Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Nothing Like the Sun	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 35148 -:- Recommendations : 3 -:- Currently Reading : 4
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and am making no money from this story.

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

Chapter Eight—Grace

            “Draco.”

            The voice was one that Draco hadn’t wanted to hear again for at least a year. He half-closed his eyes and turned his chair towards her, but kept his gaze fixed on the notes for the next batch of potions the Ministry wanted him to work on, a possible cure for vampirism. A Potions master in Austria had invented the basic formula, but hadn’t elaborated on it before he died. Draco thought he would have to add rather more animal ingredients and cut back on the plant-based ones that particular Potions master seemed to favor. “Daphne. What do you want?”

            “You don’t really resent me, do you?” Daphne slid into his office, as Draco could see from the corner of his eye, her head bowed and her lip pouting out as she played with her fingers. “I was only looking out for your interests.”

            “How is persuading Potter that I’ve betrayed him looking out for my interests?” Draco looked up, smiling, and pleased to see her flinch away from the smile. “If nothing else, that could endanger my life, considering how powerful Potter is, and what he’s inclined to do to those who betray him.”

            Daphne swallowed. “I’m sorry for the way I chose to do it,” she said. “But the more I learn about Potter, the more I become sure that you shouldn’t be attached to him at all, Draco. And there’s no cost great enough to detach you.”

            Draco sighed and kicked his feet up on his desk. It was a slow day, and he watched the sunlight dancing through the enchanted windows, timing the moment until they changed to a pine forest by moonlight. “You and I both know this is so much froth, Daphne. Say what you came to say and leave.”

            For a long second, he thought she would leave without speaking; she just stood there, breathing, as if resentful that she wouldn’t manage to trick him that easily. Then she blurted, “Did you know that Potter sleeps with Muggles?”

            Draco turned his head slowly to look at her. “And?” he asked, after a pause. “I knew he wasn’t sleeping with wizards, and I’d hardly expect him to stay celibate.”

            Daphne ran her fingers through her hair, the way she did when she was trying to decide if something was worth her while to say. In this case, Draco hoped she thought he knew all the details already.

            In fact, he didn’t. Harry had mentioned sleeping with Muggles and “practicing” with them to get good enough at oral sex, he hoped, to satisfy a wizard lover, but not a lot about who those Muggles were or where they went. Draco had thought that would come later.

            Although, with as slow as he is to trust me, maybe not until years later.

            “Did you know that he goes to the Muggle clubs and sleeps with multiple different people every night?” Daphne laughed, and Draco couldn’t tell if it was because of her own insincerity or because of something she saw in Draco’s face. “Well, sleeps is the loosest term. He lets them come down his throat or on his tongue. He never does anything else. It makes you wonder if he can even satisfy someone, hmm?”

            Draco controlled the urge to frown. It was one of the harder things he’d ever done. Yes, he’d known that Harry did that, or he’d thought he did. Multiple partners certainly factored into it. And it made sense that Muggle clubs, havens of anonymous sex, would be the places for Harry to gravitate to. He’d even said something about that.

            It was just…

            Daphne made it sound like Harry had had hundreds of partners. And that hadn’t been something Draco had pictured. He especially hadn’t come to terms with the fact, though he supposed he should have known it from the pieces he had heard, that Harry had spent all his time on his knees for someone else, never touching himself where they could see, never fucking them, never kissing them, never doing anything but pleasuring them.

            It did make Draco wonder, yes. But what it made him wonder was if Harry could accept cuddling from Draco, could accept lessons in kissing, could give Draco blowjobs, but would never want to do anything else. Would Draco even be able to stand up to his expectations after night after night of dozens of partners?

            It made Draco resent it the more because he was sure that that was exactly what Daphne had been trying to make him feel. But he kept his face bland and inclined his head. “Thank you for confirming that you know nothing about him,” he said.

            Daphne stared at him and reached up to toy with the end of a hair. Draco nearly smiled. That had always been one of her giveaways when she was trying to spread gossip in the Slytherin common room, too. “What do you mean?”

            “You know that you never venture into the Muggle world yourself,” Draco said, with a gentle viciousness that he saw no need to restrain. “How would you know what Potter does on weekends? Have you observed it?” He clucked his tongue against his teeth when Daphne turned red. “My, my. You’re less pure than I thought you were.”

            “One of Pansy’s second cousins has a Squib friend who supplies him with Muggle drugs,” Daphne gritted out. “He saw Potter at one of the clubs and recognized him.”

            Draco nodded understandingly. “Not even one of your second cousins,” he said. “You used to be more creative with what stories you told, Daphne.”

            Daphne clenched her hands. “I’m telling you the truth!”

            “I’m sure you are,” Draco said, as kindly and patronizingly as he knew how.

            Daphne kicked the side of his desk and took off running. Draco waited until she was out of the door to sigh and lean back, his feet still on his desk. To anyone else, he thought he would have looked the epitome of relaxed and casual.

            But although he thought he had managed to fool Daphne into thinking he didn’t believe her, he did. And the belief was inside him like poison.

            Harry. Did you do that? Have you gone back and done that since we started dating?

            He didn’t think so, but then…there was so much he didn’t know. And there were so many times in his life he had thought he was important to Harry Potter, only to find out that Harry regarded him differently.

            I have to talk to him.

*

            Harry swore softly as he bounded around the corner in this massive underground complex that only the Unspeakables had suspected existed before now and found another empty room. There was nothing but bare stone walls that made Hogwarts classrooms look decorated and some burning, blue-flaring torches.

            The Unspeakables had contacted him and Ron for help that morning. They hated to admit it, but it was clear that the Dark wizards they’d been tracking for the past few months, who had somehow acquired an incredible collection of artifacts that they sold on the black market to whoever would take them, had help from inside the Department of Mysteries. The Unspeakables wanted Aurors to track down the criminals and the artifacts while they worked on stopping the problem from their end.

            Harry had thought it seemed like a simple job at first. They had found the source of the artifacts without much trouble, and once the Unspeakables found and stopped the person who had been selling off items from the Department of Mysteries and handing out information about when the next Unspeakable raiding team would appear, then any future supplies would also wither up.

            But apparently the artifacts sold had included an engine that could generate an incredible amount of wizardspace, and also Invisibility Cloaks. Every room that Harry ran into was empty, and they spiraled out from each other, linked by tunnels that hadn’t been on the Unspeakables’ initial, supposedly accurate map of the place.

            “Ron?” Harry called over his shoulder, keeping his eyes trained on the room. There were two doors in the distance, on the far wall, but one of them looked marginally less real than the other.

            His voice echoed and died away. Harry was alone with the sculpted stone and the holes in the floor that looked as though artifacts had been yanked out unexpectedly. Harry cast a Disillusionment Charm on himself, even though his yelling for Ron would already have given him away to most of the people who had been here, and moved slowly forwards, his head turning to examine every surface. He had a few spells that could detect Invisibility Cloaks, but he’d prefer it if he didn’t have to use them; they were just this side of illegal.

            Something scratched in front of him. Harry dropped to his knees at once, and felt something sigh over his head, parting his hair like a scythe.

            Instincts Harry couldn’t even name raced through his head, glinting, and then he flung himself forwards at what he knew was the right height. Someone screamed indignantly in front of him, and he felt the slippery material of Demiguise hair under his hands.

            “Ron!” Harry yelled again, and cast a Patronus, not to carry a message but to lead Ron back here. The silver stag galloped once around Harry, as if reluctant to leave him, before it turned and ran into the tunnel that had looked less real. Harry shrugged. He had to trust that the creature knew what it was doing, really.

            “Harry Potter.”

            He looked down at the figure he’d captured. It was a young man, with a thin, pinched face that fleetingly reminded Harry of Draco’s. Then he shook his head. Draco had grown up and got some liveliness to go with his face, while it looked as though that particular sot would remain permanently curdled.

            “You’re under arrest,” Harry said, and cast spells that would bind the man up in his own Invisibility Cloak. It was a bit risky, as he might hide if he slipped away from them, but he would also trip and fall, and the Cloaks couldn’t hide noise.

            The thief didn’t seem to notice what Harry had done. “Harry Potter,” he whispered again, and struggled to sit up. Harry held him down with one arm across his chest, eyes searching for some sign of another Auror or at least a Patronus. Nothing so far. Harry hated cases like this, where the people they hunted turned out to have stronger magic than they’d suspected.

            “You should have stayed away.”

            Harry looked down at the man again. That seemed to be what he wanted, because he rolled his head back and gave Harry a smile that was almost lipless. He lifted a hand. On his right ring finger sat a thick black band with a green-flecked dark stone in the middle of it.

            Harry tensed despite himself, because it wasn’t all that different from the Resurrection Stone, but the man seemed to take it for the wrong reason. He laughed. “Yes, behold your doom! With this stone, we know what anyone fears, and you were assigned to the case early on. We knew you would be. We’ve already looked into your past and future and seen what you would fear, Harry Potter.”

            “Really?” Harry looked again at the tunnel entrances, while keeping his body positioned so that the man would have no way of escaping. Where the fuck was Ron? “What is that, then?”

            “Being scarred.”

            Harry whipped his head down, just as the man shot his hand up and flicked his finger against the base of the ring. The stone flipped back, and a clear, glittering liquid sprayed up from a hollow under it.

            Harry rolled, thinking, That’s acid, that’s acid, and it’s going to hit me in the face—

            He felt a bite like a weasel’s on his cheek, and screamed in spite of himself, while the man tried to flop his way to his feet, laughing maniacally.

            “We knew it, we knew the stone spoke the truth,” the man cried, though his voice was oddly hushed, as though he was trying not to wake someone up. Or was that only Harry’s blood roaring in his ears? “We knew that you were a coward, that you feared something so simple, that we could—”

            Harry struck out with the first spell that came to mind. “Sectumsempra!” he cried, and the man’s voice died in a gurgle of blood.

            Harry curled up on the floor, trying to fight his way to his feet. He could feel separate burning points of pain now, on his cheek, on his earlobe, underneath his left eye. Not in his eyes; he still had his sight, and he supposed that Hermione would tell him that was the important thing, the thing he should give thanks for.

            But he couldn’t, couldn’t, not when his heartbeat was in his ears and he was picturing what he would look like with acid burns on his face.

            I shouldn’t ever have started thinking that I could date someone else. I should have stayed with the Muggles.

            He had learned control over the past year, though. He retained enough to cast a Numbing Charm on the parts of him that hurt from the acid, stand up, and stagger over to the wizard. Harry’s spell hadn’t killed him, after all; maybe because of the way he was standing, maybe because of the Invisibility Cloak he was bound to, it had caught him across the arm instead of the chest or the throat. Harry only had to stop the bleeding and cast a few Numbing Charms again to make him stable.

            By then, Ron had finally run through the far tunnel, guided by the disappearing shimmer of Harry’s Patronus. He jerked to a stop, his eyes full of a pity so awful that Harry curled his fingers like claws into the Invisibility Cloak beneath him.

            “Get the other Aurors,” he said jerkily. “I don’t think we can find our way out of here on our own.”

            Ron shook his head and held out an arm. “It’s mostly illusions,” he said. “Tangible and auditory as well as visual, so we couldn’t see that the maze of tunnels didn’t really exist. We can—we can guide you out, and you’ll be all right.”

            His voice sank on the last words, and Harry saw the way Ron’s eyes steadily avoided looking at his face. So. It was as bad as he feared, then.

            Harry stood up and let Ron bind his unconscious criminal. He didn’t trust himself enough to touch the man right now. He already had a chorus of voices in the back of his head: Hermione saying that he shouldn’t have used any of Snape’s spells on someone, no matter what the provocation; Ginny’s, saying she didn’t understand the darkness and violence that lurked at the bottom of Harry’s soul; Frank’s, saying that one scar on his face was enough.

            He wanted to go into silence and stillness when he got back to the Ministry. He hoped that the Healers would take the prisoner and Ron would take his statement, so that he could go away and write paperwork.

            And figure out how he was going to tell Draco.

*

            Draco narrowed his eyes. His owl had come back with the letter to Harry still attached to its leg. Draco could understand if it had been rejected from Harry’s wards; Harry might have gone into some ridiculous fit of shyness after the last time Draco had held him and want to be alone. But there was a sign that the envelope had been opened and its seal broken. Harry had simply sent it back.

            Like Draco was rubbish. Like he didn’t deserve the courtesy of an honest answer.

            Draco stood. “Can you take me to where he is?” he asked the owl. Some birds could, some others couldn’t, and Draco had never tested the intelligence of this particular owl on the matter.

            But it wheeled around the room for a moment as though getting its bearings, then took off and led the way down corridors towards the Auror Department. Draco blinked a little as he followed. He knew that Harry had been back for several hours; no one could have missed the commotion when the Aurors who had been assigned to that case came back, parading their prisoners. Why was he still here instead of at home?

            The owl’s pace and direction were uncompromising, though, and Draco didn’t have to dodge a lot of people getting to his destination. It was late enough in the afternoon that most Ministry employees had gone home.

            “Go home, mate.”

            That was Weasley’s voice. Draco stopped out of sight, holding up his arm when the owl would have flown forwards. It promptly sat on his shoulder and started picking its way through its feathers for dust and parasites. It had brought him to his letter’s recipient, said its abrupt movements, and in doing so, done all that could be expected.

            “I don’t want to.” Harry, precise and quiet, but with a tone to his voice that made Draco turn his head and prick up his ears. Had something unexpected happened? Perhaps Harry had encountered one of his former lovers in the case, or the aftermath of the case? Draco had to admit that would please him, to know one of the bastards was a thief of Dark artifacts.

            “I don’t know exactly what’s going on with you and Malfoy.” From the sound of papers being moved, Weasley had sat down on the edge of a desk. “But I think he’ll understand this.”

            Draco blinked. What could have happened that would damage the trust Harry had built up in him? Yes, perhaps meeting a former lover would hurt Harry’s confidence, but he couldn’t think Draco was foolish enough to be jealous?

            Well. He thought I would be jealous enough not to tell me about his Muggle conquests.

            “I don’t know if he will.” Harry’s voice was so low, Draco had to stop thinking to make out the words. “I—maybe. But I want to wait until I know how to say it.”

            Draco clenched his hands in silence, and wondered where all the trust that Harry had professed in him when he lay in his arms had gone. Or was Draco to be trusted only in private, and not in conversations with Harry’s friends?

            Draco had thought Harry too deep-hearted to care about something like that, had thought he would tell his friends. But perhaps not.

            Draco faded back into the shadow as Weasley took his leave, with a heavy pat on Harry’s shoulder and a shake of his head. “It’s your choice, mate. But I think you should tell him as soon as you can.”

            “I will.” Harry tilted his head back and stared at Weasley. “As soon as I can.”

            Weasley’s sigh would have been enough to shake a building down. But he left, and Harry leaned further back in his chair, passing a hand over his forehead as though his scar was paining him.

            That let Draco see what Harry might have been debating over telling him, at least. A small, pale mark shone on his cheek, and another below his left eye. Draco made out the remains of acid splashes.

            Scars.

            Draco tossed his head up. What was different about those scars from the ones that Harry had already shown him, some of which came from the war and the private memories that he’d put into the Pensieve for Draco? Hadn’t Draco proved by now that he didn’t care about what Harry looked like?

            Draco took the letter from the owl and told it in an undervoice to go back to his office. Then he stepped out of the shadows. If he waited the days or weeks it would take Harry to find the voice to talk to him, then he might as well admit he would know nothing. Harry didn’t trust him enough.

            Perhaps it’s time to turn this around.

*

            Harry touched the new scars, wincing. They were smaller than he’d thought they were; the acid that git had tossed at him had missed as much as the Sectumsempra that Harry had thrown at him in return. But he had to wonder how many other people had seen that artifact, the stone that told you what someone’s fears were, before it was recovered, and whether the knowledge might pass on as gossip about Aurors so often did, from Dark wizards to rogue Potions masters to thieves, and he would find himself facing opponents armed with acid from now on.

            I don’t think the scars will ever end.

            “When were you going to tell me, then?”

            Harry started violently. Draco was standing in front of his desk, looking down with opaque eyes. He had a letter in his hand—the same letter Harry had opened earlier, seen something about meeting tonight and the next lessons Draco would like to pursue, and handed back to the owl. He couldn’t deal with it, so soon after wondering how Draco would react to his changed face.

            Draco’s eyes were raking him over with contempt. Harry felt as though something large and soft had punched him in the stomach.

            I should have known. I never should have lowered my guard that much—

            Harry snatched back the thought before it could finish itself. He thought that Draco probably didn’t despise the new scars, the way Veronica would have. But he still wanted something from Harry that Harry couldn’t give, deeper trust, in this case. For Harry to move past his issues and invite Draco into his life.

            He couldn’t do it. And Harry had the flavor of ashes in his mouth when he spoke, knowing that something was ending, something brighter and purer and cleaner than he’d allowed himself in a long time.

            “I would have told you eventually,” Harry said. “The way you know, if you were listening to my conversation with Ron.”

            Draco silently threw the letter onto his desk. “You could have sent me an owl saying that now wasn’t a good time,” he said, and leaned into Harry’s desk the way he had before. Why does he like the Auror Department so much for conversations? Harry wondered, in an attempt to distract himself from the new, crumbling sensation in his chest. It was where Draco had asked him on a date, as well as started two confrontations that ended up playing out later. “That’s what a normal person would do.”

            Harry smiled a little. Well. That was a familiar tack, wasn’t it? And it hurt, yes it did, but it also turned Draco back into Malfoy, back into someone Harry could deal with.

            “I know a normal person would have,” Harry said blandly, and let himself slump in the chair and his smile widen. “But I’m not normal.”

            Malfoy sneered at him. “Did you think I would be put off by that?” he asked, gesturing at Harry’s new acid-scars. “You really do think that I’m shallow and obsessed by prettiness, if you did. Or else you’re judging my decisions again before I’ve made them, which I’ve asked you not to do.”

            “I thought that you would be put off by them,” Harry agreed. “And I shouldn’t have.”

            The tone he’d chosen made his agreement more offensive than insults, and Malfoy puffed up again. “You knew you shouldn’t have, and you did it anyway?” he whispered.

            Harry reached his hand as though to shield the acid scars from view, then let his hand drop, “accidentally” pulling back his hair on the way so that his earlobe and the acid burn on it would also show up. Malfoy opened his mouth, but Harry broke in. “I told you. The scars are important enough to hide. Maybe I shouldn’t have felt that you would reject me for them, but I did. I did feel that way.”

            It was a trap. To escape it, Malfoy would have had to do what he did the other day, show that he understood the way Harry felt but ease him past it.

            Instead, Malfoy fell straight into it.

            “Then it was stupid of you.” Malfoy had folded his arms across his chest, always an excellent sign. Harry could feel the brilliant ache that meant he was hurting someone, and the lightness, as if from the release of a leash, that meant he was setting someone free. “How could you think that I would—how much time do I have to spend reassuring you? I thought you trusted me after what you let me do the other day. I thought you were letting the barriers down.”

            That was perfect, and told Harry how to proceed. He folded his own face into an ugly sneer and threw his hands up defensively. “Maybe not fast enough for you!”

            “I’ve been nothing but patient.” Malfoy couldn’t keep his arms folded. He paced a step closer, one fist coming down on Harry’s desk with a sharp rap. “When do I get something in reward for my patience? I haven’t asked you for promises, or kisses, or anything except that you acknowledge me.”

            “Which has been troublesome enough,” Harry muttered, glaring up at him from beneath lowered eyebrows.

            “I haven’t asked for anything except what you wanted to give me,” Malfoy repeated doggedly. “Like trust. And when were you going to tell me that you were sleeping with hundreds of Muggles? Excuse me, sucking them off.” Again the sneer, this time with more barbs on it than Frank’s had ever had. “Because sleeping with them would make you too vulnerable and start you thinking about rape again, wouldn’t it?”

            Harry’s stomach went still. Then his heart began to beat again, and more life flooded his chest. He didn’t know who had found out that he was going to Muggle clubs, but he could make a good guess, based on who had already tried to hurt them. And when he was done here, he would go find her and explain that trying to tug Malfoy further into this and cause him pain when he was already hurting was not a good idea.

            But in the meantime, he had a lover to alienate.

            “It would,” he said, and let his voice deepen. “And I trusted you when I told you about raping my past lovers. You—”

            “Nothing except your goddamn martyr complex would ever make you say that you’d raped them in the first place,” Malfoy snapped. “You know that’s not the way it works. You know that you didn’t rape them. You just said that to get more sympathy.”

            Harry relaxed even more. He had been afraid that Malfoy would say Harry had claimed it was rape to keep future lovers at a distance, which might have made him think about what Harry was doing to him right now.

            “I didn’t say it to get sympathy,” Harry said. “And I slept with Muggles because I could and it was practice and it was the only safe way to have sex without hurting someone and no one knew who I was—”

            “Someone found out.” Malfoy had swollen to the size of a puffer fish by now. “For fuck’s sake, it’s not like you have spines all down your cock or something. You’re not hurting someone by having sex with them.”

            How fortunate for you that you don’t get to find out, Harry thought, remembering the expression on Veronica’s face a few times after they’d finished fucking, and retorted, “You can hurt someone through emotional means even more than physical ones. Not that you would know anything about that.”

            Malfoy ripped a hand through his hair. “I told you I cared about the emotional part even more than the physical part!”

            Harry laughed at him, made it as ugly as he could. “Then why do you care if I was sleeping with Muggles or not? Aren’t you not even supposed to consider them human or something?”

            The flash of temper was more like a thunderclap. “I’m past those attitudes from the war. I thought you knew that.”

            Harry rolled his eyes. “But you’re not past the ones that say your lovers should be pure, right? You knew before I sucked you off that lots of people had had my mouth—”

            “There’s a big difference between six or so, and hundreds.”

            “What?” Harry widened his eyes and pressed his hand to his chest. “Why? Do you doubt the effectiveness of my Anti-Disease Charms?” He leaned forwards and let his eyes fix themselves on the center of Malfoy’s chest. “I promise you, Veronica would have had something if I was careless. I fucked her after I fucked all those hundreds and hundreds of Muggles.”

            Malfoy swallowed, looking sick. Harry nodded a little. This was nothing more than the truth, the way that him being patronizing and scarred was. If Malfoy could have lasted through it, that was one thing, but instead Harry would get to drive him away.

            And it would hurt, but Harry was used to pain, and this time, he wouldn’t be stupid enough to choose another wizard.

            “How many have you really slept with?” Malfoy whispered.

            “I don’t know,” Harry said. “Hundreds is probably close to it. I went most nights in the last year.”

            Malfoy pushed himself stiffly back from the desk, watching him. “I wanted you to trust me.”

            Harry laughed, although this one stuck in his throat. “And I told you, I tried. But why should I have told you about this, when it disgusts you so much? That would only have made you leave faster.”

            “I wouldn’t have been disgusted if you had told me about it!”

            Harry leaned back and propped his feet up, shaking his head. “I don’t believe you. Not the way you’re looking at me and crinkling your brows. You’re horrified to think that I had my mouth on your pure-blood cock when it’s been God knows where else.”

            “That’s not what I’m horrified by,” Malfoy said, and then looked as if he wanted to slap himself.

            “Of course not,” Harry said, and softened his voice, deepened it, to the level where it would make the most impact. “But you are horrified by something. It’s all right. I know that I can’t compete with the sort of future you can make for yourself. I know that you can’t really show someone like me off at parties. And you would probably wonder about whether I was off with the Muggles even if I did date you. You would probably be insecure. And jealous.”

            The way Malfoy flinched said Harry’s words had hit the mark. Harry let his smile deepen, and his sadness. Well. That was the way things had to work out, sometimes. Never let it be said that he didn’t know how to hurt a lover. Perhaps his one true talent, along with Auror work.

            “Not that,” Malfoy whispered. “I didn’t—I just would always wonder what else you were keeping from me.”

            Harry nodded, and then touched the acid scars on his face. “Are you horrified by this?”

            “No!”

            “Then what?” Harry swung his feet to the floor and leaned forwards, rapping his fingers on his knee for a moment. “What is it? You say that it’s only a matter of trust that you care about the Muggles, but it’s more than that, isn’t it?”

            Malfoy’s face was drawn tight, his eyes squinched shut. Harry waited, but he wasn’t going to say it on his own. So Harry spoke, the words that his pure-blood lovers would have said—not that they had said them, because Harry hadn’t been practicing on Muggles when he dated them, but months and months of learning, in hindsight, what they had thought and felt had let Harry know them very well.

            “You were raised to respect pure things, fidelity of a certain kind. You might betray a friend or a lover if the price was high enough, or if you found out they had betrayed you, but even that’s a purity to a different dream or a higher ideal. You’re not so much horrified by the lack of trust or the lack of fidelity to a lover as that I’ve let myself go to hundreds of people. I’m too experienced. You wouldn’t want a virgin, but you don’t want someone crowds of people have pawed, either.”

            Malfoy’s eyes popped open, and he stared at Harry. Harry thought a denial would follow—a weak and unconvincing one, given that Harry might have just pulled out Malfoy’s beating heart—or else Malfoy would say something cutting and try to press the argument back on Harry and what he had done wrong.

            Instead, Malfoy simply ran away.

            Harry blinked and sat back slowly. It seemed he had achieved what he’d failed to when Malfoy had shown up at his house for the cuddling session, and when he’d wanted to give Harry the lesson in kissing, and when he’d wanted the first date. He’d driven him off.

            He didn’t feel good about it, but for Harry, “good” had never been a steady state of being. He turned back to his paperwork, rubbing one of the acid scars and making mental notes to take a good look at his normal cheek and earlobe in the mirror that night. He would have to come up with glamours for them, too, but he didn’t know those parts of his body well enough yet.

*

            It wasn’t until Draco had slammed shut the door of his office and was pacing furiously up and down in the center, trying to come to terms with the emotions that were suffocating him, that he realized what had happened.

            He played me.

            Like an expert, pressing on keys that weren’t Draco’s alone, but common to pure-blood wizards. And yanking on the emotions already swirling around Draco, the ones that came from Daphne’s information.

            And Draco had fallen for it.

            The question, of course, was what he should do about it.

            Draco closed his eyes. He was in no shape for another confrontation right now, and he already regretted starting a third one in the Ministry, even if the second one had been mostly in private, and this had had no witnesses because most sensible people had gone home. Harry could cut the ground from under his feet, shake him off, and reduce him into mortar to build the walls around his soul, after all.

            Draco needed a place and a plan that Harry couldn’t render. He had gone about this like a Gryffindor, and trusted in Daphne’s information as blindly. This time, it had turned out to be right.

            He still wasn’t sure—how he felt about that. How he felt about the knowledge that Harry had knelt at the feet of so many Muggles as willingly as he’d knelt at Draco’s. They’d seen the green eyes looking up at them, slipping shut as pleasure—

            Draco cut himself off with a hiss. He was getting hard, which only proved how fucked in the head he was over all this.

            But in the meantime, Draco was going to come up with a plan. He would go home for now, and consider what had happened, and what had made him vulnerable, and the best way to keep it from happening again.

            And then he would take the battle to Harry again. This was a matter of pride now, of being different from the others, of escaping the traps that Harry had constructed for him and the intense way Harry had turned Draco into what he wanted, after all. Draco was already working to change Harry, and he didn’t mind being changed back.

            But not like this.

            He gathered up the paperwork he needed and headed home, ready for a long night in front of the fire, and without an anger as clean and pure as he’d had only ten minutes before to support him.

*

            In the end, it wasn’t so very hard to track her down. Daphne Greengrass had several homes, as Harry had discovered with a minimum of research, but also an established routine that made him shake his head. For someone who thought he was hunting her, and also someone who had to have made enemies before with her dangerous gossip, she was astonishingly predictable. She spent the same few nights every week in a flat halfway down Knockturn Alley, in an actually clean building, for which she must have paid an exorbitant price.

            She had wards on her front door, of course, but Harry had raided Knockturn Alley two dozen times and knew all the common ones. He passed through them like a ghost and climbed her front stairs to her door, where he knocked.

            He could hear the rustle of movement inside pause, but then Greengrass obviously reasoned that if the person who’d knocked had come through her wards without alerting her, they must be a friend. Harry shook his head, sadly, as the door opened. So many Dark wizards made that mistake. Harry was thinking of running a class, at least for people already safely in holding cells.

            Harry smiled brightly at Greengrass, his wand down by his side and the spell already in motion as her mouth began to fall open. “Veritas tota contra rumores,” he hissed as he finished, and the magic shimmered up and helpfully hit her tongue.

            “What the hell are you doing?” Greengrass hissed, falling back before him, but not slamming the door. Harry surmised that such a sound would attract unwelcome attention right now.

            “Teaching you a lesson,” Harry said. “You gossiped about me to Draco, again, which means that now you aren’t going to gossip at all.”

            Greengrass laughed at him. “What are going to do to me? You’re nothing but a Mudblood who should have been drowned at birth, ugly face and scar like an open wound and all.” Her hands flew to her mouth a minute later, and Harry knew why. She hadn’t meant to say that last part, no matter how much she might have thought it.

            “Yes,” Harry said gently. “That’s what I did to you.”

            Greengrass released her hold on her mouth cautiously, as though the words would fly out again. Perhaps they would, Harry thought. She seemed so used to spiteful gossip that she might do it without meaning to.

            “Nothing happened,” she said, probably because a moment of silence had passed and she had the irresistible temptation to fill it with something. “Why didn’t anything happen?”

            “Because the spell only comes into effect when you mean to gossip,” Harry said. “When it does, you’ll say what you’re really thinking, no matter what you intended to tell your enemies.” He flipped off a little salute while she gaped at him. “And speaking the truth might still hurt some of your friends, I imagine, since it’ll cut through that mask of false concern you use with them, but it won’t allow you to damage reputations as effectively as you were doing.”

            “Wait! Potter!”

            Harry turned away. He could feel her trying to come up with words to use against him, probably about Draco, but he didn’t care if she did. They would still be constrained by the spell, which in the end would hurt her more than anyone else.

            And he’d said more hurtful words to himself about Draco already.

*

            Draco sighed and patted his stomach. His house-elves had served him a deep, full dinner with plenty of fruits sliced just the way he liked them, and chicken prepared so delicately that he would have sworn it wasn’t chicken. And he’d spent most of the afternoon and evening thinking about the things that had gone wrong when he spoke to Harry and thought he knew the tack to pursue, now.

            Of course, what he wanted to say would come easier in person than in an owl. Which meant he was hoping that Harry hadn’t blocked his Floo connection to Draco’s calls.

            Draco watched as the fire flickered through the motions of turning green, letting his mind drift, refusing to let himself anticipate whether Harry would receive him or not. Then the green flared in the way that indicated the connection was established, and Draco sighed and rolled himself over on his elbow on the couch. At least he was close enough to stick his head in comfortably, without having to kneel on the hearth.

            The firecall opened into an empty room at first. Then Harry stood up and paced forwards from the couch where they’d spent the other night cuddling, his arms folded and his face as polite and meaningless as blank paper. “Hello,” he said. “Did you forget something you wanted to tell me earlier?”

            Draco cleared his throat, trying not to imagine the past lovers who might have called Harry up again just to yell at him. “Yes,” he said.

            Harry nodded, passionless. “Then you might as well say it,” he added, when Draco said nothing.

            Draco took a deep breath. “I—I know that I did something wrong today.”

            Harry nodded again.

            Draco clenched his hands around his stomach after all, making it bounce uncomfortably. Wasn’t the idiot even going to—

            But no, he wasn’t. Harry had been through this game before, as he thought. Breaking up with people he’d trusted and slept with. Having them tell him things that they thought were true. Excuses for their inadequacies. Tirades about how insensitive Harry was. Half-apologies that were crueler than silence, given what they assumed.

            Hadn’t Draco already thought that before? That Harry had taken every rejection and insult and used them to build his walls higher, so that the next person wouldn’t have as much chance of hurting him?

            Time to show him that this isn’t a game. Not to me.

            “I made an assumption about the way you slept with Muggles based on what Daphne said,” Draco murmured. “When I already knew that she was untrustworthy and had tried to cause trouble between us in the past. I’m sorry.”

            “It turned out to be true, so I don’t know why you’re apologizing.” Harry blinked at him. “She’s been your friend for a long time. She was right in this instance.”

            How can I be important to you? Compared to your friend? Of course I can’t be.

            Harry was still playing the game, and Draco had to reluctantly admire his skill. Throw out the things that other people wanted to believe, and Harry would lead them astray. Draco had to remind himself, again, of what he had thought through. As so often in this strange connection they shared, it seemed nothing but absolute honesty would do.

            “I came up on you at a bad time, when you were already defensive about your scars from the acid,” Draco said. “I’m sorry. And I apologize for ranting the way I did about Muggles.”

            Harry’s smile softened his face. “You didn’t rant. I was the one who did most of that. And you have a perfect right to be disgusted and distressed. I know that Hermione is, too, hard as she tries not to show it.”

            Sliding down that perfect wall again, Draco marveled. He’s not going to let me in.

            Well, did he have to, after what Draco had said earlier?

            Draco drew a deep breath. “I’ve decided that I don’t care about how many Muggles you’ve slept with. It’s been long enough now since you—sucked me off that I would have shown symptoms of a disease if you had one. The only thing I ask is that you not sleep with any more, now that we’re together. At least while we’re together. If this doesn’t last, by all means go back to them.”

            Harry’s body tensed, then loosened again. “Actually, I already went out and blew one this afternoon,” he said, shrugging. “Sorry.”

            Draco wanted to spit, but not for the reason Harry thought. “You’re lying,” he said. “The way your eyes darted off to the side? You’re lying.”

            Harry snarled, and the polite mask shattered as if it had never been. “You don’t fucking care, Malfoy. You made that very clear. I reckon scars don’t send you running, they might even interest you in an odd way, but my past with Muggles did upset you, and it would always come between us. I didn’t know you would show up and date me, did I? I didn’t save myself all pure and a virgin for you. Yeah, I’ve slept with lots of Muggles. And I enjoyed it.”

            Draco clenched down, hard, on his own flare of disgust. “You did it because you thought you couldn’t have a wizard,” he said. “Maybe you enjoyed it in your own way, the way you did blowing me. But it’s not the same as having someone who holds you and cares about you.”

            “You’re right,” Harry said, nodding. “When the person who holds you actually cares about you, and doesn’t turn against you when you tell him the truth. We’re too different, Malfoy. I’m too promiscuous for you, and I would take too long to give you what you want.”

            “What do you think I want?”

            “Trust,” Harry said. “I’ve only given you a bit of it so far, and now it’s not going to come around for a long time, oh, a long time, Malfoy. Assuming I was foolish enough to believe you again, which I won’t. And you would get tired and back off again. You’ve had too little reward for too much struggle. I might believe that you like a challenge, but I don’t believe that you have the patience for me.”

            Draco ground his teeth. Too much of that was true. Harry had grown too skilled at protecting himself. Maybe Draco had shut the way behind himself too well.

            But he refused to believe that as long as Harry was still here and talking to him. He had expected the Floo connection to be shut, after all. If Harry was here, if he deigned to speak in the first place, then…

            “Yes, I want your trust,” Draco said. “I want you to—not sleep with Muggles anymore when you’re dating me. I want your fidelity. I want your permission to come and talk to you, and hold you, and give you more lessons in kissing and other things as you want them.”

            “And what do I get in return?” Harry tilted his head to the side until Draco was reminded of some of the owls he’d had in the past. “Your promise to listen to me rather than your gossiping friends? Your patience? Your trust?”

            “Of course,” Draco said, blinking at him.

            That made Harry stop, with his hand braced on the mantle. Draco gaped at him. Had he had a lover who had decided that Harry had to be patient and faithful and trusting but they didn’t have to be? Or was it for some other reason that he had decided Draco wouldn’t be willing to do anything for him in return?

            Maybe not reason. Maybe just experience.

            Draco cleared his throat. “I don’t know what kind of reassurance I can give you,” he said, cast back on honesty again, and the fact that he shouldn’t have listened to Daphne. He couldn’t help being disgusted by all the sleeping around Harry had done, but he could and should have thought it through instead of marching off to Harry to confront him about something a known liar had said. “Can I give you anything? Is there any promise that you would trust me to keep if I made it? Because, if not, I think you’re right and this has to end.”

*

            What makes you think that it hasn’t already ended?

            But Harry bit back the furious snap he wanted to give. Instead, he held his breath for a few seconds, until the heat of his anger had calmed a bit and he didn’t think he would breathe flame on Malfoy for asking.

            If Malfoy wanted to come back and try again, if his own disgust didn’t control him the way it had with Ginny and Frank and Veronica and all the rest…

            Harry didn’t think he owed him the chance. He had already paid what he owed. He’d trusted Malfoy, and look what it got him. His past was too much for anyone to face, just the way he’d always thought it would be. The only difference was that he had thought it was his weakness against the Dursleys that would drive Malfoy away, or the memories of the war, and instead it was Harry’s defense against being celibate or hurting anyone.

            But perhaps he owed himself something more. If he wanted a wizard lover—and he did—Malfoy was still probably the best choice. Harry could remember the warmth in his arms, and the way Malfoy had shifted aside for him without complaining, and the way he had touched the circular scar on Harry’s ankle and not flinched away from it. Maybe the acid that had scarred Harry’s face had played no part in this fight.

            And Malfoy had apologized for doubting him.

            Harry couldn’t remember the last time he had received one of those from someone who wasn’t Ron or Hermione.

            Harry leaned heavily on the mantle for a second, and then straightened up. “I want you not to listen to Daphne Greengrass again,” he said. “At least for as long as we’re dating. If she comes to your office, send her away. If she tries to send you an owl, tear it up. That was what caused the trouble in the first place. And even though she won’t be lying as effectively again, I would still prefer it if you stayed away from her.”

            “Why won’t she be lying as effectively again?” Malfoy asked, picking up on what was probably the least important thing in the whole speech, the way Malfoy did.

            Or maybe he’s putting off making the promise. But Harry had decided. If Malfoy couldn’t promise to stop listening to someone he knew was out to get them both, then he was an idiot that Harry couldn’t be bothered with.

            “Because I cast a spell on her that will make her say what she really thinks when she tries to gossip,” Harry said.

            Malfoy gaped at him for a second, and then laughed quietly. Harry, who had braced for an attack because Malfoy was Greengrass’s friend, relaxed a little. Either Malfoy wasn’t feeling as much friendship for her anymore, or he could appreciate Harry’s action no matter what he thought about her.

            “I see,” Malfoy said, and his eyes gleamed a little. “Then I make the promise.”

            “So easily,” Harry couldn’t help muttering.

            “Look,” Malfoy said, and seemed to enlarge the image floating in Harry’s fireplace even though it was just his head there, “I made a mistake. I was an idiot in some ways, I agree. But I’ve fought pretty hard, and I’m going to fight harder still. I could go off and find someone who was easier to date.”

            “Then why don’t you?” Harry had to ask. He knew that Malfoy wanted Harry to acknowledge him in some way, but even this rejected relationship was more acknowledgment than most people had got from Harry in years. That ought to have been enough to satisfy him, really.

            “Because now I’ve taken this on, and I want to conquer it, and I want you,” Malfoy said. “The man I held in my arms the other day. The man who trusted me enough to relax.”

            Harry grunted. “You know it might be a while before you get him back again.”

            “I know,” Malfoy said. “But I don’t think it’s impossible, and I’d like to try again.”

            Harry thought about it. Really, the more he thought about it, what did he have to lose? He already knew that he was still in control of the situation, enough to drive Malfoy away if he had to. If Malfoy abandoned him, it was no worse than going through the same situation with anyone else.

            The remaining, horrid possibility was that he might hurt Malfoy.

            But…

            And Harry felt the smile creeping its way across his face without his permission. He had done that this afternoon, hadn’t he, and without remorse? When he thought Malfoy was rushing around clinging to his precious prejudices like a pompous pure-blood, then Harry had manipulated him and flung those prejudices in his face. Maybe because it was Malfoy, he had been less concerned about what would happen to him as a result.

            It was marvelously freeing, to have a lover whose mental safety he wasn’t worried about every minute. And Malfoy might like it, too, since it would stop that behavior from Harry that he had called patronizing.

            “All right,” Harry said. “A chance. Void if I find out that you’ve talked to Greengrass in any way.”

            Malfoy nodded. And being Malfoy, he pushed. “How will I know when I have the level of trust from you that I had before?”

            “When I call you Draco again,” Harry said, and shut down the Floo connection on Malfoy’s astonished face.

            And there was so little pain in his mind and soul that he thought he could go to bed.

*

            delia cerrano: Thanks. I hope this chapter satisfied, in spite of the angst.

            SP777: And more remains of it than Harry thought, for him to give Draco a second chance.

            moodysavage: Thanks! I think you might like the next chapter even better, since this one was a little angsty.

            CareLessLover: The answer for that is “eventually.” Eventually, that will happen.

            sanaz: Thank you!
- 7
- 8
- 9
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Nothing Like the Sun