Merry Christmas!
Happy holidays, everyone! I hope you're doing well. I'm afraid I don't yet have a complete, edited fic to post, but I do have teasers from two one-shots (one of which is not yet edited but will be posted soon, one of which is not yet finished).
("Intaglio" is the finished one, an epilogue-compliant story with Harry pursuing Draco that grew, and grew, and grew. And grew. It is about 12,000 words long, stupid thing. This scene takes place right after the Battle of Hogwarts).
Harry stood with his arms folded, leaning against one of the walls of the Great Hall, and stared out over the weeping, shivering, rejoicing, embracing madness. He found his eyes turning wearily from side to side, as if he were too tired to look at any single person or family for too long. He might see tears, and he didn’t think he could deal with that right now.
His gaze fell on the Malfoys, and stopped.
Lucius was sitting on a bench at a table, his eyes shut and his hand stretched across the table to rest in Draco’s. Narcissa was leaning with her arms dangling into her lap and her head on Draco’s shoulder. Draco sat bolt upright in the middle of them, face strained and dry.
And fearless.
Harry paused. Draco looked rather the way he did right now-as if he had seen everything in the world there was to be frightened of and so he couldn’t imagine giving way to fear again.
Harry knew that emotion wasn’t something that would last, for either of them. But for the moment, they were close, and so he drew the hawthorn wand out of his robe pocket and marched forwards.
Draco turned swiftly to look up at him as he approached, hunching his shoulders. Neither Lucius nor Narcissa moved. They seemed to trust their son to defend them.
Harry swallowed. He felt a moment of bitter, scorching envy. He would have given anything to have a family like that, and it seemed unfair that Malfoy, of all people, had it instead.
But then he thought of Draco being forced to torture people, and the helpless way Lucius had asked Voldemort about Draco, and the way that Narcissa’s nails had dug into his skin when she asked if her son was still alive.
No, he earned it.
“What do you want, Potter?” Draco hissed under his breath. His mother stirred at the name, but still didn’t lift her head. Draco placed his free arm around her as if to make sure she wouldn’t, his eyes never leaving Harry’s. “If you’ve come to scold me, it can wait. If you’ve come to taunt me, have your fun and go away.” He smiled, a smile that seemed to come from a long way away, and which had the shadows of Fiendfyre dancing around it, at least to Harry’s eyes. “At least I know you can’t arrest me, because you’re not an Auror yet.”
“I wanted to return your wand,” Harry said. There were all sorts of words he would have liked to say, but each of them would have revealed to Malfoy that he knew about some of his weaknesses. Harry didn’t want to do anything to make Malfoy feel less strong right now. He held out the wand and waited until Malfoy took it, his eyes darting back and forth between it and Harry’s face.
“You’d trust me with a wand,” Malfoy said. “Now.”
“There’s no Voldemort to make you do things you don’t want to,” Harry said simply.
Malfoy’s wide eyes caught and held his. Harry gave him a single deep glance, hoping to use it to tell him that matters were over and done with between them, as far as he was concerned, and they never needed to bother each other again.
Malfoy’s gaze softened for the merest instant. Harry saw a fleeting fondness there, as if Malfoy were grateful for the end of their rivalry.
The fondness made Harry’s cheeks flush, and something stirred within his belly that he didn’t understand and didn’t want to acknowledge. He hastily cleared his throat, nodded briskly to the Malfoy family, and turned away.
He caught sight of the cluster of red hair across the Great Hall and made a beeline for it. He wanted to find Ginny and Mrs. Weasley. Around them, he could just feel. He didn’t have to think.
("Take Your Bloody Traditions And--" is the one that's not finished. It's a fic in which Draco courts Harry, written for a long-ago request of that type. Being Draco, he is trying to court Harry during his wedding preparations to marry Ginny. Fun times! Also, Harry is being a bit selfish here.)
“Harry! Where have you been?”
Harry just had time to fend off Hermione’s charge, and then he found himself holding a woven bag filled with something that rustled and crumpled under his hands. He stared at the bag blankly, then smelled it. The scent of roses filled his nose so powerfully that he coughed, his eyes watering.
“You don’t smell it,” Hermione said in an aggrieved voice, and tugged him out the door. “They’re hung around the house to create a web of blessing.” Despite the flush on her cheeks, she smiled at Harry. “Isn’t that interesting?”
Harry shuddered and obediently began to hang the bags of rose petals, but he was thinking of something more than the immediate present. Hermione had read up on all the wizarding wedding traditions before she started helping Molly; Harry suspected she wouldn’t have thought herself qualified to help otherwise. Maybe she could tell him about this Courting Malfoy had mentioned, and why expensive gifts and flirtatious seduction seemed to be a part of it.
“It’s interesting,” he said casually, and then started to levitate a bag of rose petals towards the roof. “Can you tell me-“
“Harry!” Hermione stamped her foot. “You have to hang them by hand, not by magic! Or all the virtue goes out of them.”
“Oh.” Harry blinked and decided he wasn’t about to argue with her in this mood. Instead, he conjured a ladder from a stone-he had grown rather proud of how good he was at Transfiguration, and he had taken a high NEWT in it-and leaned it against the side of the Burrow. Hermione began tossing rose-bags to him; Harry began conjuring hooks, too, when he found out that the bags had string loops woven on the top, but no other apparent means of hanging them. “Have you ever heard of something called a Courting?” he asked at last.
“Yes.” Hermione looked up, her eyes narrowed. “But why do you ask? You and Ginny are having a traditional wedding, and Courting is something else, and Harry, we really don’t have time to change everything we’ve agreed on now, you’re getting married in a month-“
“I know that,” Harry said hastily. “But there was another customer in Madam Malkin’s this morning, and she was giggling and saying that she was being Courted. I didn’t know what she meant.”
“You’re not usually that curious, Harry.” Hermione had rocked back on her heels and was still regarding him skeptically. Harry suspected Ginny might have confessed some of her own inclination to run off to Hermione.
“She seemed happy,” Harry said, and let some of his bitterness slip into his voice. “Happier than I am about this bustle.”
“Oh, Harry,” Hermione said, her face softening. “You know that it’s because Mrs. Weasley wants the best for both of you, and because you’re a celebrity and your wedding would be a madhouse anyway-“
“I know,” Harry said. “I just wish-well, never mind.” Hermione’s face had begun to change alarmingly. “But I’d like to know what a Courting is. Her talk about it is all I had to listen to for two solid hours, but I never got a good sense of what it was.”
Hermione nodded absently and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “It’s when someone decides to approach someone else for a-well, call it a non-traditional marriage,” she said. “It has a special name, but I can’t remember it right now-“
Harry gave a gasp of mock horror, and the next bag of rose-petals Hermione tossed at him almost knocked him off the ladder.
“But there’s more than one form of marriage in the wizarding world, you know,” Hermione continued. “Nowadays most people have weddings like this-“
“How do they sleep at night?” Harry muttered, causing another hook to pop out of the side of the Burrow’s roof with unnecessary force.
Hermione ignored him. “And like Bill’s and Fleur’s. But there were also marriages made between pure-bloods for the sole purpose of having children, and for making sure that there was a legal heir from a family they could trust in the case that a man or woman who didn’t want to marry traditionally died early, and for-oh, dozens of other reasons.” She smoothed her hair away from her face again, this time casting a spell so that it would hover behind her instead of getting in the way. “But the Courting led up to a union that was more flexible than either of those. It was what the partners wanted it to be. It could have sexual fidelity and legal aspects incorporated into it, but mostly it tied together two people so that they could trust each other. It was meant to make them happy.”
Harry swallowed. “The girl in Madam Malkin’s said something about gifts,” he said as casually as he could, whilst he caught another rose-bag and hung it in place. He was glad that he’d thought to tuck the green silk cloak away again before he returned to the Burrow. “Are they part of the Courting, too?”
“Oh, yes,” Hermione said. She sounded more relaxed than Harry had heard her in weeks. He suspected she liked talking and speculating about wizarding traditions more than she did actually participating in them. “The person who initiates the Courting sends one they think the recipient will like. The recipient can refuse it, and that marks the end of the Courting. Accepting it and sending a return letter says that the Courting can continue, but it doesn’t constitute encouragement. Returning gift for gift gives enthusiastic consent.”
Harry was silent, thinking frantically, as he moved his ladder around the Burrow and the hanging of rose-bags continued. Did he want Malfoy to Court him? The green cloak was a wonderful gift, but Harry hated to think of himself bound to spread his legs for Malfoy-or whatever it was that two blokes did with each other-just because he’d received a few nice presents. And who was to say that the other gifts would be equally thoughtful?
“It sounds like bribery,” he said.
“It isn’t,” Hermione said firmly, standing on her toes so that Harry could reach the bag she held out. She seemed to have got tired of levitating them-or, more likely, Harry thought, she’d been using her own magical strength all day and was nearly exhausted. “The person being Courted can break up the Courtship at any time, just by sending a letter saying so. The Courtship has to be willing, or it doesn’t mean anything.”
Harry nodded and swallowed. He couldn’t believe he was actually considering what he was considering.
But why not? You heard Hermione; you can break it off when you like. And how quickly can Malfoy possibly Court you before the wedding? He’ll doubtless give it all up when he sees that you’re going to marry Ginny anyway.
Harry relaxed. Yes, he deserved a little excitement in his life. And he was interested to see what Malfoy would send next. Maybe a letter saying “Fuck off, Potter,” because he was likely to demand a gift in return instead of just a letter saying that he could continue, the greedy bastard.
“That’s better,” Hermione said approvingly. “You’re smiling again. Remember that you should be getting married for love, Harry.”
“I do remember that,” Harry said quickly, and hung up the last bag. The cloak felt like a burning coal in his pocket, and he didn’t want to think of Ginny’s face.
I can break it off whenever I like.
He thought of Malfoy’s face instead when Harry didn’t fall over his feet to accept his offer, and smiled.
("Intaglio" is the finished one, an epilogue-compliant story with Harry pursuing Draco that grew, and grew, and grew. And grew. It is about 12,000 words long, stupid thing. This scene takes place right after the Battle of Hogwarts).
Harry stood with his arms folded, leaning against one of the walls of the Great Hall, and stared out over the weeping, shivering, rejoicing, embracing madness. He found his eyes turning wearily from side to side, as if he were too tired to look at any single person or family for too long. He might see tears, and he didn’t think he could deal with that right now.
His gaze fell on the Malfoys, and stopped.
Lucius was sitting on a bench at a table, his eyes shut and his hand stretched across the table to rest in Draco’s. Narcissa was leaning with her arms dangling into her lap and her head on Draco’s shoulder. Draco sat bolt upright in the middle of them, face strained and dry.
And fearless.
Harry paused. Draco looked rather the way he did right now-as if he had seen everything in the world there was to be frightened of and so he couldn’t imagine giving way to fear again.
Harry knew that emotion wasn’t something that would last, for either of them. But for the moment, they were close, and so he drew the hawthorn wand out of his robe pocket and marched forwards.
Draco turned swiftly to look up at him as he approached, hunching his shoulders. Neither Lucius nor Narcissa moved. They seemed to trust their son to defend them.
Harry swallowed. He felt a moment of bitter, scorching envy. He would have given anything to have a family like that, and it seemed unfair that Malfoy, of all people, had it instead.
But then he thought of Draco being forced to torture people, and the helpless way Lucius had asked Voldemort about Draco, and the way that Narcissa’s nails had dug into his skin when she asked if her son was still alive.
No, he earned it.
“What do you want, Potter?” Draco hissed under his breath. His mother stirred at the name, but still didn’t lift her head. Draco placed his free arm around her as if to make sure she wouldn’t, his eyes never leaving Harry’s. “If you’ve come to scold me, it can wait. If you’ve come to taunt me, have your fun and go away.” He smiled, a smile that seemed to come from a long way away, and which had the shadows of Fiendfyre dancing around it, at least to Harry’s eyes. “At least I know you can’t arrest me, because you’re not an Auror yet.”
“I wanted to return your wand,” Harry said. There were all sorts of words he would have liked to say, but each of them would have revealed to Malfoy that he knew about some of his weaknesses. Harry didn’t want to do anything to make Malfoy feel less strong right now. He held out the wand and waited until Malfoy took it, his eyes darting back and forth between it and Harry’s face.
“You’d trust me with a wand,” Malfoy said. “Now.”
“There’s no Voldemort to make you do things you don’t want to,” Harry said simply.
Malfoy’s wide eyes caught and held his. Harry gave him a single deep glance, hoping to use it to tell him that matters were over and done with between them, as far as he was concerned, and they never needed to bother each other again.
Malfoy’s gaze softened for the merest instant. Harry saw a fleeting fondness there, as if Malfoy were grateful for the end of their rivalry.
The fondness made Harry’s cheeks flush, and something stirred within his belly that he didn’t understand and didn’t want to acknowledge. He hastily cleared his throat, nodded briskly to the Malfoy family, and turned away.
He caught sight of the cluster of red hair across the Great Hall and made a beeline for it. He wanted to find Ginny and Mrs. Weasley. Around them, he could just feel. He didn’t have to think.
("Take Your Bloody Traditions And--" is the one that's not finished. It's a fic in which Draco courts Harry, written for a long-ago request of that type. Being Draco, he is trying to court Harry during his wedding preparations to marry Ginny. Fun times! Also, Harry is being a bit selfish here.)
“Harry! Where have you been?”
Harry just had time to fend off Hermione’s charge, and then he found himself holding a woven bag filled with something that rustled and crumpled under his hands. He stared at the bag blankly, then smelled it. The scent of roses filled his nose so powerfully that he coughed, his eyes watering.
“You don’t smell it,” Hermione said in an aggrieved voice, and tugged him out the door. “They’re hung around the house to create a web of blessing.” Despite the flush on her cheeks, she smiled at Harry. “Isn’t that interesting?”
Harry shuddered and obediently began to hang the bags of rose petals, but he was thinking of something more than the immediate present. Hermione had read up on all the wizarding wedding traditions before she started helping Molly; Harry suspected she wouldn’t have thought herself qualified to help otherwise. Maybe she could tell him about this Courting Malfoy had mentioned, and why expensive gifts and flirtatious seduction seemed to be a part of it.
“It’s interesting,” he said casually, and then started to levitate a bag of rose petals towards the roof. “Can you tell me-“
“Harry!” Hermione stamped her foot. “You have to hang them by hand, not by magic! Or all the virtue goes out of them.”
“Oh.” Harry blinked and decided he wasn’t about to argue with her in this mood. Instead, he conjured a ladder from a stone-he had grown rather proud of how good he was at Transfiguration, and he had taken a high NEWT in it-and leaned it against the side of the Burrow. Hermione began tossing rose-bags to him; Harry began conjuring hooks, too, when he found out that the bags had string loops woven on the top, but no other apparent means of hanging them. “Have you ever heard of something called a Courting?” he asked at last.
“Yes.” Hermione looked up, her eyes narrowed. “But why do you ask? You and Ginny are having a traditional wedding, and Courting is something else, and Harry, we really don’t have time to change everything we’ve agreed on now, you’re getting married in a month-“
“I know that,” Harry said hastily. “But there was another customer in Madam Malkin’s this morning, and she was giggling and saying that she was being Courted. I didn’t know what she meant.”
“You’re not usually that curious, Harry.” Hermione had rocked back on her heels and was still regarding him skeptically. Harry suspected Ginny might have confessed some of her own inclination to run off to Hermione.
“She seemed happy,” Harry said, and let some of his bitterness slip into his voice. “Happier than I am about this bustle.”
“Oh, Harry,” Hermione said, her face softening. “You know that it’s because Mrs. Weasley wants the best for both of you, and because you’re a celebrity and your wedding would be a madhouse anyway-“
“I know,” Harry said. “I just wish-well, never mind.” Hermione’s face had begun to change alarmingly. “But I’d like to know what a Courting is. Her talk about it is all I had to listen to for two solid hours, but I never got a good sense of what it was.”
Hermione nodded absently and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “It’s when someone decides to approach someone else for a-well, call it a non-traditional marriage,” she said. “It has a special name, but I can’t remember it right now-“
Harry gave a gasp of mock horror, and the next bag of rose-petals Hermione tossed at him almost knocked him off the ladder.
“But there’s more than one form of marriage in the wizarding world, you know,” Hermione continued. “Nowadays most people have weddings like this-“
“How do they sleep at night?” Harry muttered, causing another hook to pop out of the side of the Burrow’s roof with unnecessary force.
Hermione ignored him. “And like Bill’s and Fleur’s. But there were also marriages made between pure-bloods for the sole purpose of having children, and for making sure that there was a legal heir from a family they could trust in the case that a man or woman who didn’t want to marry traditionally died early, and for-oh, dozens of other reasons.” She smoothed her hair away from her face again, this time casting a spell so that it would hover behind her instead of getting in the way. “But the Courting led up to a union that was more flexible than either of those. It was what the partners wanted it to be. It could have sexual fidelity and legal aspects incorporated into it, but mostly it tied together two people so that they could trust each other. It was meant to make them happy.”
Harry swallowed. “The girl in Madam Malkin’s said something about gifts,” he said as casually as he could, whilst he caught another rose-bag and hung it in place. He was glad that he’d thought to tuck the green silk cloak away again before he returned to the Burrow. “Are they part of the Courting, too?”
“Oh, yes,” Hermione said. She sounded more relaxed than Harry had heard her in weeks. He suspected she liked talking and speculating about wizarding traditions more than she did actually participating in them. “The person who initiates the Courting sends one they think the recipient will like. The recipient can refuse it, and that marks the end of the Courting. Accepting it and sending a return letter says that the Courting can continue, but it doesn’t constitute encouragement. Returning gift for gift gives enthusiastic consent.”
Harry was silent, thinking frantically, as he moved his ladder around the Burrow and the hanging of rose-bags continued. Did he want Malfoy to Court him? The green cloak was a wonderful gift, but Harry hated to think of himself bound to spread his legs for Malfoy-or whatever it was that two blokes did with each other-just because he’d received a few nice presents. And who was to say that the other gifts would be equally thoughtful?
“It sounds like bribery,” he said.
“It isn’t,” Hermione said firmly, standing on her toes so that Harry could reach the bag she held out. She seemed to have got tired of levitating them-or, more likely, Harry thought, she’d been using her own magical strength all day and was nearly exhausted. “The person being Courted can break up the Courtship at any time, just by sending a letter saying so. The Courtship has to be willing, or it doesn’t mean anything.”
Harry nodded and swallowed. He couldn’t believe he was actually considering what he was considering.
But why not? You heard Hermione; you can break it off when you like. And how quickly can Malfoy possibly Court you before the wedding? He’ll doubtless give it all up when he sees that you’re going to marry Ginny anyway.
Harry relaxed. Yes, he deserved a little excitement in his life. And he was interested to see what Malfoy would send next. Maybe a letter saying “Fuck off, Potter,” because he was likely to demand a gift in return instead of just a letter saying that he could continue, the greedy bastard.
“That’s better,” Hermione said approvingly. “You’re smiling again. Remember that you should be getting married for love, Harry.”
“I do remember that,” Harry said quickly, and hung up the last bag. The cloak felt like a burning coal in his pocket, and he didn’t want to think of Ginny’s face.
I can break it off whenever I like.
He thought of Malfoy’s face instead when Harry didn’t fall over his feet to accept his offer, and smiled.