Part Six of 'Company Manners'
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Harry’s plan was to wank over Draco when he got home, fall asleep in the middle of his sheets after a quick Cleaning Charm, and then wake up in the morning so that he could take a proper shower and wank over him again.
As it happened, only the first part of the plan went according to schedule. He woke in the middle of the night to a terrific hammering on his window and leaped to his feet, rubbing his eyes. There was only one kind of owl that knocked like that.
His heart began to pound, and he had to swallow several times before he could lower the wards on the window and let the bird in.
One of the Ministry’s express owls circled his head three times, then landed on his shoulder. Harry winced, since he’d been sleeping naked, but bore with the fact that its claws were drawing blood. The express owls had been crossbred with falcons so they would fly faster, in quiet defiance of the ban on experimental breeding, and Kingsley never used them except in an emergency.
The letter was simple and short, but it still made Harry’s stomach throb and clench into a ball like a fist.
A prominent advocate for Muggleborn rights has attacked Emma Lansby. Lansby is demanding a term in Azkaban for him. At the moment, she’s at St. Mungo’s. I need you to go to her and do anything you can to prevent her from demanding so extreme a sentence.
Harry closed his eyes. He knew why this was so important. Not only would it poison relations between pure-bloods and Muggleborns incredibly if a leader for either side was condemned to Azkaban, which was still a horrible place, but Lansby would become overconfident if she managed to secure this, and so would other pure-bloods. They would press for more and more concessions from the Ministry. When Kingsley refused, as he would have to when their demands became unreasonable, they would become discontent and drift further away from the central government of the British wizarding world into their own small parties that might foment rebellion.
Or open war.
Harry went mechanically to choose his robes, his mind already flinging itself through the loops of memory. He called to mind all the conversations he’d ever had with Emma Lansby, and decided based on them what he would wear.
Dark grey robes, the color of a stormcloud, but not all the way to black. Harry knew how to create embroidery enchantments that would last a few hours, and so he would embroider eagles onto his sleeves and collar. The symbol of Lansby’s family was the eagle.
Sympathy and mourning at once, as if he were afraid that they would lose Lansby. He would soothe her and coax her and drag her back into service to the Ministry so gently that she wouldn’t know it hadn’t been her own idea.
Which would be exhausting.
Harry grimaced and shrugged. I still choose to do the job. I could quit if I really wanted to.
*
“I see your boyfriend’s been out preventing war again,” Blaise told Draco in the morning.
“Someone has to,” Draco responded automatically, and sipped at his tea before he realized that Blaise had had a sharp note in his voice, instead of the wry one he seemed to get when he talked about Potter most of the time. He leaned back, blinking, and asked, “Has something happened to Harry?”
“Harry, even,” Blaise told Astoria, who sat across the table from him and was eating delicately buttered scones with fingers that somehow missed getting even the slightest scrap of stickiness on them. Draco was used to good manners, but Astoria’s were almost unnatural. She gave Blaise a level look in response to his statement and picked up another scone.
“It was in the papers this morning,” she said blandly, “that events somehow conspired to do Emma Lansby an injury, by means of that insufferable Muggleborn bore Ernest Poppycock. She’s in St. Mungo’s for the injury, and Potter is with her, wearing those dove-grey robes I’d like to know where he bought.”
Draco hesitated for a moment. He was not sure how much Blaise and Astoria knew about the truth of Harry’s job. Certainly they had no idea how thoroughly he despised most of the pure-bloods, so Draco would have to tread carefully in his attempts to defend Harry.
“You surely can’t think that he’d want to spend any more time in Lansby’s company than absolutely necessary?” he asked Blaise. “I know that I would rather hate it, myself.”
Blaise gave him a flat, unreadable look, and then turned back to his own breakfast, which he didn’t eat anywhere near as neatly as his wife. Draco wondered idly if Astoria had known that before she married him. “That’s just what I don’t know,” he said. “Lansby is the worst sort of blood purist-loud and demanding. Potter doesn’t have to spend time around her. And yet he chooses to. He was even dancing with her at the last two parties.”
Draco regarded Blaise reflectively. He’d never been sure of what Blaise’s own feelings on blood purity were. He didn’t particularly like Muggleborns or half-bloods, but he invited them to his house. He called the Weasleys blood traitors, but he admired them enough to think their daughter was pretty. He seemed to admire what Harry was doing in trying to prevent war between the factions, given the note that had been in his voice when they saw Harry at the Ministry gala.
It was the last part that decided Draco. “I have excellent reason to think,” he said, “that Harry’s playing a long game in which the winner is the person who gets closest to Emma Lansby.”
“Not a prize I would choose in any game I organized,” Astoria said. She had finished her breakfast now, and all the crumbs had magically vanished. Draco wondered if she had placed a house-elf under a Disillusionment Charm and ordered it to hover around her plate, picking them up.
“Well, of course not,” Draco said. “But you can consider what stakes someone who had to play the game might think were worth the risk.”
A thoughtful silence settled around the table. Draco sipped at his orange juice and hoped he hadn’t made a mistake.
Then Blaise murmured, “I was planning on not inviting Potter to the party that we were going to organize next month in celebration of the end of the war. If he simply attached himself to Lansby, he wouldn’t come. She always avoids celebrations like that,” he added to Draco, and Draco nodded. Of course Lansby would if she were a hardcore blood purist, since she probably believed that the fall of Voldemort was the biggest defeat blood purity had ever suffered. “Now I wonder if I ought to reconsider the invitation.”
“It would give me someone to dance with,” Draco said in a carefully bored tone.
Surprisingly, Astoria laughed, making Blaise and Draco look at her. She was sitting back in her chair, her blonde hair playing freely around her face, and a spark of wicked humor in her eyes that was directed at both of them.
“It’s perfectly obvious that you’re unhappy believing that Potter is really Lansby’s running hound, Blaise, and it’s perfectly obvious that you don’t think he is, Draco. So why shouldn’t you extend the invitation, since it will give both of you so much pleasure?” She rose to her feet, shaking her head. “These rules we live by should never be the excuse for pain. We do much too good a job of inflicting that on ourselves.”
And off she floated. Draco blinked at her back. Then he turned to Blaise.
“I think you have a remarkable wife,” he said.
Blaise smiled back at him, the deepest and most relaxed expression Draco had seen on his face since he came back to England. “I know it,” he said.
“If I were interested in women, I might even be jealous,” Draco said, rising to his feet, and watched Blaise’s face change before he went off to write to Harry. He wouldn’t go to St. Mungo’s, even though he was sure that Harry could use the support, just in case he interrupted some delicate political dance, but an offer of a date at the Three Broomsticks might be what he needed.
Maybe. You don’t know.
But that was the pleasant thing about this relationship, Draco mused as he sat down to write. It wasn’t closed-off in love, the way he thought his relationship with Paul had been, and so he was much less worried about being perfect.
*
Harry sighed as he flung himself into his chair and closed his eyes. That had been exhausting. Lansby had required more reassurance than Harry had realized it was within his power to give. Somehow, he had dug down into himself and tamed his impatience and frustration with her and his hatred of blood purist rhetoric, and given her the listening ear and firm hand that she needed.
Somehow, he had convinced her that it would be a much more entertaining spectacle, and much more embarrassing for Poppycock, if she pushed for a public hexing and a fine instead of an Azkaban term. After all, without the money that he needed to fund his pet projects, Poppycock would be much more frustrated than he would be if he found himself in Azkaban and could act like a martyr. And it might take him months to overcome the effects of several good, combined hexes.
Not the best solution, but then, neither was the way that Poppycock had stepped into the middle of a volatile situation and waved his wand around. Harry hoped that Kingsley, who would be handling Poppycock, sat on him, hard, and quelled any tendencies to speeches full of suffering. Harry couldn’t deal with speeches full of suffering right now.
Something pecked him on the shoulder. Harry opened startled eyes and found the owl that had delivered Draco’s last invitation to dinner sitting there, head tilted to the side as if it thought of knocking on his skull next.
Harry removed the letter from the owl’s leg and opened it, wondering if he had the strength to deal with Draco after today. It was almost six, in any case, and Draco might already have dinner plans.
Dear Harry,
I understand that your duties with Emma Lansby have grown harder. I wondered if you would like to go to the Three Broomsticks again and spend a little time in the company of someone who will be considerably softer than she was-unless you prefer a certain part of me to grow hard.
Yours,
Draco.
Harry smiled at the ridiculous innuendo, which told him something about how far he’d fallen in relation to Draco.
But the thought of the Three Broomsticks made him want to vomit. There were Muggleborn advocates who made that one of their regular meeting places, including some of Poppycock’s followers. They would certainly come up to him and confront him about what he’d been doing in hospital instead of joining them in demonstrating outside the Ministry.
A sudden thought struck him, and Harry acted on it before he thought better of it He turned the letter over, Summoned the nearest ink and quill, and wrote, Why don’t we go to the Perpetual Party? I’ll be there at eight.
He hesitated, then added, Yours, Harry. He felt a bit silly copying Draco’s closing, but at least it conveyed some of his feelings without involving him in the difficulties of deciding on different words. And his intention to attend the party anyway left Draco an out if he didn’t want to come.
With some gratitude, Harry went to change out of the grey robes and into the red-and-gold ones that were his favorites. With proper tailoring, they looked actually elegant. Harry grinned. If Draco came, Harry could surprise him by showing him that Gryffindor colors and beauty were not mutually exclusive.
*
Draco shook his head and smiled as he stepped into the front entrance of Lori Porter’s home. Just as it had been when he left five years ago, the noise of constant music brushed past his ears, though the color scheme of the hall had changed somewhat. Draco studied the dark green and red drapings as he waited for an attendant to find him.
“Delighted to serve you!” A laughing woman in white whirled up, her dark hair gathered into a net of thin black strands studded with tiny pieces of obsidian, onyx, and ebony. It made her face look pale and large, higher in the forehead than Draco thought was natural. She dropped a flawless curtsey to him and reached out to take his cloak. “The mistress is holding court on the other side of the room, if you wish to greet her.”
Draco smiled and nodded, then slipped the woman a Galleon. Lori Porter preferred human servants to house-elves, because house-elves offended her aesthetic sensibilities. Draco had heard from Blaise that Harry’s friend Granger got on well with Lori, though trying to make Lori do anything political was impossible.
With that, he stepped out of the darkly glowing entrance hall and into the Perpetual Party.
Lori Porter was the last of a long and distinguished pure-blood line who had been interested in accumulating money instead of power, and were widely suspected of having used Time-Turners to travel back and start accounts in multiple banks around the world. Or so the rumor went. No one Draco knew had ever pretended to have uncovered the source of the Porters’ enormous wealth. Apparently, the people Lori dealt with were only concerned that she had it.
Lori had decided that she didn’t want to marry, have children, or dabble in politics, which left attending parties as the only respectable activities for someone of her family’s age and rank. But leaving one party to attend another bored her, so she simply started a single large festival in her house and left it going at all times. When she wanted, she could leave and rest; her guests were happy to eat, drink, dance, gossip, and listen to music without her, and her human attendants traded shifts throughout the day to welcome them.
The Perpetual Party had started two years before Draco left England. He wondered idly if it would ever stop. Of course, there was no reason it should as long as Lori had the money and the interest. Who said that every pure-blood had to be ambitious and sophisticated? Draco’s class needed its clowns as much as the Muggleborns did.
He paused thoughtfully, and wondered if that was one reason for Harry’s request to meet him here, which had rather surprised Draco at first.
For the present, Lori had adopted an underwater motif. More dark green hangings covered the walls, blending with dark blue hangings and elaborate murals of waves and aqua tiles and the largest ultramarines Draco had ever seen. Fish swam past his face, well-done illusions of angelfish and dolphins and the occasional shark. Shells crunched under his feet; Draco glanced down and saw that the entire floor had been redone in them. Sparks of golden magic arched up and renewed the shells as each top layer was crushed.
Lori held court on a coral throne in the middle of a circle of adoring men and women. She’d grown her golden hair long, and a siren’s tail had replaced her legs. Draco shook his head. Knowing how far Lori would go in pursuit of a conceit, that might even be a real Transfiguration, instead of simply glamour.
“Draco. Thank Merlin.”
Draco turned around in some concern, wondering if Harry had been harassed by people who recognized him. But Harry simply smiled at him, a brilliant flash that made Draco feel more dazzled than the ultramarines had, and linked his arm through Draco’s. “Come on. I think the food without experimental potions in it is over here.”
Draco laughed and let himself be led. He was exulting in the thought of the picture they must present, and still more in the fact that the admiration they attracted at the Perpetual Party was likely to be entirely aesthetic. He didn’t want Harry to feel pressured to perform today. “Had the experience of waking up with your cock gone invisible, have you?”
Harry snorted. “No, but it does take an awfully long time to stop thinking one is a sea turtle when one’s been wallowing on the floor half the morning.”
The sideboard of “traditional” food ran along most of the far western wall of the room. The majority of it was seafood, Draco noticed, and the water tasted salty. For all that, he managed to achieve a satisfactory plate of frogs’ legs, lobster, and oysters. Harry slapped a thick piece of salmon between two slices of bread that he’d found Merlin knew where and took a large gulp of salty water. Draco winced.
Harry met his eyes with a challenging gaze. “What, I’m not being dainty enough for you?”
Draco carefully shook his head. “It has nothing to do with that,” he said truthfully. “I was wondering how you were able to drink all that salt without wincing.”
“I’ve been here long enough to develop a taste for this,” Harry admitted. “Porter’s had the same motif for the last six months.” He took an enormous bite of fish, and then ate it delicately enough, never opening his mouth, which Draco thought was more than he would have managed. “And saltwater tastes better than the flattery that I’ve had to pour on Emma Lansby’s head for the past eight hours.” He tilted his head back to rest against the wall and closed his eyes. A sunfish swam past his forehead.
“Hard work?” Draco murmured. Yes, it was redundant, when he could already see the effects of that fatigue in Harry’s face, but it gave Harry a chance to complain, which Draco thought was principally what he wanted.
“You have no idea.” Harry pried open an eye and snorted. “Did you know that all the blood purists in Britain are waiting on her orders? And that she could have Ernest Poppycock assassinated soundlessly in the middle of the night, and people would only quake in fear of her instead of trying to retaliate? Never mind that she would have taken over the country already if she had anything near that kind of power. Imagine trying to act as if you believe that.”
Draco winced again, but more sincerely this time. “I’m surprised that you chose to come here, after that,” he said, moving on to what he had wondered about when he first stepped into the Perpetual Party. “Haven’t you had enough of blood politics and polite manners for one day?”
“Blood politics isn’t the same as the presence of pure-bloods,” Harry said. “And I knew that any pub I could go out to tonight, even with my friends, would only involve me in the politics again.” He used his free hand, the one not clutching the dripping sandwich, to make a slashing gesture around the room. “No one talks about that kind of thing here.”
“But they’re still pure-blood,” said Draco. “I’m…surprised that you haven’t become sick of us all after having to deal with people like Lansby.”
Harry met his eyes, and said, unsmiling, “I like some pure-bloods.”
Draco caught his breath, and felt warmth like sunlight move through him.
“Not to mention,” Harry added, “that I like some of their manners and their customs, too. Some, not all. Maybe thirty percent.” He looked around the Perpetual Party and the whirling, laughing, munching, talking crowd. “I wanted to come to a place where I could see beauty and be around people who are far too polite and interested in other things to mention politics when they realize that you don’t want to talk about them.”
Draco felt as though someone had picked him up like a rug and beaten most of the tension out of him. So Harry did recognize that he could like pure-blood customs and manners separately from the people who made such great nuisances of themselves in his daily life. And obviously not everyone was a nuisance, given that he had just acknowledged Draco’s family background.
He wished he could say something back. Appearing at the Three Broomsticks with Harry last night was the beginning of showing Harry that Draco wanted to be comfortable in his world, too, but he didn’t know it nearly as well as Harry knew this one. He had no idea what an appropriate gesture would be.
Then he decided that, since Harry had chosen to come to this party instead of being forced to do it by the exigencies of his job, and since he had mentioned a liking for beauty, Draco might as well act like a pure-blood for tonight. He held out his hand. “Do you care to dance?”
Harry gave him a startled look, but quickly it became a smile. He finished his fish sandwich, handed his cup of salty water to an attendant who conveniently appeared just when he was wanted-as they always did-and then clasped Draco’s fingers. “Let’s.”
The music was constantly changing, and various kinds clashed with one another, so that one only had to choose the part of the room that suited one’s mood. Draco saw couples doing waltzes, pavanes, wild dances that had no name he knew, and dancing that was practically sex with clothes on. He wondered which one Harry would choose.
Harry dragged him straight to one of the places where gentler music played, and began to pull Draco through a slow pavane. Draco adjusted at once, and placed a possessive hand on Harry’s back, just so that no one else would think they had the right to interrupt.
Harry smiled at him with half-open eyes and sighed as the music swirled upwards, tugging Draco’s imagination with it. He watched as light sparked off Harry’s robes-red and gold, and still tasteful, for a miracle-and thought about how soon he’d be able to pull them off. He watched the graceful motions of Harry’s feet and thought about how long it had taken him to learn to dance like this.
He could still remember the schoolboy who had floundered around the dance floor at the Yule Ball and taunted him, if he tried. But the reality of the strong, confident man in front of him melted through the fancies and sent them spinning. This was the man he desired.
He thought about how soon they could go to bed.
Harry leaned forwards and pressed his lips to Draco’s again as the dance music finished. Draco stroked a hand through his hair and slipped his tongue between Harry’s easily parted lips. The kiss lasted longer than the one the previous night had, and was more thoughtful and considered, Draco thought.
It also made him pant harder. He surged forwards, pressing his erection into Harry’s waiting one. Harry gasped, his mouth falling open wider. Then he shook his head and stepped away.
“Not yet,” he murmured. “I’m too tired tonight to be of any use to you.”
Draco recognized the excuse for what it was, but he could still bow and then escort Harry off the dance floor and go on talking, because he also recognized that the reality of Harry meant he wouldn’t allow himself to back away forever.
*
Harry paced his front room, filled with energy that he was startled to possess after today. If nothing else, the dances he’d had with Draco should have released it and made him collapse into bed with a sense of gratitude.
Instead, he paced, and his robes swung around his ankles and hissed on the carpet the way he would have liked to hiss at Lansby.
Then he gave in and ducked into his bedroom, dragging off the robes as he went and letting them fall to the floor. Any small tears or dust motes that they picked up would be easy enough to clean off later. At the moment, what Harry needed most was to quell the fire dancing up and down with short, sharp jabs in his abdomen.
Draco.
He seemed to be everywhere around Harry, though Harry clearly remembered walking away from him at the Perpetual Party less than an hour ago. His face was bright with laughter when he didn’t remember to control it, and with other flickering, suppressed emotions that Harry wanted to learn how to read. Just because he understood the culture of the pure-bloods didn’t mean that he understood every individual within it.
He fell on the bed and reached out, stripping off his pants with one impatient hand so that he could get the other on his cock sooner.
Ah, Draco. Draco. He moaned the name aloud, although that didn’t have quite the same resonance as the word did in his thoughts. His hand jolted up and then down, almost painfully abrupt. He tried once to stop himself and be a little gentler, but that didn’t work. His hand sped up again as if of its own volition.
He thought of the way Draco had moved in the dance, the way he had darted looks at Harry with the same fascination that Harry had used on him, the way his hand had settled on Harry’s back and he didn’t seem happy when it wasn’t there. He thought of the swinging, swaying hair, the slightly parted lips, the very slight lift of his chin when someone looked too hard at him. Harry bet that Draco didn’t even know he made that last gesture, as if he were daring the world to find fault with him because he had done a few stupid things once.
The flashes of fire in his gut roiled and burst into flame.
Harry arched his back and grunted as he came. The pleasure continued longer than it should have, fine details of Draco’s language and face and personality traveling through his memory one by one and then lingering there.
Harry fell limp and tired at last, and barely managed the Cleaning Charms that folded up the robes and dusted them and removed the semen from his thighs and hand. As he curled up on top of the sheets, too tired to get under them, he thought quite distinctly, It’s a fine thing to be such a good observer that I can wank to what I notice about someone.
And I’m sure Draco will be flattered when I tell him that he gave me sweet dreams.
Part Seven.