Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Home From the Hill	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Lucius Views: 5712 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
- 1-Home From the Hill
- 2-Part Two
- 1
- 2
Title: Home From the Hill
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Eventual Harry/Lucius, past Lucius/Narcissa
Warnings: Some light angst, some violence, implied torture
Rating: R
Wordcount: This part 3300
Summary: Harry finds it a strange world, where he keeps visiting Lucius Malfoy out of his own free will even when the necessity has stopped.
Author’s Notes: This is an Advent fic for alafaye, who gave me the prompt:
-either Snape/Harry/Draco or Lucius/Harry
-not too much angst (I know, I know; you do angst so very well)
-Prompt: welcome home kiss.
The title is from Robert Louis Stevenson’s Requiem: “Here he lies where he long’d to be;/ Home is the sailor, home from the sea,/ And the hunter home from the hill.”
This will be a two-shot.
Home From the Hill
The first time Harry came to disturb Lucius Malfoy in the middle of his magnificent, lonely house arrest, it was because he needed information about the Lestranges.
Harry waited in front of Malfoy Manor’s doors after his knock. The knock had been answered by a house-elf who had stared at him, squeaked, and whisked out of sight. Harry had no idea if that meant he would be getting someone to talk to him soon, or not. So he waited, and at last the door opened again, and Lucius stood there, staring at him.
Harry stared back. He could admit—revelation of the last few months that he’d fought silent, bitter battles with in his nights alone—that Lucius was well worth looking at. His hair was not as long as it had been, but on the other hand, it wasn’t lank and unwashed the way it had looked during the trials, either. It shone almost pure white, and the cane he clutched, a new silver one with a head like a rearing cobra, complemented the severity of his dark robes.
“What can I help you with, Mr. Potter?”
Harry cleared his throat a little. “We’re still searching for the Lestranges. I thought you might know where they’re hiding.”
“I assure you, they are not here.”
Lucius almost hissed the words, and Harry stepped back with his hands up. “Okay, okay. But you know them best of all the people who are free of Azkaban. I thought you might have some ideas about where they’re likely to go.”
Lucius held still for a moment, studying him. “You could interview my wife.”
“I did try,” Harry admitted with a grimace. “She won’t return any of my owls.”
“How similar we are,” Lucius said, and then turned and swirled into the Manor before Harry could make some sort of startled comment. “You might as well enter and sit down, Mr. Potter. This could be a long discussion.”
Malfoy Manor looked different from the last time Harry had seen it. He supposed that wasn’t a surprise; almost any place would look different with Voldemort gone. But he wondered at how light the heavy wooden frames of portraits, and the dark doors, and the gilt and silver ornaments, seemed.
Lucius settled him in a sitting room that was so spare Harry almost checked to make sure something in the doorframe wasn’t a Portkey. It had two upright chairs, white and expensively uncomfortable, in front of the fireplace. It had a table in between them that balanced on three legs and had depressions for saucers. And that was all.
The tea was expensive, too, some kind of flavor that Harry didn’t recognize but which had an edge of oranges. He inhaled it and put the saucer down in the nearest depression, studying Lucius in silence.
Lucius spent a moment studying his own tea with the silence of someone who had all the time in the world. Then he looked back up. His eyes could still cut, Harry saw. “Explain to me why you are the one searching for the Lestranges.”
Harry’s Auror training had told him that he should be the one asking the questions, not answering, but he found himself disregarding that and answering anyway. “Most of the rest of the Ministry doesn’t care about them anymore. They caused some trouble right after the war, and everyone was all keen to arrest them then. But now they tell me that they’ve disappeared and I should only pursue active cases.”
“What makes you think that the Ministry isn’t right?”
Harry silently took out the letter he’d received a week ago and held it out to Lucius. He took it and smoothed it flat. A second later, an expression of quiet disgust coiled across his face.
Harry relaxed. His instructors had told him that he trusted too much to his instincts, and he had to analyze all the evidence, not decide someone was guilty or not guilty based on their expressions. But this time, Harry knew he had been right. Lucius looked too sincere to be conspiring with the Lestranges.
“Disgusting,” Lucius commented, passing it back. “But then again, Rabastan usually was.” He hesitated. “And that is definitely his handwriting.”
“That’s what I thought.” Harry folded the letter up again and tried to ignore the conviction that it was silently staining his skin. “So. Anything you could tell me would be appreciated. And then I’ll go away and stop bothering you.”
“Does it look as though you are bothering me, Mr. Potter?”
It was “Auror Potter,” technically, but Harry didn’t think he needed to remind Lucius of that. He just shook his head. “I don’t know what you do to make house arrest less boring. I could have interrupted you in the middle of brewing a potion or something.”
“Yes. Well.” Lucius looked into his tea again, looked out the window, and then turned back to Harry with a cold spark in his face. “Something like this is a welcome diversion to make my life hold less of a certain frozen feeling.”
Harry nodded, and then listened carefully to Lucius describe some of the ancestral Lestrange properties the brothers might have gone to. He had a charmed quill that wrote the notes down. Lucius glanced at it, but didn’t speak directly to it the way Harry had found most people did. His eyes always came back to Harry’s face.
Harry smiled when they were through and stood up, oddly relaxed. “Thank you, Mr. Malfoy. I appreciate your time and effort.”
“You have a right to it if anyone does,” said Lucius unexpectedly, and the way his eyes narrowed on Harry told Harry that he was thinking mainly of something else. “Do come back and see me again, Mr. Potter.”
Harry blinked at that, but nodded as politely as he could and left the house. No elves escorted him out.
Harry found himself hoping that Lucius didn’t sit by the fire and stare into his tea for the rest of the day. Harry wanted better for him.
  And that is strange enough.
The Lestranges awaited. Harry shook off his strange mood and thoughts and turned on his heel outside the Manor’s gates, hopefully Apparating to meet them.
*
“What brings you to me this time, Mr. Potter?”
Harry blinked at that, and struggled for a second to recall the last time he’d been at the Manor. Oh, right. When he’d had that disturbing letter from Rabastan, and he’d come to see whether Lucius knew anything about where they could be hiding. Harry had found and arrested them the next day.
Harry dismissed the thought. It wasn’t important.
“I need some of your blood,” he told Lucius. “Will you give it to me?”
Lucius’s face had drained of the odd light that momentarily illuminated it with his first sentence, and now it looked grim and pinched and old. “Perhaps, if you tell me why you want it.”
“Draco is missing,” said Harry, and would have gone on speaking, ignoring the way that the rain dripped down his shoulders and made his hair cling to his forehead, but Lucius uttered a disgusted sound and dragged him through the front door.
“Come in. Sit down. Tell me how it happened and why I wasn’t informed of this.”
Harry moved with Lucius, because that would hurt less at the moment, and then sat down in the chair Lucius showed him and sighed. It wasn’t the same sitting room as last time, since it was larger and grander and had plush chairs instead of small expensive ones. Harry was glad of that. At least he wouldn’t get blood all over something that probably cost more than he would make in three years.
“You’re hurt.”
Harry nodded shortly. “I was trying to stop them when they took Draco.”
“Why would you be involved at all?” Then Lucius held his hand up and shook his head. “No. Let me have your wounds tended first, and then you can tell me.”
Harry ground his teeth. “Let me have your blood before you do that. It might not work for long.”
Lucius gave a low chuckle that made Harry start. It seemed to start somewhere around the bottom of Lucius’s chest before it bubbled its way to the top, and it was having an effect on the bottom of Harry’s chest, as well.
  Now is not the time for that, Harry told himself firmly, and shoved the sensation away.
“Nothing can block the blood ritual I’ll show you,” Lucius said confidently. “But you need to be in better shape when we go after them.” A house-elf had arrived with what looked like a small glass case of bandages and potions, and Lucius opened it, hands moving with assured skill.
“We?”
“You thought I would let an already wounded Auror go off and face my son’s kidnappers alone?” Lucius studied Harry and clucked his tongue. “I thought many things, Mr. Potter, but not that you were stupid.”
So that confirmed he did know Harry was an Auror and was just not using the title to fuck with him. Harry sighed. “You don’t have combat training—”
“You forget what I was.”
Harry shut up. Yes, he supposed being a Death Eater would be a special form of combat training, at that.
Lucius tended to Harry’s wounds—a long, shallow slash down the side of his face, and a deeper cut on his shoulder—himself, which made Harry blink at him. But Lucius said nothing about the house-elf who still stood there holding the kit open. He just tended them, his face intent, and then stepped back and nodded at Harry.
Harry sighed and mopped some more water and blood out of his eyes. “Draco was kidnapped an hour ago. I was supposed to meet with him because he contacted the Ministry saying that he was being threatened into participating in illegal brewing activity, and he had finally decided to turn on the people threatening him, but he wanted my protection. They showed up as we were negotiating the terms of his surrender. They fought me and snatched him. I’ve spent the past hour running around the countryside after them trying to find them.”
“Why would you think you knew where to find them?”
“Because one of them mentioned the name Nott.” Harry leaned back and looked up at Lucius. “So I went to every house I could think of or look up that had some connection to the Nott family, but he wasn’t at any of them.”
Lucius looked down at him with calm, deep eyes. Harry stared wearily back. His head ached. His neck ached. His back ached. Apparating wildly from place to place took its toll on him, at least as much as the battle had.
“You moved quickly,” was all Lucius said in the end, and handed the things he hadn’t used back to the house-elf. “Well. It’s possible that powerful magic, such as my comrade Trajan Nott used during the war, could block most blood rituals. But not the one I intend to use.”
Harry nodded shortly. “Then you’ll give me your blood?”
“I’ll draw it myself,” said Lucius. “Wait here while I fetch the implements I’ll need.”
He departed in a swirl of robes, even as Harry was opening his mouth to ask why he couldn’t simply have the elves gather them. Harry closed his mouth and drummed the flat of his hand on the chair arm.
  I’m sure he wants to rescue Draco even more than I do, he tried to remind himself. It doesn’t mean that he’s taking unnecessary time. Maybe there’s a special reason elves can’t touch these ritual tools.
When Lucius came back in with a crystal rod and a silver knife, he came alone, which seemed to confirm that he needed house-elves not to touch his tools. Harry watched in interest as Lucius laid the tip of the crystal rod to his arm and began to murmur something over it without reaching for his wand.
Lucius was in the middle of the chant when he nodded sharply at the silver knife. Harry blinked, then got up and came over. He’d thought Lucius was going to do everything himself. And Harry had never done this particular ritual before. He hoped he wouldn’t mess it up.
The way he brought the silver knife slashing down and drew Lucius’s blood seemed to indicate he’d done it right, though. Lucius’s blood stained the crystal rod deep crimson, and Lucius began to chant again, waving yet another knife, this one with a black handle, over the rod and making the blood practically sit up and do tricks.
Harry watched the swirls of red around the crystal rod, and wondered.
After all that, it seemed to happen in a blur, it was so fast. Lucius made a soft, satisfied sound, and shot a hand out. Harry almost put the knife in it, thinking that was what he was looking for, but instead, Lucius snatched his arm and dragged Harry along on the sudden journey that gripped them. It was faster than any Portkey Harry knew, but it was more like that than Apparition, whirling them along instead of squeezing them.
And then they were inside a broad room with an arched, vaulted ceiling and plenty of places to hide, and Harry was ducking one spell and firing back with a Stunner, and Lucius moved beside him like a great beast, calmly casting curses.
They found Draco in time. He was chained down to an altar with a silver five-pointed star around him that made Lucius exclaim and turn to face his son’s kidnappers. Harry kept his back deliberately turned while he freed Draco from the chains and made sure he didn’t have any spells on him that would activate when Harry helped him sit up.
That which he couldn’t see Lucius doing, he didn’t have to arrest him for.
Lucius told him, “It’s over,” at last. Harry turned around, and stepped out of the way as Lucius walked over to face Draco.
Harry knew their relationship hadn’t been the best lately. He kept his head politely turned while he went to collect the kidnappers and Stun them and bind them and get ready to report their numbers and location to the Ministry.
When he came back, Draco was asleep in his father’s arms. Lucius stood there gazing down at him, his own blond hair falling and swaying in a rhythm even slower than his blinking eyes.
Harry stood there looking at them in silence before he cleared his throat. His first thought was that he was jealous of Draco for having a father, someone who would come rescue him and hold him that way.
But he could admit later, in bed, that he was jealous of Draco for resting specifically in Lucius’s arms, and that was closer to the truth.
*
“Mr. Potter. To what do I owe the pleasure this time?”
Harry opened his eyes slowly. He turned his head, and stared. He was resting on a thick rug in front of a fire so hot that it felt as if it could actually melt the Frostbite Curse out of his limbs. That would be a first, he thought, as he stretched hugely and rolled towards it. He closed his eyes again. He didn’t care if this was a delusion or a dream, as long as it let him rest.
“Mr. Potter.”
  Maybe not a delusion, with that voice. Harry turned his head and opened hazy eyes to see Lucius bending over him, frowning at him. Harry sighed. “Sorry to inconvenience you, Lucius,” he croaked. “I was—somewhere that I don’t remember exactly, being tortured. I decided to try Apparating when they moved me from one room to another. I thought—I wasn’t thinking. I wanted to try for somewhere safe, and—”
“The house-elves found you outside my gate,” Lucius finished, his voice absolutely devoid of such simplicities as tone and inflection. “Strange that you consider Malfoy Manor safe, Mr. Potter.”
“Huh.” Harry looked at the fire again. “It’s a long time since I’ve been warm.” He stretched out a shaking hand, and sighed as some of the eternal cold did seem to melt away. “How strange.” He closed his eyes again.
“Mr. Potter. Harry.” Lucius’s voice sounded closer this time, as though he was crouched down. “I need you to tell me. Where are you hurt?”
“Frostbite Curse bothers me the most,” Harry said, and then stuttered out a laugh when Lucius impatiently shook his shoulder. “But. I hurt everywhere. I can’t remember the last time I didn’t hurt…”
“Yes, you’ve been gone some time.” Lucius sounded grim. “And I think what you need right now is care. But first—Finite Incantatem.”
Harry gasped as the shield of cold that the Frostbite Curse had laid over him melted, and languid, relaxing warmth rolled through him instead, as if he’d been dipped in melted batter. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” he said, and beamed harder at Lucius. Then he started to shiver.
He remembered little after that. There were house-elves bathing him at one point, he knew that. Harry thought about being embarrassed, then reminded himself that the torturers had seen all his bits at one point or another, and curled up tighter into the blissful existence that was cloths gently scrubbing him, and delicious food being popped down his throat bite by bite.
When he lay in what felt like an actual bed (Harry couldn’t help exploring the sides with his hands, and making soft seal-like noises as he marveled), Lucius came into the room. Harry knew him from the sound of his steps and turned his head, smiling. His eyes felt exhausted from the loss of his glasses and he couldn’t see him that well, but he felt the moment when Lucius’s hand descended on his forehead and smoothed away some of the sweat there.
“Inform,” Harry asked around a huge yawn, “Ministry?”
“I did.” Lucius’s voice was quiet. “They wanted you to remain under observation in St. Mungo’s.”
“No. Want stay here.” Harry didn’t care that he sounded like a little child. He deserved to stay here, after everything that had happened.
“I told them you were too injured to be moved,” Lucius said. “Which is certainly true.” A pause. “Mr. Potter, what did they do to you?”
Harry shivered again. “Same people who took Draco. Don’t wanna talk about it.”
“Then you do not have to,” said Lucius, and so firmly that Harry almost thought he meant that Harry didn’t have to tell anything to the Healers and other people, either. “Rest.” His hand moved and trailed slowly through Harry’s hair, Harry’s clean hair.
Harry grabbed Lucius’s wrist and held it there. “Pet me,” he demanded.
“So I will,” Lucius said, and his voice was so soft that Harry could pretend he said other things, things he wanted to hear. Harry closed his eyes and fell asleep with a smile on his face to the soft stroking of his hair.
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Home From the Hill