Chapter Ten of 'The House That Lovers Built'- Shattering the Webs
Chapter Nine.
Title: The House That Lovers Built (10/15 or 20)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Draco, Ron/Hermione mentioned
Warnings: Angst, violence, forced bonding (of a sort), hurt/comfort.
Rating: R
Summary: A planned Auror raid on a notorious Potions brewer goes wrong. Badly wrong. To the point of Harry-ending-up-trapped-in-a-magical-house-with-Draco-Malfoy wrong. And the secret to leaving is going to be something that Harry might not have the strength to face.
Author’s Notes: This is a hurt/comfort fic for both characters in some ways. The forced bonding is more related to the house than to a typical bond. And, finally, I’ve been wanting to write this fic for a long time. It will update every Monday, and probably be somewhere between ten and twelve chapters long.
Chapter One.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Ten-Shattering the Webs
After that, it was surreal.
At least, it was for Harry. Maybe Malfoy had experienced such bouts of Potion-brewing before. Harry wouldn’t know, considering that he had spent only as much time in labs as he needed to to qualify for Auror training, and emphasis on Potions knowledge had decreased under Kingsley’s Ministry; most of the Dark wizards they chased seemed to rely on pure Dark Arts, the spells rather than the potions.
But when it went well, the way it was doing now, Harry thought he could see why people like Malfoy might dedicate their lives to this art.
Malfoy at his cauldron was a pleasure to watch. His arms swirled with delicate motions more graceful than any ghost’s. Harry watched him from the corner of his eye as he mashed the last seeds up-the seeds were bright red and shed a peppery dust that made Harry have to hold his breath some of the time-and Malfoy’s lips were twitching all the time, barely concealing a smile.
He stood back out of the way when fumes billowed up from the cauldron at one point, and avoided the red and stinging eyes that they afflicted Harry with. The touch of his hand on Harry’s back, and the sound of his voice as he cast the incantation that eased the stinging, was gentle.
“It takes some people that way, the first time,” Malfoy murmured into Harry’s ear.
Harry tried to find his voice, to remind Malfoy that after they escaped the house, he would have no reason to stand at Malfoy’s side and try to brew a potion again. But Malfoy’s hand tightened, and Harry turned his head towards him, to make sure that Malfoy’s face was the first sight he would see when the smoke finally cleared from his eyes.
After that, if not before, it was surreal.
Harry didn’t make another mistake. The pestle and the mortar moving in his hands felt as light and as natural as a wand ever had. He deposited the crushed seeds in a bowl from which Malfoy took them, with more of the graceful motions of those hands that Harry had to duck his head to watch, that made his breath come short as he watched them.
Malfoy caught him looking more than once, and more than once gave him the same long, slow smile he had showed when Harry woke that morning. But Harry didn’t mind it. They worked beside each other, and they were making good progress towards getting out of the house. He could hardly ask Malfoy for more.
He had asked him for more.
Harry shifted. His arse still stung, but not being a virgin any more felt less different and life-changing than he’d expected. He’d built it up as this huge thing that would change him completely in his mind, one of the reasons he’d been so hesitant to do something about it. What were the odds that he would find a partner who wouldn’t laugh?
What were the odds that he would find a partner who would take the gleeful, wicked delight in divesting him of it that Malfoy had?
Harry’s cheeks flushed, but he kept working through the embarrassment, and watching Malfoy’s hands as they swooped and rose. How many motions had he learned like that, by heart? How did he know just what to do next? How could he tell when the potion needed to be covered with a lid, or placed under a Stasis Charm, or moved away from with a murmured warning to Harry?
It’s the same kind of art that I have as an Auror, Harry realized slowly. Everyone keeps asking me how I can memorize all those defensive spells and get them working together. Monica Whistler said that she couldn’t believe I could fire so many hexes so close together in battle.
But you love something enough, you work at it, and it becomes instinctive, or close to instinctive. And Malfoy loves Potions.
Watching Malfoy, Harry thought he could understand that love himself. Not something he would ever have said before this.
Malfoy glanced up, smiled at him, and said, “As flattering as I find it to be drooled over, I do need your help for this next part of the potion. If I’m right, then I understand the modifications to the theory behind the house that we made when we stumbled into it. But both of us need to correct that mistake.” He turned to face Harry, stirring rod in one hand and chopping knife in the other, like some arcane wizard of the kitchen.
Harry swallowed the laughter that wanted to escape and nodded. “If you’re right?”
Malfoy only shrugged. “All of this has been experimental, Harry, and if you don’t understand that, then you’re a greater fool than I thought you were. I don’t think you are one. A fool, I mean. I think you enjoy playing one-”
“A lot of people think they can make me the butt of their jokes, if that’s what you mean,” Harry interrupted, and he couldn’t help the way that his hand dropped to his side and gripped his wand. Most of the people who had said things like that to him had attacked him in the next moment.
“That’s not what I mean,” Malfoy said, and held Harry’s eyes until he flushed and lowered his wand. “Now. Come here.”
The voice was quietly commanding. Harry moved forwards and stood across from Malfoy. Malfoy lifted his hands and spread them, then seemed to realize that he still held the rod and knife and put them down. When he spread his hands again, a web shimmered between them, thin as though it was made of torn tissue. Harry squinted at it, shook his head, and looked again. Now it looked as though it was made of silver thread starred with dancing bubbles, like a spider’s web in the morning.
“Yes,” Malfoy whispered. “I’ve arrived at the point in the potion where my own magic is interacting with the magic of the house. This is how it manifests. The house has established a sanctuary for us, and it doesn’t see that we have any reason to leave it. Hence the web, the symbol of strangling and imprisoning.” He turned his hands over, and Harry saw that the web had grown thicker and was creeping up his wrists.
“You didn’t say anything about this.” Harry worked on his outrage, making sure Malfoy could hear it but it couldn’t overwhelm Harry himself. If the house opposed them like this, then that meant there was a way they could fight it, even if not by bursting through the walls. And here Harry had thought he was reliant on Malfoy’s Potions skills all by themselves.
“I didn’t,” Malfoy said, staring at him, “because this is all part of the brewing process, no different than crushing seeds. But I did ensure that you could participate with me in it. That’s why I had you help brew.” He nodded at Harry’s own hands.
Harry looked down and saw the silver web hanging there. He jumped. The web swished against him, but Harry felt nothing more than the brush of a raindrop.
“Good,” Malfoy said, and his eyes were bright and his smile sharp. “Now that you can see it, we can destroy them.” He lunged forwards and moved his hands in a careful round, snaring his web with Harry’s. They caught and tangled like chains, and then Malfoy stepped forwards.
“Don’t you have to back up so that we can tug on them and shatter them?” Harry gave an experimental pull on his bonds, and felt nothing except an implacable push, like a wall, when he reached a certain distance.
Malfoy shook his head. “We’re ultimately fighting against a house that shoved us together and wants to keep us together.” Harry breathed deeply and fixed his eyes on Malfoy’s. “We have to show it that we’re together, but in our own way, not at its command.” He paused, then chuckled. “Yes, I thought that would inspire you, fighting an enemy. You should see the way your eyes lit up.”
Harry snorted. “A lot of my enemies have learned the way my eyes light up to their cost,” he retorted, and pressed closer to Malfoy. “Remember that.”
“Since I’m not an enemy, I hardly think I need to,” Malfoy said, on an exhaled breath so soft that Harry really wasn’t sure how he heard the words. “I spend enough time thinking about you as it is.”
Harry wanted to close his eyes and turn his head away, but that wouldn’t solve the problem, and was probably the equivalent of running right now besides. He was not going to retreat.
He stepped closer instead, when Malfoy gestured for him to do that, and murmured, “What do we do now?”
“Think about the things you were thinking about this morning.”
Harry blinked. How did Malfoy know about that?
“The expression on your face when you were brewing, when you watched me,” Malfoy whispered. “Or the sex we had. The house forced us to do some things, like give us each other food and share the shower and stay in the same room. But others were our choices. Think about the choices.”
Harry took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He was swaying a little from the force of the sense memories that assaulted him, he thought. Just a little. The memories pounced him and bowled him over, and he went with them, restless and dazed. His breath was coming fast as he thought about the way Malfoy had pinned him down on the mattress in the lab, and sucked him off, and held him-
“Yes, that’s it,” Malfoy whispered, and Harry felt the brush of his fingers and wrists and pulse as Malfoy knotted his hands around Harry’s.
Harry didn’t open his eyes to check, because the sight of Malfoy’s face would probably distract him. He just thought, about hands and tongues and lips and the way he had reacted, the way he had wanted Malfoy, the way he moved when he brewed the potion, and how he teased and joked but was overall decent to Harry. His helplessness hadn’t lasted long; he was taking the lead in rescuing them. He hadn’t been unreasonable for long enough that Harry hated him for it, either. He would have been more unreasonable in Malfoy’s place.
He swayed, and he breathed, and then he heard a splintering crack, one that made him want to fling himself on top of Malfoy to protect him from imminent danger. He probably moved without thinking about it, because the next moment, he found his elbows hitting the floor of the lab and his chest hitting Malfoy’s. He blinked open his eyes, and shivered.
Malfoy raised an eyebrow at him and said, “Not that I’d object, you understand, but would you mind standing up so I can see our hands?”
Harry shut his eyes and shook his head, scrambling up and backwards. His whole body knew what Malfoy felt like and wanted more. He held up his hands, though, and miraculously kept them from reaching out and taking what they wanted.
Malfoy laughed.
Harry opened his eyes, prepared to see that they had failed after all and had to do something else to make the house relax its hold on them. Part of him wouldn’t mind; he liked the way they acted around each other now, how they worked as a team, almost like the way he acted with Ron as his partner.
But no, the spiderwebs were gone. Malfoy seized Harry’s chin, kissed him hard enough to make him pant, and scrambled back and faced the cauldron. That was still whole, Harry saw, and the table, and the instruments like the knife and the stirring rod that Malfoy had laid down beside the cauldron. The crack must have come from some of the house’s magic holding them in.
“You might even be able to leave the room, if you wanted,” Malfoy murmured. His back was turned, his head bent over the cauldron.
That didn’t fool Harry. He moved closer and took Malfoy’s shoulders in his hands, not holding them, simply using his palms and fingers to shape them.
“I don’t want to,” he answered.
Malfoy turned his head, and their kiss was lighter this time, but no less fierce, no less promising.
*
Harry opened his eyes with a start somewhere after midnight. He knew it was after midnight because the clock that the wall in the bedroom had obligingly sprouted this morning said so, and because Hermione’s Patronus was hovering in front of him, paws clasped as the otter scolded him.
“…until today, Harry! And now it’s midnight, and I’m trying to revise the information you’ve given me, and it doesn’t make sense! Something is missing, Harry. Some ingredient that Malfoy uses in the potion, or something else. Maybe a procedure that he’s used and hasn’t told you about. Get him to tell you, so that I can actually help the problem from the outside.” The otter’s voice softened. “We miss you. We want you back.”
The otter dissolved into wisping smoke, and left Harry blinking. Malfoy sat up behind him, rubbing his back and saying nothing. Harry finally felt secure enough to turn to him and smile. “Sorry you had to hear that.”
“She’s right,” Malfoy said. “After all, you didn’t tell her about the blood in the potion, and the theory she’ll try to work with doesn’t make sense without that.”
Harry nodded uncertainly. His world had gone strange again, he thought, surreal like that afternoon of watching Malfoy brew. He ought to want to be out of this house more than anything in the world.
In the beginning, it had been like that, especially because he wanted to make sure that the case of the Solitary Brewer ended with the Brewer’s capture, not escape. But he hadn’t thought about the case that much in several days. He hadn’t counted the minutes or spent every one thinking up new insults for Malfoy, the way he had been sure he would.
“I don’t mind being here with you,” he said aloud, because a revelation like that had to be shared.
“I like being here with you,” Malfoy responded.
Quiet, but the words struck Harry nonetheless, hard as a blow. He turned around and reached for Malfoy’s shoulders almost angrily, because that was like the git, wasn’t it? To challenge him, to come up with words that were more profound than his own, to show that he had come as far as liking Harry while Harry was still struggling with the admission that he might be okay with someone-
Malfoy met him kiss for kiss and scramble for scramble, and Harry-though he blamed that on the small size of the bed more than anything else-ended up near the edge with his head hanging off it. Harry struggled and wheezed with rage, and Malfoy leaned up and off his chest so that he could sit there.
“I don’t need you to talk to me like I talk to you yet,” Malfoy said, words keen as sleet. “I need you to realize that this isn’t ending, that the house’s walls can fall and I’ll still be there, that not everything disappears because this dimension does. Can you promise me that, Harry?”
Silence, and Harry turned his head away, because he didn’t know that he could, not really, and Malfoy’s fingers were tightening on his shoulders as though he was going to rip muscle from bone after all-
“I told you,” Malfoy said, voice soft as a breath now, “you don’t need to call me the same things that I call you.”
But Harry’s sense of fairness woke up at that, because it really wasn’t fair, to leave Malfoy struggling like this, to have him make all the promises. And weren’t Gryffindors supposed to be the more courageous ones, anyway, the ones who gave their hearts without hesitation and responded when someone all but said he loved them?
He. That was going to be a sticking point with Ron and Hermione, too, who had never known Harry as any different than he’d presented himself with Ginny.
But it wasn’t a sticking point with Harry anymore, and it was silly to pretend that it was. He reached up, noticing the way his fingers shook, before he put a stop to that by burying them in Malfoy’s hair. Malfoy looked down at him, quick and intense, and shook his head. Harry knew without his speaking that he was silently refusing a kiss to put an end to the conversation right now, if that was the only purpose Harry had for it.
“I can promise you that I’ll be there, that I won’t vanish because the house does,” Harry said, although he trembled and his breath would have come out as cold, shaky clouds if anyone was around to look. “I can’t promise that I’ll still be your lover. That’s what I promise. Draco.”
Malfoy was on him then, hands tugging and ripping again, although Harry only wore a shirt and pants to bed and they came off easily enough. Then Malfoy pulled back and hovered, eyes on Harry as though the scars on his back were a surprise, while Harry laid his head on the pillow and his heart pounded and sang in his ears, Draco, his name is Draco.
“What?” Harry demanded, when the looking had gone on long enough to make him feel that every inch of his skin was scattered with embers.
“I’m trying to decide how I should have you,” Draco said casually. “We’ve done so much so far, and it’s all satisfying, but what would be the most particularly satisfying thing for this particular moment?”
Harry propped himself up on an elbow and stared earnestly at Draco. “I’ll tell you a secret.”
“Yes?” Draco bent down, his mouth crooking up in a smile that Harry had never seen before and wanted to see again and again.
But not enough, right now, to keep him from whispering into Draco’s ear, “I’m not a bloody potion.”
Draco drew back, blinking at him. “I know,” he said, and his voice took on a caressing tone that made Harry blush. “Why would you think I didn’t know that?”
“I’ll thank you not to approach me so methodically, if you do know,” Harry said, and held his eyes without turning away.
Draco shook his head, a small frown working its way across his lips for the first time. “I’m only speaking. It’s only a matter of speaking, Harry.” He reached out and traced his hand from Harry’s shoulder to his hip in a way that almost made Harry forget what they were talking about-but only almost. “You can tell me what to do, if you want to,” Draco added, his eyes darkening with passion, “and that way, it will be even less like brewing a potion, what with you in charge.”
“Tempting,” Harry said, catching Draco’s hand as it reached out for him again. His breath was catching in his lungs and the pace of his heart making him almost feverish, all from the way Draco was looking at him. “But I want to say this first.”
“Then go ahead and say it.” Draco dragged his chest impatiently up and down against Harry’s shoulder. “I grow tired of waiting.”
That strengthened Harry’s resolve to say what he wanted to say. Maybe the words were silly, but Draco was getting his way a lot lately. He had got his way more often since they came into the house, as a matter of fact, because he had been the one to adapt to sex and the shower and the food more easily. Harry didn’t think he was in a conspiracy with the house, not exactly, but this had been easier for him, and Harry was determined to make the sex maniac listen to his point of view for once.
“If we’re going to stay together once we’re out of here,” he said, “then things will have to change.”
Draco ducked his head and looked up at Harry from under lowered eyelashes. “You promised that you would stand up for me to the big, bad Aurors.”
“I didn’t promise,” Harry said, and shook his head when he saw the way Draco was frowning. “Oh, it doesn’t matter. Look. We’re not going to spend all our time alone, and we’re not going to spend all our time having sex. We’ll have to talk about how this is going to work. How much time are you going to want to spend with me? Are you really going to want everyone to know about this right away, when I’m a public figure?”
“I’ll have you know that there are brewers who know my name, as well.” Draco bristled.
Harry kept himself from rolling his eyes because he didn’t think it would help right now, but he decided to remember that Draco had that bitter little trace of jealousy still hidden inside him. “I know, but it’s different for you. Some of the people that were just rumored to be with me had a pretty bad time with all the owls dropping on their heads and jealous rivals stalking them. Is that what you want? Or are you going to need privacy?”
“You want to lie to them.” Draco sat up and wrapped his arms around his knees as though for protection against the cold. “You want to tell your friends that we’re not really lovers.”
“My friends will have to know,” Harry said. “Of course. I’m talking about the public, and the people who make up the public. Do you want them to know?”
“Why do your friends have to know?”
Harry checked his sigh and nodded to the place near the wall where Hermione’s Patronus had hovered. “Because they already know a lot, and they have a place in my life that no one else does. But they won’t spread gossip. How much we’re out in public and what they think about us will really be up to you. What would make you comfortable?”
“I don’t see why you should value them more than me.” Draco was staring at him with his eyes narrowed. Harry had to resist the urge to look down and make sure that his chest hadn’t changed form somehow. “Who took your virginity?”
Yes, mention of that could still make Harry flush. He hoped fervently that he wouldn’t have to put it in quite those terms to Ron and Hermione, who probably suspected that he was still a virgin in most ways but wouldn’t want to hear about it. “What does that have to do with anything?” he snapped back. “So you took my virginity. That doesn’t make you more important than my friends.”
Draco struggled in silence for a moment, and then said, “What if I want to be?”
Harry swallowed. He felt a lump sticking in his throat that was a lot like the one he had felt when the house forbade him to call Draco by his last name. “I-then you’d have to find someone else,” he said. “I mean, you’re important. You’ll be important to me for a long time, if you want to be. But I won’t say that you’re more significant to me than my friends. Why would you want me to?”
“I told you what I wanted,” Draco said in a low, charged voice. “Why I was almost grateful that the house trapped us in here, for the experience of your friendship.”
“And you also said that you knew it might not last,” Harry snapped. “Listen, Draco, everything will be different when we get out of here. Maybe not the emotions, but we won’t be alone together anymore. My friends will come back into my life. You knew that.”
“You’re speaking now as though that matters more to you than the time we spend here.”
“Of course it does,” Harry said, and then watched the wounded roll that Draco took away from him and realized what he’d said, or what Draco had probably thought he meant. “No! I mean-I mean that we’re going to spend more time outside the house than we are trapped inside it. The whole rest of our lives, I hope.” He tried to soften his words, and he held out his hand, but Draco was turned away and didn’t see it. Harry let it drop, and tried to ignore the urge to clench his fingers into the bedsheets. “Listen, Draco, I want to be with you. I do. What I’m trying to get you to consider is what you want.”
“To stay here, if what you offer me is the only alternative.”
Harry didn’t manage to check the sigh this time. So now we come to it. “I won’t stop being Ron and Hermione’s friend,” he said quietly. “I’m willing to try being your lover. But is that what you want?”
Draco’s silent, turned back answered him.
Harry shook his head. “I don’t know what to say to you,” he said, rubbing his hands through his hair. “The house brought us together. We can try remaining together. But things won’t be exactly the same when we get out. You know that. Of course you know that. What is this, the last gasp of denial?”
“You’re impossible.”
“I’m trying not to be,” Harry said, and made an effort he hadn’t thought he was capable of to gentle his voice and sit back with his arms unfolded and his legs open, making himself vulnerable down to his hard cock, which was still enthusiastic because Draco was nearby. “What do you want? Seriously. That doesn’t involve staying in the house, because you know as well as I do that we’ve worked too hard for that.”
Draco continued to sit with his back turned for long enough that Harry thought he might never say anything again, and Harry would have to get up from the bed and escape from the house and do everything else he wanted by himself. Then he said, “I want you to promise me that you won’t leave.”
“I will,” Harry said instantly. “Stay with you, and let you determine how much publicity you’re comfortable with? I can do that.”
Draco turned around. “And you’ll be my lover? And you won’t tell your friends?”
Harry held his eyes until he hoped Draco could see how heartbroken he was about this, and then slowly shook his head. “Sorry, but I can’t,” he said. “My friends know, I told you. There’s no possible way they can’t know, when they realize that we spent time together. But they won’t bother you about it. And I don’t know how real my own emotions will be once we’re out of the house.”
Draco squirmed towards him. His face was so intent that Harry half-expected a slap when Draco got to him, but he held still and let him come. Then Draco was all but pushing him backwards, his hands in the center of Harry’s chest, his face passionate with anger.
“You don’t know,” Draco whispered. “You can’t make any promises. You won’t think that anything that happens here is real, even when you know bloody well it was.”
“I’m not lying,” Harry snapped. “Not to you, and not to myself. I was trying to pretend that this meant nothing, and I know it does, now. But how much is what I have to figure out. Once we’re out of the house, with nothing forcing us together, then I can figure out how much I honestly feel for you. And it’s honesty you deserve, not a false lover.”
“It’s you I deserve,” Draco said, voice lowering. “As much time as I’ve given you, as much emotion as I’ve poured into you-”
“That’s ridiculous, to think you deserve another person-”
“This house has given us so much, and you’re just going to throw it away like the gift doesn’t even matter to you-”
“It’s given you more than it has me-”
“You have no idea what you’re saying-”
“It is more in tune with your wishes, or at least you could adapt to it,” Harry snapped, thinking again of the way that Draco had looked at him with cool eyes and held the fork out on the day when they first had to start eating from each other’s servings. “You were more experienced than I was. You wanted my friendship, and I hadn’t even thought of you in years. That’s an advantage, Draco. You might not think of it that way, but it was-”
“I never even thought of us as engaging in the same kind of stupid contest that you want to make this into-”
“I did,” Harry said. “Because I was more uncomfortable than you were with what was happening, and that meant I had to think about it. And I want to leave this house, and I want to face what comes next. Just because you’re too much of a coward to do that-”
Draco slapped him.
Harry clapped a hand to his stinging cheek and stared at him in silence. Draco stared at him with parted lips as though he understood what had happened no more than Harry, and for a moment, Harry was tempted to tell himself that, to ensure that he forgave Draco-
But no, why should he? Everything he had said was true, and that Draco had put this much effort into the potion and into building up a relationship with Harry and then would balk at the notion of leaving the house disgusted him. He let his disgust show in his face, in the curled lip, in the way he dropped his hand away from his cheek and left the red print there for anyone to see who would.
Draco stared back, his hands looking oddly defenseless even as he curled them into fists. Harry thought he felt a low vibration traveling up through the bed, but he also thought it came from Draco, from the growl Draco was giving.
And then-
Then the bed dissolved beneath them like morning mist, and the walls parted, and the sheets were gone, and they were sitting in the Solitary Brewer’s darkened house, with Harry’s Auror robes and the first clothes Draco had worn crumpled in a pile not far away.
Chapter Eleven.
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