Chapter Ten of 'Burning Day'- A Series of Excuses
Chapter Nine.
Title: Burning Day (10/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Draco, Ron/Hermione
Warnings: Angst, violence
Rating: R
Summary: In the lead-up to Draco’s election as Minister, Dark Lord Harry Potter broods. Only he can’t do that all the time, even with most of Britain terrified of him now. So he has to find something else to occupy his time. And being a Benevolently Snarky Dark Lord is it.
Author’s Notes: The sequel to Easy as Falling and Black Phoenix, but still prequel to “Charming When He Needs to Be.” This will be a shorter story than the others, mostly tying up the loose ends of Draco as Minister and Harry as Dark Lord, and the last story in the series.
Chapter One.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Ten-A Series of Excuses
“I didn’t really do anything that was too bad.”
Draco fought the drag of his eyelids and his own exhaustion, and sat up, shaking his head. “That means ‘please don’t be angry at me, Draco.’ It doesn’t mean that what you were doing wasn’t actually dangerous.”
Harry froze and glared at him. Draco glared back. Yes, he could feel the fatigue in his limbs. That didn’t matter. What mattered was making it clear to Harry that he had done something fucking stupid and he should be glad that Draco wasn’t in the right state of mind or mood to shake it out of him.
Harry finally seemed to relent, and glanced away with a sigh. “I decided to surround that golden crystal with enough barriers to see what really happened when it sucked on my magic. I found out that it was a ritual. There are little runes of light embedded in the crystal that form a circle. And you know that ritual circles are always more powerful than ordinary spells. I’m not surprised that nothing we tried contained it, now.”
“What kind of barriers did you raise?” Draco made sure that his voice was quiet, even, gentle. He could yell at Harry later. There might be more information to know, and Harry would get sulky and retreat with too much yelling.
Harry brightened. “Wards around me, and then power based on the bond that I have with Hogwarts. Hogwarts was what took care of me after the crystal mostly drained my core,” he added, as if he thought that would reassure Draco. “It carried me back to the castle and made sure that I slept.”
Draco breathed through his nose. It would keep him from exploding. “Your core was drained? What prevented you from draining it completely?”
“I called up magic from the heart of the earth under Hogwarts,” said Harry simply. “That’s older than wizarding magic, you know. It blocked the crystal and proved to me that there’s at least one of kind of power that the ritual can’t affect. I’m not surprised. The Unspeakables who probably invented this were always more interested in artifacts than natural sources of magic.”
“You still did an unspeakably dangerous thing,” Draco whispered.
“Is that a pun?”
Draco bit his lips, savagely, so he wouldn’t yell. He didn’t think he would really get anywhere with Harry if he yelled. “Okay,” he said. “So you did something where you didn’t know all the consequences, and you’re trying to tell me it was okay because-what? You had something to walk you back to your office afterwards?” Picturing Harry doing that while Draco was in a meeting with potential allies that was only politically dangerous made him sick. Like he should have been there.
He’s still an adult, and a Dark Lord. I can’t know what kind of shit he’s going to pull all the time, and it’s not my place to police it.
Harry looked shiftily away from him, then sighed and nodded when Draco kept staring at him. “And because the earth-magic manifested in the form of a dragon, and swallowed the crystal when I thought I’d learned as much as I could from it. So there’s a sign that it can stop and contain and crush the crystals, too. We finally have a weapon we can use against them.” He looked at Draco with a widening of his eyes that Draco recognized, with a faint shock, as pleading. “Isn’t it worth it, if I learn enough to defeat the crystal?”
“Nothing is worth the loss of you,” said Draco, which was so simple and so straightforward he didn’t know why Harry hadn’t reasoned it out for himself.
“I wasn’t going to die. That power that makes me into a responsible Dark Lord also makes me someone who can-”
“Who can take risks, sure, and survive things that other people couldn’t,” said Draco, and he thought some of the building fury leaked through this time, because Harry looked startled. “It doesn’t mean that it’s fun for you to get hurt, or for people to watch you get hurt!”
Harry held still, and then reached out and smoothed one hand down the side of Draco’s face and onto his shoulder. Draco eyed him narrowly. He thought that Harry’s aura might have strengthened in the last few minutes, although it was hard to be sure.
“Hey,” Harry said softly. “You brought up a point I hadn’t considered. I thought-well, I knew I wouldn’t die or get permanently harmed, and I thought it was worth it to find out what was going on with the crystal. But next time, I might consider other methods of addressing the problem, at least.” He reached out, smiling, and punched Draco in the shoulder. “Thanks for making me consider that.”
Draco studied him again. Yes, the aura had come back, muted but stronger than it had been when he’d stepped into the room. Perhaps that meant that Harry talking about his magical core being drained was a bit of an exaggeration.
“How can you summon up the earth-power to destroy all the crystals that might come close to the wards, though?” he asked, deciding that he would take this as the peace offering it probably was. “I thought the earth-power would do what it wanted to do, and you couldn’t really control it.”
“That’s a good point,” Harry said in a solemn way that made Draco sure he already had an answer and had thought of this. “I’m not going to rely on the earth-power. I only wanted to be sure that there was something that could resist the crystal, that it wasn’t all-powerful, and Hogwarts wouldn’t be damaged if the crystal I had got out of control.” He hopped up on the edge of the desk, making Draco miss the warmth of his stroking hand right away. “But in the meantime, I’m going to work out ways to disrupt the ritual in the crystal, instead of working out how to block it altogether. If I make it so that that ritual couldn’t take place on Hogwarts grounds…”
“You’ll have to tell me about how you’re going to do that,” Draco murmured. Harry stopped, his head cocked to the side like a rabbit listening for the dive of a hawk. “Later. After you make up for frightening me.”
Harry turned around, hands planted on his desk. “And what way can I make up for that? Or are there multiple ways?”
“Multiple ways.” Draco stretched languidly in his chair, glad now that the cushioned back would prop his head up and show off the length of his neck. Sure enough, Harry’s stare locked onto it, and it was a hungry stare. Draco hid his smile by looking at Harry in turn. “You could use your mouth on me, for instance. Or your hands. Or your body. Or your cock.”
“I like the sound of that last one,” Harry whispered, and came towards him.
*
Making love to Draco was a little different when Harry didn’t have the magic to simply conjure a bed, but on the other hand, he still had his bond with Hogwarts.
As he rolled a laughing Draco to the floor, the stones softened under them, and became the sort of mattress that could make them both bounce almost off it. Harry knelt down and waved a hand over Draco’s clothes, and small hands came swarming out of the mattress and plucked them off.
Draco’s eyes widened, and he looked up at Harry as if he had never seen him before. “Even with your aura weakened, you can still do so much,” he whispered.
Harry realized he had been tense, and relaxed a little. He had thought the hands might hurt Draco or frighten him. But it wasn’t the case, and Draco was already reaching up and entwining impatient arms around Harry’s neck, pulling him down so that they lay groin-to-groin, chest-to-chest, body-to-body.
Harry groaned and took off his own clothes by making the little hands rise up and pull at him. The way he temporarily lost sight of Draco as his shirt was dragged over his head was the most agonizing thing he’d experienced in days. He promptly lowered his head and sucked at the side of Draco’s neck.
Draco reached up and held him there. What little Harry could see of his face from the corner of his eye looked like he had his mouth parted in idiotic bliss.
Harry lapped one more time at the skin of Draco’s neck, which was slick and salty and warmer than he had thought skin could be, and then sat up and reached for the lube that was in a drawer of the desk. It made Draco snort and then shiver to be exposed to the cold air, but Harry couldn’t help that. He carefully coated himself with the gleaming, sticky liquid, and then reached down and slid his fingers into Draco’s arse.
Draco opened his legs. “I just want you in me,” he whispered. “Go ahead and skip the foreplay.”
Harry still teased Draco with a few sharp motions of his fingers, because he liked the foreplay, but he put aside both lube and teasing when he saw the panting, serious expression on Draco’s face. He slid slowly inside, and grunted and groaned like a mad thing when the heat he had forgotten enwrapped him. He always forgot it. There was no remembering an experience like this, not perfectly.
Draco reached up and kissed him fiercely, then wrapped his legs around Harry’s waist. Harry began to rock, his eyes on Draco’s all the while. Draco had the same silly expression of bliss, and he was groaning a little, rolling his hips as though that could make Harry go faster.
Well, what Draco wanted, Draco should have, Harry considered. So he went faster, and the little hum in Draco’s throat began to break out in shouted growls of his own.
Harry adjusted the pace of his thrusts when he realized that he would probably come before Draco did. He didn’t want that. He wanted to linger, to watch Draco’s expression and the way his hands groped around at the edges of the mattress as though he didn’t really know what to do with them, to listen to the silly squeaking noises that their bodies made together.
Draco caught his breath with what sounded like an enormous gasp, and turned his head to demand, “Who said that you could go slower?”
Harry grinned and bent down, kissing Draco hard enough this time to make their lips hurt, and quickened his thrusts again. Maybe there could be too much of a good thing.
Or maybe it would be just as much fun to watch Draco fall apart as it was to take him there.
Draco groaned his way through his orgasm, all right, neck arched and shaking, legs spread as though he was trying to get even more of Harry’s cock inside his body. When he fell limp, it was to lie there and tremble, head turned to the side and tongue dangling out.
“I love you,” Harry breathed, because he did, he loved Draco more at the moment than he ever had.
Draco squeezed down in response. Harry got the point, and came with a sharp hiss that Draco was welcome to think was Parseltongue if he wanted. He excited Harry enough that he was wordless except for hisses anyway. Harry crashed down on top of Draco and did some more panting, and heard more smug humming from Draco in return.
“I want to know that you’re not going to do that with anyone else,” Draco whispered against his throat. “I know that you want me and you’re faithful, but what if something happens to split us apart? Some serious political conflict?”
Harry blinked slowly, recalling his thoughts from the mists of physical pleasure to reality. “You want me to swear that I’m not going to do that with anyone else?”
“Yes.” And Draco’s arms and legs grew even heavier, as if he would just hold Harry here on the mattress with him until he agreed.
Harry reached up and stroked the side of Draco’s neck, where his mark still was. “Even if that would mean I’d have to stay celibate? You realize that that’s a bit of an unreasonable request, don’t you?”
“Yes. And yes.”
Draco’s eyes were clear, not still hazed in the way that would have made Harry certain Draco didn’t really know what he was asking. And he went on looking until Harry dipped his head in a slow nod.
“I can’t promise that I’ll always be in love with you,” Harry whispered. “Although right now it feels like I will.” Draco still waited, and Harry knew it wasn’t good enough. “But I can promise that I would never do anything like this with someone else. There’s no one else it could ever be like this with.”
Draco spent some time considering that. Harry wanted to ask why he had desired that promise from Harry in the first place, or if he would make a promise like it, but this didn’t seem to be the time.
“Fine,” said Draco at last. “That’s good to know. Because there are lots of people who would want to be with the Dark Lord of Hogwarts, you realize?”
Harry snorted. “You have too much on your mind if you really think that. There are plenty of people who would be too frightened of me to ever consider being with me, no matter how many personal advantages it gives them.”
“Not if they knew what kind of lover and person you really were.” Harry opened his mouth to answer back, but Draco went on, speaking insistently over him. “No, I mean it. I don’t want someone else to steal into your heart and find my place there. Not ever.”
And that, Harry reckoned, was what really mattered to Draco, more than Harry making love to someone else or using Hogwarts and his magic to do it. He bent down until his mouth was next to Draco’s ear.
“I promise,” he whispered. “There’s no one else who will ever hold the place in my heart that you do, and I won’t go looking for someone who will. It’s you or no one. You’re the only one who gets to see this side of me.”
Draco studied his face until some tipping point that Harry didn’t understand was reached, and then he kissed Harry soundly. Harry went with the kiss, liking it, whether or not he always understood Draco’s impulses.
But hey, Draco had come near to losing Harry, as he saw it, when Harry confronted that golden crystal. Maybe it was only logical for him to want a promise that would keep a part of Harry safe.
*
Draco lay still with his eyes closed until he heard Harry’s breathing smooth and slow. Then he rolled over and looked at him. Harry was ordinary in sleep, at least, if he wasn’t ordinary any other time, his head hanging to the side and his mouth open a little as though he was sucking at something invisible.
I wish it was my cock.
Draco sighed. He was too tired even to stir to hardness at that. He laid his head in the middle of Harry’s chest and closed his eyes.
He supposed that it hadn’t been the best time to demand that Harry remain forever devoted to him, but the idea had come down and struck him like the sight of the ritual in the golden crystal must have struck Harry, and he hadn’t been able to dismiss it. So he had asked, and the words had come out of his mouth, and Harry had promised.
Had made the only promise that mattered, in the end. Draco knew that Harry might have other lovers if they ended their days not together; it might be politically necessary for Draco to pretend that he wasn’t interested in Harry even if the truth of their relationship came out. There were already some people who believed that Harry had another lover, in the form of the man Draco had pretended to be under a glamour.
In so many ways, Harry was beyond Draco. More powerful, more invulnerable, not dependent on the good will of people in the Ministry, less inclined to be political, more courageous, with closer friends. Draco wanted at least one hold on him, one thing that would make their relationship closer and show that Harry was at least inclined to lean on Draco in private.
Harry rolled nearer, his mouth parting and a gabble of nonsense words flowing out. Draco rolled his eyes and gathered him in, awkwardly patting the back of Harry’s neck when he snorted and snuffled and cuddled closer.
“In the end, it’s not really about power,” he whispered into Harry’s ear. “I know that. It’s just hard enough to remember sometimes that I need extra help.”
Harry whuffled again and rolled fully on top of him. Draco smiled. It was hard not to feel loved when Harry was doing that.
And so he finally let his eyes close and his body relax in the way that he hadn’t been able to do before. The flashes of uncertainty or even wishing that he hadn’t become close to Harry were only momentary. This was the forever.
Chapter Eleven.
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