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China Roses	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 3049 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Four—A Pile of Golden Illusions
            “I think he’s doing better than he was,” Harry murmured in an undertone to Malfoy as they sat in the corner of Scorpius’s room. Scorpius had once again curled up and gone to sleep, his face haggard.
            From the tilt of Malfoy’s head, he knew Harry didn’t mean Scorpius’s wounds. “Do you think having both of us scold him was the reason why this one took, and the last one didn’t?”
            Harry shook his head. “I think he finally felt that worry himself. He never did for his own life.” He rolled his eyes and focused for a second on Malfoy. “Do you know why that is? I mean, I know why I was stupidly reckless, but Scorpius didn’t have to fight a war.”
            Malfoy’s face was pensive for a second, as he stroked the length of wool Harry had let him have. Malfoy had said he knew a few unique enchantments that Harry might be able to incorporate into a countercurse, if he let Malfoy have a neutral material to cast on. He lowered his wand now and stuck the tip into the wool, and Harry watched in fascination as a blue-and-white star bloomed. That certainly wasn’t a spell he knew.
            “I don’t know,” Malfoy murmured. “I thought that he might have been influenced by his friends, but his closest friend was your son, and Al is cautious.”
            “At least about making sure that he wasn’t caught,” Harry muttered.
            Malfoy glanced at him sharply. “Are you saying that Scorpius did do this kind of recklessness at school?”
            “Let’s say that Al was probably more honest in his letters home to me than Scorpius was to you.” Harry leaned forwards. “Does jumping off the Astronomy Tower sound familiar?”
            Malfoy turned a shade paler, although honestly, with his coloring it was sort of difficult. “What?” he whispered.
            “They strung nets to catch themselves before they did it,” Harry explained. “But they were pretending that they’d had enough of this cruel world because the Slytherins wouldn’t stop mocking Al for being Sorted into Slytherin instead of Gryffindor, which they thought would have made more sense for him as the son of two Gryffindors.”
            Unexpectedly, Malfoy frowned instead of yelling. “Anyone who can’t see that your son belongs in Slytherin is an idiot. I’m ashamed of the quality of students my House is producing nowadays.”
            Harry hid his smile and said, “But at least it proves that Scorpius’s love for danger didn’t start when he became an apprentice to me. Do you know why it did?”
            Malfoy spent a moment more enspelling the hank of wool, and then sighed and put it down so it mostly dangled off his knees and he could play with the ends of it. Harry held his peace. He thought the spells Malfoy had put on it would probably keep it safe from casual unraveling.
            “I don’t remember him being that reckless in his childhood, no,” Malfoy said. “And neither Astoria nor I would ever have encouraged it in him.”
            “Your father?” Harry didn’t know much about Scorpius’s relationship to Lucius Malfoy, only that it had happened, and Scorpius seemed both repulsed and longing for those days.
            Malfoy snorted. “The one chance for his line to continue? He became resigned early on to the fact that neither Astoria nor I wanted another child. My father would have wrapped Scorpius in—in this, if he could,” and Malfoy held up the hank of wool, “and then never let him out of his room. No, it wasn’t him.”
            Harry raised a hand. “But do you think constantly being coddled like that might have been enough to make Scorpius rebel?”
            Malfoy glared at him. “He was not coddled. He was given a lot, yes, including love. But I taught him to fly with a broom early on, and that’s risky enough even when you’re not playing Quidditch. As you should know,” he added pointedly.
            Harry had got into a broom accident years ago, but he didn’t see the point in bringing it up now. He only shrugged to concede the point, and added, “But do you think he might have felt bored in that kind of existence? Safe, loved, knowing everyone cared for him?”
            Malfoy blinked slowly. “You had rather the opposite experience, from what I understand, to turn out the way you did. Are you saying that opposite childhoods could produce the same conclusion?”
            “Perhaps they could.” Harry shifted himself forwards and held Malfoy’s eyes. “At any rate, you have evidence now that it didn’t just start in the past year. He was reckless at Hogwarts, even if you didn’t know about it.” He backtracked a bit when he saw how Malfoy was swelling. That might not have been the wisest thing to say. He probably thought Harry was accusing him of being a bad father.
            “Do you think that he’s most likely to think about things more now?” Harry added, and added a smile, too, hoping Malfoy would accept that as the peace offering it was meant to be.
            It made Malfoy sniff a little and consider him, but he finally jerked his head down and said, “Yes, it might. Although I do have to wonder, given this apprenticeship with you and his friendship with your son…”
            He seemed to find the wool more fascinating than answering a question that he had left hanging, himself. Harry finally rolled his eyes and gave in to the temptation to ask more. “What are you thinking?”
            “I’m thinking that part of his recklessness might be his desire to impress you.” Malfoy leaned so that his elbows lay on the wool, and studied Harry with a frankness that was new to both of them, Harry thought. “And your son.”
            “Al wasn’t that haughty, though!” Harry had to protest. He didn’t want any aspersions cast on Al, although he was more than willing to take them on himself.
            “No, but he had the reputation of being your son.” Malfoy raised an eyebrow. “I know some idiots didn’t want him in Slytherin, but he suffered less trouble than most other people would have done—a Weasley, for example—by dint of being a Potter.”
            Harry found he had no words for that. He watched the wool for a second, trying to imagine weaving in the spells the way Malfoy did. He worked in different ways, usually backwards from whatever curse he wanted to counter or duplicate, instead of forwards, deciding how he could enchant that specific material.
            “I didn’t even think about that,” Harry finally said. “He was trying to prove something to me?”
            “People in the center of the charmed circle have difficulty seeing outside it,” Malfoy murmured, his attention now strictly on his lap. “And it wouldn’t be the first time that Scorpius did something to try to impress someone else.” He paused and darted his gaze up at Harry. “Although I wouldn’t have said what he did was reckless, exactly. Only a bit ostentatious.”
            Harry had to grin, trying to imagine what “ostentatious” would mean to someone raised in as much luxury as Malfoy had been. “Tell me?”
*
            Scorpius halts in front of his father’s study door and squares his shoulders. He tells himself it’s stupid to be nervous. Father only hates being interrupted when he’s at the beginning of a new book or near the end of an old one, and neither condition applies right now. He told Scorpius at breakfast that he’s spent more time dithering and staring out the windows than writing in the last few days.
            But Scorpius still counts three pulses before he knocks.
            “Yes? Come in.”
            So that makes it officially too late to back out. Scorpius nudges the door open with his palm—legacy of Grandfather’s habit of casting spells on the doorknob that would sting if he didn’t want to be disturbed—and leans in.
            Father looks up with a faint, pained smile. He has more lines at the corner of his eyes since Mum left, Scorpius thinks. On the other hand, he also smiles more often, which he never did when he was trying to be the Perfect Malfoy Couple with Mum.
            Scorpius can feel sorry for his parents’ divorce, but he can’t regret it. Not in the way that he knows Grandfather regretted things.
            “Scorpius.” His father nods and places both hands flat on the desk, as if he assumes that he’ll need to push off in one direction to get away from the poisonous snake Scorpius has brought to visit. That’s only happened once, Scorpius thinks indignantly. “What is it?”
            “Al Potter is coming,” Scorpius says, which of course Father already knows, but sometimes it’s simpler to start with basic facts and go from there.
            “Yes. And?”
            Scorpius squirms. Sometimes Father is more intimidating with one-syllable words than Grandfather could ever be with seven-syllable ones.
            “I want you to see what I’ve fixed up for him in the ballroom and decide whether it’s appropriate,” Scorpius finally says, since he can’t think of any other way to put it.
            Father gives him a perfectly blank look and stands up. “Of course I’ll go and see, if you wish it,” he says slowly. “But why should you need my approval? And why is it in the ballroom? Surely Potter would have little wish to go there.”
            “His name is Al,” says Scorpius, because he’s already fought this battle and he won’t let Father step back now. “You could sound like you think it’s him and not his dad I’m inviting over!”
            “It wouldn’t be his father.” For a moment, there’s the most peculiar look on Father’s face, as if he’s listening to old music, and then he focuses once more on Scorpius. “Where is this famous thing?”
            Scorpius put his head up and stalks out in front of Father. “You keep telling me not to use the word thing,” he says, feeling secure enough to tease now that Father hasn’t said no or said anything about making Al go back home. Sometimes Father makes unpredictable decisions, like letting Al visit, and then reverses them. “Then you do it. Why?”
            “Because I don’t know whether this is a device,” Father says, not missing a beat, “or a presentation, or a show, or a pyramid of house-elves dancing on each other’s heads, or a prank, or a book, or decorations, or…”
            And he keeps listing possibilities, not stopping as they walk down the corridor towards the ballroom. Scorpius finally has to reach out and press on his arm when they stand in front of the closed door. Father falls obediently silent, although he raises his eyebrows, and Scorpius can’t figure out why until he murmurs, “I had the impression that this door wasn’t often closed.”
            “I thought the house-elves would try to clear it away if they saw what I’d done,” Scorpius admits. “At least until they knew I had your permission to make it that way.”
            “Ah,” Father says, and turns his head a little so Scorpius can see the way his eyes glint, a pretty rare way. “Then not a pyramid of house-elves dancing on each other’s heads, after all.”
            Scorpius laughs, and the laughter lets him have the courage to open the door.
            Father is silent for a long moment. Then he steps in and stands looking around, tilting his head back as if he wants to make sure he doesn’t miss any of the objects Scorpius has strung from the ceiling. Scorpius lingers behind, unaccountably shy. Of course, he did hang those thin—objects to make someone look up, but he didn’t take account of how he would feel to have his father be the first one to do so.
            Father finally says, in a voice that’s soft with what Scorpius hopes is reverence, “And was it necessary to use all of your grandmother’s jewelry?”
            “Only a few pieces are hers,” Scorpius says defensively, because he might have been unsure that Father would let him do this at all, but he knew what would be the most likely to attract criticism, and look, he was right. “The rest are Mum’s. You know, the brooches and rings and necklaces she left to me because she thought my fiancée would wear them someday.”
            Father nods slowly. Scorpius waits for him to say that those pieces of jewelry belong in the locked and guarded drawers where they’re usually kept, not dangling from the torches, strung along the windowsills, and threaded through swinging banners of cloth-of-gold and cloth-of-silver. Even if those things show them off a lot better than they’ve ever been shown off by spending time in drawers.
            Father doesn’t, though. He just clears his throat. “I don’t recognize the inspiration for the décor,” he says, and gestures at the illusions that cover the floor, walls, and ceiling. Scorpius tried to cast glamours on the windows, too, but he didn’t manage that. The glass has some pretty ferocious spells woven in to prevent tampering, and even though Scorpius knows it must be to make them survive breakage, he got annoyed with them anyway.
            “It’s Gringotts,” Scorpius says, because he can at least explain this. “Our Gringotts vault.”
            Father considers the banners and the illusions and the jewelry again as if he’s never thought about that. Then he turns and nods to the large pile of Galleons in the center of the floor. Scorpius is particularly proud of that, because it was a lot of effort to break through some of the defensive spells on various safes inside the house, and in the end he had to add some illusions along the edges to make it properly impressive. He waits anxiously.
            “Is your purpose to impress young Mr. Potter with how wealthy we are?” Father asks mildly. “Or something else?’
            “His name is Al, Father.”
            “Technically, his name is Albus.” Father turns around and considers Scorpius with a frown, and Scorpius meets his gaze as evenly as he can when he feels dizzy. “But I know what you mean. Still, I’d like an answer to my question.”
            Scorpius frowns. He thinks this might be one of those adult questions they think are the most important, and he doesn’t know how to answer it, of course. Why would he, when they’re always telling him that he has to be older than thirteen to really understand the questions? “I want to impress him.”
            “With our wealth?”
            “Just…” Scorpius makes a motion with his hand in the air, and tries to think about it. The problem is, he knows exactly what he thinks about the way Al Potter handles Potions ingredients and brooms and even people who want him to collect autographs from his dad, but the words always get twisted up when they come out of his mouth.
            “Scorp.”
            That makes Scorpius worry a bit, because Father only calls him by a nickname when something important is either happening or broken. And now he reaches out and puts his hands on either side of Scorpius’s head, gazing at him more in the way Grandfather used to do than the way he does. Scorpius finds himself holding his breath.
            “I think this is—a bit much,” Father says. His voice catches, and Scorpius wonders if he has his own memories. “I think it’ll impress Al much more if you show him the grounds, and some of the art. I’ve heard that his mother has a taste for art. She’s probably passed it on to her children.”
            Scorpius glares at the pile of coins and the jewelry. He’s mainly thinking about how much time it’ll take to put it all back, and he knows that Father will keep him working past the time Al arrives, if he hasn’t got it all in place yet. “Would adding more illusions help? Maybe illusions of art?”
            Father catches his breath again, but this time, Scorpius thinks it’s different. He looks around the ballroom. “Is some of this illusion, then?”
            “Of course.” Scorpius points to a huge golden necklace with a diamond pendant hanging from a banner near the west window. “Grandmother didn’t own something that big, and Mum wouldn’t have left it behind.”
            Father’s face twitches. “Of course,” he echoes, and Scorpius glares again, because he knows when he’s being made fun of and when the catch in his father’s breath is him trying not to laugh. “But it’s modeled on one your mother has, isn’t it?”
            “Only bigger.” Scorpius glares openly this time, daring Father to say something about that. Scorpius just wanted to show off to Al, that’s all. Al has so much to show off, and to Scorpius, it seems he doesn’t have much when Grandfather was on the wrong side of the war.
            “Of course,” says Father a second time, but he continues hastily before Scorpius can get angry at him about it. “Well, it’s a very clever illusion. Why not impress Al by showing him the spells you’ve mastered?”
            Scorpius blinks. “But they’re simple. Everyone can do them.” He’s always been puzzled by the way that everyone in Slytherin House makes such a huge fuss about glamours on robes and faces. Of course they’re simple.
            Father chuckles and runs one hand through Scorpius’s hair for a second. Scorpius normally hates that, but this time, he senses something is different, that Father has some point to make. So he waits, and Father tells him what it is a second later.
            “Not everyone can do everything you do, Scorpius. No, not even the things that you think are simple,” he adds, and Scorpius shuts his opening mouth, wondering as he does how Father always knows what he’s going to say. “I think that your best bet to impress Al Potter, or anyone else, is to let them know what you can honestly do. And they’re more likely to be overwhelmed than you think.”
            He flicks his wand, and the jewelry starts falling as the illusions unwind. Scorpius watches in interest. He hasn’t mastered that much of a Finite yet, but he can see the elegance in doing it the way his father does, one turn of the wrist and a lot of concentration instead of many separate spells.
            Father glances at him and smiles. “Another thing not everyone can do is that intense focus. Maybe you should look into magical theory or spell-crafting.”
            “Concentrating is easy,” Scorpius mutters. “It’s what you do when you’re writing history. It can’t be hard.”
            He realizes what he’s said, and flushes so badly that he’s sure for a second that’s worse punishment than anything Father can do to him. But Father only laughs and says, “You’re so young,” and it turns out that is worse.
            At least Scorpius is so busy protesting that he’s not young and can learn anything Father wants to teach him that he forgets about the need to impress Al until Al actually gets there.
*
            Harry sat back in his chair in silent wonder as Malfoy finished. He hadn’t thought of it that way before. He had got used to coping with the fame when he was young, because he had to. He had shrugged a lot of it off, because he had to. He had smiled and nodded and chattered through it, because he had to.
            Now he wondered how much he had missed, how many admiring looks were sincere admiration and not simply the desire to get close to him and earn a little of that notoriety for themselves.
            “You know a lot about how Scorpius feels,” he said, to break the silence that had gone almost uncomfortable, with the way Malfoy’s eyes fastened on the wool in his lap and the way his hands tightened. “It took me years to understand my sons that well. You must be a great father.”
            Malfoy looked up quickly. “I notice that you don’t say your children.”
            Harry snorted and shrugged, remembering passionate arguments and denunciations. “Lily was simple. You just had to engage to do what she liked, at all times. If she didn’t like something or didn’t want to do something, she told you. Al and Jamie were a lot more difficult.”
            Malfoy relaxed a little, smiling. “It somewhat relieves me that Scorpius became friends with Al and not Lily.”
            Harry hesitated, but Scorpius was still snoring, and Harry would know the moment he stirred or even took a hard breath. It was the perfect chance, maybe the only one, to ask the question that had been bothering him. “What about other friendships in our families? Do you think they’re still possible?”
            Malfoy’s hands went still on the wool. He sat with his eyes bent downwards and his face drooping to follow them. He didn’t seem to be breathing.
            Harry didn’t stand up and go across the room to clap him on the back, as much as he wanted to. He sat there and waited, and finally Malfoy gathered courage or whatever else had to be gathered, and looked up at him again.
            “There’s a problem with that,” Malfoy whispered.
            “What is it?” Harry was amazed how normal he sounded. This meant a lot to him, but he sounded even more casual than he did when he was selling some of his countercurses, he thought.
            Malfoy studied him for long enough that Harry was sure he had seen into Harry’s anxiously pounding soul. “I don’t want a friendship like the one we had in our eighth year at Hogwarts,” he said.
            Harry frowned, and knew there was no way he could conceal his disappointment. “Okay,” he began, meaning to say they could try something else, maybe owling each other back and forth, or working on some project that would incorporate both magical theory and history.
            “But I don’t want that,” Malfoy said. “You said, up in your room—” It was a good thing wool didn’t crumple as easily as silk, Harry thought, because of the way Malfoy’s hands were cramping. “You said that in eighth year, some things might have been glad of my touch. Things that weren’t dragon scales.”
            Harry lifted his head. His throat felt hollowed-out, filled with the beating of wings, like a small ruby hummingbird he sold to keep watch over children in their cots.
            “You said it,” Malfoy whispered insistently.
            “I kn-know I did,” said Harry, and cleared his throat. “And it was true. It’s true now.”
            Malfoy looked at him and held out a hand with a desperate rush of strength that Harry saw coiled back in his arm.
            Harry took his hand and held on. Malfoy turned his over a second later, staring down at their clasped fingers as if he was trying to figure out whether he should shake Harry’s hand or do something else.
            “Yeah,” Harry breathed.
            He didn’t mean to, didn’t mean to sound that satisfied and sexual, but Malfoy gave him a single look that pierced through a lot of defenses and which Harry couldn’t have invented a shield to block even if he had a hundred years to work on it. He sat where he was and let the look slide through him instead, then waited.
            Malfoy glanced towards the sleeping Scorpius and shook his head a little. He didn’t lean in to kiss Harry, the way Harry had hoped he might.
            But his hand remained in Harry’s, and Harry had been right: there were people here who were glad of that touch.
*
SP777: It would probably have to be a short story, since I haven’t liked the just-a-prank long stories I’ve read in the past.
Currently not planning a sequel to my latest threesome story, but it’s something to think about.
starr: There won’t be sex in this story, but the last chapter does concern them getting together.
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