Chapter Twenty-Eight of 'There's a Pure-Blood Custom For That'- Brought Down
Chapter Twenty-Seven.
Title: There’s a Pure-Blood Custom For That (28/?)
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.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Brought Down
“You’ve got everyone involved?” Harry asked the question from inside the Manor’s warded front doors. Draco had stood up without a word after that story and that kiss, started to walk away with Scorpius, and then bent down and kissed Harry once again, hard enough to wind him, with breathless appreciation of his own.
Harry knew that he was now putting Scorpius back to bed, and that he would be safe and not come to the door. He preferred leaving Harry to deal with Aurors, anyway-a prejudice that Harry could entirely understand.
“We think so.” Dawlish shook some dirt off his cloak and grinned up at Harry. There was a small, bleeding slash on his jaw, along his chin. But he didn’t appear to notice it, and Harry thought it would be impolite to call attention to it right now. “Sixteen of them, but all so focused on the attack that they never checked their backs.”
Harry grinned back a little. “That was the impression I had of them. Clever in their way, but never paying enough attention to the larger context.”
Dawlish nodded as if he liked the description, then glanced over his shoulder. “Right now, we don’t know that we’ve got them all, and we probably won’t know for a few days, until we’ve questioned the ones we captured. I have to ask that you stay under the wards for now.”
Harry nodded and was about to respond, when red hair flashed by the Manor’s gates, and Ron charged forwards. “Mate!” Ron was breathless. “You’re all right?”
Harry met Ron’s gaze and smiled. “Yes, thanks to you. I understand that you took three of them down all by yourself!” That was what Dawlish had said when he’d come up to the door, the very first thing he’d said.
Even in the dim light of the Lumos Charms and the moon, Harry could see Ron’s proud blush. “Yeah, well…” Ron trailed off and then looked around as though someone was going to appear in order to contradict him. Then he shook his head and focused on Harry. “What happened in there?”
“The first attack woke us up. So we got Scorpius, and Scorpius got his toy, and we went to the part of the Manor where Draco cared for me after I got hurt. It’s the most powerfully warded.”
Harry thought Ron would grimace about the unsubtle implication that Harry and Draco slept in the same bed, but instead, he gaped. Harry blinked at him. “What?” he added, trying to think of what Ron could find in there to be surprised by.
“You felt the attack? Or heard it?”
“Felt it,” Harry conceded. “I mean, it was noisy, too. There was no way that I would have slept through it, or Draco either.”
But Ron still refused to become upset about the most obvious thing. “If you felt it, then you’re wound into the wards of the Manor,” he muttered. “Do you know how rare that is, mate? Unless Malfoy connected you to them himself.”
“Not that I know of,” said Harry, and glanced over his shoulder. Draco had come into the corridor, the way Harry had thought he’d heard him do. He met Harry’s eyes with a single raised brow, and shook his head slightly. Harry nodded and turned around. “No, he says he didn’t, and he really would tell the truth,” he added, seeing Ron’s slightly dropped jaw.
“It’s not impossible,” said Dawlish, and he sounded more cheerful and more inclined to tell Harry what this was about. “It’s just unusual, that’s all!” He slapped Harry on the back. “Cheers to you for doing the most sensible thing, and we’re going to get this lot back to the Ministry now. Any time you need us, we’ll be here.” He nodded to Harry, even to Draco, and then turned and left.
Ron met Harry’s eyes soberly, murmured, “I hope you know what you’re doing,” and then followed the other Aurors.
Harry shut the door. Nobody said anything for a moment. Then Harry turned around and tried to raise a smile out of Draco by asking, “Did Scorpius even wake up when you put him back to bed?”
“He did, enough to ask where Golden was.” Draco took a long step towards him. His eyes were huge and filled with a light more piercing than fire. “I’d left it back in the warded wing, so I had to Summon it.”
Harry slapped his forehead. “I should have remembered to bring it. Sorry.”
His voice sounded too high and startling, like a piece of glass dropped on the floor. Draco lifted a hand and showed the bracelet that Harry had bought him. “When you’re connected formally to the wards, it means you’re a recognized and expected guest,” he explained.
Harry blinked. “And when you’re simply connected to them?” he asked. “When you wake up in the middle of the night and discover you’re connected to them?”
Draco shook his bracelet again, but Harry maintained his steady stare, and the color mounted up into Draco’s cheeks. “It means,” he murmured, “that you really need to accept your status as a courted lover.”
“And courting?” Harry asked. He knew he and Draco had been drifting into greater intimacy, but it was something new, to have the house recognize it in an obvious way.
Draco nodded. His eyes were large and watchful, as though he was prepared to stop Harry if he bolted.
But Harry had no intention of bolting. He didn’t really know what his intentions were, when he reached out and laid a hand on Draco’s cheek, but he knew that Draco unfolded like a serpent and reached for him, and that was more than enough for Harry. He bent his head and returned the kiss.
Draco, this time, was desperate, kissing him with a punishing fierceness, and pulling him towards the stairs. Harry wrapped his arms around Draco, gasping as they flashed through darkness, and dropped onto Draco’s bed.
He drew himself back onto his elbows, staring. Draco seemed just as stunned as he was, and Harry realized what must have happened. “What does it mean when the house Apparates you straight to bed?” he whispered.
Draco looked up with his eyes so dark that Harry shivered. “It means that you’ve been accepted, in every sense of the word,” he whispered, and then opened his legs and accepted Harry between them.
For long moments, they did nothing but kiss and rub together, and Harry thought it would be like the last time. That obscurely relieved him. Obviously, things had changed, but he would still prefer to go slowly.
But Draco reached up and pushed against his chest, and looked into his eyes with a gaze of his own that drowned resistance.
“What do you want?” Draco breathed.
“Slowness,” said Harry, startled into speech. “Acceptance, but-slowness. I don’t think I know what I want other than that.”
Draco smiled as if he was content, and then rolled Harry onto his side, kissing him with a slow, steady passion all the while. Harry liked that, he had to admit it, and he kissed back, with Draco’s tongue and hands tracing soothing patterns in his mouth and on his spine, respectively. They were tangled together until Harry found it hard to tell whether a particular hand was his or Draco’s.
But he knew which needy, aching groin was his, even if he still found it hard to distinguish which high-pitched sigh was whose when their groins brushed together.
Draco lifted himself on one elbow and pushed hair like light away from his forehead. “I want to show that this is full acceptance,” he whispered. “Things have changed, and you know it. What you shared with me when we were hiding in the other wing, as well as the-the things that happened after that. The way the wards bound to you. I didn’t tell them to do that, Harry. They just did it on their own.” His eyes were intense, searing. “Is it courtship, or isn’t it?”
Harry moved his tongue slowly around his mouth. He wanted to know he could do that, just like he could resist what Draco was asking of him if he absolutely wanted to. He hadn’t given the courtship gifts on purpose, at first. He had thought they were being friends.
Intense friends, of course. The first new friend he’d made in ten years. But still friends, and not lovers.
But now?
Now, things had changed. And Harry wasn’t going to pretend that they hadn’t. The heat shimmering between them, when he would have thought no heat could do that between him and a man, was proof of it.
He nodded and reached up, catching Draco’s face between his hands and drawing him down for another kiss. Draco hummed and went with it, and then turned the hum into a sharp bite on Harry’s ear when Harry tried to prolong the kiss.
“Now,” Draco whispered, and his hand skimmed down Harry’s arse.
Harry shivered, and Draco pulled back and gave him a calm, sad look. “We don’t need to do this until you’re ready.”
“But you are,” Harry said, and started. His own voice had a quality he didn’t understand, deep and husky and…odd. Not one he’d heard before, although he had plenty of memories of what he sounded like when he was with Ginny and Daphne.
Well, he considered a moment later, this was going to be different. Not because they were women and Draco was a man, or at least not entirely. Just different.
“I am,” said Draco, kneeling back and studying Harry slowly. For some reason, the disruption to their activities hadn’t resulted in any disruption of his mood, Harry realized. It was still there, still thrumming beneath them as though they were connected by the same chord running between their hearts. “And I thought that the evidence of the wards and how deeply you’ve wound yourself into our lives meant you are. But we can wait.”
“You don’t want to,” Harry whispered, edging a hand up to rest on Draco’s cheek. Draco closed his eyes and didn’t bother responding. Harry knew what the answer would be, anyway. No, Draco didn’t want to, but he didn’t want to hurt Harry even more.
Harry hesitated one more time. He was looking for an escape, he thought, some sensation or idea that would tell him this courtship wasn’t as entrapping as it seemed. He had started this on accident. Did he really want to do something that might mean he would spend the rest of his life with Draco?
And then he snorted at himself, and made Draco’s eyes fly open. Harry ignored him for the moment, consumed by the answer thundering in his head. If anything happened that he didn’t like, he would respond exactly the same way he had when confronting the bracelet that apparently stated he wanted to marry Draco. He wasn’t a pure-blood, and he wouldn’t let those customs control his life or deprive him of anything truly important. The only question that really needed to be answered was whether he wanted this.
And he did. It was a question of desire, not of custom.
“Yes,” he told Draco, and he pulled him down again, kissing Draco into a languid mess that made Draco’s hand tremble when he finally managed to reach for his wand.
The spell that stretched and loosened Harry-Draco said he thought they should use it for the first time, since Harry had never done anything like this before-made Harry close his eyes for the strangeness. Draco kissed them open again, and moved his fingers slowly down through the conjured lube, staring at Harry as though he was simultaneously the most precious and the oddest thing in the world. Like a weird jewel, Harry thought, and reached up to pull one of Draco’s fingers into his mouth.
“Harry,” Draco breathed, in the same reverent tone he would have probably said “God.”
Harry smiled at him, and sucked on his fingers until Draco pulled his shaking hand back and reached for Harry’s arse again instead. Harry nodded and opened his legs, then let Draco spread him when that apparently wasn’t enough.
There were no words for Draco’s fingers inside him. Harry huffed steadily and thought about the ceiling. Then he thought about the sensation of Draco’s hand inside him, and how this would have been unthinkable five years ago.
Well, of course, five years ago I was with Daphne, he thought, and opened his eyes and smiled at Draco.
“This is okay?” Draco asked one more time, and Harry decided that it was time to bring back some humor, since Draco seemed so anxious about it.
“Do you need me to make the ritual gesture of submission?” Harry laid his hand on his throat and rolled his eyes back until he knew all Draco could see was the whites.
There was a long, silent, incredulous moment, and then Draco said, in tones of wonder, “Prat.”
“Yes, exactly,” said Harry, and moved his hand and opened his eyes. “I’ve given you my consent already, Draco, and that’s all you need. Please do what you need to so it doesn’t hurt too badly. But you can assume that I know that you’ll have to do a few unpleasant or uncomfortable things, and that I give you my full consent.”
Draco paused, then bent down and kissed him. Harry reached up and touched the ring on his finger to Draco’s bracelet.
Only later did he think that was a ritual gesture in and of itself, which would probably necessitate another conversation of a different kind. But Draco didn’t seem inclined to have that conversation right now. His hands were shaking, and so was his cock, which made it rather difficult to get it lined up the first time.
Harry smiled all the way through it. He would have laughed again, but he knew Draco’s nerves were probably raw right now, and he wouldn’t take it well if Harry did laugh. So Harry lay there, and smiled, and then gasped when Draco surged into him.
“I knew I should have asked again if it was okay,” Draco was fussing when Harry returned to himself. “There’s different kinds of okay, and different kinds of consent, and-”
He stopped when Harry reached out and took his hand, and kissed the back of it. “It’s okay,” Harry whispered. “Both kinds. Go ahead and make love to me.”
Draco’s eyes were like starlight, and his smile like the darkness between the stars. At last he seemed to have the kind of confidence that Harry would have wished for him all along. He began to thrust, and it was making love.
Not fucking. Not that Harry didn’t think that word, didn’t think that Draco fucked him with long strokes. But it was that in fact, and lovemaking in spirit, in essence.
Harry reached up his hands, and Draco, although he shifted awkwardly and nearly fell out of Harry at one point, managed to lift his hands in return and clasp Harry’s. Harry felt as though he was giving Draco pride and confidence, the knowledge of his pleasure that no one could have unless they were linked to him in some way.
At the very least, Draco knew that Harry’s gasps were soft because of enjoyment and not pain, now. His eyes were both starlight and darkness, and he rocked in slow motions that filled Harry up in a way he hadn’t known he could be filled.
It couldn’t last. Harry felt lucky that it had lasted as long as it had, with the two of them seemingly drifting in the middle of a deep void where only luck and beauty and love kept them alive. He couldn’t see anything but Draco’s eyes.
It turned out he didn’t need to. He could feel through his body when Draco was ready to yield and come, and Harry clamped down and held with his inner muscles. Draco let out his own soft, astonished breath, and his eyes found Harry’s once more before he closed them and turned his head away as if the expression on his face would be too exposing.
Harry watched him nevertheless, the turned head and the bent and shuddering neck, and then reached up and carefully smoothed his hand through Draco’s hair. Draco leaned his head on Harry’s chest and gasped out.
It was that which made Harry come, how Draco had twisted away as if to hide his vulnerability and then done something that revealed it completely. They were bound together, and it had nothing to do with ring and bracelet, not at bottom, or even pure-blood customs. They had chosen this.
Not that Harry didn’t like the pleasure that broke over him like a towering wave, but that wasn’t the ultimate point of this evening.
The way that Draco looked at him and touched his forehead with a steady hand, the deep satisfaction that proved his uncertainty had gone away at last…
Harry would have gone through fire for that. To have gone through lovemaking instead was his pleasure and honor. He lifted Draco’s hands to his lips and kissed them.
Draco bent down and returned the gesture on his lips, his body trembling with joy.
Chapter Twenty-Nine.
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