Series: Minor Arcana. Sequel to "Declaro" (rating R). You really need to read that first. Find it through the author link @ ff.net or skyehawke.com.

Rating: This section – R

Pairings: This section – elements of HP/DM, SS/DM, hints of DM/RL, but mostly SS/HP.

Notes: For all the people reading who want more Draco action, just be patient. The story isn't over yet, and lots of (I hope) interesting twists are underway.

Spoilers: Various up to the end of Book IV. No OotP whatsoever.

Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling and various corporate tentacles.

Archiving: Only where I've agreed.

Feedback/Reviews: Please, it's just plain encouraging. I'm especially grateful to people who give me some direction as to what works and what doesn't.

Pervinco VIII (a): The Trial

As Remus closed the door Harry curled up into the seat. Remus had surely seen him here with Draco, and even if Snape hadn't seen them Remus would tell him he was. . . what the hell was he doing with Draco anyway?

"Are you embarrassed?" Draco asked, sounding bemused by the possibility.

"No, I mean, God it's just so" – for an instant he saw himself, from Remus's point of view, being kissed by Draco on the floor – "wrong."

Draco casually joined him, draping himself over the arm of Harry's chair, one arm around his shoulder. It was warm and very un-Malfoy and Harry thought he should suspect his motives although he wanted to trust them. He let the warm moment last until he felt Draco's breath in his hair and then he slid quickly away, finding himself on the floor again. Draco flopped into the vacated seat.

"Don't kiss me anymore," Harry said. "It's confusing."

Draco smiled down at him. "Today's the first time I did."

"Oh. I guess it was me the other times, then."

Draco's smile widened. "Guess I'll just wait for you to do it again."

"I mean. . . I promised Snape I would make it clear" – the other boy looked at him expectantly – "that I'm accepting him. That it's not a competition."

"He's worried about that?" Harry half shrugged and Draco added, "That's what the rite is, Harry – competition."

"So. . . are you trying to win now?"

"As always," the blond said, reaching for the bottle over Harry's shoulder.

Harry caught Draco's arm. "What would you do to win?" He held his gaze, seriously. "I mean, would you. . ."

He couldn't quite say it, but Draco got it anyway, sliding down on to the floor next to him and saying, confidentially, very close, "No. I'd do that for pleasure. And, of course, to hear you scream my name – all the relevant clichés."

At that, or maybe it was at Draco's diffident tone, Harry laughed. "You know, I usually don't enjoy things that have me screaming."

"You mean Severus doesn't get you that way?"

"I told you, we haven't. . . done anything that would involve screaming."

"He kissed you."

"I think he was humouring me." It was the first time Harry had ever said what he thought Snape was doing. Was that what he thought?

Draco just said, "I sincerely doubt it."

Harry laughed again, and it didn't seem very weird after all. "Do you mind me talking about. . . you know. . . him and me? There's no one else I can say it to, really."

Draco gave him a long look, and flicked his fingers up into the back of Harry's hair a little. "No, you can, but. . ."

"But what? Tell me the truth."

He almost expected Draco to laugh at him, or give one of those superior looks that underlined his maturity and experience, but instead he said quickly, "I don't want you to be his lover."

Remus came back in from the corridor. He gave them an interested look and turned away before Harry had registered that they were once again sitting on the floor with Draco's arm around him.

"Well you asked," Draco whispered as he got to his feet.

They walked to the door, with the obvious understanding that Harry would leave now. At last, when Draco had already opened the door, Harry said quietly "Is that about me at all, or only about him?"

Before Draco had said anything, Remus was in the room again, and Harry felt a little annoyed that Draco had to go when Remus, it seemed, wordlessly summoned him.

"Come and see me whenever you can, won't you Harry?" Draco said, in a slightly formal tone, as he closed the door.

* * *

Hagrid was the first person to mention the difference of this meeting. He'd been cheerfully friendly with each of the supplicants, except Draco, whom he watched rather suspiciously at the same time as he tried to be friendly, which was uncomfortable for everyone. Today he clapped his hands together loudly as he came in – "So, now we get to the real thing, eh Harry?"

Harry had numbly managed to accept tea from Dumbledore and was staring at it distractedly when he realised they were talking about Snape's rooms. Hagrid didn't think Harry should live in the dungeons, and wanted to ask Professor Snape to move upstairs, where a growing lad could get some sunshine and fresh air. Dumbledore was, rather too indirectly, Harry thought, suggesting that Snape might not be quite amenable when all in a rush Harry realised that after they signed a contract people would except them to live together. For years. Did Snape. . . Snape must know that.

". . . don't you worry about it, Harry, I'm sure he's got somethin' special in mind," Hagrid was saying now.

"Ah," Harry looked at Dumbledore, who was twinklier than ever.

"We were wondering if Severus had chosen a gift for you yet?" Harry looked down at the blue silk under his left hand and blushed before he could stop himself. "Not that you need to tell us, Harry."

He could show them; he knew the raised symbol which opened the Chalybs by touch now. It would release as a fluid snake-like metallic shape but when he touched the two endpieces together it would set again into a flattened metal circle. Dumbledore would be appreciative, Hagrid would be curious. . .

"Not yet," Harry said quietly.

* * *

Harry followed Snape down to dinner in a state of shock. Snape had bowed to Hagrid. He had also given them both a gift – Harry wasn't sure what the potion was, he'd been too shocked to pay attention, but Hagrid had made his enthusiasm Hagridly clear. Of course, everyone had brought something, but even Draco giving Hagrid exotic sweets could be understood as an expected formality. That just wouldn't do for Snape.

Snape had, quite seriously, set a date to commence negotiating a contract. It was very Snape-like to say the meeting shouldn't be wasted on mere formality and he'd been irritatingly business-like about the whole thing. He'd also almost entirely ignored Harry, except for the greeting part, and that was pretty Snape-like as well. But Harry still stared in confusion at the back of the Professor's head as they moved down the stairs.

They were having dinner in Snape's rooms. Snape had arranged for Harry to eat with him in private, as if they were. . . Seamus would call it a date. Presumably they would be required to talk to each other, or at least the meal would require something more than grope, cum, and push Harry out the door. Presumably. Harry flushed at the thought and watched Snape reach the bottom step and turn under the light of the bracketed torches into his corridor. In that light the most shocking thing of all hit Harry again – Snape was not wearing black, but a green so dark it seemed black until he moved under light and the sheen of the fabric came up a dark emerald colour. Harry felt kind of faint. He was having dinner with Snape, who had dressed for the occasion.

* * *

Dobby gave Harry another enthusiastic bow and collected his plate, juggling it on top of the others. "Dobby is very happy to be serving Harry Potter again."

Harry hadn't eaten very much of this course either, but this time, with a nervous look at the Professor, Dobby refrained from encouraging Harry to have more or offering to get him something else, and disappeared with a pop.

Harry breathed out and met Snape's look. "Like I said, I gave him a sock."

It wasn't in any way romantic, but perhaps that would have been less terrifying because less believable. The table was set in Snape's front room, just past where the lounge would be and in sight of the outer door.

"And are the house-elves marching to the tune of Ms Granger's liberation?" Snape asked.

"Not quite. She says they're very culturally conservative. Dobby says they're mostly scared."

"Remarkably perceptive for a house-elf."

"You don't like them?"

"I think very little about them at all. My family didn't keep them when I was old enough to remember, and I don't recall seeing more than their shadows as a student. I believe tonight I have had more conversation with one than ever before." Snape refilled their water glasses now the still half-full wineglasses had been removed.

Harry wanted to ask why Dobby was here then, but he didn't. "Dobby's very talkative for a house elf, I think," he said instead. Harry wanted even more to ask Snape about his home. "Don't you like wine?" he said instead.

"As a potion it's fascinating, and certainly pleasurable in the right circumstances, but too much wine dulls the taste of good food."

Harry felt almost desperate for a topic where he would feel less like a student. "I've been trying to decide if I should do Sangermano's etiquette classes," he tried, tentatively.

"I thought he was 'Dante' to all the students?" When Harry didn't respond he said, "While I'm sure there are more important subjects, all knowledge has its use."

There was a longer pause around and through the arrival of dessert and Dobby's enthusiastic chatter at one end of the table and nervous silence at the other.

"You don't like Sangermano I take it," Snape asked finally, and although Harry didn't really want to discuss that it was something to talk about.

"He's too insincerely nice. And he drools all over Draco."

"I've managed to avoid that."

"You'd hate it. Trust me."

The silence this time was rather different and Harry began to feel warm.

"I gather from the grateful awkward silences in the common room that your other professors believe you to have recovered from the brink of emotional disaster."

Harry tried not to actually cringe, but his focus on the strawberry thing slowly dissolving in his plate must have given it away.

"You seem to be finished," Snape said in a strange voice and Harry thought with a sinking feeling that he'd pretty much proved they had nothing to say to each other. He managed yes, and thank you, and moved away from the table. A quick spell returned the room to its usual furnishings and, with no warning Snape said, "I apologise."

Harry was rather glad he'd been leaning against the restored lounge.

"I should have been more circumspect," Snape continued. "I am not excusing that when I say I am in a situation I would never have chosen."

And that stung. Harry turned away and said, "Then don't touch me, if you don't want to. I don't need you to pacify me."

"Do you like brandy?" Snape said, as if it was the obvious continuance of what he'd said before.

"I've tried it," Harry said, feeling rather tired and more than a little confused, "but I think I've recently discovered that I shouldn't get drunk."

"A man should know those things about himself," Snape said.

"You're patronising me," Harry said irritably.

Snape handed him a large round glass – "I'm also getting you drunk."

"I can't see that you need to," Harry replied, not bothering to hide his bitter tone.

"It depends on what I want you to do, surely?"

Harry stood very still with the glass in his hand, and kept his attention on the honey-coloured swirl.

"I think about you," Snape said more quietly, and Harry felt like the words actually touched his skin.

There was a long enough pause that Harry had to turn his head, and Snape was slightly to his right, one hand on the lounge. "Right now," Snape said, "I think about having you naked in my bed." Harry's skin seemed to leap in several directions at once. "Or maybe right here." Snape's was inches away now, his hand resting next to Harry's hip.

Almost in his ear, Snape said, "I want to open you up and fuck you, Mr Potter – I can see what you'd be like under me right now." Harry felt the slightest touch along his arm through the silk and it sent cascading lines of heat along his skin. As the amber liquid in his glass tilted Snape's dark shadow dipped and blurred there. "But I'm stubbornly holding on to some similitude of my life in which you're my student and I don't do that."

"So, basically," Harry said, forcing himself to look at the other man, "I have to wait till the contract's signed before you'll risk actually admitting that we. . . do. . . this. Before," he took a breath, "I see you naked," and Snape's eyes widened at that, "or get anything but you teasing me – and controlling me?"

Shape moved around in front of Harry, not quite pressed up against him but standing over and around him and Harry stirred in response, trying to repress a shiver.

"I don't tease," Snape said firmly, although Harry thought there was something almost amused in it and might have smiled but for the distracting sensation of the Professor's hand on his arm. "And I don't think you have a problem with the control," he added, running the hand up to Harry's exposed neck and tipping his head back so they were looking at each other directly.

"No," Harry agreed softly. The hand released him, brushing across his chest and stomach and settling on his hip. Harry looked away with a blush, at the same time furiously instructing himself not to push forward into the other man's body.

Snape moved his head around Harry's, as if breathing him in, although the hands on his back and hip didn't move. "But I'm not sure how much more waiting is feasible," the Professor whispered, his voice strangely soft and harsh.

Snape cupped his hand around Harry's and brought the glass up to his own mouth. Harry watched Snape's lips close over the rim and the golden liquid spill towards them, saw the long throat swallow, and felt himself shift from tensely aware to definitely hard.

"Now you," Snape said, and Harry lifted the glass, now warm from their hands and Snape's mouth. He took a sip and it was honey and heat.

Snape's hand on the side of his face was such an unexpected touch Harry didn't know how to react.

"You didn't like it then?" Snape said softly, "taking me in your mouth." Harry breathed in sharply at the graphic image, which swirled in his mind and prickled across his skin.

"Well?" Snape whispered, sweeping a finger across Harry's mouth.

"I don't know," Harry said, looking anywhere but at Snape's face. "It was. . . exciting, but. . . You're always keeping me at a distance," he finally said, "keeping me nervous." Snape didn't say anything, but he seemed to have come closer. "Like now," Harry added.

"Yes," Snape said simply. "But you're persistent, aren't you?" If Harry had any idea what to say to that it was lost in the realisation that Snape was unbuttoning the first of the diagonal row of buttons on his robe. He felt himself tremble – and it just wasn't going to happen this way again.

"I want us to go to bed, naked, together – now," he said, cursing how stupid he sounded.

"I know," Snape replied, reaching the lower buttons at the waist and letting the robe fall open. "But I won't, Harry. Not when so much is undecided." His hand went to Harry's trousers, unclasping them.

"Is it about Draco?"

"It's about many things we don't need to talk about now."

Snape's hands were pushing his trousers open then and Harry couldn't bear it –"Stop. Please," he said, and Snape did, which was just as well because Harry was pretty sure he wouldn't have said it again.

Harry placed the glass carefully on the side-table. He felt Snape looking at him intently. He considered just leaving and arguing with his erection all the way back to his room, but instead he took a half step forward and began to undo the buttons on Snape's robe.

"Just tell me what it is you do want," he said.

As the boy unhooked the cloth-covered buttons down the front of his robe Snape stroked his hand back to the nape of his neck and forward and up along his jaw.

Long after Harry thought he wouldn't say anything, he did. His voice was quiet, but not at all gentle. "I want you naked, kissed till you can't breathe, and dripping for me."

Harry bit his lip and moved lower still on the buttons, now too low to watch so he looked up at Snape's mouth saying to him, "I think right now I want to run my hands all over you, pressing against you till you're shaking."

Harry could go no further without bending down, so instead he slipped a hand through the space between the buttons on Snape's shirt to touch his skin, as he never had before, and leant up to kiss Snape's neck. He felt the older man hesitate, but he didn't stop him opening more buttons.

Harry spread his palm across Snape's bare stomach, the skin was softer than he expected, and ran his tongue out against the even softer skin of his neck. "Please," he breathed against the damp skin, "I want us to be naked. Not the bed then if it means so much more but here, you pushing against me or, god. . . I've been dreaming about it for weeks."

The words sounded childish but he wasn't going to think about it. Instead he reached down inside Snape's robe to slide his hand against the swollen length of his prick, and Snape was so hard for him.

"Please," Harry said, no longer caring what he was asking for.

* * *

Lavender half-danced down the corridor and then back to Pavarti. "And Justin was so charming, and did you see Terry Boot, have you ever seen him look so good?"

Pavarti smiled, but Dean muttered, "He looked bloody ridiculous."

Neville dropped back a step or two, definitely not wanting to be associated with the boys' annoyance at Wizarding Etiquette. But they were his friends so he tried to change the subject. "Do you think anyone will actually memorise all those lists so they know who's a master and who's not?"

"Me for one," Pavarti said. "It'd be hideous to get it wrong, especially when Padma will have it all off by heart – she can be so superior lately."

Lavender wasn't distracted though, and glared at Dean all the way to the door. "Well, I thought Justin looked wonderful," she said distinctly as she let Dean pass her by into the tower. "So sophisticated – like a white king almost."

"Looked like a girl," Dean muttered and Lavender was about to snap back angrily when Seamus found a distraction that worked.

"Where was Harry anyway? I mean I know the Slytherins have all that rot memorised, but Harry hasn't."

"I heard he had a meeting with Professor Snape this afternoon," Pavarti said as they closed the tower door behind them. There was a moment's silence.

"He wouldn't really would he?" Dean said in a horrified voice. "Not Snape?"

"He was probably with Malfoy," Neville said, partly to reassure Dean and partly because he really couldn't imagine it – not Harry and Snape, it just wasn't right.

"Which is vile enough," Dean began, but Seamus punched him hard in the arm as Malfoy came up the stairs from the lower Gryffindor rooms he shared with Professor Lupin.

They all looked at him silently. When he was just past them, and Neville thought with relief that they hadn't been drawn into a fight, Seamus said with artificial friendliness, "So Malfoy, I guess you haven't seen Harry tonight?"

For a moment Neville thought Malfoy wouldn't answer, but he turned on his coollest smile. "Not yet, Finnegan – but I'll certainly tell him you were looking for him desperately enough to ask me."

"Stow it, Malfoy – he's never come back from the meeting with Snape anyway. Must really burn you up, Harry choosing that old git over you, guess the looks are. . ."

Neville dragged hard on Seamus's arm and looked pleadingly at Pavarti, who grabbed Dean and whispered at him to come along now.

Neither of them thought to grab Lavender though, who gave Malfoy a sympathetic smile – "Don't listen to them, Draco, they don't know anything, and Snape's so, you know, old and ugly. . ."

"Come on Lavender," Pavarti said, when she noticed Neville's panicked look.

Lavender put a commiserating hand on Draco's arm as she went, not noticing his distinct flinch. "He'll probably be along any minute now. Oh, and Dante was asking after you."

"Lavender!"

Draco moved slowly towards the tower door, turning the pass to the restricted section of the library in his fingers. Remus was expecting him, but if he was quick there might be time to see what Severus would say about the meeting with Harry. It never hurt to be better informed.

* * *

tbc