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Water from a Stone	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 14851 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and I am not making any money from this story.

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Chapter Eight—A Night That Is Not Wild and Wonderful

            “And how many autographs would this be?”

            Slughorn’s voice had sunk into a hoarse whisper, and he was staring at the wall with big eyes, as though seeing scrolls of autographs—or maybe just the Galleons that he could get for them, Harry thought. He had to smile. Gryffindors weren’t noble anymore, and Slytherins did certain stupid things that didn’t exist but were still stupid. It was nice to see someone behaving the way Harry had expected him to.

            “As many as I can sign without my wrist getting tired,” Harry said. He wanted to make that the number rather than anything more concrete, because Merlin knew he would have to keep his wand hand in shape and flexible to defend the Slytherins, and he couldn’t do that if it ached. “And not until after I spend the night in the Slytherin common room.”

            Slughorn waved a hand, so caught up in his vision of Galleons that Harry thought he could have got away with asking for the man’s latest soft and comfortable chair, barely visible behind his desk. Although maybe not. Slughorn might have noticed when he sat down on the floor.

            “My dear, dear boy,” he murmured, voice thick with emotion. “You’ve done so much for our House. Do go ahead.”

            You mean I’ve done so much for your Gringotts vault, Harry thought, but he couldn’t resent the man for going along with his plans. He nodded to him once and stepped out of the office, planning to make his way to the door of the Slytherin common room and knock on it.

            At least, that was the plan. Harry was starting to think he might as well plan to fly to the moon and hurl rocks down from it on those abusing the Slytherins. It would have as much likelihood of coming true as any of the smaller ideas he came up with lately.

            His “guard” was waiting outside the door, though this time Harry saw a few more fifth-years than older students among them. He sighed. Maybe that meant Malfoy was relaxing about his “safety,” but Harry thought that it probably meant more people had asked for a turn, and Malfoy didn’t want to deny them.

            If they obey him that much. God, if he likes being obeyed…

            Harry shuddered as a horrendous fantasy about Malfoy trying to order him around like a good little toy drifted behind his eyes, and then reminded himself that those feelings of Malfoy’s didn’t exist, which meant he had no reason to think about them, which meant that his previous thought and the fantasy both didn’t exist, which meant Malfoy would never come up with such a horrible plan. What plan? Because it didn’t exist.

            “Potter.” Of course Zabini was part of the guard, and of course also part of the folded-arm-intimidation club. “Our leader whom we don’t mention by name has deputed us to ensure that you reach your destination.”

            “You don’t need to talk like that, Zabini,” Harry said wearily, stepping around him as much as he could to start the ridiculous procession. “I really don’t think any Daily Prophet writers are hiding in the walls to make approving comments on your extensive vocabulary.”

            Zabini held up an admonishing finger. “You don’t make comments about the vocabulary, and I don’t tell Our Leader Whose Name We Do Not Speak about the chest thing.”

            “What chest thing?” asked a fifth-year behind them, predictably. Or at least Harry thought it was a fifth-year, because of the quiet, superior snickering from the others. For Merlin’s sake, Harry thought in irritation, Slytherins like to lord everything over each other, even jokes that don’t really matter.

            “Never you mind, Talbot,” Zabini said without turning around. “Children like you will learn all about the follies of their elders when they’re old enough.”

            “I’m old enough now,” said the same sharp voice. “I stopped being a child when the Carrows tried to order me to break that Hufflepuff girl’s ankles, Zabini, and you know it.”

            There was a short silence, and then Zabini nodded. Harry didn’t think it was much of an apology as far as gestures went, but it seemed to relax the tension among the Slytherins. More of them spread out ahead of Harry, and no matter how subtly he tried to hurry along so that they didn’t get the chance to do that, they just spread out again anyway. He shook his head and gave up in despair.

            “I hope you know that I can’t shield you lot if someone strikes at me while I’m in the middle of you,” he did mutter, because he didn’t think he should simply give up without some sort of token protest.

            Someone walking in front of him turned around, and Harry found that he had once again overlooked Parkinson. Maybe she has an Invisibility Cloak, he thought suspiciously. Or maybe she always waits for the moments when I’m most confused to show up. That would be a worthy Slytherin conspiracy if there ever was one.

            “The point of this isn’t for you to protect us,” said Parkinson. She continued to walk backwards, not even faltering when they came to a rough place in the dungeon floor that one of the others tripped over. Her superior smile grew wider, in fact. Harry wanted to tell her that walking backwards wouldn’t be that impressive in a duel, but she cut in. “It’s for us to protect you.”

            “The oath won’t like that,” Harry said.

            “I’ve already learned one thing,” Zabini murmured, moving up beside Harry. “When you say that the oath won’t like something or won’t permit you to do it, you really mean that you don’t like it, or won’t do something.”

            “We’re big girls and boys, Potter,” Parkinson said coldly. “We can stand the truth. You want us to go away. We don’t want to. Malfoy doesn’t want to. Guess who wins in that contest of wills.”

            “You don’t understand,” Harry said, as calmly as he could over Zabini’s frantic cutting gestures at Parkinson for mentioning Malfoy’s name. “Malfoy doesn’t command you. You don’t have to do what he says. Neither do I.”

            Zabini and Parkinson both turned to face him this time, their heads revolving so slowly that they gave the impression of being robots of the kind that Dudley used to play with. Harry frowned and glanced at the walls. Surely someone had to find this little cavalcade tempting to attack? That way, he could do something that he was actually comfortable with.

            “Idiot,” Parkinson said.

            “Hush.” Zabini placed a restraining hand on her arm. “He doesn’t know that we went through this a long time ago and found out it was useless. You can’t expect him to have the same experiences we have.” But even he was casting Harry a disapproving glance.

            “The whole lot of you are mad,” Harry said desperately. He didn’t even know what they were talking about now, but he was certain of that. “Listen, Malfoy isn’t some kind of evil enchanter—” He paused and reconsidered it. “All right, he is, but that doesn’t mean he’s some kind of Dark Lord.”

            “I can bloody well expect him to know what’s going on,” Parkinson said, “since he’s had enough experience of it for himself, outside the walls of the common room. Tell me, Potter, what do you think happens when someone contradicts Draco? You must know. You’ve done it before.”

            “He hexes you?” But Harry’s mind was full of a different Malfoy, who looked at him with soft, concerned eyes and led him towards the hospital wing. Of course, that was only possible to think of if he hadn’t tucked that experience into the great ball of nonexistence, which he did just then, which meant he had never had the thought and had to look in confusion at Parkinson’s slowly shaking head.

            “No,” said Parkinson. “Of course not. He whinges. For hours. You should have heard the endlessness with which he went on and on about you being Sorted into Gryffindor and refusing to be his friend the first night of first year. It was hard to tell which of those two experiences irritated him most. At least, he thought they were part of a conspiracy of the universe against him.”

            “And then when he found out you were a Parselmouth,” Zabini added, “it was the same thing. ‘Why should he get to have it and I don’t?’ Finally I snapped that maybe it was because you were the one meant to fight the Dark Lord and he wasn’t, which made him shut up and think for—” He glanced at Parkinson.

            “Half a minute,” Parkinson said. “That’s all. Then he started in again on the subject of how you should have been his best friend.”

            “And then there was the time last year,” Zabini muttered darkly, “that I heard this kind of high, thin whinge coming behind the curtains of his bed, mixed with your name. I wanted to know how he could be blaming you for something when you weren’t even at Hogwarts, so I opened the curtains. And—”

            “Blaise,” Parkinson said in a deadly serious voice. “We don’t talk about the Curtains Incident. We don’t ever talk about it.”

            Zabini stared at the ground. “You’re right, Pansy. Sorry. Don’t know what came over me.”

            “It’s understandable,” Parkinson said, patting his shoulder. “Since there’s someone here who could make it all different, if he chooses to.” Once again, they both rotated their heads like robots to stare at Harry.

            “You lot are creepy,” Harry said, because he had no idea how anyone could say anything else. “Mad and creepy.”

            Parkinson snorted and turned to face the front again. Zabini kept one sharp eye on Harry all the way to the common room, as if assuming that he might jump out of line and flee down the corridor now that he knew the truth of what they were marching towards.

            Harry took a deep breath and told himself firmly that he could deal with the creepiness of this, because he knew who was to blame for it.

            It’s not their fault, poor things. They’re under the domination of Malfoy, and that would do strange things to anyone’s mind.

            The same thing could happen to me if I’m not strong enough and committed to rejecting—that is, not thinking about things that can’t possibly happen. I have to be strong. I have to talk to him, but not only to him, and look past him at the wall as often as I can, and discuss other defensive strategies and not personal things.

            It was a good plan of action, and Harry was almost confident by the time they reached the door of the Slytherin common room and Parkinson leaned forwards to hiss the password that they wouldn’t let him hear. He hadn’t had to live with Malfoy day in and day out. He had no reason to obey him. He wasn’t going to roll over and let him control everything.

*

            “Are you comfortable, Potter?”

            Harry shifted uneasily. Malfoy wasn’t touching him. He was just sitting on the edge of the nearest couch, leaning forwards so that he could see Harry’s face. He didn’t often seem to blink. But he did turn away to speak with other people, notably Zabini and Parkinson and Goyle, and he did laugh at jokes that Harry didn’t understand, and he did help younger students with their homework in what Harry thought was a normal way. So Harry shouldn’t have felt as trapped and corralled as they did.

            But somehow, whenever Malfoy’s eyes shifted back to him, he remembered what the other boy had said as he was leaving the hospital wing.

            This is too big to stop.

            Well, yes, Harry had to admit that he hoped Slytherins and Gryffindors would get along better even after the oath was done with—and when would that happen, anyway?—and it wouldn’t simply fade without any legacy. But he didn’t see why Malfoy would be so confident about it from just the slender little hope they had so far.

            So he must have meant something else.

            And here was where Harry ran into the difficulty that it was probably something he couldn’t think about in the first place.

            “You didn’t answer my question,” Malfoy said, lowering his voice into a familiar threatening register. Harry almost exhaled in relief, except that would have given Malfoy too much ammunition to use against him. “Are you comfortable?”

            Harry looked around the common room again, searching for some inspiration to talk about. It was much quieter than the Gryffindor common room, cooler in the colors, as he had seen when he visited it during his second year. But there were still people playing games, writing essays, and fighting for the best spot near the fire. It didn’t seem like the stronghold of enemies he had imagined during his younger years.

            Well, I was a bit stupid then, he conceded, and brought his eyes back to Malfoy’s face. “Not as much as I should be,” he admitted. “I’m not really waiting for someone to attack me, but it’s still not home.”

            Malfoy cast a quick glance around, as if to make sure that no one was listening to them. Harry could have reassured him of that. After some staring, most of the Slytherins seemed to have decided that Harry Potter’s presence in their common room was something they could deal with best by ignoring it. They’d given more attention to Malfoy than to him.

            Harry had to admit, that made him think there might be something to the instinctive way Parkinson and Zabini had spoken about deferring to Malfoy and—

            No. There’s nothing. It’s just a case of one strong person in a House seizing control, and the fact that he’s one of the oldest students now.

            “It could have been,” Malfoy murmured, apparently because he was finally satisfied that no one had Transfigured themselves into couch cushions to listen in. “You told me that you could have been Sorted into Slytherin and been here with us.”

            Harry leaned back in his chair and scratched behind his ear. “Well, yeah. But I wasn’t.”

            “Only because of your own choice.” Malfoy’s eyes were bright and his face flushed, and Harry realized with a sinking heart that apparently they were going to Discuss His Emotional Revelation now. After what Parkinson and Zabini had said about Malfoy’s whinging when he didn’t get something, Harry was afraid even to stop the conversation. “Have you thought about that? How, because you influenced the Sorting Hat, that makes you even more clever and cunning and more of a candidate for Slytherin?”

            Harry had thought about it a few times, in the dark of night, but mostly during his second and third years. He shrugged casually. “Well, yes, but I didn’t grow up in Slytherin. You can’t call me Slytherin now.”

            Malfoy gave him a small smile and stood. “Come on, Potter, I might as well show you the bedroom where you’ll be spending the night.”

            Harry saw everyone who had been watching them in that moment promptly glance away, and that made him suspicious. But he told himself that it was probably just a joke bed that all the Slytherins were in on or something. He didn’t really believe that they wanted to attack him anymore.

            Besides, a practical joke would be infinitely preferable to what else that shine in Malfoy’s eyes could mean.

            Malfoy led him up the stairs, a curving series of steps that made Harry stare because they had small animals carved along the edges. Serpents, mostly, but there were some unicorns and phoenixes, too. He wondered if there had been a student Sorted into Slytherin once who really wasn’t suited for it, and so became an eccentric genius carver. Maybe a secret Gryffindor. Why not? If he had gone into Gryffindor when the Hat thought he should have been here, it could have happened the other way around, too.

            Then Harry stopped himself, appalled, because that would mean he agreed with Malfoy and was thinking of himself as a secret Slytherin.

            This has to have a cause, he told himself, and cast a nonverbal charm that would test for invisible gases affecting the brain.

            Malfoy opened the door and moved aside. Harry started to speak, but Malfoy shook his head. “I don’t want to prejudice you,” he murmured. “Step inside and tell me what you see.”

            Harry gave him one suspicious glance, and then sharply looked away. Malfoy’s flush was heavier, his eyes more prominent, bulging. And lazy, somehow. Lazy with things Harry was not going to think about.

            Remember, a practical joke is better than that, Harry reminded himself again, and stepped into the room.

            Four beds stood, spaced wide apart, around the walls of a chamber that was round and decorated in dark green and bronze. They were all four-posters, like the Gryffindor beds Harry was used to, but the curtains looked both softer and thicker, and their wood was dark. The nearest bed had its curtains open and pillows strewn across it, while the sides of the bed were slightly curved, like a nest or a cradle. A window that was obviously enchanted looked out on a scene of the Hogwarts Lake, bright with sunlight. Harry shook his head. It felt as if he had stepped into some fairy tale room, under a tree because it was so dark, but also on the surface because of the light.

            “I never said my impressions would make sense,” he muttered, when he told that to Malfoy and Malfoy just stared.

            “But it shows that you could have been at home here,” Malfoy said insistently, taking his shoulder and steering him further into the room. Harry heard the door shut, and tensed, but Malfoy didn’t spring the joke on him yet. “That you don’t need red and gold and beds that don’t alter at the whim of the owner for comfort.”

            “You can alter your beds by willing it?” Harry stared again at the curved bed, and then around at the others, which had their curtains shut, trying to decipher what they looked like. Then he noticed something else.

            “Malfoy, why are there only four beds?” he demanded. “You, Goyle, Nott, and Zabini, I get that, but where am I supposed to sleep? Unless that’s the joke.” He regretted letting the words slip out in the next minute. He wasn’t supposed to know about the joke.

            Malfoy stepped up close behind him. Harry tensed, wondering which of the beds Malfoy would shove him into so that it could close around him in a trap. Or maybe a pit would just open up in the floor beneath his feet and impale him on illusory spikes. He wouldn’t like that, but it was better than standing here and waiting around for the stupid joke to happen.

            “I’m tired of you ignoring this,” Malfoy breathed, right into his ear. “You know the answers to all these questions if you’ll let yourself think about it. Asking them again and again, and pretending that you don’t understand, just wastes time.”

            Correction, Harry thought, while his heart-rate doubled and his lungs felt as if they were ten times smaller. I’d much prefer a pit in the floor to this.

            “Excuse me if I don’t know every tradition of Slytherin,” he snapped. “And excuse me if I don’t really know what to do now that I’m here. It’ll have to be dramatic enough for everyone else that I just spent the night in Slytherin, because I don’t know what else I can do to make it that way.”

            Malfoy spun him around. Harry started to splutter in outrage—the only person who had ever done that was Snape, and Harry hadn’t appreciated it at the time either—but found the spluttering cut off because Malfoy was pressing his lips to Harry’s.

            Ah, Harry thought, mind spinning in so many different directions it was a wonder he didn’t fall over from dizziness. This is the joke. It must be.

            Except that Malfoy gave no sign of thinking it was a joke. He moaned and pressed closer, and one hand was running down Harry’s back to—

            Harry jerked his mouth free. “That’s my arse, Malfoy,” he squeaked. He would have liked to call it some more manly name, but that really was the only word for it, a squeak.

            “Mine now,” said Malfoy, with a great deal of stupid satisfaction that Harry started to tell him about, so that he would know where to shove it, but he pressed closer again, and Harry staggered back, and there was some more pressing and staggering until eventually they fell through the curtains of one of the beds.

            “We could have come here in the first place, if you’d just told me you wanted to,” Malfoy murmured reproachfully, and then fastened his mouth on Harry’s again. Harry reached up with a trembling hand and shoved ineffectually at the side of Malfoy’s face.

            It was ineffectual because Malfoy was so strong, of course—much stronger than he’d ever shown himself to be in Quidditch—and pushing Harry down into the bed to try and kill him by suffocation. Not because Malfoy’s skin was warm and slightly soft, not at all how Harry had thought it would feel.

            And then Malfoy made a triumphant little noise and drove his tongue into Harry’s mouth through his lips, which were, unacceptably, parted. Harry blamed the stink Malfoy carried around with him, which he would really love if it actually existed.

            Harry hadn’t had someone kiss him with tongue before. He thought Ginny might have tried, if they hadn’t been interrupted every time they were together before the war and she hadn’t developed interests in other people after it. Perhaps Cho might have tried, if not for the dead-boyfriend-and-grieving thing. So he didn’t have any experience to compare to Malfoy’s tongue touching his, and that made it unfair. If he had had the experience, then he wouldn’t have been overwhelmed. Obviously.

            But he didn’t, so he was.

            He tried to say several wise things. Malfoy’s tongue stalled them all. He reached up and curved his hands around Malfoy’s skull, gripping his hair. Malfoy’s hair was unfairly soft. Harry curved his knees up, and he really did mean to kick Malfoy in the groin. It wasn’t his fault that gravity and Malfoy had different ideas, meaning Malfoy fell between his legs instead.

            But he didn’t just give up and surrender. He had no interest in Malfoy’s perception of the kiss. He knew all his good intentions, and Malfoy didn’t, and that made all the difference.

            Finally, even superhuman Malfoy, probably half-descended from merpeople, needed air. He pulled back, and Harry gasped it in for himself. Then he pushed at Malfoy’s chest. But his hands were weak because of aforementioned lack of air, and Malfoy caught his hand and turned it over, kissing the back of it as if he was a girl.

            “Don’t do that,” Harry said, but his voice was faint and dazed. Stupid lack of air. He frowned and tried again. “Don’t do that.”

            “Of course not,” Malfoy said, and gave him a horrible smirk that Harry would remember forever and which would probably be emblazoned on the back of his eyelids when he did, if it didn’t kill him first. “You prefer stronger kisses, don’t you, my Gryffindor-Slytherin?” He leaned in again.

            “No!” Harry said quickly, but once more Malfoy serenely refused to listen and muffled Harry’s words with his mouth and tongue. He probably thought he could win all their arguments that way, Harry thought muzzily. Well, he couldn’t.

            It was totally unfair, how soft his hair was.

            Malfoy pulled away and lay down beside him, playing with Harry’s hair as if it was somehow soft in the same way and looking ridiculously pleased with himself. “We’re on my bed,” he said. “That’s the answer to your question.”

            “Huh?” Harry rolled his head, panting, to look at Malfoy. His lips felt tender and swollen, and so did his groin. He would have looked down to make sure that it wasn’t that visible, but that would have revealed his erection’s existence to Malfoy. So he preferred to look into Malfoy’s eyes instead. “What question?”

            “Your question about why there are only four beds.” Malfoy turned and started to pull the sheets down. “You’re sleeping here tonight.”

            “Wait, wait,” Harry said. His head was spinning and his legs were weak, but he still knew something wasn’t quite right about this. “What?”

            “You’re sleeping here tonight,” Malfoy said helpfully, raising an eyebrow in his direction. His lips were swollen, too, Harry thought, and he stared. He knew Ron and Hermione had to snog quite hard to get them that way. He hadn’t thought Malfoy had snogged him—because, of course, he was the innocent victim here—with that much force. “What part of that didn’t you understand?”

            “We don’t,” Harry said, and then had to close his eyes, because his head was spinning again and the effort not to look down at his cock was getting impossible.

            “I got tired of waiting for you to wake up, and now you’re not objecting,” Malfoy noted, bundling the blankets around Harry. “I know what you’re capable of if you did, including throwing me across the room with a single spell. Lie down and go to sleep. Besides,” and he bent right over Harry’s ear to whisper into it, “think what a dramatic statement it’ll make about Gryffindors and Slytherins getting along when we announce that we’re dating.”

            Enormous, cool relief swept through Harry and seemed to make his cock deflate a little. So Malfoy had only done this because it would make their alliance seem stronger and shame the people who criticized them and thought Slytherins were subhuman. Of course they couldn’t be subhuman if the Chosen One slept with one. Right.

            He knew that he was so tired because of the potions that Madam Pomfrey had given him in hospital, and that was why he turned over and laid his head against Malfoy’s shoulder. That was why he put one arm around Malfoy’s shoulders. That was why he went to sleep in the first fucking place, instead of objecting like he should.

            Besides, he could always smash things and scream insults at Malfoy’s parentage in the morning.

*

            Lady_of_Clunn: No, and so Draco took matters into his own hands.

            Was this the “something” you were expecting?

            Regina: Thank you! I hope you like his sense of humor in the rest of the story, too.

            Byond_repair: Thank you. As for your request, I think the only story I’ve written that really fits that is I Give You a Wondrous Mirror, but that’s a long story where the Hermione-telling-off scene is only a small part of it. I don’t think I know of any others.

            angelmuziq: Thank you!

            SP777 (or PS777?): I actually meant the title to be dramatic, but didn’t get it from a soap opera. I was more thinking of the phrase ‘armchair general.’

            And yes, I am having a ton of fun with this.

            polka dot: It would—too great a twist for this story.

            Wölkchen: No problem! I can understand your English fine. But I’m afraid waiting for Harry to acting on his feelings is precisely what irritated Draco, so it didn’t happen, because who knows how long it would have taken him.

            voynich_hag: Thank you so much!
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Water from a Stone