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Sympathy for the Predators	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Lucius Views: 14906 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and I am not making any money from this story.

Chapter List
- 1-Sympathy for the Predators
- 2-Tiger
- 3-Cheetah
- 4-Wolf
- 5-Fox
- 6-Falcon
- 7-Jaguar
- 8-Killer Whale
- 9-Lion
- 10-Dolphin
- 6
- 7
- 8
Thank you again for all the reviews!

Part VII. Jaguar.

Wary in the approach.

            Harry sat on his couch, staring at the fireplace, where the flames had burned down to nothing but shimmering embers. His hands ached from being clenched together. He rubbed the back of his neck, which also ached from the tension, and sighed.

            I don’t know what to do.

            That was the simple truth, and no matter how long he sat here looking at the fire, usually a good source of visions, it remained true. In the end, he stood up and wandered along the corridor to his bedroom, where he lay down and shut his eyes. Kreacher had already come to him once that evening to ask if he needed anything, and Harry had sent him away with a glance so forbidding that he knew the little elf wouldn’t soon try again.

            Getting undressed and into the cool sheets helped, a little. His mind ceased its maddened whirling and concentrated on one subject. Unfortunately, that subject wasn’t the one Harry wanted it to concentrate on.

            He could remember the feel of Malfoy’s lips far better than he should have been able to recall a mere sense memory.

            Harry shifted uncomfortably. He had somehow thought that what he needed was distance. Put doors and walls and windows between him and Malfoy, and he would feel human, like himself, again.

            That wasn’t what had happened. Instead, the problem had become worse, because he could remember, too, what he had been like—calm and empty, without any yearning or lust in his heart except for odd moments alone—and contrast it with what he was like at the moment.

            Too full, of tension and fire and dust.

            Why can’t I go back to being what I was before? Harry rolled over and punched the pillow. He couldn’t remember the last time he had made a gesture that stupid and childish, and immediately felt ashamed. But even that was more soothing than the emotions Malfoy had inspired in him, because at least it had a reason. He wasn’t acting with the maturity and control that he expected of himself.

            Whereas there was no reason for the passion (call it what it is, Harry, face your fears and name them) with which he had responded to Malfoy.

            He hadn’t thought of being horrified at having a male lover, because he had never thought there would be a male lover. There had been Ginny, and only Ginny. There was to have been only Ginny as long as he lived.

            Now he was more horrified, and felt worse, than he would have if he had simply got drunk and had sex with someone else. That was physical infidelity. This was emotional infidelity.

            He wanted to see Malfoy again. He wouldn’t have been surprised to light the lamps and find him here, in the same room, stepping towards him with that glow on his hair that firelight always gave him and a smile that could drown sanity—

            Harry shut his eyes. He could feel every eyelash on his cheek. Malfoy had sensitized him, made him aware of his body as a body again.

            Why? Damn it, why?

            That was the problem. He’d become too used to analyzing his way out of situations. He could defeat the arguments for enslaving house-elves and ignoring the rights of werewolves that the Ministry threw at him. He could see the long-term benefits of supporting certain artists and the short-term benefits of getting angry with them, no matter how obnoxious they were. He could look at a piece of art and explain why he liked it, instead of just shaking his head and standing in silent wonder before its beauty, the way he had during his first year of studying it.

            He couldn’t do that with Malfoy. The man was as much pure sensation as a burning flame, and his words could be reasoned with, but his touches could not.

            Harry swallowed. The simple solution was not to let Malfoy touch him again, but, given the strength of his yearning, the pull of desire at the back of his throat, he wasn’t sure he could go through with that. He didn’t trust himself anymore.

            He rolled on his back and shut his eyes.

            He didn’t fall asleep until almost two in the morning. It would have been easier if he’d wanked, but he had already betrayed himself and the person he’d always thought he was enough for one evening.

*

            “Mr. Malfoy!”

            Lucius turned around, smiling. He had completed his errand in Diagon Alley, finding a gift for Potter that he was certain to appreciate, and so the impertinent advance of reporters did not trouble him as much as it would have a few minutes ago.

            “Yes?” he said in the deep voice Narcissa had told him he did so well to the young woman behind him. She had honey-colored hair, honey-colored eyes, and a hungry look about her mouth, as if she’d eaten too much honey and wanted something else for once. “Can I answer a question for you?”

            She nodded. “I’m Ariane Roberts, working for the Quibbler, and I just have to ask—” She looked around twice, then leaned close and whispered, although the watching crowd could hear every word. “Did you really kick your son out of your house over your love for Harry Potter?”

            “What an interpretation,” Lucius said, gently enough, but in a way that made her flush. “It is true that I freed him, and true that my son had him arrested. What you draw from that must be your own conclusions. I am not a man to freely name my private feelings in public.” He looked around at the watching crowd with disdain that he didn’t try to hide. “Speak with me in private if you wish a different answer.”

            He turned around and walked up the middle of Diagon Alley, the metal box in his pocket picking up his body heat and beginning to glow with a promising warmth.

            The way that Potter’s eyes glowed when I touched him last night.

            As long as he lived, Lucius did not think he would forget that moment.

*

            Harry walked into the Wizengamot’s courtroom with a hood over his face. The public was allowed to witness the debate, and he was only one of many in the milling crowd with wide eyes and gaping mouths and no fame of their own. He wanted it to stay that way.

            Hermione should be able to argue. This day should be about the house-elves, not about people distracted by the appearance of Harry Potter.

            He leaned against the wall rather than trying to find a seat; he could see at a glance that the best seats were filled, and sitting behind the spectators already there would involve seeing more heads and shoulders than anything else.

            From up here, he could see the floor where Hermione would stand, but the figures were small. The problem was easy to solve. Harry cast a Farsight Spell on his eyes, and abruptly he was seeing the floor of the courtroom with as much ease as if he were an eagle.

            Harry grimaced when the spell took effect. The Wizengamot really needed to hire some better cleaning staff.

            Then he grinned, wondering if house-elves handled the cleaning here, and what Hermione would say about it if that was true. She would probably find a way to work that fact into her argument.

            He had chosen a time shortly before the testimony was due to begin, and soon the doors boomed shut. The Wizengamot came creaking and rustling out onto the seats above the courtroom in their long robes. Harry shook his head as he watched them. For the most part, they were older wizards and witches, long detached from the wizarding world as it was, loyal to the traditions of their youth. It was one reason Harry had never really considered approaching them. They wouldn’t be interested in hearing what he wanted, and they certainly wouldn’t be interested in separating from the Ministry.

            But a tall man walked among them, younger than most, perhaps about Lucius Malfoy’s age—

            Harry grimaced, rolled his eyes, and banished the disobedient thoughts to the back of his mind like children sent to their room.

            Anyway. Yes. This man was tall, his bones heavy but his stride steady, his head slightly cocked to one side as if he was always critically, curiously, studying the world around him. His hair fell around his shoulders in a pale blond lion’s mane. Harry’s spell let him see that his small eyes were bright and grey, but he had already known that fact.

            This was Osgood Superbus. He wore pure white robes, but his heart was nowhere near that stainless, which was what made him dangerous.

            He paused now to whisper something into the ear of a Wizengamot witch that made her smile, and then took his seat in the center of them, looking slightly bored. Harry had seen more than one person fooled by that expression. It was always a mistake. Superbus had an excellent memory and could quote words back at you that you’d spoken an hour ago and ask how they linked up to what you were saying now. A simple technique, but it tended to fluster people who were confident that his sleepy eyes meant he wasn’t really listening.

            Hermione wasn’t one of them.

            She walked into the center of the courtroom with her hands clenched into fists at her sides. Harry could see that, thanks to the spell, even though her robe’s long sleeves mostly covered her wrists. She turned and bowed to the Wizengamot. The bow had a slight tremble that Harry knew was indignation.

            Harry frowned a little. He hoped that Hermione wasn’t going to fly into a rant, the way she sometimes did when speaking to him privately.

            But when she stood up and faced the Wizengamot, he relaxed. Her face was like iron, and that was a good sign.

            Gradually, the whispering quieted, and Superbus leaned forwards. “Mrs. Granger-Weasley,” he said, “you have chosen to come today as an expert witness to speak about the proposed legislation relating to house-elves.”

            “Yes,” Hermione said. The more formal and didactic someone like Superbus got, Harry thought, the shorter and plainer her words would become. It was a good choice. “I have.”

            Superbus paused as if he were waiting for her to say something else, but, when she didn’t, gave a bored sigh and waved his hand. “Very well, then. Begin.”

            Hermione did, at once, turning to the Wizengamot witch Superbus had spoken to and saying, “Madam Mountfort, do you have house-elves?”

            The woman blinked and drew her head back a little, glancing at Superbus as if she was asking whether Hermione had the right to question her. Maybe he made some sign that reassured her, because she looked back and said, “Yes, of course.”

            “What do you think would happen if they became free tomorrow?” Hermione asked.

            “I would never free them!” said Madam Mountfort, and then turned red as she listened to the way her words echoed in the air. Harry concealed a chuckle. One of Hermione’s specialties since these debates had begun was giving her opponents an opportunity to speak, which they then always regretted.

            “I mean,” Madam Mountfort corrected herself hastily, “of course, that I respect the old traditions. And house-elves have a born compulsion to serve. Everyone knows that.”

            “Not every single house-elf,” Hermione said. “Most of them, yes. And I have come to accept that those elves are better left where they are.” Harry applauded softly inside his sleeves, knowing how hard that admission had been for her to make, and drew a few puzzled stares from his neighbors. “But even they deserve better treatment than this legislation would leave them open to. And what about the house-elves who desire to be free? Do you deny that they exist, Madam Mountfort?”

            “I have met them myself,” said Madam Mountfort in some haughtiness, apparently trying to make up for her mistake, “so I cannot.”

            “But you do think that all house-elves should be treated the same,” Hermione responded, putting her left hand on her hip and tilting her head to the side as though she wanted a better view of her opponent, “regardless of their different existences or their different desires for freedom.”

            “When one is making legislation, Mrs. Granger-Weasley,” said another Wizengamot member, a heavy man in bright blue robes lined with silver fur whom Harry didn’t know, “one cannot consider every specific case. One must look to the general case and deal with the specifics as they come up. It is perfectly reasonable of us to make a law for house-elves and their owners based on what the majority want.”

            Harry hid a laugh as Hermione’s eyes brightened. The man had left her an opening, though Harry didn’t know exactly what kind it was. He could never keep up with Hermione’s mind when she was thinking her way through the midst of a debate like this; it sprang and raced far too fast for him to catch up with.

            “Mr. Tertius,” she said, leaning slightly forwards on her heels, “I find that disingenuous given the reason this law is being proposed. After all, if the free house-elves are so small a matter and so small a proportion of the population—as I would admit they are—what is the necessity for creating a law like this in the first place? What possible threat could they be to the traditions of our fine community?” Harry thought he was the only one who knew how much Hermione was choking on the bile of those words.

            Mr. Tertius looked uncomfortable, and didn’t respond. Superbus leaned forwards. “You have spoken well, Mrs. Granger-Weasley,” he said, “but we must hear from a representative of the other side now. Lord Duvalle?”

            Harry narrowed his eyes for a moment in confusion, but the wizard who walked into the room from a door opposite to the one Hermione had chosen wore French robes. That at least explained the title, Harry thought with a snort he concealed. Some English wizards liked to call themselves “Lord,” but that was an affectation. There were no true aristocrats among them unless they had Muggle titles, and most English wizards gave scant notice to those.

            There are those who call Lucius Lord Malfoy.

            Harry stiffened in irritation, partially because of the track his thoughts were taking and partially because he needed to do something to counteract the weird melting in his middle, as though he’d eaten an Acid Pop.

            Lord Duvalle cleared his throat and touched it a few times, as though to suggest that he had some sickness there and couldn’t speak long. He was older than Hermione and himself, Harry thought, but he couldn’t say how much older. He had bright blue eyes and, for some reason, a shaved head, but his beard was long and luxurious enough to make up for that. He took a sheaf of notes from his robes and began to read.

            “As the proposed law touches on house-elves, which we all own, and as it touches on the glorious traditions of the wizarding world, which cannot be overthrown without great trouble to all involved, and as it touches on the property that many pure-blood families would like to bequeath to their children, and as it touches on matters of propriety and law that many wizards should consider sacred…”

            Harry was beginning to wonder whether the sentence was ever going to end. Hermione had allowed her eyes to glaze and rise to the ceiling. With nothing more than that, and a few minor adjustments to the way that she was standing, she gave an impression of boredom to anyone who looked.

            And people were looking. Harry could hear muffled giggles in the audience and among the Wizengamot as Lord Duvalle drowned on and on. Others muffled yawns. The man was losing his audience, and Superbus frowned as though he realized that, too.

            But, having invited the man in as an expert witness, he could hardly interrupt or contradict him now. Harry leaned against the wall and amused himself with watching the changes in the Minister’s expression as Lord Duvalle wandered more and more into the tangles of incomprehensible prose.

            When he finally lowered his sheaves of paper, there were no questions. Superbus turned back to Hermione. “Do you have anything that you would like to say in response, Granger-Weasley?” he asked.

            Hermione had probably made the same judgment Harry had, that she would need literal fireworks to win the audience’s attention back now. She shook her head, and then added, “But this is only the first of several sessions, Minister. You did say that.” She gave him a smile, in that she showed all her teeth and made sure the expression was large.

            Superbus gave her a resigned look and nodded. “The next session will be in a week,” he said, “beginning at the same time.”

            “Then I shall more to say in the future, but not now,” Hermione said, and bowed, and sailed out of the room while Lord Duvalle was still gathering up his papers.

            Harry grinned as he followed her. She was the heroine of the hour. Not only had she made the briefer and more concise argument that more people would remember, she had made the Wizengamot members look like fools and appeared to release everyone in the room from the tedium of being there.

            Harry wanted to find her and tell her how much he admired her performance, but he didn’t see her when he looked quickly around the crowded antechambers. He started fighting his way towards the stairs.

            An owl, a beautiful silver bird with black points to its feathers, winged over and circled around his head. Harry stopped and stared up at it. This wasn’t the Minister’s bird. It was far more magnificent. It felt as though he was being introduced to the crowd by an angel.

            And it marked him out something horrible. Harry grimaced and walked faster. He could still feel the eyes of the crowd following him, but at least they didn’t know for certain who he was.

            Damn it, Lucius, he thought, talking to Malfoy in his head because speaking to him aloud would have made everyone look at him even more strangely. This isn’t supposed to be about me, or even about art. You have terrible timing.

            He could picture the way Lucius’s eyes would flash in response to that accusation, how he would smile, how he would tilt his head and say—

            It’s getting hopeless when I can hear what he would say, Harry thought, and lengthened his stride until he was almost running. The owl kept pace with him all the way. Harry gritted his teeth and tried not to think of how ridiculous he must look, being pursued by a bird. It hardly mattered as long as no one could see his face.

            He leaped the last few stairs and landed in a corridor of the Ministry that turned aside from the main route most people were taking out of the courtroom. Then he snarled and lifted an impatient hand for the owl’s message.

            The owl alighted delicately on his arm. Harry blinked, some of his anger fleeing because of the sheer strangeness of that. He had never encountered an owl who seemed to worry about hurting people.

            The owl shifted nearer and looked at him expectantly. Harry rolled his eyes and took the letter in hand, breaking the seal with an impatient tear. The owl ruffled its feathers as if offended, but didn’t peck him or fly away.

            Harry turned his back to the mouth of the corridor, partially so he could get better light and partially so that no one could come up and try to read the letter over his shoulder.

            My jeweled one—

            I have small hopes of being able to coax you back to my house any time soon. I saw you face a revelation that you were ill-prepared for there the other night. I know that I prefer to avoid the places where such epiphanies have happened. For example, there is a certain Hogwarts corridor where a boy forced me to free one of my house-elves that has never felt the touch of my shadow again.

            Harry blinked and stared. Then he realized he was smiling in spite of himself, as if he thought that Lucius’s reference to the past was somehow charming, and made the smile vanish as he read on.

            I must do something, however. I understand that you blame yourself and not me for your surrender, and your disappointment in the failure of your high ideals. What you do not understand is that such a failure is both natural and necessary. I have sent you a small gift that might help you to begin your climb to understanding.

            “What? Your letter?” Harry muttered. “Excuse me, Lucius, but I hardly think that your words are going to make any difference.”

            A moment later, he hunched his shoulders against a memory that shamed him. Lucius’s words had already made one difference, hadn’t they? Harry had given in to his own curiosity when Lucius said that he had something to show him. If he hadn’t, then what happened would never have happened.

            Then Harry shut his eyes and forced himself to face the truth, as he’d had to do often since the night Ginny died.

            No, I was stupid and trying to live up to a vow I had made but didn’t have the strength to really fulfill. It would have cracked and I would have had to see myself in a bad light sooner or later. I shouldn’t have made the vow in the first place if I couldn’t be loyal to it.

            He sighed and stood there, thinking. He might have stood there some minutes more if the owl hadn’t given his cheek a rough nudge. Harry flinched and turned his head. He had almost forgotten it was there, and he had no desire to have his cheek ripped open or his shoulder scratched.

            But the owl held out its leg with a solemn grace the moment Harry looked at it, and then Harry noticed the box that still dangled from one of its talons. It was small, a deep green in color, and looked as if it held nothing but air.

            There would be something in there. Harry was certain. His bloody curiosity made him take the box and open it.

            Inside was a cloud of white fluff that he pushed aside, a scrap of parchment that he took out and curled into the center of his palm…and a ring.

            Harry would have rolled his eyes when he saw it, if he could have. It was silver, set with an emerald. Of course a Malfoy would choose Slytherin colors. The only surprise was that Harry should be surprised.

            But he couldn’t roll his eyes, because the ring was too beautiful. The band was a simple, braided thing, the metal twisted and interwoven in curls that looked organic, as if it had grown rather than been wrought. It wasn’t heavy, though, or so ostentatious that it would draw the eye. The emerald had a cabochon cut and soft letters glimmered beneath the surface when Harry turned the ring.

            He looked at it for long moments before he turned to the parchment that had come with the gift. As he had suspected, it was a note, in Lucius’s handwriting, that told him what the ring was supposed to do.

            This is called an Oculus Verus, or, in vulgar English, a Ring of True Sight. Wear it when you have a conversation with me, and it will allow you to see the way I perceive you.

            That was all. No more than that.

            And nothing less.

            Harry turned the ring over and stared at it. Of course it wasn’t ugly. Lucius would never have chosen an ugly gift, or a vulgar one.

            And I’m calling him Lucius as though we really were settled lovers, or at least friends.

            Harry shut his eyes. He was going to draw attention, he thought. Someone would come through this corridor looking for a less crowded exit from the Ministry, and they would find him, and they would be curious—especially if they looked into his face and noticed his scar. He had to move.

            When he started to, though, the owl flexed its claws and dug gently into his shoulder, as though reminding him of its presence.

            “No answer,” Harry said, and shrugged so the bird had to take off, ignoring its disapproving stare. He started towards the entrance once again, keeping his fingers clasped firmly around the ring. He had tucked the box into one of his pockets. He would have left it behind, so conflicted were his feelings about it at the moment, but someone might have been able to trace his magical signature or Malfoy’s from it.

            The gift was beautiful. There was no denying that. And Harry had some idea of the magnitude of the gesture it represented.

            But that was the problem. He owed Lucius one debt already, and here was another. It seemed that he didn’t get to choose anything that Lucius handed him. He was supposed to sit around waiting passively for Lucius to ask him to go to bed, and to be kissed, and to be given gifts that it would be churlish and stupid to refuse.

            I don’t want to. I need more than that.

            Harry wouldn’t throw away the ring, of course. It must have cost Lucius quite a bit of money. But he would keep it and tuck it away, and the next time they met—which would probably be at Giles’s exhibition next week—Harry would not be wearing it.

            It might travel with him, of course. Harry hadn’t yet decided if he wanted to give it back to Lucius or not, and if he did, whether that would be in public or in private. Probably private, he decided. He wished to refuse Lucius, not humiliate him.

            And you’re calling him by his first name again.

            Harry tightened his mouth and hurried on his way, but the thoughts followed him. And when he got home, he would have to confront them, because he would be acting like a child if he did not.

*

            Lucius stepped into the room that Giles Burne-Jones had rented for the exhibition of his paintings, and smiled. This was more intimate. The great halls and the anonymous buildings that might host an exhibition one night and a winged horse race the next were all very well in their way, but vulgarity often curled along their walls like an invisible mist.

            More intimate means more intimacy.

            Lucius moved into the center of the room, turning his head back and forth slowly. Most of the paintings on display were ones that Burne-Jones had exhibited before. Lucius could rejoice in their colors and the level of skill shown in them, but without much admiration. That, only two things could give him: the shock of the new, or more talent than Burne-Jones possessed.

            Or Potter.

            Lucius sighed as a shiver ran up his spine. He could make himself come by lying in the middle of his bed, closing his eyes, and recalling with skin and flesh memory every touch of Potter’s lips.

            The memories burned as bright as flames, but they were not like touching fire. Lucius hoped that Potter was here tonight.

            He stopped before the center display, and nodded. Yes, this was the best of Burne-Jones’s work, and he had been wise to place it here, so that his audience would have to pass through the ranks of his inferior paintings to see it, and be startled by the growth of his skill.

            The painting was in the shape of an arch, an affectation that Lucius could accept because of the scene it pictured. The scene was a window at the top of a door, the panels at the side of which looked out over normal scenes of spring. The arched window, on the other hand, led into a lovely garden that had come straight from the country of summer. Lucius could see the softened shapes of trees, the tangle of sunset colors reflected in waters and grasses although no trace of it appeared in the sky, the bowing heads that might be black stags coming down to drink or strange, slow darknesses descending. Clouds overhead formed the shape of a starry eagle. This was the best work Burne-Jones had ever done, Lucius judged. Perhaps he had a new lover in his life, for the painting shone with passion.

            “Fancy finding you here.”

            Lucius turned. His head felt light; he was moving lightly on his feet, too, as though he had the stars in the eagle’s wings beneath his toes. His tongue felt too heavy for his mouth, which was why he nodded instead of replying. This was a unique occasion, though Potter might not realize it. This was the first time Potter had ever approached him first. Lucius had initiated the hunt, and had assumed without thinking that he would have to carry it through each of its several stages.

            Potter came towards him with a sleek, rolling walk that made Lucius think of jaguars. Yes, jaguars had eyes like that, and jaguars had jaws strong enough to crack skulls open, and Potter’s jaws were parted around words that Lucius knew he must have designed to hurt.

            “Listen to me,” Potter said. “I received the gift you sent me. You didn’t have to send it.” He kept his voice to a low hiss. Lucius, looking about, found no other observers near them at the moment, and approved Potter’s sense—and good fortune—to find an island of isolation in a scene of publicity.

            “I know that,” he said simply. “But I wished to. I wish to see you shining and adorned.”

            Potter’s lip curled back. “With rings?”

            “Rings are a start,” Lucius said, capturing that green gaze and holding it, so that Potter would remember the kiss as vividly as he would, “since self-confidence and self-admiration take longer to grow.”

            Potter shut his eyes for a moment. Lucius watched him, weaker than he wanted to admit, more enthralled. The thoughts behind Potter’s eyes had to remain secret even from him, it seemed, but Lucius could feel them. It was like watching the light flashing off a coin without being able to know for certain where the coin was going to land.

            Lucius frowned when he felt that thought. I thought I would be able to read Potter better than this. He expressed himself clearly enough the other night that—

            Then Potter leaned forwards and opened his eyes.

            Lucius found it physically painful to swallow. If Potter’s emotions were tumbling coins, they had settled, and on a side that was not favorable for him.

            “I can appreciate your intentions,” Potter said, “but the way you express them makes it impossible for me to accept your gifts. Here.” He took the small box out of his pocket and held it towards Lucius. Lucius knew without asking that the Ring of True Sight was inside it.

            That was disappointing, more disappointing than Lucius had wanted to admit. This hunt had so far gone well, even when he took risks that he should be whipped for taking. So he held Potter’s gaze and asked, “Would you have accepted this gift from someone else?”

            “No one else would have dared to give it to me,” Potter countered, with a glare that scorched Lucius’s hopes.

            Lucius hesitated. He was having to take risks again, but this time in public and without the ability to retreat gracefully and at once if Potter did not respond the way he longed for. He hated the trembling feeling that had invaded his skin.

            Not that his hands shook, or his legs felt too weak to hold him. This was a subtler shiver, as though he had taken a step along a bridge and it had vanished ahead of him.

            And Potter watched him as if waiting for him to fall.

            Lucius took the risk, and he took it in pride, because that was the only choice left to him. “I will not take it back,” he said. “Keep it, or sell it, or cast it away in the street. It is yours. It is up to you what you do with it—much as someone who buys a portrait might burn it or hang it up in his front rooms for all to see.”

            Potter watched him again. The silence he carried with him had shifted, his eyes gone opaque. “Why did you give it to me?”

            “So that you could know what I was thinking when I looked at you the way I am now,” Lucius said. He ducked his head in an irresistible impulse; he had to protect his throat. Not that Potter needs blades to cut me. “I had thought you uneasy because you could not fully trust me. This was a means to eliminate that uneasiness.”

            “I don’t want it,” Potter said, and his voice rang. “Do you hear me, Lucius? The friends I made, the people I care for, I can trust them because I had to learn how. This is cheating.” He bounced the ring box up and down in his palm. “Something like this should never be cheated on, but developed at full length.”



            Lucius stood still. At this point, he had no idea what was coming next. Perhaps a disquisition on his dead Weasley.

            Potter took a step forwards, his face pointed, his eyes afire, his voice once more soft so that the other people wandering into the middle of the exhibit to look at Burne-Jones’s paintings couldn’t hear. “I can’t forget about what you did to me the other night.”

            Lucius silently noted that Potter had chosen to reframe the kiss as something Lucius had inflicted on him rather than something they had shared, but that was a small thing in the face of his admission. “Can you not?” he breathed. His hand twitched, but he held it at his side. Much too daring to touch him right now.

            “No.” Potter leaned closer still. It was the nearest he had ever come. Lucius savored the way the hairs on his arms stood up and the way his hand twitched, again, with the wish to caress Potter. “And I should be able to, shouldn’t I? If it was really minor, if I’m the hero that I always thought I was.”

            Rising anger had the ability to slice even the silken web of desire Potter had flung around him. Lucius stepped back. “If you mean to accuse me of enchanting you—”

            “No, of course not.” Potter sounded honestly shocked. “I don’t think you would cheat that way. Despite this.” He bounced the ring box again.

            Lucius relaxed slowly, but held his body stiff against the temptation to trust so soon. “Then I don’t understand what you do me the honor of telling me.” If Potter could not cut through formality like that, then he didn’t deserve to be in the same room as Lucius.

            “It’s something inside me,” Potter said. “I had to think about it. Which doesn’t mean that I’m not still angry about the ring, by the way,” he added inconsequentially. “I realized I was thinking about the kiss all the time, and calling you by your first name in my head, and that I felt less guilty about Ginny than I should have. And it made me decide something. Well, not for certain. But almost decide something. At least decide to start something. At least make a resolve.”

            Lucius was glad that Potter’s particular form of beauty did not depend solely on his voice. Or perhaps he would have found even inarticulateness charming. At the moment, though, he desperately wanted to know what Potter had resolved on. “And?” he whispered.

            Potter’s eyes moved across his face like the touch of a unicorn’s mane. “If it’s something in me,” he said, “then it exists. It won’t go away. I was never the heroic knight I thought I was, living faithfully for Ginny’s memory, not if you could charm me so easily. Which means that I was flawed. But also that I’m something else. Someone who was aroused by you, of all things.” He flushed. “Someone I want to know better.”

            Lucius did not dare to breathe. He had thought that a confirmation like this, when it came—and he had never truly feared that it would never come—would make him feel as if he were walking on a mountaintop with the Northern Lights playing around him. Instead, he felt as if a starry abyss had opened beneath his feet.

            It was beautiful, but he was still falling.

            “I cannot redeem you,” he said, the first words that came to his lips. “I cannot clarify yourself for you and do nothing else. I will not be used like that. I am a fiercer and more possessive lover than that.”

            Potter looked at him and blinked. “I know,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. I want more than that. If I didn’t, if it was just loneliness, then I wouldn’t keep thinking of your name. And your kiss—” He flushed miserably and lowered his eyes, and Lucius was glad to see that Potter was as off-balance as he was. It didn’t last long, though, because Potter’s eyes rose and once more pierced through him with that jaguar-like intensity.

“I want more than that,” Potter said firmly. “Maybe anyone who kissed me could have awoken me from my vow, but I don’t think so. It was you who did, and you’re the one I want.” He stepped forwards intently, hands extended as if he could draw truth from Lucius simply by touching him.

Lucius longed to know what that touch would feel like. Not just Potter’s touch, but that particular touch, trembling in the first moments of its being born.

He never did.

Something heavy struck him from the side, something heavy and hot that made pain blossom where it touched. Lucius grunted and fell, his mind still thinking about the sensation even though his body was hurting. It was like being struck with a flare of burning mud, which clung and settled and seemed to grow heavier every moment.

            Potter crouched down over him, and did something with his wand that made the burning along Lucius’s side die into marvelous coolness. He put a hand on Lucius’s cheek, and Lucius could feel it. He was glad of that. He had thought for a moment that the splash had destroyed his nerves. “The attack came from the side,” Potter said, voice clear and ringing above the screams that had started to surround them. “I think—yes, it is. Your son.”

            Lucius turned his head, dragging one cheek painfully across the floor. Draco was walking towards them from between the paintings that surrounded them, his face pale, his eyes feverish, but his expression determined. Lucius had seen that expression shortly before Narcissa entered the Potions lab for the experiment that had killed her.

            And Draco was his mother’s son.

            “No,” Potter said gently, though Lucius hadn’t heard Draco threaten him. Perhaps Potter was speaking simply on principles of general defiance, Lucius thought. He defied Ministers and accepted ideas about art and the longings of the body; why shouldn’t he defy someone who had decided to kill Lucius? He stepped in front of Lucius and stood there with his legs locked, making a human shield of himself. “I don’t know why you hit him instead of me, but I’m still not going to let you hurt him.”

            “This is the way it’s always been,” Draco said. His voice, which Lucius had last heard sound like a cracked bell, was whole and firm now. “The Malfoy heir destroys the head of the house and takes over when that head begins to act unworthy of the family it captains.”

            Lucius would have nodded if he could. Draco had learned some of his lessons well, then. The problem was that Lucius didn’t think he’d done anything that was unworthy of the head of the family.

            But, of course, that would be no problem if Draco succeeded in destroying him. The successful heir was the one who wrote the history, and everyone in a hundred years would believe that his assassination had been right and necessary, his courtship of Potter a crime.

            If it succeeded. And Lucius felt a terrible sadness for his son, because he didn’t think that it would succeed, and Draco should have known the things that might stand in his plan’s way and made sure they were taken care of before he struck.

            “No,” Potter said again, and his voice was more remote this time. “Maybe it works that way for Malfoys. But I’m not a Malfoy.”

            He lifted his wand. Lucius could see that much from this angle. He didn’t see the words Potter’s lips formed, but he saw Draco’s face assume an expression of absolute terror for a moment. Then the air turned silver in front of him and fanned out around him like mist.

            The mist vanished. Draco was gone with it.

            Lucius raised an eyebrow. “Did you banish him from existence?” he asked. “Some of the ancient wizards did that, but they stopped when they realized that it caused the most absurd problems with time.”

            Potter turned around and crouched down next to him, shaking his head. Lucius could hear pounding footsteps now. With Draco gone, they’ve overcome their terror and called the Aurors in, he thought. Of course it only takes the removal of evil for them to find their courage. “No. I sent him somewhere else, a place that I keep things I want to hold absolutely motionless. He’ll come back when we need him to, none the worse for wear.”

            Lucius laughed. He was light-headed, but he wasn’t sure if it was from the pain or the shock or the fact he’d just realized. “Your name will be linked with mine in all the articles about this,” he said. “As my defender. As—they will say this—my lover.”

            “They’ll say that,” Potter agreed, with a slow, curious lilt in his voice, like someone struggling to swallow honey. “I’m sure they will.”

            Lucius laid his head back on the floor and laughed again. “Acknowledgment does not tell me how you feel about that.”

            “If I could have foreseen everything,” Potter answered, tugging his cloak around himself as he turned to face the first of the questioners, “I would still have done the same thing.” A beat, and he added, “You should probably rest, you know.”

            “I don’t want to,” Lucius answered. “I’d miss the fun.”

            Potter shook his head and then looked at the advancing Aurors. His back was straight, the tilt of his head sharp enough that Lucius would have liked to get on his feet and stand beside him. He could guess what the Aurors would say to Potter, someone who had already been arrested once in the past month and who had “disciplined” one of their number as well.

            But he could not find the strength to rise, which told him more about the spell Draco had hit him with than anything else did. So he remained still, cheek pressed to the floor, and watched Potter stand there unconcerned as the Aurors fanned out. Even now, he was protecting Lucius.

            I will stand beside you someday, Lucius thought to him. I will comfort you, and guard you, and return the favor in full measure.

            For now, he conserved the strength in his muscles and watched for the moment he could add the power of his voice, should it be needed.

*

            Harry felt his heartbeat slow when he saw the Auror who walked in front of the others. Ron stopped when he saw Harry and let his eyes slip past Harry to Lucius, resting on the body, then looked back.

            “I’m not even going to ask,” Ron said. “Or at least, I wouldn’t, except that the Ministry would have my hide if I came back without a full report.” He sighed and touched his temple as though he already had a headache coming on. “So. What happened?”

            “You saw the articles, I’m certain, and heard the news about what happened when Draco Malfoy tried to have me arrested, and Lucius freed me.” Ron gave him a funny look, probably because Harry hadn’t spoken Lucius’s last name, but nodded. “He attacked again, here,” Harry said. “He used some kind of spell that looked like burning mud on Lucius. I stepped up and used the Crystal Banishment. He’s perfectly safe, of course, and I can pull him out if the Ministry needs him. But that’s all that happened.”

            Ron gave him an abjectly grateful look. Harry smiled sympathetically back. He knew it was hard on Ron sometimes, being in the Auror Department, when the reports of Harry’s exploits came trickling back into the Ministry. This was the kind of situation Ron liked: simple and easily handled.

            “Well?” Ron turned to the five others who had come with him, and Harry marveled at the change in his demeanor. Ron still sometimes deferred to Harry, even though it had been so long since he was the leader of anything, but he was perfectly at home commanding Aurors. “Does anyone question his word?”

            “No, sir,” the youngest Auror present, a square-jawed woman with long red hair, said. She’d been casting spells on the surrounding area, and she looked back at Ron. “Everything seems to have happened as he said, sir. Arachne’s Lash, and then the Crystal Banishment.”

            Harry decided he would remember the name Arachne’s Lash, even as the other Aurors nodded and Ron transferred his attention back to Harry. “You should probably let us have Malfoy, mate. The younger one, I mean,” he added, with another sidelong glance at Lucius.

            Harry nodded and reversed the Banishment. Malfoy stumbled as he came out of it, and Ron Stunned him without waiting for questions or haughty demands for consideration. He slung Malfoy over one shoulder and looked long and deeply into Harry’s eyes. So softly that Harry saw more than heard the words, he whispered, “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

            Harry looked contemplatively back, and didn’t respond. Ron shook his head and marched out of the exhibit with the Aurors behind him.

            After that came a blur of apologies and handshakes and quiet but firm words that fended off the people who wanted to crowd around and see what had injured Lucius Malfoy. Harry helped Lucius back to his feet, and he leaned heavily on Harry’s shoulder, acting more hurt than he probably was. The spell had looked like a spreading purple cloud of destruction, but it seemed to have mostly ripped his robes and left a few shallow wounds on his side. Harry touched his robe collar in gratitude.

            Lucius moved so that Harry’s touch fell on the back of his neck, on bare skin, instead, and looked calmly at him.

            Harry took a deep breath. But he had come this far, and he had made a decision. It was ridiculous to pretend that his constantly thinking of Lucius by his first name and never being able to forget their kiss meant nothing. Harry was too old to play those kinds of games with himself.

            And Lucius is even older.

            That was only one of the many problems that could destroy this, Harry thought. But trying to ignore it didn’t make any of those problems go away, so he simply nodded to Lucius and said, “To St. Mungo’s? And then your house?”

            “Yes.” Lucius’s voice was rich and deep despite the wounds he’d taken. He curled his fingers into Harry’s robe collar in return.

            His hand lingered only a moment, but Harry knew full well what its heavy possessiveness meant.

            He tried not to shiver as he helped Lucius out of the room, but thought more about how Lucius was graceful even when he was limping.

*

            Sharkoon: I’m sorry you feel that way. But Harry is not needlessly cruel to animals; he was cruel to one that had tormented him in the past and was tormenting him now. Superbus could have healed his pet when it came back without claws. He could also have trained it so that it wouldn’t attack people in the first place, but he chose not to.

            k lave demo: Thanks! Harry didn’t see the vow as a sacrifice; it was just something he wanted to do to honor Ginny. In this case, he’s questioning it and his motives for making it now.

            Thrnbrooke: Why do you think so?

            Byond_repair: Thanks!

            purple-er: Thank you!
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Sympathy for the Predators