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Easy as Falling	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 31246 -:- Recommendations : 3 -:- Currently Reading : 4
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

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Chapter Eight—An Uncommon Dinner

            “This is really nice.”

            Draco turned and blinked at Potter. He hadn’t expected to hear Potter say that, but now that he thought about it, why the hell not? Potter could certainly admire beauty. Draco didn’t think he had the same instinct for it as a Malfoy did, but on the other hand, if he was totally blind to it, then he would have let the beautiful points of Hogwarts go to the dogs, instead of having the house-elves clean.

            “Thank you,” Draco said, and took a seat at the head of the small dining room table. This was much more intimate than the one in the great dining room, capable of seating only six, but it still had candles casting their wavering reflections in the dark mahogany, and the chairs upholstered in delicate gold and white. Draco wondered how long it was since he had looked at it and thought that, yes, it was rather nice. Perhaps he owed Potter for making him think about that.

            “Please sit down,” he added, realizing that Potter still stood up and looked at him.

            “Thank you,” Potter said, and dropped into the chair on the other end of the table. Draco paused, having thought without thinking that Potter would take the seat next to him, and then shook off the reaction and reached for the plates that were already appearing on the table, courtesy of the house-elves. “Do you think that everyone’s going to hate me now?”

            Draco darted his eyes to Potter as he served himself potatoes, soft and thick and fluffy as buttered clouds, from the plate the elves had brought. “You don’t sound very concerned about it.”

            “There are plenty of people who hate me already,” Potter said, nodding thanks as Draco floated the plate down the table to him and he began to scoop the potatoes off. “I was just wondering how far that hatred would extend.”

            Draco filled his cup with clear wine, considering how best to respond. “If you’re going to make a political point,” he said, “and I think that was what you accepted my help for, you’ll have to think in terms of more nuance than that.”

            “Why?” Potter sipped at the potatoes with his spoon, and shook his head at the elf who came to him with a glass of wine. With one agonized glance at Draco, the elf changed it to a glass of water, which Potter smiled at. “They don’t.”

            “True,” Draco said, sighing. “Why don’t you tell me more about the young man who appeared at your office door and tried to kill you?”

            “I suppose it wasn’t that bad,” Potter said, and launched into the tale. Draco listened while eating the salad the elves had brought, with transparent slivers of chicken and fish mixed in among the bright green leaves of spinach and the round and dewy berries. Potter ate the salad without flinching, which again surprised Draco. He would have thought Potter was more one for steak and awful Muggle sandwiches.

            When he finished, Draco had to close his eyes and shake his head. “You’re right that some of your enemies don’t think with any nuance at all.”

            “Our enemies.”

            “I beg your pardon?” Draco focused on him again.

            Potter held his glass of water to his lips, moistening them. His plate was empty, and he didn’t look out longingly for dessert, either. Perhaps some of Draco’s notions about Muggleborn and half-blood dinner guests had been formed on analogy with worse people than he suspected.

            “Our enemies,” Potter repeated, staring at him through the water and the glass. “Your enemies and mine. Which means that you should act against mine, and I’ll help you with anyone that you feel compelled to handle, of course.” He drank.

            Draco leaned back, and then stopped, shaking his head. The last thing he wanted at the moment was to put more distance between him and Potter, and that was probably how Potter would interpret the gesture, rightly or wrongly.

            This was what he had wanted, wasn’t it? Encouraging Potter to think of them as part of a team rather than Potter acting wildly on his own, and that meant that Potter would take on his enemies as well as Draco taking on his?

            Well, yes, it was. But Draco hadn’t honestly expected that much reciprocation, because he had thought Potter totally occupied with Hogwarts.

            “If I can do something.”

            Draco came back to the conversation. He had to stop wandering into his own thoughts around Potter. It was dangerous, clearly, and would take him further away than he liked from the quick drama unfolding across the table. “What do you mean?”

            “If I can do something about your enemies.” Potter gestured with his water glass to nothing in particular, his sharp eyes on Draco. “If you think that the way I handle someone who tries to kill me is too extreme, I can only assume that you’ll want me to keep away from the more delicate political situations you’re involved in.”

            Draco took a deep breath, swallowed some more of the pale wine, and put his glass aside, shaking his head. “I didn’t…that’s not what I meant, Potter.”

            “But you didn’t really respond to the question I asked, or to my story.” Potter gave him a sharp smile. “What do you think? Should I have been gentler? Find Williams and tell him that I’m going to take those pimples off his forehead and not brand him as a murderer anymore?”

            “Don’t do that.” Draco bit his lip at the shattering-glass sound of his own voice. He sat back and sucked in a breath. “I don’t know that you can help being what you are, Potter.”

            “But it would still be good to know if you thought of that as something horrible or not.” Potter’s voice was calm, outwardly, but his fingers clenched around his glass. Even knowing this wasn’t Hogwarts and he wasn’t bonded to any furniture in Draco’s house, Draco thought he should still answer.

            “Not horrible,” Draco said. “But unsubtle, and I think this will confirm in most people’s minds that you’re—unstable. A real Dark Lord would have killed him. The saint they thought you were would have sent him back with soft words. None of what you just told me you did fits in with the prior public perception of you, and you know they hate that.”

            Potter raised his eyebrows and leaned back in his own chair, nodding. “That makes sense,” he said, and smiled at him. “Thanks, Malfoy. I was afraid that you would come up with some political analysis that depended on points so minute I couldn’t even see them, but this makes sense.”

            “I wouldn’t deliberately try to trick or baffle you,” Draco began. If Potter thought Draco was dealing with him in faith as bad as that, then this alliance would never grow the wings it needed to fly.

            “I don’t think it would be deliberate.” Potter stroked his chin, where the stubble was coming in bristly and thick, and grinned at him. “I don’t think you’re that much of a git. But it would mean that you would be making connections that were natural to you, and ones that I just couldn’t follow. Like you said, I’m not anyone’s idea of a traditional Dark Lord. Someone who was could either follow it or would be too mad to worry about political consequences in the first place.”

            Draco grimaced and nodded. “Does it bother you?” he asked, because knowing if it did or not would tell him some of the ways that he shouldn’t try to work with Potter. “That they don’t see you the way you are, but as saint or madman?”

            Potter’s smile twisted, and became something Draco had never seen. If he had dreamed about Potter going Dark, then he would have pictured him with expressions similar to the real Dark Lord’s. But Potter just looked tired, and grim, and ready to follow the hunt he had started anyway.

            “Yes,” he said simply. “But not as much as it would if they had only now started doing it. They were reading me the wrong way when I was a kid. Heir of Slytherin, remember? And liar or minion of Voldemort when I was talking about him coming back.” He paused, noting the flinch that Draco couldn’t control, and shrugged a little. “Sorry.”

            “But you’re an adult now, and you saved the world,” Draco said, doggedly pushing for an answer to his question, although he was starting to be sorry that he had. “That has to sting, that you did what they wanted you to do and they still mistrust you.”

            Potter rolled his eyes a little. “It does. But they’re such…I don’t know, Malfoy, can you understand if I tell you that they’re all idiots, and that makes it hurt less? The people who believe that kind of Prophet article are idiots, I mean. It would hurt if my friends believed it, or if people I thought were intelligent did.”

            “They might start,” Draco warned him. “After what you did today, and especially because you proclaimed yourself Dark Lord.”

            Potter nodded a little, rapidly. “But I’ve been thinking about that, especially since Williams decided to try and kill me. The name Dark Lord is actually the best one I could have chosen. It separates the stupid people from the ones I can trust. The ones who try to deal with me and ask about the reasons are the ones I want to deal with. The others, I can cast off to the side.”

            Draco narrowed his eyes a little. “I’m surprised to hear any Gryffindor talking about casting people away.”

            Potter sat up. For a moment, his eyes held a light that Draco had never seen in them before, and his hands folded in front of him on the table as though he was thinking about picking up his wand and launching himself at Draco. Draco laid his hand on his own wand, ready to prevent that by whatever means he had to use.

            “Did you know,” Potter whispered, “that the Sorting Hat, which so many people think is infallible and never changes its mind, told me I would do well in Slytherin?”

            Draco stared at him because he didn’t know what else to do. The words seemed to have frozen his hand and his tongue both in place.

            Potter fell back in his chair laughing, and ended up choking on it, still grinning at Draco. Draco thought it was probably the most natural and open expression Potter had ever worn around him. Part of him was thinking that, anyway. The rest of him was ticking along in shock, encased in crystal, at a distance from the world.

            “The look on your face,” Potter said, shaking his head again. “Of course, the Hat isn’t infallible, and you can persuade it. I told it that I didn’t want to go to Slytherin, and it put me in Gryffindor. And it considered Hermione for Ravenclaw, but it put her in Gryffindor because she thought that was the best House and that was where she wanted to go. So it can’t make the right decision the first time every time.”

            “It told me to go to Slytherin the minute it touched my head,” Draco whispered. Whips seemed to strike his mind, hitting some of the cherished impressions he had carried for so long and breaking them up.

            “Well, of course,” Potter said, and shrugged at him. “You were telling me even the first time we met that you wanted to be in Slytherin. If someone really wants to go one place and has the personality to do well in that House, I don’t think the Hat argues with them.”

            Draco frowned. He had thought—oh, he had thought stupid things, it appeared. He hadn’t realized how much of what he expected from Potter and thought it right for him to do still stemmed from those old House stereotypes. He had understood Potter in part because Potter was a Gryffindor. That meant he would react in some predictable ways.

            Foolish, Draco scolded himself as he met those steady green eyes and saw Potter giving him a glance that was more than curious. Of course I should have already known that he wouldn’t always react in those stereotypical ways, because he declared himself a Dark Lord, and what uncomplicated Gryffindor would do that?

            He cleared his throat a little, and said, “It appears that I’ve misjudged you, Potter.”

            Potter waved a lazy hand. “That’s easy to do, Malfoy. And I’ve done the same thing to you in the past. Now that we have an alliance, the best thing we can try is not to do it anymore.”

            Draco cleared his throat some more. He didn’t want to admit how much the stereotypes had still controlled his thinking after he made the alliance, but if Potter didn’t intend to bring it up, then he didn’t see any reason to do so, either.

            “All right,” he said. “So you’ve told me about Williams, and I’ll tell you what I think is going to happen.”

            Potter nodded, eyes rapt on Draco’s face. Draco found himself sitting up and taking in a slightly deeper breath. It was ridiculous, the way he behaved when Potter paid attention to him, but as long as he knew about it, then it was a weakness he was anticipating before it could hobble him in the campaign.

            Or bother Rosenthal, or irritate Potter, come to think of it.

*

            Harry thought he had never seen Malfoy’s face so clear, so thoughtful, and his eyes bearing a look that Harry could understand. He supposed it was because Malfoy understood political things so well and Harry didn’t. It was different than competing with him at Quidditch, which they were both supposed to be good at.

            Or maybe we just aren’t competing anymore.

            “There will be some people who are sorry for Williams, and believe his life is ruined,” Draco told him quietly. “Those are the people who will believe whatever the Prophet prints, too, so I don’t think you have to worry about them.”

            Harry smiled at him. “Great. And the others?”

            “There will be some who want to wait and see.” Malfoy shrugged a little. “They could end up jumping to your side, or not. It’s hard to worry about them until they get impressed or irritated enough to make a move. Court them if you can, but don’t worry about them as much as about the last group.”

            “Who are going to hate me?”

            Malfoy straightened up and stared at him down the length of his nose, which actually wasn’t as long and pointy as Harry had thought it was in the past. Of course, that meant it was also less impressive when Malfoy tried to stare down it. Harry played quietly with his fingers, and smiled at him, and waited.

            “Who are going to want to be impressed with you,” Malfoy corrected him. “And you can appeal to them if you do a number of things.”

            “What things?”

            “Do you really have no idea?” Malfoy snapped, forsaking his sage pose.

            “I prefer to have you tell me.” Harry laughed again as Malfoy gave him another glare, and deliberately lounged back in his chair. “What? You’re the expert, I’m not, and I thought I was supposed to listen to experts.”

            Malfoy rolled his eyes and looked around as though indicating to an invisible audience how stupid and self-involved Harry was. Harry continued to grin at him. Malfoy really was almost adorable when he acted like this.

            And I’m drunk on pure water.

            “You should show that you won’t back down from defending Hogwarts,” Malfoy began, as carefully as though Harry might have trouble understanding simple English. Of course, to him it was probably simple-minded English, Harry thought, oddly content. “That you keep your word. That you don’t need to be violent. I think that’s what you did with Williams, although of course certain people are going to interpret that differently. But if you give some kind of interview introducing the idea that, rather, it’s that you don’t need to be violent, because you have so much magic, I think this third group will snap that up.”

            Harry nodded. “Good idea. I want to tell my friends about Williams next, before the news comes to them from someone else as a nasty shock, but I’ll make sure that I set up an interview right after.” He paused, thinking about the articles he had sometimes read in the Daily Prophet and the people other than Rita Skeeter who could read it. “What do you think about Helena Spivak?”

            Malfoy blinked. “A more sensible choice than I expected you to make.”

            “Of course,” Harry said, and kept to himself all the other things he could have said. He had encouraged Malfoy to take the view of him as someone who needed guidance, after all. It was natural that Malfoy would do so in more than one area. “I’ll get in contact with my friends, and in contact with her.” He paused, watching the way Malfoy was looking at him and tapping his fingers on his knee. “Do you want me to mention you, or not?”

            “You might mention the rumors that are going to start circulating about Minister Tillipop in a few days,” Malfoy murmured.

            Harry nodded. He understood why Malfoy might shy away from a direct linking with Harry right now. He didn’t even know that Harry would be successful in holding onto Hogwarts, after all. “Okay. The truth, and the opposition, and the fact that I’m more powerful than any of them dream. Think I should mention that the school’s bonded to me?”

            “Did you use its magic against Williams?” Malfoy was sitting up and paying attention to him again.

            Harry nodded, thinking of the way the floor had herded Williams to the stairs.

            “Then mention it,” Malfoy said. “If only so you can give a counter-perspective to the stories Williams will spread.” He pursed his lips and whistled a little. “We’re really going to do it, aren’t we? Make your crazy takeover of Hogwarts something that people will just have to live with.”

            “We are,” Harry said, standing up. “Thanks for dinner, Malfoy.” He held out his hand, wondering for a second if Malfoy would refuse it.

            But either Malfoy didn’t think that a good idea or he was more up to the challenge than Harry thought he was, because he took it with his eyes glinting and gave it a few good shakes.

            “I’ll see you later, Potter,” he said.

            Harry held up his hand and stepped out through the wards again, coaxing them to part. He caught Malfoy’s hard stare as he did so. Oops. He shrugged at him apologetically, then Apparated. He hadn’t done any permanent damage to the wards, he knew. Or at least, he didn’t think so. Malfoy would have to let him know if he had.

            We’ll both need to get used to each other.

*

            delia cerrano: Proclaiming himself Dark Lord can pretty much be construed that way.

            Rina: Perhaps, but not this early!

            SP777: Thanks! As for the glasses, I think I do have a few stories where Harry doesn’t wear them.
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Easy as Falling