Chapter Nineteen of 'There's a Pure-Blood Custom For That'- Such a Sacred Companionship
Chapter Eighteen.
Title: There’s a Pure-Blood Custom For That (19/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Rating: R
Warnings: Partial AU after DH (Draco has Scorpius but is not married to Astoria, Harry is not married to Ginny), some angst, off-screen violence
Pairings: Harry/Draco, past Draco/Astoria, Ron/Hermione
Summary: The day that Harry stops Draco Malfoy and his son from being bothered in the middle of Diagon Alley starts a strange series of interactions between him and Malfoy. Who knew there was a pure-blood custom for every situation?
Author’s Notes: A series of loosely chronological, short “chapters” based on silly pure-blood customs, and a developing relationship between Harry and Draco. This is more humor and fluff than anything else, despite the angst warning.
Chapter One.
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Such a Sacred Companionship
Draco walked down the stairs slowly, as if he expected Harry to get up from the floor. But Harry continued kneeling where he was, right in the middle of the great hall at the bottom of the stairs, his hands lifted up before him like he was pleading for his life.
He had wanted to put a pious expression on his face, too, but there were some things that wouldn’t happen no matter how much he wanted them to.
“What is this?” Draco had a snap to his voice that Harry hadn’t reckoned on, but he knew where it came from. Draco had challenged him to prove that Harry actually did hold their companionship dear, and to do it in a manner that would follow pure-blood custom. This probably looked as if Harry was mocking the custom instead.
Harry closed his eyes and bowed his head, and then concentrated on carefully parting his fingers. He couldn’t use magic, still, or this would have been much easier.
His fingers twitched the sheet of parchment upright, and he heard Draco make a little hiss, probably suspecting him of using his magic after all for a moment. Harry opened his eyes again and grinned. Draco had recoiled and had his hand on his wand. From the look of things, he was watching Harry’s palms and fingers for some signs of cracking and falling to dust.
Harry knew his smile was tender, whether Draco was looking at it or not. He had thought that Draco was exaggerating the story he’d told Scorpius, or more likely, that Scorpius just didn’t understand the real danger. Stories like the Risen Cobras weren’t things you told a child.
But now he knew that Draco had believed it. He had controlled his panic remarkably well when Harry had come into the bedroom and he’d heard where Harry had been going. He could still let Harry have some freedom from the overwhelming crush of his need, then.
There were reasons that Harry could so easily come to love him.
“Aren’t you going to take a look at the parchment?” Harry finally murmured, when Draco just stood there and stared at him.
Draco swallowed and shook his head, muttering something about fears and foolishness that Harry didn’t choose to listen to. Then he snatched the piece of parchment and unfolded it.
Harry knew exactly what he’d written there, which was the reason he was able to mouth the words along with Draco’s silent reading of them, but he would still have liked to read them over Draco’s shoulder, to share the experience, at the same time.
Anything you want to ask for is yours.
Draco stood there for so long that Harry was starting to become concerned. Maybe Draco didn’t understand. Maybe he thought that Harry was offering him sex or something, and he wasn’t ready for that. Maybe he had gone temporarily blind, and he really couldn’t absorb the words.
Then he lowered the parchment and stared at Harry as if drawing in the important details about him with his eyes. Harry remained patiently on his knees, even though they were starting to ache. He wasn’t even thirty yet, they shouldn’t, but he got a reminder every week or sort that he also wasn’t sixteen anymore.
“You know what I could ask for?” Draco whispered.
“Right, but you won’t,” Harry said, and judged the time right to rise to his feet. He reached out and laid his hand on top of Draco’s wrist, turning it slowly back and forth, admiring the delicate bone. “That’s the reason I chose to give the power of asking to you. Because I know you won’t abuse that power.”
Draco was shaking. Harry frowned. He wondered if he had accidentally interfered with another pure-blood custom or something like that, and that was the reason Draco hadn’t wanted to accept this.
Then Draco leaned forwards and whispered, “Do you have any idea how long it’s been since someone trusted me with something like that?”
“There’s Scorpius,” Harry began, unsure, but he knew what Draco meant. Scorpius gave that trust, but he didn’t give it consciously. It was the sort of thing that a lot of children with parents did.
“No one,” Draco continued. “I’m not sure that even my mother did.” He leaned his head on Harry’s shoulder and fought for breath. Harry reached up and patted his back awkwardly. He had meant this to make Draco happy. At the moment, he didn’t know if it did.
Draco finally stepped back and gave Harry a smile that was distinctly teary. “Thank you.”
That at least eased Harry’s fears about whether Draco liked his promise. He could smile back now, and tease a little. “I’m glad that you’re not rendered permanently speechless. Because I’d like you to ask me for something, you know.”
“I will,” Draco said, and there was a little gasp at the end of the words that no longer worried Harry now that he understood it. “I just have to think of what I want.” He hesitated, then added, “Well, something that I want and that doesn’t conflict with something else that I might want to ask for later instead.”
Harry decided that he didn’t need to ask what that meant; the important thing was that Draco had accepted his gift, and liked it, and he could do whatever he needed to in the meantime. He hooked his arm through Draco’s, and they walked into the dining room, where the house-elves would have breakfast waiting, the perfect temperature, the way that Harry’s food never was if his concentration wavered for even a moment.
There were some nice things about living in Malfoy Manor.
*
“Thanks for saying I could come visit again,” Teddy told Harry, bouncing out of the fireplace and shaking the soot from his robes all over the floor. Before Harry could say anything, a house-elf appeared and dusted it up, then vanished again. Harry shook his head. Probably a good thing that Andromeda didn’t have house-elves, or Teddy would get as spoiled as Dudley.
“I think that was more up to your grandmother and Draco,” Harry replied. He had thought about calling Draco by his last name in front of Teddy, just to encourage respect, but he reckoned that Draco would earn respect from Teddy anyway, just by how he acted.
Teddy gave him one of those oh-spare-me-the-exasperation looks that he liked to use around Harry. “Really? You think so? When you’ve been living here almost a week?”
“That doesn’t make me the owner of the house or anything,” Harry protested, following Teddy out of the receiving room-as Draco insisted on calling it-and down towards the gardens, where Scorpius was waiting for them.
“No, but it makes you at home here,” Teddy said, and ran away before Harry could correct him, yelling, “Scorpius! You have it coming, little cousin!”
Harry stood there wondering for a moment, then shrugged. Honestly, he would rather hear why Teddy was saying that to Scorpius than he would the reasons why Teddy thought he was so at home here.
*
Scorpius’s head hit the table for the third time. He promptly sat up and turned to Draco with an expression that was cute and pompous at the same time. “I’m not tired,” he said.
“Oh, of course not,” said Draco, and turned a page in the Evening Prophet. Harry had wondered why he had a subscription when Draco despised the Daily Prophet, but Draco had said the news was superior in the evening edition. “You have a bruise on your forehead from the number of times that you’ve almost gone to sleep, and you have an indentation on your hand from how long you’ve been holding the soup spoon, but you’re not tired.”
He didn’t appear to notice when Scorpius let go of the soup spoon and stared at his hand. Harry grinned a little and whispered, “It just means you have a dent in your hand.”
Draco’s shoulders gave a mild shake. Harry didn’t know if he was laughing at Harry for explaining or at himself for forgetting that Scorpius probably wouldn’t know a word like that.
“Oh.” Scorpius blinked for a bit, and then jumped to his feet and shook himself like a dog shaking off water. “I’m not tired.”
“I didn’t say you were,” Draco remarked again. “I wish I could pretend to be an eagle all day. It looked fun.”
“You could,” said Scorpius, and looked at his father critically, as if he was waiting for wards or barriers to rise around him. “No one is stopping you. No one ever stops adults from doing what they want to do.”
“You stopped me the other day,” Harry said, and bit back his own chuckle when Scorpius glanced at him in confusion. He was so sleepy that he had forgotten what Harry could possibly mean. “When I was going to go to the Floo and possibly make my hands fall off?” He saw Draco’s shoulders tense again, and felt a little sorry. He hadn’t meant to upset Draco with the reminder.
“Right,” said Scorpius. “But Daddy was really the one who stopped you.” He sighed and glanced at the stairs. “I’m not tired.”
“Of course not,” Draco agreed, and he actually sounded serious this time.
“But could I maybe go to bed? Not to sleep,” Scorpius added quickly. “Teddy said that it’s my turn to invent some of the rules in the game next time. I have to think about them.”
“Of course you should,” said Draco, and leaned over the paper so that he could drop a kiss on Scorpius’s head. “I expect to hear all about them in the morning, mind.”
Scorpius brightened and trotted away with a yawn and a wave of his hand. Draco looked after him with fondness shining in his eyes. Even knowing why it was impossible and that it might be a good thing it was, Harry wished his friends could see Draco right now. They at least would know that he could care for someone.
But then Draco turned around and looked at him, and Harry felt heat creep up from under his collar and cleared his throat a little. He didn’t want to share the tenderness now blazing in Draco’s eyes with anyone else.
“I’ve thought of something to ask you.” Draco’s voice was low and rich and warm.
“Sure,” said Harry. He thought he probably knew what it was going to be, but he could hardly deny that part of him was panting for it. He watched as Draco put out his hand on the table and let it lie there.
Then Draco let it go so long that Harry wasn’t sure what Draco was going to say after all. Did he want Harry to read up on some more pure-blood customs? Stay away from the Floo? Make sure that he didn’t use magic for the few days the Healers said he had before the curse would wear off completely?
“I want you to walk with me,” said Draco, and scrambled to his feet with his face averted.
I don’t understand him, Harry thought, but he had said anything that Draco wanted would be okay, and this was evidently something Draco wanted, from the way he was hastily opening the outer door. They stepped out into the gardens, where Scorpius and Teddy had spent most of the day playing.
The sun was setting, and the thick black and blue colors making their way down the sky made Harry’s shoulders settle. He sighed. Then he felt a hand on his shoulder, and turned around.
Draco was close to the hedge of white roses that Teddy had turned red with accidental magic in a moment of excitement during the games. Harry actually wasn’t sure whether the excitement had been over the game going right or Scorpius doing something wrong.
His mind was racing, and it was clear and not clear at the same time around him, as though someone was playing a light over his eyes and not giving him time to close them, and then Draco leaned in and kissed him.
Harry didn’t wait for another request. The hot, uncertain breath of desire on his lips was enough. He reached out and grabbed the back of Draco’s neck, then guided him in closer, going slowly but making sure that Draco understood this was something he was more than happy to give him-and participate in.
Draco let out a noisy sob, and then kissed him harder, not with tongue yet, but with so firm a press of lips that Harry had to smile. He pulled Draco in closer, until they were swaying together and he thought there was an excellent chance that they would go into the rosebushes. Draco didn’t seem to care. He kissed Harry long and noisily, hard enough to hurt, hard enough to make Harry’s lips go numb.
Harry didn’t care. There was living warmth, uncertain warmth, under his hands, and Harry had been right. There was no way that Draco was going to abuse his trust.
Draco drew back with his eyes closed, and stood there with them shut, and went on doing that until Harry got worried and waved a hand up and down in front of his face. Draco only shook his head, with a mysterious smile, and then opened his eyes and breathed, “Don’t ruin the moment.”
So Harry didn’t. They stood there like that, in the gardens, holding each other, and the red roses hung behind them on the hedge, and the sun slid into darkness, and Harry knew they were both happy.
Chapter Twenty.
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