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Providence	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 15841 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
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Chapter List
- 4
- 5
- 6
Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Five�What
Draco Malfoy Thought

�� Draco left
his mother as soon as he decently could, and as soon as he confirmed that one
test on the owl�s feather had failed and would afford him no useful
information. He retreated into his bedroom, shut the door, and put the letter
on the table beside him. He had thought he would stare at it whilst the latest
revelation whirled through his brain, but it turned out he wasn�t equal to that
after all.

�� All he
could do was tuck his hands behind his head and stare at the ceiling.

�� His brain
barked and flung itself in circles.

�� A man. A man is writing these letters�why? A
man is referring to himself as a woman?

�� Is this a joke? Did he think I wouldn�t find
out?

�� A great, slow
anger began to stir in Draco at that idea. He imagined his writer laughing with
friends in a room somewhere, and his lips peeled back from his teeth. His
mother told him that it was undignified to actually snarl, but there was no one
here to see him right now.

�� But then he
picked up the letter and scanned the words again, and his anger faded, leaving
behind it only steady bewilderment.

�� This is a lot of effort to go to for a joke.
Someone would have to observe me for years to accumulate this amount of
information, to know what would appeal to me and what would irritate me. And
then, if one was to put that amount
of effort into a joke�to only use it to write letters, and perhaps to make me
go on dates with Astoria? I do not see the point.

�� Draco laid
the letter slowly back on the bedside table. Perhaps he was being foolish, but for
the moment, he would continue to think that his writer meant her words
seriously.

�� No. His words. I must think that, now,
unless I plan to doubt my mother�s perceptions.

�� Draco spent
some minutes sitting on his bed with his legs curled beneath him, staring out
the window. His bedroom was a space of soft green and silver, the colors he
still felt most at home among after seven years with them at Hogwarts, and the
window gazed over the outdoor gardens to the distant greenhouses. The view
drained the agitation slowly from his mind and replaced it with great swathes
of calm instead.

�� And he
needed calmness to think about the perception that had come to him now.

�� Could I accept a man as a lover?

�� It was a
question he had asked himself before, but only in an idle, academic way, the
way that everyone must at some point in his life or another, unless he was terrifically
unimaginative. And he had thought of the awkwardness stroking another man�s
cock would bring on�at least he knew where to put his hands and what expression
to wear on his face when he was with women�and mentally compared a few men�s
arses with women�s, and then laughed silently and forgotten the whole thing.

�� But that
was before he was confronted with the possible chance of a male lover who knew
him extraordinarily well and was content to offer him exactly the sort of
challenge he most craved.

�� Yet here
his thoughts ran into another barrier.

�� He could have written about himself to me
openly, or at least in gender-neutral terms, and then begun introducing
references to his sex and seeing how I responded. Yet he has gone out of his
way to make me think he is a woman. He has gone out of his way to make me think
he is Astoria, for that matter.

�� If he thought that I wouldn�t accept a man
as a lover, why write to me at all? If he wants me to date Astoria, why not use
terms that could refer more plainly to her?

�� Unless he thinks I am stupid enough to look
no further than the words that intrigue me and decide that the writer must be
Astoria after all, with no positive evidence.

�� Draco
showed his teeth to his invisible adversary. He takes a great deal about me on trust.

�� And that
produced another barrier yet. Why would
he know so much about me and yet have these odd blind spots? Why would he
assume that he could fool me even as he admires my intelligence? And why would
he push me towards Astoria if he had the chance of making me want him with his
brilliant writing?

�� Draco shook
his head and then smiled suddenly. He had a collection of scattered pieces
that, as yet, made little sense.

�� But his
mind was working at a fast pace to solve them. He could pick at the
connections, spot the things that didn�t make sense, and work to leap the
barriers, to fuse the pieces that at first looked so different together.

�� He was not
bored. He was not looking languidly forwards to nothing more than another date
with some pretty girl, who might become
the mother to the next generation of Malfoys but was highly unlikely to.

�� That gift, at least, my writer has already
given me.

�� And he
would give more yet when Draco had been able to figure out who he was, and
whether he wanted a male lover.

*

�� Harry
stepped out of his office and yawned hugely. He�d been sitting still most of
the morning, completing the paperwork that was necessary to life as an Auror,
but so boring compared to chasing criminals around. He thought he deserved a
holiday.

�� Even if that holiday is only five minutes away
from the paperwork while I fetch myself a cuppa.

�� He paused
when he heard voices speaking around the corner. One was a voice he knew very
well, because he�d heard it most days of his life since he was eleven years
old: the voice of his best friend, Ron Weasley.

�� The other
was Draco Malfoy�s voice.

�� Harry
sucked in a soft breath through his teeth and crept forwards until he could see
around the corner. Draco stood with his feet planted beneath him as if he were
about to meet a charging dragon, staring at Ron. Ron was staring back at him,
red in the face, but more bewildered than anything else. Harry licked his lips.
That was something, at least, if Ron wasn�t about to beat up Draco and Harry
wouldn�t find himself compelled to intervene. If he met Draco right now, Harry
couldn�t guarantee that he wouldn�t
slip up in front of him.

�� But he also
couldn�t ignore the conversation, and so he had to remain where he was, even as
the risk of Draco seeing him.

�� I don�t
remember,� Ron said. �And even if I did, why would you want to know something
like that?�

�� Because it
concerns me,� Draco said, his voice clipped and quiet in the way it always was
he said something distasteful to him, �and it was as the result of your
careless tongue that the word spread. Now. Try again, Weasley. Tell me where
you were and who heard you when you talked about my being turned into a ferret.
Think hard.�

�� Ron scowled
at him, but apparently the unexpectedness of the request was too strange for
him to get angry. He rolled his eyes in the next moment and said, �Um. I know
it wasn�t that long ago. If someone�s taunting you about that, then just tell
me who it is, and I�ll deal with it.�

�� It is the letters, Harry thought, as he
watched Draco�s back stiffen. There�s no
other reason that he would be so reluctant to give out names.

�� An exact
date would be appreciated,� Draco said coldly. �And as for disciplinary action,
I doubt this individual is someone the Ministry could touch.� He wrote
something down on a piece of parchment and handed it across to Ron, who took
it, shaking his head all the while, as if getting Malfoy�s Floo address was the
strangest predicament he had ever found himself in.

�� Draco
started to turn around.

�� Shite! Harry ducked out of sight and
crept back into his office with all the skill and quiet he could muster. I don�t care how fascinated I am with him,
that�s still cutting it too close.

�� He shut the
door almost all the way, and stood behind it, one eye to the crack, as he
watched Draco stride down the corridor. Draco moved with the smoothness and
ease of a shark in its natural environment. He didn�t look from side to side,
the way he usually did, probably because he assumed there was no one in the
Ministry that he wanted to impress. It wasn�t a place for pure-bloods these
days.

�� Harry let
out a soft breath and stepped back from the door, frowning. He knew Hermione
had told Draco that Ron had been talking about Draco�s transformation into a
ferret�which he had�to throw him off the scent, but he hadn�t thought Draco
would talk to Ron. Come near a
Weasley? He would scald his own skin off first.

�� But perhaps I don�t know Draco as well as I
thought I did.

�� And if he
didn�t, Harry knew, then he could be in for a lot of fucking trouble.

�� But even as
he sat down to his paperwork and tried to consider soberly what his next
response should be, there was a flaring of glee in his chest. Draco was
intrigued enough with the mystery of �his writer� to come to the Ministry and
speak to Ron. He was intrigued enough, in other words, to put something before his pride, since it was his pride
that would have kept him away.

�� He could be giving some of it up. He could
be becoming the perfect partner�

�� Harry
caught his breath a moment later, because his mind was turning in a direction
that he didn�t like.

�� For Astoria, remember, he told himself
sternly. You�re courting him for Astoria.
And it�s a good thing that he has less pride, because she wants someone who can
actually see her.

�� It didn�t
matter how much of a pained edge his smile had, Harry thought. His plan was
working, and that was what he wanted.

*

�� Draco
cursed as another tiny piece of the owl feather winked out of existence in the
middle of a blue potion without changing anything. Either Grimoire was
well-defended against magic, or Draco himself wasn�t using the sympathetic
magic the right way.

�� It has to be the latter, he thought,
pushing his hands through his hair and pacing around the potions lab. At bottom, my writer wants me to find her�him.
Otherwise, he wouldn�t have mentioned that ferret incident or given the name of
his owl. He�s not playing a perfectly cool and collected game, any more than I
am. This matters to him too much, and so he�s giving away little subconscious
clues. He won�t be perfectly protected, because his mind and his soul, which is
reaching out to mine, won�t let him be.

�� He slowed
his breathing down, then turned around and gave the blue potion a calm deadly glare.

�� I suppose this means that I have accepted
the idea of having a male partner, or I would have given this research up as
too much of an effort.

�� But once
again, Draco had to admit that he really didn�t know. The challenge his writer offered was teaching him new things
about himself even in the absence of taunting letters. He didn�t know yet
whether this man was worth the effort, and he doubted he would until they met
face-to-face.

�� With all that irritating clutter about
Astoria out of the way, and some idea of his motives. If I get the chance to
write another letter, then I must find some way to convince him to shed part of
his disguise, to respond honestly. Yes, I have some honest responses, but I was
exaggerating when I said I knew everything about him. I don�t yet know what�s
honest and what isn�t.

Still, Draco knew he wouldn�t trade
this confusing existence for the boring one he had been living such a short
time ago.

�� I�m on the verge of something big. I can
feel that. And it doesn�t matter that Weasley hasn�t contacted me with that
list of names. It could be someone he didn�t notice, someone who was listening
on the edges of the crowd and chose that story for an entirely personal reason.
I would almost rather it were that way. Perhaps I�ll manage to discover him for
myself.

�� Wings beat
suddenly above his head. Draco looked up, his wand in his hand, though he
didn�t consciously remember commanding his fingers to make that movement.

�� Grimoire
hovered there, twisting his head from side to side as if he disapproved of the
way that Draco stared at him. Then, with an equally disapproving hoot, he
dropped to Draco�s nearest table and extended his leg.

�� Draco edged
towards him, heart beating fast. But though the owl opened his beak in a click
of disdain, he didn�t move, even when Draco reached towards his head. A quick
motion, and Draco had both the letter and a feather torn loose from Grimoire�s
neck.

�� The great
horned owl spread his wings and leaped at Draco�s face, talons out as if he
were striking at a mouse. Draco ducked, and then dropped flat to the floor and
rolled under the table when he realized that Grimoire had merely turned in
midair and come back at him. This time, the owl had to fly over the delicate potions
equipment, and Draco had the chance to aim his wand and cast a Confining Spell.
Grimoire gave a defiant hiss as the conjured cage bars closed around him, and
spread his wings to test the limits of his freedom. When he discovered that
they could extend only just to their full length, he folded them again and
fixed Draco with the full force of his unimpressed stare.

�� Sorry,�
Draco whispered, wondering if the owl could actually understand him. �But I
can�t take the chance that you�ll get away before I manage to give you a reply.
Your master is going to listen to me,
whether he likes it or not.� And then he tucked the new feather safely under a
mound of heavy scales and opened the letter. He was disgusted to see that his
fingers were shaking. At least he had no audience but a mute owl, and even
then, his fingers had other reasons to shake.

�� My Lord High Idiot,

�� I would be amused, if I did not pity you so
strongly. These are the devices that
you take to find me out? Really? Visiting the Ministry, and asking a variety of
simple questions, the answer to any of which is not worthy to occupy your mind
even in idle hours whilst you�re sipping wine?

�� I would be more disappointed than I am, but
I must only sigh as another illusion is shattered.

�� Draco
paused. His writer knew about his conversation with Weasley, that was plain.
But how? Had Weasley told him? But that would mean Weasley had known all along,
and somehow managed to lie during his face-to-face confrontation with Draco.

�� Draco would
give himself credit for many kinds of blindness, since he hadn�t recognized
that his writer was a man in the first place, but he would not claim that he
was ignorant of emotions on Weasley faces. No, Weasley had not known why in the
world Draco wanted the information about who had heard his ferret story.

�� That left
the writer overhearing the conversation himself. And yet, Draco had been sure there was no one else in the
corridor with them, and especially no one hiding under privacy wards or a
Disillusionment Charm.

�� A strange
feeling crept over Draco, a shudder in the skin over his spine almost like the
one he had experienced the first time he saw a Mudblood. But it spread to his
arms as well, and then the back of his neck, and he scratched lightly at the
skin along his ribs before he caught himself. It was a thrill of pleasure.

�� My writer is clever enough to keep me from
detecting him. At least I can be sure that his intelligence is real, then, and
not simply a fluke resulting from the chance arrangement of his words, which
I�ve made more of than it�s worth.

�� It was one
firm rock to cling to in a sea of sinking chaos. Draco continued to read
feeling a bit more steady than he had so far.

�� I have been growing more disillusioned of
late, and believe that I am almost used to the condition. You are not as
intelligent as I had thought you were. You are more prideful. You want
different things than I do.

�� I have always known the last was true, of
course. At first I told myself that it didn�t matter. We still shared enough
common ground that we could live together. And sometimes the most fervent
debaters are the ones who are the strongest and most loyal friends.

�� Draco
narrowed his eyes. Was his writer proposing a friendly relationship, then? It
didn�t fit, not after the specifically sexual language of the last letter.

�� But he told
himself that his interpretations were not always up to the mark, and read on.

�� But lately, I have wondered at how perfect
your mask is. Perhaps it has hidden the real you from me, the one person who
was persuaded I knew you best of all. Perhaps you really are nothing but pride
and conceit down to the bottom, the cleverness I thought I saw restricted to
your political plans, your compassion reserved for the members of your family.

�� Perhaps you are not my equal, only a
squealing, puling little boy.

�� Draco heard
the creak of wood. It took him a moment to realize that he still held his wand,
and that he was squeezing it hard enough to bring out ominous sounds.

�� That would be�unfortunate. I would so hate
to feel that I have wasted my time. Years of observation, in this case. Years
of wondering and planning what it would take to make you notice me. I have
moved in your circle for so long, and yet you won�t glance twice in my
direction. I assumed the fault was in me, and I hit on the approach of the
letters as the one most likely to win your interest and give me a fair chance.

�� Draco
hesitated. Was that a lie or not? His writer could have been in his circle, though Draco was convinced that it
wasn�t Astoria. And that statement about the real purpose of the letters sounded
as if it could be true.

�� But this
time, he had no certainty.

�� Lies piled on lies. Possibilities
multiplying endlessly. It�s like looking into a mirror set up in front of a
whole line of mirrors. Draco snarled and actually permitted himself to run
his hand through his hair recklessly. It�s
like facing myself, or someone as clever and skilled with teasing words and
lies of omission as I am.

�� That gave
him pause, and this time he actually had to catch the edge of the table against
the thrill of pleasure spreading over him.

�� If the
likeness was strong enough to be reality, if this person was Draco�s equal in
some skills as well as in the ill-defined way that the last letter had called
for�

�� I must not let him get away. I don�t know
yet if I could take a male lover, but for someone like that, it wouldn�t
matter. I would keep him until I learned to like taking a male lover.

�� The letter
continued, and Draco started reading hungrily now, having to continually slow
down because he was reading too fast and skipping words.

�� I find myself unwilling to think of the
possibility of failure and wasted time without more proof that I have failed
and it was wasted. There are few ways to see beneath the mask, but I happen to
know one of them.

�� I want to meet with you.

�� Yes,�
Draco whispered, his eyes drifting shut. �I knew he couldn�t want to give me to
Astoria. I knew that this would come, sooner or later.�

�� His writer
appeared in his mind as an ill-defined figure, but one with a suitably trim
body and hair that would be soft to the touch; Draco hoped it wasn�t coarse and
shaggy, because he didn�t want someone too
different from a female lover at first. The man�s face was in shadow, but
his voice recited the words of the letter with a mocking touch.

�� Draco felt
the thrill reach his groin, and gave a breathless little laugh of surprise and
delight. Perhaps he could get used to the notion of a male lover after all,
then. Or perhaps this blazing personality was enough to attract him, regardless
of what the body looked like.

�� Draco
licked his lips and read on.

�� Come to the restaurant called Merlin�s Tor
on the evening of the seventh, at seven-o�clock. I wrote my first letter to you
at seven in the evening. I find I like the symmetry. Come with nothing more
than your wand. I�ll bring the Veritaserum, and you�ll bring the charmed
parchment.

�� I will prove to you that I am your writer by
writing a letter in front of you, on parchment that won�t permit a lie.

�� Until then,

�� A sincere friend.

�� Draco licked
his lips again. Oh, yes.

�� It was the
sort of challenge that he never would have contemplated answering ordinarily,
because of all the things that could go wrong with it. But the difference from
any of his usual habits was part of what attracted him now. To go to a
restaurant that he knew well but not well enough to have any special friends
among the managers, to take only charmed parchment as a literal paper shield,
to submit to Veritaserum�

�� It was the
kind of reckless thing he hadn�t done since school, when he had begun to weigh
his every action for the kind of repercussions it might have on the Malfoy
family. And that merely increased the attraction.

�� Draco wrote
a flourishing answer on a piece of parchment that he fastened to Grimoire�s leg
with a complicated series of spells that involved him standing back from the
cage, and then leaving the potions laboratory before he dissolved the cage that
held the bird. The answer was not long. It didn�t need to be.

�� My writer,

�� I will be at Merlin�s Tor on the evening of
the seventh, and bring everything I need with me to make you admit to my
cleverness, my carefully chosen compassion that can indeed be directed to
people outside the family when appropriate, and my fitness as a partner for
you.

�� That is, I will bring everything I need with
me to make you admit that you, too, are mine.

�� Willing to become yours,

�� Draco Malfoy.

*

�� Are you mad?� Astoria really looked as if she
would tear her hair out for a moment, making Harry blink. He�d always thought
that saying was melodramatic rubbish that didn�t actually happen. �Why would
you offer to tell him the truth on charmed parchment? Why would you offer to meet him?�

�� Harry
grinned at her. The sharp tone of jealousy in her last words said that she
still wanted Draco. Good. I�d hate to put
all this work into things with no result. �You�re going to be the one who
meets him,� he said. �And if I didn�t have a way to fool charmed parchment, do
you really think I would have suggested it?�

�� Astoria
stared at him over the top of Draco�s letter. �I didn�t consider that,� she
said. �I didn�t think it could be fooled. Isn�t that the kind that senses any
lie in the mind of the writer and forces her hand to write the truth instead?�

�� Harry
nodded. �But the Aurors figured out a way to fool it,� he said. �We�ll
construct a limited telepathic bond between you and me, such that the parchment
is sensing my thoughts and not yours,
but it�s still your hand doing the writing. That bond will also allow me to
dictate the letter to you, so we�ll convince Draco that, actually, you are that brilliant on paper, as well as
face-to-face.�

�� Astoria
exhaled slowly through her nose. �You�ve done this before?� Harry nodded. �It
works?� Harry nodded again. �You think this test will convince him?�

�� This time,
Harry grinned. �I know it will,� he said. �This is a romance conducted almost
entirely by letter, remember�entirely by it if we don�t count your one date. He
doesn�t possess enough information to make a decision otherwise. Ron told me
that he ripped up Draco�s request for information about the ferret story and
won�t consider answering it, because Draco�s still a Malfoy. Everything he
knows and believes and wishes were true about �his� writer�� Harry rolled his
eyes ��comes from the letters. He�ll have
to believe after he sees you writing one.�

�� Astoria
looked half-convinced, half-questioning. �I would like to become his wife,� she
admitted. �I just don�t think it�s possible.�

�� Harry
leaned over and put a hand on her wrist. �You�ll be his. And then you can make
him yours, and show the possessive bastard what�s what. Remember that you�ll be
questioning him under Veritaserum, too.�

�� And then
Astoria finally smiled, and Harry used the smile to put paid to the uncertainty
that curled around his own heart.

�� Draco can�t really suspect or know. And
after he sees Astoria write that letter, he won�t want to.

�� I may be manipulating him, but it�s for his
own good. And he�ll probably even enjoy it, since he manipulates so many people
himself.

�� But either way, he�ll be happy. Isn�t that
what matters?

*

�� yaoiObsessed:
Draco doesn�t really know if he�s gay or not. I suppose the answer is:
possibly, for the right person.

�� And Harry
is determined not to become the prey.

�� Thanks for
reviewing.

�� Thrnbrooke:
Hermione has so much good sense that she keeps trying to convince her friends
to follow it in spite of herself!

�� gentlenightrain:
Thank you!

�� Luvdonite:
Yes. And Draco is confused, still, about why this man is writing to him and
pretending to be Astoria.

�� butterpie: Draco
is cursing himself for his own short-sightedness now, but he wanted so much to
believe there was a lover like that for him that he didn�t really think about a
woman writing herself as a conqueror.

�� fanficmom: Thank
you so much! I�m having a lot of fun with this story, so here�s the next
chapter.

�� MewMew2:
Thanks for reviewing!

�� Blur:
Thanks!

�� tiggator: Thanks!
I think this is one way Harry is giving himself away: he wants an equal (and
actually so does Astoria), but Draco�s only impression of Astoria is
clinginess.
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Providence