Title: Starfire Nights
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Draco (background Lucius/Narcissa and Ron/Hermione)
Rating: R
Warnings: Profanity, sex, cross-dressing (not as a sexual kink), homophobia on the part of the wizarding world, AU of my fic Changing of the Guard.
Wordcount: ~34,000
Summary: This is an AU of my fic Changing of the Guard. What would happen if Harry and Draco had met six years earlier than they did in that fic, in the middle of a series of fantastic Midsummer's Eve parties? What would happen if Draco figured out Harry's secret almost immediately, and did a little judicious blackmail—while Harry did a little judicious charming?
Author's Notes: This was written for duchessa, who won the auction for a fanfic I offered at help_haiti and made a generous donation to the cause of helping Haiti rebuild. She asked for an AU of Changing of the Guard where Harry and Draco meet under different circumstances and Draco figures out who Harry is. If you haven't read CotG, you should before reading this fic, but these are the basics: Harry is gay (though no one except Ron and Hermione knows that) and pretends to be a weak and pathetic recluse. In reality, he is the owner and sole employee of Metamorphosis, a business that promises the "perfect stranger" for every situation, and an expert in Transfigurations, glamours, and other magic that makes him into hundreds of different people. No one knows this secret.
Starfire Nights
Arms lifted high above his head, a whisper of magic along the underside of them to turn all the dark hair a soft and sparkling blonde. A pause, a glance in the mirror, and he adjusted the color; it had turned too bright, an unnatural gold that might attract attention. Perhaps it wouldn't, but why should he take the chance? He hardly wanted anyone to learn the secret he was protecting, and, at the same time, flaunting by venturing out in public.
Albeit so heavily disguised that no one can recognize me, he admitted as he turned the rest of his arm and leg hair golden. A Depilatory Charm on his legs followed. Then he cast the Lengthening Charm on his hair, wincing as the tight curls unwound into looser ones that tumbled to his shoulders.
For a moment, Harry smiled into the mirror. His face already looked half-alien, framed as it was by the long, bright yellow hair. He shook his head, and the hair flew forwards and against his jaw.
Ah, yes. I knew I forgot something. He tapped his wand against his jaw, muttering the Depilatory Charm again, and the hair there was tugged out in a series of small sparking pains.
He laid down the wand for a moment and reached for the Muggle contacts that he preferred to use on his eyes when he didn't have long to prepare the spells that would change the color. Those spells were risky anyway, especially for someone as near-sighted as Harry. The last thing he wanted was to end up with vision even more damaged than it already was.
His eyes watered as he carefully guided the contacts in, and he had to start over again with the left eye, but at last it was done, and the stranger in the mirror had blue eyes. Not too vivid, of course. Harry had quickly found out that when he made his eyes as bright as they were naturally, even if they were a different color, they drew all sorts of unwanted attention. No one had ever recognized him as Harry Potter, but he didn't need people tripping over themselves and asking him to dance, either. The goal was to be nodded to, but not noticed.
Harry paused a minute to stand still and simply breathe. The exaltation of being able to pass unnoticed through wizarding society, secure behind a hundred different faces, while everyone else thought he was cooped up in Grimmauld Place, made him dizzy when he thought about it.
Then he shook his head, opened his eyes, and returned to his preparations. Spells didn't work as well on his curse scar as they should, but he did shorten and thin it, and the makeup he planned to use to make his skin paler would take care of the rest. He softened the angles of his face, clucking under his breath at the pain as the bones slid and shifted. You'd think I'd be used to this by now, as often as I've done it.
His nose looked unbalanced with the new lines of his cheeks and jaw. Harry made it smaller and flatter, and then choked as the spell interfered with his breathing. It took a few hasty passes of the wand to correct that.
He'd had a lot of practice, yes, but four years wasn't enough to guarantee perfection.
After that was the makeup—careful touches to his forehead, eyelids, cheeks, and earlobes. The lipstick was meant to add a gentle red color to his lips, like the shade of the blue contacts in his eyes. Harry picked up the gold-and-jade earrings that lay on the dresser, simple knots that became more intricate the more one looked, and slid them through the holes in his ears that weren't there all the time.
Then he faced the mirror again and held up his arms, more careful than ever as he murmured the necessary spells. Changing his nose might interfere with his breathing; changing his chest could interfere with his internal organs.
He had practiced since last time, however, and now his skin bulged and swelled without effort and almost without pain. It ended, and Harry was left staring at a pair of small breasts. He smiled. It would be enough, combined with everything else, to enable him to pass as a woman tonight; he wasn't about to change himself below the waist unless it was an emergency, and perhaps not even then. He was better at graceful excuses to avoid sex than he was at altering his genitals.
Harry shuddered a little from the memory of what had happened when he last tried that, then winked at his reflection and turned towards the bed, where his clothes for the evening were laid out.
Perfect.
It was Harry Potter who had made the preparations, but it was Miranda Goldreyer who Apparated to the Wades' Midsummer Eve party that evening and gathered her skirts to mount the stairs.
*
Draco sighed. He forgot now why he had decided to attend the Wades' party. Most of the pure-bloods who would be here weren't friends of his, or even people who had attended Hogwarts. They had been privately educated, or gone to Beuaxbatons or Durmstrang. All he would have to do here would be to talk, dance, drink, eat, and perhaps conclude a few bargains or pick up a few interesting bits of gossip if he was lucky.
Then Draco remembered what he would be doing if he was still at home, and shook his head, snorting quietly at himself. Boring, perhaps, but less so than sitting around and listening to Father making plans for me that I can never participate in.
Draco drifted among the Wades' guests, picking up drinks and taking small sips of them whenever a waiter slid past with a tray, watching the swirling gowns and robes, and listening to conversations that often stopped when he approached. Once he stood behind a tall witch in red robes, Marianne Barrow, because he knew that she wanted to speak against him, and couldn't with him there. Her face was as red as the robes by the time Draco winked at her and turned away.
He was looking around for a suitable dance partner when the crowd slid apart, the way it sometimes would at the right moment, and he saw the most interesting person he'd seen all night.
Draco frankly stared. He didn't mind admitting it, because this witch deserved to be stared at. She was taller than Draco was used to seeing a woman, with long, loose golden hair and a gown of brilliant green silk trimmed with gold. Her earrings were the same color, and she moved with a precise grace that made Draco suspect she'd taken real dancing lessons, not shuffled around on a floor in her parents' house for a few hours once a week when she was sixteen, the way most of the people surrounding him had. Her arms were slim; her face was the home of faint and secret smiles.
Draco saw that she leaned on the arm of a small, shrunken wizard named Ernest Yellson, whom she could have supported more easily, but he dismissed that. This was a woman who made her own decisions. If Draco succeeded in courting her away from Yellson, even if it was only to dance, it was the coward's own fault for not being able to keep her.
He stepped towards her. Her blue eyes fell on him, and widened. Draco had no doubt that she recognized him by hair and profile, if not by sight, but he didn't know what to make of the thoughtful expression that settled over her face a moment later.
If I'd been able to make anything of her right away, she would be boring, Draco thought, and moved forwards again, making no secret that he was coming for her. The woman nodded back, but made no attempt to move, and alerted Yellson only with a touch on his arm.
Draco was bowing to her soon. She didn't appear to think that a curtsey was required. She nudged Yellson with her elbow.
"Oh, um, yes," Yellson muttered, flushing. He knows that he's bloody lucky to have her for a date, Draco thought, but didn't glory in Yellson's discomfort, because that would have meant looking away from the woman. "This is Miranda Goldreyer."
"I haven't heard that family name before," Draco murmured, and extended his hand for Miranda's. She gave it to him. The tingling prickle of her long nails and the warm skin of her palm excited him in a way that nothing had in a long time. And the way she tilted her head and let her lashes fall over her eyes…surely he had once known someone who did that?
I would have remembered if I'd met her before, of course.
"You wouldn't have," Miranda said. "I changed it when my family displeased me. I am the first of the Goldreyers, and I mean to be the last if I can't breed a line that's worthy to succeed me."
"Your family before that?" Draco asked, and felt his interest sharpen so fast it was like swallowing a shard of jagged mirror glass. This was the kind of woman he might take as a bride, when he mustered a proper interest in marriage, and the kind that his father would never agree to him wedding.
"I do not see that such information needs to be given up on the first meeting," Miranda said, her voice ineffably calm. She looked carefully at his forehead and the sweep of his hair back from it, as if they would tell her more than the rest of his face. "Particularly when you cannot gratify me by giving me the name of your family as a surprise in return."
Draco smiled helplessly. This is it. This is what I came here hoping to find, and hardly dared hope I would. Someone interesting.
"I can hope to give you something else, since my name would not please you," he said. "A dance?"
"Of course not," Miranda said, eyes widening as if she had seen something shocking. She didn't withdraw her hand from his, despite that, Draco saw. "I'm here as Ernest's date. I couldn't simply forsake him."
"I'm sure that he wouldn't mind," Draco said, with a smile at Yellson that wasn't nearly as important as the way his hand brushed the side of his robe above his wand.
"I don't dance with people who threaten others," Miranda said. Impossibly, she seemed to have seen the motion of his hand. Draco had made the motion on the opposite side of his body from her, and she had spent the entire time looking steadily into his eyes. Draco stared hard at her, and received back only the cool look that she seemed to have designed to accompany her words.
Yellson snickered a bit and then clung more firmly to her arm, nodding like a puppet. "That's right, Malfoy. Do go away now. You're polluting the air."
Draco felt his nostrils flare, and he took a deliberate step backwards, dropping Miranda's hand as he went. "Perhaps you're afraid to mention the family you came from because you're afraid of how undistinguished they are," he said.
"Do think that if it makes you feel better," Miranda said, her voice as gentle and cool as Draco had tried to make his. "I understand that your family has enough distinguishing marks for anyone." Her eyes flickered to Draco's left arm. His only comfort was that she made the motion too quickly for anyone else to notice her looking, even if they were listening to the conversation. Miranda turned to Yellson and said, "Shall we dance?"
Yellson led her onto the dance floor, pausing to peer spitefully over his shoulder at Draco. But Draco hardly cared about that. He stared after Miranda with his heart hammering so hard that he expected it to shake him from his feet.
How dare she? It's one thing to get mockery from Yellson, who will always be a dog cringing at my feet, but from her, when I honored her with my attention and wasn't even put off by hearing that she came from no family worth mentioning?
I will do something to pay her back for what she did. There must be something I can learn about her past, something that will make her ask me for mercy.
Draco watched as Miranda and Yellson whirled around the dance floor. It annoyed him all the more that there was no visible flaw in her dancing. Her shoes were simple, gold-colored sandals which matched the simplicity of her gown, and there were tiny gems sparking and winking in them like full moons. Perhaps those gems were merely paste instead of the diamonds they looked like, but most people in the room would hardly care about that.
He had to find something else.
He looked at the way Miranda's head loomed over Yellson, and briefly considered trying to humiliate her for her height, something that she must have experienced in the past. But, once again, it didn't have enough of a personal sting. It would have to be her family, he thought. It was the weapon she had willingly handed him, never dreaming that it had an edge. That would make it all the more fitting for him to damage her with it.
Goldreyer wasn't common. There had to be someone who had heard of her. And Draco had made his living since the war carefully setting up a network of contacts that would gradually allow him to establish his own business, independent of his father. There were people at the party who owed him favors.
Draco turned and cut into the crowd like a shark through the waters, mildly amused when he remembered his own earlier thoughts.
No, I cannot say that this party is boring.
*
"Do you think he suspects?" Ernest asked Miranda in a soft voice.
Miranda shook her head, watching over Ernest's shoulder as Malfoy vanished across the room. He was probably drinking some wine to ease his stinging heart, she thought sardonically. It was the sort of thing that he would try when his attempts to humiliate someone else didn't work.
"I'm sure that no one suspects I'm here as your bodyguard and not your date," she murmured. "You play your part well."
Ernest nodded, but his face was tight with anxiety anyway. "Don't say those words aloud, please."
Now that they were dancing, and involved in an activity that he'd endured months of training for and could practically do in his sleep, Harry allowed his mask to relax a bit. Vanishing completely into Miranda's personality tired him in a way that rarely happened with most of his personas. She was unlike him in ways that were far from obvious. Her disdain, her pride, her unobtrusive way of being the center of attention…Harry was already glad that most of the personalities people rented from Metamorphosis could vanish without trace later, because trying to be Miranda for days would have exhausted him.
Ernest sighed and whirled Harry around the floor with ease. At least he was a graceful dancer, Harry thought. He was also a paranoid whiner who had contacted the Manager of Metamorphosis—whom he didn't know was Harry—and demanded a beautiful, female bodyguard who could pose as a perfectly ordinary date. He was convinced that someone was tracking him, trying to kill him, because he had refused to sell his prize-winning Abraxan mare. Harry privately thought Ernest's fears ridiculous, but he was paid to be other people on these missions, not express his opinion of his clients.
And no one knows.
Harry smiled. That was the best part of the whole thing. The world thought they knew Harry Potter, and thus thought he'd spent the last five years immured in Grimmauld Place after a distinctly unsatisfactory attempt to make himself part of ordinary life in the wizarding world, forever counting his past glories while his magic faded. None of them knew that Harry originated the rumors as an extra layer of protection. Even if someone did start to suspect the secret behind Metamorphosis, that one person was everyone involved with it, they would laugh to scorn the idea that Harry Potter could be that person.
No one knows me.
It was safety, it was a job, and it was a way for him to help people without being an Auror, which had been a disastrous experiment. And it was glory and art and freedom to him.
Ernest tapped his shoulder, and Harry woke Miranda again and dove back into the sea of her soul. She turned around and followed Ernest's gaze to a far corner of the room.
"Do you see someone there that you recognize?" she asked, making sure that her voice stayed calm and that her movements never slowed as she and Ernest whirled through the last steps of the dance.
"There's a man staring at me," Ernest hissed. "He's been staring at me for the last few minutes, and I don't like it."
"It might be harmless, but I'll be on my guard," Miranda said, and took his hand and led him away from the dance floor as the music ended. Ernest made sure to hide behind her as they fetched food from the overloaded table in the front of this room. The Wades, like many of the other pure-blood families who celebrated the days leading up to Midsummer's Eve, had so much food that the sight of it made Miranda slightly sick. She had grown up poor. There was no reason to have five kinds of cheese, six kinds of wine, and ten kinds of bread available on the mere chance that someone might be bored with one kind. And since they had chosen bread, cheese, and wine in the first place because they wrongly imagined it was the kind of meal "simple" people ate, she could barely persuade herself to swallow it.
But eating in front of Ernest would persuade him to eat, as well, and probably calm him down. Miranda turned and faced the crowd, keeping an eye out for the man Ernest said had been watching him, and saw a fairly nondescript wizard moving slowly towards them.
Miranda narrowed her eyes and palmed her wand. Perhaps Ernest had been more right than he knew. There was a slightly crazed look in the man's eyes that she knew well. Her cousin Donald had looked like that right before he attacked her and she had to kill him.
"Stay where you are," she murmured to Ernest, and he froze. At least he wasn't the kind of person who let his fear drive him into running around the room like a madman, Miranda thought, as she turned and faced the wizard walking towards them.
The man had a somewhat pleasant smile, but he didn't stop moving, even when she shook her head warningly at him. He lifted his wand and cut apart the banner over her head. He probably imagined that it would fall on her and tangle her while he ran around her and did whatever it was that he wanted to do to Ernest.
Miranda hadn't become a bodyguard by falling for simple tricks like that. She stepped neatly to the side, sheltering Ernest and getting ready to resist the other spells that the assailant might try at the same time, and murmured one of her special spells to the tiles under his feet. The tiles sparkled brilliant green and white, like camellia flowers among their leaves, and she was sorry to destroy them. But protecting Ernest's life was more important.
(That was another reason, other than Donald's attack, that she had left her family. They didn't always agree with her on lives being more important than the decorations that they placed around their house for parties).
The tile sagged under the wizard's feet, making him stumble, and then surged up and around him. It had become a giant leafy sheath of the kind that Venus'-flytraps used to ensnare their prey. The "teeth" at the edges of the leaves interlocked and closed gently but inexorably, and the wizard might as well drop his wand now for all the good it would do him. The inside of the leaves was impermeable to magic of any sort, though they could be easily affected from the outside.
Miranda stepped back and bowed slightly to her hostess, Mrs. Wade, who was hurrying up with a pale face and golden robes that rustled and clanged around her as if they were actually made of the metal. "Forgive me for destroying your beautiful floor," Miranda said, as politely as she knew how. "I would never have done it if this man hadn't tried to attack me and my date." She would preserve the fiction that Ernest was her date instead of her client for as long as she could.
"I don't understand it," Mrs. Wade said, and she glanced at Miranda for permission before she peeled back the outer sheath of the leaf. The man inside glared at her through the strings of juice that covered him, and she shook her head. "His name is Thomas Young, and he's never been anything but polite and courteous in his attendance at our parties. Are you sure—"
"Yes," Ernest said, coming forwards. Now that the immediate danger was over, he seemed more collected. "A man who tried to buy a horse from me I don't intend to sell was named Nelson Young. And after that, I received several threatening letters in a handwriting that was unfamiliar to me, but which included references to my transactions with Young that I certainly never released." He turned to the captive Thomas. "I think that I would be very interested in knowing more about his family."
"He does have a brother called Nelson," said Mrs. Wade, in a subdued voice. She bowed to Ernest. "I think we should be grateful that Miss, er, your date was here to catch him," she said, with a timid little glance at Miranda.
Miranda smiled. "Goldreyer, ma'am. You wouldn't have heard of me," she added, when Mrs. Wade's eyes glazed slightly. She knew the expression of a pure-blood witch or wizard trying to fit someone into the mental family trees they all had written on the insides of their eyelids.
Mrs. Wade sighed, as though she was glad to have one less thing to deal with, and then began apologizing to Ernest and approving Young's removal from the house. Miranda shook her head and stood in the background, where she could be present if Ernest needed her but wouldn't be in the way. She was pleased with the way things had worked out. She was a bodyguard, yes, but no one had guessed that. She hadn't had to inflict violence on anyone, not really, or destroy the house.
She noticed a few people watching her out of the corner of their eyes, but most of them were more interested in the spectacle of Mrs. Wade scolding Young for ruining her party, and his sullen answers. This one wasn't a clever assassin, at least, Miranda was glad to note. He didn't even have a lie thought up for why he'd been doing what he'd been doing if he was caught.
One pair of eyes didn't move from her back. She tracked them down slowly, looking people in the face for moments at a time, as if she wasn't especially interested in any of them. But she finally made out who was staring at her as if she, and not Mrs. Wade, was the star of the evening.
Draco Malfoy.
He forms grudges in an instant, and holds them for a lifetime, Harry thought. Well, it doesn't matter. Unless Ernest really thinks that he's still under threat, then Miranda Goldreyer disappears after tonight. He never used most of his personas more than once. They were meant to make certain tasks easier, to be perfect strangers, as the motto of Metamorphosis claimed, because he had spent months but not years building most of them up. There were only so many wizards and witches with extraordinary skill or beauty or whatever it was that his clients demanded who could exist before other people started getting suspicious.
He would be sorrier to retire Miranda than most of them, he had to admit. She had spirit.
And he had been able to vanish inside her, once he worked out how to do it. It wasn't as tiring as he had feared. His experience had triumphed again, rather than the experience itself.
Harry smiled. One of the things he enjoyed most about running Metamorphosis was that it made him feel competent—competent at something besides killing Dark Lords, which, let's face the fact, were not exactly common.
Competent, and like he had a place in the world.
For that, he would put up with the occasional inconvenience, such as the conversations with gits like Malfoy, that sometimes happened.
*
I've seen that before. I know I have. But…how?
Draco had a good memory, he knew that. He had managed to memorize most of his notes before he took the NEWTs, and that was as good as walking into the room with the book in his head. He had a good memory for faces, and a better one since he had started trying to break free of the dominion of his parents. He wanted to remember the people who would help him, and the ones he should never approach under any circumstances.
But he hadn't realized his memory was this good. That he could take a motion he had seen years ago and decide that he was seeing the same person again from that movement and no more, although the face and the body were different.
She fights the way Potter fights. That motion she made when she lunged forwards on one foot and held out her wand…that's one he used when he was casting.
By now, of course, doubt was creeping in to disturb the original intuition that he'd been so sure of. How did he know that this woman was Potter? The last he had heard, there was a rumor that Potter was cooped up in his house and never came out and never saw anyone but his two best friends. Or something like that. Draco had ceased to pay attention to Potter once it became clear that Potter wasn't going to take part in the wizarding world that Draco lived in and wanted to be free in.
Then he remembered that he had seen that motion last in a highly charged moment. Potter had been facing the Dark Lord, and talking about the reason he was so sure he was master of the Elder Wand and would win, and Draco had been standing there beside his parents, his heart hurting, his head throbbing, silently willing Potter to stop talking and get on with it.
Yes. He had made that motion when he cast Expelliarmus. Draco was certain. He couldn't forget, not when that memory was limned in his mind in such distinct colors. He was never going to forget anything about that moment, that day.
And it wasn't as though he risked anything if he was wrong. He planned to tell no one about his conclusion. He would simply confront this Miranda, and that would be enough. If he was wrong, then he would Obliviate her so that she could tell no one else of his shame.
And if he was right—
Draco shook his head. Beside the hungry impatience to prove the woman who had humiliated him wrong had sprung up a curiosity that burned as bright as a white flame and devoured like it, too. Only this time it was burning on Draco's questions, and it wanted to burn on answers instead.
If he was right, and it was Potter, then he would learn why.
*
Ernest seemed much calmer, and practically drunk on power now that he had confronted the only man he probably had much to fear from. He thanked Harry graciously, but denied needing another bodyguard. So Harry turned away and walked through the crowd, declining several invitations to dance with smiles and shakes of his head. He walked in Miranda's skin and drew breaths with her lungs for the last time.
It was somewhat sad, for he had put time and effort into his creation of Miranda. But he had hundreds of other personalities which were waiting for their chance to be used. And someone might recognize her if she appeared again, and there was the slight chance that she might be connected with Harry Potter. Harry could never endure that. So back into the great sea of his imagination she went, and maybe her hair or her eyes or part of her history would appear again in another person.
"Potter."
Harry almost stumbled. To hear someone speak that name to one of his personas was his greatest nightmare. And this had been in Malfoy's voice. His nightmare couldn't have picked a better way to incarnate itself.
But if he stumbled, that would prove Malfoy right. Harry kept walking, instead. After all, Miranda's last name wasn't Potter, and even her original last name had been different. She wasn't a fan of Harry Potter, either. She would have no reason to look around, or stumble, or react to the name in any way.
Malfoy's hand clamped down on his arm. Harry continued walking as if he hadn't noticed it, then reached the limit of Malfoy's hold and turned back with a small, annoyed sigh. "Yes?" he asked in Miranda's voice, looking into Malfoy's eyes. "Was there something you wanted? I'm afraid that I'm tired and won't accept another invitation to dance. An assassination attempt does so ruin my enjoyment of a party."
Malfoy loomed close to him. They were in an anteroom, near the front doors but distant from the rest of the party; Mrs. Wade liked her guests to arrive on time, and no one was lingering here now. "I know it's you," he breathed. "It was always you, wasn't it? You didn't change places with this woman. You didn't Polyjuice into her. She's completely a pretense, and you changed yourself into her. Really, Potter, well-played. I wouldn't have thought you were that much of an actor."
And I might believe in the admiration in your voice, except that your gloating ruins it, Harry thought. He widened his eyes and shook his head. "Do you see Harry Potter everywhere you look?" he asked. "That's an interesting delusion. I did hear that you had a rivalry with him during school—as much of a rivalry as it can be when one person wins all the time, at least."
Malfoy's lips briefly showed his teeth, but he pressed closer instead of exploding in rage the way Harry's words had been designed to make him do. "It won't do, Potter," he said, as if he thought that speaking calmly was the key to making Harry reveal himself. "I recognized you when you fought. There's no one in the world but you who handles his wand like that, and I know who you are under all that." His eyes flickered over Miranda's face and hair, trying to dissipate the charms. "I've already cast a spell that would have removed the glamours, so it must be Transfiguration and advanced spells. Impressive. Nearly as impressive as your acting ability. But I know who you are."
Harry looked over Malfoy's shoulder, as if for help. Of course, everyone else was distant from them or Malfoy wouldn't have dared confront him in the first place, but someone could have come in during the meantime, which seemed to be what Malfoy feared. He turned his head, just slightly.
Harry held up his wand and murmured the Memory Charm that would take care of this little problem. He didn't put much power behind the spell. It couldn't be a particularly long-lasting memory, since this was the first time Miranda had ever appeared in public and Harry had just defeated Young a few minutes ago.
But the spell bounced off Malfoy's temple with a silvery flash. Harry swore inwardly. I should have considered the fact that Malfoy would probably have a Memory Shield. The charms, cast on pure-bloods by a Mind-Healer from St. Mungo's, deflected Memory Charms and other simple spells that would interfere with the mind.
Malfoy turned back as if he had all the time in the world, which he did, now. Harry's failed spell had told him there was something to hide there.
"It is you," he said again, but this time he was more assured. "Why are you dressed up and acting like a woman, Potter?"
Harry made some quick calculations. He wanted to storm haughtily away and say it was nothing of Malfoy's business, but that was Miranda speaking. Besides, Malfoy would be able to get part of the truth from Ernest with a little pumping, if not Miranda's identity.
Partial truth is the best way to do things. Since he made a living by lies, Harry was able to gauge to a nicety how much of a dangerous drink like truth was needed in any one moment.
"I work for Metamorphosis," he said, heaving a sigh and looking down at the ground as he rubbed his temple. It helped that he didn't wear his own face, and Malfoy's attempts to understand his expressions would be thrown off by that, but avoiding his eyes was even more of a protection, in its own way. "You've probably heard of it. Of course, no one would hire the notorious Harry Potter under his real name and face." He shrugged. "And trying to be an Auror didn't work out. So I have a few disguises that I rotate, changing them each time so no one recognizes me. Ernest was nervous about people trying to kill him, and wanted a bodyguard."
Malfoy was silent for so long that Harry looked back up. "You realize that someone will be along in a moment, and probably wonder why you're holding an attractive witch against the wall?" he asked, sliding a sly tease into his tone. "Or possibly a man?"
That ought to sting. Most of the wizards Harry knew hated the mere imputation of homosexuality. Sex was for marriage, and marriage was for children, and children strengthened the family and continued the traditions the wizarding world was so obsessed by. Malfoy would back away in a hurry when he realized how close he stood to Harry, how he was practically breathing into his face.
*
He works for Metamorphosis. That makes sense.
Draco had heard of the business. It ensured that those who needed perfect strangers could find them. Draco had never heard of anyone who used it being betrayed or, most of the time, less than satisfied with who they had hired. And then those people kindly vanished and were never heard of again. That was the part Draco had found suspicious.
Now it appeared the mystery was solved. The people Metamorphosis hired out were actors like Potter, hiding their true appearances and perhaps their skills behind glamours and Transfigurations.
But why would Potter have taken up such a career in the first place? It's not as though he lacked recognition. And he wasn't ever any good at acting while we were at school.
Draco was so involved in his thoughts that Potter's words took a few minutes to catch up with him. Then he let his mouth curl in contempt and leaned in further still.
"Perhaps you're the one who's afraid of being pinned by an attractive man," he whispered. "I'll look perfectly normal to anyone watching, but we both know the truth. I notice that you haven't made a motion to free yourself from me yet, Potter."
Potter stared at him. It was hard to tell the truth between those blue eyes and that unmarked forehead and those decorated cheeks that wouldn't reveal the telltale blush, but Draco thought he read surprise there instead of shock or disgust.
That is interesting, Draco thought, with a slow stirring in the back of his mind like a snake sliding about in the darkness. I will keep it in mind.
Then Potter snorted and pushed on his shoulders. "I was trying not to cause a scandal that would horrify Mrs. Wade," he said. "I think I've already done enough of that."
Draco caught one neatly manicured hand and held it still. "You clean up very well," he said, keeping his voice lowered. "There are lots of people who would be interested to know that. Who do you think I should tell?"
Potter gave him a hard look that burned through the makeup and other pieces of the disguise he wore to convey his contempt clearly. Draco drew back his shoulders instinctively. He had once wanted to impress Potter. He had lost that desire—he thought—but he had a new one: to make Potter stop looking at him like that.
"Oh, it's to be blackmail, is it?" Potter shook his head. "Well, my manager won't bother listening to you. After all, after tonight Miranda Goldreyer will vanish, and neither you nor anyone else will recognize me when I venture out in a different disguise."
Draco's hands tightened on Potter. Somehow—he didn't understand how, when he was the one who had figured out the truth and the one holding Potter prisoner—he was losing again. Potter seemed to be slipping away from him into a dark, complex world, leaving both Draco's goals and his methods behind as too small to bother with. Potter was winning, though Draco didn't understand how he was doing it.
He couldn't let that happen. There had to be something that could stop this flight and win him the battle, if not the war.
"What would you say to a spot of private blackmail, Potter?" he whispered, letting his breath barely stir the golden hair. Was it a wig? Draco doubted it was a glamour, or he would have seen it shimmer by now. Perhaps Potter had changed his entire head. He would have had to, Draco decided. That messy black hair was too identifiable if he had let a spell fade. "You do something for me, and I don't make you known to everyone at the party, or to anyone else. And I forget all about your working for Metamorphosis, too."
"You intrigue me," Potter said, and his voice was calmer and heavier, more passionate and more present. Draco relaxed.
He's coming back, he thought, and then forbade himself to think of why that was so important to him.
*
Harry had never played so hard as he did now.
He had had to construct, on the fly and while still giving reasonable replies to Malfoy's questions and demands, a persona capable of dealing with the idea that his world was dissolving around him. To be recognized as a Metamorphosis worker was the beginning of the end. Someone might follow that back and find out that he ran everything, that he was everyone. And someone else would say that was unhealthy, and they would try to let the Mind-Healers at him, and everything Harry had built and worked for and enjoyed and loved would fall into a pile of ashes and dust.
The persona had to deal with his own panic, too, and seal it away in a small area where it couldn't affect the rest of him. The persona did that, and was calm and cool and heroic, and, for once, had no history. Harry enjoyed creating the kinds of backgrounds and families that his personas would require, but this one was born and would die in an anteroom of the Wades' home.
It worked. The persona took over and gave Harry's answers for him, and even sounded no more than mildly interested or scornful when Malfoy threatened him. He was hard enough to face a room full of laughter, because he cared about other things.
Harry was dazzled with his own skill, and answered the question about private blackmail because Malfoy would expect it of him. In reality, he was flying through the starry darkness around his own center, and exulting.
I can do this. Even under great pressure. I can do this.
I'll always be free, and no one will catch me.
The thought made him quiet and happy on the deepest level, the level that no one else would ever see. He lifted his eyes to Malfoy's, and he was almost really the person he had pretended to be, capable of escaping the panic that Malfoy tried to inspire with his words.
"What did you have in mind?" he asked, and he was casual and careful and cautious and free.
"I'm trying to establish a business," Malfoy said, "independently of my father's control. He would prefer that I stay dependent on him, of course, and most of the pure-bloods I know still think of me as his son before they think of me as anything else. I want you to help me promote it. Creating a spectacle for me at the Midsummer's Eve parties would help."
Harry cocked his head and relaxed further. That made more sense than he had thought it would, given Malfoy's genius for stupid plans. But he couldn't let on that it was better than most of the bargains he'd thought Malfoy would make, because he couldn't seem too versatile. "Most of my skills are in bodyguarding and going on dates with people who just want someone pretty," he said. "What makes you think I could help?"
"Because you have skill in glamours and Transfigurations," Malfoy murmured. He was leaning towards Harry again, his breath coming faster, and Harry wondered in faint interest if he really was bent. "I meant what I said. What I want is a spectacle. Get people's attention. Appear utterly taken with this concept yourself, and I'm sure that other people will give in and buy it."
Harry thought that over. Yes, he could do it; he was certain of that. The problem was whether he wanted to.
Not to mention the person he wants me to go as. "I can't promote it as Harry Potter," he said. "For one thing, no one would believe it."
Malfoy snorted and finally leaned back and took his hands away from Harry's shoulders, which made him feel slightly better. Malfoy shouldn't clutch either Harry or the new persona he was using right now by the shoulders. "I don't think they would," he said. "No. Come in as an actor from Metamorphosis, wrapped up in glamours and whatever else you think you need."
"It's more complicated than that," Harry started to protest, and then slammed his mouth shut. He'd become overconfident. He was banishing the new persona now and complaining the way he would have if Malfoy had spoken to him like that. He had to remember that any words Harry Potter spoke could get someone interested, and Malfoy might start thinking about it in more depth and decide that there was more to Metamorphosis than what he was saying.
Luckily, Malfoy had taken this particular slip in the best possible way he could have taken it. "I'm sure it is," he said, with a tiny, dismissive flip of his hand. "But it doesn't matter. I want someone who can cause others to pay attention. Someone who can make them stare."
Harry felt the shine and the dip in the back of his mind that said a new persona was forming. He took a deep, contented breath. "I can do that," he said, and a name came trembling into his head like a flame. Lionel Truth. That's who he'll be.
"You haven't even asked me what the business is yet," Malfoy said. His face had become its old suspicious mask, and he craned his head to the side as if he imagined that he would be able to see what went on behind Harry's mask that way. "And you needn't think that I'll pay you the outrageous rates I'm sure you get when you work for Metamorphosis. Your payment is that I'm keeping your nasty little secret."
Harry's lungs felt bigger, and the new persona was coming clearer and clearer in his head, with brown hair and green eyes—the eyes could be left almost the same, except the need for some magic that would take the clarity of their color away—and a daredevil grin. He would laugh when people asked him what kind of name Truth was, and then offer his hand to shake, staring straight into their eyes all the while. They would wonder if they could trust him, but he would wink, and then they wouldn't care.
It was an effort to force his mind away from the fires of creation to the mundane business of answering Malfoy's question. "Yes, I know," he said, and he sounded weary and impatient and was proud of himself. He was keeping secrets even from someone who had excellent reason to be suspicious of him. "What is your business?"
Malfoy struck a pose that he probably didn't know he was making. Harry might have thought of hiring him for Metamorphosis if the business had needed actual employees. "Malfoy's Machineries," he said.
Harry arched his eyebrows, unable to do anything else. The thought of Malfoys and the thought of the Muggle technology he could instantly see in his head when Malfoy pronounced the name struck sparks off each other. "And what do you make?"
"Machines endowed with spells to replace house-elves," Malfoy said, sounding more and more satisfied with himself as he spoke. "Pans that clean themselves. Stoves that cook the food to the perfect temperature without a constant adjustment of charms. Cloaks that shake all the dust off when you take them off and hang them on the peg."
Harry considered him carefully. That was a cleverer idea than he would have thought Malfoy could come up with. "Why do you need my help to promote this?" he asked. "It sounds as though you could do well enough on your own."
Malfoy sneered, and his voice lowered. Harry watched his face and saw the lines forming there, carving themselves with the ease of furrows that had appeared more than once. "I told you. Most of the pure-bloods think that I'm an appendage to my father. They're used to him coming out of retirement and gaining power again. They won't dare support something he disapproves of, just in case he roars back to strength later and remembers that. And he does disapprove of it. He doesn't want me selling anything, let alone machines that he believes won't succeed and that are meant to replace house-elves."
Harry nodded. "And you need the pure-bloods to buy the machines first, so that the less wealthy wizards will see and imitate them."
Malfoy shut his mouth hard on whatever he had been going to say. Then he murmured, "You're more clear-sighted than I thought you were."
Harry bit his lip to keep from laughing, because Malfoy didn't know who that clear sight belonged to. "I have a persona in mind to adopt. What's the next Midsummer's Eve party you're going to?" There was a series of such parties all through the month of June, but Harry didn't think Malfoy would consider all of them equally good candidates for launching his publicity campaign.
"The party at Unruffled," Malfoy said, and must have seen something in his face Harry hadn't fully intended to put there, because he nodded. "Yes, the name strikes me, and most of the other people who know it, as absurd. But they have good food. And there will be plenty of people anxious to show off their new robes and wealth there."
Harry stopped a cynical comment about wealth from escaping, because it wasn't the sort of thing either his new persona or Lionel Truth would say. "All right. That's in three days, isn't it?" Malfoy nodded. "When do you intend to show up?"
"At eight in the evening," Malfoy said, with the calm assurance of someone who believed in marble floors, fine robes, and the ability of any wizard who really tried to wrestle down something so simple and well-meaning as time. "You will be there."
It was a command, not a question, but Harry nodded. Lionel Truth wouldn't mind Malfoy ordering him about; he would laugh it off. "Farewell, then." He started to turn away, pieces of history traveling through his head like sleet. Lionel had a younger sister who lived in Spain and whom he hadn't seen since they had a raging fight over what, exactly, she was going to do with her life. She had gone off and married someone in revenge, and then had the temerity to be disgustingly happy. Lionel would roll his eyes when he said that, and no one who listened would know whether he was joking or not.
"Potter!"
Harry winced; that name grated on him when he was deep in the toils of creating a new persona, or, for that matter, when he was wearing another face and another name. He turned around, though, and saw Malfoy bracing one hand on his hip. Harry started, but managed to cover his laughter in time.
That doesn't make him look at all attractive. I wonder if he knows that.
"What will you look like?" Malfoy challenged him. "This?"
"That would be a little strange, wouldn't it?" Harry asked. "After all, how many people saw Miranda humiliate you?" Miranda's persona squirmed in the back of his head, uncomfortable with being spoken of that way, but Lionel's overpowered her. "No. I'll be male, and you'll know me when you see me."
He left, then, and ignored the one low call of his name Malfoy sent after him. He had a spectacle to plan.
As he went, he dissipated the privacy spell he'd cast, wandlessly, the moment Malfoy had seized him. It was his first and instinctive defense when someone looked like they were near to figuring out his secret.
It doesn't matter if he destroys a temporary persona, but no one is going to link my name with Metamorphosis.