Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Anarchy as Art	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 12618 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

Chapter List
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Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Nine—This Means War
Harry leaned back in his chair and yawned. Then he stared up at the ceiling and yawned. Then he reached for the warm cup of tea that Ron had brought in earlier and yawned.
“You all right, mate?”
Harry forced his eyes open against the pressure of his own weariness and managed to smile at Ron, who hovered next to his desk. “Fine, Ron. It’s just—unexpected, you know?” Another yawn interrupted him before he could finish the sentence, and he had to stifle it so he could continue. “To have to look up a counter to that kind of curse when, as far as I know, Malfoy never cast it on me. It turns out it was a time-dependent spell. As soon as I did something he didn’t like out of his sight, then I would start having those dreams.”
Ron shuddered and looked as if he was keeping himself from throwing up with heroic effort. “Better you than me, mate. Ugh. Just thinking about it is enough to give me the shivers.”
Harry snorted and closed his eyes again to snatch a moment of rest. “I know. Desiring someone like Malfoy, someone who’s so convinced of his own superiority, isn’t my idea of a fun time, either.”
Ron said nothing, and a moment later, Harry forced his eye open and focused on him. Sure enough, Ron hadn’t nodded and gone back to work; instead, he was staring at Harry the way he did when he disagreed but thought he might upset Harry if he said something.
“What?” Harry demanded. “Don’t you think that I wanted to get rid of the spell?” Hell, the last thing he needed was Ron thinking that he wanted Malfoy—really wanted him, not just because of the spell.
“Well, yeah,” Ron said, and scratched at the back of his neck, and stared into the far corner with a desperate nonchalance. “Of course.”
“But,” Harry said grimly, leaning forwards across his desk and making sure that there were no reports in the way that he might damage if he suddenly needed to punch Ron. “You always follow a statement like that with a But, don’t you?”
Ron sighed and then said, “If I was thinking about a spell forcing me into dreaming of Malfoy, mate, the last thing I would care about was whether he was arrogant or not. I would be concerned because it was Malfoy, the git who harassed us in school. I would care about that. I wouldn’t care so much about his character. His actions are enough for me.”
“If you think that I don’t care that he taunted you for your family and Hermione for hers,” Harry began.
“No,” Ron said, although there was a weird ripple of expressions under the surface of his face for a moment, as though he was fighting back things he didn’t want Harry to see. “But it’s shifted for you, hasn’t it, mate? It was always different, anyway. Malfoy never taunted you about your family except to get a rise out of you, same as all the other times. It wasn’t an impersonal hatred or a blood feud for him. It was always personal.”
“I think hating you because his father hated your dad and hating Hermione because his father told him to hate Muggleborns is pretty personal, too,” Harry said, letting his chair tilt forwards so that the front legs crashed against the floor. He stood up and prowled in a slow circle around the desk, his eyes fastened on Ron.
“And now you’re angry, and I hate it when you’re angry,” Ron said plaintively, lifting his hands in front of him. “Harry. No. Really. I think the kind of hatred Malfoy has for you is different from the kind he has for me. I’ve always thought that.”
Harry hesitated, and then said, “All right. Fine. Then I have no idea what you’re saying about these dreams and that curse.”
“That maybe your feeling towards him is personal, too,” Ron said, looking him in the eye. “That you think differently about being cursed to desire him because—” Ron hesitated, visibly braced himself, but forged ahead. “Because you already do.”
Harry didn’t yell, didn’t scream, which he thought was pretty big of him. He just counted to ten in his head, and then said, “You’ve been arguing all along that I’m obsessed with him. I can see that, and why. But I’m obsessed with seeing his arse in prison, not—not seeing his arse.”
Ron raised his hands soothingly in front of him. “Whatever you say.”
“And now you’re managing me,” Harry pointed out, his voice sinking in spite of himself into what Ron called “the dangerous territory.” “The exact same way Hermione would.”
“Not on purpose, Harry, not on purpose.” Ron’s face was so dreadfully earnest that Harry knew he had to believe him. “But just because it seems that you won’t admit to yourself that part of the reason you chase him is your own desire. It’s a good thing you removed the curse, of course it is. But remember what you told me when we were chasing the Surrey Singer?”
Harry shuddered. “Yeah.” That had been a case where a Dark witch had learned spells that would give her voice a siren’s power and had lured red-haired women to their deaths and then strangled them.
“That I couldn’t see Ginny in all those victims, because I would lose control when I was chasing her,” Ron said. “I had to understand what I was feeling and how to handle it. That did me a lot more good in the end than just running around screaming into the wind and feeling whatever I wanted would have. I think you need the same thing, mate. Understand what you’re feeling for Malfoy, and you may be able to understand how best to catch him.”
Harry reached out and put his hands on Ron’s shoulders. Ron flinched, out of habit it seemed, before he looked into Harry’s face and stood still.
And it seems I’m the sort of person who regularly scares my best friends. Talk about understanding yourself.
“Thank you, Ron,” Harry said quietly, giving him a little shake to emphasize that it was a good thing he had called Harry out on this. “Really. This—tells me that it’s something I’ll have to work on, if everyone else can see my obsession with Malfoy in those terms and I can’t. It’s a weakness if I don’t acknowledge it.”
Ron peered at him intently, and Harry tried to look open and helpful and whatever other thing he could to reassure him. Ron clapped him on the shoulder a moment later, and nodded. “You’re welcome,” he said. “It just tears me up to see you tearing yourself up, mate. And I think you can catch him better if you put energy into the chasing and less into explaining to yourself that you don’t want him.”
Harry snorted. “Probably true. Although I should wonder why I do. Prejudiced, arrogant, conceited arsehole that he is.”
Ron cleared his throat. “There were times I wondered that about Hermione,” he mumbled. “We fought so often, and sometimes she made me so angry that I just wanted to explode…”
“But?” Harry prompted, fascinated.
“There were other things,” Ron murmured, staring up at the ceiling as if trying to call back memories of those distant days in Hogwarts. “Times when she would look at me and I would think that someone who made my heart beat that fast was better than someone who never made my heart beat at all. And times when I wanted to shout to the world that I loved her, and wasn’t that enough? Against all the odds, against all the challenges?” Suddenly he seemed to remember where he was and who he was talking to, and broke off with a small laugh, rubbing the back of his neck. “Anyway. That’s some of it. I think you might want Malfoy in the same way. Because he’s someone who can make you scream in frustration and still want to catch him.”
“To put him in prison,” Harry said quietly. “Not to fuck him.” He tried to ignore the memory of how badly his cock had throbbed even after he found the countercurse to the spell that Malfoy had cast on him.
“But you have to think about putting him in prison,” Ron said, leaning forwards again as if he was going to fall off his chair. “The what, not the why. Concentrate on the why, and you’ll only end up in this position again.”
Harry winced at the thought of more dreams like last night’s, more questions to himself about what the hell he was doing, more exchanges with Malfoy like the Howler. He’d been proud at the time, proud of provoking the response, but now that he thought about it, wasn’t that more than a little childish? What did the Ministry pay him for, to be an Auror or to spend time playing games with someone who had openly acknowledged to Harry that he was a thief and trained other people in the Dark Arts? What mattered was that he belonged in prison. Harry had to acknowledge his personal feelings so that he could put them aside for a little while and focus on his bloody job.
“Yeah, you’re right,” he said, and punched Ron on the shoulder. “Thanks.”
“There are two kinds of people in the world,” Ron said solemnly. “Those who know I’m always right, and the ones who don’t. Thank Merlin that you’ve finally joined the ranks of the enlightened.”
Then he had to duck to avoid a seriously nasty curse that might have rendered him useless to Hermione for a couple of days, and at least gave him something else to think about besides his correct opinions.
*
Harry dressed himself with the help of the mirror again that night, and wore a dark green robe with golden buttons and silver trim that glittered in any kind of light and made him feel like a cross between a whore and a kid dressed up for a costume party.
What matters is that this plan is going to work. Stop thinking about the way that you feel when you’re doing it. What matters is that it’s going to take Malfoy down.
Harry closed his eyes and spent a few minutes in a kind of meditation until he thought he could convince himself of that. Then he nodded and opened his eyes, and walked towards the entrance of his house.
As he reached for the door, he noticed a single, thin, golden line strung glittering across it. Harry pulled his hand back and narrowed his eyes. He knew that hadn’t been there when he came home from the Ministry to dress, and Ron or Hermione would have mentioned it to him before they put something on his house, even a ward as harmless as this one looked like.
And, of course, it might not be harmless at all, depending on what it was designed to do…
Harry pulled out his wand and whispered the incantation he had devised himself, a twist on the usual spell to reveal the nature of a ward. This one ought to give a misty picture of the surrounding area at the time the ward was cast, and give him a glimpse of the person who had cast it, unless they had the foresight to use a Disillusionment Charm.
If it was who Harry thought it was, then he might have been too arrogant to use one, even in an area where someone could see him and decide that he was breaking into Harry’s house.
And sure enough, there was Malfoy, standing out in the open, hawthorn wand swirling elegantly through familiar motions, ones that Harry didn’t even have to glance at the words about the ward’s nature that unscrolled in the air to identify. This was a spell that would tell someone when a particular person had left or entered a location.
The image faded and left Harry with twitching lips and a pounding heart—not that it ever didn’t pound near Malfoy, as he realized now thanks to Ron, but this was a new kind of interest.
So Malfoy wanted to know when Harry entered and left the house, did he? Badly enough to cast the fucking spell in the first place, badly enough that he had sent Harry that Howler. Harry thought he could see that Howler in a different light, if he looked at it hard enough.
Harry’s head went up, and he flung open the door and stalked out of the house, ignoring the ward as it broke with a faint harping sound and sent its invisible warning out to Malfoy, who would have to wait within a few miles to feel it.
This had all been a pretense so far, a way to lure Malfoy closer, to make him forget his caution, to make him do something that not all the deniability and smooth lying in the world could make the Ministry ignore.
But…
Now, Harry thought he might pick someone up after all at the Cycling Celebration, which he had never done before, and which Ron and Hermione might die of shock to hear him say.
Who was Malfoy to think he had sole claim to Harry? Who was anyone to think that they had a right of say over Harry’s comings and goings, unless he wanted them to?
Funny, Harry thought, just before he spun in place and Apparated. His lips were parted as though to taste the air, his fingers tingling as though he had just come in from the cold. I don’t think I’ve felt this alive in years.
*
Harry stood at the entrance to the Sarcophagus, the wizarding establishment that housed the Cycling Celebration, and watched the shifting chaos below.
It was a cross between a Muggle club, a dance, and a never-ending party. The wizards and witches in the room wore elaborate robes, and Muggle clothing, and a mixture of both that would have made even Mr. Weasley snicker. No one cared, not in the constant rush of the music and the dancing and the drinks and the entertainments that sent fountains of sparks into the air and made people gathered around planks and tables and small dark pools inset into the floor sometimes start back and sometimes cheer and sometimes wipe ashes and soot off their faces. Harry knew that George used the place as one of the prime testing grounds for the newest Wheezes. There was always someone who would try anything at the Cycling Celebration.
A broad flight of shallow steps led down from the entrance where Harry stood—not the only one, as the constant rush of banging doors and windows from other directions showed. Harry turned and strode down them, not bothering to hide his scar. In fact, as a few people glanced up at him in interest (there was also always someone at the Cycling Celebration looking for something new), he cast a minor charm that swished his hair back and revealed it.
Someone gasped; someone else made a low, hungry sound that fired Harry’s blood to hear it. He pretended to ignore them and worked his way towards one of the numerous tables that contained a lot to drink and rather less to eat, breath coming slightly faster in excitement as he imagined the way that they would stare at him.
And that at least some of them would want. There were people out there, idiots, who imagined that somehow sleeping with the Chosen One would be different from anyone else they’d ever slept with. Let them think about it, let them dream about it. Harry had always avoided them.
Now he would welcome even their touch. In fact, that might be more useful, since it would irritate Malfoy more to be rejected for someone so shallow. He probably imagined that what he could offer Harry was not shallow, somehow.
He reached the table and ordered “the hottest drink you have.” The man there, with bright red hair and a dragon tattoo in full flight across his cheek, considered him a minute, and then grinned.
“In what sense?” he asked.
“All the senses,” Harry said firmly, listening as the crowd behind him shifted and someone moved closer. Then he was temporarily deafened by someone screaming from behind him as their game or trick blew up in their face. He couldn’t hear any more longing words, but he thought he could feel the longing stares.
“A drink to match the drinker,” the man said, and bowed his head a little before he turned away to snatch up glasses and pour different kinds of alcohol together. Harry leaned his elbows on the table, a block of white marble, or some more common stone enchanted to resemble marble, the height of his chest, and turned to watch the crowd.
Someone was near him, wearing powder blue robes, and Harry looked up with a smile of welcome—
And Malfoy bent down over him, one arm sliding behind his shoulders, mouth arranged in a smirk, lips parted, and fury in his eyes.
“Did you think that you were less mine because you came here?” he whispered.
Harry, in that delicious moment of poised dizziness before he chose which direction to shatter, could think only, Challenge accepted.

*

            unneeded: Harry wasn’t really thinking of it as a prank war, more a ruse like an ambush to arrest Malfoy. I think he’s thinking differently now, though!

            And yes, Malfoy is creepy.

            SP777: I really have no idea, no.

            But hey, Draco got to see them this time!

            toby: Thank you! I hope you like this chapter.

            AlterEquis: Since it’s in Harry’s POV, I can only really let that information out when Harry finds out.

            But I promise, Thorin is more than enough of a doofus to be convinced Malfoy’s public appearance without needing to be paid by him!
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