Chapter Seven of 'The House That Lovers Built'- Sing the Difference
Chapter Six.
Title: The House That Lovers Built (6/10 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 Seven-Sing the Difference
Harry jumped awake. He’d been dreaming of solving a puzzle, squatting beside the brightly-colored pieces spread on the ground, and then he knew he was lying on a pillow, someone huge and warm pressed beside him, his hands sprawled in uncomfortable directions and a hand playing with his groin.
Playing, as if his cock was a toy. Harry reached down to take it away, because it annoyed him more than anything else, and then the hand turned sideways and brought such a rush of pleasure into his life that he froze and groaned, stomach churning.
“Good morning,” Malfoy said into his ear, soft and friendly, and squeezed again. “How about a morning wank?”
Harry would have said yes, but his throat was as crowded as the bed, and he couldn’t force the words out past the blockage that had taken up residence there. He shut his eyes and turned his head to the side until his tongue could flick out and up and down Malfoy’s wrist. Malfoy chuckled and started stroking him.
Harry kept his eyes closed the entire time, but he could imagine how he looked anyway: half on his side, half on his arse, flexing under Malfoy’s constant soft touches, rubbing against his knuckles, rubbing against his palm, rubbing pretty much everywhere. He was sure that he looked silly, or abandoned, or something else.
But there was no one else here to see except the house, who frankly didn’t count. And if Malfoy ever tried to tease Harry about it, all Harry had to do was bring up the way he had looked last night.
“You sound good and smell good and feel good,” Malfoy said into the back of his neck, to the point that Harry didn’t know how he could hear him. Maybe his ear was closer than he’d thought to Malfoy’s mouth. Maybe that picture in his head wasn’t so accurate after all. “But I bet you’d feel even better if you stopped thinking, for once.” His fingers clasped down and ran back and forth, loose but tightening on every stroke now.
Harry trembled. The pleasure had leaped up to a new height. He found himself touching Malfoy’s wrist, moaning softly as his hips began to answer the insistent motions.
“That’s it,” Malfoy said into his ear, and then leaned over and kissed him, tongue lapping at his teeth as if Harry had sweet-smelling morning breath instead of the disgusting kind.
Harry kissed back, and maybe Malfoy had cast some sort of special spell, because his morning breath tasted pretty sweet to Harry, too. Harry kissed, and kissed, and let go, enough that it was a surprise to hear Malfoy moan and pull sticky fingers away, because Harry had almost forgotten he’d come.
“The house knew what it was doing,” Malfoy whispered thickly, and rolled on top of Harry before he could contest that. Harry thought Malfoy was going to rock against him again, but instead, Malfoy sat where he was, straddling Harry’s lap and staring at him, his arse twitching but not moving.
“What?” Harry asked, shivering a little now as his skin started cooling. It seemed unbearably silly, suddenly, to be trapped like this, under Malfoy, who had a gloating expression on his face. Harry had to take a deep breath and remind himself about the house before he could lie still.
“Touch me,” Malfoy said. “I-want what you can make me feel.” And he leaned back until he was sprawled against Harry’s knees, which must have been as uncomfortable as all fuck, but he didn’t sit back up. His legs fell open, and he waited.
His eyes never left Harry’s. That brought an uncomfortable, prickling flush to Harry’s face, but it also reminded him, again, of what this was. Nothing more than touching. And Malfoy would be humiliated if Harry told someone else about him wanting Harry. They each had equal leverage on each other.
Harry still reached out slowly, checking Malfoy’s face. Malfoy’s lips parted, and he began to pant, his legs stirring uneasily in the bedclothes. Harry touched his cock, tried to assimilate the smooth hardness of it, knew he didn’t do a good job, and then just gave up and began to stroke back and forth.
It wasn’t the way he liked to be touched himself, but Malfoy squirmed and moaned. Harry’s face flamed now, and he was really glad the house didn’t have portraits. He tightened his grip when Malfoy whispered that he should, and Malfoy went back to his rocking, only this time he wasn’t just concentrating on Harry’s leg or groin. It was his hand, Harry’s willing touch, and it made Malfoy’s head move in slow, counterclockwise circles, his tongue dangle out and his breath pant.
It made Harry want to keep stroking him.
Luckily for both of them, Malfoy came before that could happen, and Harry took his hand back and performed a Cleaning Charm. Only on himself, though. Even though Malfoy was dripping and smelled bitter, Harry couldn’t bring himself to disrupt the expression of sleepy contentment on his face.
Malfoy opened his eyes when Harry’s legs began to tremble. “Hmm,” he said. “Wonderful, but I’m not going back to sleep.” He leaned down and cupped Harry’s cheek.
Harry squirmed. Malfoy really did look right now as if he was reconsidering their bargain, and would tell someone else all about the stupid things Harry did in bed and the embarrassing sounds he made. His hand was so steady. His eyes were piercing, and he seemed to be trying to memorize Harry’s features.
“I’m not a werewolf,” Harry blurted at last.
Malfoy blinked, then leaned back without taking his hand off Harry’s face. “What made you think I thought that?”
“You’re looking at me as if you expect me to change shape,” Harry said, and shook his head. “It’s not-never mind. We’ve done what should really satisfy the house, and now I’d like to sit up.” He looked pointedly down at the mess on his stomach.
Chuckling, but in a way that made it sound as if he were panting and caused Harry’s stomach to quiver again, Malfoy rolled off him. “I predict that the house won’t let us shower this morning at all unless we’re both in it and washing each other,” he said, rolling his head in a clockwise direction this time and touching his neck with a frown as it made a cracking noise.
“And you have to keep giving it ideas,” Harry muttered, bending to pick up the robes that the house had placed neatly on the floor.
Malfoy stopped him with a long, sliding touch to his shoulder. “Why dress?” he murmured. “We’ll only take the clothes off in a few minutes anyway.”
Harry closed his eyes and swallowed through a dry throat. “I’ll feel better if we do,” he said. “I don’t know why,” he added, anticipating Malfoy’s next question. “I just will.”
Malfoy paused, then withdrew his hand. Harry opened his eyes to see him shrugging. “If you want to do that, then you should,” Malfoy said, and turned, rolling over so that Harry could see the line of his shoulders for a long moment before Malfoy bent down and pulled on a pair of soft slippers that the house must have provided.
They walked down the corridor in silence. Harry was aware of the burning glances, though, the quality of the silence. Yesterday, it would have been merely not saying things; now it hummed with things unsaid.
As Malfoy had prophesied, the shower gave them water at all only when they were both inside it, and the gentle, warm sprays of water that made Harry groan again. When Malfoy put his hands on Harry’s shoulders to wash him, and poured shampoo into Harry’s hands so he could do the same thing for Malfoy’s hair, Harry discovered he didn’t want to protest.
*
This time, the work Malfoy put Harry to was preparing geraniums by crushing them with a pestle and mortar. Harry at least knew how to do that, although he was less sure about exactly how crushed the geraniums should be. Malfoy had to lean over his shoulder at a few points and take his hands to show him how to do it.
Malfoy lingered when he was done. Harry closed his eyes and stood there until Malfoy withdrew, with the same panting chuckle he’d used that morning.
Harry licked his lips and tried not to taste the strawberries that, sure enough, the house had only let him eat from Malfoy’s fingers, moving the plates away or just thinning the food into insubstantiality when he tried to pick them up.
Malfoy touched him casually through the morning-reaching past Harry to get something and letting his arm brush him in the middle of the back, using his shoulder as support when he leaned far over the cauldron, and boosting him from below when he wanted Harry to check something on the highest shelves of the Potions lab. After the first time, when he nearly squeaked, Harry gave up complaining about it, too. The house was full of ideas already, and he didn’t need to give Malfoy any help.
At least they did get to stop and eat lunch this time, and it was some kind of salad that had to be served with forks instead of fingers. Even better, Harry thought, and didn’t stare into Malfoy’s face when he was eating, because that would be ridiculous. He looked at the fresh green and gleaming lettuce leaves instead, at the tines of the fork, at the walls of the kitchen and the merrily humming refrigerator.
“If you could duplicate the spells on the house and make them obey a pair of wizards instead of trapping them, you’d make a fortune,” he muttered at one point.
Malfoy paused, holding a fork that dripped with cheese and soft egg and more lettuce over the middle of the salad. “How so?”
Harry blinked at him, then remembered that not everyone was an Auror and what to him was an obvious application might escape them. “Because we could carry safehouses along with us,” he replied. “It’s hard to find shelter in the middle of a chase, and especially shelter that might not expose you to the very criminals you’re hunting. A house in the middle of a dimension that no one else could see, and which had its own food and showers and bedrooms? Perfection. Maybe we could even modify the windows so that we could see our prey and always know where they were going in the morning.”
Malfoy snorted and held the fork out to Harry again, forcing him to open his mouth and accept it. “I was unaware that you chased that many wizards who couldn’t Apparate. Or are sixteen-year-olds taking up Dark Arts in unprecedented numbers now?”
Harry laughed, then choked, then spent a few minutes cleaning half-masticated leaves from his face while Malfoy looked in the other direction. If I want him to leave me alone, then, just make sure that my table manners are unacceptably bad, Harry decided with some glee. “No,” he said. “But the places that people can Apparate out of Muggle sight are more limited than you might think, given all the Muggles who like to live in isolated places and wander around in them, too. And there are the corridors-”
He shut up. Malfoy looked at him and selected a smaller forkful, this time crumbled cheese alone. “Which ones?”
“The corridors of the Ministry,” Harry said, biting his lip. He felt that wasn’t a big enough punishment; he would have liked to slam his head against the table like a house-elf. “I mean, when someone commits a crime in the Ministry, they can’t just Apparate out right away. They need to run, and-”
“You’re not a convincing liar,” Malfoy said, smiling at him, as if that was information he was providing Harry as a service. “And there would be no need for a safehouse in the Ministry. Explain.” He tapped the fork against Harry’s chin. “After you eat your cheese.”
Harry grimaced and opened his mouth. Malfoy touched the fork gently to his tongue, so that Harry at least had a choice about whether to swallow or not. The cheese broke apart equally gently in his mouth and flavored his lips with a smoky tang, which only made the decision the harder.
“We’ve laid out anti-Apparition corridors over some parts of Britain,” he admitted at last, because Malfoy was gazing at him with a rapt expression and his assistance was still the best means that Harry had to get out of here. Either the potion or convincing the house they were lovers-Harry needed him for either plan. “They’re long and narrow, but we’re the only ones who know where they run. If we can herd a criminal into one, then they have to go straight ahead for a long time, and we can chase them.”
Malfoy paused with his fork in the salad again. “What a fascinating idea,” he said. “I presume that you weren’t the one who came up with it, since it is so fascinating. Who did?”
Harry shook his head. “I can’t tell you that.”
“Of course you can.” Malfoy reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind his ear. “Since you’ve already told me so much else, and you ought to know that I’m not going to give up now.” His fingers slipped along Harry’s face and down into his mouth. “I know more about you than anyone else does now.”
Harry sneered and kept silent. Malfoy might know what Harry was like when he had sex, true, but compared to the depth of knowledge Ron and Hermione had about him, that was paltry.
Malfoy handed the fork to Harry and leaned back with his limbs draped loosely along the chair, his mouth opening. “Now,” he murmured, somehow without quite closing his mouth, “you can feed me.”
Harry moved around the table and picked up the fork, making sure to get a good amount of lettuce on the fork each time, so that Malfoy would have trouble speaking. Malfoy was faster at chewing and swallowing than Harry had counted on, though, and not at all shy about holding onto Harry’s hand to keep him from overfeeding him. Harry recoiled at the first touch, and Malfoy laughed. “A bit silly, don’t you think?” he asked, and passed straight into his chosen subject before Harry had a chance to answer. “I wonder how much money I could make from selling this potion to the Aurors, then, always assuming that I could exactly duplicate the mistake’s effects.”
“Not that much,” Harry said, keeping his eyes on the way that Malfoy’s hair parted on the top of his skull. It looked like it might start thinning early. That cheered Harry up. “It would be useful for me, but I think the Department might set a different value on the potion, and they probably wouldn’t end up buying it from a known criminal.”
“A Potions master who stayed out of trouble?” Malfoy touched one hand to his chest, smiling at Harry. That made Harry think about how he had made that chest flush, but although he blushed, it would have seemed silly to look away now. “I’m not a criminal. I got involved in this completely innocently.”
“You interrupted an Auror raid you knew was in progress,” Harry said. He had to concentrate, to remember both what was needed to get out of the house and that the house wasn’t the whole of the world. Somewhere out there were Aurors with good arguments for why they could put Malfoy in prison. “That’s going to be suspicious to someone.”
“And you won’t put in a good word for me?”
Not trusting the way Malfoy’s voice had fallen for one moment, Harry went back to the salad, and feeding Malfoy enough to satisfy him and keep him quiet. And Malfoy let him, after studying Harry’s face for a few seconds. Harry wondered what magical ingredient in his expression had changed Malfoy’s mind. He’d probably never know.
*
“You don’t want to go swimming?”
Harry didn’t look up from the seeds that Malfoy had handed him about mid-afternoon. He didn’t know what they were, but they burst with a sweet-smelling cloud of dust when he crushed them, and got milky fibers all over his hands. “Looking forward to cleaning up,” he said, holding out a hand. “Not swimming.”
“We haven’t been in the pool yet.” From the sound of it, Malfoy was over on the other side of the lab, putting away the ladder that they could only use to reach the high shelves if both of them were touching it.
“We don’t have to use every corner of the house,” Harry said, and finally ground down the last seed so that it lost all trace of its round shape and he could toss its mangled corpse in with the others. “We’ve barely used the meditation room since that first day, either. Where did you want these?”
“Those are the final ingredient in this stage of the potion,” Malfoy said, and now he had moved up behind Harry. Harry wished he knew who had given Malfoy lessons in stealth. He could do with some of them for his own heavy-footed Aurors. “And you’re going to help me stir them in.” He reached around Harry and scooped up the seeds he’d crushed, somehow doing it with his hand held like a spoon so that none of the fibers or dust got on him. The bastard.
Harry shook his head. “Aren’t you afraid that I’ll ruin your potion if you do that? You know Snape never trusted me to put the potions together.”
“In this case,” Malfoy said, his voice soft against the nape of Harry’s neck, “I think it best.”
Harry closed his eyes and reminded himself again that this was about fooling the house, and Malfoy would have objected to touching him just as much as Harry objected to touching him if it wasn’t for the house.
As Malfoy’s arms twined around his and his hands lifted Harry’s hands, though, to lever the seeds to the cauldron, it didn’t feel like that. Harry shook and burned and bit his lip, and he could hear Malfoy breathing behind him, as unsteady and trying-for-casual as two of Harry’s Aurors had been when he caught them snogging in front of a suspect.
But so what? It was silly to feel so much anxiety about it, the way Harry had done for so long, and it was silly to think that Malfoy attached a lot of importance to it, or that anyone should. Harry kept his eyes fixed straight ahead, and had the satisfaction of seeing the seeds drop straight into the cauldron at last, without his hands trembling and adding random scraps of skin or something, the way Snape would have claimed they did.
When the seeds hit whatever was at the bottom of the cauldron, though, they did send up a huge puff of dust, and Harry coughed as it hit and coated his face. Malfoy laughed behind him, and ducked.
“Bastard,” Harry croaked aloud this time. “Of course you didn’t get any on you. You were using me as a human shield.”
“Are you suggesting that there’s some other shield you could be, Potter?” Malfoy’s hands were still on his, pressing his fingers down and also twining around them as though, of all the stupid things, he admired the shape of Harry’s hands. Harry shook them off and turned to face Malfoy. He surprised a slightly slack look on his face before Malfoy blinked and focused on him. Then he just cracked a smirk, probably because Harry had all that dust on his face and looked like an angry snowman.
Harry rolled his eyes. “Fine. Now can we go eat dinner?” He turned his back and walked steadily towards the door from the lab, which would force Malfoy to follow, since he couldn’t work with anything in the lab when Harry wasn’t there.
Malfoy stepped up behind him and said, “But don’t you want to go for a swim and get cleaned up that way?”
“Tergeo,” Harry snapped, and gasped as the spell swept over him and left his skin stinging and tingling in its wake.
Malfoy had stopped walking. Harry turned around and saw him studying Harry with a slow motion of his eyes from side to side that probably had some secret Slytherin meaning, but which looked as though he thought Harry was mental.
“The house would have prevented Cleaning Charms, I thought,” Malfoy continued in a low voice, “because it wanted us to shower or swim together. But obviously it didn’t consider that you were mad enough to use one that hurts. Congratulations, Potter. You’ve successfully come up with ways to make the house think you’re mental.”
“It’s my proudest moment,” Harry said, and bowed to each of the walls, and then burst out laughing from the sheer look on Malfoy’s face.
Malfoy continued to look at him, and whether it was silly or not, what was between them and what they were doing and what they were discussing, Harry found the laughter becoming a smile.
Not enough of a smile to agree to a dip in the pool with Malfoy. But enough of one that he didn’t move away when Malfoy slung an arm around his shoulder to help him up the stairs.
Chapter Eight.
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