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A Series of Malfoy Events	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 11220 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
- 6
- 7
- 8
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Seven—Why the Laughter
            Harry rolled over and mashed his face into the silken pillows that the Malfoy house-elves had arranged at the head of his bed. Or maybe he was supposed to call them “face-bearers” or some other absurd Malfoy coinage, the same way he was supposed to call grey silver.
            Or is it silver that I’m supposed to call grey? I can’t remember anymore. Harry rolled back and over and grinned at the ceiling, at the middle of a fantastic, slowly changing enchantment that showed a dragon wandering through mountains. Technically I’m still on assignment, but I get paid to look at things like this and sleep late. It’s pretty—
            Then something hit the enchantments around the Manor hard enough to make Harry’s teeth ache, and he was out of the bed in seconds.
            The only thing he had to wear were the Transfigured Auror robes that Malfoy had turned blue. Harry grabbed them and spun around, trying to Apparate before he remembered. Then he had to run across the vast expanse of the bedroom to get to the main doors.
            How did his ancestors handle it when they had to escape from the rustic torch-wielding mob? Well, they probably had private lifts or something.
            The attack struck again as Harry finally wrenched the damned door open and staggered out onto the landing. Corridors stretched up and down before him, a maze so thick that Harry had no idea which direction he should go to see outside, let alone get there quickly.
            He gathered his magic and snapped, “Point Me the danger,” only to have the wand spin wildly around in his palm. Harry stared at it, then gave up. Probably some poncey Malfoy protective spells so no one would know who was sneaking through what secret passage.
            Another jolt, and this time Harry thought he could pinpoint what direction it was coming from. He turned and ran wildly, feeling his breath buck through his lungs like a wild thing. Well, it would just have to wait, wouldn’t it? He had miles of corridors to get through.
            Right and left and right, and then Harry was standing unexpectedly on a huge balcony that overlooked the entrance hall. He could see hazy, wavering magic through the windows that looked out on the grounds, and hear the wailing of terrified house-elves.
            No time to go down all the stairs, which in any case included stupid landings where someone could pose to show off their robes. Harry leaped over the side of the balcony and cast a bunch of spells as he did, making himself fall more slowly and keeping his robes down from off his face and easing the impact on his feet and knees as he landed.
            When he landed, he sprinted for the front door, only to have a house-elf appear in front of him. Harry veered to the side to avoid running the little creature over, but it showed right back up again, hands spread and arms waving up and down appealingly. “Master Harry must be finding Master Malfoy! I is defending the house!”
            Harry raised his eyebrows. Admittedly, he hadn’t been inside many pure-blood Manors when they were getting attacked, but he’d never heard of elves sharing in a house’s defense before.
“Potter, why are you running around being ridiculous? Leave the defeat of the boors up to Doory. It’s her job.”
Harry stopped, looked up, said, “These are potentially dangerous criminals,” and leaped over Doory’s head when it seemed she would still block him. The elf pursued him, squeaking in distress, but by then, Harry had the front doors open and he was outside.
The white waves of dancing, boiling lightning made him stop and stare. The hazy shapes of several people were standing outside the gates, cloaked in basic glamours that would make it hard to identify them.
            But then he began to grin. Damn. I should have remembered some of my own basic training and what it required.
            And, specifically, the kinds of pranks that he and his fellow Auror trainees had sometimes played on their instructors.
            Harry spent a moment gathering his will. He needed to time his spell precisely even if the attack was much less serious than he’d thought. He waited until a fourth thunderous impact had torn through the air and the wizards beyond the gates were raising their arms and wands for another try.
            Then he said and willed at the same moment, as hard as he had ever willed anything, “Finite Incantatem.”
            The flashes of thunder and lightning dissolved at once, and the people beyond the gates reeled back. Harry thought he heard a few yells of astonishment, but he didn’t pause to listen. He rushed straight at them, and they promptly began scattering and Apparating.
            Harry leaped over the top of the gates with the aid of another spell and did his best to grab the trailing robe of one wizard in front of him. That wizard snapped left, though, and someone from the right cast a spell that forced Harry to hop, and then they were all gone. Harry turned around in the dust, shaking his head.
            No one came out after him. Probably Doory was supposed to stay in the house and defend her masters from there, Harry thought, as he entered back through the gates and trudged up to the doors.
            His mind was on the report he would have to make for Kingsley, and so he didn’t notice when Malfoy swept down the stair and paused grandly on one of the landings. At least, he assumed Malfoy had done that and he didn’t notice, both because it was the sort of thing Malfoy would do and because Harry earned a disgusted click of Malfoy’s tongue when he swept past the staircase.
            Harry paused and blinked, looking back.
            Malfoy folded his arms. “How did you defeat their spells?” he said, firing the questions at Harry as if he thought Harry was in a conspiracy with the attackers.
            “Illusion,” said Harry.
            Malfoy let his arms fall in what was apparent outrage at a non-answer. “No Finite Incantatem that I ever saw was an illusion,” he said coldly.
            “No,” said Harry. “They were using illusions. I figured that out when I noticed that there wasn’t any feeling of static in the air, the way there would be if they were summoning real lightning. And then the thunder made the kind of noise that spells make when they’re exploding in mid-air, not actually slamming against the protective enchantments.”
            Malfoy came one step down. “I felt the house shake.”
            “From the concussion of the noise. Not actual blows.”
            “Why did you let them escape?” Malfoy came down another step.
            Harry shrugged a little. “I didn’t mean to. I did try to trap and corner them, but they were probably too panicked when they realized I was actually charging them and I’d broken their glamours.” He frowned. He should at least have tried to catch a glimpse of a face. His Finite would have broken the illusions they wore to hide those, too.
            “Why did you do that?” Malfoy was on the second step from the bottom, and pointing dramatically up at the balcony that Harry had leaped from. Then again, Harry wasn’t sure he could point other than dramatically.
            Harry looked up, expecting to see that he’d broken some of the railing, but the balcony was still the same ornate monstrosity it had been earlier. Harry wrinkled his nose a little and looked at Malfoy. “What do you mean? I didn’t do anything to it.”
            “You leaped.” Malfoy must have felt really strongly about that, because he was on the bottom step by then, and then on the floor, and he came towards Harry with the fervor of a courting bull. “My fiancé doesn’t leap.”
            “Two,” Harry breathed at him, and Malfoy drew his head back and tried to stand stiff and outraged. Mainly outraged.
            “He doesn’t,” said Malfoy. “Or she doesn’t. Let me assure you that I could replace you.”
            “Oh, all right,” said Harry, and shrugged, mainly to watch Malfoy’s eyes widen. He reached for the diamond ring on his finger. “I suppose it was fun while it lasted. But I can’t have a fiancé who gets upset about me leaping.”
            Malfoy visibly swallowed, and then said, “You don’t need to do it all the time. No more than once a month.”
            “Once a week,” Harry said, gravely. “It’s vitally important that I leap over balconies on a weekly basis to catch fleeing criminals. And yes, I know that was one,” he added, before Malfoy could.
            Malfoy stood there and struggled with it. Harry watched him with glee and compassion, with the glee being like the desert and the compassion being like the oasis.
            Malfoy finally held up his head and spoke with a quiet dignity Harry hadn’t expected from him. “I don’t want to damage your reputation in the papers. Therefore, it is appropriate that we negotiate a little longer and reach an acceptable compromise.”
            “I thought we had,” said Harry, widening his eyes. “Leaping once a week.”
            “Once a fortnight.”
            “If you can’t have a fiancé who leaps at all,” Harry said, “why is a fortnight better?”
            “That gives you one day to leap, and me thirteen days to recover.”
            Harry laughed before he could stop himself. Malfoy gave him a thin smile and moved a step closer. Harry let his hands hang relaxed at his sides. He didn’t think Malfoy was going to hurt him, but he was interested to see what he would do.
            Malfoy reached out and clasped the hand where Harry wore the diamond ring. Harry waited, still, while Malfoy turned the hand back and forth. If he was going to take the ring, at least it wasn’t in public, and that might mean Harry could make a better report to Kingsley than if his cover had been completely blown.
            “My dear,” said Malfoy, in a level whisper that Harry had to admit he would have leaned closer to hear if they were in a particularly crowded place, “you can leap more easily than you can do some other things. I trust you’ll remember that.”
            “What other things?” Harry moved nearer and leaned a little on Malfoy, mainly to see what he’d do. This was the closest they’d been, even when dancing at the Crocodiles’ ball. Harry had thought at the time that Malfoy wouldn’t keep up a similar level of intensity in private, and so far that had been true.
            That made him all the more interested to see what would happen when the level of intensity did climb. He put his hand over Malfoy’s heart and listened.
            “You were looking for something?” Malfoy could carve chunks from the air with his words, but his heartbeat was still quickening under Harry’s touch, and Malfoy pulled in a breath a little faster than he should have.
            “I was hearing something,” Harry said, and met and held his eyes. “But I suppose you would say that’s not important enough to take note of. It probably sped up when I leaped over the balcony, too. Did it?”
            He pulled his hand back and away.
            Malfoy’s eyes followed the motion of his arm as if compelled. Then he shook his head sharply and seemed to wake up. “You leave much to be desired as a fiancé.”
            “But you already agreed that I could leap once a fortnight if I wanted to,” Harry said, and fluttered his eyelashes at Malfoy. “I think that means you’re stuck with me. Dragon.”
            Malfoy caught his wrist this time, and pulled his hand close enough that Harry thought it would touch his chest in a second. But instead, Malfoy leaned towards him and spoke in a soft, intimate tone. Harry felt his own pulse speeding up without really wanting it to.
            “I’m going to find out why you’re sticking close to me, Potter,” Malfoy whispered into his ear. “Why you’re acting as though you have the right to say anything you want and expect me to tolerate it.”
            “Well, that would be nice,” said Harry at once. His heartbeat was speeding up for a different reason now, as he thought of the weird way that so many people around Malfoy simply accepted what he wanted to do and the way he went about things. Here was the chance to get real answers from Malfoy, maybe. “As long as you tell me what right you have to drag me around and introduce me as your fiancé.”
            Malfoy took a long step back from him. He was frowning. “You don’t know?”
            “Nope,” Harry drawled, not taking his eyes away from Malfoy.
            “But you must,” Malfoy said, and shook his head, eyes going past Harry for a minute. Harry turned to glance over his shoulder, but there was nothing there except blank stone. So the Malfoys had missed one place on the wall where they could have hung a sneering portrait. Shame. “Why would you have gone along with this otherwise?”
            Harry immediately focused on Malfoy. Here was his first indication that Malfoy knew it was strange to make people do what he wanted them to, and haul them around like objects, and position them like statues. If Harry could just get him to admit it…
            “Why would you have accepted my ring if you didn’t want to be my fiancé?” Malfoy was almost whispering now, his fingers reaching out to brush down Harry’s face and push his hair behind his ears. “Why would you have accompanied me to the party? Why would you have asked me to take you back after almost flinging my ring in my face?”
            “I went along with it because I thought it would be fun,” said Harry. He hoped that this would get to a real conversation, one that might include any of Malfoy’s suspicions on who would want to curse his broom. “And I didn’t want to make a lot of waves. But then it didn’t stay as much fun as I thought it would be.”
            “Then why come back?”
            Harry hesitated once. Maybe he ought to tell Malfoy the truth. He hadn’t so far only because he had thought Malfoy was unlikely to let Harry stay close if he did. But Malfoy hadn’t done anything criminally wrong. He might know things he didn’t know he knew. Probably best to just make him aware of the Auror concerns about the person who had tried to kill him on his broom.
            Harry opened his mouth.
            And then Malfoy pointed a finger at him and appeared almost to dance in glee.
            “I know. I know, of course,” said Malfoy, and this was the most annoying emphasized word Harry had ever heard from him. “Because you found yourself falling more and more helplessly in love with me. You couldn’t help yourself.” He didn’t speak as if he was testing out a theory and wanted Harry to answer him. He spoke like someone who was absolutely, smugly, in no doubt about what he was saying. He reached out and touched Harry’s hand quickly. “And perhaps because you wanted better gifts from me. I can’t blame you. I am irresistible and rich.”
            He straightened up and spent a moment studying Harry. “But I meant what I said about you needing to spend more time reflecting me like a glass. You’re spending too much time saving my life and not enough time doing other things.”
            “Um,” said Harry weakly, because the mere existence of such arrogance was blowing his mind. “Saving lives is what I’m trained to do, as an Auror.”
            “Yes, but you must have saved dozens of lives,” said Malfoy, and shook his head a little, the frown that he’d last worn when examining all those pieces of fabric on his face. “Not to disparage the speed and skill you show when you do it.” This time, the sheer condescension of the smile stole Harry’s ability to respond. “I want you to do something for me that you don’t do for anyone else.”
            “Listen to your nonsense?”
            “Nonsense,” said Malfoy back at him, and Harry thought he was going to get an indignant retort. But then Malfoy continued, in what was probably the Malfoy-world equivalent of a reasonable tone, “How can you listen to any nonsense I say if it comes from other people? Do use your words correctly, Harry. Listen to me. Reflect me. Focus more on me, and less on these criminals that you think you need to chase around.”
            He reached out and took Harry’s hand again, beaming at him. “And in return, you can leap over balcony railings once a week,” he added, in what was probably, for him, a fit of unprecedented generosity.
            Harry stood very, very still, because he had never known such an intense need to punch someone, and his fists would probably move of their own free will if he allowed them any chance.
            Malfoy sighed a little, apparently put-upon. “Oh, very well. You may leap over balcony railings once every three days.” He nodded at Harry’s feet. “But any more than that, and I won’t be responsible for replacing your boots when they wear out.”
            Harry’s anger drained away again, and a sensation like light suffused him. It didn’t stop, either. It bubbled out of his lips as giggles, and he bent over and began snort-howling into his hands.
            Malfoy…honestly didn’t understand. He thought anyone would be on top of the world to date him. He thought Harry’s protests were all ineffectual because he was so lovable. He thought everything he said was true.
            It was an arrogance so colossal that Harry had to admire it, the way he had admired the sheer stupidity of some of Malfoy’s plots in school. And he could fight it, or he could plan to be there for the moment it really cracked and crumbled.
            Because he could make dents in it. The way he had “persuaded” Malfoy to let him jump off balconies more often was proof of that.
            Maybe he would have to leave before that happened, because the case might be solved. But Harry hoped not. He hoped he would get to see Malfoy step out of his egg and come face to face with reality, and Harry planned to enjoy every last minute of it.
            “There’s only so much laughing in relief at your reprieve that you need to do, Harry.”
            Malfoy’s voice was getting politely exasperated. Harry straightened up again, and gave him the best imitation of a besotted look he could muster.
            “That’s what you say, Dragon.”
            Malfoy moved in closer still and took his arm, turning him around to escort him towards the stairs. His breath was warm and he was once again nearer than he needed to be, but Harry didn’t care, because it helped to keep him from going into hysterics.
            “It is what I say,” Malfoy said. “And you might as well alter your consonants a bit and call me Draco.”
            Harry lowered his voice on purpose. “Whatever you say, Draco.”
            A flush surged up Malfoy’s cheeks, and he dropped Harry’s arm and strode aside. “You’ll accompany me to practice today,” he called over his shoulder. “Time to see how you fly in the middle of a real team.”
            Harry stood there a second. Then he followed, grinning.
            So there was a way to crack Malfoy’s pride that didn’t depend on waiting for the stars to align just right. Flirting with him would do it.
            And Harry fully intended to exploit this new discovery.
*
Severus1snape: Thanks so much for all your reviews! I’m glad that you did decide to read the story after all. ;)
moodysavage: Thank you!
SP777: Thanks! Glad it made you laugh and helped you out with stress. Harry is going to push the emphasis thing more in the next chapter.
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A Series of Malfoy Events