Fic: The Ivory Tower (HP, H/D, H/G, NC-17)

[lucilla_darkate]

Title: The Ivory Tower (Chapter Two)
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing(s): Harry/Draco, Harry/Ginny, Draco/other secondary characters
Rated: NC17
Warnings: Non-con, dub-con, pandering, slash, het, WIP
Notes: Inspired in part by the fairytale Rapunzel. This is a WIP. Beta'd by judas_denied.



Chapter Two

“His mouth is most sweet: yea, he is altogether lovely.”
The Song of Solomon

A single teardrop held suspended on lashes the colour of dark amber. The sunlight through the window over the bed glitters through it and makes it spark like the fire of an opal. A tiny thing and it could mean nothing. It could be the discharge of a sleepy eye or it could be the water caused by a yawn moments before Harry woke to see it.

Or perhaps it's more than that. Perhaps it is a single tear shed in fear as shadows without faces stalk his wife in her dreams. Perhaps it is what's left after Ginny climbed into bed beside him, curled against his back and cried herself to sleep.

Or perhaps it's nothing but a tear, without higher meaning or significance and he is a fool for getting lost in it.

Simple fact is that it's a drop of water, several parts salt and mineral. It is a hair on an eyelid; two shades shy of being actual red with a touch of pink. It is light slanting through a window, hitting the curved side of a prism and casting a coloured glow.

As Harry watches, the tear slides to the pointed end of that lash and drops onto the sheet. Ginny's eyelids flutter, those bright lashes sparking with little glints of light, and she opens her eyes. Her eyes are the liquid colour of dark topaz, a ring of brown that is almost black around the iris. The sun hits them and for an instant before she moves her head because the light is shining right into her eye burns, he can see directly into them where the pale glow rises to shadow.

“Good morning, Harry,” she whispers and smiles at him tiredly.

So much they do now is done like that; with exhaustion and strain. Even their joys, where they can find them, are dealt with that way. As if they dare not love too much, laugh too loudly, think too freely and feel too deeply. Years of terror and darkness have a way of snatching away the gift of peace, because the terror is never gone. The fear is always there. As long as Azkaban is full of prisoners of war demanding their freedom, as long as Harry and Ginny can't walk down the street without being stopped and thanked for doing what they had no choice in, as long as Fred is still dead and George is still mad, as long, as long... There will always be that fear, Harry is convinced of it, and so they pass through their lives in pleasant, if wary, comfort and call it happiness.

“Good morning,” he whispers back and reaches out a hand to touch her hair where the auburn curls have fallen over her face, sticking to her cheek where it has pressed against the mattress sometime in the night.

“Did you sleep well?” she asks. She asks it like she always does; as though she does not already know the answer is no.

“Yes,” he says. The lie is a small one and one of those things that they do to keep their hold on the comfortable illusion.

He is rewarded with another wan smile in response. “Should I get breakfast or should I stay?”

He smiles back and brushes a finger over her full bottom lip, sleep-swollen and rose pink. “Stay.”

She shifts closer to him and lifts her own hand to the side of his neck, touching with light fingers until he shifts closer too. He has a scar there, just below the curve of his jaw; a wound that came half a scream too late to save Hermione Granger and one breath closer, would have taken his own life. She moves her fingertips over it, back and forth, and his pulse throbs just there. Testimony of life in a very morbid way, or it would be if Ginny's mind worked like that, but it doesn't. Harry's does and he links his fingers with hers and moves her hand away.

Harry moves on the bed to lay on his back and pulls Ginny on top of him. She laughs and makes the bed springs squeak when she sits back, straddling him with one leg on either side of his waist, and bounces lightly. Her eyes are alight with teasing amusement and he smiles back as he sits up to kiss her.

And just like that the play is gone and she pulls him close, her slim little fingers that look so frail, suddenly strong as bands of iron and tugging at his clothes. They undress each other with quick, almost desperate pulling, tugging. Harry gets his fingers caught in Ginny's curly hair and pulls, whispering an apology with a quick nipping kiss as he frees his hand. Ginny rips the sleeve of his shirt as she pulls it over his head and drags it down his arms.

Ginny's back arches when she takes him inside. Harry growls softly and holds her hips in his hands, fingers biting into her flesh hard enough that there will be bruises when they finally rise from the bed. She gasps and tosses her head back, throwing her long hair out of her face and looking right into his eyes as he thrusts up. Harry gentles his hold on her hips as she begins to move, thrusting up to meet her as she rocks, rolling her hips in his hands in a steady sway that has sweat beading on her skin and her breath coming in soft whimpering pants.

“I love you,” Ginny murmurs, leaning down to kiss him.

Harry kisses her back, a moan sliding over their tongues as he rolls her beneath him on the bed. He thrusts and it is not gentle, it holds that fierce desperation with which they ripped each others' clothes off, but Ginny can be just as fierce. She wraps her legs around his waist and pushes up, her breath hitching on a cry as she breaks her mouth away from Harry's.

Harry watches her like that, his rhythm rough, but controlled; watches her as she writhes and arches under him. Her fingers pull at the sheet then she drags one hand down his back, her nails biting in enough to leave red trails, but not blood. He hunches his shoulders under her hand and licks up the side of her neck to her ear, tastes her sweat and feels the thrum of her rapid pulse against his tongue. He watches her as her eyes go smoky dark, but never dull with her pleasure and grinds against her on his next inward thrust.

Ginny catches her breath, then cries out, holding him tightly as her orgasm pushes through her like abrasively gloved fingers along her nerves, through her blood. Harry smiles triumphantly down at her and fucks her through it, savouring the way she trembles and moans, relaxing against him only to cry out and jerk when he presses just so, just there. He clamps his teeth down on her shoulder when he comes. He doesn't bite down, just holds her there, feeling her flesh and bone between his teeth as pleasure takes his breath with a shout.

“I love you,” Ginny repeats lazily, stroking her fingers through his sweat tangled hair.

Harry lets go of her shoulder with a soothing lick and nuzzles the side of her neck, breath sighing and warm against her cooling skin. “I love you back,” he murmurs and smiles when she laughs.

They lay like that for a few minutes, kissing and murmuring nonsense that all comes down to the same I love yous as before. “We have to get up, you have to go to work and I have to clean the house,” Ginny whispers, but she makes no move to leave the bed.

“Mmm, I don't want to,” Harry mutters, and wrinkles his nose. He laughs at how childish he sounds and rolls over to sit up. “All right, yes, we have to.”

Harry reads the Daily Prophet while Ginny makes them toast and eggs, sometimes reading a bit aloud for her. “They're reviewing Snape's case on Monday.”

“Maybe you should go,” Ginny says as she sets a plate down for Harry and goes to get the marmalade out of the refrigerator. “They may want to hear you.”

“I don't think so,” Harry says, and turns the page. “Firebolt has a new line of brooms,” he tells her, and shows her the picture. She laughs and that's it. The topic of Snape and his case is not brought up again. It is not important to them now, they refuse to allow it.

After breakfast, Harry leaves Ginny to battle the doxies in the drawing room and goes to work. He became an Auror, just like everyone expected he would, mostly because he didn't know what else to be and if he had nothing else, he had all the credentials anyone could ever need to hunt dark wizards.

The thing about being an Auror that no one ever told him was that it's rather boring work most days.

He spends most of the morning doing paper work. Around noon, he's sent to an old house out in North Yorkshire to investigate a sighting of William Gaston, a dark wizard wanted for kidnapping. When he gets there, all he finds is a young boy hiding in the hayloft and a half-blind witch named Hazel Johnson shooting batboogie hexes at the straw piles.

After rescuing the boy and calming Mrs. Johnson down long enough to get her to put her spectacles on and stop waving her wand, Harry takes a late lunch at the Leaky Cauldron. He eats and goes back to finish his paperwork.

And so it goes. Paper work is mind numbing, but it doesn't try to kill you or threaten your family, the worst you're likely to get is a paper cut or an ink stain on your favourite tie. Rescuing children from irate house wives is a grand adventure. So it goes and Harry is bored, but the world is safe now and he counts it a fair trade.

As he's getting ready to go home, the phone on Harry's desk rings and he jumps. The Ministry had them put in a year earlier because of all the Muggle-born witches and wizards that preferred telephones to sticking their head in a floo, but Harry can count on one hand the number of times it has rang since it was installed.

Eyebrows lifted, he picks up the receiver. “Erm... hello?”

“HARRY?”

Harry jerks the phone away from his ear as Ron's voice pitched to top volume makes his eardrum quiver. “Ron! Don't DO THAT!” he barks back at him, shifting the receiver to his other ear while he works a finger in the one that is still ringing. “What's wrong?”

“WHY WOULD--I mean, why would anything be wrong?”

“Because, well, this is the telephone, which last I knew you didn't know how to use,” Harry says. He leans his hip on the edge of the desk. “And because I'm at work and you... don't have a job, but still, should be at the pub.”

“I am at the pub,” Ron says.

“Okay, so why are you calling me?” Harry says. “From the pub.”

“Because... erm...”

Ron trails off into mumbling and Harry's eyebrows inch toward his hairline. “Because?” he prompts.

“Because... I don't know what pub this is.” Ron snorts and there is a sharp crack that might be his head hitting something or just Ron slamming his bottle down on the bar top. “They have messy floors, though. And the bartender's a woman. A kind of hot woman... but she looks like she's mad at me, Harry. Harry?”

Harry is grinning and winding the phone cord around his fingers. “Here, Ron.”

“Harry, why's she mad at me?”

“Why don't you ask her.”

“She might hit me and I have a date tomorrow and... Why did I call you? Wait, who did I call again?” He asks this last to someone else on the other end of the phone.

“Ron, it's Harry,” Harry says patiently. “I don't know why you called.”

“HARRY!” Ron shouts joyfully into the phone, making Harry wince. “I need... something, um... I want to go home.”

“So go home,” Harry says.

“I can't find my wand, I think I broke it,” Ron whispers. “Shhh, don't tell mum, she'll be so mad at me.”

As Molly Weasley's been dead for the last ten years, Harry seriously doubts that will be an issue. “Ron, do you need a ride or something? Cab fair?”

“A ride... hmmm, yes, I think so, yeah, uh huh,” Ron mumbles. “She took my keys.”

“Who did?” Harry asks, thinking it's probably for the best and he might want to thank 'her'.

“The bartender, I told you.”

“Okay, Ron, I'll come get you,” Harry says. “What's the name of the pub?”

“Don't know, I told you,” Ron mutters. He sounds muffled, like his head is down on the table or bar.

“Is the pretty bartender there, Ron?”

“Mhmm, yeah, she's right here. She wants the phone back.”

Harry's pretty sure all she wants is for whoever Ron's on the phone with to agree to come get him. “So ask her.”

There is some fumbling around on the other end of the line, the phone smacks against something and Ron curses, then a woman's voice comes on. “Hello?”

“Er, hi,” Harry says uncertainly. “Where is he?”

“The Choke Cherry, you know it?”

“Yeah,” Harry says. “He's been there before, actually. I'll come get him, thank you.”

He hangs up and rakes a hand through his hair, then picks up the receiver again and calls Ginny at home. “I have to go get Ron,” he says.

“Alright, Harry,” she says easily. This is not the first time it's happened.

“I'll be home in about two hours, no later, I promise.”

“Alright, Harry.”

The Choke Cherry is a Muggle owned pub in London and not a bad place despite its unpromising title. Harry gets there about ten minutes after hanging up with Ginny and goes inside to find Ron passed out on a table in the back where the bar tender had propped him against the wall.

“Ron?”

“Mmmnnnnguh,” Ron groans.

“Ron, come on,” Harry says, and gets an arm around him to haul him up.

“Huh uh, no, le’ go,” Ron mumbles, swatting at Harry feebly.

Harry pats Ron's face. “Wakey, wakey, my friend.”

“Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnn...”

“I think the word you're looking for is 'no', but yes you are,” Harry says, amused. He half-carries Ron over to the bar to get his keys from the woman bartender. She turns them over and makes a little waving 'bye-bye' gesture at Ron as Harry takes him out of the pub.

“Where...? Ew, I'm sick,” Ron says.

“You probably deserve it,” Harry says. He holds Ron propped up against the side of his car while he opens the door, then shoves him inside.

Ron flops over in the seat, his head on the drivers' side, nose squished against the steering wheel. “I do bnot,” he says, voice sounding stuffed. “I bought eberyone drinks, I'm a nice man, peoble like me.”

“You bought them drinks, of course they liked you,” Harry says, getting in the car and pushing Ron over. “For all of two minutes, until the drink is gone.”

“That's not true,” Ron says. He blinks his eyes open and stares out the window as Harry starts the car. His eyes cross and he instantly closes them. “Ow.”

Harry snorts and starts the car toward Ron's home. He thinks of climbing all the stairs to Ron's flat and decides they will be taking the fucking lift.

“I know a sssssssss...” Ron says, holding up a finger and waving his hand in Harry's face.

Harry swats his hand aside. “Really? That's fascinating, Ron.”

“Ssssecret,” Ron manages, giving Harry a baleful glare. “I know.”

“That's nice, what secret would that be?” Harry says, not really interested.

“The Ivory Tower.”

Harry's head whips around and he touches the brakes, almost slams his foot down before stopping himself. “You what?”

“I know... what's in it,” Ron elaborates. He rubs his head where it hit against the window when Harry braked. “Ow.”

“Sorry,” Harry says, forcing himself to look back at the road and drive and not crash. “So... er... What's in the Ivory Tower?”

“Dunno if I should say, you broke my head,” Ron says testily.

“I'm sorry, Ron, you surprised me is all,” Harry says, making his voice sound as sincere as he can. “Please tell me.”

“Oookay, I will,” Ron says. “Because it's funny. You'll like it. Malfoy.”

It takes him a minute, then Harry blinks and looks around at him. “Excuse me?”

“Malfoy,” Ron repeats. “The... the little one.”

“Draco Malfoy is the secret kept in the Ivory Tower?” Harry says. He tosses his head back with a laugh. “Fuck’s sake, why? And how do you know that?”

“Saw him. Fucked him, that's why,” Ron says, muttering against the window again.

“You what?” Harry snaps. Thankfully they've reached Ron's building, so he parks the car and turns to face him. “You hate Draco Malfoy, why in the hell would you fuck him?”

“S'why,” Ron says. “I hate him and there... there he is and he can't say no. Wants to.” Ron laughs a little at that. “Yeah, he does. You can see it. He's in there, mhmm. Fucking wanker. S'what he's for, though, so he can't.”

“That's...” Harry tries to wrap his mind around that and just... can't. “That's sick, Ron.”

“Yeah?” Ron thinks about it, eyes narrowed, brow scrunched. “Yeah, maybe.”

“Maybe,” Harry says, incredulous. “You know how to get in there, right? Password or whatever the hell it is they want to let you through?”

“Password, yep,” Ron agrees. “Change it every week on Sunday, that's what Burstrome said. But he knows, says he'll tell me what it is if I wanna know.”

“Great, you're coming with me and we're going to go see him,” Harry says.

“See who?”

“Draco Malfoy.”

“Already did today, I told you that,” Ron mutters.

“I know,” Harry says. He puts the car in reverse and pulls back out. “You're going back.”

Harry drives to the Ivory Tower in silence. His car stops working about a half a mile from it. A spell against Muggle contraptions and technology surrounds the place on all sides. So he helps Ron from the car and they walk, Harry supporting him with an arm around his waist so Ron doesn't trip and plant his face in a gutter.

As they walk, Harry listens to Ron tell him about the party he'd been to at some pub--not the Choke Cherry--and he hardly bats an eye at some of the names of the people who attended; high up officials in the Ministry, a famous writer from Germany, an artist, even a musician. Ron knows people, he's used the money he made off of his name by telling his war stories, by his association with the great Harry Potter, by being the guy that always buys the house a round of drinks. So he knows people and some of those people he knows know other people and so on. Harry's sure that's how Ron got to know the secret kept in the Ivory Tower.

They are stopped by a tall, dark wizard with scars on his face as they reach the building. From the outside, to the unknowing eye, the Ivory Tower is a huge, but squat, warehouse and the wizard is dressed in plain Muggle clothes as befitting someone who owns such a place. To those such as Harry and Ron, it is a tower, giant and intimidating; so white that it shines.

“Password,” the gate keeper rasps, scrutinising both of them with sharp blue eyes.

Ron mumbles something unintelligible.

“Pardon?!” the man barks.

“White rabbit,” Ron manages. “Down the rabbit hole, whooooooo!” he adds to Harry.

Harry rolls his eyes and at the gate keeper's nod, leads Ron through the entryway and into the Tower. Inside, the Ivory Tower is breathtaking and magnificent. Rose marble floors inlayed with alabaster rose tangles that swirl and branch out in a filigree across the vast expanse of the pale pink stone, high vaulted ceilings that seem to reach up forever, round windows with white lattice that go up and up in a spiral around the Tower's outer most walls, light falling through the patterns of stone and casting patterns over the floor and opposite walls.

“It's beautiful,” Harry whispers, speaking with the quiet awe one often reserves for sacred and holy places.

“Yeah,” Ron says, blinking owlishly around.

“And terrible,” Harry says, just as quietly.

Ron gives him a funny look. “What d' you mean?”

Harry shrugs. “Just that. It's beautiful and terrible.”

“Some of the most beautiful things in the world are,” says a voice from Harry's left.

Harry looks up to find a woman in a long white cloak watching him. Her eyes are the sharpest, most intent and yet uncannily serene eyes he has ever seen. It takes him a moment, staring into them, to realize why. They're yellow. Or, not exactly yellow, but a pale, pale shade of gold. Like a cat's eyes, the pupils contract inward in slits to hold out the bright light and it is very bright in the Ivory Tower. She has hair the colour of rich coffee that falls straight down past her waist like a drape and her skin is the same shade of white as the Tower itself. She, like the Tower, is beautiful and like the Tower, she fills him with a sense of quiet dread.

“Who are you?” Harry asks. He ignores Ron's quiet shushing and meets the woman's fierce eyes. He is not unafraid - the years have taught him that fear is not an altogether bad thing in any case - but he locks gazes with her and he is not the first to look away.

The woman studies him and lets her eyes drift away to track a glowing mote of dust. She does it as though she is bored and leaves Harry feeling no sense of triumph at having stared her down. He gets the distinct impression that he did not stare her down at all so much as become a thing of less interest to her.

“Names are things of power,” she says, and her voice is soft like harp song, but not like it truly is soft, merely that she chooses to make it so. There is latent power in everything about her. The way she holds her hands together before her, her posture, the way she turns her head, almost like an animal scenting for disturbance. A great beast of prey watching over its territory. “For you, Harry Potter, I have no name. You have much strength in you and I know not whether you be friend or foe to me and I will not be giving you my name.”

Harry tenses at that, hearing that and then hearing his name so easily fall from her lips. He knows very well that there is no wizard or witch in the entire world that does not know his name, but her words are like a slap in the face, like a gauntlet on the ground. It narrows his eyes and has his fingers twitching toward his sleeve, where he conceals his wand.

“Do not,” she snaps. She does not look toward him as she speaks, but she is aware of him and what he does. Harry has the feeling that this creature, whatever she be, is more aware in her sleep than he is in his most wide awake moment. Assuming she does sleep. “I offer you no violence. I do, in fact, allow you passage here. You will not threaten me in my own house.”

She had a good point and though she makes him uneasy, Harry knows it. Reluctantly, he moves his hand away from his sleeve. “We're here to see Draco Malfoy,” Harry says.

She looks at him then and there is amusement in her strange eyes and the slight curve of her lips. “Draco Malfoy is it? My, aren't you clever, Harry Potter.” She shifts her eyes to Ron and pins him with her gaze. “Or perhaps not so clever at all.”

Ron stammers something and sidles nervously behind Harry's right shoulder.

“Clever enough,” Harry says sharply and her eyes snap back to him, bright as cuts of pale, pale candy ginger.

She stares at him and it is less than half a minute, but it raises the hair on the back of Harry's neck and along his arms making his heart thump uncomfortably against his rib cage. He swallows and looks away quickly.

“Go right up,” she says calmly and she is still looking at him, but some of that latent power is gone. No, not gone, concealed. Put away as one might put away a knife in their pocket for later.

“I... Thanks,” Harry says, and he hurries toward the spiral staircase, Ron right behind him.

“Not you,” the woman says, no less calmly, but there is command in the words that demands it be obeyed and fully expects to be. “Ronald Weasley. No. You will stay.”

“I... Yes, yes, mum. Sorry,” Ron mumbles, moving away from Harry and the stairs and away from her.

“Ron?” Harry says, asking him without saying it if he will be all right.

“Fine, Harry, go on,” Ron assures him. He backs toward the outer door and only stops when his back hits the alabaster wall and then slides down to sit on the floor.

Harry regards him uncertainly for a minute, then turns and goes up the stairs. The long, long, long twisting stairs. He's exhausted and a little sweaty by the time he reaches the top, but he gets there.

“You must wait, sir,” a guard tells him.

He is sitting at a small, round table in shadow - or what passes for shadows in this bright place - with a deck of cards fanned out before him. As Harry watches, he sweeps his hand across them and gathers them back into a deck. He shuffles and noticing Harry's silence, glances up. Then pauses.

“Harry Potter, sir,” he says politely, and nods. “Should wait, sir. He's eating and you don't want to watch that.”

Harry lifts a brow at him and frowns. Not at what he said so much as the way he said it. Like watching Draco Malfoy eat is something terribly revolting. “All right, then,” Harry says agreeably. He crosses his arms over his chest and leans against the wall to wait. “How long does that usually take?”

“You in a hurry, sir?” the guard asks. “I can let you in now. He'll eat later.”

“No,” Harry says quickly. “No, that's not why I asked. Just... wondered is all.”

The guard shrugs and begins dealing out cards in rows for solitaire. “'Bout ten minutes, maybe fifteen. He doesn't eat much,” he explains.

“Oh,” Harry says. He searches for something else to say, but the guard doesn't seem particularly interested so he just looks down at the pink marble floor at his feet and waits.

After about five minutes, another guard opens the door and peeks out. He looks at Harry and Harry looks back, then the guard pulls his head back in the room and closes the door.

He waits another five minutes before the same guard comes out of the room again, carrying a plate and a small pitcher that's still half-full with milk. The other guard, with the cards, makes a waving gesture toward the door. “You can go in now, Mr. Potter.”

“I... ah, okay, thanks,” Harry says.

He walks over to the door and then hesitates. He stares at the handle - not a knob, a handle -ornate and golden and he wonders if it's really gold or just bronze. He decides it's probably bronze, not because he doesn't think the owner of the Ivory Tower couldn't afford door handles cast from gold, but because it's just more practical and gold is just too soft. It's beautiful, like everything in this place, made up of wild rose vines twisted together and drooping down, curling to a point against the side of the wood door. Beautiful.

“You going in, sir?”

“Ah...” Harry closes his hand over the handle and squeezes, feels the latch click against his fingers, and pushes it open ahead of him as he walks through. “Yeah, I guess I am.”

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