[one-shots]: With Your Green Mantle, R, 3/3
This is a long one-shot. Don't start reading here; this is the third part.
“And then Millicent said…”
Draco didn’t hear the rest of Pansy’s anecdote. He had paused with his glass of rich amber liquor at his lips and was staring blankly into the distance while Pansy told her story and Blaise and Theo laughed. Astoria was laughing beyond Pansy, too, leaning heavily on her with her hand across her mouth. That was the “tipsy” lean that meant she had chosen her partner for the evening. Daphne hadn’t attended this party.
Draco had discovered something horrifying as he sat there, drinking good wine, in the middle of his friends, in the middle of his life, in the middle of everything.
He was bored.
Draco set down his glass and examined it suspiciously for any trace of different flecks of color swirling in the amber. He wouldn’t have put it past Blaise or Theo to lace his drink with an experimental potion, one that was supposed to suck the life and joy out of everything. Draco had never been bored at a party in his life.
At least, not if the party was worth anything. And if it wasn’t, Draco could always draw a few people to him like a flower drawing bees and create a private celebration in the middle of the unworthy larger one. Or an orgy. He wasn’t picky.
Now, though, he was sitting with his friends, people he didn’t need to do that with because they were always entertaining and knew him well enough to notice when he was bored, and he was still bored.
What was happening?
Draco raised his hand and examined his nails for a moment. There were some diseases that he knew drained the whole world of interest, and if he was suffering from one of them, that meant he should no longer care about his appearance. But when he imagined that his right thumbnail had been broken and was jagged and ugly, he suffered the same stomach-clenching thrill of horror that the thought would always awaken in him. He released a hard breath that finally drew the attention of the others.
“What is it, Draco?” Astoria leaned forwards with a smile that said she could change her mind and include someone in the threesome with Pansy if she wanted to, and the someone might as well be him. Draco gave her a faint smile and then glanced at the others, but they were watching him with concerned expressions. If someone had tried a potion or a charm on him that made him feel this way, it was subtle and they had probably forgotten they had used it by now, given the amount of wine they’d all consumed.
“I’m not feeling well,” he said, which was true if an understatement.
Pansy flinched a little. Since she’d had a cold the year before that had made her nose red for a week, despite all the medicinal potions she could throw at it, she’d been overly anxious about germs. “Perhaps you should go home, then, dear, and recover for a little while,” she suggested. “Just until you feel better.”
Theo gave an exaggerated nod that suggested to Draco that he was hoping to get back into Pansy’s good graces before the end of the night and sleep with her. Ordinarily Draco would have found that amusing when Astoria hadn’t invited Theo, too, but right now his throat burned with confusion.
“Fine,” he said, and stood up.
Blaise pushed his chair back from the table at the same time. “I’ll go with you,” he said.
Draco gave him a level look as they emerged from Pansy’s dining room and into the garden where she kept an Apparition point. “Did you come with me because you wanted to get away from them, or because you want to sleep with me?” he asked. “Because I am feeling bad, Blaise, and I’m not in the mood.”
Blaise smiled at him. “I can change your mind,” he murmured, and suddenly he was pressed against Draco, knocking him into an ornamental sundial as he sought Draco’s mouth with his own.
Draco let Blaise kiss him for a moment, curious. Maybe he’d simply been brooding on Potter for too long, and someone else could give him the jolt of arousal and lust he needed to return to normal.
But it just tasted persistent and rather wet, and in the end Draco pulled away and claimed a friend’s, rather than a lover’s, privilege. “I’m too drunk and I don’t feel good,” he said again. He knew he sounded petulant. He doubted that Blaise would let it bother him for long. “Take me home? And then leave,” he added, just in case Blaise got the wrong idea after all.
“I wish you would let me stay,” Blaise whined, but he did as Draco asked, with nothing more than a second kiss and a lingering grope of his arse when Draco paused inside the door of the Manor and looked expectantly at him. Then Draco was alone in the house, with nothing more than a slight buzz between his ears and a suspicious brain.
He thought-he couldn’t be sure, but he thought-that he might have done this because of Potter.
That was such a horrid thought that he had to go and get drunk on his own wine.
*
Draco checked his preparations for the thirtieth time, and sighed. There was very little he could do about rescuing Potter until he reached the first day of autumn. And in the meantime, he was bored.
His friends’ parties bored him more and more often now. Oh, they would be fun for a few hours, but then Draco’s mind would wander to Potter or speculation about what would happen if he really rescued him. Or he would clench down to stimulate the memory of the burn in his arse, which didn’t return no matter how much he let Blaise and Theo fuck him.
There was no reason that should be so. Draco was rather indignant about it, and starting to think it was a charm Potter had cast, except that he didn’t think the faeries would be stupid enough to let Potter keep his wand.
He didn’t see Potter again, except in dreams and a few fleeting glimpses of someone among the rosebushes who was gone by the time he got there, which made it worse. And the few times that he went out into the gardens and called for him, or tried to come up with an appropriate summoning ritual, his failure just made him more depressed.
Finally, in desperation one day, he took Daphne’s advice and went to visit Millicent.
Her robe-shop was halfway down Diagon Alley from Madam Malkin’s, which Draco thought was sensible. People wouldn’t have to walk as far to get to hers, and she would sell a lot of robes to pure-bloods who made impulse purchases. Draco stood outside her window and admired some of the colors and fabrics she had on display. He decided that it wouldn’t be a disaster to allow her to make a few of his clothes.
“Draco?”
Draco started and turned around. He didn’t know why, but he had imagined that he would hear Millicent coming before he saw her. But she had sneaked up on him. She was wearing a delicious rich purple robe, and he admired it for so long that he missed the way she held out her hand to him until it appeared right in front of his eyes.
Draco shook his head and shook her hand at the same time. Potter had made him into a fool, he thought indignantly. He was going to demand payment for that when he saw Potter again, preferably in the form of one of those lovely long shags.
“Daphne suggested that I come and see you,” he said, when Millicent had given him a look that meant she wanted to know what he was doing there. See, Draco thought to an absent Daphne, I’m not blind to nuance, and my friends aren’t the only ones that I can read. Then he wondered if that didn’t count because Millicent had once been a friend, and still was one, in a way, though she hadn’t attended any of their parties in longer than Draco could remember. “I have a cloak made of unusual cloth that she thought you might be interested in.”
Millicent’s face went polite and distant, and she nodded. “Always glad to acquire unusual materials,” she said.
Draco peered at her. “What’s the matter?”
“What do you mean?” Millicent had started to bustle towards the back of the shop, but she turned around and gave him a bewildered look.
“I said why I was here and you looked as though someone had called you a Gryffindor,” Draco said. He thought she must have heard that insult more than once since she had become one in all but taste, but he reckoned that it might still hurt. “Why?”
Millicent hesitated, then sighed. “I did hope that you had come to visit just because you missed me,” she said quietly. “It seems that no one comes for that reason anymore.”
“Oh.” Draco felt awkward, which was a sensation so strange that he thought he had to thank Millicent for introducing him to a new experience. He studied his feet for a moment, then looked up at her. “I thought you wouldn’t want visitors like us anymore,” he said, as a partial compromise. “Won’t we get you in trouble with the Ministry and all the other good little taxpayers if they see us around here?”
Millicent sighed and rested one elbow on a shelf that was covered with bolts of fine fabric. Draco noticed a shade of green there that matched Potter’s eyes and had to fight the temptation to clench down with his arse again. “It’s not like that, Draco. They’re not as uptight as you might think, the Ministry.”
Draco could only stare at her. “Right,” he said at last, thinking of all the constant raids and the socially sanctioned murmurs and mutters that had made his mother have to leave the country.
“They don’t arrest people merely for associating with Slytherins,” Millicent said. “They went after your parents, yes, but they haven’t gone after you, even though you might think that they’d want to get rid of anyone with a certain last name.”
Draco shuffled, but said nothing. He wanted to say that the Ministry didn’t go after them as long as they were careful, but they hadn’t been particularly careful, had they? He thought they must have broken a few laws in their partying, if only natural ones.
“It seems strange that you out of all of them would be here,” Millicent continued reflectively. “I had thought you would continue partying until you sired some bastard children and had to choose one of them to make legitimate so that they could inherit the Manor.”
“I resent that implication,” Draco said hotly. “The only women I had sex with were Pansy, Draco, and Astoria, and I always made sure that we used contraception charms.”
Millicent, for some reason, turned around and muffled what had to be laughter against her sleeve. Draco stood by stiffly, and waited for her laughter to stop, while he reconsidered showing her the cloak. But there was always the chance that she could relieve his boredom a little, and what would he have to look forward to if he went home right now? Another party tonight, and another valiant struggle to conceal his yawns.
“Anyway,” Millicent said, facing him again, “why are you here? Apart from Daphne’s suggestion, which I’m grateful to her for making.”
“I don’t know,” Draco said. Honesty was a novelty, and he might as well try a bit of it right now. “But lately, I don’t find as much enjoyment in the parties as I used to. And something strange happened to me, and I thought you might want to hear about it.”
“That thing having to do with Potter?”
Draco stared at her. He wanted to ask if opening a robe shop had granted her some kind of special insight into human character, but then he saw what must have happened. “Daphne’s already told you,” he said flatly.
“Yes,” Millicent said. “But she didn’t show me an image of the cloak that you brought her or anything, so that part would still be a surprise.”
The smile lurking around her lips made Draco step back and fold his arms over his chest. Then he thought he might look petulant and dropped them again. “You’re humoring me,” he said, and turned his head towards the front of the shop, yearning suddenly for the unwashed crowds of Diagon Alley. This was another new experience, but not one that he could particularly thank Millicent for introducing him to. “Perhaps I should just go.”
“Daphne always thought that you would get tired of the parties and the orgies someday,” Millicent said. She made no physical movement to detain him, but her voice flowed over Draco like calm water and was effective in its own way. “She thought you would eventually yearn for something else. I must admit, I never imagined that something else would be Harry Potter, but I can see why the temptation of rescuing him would be interesting. My question is, what will you do after you rescue him?”
Draco turned around and blinked. He couldn’t understand why she didn’t know the answer to that question if Daphne had told her everything, as it seemed she had. “Have great sex, of course,” he said.
“No,” Millicent said. “I mean, what will keep you from getting bored again? I left and opened this shop because I could feel myself becoming numb, and I didn’t want to end by hating anyone simply because I’d forced myself into a certain mold.”
“I don’t know,” Draco said. “I’ll try not to be bored.”
Millicent smiled, and Draco had the impression that she was trying to hold back on a smile of pity rather than one of amusement. He scowled. “I don’t know what else to do,” he said defensively. Then something else occurred to him, and he narrowed his eyes. “Why are you so interested in what I do, anyway?”
Millicent made an apologetic shrugging motion. “It would be nice to have some company,” she said. “In the world of people who have better things to do than party endlessly, I mean. I thought for a long time that Pansy would be the first one to emerge, but Daphne knew better. You could come and speak with me, if you really want to, about cloth, but I’d hope that we could talk just as friends.”
Draco paused and studied her thoughtfully. He hadn’t expected a response he could understand from her; everyone knew that people who had been infected by Gryffindor disease never expressed themselves clearly again. But he could accept what she’d said, and that was enough to make him reply calmly. “Yes, I do want to talk with you. And maybe later I’ll be more interested in cloth. I reckon even cloth can be interesting.” He glanced at the shimmering colors beside him again.
“Of course it can,” Millicent said. “With the right people.”
Draco nodded approval. It seemed that Millicent hadn’t entirely become a Gryffindor after all. She still remembered the most important lesson Draco himself had picked up in Slytherin: a good conversationalist could accomplish anything.
*
“Draco.”
He actually didn’t recognize the voice at first. For one thing, it had never spoken his first name that he could recall, except in the throes of passion, and for another, it sounded weak and desperate. Draco blinked and turned his head, stretching cramped muscles as he tried to sit up.
“Potter?” he asked groggily, and then spat out the glue that seemed to have invaded his mouth. He had thought that he’d get drunk in the garden one more time for old time’s sake, but he hadn’t realized that it would leave him with such an awful taste behind his teeth and fuzz on his tongue and bleary sight.
“Don’t speak my name. She’ll hear you.”
Finally Draco could see, and he made out a thin and shivering Potter crouched beside the rosebushes, head bowed as though he was trying desperately to suck in the scent of flowers that had vanished. And he really was thin, like a flame. Draco could see through him, but more to the point, he wavered as if he would go out at any moment.
“Who’ll hear?” Draco whispered, trying to make his voice as soothing as possible while he sat up.
“Her.” Potter had the eyes of a hunted animal, and he turned his head and stared into a distance that Draco couldn’t see. Somehow, he doubted that Potter was that afraid of his garden wall.
“Oh,” Draco said. “You mean the-”
The glare Potter shot him convinced that it would be a good idea to shut up, at least. He sat down on the grass next to Potter and shook his head. Then he reached out, though he didn’t know if he would actually manage to touch living flesh.
Potter was solid enough that Draco could feel a muffled sensation of cloth and skin, as though he was touching someone buried under several blankets. And Potter did something he had never done before: burrowed into Draco’s shoulder like a rabbit into the earth, curving his head down so that it rested against Draco’s neck. Draco could feel a faint sensation of breath, too, warm and wet and so distant that he frowned.
“All right,” he said, absurdly protective as he stroked Potter’s hair back and planted a kiss against his temple. It was like kissing glass, but, well, he would make do, particularly when he had Potter so afraid. “We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
“I don’t want to.” Potter’s voice was soft but definite. “I want you to hold me. Just-sit here and hold me.”
Draco could do that, though it was a skill he hadn’t realized that he possessed before, since there was little call for it in his life (excluding the time that Pansy had sobbed in his arms during fifth year because she’d got a bad mark in Transfiguration, and then he hadn’t exactly been a willing participant). He smoothed his hand up and down Potter’s back and said the kind of soothing nonsense things that he remembered his mother saying to him when he returned to her after his seventh year at Hogwarts, with the Carrows and other Death Eaters “watching” over him. “It’ll be all right. Nothing can ever change the way that you appear to me. You’ll always be Mama’s little boy.”
Potter jerked his head up and stared at him. “What?”
“Look, I don’t have much experience in this sort of thing,” Draco said defensively. “I had limited role models.”
Potter stared a little more, then seemed to decide it wasn’t worth disputing over. He buried his head again, and Draco’s hand rose and fell, and his whispers stirred the air in soothing ripples, and he forgot both time and place as Potter snuggled against him and his breathing slowed.
He wondered what had changed, what had made Potter so fearful instead of nervous or defiant, but-and he was so insightful it amazed him-he didn’t think he could ask because that would mean asking Potter to talk about it. So he was surprised when Potter stirred against him and then began to speak.
“She showed me what I was going to be sacrificed to.” And then Potter stopped, and the sound of the thick choke in his voice told Draco far more about what he’d seen than a detailed description would have.
“Well, you don’t need to worry about that for much longer,” Draco said, and hoped that his voice was strong and cheerful enough. It probably wasn’t, but he would worry about that later. “After all, I’m going to be the one who rescues you from it, remember?”
Potter was quiet for a few minutes, and Draco decided that he was probably constructing hopeful scenarios in his head. But then he gave a disconsolate moan and slumped forwards to bury his head against Draco’s shoulder. Draco frowned and pulled back far enough that he could look into Potter’s eyes. “What?”
“No offense, Malfoy, but the rescue would require a hero,” Potter said gloomily. “I was wrong to involve you. You’re a lot of things-” his eyes flickered appraisingly up and down Draco’s body, but he didn’t give him the chance to preen “-but you’re not one of those.”
“I have the motivation,” Draco said stubbornly. “I know that they’re still offering the Galleons, and you’ve fucked me, and I want to feel that again. That ought to be as good as true love, since I don’t think you love me, either.”
Potter froze. “I-that’s not fair,” he said. “How can I have the chance to fall in love with you when I’ve really only known you for a few months?”
“I don’t understand Gryffindors,” Draco told the sky. “You’re worried about dying, and you’re worried that I’m not enough of a hero to rescue you, and what you want to argue about is whether it’s fair to expect you to be in love with me?”
“I want to talk about this,” Potter said. “You’re acting as though you can play the part of a hero even though you have insufficient motivations. And you’re acting as though I should fall in love with you and be grateful to be rescued by you because of that. I’m playing the part I’m supposed to. You’re the one who can’t be a hero.”
“How do you know that I can’t be a hero?” Draco demanded. “It’s not as though anyone ever asked me to be.”
Potter gave him a scornful glance. “The war,” he said. “That was the environment for heroes, and you sucked at it.”
“So did most other people,” Draco said. He was amazed at how calm he felt, almost smug. Maybe it was because he knew that Potter really didn’t have much choice about who was going to rescue him, and would have to either accept Draco’s inferior skills or die. “But if a hero rescues people, then you’ve sucked at rescuing yourself so far. Seven years, and you couldn’t win free once?”
Potter gritted his teeth. “It’s hard to defeat faeries. That’s the reason that I don’t think you can do it. What do you know about it?”
Draco shook his head. “I’m not going to tell you my plans, just in case a certain someone lies down on top of you again and lets you feel her breasts. You seem to be a fool for that.”
Potter flushed. “I don’t-Malfoy, this is all so stupid. I was stupid to involve you. Can’t you see that? The only thing that will happen is that two people will die instead of one, because I was desperate enough to think I was special and could escape a fate that’s happened to every person they’ve taken away for hundreds of years. Will you please stay away? I don’t want to be responsible for your death.”
Draco had no intention of talking about the melting sensation in his stomach when Potter said that, so instead he raised a malicious eyebrow and mused, “Well, someone could listen to that and say that you are in love with me. It sounds like it, doesn’t it?”
Potter gave him a furious glare, slammed to his feet, and took a few steps sideways. Draco watched him dissolve with a flash into the air and sighed. Maybe he had been foolish to argue with Potter on what could be the last occasion he would see him before the first day of autumn.
On the other hand, he liked a defiant, strong, and angry Potter, not one who had decided that he should make Draco’s choices as well as his own and was about to hypnotize himself into a brooding fit of angst.
Draco squeezed down with his arse and grinned again.
Did he ever like a defiant Potter. In fact, the argument might be a good thing, because that way Potter would be angry when Draco dragged him off the damned horse, and he might fuck Draco right there in the grass after the faeries were defeated. Draco liked the sound of that.
*
The first day of autumn had come, and Draco started drinking with the dawn.
The thing was, he knew Potter was right and he wasn’t a traditional hero. He wasn’t brave and ready to die at the drop of a hat. But that wouldn’t keep him from coming to heroism in his own way. Drink was one part of that, and so was the stained green cloak that he picked up and draped over his shoulders-he’d been having some interesting talks with Millicent in the past few weeks-and so were the weapons that he poured into his pocket, checking to make sure that none of them would fall out.
And none of the weapons was a sword, either. Draco wasn’t a bloody Longbottom, to cut the heads off enormous serpents with the Sword of Gryffindor. He should find something better, and he had.
He swallowed his last glass of wine sometime around noon, and stood judiciously. Yes, that was enough. The wine had to insulate him from the effects of his fear, but leave him able to walk and fight-well, sort of fight. That was the whole point of the cloak, after all, that he wasn’t using traditional weapons. He patted it and then stepped out his door and Apparated, carefully, to the path through the crooked trees that Potter had told him about.
When he arrived, he wasn’t very impressed. The trees were monstrosities that he knew his father had always meant to cut down, and he had meant to do the same thing but just hadn’t done it yet. The path was a straggling little thing that wandered and kept losing its way despite the fact that the cover wasn’t very dense. Draco thought a bunch of faeries who supposedly valued beauty and grace could have chosen a better place for their manifestation.
After a while standing about, it occurred to Draco that Potter had never told him what time he needed to be there on the first day of autumn. Perhaps they had already ridden by and he had missed them.
But Draco dismissed the thought almost as soon as he had it. He was sure he would have heard someone being sacrificed behind his house, even as drunk as he had been both last night and this morning. If nothing else, all the screaming would have made him reach for a pillow to put over his head.
He checked his pockets again, and then sent his house-elf for a goblet and a bottle. If he was going to wait for Potter, he might as well wait in comfort.
*
A jingling of harness and a clatter of hooves roused Draco from a deep trance just when he was starting to feel sorry for himself. He blinked, set the goblet and the bottle down in the roots of the tree behind him where they weren’t likely to get broken, and then stood up, wavering. He had to brace himself against the trunk.
He wondered if that was a good sign, and then thought it was stupid to worry. He would have so many other things to worry about in just a minute.
A troop of horses was coming down the path towards him. Draco knew at one glance that the horses had to be illusions, or at least partially covered in illusions; he reckoned even faeries couldn’t sit on just moving air. There was no way that any mortal creatures would look that graceful, that much a sweep of snowy mane and glorious tail and swan-like neck. All the horses had white manes, though most of them were black and brown, with here and there a pale grey.
Potter said that he would be on a white horse. Draco had to smile as he thought about that. Appropriate for a hero.
The lead horses were passing him now. The figures on their back were clad in green cloaks of the sort that Potter had given Draco and some floating white but not transparent material that Draco thought Millicent would have given a lot of Galleons to copy. They never looked at Draco, and Draco wondered whether he should be offended or relieved.
Relieved, he decided, when the second set of horses passed, the greys, and the faeries on their backs did glare at him. They were all taller and paler than Draco, and blonder than Draco, too, with hair of what looked like molten gold or pure sunlight. Their faces were sharp and white, and their eyes were a brilliant green that made Draco’s heart ache. But he thought of what Potter had said about glamours, and smiled at them. They snapped their heads away, one and all, and rode past him, the bells on their horses’ harnesses ringing softly.
Draco saw a flash of pale color through the trees, and his heart leaped up. But it was a palomino mare, and riding on it was the most beautiful woman Draco had ever seen.
It had nothing to do, he thought later, with not finding his female friends attractive, or being attracted to women or men. This was a beauty that was above all those things, the way that the sun was brighter than the moon no matter how much you might personally prefer moonlight.
But Draco couldn’t say what components went into that beauty. The woman had-currently, anyway-red hair with golden streaks and curls in it, and blue eyes, and a face that looked like it was made of brown glass. She wore a silver circlet around her head and a sheer green gown that left her breasts free to swing. But she could have gone dressed in sackcloth with red eyes like the Dark Lord’s and been glorious. It annoyed Draco that he couldn’t say why she was gorgeous, only that she was.
That irritation was what finally freed him to turn his eyes away from her and examine the other figures that were riding towards him. Potter’s beauty was human, and one could point to his eyelashes or his eyes or the way his hair curled and expect other people to understand. Draco might be awed for having seen the Faerie Queen, but he couldn’t show her off to his friends the way he could with Potter.
And really, wasn’t that half of the pleasure of having a handsome lover?
Another phalanx of horses trotted by, this time all strawberry roans with tall, upright faeries on their back beating drums. Draco noted they were wearing green cloaks and had red hair through which fox ears poked, and then dismissed them. They weren’t beautiful enough to look at anyway, in the face of what would be coming when Potter showed up.
If he did. It would be like Potter, Draco thought crossly, to be late to his own sacrifice.
But no, wait. At the very tail end of the procession-which Potter could have mentioned, so that Draco wouldn’t have hurt his neck craning it down the path the way he had-strode a white horse that looked more normal than the rest. Maybe they hadn’t seen the point of using glamours on it when it was carrying what was essentially a condemned prisoner, Draco thought. Its nostrils were bright pink, its eyes blue, and its hooves clopped on the earth rather than rang. Potter sat half-slumped on its back, his hands linked to the pommel of the saddle with small ropes.
Draco frowned. His plan depended on him being drunk, not Potter. If they had given him some drug to subdue him, then Draco’s plan might not work.
But he would just have to go ahead and hope that it did. He raced forwards, past the drum-playing fox faeries, who never turned to look at him, and swept the stained green cloak from his shoulders, wrapping it around Potter’s. At the same time, he hissed the incantation that he had learned from Blaise one drunken evening long ago. “Imaginor iterum!”
Potter’s wide, glazed eyes blinked, and he looked aware, if confused, for a moment. Then he gasped and tilted his head back, shuddering as the semen stains on the cloak flared and came to life, driving white threads into his body.
Draco smirked. The spell would take advantage of any stain or reminder of sexual activity to make one of the participants relive it.
And with Potter in the throes of orgasm, he was less likely to be affected by the illusions that the Faerie Queen would try to spin.
Draco wrapped his arms more solidly around Potter and began to pull him free. His legs caught in the stirrups, and of course the thread that bound his hands to the pommel of the saddle pulled tight. Draco frowned. He hated himself for forgetting that. He picked up his wand and began to singe the string.
There was a rustle behind him, and a sound like an indrawn breath. Draco was vaguely aware that the drums he had heard the faeries playing and the jangling of the bells on the harnesses had stopped.
Potter, in his arms, body shuddering as though he was the one getting fucked, suddenly changed into a huge and writhing snake. It was green, with shadows of white and black on its belly, and it reminded Draco too much of the Dark Lord’s snake for comfort.
But he couldn’t be afraid of snakes, he thought, not when he had spent the last seven years choosing his friends and lovers from a group of people who were serpents in all but name, and lived in Slytherin House before that. And when the memories of Nagini tried to paralyze them, they fizzed out. Draco’s drunkenness was rescuing him. The way he was rescuing Potter, he thought in triumph, and burned through the string that tied Potter’s hands-because suddenly his hands were tied and he was a human being again, just like that.
Glamour, Draco reminded himself. Glamour is all it is. And you know that you can live with that.
Potter’s body slumped into his arms, the cloak still wrapped firmly around him. And then Draco had to deal with a lunging, thumping shape that pushed a beak into his face and screeched at him. It had wide wings, the cloak seemed to have become obstructing, rustling feathers, and Draco realized that he was holding an eagle.
It’s just Potter, remember that, Draco thought, and managed to stand still when the beak came at his eyes as if it would scoop them out and the talons reached towards his belly. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe in the glamour; it was just that the memories of Potter fucking him were stronger than his fear, and he would never get to experience that again if he opened his arms and let Potter go.
The eagle melted, and there was a lion in his arms, breathing its hot breath into his face, stroking downwards with its back legs. Draco thought of being disemboweled. He couldn’t not think of it, when the lion was heaviness and stink of carrion and blood in his embrace and he could experience those things as if they were real.
No. I have to hold him. And he was a lion, of course, because the lion is the symbol of Gryffindor House. I have to remember that. It’s not wrong and unnatural, and think of the way that he would behave if he was a lion in bed!
Draco laughed aloud at the turn his thoughts were taking. He thought the Faerie Queen probably wouldn’t have encountered them before. He tilted his head back and bared his throat to the lion, smiling. He could imagine the great teeth crunching down, and he didn’t mind them. He wondered if he would still feel the same way when the teeth locked, but, well, he was thinking of Potter using his weight to such welcome advantage in bed and wasn’t as afraid as he could have been.
The lion snarled above him as if baffled, and then went quiet, sniffing at the scent between Draco’s neck and shoulder. Then it writhed and kicked as though someone was trying to crawl out from inside its skin. Draco kept his smile and his arms both steady. If Potter was in there and trying to come out, Draco would kiss him when he did.
The lion twisted, and something much smaller and fiercer and with a blunt nose suddenly screamed into Draco’s face and tried to slide out of his hold. It was so much smaller that Draco had to hastily drop to his knees and grip its head so that it wouldn’t slip away from him completely. The Faerie Queen wasn’t going to win, because Draco wanted Potter back and he was going to have him.
It was a badger, the animal he held. Draco frowned. He suspected the Faerie Queen of paying too much attention to Hogwarts and the symbols of the Houses. His books, or rather Pansy’s books, said that faeries tended to indulge in a lot of symbolic thinking.
Then he had other things to worry about, because the badger was trying to dig out his eyes with sharpened claws. The eagle had tried the same thing with its beak, Draco remembered, and decided that the Faerie Queen wasn’t as imaginative as he had thought she was, either.
He wrapped the badger in the cloak so tightly that it would hurt itself if it tried to escape, and held it to his chest. It began to snarl like an annoyed teakettle. Draco smiled. He could picture Potter spluttering like that when Draco introduced him to his friends.
“You’re the same no matter what shape you’re in, aren’t you?” he asked the badger. “She can change your appearance, but she can’t change your essence, and I think that’s what you mean when you say that everything is glamour. You can tell the difference between reality and falsehood after all, even when the glamours are powerful.”
There was a long silence behind him, and then he was once again holding Potter. Potter was gasping and wore a look like an exquisite mingling of pain and pleasure on his face. Guessing the reason, Draco took pity and gestured sharply with his wand, taking away the spell that bound Potter to relive his orgasm.
He waited, but there was no other change. He thought that meant he had won, but he wasn’t sure. He turned around, dragging Potter with him. Potter stumbled, but at least he didn’t fall on the ground, which would probably count as a last-minute letting-go on Draco’s part.
He faced the Faerie Queen, who stared at him with eyes the exact shade of green at Potter’s, blazing with secret fires, and said nothing at all.
“He likes fucking me more than he likes fucking you,” Draco explained kindly.
She turned her head as though her neck was on runners and stared at Potter. Potter looked at her with glazed eyes, but then his body straightened. Perhaps she compelled it to straighten, Draco thought. He wouldn’t know about that. Potter stared back at her, and the virulent loathing in his eyes seemed to answer her silent question.
The Queen turned and lifted her hand, then brought it down like someone pulling a curtain across a window.
And they were all gone: horses, drums, bells, faeries and all. Draco stared at the empty road, and then stared at Potter, who was wobbling on his feet with his eyes closed. “Does she always do that when she’s thwarted?” he asked.
“Not always,” Potter mumbled. He sounded drunk, and, more than that, like someone with no experience in handling his drink. Draco knew he had never sounded that bad. “The last time, she said that it would have been better if she had turned the one who escaped into a tree.” He laughed abruptly, and the sound had tears in the back of it.
“What’s the matter?” Draco asked, and looked around suspiciously for any faeries in the trees. His hand went down to toy with the iron in his pocket, the weapon that the books had said would be effective against faeries. Draco had been able to find so many iron things-nails, coins, bits off pokers-that he wondered why anyone had ever feared the Faerie Queen.
No, he decided then, slowly, thinking about the way her eyes had glowed. I reckon I can still understand that part.
“I’m human again,” Potter said. Tears were streaming down his face, but his voice didn’t sound at all choked. Draco decided that he had a weird voice. Showed his drink too much, didn’t show his tears. Draco would have to check his expression if he wanted to know the truth about him in the future. “And I have you to thank. A hero I didn’t think could do it. My hero.”
He opened his eyes and turned his head.
Draco had the time to gasp before he found himself on the ground again with his pants around his ankles. Potter had his eyes closed as he sucked on Draco’s cock, his throat working so hard that Draco’s erection ached even before he consciously registered the wetness and warmth that surrounded him.
“Potter, you don’t have to-” Draco said, and then wondered why in the world he’d said that. He must be brain-damaged from his last look into the Faerie Queen’s eyes. He spread his legs and closed his eyes, arching his head back, using the solid thump as it connected with the dirt to distract himself from stupid ideas that wanted to parade through his mind. Now was not the time to start being generous. “Oh, yes, Potter, right there!”
Potter swallowed with a grace and speed that made Draco liable to forgive him for the semen-tasting kiss that he received a few minutes later.
And just proving that, when nature decided to gift someone, she really decided to gift him, Potter’s cock was delicious, too.
*
Potter had insisted on bread and cheese for his first mortal meal in seven years. Draco didn’t understand that. If you hadn’t tasted anything real-or at least anything where you could be sure what you were eating-in seven years, why not at least make honey and chocolate the first taste? But Potter seemed perfectly content to devour the crudest loaf and wedge of cheese that Draco’s house-elves could find, and he only wanted water to drink. When he leaned back in his chair, he shifted a bit, as if the cushioning was too comfortable for him.
“The water in her land ran in streams as bright as mirrors, or as red as blood,” Potter murmured, gazing into his glass.
“It sounds as though you miss it,” Draco muttered. “Or her.” He was feeling strange, sitting there in a chair in his own home, looking at a solid Potter. He didn’t really know what came next. No wonder that all the fairy-stories ended with the hero rescuing the fair maiden, he thought. Or bloke, as it might be. What else was there to say? Was the hero really going to look into the maiden’s eyes and notice that she wasn’t beautiful when she cried? Draco was noticing the weariness in Potter’s eyes now and the way that he refused to sit with his back to a door.
“I don’t,” Potter said. “But it marked me, living in a place of eternal youth and beauty, or at least what they could make appear as youth and beauty. I don’t know how I’ll cope watching people age and die.” He took a drink of the water and set the glass back on the table with a hesitating motion. Draco braced himself. This was the part where Potter said he was very grateful for Draco’s rescue but he couldn’t stay.
“Listen,” Potter said in a restless, blurred voice, staring at the floor, “I know that you probably have someone else, and I was only one fuck, but I’d like to stay with you, make a go of it with you. Can I?”
Draco felt his face trying to ache with his grin. But he didn’t grin like that, because he was a Malfoy and it wouldn’t have been dignified. He held up his hand. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m afraid that you’re going to have to repeat that, Potter, because I couldn’t have heard what I thought I heard.”
Potter lifted startled eyes. Then he started to grin, but he was disheveled and had just depended on Draco Malfoy, of all people, to get him back to the real world, so that was all right. “You wanker,” he said. “You’re going to let me stay.”
“If you beg nicely,” Draco said, and helpfully opened his legs so that Potter could come nearer and fall on his knees if he wanted to.
Potter did fall on his knees, but it was to take Draco’s hand. Draco found it hard to breathe. He suspected it had something to do with the bread and cheese he’d eaten to keep Potter company-unacceptable food for a Malfoy, for certain. He would remember for the next party he held.
“Malfoy,” Potter whispered. “Beautiful Malfoy. Dearest Draco.” His fingers caressed Draco’s hand, moving up and down in stroking motions that no one else Draco had been with had ever done, not even Blaise. “Will you let me stay here? Will you live with me, and try to love me, and be faithful to me alone? Will you?”
Draco swallowed. “You have to do the same thing,” he said, which was inane. Potter was a hero. What else would he do but be faithful and live with the person he had fallen in love with?
“Agreed,” Potter said in an eager voice, staring at him with shining eyes.
“Then-then-” Draco said. “I mean, you could love me?”
“Yes,” Potter said. “You were there. I looked around, and you were there, and you came through for me. And I do adore the way you come. All the sorts of ways you come.” His eyes were heavy-lidded, and Draco knew that he would never have believed it if he hadn’t seen it for himself, that Harry Potter could flirt.
Draco swallowed. His throat was heavy, too, and clogged with some strange and mysterious substance. He wasn’t going to drink that vintage of wine again. “I’ll try, then,” he said, in a voice that would have been grand and mysterious if not for the wine.
His friends wouldn’t take this well, and there would be a tearful reunion with Granger that might hold Draco back from getting his money, and it seemed that lust more than love held Potter to him, and, and, and-
But at this moment, with Potter reaching out a hand that held a white rosebud-where had he got that?-and placing it in Draco’s hair, above his ear, Draco thought that he deserved all he had and that everything might end happily ever after, after all.
Potter’s had his faerie tale, for seven years. It’s time for me to have mine.
The End.
This entry was originally posted at http://lomonaaeren.dreamwidth.org/310720.html. Comment wherever you like.
“And then Millicent said…”
Draco didn’t hear the rest of Pansy’s anecdote. He had paused with his glass of rich amber liquor at his lips and was staring blankly into the distance while Pansy told her story and Blaise and Theo laughed. Astoria was laughing beyond Pansy, too, leaning heavily on her with her hand across her mouth. That was the “tipsy” lean that meant she had chosen her partner for the evening. Daphne hadn’t attended this party.
Draco had discovered something horrifying as he sat there, drinking good wine, in the middle of his friends, in the middle of his life, in the middle of everything.
He was bored.
Draco set down his glass and examined it suspiciously for any trace of different flecks of color swirling in the amber. He wouldn’t have put it past Blaise or Theo to lace his drink with an experimental potion, one that was supposed to suck the life and joy out of everything. Draco had never been bored at a party in his life.
At least, not if the party was worth anything. And if it wasn’t, Draco could always draw a few people to him like a flower drawing bees and create a private celebration in the middle of the unworthy larger one. Or an orgy. He wasn’t picky.
Now, though, he was sitting with his friends, people he didn’t need to do that with because they were always entertaining and knew him well enough to notice when he was bored, and he was still bored.
What was happening?
Draco raised his hand and examined his nails for a moment. There were some diseases that he knew drained the whole world of interest, and if he was suffering from one of them, that meant he should no longer care about his appearance. But when he imagined that his right thumbnail had been broken and was jagged and ugly, he suffered the same stomach-clenching thrill of horror that the thought would always awaken in him. He released a hard breath that finally drew the attention of the others.
“What is it, Draco?” Astoria leaned forwards with a smile that said she could change her mind and include someone in the threesome with Pansy if she wanted to, and the someone might as well be him. Draco gave her a faint smile and then glanced at the others, but they were watching him with concerned expressions. If someone had tried a potion or a charm on him that made him feel this way, it was subtle and they had probably forgotten they had used it by now, given the amount of wine they’d all consumed.
“I’m not feeling well,” he said, which was true if an understatement.
Pansy flinched a little. Since she’d had a cold the year before that had made her nose red for a week, despite all the medicinal potions she could throw at it, she’d been overly anxious about germs. “Perhaps you should go home, then, dear, and recover for a little while,” she suggested. “Just until you feel better.”
Theo gave an exaggerated nod that suggested to Draco that he was hoping to get back into Pansy’s good graces before the end of the night and sleep with her. Ordinarily Draco would have found that amusing when Astoria hadn’t invited Theo, too, but right now his throat burned with confusion.
“Fine,” he said, and stood up.
Blaise pushed his chair back from the table at the same time. “I’ll go with you,” he said.
Draco gave him a level look as they emerged from Pansy’s dining room and into the garden where she kept an Apparition point. “Did you come with me because you wanted to get away from them, or because you want to sleep with me?” he asked. “Because I am feeling bad, Blaise, and I’m not in the mood.”
Blaise smiled at him. “I can change your mind,” he murmured, and suddenly he was pressed against Draco, knocking him into an ornamental sundial as he sought Draco’s mouth with his own.
Draco let Blaise kiss him for a moment, curious. Maybe he’d simply been brooding on Potter for too long, and someone else could give him the jolt of arousal and lust he needed to return to normal.
But it just tasted persistent and rather wet, and in the end Draco pulled away and claimed a friend’s, rather than a lover’s, privilege. “I’m too drunk and I don’t feel good,” he said again. He knew he sounded petulant. He doubted that Blaise would let it bother him for long. “Take me home? And then leave,” he added, just in case Blaise got the wrong idea after all.
“I wish you would let me stay,” Blaise whined, but he did as Draco asked, with nothing more than a second kiss and a lingering grope of his arse when Draco paused inside the door of the Manor and looked expectantly at him. Then Draco was alone in the house, with nothing more than a slight buzz between his ears and a suspicious brain.
He thought-he couldn’t be sure, but he thought-that he might have done this because of Potter.
That was such a horrid thought that he had to go and get drunk on his own wine.
*
Draco checked his preparations for the thirtieth time, and sighed. There was very little he could do about rescuing Potter until he reached the first day of autumn. And in the meantime, he was bored.
His friends’ parties bored him more and more often now. Oh, they would be fun for a few hours, but then Draco’s mind would wander to Potter or speculation about what would happen if he really rescued him. Or he would clench down to stimulate the memory of the burn in his arse, which didn’t return no matter how much he let Blaise and Theo fuck him.
There was no reason that should be so. Draco was rather indignant about it, and starting to think it was a charm Potter had cast, except that he didn’t think the faeries would be stupid enough to let Potter keep his wand.
He didn’t see Potter again, except in dreams and a few fleeting glimpses of someone among the rosebushes who was gone by the time he got there, which made it worse. And the few times that he went out into the gardens and called for him, or tried to come up with an appropriate summoning ritual, his failure just made him more depressed.
Finally, in desperation one day, he took Daphne’s advice and went to visit Millicent.
Her robe-shop was halfway down Diagon Alley from Madam Malkin’s, which Draco thought was sensible. People wouldn’t have to walk as far to get to hers, and she would sell a lot of robes to pure-bloods who made impulse purchases. Draco stood outside her window and admired some of the colors and fabrics she had on display. He decided that it wouldn’t be a disaster to allow her to make a few of his clothes.
“Draco?”
Draco started and turned around. He didn’t know why, but he had imagined that he would hear Millicent coming before he saw her. But she had sneaked up on him. She was wearing a delicious rich purple robe, and he admired it for so long that he missed the way she held out her hand to him until it appeared right in front of his eyes.
Draco shook his head and shook her hand at the same time. Potter had made him into a fool, he thought indignantly. He was going to demand payment for that when he saw Potter again, preferably in the form of one of those lovely long shags.
“Daphne suggested that I come and see you,” he said, when Millicent had given him a look that meant she wanted to know what he was doing there. See, Draco thought to an absent Daphne, I’m not blind to nuance, and my friends aren’t the only ones that I can read. Then he wondered if that didn’t count because Millicent had once been a friend, and still was one, in a way, though she hadn’t attended any of their parties in longer than Draco could remember. “I have a cloak made of unusual cloth that she thought you might be interested in.”
Millicent’s face went polite and distant, and she nodded. “Always glad to acquire unusual materials,” she said.
Draco peered at her. “What’s the matter?”
“What do you mean?” Millicent had started to bustle towards the back of the shop, but she turned around and gave him a bewildered look.
“I said why I was here and you looked as though someone had called you a Gryffindor,” Draco said. He thought she must have heard that insult more than once since she had become one in all but taste, but he reckoned that it might still hurt. “Why?”
Millicent hesitated, then sighed. “I did hope that you had come to visit just because you missed me,” she said quietly. “It seems that no one comes for that reason anymore.”
“Oh.” Draco felt awkward, which was a sensation so strange that he thought he had to thank Millicent for introducing him to a new experience. He studied his feet for a moment, then looked up at her. “I thought you wouldn’t want visitors like us anymore,” he said, as a partial compromise. “Won’t we get you in trouble with the Ministry and all the other good little taxpayers if they see us around here?”
Millicent sighed and rested one elbow on a shelf that was covered with bolts of fine fabric. Draco noticed a shade of green there that matched Potter’s eyes and had to fight the temptation to clench down with his arse again. “It’s not like that, Draco. They’re not as uptight as you might think, the Ministry.”
Draco could only stare at her. “Right,” he said at last, thinking of all the constant raids and the socially sanctioned murmurs and mutters that had made his mother have to leave the country.
“They don’t arrest people merely for associating with Slytherins,” Millicent said. “They went after your parents, yes, but they haven’t gone after you, even though you might think that they’d want to get rid of anyone with a certain last name.”
Draco shuffled, but said nothing. He wanted to say that the Ministry didn’t go after them as long as they were careful, but they hadn’t been particularly careful, had they? He thought they must have broken a few laws in their partying, if only natural ones.
“It seems strange that you out of all of them would be here,” Millicent continued reflectively. “I had thought you would continue partying until you sired some bastard children and had to choose one of them to make legitimate so that they could inherit the Manor.”
“I resent that implication,” Draco said hotly. “The only women I had sex with were Pansy, Draco, and Astoria, and I always made sure that we used contraception charms.”
Millicent, for some reason, turned around and muffled what had to be laughter against her sleeve. Draco stood by stiffly, and waited for her laughter to stop, while he reconsidered showing her the cloak. But there was always the chance that she could relieve his boredom a little, and what would he have to look forward to if he went home right now? Another party tonight, and another valiant struggle to conceal his yawns.
“Anyway,” Millicent said, facing him again, “why are you here? Apart from Daphne’s suggestion, which I’m grateful to her for making.”
“I don’t know,” Draco said. Honesty was a novelty, and he might as well try a bit of it right now. “But lately, I don’t find as much enjoyment in the parties as I used to. And something strange happened to me, and I thought you might want to hear about it.”
“That thing having to do with Potter?”
Draco stared at her. He wanted to ask if opening a robe shop had granted her some kind of special insight into human character, but then he saw what must have happened. “Daphne’s already told you,” he said flatly.
“Yes,” Millicent said. “But she didn’t show me an image of the cloak that you brought her or anything, so that part would still be a surprise.”
The smile lurking around her lips made Draco step back and fold his arms over his chest. Then he thought he might look petulant and dropped them again. “You’re humoring me,” he said, and turned his head towards the front of the shop, yearning suddenly for the unwashed crowds of Diagon Alley. This was another new experience, but not one that he could particularly thank Millicent for introducing him to. “Perhaps I should just go.”
“Daphne always thought that you would get tired of the parties and the orgies someday,” Millicent said. She made no physical movement to detain him, but her voice flowed over Draco like calm water and was effective in its own way. “She thought you would eventually yearn for something else. I must admit, I never imagined that something else would be Harry Potter, but I can see why the temptation of rescuing him would be interesting. My question is, what will you do after you rescue him?”
Draco turned around and blinked. He couldn’t understand why she didn’t know the answer to that question if Daphne had told her everything, as it seemed she had. “Have great sex, of course,” he said.
“No,” Millicent said. “I mean, what will keep you from getting bored again? I left and opened this shop because I could feel myself becoming numb, and I didn’t want to end by hating anyone simply because I’d forced myself into a certain mold.”
“I don’t know,” Draco said. “I’ll try not to be bored.”
Millicent smiled, and Draco had the impression that she was trying to hold back on a smile of pity rather than one of amusement. He scowled. “I don’t know what else to do,” he said defensively. Then something else occurred to him, and he narrowed his eyes. “Why are you so interested in what I do, anyway?”
Millicent made an apologetic shrugging motion. “It would be nice to have some company,” she said. “In the world of people who have better things to do than party endlessly, I mean. I thought for a long time that Pansy would be the first one to emerge, but Daphne knew better. You could come and speak with me, if you really want to, about cloth, but I’d hope that we could talk just as friends.”
Draco paused and studied her thoughtfully. He hadn’t expected a response he could understand from her; everyone knew that people who had been infected by Gryffindor disease never expressed themselves clearly again. But he could accept what she’d said, and that was enough to make him reply calmly. “Yes, I do want to talk with you. And maybe later I’ll be more interested in cloth. I reckon even cloth can be interesting.” He glanced at the shimmering colors beside him again.
“Of course it can,” Millicent said. “With the right people.”
Draco nodded approval. It seemed that Millicent hadn’t entirely become a Gryffindor after all. She still remembered the most important lesson Draco himself had picked up in Slytherin: a good conversationalist could accomplish anything.
*
“Draco.”
He actually didn’t recognize the voice at first. For one thing, it had never spoken his first name that he could recall, except in the throes of passion, and for another, it sounded weak and desperate. Draco blinked and turned his head, stretching cramped muscles as he tried to sit up.
“Potter?” he asked groggily, and then spat out the glue that seemed to have invaded his mouth. He had thought that he’d get drunk in the garden one more time for old time’s sake, but he hadn’t realized that it would leave him with such an awful taste behind his teeth and fuzz on his tongue and bleary sight.
“Don’t speak my name. She’ll hear you.”
Finally Draco could see, and he made out a thin and shivering Potter crouched beside the rosebushes, head bowed as though he was trying desperately to suck in the scent of flowers that had vanished. And he really was thin, like a flame. Draco could see through him, but more to the point, he wavered as if he would go out at any moment.
“Who’ll hear?” Draco whispered, trying to make his voice as soothing as possible while he sat up.
“Her.” Potter had the eyes of a hunted animal, and he turned his head and stared into a distance that Draco couldn’t see. Somehow, he doubted that Potter was that afraid of his garden wall.
“Oh,” Draco said. “You mean the-”
The glare Potter shot him convinced that it would be a good idea to shut up, at least. He sat down on the grass next to Potter and shook his head. Then he reached out, though he didn’t know if he would actually manage to touch living flesh.
Potter was solid enough that Draco could feel a muffled sensation of cloth and skin, as though he was touching someone buried under several blankets. And Potter did something he had never done before: burrowed into Draco’s shoulder like a rabbit into the earth, curving his head down so that it rested against Draco’s neck. Draco could feel a faint sensation of breath, too, warm and wet and so distant that he frowned.
“All right,” he said, absurdly protective as he stroked Potter’s hair back and planted a kiss against his temple. It was like kissing glass, but, well, he would make do, particularly when he had Potter so afraid. “We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
“I don’t want to.” Potter’s voice was soft but definite. “I want you to hold me. Just-sit here and hold me.”
Draco could do that, though it was a skill he hadn’t realized that he possessed before, since there was little call for it in his life (excluding the time that Pansy had sobbed in his arms during fifth year because she’d got a bad mark in Transfiguration, and then he hadn’t exactly been a willing participant). He smoothed his hand up and down Potter’s back and said the kind of soothing nonsense things that he remembered his mother saying to him when he returned to her after his seventh year at Hogwarts, with the Carrows and other Death Eaters “watching” over him. “It’ll be all right. Nothing can ever change the way that you appear to me. You’ll always be Mama’s little boy.”
Potter jerked his head up and stared at him. “What?”
“Look, I don’t have much experience in this sort of thing,” Draco said defensively. “I had limited role models.”
Potter stared a little more, then seemed to decide it wasn’t worth disputing over. He buried his head again, and Draco’s hand rose and fell, and his whispers stirred the air in soothing ripples, and he forgot both time and place as Potter snuggled against him and his breathing slowed.
He wondered what had changed, what had made Potter so fearful instead of nervous or defiant, but-and he was so insightful it amazed him-he didn’t think he could ask because that would mean asking Potter to talk about it. So he was surprised when Potter stirred against him and then began to speak.
“She showed me what I was going to be sacrificed to.” And then Potter stopped, and the sound of the thick choke in his voice told Draco far more about what he’d seen than a detailed description would have.
“Well, you don’t need to worry about that for much longer,” Draco said, and hoped that his voice was strong and cheerful enough. It probably wasn’t, but he would worry about that later. “After all, I’m going to be the one who rescues you from it, remember?”
Potter was quiet for a few minutes, and Draco decided that he was probably constructing hopeful scenarios in his head. But then he gave a disconsolate moan and slumped forwards to bury his head against Draco’s shoulder. Draco frowned and pulled back far enough that he could look into Potter’s eyes. “What?”
“No offense, Malfoy, but the rescue would require a hero,” Potter said gloomily. “I was wrong to involve you. You’re a lot of things-” his eyes flickered appraisingly up and down Draco’s body, but he didn’t give him the chance to preen “-but you’re not one of those.”
“I have the motivation,” Draco said stubbornly. “I know that they’re still offering the Galleons, and you’ve fucked me, and I want to feel that again. That ought to be as good as true love, since I don’t think you love me, either.”
Potter froze. “I-that’s not fair,” he said. “How can I have the chance to fall in love with you when I’ve really only known you for a few months?”
“I don’t understand Gryffindors,” Draco told the sky. “You’re worried about dying, and you’re worried that I’m not enough of a hero to rescue you, and what you want to argue about is whether it’s fair to expect you to be in love with me?”
“I want to talk about this,” Potter said. “You’re acting as though you can play the part of a hero even though you have insufficient motivations. And you’re acting as though I should fall in love with you and be grateful to be rescued by you because of that. I’m playing the part I’m supposed to. You’re the one who can’t be a hero.”
“How do you know that I can’t be a hero?” Draco demanded. “It’s not as though anyone ever asked me to be.”
Potter gave him a scornful glance. “The war,” he said. “That was the environment for heroes, and you sucked at it.”
“So did most other people,” Draco said. He was amazed at how calm he felt, almost smug. Maybe it was because he knew that Potter really didn’t have much choice about who was going to rescue him, and would have to either accept Draco’s inferior skills or die. “But if a hero rescues people, then you’ve sucked at rescuing yourself so far. Seven years, and you couldn’t win free once?”
Potter gritted his teeth. “It’s hard to defeat faeries. That’s the reason that I don’t think you can do it. What do you know about it?”
Draco shook his head. “I’m not going to tell you my plans, just in case a certain someone lies down on top of you again and lets you feel her breasts. You seem to be a fool for that.”
Potter flushed. “I don’t-Malfoy, this is all so stupid. I was stupid to involve you. Can’t you see that? The only thing that will happen is that two people will die instead of one, because I was desperate enough to think I was special and could escape a fate that’s happened to every person they’ve taken away for hundreds of years. Will you please stay away? I don’t want to be responsible for your death.”
Draco had no intention of talking about the melting sensation in his stomach when Potter said that, so instead he raised a malicious eyebrow and mused, “Well, someone could listen to that and say that you are in love with me. It sounds like it, doesn’t it?”
Potter gave him a furious glare, slammed to his feet, and took a few steps sideways. Draco watched him dissolve with a flash into the air and sighed. Maybe he had been foolish to argue with Potter on what could be the last occasion he would see him before the first day of autumn.
On the other hand, he liked a defiant, strong, and angry Potter, not one who had decided that he should make Draco’s choices as well as his own and was about to hypnotize himself into a brooding fit of angst.
Draco squeezed down with his arse and grinned again.
Did he ever like a defiant Potter. In fact, the argument might be a good thing, because that way Potter would be angry when Draco dragged him off the damned horse, and he might fuck Draco right there in the grass after the faeries were defeated. Draco liked the sound of that.
*
The first day of autumn had come, and Draco started drinking with the dawn.
The thing was, he knew Potter was right and he wasn’t a traditional hero. He wasn’t brave and ready to die at the drop of a hat. But that wouldn’t keep him from coming to heroism in his own way. Drink was one part of that, and so was the stained green cloak that he picked up and draped over his shoulders-he’d been having some interesting talks with Millicent in the past few weeks-and so were the weapons that he poured into his pocket, checking to make sure that none of them would fall out.
And none of the weapons was a sword, either. Draco wasn’t a bloody Longbottom, to cut the heads off enormous serpents with the Sword of Gryffindor. He should find something better, and he had.
He swallowed his last glass of wine sometime around noon, and stood judiciously. Yes, that was enough. The wine had to insulate him from the effects of his fear, but leave him able to walk and fight-well, sort of fight. That was the whole point of the cloak, after all, that he wasn’t using traditional weapons. He patted it and then stepped out his door and Apparated, carefully, to the path through the crooked trees that Potter had told him about.
When he arrived, he wasn’t very impressed. The trees were monstrosities that he knew his father had always meant to cut down, and he had meant to do the same thing but just hadn’t done it yet. The path was a straggling little thing that wandered and kept losing its way despite the fact that the cover wasn’t very dense. Draco thought a bunch of faeries who supposedly valued beauty and grace could have chosen a better place for their manifestation.
After a while standing about, it occurred to Draco that Potter had never told him what time he needed to be there on the first day of autumn. Perhaps they had already ridden by and he had missed them.
But Draco dismissed the thought almost as soon as he had it. He was sure he would have heard someone being sacrificed behind his house, even as drunk as he had been both last night and this morning. If nothing else, all the screaming would have made him reach for a pillow to put over his head.
He checked his pockets again, and then sent his house-elf for a goblet and a bottle. If he was going to wait for Potter, he might as well wait in comfort.
*
A jingling of harness and a clatter of hooves roused Draco from a deep trance just when he was starting to feel sorry for himself. He blinked, set the goblet and the bottle down in the roots of the tree behind him where they weren’t likely to get broken, and then stood up, wavering. He had to brace himself against the trunk.
He wondered if that was a good sign, and then thought it was stupid to worry. He would have so many other things to worry about in just a minute.
A troop of horses was coming down the path towards him. Draco knew at one glance that the horses had to be illusions, or at least partially covered in illusions; he reckoned even faeries couldn’t sit on just moving air. There was no way that any mortal creatures would look that graceful, that much a sweep of snowy mane and glorious tail and swan-like neck. All the horses had white manes, though most of them were black and brown, with here and there a pale grey.
Potter said that he would be on a white horse. Draco had to smile as he thought about that. Appropriate for a hero.
The lead horses were passing him now. The figures on their back were clad in green cloaks of the sort that Potter had given Draco and some floating white but not transparent material that Draco thought Millicent would have given a lot of Galleons to copy. They never looked at Draco, and Draco wondered whether he should be offended or relieved.
Relieved, he decided, when the second set of horses passed, the greys, and the faeries on their backs did glare at him. They were all taller and paler than Draco, and blonder than Draco, too, with hair of what looked like molten gold or pure sunlight. Their faces were sharp and white, and their eyes were a brilliant green that made Draco’s heart ache. But he thought of what Potter had said about glamours, and smiled at them. They snapped their heads away, one and all, and rode past him, the bells on their horses’ harnesses ringing softly.
Draco saw a flash of pale color through the trees, and his heart leaped up. But it was a palomino mare, and riding on it was the most beautiful woman Draco had ever seen.
It had nothing to do, he thought later, with not finding his female friends attractive, or being attracted to women or men. This was a beauty that was above all those things, the way that the sun was brighter than the moon no matter how much you might personally prefer moonlight.
But Draco couldn’t say what components went into that beauty. The woman had-currently, anyway-red hair with golden streaks and curls in it, and blue eyes, and a face that looked like it was made of brown glass. She wore a silver circlet around her head and a sheer green gown that left her breasts free to swing. But she could have gone dressed in sackcloth with red eyes like the Dark Lord’s and been glorious. It annoyed Draco that he couldn’t say why she was gorgeous, only that she was.
That irritation was what finally freed him to turn his eyes away from her and examine the other figures that were riding towards him. Potter’s beauty was human, and one could point to his eyelashes or his eyes or the way his hair curled and expect other people to understand. Draco might be awed for having seen the Faerie Queen, but he couldn’t show her off to his friends the way he could with Potter.
And really, wasn’t that half of the pleasure of having a handsome lover?
Another phalanx of horses trotted by, this time all strawberry roans with tall, upright faeries on their back beating drums. Draco noted they were wearing green cloaks and had red hair through which fox ears poked, and then dismissed them. They weren’t beautiful enough to look at anyway, in the face of what would be coming when Potter showed up.
If he did. It would be like Potter, Draco thought crossly, to be late to his own sacrifice.
But no, wait. At the very tail end of the procession-which Potter could have mentioned, so that Draco wouldn’t have hurt his neck craning it down the path the way he had-strode a white horse that looked more normal than the rest. Maybe they hadn’t seen the point of using glamours on it when it was carrying what was essentially a condemned prisoner, Draco thought. Its nostrils were bright pink, its eyes blue, and its hooves clopped on the earth rather than rang. Potter sat half-slumped on its back, his hands linked to the pommel of the saddle with small ropes.
Draco frowned. His plan depended on him being drunk, not Potter. If they had given him some drug to subdue him, then Draco’s plan might not work.
But he would just have to go ahead and hope that it did. He raced forwards, past the drum-playing fox faeries, who never turned to look at him, and swept the stained green cloak from his shoulders, wrapping it around Potter’s. At the same time, he hissed the incantation that he had learned from Blaise one drunken evening long ago. “Imaginor iterum!”
Potter’s wide, glazed eyes blinked, and he looked aware, if confused, for a moment. Then he gasped and tilted his head back, shuddering as the semen stains on the cloak flared and came to life, driving white threads into his body.
Draco smirked. The spell would take advantage of any stain or reminder of sexual activity to make one of the participants relive it.
And with Potter in the throes of orgasm, he was less likely to be affected by the illusions that the Faerie Queen would try to spin.
Draco wrapped his arms more solidly around Potter and began to pull him free. His legs caught in the stirrups, and of course the thread that bound his hands to the pommel of the saddle pulled tight. Draco frowned. He hated himself for forgetting that. He picked up his wand and began to singe the string.
There was a rustle behind him, and a sound like an indrawn breath. Draco was vaguely aware that the drums he had heard the faeries playing and the jangling of the bells on the harnesses had stopped.
Potter, in his arms, body shuddering as though he was the one getting fucked, suddenly changed into a huge and writhing snake. It was green, with shadows of white and black on its belly, and it reminded Draco too much of the Dark Lord’s snake for comfort.
But he couldn’t be afraid of snakes, he thought, not when he had spent the last seven years choosing his friends and lovers from a group of people who were serpents in all but name, and lived in Slytherin House before that. And when the memories of Nagini tried to paralyze them, they fizzed out. Draco’s drunkenness was rescuing him. The way he was rescuing Potter, he thought in triumph, and burned through the string that tied Potter’s hands-because suddenly his hands were tied and he was a human being again, just like that.
Glamour, Draco reminded himself. Glamour is all it is. And you know that you can live with that.
Potter’s body slumped into his arms, the cloak still wrapped firmly around him. And then Draco had to deal with a lunging, thumping shape that pushed a beak into his face and screeched at him. It had wide wings, the cloak seemed to have become obstructing, rustling feathers, and Draco realized that he was holding an eagle.
It’s just Potter, remember that, Draco thought, and managed to stand still when the beak came at his eyes as if it would scoop them out and the talons reached towards his belly. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe in the glamour; it was just that the memories of Potter fucking him were stronger than his fear, and he would never get to experience that again if he opened his arms and let Potter go.
The eagle melted, and there was a lion in his arms, breathing its hot breath into his face, stroking downwards with its back legs. Draco thought of being disemboweled. He couldn’t not think of it, when the lion was heaviness and stink of carrion and blood in his embrace and he could experience those things as if they were real.
No. I have to hold him. And he was a lion, of course, because the lion is the symbol of Gryffindor House. I have to remember that. It’s not wrong and unnatural, and think of the way that he would behave if he was a lion in bed!
Draco laughed aloud at the turn his thoughts were taking. He thought the Faerie Queen probably wouldn’t have encountered them before. He tilted his head back and bared his throat to the lion, smiling. He could imagine the great teeth crunching down, and he didn’t mind them. He wondered if he would still feel the same way when the teeth locked, but, well, he was thinking of Potter using his weight to such welcome advantage in bed and wasn’t as afraid as he could have been.
The lion snarled above him as if baffled, and then went quiet, sniffing at the scent between Draco’s neck and shoulder. Then it writhed and kicked as though someone was trying to crawl out from inside its skin. Draco kept his smile and his arms both steady. If Potter was in there and trying to come out, Draco would kiss him when he did.
The lion twisted, and something much smaller and fiercer and with a blunt nose suddenly screamed into Draco’s face and tried to slide out of his hold. It was so much smaller that Draco had to hastily drop to his knees and grip its head so that it wouldn’t slip away from him completely. The Faerie Queen wasn’t going to win, because Draco wanted Potter back and he was going to have him.
It was a badger, the animal he held. Draco frowned. He suspected the Faerie Queen of paying too much attention to Hogwarts and the symbols of the Houses. His books, or rather Pansy’s books, said that faeries tended to indulge in a lot of symbolic thinking.
Then he had other things to worry about, because the badger was trying to dig out his eyes with sharpened claws. The eagle had tried the same thing with its beak, Draco remembered, and decided that the Faerie Queen wasn’t as imaginative as he had thought she was, either.
He wrapped the badger in the cloak so tightly that it would hurt itself if it tried to escape, and held it to his chest. It began to snarl like an annoyed teakettle. Draco smiled. He could picture Potter spluttering like that when Draco introduced him to his friends.
“You’re the same no matter what shape you’re in, aren’t you?” he asked the badger. “She can change your appearance, but she can’t change your essence, and I think that’s what you mean when you say that everything is glamour. You can tell the difference between reality and falsehood after all, even when the glamours are powerful.”
There was a long silence behind him, and then he was once again holding Potter. Potter was gasping and wore a look like an exquisite mingling of pain and pleasure on his face. Guessing the reason, Draco took pity and gestured sharply with his wand, taking away the spell that bound Potter to relive his orgasm.
He waited, but there was no other change. He thought that meant he had won, but he wasn’t sure. He turned around, dragging Potter with him. Potter stumbled, but at least he didn’t fall on the ground, which would probably count as a last-minute letting-go on Draco’s part.
He faced the Faerie Queen, who stared at him with eyes the exact shade of green at Potter’s, blazing with secret fires, and said nothing at all.
“He likes fucking me more than he likes fucking you,” Draco explained kindly.
She turned her head as though her neck was on runners and stared at Potter. Potter looked at her with glazed eyes, but then his body straightened. Perhaps she compelled it to straighten, Draco thought. He wouldn’t know about that. Potter stared back at her, and the virulent loathing in his eyes seemed to answer her silent question.
The Queen turned and lifted her hand, then brought it down like someone pulling a curtain across a window.
And they were all gone: horses, drums, bells, faeries and all. Draco stared at the empty road, and then stared at Potter, who was wobbling on his feet with his eyes closed. “Does she always do that when she’s thwarted?” he asked.
“Not always,” Potter mumbled. He sounded drunk, and, more than that, like someone with no experience in handling his drink. Draco knew he had never sounded that bad. “The last time, she said that it would have been better if she had turned the one who escaped into a tree.” He laughed abruptly, and the sound had tears in the back of it.
“What’s the matter?” Draco asked, and looked around suspiciously for any faeries in the trees. His hand went down to toy with the iron in his pocket, the weapon that the books had said would be effective against faeries. Draco had been able to find so many iron things-nails, coins, bits off pokers-that he wondered why anyone had ever feared the Faerie Queen.
No, he decided then, slowly, thinking about the way her eyes had glowed. I reckon I can still understand that part.
“I’m human again,” Potter said. Tears were streaming down his face, but his voice didn’t sound at all choked. Draco decided that he had a weird voice. Showed his drink too much, didn’t show his tears. Draco would have to check his expression if he wanted to know the truth about him in the future. “And I have you to thank. A hero I didn’t think could do it. My hero.”
He opened his eyes and turned his head.
Draco had the time to gasp before he found himself on the ground again with his pants around his ankles. Potter had his eyes closed as he sucked on Draco’s cock, his throat working so hard that Draco’s erection ached even before he consciously registered the wetness and warmth that surrounded him.
“Potter, you don’t have to-” Draco said, and then wondered why in the world he’d said that. He must be brain-damaged from his last look into the Faerie Queen’s eyes. He spread his legs and closed his eyes, arching his head back, using the solid thump as it connected with the dirt to distract himself from stupid ideas that wanted to parade through his mind. Now was not the time to start being generous. “Oh, yes, Potter, right there!”
Potter swallowed with a grace and speed that made Draco liable to forgive him for the semen-tasting kiss that he received a few minutes later.
And just proving that, when nature decided to gift someone, she really decided to gift him, Potter’s cock was delicious, too.
*
Potter had insisted on bread and cheese for his first mortal meal in seven years. Draco didn’t understand that. If you hadn’t tasted anything real-or at least anything where you could be sure what you were eating-in seven years, why not at least make honey and chocolate the first taste? But Potter seemed perfectly content to devour the crudest loaf and wedge of cheese that Draco’s house-elves could find, and he only wanted water to drink. When he leaned back in his chair, he shifted a bit, as if the cushioning was too comfortable for him.
“The water in her land ran in streams as bright as mirrors, or as red as blood,” Potter murmured, gazing into his glass.
“It sounds as though you miss it,” Draco muttered. “Or her.” He was feeling strange, sitting there in a chair in his own home, looking at a solid Potter. He didn’t really know what came next. No wonder that all the fairy-stories ended with the hero rescuing the fair maiden, he thought. Or bloke, as it might be. What else was there to say? Was the hero really going to look into the maiden’s eyes and notice that she wasn’t beautiful when she cried? Draco was noticing the weariness in Potter’s eyes now and the way that he refused to sit with his back to a door.
“I don’t,” Potter said. “But it marked me, living in a place of eternal youth and beauty, or at least what they could make appear as youth and beauty. I don’t know how I’ll cope watching people age and die.” He took a drink of the water and set the glass back on the table with a hesitating motion. Draco braced himself. This was the part where Potter said he was very grateful for Draco’s rescue but he couldn’t stay.
“Listen,” Potter said in a restless, blurred voice, staring at the floor, “I know that you probably have someone else, and I was only one fuck, but I’d like to stay with you, make a go of it with you. Can I?”
Draco felt his face trying to ache with his grin. But he didn’t grin like that, because he was a Malfoy and it wouldn’t have been dignified. He held up his hand. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m afraid that you’re going to have to repeat that, Potter, because I couldn’t have heard what I thought I heard.”
Potter lifted startled eyes. Then he started to grin, but he was disheveled and had just depended on Draco Malfoy, of all people, to get him back to the real world, so that was all right. “You wanker,” he said. “You’re going to let me stay.”
“If you beg nicely,” Draco said, and helpfully opened his legs so that Potter could come nearer and fall on his knees if he wanted to.
Potter did fall on his knees, but it was to take Draco’s hand. Draco found it hard to breathe. He suspected it had something to do with the bread and cheese he’d eaten to keep Potter company-unacceptable food for a Malfoy, for certain. He would remember for the next party he held.
“Malfoy,” Potter whispered. “Beautiful Malfoy. Dearest Draco.” His fingers caressed Draco’s hand, moving up and down in stroking motions that no one else Draco had been with had ever done, not even Blaise. “Will you let me stay here? Will you live with me, and try to love me, and be faithful to me alone? Will you?”
Draco swallowed. “You have to do the same thing,” he said, which was inane. Potter was a hero. What else would he do but be faithful and live with the person he had fallen in love with?
“Agreed,” Potter said in an eager voice, staring at him with shining eyes.
“Then-then-” Draco said. “I mean, you could love me?”
“Yes,” Potter said. “You were there. I looked around, and you were there, and you came through for me. And I do adore the way you come. All the sorts of ways you come.” His eyes were heavy-lidded, and Draco knew that he would never have believed it if he hadn’t seen it for himself, that Harry Potter could flirt.
Draco swallowed. His throat was heavy, too, and clogged with some strange and mysterious substance. He wasn’t going to drink that vintage of wine again. “I’ll try, then,” he said, in a voice that would have been grand and mysterious if not for the wine.
His friends wouldn’t take this well, and there would be a tearful reunion with Granger that might hold Draco back from getting his money, and it seemed that lust more than love held Potter to him, and, and, and-
But at this moment, with Potter reaching out a hand that held a white rosebud-where had he got that?-and placing it in Draco’s hair, above his ear, Draco thought that he deserved all he had and that everything might end happily ever after, after all.
Potter’s had his faerie tale, for seven years. It’s time for me to have mine.
The End.
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