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Roses, Made by Hands	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 7790 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, and I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
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Title: Fairest of Them All

Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and her associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

Pairings: Harry/Draco pre-slash, moving towards slash

Warnings: Mild angst

Rating: PG-13

Wordcount: 2000

Summary: Harry and Draco work together in Transfiguration, and nudge the apparent project in inter-House unity they’ve undertaken together along.

Author’s Notes: This is the seventh in my “Made by Hands” series, a fluffy, slowly developing H/D series set in Hogwarts during their eighth year, following “Roses, Made By Hands,” “Sculpted Light,” “Leaves, Constructed to Make Anew,” “Gold, As Captured Flame,” “Gifts, Glittering and Jeweled,” and “Algorithms of Radiance.” Read the other stories before reading this one.

Fairest of Them All

            “Today we will begin working on Transfiguring a common object into an enchanted object.”

            Harry didn’t have to turn his head to know that Hermione’s hand would have lifted quickly enough to give most normal people an adrenaline rush. Just as he didn’t need to turn his head to know that Draco, beside him, would be biting his lip hard enough to make it bleed.

            Once, he might have found that second piece of knowledge disturbing, if not the first. But now he could sit there and smile.

            “Yes, Miss Granger?” McGonagall had a heavier weight of grey hair on her head than she’d had in past years, and her tartan seemed dulled in color. But she still had a smile for Hermione and the spark deep in her eyes that said she wanted the right answer, and that was the important thing, Harry decided.

            Plus, she had been the one to issue the Slytherins the invitation to come back to Hogwarts. That had to mean something.

            “Why do we need to Transfigure common objects into enchanted ones?” Hermione asked, so fast that Harry might not have understood her if he hadn’t spent the past seven years listening to her. “I mean, why not just do the enchantments, or buy objects that have those enchantments?”

            McGonagall swept the class with an expectant gaze, but no one answered. Harry did feel Draco sit down a little more heavily in the seat next to him, and suspected he probably knew the answer. But if he wasn’t going to volunteer it, Harry would hardly push him to say it.

            “Enchantments on sold objects are generic, not personal,” McGonagall responded at last, returning her gaze to Hermione. “With Transfiguration, provided that you have the strength and concentration, you can make an object that does exactly what you wish it to. A Foe-Glass that watches for future enemies rather than only present ones, for example.” She paused.

            Or something that could protect someone forever, Harry thought, and swallowed. He wondered why his parents hadn’t come up with an enchanted object like that. He knew his mother had been excellent at Charms, although he didn’t know if that meant she could also Transfigure enchanted objects.

            “Of course,” McGonagall continued, “just as enchanted objects run out and have to have their charms renewed, the same thing can happen to Transfigured objects. Their power wears down the longer the magic lingers, or the more they’re used. If the creator doesn’t notice, they might wake up one day and find that their enchanted ring is just a sliver of wood again.” She paused, looking from eye to eye once more.

            “And the Transfiguration is limited by the imagination,” she finished, looking at Harry this time. “If you can’t imagine exactly how this Foe-Glass should work, or how the protective enchantments would function, then they won’t. That’s one reason that most Transfigured objects are more powerful versions of the commonly sold ones.”

            Harry nodded, reassured. No one could imagine how Voldemort could break the Fidelius, so they didn’t try anything else to counter it.

            “Now,” McGonagall said. “We will begin with a simple trial, and one that is the same for everyone.” She ignored the couple of groans that got, including one from Hermione. Harry was sure that she’d already envisioned the perfect object. “One of the most common enchanted objects is a mirror. I want you to make a mirror out of one of the starting blanks that I will present to you. And,” she continued, with a faint smile curling around her mouth, “I want you to make it for someone else.”

            “How?” Draco asked aloud, and then started to clap his hand over his mouth as if he were mortified that he’d spoken. Harry caught his hand and slipped it under the table before that could happen. He wasn’t about to see Draco humiliated in front of everyone.

            McGonagall considered Draco as if to make sure he was serious, then said, “I want you to listen to someone else describe what they’d like out of the mirror, and then make it to their specifications. Think of it as honing your powers of description for the moment when you begin to make more permanent and stable Transfigurations for yourself.”

            Draco blinked for a long second. Harry watched him, then reached out and clapped him on the shoulder.

            “Think about what you want, because I’m going to make it for you,” he told Draco, and then stood up and walked towards the pile of flat wooden and metal pieces that McGonagall was stepping back to offer them.

*

            Draco closed his eyes. His face was on fire, and he knew that the curious stares from Harry’s friends weren’t helping it any.

            How was he supposed to think of something he wanted? More to the point, how was he supposed to make something Harry wanted?

            Then he straightened his shoulders and shook his head. So far, he had taken risks with what he was, rather than what Harry wanted. Harry hadn’t expressed any desire for a dueling torque, but Draco had given him one. And Harry had got the golden cauldron not knowing if Draco would accept or reject the gift.

            They had taken enough chances for each other so far that this ought to be simple.

            Draco stood up, calm enough now that he thought he could have stared with indifference at Aurors if they walked into the room, and went to choose his metal piece. An oval of silver attracted him. He picked it up, considered the cloudy reflection in it, and nodded. He would have trouble making this into a polished mirror, but that was true about all the others, too, and at least he thought it would be easier than the wood.

            By the time he came and sat down again, Harry was back, clutching his own piece of cherry wood. Draco smiled. “Of course you’re the one who likes a challenge,” he muttered to Harry.

            “I do.” Harry leaned in, smiling, his fingers tapping on the piece of wood as he laid it on the table. “So, tell me what you want.”

            This was another risk, another exposure of himself, but it didn’t panic Draco as much as the thought of trying to make something for Harry and failing had. So he took a deep breath and thought for a second, ignoring the darting stares from other people and the way that Harry looked at him, warm and present and near.

            “I’d like a mirror that would always tell me where you are,” Draco said at last. “I could look into it and it would show me where you are and what you’re doing.”

            Harry’s smile was slow and sweet and dazzling, but luckily, he nodded and bent his head over his piece of cherry before Draco could stare too much and embarrass himself. “Fine,” Harry murmured. “And what would I like?”

            “I don’t know,” Draco said, snappish himself in his conflicting feelings. “Don’t you have to tell me?”

            Harry grinned at him again, with less of the brilliance, and said, “That’s right. Now, I think that you don’t need to describe more fully to me what you want, because the glass should show where I am just like an ordinary mirror, right?” His voice was almost lulling, and Draco nodded before he thought about what he was doing. “But what I want is going to be a bit more complex.”

            He reached out and took Draco’s hand. Draco didn’t think that many people were paying attention to them, because most people were finding partners or fetching blanks or explaining the mirrors they wanted, but he blushed anyway.

            He didn’t take his hand from Harry’s, though. The time for that had passed when they walked to class yesterday holding on to each other’s hands.

            “I would like,” Harry whispered, the motion of his lips nearly as hypnotic as his eyes, “to have a mirror that I could use as a defensive weapon. When I fling it between someone and a curse, it should expand and reflect the curse back to the caster. Of course the glass or the other material it’s made of would need to be strong, so that it wouldn’t break when it fell to the floor.” Draco’s free hand moved to rest on the piece of silver he had chosen. “Or it could be hung on a wall or a chest and used to deflect a curse that landed on it there. Mostly, just deflection.”

            “Reflection,” Draco whispered.

            Harry nodded.

            Draco hesitated. “What about hexes? Do you want it to be able to guard against those as well as curses?”

            Harry blinked for long seconds before he slapped his forehead. “Right,” he muttered. “I keep forgetting that there’s a distinction between those kinds of spells for a good reason.” He hesitated, mulling it over, before he shook his head decisively. “No,” he said. “I want it only to deflect curses.”

            Draco raised his eyebrows. Harry cocked his head. “Because I’m able to protect myself against hexes, and better than ever with what you gave me.” For a moment, his hand caressed the torque lying beneath his shirt. “And most other people should be able to defend themselves against hexes, too. But this will be an unexpected bonus, something that I can use to defend anyone who needs it.”

            “Including Slytherins,” Draco said, swallowing. There was a faint acidic taint in the back of his throat, although he didn’t know why there should be. If Harry wanted this as a gift, and thought Draco could make it, and had chosen Draco as the one to make it, wasn’t that gift and honor enough?

            “Including you.”

            Draco’s eyes snapped back to Harry’s face. He had never thought that Harry was particularly sensitive to everything around him, certainly not enough to know what Draco was feeling when Draco didn’t know what he was feeling.

            But Harry looked at him with a kind of tender seriousness, and the hold he had of Draco’s hand was firm enough to content anyone. “Including you,” he whispered, and squeezed Draco’s hand one more time before letting it go.

            “I think you’re going to have the harder time,” he continued. “But that doesn’t mean I’ll finish your mirror fast. What do you say to meeting some time after class so we can see how far we’re getting?”

            Draco nodded, his heart and his throat full. He was afraid his eyes might be full, too, but if they were, Harry tactfully ignored that, turning away to begin concentrating on the piece of polished cherry wood instead.

            Draco looked at his silver, and he looked at Harry, and he thought of the mirror he was going to make, and he thought of the mirror Harry was going to make. Even if the gift he made was going to be used to defend other people, the mirror Harry made would only ever show Draco Harry.

            Maybe that’s the way to work it. Alone and together—

            Draco had a confused, and confusing, vision of the way they might move together, in the larger circles of the school and their Houses and in the smaller circles around each other at the same time—

            But the vision was so incoherent he had a difficult time holding onto it, and in the end, it seemed far better to bend over the silver blank in front of him and concentrate on making the best mirror he could.

            They would take the next steps, the fair and the ugly, together.

            The End.

*

            delia cerrano: Thanks. The pace is deliberately gentle, since I don’t think this kind of story would work if crammed together all at once.

            moodysavage: No, it won’t. But at least a few people will be more cautious now.

            Deylyn: Thank you!

            unneeded: If anything, it would have made more sense for him to attack the Slytherins who hurt him instead of Harry. But either they’re not at the school or Harry is a visible symbol for, as the other student sees it, tolerance of people who hurt him. Even if in this case they just share a House with some of the people Harry is protecting, and nothing else.

            Most objects are fixable with Reparo, I think, but Harry wasn’t thinking clearly right then.

            jujukitty: Thank you! Hope you enjoyed this one, too.
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Roses, Made by Hands