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Part Two

"I never knew that so many of my ancestors were good at Potions."

Lucius looked up from the other side of the wide table that now occupied the drawing room, where they had both been occupying themselves with books. "You sound wistful."

"I'm not good at them. I'm never going to be." Harry flipped a few pages and then sighed and shut the book. He knew already that this one was only going to depress him right now. "I'll go out now and fly a few laps around the village."

"I would prefer that you explain to me why you think that you will never be able to improve your scores at Potions."

"It's not about scores now," Harry said, standing up. Lucius's eyes were fixed on him. Harry had never spent enough time around him before to realize how piercing those damn gazes were. "It's about just—feeling comfortable. Feeling at ease with them. And it's Snape, of course. I can hear his voice sneering in the back of my head every time I even think about brewing."

"Ah." Lucius closed his book on his finger and sat back a little. "Then you think improving at Potions is necessary in order to make the house feel like a home?"

"I didn't say that. Just that it would be easier if I had that gift my ancestors did."

"I can teach you."

Harry blinked. "Potions?"

"Why not? It sounds as though you have placed some weight on it, which makes it important. Remember, Mr. Potter, the ritual to infuse the house with your connection to your ancestors depends on the way you feel. Not the way someone else does, not the way that someone else thinks you should."

Harry hesitated, his fingers tracing the glass edge of the table where it met the exquisite wooden frame. "I don't want to ask…you've done so much already…"

"You truly have no idea of the magnitude of the debt I'm paying back, Harry. Let me do this."

Harry relaxed, a little. He still didn't like to hear Lucius talking about the debts, but at least he knew that they would make Lucius behave a certain way, and with the odd manner his heart had taken to bounding in whenever Lucius looked at him, he needed reassurance. "All right. Thank you."

"Thank you."

Lucius's eyes took on that gleam that was even odder than the way Harry's heart bounded, and Harry escaped to his broom before he had to figure out how good Lucius was at Legilimency and how likely he would be to see the thought drifting behind Harry's eyes.

"You have never learned to be comfortable around cauldrons, have you?" Lucius asked thoughtfully the next day after their first Potions lesson.

Harry stretched his arms and rolled his neck. "Not really. I had no chance to do it during my childhood, and—"

He glanced over, found Lucius frankly staring, and averted his eyes. He's only staring because this shirt is Muggle, Harry told himself firmly. You misinterpret everything. He cleared his throat and managed to finish, "And then after that, the Potions classroom was always a place of danger."

"You need to learn how to make at least some simple potions. Healing potions, hangover cures, the like."

"I know. And I know this one was a failure," Harry nodded at the cauldron that still had steam rising out of it where the Hair-Sleeking Potion was dissolving in a horrid lump at the bottom, "but I came closer than I would have if I was trying to brew it on my own. Thank you."

"I wish to hear you thank me for different things."

Harry looked up sharply. Lucius was leaning over the cauldron, eyes still fixed on him. And dilated in a way that Harry doubted had anything to do with the fumes from the failed potion.

Harry kept himself from backing away. After the war, he tried not to flinch from things that he knew other people would think were perfectly normal. Instead, he fixed a normal smile on his face and said, "Oh?"

"Yes."

And normality has failed, Harry thought as he watched the stark emotions flaring to life on Lucius's face. Damn it.

"Oh," Harry said, in a different tone this time, and watched Lucius turn away, one of his hands reaching out to deposit a fluttering touch on one of Harry's.

"You seem to me to be lonely."

Harry looked up from his book that detailed some of the legends of the founding of the Potter family that might or might not be accurate. Lucius sat in the red wingback chair in front of the fire that he preferred, his eyes as lazy as a cat's while he looked at Harry.

"Well, it would feel that way, of course, wouldn't it?" Harry asked, curious. "Because it's a lonely house and you're here to help me turn it back into a home."

Lucius inclined his head slowly. Harry had the odd feeling that he'd not meant it that way. "I mean that you sit as though you are self-contained. Not lounging, the way I thought someone without any training in posture would. Am I mistaken and you have had more than I thought you did?"

"I think that might be your stereotypes of Gryffindors getting in the way again."

"I don't think so." Lucius reached out from the chair, across the table between them, to smooth his fingers down Harry's knuckles. "I thought someone such as you would be expansive, reaching out to the world. But you seem to be trying to hide from it."

"I am plenty bloody expansive," Harry said, wishing his words hadn't come out so high and breathy from the way Lucius touched him. He thought about it, then moved his hand back. With most people, he would have just snatched it, but he didn't want to do that to Lucius. "I died to save the world. How is that not expansive?"

"There are some," Lucius said, his voice dropping into the middle of the silence like stones being plunked into the pool, "who might say that dying is the easy choice, and living is the hard one."

"I doubt they've walked to their deaths to get rid of a Horcrux," Harry snapped, and buried his nose in his book again.

"Was it truly a Horcrux?"

Harry, who had been trying to relax for ten minutes in front of the fire that Lucius could light in the hearth but he couldn't, opened an annoyed eye. Lucius had the habit of continuing conversations from the other day and expecting Harry to follow them. This once, Harry was tempted not to give in.

But Lucius stood there, gazing at him with eyes so bright that Harry couldn't bring himself to turn him away. He sighed and sat up. "Yes. Voldemort had put a Horcrux in me the night my parents died. He didn't mean to. It was just a tiny bit of soul. Then he destroyed it in the Forbidden Forest. I thought you knew this already?"

"Each time I heard the story told," Lucius said, "it was from the mouth of someone who might have had other things to gain from the telling, or in circumstances that made it seem less like the truth. And I have heard it with more elaboration than that." He sat down in the chair across from Harry and studied him. "You can speak of it so casually."

"I had years to get used to it."

"You knew that a Horcrux was in you for years?"

"No, I mean, years to get used to the fact that I died for it and came back." Harry shook his head when he saw Lucius still staring at him. "It gets less remarkable when you live with it. When it's something that already happened."

"I don't think that you knew you were a Horcrux for years," Lucius whispered.

"No. I did know they existed for years. That was what I was trying to destroy during what should have been my last year at Hogwarts, the Horcruxes that tied Voldemort to life."

Lucius narrowed his eyes as if he was listening to distant music he couldn't make out. "So when someone told you that you had a Horcrux in your head…"

"It was Professor Snape's memories. Dumbledore told him I was, and he left those memories so I would find out. The only way to get rid of the Horcrux in me was to let Voldemort hit me with the Killing Curse."

"So when you found out, you marched off and committed suicide."

Harry rolled his eyes. He'd already had this all out with Hermione years ago, on slightly different terms. "No. I was upset about it. I didn't want to. But I also knew that I didn't have any choice if I wanted to save people and stop Voldemort. I'm sure you've done more than one thing you didn't want to do in your life because it was still the best choice."

Harry hoped that would be enough warning for Lucius to drop it. If they started talking about the war, they would have to talk about what Lucius had done as a Death Eater, and Harry didn't want to. He just wanted to relax in front of the fire and talk idly with someone whose company he unexpectedly enjoyed.

But Lucius said, clutching his cane so hard that it looked as if he was going to break his hand, "I want to know if Dumbledore knew you would come back from that."

"I think he suspected it. I don't think he knew." Harry wasn't about to discuss the vision he'd had of chatting with Dumbledore in King's Cross. He knew it would make him sound mental.

Lucius looked away from Harry, his body edged with fine tremors. He nodded sharply, and then said, "Excuse me. I find that I must have some time to myself to recover." He marched out of the room and up the stairs to his own bedroom.

Harry watched him go in puzzlement. What was that all about? But at least the disturbing conversation was over and he could turn back and enjoy the fire.

"Where have you been?"

Harry opened one eye. He was lying on the couch in front of the fire again, and he thought he deserved it. He'd spent most of the last five evenings with Lucius, eating dinner, talking, and working on potions or research into Potter family history. But today he'd engaged in some intense training in the dueling rooms, then dealt with one of the "fans" who had managed to sneak past security into the Ministry and been intent on touching him in ways he didn't like. He ached all over from the planned duels and the impromptu one.

"At work," he said, and closed the eye again, rolling on his side so that his aching muscles got some more support from the couch cushions.

"I held dinner for you."

Harry sighed a little. "I found it under the Warming Charm. Thank you." He turned and buried his face in the pillows on the couch, hoping Lucius would get the hint.

"Why were you late?"

Harry sighed again, louder. "Duels," he said, when Lucius only stood over him and refused to be chased away by the sighs. Harry could feel his heat from here, and only thought it a little odd that he could distinguish the kind of heat Lucius shed from what the fire shed. "I fought duels today for training, and then someone sneaked up on me in the Ministry and dueled me."

"What sort of someone?"

"Someone who really wanted my autograph and hated it that I refused. Look, I'm tired and I hurt all over. Can I just rest? I'm sorry for missing dinner. It wasn't my fault."

Lucius said nothing, and then moved away. Harry sighed again, this time in relief. Then he started when, perhaps five minutes later, someone started sliding his robes down his shoulders. He sat up and swatted.

Lucius considered him through heavy-lidded eyes. "You can do that, if you wish. Or you can hold still and let me rub this ointment into your muscles. It should soothe some of the aches."

Harry sniffed experimentally. There was a smell of valerian and some other herbs rising from the small pot of ointment in Lucius's hands. Perhaps it would be soothing, after all. He nodded and lay back down, sighing as Lucius finished tugging his robes off. "All right. If you don't mind…"

"I would do far more than this for you."

Harry frowned, sure he couldn't have heard right, and then Lucius started removing his shirt. Harry tried to sit up again. "What are you doing?"

"Do you expect me to somehow rub the ointment into your muscles through the cloth?"

"Just—sort of—around it?"

Harry knew he sounded stupid, but Lucius was kind enough not to point that out. He merely said, "Harry. Let me."

Without looking at him, Harry considered. He was lying face-down on the couch, which meant that any unfortunate reaction he had to Lucius wouldn't be visible. It ought to be okay, he thought as he swallowed with a dry mouth. In the end, he nodded and then lifted himself on his knees so that Lucius could take his trousers off, too.

It felt like a dream. He'd had so many problems with people who wanted to date him not wanting to face the press or turning out to be complete wankers that it had been a long time since he was touched like this.

And then Lucius's hands began to rub the warmed ointment into his muscles, and Harry knew he'd been wrong. He'd never actually been touched like this. So warm, so flowing, so making him melt. He gasped, and Lucius's fingers stopped digging into his muscles.

"Harry?"

"I'm—a little sore, that's all," Harry said. "But what you're doing still feels good." He ended with a groan as Lucius pressed both thumbs down in the same place at once, and he felt as though something had slammed into his back.

But only for a moment. Then the tight place loosened, and Harry groaned again, this time treating the pillow to his appreciation.

"Indeed," Lucius said, sounding softly amused, and then his fingers went back to work, prodding and smoothing.

I don't see what there is to say "indeed" about, Harry thought crossly, but he was in the process of puddling across the cushions, so maybe his brain was a puddle, too, and there was something to say indeed about, something he didn't see or remember.

He tucked his cheek into the pillows and treated it to a symphony of sighs, while Lucius worked him up and down, and then went back to places that Harry would have sworn were more than relaxed by now. But it seemed that Lucius wasn't convinced they were, and wanted to give them a thorough going-over.

Harry opened his eyes at one point, staring into the fire. Hazy warmth was overcoming him, and he wasn't sure that he would remember to say it later, so he wanted to say it now.

"Lucius."

"Hmmm?" Lucius's hands never stopped moving, but he bent down towards Harry. Harry looked at him, but his face was a dark blur in the middle of a halo of light, the way the fire was making his hair blaze.

"Thank you. You've—done a lot—" Harry broke off into another gasp, and this time, he thought he saw a change come over Lucius's face when he made the sound. But it was still too dark as it was backlit by the fire to be sure.

"Not as much as I wish to do for you."

Harry tensed a little, but Lucius's hands soon massaged that right out of him. He let his head loll back with a sigh. Honestly, he felt more relaxed now than he would have done if Lucius had simply let him go to sleep in front of the fire.

"Will you consider it?"

Were we having a conversation? I don't remember us having a conversation. Harry had to call a lot of himself back from a long way away to ask drowsily, "Consider what?"

"Coming home more often. Coming home earlier more often. Accepting that this a place where I live, and I want your company."

Harry nipped at his lip. He thought he would understand this better if he had more of his brain, but then Lucius's hands moved again, and what he had left melted. He nodded even as his eyes slipped shut. "Yes," he whispered. "I'll try to—do that."

"It may be time for me to speak with the Head Auror…"

Harry didn't hear what he said after that, because he was asleep.

"I thought you said you would try to come home earlier more often."

Harry sighed as he hung up his cloak on the hook where it usually belonged and kicked off his boots. "I'm sorry, Lucius. There was another Auror who seemed all right before today, but now she's decided that she wants to date me or something, and she's bloody around all day."

"What is her name?"

Lucius's voice had gone frigid. Harry peered at him. He wondered if this was something he had done wrong without realizing it, like missing the dinner the other time. "Her name? Lydia Catchkins. Why?"

Lucius swept off without answering. Harry shook his head and sat down to eat a lonely meal. No matter what Lucius thought about matters of importance, no matter what he had gone to do, Harry would rather have had his company.

"Lucius! What did you do?"

"Spend the day sitting on the couch with a book. That is something for you to roar about now?"

Harry hesitated. He'd come storming in through the front door, expecting to meet Lucius ready for battle, and instead Lucius was marking his place in the book with one finger and tilting his head a little. It made Harry feel uncivilized and uncouth.

But only until he remembered the news he'd got today, and then fire blazed through him again. "You had Lydia Catchkins sacked!"

"I merely mentioned to the Head Auror that the woman was annoying you. I wanted to have a conversation with him anyway about keeping you late because you supposedly had nothing to come home to."

Harry blinked. Yes, he remembered that conversation with Robards. The man had insisted that because everyone else had a "family," Harry could stay at the Ministry and conduct extra training and give lessons to the trainees. But those words, though they'd stung, had been overshadowed by the stupid duel he'd had that same day with the autograph seeker.

"Lucius…"

"I still have influence in a few places. Mostly with people who fear that I would reveal their secrets, admittedly." Lucius put down his book and rose gracefully to his feet. "I want you to listen to me, Harry. You have a family. You have the Weasleys, and you have the memories of your ancestors that are infusing the house with greater warmth."

He paused. Harry had the feeling that some revelation was going to follow those words, but he didn't know what.

"And you have me."

"Lucius…"

Lucius's eyes and hair were both brilliant, lit by the shimmering fire, but his voice was as low and husky as burning embers. "Did you really think that I could live here with you, speak to you, eat meals with you, and feel nothing?"

Harry swallowed. "I—I hadn't the slightest idea that you—that you liked men," he said, and then felt like an idiot.

"I have found pleasure and comfort in both sexes in the past." Lucius reached up to the buttons of his robe. Harry felt his throat become as dry and husky as Lucius's sounded when he began to deliberately undo them. "But that was before I was married. While married, I was faithful. The stresses of the war and what came after dissolved my union with Narcissa. And now I have found you."

"We've—only lived together a few months," Harry said, eyes on Lucius's pale shoulders and collarbones as he began to slide his robes off them.

"That is enough for me to know what I want." Lucius shrugged, and the robes slid down around his body. He was bare, absolutely, underneath them, except for a small, modest pair of pants that Harry wouldn't have expected him to wear. He watched Lucius's erection curve slowly and visibly up, and was helpless to prevent himself from stirring and rising in response. "You do not have to want me in return."

Harry said nothing, because he couldn't.

Lucius paused and scanned his face, then gave him a thin smile. "But I think you do." He stepped forwards and trailed his fingers along Harry's face, down the line of his jaw to his chin, and around in circles that made Harry dizzy. "I have seen the way you look at me and then snap your gaze away again, as though you assume I would forbid you."

"I had no idea you liked men—I didn't want to disrupt things here or make you feel uncomfortable—"

"How unlike the daring Gryffindor you were in school."

Harry narrowed his eyes back at Lucius, and managed to ignore the sight of his bare chest for a minute. "It's one thing when I'm taking risks with my friends, you know. It's another thing when I could make you uncomfortable."

Lucius studied him for a second, and then nodded. "Yes. That excuse will do for now, if you are going to join me in bed."

Harry had to close his eyes, and his hands shook as he reached up to his Auror robes. He was close enough to hear the slight noises as Lucius shifted his balance. They mattered more to him than the background crackle of the fire.

The fire. Harry opened his eyes. "Can we make love for the first time in front of the hearth?" he asked quietly. "I think I'd like to."

Lucius considered him for a moment with widened eyes, and Harry wondered if this was sort of pure-blood faux pas he didn't know about. But then Lucius leaned forwards and kissed him hard enough that Harry nearly choked on his mouth full of tongue, and he figured it out.

Lucius liked that idea. Really liked that idea.

Harry smiled, and let Lucius help him undress.

It had been so long since something like this happened, and Lucius seemed to misunderstand. He trailed his fingers gently along over Harry's collarbones and shook his head. "I will not hurt you," he murmured.

"I know. I'm—this is excitement, Lucius. Not fear."

Lucius's lips lifted gently. "The thought of being with me is that pleasant?"

"Yes," Harry said, and leaned in to kiss him, moaning slightly even before their mouths touched. Lucius was someone he had never envisioned being with before the last few months, but he had gone out of his way to help Harry, and worked with him on improving his Potions skills, and helped Harry study his family history in a way that let him feel connected to the wizarding world instead of having that connection overshadowed by his parents' deaths, and…

And he was attractive. Harry had admitted that much to Ron the day Lucius moved in.

A hint of future trouble flickered like a flame in the back of Harry's brain, worry that people might think Lucius was corrupting Harry or something equally ridiculous, but he couldn't worry about it for long, not when Lucius was proceeding to melt his brain again. He leaned back on the couch and let Lucius take control.

First, Lucius raised the fire high enough with waves of his wand that there was no way he could mistake Harry's shivering for being cold. Then he bent down next to him and began to kiss his way determinedly across every inch of Harry's skin. Harry reached for him many times, but Lucius's hands held his firmly down, and finally Harry had to lean his head back and just give in.

It was quiet and warm enough in the room that Harry could catch every single tone of his own breathless gasps and the quick sound of Lucius's tongue on his scars, his muscles, his thighs. Harry parted his legs and tried to make an encouraging noise that emerged nowhere near as softly as he'd thought it would. He felt Lucius smile into his skin, and then he wrapped his lips around the skin near Harry's cock and sucked.

"Lucius!"

"I am here," he got back, but still no lips wrapped around him. Instead, Lucius finished kissing his way down Harry's legs and around the curve of his ankles, and then he pulled back and let his unbound hair trail down Harry's feet.

Harry looked at him, knowing his eyes must look dazed. Lucius didn't seem to object to it, though, if the slight smile on his face was any indication. He pulled back further, but only long enough to cast charms that Harry welcomed with another gasp. He had already waited long enough. He didn't want to wait while Lucius stretched him with his fingers and washed him out.

Someday soon, perhaps. But not now.

Lucius cast one final charm that made his cock glisten as if with potion, and then he lengthened the couch with another wave of his wand. Finally, he put the wand down and got his hands back on Harry's skin where they belonged. As he slid them under Harry's hips, Harry smiled up at him and murmured, "Thank you. I really am—fond of you, you know."

"I know. And I imagine that most other words can wait right now," Lucius added, and slid into him.

Harry ended up having to relax his muscles one by one from their first startled, instinctive tightening. Lucius stroked his stomach with gentle fingers, which helped. "Did I hurt you?" Lucius asked, quietly.

"No. It's—been a long time since I've done this with someone." Harry opened his eyes again and smiled up at him through the golden haze of firelight. "Please, Lucius, move now."

Lucius was probably giving him a smug look about that confession of it having been a long time since Harry had done this, but Harry couldn't see it anyway in the light hovering around his face. He reached up and kissed him, long and slow enough that Lucius murmured in pleasure and flexed his hips. Harry gasped as he was abruptly reminded that someone was inside him.

"Yes. Please. Please."

He probably sounded like an incoherent, babbling fool, but at least Lucius didn't make him wait. He began to rock into Harry, and Harry clutched at the couch and his arms and his hair and at what sometimes felt like the firelight, urging him on with nonsense words. Lucius responded with softer sighs, with murmurs of pleasure, with tightening of his hips and the pounding of his body.

He was there, in a way no one had been in so long. Harry loved his friends and held them inside his heart at all times, but someone inside both his heart and his body…

He came with another gasp at the thought, and Lucius bent down and shuddered over him, hips working desperately. When he came, Harry shivered in delight and reached up to rake his fingers through Lucius's hair. Lucius nodded at him, his head drooping. Harry drew Lucius down to rest his face in Harry's shoulder.

It was a long time before Lucius stirred, and Harry reluctantly let him up. Lucius gave him a slight frown as he stood. "Am I not crushing you?" he murmured. "With all my weight on you as you lay on a couch not designed for such things."

Harry hid his laughter at how formal Lucius sounded even after lovemaking. He would probably take it the wrong way right now. He shook his head. "No. It was wonderful." He kissed Lucius again and reached for his wand to perform the charms that would clean him up.

"Let me do that for you."

Harry hesitated, then lay back and let Lucius cast the charm. He sighed as it whispered over his skin. It felt warm in a way that his own magic never managed. As warm as a bath, as warm as—

He turned abruptly and looked at the fire. It was sinking calmly into normal embers, not the magical putting-out that he'd had to resort to in the past. He shook his head slowly. "We did it," he whispered. "This house is a home."

Lucius stiffened for a moment, and then laid his wand aside. "I suppose, then," he said, his voice hideously cool when he was still leaning his hand on Harry's bare shoulder, "that you will want to live here alone again."

"I said this house, not my house," Harry said, and turned around. "I consider it both of ours. Honestly, for a pompous pure-blood, sometimes you're really bad at the nuances of language."

Lucius ignored the jab, staring at Harry with widened eyes. "You do mean that."

"I do." Harry twisted his head enough to kiss the hand on his shoulder. "It wouldn't be a home without you. I'd probably have to just have you back again in a month. Or this place would burn down, too, and I'd rather not deal with that for the second time in a year, thank you—"

The rest of his words got lost as Lucius kissed him, furiously, frantically. Harry wound his hands in Lucius's hair and happily held on. Lucius shivered above him and then reached out and stroked drying sweat from Harry's side.

"We could go upstairs and I could show you how comfortable my bed is, perhaps," Lucius murmured.

Harry remembered the enormous bed that Lucius had floated through the house on the day he moved in, and snorted. "You brought one that big on purpose, didn't you?"

"I always sleep in a bed that size," Lucius said haughtily, and then gave a faint smile. "Not that I might not have considered your comfort as well, and the possibility of sharing."

Harry smiled at him, let Lucius pull him to his feet, and kissed him again. Then they walked up the stairs together, the light of the fire slowly fading behind them.

The End.