can understand something of the way you have to protect yourself, because there are people who would try to take advantage of you."

            "Including you?"

            Harry met his eyes. "That would depend entirely on what you like in the bedroom," he said calmly. "Since that's all you'll let me be interested in at the moment."

            "Let you," Malfoy sneered. He was remembering something of his composure, it seemed. That was all right. Harry would make it scatter again soon enough. "You can want more than that."

            "But if I said I did, you would sneer and call me weak." Harry shrugged and ate a little more of his marlin. "I prefer not to be insulted. You're beautiful, though, and you know it. That means that physical compliments are safer territory for you. And so is a lover who demands nothing more than use of your body."

            Malfoy met his eyes. There was a desperate flash in his, something Harry had seen many times before. The gazelle started before the hunter. The fish on the line. Yearning to escape, fighting for life, but knowing it might not happen.

            Harry smiled slowly back, and continued eating.

            Malfoy closed his eyes. The flush had died from his face, but moved to his throat. Harry found it fascinating, all the different ways he could blush. "You'd want to fuck me, I suppose," he said. "If you had continued with that speech you were making."

            "I want to touch you," Harry said. "And go with what the moment and my leanings and yours tell me. Sometimes I prefer to fuck, sometimes to be fucked."

            Malfoy opened his eyes again, and the sneer Harry hadn't wanted to see was on his face. "People like you," he said. "People who claim that everything is fine, that they don't have any preferences. You don't exist."

            Zabini was one, Harry completed the sentence silently. "I am one," he said. "But there are times that I have pretty strong preferences, it's true. With one bloke, I preferred to fuck him because it felt bloody good, but also because he had no idea where my prostate was. I fucking cast a spell on the end of his cock that should have guided him, and he still couldn't reach it."

            Malfoy broke out laughing, and then looked as startled as Harry that he had. He drank more wine to cover it up and dragged his plate towards him. Harry studied him curiously. It seemed that simply laughing had relaxed him, which Harry thought was unusual, but supposed was possible.

            "Let's see where the rest of the evening goes," Malfoy said. He was toying with the stem of his glass again, but his eyes were clear, and that desperation was gone from them, leaving only the flash of the struggle. "I might enjoy you--touching me."

            Harry toasted him the way he had in Venezia's, his own pulse high and hot and hard and hammering. I want him. This is going to be more than fun.

            This is going to be a positive pleasure.

*

            unneeded: Harry is pretty confident that he can handle both Malfoy and Robards.

            Taragh McCarthy: Thank you! Harry does try to be fair. He'll turn Malfoy in if he finds evidence of illegal activity, but it has to be actual evidence.

            Erin_49: I think Draco and Fovea's meeting will be an experience. On the other hand, Fovea might not like having to share Harry.

            SP777: Thank you! Draco is utterly at a loss as to how to deal with Harry. He is much more used to the seducer role than the other way around, after all.

            Well, as I think you know, I have an African gray, and so I give a lot of time to birds in real life. I might as well do the same thing in a fanfic!

            Pixie: Thanks! That playfulness confuses Draco, who keeps trying to make Harry back down in the way that he's more used to being able to do, and can't.
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His Actium