Chapter Five of 'The House That Lovers Built'- House of Horrors
Chapter Four.
Title: The House That Lovers Built (5/10 or 12)
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 Five-House of Horrors
And a long day of chopping was what it was, except that this time Malfoy took away the valerian leaves about halfway through and assigned him to chopping fern fronds. Harry worked with his head down, not looking at Malfoy except when he had some question-rare-to ask about the amount of salt or whether a particularly ragged cut was acceptable.
Malfoy always answered in monosyllables. He seemed to never lift his head from its bent position over the cauldron, to the point that Harry wondered that he didn’t have a cramp. But unless Malfoy asked Harry to massage his neck or something, Harry thought, it was really none of his business.
Harry snorted. As though Malfoy would ever ask me that.
They worked straight through lunch, and although Harry nearly opened his mouth to ask Malfoy if he wanted to go back to the kitchen and find food, Malfoy shot him a deadly enough glare just then that he decided not to ask. Harry was hungry, but it wasn’t as though he had never worked through hunger before. And he would eat a big dinner, if necessary by conjuring a chain between their wrists so Malfoy couldn’t leave him alone.
Near what Harry’s Tempus Charm identified as six, when the light slanting through the windows in the lab had become perceptibly dimmer, Malfoy leaned back, stretched, and stared at the shimmering numbers of Harry’s Charm as though he had never seen them before. Harry curled his lip, wondering if Malfoy’s next rule would be no casting spells where he could see them.
“I’m hungry,” Malfoy said in wonder.
Harry rolled his eyes and began to clean off the knife and put the salt away. He left the uncut fern fronds lying in the center of the table, because, knowing him, he would handle them wrong, and Malfoy would throw a fit. Harry was tired of fits. He wanted food, and he wanted a long, hot shower, and he wanted to go to sleep in a bed that he hoped wouldn’t shrink or grow during the night.
Hermione had once talked to Harry about how wonderful it would be to live in a strange place where magic worked, but not by usual rules, and to figure them out-a place like Wonderland. Harry shook his head. He had first-hand experience, now, of how it was anything but wonderful.
“I’m cramped up.”
Harry just nodded, determined not to take issue with the whinge in Malfoy’s tone, or point out how it was totally his fault. “Taking a hot shower will probably help with that.”
“Not unless you’re in there with me.”
“I want one, too.” Harry kept his head bowed over the knife. Talk about simple things until his friends came and rescued them or the potion worked, that seemed to be the key. “I’ll get into it with you.”
Dear Hermione, to make the shower work I had to promise to shower with Malfoy…
“The shower is too small.”
Harry rolled his eyes under the protective cover of lowered eyelids, so Malfoy wouldn’t have anything to complain about. “Then I’ll stand over to one side, and you can stand over to the other, and then we can both catch the warm water and we don’t have to worry about touching each other.”
“No, I mean, I want to lie down, and the shower won’t let me do that.” From the sound of it, Malfoy was throwing his stirring rod carelessly over to the side of the table. Harry listened, but didn’t hear the glass crack, which he thought was more good luck than they really deserved. “Come on. I want to try the hot tub.”
Harry resisted the temptation to bang his head into the nearest wall, and instead put the knife down, folded in its cleaning rag. Malfoy hadn’t told him where to put it, anyway. Harry would rather err on the side of a scolding for overcaution than do something that couldn’t be retrieved and delay the progress of the potion.
When he came into the hot tub room, Malfoy was already bent over the shining porcelain side, studying the tubs. “There’s more here than in the Prefects’ Bath at Hogwarts,” he said to Harry in the most conversational tone Harry had heard from him all day. “Hot water, scented water, shampoo, bubbles-”
“Not bubbles,” said Harry hastily, one of Hermione’s warnings from years ago coming back to him. “Not if it’s modeled off a Muggle device.”
Malfoy shot him a glance under lowered eyelids, but nodded and stood up, starting to strip.
Harry bit his tongue, wondered for a moment what exactly the line was between the times that Malfoy was shy in front of him and the times that Malfoy would pull his clothes off without warning, and turned his back. He tugged his own shirt over his head, following it with his trainers, his trousers, and his pants. He just tried to think of it as a series of movements, things he did, a routine.
“What happened?”
Harry stared at the far wall, which had a mosaic of slowly moving dolphins nudging a shell around the waves that he hadn’t noticed before, and shook his head. “You’ll have to give me more context for your random utterances than that, Malfoy,” he said.
Malfoy didn’t reply, and Harry had just started to turn around to get into the water when Malfoy whispered into his ear, “Don’t move,” from behind him. Harry froze, and felt Malfoy’s fingers low on his back, tracing something-
Oh. The jagged line of the scar that Harry had earned last year during the chase of a Dark wizard who turned out to have more unusual guardians around her home than they’d thought. Harry relaxed and shrugged. “A jaguar bit me on a case.”
“And you survived?” Malfoy’s hand dipped lower, as though he wanted to explore the texture of Harry’s skin, and Harry jerked away abruptly and bent down to twist the knob that poured hot water into the tub. He hadn’t asked Malfoy, which was probably the cause of the indignant breath from behind him, but Malfoy had said that he wanted to relax cramps in his muscles, and for that, he didn’t need perfume or bubbles.
“There were Healers not far away,” Harry said, and slipped into the water, pleased to find out that the tub was more than deep enough, and the faucet quick enough, for his waist to be hidden, and everything beneath it. “We knew that she used animals, although she’d never used great cats before. And it’s not as though the jaguar cracked my skull. They can do that, you know.” So the Healer who tended him had lectured him and again, trying to keep him from drifting off due to the pain as she stitched him up.
“I don’t have scars of that kind,” Malfoy said, slipping into the water beside him. “Potions doesn’t leave them. Only one more reason for the superiority of my career over yours.”
Harry looked at him for the first time that evening. Malfoy leaned back in the water, lounging on what seemed to be a sort of shallow step or ledge that ran all the way around the side of the tub, and sighed as he received the touch of the heat on the back of his neck. Harry suspected that really was the place that hurt the most, not simply the one that he had thought did. Malfoy’s face seemed to melt, mouth opening and cheeks sliding down in a long and unconscious moan. Harry looked away.
“What about scars from acid, slipped knives, fire?” he asked at random. “You can’t tell me you don’t have those.”
“Oh, there’s this one, of course,” Malfoy said in a lazy voice, and Harry turned back to see him holding up his right arm, tapping the curve of his elbow, where the snake of the Dark Mark would lay its head on the left arm. “Not much I could do about that.”
Harry squinted, and made out the twisting mark of a knife, in a way that made him want to touch his own arm, and the scar that Wormtail’s blade had left there. “What happened?”
“I had to take my own flesh and blood for the potion that I brewed to become a Potions master,” Malfoy said, and tilted his head further back, until he was floating with his hair spread around him. “And it had to be deep enough to leave a visible scar. A small price, though, to pay for so grand a gain.”
Harry nodded. “Becoming an acknowledged master of your craft?” He couldn’t imagine what other kind of gain Malfoy was talking about, unless he was engaged in illegal Dark Arts of the kind that the Solitary Brewer had been.
And he might be. Don’t let sharing a house with him and feeling some sympathy towards him dim your memory of what he is.
Malfoy floated in the water in silence, staring at him. Then he said, “Sometimes you’re not as stupid as you look, Potter.”
“But only sometimes,” Harry finished for him, and ducked his head under the water, running his fingers through his hair. He had to admit Malfoy was right. Cleaning Charms had nothing on water and soap.
He avoided the floral-scented soaps and shampoos, though, because he could only imagine how Malfoy would bitch about having to share the bed with Harry if he smelled like that, and chose one that had an odor of dessert. Hard to qualify it as more than that, Harry thought as he poured the thick liquid into his palm; he couldn’t narrow it down to vanilla, or fudge, or chocolate, or anything that was more traditionally dessert-like. Only “dessert.”
He rubbed it into his hair, and then dived down to rinse it out. He’d shaken his head and raked his hands underwater three times before he realized that the shampoo had decided to cling.
Harry surfaced with a gasp. “Fucking stupid house,” he told the walls, which stood there in silent smugness. He was sure something could hear him, probably whatever was in charge of changing the size of the bed and the food in the kitchens, but he didn’t get the satisfaction of an answer.
“What are you talking about?” Malfoy snapped. He moved up behind Harry. “Are you so incompetent that you can’t even wash without my help?”
“I can’t wash without your help because the house doesn’t want me to,” Harry said softly, and tilted his head back, reminding himself that he’d been held captive by Dark wizards. “The shampoo won’t come out. Will you please do it for me?”
Malfoy paused. Harry wondered for a moment if he was like the house, about to refuse to do something simple because of his own inscrutable whims.
But although Malfoy certainly could be like that, he apparently decided to put it aside, perhaps because he knew that he would need Harry’s help next. His fingers rose and brushed through the clumping hair, and it sprang apart under his touch. He did it again, tugging, and Harry groaned and sank deeper into the water.
Sinfully good. Decadently good. Harry associated a lot of things in the house with decadence-no one needed an indoor pool, a hot tub, a Potions lab that big-but this was better. He would need to have someone wash his hair when he got back to the wizarding world, he decided. Definitely.
And just like it had in the shower the other day, Malfoy’s touch was getting him hard.
But Harry had known it was a risk, and probably the reason that the house had set this up in the first place. He bit his lip and held still, other than the sinking into the water that he couldn’t help. Malfoy’s hands grew gentler and more skillful. Perhaps he remembered the other morning, too.
“Why are you so good at this?” Harry asked, when Malfoy had paused. Harry thought he was moving away, but heard the sound of hands rubbing together, and knew that he was working more of the shampoo into a lather instead. So he held still, head drooping a little, concentrating on the silky brush of hot water against his skin instead of his erection.
“Anything I want to do, I think I should be good at,” Malfoy responded, his hands dipping into Harry’s hair more deeply this time, to the point that Harry thought there wasn’t a spot on Harry’s scalp he hadn’t touched. He kept his eyes closed, and that was a way of distancing himself, getting away from the touch. Or maybe he split himself, mind and body. With his mind he heard Malfoy, with his body he felt him. “And I’ve had lovers who wanted me to do this for them, that I wanted to do this for.”
Harry nodded, or he thought he did. Malfoy stayed him with a hand on the nape of his neck, murmuring something about how Harry would spoil the pattern of the lather. Harry held his tongue, and then body and mind tumbled back into each other and he gasped aloud as Malfoy’s fingers made a small pattern on the back of his neck.
“Good,” Malfoy whispered. Harry didn’t know who he was addressing, Harry or the shampoo, but the next moment Malfoy let him go and moved away, and Harry was both glad and sorry. He turned around to find Malfoy gathering up a different kind of shampoo, this time strongly scented with lavender, and crushing it between his hands into a cramped, curled shape. He dumped the whole handful over his head and shook it so that the lather ran and dripped, then drifted backwards and sighed. “Now. Your turn.”
“I won’t be as good as you were,” Harry muttered, dipping his hands into the shampoo and feeling it crawl up his skin.
“The first time that you do something, you can’t be,” Malfoy said drowsily. “Only Malfoys can be.”
Harry rolled his eyes, but began to move his fingers around, and scrape them, and even dig into Malfoy’s hair and scalp the way that he’d dug into Harry’s. The hair felt thick and soft as it rubbed past his palm, but then, the foam from the shampoo felt much the same way. “Why do you think I haven’t done this before?”
“You didn’t know how to do it for yourself, let alone a lover.” Malfoy opened his eyes and turned his head slightly, not seeming to notice how his words had frozen Harry. “In a lot of things, you seem…inexperienced.”
Harry welcomed the burning sensation in his face, and the sharp pain as he bit into his bottom lip, and the way that his hands traveled deeper and rubbed harder. Yes, he couldn’t be friends, or attracted for long, to someone who sounded the way that Malfoy did.
Gorgeous, until he opens his mouth. He remembered Ginny complaining about the same problem with some of her boyfriends. Never Harry, luckily, but then, he thought that might come from not fitting into the “gorgeous” category.
He washed Malfoy’s hair until Malfoy was drifting limp enough to nearly drown, and then tapped him on the shoulder. Malfoy winced as though the sharp edge of Harry’s fingernail was a personal affront, and sat up with a little sigh. “As you wish,” he told no one visible, and handed a cake of soap to Harry.
Harry stared at it blankly. “You don’t think the house is going to let us wash the rest of our bodies, either?” he muttered.
“Do you think so?” Malfoy touched his clean and dripping hair, his eyes as steady as though neither of them had ever suffered their little fits of embarrassment. “I don’t want to try it. I hate having soap cling to my skin and itch.”
Harry stared at him. That sounded like an excuse, and the way Malfoy’s eyelids flickered confirmed it, but-
But nothing, Harry, he told himself, as he began to rub Malfoy’s chest. Maybe he just doesn’t want to deal with the house’s stupid tricks on top of everything else that he’s dealt with today.
“I’m not a piece of sandpaper,” Malfoy hissed abruptly, and pulled away from Harry, shaking his head.
Harry started. He had rather been scrubbing away as if Malfoy was one of Aunt Petunia’s pots instead of a human being. “Sorry,” he murmured, and paused, rubbing with one hand instead, and bringing up scooped palmfuls of water to drench Malfoy’s chest with. He tried not to notice how different a color Malfoy’s nipples were from the rest of his flesh.
“Mmmm,” Malfoy said, and let his arms spread out, his toes floating up as if he were enjoying himself. Well, he probably was, Harry told himself. That didn’t mean he didn’t want someone other than Harry with him here, and it didn’t mean the house’s stupid tricks to try and force them together were going to work.
Harry managed to split his body and mind again, so that his hands were the ones that stroked the soap into Malfoy’s skin and up and down again, but his mind was the one drifting far away, thinking about it as happening to someone else, noticing Malfoy’s reactions as they occurred.
Malfoy finally opened his eyes, and shivered a little, and reached up to take Harry’s hand, fingers closing around the wrist in a way that once again snapped the barrier between body and mind, and Harry was there, the wristbone that Malfoy held, the smooth pulse of blood in the skin beneath his fingers. “Now I’ll do you,” Malfoy said softly.
Harry ground his teeth and tossed his head. “Thanks, but I think I’ll be content with Cleaning Charms for my body.”
He started to turn away, but Malfoy’s hands were already in place, ribs and hips, gripping him, holding him still. “What’s the matter?” Malfoy whispered, hot behind his ear. “Scared of me? Ashamed to let a Malfoy touch you?”
Harry shut his eyes, and decided that honesty was worth more than forcing Malfoy away again, especially since that only caused stupid fights both of them regretted later. “I don’t think I want to give the house more fuel for its tricks,” he said, with difficulty, since Malfoy’s fingers had slid up his arm, and the inside of his left arm was more sensitive than he had ever realized. “And I don’t want to-feel what I do when you touch me.”
“Ah,” Malfoy said. “Yes, when someone is inexperienced, he does feel greater arousal from a casual touch than someone who knows a lot.”
Harry whipped his head around, exasperated. “Will you quit saying that? You’ve already admitted that you haven’t ever slept close to someone either, and I don’t know how you get from that to saying I’m a bloody virgin!”
Malfoy raised his eyebrows and leaned in. “But the expression I saw on your face when you said that gives me all the acknowledgement that, yes, you really are.”
Harry gritted his teeth, and tried not to duck his head. Bloody stupid blush! Bloody stupid emotions! He had done a lot of practice in the last few years at controlling his feelings and making them as obscure as possible, but that training always failed when it came to people like Malfoy that he felt strongly about.
And not strongly in that way, either.
“Fine, you can think what you want,” Harry said, and gestured with one arm behind him. “But I’ve washed you, and you washed my hair, and that ought to be enough even for this bloody house.”
He walked towards the edge of the hot tub, and gripped the ledge that ran around it under the water, to pull himself out of it. He had had enough of everything, the steam around him and the sharp scent of the shampoos and soaps and Malfoy’s proximity.
But no matter how long he walked, he never got any closer to the edge of the tub. The bottom lengthened, and the water closed in around him, not stopping his movements but blocking them. Even the faucets looked more distant than they had. Harry finally stopped and leaned his head on his forearms, swearing.
“You had a word with me this morning, about being stubborn.”
Harry looked up wearily. Malfoy floated in the water in front of him, and his eyes had the same direct, bright, hard look, without passion but also without hatred. Harry might have become an especially interesting Potions ingredient.
Perhaps that was better. Perhaps he could handle being looked at like that, Harry thought. He folded his arms and said, “What about it?”
“That being stubborn in a case like this is more trouble than it’s worth,” Malfoy murmured, and reached for the soap again.
He said nothing else, but Harry understood. He still turned his back with a grimace. He didn’t like what the house was doing to him, to them, the way it shoved them closer and then did something worse just when Harry had come to the conclusion that he might be able to accept that level of closeness.
He closed his eyes and breathed slowly through the touch of Malfoy’s slick hands to his shoulders. You’ve survived worse. You can survive this. And remember that he’s doing you a favor. He’s brewing you the potion that’s going to get you out of here. You certainly can’t do it yourself.
All those distracting thoughts, and bracing ones, didn’t make the touch any less like lightning. Harry cried out in spite of himself when Malfoy’s fingers wandered into a spot on his spine that no one else had ever touched, and then bowed his head and tried to return to the deep, regular breathing. Malfoy paused, his hand brushing lightly.
“That doesn’t help,” Harry told him, rubbing his temple where a headache had sprung up. “If you have to, could you please just dig in? The lighter touches are-they’re uncomfortable for me.”
Malfoy brushed his thumbs up and down in response, which wasn’t what Harry had asked for, but then pressed down like a masseuse seeking the source of his client’s tension. Harry sighed. This kind of touch affected him, too, but at least it wasn’t as bad.
Malfoy moved down his back to his legs, and began to wipe soap on Harry’s arse. Harry bit his tongue on the impulse to ask him to stop. The house might not let him out of the tub unless they did this. Harry reckoned he would rather go through the whole ordeal at once rather than do it once, fail to get out of the tub again, and have to come back.
Malfoy paused, as if counting heartbeats. Harry held still, or as still as he could when his feet drifted off the floor. He could hear his own heartbeat, sure enough, and his labored breathing. At least he didn’t sound as if he would bolt away from Malfoy at any moment, even if he felt like it.
Then one hand came forwards and brushed Harry’s hair off his shoulders. Harry opened his mouth. “You already washed that-”
“Hush.”
Harry shut up, because Malfoy’s voice was quiet, precise, but abstracted. Maybe he had another plan that would involve them being able to escape. The major plans had been his so far, and Harry’s hadn’t worked, other than sending the Patronus. So he sat there, and remembered the food in the kitchen. Something like the hot tub might be a silly trick of the house’s to throw them together, but they really needed to eat and sleep, to be ready for the brewing.
If Malfoy thought this was serious enough, too, then Harry would sit still for it. But they needed to stop trying to relax and take advantage of the house’s luxuries. Something stupid always happened when they did.
Malfoy rubbed his hand down Harry’s chest, without insisting that Harry turn to face him. It was a small kindness. Harry relaxed in the face of it, until Malfoy’s fingers fluttered past his nipples. Then he held his breath again.
“I won’t touch you that way if you don’t want me to,” Malfoy said, and pulled his hand back.
Harry nodded and bowed his head, letting Malfoy stroke his neck, and touch his hair again, and stroke between his legs. Something about his voice-that helped. His hands were still everywhere and terrifying, but his voice was so thick, so sure, so grounded. Harry discovered that he was breathing in rhythm with Malfoy, and didn’t stop in embarrassment only because he thought Malfoy wouldn’t make fun of him for it.
Malfoy won’t make fun of me? What kind of mad world am I living in?
One in which the house was madder, Harry understood then, and Malfoy was a victim of it, too. If Harry didn’t like being tumbled into the same bed and made dependent on someone else for food and escaping the water, neither did Malfoy.
That was the best way to think of it. Focus on what made them similar, and not different. Cooperate to escape the trap.
Which was the way that Harry had been trying to think in the first place, thinking of Malfoy as one of his Aurors. He wasn’t sure why he’d stopped.
Because none of my Aurors have ever touched me like this. I’ve never been attracted or aroused by any of them.
And that was true for everyone, including Hilary Broadmain, the blonde and green-eyed Auror everyone else swooned over, or Shirley Cassel, who Department gossip said had been responsible for the breakup of three marriages and near-deaths in four duels. Harry had decided it was because he was busy all the time, and resolved to be less busy.
Now he had to wonder if it was because he was gay, and had always been just too busy to explore it.
Sometime, I’ll have to. But it would be beyond mental to think that Malfoy would make a good candidate for that.
Malfoy’s hands dipped up and down, swabbing the inside of his thighs. Harry wondered suddenly why the house hadn’t given them washcloths or towels to do this, and then scowled. Of course. That would be too easy. The house wanted them to touch each other, to use bare hands for everything; it thought it was easing a lovers’ quarrel.
“You’re tense again,” Malfoy whispered into his ear. “I don’t want you to be. The more relaxed you are, the better chance I have of a good meal and the sleep that I need tonight.” His hands swept up to Harry’s shoulders again, and he did that deeper touch that helped Harry more than the light one.
“I’m okay,” Harry said. “Just thinking about what the house will try to make us do next.”
“I know,” Malfoy said. “But don’t think about that.” Harry rolled his eyes, but Malfoy continued in a quiet, insistent voice. “Think about your friends. Think about your case. Think about pounding me into the ground, if that’s what you want-”
Harry jerked in Malfoy’s arms despite himself. Malfoy paused, then laughed softly. “You try not to think of things that will stress you out more,” he said, his hands still sliding up and down, “and I’ll try to watch what I say.”
“Yeah, good idea,” Harry said, and hated that his voice came out breathless, and hated the way he could have sagged forwards and rested his forehead on the edge of the pool and gone to sleep right there. But he tried to remember what Malfoy had said, and started considering his Aurors’ combinations of partners, and the ones that worked well together, and the ones that he would probably have to change in a few months.
He was just relaxing finally, sure this would almost work, and Malfoy’s fingers came in, low, his hand spreading out under the water, his fingers curling up so that he very nearly cupped Harry’s cock.
Harry shut his eyes and held his breath and simply drifted. He reminded himself that Malfoy had said he wouldn’t touch Harry in places that Harry didn’t want him to without Harry’s permission, and then he reminded himself that Malfoy’s fingers hadn’t actually touched him there. They were just there.
And Malfoy pulled his hand back after a moment, so the way Harry had imagined it lingering and lingering was just his imagination.
“Come on,” Malfoy said, his voice back to deep and soft, and pulled Harry towards the side of the tub. Harry’s sigh when his arse bumped into the ledge that ran around the side of it and he found he could climb out was so deep that he felt a little shaky as he wrapped one of the towels waiting on the floor around himself.
Malfoy stood beside him, drying his own hair with both hands while the towel dangled limp and loose around his body. Harry stole a quick look, although he didn’t really want to; it was just something that happened. He tried to think about how he would respond to that pale skin if it didn’t belong to an enemy or he hadn’t just washed it, and came up with disturbing answers both times. He turned away, shuddering.
“You know the house may do worse things to us,” Malfoy said, calmly, not looking at him.
Harry nodded wearily and raked his fingers down his face, clearing his fringe out of the way and messing it up at the same time. “I know. But let’s take one challenge at a time for now. I’m hungry.” That was a small word for the way his stomach plastered itself against the back of his ribs.
Malfoy nodded, wrapped the towel around himself, and led the way up to the kitchen. Harry hesitated, then followed, Summoning his clothes. If he waited and tried to dress, the house would probably make them disappear or something
Chapter Six.
This entry was originally posted at http://lomonaaeren.dreamwidth.org/496403.html. Comment wherever you like.