xx Chapter 1: Wicked Games xx
"Excuse me—how have I finally gotten your stupid Gryffindor friends to figure this out but you still don't get that this is my seat?"
Harry cringed and moved his broom out of his grumpy boyfriend's spot under the snickering gazes of his supposed friends.
"Good boy," the blonde said, tossing his hair as he sat down.
"Ponce," Harry mouthed at him, but Draco only grinned and squeezed his leg under the table.
"Why are you working on homework at dinner? Homework for later. Dinner time for eating," Harry said slowly, as though trying to teach a Troll. Draco was not impressed, looking at Harry from under a flat brow.
"Not homework. Wedding stuff," Draco said in the same tone.
"What is it?" Seamus questioned, looking over Draco's shoulder.
"Our guest list. Can you believe I have to have it approved by nine tonight? I'm not even halfway through thanks to some little rogue sucking up all my free time."
"Sucking it up indeed," Harry responded, earning an elbow to his ribs.
"Harry, I have to talk to you," Neville called tremulously, but then winced and seemed to change his mind about interrupting. Harry chose to ignore it to focus on something a bit more important.
"How long could it possibly take you to read through that thing? You've still got three hours," Harry question, already dreading the response based on Draco's raised eyebrow.
"Three hours isn't nearly enough time! Do you have any idea how long this thing is?"
"Actually, no. But if you could fit it at the end of your parchment roll, then it can't be too bad, right?" Harry asked hopefully.
"End? Harry, this whole parchment roll is the guest list!" Draco cried incredulously.
"The whole thing?! That's got to be over a meter long!"
"I'd put my money on two meters," Dean decided.
"Shut up, Dean," Draco growled.
"You said it was going to be a small affair! Family and friends only!" Harry accused, pulling Draco's attention back to him.
"This is small! Do you have any idea how long I've worked to whittle it down to the size it's at now?!"
"No, but obviously not long enough! That's at least twice as long as it should be."
"You want me to go through and cut half the list?! Impossible! It was hard enough getting it to where I'm at!"
"Maybe this is something to discuss later," Hermione suggested, shooting a furtive glace at Neville for some reason. Draco turned back to his food and sulked for a second before eyeing Harry's broom and asking in moping tones, "Are you going for a fly after dinner?" as a way to change the subject.
"I've got practice," Harry responded stonily.
Draco's hand stopped dead reaching for food and turned to Harry anew, filled with a violent mix of shock and anger.
"We have the thing tonight!" he cried out with angry petulance.
"I told you I couldn't go to that."
"When?"
"The last time you made me skip practice to go! I told you 'I'm never skipping practice to go to one of these things again'!"
"I didn't know you meant it!"
"I mean everything I've ever said, ever, because I'm Harry Potter."
"Last week after we did it three times in a row you said that we were never having sex again, and I know you didn't mean that," Draco hissed angrily.
"Well I meant this. We've got the last game against Ravenclaw in two weeks and then that's it, it's over, my days as Seeker are finito, and I'll be damned if I lose the last real Quidditch match of my life."
"How melodramatic can you get? I think our wedding is a bit more important than your stupid Quidditch match!"
"You take that back!"
"I've had it up to here with you ditching your wifely duties to go play big Quidditch captain on the pitch!"
"Maybe you should get a friend so you can insult them instead of your future husband when you're this grumpy. As for me, I have a Quidditch practice to get to."
Draco glared at Harry hard, body expanding with a long, angry breath, but instead of using that breath to curse Harry into the next millennia, he hissed, "Talk. Now," and shoved himself away from the table, stomping angrily out of the Great Hall.
Harry watched him go angrily, trying to calm himself down before he said something he'd really regret.
He only just realized that Neville was trying to get his attention.
"What is it, Neville?" he asked, angry and exasperated with being interrupted in his angry thoughts.
Although Neville had only recently gotten out of the hospital ward from his holidays-fiasco, he had been doing nothing but getting on Harry's nerves since then. He was quieter than usual, spending more of his time with Hannah Abbot, a girl he clearly seemed to fancy, but when he was around Harry he would try to start up a conversation that was obviously going to be highly embarrassing judging by Neville's intense blush. In all, Harry was relieved that Hermione and Ron always seemed to step in and prevent the delivery of whatever awkward question Neville had for him.
"It's nothing, Harry, Neville's just being silly," Ron growled, mostly in Neville's direction.
"Even after all that?!" Neville asked Ron angrily. "Harry!"
"Don't do something I know you will regret, Neville," Hermione said through her teeth.
"I don't care. Harry," Neville began, but Harry shook his head. He couldn't let Draco simmer, that was for sure. Given a head start the blonde always used his time wisely: carefully choosing a counter-argument to every possibility of recourse Harry could come up with.
"Not now, Neville. Merlin!" Harry hissed, standing although he still wasn't calm enough for his liking.
Draco was pacing in a hallway off the Great Hall and glowered at Harry as he approached, broomstick in hand. Still, Harry had gotten pretty good at reading Draco, and he thought the blonde looked more petulant than murderous.
"What is your problem?" Draco questioned, but rather than bitchiness Harry thought he detected more frustration in his tone.
He took a deep breath before he responded. "This match against Ravenclaw is the last game of Quidditch that I will ever play. I want it to be good—more than good, I want it to be great. To do that I need to practice. My team needs to practice."
"Yeah, well this is the only wedding you're going to have for the rest of your life, if you're lucky, so I think that trumps Quidditch."
"It's just that the last time I had to skip Quidditch practice for this crap we were there for two hours, and at the end of it there was no need for us at all! With all these wedding planners and then your mother, pretty much all we have to do is show up and say 'I do'."
"If that's true than please, explain to me why I've been up to my ass in wedding work. Just because you haven't done anything doesn't mean there's nothing to do!"
"You're just busy because you don't know to leave well enough alone. You're a total micromanager!"
"And you're a lazy jerk!"
"So what, I'm supposed to skip another Quidditch practice in order to stare off into space for two hours?"
"Oh what do you want me to do—go alone?"
"Yes!"
Draco grabbed the front of his robes in one angry fist and at first he thought the blonde was going to punch him but instead he shouted, "We're supposed to be a team!"
Draco seemed embarrassed at the vehemence of his words, and released Harry's robes tetchily. He clenched his jaw before he continued, looking at Harry's knees instead of his face.
"This might be your last year on the Quidditch team, but it's your first year on my team, and I want you there from the beginning," he mumbled.
Harry looked over his future husband, trying not to break into a loud "Awww!" The blonde always looked much smaller when he was embarrassed—he had a habit of drawing his whole body inwards, and it was amazing the difference it made.
"That was so tacky," Harry finally said and Draco couldn't help but laugh.
"Shut up—you've said worse." Harry caught Draco's arm as the blonde hit him with a half-hearted punch to his ribs and drew the boy in to his chest, resting his head against the white-gold locks.
"You owe me big time, you manipulative punk."
"Anything you want," Draco said happily, hugging him around the middle. He pulled back in slight confusion when Harry jumped slightly.
"Think of something?" asked Draco in a sultry voice when he saw Harry's face.
"Mmmhm. You're going to have one long night," Harry said in his gravelly, bedroom voice. Draco shivered inwardly, but hoped it wasn't obvious. But as dense as Harry was he always seemed to pick up on these things.
"I hate to break it to you, babe, but that's not really a punishment."
Harry's smile widened. "I've got something a bit more involved in mind." When Draco looked at him curiously he added, "Let's just say I need to train you to sit up and beg."
When it dawned on Draco what Harry meant the brunette kissed him quickly and said "Well, I'm going to go change before we're off," in jaunty tones, leaving Draco standing blankly.
XXX
Draco thought that, rather than becoming easier, it…and he…was becoming harder with every passing minute under his mother's icy gaze. She was too observant for her not to know what was having him twitching and fidgeting in his seat, but damned if the woman let anything move beyond a snail's pace. This was punishment, definitely. But for what?
He couldn't focus on anything going on around him, yet he was intensely aware of Harry in a way so excruciating he was thinking it must be Dark Magic. Harry shifted in his chair again—obviously uncomfortable in the hard, straight-back Malfoy chairs—and Draco's body tightened around its core, watching the boy from his peripheral.
He wiped his pale palms on his robes—they were slick.
What was this? Was he nervous? Or was this simply a new form of unbearable excitation?
Draco agreed to whatever was offered up by his mother or the wedding planning coordinator: Miss Gates. He knew that in either hands this wedding was going to be very well taken care of. Chloe Gates seemed to match his mother in astuteness, ruthlessness, and gritty, no-nothing competency. She looked like a bouncer you scoffed at in the moment before everything went painfully black. Although Draco normally felt gleeful being in both their commanding presences at once, right now he'd rather be sunbathing with a Blast-Ended Skrewt. For the moment he agreed with Harry that the boys were completely superfluous to the process.
He glanced at Harry for one moment, making sure that the boy wasn't watching him. He was about to doubt himself and knew that the brunette would be able to tell if he were being attentive. Luckily, Harry and Lucius seemed to be having a conversation entirely made of silent eye-rolls.
"Did you have to go through all this shite with your wedding?" Harry was eye-asking.
"All this and more," was Lucius' disgruntled eye-reply.
Draco turned his head away and let himself doubt.
He wasn't necessary here. Harry especially wasn't necessary here. Harry was…God forbid…right. (But how could he get them out of this situation without mentioning that?) He was a micromanager. He knew that Gates and his mother were perfectly capable of putting this whole thing together splendidly, he knew that all the finer details he cared about could fit into one piece of parchment and from there on out it would be Gates and her team's job to put those wishes into reality—not his. He knew this and yet…he couldn't stop himself. For whatever manic reason, some obsessive part of him wanted to be informed of every little drama, every little quirk to be worked around, every difficulty, every success and every delay.
His mother didn't mind it, she said she'd gone through a similar phase during her wedding, but his father was poignantly disturbed by his avid care for the process. As when he'd walked in on Draco playing wardrobe director with Crabbe and Goyle in his mother's closet when they were 5, Lucius seemed to be readjusting his mental expectations of Draco's masculinity. At five Lucius' mind had tentatively crossed out the Future-Wife he'd always imagined for Future-Draco. Now he seemed to be wondering what else there was to cross out. Probably the image of Harry in an apron bringing Draco his slippers after a hard day at the office.
Cares about weddings=definitely the woman in this relationship, Lucius' mind seemed to be pointing out.
Draco pouted.
That was unfair. Just because he cared about this wedding didn't mean he was any less a man than Harry.
In his head Draco came up with a list of why Harry was the woman.
He cries more. He gets mushy more often. He's more concerned for others.
Draco thought those were substantial enough to validate him. He, after all, was dark and sinister and manipulative. Harry was good and virtuous and touching the small of Draco's back.
Draco's entire body went stiff and he turned to stare into the daring, sinister, predatory eyes of his future wife. Harry slunk rather than just moved closer, twisting his neck forward, letting his lips brush the shell of Draco's ear as he whispered, "When we get home, that smug look on your face is going to be the first thing to come off."
Draco's spine nearly shivered him out of his chair.
"If that's all, Mom, we really have to go," Draco said in one strained breath, trying to disguise his shiver by jumping straight out of his chair.
Narcissa looked pleased—she must know that he had been struggling for composure for the last hour and had finally failed. Except this didn't feel like failure, so he must have given in—and being with Harry for this long had taught him just how blissful giving in could feel.
In his mind he planned out exactly how long it would take him to unlock the drawer with the deep-green collar still in its pristine white case…especially with his fingers trembling the way they were…
X
A/N: Holy shit it's been a while. What can I say? I'm one lazy SOB. I do also have the added excuse of being in France right now...but it really is more due to the laziness problem. Hope this installment doesn't suck too bad, and also doesn't make anyone start angst-crying.