Title: Venture

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

Pairing: Harry/Draco

Warnings: Established relationship, angst, references to homophobia

Rating: R

Wordcount: 3800

Summary: Short sequel to Changing of the Guard. It started out as the smallest idea, one that Harry could hardly believe he'd had himself. But it grew into an obsession.

Author's Notes: An Advent fic for callistianstar, who asked for more of the world in Changing of the Guard. Hopefully this satisfies. Happy Advent!

Venture

It started because he saw Draco so often.

Well, of course he did. They lived together most of the time, they were lovers and partners, they were often together in public (if only because Harry would be guarding him in disguise) when Draco made the political speeches or Harry appeared in a rare showing of his name and face, for what good that would still do. Really, it was more surprising that he hadn't already come up with the idea.

But as he sat at the breakfast table one morning, admiring the fall of the sunlight down Draco's face and listening to Draco's hilariously funny renditions of the latest complaints about homosexuality, Harry felt that soft, minute shift inside himself. The one that used to accompany the birth of new faces and new personalities for him when he was still coming up with them on a regular basis for Metamorphosis.

Harry looked Draco in the face, and wondered what it would be like to become Draco, at least for a short time.

"What is it?" Draco looked up at him and arched an eyebrow. He had about a hundred different ways of doing that. At least Harry (usually) merited less of a lift than whatever political nonsense Draco was contending with now. "You're staring at me as though I'm the key to a lost Gringotts vault."

"I was just wondering," said Harry, and spread his hands out on the table to keep them from trembling with excitement. "You told me that you had those two political commitments this afternoon, right? One right after the other, on opposite sides of London?"

Draco snorted in disgust. "Yes. And Nathaniel absolutely refused to accept being put off." Nathaniel Nuthatch was the wizard who hosted what was called the Liasion, a small group that attempted to mediate between homosexual wizards and witches and the more traditional pure-bloods who didn't want to accept them. "He said I could just Apparate and arrive at his group's meeting ten seconds after the first one ended."

Harry hummed and tapped his fingers on the table, hoping that would distract Draco's attention from the idiotic grin that he could feel stretching his mouth. "Well. I was just wondering. What if I dealt with whatever commitment is more irritating for you?"

Draco crossed his legs and lounged with his arms over the back of the chair. "Is that the way you dealt with Hester Jerold last time?"

Harry flushed. Jerold was one of those annoying witches who had insisted on rushing up and kissing him on the cheek at a public demonstration, trying to prove that she could convert him to a straight life; all he needed was the right witch. What was invisible, unless you were like Harry and had an exquisite sense of what both potions and magic could do after using them to transform into other people for ten years, was that her lips had been coated with a combination of a love potion and a Calming Draught. She was going to lead Harry away from Draco and get him into an alley where she could...

Harry shook the memory off. It hadn't happened. "You notice that the Wizengamot did give her a sentence for improper use of a love potion."

"That doesn't necessarily mitigate the picture of you launching her thirty feet through the air atop a lightning bolt," Draco said dryly. "It's the picture that damaged us, not what you were really doing."

Harry moved his hand down sharply. "I wouldn't have a problem handling Nuthatch unless you think that you would. I'd be going as you."

Draco's eyes widened, and he sat there, his hands folded in front of him, studying Harry like he was one of those complicated word puzzles Draco loved to solve so much. Then he said, his voice uninflected, "I assume that you don't mean simply a potion that turns your hair blond and gives you a little more grace."

"No," said Harry, and smiled at him. He was growing more enamored of the idea the more he thought about it. "I mean taking on your guise the way I used to take on the guises of other people." He leaned back and stared at Draco, letting his eyes go unfocused, taking in the contours of Draco's face, imagining the way he would reshape his own into them with the use of spells. "I've rarely done a real person before, only ones I imagined. It could be fun."

"I find it hard to imagine you as me," said Draco. "I don't know if I want to imagine you as me."

Harry grinned. There was a glint in Draco's eye that said he might not want to imagine it, but that wasn't the same thing as not wanting to see it. "Let me try? And if you're dissatisfied with the way I'm presenting you, then you can go back to dashing between meetings. But let me try first."

Draco spent a few more minutes thinking, in silence. Harry didn't rush him. He watched the way that Draco held his hands when he was thinking, instead. He might have to do a lot of thinking and impulse control when he was impersonating Draco, and this was the sort of small gesture that, while it wouldn't necessarily give him away if he didn't master it, might make people uneasy.

That was the fun of the game, for Harry. No one had ever suspected him as Harry Potter when he was playing his characters from Metamorphosis, until the very end. He didn't want them to suspect him as Draco Malfoy, either.

"All right," said Draco, abruptly, turning to him. "I want to see what this looks like. But if I don't like it, then you're not leaving the house."

Harry paused, rising from his chair slowly to stare at Draco. "That's not the same thing as making me remove the disguise. Why not?"

Draco's eyes shone back at him as he folded his arms. "Because I want to see what happens when you make the change. And I might not want to share it with other people."

Harry gave him a single deep smile and spun to head up the stairs. He would make this transformation with exactly the amount of haste it needed, keeping in mind his deadlines and his prior knowledge of Draco, but also the many small changes he would need to make. He would probably need some of the special sort of shoes, to alter his walk to that way of Draco's that was like a dance, and he would have to grow a bit, and he would have to make sure that his hands were more slender...

He relished the challenge.

Draco laughed quietly to himself as he watched Harry dash up the stairs. Harry had been a bit disgruntled the last few days, ever since a wizard who had been sent from Counterstrike had nearly managed to cast the Imperius Curse on him. That wizard hadn't known who he was enchanting, since Harry had been in disguise, but that fact had also worked against Harry, since he was so deep into playing his persona that he hadn't automatically resisted the curse.

Harry became the people he was playing, submerging himself into their personalities with a skill that had engaged both Draco's admiration and dread ever since he saw it for the first time. Well, saw it for the first time and knew who was behind the mask. At first, he had been as fooled as anyone else.

Since they had engaged in a necessary conversation-well, two of them, one when Draco first found out the truth and another when he managed to keep Harry from what would have been a kind of suicide of his own persona-Harry had been much better about that. He now acknowledged that it was himself behind all those masks, that Harry Potter wasn't a mere weak-willed vessel whose only purpose was to act as a host to much more interesting people.

But he had never done something like this before, apparently, submerged himself into becoming someone he knew so well. Draco did want to see the results, but he was more than a little wary.

Two hours later, when he was studying the final notes for the speech he'd have to give and heard a series of light, quick footsteps on the stairs, he knew he'd been right to be.

He, himself, Draco Malfoy, came through the doorway of the library.

Draco lowered his newspaper and gave the disguise a look of calm study, hoping that would hide the way his heart had leaped into his throat. It looked, it honestly did, as if his reflection had stepped out of mirror and was walking around the library, studying it with a small smirk that Draco had heard his friends accuse him of giving.

"I do not smirk like that," Draco said, involuntarily, the way he had the last time Pansy told him he did.

"Yes, you do, at your friends' inferior libraries," said his own voice, and Harry turned around and looked at him.

It was only by reminding himself several times that this was Harry in front of him that Draco could hang onto his sense of his own personality. Harry played him so well that Draco almost felt as though he was floating out of the chair, turned into a ghost that would stay in this room until Harry took off the disguise and became the man Draco loved again.

"How did you achieve my hair color?" he found himself asking, though, exactly as if it was a reflection after all. That was not his hair color. It was a hair color that Harry had managed to duplicate, that was all.

Amusement shone in Harry's face, but it was amusement the way Draco would have done it, with a little cock of his head and the inevitable downward curl of the left side of his lips. "Dye."

Draco glared at him.

Harry laughed and turned to face the library doorway. "I assume we're still doing this? You haven't changed your mind about my taking your place?"

Draco relaxed. It was a little easier to hang onto the sense of the matter when he couldn't see Harry's face and when Harry was speaking about them as separate people. "I think you'll fool them. And I don't want to keep you just in the walls of the house."

He had thought he might find Harry playing him inspiring in the bedroom sense. And why not? After all, he knew what he looked like, and he had found Harry attractive in plenty of his other guises.

But this wasn't inspiring, or arousing, or even playful. It was simply unnerving. Draco shook his head and stood up. "Be careful with Nathaniel. Not that I think he'll discover your pretense, but he does prove sensitive to every little bit of contempt, and it'll be a problem for both of us if he senses it from you."

"I know that," said Harry, with a little toss of his head and a gleaming grin over his shoulder at Draco. "You don't need to tell me what to do."

And he was gone, leaving Draco to shut his eyes in admiration and worry.

"I have the impression that you aren't paying much attention to me, Malfoy."

Harry let his eyelids droop the way Draco's would as he turned to smile at Nuthatch. "You'd be mistaken, then, Nathaniel," he said, and flipped his hair over his shoulder the way he had when he was leaving the library. "I remember perfectly well what we talked about last time-" he should, since Draco had spent two hours complaining about Nuthatch's unreasonable demands to Harry "-and I assure you that I'm giving it my utmost attention."

"But you aren't paying attention to me." Nuthatch's fingers dug into Harry's arm. Harry carefully took his arm back and rearranged the disarrayed folds of his sleeve. "I need to know that you're doing that."

"How is paying attention to your plans not paying attention to you?" Harry fell back a step and turned to give a smile towards the crowds. Draco had a better rapport with them than Harry did, partially due to Draco's sleeping with women in the past and partially due to Harry's lingering reputation as a recluse. "I thought they were the same thing."

"Careful, Malfoy. You don't know whose heels you're treading on."

Harry turned around with another faint smile, but with a sick pounding at the base of his throat. He could feel it, the way he had when he had fallen too far into the persona of Brian, the man he had originally created to be Draco's boyfriend. Something was going wrong. The persona, the impression, was sliding away from him. He didn't feel as though he was that person, Draco to the roots of his mind; he was Harry Potter playing dress-up in a Draco skin.

Perhaps that was a natural side-effect of having a stronger personality, now, the way Draco was always encouraging Harry to think of himself as himself, instead of a host of traits and mannerisms that he could mine for inclusion in a new persona. But that wasn't going to help him here and now.

"I don't know what you mean," Harry said, quietly, bowing close to Nuthatch so the eager crowd who'd listened to and applauded Harry's nuanced little speech on the coming together of gay and straight wizards wouldn't be able to read his lips. Unnecessarily paranoid, perhaps, but their enemies had tried assassination attempts in the past, and sometimes their supporters hadn't been much better if they thought Harry was disappointing them. "Are you worried about those ridiculous rumors that circulated, the ones that said you and I were lovers?" He curled his upper lip, and at least he had the advantage of remembering exactly how Draco would do that. Draco had often kissed Harry right after reading another rumor that he was supposedly pursuing someone else. "Because I don't know what else you mean by treading on your heels."

Nuthatch flushed vividly, and then seemed to realize that standing so close and letting Harry whisper in his ear would only add to the rumors. But he controlled himself instead of leaping away, because that would also set back the cause. Harry could admire the way he adjusted his robe collar, nodding at Harry as if in thanks to him for noticing some piece of dirt or fluff, and then turned majestically back to the room at large.

"Our thanks to Draco Malfoy for such a moving speech," he said, and once again people began to applaud enthusiastically. Harry managed Draco's bow, but his head spun a little. Once again, he was thinking of himself as Harry, not the person he was imitating. This wasn't so easy after all.

Maybe I'm just not meant to play real people. Coming up with my own people and their histories is more exciting.

Or maybe...

Maybe I'm just used to being myself when Draco is around, and he's convinced me to keep being myself even out of his sight.

It was a strange thought, not an entirely welcome one, and it might lead to problems with Nuthatch later, since Harry didn't know what situation he was referring to and Draco hadn't seen fit to enlighten Harry. But for the moment, he was going to get out of here all right; Nuthatch avoided him for the rest of the afternoon, and Harry was able to Apparate home with only his own concerns weighing on his mind.

"It didn't go well?" Draco asked quietly when he stepped into the kitchen and found Harry sitting at the table with a cup of ginger tea, looking like himself. Both were almost equally indicative of Harry's state of mind.

Harry looked up at him with a lost expression that made Draco swiftly cross the space between them. His own speech had gone well despite a more hostile audience than Nuthatch's group had. If Nuthatch had done something to hurt Harry...

"He said something about you treading on his heels, and I didn't know what he meant," Harry said softly. "I put him off, and I don't think he suspected I wasn't you, but." He stopped the sentence and wrapped his fingers around his cup.

Draco snorted and sat down across from Harry, glad it was nothing worse than this. "Nuthatch thinks that some of the ideas we've been implementing to make gay wizards and witches more acceptable in society are his, and we've been falsely claiming them as ours. Or that I've been claiming them as mine. That's all. Don't worry about it." He took Harry's hand, waited until Harry looked at him, and added softly, "I'm glad that you couldn't fall too far into that pretense of being me."

"Why?" Harry shook his head before Draco could answer. "I know, you want me to be me and you're not displeased that I'm finding it harder to keep a hold of my personas. But this time, it could have been a much bigger problem than it was."

"It could have been, but I trusted you to hold the problems at bay, and you did," said Draco simply, bending to kiss the fingers he held. They spasmed once in his hold before Harry visibly made them relax. "And I found you as me boring, Harry. I like that we're separate people. I like that we have separate strengths. I like knowing the true person behind the mask."

Harry paused, then gave him a smile that Draco saw sparkled with mischief at the edges, which relieved him somewhat. "And you found the way I could imitate you so well unnerving."

"Shut up," Draco growled, although it was perfectly true. The very skills that had let Harry copy his mannerisms and gait and looks and voice within a shade of perfection proved how well Harry knew Draco.

Harry stood and came around the kitchen, bending down to kiss Draco hard. Draco felt the shift in mood-he'd have to have a skin of iron not to-and wasn't at all surprised when Harry whispered, "Let me take you upstairs and show you what I can do."

Draco smiled, extended his hand, and let himself be led.

By now, sex between them was an elegant dance that they didn't need to spend a lot of time considering. Harry knew when he wanted it, he knew when Draco did, and it all collided in a flurry of sparks that made it as easy for him to undress Draco and steer him into the bedroom, and for Draco to yield to him, as it was for either of them to cast the preparation spells.

Draco was reclining with his hands behind his head, watching Harry with frank appreciation that wasn't new but was unusual in its sheer intensity, and Harry paused to watch him back as he worked his fingers into Draco's arse. "What is that look for?"

"It's because I knew that I preferred you the way you were, but I hadn't been reminded of it in a while." Draco caught his free hand and kissed it, all careless grace even when he was naked and spreading his legs. "I love you for being you."

Harry flushed deeply and slid into Draco a minute later without saying anything. There was nothing to say. He had been scolding himself for not playing the part of Draco to perfection earlier that day, for not being someone else.

Now he knew that he was the person Draco wanted, and it was hard to resist the heady sensation that affected him when he remembered it.

"I love you," Harry said, when he was thrusting into Draco and he thought his flush of embarrassment was sufficiently mixed with the one of exertion that was spreading all over his skin.

"I love you, too," Draco said, and took his hand and kissed it again.

He shouldn't have had the breath or the concentration for that, Harry decided, and he picked up the pace of his thrusts. In seconds, Draco was gasping, and gripping Harry's hand now as if he needed a port in a storm. Harry bent over, almost contorting his body in half-it was still less of a gymnast's feat than some of the other things he had done in various disguises-and kissed Draco again.

Draco was still able to touch Harry's hair and the back of his neck, but his hand shook too much to do anything else. He finally began to arch his spine and grunt a little, and his bright, startling eyes closed.

Harry kissed him again, and then drew back. He wanted to give Draco as much pleasure as he could, and it was difficult at this angle.

Draco caught him with both hands behind his neck before he could withdraw, and kept him in that position. They rocked awkwardly, Harry's knees aching and his neck probably glinting with the impress of Draco's fingers.

But Harry wouldn't trade it for anything else, not even being able to impersonate Draco perfectly as he wished he had.

"You're so delicious," Draco said, and he kissed Harry once more before he tossed his head back and began to silently come.

Harry shivered in delight as he felt Draco's body tighten around him, and then he surrendered in the same way, hands finally shifting to Draco's shoulders when he couldn't do anything else to hold himself up. Draco's arms tumbled limply to the bedsheet, and his sweaty face tilted to the side, so full of bliss that it made Harry ache in a different way.

He curled up beside Draco, still holding him, and Draco's fingers felt all over his face, apparently tracing the features that he ought, Harry knew, to have memorized by now.

"I love you," Draco breathed, "the way you are."

Flaws and all. Harry nestled his head into the side of Draco's neck and didn't respond. He had no words that would match the emotion of the ones Draco had said. Instead, what he gave was his actions: he didn't retreat, he lay there and let Draco position him the way he wanted once Harry had pulled out, and his hands were always open and his mind not racing with plots and plans and ways to be other people.

He could accept any failure in himself, any flaw, as long as he had Draco.

He could even accept that some of those things he thought of as flaws were, for Draco, no such thing.

This was love.

The End.