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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
- 7
- 8
- 9
Thank you again for all the reviews!

Part VIII. Killer Whale.

Swallowing the prey whole.

            The Healers stared as Harry helped Lucius into the building. Then someone came forwards to ask what ought to be done, and Harry started answering the first of a long round of questions.

            There were stares all the time, of course. Harry had managed to reconcile himself to the necessity of that. After all, he and Lucius were both notorious, and the papers had been full of news of them lately, since he had been arrested and Lucius had freed him. They would be objects of curiosity.

            Are you ready for that? The papers would be interested no matter what lover you finally took, but someone who fought against you in the war, someone infamous in his own right, someone who’s already made certain extravagant gestures that people have linked to you…

            Harry dismissed the thought. He wasn’t ready for it, in that he hadn’t thought every possible permutation of what could happen through with care, but he was willing to accept and endure it. Maybe, after six months of trying, he wouldn’t be. But he honestly didn’t think he could predict that far in advance.

            Funny, he thought, as he watched the Healers run their wands over Lucius’s wounds and admit that they couldn’t much better the spells Harry had already used to calm the pain of the Arachne’s Lash. A week ago, I would have thought I could. I’d already predicted that I would never take another lover in my life and would never respond to Lucius’s advances.

            He faced the future with a deeper calm than he had thought he would have, now that it was all torn to pieces. He would try, and he would be an adult about it, the adult he had learned to think himself since Hogwarts and especially since Ginny died. He would not whinge and throw a temper tantrum, as tempting as that might be.

            Lucius looked up at him once the Healers had finished healing the wounds and had given him a cooling potion which he was to smear on his wounds twice a day for the next fortnight. His eyes had gone back to the burning pools of light Harry had seen during the kiss and when he first walked up to greet Lucius at the exhibition.

            “Shall we go home?” he murmured.

            Harry nodded, put out one hand, and helped Lucius to his feet.

*

            “Bell is hearing all about Master Draco,” Bell said, appearing to greet them the moment the door shut behind them. “Bell is so sorry, Master Lucius. Bell is helping to raise Master Draco from a child, and is never seeing any signs of insanity in him before.” Bell shook his head slowly and solemnly, and then gave his ears a single efficient yank before he stared at Lucius, awaiting an order.

            Lucius smiled. He liked it when house-elves got their punishment out of the way all at once, and Bell had obviously picked up on that preference. “I do not wish to discuss my son at the moment,” he said. “Please prepare a room for Mister Potter, but light a fire in the smallest sitting room first, and bring us drinks there.”

            “Bell is doing that immediately, Master Lucius,” Bell said, with a bob of his head that seemed to suggest it would only be immediately because there was no faster word, and then vanished.

            “Do house-elves make you uncomfortable?” Lucius asked, turning to Potter. Potter stood beside him with his arms folded and his head bowed slightly, staring at the floor. Lucius asked the question partially because he wanted to know the answer, but more to make those brilliant eyes lift and return to his face. Lucius liked it better when they were looking at him.

            “No,” Potter said slowly. “I have one of my own. Kreacher. He used to serve the Black family.”

            Lucius had forgotten that little circumstance. He chuckled and moved in the direction of the smallest sitting room. Potter drifted beside him, looking as if he didn’t know whether Lucius wanted the support of a hand under his arm or not.

            This is hard for you, isn’t it? Lucius thought as he watched the younger man. You excel in the immediate rush of a situation, when you can make courageous decisions or defend someone, but the aftermath of the decision is more difficult.

            It would be so always, and Lucius was not minded to take away much of Potter’s discomfort. He wanted some control back, some balance. For now, keeping Potter off-guard appeared to be the best way to achieve it.

            The smallest sitting room had white walls with a pattern of blue flowers, blooming slowly on the pale carpet and up the walls from the baseboards. They would have looked grotesque or childish, but whoever had fashioned them had great skill, and Lucius felt calmed and refreshed when he spent time in this room. He was relieved to see the same thing seemed to happen to Potter, because he dropped into a chair with a small sigh and appeared to count the petals of one of the flowers several times.

            Bell had left a tray with the same pale wine they’d shared the last time Potter had been here. Lucius picked up a glass and left Potter to take the next. Potter did, and sipped several times—at least they were small sips—before looking at him.

            “Where does this begin?” Potter asked quietly, nervously touching his hair. “What happens next?”

            Lucius muffled a snort. “I was about to ask the same thing. You seemed so decisive so far, I was hoping you could tell me.”

            “I didn’t—” Potter stopped himself, probably because the rising tone of his voice indicated he was about to say something unfair. Instead, he cleared his throat and looked away, once more depriving Lucius of the sight of those magnificent eyes. “I didn’t know,” he said. “I want to try, but I didn’t think Draco would attack like that. That creates—a deeper bond.”

            “Between us, or between me and him?” Lucius sipped with less delicacy than normal. He felt the need of something to cool and soothe his throat at the same time. “I hope I may be excused for thinking that it would forge no sort of bond between you and him.”

            Potter’s smile was rushed and didn’t touch his eyes. “No. What I meant was that I saved your life. It was something I’d do again,” he added, as though he thought Lucius could honestly mistake his meaning. “But, just like when you freed me, that creates a bond. A debt. It confuses things. I didn’t want this—” He circled his hand between them, evidently not knowing how to refer to what they might share. “To be obligated by anything. But now it is, and I don’t know what to do.”

            He finished the words with a little sigh, and a glance at Lucius that seemed to expect him to find a way out of the difficulty. Lucius knew he would find that hard, because to him it was not a difficulty. He was glad to be alive, and he was grateful to Draco, slightly, for doing something that helped him along the difficult path to winning Potter’s regard. Because of many other complicating factors, of course, his gratitude was not sufficient to extend to getting Draco out of the clutches of the Aurors.

            “We continue forwards,” he said. “At a pace you find comfortable, and with deviations to the side as needed. Did you want to back away from me?”

            That won him a surprisingly outraged glare and a combative turn of Potter’s head. “I’m not going to back away,” he said. “Never from anything that you could do, and never from any emotion you can inspire.”

            Lucius smiled. “Good,” he said. “I am amenable to continuing things immediately. What do you say?” He held out a hand in the air between them, and saw Potter’s eyes fasten on it as if it were the claw of an owl and he a mouse.

            “Wait,” Potter said, still looking fixedly at his hand. “There are some things we should address. I mean, what if Draco hates me? Doesn’t that matter to you, that your son doesn’t want me around? He’s still your son. And there are reasons that I don’t want to jump into bed with you right away.” He licked his lips.

            Lucius dropped his hand to his knee and took another sip of wine. “I thought to find the limits of your courage,” he said. “They are not very far away.”

            Potter’s eyes heated, and he looked as he had when they stood in the exhibition of Burne-Jones’s paintings again. “You did that on purpose,” he said.

            “Yes,” Lucius agreed.

            “You enjoyed that.”

            “Yes,” Lucius said again.

            Potter glared at him. “Just because I don’t want to go to bed with you right away doesn’t make me a coward.”

            “No,” Lucius said, glad for the chance to use a different monosyllable. Potter’s words sent a sensation of delicious heat and friction sliding down to the base of his spine that he would remember and use in his wanking material later that night. “But you did say that you would back away from nothing I could propose. I naturally had to see if that was true.”

            Potter huffed and scratched his chin as though he were trying to get rid of the scrim of beard Lucius could see pouring over his skin. “Doesn’t it bother you that your son just tried to kill you?” he asked. “It does me.”

            “Because he tried to kill me, or because he’s my son?” The abyss Lucius had thought he was falling into earlier that evening had closed. He settled back in the chair and watched the way the firelight flashed off the lobe of Potter’s ear. He didn’t wear jewelry. Lucius could not decide if that was a pity or if he looked better unadorned. Either way had its beauty.

            “Both, actually,” Potter said, looking as though being made to choose between the two alternatives was an incredible hardship. Lucius could not help him there; Potter had been the one to present the options, so he should decide on which one was more disturbing. “I want to get along with your family, and since Draco is the only one left, that makes it even more important. But I don’t want you to die.”

            He said that with a half-guilty, half-defiant sideways look, as if he imagined that Lucius was slavering for his bloodthirstiness. Lucius smiled to reward it, and watched the way Potter’s cheeks flushed before he answered. “Thank you for that. But the fact is, Draco was acting in accord with the rules I taught him. Malfoys have killed Malfoys before, in cases when they could not wait for the natural death of their parents or when they believed that their parents were behaving disgracefully. Either or both might have been Draco’s motivation.”

            “Was he always this—impatient?”

            Potter was floundering as he tried to walk on this new ground, and use terms that were obviously completely unfamiliar to him. Lucius took pity on him and shook his head. “No. I believe a large part of this is my own fault. I kept him on a short leash, but not short enough. I gave him too much of pleasure and not enough of duty, believing he would be contented that way and not seek to assassinate me because to do so would imperil his comfortable life. I see now that he believes himself a pampered pet and wants his freedom back.”

            “So—you think this is your fault?” Potter was regarding him with a skeptical expression Lucius would have found flattering, except that he believed it indicated Potter’s incredulity that he could ever feel at fault rather than Potter’s disbelief that he was at fault in this particular situation.

            “Yes,” Lucius said. “And I will have to do something for Draco. But that something will never be giving you up.”

            Potter sounded as if he stopped breathing, which would be interesting if true. But Lucius did not think it was. Potter swallowed in the next moment, after all, and looked at the floor as he said, “But what if there isn’t a way for him and I to reconcile?”

            “Then the thing I do for him will not involve you,” Lucius said.

            Potter half-shut his eyes and took another sip of wine. “Do you think it would help if he had a time limit?” he asked.

            Lucius considered the view of Potter in profile and wondered what it would look like carved in marble. Or perhaps marble would be the wrong stone to capture him. Not fluid enough, not lively enough. Lucius could appreciate something better that would flow with dazzling swiftness and gleam. It was too bad that there was no way to make statues out of quicksilver. “That is an innovative idea,” he said. “A time limit telling Draco how long he has to accept our relationship? It would provide an ultimatum.”

            Potter gave him an oddly-shaped look. “That wasn’t what I meant,” he said. “I wondered if we could tell him how long this might last, so he could stay out of the country for a few months or something like that, and then come back when I was gone.”

            Lucius sat still, because it was the best way to control any unfortunate reaction he might have had. At last he asked, in a whisper that he did not try to make less dangerous, because Potter deserved all the danger he could muster, “And do you plan to leave me so soon?”

            “I don’t plan to leave you,” Potter said, and there was a heavy green weariness in his voice that made Lucius listen to him. “This is so strange that I won’t presume to make plans about it. What matters is that I have no idea how this will work out or what will happen.”

            “In that case, you cannot give Draco a deadline,” Lucius said, and learned to breathe again. “Because you do not know if you will be tired of me by the time it comes, or wish to leave me.”

            Potter shook his head, but glanced up and said, “You’re right. I was hoping that you would put some kind of limit on it so the decision to end this relationship, or let it endure, or whatever’s going to happen, wouldn’t be mine.”

            “That honesty could be dangerous,” Lucius murmured, imagining Potter plunging it like a sword into his heart.

            “I know.” Potter touched his forehead and ran a finger down the line of his scar. “And so could the difference in age between us, and our pasts, and the reaction my friends are going to have to this, to say nothing of Draco’s further reactions.” He lifted his head, and there was a quiet challenge in his eyes. “Not to mention,” he added, “what will happen when you finally decide that beauty isn’t a good enough reason to lust after me.”

            Lucius said nothing for some time. He knew Potter was waiting, and he was content to let him wait, since the motives he had for speaking like this in the first place were hardly complimentary.

            Besides, he wanted to finish his wine.

            When he had set the glass aside and faced Potter with sweetness tingling through him, he said, “I play the games of the mind because I enjoy them. I analyze situations. I anticipate consequences. I take risks and then dance lightly out of the way of their repercussions, because I would not wish to be crushed.”

            Potter nodded, his eyes puzzled, wary. They were beautiful even like that, but the knowledge was no surprise to Lucius. He could no longer remember a time when he had not been a willing victim of Potter’s enchantment.

            “But at times,” Lucius said, “I prefer to let the games of the mind play themselves out on another level, while I experience—and enjoy—what the fates have given me.”

            He reached up with both hands to undo the braid that tied his hair. He could have accomplished it with a single gesture, a single flick of his wand. But that would have undermined the point he wanted to make, the slowness of the moment.

            Potter did stop breathing as he watched. Lucius unwound the braid one loop at a time, and laid aside the dark grey ribbon he had chosen to hold it. His hair was no longer as long as it had been at some points in his life—Narcissa had gloried in the rare occasions when Lucius would let it grow, or grow it, until it was halfway down his back—but it still reached a respectable length unbound. Lucius turned so that the firelight would shine on it.

            This was not seduction, or at least it was only as much seduction as was consonant with natural gestures. Lucius had meant what he said to Potter. They would enjoy themselves this evening, and let the consequences be what they might.

            Come to that, Lucius did not know that there would be consequences. Potter might choose to back away.

            Potter’s throat was throbbing continually, and he watched Lucius’s hair for a long time before he made any move. That was all right with Lucius, who sat with his eyes on the fire and felt Potter’s gaze moving over him like a caress.

            Then Potter leaned forwards, hands held out, even twitching.

            He ran his fingers through Lucius’s hair. The motion wrung a shudder from Lucius and a quiet, urgent moan from Potter. Lucius locked his muscles to keep from turning around and taking Potter’s mouth in a kiss. He had done most of the seeking, the initiating, from the hunt to the one kiss they had shared. It was Potter’s turn.

            Potter seemed at least as much inclined to do that as he had been to ask uncomfortable questions about where Draco would fit into Lucius’s life after this. He leaned forwards and breathed into Lucius’s hair, still stroking it. Lucius bowed his head so that a few strands tugged out of Potter’s grip, and knew from the sound of shifting muscles and creaking wood that Potter had risen to his feet to maintain his hold.

            Further and further he bent, and Potter followed, until he was bracing one hand on Lucius’s back and making soft, impatient little sighs in his throat. His other hand still never stopped the stroking. Lucius shifted in place, wondering if he would have to seize the initiative after all to make Potter do something else.

            Potter laughed quietly. “You want me to touch you elsewhere?” he asked, his voice so low that Lucius found it hard to distinguish the tone. “Oh, all right. If you’re sure.”

            And he kissed the nape of Lucius’s neck, parting his hair to either side like a waterfall to reach the skin.

            It was Lucius’s turn to moan. He didn’t care to muffle or hide the sound, and it broke from him in small, jerking breaths. Potter paused in shock. Perhaps he had assumed that he would never get that much from Lucius no matter how much he gave.

            But his hands tightened to show approval of it, and he kept breathing and biting and kissing and stroking and touching.

            Lucius let it continue until he could no longer stand not to have his hands on Potter. Then he leaned back slowly, so Potter could maintain his balance, and turned.

            His touch came down on cloth first, the rough material of Potter’s robes, and when he pushed that aside, there was a shirt beneath. But Potter seemed to sense what he wanted and tilted his head so that Lucius could touch his shoulder.

            Warm, wiry, skin shifting back and forth over muscles as tense as those of a wild animal. Lucius wanted to snarl in triumph when he remembered that no one else had touched Potter this way in seven years.

            Potter seemed to be thinking the same thing, because he lifted his head and tensed still further. Lucius frowned. He might as well be caressing a mountain range for as much pleasure as Potter was getting out of this.

            “Relax,” he whispered, and turned his head so that his hair instead of his hand brushed Potter’s bare skin. Potter half-shut his eyes and breathed more easily. He likes my hair, Lucius thought. I will be sure to remember this. “I know you cannot be a virgin.”

            “Yeah, I’m not,” Potter breathed, shifting back and forth in place as if he didn’t know whether to come nearer or pull back. “But it’s been a long, long time, and it was only the one.”

            “Only the one what?” Lucius urged Potter nearer with a series of light, furtive touches to the back of his neck and the skin behind his ears. Potter uttered a tortured-sounding gasp. Lucius paused and scanned his face. “Only the one what?” he repeated.

            “Only the one lover.” Potter met his gaze fearlessly, though he flushed. “Ginny was the only one I ever had. I know you’ve had many. Dozens, probably. Or hundreds. How the fuck should I expect this to be an equal exchange?”

            Lucius felt his cock become hard enough to be troublesome. He had suspected this, but there was a difference between suspecting and knowing. He stroked, bearing down a bit harder with his fingers this time, and Potter hissed in surprise, as though he hadn’t known he liked to be touched like that.

            “It doesn’t matter,” Lucius said. “I will do what I can to give you pleasure, though of a different kind than you enjoyed with your fiancée.”

            Potter looked at him through half-lidded eyes. Now that he had dropped the barriers Lucius had never seen past, he looked more naked with his shirt and robes halfway down his shoulder than most people would fully undressed. “The power dynamics are still important to you,” he said.

            “Yes,” Lucius answered honestly, since it would be stupid to expect Potter to believe him if he said otherwise. “But I will never despise you for your reactions.”

            That promise, neither particularly profound nor particularly original, made Potter moan harder than he’d done since he first touched Lucius. And then he opened his arms, and gave himself over to the fire that burned between them.

            Lucius smiled. He had known Potter would be good at this kind of honest, passionate lovemaking.

            And then he became too busy to smile or think patronizing thoughts, because Potter overwhelmed him like a flood tide.

*

            There was so much to Lucius, and all of it brilliant.

            Harry hurried from place to place on his body at first, wanting to kiss or touch everywhere at once. His neck, which arched and dipped at weird angles when Harry did something to him. His collarbone, which disappeared intriguingly into the shirt that Harry impatiently pushed aside. His hands, with long fingers that Harry wanted to suck. His cock, which Harry was tired of only feeling and yearned to see.

            But Lucius tolerated just a few minutes of that before he clamped a hand down on Harry’s head and stilled him. Then he dragged Harry back up and consumed him in another kiss.

            Harry shuddered and clung to Lucius, pressing the backs of his fingers against his cheeks. He had never experienced anything like this, this growth of desire until he would have burned down the world for a touch. Yes, he had felt wonderful things with Ginny, and he had thought he felt wonderful things from the first kiss, but this…

            It was what it was.

            As Lucius said, they could deal with their questions and problems later, and this was enough to make Harry think that was a viable option.

            He let Lucius guide him, taking Harry’s hands between his own and sliding them coaxingly down his body. Harry learned the wonders of his ribs that way, the direction his skin flexed as he breathed, the steady pounding of his heart and the curved weight of his sternum beneath supple muscle.

            Lucius showed Harry his hips, splaying Harry’s fingers wide with his own, making Harry feel both bone and muscle. Harry shut his eyes and shivered. He wasn’t entirely sure if it came from the body he was touching or the way Lucius looked at him, but at least he could concentrate on just one set of sensations that way.

            “Now,” Lucius said, and urged Harry’s hand down to his cloth-covered cock.

            “Oh,” Harry breathed, and let his fingers close around it, his thumb seeking the head, his other fingers wrapping around the shaft. It seemed lighter than he had thought it would. In his head, when he dared to imagine Lucius touching him with it or sliding into his body, it was incredibly heavy.

            “Yes,” Lucius said. One word and no more, like his instructions, but Harry felt his body tilt, and he opened his eyes, already knowing what he would see.

            Lucius’s head was bent back, his eyes shut and his face calm but his heart beating so fast that Harry could see the motions of it working through him. Harry moved his hand up and down in one loose stroke. Lucius moaned, then sighed and leaned forwards as if he would faint on the floor. Harry caught him around the shoulders with his free arm.

            Lucius breathed along the side of Harry’s neck, a touch of frost and fire, and then began another kiss, his mouth returning to Harry as if he hadn’t breathed since the last time their lips touched. Harry moaned, a sound that seemed to have no end, as Lucius’s tongue caressed his and made his mouth open wider than he had ever opened it for anyone. Lucius shifted sideways and pulled, and guided Harry down to the couch, until his back brushed against the smooth cushions.

            Harry tensed for one moment. He was remembering the lovers Lucius had had, the skill that the merest touch on his body exhibited, the unhurried desire Lucius had in his eyes when he looked at Harry, the way his movements were open but never uninhibited.

            I can’t compare with that. I can’t compete with that.

            “Relax,” Lucius said above him.

            Harry opened his eyes and glared. “Easy for you to say,” he mouthed more than said, because Lucius’s hand rested on his chest in an apparently idle manner that took the saliva away from his mouth.

            “Yes,” Lucius said, “it is.” He tilted his head, and his hair brushed against Harry’s chest and nipples. Harry shuddered and wondered why he responded that powerfully. He had never done that when Ginny wore her hair long. “But you overestimate my experience,” Lucius continued in a gentle, iron voice, as he reached down and undid Harry’s trousers. He stripped them off so casually it was done before Harry thought about the consequences. “I have slept with many people, that is true. But this is still new to me.”

            Harry stared at him. “Why?” he asked at last, or maybe his eyes asked it. Lucius took his senses away, and he became uncertain whether he had spoken or not.

            “Because I have never slept with you,” Lucius said, and his eyes were as sincere as starlight.

            Harry shut his eyes. He might be an idiot to be seduced by words that simple. Lucius had probably said them to lovers before, his common sense argued.

            But if Lucius took away his senses, that was also true of Harry’s common sense.

            And if it became too much, he could ask Lucius to stop. Harry was certain Lucius would respect that.

            Willingly, he waded out into the sea of fire.

*

            The faint smile on Potter’s lips told Lucius that he had relaxed at last.

            He could go slowly now, and focus on something other than overwhelming Potter in the fear that, if he did not, Potter would pick up his clothes and storm off in a fury of indignation. He drew his pants down slowly, and Potter began to give fast, shallow breaths as Lucius stroked his inner thighs.

            His cock, revealed now, stood up straight and throbbed in a way that made Lucius’s mouth water. He murmured something incoherent and dipped his head. Ordinarily he would wait, but it wasn’t ordinary for him to have a jaguar in his bed.

            He licked a line up the side of Potter’s cock, and Potter cried out and flailed, his fingers digging into the cushions of the couch as if he imagined that he could lessen the sensation by hanging on there. Lucius paused, wondering that such a small thing should command such a response, and then remembered that it was seven years since Potter had had someone else touch his cock. He smiled and did it again.

            “Don’t, I’ll come,” Potter said, in a choked warble.

            “Do you imagine that that is the end?” Lucius murmured. He spoke close enough to Potter’s cock that he could watch it twitch and dance in response to his breath. “Or that I will let it be?”

            “I don’t—I want it,” Potter said. “I want you. I want this to happen. But—” He lifted his hips and gave a controlled little writhe. “But I don’t want it to happen like this,” he whispered.

            Lucius nodded, although Potter had his eyes squeezed tightly shut and couldn’t see him, and drew back. “As you wish, then,” he said, and slid one fingernail down Potter’s chest, digging into and shredding the skin.

            Potter squirmed, mouth opening in a soundless snarl, and said, “I don’t like things like that.”

            “Yes?” Lucius glanced politely down at Potter’s full cock. “But it appears that your body disagrees with your mind. And I know which one I will listen to.” He leaned down and fastened his mouth around Potter’s left nipple as he drew his fingernail down again.

            Potter made a sound for which Lucius knew no name and kicked randomly with his legs. Lucius was glad that he did not have his head in the way, or he might have had to be upset about that. As it was, he licked down the trails his fingers had left and sat up, making sure that his hair fell around his face like the wings of an owl. “What do you wish?” he asked with calm politeness, as if they still sat opposite each other in chairs and sipped at their wine.

            Potter glared at him in silence for some time, his chest heaving. Lucius used the moment to examine him in a more leisurely fashion than he had managed so far. His skin was unexpectedly pale, red where Lucius’s nails had scored him. His legs were long and slender. His nipples stood up with an urgency that enchanted Lucius more than the urgency of his erection. Black hair bristled everywhere, and did not at all lessen his resemblance to a stalking great cat.

            “I want to see your bedroom,” Potter said, in a voice as harsh as the scratches on his chest.

            And any impulse that Lucius might have had to laugh was gone.

*

            Lucius drew him up the stairs, shining. That was what Harry remembered of the walk afterwards. He was sure that Malfoy Manor was amazing, glorious, wonderful, and all the rest of it. But what he saw was Lucius.

            Lucius lit both the fire and the candles in his room, as if he wished to have as much light as possible. Harry would have smiled, remembering how dark and Dark he’d once thought the Malfoys, but his mouth was too hungry to form a smile. All he could do was stare, and then walk forwards and lay his hands flat against Lucius’s chest.

            A hand trailed over his own scratches again, and then rose and touched the scar on his forehead. “So marked,” Lucius murmured. He brought his left arm forwards in a smooth, sweeping motion that had more than a hint of challenge in it.

            Harry looked down fearlessly at the Dark Mark, wondering what Lucius expected him to do because of it. Then he laid his hand over it. He did tense, wondering if he would feel a pulse of anger or hatred, but all he felt was a slightly rougher patch of skin. Voldemort was dead, dead long since, and the power behind the Mark with him. Harry looked up and shook his head. “Are you trying to make me back away?” he asked. “I won’t.”

            Lucius’s arm curled behind his neck, and his mouth took over.

            Harry didn’t know why his kisses were so much more powerful here, in this pale room of flashing bronze and silver splendor, which he glimpsed from the corners of his eyes as Lucius steered him towards the bed. Perhaps Lucius had assumed that he couldn’t kiss too strongly when he still didn’t know whether Harry would run away.

            Harry got a hand in edgewise and tugged hard at the ends of Lucius’s hair. Lucius changed the passion and force of his kiss, upping both, but not the direction of his shoving. Harry felt a bed behind his knees, and he sat down. It was important to him that he should show he was here by choice, rather than Lucius bearing him down to the sheets like a prisoner or a captured maiden.

            Lucius, to Harry’s stunned astonishment, knelt in front of him instead, dropping back from the kiss to touch the marks he had left on Harry’s chest again. His eyes were hot enough that Harry found them painful to look at, probably because lust wasn’t the only part of their flame. Harry turned to the fire, and Lucius brought his head around again with a savage motion that hurt his neck.

            “Do you know how beautiful you are?” Lucius asked, breathing thick and warm over Harry’s nipples, so that they stood to life. Then he laughed, which made Harry grip his own hips so he wouldn’t buck. “No, what am I saying? I know that you do not know. You disdain compliments, and if you were more aware of your beauty, you would not be so unaware of your own power.”

            “You’re making me uncomfortable,” Harry said, which was the only thing he could say to that ruthlessly honest a declaration.

            “Am I?” Lucius touched one of his marks again, and Harry caught his breath, which made his stomach muscles flex in and out. But Lucius didn’t try to renew the scratch, only watched it for a minute before looking up at Harry. “Why is that, I wonder? Am I touching you in a way you don’t like?”

            “No.” Harry arched so that his cock brushed the underside of Lucius’s wrist. Lucius chuckled and moved his hand higher.

            “Then suppose you tell me,” Lucius said, a dark eagerness in his voice.

            Harry would have rolled his eyes, except that he didn’t think he was capable of it right now. Lucius always had to be like this, didn’t he? He would want to know the reason for a snowstorm in the snowstorm.

            “I know what I look like,” Harry said. “And it’s nice of you to want to compliment me, but I’m perfectly capable of looking in a mirror, so you might as well save your breath.” He reached out and put his hands on Lucius’s shoulders, intending to draw him to his feet and into the next steps of the dance. That ought to thoroughly distract him.

            Lucius moved, surging upwards, but not as Harry had intended. Harry found himself on his back after all, his wrists pinned above his head by Lucius’s hands, while Lucius stretched out above him and watched him from less than an inch away. His eyes were as satisfied as a cat’s.

            “Let me tell you why you are wrong,” Lucius whispered.

            Harry felt his mouth fill with saliva. He had to swallow several times to make sure that none of it trickled down his cheek in a way that would have been thoroughly embarrassing.

            What the fuck? Could the offer of a compliment, one that people like Willowwand had been all too eager to pay him, really be enough to make his mouth water?

            Apparently.

And then Harry stopped paying attention to his basic bodily reactions, because Lucius had lost his smile, and leaned closer still.

“Your eyes shine,” Lucius said. “You have been through horrors and war, and yet still they can reflect light upon the world. I know few like that. The war crippled some and killed many others who yet walk about on their legs and pass as living. It was an end to their growth. But you have lived, and changed, and you have rid yourself of the one great block to further growth: that vow you swore.” His index finger traced a wandering path down the inside of Harry’s wrist.

Harry arched his back and then tried to pretend he hadn’t. He’d heard all sorts of nonsense about his eyes before. What Lucius said was new, but it also seemed obvious that Harry wasn’t the only one like that. Lucius had managed to survive the war just fine, and Hermione, and Ron—

“No. You will listen to me.” Lucius’s voice was light as a steel blade. “Your body is honest. The gestures of passion that you cannot hide, the way you stare before you fling yourself forwards in a fierce challenge, the hawk-look that you give me when you are warning me that you cannot be subdued or bribed. I am tired of those who can manage to conceal everything they are feeling. You show the most profound emotions, and that is as it should be. It lets me distinguish you from the mass of shallow souls I am surrounded by every day.”

            “I wish you wouldn’t distinguish me by running other people down,” Harry managed to say, though his voice was so dry it seemed a miracle he had said that much.

            A laugh burst out of Lucius, which seemed forced from him against his will. “Very well,” he said, releasing Harry’s wrists and lying down beside him. “Then I will not.” He brought his hand back into play, caressing one of the lines of hair that pointed down Harry’s chest. “Will you still listen to me?”

            Harry turned his head, and saw the gleam of the firelight in Lucius’s eyes. He felt as though that light had reached out and embraced him. Lucius could talk about Harry’s eyes being distinctive and alive all he liked, but his eyes were the wonder.

            And the shutters that had covered them so far had cracked and parted. Harry saw a silvery depth to them that he hadn’t imagined could exist.

            “Go on,” Harry whispered.

*

            Lucius knew it would be undignified to howl in triumph and close his teeth on Potter’s throat, let alone counterproductive when he had promised to list his beauties for him and Potter was in the mood to listen.

            But he still wanted to do it when he saw those fascinated eyes peering at him.

            Lucius saw the unsteadiness of his hand was visible as he reached out and stroked Potter’s chest, his shoulders, the line between his nipples, but he didn’t truly care. His voice had gone thick and heavy, creamy, and that appeared to paralyze Potter. He probably wouldn’t spend a lot of time noting Lucius’s loss of control.

            “Your manner,” Lucius said. “You have grown, I said. You do not insult others merely to hear yourself speak, but you have no trouble with defending your reputation or your actions. So few ever learn that balance.” He bowed his head and let his hair sweep across Potter’s neck, so that Potter would not think too deeply about the implications of his words. “I have not.”

            Potter’s hand closed over his, his fingertips gently caressing Lucius’s knuckles. Perhaps he had not hidden his tremor clearly enough after all.

            “You have,” Lucius whispered. “That is better than perfect control.” He licked Potter’s left nipple. Potter jumped, and groaned, and folded towards him. Lucius rejoiced, but he drew back his mouth so that he could speak. He had promised.

            “You are strong,” he said. “You move like a wild thing in its own territory, estimating the threats to its safety with perfect wisdom. You smile as if the world could end and find you still balanced on the precipice, still hoping. You laugh and the world pauses to hear it, waiting for its echo, wondering that it should have one treasure but still half-expecting another.”

            Potter’s cheeks burned, and he looked up at Lucius through half-lidded eyes. Lucius expected a denial of his beauty like the one he’d got a few minutes before, but Potter said, “You—feel that? Really?” His voice was soft and tentative.

            He might believe it. And Lucius had a vision, sudden as lightning, of what Potter might look, do, be, become, when he acknowledged his own merits and his right to be stared at.

            His voice cracked down the middle. His hand trembled. His eyes blazed. All the signs he had worked so hard to hide shone out as he answered, “I do.”

            Potter rolled upwards, sleek as a diving otter, and brought their mouths together. Lucius moved with him, trying at once to learn the slope of Potter’s shoulders and to teach him the angles of another man’s chest, the shape of his skin, the taste of his mouth.

            Potter was shuddering and whining all over long before Lucius felt that he knew enough to continue with the seduction, and hooking his leg around Lucius’s hip so that he could rut and thrust and frot. “Please,” he whispered, semi-coherent, the pupils in his eyes wide like open flowers. “Please. I need you.”

            “Patience,” Lucius said, but it was a breath with no voice behind it. His own need leaped to life at Potter’s words, curling around his cock like the touch of a whip. He reached down and tried to take his own erection in hand, to squeeze and soothe it, but Potter’s leg was in the way.

            So warm. Lucius felt the fever bursting through him. He dropped his head to Potter’s shoulder which, known, should calm him, but it only made the fever worsen. His sight was swimming. He could see nothing but Potter’s eyes, and green filled all the world.

            This was desire taking him by the throat. Lucius had experienced it before—oh, of course he had, on an evening when Narcissa shone like a star and his blood shone like the sea by moonlight—but he had not expected it like this, not with Potter, or not so soon, or maybe at all. Desire ate his directions and his definitions and his plans.

            He had his wand on his hand. Had he held it all the time? No—no, he thought not, but he couldn’t remember from where he had picked it up. He touched it to Potter’s arse and gasped aloud the words of the required spell.

*

            Harry had used the lubrication spell before, but not for years. He had forgotten how odd it felt to get slick down there—not horrible or wrong, just odd. He squirmed and lifted his legs higher, flinging them around Lucius’s hips in a loose embrace. If Lucius didn’t plan to get on with things, he would just have to do it himself.

            He whined something. He thought his sounds were wordless at first, but then heard himself repeating over and over again, “Doitdoitdoitdoit.” He would have been ashamed if he had remembered how to be.

            Lucius reached down to his arse, but his fingers shook so badly that he couldn’t get them in at first. Harry shoved himself back, and that worked. It also made his arse burn as the fingers went in, and he wondered if the pain would wilt his cock and the mood. He thought it should have.

            But his eagerness was too much, and instead the pain made the wave beating through him crest. Harry cried out in shock and humiliation and heat, and came all over his belly and the hand Lucius had put there as if to steady himself.

            He shut his eyes a moment later, not wanting to see the disappointment and chiding he was sure would haunt Lucius’s expression. Indeed, Lucius simply knelt there with his fingers in Harry’s entrance and his hand on Harry’s belly, and said nothing, nor moved. Harry hissed through his teeth and tried to imagine what would happen next. Both his mind and his life remained blanks.

            Then Lucius said, “You are as beautiful when you come as you are in the middle of an art exhibition,” and Harry opened his eyes.

            Lucius lifted his semen-covered hand and slid it down Harry’s gut and lower, never looking away from him or blinking. Then Harry felt the fingers of that hand creep into his entrance, and he shuddered and thrashed.

            Lucius smiled. “I think I will allow no one else to know that,” he added meditatively, and it took Harry a moment to realize that he was referring to Harry’s beauty—supposed beauty—during orgasm, and not the way he liked having his own spunk in his arse. Then he bowed his head, licked Harry’s chest between his nipples, and worked his fingers from both sides into Harry’s arse, with light, quick jabs.

            Harry moaned throatily and spread his legs wider, only to realize from the ache and the way they met resistance that he couldn’t part them more. Lucius bit his chest and smiled against it, then slid back and poised himself with his cock at Harry’s entrance.

            “This will hurt,” he said.

            Harry glared at him. The shock and the humiliation were gone as if they had never been; he hadn’t known Lucius had the power to banish them. Only the heat remained. “I don’t care.”

            “I am told that one often suffers difficulty in walking the next morning.” Lucius’s pleasure was almost as visible as the firelight.

            “I don’t care.” Harry tried to spread his legs again, and then remembered. He settled for tapping his foot against Lucius’s side.

            “You might,” Lucius said. “There were qualms that you had earlier.”

            “Only you,” Harry said, so close to laughter and to screaming in exasperation that he had no idea which one would win, “would be confident enough to say something like that now, when you’re confident that it won’t scare me off.”

            “I only wish to make you aware of what you are choosing, so you properly appreciate it,” Lucius said with snow-like innocence, and then sank into him.

            Harry gabbled and garbled and groaned and perhaps made other sounds that began with “g.” He let his head fall to the side and bit his tongue. A slow trail of liquid crept down his chin, and Lucius reached out and ran his fingers through it. Harry looked up to see blood shining in the light.

            “Yes,” Lucius said, less a snarl than a sigh, and snapped his hips forwards.

            Though some would say that he was passive, that he lay there under Lucius and let the fucking happen to him, Harry felt more active than he had in a long time. There was so much of Lucius to absorb, for one thing, the gold and the white and the delicate red of the flush on his cheeks and throat. There were the thrusts to match, for Harry pushed back and never let Lucius think he had gone too far in subduing Harry with the newness of the sensation. There were the movements of Lucius’s hands to guess, for they stirred and fluttered and slid in odd directions, cutting the air like comets.

            His hair fell back along his neck and shoulders. His chest heaved with deep, panting breaths. His hips moved in ways that told Harry he had gone past the boundary of control.

            And all of it made Harry want to shout with triumph, to say that he was the one who had caused this, and the one here, experiencing it with Lucius, and that they were both alive.

            Without turning their backs on the past. Without turning their backs on the dead. Harry had thought he would feel at least a twinge over betraying Ginny, but he didn’t. Because this wasn’t a betrayal.

            Seven years later, and a different person. I’m not betraying her. That vow wasn’t worth making in the first place. She would never have asked me to make it.

            Harry reached high, clawing at Lucius’s shoulders, wanting to leave a mark of his own the way that Lucius had earlier left marks on him, straining, making the muscles in his arm ache as if they were pulling away from the tendons, reaching and reaching…

            And the moment Harry touched him on the shoulder, Lucius shuddered and came as if he had finished a race.

            His eyes were shut. His mouth worked soundlessly open and then closed. His chest bent and rippled. Harry absorbed every detail, and still it wasn’t enough. Still he thought he would have to play over a Pensieve memory before he could truly, honestly, grasp it the way it was, the way it had been.

            Lucius fell on his chest. Harry winced automatically, but the weight of another man there was less heavy than he expected. Maybe it had something to do with the way Lucius was still inside him and so had part of his weight resting on the bed and Harry’s thighs.

            Maybe it was the sheer elation that filled him and felt as though it gave him the strength to lift the Ministry off the ground.

            He shut his eyes and wrapped his arms around Lucius. At the moment, he couldn’t imagine doing anything else.

*

            Lucius opened his eyes slowly.

            He always felt as though he went somewhere else during sex. Colors changed. Scents changed, or else a certain peculiar scent followed him. His body acted without his direct intervention and control, and dizzying hormones raced through his blood. He saw the world through a stained glass window.

            Now, he had someone in bed who had made him live that experience so intensely that Lucius thought he could not have experienced much more if he had been aware of his partner every moment.

            When he looked down at Potter—or sideways, as his head rested next to Potter’s chin—he saw no resentment there, no suspicion that he might have lived through something Potter was unable to share. Instead, Potter gave him a smile of radiant happiness that rendered Lucius suddenly uncertain if he was, after all, the one who had ascended elsewhere.

            “I want to try that sometime,” Potter said. His eyes had begun to close, but he wrenched them open through sheer stubbornness and stared at Lucius challengingly.

            “Perhaps you shall,” Lucius said, as generously as he could. His blood still shuddered in his veins. The thought of giving that up to someone who had no experience with topping a man was not a pleasant one.

            But warmer and greater and more enfolding was the thought of sharing his bed with Potter another time.

            Lucius had occasionally had lovers whom he knew he did not mean to keep for long. They were too shallow, too simple, too uncomplicated to appeal to him.

            His feeling now was the exact opposite of that. He could not see where his experience or time with Potter would end.

            This is it.

            Once, when he was young, Lucius had had a dream of standing at the edge of a vast country, golden and green. The gold and green both came from fields of grasses, rippling in the wind, rising and falling in patterns that constantly changed their coloration. Lucius had looked out and known that wonders and terrors, secrets greater than wizards could conceive, hid in the grasses and the hills and dells they concealed.

            He stood now on the edge of a similar vast country of experience: being with Potter. Lucius could see the gold and the green, and knew them for his own joy and curiosity, his delight in Potter’s beauty and his power, his pleasure in sex and his pride in having such a lover. This was several different things he had wanted, all in one person.

            Lucius was not sure that he would find it in him to let Potter go, should Potter ever be so foolish as to require freedom from him.

            “Lucius?”

            How long had he been lying there, eyes dazed with gazing on the future, staring straight past Potter, the living present? Lucius shook himself slightly and replied, “Yes?” His voice was hoarse, he noted with some annoyance.

            He challenges me. He breaks my boundaries, and renders me a person I do not know.

            Lucius experienced a brief moment of vertigo, as he had earlier that evening when he was trying to charm Potter into accepting the ring and Potter had resisted. If he could not maintain control—

            “That was brilliant,” Potter said, and smiled again.

            And Lucius smiled back, and touched Potter’s scarred, sweat-marked brow, and decided that, as he had met and conquered every other challenge, he could meet and conquer the challenge of change.

*

            chris7100: Thanks! It feels odd to me, too, since this is my first venture into this pairing.

            js: Thank you! Lucius will have to work even harder in the next chapter, which is very much focused on the morning-after.

            Mia: Thank you! Lucius is actually closer to considering Draco evil than Harry is, here. Harry somewhat understands Draco’s position, and he’s anxious to get along with him.

            Jesilyn: Thank you! I am very fond of this version of Lucius, as well. But Harry isn’t running, now. When he made up his mind, he flung himself into this wholeheartedly.
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Sympathy for the Predators