Thanks for the reviews on the last chapter!
I had a few people ask me to warn for this, so here it is. This chapter does contain heavy slash. If you don't want to read that, stop at the sentence, "And Snape isn't maddened by the presence of werewolves in the house right now."
Chapter Fifteen: Draco Decides To Be a Distraction
"And you think that you need the book?" Snape's voice was casual, and only his grip on the silver stirring stick showed how tense he was. Harry had interrupted him in the middle of brewing yet another new potion. Sometimes he thought this was how Snape stayed sane in the middle of so many werewolves.
"I do," said Harry. "I've been having dreams—"
"Visions?" If silver could snap, Harry was sure that Snape's grip would have snapped the stirring stick.
"No, no." Harry smiled, and that didn't appear to reassure his guardian. He held out his hand in a placating gesture instead. "I mean it. They aren't visions. They're not even dreams that let me clearly see the title of the book at first. I think this was more in the nature of my mind realizing what I needed before I did, and prodding me with a few dreams to get my attention."
Snape looked away from him. "That book has passed through the hands of many owners over the years," he said carefully. "If it contained a cure for lycanthropy, I am sure that someone would have noticed."
"Really?" Harry studied his turned face. He looks as if he's sleeping better, at least. I'm glad of that. "From what Draco told me about it, each person who reads it is driven to brew a potion that resonates with their goals. Maybe there is a potion that could cure lycanthropy, but only if someone opens the book looking for just that and nothing else. Or maybe I can create the base and then modify the potion from there."
"It's possible." Reluctance think as treacle still crowded Snape's voice. He turned around again. "But you cannot be under compulsion, Harry. You are vates. Do you forget so easily?"
Harry blinked. "Of course not. But a willingly chosen compulsion is different. If it were really true that a vates can't compel himself, I couldn't swear binding oaths, either, or make promises."
Snape clenched his teeth. Harry could almost hear him striving for some other way to refuse his request, though he wasn't using Legilimency. Harry made his voice as gentle, as warm, as persuasive, as possible.
"I promise I won't misuse it, sir. I promise I'll bring it back to you the moment I have the list of ingredients copied down—"
"That won't be possible," said Snape. "The book makes you want to keep it with you until the potion is completed. If you could simply separate yourself from it when you'd chosen the recipe, then Melissa Prince's spell wouldn't work." He hesitated a moment. "She was an ancestor of mine," he added.
Harry blinked. "She was?" Now that he thought about it, he supposed he remembered someone telling him Snape had descended from the Prince line, but he refused to claim any of the (largely empty) honors that could have been his, including having the Prince coat of arms on the back of his chair at the equinox alliance meeting.
"Yes," said Snape, and then turned away and stared into the cauldron again.
Harry narrowed his eyes. I know he's a halfblood who wasn't raised in the pureblood rituals. And I know the Prince line was proud enough that they were horrified at the thought of producing a bastard child when that Muggleborn Lord claimed to be related to them, even if he did have Lord-level power. A parent—a mother—who married a Muggle or a Muggleborn…
I wonder what she would think of herself? I wonder what her family would think of her?
And Snape's face was darkening with shadows again, as if all the nights of good sleep meant nothing in the face of this revelation. Harry took a deep breath and guessed.
"Are the dreams about your mother, sir?"
Snape turned so suddenly and so viciously that Harry stumbled back a step. This time, his magic must have lent its strength to his hand, because the silver stirring stick actually bent under his fingers. Harry shuddered a bit, and Snape looked down and seemed to realize what he'd done. Carefully, he laid the silver stick aside.
"They are about nothing important," Snape said.
Harry could almost hear the rattle of scorpion stings in his words. Ice was slowly creeping across the walls, and it wasn't Harry's. He knew that Snape could have a cold temper himself on occasion, though; fourth year was a more than good enough example of that.
"All right, sir," he said quietly.
Snape eyed him for a moment, then swept across the room. Harry waited while he rummaged through a trunk. Snape had explained that he never let the book out of his possession unless someone else was borrowing it with his permission; the compulsion spell on it, and the potions within, were too dangerous. Harry could understand.
He remembered the expression on Snape's face a few moments ago, and wished there were other things he understood as well.
Snape turned and tossed the book to him. Harry caught and examined it. It had a handsome, dark cover, with the words that he remembered seeing from the time when Draco was brewing a potion to summon Julia Malfoy on the cover. Medicamenta Meatus Verus, or Potions of the True Path.
And he could feel the magic. It woke at once, rolling around the cover and in between the pages, purring and laughing and rubbing against his fingers like a cat. It wanted to reach out to him, Harry thought. It was already looking at him, tracking inconsistencies in his own principles, searching for cracks that would allow its compulsion to bind him.
This is freely chosen, he reminded himself, and concentrated on a potion to cure the lycanthropy curse, and let the book fall open.
The purring sound in his ears intensified, and then the book's pages turned as if an invisible hand manipulated them. Harry felt the web curl around his shoulders like Argutus, and it whispered words he couldn't quite make out. He waited for the book to settle on a page, his heart pounding hard.
And then it did, and Harry glanced down the page, and almost laughed aloud. It was no wonder that no one had managed to work out a cure to the lycanthropy curse so far, he thought. This was a potion to free the soul and the body from a curse, but a note in neat handwriting towards the bottom stated: To break any truly powerful curse, this potion must be invested with some of the bearer's magic.
Most of the people preparing the potion wouldn't want to sacrifice their own magic, Harry thought. Or they wouldn't have any idea how to do it, except to a magical heir. I'm absorbere. I can do this.
"Harry?"
That was Snape's voice, somewhere beyond the roaring in his ears. Harry blinked and looked up at him. "Hmmm?"
"You will be well?"
Harry nodded, his mind already swimming with plans. Most of the ingredients of the potion were common, but most potions brewers wouldn't think to add them in the order the book recommended, because they were explosive when mixed. The book recommended a magic-infused base that would get around that, though, and Harry knew where a few other useless, pretty artifacts were stored in Silver-Mirror that could give him the magic he needed. "Yes."
Snape sighed, but said, "Then go and begin your brewing, I suppose."
Harry wondered out of the room, still reading the instructions for the potion. But, perhaps because he had had practice before in handling one overriding problem while sparing some time for others, he did make himself a note. Send an owl to Gollrish Y Thie. Get Joseph here to help Snape.
Draco was extremely frustrated. Today was the day he had planned to push, break some of Harry's barriers, and make him relax, but he couldn't find him.
He had used the morning to good effect, writing his contacts in the Ministry, and even some of those more responsible to his father, and playing on the power of his name and his closeness to Harry to ask them to look carefully at the Ministry's anti-werewolf—and anti-Harry—politics. But then he had gone down for lunch, and he couldn't find Harry. None of the werewolves who would talk to him had seen him, either. Peter was busy practicing Animagus training with Connor, and they were both annoyed with Draco for interrupting them when Connor had been about to see his silhouette. Draco privately thought Potter was just being a whiny little brat, as usual, and hadn't been anywhere ready to see it.
It finally occurred to Draco that he might not be at Cobley-by-the-Sea, but in one of the other Black houses. He hastened to the library Harry had set up with Floo connections to all four houses, trying to think. Where would he go?
Probably not Wayhouse, he thought. There was no one there, and the house's temperament was so uncertain that Harry had specifically said he didn't want to visit for a while.
Not Grimmauld Place, either. Draco was sure that Snape would have been fuming in that case, over Harry going to talk to Lupin.
He cast a handful of Floo powder into the flames and announced, as confidently as he could given that he'd just reasoned it out, "Silver-Mirror!"
The flames turned green, and Draco hopped in. Briefly, he was whirled around, and then flung out into the main hall of the house, beneath the golden fire-pool. Draco blinked and looked around. He had expected Harry to be in front of the pictures, perhaps pacing, staring at them moodily, and wondering when Regulus would reappear. That would have been a perfect time for Draco to try and break him out of his brooding. Being teased about said brooding tended to do that to Harry.
Instead, the hall was empty, but Draco could hear low muttering and fussing coming from a side door, one that didn't lead to the wind-pool. He walked over to it and peered carefully around it.
Harry was sorting through a pile of tiny treasures, spoons and statuettes and coins and others that Draco knew no one would have looked at twice if they didn't tremble with magical power. In most cases, though, the spells on them were minor, nothing more than a charm to make them brighter and more polished, or cast a mild illusion that might entertain a child for a few minutes. Harry had had them all piled here after the Midsummer battle, Draco knew. He wanted the treasures he could drain to restore the former Squibs all in one place.
Now, though, he had a cauldron set up beside him, boiling with water and smelling of hedgehog quills and something else that Draco couldn't immediately identify. Draco frowned. Is he actually planning to melt some of those treasures? Why? What would he use molten silver for?
Suddenly Harry gave a small noise of satisfaction and stood up, a tiny mirror in his hand. He breathed on it, and then nodded at whatever he saw there; Draco couldn't see from this angle. He stared, and then Draco felt the pull as he used his absorbere gift on the mirror, drawing the magic from it.
Draco shuddered. He's making a potion that uses a lot of magic? What is it? And I wonder if he's thought that turning all the Black treasures into useless trinkets isn't a good idea? I know he doesn't value them, and Regulus doesn't care, but someone else might.
"Harry?" he asked.
Harry jumped, but not as badly as Draco thought he should have. Instead, he just glanced up, gave a distracted little, "Hmmm," and looked back at the mirror. Then he nodded, dropped it, and walked across to the cauldron. Draco smelled a gush of rose scent as Harry poured the magic into the potion. It paused for a moment, then began bubbling more enthusiastically.
"What are you doing?" Draco asked, coming further into the room.
"Starting to brew a potion that I hope will be a cure for lycanthropy," Harry said, as calmly as if he did this every day. He turned and picked up a book lying next to the cauldron. Draco recognized it from the shape of the spine alone. He'd spent two months carrying that book around and staring into it every day. And in the end, he'd summoned the ghost of his ancestor and received—well, empathy, yes, but also a glimpse of how very wrong everything could have gone.
"Harry," he hissed. "Why on earth are you using that book?"
"Because it's the only one that might tell me the recipe," Harry said absently, and flicked a page over. "And the cure is the one part of this process I can really control, at least until Fred and George set up a means of contacting Scrimgeour through Percy. And I want to be able to do something for the werewolves, not just sit around and be a pack leader in a few isolated houses. Once I go back to Hogwarts, I won't be able to do even that." He looked up, blinking. "This potion will take some months to brew, but that's under normal working times. If I concentrate those months into a few weeks of intense effort, then—"
"You'll be needed to do other things!" Draco came a step forward, vibrating with indignation. I can't believe that Snape would be so stupid as to give him that book. "I could barely concentrate on anything else while I was brewing that potion to summon Julia Malfoy. What makes you think you'll be able to?"
"You could still do your schoolwork and argue with me." Harry didn't sound concerned. "I can keep up, Draco. But I had this idea from my dreams, and I finally remembered where I'd seen a book with a title like that when I woke this morning. This is a way to do it." He smiled at Draco. "I accepted the compulsion willingly. It's not going to hurt me."
Draco shook his head, hardly able to find the words. He knows how many different things he has to concentrate on, and then he goes and does—this. I suppose he does think that he'll be able to brew the potion and still do other things. He isn't the kind of person to just abandon his responsibilities.
But he won't be able to. Draco shuddered. His memories of the compulsion creeping into his brain were two years old now, but when he thought of it, they came curving back, cold fingers stroking his thoughts, twisting them in all kinds of different directions. And I think I wanted to be my family's magical heir less than Harry wants to find a cure for lycanthropy. This is going to ride him, and he'll neglect his Animagus training and his political commitments and breaking the curses on his left wrist.
He'll neglect me.
Draco narrowed his eyes. It seemed that his task of distraction was both more necessary and harder than he'd thought. Harry had already turned away again, murmuring to himself as he laid the book down and picked up what looked like a salt cellar but was probably full of another ingredient. The small golden specks that Harry added to the potion with a delicate shake confirmed that.
"Harry," Draco began.
Harry looked up from the potion. "Hmmm?"
"I don't think you should do this," said Draco. He glanced sideways at Medicamenta Meatus Verus. He could almost feel the damn book smirking at him. "And you can break the compulsion, I know you can. Breaking webs is what a vates does."
Harry tilted his head to the side. "But why should I want to break this? I want to find a cure for lycanthropy, Draco, and this is my best chance to do so."
Draco came a step forward. "But you could copy down the recipe and then break yourself from the web."
"Snape said I couldn't," said Harry, looking fretful. "Or the spell on the book wouldn't work."
"So what?" Draco demanded.
"Then I wouldn't finish brewing this as fast as possible," said Harry, as if talking to a child. "And I do want to finish it." He turned around and faced the cauldron again, this time adding what looked like the edge of a swan feather. The cauldron gave a contented gurgle which didn't comfort Draco at all.
"This is stupid," said Draco, deciding to be blunt. "You made another spur-of-the-moment decision, and you think that you should finish this because you haven't achieved a victory in a while."
Harry jumped. Then he turned around again, and Draco saw that the words had pierced through his compulsion. Harry didn't like to consider that his motives behind making this choice weren't purely altruistic. But he did want to break another web or brew a potion that would cure lycanthropy to show that not all his victories were compromises like showing the Pensieve memories were. Draco was convinced of it. Harry could be selfish and short-sighted, too.
"That's not true," Harry said, but his eyes were narrowed, and his magic soared up around him enough that the room reeked of roses. "I'm not doing this just to gratify myself."
"No, but you are frustrated," said Draco. Someone else might have been standing behind him and whispering the words into his ear. He could see the pattern Harry had fallen into over the last few days since the festival now, and wanted to kick himself for not seeing it beforehand. "The festival didn't go the way you wanted, with Falco Parkinson showing up and then escaping, and the Pensieve memories not birthing a movement against the Unspeakables. Then you spent time with your brother, and that didn't go the way you wanted, either. And then the Vox Populi came along, and while you delegated me to deal with it, you didn't anticipate it, and that makes you angry. You're trying for something you think will enable you to make a definite step forward. And maybe it will, Harry, but you can't afford to do nothing else for a few weeks. Which that damn thing will make you do." He scowled at the book.
"I am not angry," said Harry, while behind him a pile of small Black artifacts rearranged itself for no apparent reason.
"Of course you aren't," said Draco, with a tolerant smile. "And Snape isn't maddened by the presence of werewolves in the house right now."
Harry opened his mouth to counter that, but closed it with a growl. He then shut his eyes and took a few deep breaths.
Draco didn't want to give him time to recover himself. He might decide that continuing on with the book and the madness and the potion was a good idea, and Draco didn't want that. He could feel the same excitement that he'd discovered this morning at the thought of provoking Harry welling up. He would get out of this what he wanted and Harry what he needed. Pointing out that Harry was stupid to make the same mistake he'd made was just an extra.
"He isn't thinking about them by driving himself into brewing," said Draco. "But he can afford that, because no one is looking towards him to lead them. You're in the opposite situation, sorry, Harry. And it was your own choices that put you there. You were so philosophical about that with the Vox Populi, that people wouldn't do just what you wanted them to do. And now you're already running away from it? You expect everyone to pause while you brew this potion?"
The wall behind Draco turned to ice, and a spoon pinged as it was bent out of shape. Draco wished it hadn't. Harry looked towards the sound, and his face went ashen. He shook his head and closed his eyes, and the smell of roses palpably sank.
"I can't afford to argue with you about this, Draco," he said softly. "I have to—"
"Do other things, I know," said Draco, with a nod. Harry opened his eyes hopefully, and Draco used his words to hit him between them. "You have to run away from your responsibilities. You have to subject yourself to compulsion from a book you should know better than to trust, after what it did to me. You have to make sure that you do something concrete, even though no one is demanding that lycanthropy cure from you right now. You have to pretend that you're still only a political nonentity, and what you choose to do with your time is your choice. Meanwhile, you deny yourself the right to get angry over something like the Vox Populi, and you assume that you're at fault in that prank, when it was your brother."
Harry swallowed and closed his eyes again. "Draco, stop it," he whispered.
Draco paused and studied him. He frowned. He's far closer to the edge than I thought. I wonder how much time he did spend sleepless because of guilt, not because I wasn't there?
And then his uncertainty fed back into his anger and his determination. If he couldn't sleep because of guilt over that stupid prank, then he lied to me. He should know better than to do that.
Besides, it's a service for me to tip him off this edge. If I don't, then who knows when he might fall and shatter? At least this is a point when people aren't expecting that much from him—and if I can get him to release all this anger and guilt and whatever else is befouling him, then he'll only handle what comes after this better.
Draco wrapped the whole gift to himself with a bow of self-interest. And I'm not frightened by his anger. Quite the opposite. He felt a pull low in his groin at the thought, and went back to work on Harry.
"You're setting yourself up to fall again, you know," he told Harry conversationally. "You've done quite well for the last little while, but now you're retreating into old, and stupid, behaviors. Yes, let's put the vates under a compulsion, that's a wonderful idea. If you're an idiot who thinks he has to keep doing favors for others or people won't love him."
Harry gave a huge, jolting flinch that shook his entire body. "Stop it," he said. "That's not what I think."
"Yes, it is," said Draco, quick to follow things up now. He could feel the momentum in the room shifting, changing, charging forward, and he didn't dare lose it. "You accept that we love you, Snape and me and your brother—I wonder if you accept it from anyone else?—but you still think that you need to come up with reasons that we should love you. You still avoid letting us know when you're angry and trampling on our wills, and not just because of the vates idea. How many times have you smoothed anger back into the depths because you thought we would hate you if you said what you really thought?"
That was too far, deliberately too far, and Draco knew it. Harry's back stiffened with outrage. Two spoons rose from their pile and sped past Draco, to clatter against the wall next to him. He didn't flinch, for a simple reason: he wasn't afraid.
Harry was getting angry, and the anger was a magnificent sight. Draco wished that Harry could see himself in it; then he wouldn't have asked that stupid question the other day, about whether Draco physically desired him, or only wanted emotional intimacy. His eyes were alight now, with fire that he usually kept too carefully in check out of fear of his magic, and a complex dark star spread out behind him, briefly forming a pair of white-gold wings.
"I know you don't hate me, and never will," Harry said, his voice low. "And I've really changed in the Sanctuary, and I'm going to keep pushing forward. I promised you that, Draco."
Draco looked at the book and the cauldron, and raised one eyebrow. He really didn't have to say anything else.
"This is a choice I made that doesn't have anything to do with you," Harry told him.
Draco wanted to cheer. He didn't think he could yet, though. Harry wasn't really listening to his own words. Let this drop, and he was too likely to start castigating himself for saying such words at all. Harry made too much of small rows and tiffs and insults, thinking that each was a case of him stepping on someone else's free will.
"Yes, it does," said Draco. "Why is it that you never rest, Harry? Why is it that you can't relax? Because the only kind of love you've ever been comfortable with is conditional, and you believe that if you wait too long, perhaps the people who love you will think you're lazy, and shift their love somewhere else."
"That's not true!" Harry's dark starburst spread a little further, and a mirror shattered. Draco didn't even duck, because the glass pieces were going the other way. Besides, ducking would also snap the mood.
"You set yourself arbitrary time limits," Draco said. He gestured at the book and the cauldron again. "At least, for those things that you do for other people. You pushed away and ignored your own loss of a left hand for as long as you could, because you didn't want to be thought selfish and weak. You wanted to heal others' grief instead of looking at your own, because Merlin knows that your own grief frightens you."
"Stop it!" Harry was yelling now, his hand clenched. "I'm not afraid!"
"Yes, you are," said Draco, and found himself smiling. He thought he would have been even if he didn't expect a certain very enjoyable result from Harry's broken barriers. "The only times I've ever seen your pain and your grief were when you literally couldn't hide them anymore, Harry. Even in the Sanctuary, you kept most of it hidden because you didn't want to interfere with my healing. Or that's the excuse you gave. It's amusing, really. Other people curl up and cry in fear when they hear someone say Voldemort's name. You curl up and cry in fear because you think someone else might see you in pain."
Harry snapped his hand viciously sideways. Draco found himself unable to move as Harry headed towards him, his eyes brighter than they had been. The white-gold wings were dripping light, but kept resurrecting themselves, stronger illusions on Harry's back each time. Draco was definitely hard now, and more than ready. He wondered how much more pushing it would take.
"That is not true," Harry hissed at him. "Take it back."
Draco raised his eyebrows again. The magic was holding his jaw shut. Harry hesitated, and Draco saw a hint of self-awareness creeping back into his eyes. Any moment now, he was going to blame himself for expressing a reasonable level of anger that he'd been provoked into.
Draco couldn't let that happen.
He still had control of his facial muscles, so he let a deliberately mocking look cross his face, as much to say that he knew the truth when Harry didn't.
Harry stared at him, and Draco felt the pressure of Legilimency. This was even better. He let one thought sound over and over at the forefront of his mind, so that Harry would be sure to hear it. If you're really overcome most of your training, as you've promised me you've been trying to do, then I don't think your fear of bedding me has anything to do with that. I think it's just fear.
Harry snapped.
Harry knew he ought to be able to stop, to slow down. His magic was further out of control than he had ever let it expand before, even when they rode back in the carriage from the Sanctuary and Paton said he had felt it coming. It was blooming and singing around him, and he knew that ought to frighten him.
But those conclusions were like words written on a page pinned on a wall across the room. They might be true, but they couldn't touch him right now.
He just wanted to make Draco shut up and stop saying things that weren't true. Of course he believed that Snape and Draco and Connor loved him unconditionally, of course he wasn't afraid like Draco was insinuating he was—how dare he insinuate that!—and of course he did feel guilty when he had a reason to and didn't mope unreasonably.
And of course his training was still there, and not just ordinary fear of bedding. So he would prove to Draco that the training was still there.
He had the feeling that there was a contradiction in his thoughts somewhere, a place he couldn't quite touch.
He didn't care.
He let the magic go and grabbed Draco's chin in his hand, growling again in annoyance at the lack of a second one. He had to correct that soon, he thought muzzily. For now, his chest was hot and tight and fell smaller on the bottom than the top, and his thoughts leaped and careened and ran in strange directions, but the main center of them was always the same: proving Draco wrong.
He kissed Draco, more roughly than he'd ever dared to before, because he had always been afraid that if he did, he would hurt him, he was so much the stronger—
Except that that couldn't be true, because he wasn't afraid. And so he would kiss Draco hard and even bite him if he wanted, because Draco wasn't afraid of him, and he should be, and Harry wanted to show him just how wrong he was.
Draco moaned. Harry didn't think that was supposed to happen. He didn't have much time to think about it, though, because Draco, since he was no longer being pinned against the wall, had leaned forward, one hand in the center of Harry's chest, and shoved him backwards, and Harry went half-sprawling, and he rolled over and came up to one knee in the coins, because, damn it, he wasn't done.
He didn't use his magic to stop or slow Draco down as Draco sprang at him, though, because why should he? He didn't need to. He was going to show Draco that he was wrong, because any moment his training would kick in and push him away screaming, and that meant Draco would see that Harry really had struggled to overcome it and hadn't been able to.
He would be wrong.
Harry thought it was very important to remember that, so he clung to it even as the rest of his thoughts scattered like small startled birds, because Draco was straddling him, and Harry was gasping because he hadn't known the jut of hipbone digging into his belly could feel good. Then Draco leaned down and kissed him again, and Harry found out that he liked teeth clashing together, even when it was outside battle or Draco convincing him to go to the Sanctuary.
But any moment his training would hurt him and he would win anyway, so he felt it safe to kiss back, letting a flood of hot wetness that was certainly partly blood run through his mouth, and then roll over so that Draco dropped, shocked, onto the floor beside him. Harry reached out and raked the air with his fingers, and Draco's shirt and trousers parted into neat strips of cloth that fell to the floor. Draco blinked, looking entirely taken aback for a moment.
"Didn't think someone who was afraid would do that, did you?" Harry asked, and then his eyes took over from his mouth and he shut up for a moment. Draco actually looked…well, he looked much better than Harry had expected him to look for someone with the training he had, because, obviously, someone with the training he had couldn't expect to be normal and couldn't take a lover.
But he looked really, really good, and Harry found that he wanted to kiss Draco somewhere other than on the mouth. He crossed the floor between them while Draco was still blinking, and he didn't remember if he did it on hands and knees, or if he got up and ran. It didn't matter, because any moment the training would kick in.
He rolled to a stop beside Draco and fastened his mouth roughly on his chest, licking and biting again, and determined to find a place on Draco that would do what the place on his neck did to him. It was not fair that Draco knew about that place on his neck. Sensitive ears as revenge didn't really count, because everyone, practically, had sensitive ears.
Draco cried out abruptly when Harry licked one of his nipples, and Harry thought he'd found the place. But, really, just having something in his mouth didn't prove the point, because then he couldn't talk, so he swung a leg over Draco's hips and straddled him in turn, and reached down to Draco's groin. That meant he removed his hand from Draco's chest and so couldn't hold him down anymore, but Harry thought he probably wouldn't want to move away. At least, if the way that Draco gasped and then twitched in his hand was any indication.
Harry hummed in satisfaction and stroked Draco more firmly. His magic was leaping around them in dizzying, twisted, brilliant patterns. Harry thought he saw it create a bolt of lightning out of the corner of his eye, and a pair of entwined figures who looked like him and Draco, but then he let most of his attention go back to what he was doing.
There was so much heat, engulfing heat like the second real kiss he'd shared with Draco, when he came out of the Maze in Lux Aeterna alive, as if they were standing in the middle of the summer sunlight. Harry could taste salt and sweetness in his mouth, and his head shone with fog and sun and fog and sun in alternating patterns, and he was rolling his own hips now, in motions that vaguely surprised him, because surely someone who'd had the training he'd had would not know how to do that.
He found himself pressing firmly against Draco, so firmly he hurt his own wrist where he was stroking Draco, pinning his hand between their bodies. And he regretted not having a second hand more than ever, because now Draco was writhing around and making noises. Harry quite liked the noises—even if half of them sounded like abbreviated versions of his own name and the other half were variations on Fuck—but the writhing made it difficult for him to keep doing what he wanted to do, which was stroke and pull and press down.
He should know to hold still, Harry thought, somewhere in the fog-dazzled confusion. I know how to hold still, and if I know how to do it, then he ought to know how to do it.
The sun broke through the fog again as Draco shuddered abruptly against him, and Harry felt his hand grow warmer. He blinked, and stared at Draco, and the way his face had gone slack with pleasure, his eyelids fluttering in regular contractions, his mouth gasping in air, and he thought, Merlin, I made him feel that good? There was genuine wonder in his thoughts. Harry thought the wonder would last.
It didn't. He'd lifted his head from Draco's chest, and as if that had drawn Draco's attention, he opened his eyes and rolled Harry over with unexpected strength. Then Harry found himself with his trousers tugged open and then his pants, as if Draco didn't care about all the work he'd done that morning putting them on, and then a hand grabbed hold of him, and all the tightness and heat rushed from his lower chest to his groin, and wonder had a different meaning.
"Wish I had you naked," Draco snarled at him. "Should have, if you had done this like a normal person." Harry wondered what he was babbling on about as his head rolled back and he heard his breath coming in short, sharp gasps and his hair rasped against his cheeks and he found himself pressing his hips up in irregular jabs. "Saw you naked once already, though," Draco added inanely. "It'll have to do for now."
And on now he gave one hard tug, and Harry cried out as pleasure hit him like Light magic, rich and rolling and white-gold, and ripped him away from the world for at least a few moments.
He kept waiting for the training to appear. It never did.
He came back to himself slowly, with the sense that he needed to collect bits and pieces which had never broken free from him before. He found Draco sitting beside him, staring into his face.
He didn't look as if he'd lost, even though Harry had proven he wasn't afraid. He looked very much as if he'd won something instead. He was trying to be solemn, Harry thought, but a smirk tugged the corners of his mouth up.
And it hit Harry, then, what he'd done.
He shoved Draco, hard, with his hand and his magic. Draco went over backwards, which was happening a lot lately, and gave a wince when he landed. Harry guessed that he'd finally managed to notice they were rolling around on top of Black artifacts, something they'd both ignored earlier. Harry thought he had a number of bruises and small cuts on his own back and hips.
He didn't care. He struggled against the lassitude in his muscles and the tangling of cloth around his legs, and snarled, "I know what you did."
"And you're angry?" Draco grinned at him.
Harry opened his mouth to snap back, then paused. Either way he went, he realized, Draco had won. Either he'd coaxed Harry into showing the anger he'd been holding back on, or he was proving that he was right about Harry being unwilling to express his anger.
"Damn it!" Harry shouted, and scrambled away. He didn't even know how he felt anymore. He should be angry at Draco for manipulating him, he knew that, and part of him was, but when he looked over at the cauldron of brewing potion and Medicamenta Meatus Verus, he wondered what the hell he'd been thinking. Draco had reacted to stupidity with provocation, the way Harry himself had done with Snape. And he should be angry at Draco for lying to him, but Draco wouldn't repent for that. He'd always cared less about it than Harry had, and in the tradition of accepting allies with different morals than he had, he couldn't insist that Draco change.
And Draco had made him feel so good, even if what he felt right now was mostly messy and sticky. He closed his eyes and shook his head. The little cuts and bruises ached now. The cooling liquid on his leg felt disgusting. The memory of how he'd refused to hold back anything, his magic or his rawer instincts, was enough to make him worry for what could have happened.
But he mostly wanted to feel that pleasure again.
"Damn it!" he yelled again.
Draco chuckled.
Harry opened his eyes and glared at him. Nearly naked, his pants darkly splotched, his blond hair going every which way and his face sweaty and pink, Draco had still won.
"I grant you that one," Harry said, knowing he should sound more upset, and not let afterglow infuse his voice. "And I'll copy down the recipe and then return the book to Snape."
Draco nodded, clearly pleased.
Harry sighed. Maybe he should be angrier, but he wasn't. And if he wasn't angrier, then maybe—
Maybe no one has the right to tell me I should be angrier.
That was a new thought. Harry had spent so much time trying to learn how to be normal and to see what he missed because of his training that he hadn't considered that some of his own, non-normal reactions might be all right.
He stood, slowly, and cast a cleaning spell that left him considerably less sticky than before, then pulled his pants up. He looked over at Draco, and found his eyes lingering on him. Harry blushed.
"And now he blushes," Draco said, as if making the observation to a third person, unseen.
Harry shook his head, and leaned against the wall, trying to work out how he felt other than dizzy and angry and relaxed and good and—
And happy.
