Title: Lord of Misrule

Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

Pairing: Harry/Draco

Warnings: Crack

Rating: PG-13

Wordcount: 3800

Summary: Maybe Harry and Draco should have listened to their friends when they said the universe was against a Gryffindor and a Slytherin dating.

Author's Notes: Written as an Advent fic for sisi_rambles, who asked for an H/D story with the prompt The universe does just not want them to go on this date!

Lord of Misrule

Harry smiled at Draco as they came into the small restaurant that had just opened near the mouth of Knockturn Alley. Temptingly Dark enough that Draco had agreed that it would be a suitable setting for their first public date, it didn't actually use Dark Arts. Harry knew that because Hermione had firecalled ahead and made sure of it.

"I don't want you getting arrested," Hermione had told him frankly when Harry scolded her for it. "This date is going to be enough trouble as it is."

Harry had rolled his eyes. Secretly, he was glad that she cared enough to find out for him, but he didn't appreciate the insinuation of trouble.

"What would it take to convince you Draco's changed?" he demanded. "For him to spend a year as a Healer tending to war-damaged wizards in St. Mungo's? Oh, wait, he did that. To donate most of his money to a fund for poor orphans? Oh, wait, he did that, too. Come on, Hermione. You're getting as bad as Ron."

Ron had sworn an oath to lock himself in his room and go on a hunger strike as long as Harry was dating Draco. It had lasted an impressive three hours.

"It's not me," said Hermione. "It's public perception, and prejudice, and perspective, and policy—"

"Yes, and other words starting with p," Harry interrupted hastily. Let Hermione start rolling, she wouldn't stop until long past the time he was supposed to meet Draco tomorrow. "Fine, but I don't care what the public thinks, and neither does Draco."

Hermione eyed him. "Right," she said after a moment. "That would be why you have that little portable shield floating around you. You can take that off when you're indoors, you know."

Harry looked down in surprise at the shield floating in front of his chest. "I could," he agreed. "But what if the roof falls on me?"

"No, that'll happen on your date," said Hermione, voice charged with prophetic meaning. But Hermione wasn't Sybil Trelawney, and Harry felt comfortable ignoring her.

The restaurant was the Heart of Ice, and all the decorations were meant to evoke the feeling of being in the heart of an iceberg. Draco murmured praise of the pale walls with stripes of purple and green and red and yellow running through them as the hostess, clad in a floating white robe and snowflake mask, escorted them to a round table beneath one of the many icicle-shaped chandeliers hanging from the ceiling.

"This is pretty," Draco confirmed, when they were sitting across from each other and Harry had taken his hand.

"It is," Harry said, beaming. They had firecalled their orders ahead, and now all they had to do was sit there and wait for their food.

All they had to do.

Harry had already taken off his boots, to walk on the soft, snow-deep white carpet that covered the floor of the Heart of Ice. Though the decorations were all focused around a theme of cold, it was perfectly warm in the large room, with a fireplace every few feet down the circular walls. Harry smiled now, and began to slide his foot up and down Draco's leg.

Draco stared at him with wide eyes, and then let his eyes close and moaned.

It was an unexpectedly loud sound. Harry jumped a little when he noticed the people glaring from the nearby tables, but he determined to ignore it. If they didn't want to see some affection, he thought, they shouldn't have come here on a night when Harry and Draco were having their first date.

"Your foot is so soft," Draco whispered. "And firm. And hard." He arched his leg forwards, so that Harry could run his foot up it better, towards Draco's groin.

Harry was almost there, in fact, and having to lean back in his chair at an angle that was slightly painful for his back, when the chandelier above them loosened from its chain and plunged towards the table.

Harry had set fire to three hundred Howlers, five dozen requests for interviews, and seven outraged letters from Ginny by the time Draco arrived at his house to go on their date. Draco had looked at all the ashes on the floor, changed his pristine Healer's robes for older ones, and turned, blinking, to Harry for an explanation. Harry admired the way he had cared more for clean robes than an explanation.

"All the people who think that we shouldn't be dating," Harry said. "Shall we?" And he stepped forwards, holding out his arm, elbow crooked, for Draco to take.

He tripped on one of the piles of ashes and pitched forwards. If Draco hadn't caught him, he would have broken his nose on the hearth. They stared at each other for a few moments before Draco carefully helped him stand and took a step back.

"Maybe they're right," said Draco.

"Nonsense," Harry said, and Vanished all the ashes so that couldn't happen again. "Shall we?" This time, Draco managed to take his elbow, and they made an acceptable promenade out the door.

Harry's mind slowed for a moment when he saw what looked like a huge icicle falling towards Draco. It was towards Draco, there was no doubt about that. Someone had aimed it at him deliberately, and this was an assassination attempt—

Harry whipped out his wand and Transfigured the chandelier into a real icicle. There. Now the heat in the restaurant ought to melt it, and it wouldn't be a danger by the time it hit the floor.

Except the heat didn't work fast enough, and the icicle slammed into the table with enough force to splinter it anyway. Harry had only managed to move it so that it was aimed more at him than at Draco. And then his shield deflected it a little, but not enough. Flying chunks of ice hit Harry, and lashed at his eyes, and at the heads of some people behind them, who shrieked.

They need to survive a few more wars, Harry thought darkly, and cast a spell that should melt the last of the icicle. Then he stood up, intending to see if Draco was okay, slipped in a puddle of icewater, and sat as abruptly down again. His dress robes were sodden, and his date was ruined.

But although Draco was a little shaken, he seemed still in the mood. He came around the table and checked Harry's eyes and pulse and head, but, well, he was a Healer, they did that. At least he wasn't suggesting they should go home right away, and for now, Harry was prepared to count that a win.

The hostess had come back and was trying to gabble something at them about how that was the first chandelier that had ever fallen. Harry inclined his head sharply. "Well, another one won't fall on us," he said, and led Draco out the door.

They didn't trip on anything this time, because Harry was determined that it should be so. He turned to Draco once they were outside. "I'm so sorry," he whispered, touching Draco's wet hair.

Draco shook his head. "The Leaky Cauldron? At least they don't have anything hanging from the ceilings."

Harry laughed at that way of looking at it, and led the way.

The threatening letters had been coming for longer than the Howlers and upset messages from Ginny that Harry had destroyed, honestly. For example, some had come demanding his blood and saying that he didn't deserve to date a god among wizards like Draco.

Those letters all appeared to be from the same person, since they were written in the same hand. Draco had looked at them and shaken his head, though. "I don't know who that would be. And no one except you thinks that I'm a god."

"I think of you as a demigod, maybe," Harry had said teasingly, and Draco had laughed, and Harry had leaned forwards to kiss him.

That hadn't worked, mostly because Harry had mashed his nose into Draco's lips instead of his mouth but also because they had heard the voices of other Healers around the corner, but other things would work out.

Harry was determined that they would work out, and what he wanted, he got accomplished. Who else had managed to defeat the undefeatable Dark Lord, finally?

Of course, he did hope that dating Draco wouldn't take him seventeen years, the way that had. But Harry was optimistic.

The Leaky Cauldron was dim and full of flickering shadows. Tom grunted and gave them their food without looking up at them. The people who watched them whispered for a minute, but they seemed more inclined to turn back to their own shady business, which probably included the plotting of world domination.

Harry found it refreshing.

"You know that you're going to eat greasy pub food and have Firewhisky in stained mugs to drink from," he warned Draco as they sat down.

"I know," said Draco, and smiled at him. "I don't mind at all as long as you go back to what you were doing."

It took Harry a moment to remember what that was, but then he smiled and took off his dragonhide boot again. He put his socked foot on the floor for a second before he ran it up Draco's leg, adjusting himself for the best angle.

Something on the floor bit him on the ankle. Hard.

Harry yelped and swung his ankle straight up. His foot hit Draco in the groin, and Draco fell back against his chair, groaning. Harry would have been more concerned about that if he hadn't been trying so hard to see what had bitten him.

The question was answered as a gigantic spider—the biggest one Harry had ever seen that wasn't actually an Acromantula—darted from under the table into the middle of the room. It had hunched black legs and shiny chitin and, Harry could swear, eight red eyes that glared at everyone around it impartially. It raised its front legs and gave a single, high-pitched scream in warning.

Harry looked down at the swelling on his ankle. It was in the shape of a lightning bolt.

That, combined with the red eyes…

Harry, before he fainted, was opening his eyes mouth to yell that Voldemort had returned in the form of a spider. Maybe it was a good thing that he didn't get a chance to shout it.

"Something always comes up," Draco had said apologetically, pulling his Healer robes back on as Harry slouched back onto the couch in a mixture of frustrated desire and aching hardness.

Harry watched from under his eyelids as Draco got dressed again. He was handsome doing even that, Harry had to admit, but he would feel more gracious about admitting that if he ever got to see Draco with his clothes off. Every time they tried to make love, something came up. There were other Healers who needed Draco, or Harry's friends wanted to come over, or he tripped on something and needed Draco's help to steady himself and then the mood was lost.

Or, as in this case, there was an urgent firecall from St. Mungo's. One of Draco's patients needed him, and it was a wealthy widow who wouldn't let anyone else treat her because she insisted that she trusted Healer Malfoy's "correct instincts." Draco said she spent most of the time they stayed together flirting with him.

"Don't let Mrs. Waverley seduce you, now," Harry muttered from the couch. He knew that he sounded sour, but he really couldn't help it.

Draco paused to shoot him a quick smile. "There's only one person I want, and he's currently sulking and acting like a prat."

Harry blinked before jerking a thumb at himself in silent question. Draco nodded and vanished through the fireplace while Harry was still disputing that characterization of himself.

Harry fell asleep, and didn't wake up until hours later when Draco came in with his hair bedraggled and muttered, "Mrs. Waverley didn't want me after all. But I got caught up in this meeting, and then some other patients needed me, and they required another brewer because Martin got sick from the bicorn horn again…"

Harry got up long enough to propel Draco down the corridor to his bedroom, where they curled up and shared the rest of the night sleeping back-to-back. That was nice, if not a patch on what Harry wanted to be doing.

"I'm here, Harry. It's all right."

Harry opened his eyes—where else—in St. Mungo's. Draco sat next to his bed, talking in a soothing voice. It would have soothed Harry more if Draco hadn't been dressed in his Healer's robes and looking at the scarlet letters of a Diagnostic Charm hovering in front of him with a frown.

"What's happening?" Harry demanded. A thought occurred to him. "Did someone squash that spider? Or capture it so you could tell what the poison was?"

Draco smiled at him, but Harry knew a fake smile when he saw one. This wasn't quite on the danger level of Hermione's I-found-a-book-you-should-read smile, but it was pretty close to Aunt Petunia's I-thought-of-a-chore-you-could-do one.

"We caught the spider," Draco said soothingly. "And we're analyzing the poison now. We're sure that we'll know what it is in a few more hours."

Harry stared at Draco with his mouth open before he could stop himself. "What do you mean, know what it is?" he asked when he could get his mouth under control. "You don't recognize the poison?" This was St. Mungo's, full of experts on all sorts of wizarding ailments. One of them should know spiders that only lived under a rock on the highest mountain in Never-Never-Land.

Draco shook his head. "Sorry. But we'll recognize it soon enough to keep you from losing the leg, I'm sure." He patted Harry comfortably on the hip and then turned away to study the Diagnostic Charm again.

"Draco? Draco!"

But Draco had departed from the room, and a mediwitch stepped up to Harry with a faint, chiding frown. "You don't want to displease an important Healer like Healer Malfoy, do you, Mr. Potter? After all, he has such a dedication to his job. And such a nasty temper," she added, frowning a little.

"What did he mean by losing my leg?" Harry asked her, grabbing her hand.

The mediwitch clucked and patted his shoulder. "He said that you won't lose it. Only a forty percent chance of that, you know. Otherwise, he would have used the word likely!" She beamed at Harry, and then called anxiously for help to handle a patient foaming at the mouth.

"You should really reconsider it," said Hermione, when she heard about the threatening letters and the way that Harry and Draco could never have sex. "It's the universe talking to you, warning you away from each other, mark my words."

Harry noticed that she didn't say that again after he had set up wards that barred Ginny's letters, and the number of them went down. They didn't stop, completely, but it seemed that a lot of them came from Ginny. And Harry had to cut off the firecall where she complained tearfully that she was just trying to help fate along, and it had nothing to do with any lingering desire she had to date Harry.

Ron shook his head at Harry and silently handed him parchments covered with Divination predictions that said his match with Draco was doomed—predictions that Ron said he had got from looking into his teacup when he was done drinking the tea, and reading the leaves.

"You didn't ever make a true prediction when we were in Trelawney's class," Harry had protested.

"Maybe the talent is flourishing late in life," Ron said solemnly. "You never know."

Then he had to leave the room and excuse himself to go to the loo. It seemed there was a price for drinking that much tea.

Harry had almost fallen asleep when the door to his hospital room opened, and Draco came back in. He held the spider that had bitten Harry on his hand. Harry promptly sat up and searched frantically for his wand.

It had been taken. Some long-ago administrator of St. Mungo's had thought it was a good idea to bar patients from having their wands so they wouldn't accidentally curse their Healers when the Healers hurt them.

"Take it away!" Harry yelled, not caring how much he sounded like Ron at the moment.

"It has some apologizing to do," said Draco heavily, and he bent down and released the spider onto the floor.

Harry decided that his friends, and the universe, had been right, and dating Draco had been a bad idea. Clearly, he had either gone mad, or decided that Harry was enough of a hero to battle a spider like that with his bare hands—which just meant he was mad in another way.

But then the spider quivered, and trembled, and grew upwards. A naked man crouched there instead, his head twisting away more the longer that Harry stared at him. Harry was a little surprised that his Animagus form hadn't been an owl. He seemed to have a very flexible neck.

"Who?" Harry asked. He couldn't part his lips very far when he asked it, and it came out as a whistle of air.

Draco heard him, and answered anyway. "Theodore Nott. He's also the one who's been sending all those threatening letters to you calling me a god and saying that you shouldn't date me." He put his hands on his hips and frowned at Nott.

"You wanted me to," said Nott, and Harry flinched. His voice still had some of the high-pitched whine of the spider. Or maybe that was just the whine of a Slytherin who'd been caught. "You said that you wanted me to pressure him so he would get on with things."

Harry stared at Draco the way he'd stared at Nott. Draco, though, didn't flinch away, but just sighed and shook his head. "Yes, it's true that I told Theodore to send you a few letters, threaten you a few times, get you ready for the big adventure. You were so slow. Every time that I wanted to have sex with you or go on a date with you, you tripped on a piece of carpet, or you hesitated until St. Mungo's had to firecall me, or you started talking about your friends and the universe being against us."

"I did not!" Harry said indignantly. "St. Mungo's firecalled you all the time, and when you did come home, you were too tired to be in the same bed with me and stay awake!"

Nott winced and covered his ears. Draco stared at Harry levelly over Nott's head. "Don't you recognize hard-to-get when someone's playing it? I wanted you to fuck me in the corridors here. I wanted you to bend me over an empty patient's bed and go at it. I wanted you to seize me in your drawing room and have your wicked way with me. And you just tried to kiss me all the time, and worried about my safety when the letters started arriving, and went slowly until someone really did interrupt us."

"What was I supposed to do?" Harry hid his face in his hands.

"Fuck me."

"What did the spider have to do with it?" Harry muttered, still not looking up.

"Oh, that." Draco shrugged. "It seems that Nott went too far with the writing of the letters, and convinced himself that I really was a god and he really was in love with me. So he cast a bad-luck curse that brought down the chandelier and then turned into his spider form and bit you when that didn't work. I recognized his Animagus form right away, of course. I was able to bring him in and Mind-Heal him, and now he's sane."

"You don't have authority or training to be a Mind-Healer," was the only, absurd thing Harry could think of to say.

"I do when it's one of my friends and I understand exactly why they're acting that way." Draco sighed and nudged Nott a little with his foot. "Believe me, it's happened before, this falling hopelessly in love with me. There was Pansy for a few years before I figured it out and managed to cure her, and then it was Millicent, and then it was Greg." To Harry's horror, that was the only one Draco looked a little wistful about. "It figures, of course," he said, and he looked up and straight at Harry, "that when someone I want does fall in love with me, he won't fuck me."

Harry closed his eyes. "Did it ever occur to you to use some other means to get me to fuck you?"

"No," said Draco.

Of course it hadn't. Harry opened his eyes warily. Nott, to his relief, had left the room. There was probably only so much talk of fucking he could listen to when he knew he wouldn't be getting any.

Harry looked at Draco, and then shook his head. "I understand what you mean," he whispered, "about the way that people fall helplessly in love with you and won't get out. Because, Merlin help me, I'm the same way." Even after that confession, he wanted to be with Draco, and damn what the universe had to say about it.

Draco smiled and held out a hand towards him. "Then you'll fuck me now?"

"Yes," said Harry. "As soon as you take out your wand and seal up that fireplace."

Draco did so, right as someone began to call "Healer Malf—" from it. And then Draco was shedding his robes, and climbing into bed with Harry.

Harry paused before he kissed him. "And I won't lose the leg?"

Draco paused abruptly. "Shit. I forgot to collect the poison from Theodore's fangs before he changed back. The poison has to be used in the antidote." He started to climb out of the bed again.

"No, no," Harry said hastily, drawing him back. "It can wait. This can't."

And together, they proved that good things came to those who waited, even to someone who had to go through an agonizing procedure to remove the built-up poison the next morning.

The End.