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Under the Manor	By : WillGirl Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 13318 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: Disclaimer: I make no claims to Harry Potter, either books or movies, and all rights belong to JKR. No money or other recompense is being made from this story.

Chapter List
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Draco laughed when he caught up to him halfway down the block and the sound was strangely bitter. “Merlin, Potter,” he said, “took you long enough...I was beginning to think you weren’t coming.”

Harry shrugged, hoping that the darkness of the street was enough to hide the flush of his cheeks. “I wasn’t,” he said, “but then I changed my mind.”

Draco snorted. “Fair enough,” he said, and held out his arm—the right arm, Harry noted, despite the fact that Harry was walking on his left side; did he think that Harry would be reluctant to grasp the other one, knowing what was on it?

“If you’ve made up your mind, then,” Malfoy drawled challengingly, “come on.”

Harry hesitated, then realized that he’d decided a long time ago, and had just been fighting against the horror of that decision ever since. He grabbed Draco’s left hand, lacing their fingers together tightly. “Okay,” he said, “go ahead.”

For the first time genuine surprise flickered across Malfoy’s pointed features, and Harry didn’t think it was because of his sudden agreement. Then he shrugged lightly and turned through the air, pulling Harry after him. The world shrank in, the familiar feeling of compression squeezing the air from Harry’s lungs; he held tightly to Draco’s cold fingers, wondering where the other man was taking them.

When he could breathe again, it was warm. Harry opened his eyes but everything was dark. Long fingers disentangled themselves from his own, and Harry missed their coolness against his skin, and wiped his palm on the leg of his jeans to shake it off.

“Lumos,” Malfoy muttered, and Harry flinched against the bright glow of his wand. Then candles flickered in ornate, elegant holders, and the room was bathed in soft radiance. Draco put his wand away and began to unbutton his jacket. Harry looked around.

He had no idea where they were, but it was beautiful. Heavy velvet drapes obscured windows tall enough to walk through. The wallpaper was a pale, grayish-cream, with an intricate pattern of loops and spirals raised against it in darker gray; it looked like lines of velvet had been painted right onto the walls. They were hung with several paintings in ornate, gleaming frames, but none of the pictures featured portraits; they were all landscapes, gentle and muted and vaguely...Harry struggled to remember the right term...Impressionistic? Surreal? Something that wasn’t quite right, but nearly looked it. They did move, as wizard paintings usually did, but only according to the dictates of their imaginary weather, from light breezes to windy storms.

Along the wall nearest Harry, under a painting of a forest brook at dusk, there was an elegant writing desk in some sort of dark, highly-burnished wood. The matching chair had one of those flat, thin cushions that you just knew from looking at it was more comfortable than it appeared, although Harry had to wonder who would be daft enough to have such light-colored fabric somewhere that they commonly worked with ink.

There was a short bookcase in matching wood, equally well-carved, next to the desk; the titles on it were the sorts of things Hermione would have loved, all of them seemingly dry treatises and articles on potions and assorted magicks. There were several papers strewn on the desk; it looked like whoever worked there never worried about other people disturbing his things, because there was a clear order to the mess, but no efforts had been taken to secure the position of the papers. Harry blinked—was one of those quills made out of a peacock feather? And a pure white one, at that?

He wrenched his gaze away from the desk to examine the rest of the room. It was a little bit larger than Harry thought bedrooms had any reason to be, but that was clearly what it was, because there was a large, impossibly ostentatious bed against the other wall. It was practically nested with pillows, all of them silver and cream, and the thick comforter was a deep forest green that looked like it was made out of something softer than any cloth that Harry had ever felt. The curtains of the four-poster were likewise pale, creamy things with silver threads running through them; they glinted in the candlelight as if they might be made of the actual metal.

There was a footstool at the end of the bed (same comfortable, pale cushion as the chair at the desk), with a neatly-folded dressing gown and elegant day slippers resting on top of it. The wood of the bed and stool were the same shiny, dark stuff as the rest of the room’s furnishings: another set of chairs, over by the far window, with a little table between them (Harry couldn’t see the title of the book on it, but imagined it must be along the same lines as the rest of the dull, academic stuff he had seen so far)...two large wardrobes, identical save for the elaborate carvings on their doors...a matching chest of drawers, its top cluttered neatly with things like cufflinks, hairbrushes, combs; a few pretty boxes that no doubt held the rest of the customary accoutrements for getting dressed...

A large, silver-framed mirror hung over the dresser. Harry could see himself reflected in it, wide-eyed and rumpled and so very clearly out of place. The closest Harry had ever come to seeing opulence like this had been the first time he had come to Number 12, Grimmauld Place, and that had been dark and decayed and even in its prime he couldn’t imagine that it had ever been quite this elegant.

“Where are we?” Harry asked.

“My rooms,” said Draco, hanging his jacket inside one of the wardrobes.

At first Harry thought he had imagined the pluralization, but then he saw that the open door behind him did not, as he would have expected, lead out into a hallway, but rather to another chamber. This one held an assortment of chairs, several bookcases, more small tables—half of them cluttered with books or papers, too—more paintings, an enormous old pendulum clock, a sword mounted on the wall over a large fireplace, and one of those absurdly anachronistic couches that Ginny had insisted he buy for the living room as a lark: fainting couches, or falling couches, they were called something like that...

That room was similar in color-scheme to the adjoining bedroom, although slightly deeper and brighter. It was all rather muted for Harry’s tastes, despite the dark richness of the wood, and the occasional burst of forest green, but though the rooms gave off an aura of coolness, they weren’t cold; it was more like the soothing chill of a balm, an aloe. They seemed strangely peaceful to Harry’s eye, and a little bit empty.

“They’re um...nice,” he said lamely.

“Mm?” said Draco. “Oh, thanks.”

He seemed supremely unconcerned with what Harry thought of his rooms, which made Harry wonder what they were doing here. It wasn’t like Malfoy not to jump at the chance to show off any evidence of his family’s wealth and status, and his rooms reeked of both. They also smelled, inexplicably, faintly of lavender.

Harry peered through the open door and frowned; for some reason, one of the bookcases was completely, totally empty.

“It’s linked to the library,” came a quiet voice at his shoulder.

Harry jumped. “What?” he gasped, willing his heart to slow down as he gaped at the taller man who was leaning in close to his face.

“The bookcase,” Draco nodded. “You were staring at it—the empty one? It’s because it’s linked to the library downstairs.”

“Linked,” Harry repeated dumbly.

“So I can get a book without going all the way downstairs?” Draco explained, as if Harry were being deliberately stupid. “I just select which shelf down there I want it to double as, and it brings those books up here. Sort of like the Protean Charm, I suppose, although it’s linked to an actual transport spell...Merlin, Potter, it’s not exactly an uncommon piece of furnishing,” he laughed at him.

“Oh,” said Harry, flushing. “Well, it sounds useful, sure...”

Draco snickered and walked away, crossing the room to the far door. He locked it with his wand, and then moved to another, smaller door in the far wall, pulling it shut but not before Harry had a glimpse of something that looked a lot like a private potions lab: all gleaming cauldrons and tiny little drawers. He figured out where the lavender smell was coming from; there had been a dried bouquet of it hanging just inside the door.

Harry couldn’t help but grin at the realization that Draco was even more of a swot than he had ever let on at school. The books, the little laboratory...it was all faintly ridiculous but, disquietingly, it also made Malfoy seem more human, somehow. Harry tried to shake away the realization of Draco Malfoy as an actual person. He decided that it was just because he spent so much time with Hermione. He was projecting, that was all; associating the flat, two-dimensional sarcasm of Malfoy with Hermione’s genuine wit and compassion because of their apparently mutual love of study.

It didn’t really mean anything.

Draco walked back towards him, and Harry swallowed hard. The curtains in there were open, unlike the ones in the bedroom itself, and moonlight spilled in across the thick carpet, and across the slim figure crossing it. The chilly light made Draco’s hair glow like white-gold, and it shimmered on his pale skin, illuminating how skinny and tired he really was, but also highlighting his aloof, aristocratic beauty.

With the moon on him like that, Draco Malfoy looked like frozen perfection itself.

Harry gasped involuntarily.

An eyebrow arched. “All right, Potter?” he asked, his voice humming with smug amusement.

Harry nodded. “Draco...” he said, “what are we doing here?”

Malfoy paused; tilted his head almost like a bird. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“Your...your rooms,” Harry said, waving a shaky hand at the pale expanse of Draco’s chambers. “Why are we here?”

Something flickered across Draco’s face. “You would prefer the storage room, I suppose,” he said flatly. “Absolute equivalence, is that it?”

“What? No,” Harry said, “no, that isn’t at all what I...I mean, why bring me here?”

Draco shrugged. “It seemed like the best place, I suppose? I wasn’t really thinking about it,” he admitted. “Would you prefer somewhere else?”

“Somewhere else for what?” Harry asked.

“To extract your recompense,” Draco said, his face a perfectly smooth mask.

“You mean, to...” Harry swallowed hard. “Draco, I don’t want to—to fuck you...”

“Oh no?” Malfoy asked, that thin eyebrow arching again in chill disbelief.

“And I certainly don’t want to—to do to you what—what we were forced to—what they...that,” he finished, unable to detail exactly what had gone on half a decade ago in the storage room off the cellars. He could already feel heat creeping into his face, and tingling at his groin, and hoped that the cold moonlight and dim candles would keep Malfoy from noticing his blush.

Draco stared at him with eyes that grew slowly narrow. “Oh,” he said quietly, “oh, I have misjudged you, haven’t I...”

Harry felt panic claw at his throat. “I—I think I should go,” he stammered, looking around for salvation, for escape.

Draco smirked, his eyes cold. “Well, the Manor is warded,” he said. “You can’t Apparate in or out unless you know the proper spells. I suppose you could always walk out the front door...”

The challenge hung in the empty air between them. Harry knew that he would never do that, never walk away through the long and winding halls of Malfoy Manor, where Narcissa or Lucius could be waiting innocently around any corner, unaware that Harry Potter was in their house at all, let alone what he had come there to do with—to—their precious son.

Harry swallowed. “Okay,” he said, “okay, then. What...what now?”

Draco slipped past Harry through the door, brushing impossibly long fingers over Harry’s wrist as he went. He crossed to the bed and flopped down gracefully, lounging languidly back across the deep green coverlet. “Now,” he said, “you have a seat, and tell me what it is you do want, Harry Potter.”

And he smiled.
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Under the Manor