Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Changing of the Guard	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 58627 -:- Recommendations : 4 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor any of the characters from the books or movies. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 30
- 31
- 32
Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Thirty-One�The Meeting

�� I�m glad
to see you again, Elizabeth.� Nusante�s smile was anxious. He reached out and
took Elizabeth�s arm hard enough to make her wince a little with the pinching
of the skin. �Where is the meeting? The Apparition coordinates I received told
me to come here, but it can�t be here. It�s too public.� His eyes darted about
for a moment, as though he expected Aurors to come pouring out of the stone
walls around him.

�� Elizabeth
watched him for a moment, biting her lip to hold back the pity. Nusante had
seemed so confident when he met them that first day at the
Theater-in-the-Round, agreeing to change his play in a way he knew would cause
an immediate public response. Now he looked hunted.

�� You know,
Raymond,� she said softly, even as she turned and led him along the alley, �if
you don�t want to stay involved�if this is too hard��

�� He jerked
away from her and faced her with his arms folded, his eyes suddenly hard and
without any trace of fear. �I never said that,� he snapped. �I can do this.
I�ve always wanted to be free to love whom I wanted, and this is my best chance
to do that. If I sneak away now, that leaves�how many people in the lurch?
Hundreds, probably, and certainly the dozens I know who are depending on me. I
may feel that I should have had a different position in the rebellion than that
of leader, but I�m not about to abandon it, now that I have it.�

�� Elizabeth
smiled at him. She had heard similar speeches from Muggle leaders of gay pride
movements who in the end had decided to stay and work for it, daring mental
scars and physical violence. �You�re brave,� she said, and discovered, to her
amusement, that a woman�s compliment could still make him blush.

�� Do you
know if Draco Malfoy will be attending this meeting?� he asked, allowing her to
draw him down the alley again. �There are some people who are only coming on
the off-chance that they�ll see him. They�were very impressed by the way he got
himself disowned. We all know he has his own business, of course, but still, it
can�t have been easy for him to risk losing everything he expected to inherit.�

�� I can say
with some confidence that Draco Malfoy will be there,� said Elizabeth, and then
leaned closer to him and lowered her voice. They were coming up on Diagon Alley
now, and it was for the best, just in case someone happened to be looking at or
listening to them. �And that rumor I passed along about the house we�re meeting
in?� She had sent a second owl to Nusante hard on the heels of the first one
that gave him the correct Apparition coordinates. �That�s true.�

�� Nusante
jumped as if stung, then flushed again and glanced about as though someone
would pay attention to them just for that. Seeing the bland or harried faces of
the wizards and witches who poured past them on errands seemed to reassure him.
Turning back to her, he whispered furiously, �But that�s nonsense! Harry Potter
isn�t one of us. There�s no one who has more to gain from keeping the world the
way it is.�

�� Elizabeth
struggled to keep up her smile. It felt as though a menstrual cramp had invaded
her belly at the moment. �I agree that he�d have a lot to gain. But maybe his
motivation is the same as yours. Maybe he�s tired of not being able to walk
about in the open with his lover. Maybe he�s afraid and weary at the thought of
all the work the rebellion entails, but he�d still rather face that than having
to hide every day for the rest of his life.�

�� Nusante shook
his head, but in wonder this time. �I�there�s never even been a rumor about
him.�

�� He�s been
mostly fucking Muggles, I think,� said Elizabeth, and pushed away an
inappropriate pride for Nusante�s lack of suspicion. �After all, there�s the
celebrity factor to make it especially unwise for him to indulge himself in the
wizarding world.�

�� True
enough,� Nusante said, and then began to grin. �Do you know if he�ll put in an
appearance at today�s gathering?�

�� And there
was a moment when Elizabeth felt a cliff-edge she had not expected to feel
beneath her feet. She crossed it without waiting for the cleverest corner of
her mind to speak to her.

�� That might
be a possibility,� she said. �At least for a moment,
and near the end. He won�t want to distract attention from the main purpose of
the meeting.�

�� Nusante
straightened and glared around the Alley, as much as though to say all these
ordinary straight people couldn�t trouble him when he had Harry Potter on his
side. Elizabeth concealed a giggle�it would make her sound drunken at the
moment, which was approximately how she felt�and took his arm for the
Apparition.

*

�� Just keep
me away from the women,� Pansy said, for the third time, as she, Blaise, and
Draco appeared on the doorstep of Grimmauld Place.

�� Draco
rolled his eyes and flung the door open. �Don�t be more stupid than you can
help, Pansy,� he said. �Not every lesbian wants a straight woman. Besides,
you�ve gone to the effort of polishing yourself up like a cold diamond. Most of
them want a woman with a little more life in her.�

�� Pansy gave
him a particularly venomous glare that Draco knew meant he would pay for that
remark later. But really, Pansy could not go about saying stupid things like
that in the middle of this meeting. She didn�t believe them, anyway; they were
just an effective mask for her nervousness.

�� They
stepped into a corridor that looked nothing like the entrance hall of Harry�s
house, decorated as it was with glamours of marble floors and stone walls
warmed with hanging tapestries. The glamours were layered, so that even if
someone sensed the first ones and removed them, they would only see slightly
dingier marble and stone than before, and think Harry was trying to conceal a
lack of cleanliness rather than a completely different type of building
material.

�� Blaise, of
course, was in his element in moments, joining the largest group of people and
adding an original punch-line to the joke being told. Someone laughed. Someone
else passed him a glass of wine. Blaise looked thoughtful, swirled the wine
around on his tongue for a moment, and then said something else, which made the
entire group erupt in laughter. Draco took a moment to cast the Killing Curse
on his envy. That was one talent he�d never have, not for a lack of charm but
because his name and face were too familiar in an unnerving way.

�� Thanks a lot, Father, he thought. At the
moment, he would have given much to have been born into an ordinary,
low-ranking pure-blood family, one that didn�t need to join Voldemort or
Dumbledore because they were too small for either side to notice.

�� Then he
reminded himself his support wouldn�t mean what it did to the rebellion if he
were someone else, and turned around, Pansy trailing behind him, to scan the
room for Harry.

�� His eyes
locked on the woman standing next to Nusante, and narrowed. She was that woman
who had bored him with her speech at the meeting the Aurors raided, wasn�t she?
Elizabeth someone-or-other. Draco hoped she would let
someone else speak today. At the moment, she was rather monopolizing Nusante�s
time.

�� Then she
turned and caught his eye, and Draco felt the slight crackle of a time-delayed
spell, apparently set to take effect the moment they looked at each other. For
a moment, Elizabeth�s rather nondescript eyes were a brilliant green.

�� Draco
swallowed a curse. The
bastard. This is his way of
winning Nusante�s confidence and telling me his latest little secret without
actually confessing it to my face, isn�t it? The way the glamours on the house
are a way of hiding its true provenance and a show to me of how much power he
has in this area.

�� For a
moment, worry churned in his gut. If Harry was this skilled at acting, he could
absent himself from Draco�s life without changing a single habit. Draco could
search for him forever and never find him.

�� But he
would not let that happen. He would make himself so brilliant that Harry would
be charmed into staying with him, gazing at him admiringly, wanting to know
what he was thinking and what he would do next.

�� He turned,
plucked a glass of wine from someone who was wasting it by gesturing everywhere
and letting the wine splash to the floor, and intimidated the woman with one
glare when she tried to protest. He took a swift sip for courage and then
strode towards one end of the room. A whip of his wand, and the floor
Transfigured itself, molding up into a stage as high as the bottom step of
Harry�s real stairs. He leaped onto it, and cast Sonorus on his throat. By that time, he had the attention of most of the
room.

�� I�m sure
many of you know me by name, face, reputation, and Prophet articles,� he said. A few smiles
appeared here and there in the audience, and Draco relaxed. He could feel
himself taking the reins now, gathering up their emotions and manipulating them
into new patterns. �What you read is true. My father has disowned me for daring
to go against him and love whom I want to love.�

�� Stamping
and shouts and whistles answered him. Draco let the noises build on themselves
until they began to die down again. He knew Pansy would be making faces at his
back, telling him to get on with it already, and that was another advantage of
starting to speak when he did.

�� I did try
to appease my parents,� Draco continued, �because they are my parents and I
love them.� He wanted to pause for a moment, because he didn�t think he�d ever
admitted that in public before, but the tide of the speech was carrying him
onwards. �I wanted to live in peace with them if I could, to have both my
partner�s companionship and theirs. I�m sure most of you have experienced the
same struggle, the sense that if you only did something right, the problem could be solved, and it was your own
fault that it wasn�t.�

�� Heads
nodded all around the room. Draco let his own pride catch and catapult him
high. No need to be modest now, not when he had them.

�� He paused,
both to emphasize the words he was about to say next and to make sure that
Harry�s eyes were resting on him. A glance out of the corner of his eye showed
Nusante and everyone around Nusante staring at him as if they could not look
away.

�� But that
isn�t the way it happens,� Draco went on. �It�s not our fault that we can�t
live in peace. It�s the fault of irrational prejudices that retreat when
questioned, only to fasten on some new object like spiderwebs. I�ve asked my
father why he has such objections to two men sleeping together. He mutters
something about hygiene. I tell him that spells exist which can protect men
from disease as surely as they protect men and women. Then he comes up with
some objection about children. Adoption exists, I remind him. And so he delves
up some nonsense about how �unnatural� it is.� Draco snorted, feeling free to
express his disgust about those conversations with Lucius for the first time. �If
he would just admit that he�s worried about a man desiring him, making him the one looked at for once instead of the woman, then I would have a lot more respect for him.�

�� Applause
and raised glasses answered him. Draco smiled and deliberately did not glance
to the side. Are you watching, Harry?
This is for me, yes, and for them, but mostly for you.

�� And the
scope of my disrespect has dramatically increased with my abortive arrest for
flagrant public displays of homosexuality,� he said. �The Ministry is now included
in it.� He paused, aware that their gazes had sharpened to the point where the
expectation in the room was actively painful. �That�s why I am going to
announce that all the profits from Malfoy�s Machineries which had gone to the
charities used and established by the Ministry are being redirected to the
disposal of the rebellion instead. People like us, people who will find very
little help in the wider world if we do not help ourselves.�

�� He couldn�t
have timed it better. People were still staring at him with astonished eyes,
and the applause was tentative and just beginning, when a tawny owl swooped
through one of the open windows and aimed towards him. Draco held up his arm
imperiously, and the owl settled into place, holding the letter out to him with
what Draco could easily imagine was a bow of its head. The letter bore the seal
of Gringotts.

�� He opened
it, scanned the contents quickly to make sure they said what they should, and
then smiled at the crowd. �And the transaction is complete, thanks to the
quickness of our goblin colleagues,� he said.

�� The
cheering was hysterical then. Draco bathed in it for long minutes, and shook
the hands of the people crowding forwards for that purpose, before he turned
his head to the side and looked at Elizabeth.

�� Her eyes
were wide and green when they met his, and there was a warmth
of admiration in them that made Draco want to stride over and kiss her/him in
the middle of the meeting. But he modestly stepped aside and let others take
the platform, including some people who Harry had told him would give them a
good summary of the laws Counterstrike and the Ministry might try to use
against them. Draco planned to listen to those intently. He trusted Elizabeth
to excuse herself soon and come back to his side as Brian.

�� He could
wait patiently in part because his heart and his soul were humming with eager
warmth.

�� He admires me. He trusts me. He has reason
to see that I�m as committed to this course of rebellion as he is. I want all
of that.

�� Not that the public admiration doesn�t feel
bloody good as well.

*

�� Given that
Nusante had a speech of his own to make, and Elizabeth was scheduled to do
nothing in that line, it was easy enough for her to slip away. In a corridor
that only she would have known was there behind the piled glamours, she clasped
her hands to her burning cheeks and closed her eyes.

�� Draco�s
gift was utterly unexpected, even though she knew he had spent the last few
days making �preparations.� She had simply assumed that the preparations
concerned his Slytherin friends and nothing else. Zabini and Parkinson had
followed him in, so those activities had been successful. As to what else might
have happened, she hadn�t thought to question it.

�� She let out
a sharp breath, and then the Elizabeth persona flickered and vanished, and
Harry opened his eyes�not as himself, but with his own mind burning and racing
behind the Transfigured mask.

�� Oh, God. His father will be so angry with
him. So will the Ministry officials and committees that depended on that income
to their charities. Other people will see how committed he is and investigate
the rebellion, because they will think any cause Draco Malfoy supports is
serious enough to demand some attention. He�s done more for us at a stroke than
anyone except Nusante has.

�� He�s running an enormous risk. And he
doesn�t care. Or rather, he�s weighed it, and decided that it�s worth the
consequences.

�� Harry paced
back and forth, glancing now and then at the glamour that hid him. If someone
had seen him walk through the wall, there could be trouble. But no one
intruded, and that meant Harry couldn�t help being drawn back into the
whirlwind of his thoughts.

�� So many risks to run. He�s flung himself headlong into a problem
he could have ignored altogether, or only supported from a distance. And I�m
certain his friends advised him to do stay distant.

�� Harry
paused and, drawing his wand, created a small hole through the layers of
glamour, which should be invisible to everyone outside it unless they happened
to be gazing in exactly the right direction when the hole appeared. Then he
bent down and put his eye to the hole, seeking out Zabini.

�� Zabini was
standing near Draco, one arm around his shoulders, his head bent towards him.
Draco�s mouth was open in laughter, his head tilted back as if he trusted
Zabini to support him completely. Harry didn�t think he�d seen him so relaxed,
except perhaps after they made love. And even then, Draco had either been
trying to discover Brian�s secret or convince Harry to tell the truth. He
hadn�t looked so much as if he trusted Harry, as he looked like he trusted and
loved Zabini.

�� Jealousy
was an ugly thing. Harry closed his eyes and pressed his hand to his abdomen,
envisioning the emotion swelling like a tumor. The darkness behind his eyelids
roiled with orange and red, yellow and pea-green�all the colors of vomit.

�� They�re probably just friends, the voice
of his reason argued. Why would Draco be
pursuing you so strongly if he had a secondary relationship that would content
him just as well? And Zabini appeared because he heard Draco was in trouble,
not because Draco invited him. Draco wouldn�t scheme against you like that.

�� But the
jealousy replied that Zabini was charming, open about himself,
and relentlessly interested in Draco, if the way he smiled at him from one
corner of his mouth was any indication. And he was making Draco laugh. And there were so many problems
that lay between Harry and Draco, so many of them the result of Harry�s own
stubbornness. What if Draco did decide that, as much as he wanted their
relationship to succeed, Harry simply hid too much for him? Draco Malfoy was
not someone to pine uselessly forever after someone who would never return his
love. He would move on, and expect Harry to do the same thing.

�� But�

�� But I don�t think I can. Where else am I
going to find someone as strong and beautiful and intelligent as Draco? Where
else am I going to find someone fascinated with my personas, even if uneasily, rather
than frightened of them, or someone whom I can never tell?

�� Maybe Draco is the one person I don�t have
to wear masks around.

�� Harry
waited expectantly for the merciless voice to speak up, or the voice of his
reason, or the voice of his jealousy. But he was alone inside his head, and if
the silence scared him, it also goaded him.

�� You can�t depend on any persona to snare
Draco, because he�s already told you what he wants�all of them, and not just a
facet. He doesn�t like you lying. He doesn�t like you sleeping with anyone
else. He�s inviting you into a bond like the one Ron and Hermione have, one you
thought you never could have after you had to tell Ginny you were gay.

�� But he
wouldn�t want to just seize this chance because he might never find something
better. That would be insulting to Draco.

Harry put his eye to the hole in
the glamours again and watched Draco, who had stepped away from Zabini and
faced him with his hands on his hips. He was snapping something at him, to the
great amusement of the group that surrounded them. Zabini retorted, and the
crowd roared. Harry didn�t miss the smile both men exchanged.

�� And Harry
knew he couldn�t let this go, and it had nothing to do with his not wanting to
spend the rest of his life alone. He had become resigned to that long since.

�� Draco was
the one who woke him from resignation. Draco was the one who promised him that
something better was possible, even likely. But he couldn�t force Harry to
accept him or believe him. Harry would have to do that on his own.

�� His wand
shook when he aimed it at himself, and Harry had to pause and close his eyes.
His breath was loud in his ears, not helped by the enclosed space in which he
stood. He suffered a brief, wild urge to claw at his face, to drop the wand and
run, to go upstairs and fetch the reverse Pensieve.

�� But he had
made his decision.

�� Finite Incantatem,�
he said, and the world danced and shrank and realigned as his center of
balance shifted, as he lost Elizabeth�s breasts and height. He shivered as he
ran a hand through his hair and discovered it was a tangled mess.

�� Then he
turned and stepped through the glamours into the room where Draco waited for
him.

*

�� Draco lost
the thread of his conversation with Blaise as he looked up and in the direction
of the gasps and murmurs and pointing fingers of the crowd. The noise quickly
died away under the pressure of Draco�s own frantic heartbeat.

�� Harry was
walking hesitantly towards him, his head up and his eyes brilliant with the
kind of feverish glaze a unicorn might show before it ran away and hid itself in the woods. But he kept walking towards Draco.

�� And he wore
no disguise at all.

�� Draco began
to tremble. He took a step forwards, swayed, and found Blaise�s hand bracing
him. Harry�s gaze darted to the hand, then snapped to
Draco�s face, and his stride became faster.

�� He came up
to Draco and stood for a moment, scanning his face as though seeking out a
signal. Draco held his breath and hoped silently that Harry would find whatever
it was he needed to see in his expression.

�� Harry found
it. He nodded, gave Draco a small, panicked smile, and turned to face the
people shouting about him. They fell silent at once when they saw his mouth
open, and leaned forwards. Draco winced. The weight of expectation that had met
his own speech was nothing to this.

�� Yes, I�m
really Harry Potter,� Harry said clearly. �Yes, as you might have decided by
now, I am gay. And for the past few weeks I�ve been going about under the guise
of Brian Montgomery, Draco�s boyfriend.� He looked sideways at Draco, and his
hand slipped down to Draco�s elbow, clasping it with frantic tightness, out of
the sight of anyone in front of them. �We were protecting me from publicity. I
wasn�t ready to let anyone but Draco know I preferred men. But the time comes
when every mask has to drop.�

�� He turned
to face Draco, and reached out.

�� Draco met
him halfway there, seizing the back of Harry�s neck and kissing him hungrily.
Harry opened his mouth in a soft gasp, his tongue darting out as if he thought
he could content Draco with a single pass, and then he leaned forwards and snogged him back, his hands clasping Draco�s shoulders
until the bones hurt.

�� Draco was
dizzy with happiness. He wrapped his arm around Harry�s waist and pulled him
closer, vaguely sorry they were in the middle of an audience and he couldn�t
simply lay Harry down on the floor and make love to him right there.

�� But Harry�s
gesture of courage and trust and terror and love would have to do for now.

*

�� Violet
Eyes, thrnbrooke, momoko,
broomrider949, Mangacat, Dani:
Thanks for reviewing!

�� SoftObsidian74:
You may indeed be right! Harry�s gone a long time without admitting anything
that�s deep about himself, negative or positive, to
anyone else. He may be recovering the positive aspects along with the negative
ones.

�� You�ll
eventually find out what happened during Harry�s nineteenth year, yes.

�� I hope this
chapter satisfies your craving for more of Pansy and Blaise, as well as more of
the social justice momentum of the movement!

�� qwerty: Perhaps, but Pansy really wants to stand united with
her friends on this one. She wouldn�t have chosen to support the rebellion on
her own.

�� Lunatic
with a hero complex: I like Harry�s personas, a lot. I don�t think you need to
feel guilty for liking them.

�� As for
Harry�s response re: Blaise, I think this chapter proves you right.

�� Christabell: Thank you! I like to think I put a lot of work
into the subtlety of the language, but of course it can escape notice.

�� Andria
Meredith: Well, I did plan to have Blaise meet Brian originally, but, uh. This
chapter decided to take over.

�� And I�m
glad you like the review responses.

�� Yume111: I
suspect Harry will get the chance to find out just how much of an ally Kingsley
is very soon now.

�� I can see
Harry envying Draco for his freedom in society, but not the ability to sleep
with women. Harry�s very comfortable with his orientation.

�� Harry has a
strong hero complex, and a strong guilt complex. It will take a while for him
to stop berating himself.

�� SP777: It
was probably an unconscious Hobbit reference.

�� Harry might
well imitate Draco if he ever needed to.

�� spedwouthermedz: I�ve added you to
the update list.

��
- 30
- 31
- 32
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Changing of the Guard