Title: Shattered Curses
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Lucius
Content Notes: Silliness, fluff, mentions of past Harry/others
Wordcount: 2900
Rating: R
Summary: Harry has had such terrible luck in dating that he suspects he has a curse on him. He comes up with an idea to break it: date someone so terrible for him that the curse will give up. He picks Lucius Malfoy as the obvious worst choice.
Author's Notes: Another of my "From Samhain to the Solstice" fics.

Shattered Curses

"Explain to me the part where you need to date me but don't actually want to again, Mr. Potter."

Harry sighed. The steaming cup of tea in front of him had gone cold. He tapped his hand against the cup to warm it up again, and saw Lucius's eyes fasten on his fingers. He perked up a little. Maybe this could work. Some people were attracted to his wandless magic.

"Can you call me Harry? Or the curse might not break."

Lucius paused, his eyes raking up and down Harry's body even though they simply sat at a small outdoor café in Interesting Alley and Harry wore ordinary Muggle clothes. "Very well. Harry. Explain it to me again."

Harry licked his lips and let a shiver run through him, just enough that it should intrigue Lucius. "I don't find you unattractive or anything, Lucius. Just that you're not the sort I can see myself settling down permanently with."

"How reassuring. Explain your thought process again."

"I'm under a curse," Harry said. "There's no reason for things to happen like my first boyfriend slipping on ice and breaking his ankle on the first date, or my first girlfriend revealing herself as an autograph hunter and then trying to stab my heart out to sacrifice on an altar. I mean, how do you go from wanting an autograph to that?"

"I don't know," said Lucius gravely. "Of course, some autograph seekers can be quite passionate. Why do you think it a curse focused on your dating life and not a general bad luck curse?"

"I've almost been promoted all the way to Head Auror. I have great friendships. I found twenty random Galleons on the corner outside the Ministry the other day, for fuck's sake. But all my dates have been disasters."

"Beyond the two you mentioned?"

"Those were the least bad."

"I found the thought of you being sacrificed on an altar and dismissing that as an empty experience—annoying, Mr. Potter."

"Harry. Anyway, that was nothing next to almost being drugged so that someone could pretend I was dead and pose my body—that was the necrophiliac—or the woman who got drenched with urine by someone on a balcony above us, or the former Death Eater who tried to get close enough to stab me, or the one who turned out to be a horse in disguise."

"…A horse."

"Yes."

"I begin to see what you mean, Harry. Still, what makes you think me such a bad choice compared with the might of the curse? I am afraid that I am all man."

Lucius's voice dropped into a purr that led Harry's thoughts in unfortunate directions. Or maybe not so unfortunate, given that they could probably have sex and it would be terrible. Harry cleared his throat and continued on. "Because you hate me. Because you were a former Death Eater, so that part about you being an enemy is taken care of already, and because you would probably want to tie me to your bed and torture me, right? So that part where the curse could go wrong is taken care of. And because you would never be able to forget that my mother is a Muggleborn, so eventually you would explode in bigotry and prejudice. The curse hasn't tried that yet. I really think the combination of terrible circumstances will break it. That, or it doesn't, and I'm no worse off than I was before."

Lucius kept on looking at him in silence for a long moment. Then he raised his glass and said, "I am willing to try."

Harry clinked his glass against Lucius's, and they drank to that.

"I was thinking a date in a public place, first. To give things a chance to go wrong when people realize that I'm on a date with Lucius Malfoy."

Lucius had agreed with the peculiar thin-lipped smile that Harry found so damn attractive for some reason. Well, Harry thought as he stood waiting at the Apparition point where Lucius would arrive and they would stroll down Diagon Alley, this wouldn't work if I really didn't find him attractive. The curse probably wouldn't act at all.

Lucius arrived, and the sight of his broad shoulders straining the dress robes of dark silver made Harry's mouth ache with the urge to bite or water or mark or something. As it was, he forced himself to smile at Lucius and say, "Hello. You look very handsome. Thank you for coming with me." He held out his hand, and Lucius took it, then turned so that their arms were linked together and Harry was drawn snugly to his side.

"It was indeed my pleasure."

Harry shivered at the undertones in his voice, and then sighed and stepped out of the little side alley that contained the Apparition point.

They didn't attract much notice for perhaps a whole three seconds. Then heads turned and jaws dropped and people pointed and Harry heard the mutters take on a "Death Eater" tone. He had to smile. There was more chance of the curse breaking with public disapproval, perhaps. He had certainly suffered from public humiliation in the past, given what had happened with a few of his dates.

"This is amusing," Lucius whispered into his ear as they dawdled past the entrance to Flourish and Blotts. Harry told himself to calm down, given what that breath did to him. "Perhaps your plan has more merit than I thought it did."

"Yeah, I reckon it does," Harry said, with a sharp smile, and they went into the bookshop. Lucius emanated a polite air of disdain, but Harry simply rolled his eyes and stepped in among the shelves to browse. He was looking for anything on Defense or curses that he didn't already have.

Not that he expected to find anything that would tell him about the curse on his dating life. He'd only been able to discern its characteristics by what happened to him when he was actually on a date with someone; he hadn't been able to find anything that would tell him what it was called or who had cast it.

"Malfoy."

Harry turned slightly, shielded by the side of a shelf, to watch Lucius face down a fellow Auror. Harry let his eyebrows rise. That was Alfred Stockley, and he looked ready to duel Lucius right there in the shop.

"I'm afraid I don't recall your name," Lucius said, in a distant tone that had Harry hiding a snicker.

"No reason you should. I don't think good and decent Light wizards associate with Dark ones."

Harry couldn't resist the cue. He stepped out from between the shelves with a large leather-bound tome in his hand and fluttered his eyelashes at Lucius as if he didn't notice Stockley. "Lucius, darling, what do you think about this one? The title is unprepossessing, but I do think this is wyvern hide, isn't it?"

Lucius put a hand over his on top of the book, with a heavy-lidded look that said he knew exactly what Harry was doing. But he played along, glancing down at the book and back up with a patient expression. "Darling, I've told you that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover before."

"Potter! What are you doing?"

"Trying to decide on a book," Harry told Stockley, in a way that made Lucius's hand tighten quickly on his in appreciation.

"You're with a Death Eater!"

"Oh, yes, there was that little unpleasantness called a war, wasn't there?" Harry asked, furrowing his brow. He looked up at Lucius and caught a surprising amount of heat in his eyes. Then again, there was no reason that Lucius shouldn't enjoy himself. "I'd forgotten about it. When did it end again, darling?"

"You have him under the Imperius Curse!" Stockley had turned his wand on Lucius now.

Harry faced him, sighed, and dropped the act. "You know very well that I can throw off the Imperius Curse, Stockley. Do shut up and stop shoving your ignorance in all our faces."

Stockley fell back with a sharp gasp and a hanging mouth. "You—you're aware."

"Yes."

"That means you're here with a Death Eater of your own free will."

"Yes."

Stockley turned and marched away, his wand trembling in his hand. Harry laughed. Lucius pressed a warm, gloved hand against the small of his back. "You know that he might spread rumors."

"He might." Harry glanced around. Other people in the bookshop had noticed and were avoiding his eyes. He was vaguely surprised that no one had tried to curse them, but, well, the curse on his dating life must consider this small compared to some of the disasters it had caused in the past. "Let me pay for this book, and then we can go to dinner."

"I would enjoy that."

Yes, he's going to take advantage of this for all it's worth, Harry thought dryly, as he felt Lucius's hand press into the small of his back again.

"You are sure there's a curse?"

Harry ate a delicate slice of wild boar to avoid having to answer that question. This was the fourth restaurant he and Lucius had been at in as many weeks, and as yet, no one had tried to curse them, and the floor hadn't turned to ice so that Lucius fell and broke his ankle, and there hadn't been a live sheep dropping into the middle of the table.

"There has to be." Harry put his fork down only when he had completely chewed and swallowed. Lucius didn't look as though he would appreciate the gross games that Harry and Ron played with each other. "There have been too many terrible coincidences happening to the people who wanted to date me."

"Including the ones you asked out?"

Harry nodded. "Yes, so that doesn't make a difference." Harry eyed Lucius. The restaurant they were in tonight was dark except for the fire in the huge hearth, which meant that Lucius's pale face floated above the dark table and the seat, like a pew, he sat in. His wine glowed a soft blue. "What's your theory if there's not a curse?"

"Bad luck." Lucius sipped from his drink and then put it down, reaching out to touch Harry's hand. Little shivers ran up Harry's spine. Lucius smiled, an expression that wouldn't have been out of place above the whiskers of a jaguar contemplating its prey. "Combined with some active malice, because there are people who would want to hex someone who was dating you."

"But the horse? And the live sheep that fell into the middle of my table when I was here two years ago?"

"Live sheep?"

Harry told him, and by the time he was done, Lucius was laughing near-silently. In fact, the only reason Harry knew he was came from the trembling way that his fingers kept brushing Harry's hand. Harry smiled and drank his own red wine.

"Well, you told me that was a duel, and people were flinging objects everywhere," Lucius said when the story was done. "The sheep came from a pen off Knockturn Alley, right? Where haruspices use them for their entrails in divination."

"Ew."

"Yes, well. I think that was coincidence, Harry. Did the young woman you were dating at that point allow herself to be scared off?"

"Yes." Harry sighed back and put his wineglass down. "I suppose I've just got used to the fact that everyone is going to be scared off, and I'm waiting for the same thing to happen to you."

"I do not intend that it do so."

Lucius's voice was deep enough that Harry looked up sharply. Lucius's hand had come to rest on the table next to his. As Harry watched—his face more than his hand—Lucius's fingers extended and curled gently around his.

"I think," Lucius said, "that I do intend to spend the evening in bed with you."

Harry swallowed. They hadn't slept together yet. He'd been waiting, semi-impatiently, for the curse to do its work, and now, when he heard that it might not… He tightened his hand so that Lucius would have a harder time withdrawing his own.

"Yes, all right. Let's do it."

"God, Lucius."

Lucius hummed softly around his mouthful, not saying anything. His nails were tight, sharp, as they curled into Harry's hips. He held Harry's body still and controlled him beautifully, sucking, but not letting him thrust.

Harry tossed his head back on the pillows, the only movement he was allowed right now, and stared blankly at the ceiling. His legs twitched. His hands twitched. His eyes rolled back in his head in a second. The pleasure was intense and as all-encompassing as pain.

Lucius gave a single, long suck, and Harry shouted. Lucius smiled against him, but still held him down, and Harry didn't even have room to buck as he came. It made it shorter but intense, burning, as if he sat in a pool of fire.

Harry was still gasping when Lucius drew back and gave Harry his first good glance at him since they'd arrived at Harry's house. Lucius had wasted no time in stripping them both, but also no time in kneeling down and taking Harry onto his tongue.

Lucius looked pale all over, except for one long purple scar that twisted down his side. Harry reached out and trailed his fingers slowly down the scar, feeling it pucker here and there. Lucius watched him with the same interest that he'd given Harry since—

Since the moment I first asked him to date me, honestly. Harry propped himself up on his elbow and reached out. "Come here," he said softly. "I want you."

Lucius smiled and slid into his bed. Harry was still half-braced for something to happen, like a Dark wizard invading the house with a drawn wand or the bed suddenly collapsing, but nothing did as Lucius conjured lube and reached down between them. Harry held his breath and squirmed as Lucius's fingers went into him.

"If you hold your breath like that, it's going to be tight and hurt."

Harry nodded and released his breath with a slow huff. "Sorry. I just—it seems that there's always something about to happen. I haven't done this in a while because the curse never let me and the people I dated get that far."

Lucius's eyes turned practically incandescent. "How interesting," he purred, and his fingers slid deeper.

"You're jealous?"

"Merely interested in what I need to do to preserve this delightful state of affairs."

Harry rolled his eyes and exhaled heavily as Lucius's fingers twisted within him. "If you really want me to continue going without, take your hand out and don't put your cock in, either."

"That would be a loss," Lucius murmured, and replaced his cock with his fingers so quickly that Harry couldn't stifle a yelp. Lucius stroked his sides for a second, his head bent so that their eyes were on the same level. "I meant, what to do to make sure that I'm the only one inside you from now on."

"We've—barely started and you're talking about—forever?"

"That is the best time to talk about it."

Lucius thrust languidly, ignoring the way Harry cursed and swore at him. His hands were slow and busy on Harry's sides, his mouth on Harry's throat. Harry finally gave up the swearing for gasping, because he couldn't get his breath enough to speak. Every time he did, Lucius would thrust again and drive it away from him. Harry didn't know if he could come again, but it seemed Lucius was doing his damnedest to make him try.

And in the end, he did, his arse squeezing down around Lucius enough to make him still and stiffen. He followed Harry in what seemed to be a freefall a moment later, his arms tightening around him and his mouth clamping down on his throat in a way that drew a half-pained cry from Harry. He let his head fall back on Lucius's shoulder and his eyes roll shut.

"Damn."

"Yes. A successful evening." Lucius's hand came back, light enough to tickle, rising to the top of Harry's head and following his clump of sweat-soaked hair down. "Do you still believe there was a curse, Harry?"

Harry opened one eye and studied Lucius for a second. Then he said, "Well, I don't know. Sometimes it did let me have a few successful dates or even sleep with someone before it struck again, as long as it could make me suffer something embarrassing and painful. You should stay. You never know. It might come back."

Lucius's smile was as light as his fingers. "It might." He kissed the top of Harry's head and lowered him to the bed, still wrapped up in his body. "I suppose I will have to stay a long, long time, in case the curse gathers strength and manages to afflict you again. Perhaps even that forever we were talking about."

"You just might," Harry agreed, and tightened the hold of his arms. Lucius looked good like this. Harry might have to keep him.

If he was right and it was just bad luck, it's ended at last. If I was right and it was a curse, then I need him here.

Either way, we both win.

The End.