HP Magic Eight Ball Part 11
NB: Two today, as I'm feeling generous. Also, I'm busy tomorrow, so…that'd be the 'fickle' part, perhaps?
Warnings: AU; EWE; Junior Aurors!Harry smuff-filled center;NC-17; smidgeons of spare flangst.
Harry, as he'd stated plainly to his heretofore-despised Auror partner, was neither noble nor mindless. Further, he wasn't strictly heterosexual, despite the even more despicable Dursleys and their sodding middle-class stodgy suburb where 'alternative' was defined as doing one's shopping somewhere other than the High Street. A combination of Cho, Ginny, Luna, Theodore, Seamus and a nice Muggle boy named Bryan had demonstrated this to him with more than reasonable clarity. Let it be noted, however, that Harry was not one given to introspection, either—he found it depressing these days—and he was not particularly adventurous, romantically. He preferred comfort and sameness and so on, especially after fighting for his bloody life during the vast majority of it, living out of a tent with two highly excitable teenagers for the best part of a miserable senior school term and then compounding his entirely too exciting and dangerous formative years with a profession that gave top billing to the words 'excitement' and 'danger'.
Even more than boredom, though, Harry craved that nebulous place where he could be 'himself', whatever and wherever that was. The Weasley family had provided a reassuring taste of its existence, though not quite enough to satisfy. Sirius had been a contender, as well, with his fatherly caring and his sense of deep connection to Harry's past. But the concept of 'family' was not quite all Harry desired.
Trouble was, he didn't know quite what it was he was missing, or if he'd even recognize it if he stumbled over it.
He did know, however, that Malfoy was fit. That was one of those immutable laws of nature. He knew as well that Malfoy could be relied upon to be a git, whilst still being fit, and that no matter how matey they managed to be after four years or more of enforced cooperation, he and Malfoy would never actually graduate to being such. Not in the sense or on the level of Ron and Hermione, at least.
Not 'friends', then, as Harry defined the term, and not 'family', as Harry's admittedly small experience described. So…what precisely was this nagging, bone-deep obsession with Draco Malfoy? Why had it gone on for so long, undeterred even by Harry's attempts to stuff its pesky self back into his emotional baggage and keep it firmly under wraps? How could he explain it—and thus explain it away?
The Muggle Ball was looking to be more and more attractive an option, every sodding moment. A series of simple 'yes' or 'no' answers would be damned helpful at this ill-defined point in Harry's continuum and Harry was all for simple answers. He'd enough of confusion, grey areas and waffling for a fucking lifetime and he was only twenty-four, sadly. Though he often felt himself to be much older.
Harry wondered if Malfoy felt that way, too, as he sent another striped ball into a side pocket neatly, and Malfoy chalked up.
"Happy, Potty?"
"What d'you mean by 'happy', precisely?" Harry shot back defensively, concentrating on winning. He felt oddly required to make at least some show of competing with Malfoy's many lurking talents, if only to prove he wasn't the worthless half-blood a younger nemesis had always made him out to be. That this was a most childish behaviour on his part seemed to make not the slightest difference. Malfoy was a git, a prat and a wanker, and that, too, was a law, rendering obsolete the incontrovertible fact that these flaws were packaged all too nicely.
With a horrible vomiting noise, the felt-topped table flexed and coughed Harry's blue-and-white ball right back up again, sending it skittering off into three others. Harry frowned. The game had interrupted his required bout of brooding.
"As in, suitably relaxed and perhaps even enjoying some of what life has to offer, Potter," the wanker/git/prat grinned as Harry smartly re-pocketed his chosen billiard. "I know it's difficult for you, especially, given your determination to suffer perpetual martyrdom, Saint Potty, but there is actually pleasure to be had in this vale of tears we call Life."
"Arsewipe," Harry replied, without much heat, sending two more stripy balls off to perdition. The table hacked again and gurgled, as if it were a Kneazle struggling with a hairball, and swallowed, finally accepting its treats with poor grace. Malfoy stepped forward, sizing up the lay of the turf.
"Tell me more, then," Harry demanded fretfully. "What do you do to offset the trials of daily life?"
In truth, Harry was terribly curious. This was a whole new guise for the same-old, same-old Malfoy he knew and disliked so heartily, and he wanted to poke at it repeatedly with a sharpened stick, see if the illusion of good-nature was in any way based in reality. Certainly, he'd never expected to discover his partner had a finely honed sense of humour or a boyish grin that could warm the cockles of even the most jaded of hearts.
Malfoy charm, he told himself firmly. They're bred for it; it's how they get ahead. Can't be a bossy dickweed all the time, even with scads of Galleons.
"Well, lessee," Malfoy answered equably, sinking a solid red orb in a rather disturbingly professional manner. "I volunteer, naturally," he began.
"You do?" Harry was aghast.
"Of course I do, Potter," Malfoy was now practically spreadeagle across the felt, his bum poking up for Harry's visual delectation as he took careful aim at a green one. "I'm required to make a show of it, aren't I? Reps aren't rebuilt in a day, you realize."
The strip of exposed skin was now considerably larger and Malfoy's elegant arsecrack was showing above his borrowed trousers. Harry pressed his aching groin into the rolled edge of the billiards table and stifled a pained groan. God, but he despised inconvenient hard-ons, particularly those caused by Malfoy, of course, ruddy blighter that he was. He could not be more embarrassed by this one…well, he could, but he didn't wish to dwell.
"Why?" Harry wanted to know, determined to keep his mind off Malfoy's dubious charms, as well as the question of why the bastard was still wearing Harry's clothes when he had access to his immense wardrobe right upstairs. Or somewhere in that vicinity; the Manor defined the word 'immense'. "Why bother with that shite? It's not like you give jackall about the public's opinion, Malfoy. Even I realize that."
Malfoy completed his shots, having sunk four solid balls in rapid succession, the table cooperating without a single ripple of disobedience. Harry found this to be highly irregular and not according to Hoyle; he was accustomed to Muggle billiards, where the balls remained tidily in their cups and the green was lifeless.
"But there you're mistaken, Saint," the blond menace smirked at him again, all teeth and smoldering power, reminding Harry alarmingly of certain Mugglish Bond films, especially the ones with Sean Connery. "I've other people's public personas to be careful of, now. Wouldn't want to be a Dark stain on certain someone's golden existence, would I?"
"What?" Harry said, puzzled. Did Malfoy refer to his parents, who were currently well out of it and basking in the sunny climes of southern France? Or his mates, Slytherins all, and every one of them committed to some sort of altruistic profession purely for the sake of appearances? Well, excepting Parkinson, of course, and she was just out to marry yet more money.
Musing on the oxymoron of Malfoy altruism, and indeed Slytherin altruism, Harry determinedly went after the last of his billiards, attempting a trick shot off two banks and a diamond in the far right corner. The reassuring crunching noises as the table accepted its meal covered his disbelieving mumbles about Malfoy's typical two-faced agenda. 'Once a spy', in Harry's opinion, 'always a liar'.
"Hmm, Harry?" Malfoy was contemplating the floating score board, a meditative finger to his pointy chin. "I do believe it's a draw, yes." He set his No. 20 back into the rack. "Fortunate, that. Wouldn't want to brangle over a friendly game of balls-and-sticks like two errant schoolboys, would we?"
"Nargh," Harry gulped, as the echoing refrain of 'balls-and-sticks' summoned vivid images he could do without, and was all at once heartily sick of innuendo, Charms and opaque motivations.
"You know what, Malfoy? I want that blasted Eight Ball of yours, right this minute—give it here!"
TBC…a fickle fateful fic in drabblets, mostly daily.
