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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
- 6
- 7
- 8
Thanks again for all the reviews!

Chapter
Seven�Exceptions to the General Rule

�� Harry
opened his eyes when the sun rose; he usually did, even on those assignments
when he could sleep later. He liked to wake up, make sure there was no danger
and nothing drastic had changed, and examine his immediate surroundings before
he went back to sleep.

�� Now, though
he drew Brian�s wand and carefully cast a few detection spells, he couldn�t
find a trace of foreign magic in Draco�s room. Harry nodded in satisfaction. Apparently,
Draco�s parents weren�t desperate enough yet to intrude into their son�s
private quarters, even�or especially�when they must have guessed what he was
doing there with his new boyfriend.

�� Harry
turned on one elbow to stare down at Draco�s sleeping face. A stir of the
excitement he�d felt last night came back to him, and he frowned.

�� He had gone
along with Draco�s passion because it seemed as though Brian would. Brian was
more spontaneous, more liable to get excited, than Harry himself was. And there
was no great distrust holding him and Draco apart.

�� But there
were moments when one of Harry�s roles could seem like a thin mask over
reality. That had happened once when he played a bodyguard, and the person
stalking the woman he protected, the Seeker for the Kenmare Kestrels, had tried
to kill her young children as well as her. Harry�s own rage at the thought of
innocents being threatened had nearly shattered the cool, professional
competence that Ursula Windwood had the right to
expect of the man she�d hired.

�� And last
night, how much of Brian�s passion had been his own?

�� Too much, Harry thought with a light
shake of his head. I stand a danger of
falling into a pool that I normally avoid.

�� It was true
that Draco was fantastically responsive in bed. But Harry hadn�t come into this
job to find a partner; he would do that as himself if he wanted a permanent
relationship, which so far he�d never yet yearned for. He had come into this
job to get Draco disowned by his parents, and he should focus on that.

�� The obvious
conclusion: Brian could join Draco in bed again, as Draco would be suspicious
if he didn�t, but not in the same way. Not so intimately that Harry nearly lost himself.

�� He sat up.
He�d write out a note that recounted last night�s conversation with Lucius and
Narcissa for Draco, and then leave it pinned beneath his gift, the statue of
the siren. He started to smile as he considered how to phrase the truth in
Brian�s bombastic style.

�� An arm
settling heavily, possessively, against his chest halted the plans whirling in
his head.

�� Where do
you think you�re going?� Draco
whispered into his ear.

�� Shit, Harry thought in self-loathing. You really should have noticed that he was
awake.

�� He shoved
Harry away in the next instant and donned the mask of Brian, who would not be
embarrassed to be caught like this. He turned around and stared at Draco,
raising an eyebrow. �Out, of course,� he said. �I certainly wasn�t about to go
downstairs and try to chat up your father.�

*

�� Draco
smiled, but he could feel suspicion blossoming in his mind, dragging itself out
of the intense haze of pleasure he remembered from last night. Brian certainly
could make love.

�� But he
could do other things, too, and Draco should not have let himself forget those
other things.

�� Do you have
such a busy schedule that you couldn�t wait until I was awake?� he whispered.
He had woken up the moment Brian moved from beside him, and he knew the man had
spent a few minutes silently contemplating his thoughts before he sighed and
sat up. Draco wanted to know what those thoughts had been.

�� If he had
become so involved with Brian in such a short time, the only acceptable
response was for Brian to become more involved with him, too.

�� Actually,�
Brian murmured, �I�ve blocked out most afternoons and nights for you as long as
I�m working with Metamorphosis. But I do have
a life of my own, as you know.� He grinned. �And some friends who will be
waiting impatiently to ask me questions. I told them I was going to do
something spectacular. They won�t be expecting my name in the papers, though.�

�� Draco
narrowed his eyes a little, but kept his voice delicate. �Then take me along to
meet these friends.� His fingers traced the line of Brian�s waist. No, he
hadn�t put on any clothes again after they�d come. They had spent the night
tangled together absolutely naked, a privilege that Draco didn�t allow many of
his lovers.

�� No,� said
Brian.

�� Draco
blinked, for a moment thinking the word an answer to his thoughts, and then he
remembered his own demand. He frowned and withdrew his arm from Brian�s chest.
�What?�

�� You
purchased my services to help you get disowned.� Brian stared calmly into his
face. �You didn�t purchase my friends. You didn�t purchase every single moment
of my time. Besides, the point of Metamorphosis is to provide you with a
perfect stranger, remember? We aren�t
supposed to get intimately involved in the details of each other�s lives.�

��

�I�ll have you meet my friends,�
Draco said, deepening his voice from the shout he wanted to give. The shout was
hardly the way to convince Brian, who had shown himself not readily susceptible
to intimidation.

�And that�s your choice.� Brian
shrugged a little and pulled back. �I won�t have you meet mine.�

Draco smiled a little,
acknowledging that he had moved too fast and got out of his depth. He was used
to people who ultimately gave in to him. The few friends of his
who weren�t like that, namely Pansy and Blaise, didn�t have anything he wanted
badly enough to require him to manipulate them, and they preferred free
association, too. Brian had warned Draco that he would push back. That was
abundantly clear now.

�� Brian would
need a different tactic. Draco didn�t mind having an equal, he told himself; he
just needed to be sure he wasn�t the
one falling under the spell.

�� Very
well,� he said. �But tell me what my parents said to you before you depart, so
we can plan for Lucius�s next attack.�

�� Brian
blinked, but went with the rapid shift of subject, recounting the conversation
word-perfect. When Draco stared hard at him, Brian shrugged and murmured, �I�m
an actor, remember? Play instructions are harder to memorize. Some of them
don�t make near as much sense as that
conversation did.�

�� Hmmm,�
said Draco. Really. �I�ll meet you at two in Diagon Alley.�

�� Good
enough.� Brian waved his wand and lazily Summoned his
robe. �Where?�

�� Oh,� Draco
said, �I think you�ll be able to find me.�

�� Brian
kissed him before he left, with the assured confidence of a boyfriend who
assumes it�s perfectly all right. Draco wasn�t sure if he found that attractive
or not. He lay there thinking about it before he shook his head, got up, and
went to take a shower.

�� He had an
outraged father to confront. He expected breakfast to be entertaining.

*

�� Harry
gratefully altered his face to have the right angles again, and then spelled
his eyes from blue back to green. His lightning bolt scar spread across his
brow once more. Harry spent a thoughtful moment looking into the mirror, then shrugged.

�� He had just
thought that he knew himself less
than he knew any of his created personalities, but that was the point. He had
made up those personalities the way novelists made up their characters; there
was no reason he shouldn�t know all about them. But the personality he had
left�

�� Harry
snorted.

�� The person
he had been had died with Voldemort.
When he�d had some time to pause and think after the final battle, he�d
realized he didn�t really know what to do with himself when Voldemort wasn�t
threatening him. The other man had defined his life for so long. Harry had
planned, acted, reacted, thought, loved, related, solely with the thought that
Voldemort could kill him someday. If he hadn�t done that all the time he�d been
at Hogwarts, he�d certainly done it since Sirius died.

�� Where did
the shadow go when the light that had cast it was gone?

�� And then
the media had descended.

�� Harry had
thought he understood would it would be like from the fuss over his entry into
the Tri-Wizard Tournament, and the accusations of his insanity during fifth
year. Those occurrences gave him no idea of the reality. This time, he wasn�t a
young wizard competing in a dangerous sport or a potential future Dark Lord; he
had saved the world, and it seemed
that was something Britain hadn�t seen in too many lifetimes.

�� Many, many
times during that frenzied last year of school, when they somehow caught
pictures of him in the showers in Gryffindor Tower, when he couldn�t play a
game of Quidditch because the number of admirers on brooms was too great, when someone
had broken his hand with a spell that attempted to force him to sign a thousand
autographs, Harry had wished Dumbledore was still alive. Had people lauded him
like this after he defeated Grindelwald? Harry longed
to ask. How in the world had he dealt with
it?

�� McGonagall,
as Headmistress, had done her best, but she couldn�t keep everyone determined
to have a piece of Harry out of the school, even with the strongest wards;
desperation and cleverness together let them find a way inside. So Harry, aware
that he might literally go mad with all this attention�he had lain with his
wand against his throat in the darkness too many times�found his own escape.

�� He began to
study masks, glamours, disguise charms, spells that altered the color of eyes
and hair and skin, spells that had originally been meant to conceal
disfigurements and scars and a lack of magic. He observed the way that people,
even the importunate reporters who badgered him, walked and talked, stood and
moved their hands, met other people�s eyes or didn�t. He took personality as a
plastic cast and poured new materials into it, imagining what he would be like
if he had grown up with parents, in France, with only one leg, with a permanent
grudge against the world. (He thought he almost deserved to have that last one).

�� And he
learned he could become other people, and those other people saved his life.

�� When he was
Robert Barrington, walking down a Muggle street in Muggle London, no one
troubled him. When he was Sheila Hacklestein, a
sixteen-year-old witch bitterly complaining because her parents had chosen to
keep her at home instead of letting her go to Hogwarts, a few people murmured
sympathetically, but no one looked at him the way they looked at Harry. When he
was a hunchbacked drunk crooning into his glass at the Three Broomsticks, no
one even cared about his name, as long as he had enough Galleons to pay for his
drinks.

�� Harry ran
further and further away from himself, until at last he saw the Harry Potter
part of himself as the most hollow personality he
owned, just the dressing robe he put on between a bath in one persona and the
clothes of another.

�� And then he
had opened Metamorphosis, and that had done well, and he had discovered that he
had a talent for acting and lying, for being someone other than himself. Maybe
that talent wasn�t natural, forged instead in the fires of desperation, but it
was real enough now.

�� He had to
be Harry for a short time this morning; he wanted to catch Hermione before she
went to the Ministry and tease and congratulate her on the coming child. But he
could be Brian again this afternoon.

�� Harry
hummed softly under his breath as he chose one of the robes that Ron and
Hermione would expect to see him appear in. Acting like a shell of a person
wasn�t so bad, when he had knew he had full, rich personalities he could change
into with a few flicks of his wand. And Ron and Hermione gave the Harry Potter
shell life it never could have had without them.

*

�� Morning,
Father.�

�� Lucius
greeted him with a perfectly cool face as Draco strolled into the dining room.
�Hello, Draco. Did you have a restful night?�

�� More than
I�ve had in some time,� Draco said, and chose a seat a few chairs away from his
father. The table was large enough that he could have sat near the far wall if
he wanted, but Draco didn�t want to appear eager either to get away from Lucius
or cozy up to him. He ran a hand through his hair, which he�d left deliberately
damp from the shower, and smiled at the house-elf who appeared with a cup of
tea and the mixture of several different kinds of meat that Draco liked to eat
in the mornings. He picked up his fork and ate a few bites, aware of Lucius
reading the newspaper instead of looking at him.

�� He can do that if he wants. It doesn�t make
the charade any less a charade.

�� It feels
so much better to have the secret out in the open at last,� Draco continued,
sipping his tea and glancing at the front page of the Daily Prophet. They were carrying some story about a Quidditch
match where the Seeker had fallen from his broom and been rescued by one of the
opposite team�s Beaters just in time. His party had taken place too late the
night before for it to have made the lead article, Draco judged. But that would
alter by this evening. �To know that I�m not deceiving you
about my future plans.�

�� I see no
reason that those future plans should change,� Lucius said, in a deceptively
mild voice.

�� Why not?� Draco lifted an eyebrow and plucked a strip of ham
loose from a strip of sausage. �You have to admit that you never expected me to
turn out gay.�

�� If he
hadn�t been watching closely, he wouldn�t have seen Lucius�s knuckles turn
white where they gripped the paper. He had obviously used the night to talk
over some things with Narcissa and rebalance and reorient himself. Draco was
reluctantly impressed. He would have expected the shock to last longer.

�� Of course
not,� Lucius said. �But gay men can still marry and father children. It has
been done for years, in times when attitudes�and laws�were stricter than they
are now.�

�� Draco knew
exactly what his father was talking about, and though he smiled without effort
and continued eating, he felt a sharp spark of disgust at the base of his
brain. It was no longer actually legal to imprison a wizard or witch just for
being gay, though parents could still legally disown them for no other reason.
Lucius quite obviously wished that the lawmakers of a generation or two back
had not been so permissive.

�� More subtle threats. But still threats.

�� Unless
they�re utterly sexually incompatible with women, then yes, they can,� Draco
agreed. �But there is no draw for them to get married, no attraction, as there
is for straight men. And I have no intention of getting married.�

�� Lucius laid
down the paper and gave him, at last, serious attention. His face was still a
mask of serenity, of course. Only long experience made Draco sure that his
father was ready to explode with fury and frustration at having one of his
most-cherished plans contravened.

�� You must,�
Lucius said. �You know that the continuation of this family depends on you.�

�� What about
Maxwell?� Draco countered innocently, just for the sake of seeing his father
flush a bit. Maxwell Malfoy was the bastard son of Lucius�s father�s
younger brother, half Muggle and less interested in magic than machines. He
kept in touch with the wizarding world, but erratically. And he was the only
other possible Malfoy heir besides Draco.

�� He is not
pure-blooded,� Lucius said. �He has not been raised within our world. Why will
you force me to state the obvious, Draco?� His face was pained, apparently
appealing to an invisible audience of parents over his impossible child. �He
will not make half the heir you will.�

�� But to be
your heir,� Draco said, leaning forwards and speaking seriously, �I would need
to marry and have children of my own. One
heir by himself isn�t enough. It�s the continuity, the line, that�s important.�
He had heard those words from the time he was five years old. Lucius had wanted
him to understand that he was not the center of the universe. Instead, the
Malfoy family, the larger unit Draco was a part of, was the center of the
universe. �Maxwell is superior to me as your heir because he�s straight.� Is he ever. Maxwell
had apparently had two children already, and yet he wasn�t married. At least he
was supporting both of them, which was more than Draco could say for what
Maxwell�s father had done. Quintus Malfoy had deserved to die in that
hippogriff accident.

�� Your
sexual orientation makes no difference to me,� Lucius said.

�� Yes, it does. Draco was absolutely
certain of that. Maybe his mother could speak those words with some truth, but
not his father. Lucius hated being wrong too much; he hated not being able to
predict what his son would do next. Therefore, Draco watched his father with
pardonable suspicion.

�� This�stunt�can
be recovered from. It need not change the course of your life,� Lucius
continued, sounding calmer now. �You can give up this Montgomery, or retain him
on the side if you must, but you will marry. You will have children. True, your
orientation is an unfortunate fact, but it will change nothing.�

�� Well. Draco had counted on his father�s
vast stubbornness. He simply hadn�t predicted that his father would try to
paint him over like a hole in the plaster.

�� You think
there are still women who will have me, after last night?� he asked, pretending
to play along for a moment.

�� Alice
Moonstone did not seem overly horrified,� Lucius said,
his face and his eyes sending out subtle beams of pride in his son.

�� She�s
twelve years younger than I am,� Draco pointed out. �Just
eighteen.�

�� That only
means she is still in her prime for bearing wizarding
children,� Lucius said firmly. �You know that children born when their mother
is younger than thirty tend to be Squibs less often. I have wished you married
before now, Draco, but at least your delay will not affect your children as
much as taking an older bride would.� He relaxed into a smile.

�� Ah,� said
Draco. These were calculations he had heard all his life. He was as tired of
them as he was of everything else about his father�s dominion. �I am sure I
would find this discussion more interesting if
I intended to marry.� He finished his breakfast and stood, a house-elf
appearing at once to take the empty plate and cup away.

�� Lucius
looked at him with a face empty of expression for a moment. Then he said, �You
may think that,� and picked up the paper.

�� Draco
stepped out of the dining room and stood still for a moment, eyes shut, to all
appearances enjoying the fall of sunlight through the large window at the back
of the house. In reality, he was calming his anger. Making a mark on Lucius�s
obstinacy was like trying to chisel diamonds with a piece of chalk.

�� Draco?�

�� He opened
his eyes and smiled down at his mother, who had come up beside him without even
a rustle of her gown. She did not smile back. She held out her arm and said
instead, �Walk with me in the garden for a while?�

�� Draco
stepped out beside her into the sunlight. It was a beautiful June day, so warm
that Draco would have thought it already past midsummer if he hadn�t known
better. The sky was that rare, high, pounded blue of cobalt. The few clouds
visible glowed as if made of gold. He followed his mother into the maze of
lilies and roses that sprawled across the front part of the gardens.

�� Narcissa
finally said, in a murmur just above a rustle, �Draco, how could you do that to
us?�

�� Draco
looked thoughtfully down at her head. He understood exactly what outraged his
father, but his mother was a more complicated personality and always had been.
�Turn out gay?� he asked. �I didn�t plan that, really. It just happened.� And so far as I�m attracted to men, that�s
true. I�m just leaving out the part where I can find women attractive and sleep
with them if I want to.

�� Announce
it in such a fashion,� Narcissa said, and this time she was whispering.
�Publicly embarrass your family. Put our future in jeopardy.�

�� It was the
only way I could think of that Father wouldn�t be able to dismiss,� Draco said,
stroking the inside of his mother�s elbow. The first step on the road to my actual
dismissal as the Malfoy heir. �Otherwise,
he would have ignored it. As if ignoring something changes the reality. I�m
sorry you got caught up in it, but you know that many of your dreams for me are
the same as Father�s.�

�� His mother
pulled him to a stop with surprising strength, and then stood looking up at
him. Her face was as pale as the lilies around them, but her eyes were as
strong as the sun. Draco looked down at her, uncertain what he was about to
hear.

�� Not
exactly the same,� Narcissa said quietly. �I do want you to be the patriarch of
a successful pure-blood family, committed to keeping our heritage and
traditions alive in a world that wants to destroy them.�

�� Draco did
not say, though he wanted to, that maybe if the pure-bloods hadn�t done such a fine
job of making others hate them by serving the Dark Lord in two wars, then maybe
those traditions wouldn�t be in danger. He just held his mother�s gaze.

�� But there
is something that comes before all that,� Narcissa said. �Something your�your Mr. Montgomery said to me last night, which I
discounted at the time but have been thinking on since. I want to see you
happy, Draco. I want to see you standing free of your father�s shadow�which is
there, even if Lucius does not mean to cast it�and independently, on your own.�

�� Draco
tilted his head curiously. It was far from the first time that his mother had
said she wanted to see him happy, but the other wish was a new one. �Then why
did you encourage me to marry someone exactly like Father did,� he asked, �a
beautiful pure-blood witch? Why did you encourage me to live exactly like he did?�

�� Because I
thought that would lead to your freedom in time, when Lucius died if no sooner,�
Narcissa answered. �Lucius became free of his father in the same way, and Abraxas was yet more overwhelming.� She hesitated.
�However, he died whilst Lucius was still a young man, younger than you are
now. I had not considered before how much room that might have given Lucius to
grow.�

�� He will
not give me that room,� Draco said. �I must take it.�

�� I would
wish you luck,� said Narcissa, �except that I do not believe Mr. Montgomery
will make you happy. Nor will living as an exile from so many of our social
circles in the wizarding world. Come back, Draco. You may not find your freedom
right away, but you will only find it, ultimately, along with your happiness,
here.�

�� Draco
kissed his mother�s cheek, overwhelmed by love for her. She was brave and sympathetic
in ways his father would never understand. Were it not for the marriage
assuring his own existence, Draco would have passionately wished she had found
a husband more suited to her. Lucius and Narcissa worked well together; Draco was not at all convinced they lived well together.

�� Does this
mean you will reconsider?� Narcissa breathed.

�� No.� Draco
took her hands. �Brian does make me happy, Mother. And I can stand the exile.� Since I will recapture the
people who despise me now in ways that Father cannot even imagine doing.

�� Narcissa
gave him a steady stare, then took her hands away and went into the house.

�� Draco
smiled and cast a glance at the white marble clock in the middle of the garden.
Still short of noon, and therefore a few hours away from his meeting with
Brian. He would take a long, slow shower, swing briefly by his business to see
what was happening, and then prepare himself for another meeting with the man
who�

�� Intrigued
him? Frustrated him? Complemented him?

�� All of those. And he makes me happy as well, at least for
now.

*

�� Celestialuna, avihenda, Matt, anaxibia, qwerty, Ladynight: Thanks for reviewing!

�� Mangacat: Thank you! I do try to make my intentions
comprehensible to the reader, even if it�s just not letting them judge the
characters too much.

�� And Harry
is not really worried about how much skill he�s displaying as Brian, because he
thinks he doesn�t have much of his own personality left to shine through.

�� Sp777:
Thanks! I was puzzled about Purity attracting so much attention just because
his personality was not really described.

�� And yes,
what you said about Chapter 6 does make sense. Draco still sees himself as
playing a role, not really letting go, and Harry is definitely doing so.

DuckieSongbird:
Thanks! I have a dream of being a writer someday (don�t we all?), so who knows,
that may happen.

�� Thrnbrooke: Narcissa is thinking, but her suspicions are
not leading her in the right direction yet.

�� SoftObsidian74:
I�m sure Draco would be horrified if he knew it was Harry Potter. However, this
is the kind of thing that doesn�t bother Harry, or he could never have run his
business as long as he has (ten years). He thinks it�s not really Harry in bed with Draco, it�s Brian. And that
is exactly what Draco paid for.

�� Lunatic
with a hero complex: Thanks very much! I do wonder what you think of Harry
after this chapter.

�� Jaylynn: Narcissa is smart, but she wouldn�t automatically
associate a scar with Harry Potter.

�� Hi-chan: No. Harry changed the way he walked, etc., but not
the size of his parts. ;)

�� Heyjena01:
As you can see here, Harry is still vulnerable, but he can hide that so well he
can pretend it doesn�t really exist.

�� Yume111:
Harry was making kind of a joke when he talked about pure-blood manners there.

�� Harry
himself is uncertain how much of his personality comes through Brian.

�� And yes, �passionately
detached� is a good description. Harry�s personality is very complex when he�s
playing someone, going back and forth between �reality� and �mask,� and
transforming them into each other. Harry does think of some of his creations as
more real than he thinks of himself.

��
- 6
- 7
- 8
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Changing of the Guard