Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Anarchy as Art	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 12617 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

Chapter List
- 7
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- 9
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Chapter Eight—To Die For
“Your hair would have been so much better all along if you had just let me advise you, dear.”
Harry gave the enchanted mirror what it was perfectly free to think of as a smile, and stepped back, turning his head to the side. “You’re sure that he’ll like this?” he asked. His head looked—different—without the hair sticking up all over the place. It still wasn’t completely flat, and it would never flow down to his shoulders in manly waves or anything, but it wasn’t sticking out like a hedgehog’s morning shag-quills, either.
“He’ll adore it,” said the mirror, and Harry thought it would have bounced in its gilded setting if it could have. “But you never did tell me the name of your mysterious boyfriend, dear.”
Harry snorted. Hermione had bought him the enchanted mirror years ago as a birthday gift, during the period when she was trying to be more “wizarding” in every possible way, but this was the first time Harry had found a use for it, and it really wasn’t that subtle. “I don’t see that his name matters,” he said, and picked up the sleeveless robe lying on the bed. He considered it with his head on one side for a moment, shaking his head. It was white, a glittering white that looked as if it came from the inside of an iceberg. Harry didn’t think he’d ever worn something that color, but it had been the one robe that the various assistants at Robes for the Discerning Wizard agreed on.
Which doesn’t mean anything. It could just mean that they all have the same bad taste and you’ll look stupid in it.
Harry stopped himself from glancing over his shoulder. There was no sign that Malfoy meant to break into his home this evening, and that meant he was alone, and no one else would see him if he did look stupid. He shrugged off his plain shirt and trousers, ignoring the way that the mirror whistled at him, and pulled the robe on. At least the material was thick and warm, brushing gently against his skin and then dropping back to hang around him in a way that, the assistant had said, would flow and outline his movements gracefully.
There were approximately two hundred small gold buttons for him to do up. Harry struggled with the robe in silence at first, then swore at it when it proved uncooperative, and as if the swearing had impressed it, the buttons became easier to manage. Harry looked up at last and studied himself in the mirror, pushing back his hair. He ignored the mirror’s protests about how he was messing it up. Now that he knew the spells the mirror had mentioned to make his hair look like this, he could do the same thing himself any time.
He certainly looked odd in the robes, Harry decided after a moment. The assistants had said something about how he had “olive” skin, but to Harry, it just looked sallow and queer next to the white fabric. It didn’t make him look washed-out the way that dress robes sometimes did, but he wasn’t sure that he liked it. He grimaced and reached for the top button of all that massive array of them.
“Oh, don’t!” the mirror whinged, hard enough to make Harry stop struggling and blink at it. “You look stunning, darling, and when’s the next time that I’m going to get to see you looking like this?”
Harry blinked again and looked back at himself in the mirror, trying to find out what had attracted the mirror’s notice. Nothing, as far as he could see. He was just—he was just himself, and the white color looked weirder by the minute.
“They were right, whoever said that the robes make the man,” the mirror said, and sighed. “I wish there was some way that whoever said it could see you now.”
Harry shot the mirror a skeptical glance. The only reason he hadn’t smashed it or got rid of it was the fact that it was a gift from Hermione. None of that meant it knew what it was talking about, though.
“So handsome,” the mirror said, and gave a little wavery sigh at the end of the words as if it would explode into shards and litter itself all over the floor. “So dashing!” And then it sank into muttering that made Harry shake his head and turn towards the other robes that he had taken out of the bags.
The mirror excoriated the grey one, the way that Malfoy had—and Harry told himself not to think about Malfoy’s hands on his arms and his lips close to Harry’s if he didn’t want to explode into a permanent blush—but liked the deep blues and reds, the deep greens and the light shining blue that one of the girls had fainted when she saw him in. Harry studied that last one by the light of a few candles and a Lumos Charm and decided it would do. There were silver accents along the sleeves and hem that he thought about stripping off, but the mirror urged him to keep them, and it would do no harm to go along with its advice this once. Or this twice, if he counted his hair.
Then he stepped away, took a deep breath, and turned towards the door that led out of his house. Time to let other people see him, beyond the mirror and the winking photograph of Malfoy on the wall.
Harry couldn’t tell for sure, but he thought the pace of the picture’s winking faltered a bit when he walked through the drawing room. He could only hope that he would make as much of an impression on the original.
*
“Mr. Potter, we are so glad to welcome you. What would you like to begin with?”
Harry smiled and murmured and disclaimed, and especially refused the offer of a private room. The House of Athena was the newest and most exclusive restaurant off Diagon Alley, and most of the people who came to dine in it seemed to want tables where the noise and chatter of the other patrons didn’t penetrate. But Harry had a purpose for eating in the grand front room, which was made up to look like a Greek temple with mirrors between the pillars.
And the manager seemed perfectly happy to have him eat there, too, really, given that it would probably bring in other business. He whisked cloths and dishes and glasses back and forth, and soon Harry was eating something that he knew had started as a bird back along the line but, somewhere between the sauces that smothered it and its fancy French name, had transformed so much he couldn’t tell whether it was chicken or duck.
He let the manager fill his glass several times, with drinks whose names he didn’t try to keep track of, either. He knew a convenient charm that made the liquid inside vanish at a tap of his wand underneath the table. Let those who watched think he was getting exceedingly drunk, or at least could be.
That was part of the plan, too.
Harry finally settled back when he had finished his meal and scowled at the door. The manager was instantly beside him, bending down so that Harry had to look into the anxious black eyes above the long white beard. “Is something wrong, Mr. Potter? Only you look as if there were, and you would break my heart unless you can tell me that nothing is the matter.”
Harry sighed and shook his head, but the manager pressed confidentially forwards, and finally Harry muttered, “All right. I was supposed to meet someone here. I don’t know why they didn’t show up, it’s at least two hours since the time we agreed on.”
The manager all but drooled over the prospect of knowing who Harry Potter was dating before anyone else, and Harry, leaning back in his chair, gave him a thin smile. Yes, someone like him would see the gossip aspect of it.
“May I know the name?” the manager asked, all precious assurance and humble respect, at least on the surface. But Harry was pretty experienced at seeing the gleam of avarice beneath the surface, and he saw it then. He smiled in spite of himself. Of course, the man interpreted that as a compliment to him, and preened a little, all the time watching Harry eagerly from the corner of one eye.
“Well, I don’t know that he would want me to tell it,” Harry said, with an anxious glance at the doorway of the restaurant, which was up a set of long, sleek steps, as though the people who approached were climbing a hill. “We’ve only been dating for a few days.”
“But he might have missed you in the crowd,” the manager suggested smoothly.
Harry gave the man a long look that he at least had the grace to flush over. Harry was sitting in the center of the huge room, on a table that was raised above the others on a small dais. He had let the manager put him there because to be seen suited his plans, but of course, it would have made him instantly obvious to his imaginary date.
“Yes, well, my sympathies,” the manager said at last, and cleared his throat. “I hope this won’t discourage you from making use of the House of Athena in the future?”
Harry smiled, and watched as the man preened again. “Of course not. Although I object to the verb. One can never simply ‘make use of’ a restaurant as fine and expensive as this.”
He sent the manager away deliriously happy, and then returned, humming, to the last of his drink. He finally left without looking behind him, his head up and his hands dangling at his sides as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
Now. To see what Malfoy makes of this.
*
What he made of it was a Howler that came and found Harry the next morning when he’d gone into the Ministry to make sure that Linton’s letters were still safe in their hiding place.
This time, the owl that brought it was indisputably real; no magical owl could have crouched in the middle of Harry’s desk as it held out the red envelope and deposited a fall of messy shit right on his papers. Harry reached out a hand for the letter that he had to pull back for a moment, since it trembled with excitement. Then he shut and locked the hall door, and put up a few Silencing Charms, right before the Howler finally burst out and started to scream.
“Harry Potter.” Malfoy’s voice, even when he was shouting, was lower than Mrs. Weasley’s or Hermione’s; they were the people Harry had got Howlers from most often in the past. Harry took his seat and grinned at the Howler, while the owl watched him with its head cocked as if trying to decide whether he was stupid. “I know that you can’t have started dating someone else in the two days since I last saw you. And I know that you wouldn’t have kissed me if you were already dating someone. You’re faithful, whatever else you are.”
“How do you know that?” Harry asked the Howler, although of course it couldn’t hear him and Malfoy had merely paused for breath. “That could be the ideal Gryffindor you made up in your head, you know, not the person I really am.” He shook his head as he thought about it. Malfoy really knew next to nothing about him. Even if he was right and Harry had stifled everything personal about himself in order to do his job well, how would Malfoy, of all people, know what lay underneath?
He doesn’t know shit. He’s just making shit up so he can justify screwing around with me the way he used to do in school.
Harry knew it was true, but it still made him wince a bit, phrased like that. Malfoy really had changed even less than Harry had thought.
“You have no idea what it did to me, when I heard,” Malfoy said, and his voice sank again, until Harry thought he wouldn’t have heard him with the door shut between them—unusual for a Howler. “I had to smile and laugh and pretend that it was an ordinary bit of gossip, like it doesn’t matter to me what the Great Harry Potter says or does. And that’s not true.”
“So sorry that you can’t pretend to your gossip-mongering little friends that we’re dating, anymore,” Harry said, and tried to picture who Malfoy would have heard the news from and what he would have said. He ended up shaking his head. He couldn’t imagine, which probably meant it hadn’t happened, or else Malfoy moved in a world far different than the one that Harry lived in.
Which I already knew, of course.
“If you had the slightest idea what you mean to me,” Malfoy whispered, his voice declining again, “you wouldn’t have done it.”
And then the Howler ripped itself to pieces. Harry sat back in the middle of the falling flakes of envelope and sighed, trying to understand the mindset behind a performance so stupid.
So Malfoy was afraid that people he had bragged to about having Harry in the palm of his hand would take offense. So what? It was still less than diplomatic to tell Harry that and try to push him to care for Malfoy that way. If anything, Harry was just more likely to take offense, and realize that he was a conquest to Malfoy and nothing more.
Then again, he’s never tried to hide that. What he expects to do is bowl me over so much that I won’t care about having any deeper meaning to his actions.
Harry sighed and Vanished the pieces of the envelope, checked on Linton’s letters, and then strode out of his office, heading briskly for the lifts before he could meet anyone. The last thing he wanted was to get caught talking with Ron or someone else who would want to know about his progress. He didn’t have any concrete notes on his progress, yet.
Only a reaction. And hope.
*
Harry twisted in the middle of his sheets, and then flung them off. The room was too hot, as though he had a roaring fire going in the hearth, and for a moment he wondered whether that came from the colors that Malfoy had enchanted onto the walls. It was just like him to try and make Harry uncomfortable in his own home, beyond the obvious ways he’d already done so.
“Look at you.”
Harry turned his head and blinked. He was naked, he realized, because he had taken his robes off before going to bed; it was that intolerable heat.
And next to his bed stood Malfoy, having fought his way through the wards once again, it seemed. He was naked from the waist up, and his chest muscles shone under pale skin, sharply defined. As Harry watched, a line of sweat led down from his collarbone towards his sleek trousers. Harry licked his lips. It wasn’t that he was attracted to Malfoy, he knew. But it had been so long since he’d had anyone, and watching Malfoy, he remembered the kisses and the way that the git had made him laugh more than he thought about the Howler or the owl that had destroyed Flowing’s evidence.
“Am I good enough for you like this?” Malfoy asked softly, kneeling down on the bed with one leg only. His left hand reached out and slowly skimmed down Harry’s chest, aiming for his waist. Harry shuddered uncontrollably and lifted a leg before he could stop himself, and Malfoy’s hand wandered into the hollow between Harry’s thigh and groin and remained there, comfortably, familiarly.
“Yes,” Harry whispered. He would probably say anything as long as Malfoy kept touching him. His fingers felt madly good, rubbing up and down as he slowly began to move his hand again. Harry turned his head to the side and closed his eyes, his hips beginning to move as he pushed into the touch.
Then Malfoy pulled his hand away and said, “Try not to hate me too much when you wake up.”
Harry opened his eyes—
And opened his eyes. He was lying in his bed, and there was nothing and no one with him. The room was warm, but not at the level that it had been in his—dream. Yes, it was a dream, and he had never found Malfoy attractive or appealing in any way.
Malfoy had sent him a dream curse.
Harry was hard.
He thought of the two facts in that order, and groped for his wand on the bedside table. He cast a spell that forced his erection to grow flaccid, gripping his lips in his teeth as he thought about it. The spell rippled over his groin as pain, and he winced, but he frankly didn’t care. He didn’t want to think about Malfoy. Not like that.
He wouldn’t. He was going to find a way to take the spell off himself. He stood up and padded over to his bookshelves, full of the theoretical texts that the trainers had introduced them to when he was preparing to be an Auror and which he’d kept ever since.
And if some of the unexpected charge of the spell came from his own loneliness and not the fact that it was a curse…
Well, that was just too bloody fucking bad.

*

            SP777: I think there’s plenty of action! What with kisses and Howlers and owls and dreams…

            And Harry is going to do his best. At least he’s earned a reaction from Malfoy.

            unneeded: I doubt Malfoy will miss it, but it’s so hilariously naïve that he might find it cute.

            And Thorin is Head Auror mostly because, after the war, the Ministry oiks felt they needed someone who would be hard to corrupt.
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