Chapter Fourteen of 'A Series of Malfoy Events'- Where Malfoy Woke Up
Chapter Thirteen.
Title: A Series of Malfoy Events (14/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Draco, others mentioned
Rating: R
Warnings: Light angst, brief violence, rather crack-ish humor
Summary: Harry saves Draco’s life. That should be the end of it. Except it isn’t, because Draco keeps coming up with crazy things-and Harry goes along with it because he can’t wait to see what Draco’s going to come up with next.
Author’s Notes: I don’t yet know how long this story will be. It will be largely fluffy, and updated every Thursday.
Chapter One.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Fourteen-Where Malfoy Woke Up
“You’re sure there’s something wrong with him?” Eilir Gundar, the Ministry Healer on duty, stepped back from Malfoy’s bed and gave Harry an absurdly skeptical glance.
Harry raised his eyebrows. He had taken the risk of summoning Healer Gundar through Malfoy’s Floo because he had thought someone qualified needed to look at Malfoy as soon as possible, but taking him somewhere else would probably seem like kidnapping. Not to sane people, of course. But Harry had had to accept that Malfoy didn’t really fit into that category.
“I thought there was,” Harry said. “He’s admitted that he let someone almost kill him, in order to test other people.”
“To see if they would rescue him?”
“No, to see if they wouldn’t. Because their obedience to his wishes was more important than his life.”
Healer Gundar rubbed her forehead with one hand, an encouraging sign, but only sighed and shook it at Harry. “I’ve checked him for the Imperius and all spells related to it, for any kind of potion I could think of that would influence mental processes-and anyway, he would have to ingest it on a regular basis for months to influence him against preserving his own life-and even for spells that are meant to affect wealthy pure-bloods with an inheritance to leave to consider candidates outside their own families. Nothing is showing up. What you say is strange, but I don’t think he’s sick or influenced against his will.”
“What about mental illness?”
“I’m a magical and physical Healer, not a Mind-Healer,” said Healer Gundar, and sniffed a little. “I suppose you’d have to contact one of them to ask whether your friend was in danger.”
“Not exactly my friend,” Harry said, but he waved his hand when Healer Gundar started to turn. “Never mind. This is related to a case that grows more complicated by the day, and I’ll make sure to tell my superiors about all the help you gave me.”
“By which you mean Shacklebolt.”
Harry blinked innocently at her. If there was some feud going on between Kingsley and Healer Gundar, he hadn’t heard about it. Then again, he was pretty sure that wasn’t what was going on. “Yes, of course. He was the one who assigned me to this case. Is there some reason I shouldn’t report to him?”
“Of course not.” Healer Gundar seemed oblivious to the way she was glancing around, as if in search of a mirror. Harry decided it would be too obvious for him to simply conjure her one. “Anyway. I must go now.”
“Of course,” Harry said, and bowed and held the bow before Healer Gundar left by Floo. Then Harry shook his head and turned towards the bed.
Of course Malfoy’s bedroom was probably the most magnificent room in the house, and the only surprise for Harry in it was that Malfoy had covered up the mirror that he’d had Harry preen in, the night they went to the Crocodiles’ party. A heavy green curtain hung in front of it-or perhaps the color was emerald-sheet-of-living-fire, given the complicated names Malfoy gave to hues like that. The bed had been so neatly made, the creases in the sheets so tight, that Harry had had to fight them to tuck Malfoy in.
He reached now for Malfoy’s shoulder, to shake him and get him up, but a house-elf popped into being behind him. Harry turned around and saw her march towards the great carved headboard. With careful hands, she adjusted the pillows behind Malfoy.
“Pillowy?” Harry asked.
Even though she must have seen him, the elf still leaped in the air and squeaked with surprise as she turned around. “Master Malfoy was introducing me?” she whispered.
“It was just a good guess,” Harry said, and waved a nonchalant hand, enjoying her look of wild-eyed awe. “I need some food from the kitchens.”
“What kind of food, Master Harry Potter sir?”
Harry shrugged. He hadn’t got that far. “Whatever you have that’s cold. Really cold,” he added, eying Malfoy.
“Yes, yes, Master Harry Potter Master’s fiancé sir,” said Pillowy. She appeared to have caught sight of the diamond engagement ring that Harry had laid on the end table. Harry snorted as she Apparated out, and turned back to Malfoy.
“Only you would have your house-elves add more titles to someone’s name as they got to know them, instead of less,” he told Malfoy.
“Fewer.”
Harry perked up. That meant Malfoy had recovered from the Stunner faster than he’d thought. “What did you say?” he asked, stepping nearer.
Malfoy remained in a stubbornly, quietly breathing state, his lips a little parted and his body still and limp. Harry raised his eyebrows and stepped back.
“You know you can’t escape me or ignore me forever,” he said. “You are going to wake up and we are going to have a conversation.”
Malfoy continued to imitate Sleeping Beauty. It would be easier to laugh at him if he wasn’t so good at the “Beauty” part, Harry conceded.
“Anyway,” Harry said, “what you say half the time makes no sense. I don’t think you can possibly be running a con game, and at the same time, you can’t possibly believe all the nonsense that you spout. You’re too smarter for that.”
This time, he saw Malfoy twitch with the desire to correct the grammar error. He was sure he did, but Malfoy just lay there.
Harry shrugged and turned around as Pillowy popped into the bedroom-no, wait, it wasn’t Pillowy, it was a house-elf with blue eyes, the first Harry had ever seen. Harry smiled kindly at him as he took the tray he held, which was covered with a glass of chill lemonade, glittering ices, and things that looked like cakes made of ice.
“Kitcheny?” Harry guessed.
“No, Master Harry Potter Master’s engaged fiancé sir,” said the elf, and bowed several times. “I is Icy.”
Of course he has particular elves to soothe particular needs, Harry thought, and put the tray down on the table. “Do you make all the cold things for the Manor’s kitchens?” he asked.
“Of course, Master Harry Potter Master’s engaged fiancé who should be wearing his ring sir!” Icy bowed. “Yous will be finding the food very cold.”
“I count on it,” Harry said, and smiled at Icy in a way that seemed to puzzle him. “But I need to be alone with your master for me to do what I need to do.”
Icy’s eyes widened, and he seemed to blush. But he did disappear with a squeak. Harry shook his head. He supposed Malfoy must have had revels here in bed with lots of lovers, for the elves to react like that.
Harry turned around in time to see Malfoy’s eyelids flickering a little. “It’s silly to pretend that you’re not awake,” he said, and picked up the glass of lemonade. “Last chance to act like a regular human being.”
Malfoy had decided he was a marble statue.
Harry shrugged and threw the lemonade over him.
Malfoy sat up at once, shrieking like a wet cat. Harry followed with one of the cakes of ice, tossing it calmly onto his chest. Malfoy began clawing at his shirt, then raised a hand and touched his dripping hair and moaned. “Do you know how long that’s going to take to get out?” he asked.
“Here, let me help,” Harry said, and picked up one of the ices. “This will let you come clean.” He tipped the flowing chocolate and banana mess all over Malfoy, although he sincerely mourned the loss of a confection so beautiful.
Malfoy lunged at him this time, his hands out and his fingers crooked into claws. It was the only weapon he had, since Harry had thoughtfully retrieved his wand and put it under the bed with a Sticking Charm on it in case Malfoy tried to Summon it. Harry dodged, let Malfoy sprawl on the floor, and shook his head. “We could continue chasing around the room for a while, or you could just tell me the bloody truth. What do you think?”
Malfoy apparently thought he could twist on the floor like a real cat and come back at Harry, was what he thought. But his foot slipped in the various liquids that were cascading down his body, and he fell hard on his arse. What a pity, Harry thought, as he drew his wand and rapidly cast. There are so many better things that arse could be doing.
Cage bars grew up from the floor as high as Malfoy’s waist, and then stopped. Malfoy didn’t try to hop over them, maybe because he knew the spell and what it would do, maybe because he just didn’t want to look silly. He glared at Harry instead. Harry leaned back and started to tick things off on his fingers.
“You act like a suicidal idiot. You act as if you don’t care about your life, or in fact anything other than having your wishes obeyed. On the other hand, you still have the money and the possessions and the house that your family’s had for centuries. You would have lost it all by now if you were really that big an idiot. Plus, you have house-elves named for every function in the Manor, which means that you’re obsessively organized in at least one area of your life.” Harry leaned towards Malfoy and nodded a little. “People who are that obsessively organized in one aspect of their lives are usually obsessively organized in others, too.”
“Sometimes your Auror skills are wrong.” Malfoy had a dull, mottled flush on his face now, as if he had broken out in Dragonpox. Or maybe not, Harry thought. It wasn’t that bad. Dragon Unattractive Spots, maybe.
His lips twitching a little at the thought of what Malfoy would do if Harry uttered the word “Unattractive” anywhere around him, Harry cocked his head. “Maybe they are. Maybe they aren’t. But what I know is that you haven’t told me the truth all through this. I want to know what else you’re hiding.”
“Nothing. I don’t know who coordinated those mass attacks.”
“And I don’t know how your other lovers could stand to be around you,” Harry said.
That made Malfoy stop cold (Harry snickered to himself) in the act of reaching towards the cage bars. “What?”
“I don’t mind the company of actually stupid people,” Harry explained, kicking one foot out in front of him as he lounged against Malfoy’s bed. “I think I would have got along quite well with Crabbe and Goyle if they weren’t, you know, trying to beat me up and kill me all the time when we were kids. But I mind the company of people who pretend to be stupider than they really are. You’re tiresome. How did you manage to convince that whole cavalcade of Quidditch players and pure-blood politicians and the rest that you were someone worth smiling at?”
Malfoy was still frozen, staring at him. Harry helpfully picked up the next cake of ice.
That got Malfoy’s tongue flapping, at least. “You assault me and take me to my bedroom and expect an answer to your questions?”
“You put my life in danger and bring me to your house with an unauthorized Portkey and expect me to put up with more of your bollocks?” Harry tilted the little plate he held meaningfully.
“You’re not what I thought you were,” Malfoy said softly, his eyes locked on Harry.
“Well, since I don’t trust you to tell me the truth about what you thought I was, that insult doesn’t exactly sting,” Harry told him kindly.
Malfoy bowed his head a second. Then he said, “And you seem as if you would distrust me no matter what I said. What’s my incentive?”
Harry tilted the plate some more. Malfoy sat back in his little pen of cage bars. “Nothing a shower wouldn’t fix. Well?”
Malfoy remained quiet enough that Harry thought he had chosen the shower of sweets. But just as the cake started to fall, Malfoy looked up.
“I know I’m special,” he said. “I only ever doubted that during the war.”
Harry caught the cake back and bit his tongue to inform Malfoy of all the many, many ways he was special, and only nodded encouragingly. If he shut Malfoy up prematurely, he thought, he might never get him to speak again.
Malfoy leaned slowly back against the cage bars behind him and stared dramatically into the past. Harry waited. He would allow perhaps thirty seconds of that before he would remind Malfoy of the drama of the future.
Malfoy rubbed his hands together once, and then spoke. “But I began to realize that most of the people around me didn’t see who I really was, into the core of me. They saw my money, my heritage, or my skills at Quidditch. There was no one who could value the whole person. They broke me up into little parts, and those were the things they wanted. They didn’t want the Quidditch player to donate money to them or the wealthy man to sit on his broom.”
Harry felt an ache of empathy within himself that he knew he would have to control carefully. He also felt that most people didn’t see who he was, most of the time. He also felt that controlling his various selves was exhausting. He was lucky that Kingsley tolerated more of his sarcasm than a lot of bosses would have, and that he had friends who had known him so long they weren’t fooled by the walls that Harry had to put up for the press.
But-and this was the difference between him and Malfoy-Harry had never told other people that they had his permission to try and kill him. So it remained to be seen how Malfoy had got from feeling isolated to going mental.
“So you wanted someone to see the whole you,” Harry said. “How did that lead to this?”
“Some of them seemed to see me, for a little while,” Malfoy murmured. “They would give me compliments that didn’t just rely on how famous I was, or how wealthy, or how good I was in bed.”
Harry remained still and silent. It was one of the hardest things he had ever done in his life. Suggesting that Malfoy might have paid attention to more things than compliments from his dates was-not a good idea right now, though.
“So I did what I had to do,” said Malfoy, and sighed hard enough to pull most of the air out of his body. “I tested them. And they all failed the test. They didn’t obey me, or they started begging me for money the instant I withheld it from them, or they took their privileges for granted and tried to order me around. Dumping them was almost the only way to make them think I was serious about the test.”
“Still waiting for the part where you thought it was okay to let people kill you.”
Malfoy shot him a glance that was cold, but not nearly as cold as the plate Harry still held, so it was wasted effort. “They acted so desperate when I broke up with them. I started to think that maybe some of them could do what I wanted, if they only had the right incentive. So I tested them again.”
“Why did you tell Cassel to hex your broom?”
“She was the one who would have been the most convenient, and one of the most obedient when I was actually dating her.” Malfoy scowled a little. “And she never bothered me for Quidditch secrets since she was on the same team and knew exactly how to play the game. I’m surprised she went as far as she did.”
“So you are blaming her for the attempts to kill me?” Harry surmised.
“Not blaming her, not without proof. But there’s no one else who knew so quickly that I was dating you, and honestly, she’s one of the smarter people I dated. She could have come up with the plan.”
Harry shrugged. “We have only a bit of evidence right now, but if she’s innocent, then the Aurors will find out.” He put the cake of ice back on the table. “All right, Malfoy, that’s what I wanted to know. Go enjoy your shower.” He undid the Sticking Charm on Malfoy’s wand under the bed, and it rolled out on the floor. Harry nodded to him and made for the door.
“Where do you think you’re going.”
Malfoy had made his voice colder than the things he was covered with, this time. Harry turned around and applauded. “Keep that up, and you might have a career as an actor ahead of you,” he said.
“I meant it,” Malfoy said, and stepped over the cage bars. Without Harry to control them, they didn’t jump up to chest height and keep him imprisoned the way they would have otherwise. “Where do you think you’re going? Do you think you can just walk away from me after that? I told you the truth! That was what you said you wanted!”
“I have no desire to date someone who thinks he should test people and that everyone else should pay him compliments all the time,” Harry pointed out. “Besides, I have no need for your money or your fame, and I know how to play Quidditch just as well as you do. If you want to know what your lovers want, what did you think would keep me around?”
“You could just want me.” Malfoy’s voice was slow and soft. “Someone who knows the real you, the way you know the real me.”
Harry hesitated, and Malfoy took the chance to come to a stop in front of him and look Harry slowly up and down. Harry braced himself against the effects of that gaze, wishing he’d kept one cake of ice to slap over his disobedient groin.
“You didn’t reveal your real self to me without extreme coaxing,” Harry said. “I don’t think that you could tell the truth about me.”
“I could if you told me.” Malfoy smiled faintly at him. “And everything you said applies to me, too. I’m not going to date you for the prestige of being seen with the Boy-Who-Lived. I know you can do lots of things I can’t. But I can entertain you and make you burn. How many other people can say the same?”
Harry thought about it. And this time, he thought, his mind was a lot clearer than it had been the other two times.
“I want to know I can trust you,” Harry said. “We’ll give it a while and see if it works out.”
“You lied to me too!”
“Hence why we should give it a while.” Harry had to grin at the way Malfoy looked almost ready to dance with outrage. “Don’t you think we should?”
“I think you don’t get to choose when to walk away from me!”
“Then get used to it,” Harry said. “Or find someone you want more.” He smiled at Malfoy. “Thank you for helping with my case.” He walked serenely away.
“Potter!”
“Floo me tomorrow if you’re still serious,” Harry said. “And not before then.”
The nice thing about the thickness of Malfoy’s bedroom door was that when Harry shut it, all his complaints were cut off.
Chapter Fifteen.
This entry was originally posted at http://lomonaaeren.dreamwidth.org/783960.html. Comment wherever you like.