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A More Worldly Man	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 10960 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- 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.

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Chapter Eight—Hope Returning

            Harry stood in the loo, his fingers tightening on the door of the cabinet he’d opened. There before him shimmered the glass vials of his own potion, the base for Desire, the potion he’d consumed for years to help him ward off unwelcome emotions, and then to strengthen his magic so he could protect Draco.

            He could feel the temptation to reach out, pick up one of the glass vials, and open it. It was not only the habit of years that made him want to do so. Rationally, he knew the potion had no addictive properties, but he also knew that he had relied on it to do things he couldn’t. To go without it, now—to go practically naked, if only in his stomach and head—frightened him.

            Draco rapped sharply on the door of the loo, and Harry jumped. Then he raised his wand and murmured the words of the Vanishing spell quickly before he could change his mind.

            Every single vial of his potion disappeared. Harry took a deep breath, which caught in his throat and turned to clogged panic.

            “Harry? Are you done?” Draco’s voice was light with impatience, which Harry thought he was showing in place of worry. Since his sojourn in Draco’s mind, he no longer believed Draco was perfectly in control of his feelings at all times; he often masked them with others. “Only we’re supposed to meet Millicent in three minutes, and it will probably take us that long to get into an area where no Muggles can see us.”

            Harry closed his eyes and fought the temptation to lean against the wall. He had chosen to do this. He had maintained his resolve even when the mind-reading potion wore off and things no longer seemed so easy.

            “I’m coming,” he murmured, and opened the door of the loo. Draco stepped past him at once, bracing one hand on Harry’s shoulder as he stared at the cabinet that had contained the potions. Harry watched his hand twitch towards his wand, and he suspected Draco probably wanted to cast a spell that would reassure him the vials were really gone, not simply turned invisible or otherwise hidden from sight.

            Then he took a deep breath and faced Harry, wrapping his arms around his neck and staring into his eyes. “I’m proud of you,” he said.

            Harry kissed him, desperately needing the reassurance of lips and tongue beneath his. Draco let him into his mouth eagerly, and then moaned, which made Harry smile. He moved to tangle his hand into Draco’s hair and shift his hips forwards, but Draco drew his head back and murmured, “Two minutes, maybe? And as a courting gesture, it’s a fine one, but it could use some company.”

            Harry smiled as he followed Draco out into the main room of the flat. He understood Draco’s nervousness with romantic and sexual gestures much better now that he had actually seen what Daphne had done to him. Draco would need a chance, yet, to become accustomed to Harry, and he liked being wooed and courted. Merlin, he liked being supported in any way at all, after so many years of having to make and justify his own decisions.

            Harry could do that. He could happily do that.

            And not only because focusing on that idea carried him past the moments when he might have regretted his sudden course of action and tried to recover the potions.

*

            “I thought you said this was a warehouse?” Draco asked, and didn’t bother keeping the snide tone out of his voice.

            Millicent turned and smiled at him. “I may have misled you a little,” she said, and waved her wand in a sweep that brightened the magical lights all over the building. “I do that sometimes.”

            Draco tilted his head back and fought to keep from gaping. He wasn’t going to be that undignified. The building they stood in was enormous, both tall and large, more like a cavern than a house. And yet it hadn’t been used just for storing objects; Draco could see balconies projecting from the walls, ornamented doors, places on the walls where paintings had once hung.

            In the center of the room sat one massive staircase that spiraled up to what looked like the roof but must only be the ceiling, and then split into two corridors. Draco supposed those descended through the walls to come out into the balconies he saw, and probably more rooms.

            “What was this, if not a warehouse?” Harry said, and shifted restlessly behind Draco. Draco reached back to press his hand without looking at him. He knew Harry was worrying they had made a mistake trusting Millicent, but Draco didn’t think so. She had been fond of practical jokes and misleading people, as she called it, back in school, but her machinations had lacked the outright malice that drove Daphne’s.

            “A place where Dragon-Keepers once gathered,” Millicent said. She was pacing towards the staircase, and looked back at them, smiling as if she knew exactly why they were reluctant to come further and thought the fact hilarious. “They wanted a building that could hold their—ah—friends whilst they danced. The first floor was not meant for dragons, of course, but all this was.” She gestured around at the stone floor and walls of the enormous central room.

            That explained the remains of fire-deflection spells twined with the stone, Draco thought wryly. He was already evaluating which corners of the room would be best for a potions laboratory.



            Or perhaps—

            Could he have a laboratory that occupied the whole of this floor? And why not? No one else was here to trouble him. Harry would be happy to help; Draco had already seen that he was not afraid of grand endeavors. And there was no longer a necessity to reserve the space for dragons.

            He began to wander in circles, calculating the best places for shelves, tables, cabinets, large cauldrons. He heard Harry and Millicent talking quietly behind him, but didn’t pay attention to the conversation until he heard Harry’s loud protest.

            “No! Are you mad? Let me pay you back for the ingredients, at least.”

            Draco turned around, frowning. He probably should have insisted on handling Millicent for at least the first few passes of the conversation, instead of letting Harry talk to her. He had allowed Harry to take over during their first meeting because Millicent would expect him to talk at some point, and because he had been thinking about the mind-reading potion. But now Harry had offered her an insult, and he didn’t even know it.

            Millicent was standing as stiff as an obelisk, her smile gone. Then she turned her head away from Harry in the way she had the other day when sheltering under the hood from the rain.

            “Malfoy,” she said, voice strained but still more polite than Draco had expected given the subject matter. “Perhaps you could explain some things to him?”

            Draco sighed and stepped up beside Harry, resting a hand on his shoulder. Harry’s muscles bunched under his palm like a restless horse’s, and then he relaxed and sighed. He glanced sideways at Draco from the corner of his eye. “I suppose you’re going to tell me what I did wrong?”

            “Yes,” Draco said, and had to smile at the half-exasperated, half-guilty expression on Harry’s face. He could remember when Harry would have placed the blame for his mistake entirely on the Slytherin he was dealing with. He turned Harry to the side, so that they were, at least on the surface, not looking at Millicent. “If someone in pure-blood society offers to back you with money like this, instead of being talked into it, you don’t offer to repay them. They’ll take their repayment in some other coin. Lucius’s ruin, in this case.”

            Harry frowned and ran a hand through his hair. “But that makes no sense,” he said. “I understand the concept of debts. Why shouldn’t she accept the debt back in the same coin?”

            “Because that’s not the way it works,” Draco said. “Would you trade money for money?”

            “I do it all the time when I change my Galleons into Muggle pounds,” Harry said stubbornly.

            Draco rolled his eyes, but was thankful to see Millicent’s face twitch from the corner of his eye in the way that meant she was concealing a smile. She wasn’t truly offended, and Harry’s ignorance hadn’t put a fatal dent in the wall they were building together.

            Besides, whose fault is this for not warning Harry?

            Draco blinked a little. He had not expected to accuse himself. He wondered for a moment whether that was not a better sign of how he felt about Harry than anything else he’d done so far.

            But he put the thought aside impatiently when Harry stirred in his hold. “Not among us,” he said. “Money for money is a vulgar idea. Yes, eventually someone who lends you Galleons in a business matter will expect to be paid back, but it will be in wares or profits from that business matter, instead of a simple repayment.”

            “I don’t understand,” Harry muttered.

            “Leave it up to innate pure-blood deviousness, if you like.” Draco rubbed Harry’s shoulder. He thought he had balanced his Slytherin and Gryffindor qualities well so far, using the best ones when the best moment came. Harry obviously needed more work. “We do things indirectly. What Cordelia did, purchasing the debts that I owed others and then challenging me to repay them, was actually dreadfully vulgar. Of course, I had other concerns than telling her so.”

            Harry nodded. He glanced sideways at Millicent, who was still avoiding their eyes, and then said, so softly Draco could barely hear him, “I’m sorry. Is working on Lucius’s ruin enough for you right now? Or do you want something else?”

            Draco grimaced. That was still more direct than he would have been. On the other hand, it reached Millicent, who turned around and said, “His ruin is enough. I will see him ruined by the son he raised and tried to make his heir. The copy of himself—as he thought. He will have created, quite literally, his own bane.” Millicent’s mouth curved like a serpent. “There is a certain poetic irony to that that I like.”

            “Do you have the ingredients for the Desire potion gathered?” Draco asked, so they might all move on from the awkward moment Harry had unintentionally created. Millicent cocked her head at him with another small smile that said she knew exactly what he was doing, but reached into her pocket and pulled out a shrunken trunk she enlarged to normal size with a flick of her wand.

            Draco exhaled a pleased breath when he opened the trunk and saw many different compartments, all of them lined with cloth, all of them separated from each other with small but thick walls of treated wood. Yes, Millicent had studied the proper way to prepare potions ingredients. There was no chance that the ingredients, themselves wrapped in cloth bags or lengths of silk where that would not damage them, had reacted with one another. He drew out the bag that held shavings of unicorn hoof, from the smell, and opened it to spill them into his hand. He nodded, then set the bag back into its compartment. Of course he would examine them all in detail before he used any of them in the Desire potion, but it would be insulting to show more than the barest caution in front of Millicent, after she had performed such a great favor for them.

            “How soon will you expect us to have the Desire potion finished?” he asked, and saw Harry’s head twitch with surprise. But Millicent’s smile widened. Draco looked at her calmly. This was one of the methods of indirect repayment he hoped to teach Harry about. Millicent was playing an important part in their being able to brew the potion again at all; she deserved a certain amount of say in how they would brew it.

            “I don’t want to rush you, and I don’t want to strain you,” said Millicent, with a significant glance down his body, as if she were searching for hidden scars. Draco ignored the look. She had a right to doubt him after the information she’d heard the other day. “But I think it important that we show Lucius and the others that we are challenging them, instead of merely playing about. Can you have the first batch ready in four days? I will spread the word in the meantime, and make sure that you have a few willing clients.”

            “Four days will be enough time,” said Draco, and didn’t look at Harry when he shifted uneasily. Harry was no doubt worried that it would not be enough time for Draco, given the wounds he was recovering from. But he didn’t understand. It would have to be made enough time, whether it really was or not.

            “Good,” said Millicent. “In that case, I leave you here.” She flipped something through the air, and Draco caught it with a deft hand, though he had seen Harry reaching for it at the same time. It was a set of keys, which he knew were symbolic more than anything, but which would unlock the main door of the house in much less time than it would take them to undo all the wards. And there were more, small silver and iron keys, which looked as if they were to the doors inside the house. “I will owl you when I think the potion ought to be finished. Do not disappoint me.” She smiled at Harry, and then turned and departed, her robes swishing along the floor. They struck up no dust, Draco noted. Millicent had been in here and cleaned already, or fetched someone she trusted to do so.

            Draco took a deep breath and looked around the enormous room once more. A twitch of his wand Transfigured one wall and alcove into the beginning of a table. Then he enlarged the shrunken cauldron he had carried with him and placed it on the table. Turning to the trunk in which Millicent had left the ingredients for the Desire potion, he retrieved two of the small pouches, and then paused. Harry had just cleared his throat.

            “Yes?” Draco asked mildly, not straightening yet. He was making sure none of the pouches had wards or stinging spells on them. Millicent might have left those either to test them or simply to satisfy her appetite for pranks.

            “I—are you sure you’re ready for this now?” Harry murmured. “I mean, we don’t have to do this immediately. It doesn’t take us long to brew a cauldron full of Desire potion once we start. You can rest—“

            Draco stood and turned around to face Harry. Harry had asked him to be honest about his feelings, and so Draco showed his irritation in his narrowed eyes and harsh breath. Harry blinked and fell silent, then stepped back, one hand raised as if to shield himself from a blow.

            “It’s very chivalrous of you to protect me, Harry,” Draco said, and made sure every word echoed in the silence like a stone falling to the floor of stone they stood on. “But I don’t need it forever. And there are some things I need to do whether or not I hurt. You’ve kept going through wounds or pain, haven’t you? You focused on brewing the potion you took even though you were hurting from what you’d almost done to Weasley. I can do this.”

            Harry narrowed his eyes back, and stood his ground. “And is it best to do this when we’re angry with each other? I don’t think even the camaraderie that builds up from sharing magic can compensate for that.”

            Draco blinked, and his pride deflated like a pricked bag of water. He shuddered and laid his hand over his eyes. Harry was right. What was wrong with him? He knew better than to let his emotions get in the way of brewing, and honesty or not, Harry hadn’t done anything worth the lecture Draco had tried to give him.

            Besides, he had used information he’d found in Harry’s mind against him. Draco hadn’t wanted to do that, either.

            Swallowing, and then almost choking against the taste of shame, he looked up and cleared his throat. “I—apologize. I know you’re simply worried about me. But I brewed the mind-reading potion yesterday, and the sooner we strike back against those trying to destroy us, the happier I’ll be. I want to have something solid to show them, and the Desire potion is something solid.”

            Harry relaxed and stepped towards him, wrapping an arm around his waist and nuzzling his face into his hair. Draco tilted his head up, surprised for a moment how physical Harry had become since yesterday.

            On the other hand, he admitted he loved me. I suppose he feels free to be physical after that.

            “I don’t underestimate your determination,” Harry whispered. “Or your stubbornness. And I want to have something solid, too. But I would rather lose what remains of my dignity and public reputation to Diggory than see you hurt because you took on something that was too much for you. I was more worried about your mental than physical fitness, actually, and the way you’ll be channeling magic during the brewing. Daphne cast spells that affected your magical core, didn’t she?”

            Draco shivered and moved his hand up to stroke the back of Harry’s neck. Yes, if someone was in love with him—and Draco had no real doubt that Harry was—he could depend on that person to support him, protect him, worry over him.

            It was a foreign sensation, but more because Draco had grown used to standing on his own feet in the last few years than because he resented such support. How could he resent it? Harry was offering his love without even knowing if Draco loved him back.

            “Let’s brew,” he whispered into Harry’s ear, answering the concerns about his health and safety the only way he could.

            Harry took a moment to kiss his throat before he nodded.

*

            The brewing was—not as Harry remembered it.

            When they began to pass their magic back and forth, he found himself dismayed at how calm his power seemed to be, how passive. Before, it had been like tossing a raging spate of water at Draco, and that had been intensely exhilarating in its own way. Now he was handing across a skein of lead, and it seemed Draco was crossing it with his own power as slowly as he might cross two swords.

            What is wrong with me? Harry thought, frowning furiously at his hands during one of the moments when Draco was salting the cauldron with ingredients and didn’t need him. We should be closer than ever after that mind-reading potion, not so distant from each other that—

            And then Harry sighed. Were they that distant from each other, or did he fear he would fail to contribute magic when the potion most needed it?

            He had always had the support of his own potion before. It had lessened his control over his magic at first, leaving the strength to press against the surface and pop continually like a large bubble. It had been easy to pour that magic across to Draco. And then he had been aware of his magic reacting whenever it thought Draco was in danger, whether or not he had specifically commanded it to do so.

            His magic had not lessened. But he would have to learn to control it consciously now, rather than leaving that control up to external factors.

            Draco tossed the stream of magic back to him, and Harry gathered it up, added more, and then added the next ingredient to the cauldron. Cautiously, aware that Draco would scold him for such Gryffindor experimenting in the middle of a delicate process if he sensed it, Harry asked the power to increase and concentrated on making it do so, rather than simply waiting for it to happen.

            The magic blasted through him like purifying fire in an instant, and Harry could hardly restrain a gasp as he flung it back to Draco. He felt sweat start on his forehead.

            Draco faltered as he caught the stream, and Harry wondered if he would need to step in and catch it—or if perhaps the magic had traveled through a hole in Draco’s magical core caused by one of Daphne’s spells. But Draco seized hold in a moment, and then raised his shining eyes to Harry’s face and laughed.

            Harry felt a grin light his face in response. He watched the movements of Draco’s hands, swift and skilled and sure, eagerly now, waiting for the moment when it would be his responsibility to take over. And then Draco turned his head and winked at him, hair blowing in some wind Harry couldn’t feel, and tossed him the magic.

            Harry snatched it out of midair, held the power a moment for the sheer pleasure of feeling it storm through him, and then poured it directly into the potion. Draco had completed the final step, and there was only this left—a step they had performed before, but which Harry was in charge of for the first time.

            Draco took hold of his shoulders and leaned his chest against Harry’s back. Harry shuddered in delight and leaned back, clasping Draco’s hands with his own, never taking his gaze off the cauldron. The iron sides were vibrating, the potion shuddering and on the edge of boiling away, and Harry knew he had to be careful not to pass the physical limits of what Desire could take. He conjured the image in his mind of what the final potion should look like, blue-green and thick and almost clear in places, and drew the magic along a straight line between the reality of the present moment and that vision.

            A silent white pop scattered light through the air in front of him, hard enough to blind Harry for a moment. He felt Draco take a step towards the table, though he kept one hand on Harry’s shoulder as though not wanting to lose contact. He had to stretch far enough that his fingers strained like the spread legs of a spider before he could see into the cauldron.

            “Well?” Harry demanded. Draco’s face was neutral, and Harry was annoyed he couldn’t read it.

            Draco turned to him and laughed, and Harry realized he had kept the neutral expression on purpose. The Desire potion was perfect, or Draco would have made some sign. Harry exhaled in relief and tackled Draco.

            Draco went over with an oof, and they rolled together on the floor, each trying to hold and pin the other. Harry nearly lost the contest because he was laughing too hard to breathe or keep a consistent grip on Draco’s hands, but in the end he trapped Draco with his arms bent almost behind his head, his legs firmly wedged between Harry’s, his neck arched above the floor.

            “Well,” Draco said, the words puffing across Harry’s ear and creating a buzzing, pleasant tingle, “now what are you going to do with me?”

            Harry smiled at him and began to kiss down his face and his neck. His contentment was deeper with every little helpless breath Draco took, the way his legs flexed restlessly and then fell open. In this, at least, he was confident. He had enjoyed making love to his girlfriends even under the influence of the potion that forbade him passion.

            He slipped his hand under the top of Draco’s shirt and rubbed his stomach for a moment, then reached towards his pants. Draco caught his breath as if he couldn’t believe Harry’s boldness, then arched his hips with a needy little groan. “Please,” he said. “Please, please, oh please.”

            And that was all Harry needed to reassure him that his gestures were welcome, even after Daphne.

            Harry took his time, wriggling his fingers gently between Draco’s thighs, finding his balls and skimming them with his thumb. He had nearly touched the bare flesh of Draco’s erection when they both heard the pop of Apparition outside the door.

            Draco’s body went tight in an instant, and he sat up. “That will be Diggory,” he said.

            “What?” Harry whirled around, crouching mostly on top of Draco still, putting his body between Draco and the door. “Can you feel his magical signature?”

            “Of course not,” Draco said, and kissed the side of Harry’s face. “I simply wondered who would be most likely to appear and ruin the moment just as I’m about to get a handjob, and it was him.”

            Harry laughed shakily. Then Draco caught the back of his neck and pulled his head around. The expression on his face was more serious than Harry had ever seen it without anger to qualify it.

            “We are going to finish this later,” he said quietly.

            Harry smiled back, without a shake to it this time, and held out a hand to help Draco up.

*



nomdeplume: Thanks! It really helps that I got over the sickness I had, which lingered for weeks.

            And yes. I think Harry and Draco will still have issues between them—as this chapter makes clear—but not the same ones.

            Thrnbrooke, avihenda, Lilith: Thanks for reviewing!

            Mangacat: Thank you!

            Yume11: I think Draco’s issue with Harry was always personal. Even the way he reacted when Harry got Lucius sent to Azkaban was personal. He used Voldemort as a threat against Harry, but he never understood what Voldemort was like until his sixth year, and then he focused on saving his family fairly easily.

            Draco is not sure that he’s in love yet. He may be. But he’s not very good at recognizing strong emotions like that, and even worse at expressing them. It took a lot for him to express his anger at his parents openly, after all. So he would rather wait until he’s certain, and Harry gave him permission to do so.

            Harry is Harry. He endured the loss of love before, letting the girlfriends he had leave him for someone more passionate and not reproaching them for it. I think he’s willing to wait for Draco because that’s what Draco needs.
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A More Worldly Man