Title: Most Arrogant and Loving of Men
Summary: Harry knows very well that he's showing the mask of the Savior to everyone around him—his friends, his lovers, his enemies—but he doesn't know how to stop. The part of him that wants things to be different is selfish and greedy. He doesn't see any way to express it and not have his life explode…until Draco Malfoy, of all people, realizes it's there.
Rating: R
Warning(s): Angst, violence, minor character death
Word Count: 30,300
Author's Notes: Written for DiverTazSC for the Draco Tops Harry fest. Thank you to DiverTazSC for the prompt I've been waiting for all my life. Thanks so much to my betas, L, and K., and the mods of the fest for setting it up. The title comes from a line by Walt Whitman. I hope everyone enjoys the story.

"It's not you. It's me."

Harry stared down at Ellora's bowed head. It seemed he'd been hearing a variation of those words from every woman he dated. He leaned silently on the doorway and listened to her speak her way through a tangled justification of words.

"I thought it was the hero I wanted, and now I know it's not. That's not your fault. You've been nothing but good to me, and you've given me so much and you're a wonderful listener. But I just need someone who's not so heroic all the time, I suppose. Someone who has needs I can tend to and flaws that I can put up with…"

If you really knew me, you'd realize that I'm almost all flaws.

"But I was the one who wanted to date the man who would sweep me off my feet, and you were everything I dreamed of. I'm sorry, Harry. I hope you find someone who can love you for the way you are…"

That's impossible.

"And find someone you feel comfortable showing your true self in front of." Ellora reached up and caressed his cheek for the last time. "When you find her, please invite me to your wedding? I still care for you. I'd love to dance there."

Harry had a smile for her. He always did, for everyone, except the criminals he had to face with a stern expression and outthrust jaw. "Of course, Ellora. I'm sorry things didn't work out. I'm still fond of you, too." He kissed her hand, and she smiled gently at him and left with her things floating behind her. Women Harry dated always moved in with him. After all, his house was bigger than theirs, and he wanted to be generous and loving and shower them with gifts.

He did. He did want that, he thought, as he crossed to the big window that overlooked the front steps and watched Ellora walk to the edge of his wards so she could Apparate. He would have to change them soon so she could no longer come through them.

It was just that he wanted other things more.

Harry turned so that his back was to the window and stared around the drawing room. Ellora's things being taken away honestly didn't change much. Most of the photographs on the tables and mantel and shelves were Harry's, as were the books, the awards from the Ministry, the mementos from Hogwarts, the draped Gryffindor banners, and the knickknacks that he'd bought because they reminded him of something. Ellora's photograph of her mother was missing from beside the bounding crystal stag above the fireplace, and her own Ravenclaw banner was gone from beside the largest Gryffindor one, making it look unbalanced.

But it wouldn't be for long, Harry knew. His life would close over that like water, seal like a wound, and he would go on. Ron and Hermione were always talking to him about how amicable his breakups were—they always were—and they thought that was why Harry never seemed to mind all that much when his lovers walked away from him.

Harry closed his eyes and exhaled, hard. Why was he standing here mourning things he could never have? It was useless and only made him feel still more depressed. He stood and walked briskly through the drawing room and down several corridors into the training room that he'd modeled after the Aurors' dueling court.

It was a huge, circular room with walls the color of copper, although of course not actually made of copper. Harry couldn't have afforded that. He'd simply woven in the spells that would make it comfortable and practical to duel here, and the copper color was what had come out.

Harry stepped into the ring carved into the floor, edged with tiny shining blocks of obsidian, and began to twist and dodge and counter as the stones threw spells at them. For the moment, they were spells of the sort he had learned at Hogwarts: spells meant to disarm, entangle, stun, and knock down. He could create tougher spells any time he wanted, including Dark ones.

But not as Dark as he wanted. Never that.

Harry grunted in irritation and pushed himself harder, causing more stones to spit spells. And it worked. The thought of what he could never have, what he was too selfish to have because he would never stop wanting it and he couldn't use moderation, seared through him and then dropped into the back of his mind. He had to be too focused on survival right now.

The thoughts would come back that night, when he lay in the darkness of his empty bed.

But it didn't matter. Harry would return to a life of Auror work, spending time with his friends, helping the needy, and dating someone who wanted the hero soon enough. And if it wasn't enough for all time, it was enough for right now.

That had to be enough, because there was nothing else he could take.

"Malfoy wants to see you, mate."

"Huh." Harry sat up a little. That wasn't a usual announcement for Ron to greet him with as he walked into the office. "Doesn't he realize by now that I'm not going to take any of his bribes?"

"Not Lucius. Malfoy."

Harry's eyebrows rose still further. He sometimes saw Draco at the Ministry gatherings, galas, parties, charity balls, and other things he was forgetting right now, but Harry honestly didn't think they'd spoken since he returned Malfoy's wand. Most of the time, they nodded at each other and went away with their own groups. It wasn't even calculated avoidance. Just indifference that had become less calculated over time.

"Is he right outside?" Harry stood up, absently casting a charm to straighten the pile of paperwork. He didn't think any conversation Malfoy wanted to have with him would be one he'd be comfortable having in front of Ron.

"Yeah." Ron wrinkled his nose.

Harry half-closed his eyes and reached for his polished persona when people wanted to contact him about donating to one of the charities he sponsored. Then he nodded to Ron, mouthed, "Thanks," and stepped out into the corridor.

Malfoy straightened up from leaning against the wall. Harry's steps slowed.

Malfoy was staring at him with eyes like polished stones, but they had a fire glistening in them that made sweat break out on the nape of Harry's neck. But running away from his problems wouldn't help with them, so Harry made himself smile a little, nod, and say, "Malfoy. You wanted a private conversation?"

"If you please."

Malfoy turned smartly on his heel. Harry followed him to a small room that was usually used for interrogations. Malfoy must have good friends in the Department to know it was there in the first place, let alone that it would be free this time of day. Harry stepped in and watched as Malfoy closed the door. Then he cast Locking Charms.

Harry automatically noted the fireplace in one corner, how wide the table was, how many chairs it had around it and which ones he would kick into Malfoy's path if the bastard attacked him. Malfoy turned around, paused when he saw him, and shook his head a little.

"I don't want to be interrupted. It's not meant to confine you."

"All right," Harry said slowly. He didn't take a seat, though. "What is it? Did you want to talk to me about a donation?"

Malfoy's lips twitched. "I suppose you could call it that. But a very specialized fund. And one that's to be directed to one individual alone."

"I don't think I can help you, Malfoy. I'm not involved in anything like that."

"Oh? The Give Harry Potter What He Needs Fund?"

Harry's breath caught so suddenly in his throat that he choked. Malfoy took a single step towards him, his eyebrow raised and his eyes normal—if you didn't look into them. The fire Harry had noticed before was all there was now. No trace of coldness left.

Malfoy moved again, and Harry aimed his wand. Malfoy made a single click with his tongue, but said nothing.

"This is a joke, obviously. Well, you can go back and tell your Slytherin friends that you made me swallow air. Very funny, Malfoy. I have to get back to work."

Harry had said words like that before, solid ones that reasserted normality. He'd calmed down arguments with that voice, smoothed over some breakups, and convinced his friends that he and Ginny would never date again. He'd thought it worked on everyone. But Malfoy only looked at him and spoke soft words that cleaved through him.

"You're thirty years old, Harry. Don't you think you've given the world enough? Why not take something for yourself? Just once?"

"You don't know what you're talking about, Malfoy. I have plenty. I have all the Galleons I could ever want, wonderful friends, a nice house, and a sensible level of fame. I even have more people who want to date me than stab me in the back, which wasn't the case when I was younger. Step back."

And that cold voice had made criminals surrender before they felt the scrape of his wand. Malfoy only kept looking at him. Then he said, "Do you remember the Doherty gala that you went to three months ago?"

"Yes. I know you were there. I also know that you kept away from me and Ellora the entire evening."

"But at one point you were looking off into space, as it were, and I happened to be in your line of sight. I was bored, I admit. I used Legilimency on you because one sometimes finds out interesting secrets that way, and the thought of being in possession of one of them before the Prophet broke it amused me."

"Then perhaps you saw that I thought Ellora and I were destined to break up. Such—"

"No. I saw the part of yourself that you keep hidden. That selfish—what do you think of it as? A thing. A beast. A monster. You think that if you really let yourself go, you'd destroy the world. That wording is as dramatic as usual, but it's true that you haven't let yourself have something more selfish than an extra scoop of ice cream since the battle. And even that, not often. Potter, I caught the edge of the thought that you shouldn't eat so much ice cream because it might make you fat and slow you down when someone needed you to run faster. Do you have any idea how ridiculous that is?"

Harry clamped his hands down on his wand and the table, because he honestly would go flying at Malfoy's throat if he didn't. He remembered that thought. He had no doubt Malfoy had read his mind.

Then again, he hadn't really doubted it before this. And he had no intention of indulging Malfoy. "What does it matter to you?"

"I couldn't believe it. So I did some investigating. And I started finding things out."

Malfoy slid a step towards him. It was Harry's turn to click his tongue. Malfoy halted his feet.

But not his fucking mouth.

"And I found out it's true. Well, I doubt that most people think that you're actually restraining yourself from ice cream in case it would make you run less fast, or think of perfectly normal desires as bestial. But I found out that you don't take holidays. Not Auror Potter! What if someone needs him? And you say yes whenever someone asks for your help on a new charitable project, even though you barely have time on your weekends already thanks to the amount of foundations and groups you're involved in. You attend all the Ministry parties, even the smallest. All your ex-lovers talk about how gallant you are, how you gave them just what they needed. No one can remember a time when you spoke a harsh word to them—which I suppose makes me special." Malfoy smiled, his eyes glowing again. "You're the perfect godfather, the perfect heroic figure, the perfect Auror who never mistreats the criminals he arrests and even rescued some of them from Aurors who would. Doesn't it get tiring, Harry? Being perfect?"

Yes. Merlin, yes.

Harry stopped his tongue from speaking and aimed his wand carefully between Malfoy's eyes. He knew a harmless hex that would make him stop speaking and get him out of the way, and in a second he would use it.

"But I know that you want other things. I think I would know that even if I hadn't seen your thoughts. Because no one can maintain that kind of façade without cracking."

"It doesn't matter if I do, Malfoy. There are too many people who depend on me now. What should I do? Abandon all the orphans and widows and Hogwarts students and reformed criminals who need my help because, I'm sorry, I just have to take some time for myself?"

"Why not? If you died tomorrow, they'd have to get along somehow, wouldn't they? In fact, this is probably good practice for them. You can do a controlled abandonment, and that means they get to find other solutions instead of having to do it in the middle of a crisis."

"Very funny, Malfoy—"

But then Malfoy stepped right up to him, because somehow he had got close without Harry casting that hex, and leaned his hand on Harry's cheek. He was staring right into Harry's eyes, and Harry's tongue was the one that stuttered.

"I want to be the one who helps you get what you want."

That broke the spell. Harry snorted and knocked Malfoy's hand away, ignoring the part of him that shrieked somewhere in the bottom of his soul. "Yeah, Malfoy, pull the other one. What? You don't give a fuck—"

"Oh, but I do," Malfoy said, in a voice so thick and soft that it was nearly obscene. "I do, Harry. Because I don't like seeing the one who risked his life to save our world and me being worn down bit by bit."

"I'm not—"

"Do you think that you can endure forever? That there'll be anything left when their insatiable desires have carved all the pieces from you? I admit I'd like to see the looks on their faces when they reach for you someday and realize there's nothing left. But not the look on yours."

Harry closed his eyes. He abruptly realized how stupid it was to stand here and listen to Malfoy talking. He was only trying to get one over on Harry, the way he always had. It stunned Harry that he'd let it go on this long.

He pressed his wand against Malfoy's throat. Malfoy shut up, but he never took his eyes from Harry's face.

"Go away," Harry said. "If you don't leave right now, I can have you escorted out of the Ministry in five minutes."

"Yes, you could," Malfoy said, after a moment of contemplation. "All right, Harry. I can see that I'll need to take different measures. You're too ashamed of what you need to come to me. I'll come to you."

His voice was soft and obscene again, and his fingers rose for a moment and raked through Harry's hair, then tightened and gave a slight pull. Before Harry could do more than hiss in shock, Malfoy had turned away, removed the charm he'd cast on the door, and strode off down the corridor.

Why did he do that?

The answer was so obvious that Harry had to sigh. To be strange. To get a rise out of me. That's the only reason he does anything with me.

Harry ignored the fact that Malfoy hadn't thought him worth taunting in ten years. He'd probably had a flash of nostalgia or been bored today and decided to act on the thought he'd read out of Harry's mind months ago.

He returned to his and Ron's office. Ron looked up. "What did Malfoy want, mate?"

"To lord it over me, as usual. Now, come on, tell me whether you think Rose is going to be in Ravenclaw or Gryffindor today."

Ron laughed and started telling him stories of his goddaughter, the way he always did when Harry asked that question. The thought flashed through his mind that it was almost manipulative, to ask questions like that when he knew it would distract Ron.

But Harry put it aside. The conversation with Malfoy would only upset Ron, and he really did love Rose and want to hear about her.

There was a box on the rug before his front door.

Harry rolled his eyes and invoked the spells that dwelt in the stones of his house with a flick of his wrist. They descended in a glowing, sparking net on the box. They would detect all signs of curses, poisons, and more harmless hexes. When they found something nasty, they would make the box explode.

Harry did retreat a few steps, because honestly he had no desire to be splattered by either the foul contents or what the contents would become once his defenses were finished with them. He was mildly curious at what color they would be. It was almost six months since some had tried this tactic to hurt him or compel him.

But the net burned out, and the box just sat there. Harry blinked. It's harmless? But Ron and Hermione and George and the rest tell me when they're planning to get me a gift.

Well, it was possible they'd forgotten. Harry could hardly demand perfection from his friends. He floated the box through his door and set it in the middle of his kitchen table, then cut through the plain brown paper that wrapped it, still standing at a distance. There could still be something harmful in there. His spells had never failed, but there was always a first time.

The box finally fell apart, to reveal a gigantic—

Cake made of ice cream.

Harry stared. He'd never seen anything like this at Fortescue's, the only place he saw ice cream on a regular basis now. It gleamed softly blue and gold, made to look like the sky with little Snitches darting around on it. And there was a card leaning next to it, made of silver-edged parchment.

This time, Harry flicked his finger to send the card flying to him. He didn't normally use wandless magic, but there was no one here to see him and be frightened or impressed.

The card said only, The first of life's pleasures.

Harry sighed and put the card down. It wasn't signed. It was sad that he could recognize Malfoy's handwriting after years of not seeing it, frankly.

Harry cast some more detection spells, this time aimed at potions that could be mixed into the cake. But he found nothing. He shrugged and went to Floo Ron and Hermione. He reckoned Rose and Hugo would enjoy this cake.

"How did you enjoy your gift, Potter?"

Harry closed his eyes in a swift blink. Good God, I forgot how annoying Malfoy is. But then he turned around and offered the man a polite smile. "My godchildren loved it. Thank you for getting it for them."

Malfoy went still, and darkness seemed to gather around him, even though they were standing in the middle of the sunlit sandwich shop where Harry went for lunch every Monday. "That cake was for you," he whispered.

"And you thought I was going to eat it? You don't know me at all."

Malfoy reached out and snagged the back of his shirt, pulling Harry fluidly towards him. Harry reacted as fluidly, spinning to the side and pressing his wand against Malfoy's throat at the same moment as his free hand grabbed Malfoy's free hand, twisting it to the side. Malfoy went white at once. Harry knew the moment he realized how close his wrist had come to being broken.

"You were saying?" Harry murmured, leaning forwards and watching the way Malfoy's eyes darted from side to side. He stepped out of the queue he'd been in with a polite grimace at the watching people. After a second, those people went back to what they were doing. There was nothing unusual in the sight of Auror Potter arresting a criminal, after all.

Malfoy stood there unbreathing for a second. Then he said, "I got the memo, Potter. I can't force you to take care of yourself or enjoy yourself."

Harry smiled a little. "Malfoy," he said, and put his lips near Malfoy's ear, leaning up a little to do so. It made Malfoy shudder. Harry let a little of the dark thing that lived inside him leak into his voice, because he wanted to make the shudder even stronger. "You can't force me to do anything."

Malfoy stood there with his eyes closed even after Harry let him go. Harry shook his head and stored his wand. Then he turned around. He would have to go somewhere else to get lunch. He wouldn't stay here and make people wonder when he would break out in violence again.

"Potter."

Harry looked back. Malfoy had a faint smile on his face, but his eyes—they were practically black. Harry let his hand rest on his wand, but Malfoy just gave him that look of devouring passion and strode past him, bumping his shoulder into Harry's. The bump felt more like a caress.

Then he left.

Harry stood there and sighed out some complicated things. Then he shook his head, smiling, at the people who had taken a few steps towards him. "It's all right. Tensions with an old school rival."

They nodded, and smiled, and sat down. Harry heard a few murmurs as he left about how brave and restrained Auror Potter was, not to lash out at someone who inconvenienced him like that.

It made him tired.

The letter Malfoy had sent him earlier that day still sat in the middle of the table, because on the one hand it had no curses or jinxes or poison on it and was resistant to fire, but on the other hand, Harry was damned if he was going to read it.

An hour later, when he'd finished eating his salad, Harry sighed and reached for the letter. It only made him feel foolish to himself not to read it. Besides, Malfoy could be in danger and need help.

Potter,

I suppose that you'll think I want to bleed off the tension inside you to prevent an explosion of magic and save the world or something. That's the reason you would have if you tried to seduce someone like you, I know.

But I just want you. Someone who's never been spoiled or allowed someone else to spoil him—I know exactly how to do that, you know. My upbringing gave me an excellent model to imitate. And someone who's as handsome as you are. And someone who's as fluid and powerful and well-trained. It will be a positive pleasure to fuck you, Potter. I know that you're trying to discover what I'm getting out of this. All that.

And more. I know that you've never dated a man. There's that pleasure. And knowing that I was right. In Hogwarts, I always thought something darker than the heroic surface had to lie underneath that surface. Now I know it does, but you've been repressing it. Merlin, I want to see that come out. I want to see how you move and duel and have sex and laugh when you're not focused on pinning part of yourself down and strangling it to death.

I'm getting hard writing this, so I'm going to end this letter and go have a wank, Potter. I leave you to decide on the truth of my words.

Draco Malfoy.

Well, he signed it this time, Harry thought, and restrained a giggle as he put the letter down. He stared at it, brow furrowed. Then he shook his head again.

So Malfoy wanted to fuck him. Well, okay, Harry knew that sort of impulse. It had led—not Ellora, but a few past girlfriends into his bed. It had been a disappointment for them in the end. Harry was the gentleman of their dreams, but no amount of handsomeness could make up for the fact that they fell in love with someone else, or they couldn't withstand the scrutiny of the press, or they felt disconnected from him.

If Malfoy was chasing him all over the Ministry or showing up in places like the sandwich shop the way he had yesterday, it was going to cause commentary. Harry grimaced. He would rather that people not think he was trying to make himself a figure of gossip.

So. Best to treat this the way he had the few women in the past who wanted to date him and had no sense of discretion. Malfoy wanted him because he was a virgin with men? Well, that quality wouldn't last long. Neither would any of the rest, not when he realized that he wouldn't like the darkness hiding inside Harry.

Harry would go along with this, with a smile on his face, and wait for Malfoy to tire himself out and get disgusted with the way Harry accepted things. It would be a bit of pleasure for Harry, too.

Harry winced as he realized that. He was looking forward to being alone with someone he could let a few of his masks down with.

You're not to hurt him, he reminded himself, and reached for quill and parchment to write back.

"You thought my first seduction attempt would take place in public, Potter? I'm surprised."

"I thought you'd want people to see the great prize you seem to have convinced yourself I am." Harry rolled his eyes a little and extended his cloak to the insistent house-elf. He retained his wand and the small knives that he ordinarily would have stored in the cloak lining, one in his boot and one in his belt. "You're going to be so disappointed, Malfoy."

Malfoy watched him with a smile that didn't look patronizing, although Harry had to admit he probably wasn't looking closely enough. "Come on, Potter."

Harry rolled his eyes again and followed Malfoy through what was practically a jungle of potted plants with gleaming, trembling flowers to a balcony on the outside of the house. They were in Malfoy Manor, but Harry wouldn't have known it, not with the garlands of orange flowers dangling over his head and the view from the balcony. Not a prissy flowerbed or white peacock in sight. Instead, he could see a bristling, tumbling blue-black-and-green jungle from the railing, and the air was thick with Humidity Charms.

He found himself smiling without meaning to. "When did you decide to turn the gardens into a jungle?" he asked, and cast a spell that diminished the weight of the cloth in his shirt. Then he sat down and tilted his head back to catch the faint breeze.

"I liked it better."

"Hmmm. 'S a good reason."

"Are you about to go to sleep on me, Potter? Who knew I had to do as little as that to make you relax?"

Harry forced open an eye and saw Malfoy standing next to his chair. "It's not an atmosphere I get to experience often." He let his eyes drift closed again while he listened to the cries of distant birds and the rustling of palm fronds in the wind. He sighed out, and his hand tumbled away from his wand.

He supposed Malfoy could have used some spell in the perfumes that he could smell wafting up from the flowers and down from the garlands, but he was also sure he would have sensed that. No, this was just relaxing. And when Malfoy quietly slipped a glass of wine onto the table beside him, Harry didn't bother testing it. He picked it up and took a sip.

"You're more relaxed than I expected."

"I've committed to this. I have to trust you, or you'll think I'm playing hard to get and keep pursuing me harder than ever."

Silence then. Harry had to smile a little. He wondered if he'd put Malfoy off with that. Well, as long as Malfoy let him stay for an hour or so listening to the whistles and screams and smelling the flowers before kicking him out, that was okay.

"Dinner, Potter."

Harry opened his eyes and sat up with a yawn. He saw Malfoy watching him closely, avidly, as they went to the table in the center of a great dining room with windows open to the jungle-garden. "You must not get a lot of sleep. I understand that you like the jungle atmosphere, but the way you slumped over that chair…"

"It is hard to sleep sometimes," Harry said. Honesty, Malfoy wanted honesty. Fine, Harry would give it to him until he choked on it. "I tend to worry about all the plans for tomorrow and what I have to do to make sure I don't slip up."

"Slip up, Harry?"

"Don't call me that."

"I think that it would help you be more relaxed. People at work mostly call you Potter, don't they? They demand your attention with a name that you might not feel even belongs to you."

Harry stood up and walked over to the chair Malfoy had indicated. "I could explain what I meant by a slip-up, which I believe was your question, or I could debate with you about my name."

"You're right, Harry. You should answer the question."

Harry bared his teeth a little, and then he took a bite of the lamb waiting for him, swimming in some kind of sauce that smelled delicious, and he sighed. It seemed less important to hold to principle. They would have sex soon, Malfoy would lose interest in him because he wasn't a virgin anymore or that interesting, and things would be resolved. "Fine. I mean that—God, I'm selfish, Malfoy. I fight against it all the time. I think I do a pretty good job, but it's always there, the thought of what kind of advantage I could take of my reputation or my power in the Auror Department. Sometimes I want to bounce some fucking Dark wizard's head off a step. It hasn't happened so far, but it could. And it would be more likely to happen if I was tired or distracted."

Malfoy was silent. Harry went on eating the lamb, and sampled the salad that sat in a dish by the plate. He found himself relaxing the same way he had when he was lounging on the chair. The salad was crisp and clean, the small whole tomatoes scattered throughout it breaking open with soft pops in his mouth, and the cheese in it—Harry honestly couldn't identify what kind of cheese it was—sweet and soft.

"You're not used to good food, either. But you can afford it."

"I can afford it. But I don't have the time to make it for myself, and Hermione would commit murder if I owned a house-elf."

"Why don't you have the time?"

Now Harry was beginning to wonder if Malfoy was just stupid. "Have you seen the workload that Aurors have?"

"I see Aurors in restaurants all the time," Malfoy replied. He was leaning forwards across the table. Harry noticed that he'd barely touched his own meal, but then again, Harry didn't think poisoning him was the point. "And I know that Auror Essary is a good cook. I have friends who've been over to her house."

Harry grimaced. "Fine. But I choose to do other things with my time."

"Even though you enjoy the food so much?"

"Yes. Why is this hard for you to understand?"

Malfoy gave him a winsome smile that didn't sit well on his face. "I'm trying to understand you, Harry. That man I saw at the Doherty gala was a different one than you. A man who knew what he wanted, who was bored by mindless activities, who was even bored with the woman he was dating."

Harry flinched. His appetite almost vanished, but honestly, he couldn't remember the last time he'd had a meal like this. He went on eating. Malfoy watched him so avidly that Harry finally laid down his fork and said, "I don't know what answer you want."

"I want to understand you."

"And I'm telling you that you're mistaken about what kind of man I am. Sure, I have terrible, selfish thoughts, just like everyone else. And mine are probably worse, because of what I could do if I didn't keep a close watch on myself. But you might as well go out and find a nice pure-blood woman who has those same selfish thoughts."

"Do you know I've changed since the war?"

Harry cast a glance around at the jungle. "Obviously."

"I've not become someone who's warm. But I care about more than just my own pleasure. I also care about the pleasure of people close to me. And sometimes, I like the chance to expand my circle. You think you're selfish. I want to give you a chance to be selfish."

"Why, for fuck's sake?"

"To see what happens."

Harry studied Malfoy. Malfoy only looked back, and radiated a kind of jagged sincerity that Harry found himself believing. If Malfoy had claimed complete reform, Harry would have snorted and refused to listen. But Malfoy wanted to do this, for whatever reason.

He's only going to be disappointed. Harry leaned back and sighed. "All right. Do your worst. But promise me one thing."

"I want to promise you the world, Harry."

Harry swallowed. He hadn't ever had someone say something like that to him. But he worked, and managed to get his words past the lump in his throat. "If I don't like it and I leave, or I say I never want to see you again and I leave, then back off. Don't approach me again."

"I promise." Malfoy had floated around the table and stood in front of him now, his eyes brilliant as he stared down at Harry's upturned face. "I only pushed this hard in the first place because I can't believe that you know what you're missing. If you know and you don't want me to offer it to you again, that's your choice."

Harry thought about it, then nodded. It was true that he was a virgin with men and didn't know what he was missing.

But it was also true that he couldn't imagine his dissatisfaction with sex and dating really changing if he was with a man.

He started to stand up, to kiss Malfoy, to learn how he could romance him and how he'd like to be touched. But Malfoy slammed into him before he was even fully up from the chair, bearing him back into the wall of the dining room. For a second, Harry wasn't aware of anything but the crash of his heart, the startlement from the sudden movement.

Then Malfoy kissed him.

Harry gasped and opened his mouth. Malfoy's tongue was in there, flicking, teasing, licking, pressing. His arms were wrapped around Harry's neck and waist, and he was pressed so close that Harry doubted he could get away if he wanted to.

He didn't want to. Harry's heartbeat was accelerating until he thought he might faint. His own tongue flicked back at Malfoy's and the taste went through him like a shock of hot needles. He tried to press forwards, and found he couldn't.

Harry liked that.

He wound a hand in Malfoy's hair and tried to lift his mouth away. Malfoy only licked at him more determinedly and slid one of his legs between both of Harry's. Harry swayed. There was no chance of falling, there was a solid chest in front of him and a mouth at his neck and a wall at his back, and he was burning as though Malfoy had put a Pepper-Up Potion directly under his skin, and he was hard.

Now. He wanted to be naked. Now.

For a second, Harry tried to pause and think about it, because this was the kind of selfish wanting that meant he would neglect his partner's pleasure and try to focus on his own instead. But Malfoy's mouth was there, then his hands, slicing down the side of Harry's ribs and forcing his robes away from them. Harry arched. He hadn't known the skin there existed, let alone that it was so sensitive. He burned. He writhed. He wanted.

Just him. Him alone. He forced his eyes open and Malfoy was hazy, except for the parts of him touching Harry.

"Told you you'd enjoy it."

That smug tone should have brought Harry out of his daze if anything could, but he only groaned and nodded. And went with Malfoy when he turned and abruptly started urging Harry towards the door away from the dining room.

God, there was a hand down the back of his robes and a hand at his hair all the way, and Malfoy's mouth for the majority of the way, making Harry twist and try to get closer. Malfoy only chuckled and now and then used his mouth to break Harry's thoughts into scattered pieces. They stumbled—well, Harry stumbled—down a corridor he could never remember later and straight into a room empty except for an enormous, half-moon-shaped bed.

Malfoy twisted so that Harry dropped onto the shimmering blue sheets. Harry arched up towards him, but Malfoy put a hand in the middle of his chest and said, "Wait."

Harry closed his eyes. His breath was coming in gasps. His cock twitched. There was already a small pool of his fluids on his abdomen, and he'd been lying down for a few seconds.

"Nudus."

Harry shivered as his clothes went flying away from him, but he'd expected it. He opened his eyes and looked down at himself. He'd never seen that flush on his cock, or himself that wet. He swallowed and glanced up at Malfoy, who was unclasping his own long, flowing robes with leisurely movements of his hands.

"Why—"

"Because I want to."

Harry fell silent, licking his lips. God, Malfoy's eyes. They had turned almost the color of the sheets, and they shone as if Harry was the sun giving them light. That was something he had never seen, either.

Malfoy caught one of his hands and kissed it, then turned his back and tipped his head a little. By squinting, Harry could make out the lace that seemed to lie across the back of his neck. He turned himself on one side, reached up, and tugged.

The lace coiled to the side and the whole set of robes unfolded with it, sweeping down in a long, elegant gesture that let Malfoy step out of them and turn around. Harry caught his breath. Malfoy's cock wasn't as dark as his, but it was pretty red. Malfoy smiled at him and knelt on the bed.

Harry had had time to catch his thoughts along with his breaths. This was mental. It wasn't the way he acted, not the way he went to bed with someone. When Malfoy gathered him into his arms again, Harry tried to reach up and kiss him slowly, gently, probingly, to find out what Malfoy liked, the way he had with his other partners.

Malfoy forced him casually down, and shook his head a little when Harry glared at him. "This is about you," he said, and then he leaned forwards and bit Harry just under his collarbone.

Harry made a noise that wasn't enough of a shriek for him. That bloody hurt. But it also made his groin throb with arousal. No one had ever done this to him before.

He caught Malfoy's shoulders, but Malfoy lay down on top of him, and Harry clenched his teeth as their cocks brushed together. Then Malfoy cast a spell that left his hands coated with some kind of oil. He rolled his wand to the side and ran his hands down Harry's ribs again.

The pleasure that seared him then was unreal. Harry said, "Malfoy," and he meant to ask a question, but his voice just ended up coming out on a sob instead.

"I'm going to take care of you," Malfoy said, and licked the bite he'd left on Harry. "I don't think many people ever have."

"I don't—let them," Harry said, and blinked. Those words had come from somewhere deeper inside himself than the selfishness did. "No, I mean—"

"You said what you meant. This oil relaxes you as well as gives you pleasure." Malfoy kissed him again, twice, once on the mouth and once on the bite mark. "Now. Let me take care of you." And he slid down the bed and fastened his mouth around Harry's cock before Harry could say anything else.

Harry jolted. He couldn't remember—the last time a woman had done that—

And Malfoy was undeniably there. His mouth worked, and Harry felt the flick of his tongue. Harry cried out, his hips thrusting up so quickly that he thought he probably hit Malfoy in the jaw. But he didn't need to apologize. Malfoy flowed back with the motion, and then went back to work, using little taps of his teeth that somehow didn't hurt and his throat muscles and the insides of his cheeks to make Harry sag into the bed.

Thought withered and blew away in the firestorm of his orgasm. Harry shuddered and gave himself up, and his mind was blank and blissful. He felt the wetness surround him again. He knew Malfoy had swallowed it all.

Nothing happened for a few seconds but his breathing, his coming back to earth, and Malfoy cleaning him up with his mouth. Then Harry shivered as reality seized him in hawk's talons and he reached down and gently touched Malfoy's head.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do that—"

"It's good that one of us around here means something, then."

Malfoy came back up the bed and touched Harry on the ribs again. Harry curled back and moaned. The oil was still on Malfoy's fingers, or maybe he'd put some more on. His cock was already stirring back to life. Harry stared at it.

"You're not used to magic playing much of a part in your sex life, either," Malfoy muttered, and shook his head. "But I don't think I can blame that on your hero complex. You probably just haven't been adventurous in bed before this."

"Malfoy—I need—"

"Yes, I know. I am going to fuck you this time, you know. That's what you need."

"No, I mean—I want—"

Malfoy caught Harry's hand long before it could come near his cock. "I know that you want to pleasure me," he said quietly. "But tonight is about what you need, not what you want. I just need to take some of the edge off. Merlin, Potter, your body is starving for it." He seemed to be looking at Harry's ribs where he'd touched, although Harry didn't know why. "This oil glows in a spectrum of colors that can tell me how long it's been since you were really sexually satisfied. Do you know what color it is?"

"None?" Harry looked, too. He couldn't see any glow.

"White," Malfoy said calmly. "The color of virginity. You've never been really satisfied, Harry. Do you know why?"

"No." Harry could feel bewilderment stirring and forcing itself to the top of his mind. He'd had lots of lovers. He—

Had never gone as far as he wanted to with any of them. He couldn't. It would have hurt them. Their feelings, if not their bodies. He was supposed to be the hero who protected them and kept them safe. How could he justify hurting them?

"Exactly," Malfoy said, as if he knew all those words already. He let his tongue curl around one of Harry's nipples, and smiled as he arched. Harry stared as Malfoy's eyelashes fluttered and his face darkened. "Watch me."

Harry couldn't have taken his eyes off him, anyway. Malfoy seemed to understand that, and smiled at him as he spread a different oil—Harry thought it was a different one—across his cock and then reached down to Harry's arse. Harry hissed as the fingers penetrated him.

Malfoy was watching his face intently, but seemed satisfied that Harry wasn't going to protest. He shoved in and twisted, and Harry humped up with a surprised noise.

"No one ever played with you here? Merlin, Potter, what kind of idiots have you been sleeping with?"

"They didn't want to."

"And neither did you, because of course you couldn't ask them for it. The list of what you felt comfortable asking for is very bloody small, I suspect."

Harry would have said something, but then Malfoy's hands touched his cock and something inside him at the same time, and Harry made a thoroughly shocked noise. Pleasure rebounded through him, and the magical pleasure of Malfoy's touch, enhanced by that oil or that potion or whatever it was, made him shove himself back and down.

"That's your prostate."

Harry turned his head to the side on the pillow and shut his eyes. Malfoy immediately stopped moving his hands. Harry lifted his head to glare at him again, and Malfoy grinned and worked his fingers inside Harry harder. Harry thought there were three of them now. Or four. His head was spinning too hard for him to be sure.

"I did tell you to watch, you know."

"You—you're going to huge lengths just to win a bet with yourself."

"There's no bet here except whether I can actually satisfy you. And I'm going to. The glow is already turning red, you know. You've had more satisfaction just from my fingers than you ever had in bed before."

Harry shuddered, not taking his eyes from Malfoy's gaze, and lifted his legs before he could think better of it. Malfoy promptly bent down and kissed him fiercely. Harry let his tongue curl around Malfoy's. Malfoy drew back and nodded.

"It's nice to know that a conscious part of you can want this, too."

Harry didn't think he could speak his desire. He flexed his hips instead, and Malfoy got it and touched his prostate again. Harry enjoyed the flush of pleasure that seemed to travel from the base of his cock all the way to the top of his head.

Malfoy finally took his fingers out—four, it looked like—and then smoothed some more lubricant onto his own cock. "Ready, Harry?"

His voice was soft, and he paused as if he would rear back and get off the bed. That gave Harry the courage to nod. Malfoy eased in slowly, his brow furrowed like he was concentrating on a difficult puzzle.

Harry winced and shivered at first, but then there came the moment when Malfoy's cock brushed his prostate in the same way his fingers had, and Harry bucked and shouted. Malfoy smiled at him and began to fuck him with his head cocked. At first it was as slow as his entrance had been, but in minutes his hips were snapping, his head bending forwards, his breath coming out in harsh puffs.

It felt so good.

And Harry was pinned, in a way, on the bed beneath Malfoy. He couldn't just stand up and throw him off. Malfoy was on top of him. Inside him. Harry felt another wonderful flush travel through him.

He'd always been in control. Always known that he was holding back, but also that he could stop in an instant if a partner needed him to—and there had been times she had. He'd always fulfilled other people's needs and smiled in a restrained way and kissed gently and kept his hips moving at a sedate pace.

Now he didn't need to. There was no one else here who could be hurt by him not holding himself back.

Harry let his inhibitions go.

As it turned out, the noises he made when he was letting go were thick and guttural and nearly ugly. Malfoy's eyes widened for a second. Then he shuddered with his own pleasure and bent over to murmur, "I never thought I would hear something like this from you."

Harry responded with more of the same sounds, and Malfoy's thrusts became fast, erratic, hard. Punishingly hard. Harry didn't care. This was what he wanted. What he needed. For once, the two were one.

His sight blurred. Sweat crowded the corners of his temples and dripped off, and he couldn't ever remember feeling this naked. Malfoy shuddered above him, body an exquisite curve. Harry watched him. He was beautiful. Pale and pink and beautiful.

Malfoy caught his eye and said, as if he was continuing a conversation they'd been having for a while, "Come."

Harry screamed hoarsely as the orgasm tore out of him, straight through his cock, almost seeming to turn his bollocks inside out. It didn't stop, either. The wave crested, and pulled him with it, and still he was cresting, and rising, and not falling, and the detonation of pleasure was there, was with him, he couldn't hide from it—

Malfoy came inside him, and that felt better than any time a lover had ever orgasmed with him.

In the silence that followed, Harry lay there and tried to understand. Malfoy lay down next to him, still inside his body. Harry shifted, trying to decide how he felt about that.

Malfoy laughed and kissed his forehead. "Go to sleep."

His power to make Harry come on command had to have something to do with the lubricant potion he'd used, but there was no reason that it should work when he told Harry to go to sleep. And yet, it did. Harry slipped quietly and comfortably away, wrapped in Malfoy's arms.

Waking up was one of the most horrible experiences of his life.

He'd lost control last night, for the first time in—Harry couldn't actually remember. He'd fantasized about losing control a lot. He'd never done it.

He kept his breathing quiet and his eyes shut, because he was pretty sure Malfoy was still asleep, and listened to the guilt crackling through him like lightning strikes. If he'd let his magic go, he could have hurt Malfoy. If Malfoy hadn't been so into it—for some unknown reason—he might not have achieved his own pleasure. And Harry had come here for selfish motives. Because it was easier than avoiding Malfoy. Because it was an experience he hadn't had before.

"You twitch when you're feeling guilty."

Harry swallowed and opened his eyes. Malfoy was lying there, next to him, his piercing gaze far too understanding for comfort. Harry wanted to glance away, but he couldn't convince his neck to move. It would be cowardly. He at least owed Malfoy the truth now that they'd had sex.

"I deceived you. I came here because I thought it would make you stop pursuing me once you had sex with me."

"Oh, I knew that."

Harry had been preparing to go on, to explain and take whatever scorn Malfoy wanted to give him, but he found himself stopping with his lips a little parted and his tongue almost dangling between them. Malfoy's gaze aimed itself straight at his mouth, which didn't help. Harry closed it and swallowed. "What?"

"You wouldn't suddenly have given in and realized that you deserve everything I want to give you," Malfoy murmured. He tucked Harry more firmly against his side. At least he wasn't still inside him. "So you changed your mind for a different reason. A noble, self-sacrificing reason would fit. And the only one I could think of was that you wanted me to have a taste of you. And give yourself a taste of me, but that motive was probably buried."

"Malfoy, there is no reason for you to be here."

"Yes, there is. For one thing, it's my house. For another, we had sex last night."

Harry shoved at his shoulder. "There are other people you could have," he said roughly. "More experienced. People who would love you the way I don't now—"

"I've had people like that, and been bored every time. I enjoy both men and women, so it's not just that I wanted you because you're a man."

"But you wanted me because I was a virgin with men."

"It added to the attraction. But it wasn't the only reason."

"So fucking why, Malfoy?"

Malfoy was silent for a little while, to the point where Harry would have thought he'd gone back to sleep if not for those shining, clear grey eyes fixed on him. And then Malfoy nodded a little and began to speak, his voice soft and charged with some emotion so intimate that Harry found himself holding his breath to listen.

"Because you've given so much of yourself to the wizarding world, and never received anything back. Because you're attractive. Because you're complicated, and that means I won't get bored easily. Because you're unselfish in a lot of ways, and I will enjoy that. Because I enjoy pampering and spoiling people."

"I won't let you do that to me."

"You already did."

"I mean spoiling." Harry closed his eyes, because Malfoy's direct gaze and voice were getting on his nerves, and if he lost control of his temper, his magic would raise boils on Malfoy's skin—at the very least. "I've seen enough people spoiled to understand what it really means."

"Tell me what it means, then." Malfoy's voice was breathless as he walked his fingers up Harry's chest and skimmed them along his neck. "And show me your magic. God, I bet it's gorgeous. Just like you are."

Harry wanted to bang his head against something, but there was nothing convenient, what with Malfoy hovering above him and practically holding him down. He finally said, "My cousin was spoiled. And I mean that. He got better later, but in his childhood—he was ruined, Malfoy. He was a horrible person until he was about fifteen. I don't want to become that way."

"Hmm, I think I understand some things now, like why you're so sure that one indulgence is going to make something horrible happen to you," Malfoy murmured. His hand slid back and forth along Harry's shoulder. Harry's magic formed a gleaming white shield that, he knew from experience, could hurl someone away from him, but this time it didn't seem intent on doing that. It only hovered. "But your aunt and uncle had to spoil your cousin for a long time for that to happen. And he got better later. So I don't understand completely."

"You don't need to. Let me go."

"You're always free to go." Malfoy moved back, and Harry shivered a little as he felt Malfoy's magic caress his own. "If you want to."

"Why wouldn't I want to?"

"It's five in the morning," Malfoy said casually. "So you could stay here and rest some more, and then eat the most delicious breakfast you've eaten in your life. I saw how you savored the dinner, Harry. It's not that you're immune or don't want temptation. You just—think you shouldn't have it. So let me provide it for you."

"If I stay here, I'll be just as guilty as you."

"Do you always put yourself and your lovers on trial for imaginary crimes?"

Harry winced. Malfoy didn't have the same kind of selfishness he did, and it was unfair to imply he did, or put him through guilt about it.

For a moment, holding those grey eyes, Harry was tempted to get out of bed and walk away. It would be the best thing to do. Of course it would.

Then he let his head fall back. If he was as strong as he'd always thought, then he could survive this, right? And his head was a whirling mess right now. He hadn't thought about Dudley in so long, hadn't known that he thought that about his cousin and being spoiled and—

"Let me take over for a little while." Malfoy leaned over and brushed his cheek with his lips. "You don't need to make the decisions right now. Just eat the breakfast and relax. We don't need to have sex again right now."

Harry did have to roll his eyes at that. "Of course we don't, Malfoy."

Malfoy only smiled at him and turned around to call the house-elves. And Harry let them bring him breakfast in bed because he honestly had no idea what else to do.

"Are you all right, mate? Only you've signed that report three times."

Harry looked down, sighed, and cast the modified charm he'd found that would remove the signatures only without damaging the rest of the ink on the report. "Sorry, Ron," he said, rubbing his eyebrow. "I have a lot on my mind."

"Yeah, I haven't seen you like this in a long time."

"You mean this preoccupied?"

"Brooding, yeah. I'm sure that you'll have a new girlfriend soon, Harry. Just because Ellora needed to find someone else doesn't mean the next one will."

Ron turned back to his reports, but Harry sat still where he was for a full minute, despite it confirming Ron's opinion that he'd changed. No, he hadn't acted like this, had he? He'd accepted things and kept going. He'd been the good hero, the good Auror, the good friend, everything.

And now he was slipping.

Harry frowned and started signing reports again. He made sure not to press so hard that he broke the quill or splattered ink. He didn't do things like that anymore.

And perhaps that's part of the problem.

Harry set his jaw and didn't admit the thought. No. He wasn't going to let Malfoy change him. He was stronger than to let some good sex and meals slip under his defenses. The next time Malfoy approached him, he would be calm, cool, collected.

And refusing. Because he had to.

Malfoy slid to his knees in front of Harry the minute he opened his front door and pressed his mouth on Harry's cock through the cloth of his robes.

Harry staggered back with a gasp. His heart was pounding so hard he thought it might be failing him, and his vision was closing and opening like a butterfly's wings. He hadn't thought, when he heard the knock, that—

Malfoy pushed his way into the house and pressed Harry back against the wall next to the fireplace, which had never felt so hard before. His mouth was as hot and persistent on Harry's face as it had been on his cock. Harry lifted one leg and wrapped it around Malfoy's waist, grinding into him.

Malfoy smiled at him and slid his hand down, grasping Harry's erection and holding on. Harry closed his eyes and threw his head back. He was already almost there, from nothing to arousal in seconds, and he was going to—

"None of that right now."

Harry dropped his leg from around Malfoy's waist and stood there. It felt as though his face was honestly on fire. He couldn't look at Malfoy. God, he was selfish, taking like that. What must Malfoy think of him?

Apparently, that it was time to grab his cheeks and kiss him breathless. Harry blinked his eyes open again and stared at Malfoy, dazed, not understanding.

"I only meant that I didn't want you to come yet," Malfoy whispered to him, and pushed him further towards the bedroom. "Not that I wanted you ashamed or guilty. You're so beautiful when you're not wearing those expressions."

Harry found himself in the bedroom barely aware of how he'd got there. His head was still spinning dizzily on the inside. People didn't call him beautiful, not like that. Some of his lovers had called his soul beautiful. They'd said he was heroic, caring.

And so he'd had to be. Because he knew what he could be if he let himself go.

"None of that right now, either."

Harry blinked and looked at Malfoy again. Malfoy was already stripping out of his belt, shrugging so that his robes rolled off his shoulders. Harry reached out to finger them as they whispered past his face. He started. He'd never felt anything so soft.

"Yeah," Malfoy said, with a faint smile and glance over his shoulder at him. "That's the kind of clothes you'll be wearing soon enough."

"What makes you think I'll let you spend your money on me?"

Malfoy grinned. It transformed his face. Harry stared. He'd never seen Malfoy grin happily in school. "That defiance is one thing I do like. More of that, please." He went on stripping, and Harry swallowed as he watched the pale chest with the puckered scars appear. He'd thought it might look silly outside the context of Malfoy's rich bedroom. It didn't. It just appeared—Harry wanted to touch it.

He hesitated, then reached out and did it. There was no magic snapping and sparking around his fingers yet. It had to be safe.

Malfoy sighed and thrust his chest forwards so Harry's fingers were sliding along the scars, then gripped his hand and sucked so hard on Harry's thumb that Harry could feel his erection rising higher. "Come on, your turn."

Harry blinked and took his clothes off without waiting. But his mind was spinning in another direction now. He'd never done something like this before. He'd seduced his girlfriends, and set up romantic evenings, and asked them when they were out for dinner if they wanted to make love. It was always planned.

Malfoy just showed up and acted like he had the right to—

But he did. Because when he reached out as Harry bared his chest and pinched one of Harry's nipples, Harry's spinning mind stopped and settled.

For right now, it was okay for there to be just this.

He leaned forwards to kiss Malfoy, and Malfoy made a soft pleased noise like a hidden creature and kissed him back. Then he guided Harry to the bed, and suddenly it was as if they were back in his bedroom in the Manor. He made the sheets softer, the lights brighter with his very presence.

This time, Harry spread his legs before Malfoy could persuade him to, but he shook his head when Malfoy conjured what looked like the same oil as before. Malfoy blinked. "Why not?"

"It's—too intense."

"All right, then you need something a little softer this time." Malfoy rubbed his fingers off against the sheets, which should have irritated Harry. "Just regular lube?" His wand swished again, and then there was a huge amount of slightly blue-gleaming oil all over his hand. "Do you like this kind?"

"Um. I don't know."

Malfoy's eyebrows went up, and then Harry was being looked at in another intense way that he wasn't sure he liked. "Huh."

"What?"

"No, don't lower your legs. It's just that I thought when you said you weren't experienced with men, you just meant you'd never slept with a man. But you've never really played with your arse at all, have you?"

"Why the fuck would I want to?"

"Well, because of what you felt when we were fucking," Malfoy said dryly. Harry flushed harder. "It's okay. This time I think we'll concentrate on letting you feel it. Last time I just wanted to take the edge off for you." His voice was soft and warm. "Here, let me."

Harry slowly tucked his knees up to his belly again. Malfoy's fingers, coated with the lube, reached towards his arse, and he smiled. "You're beautiful."

"Someone's arsehole is not fucking beautiful, Malfoy."

"There's your sense of wit and humor! I wondered where it'd gone. And I'll find anything beautiful that I want, Potter."

Harry felt a surge of relief that Malfoy was calling him by his last name again, and then Malfoy's fingers slid into him and he tossed his head back. For some reason, this felt a lot better than it had with the enchanted lube. And he quietly lay there and focused on the sensation of Malfoy working his fingers deep and deeper into him.

Malfoy paused. Harry looked down at him and found him staring at Harry's arsehole again, or maybe his fingers holding it open, for all Harry knew.

"Still not beautiful."

"Still going to find it beautiful if I want, Harry."

Harry felt a cascade of shivers roll over him as Malfoy spoke his name. God, he couldn't go on meeting his eyes. He turned his head and put his arm over his face.

Malfoy didn't object. He went on, probing and sliding and spreading him wider, and Harry made soft huffs in his throat until he realized he was doing it, tried to stop, and couldn't. By the time Malfoy had four fingers in him, Harry was a mess, and the pleasure was all over his body like a huge warm blanket.

"Ready? I think you are."

"Yeah. You—" Words stuck in Harry's throat for a second, and then he swallowed and continued. "You've got me loose, Malfoy."

Malfoy sounded as if he was taking all the air in the room, and then he was moving urgently on top of Harry, pushing his legs off to the sides, urging his cock against Harry's hole. Harry took the arm away from his eyes. Malfoy stared at him with eyes so wide that Harry gasped.

"I really need you," Malfoy said, and sheathed himself before Harry could say anything.

Harry shouted at what was still a painful burn, for a minute. Then Malfoy was fully inside him and petting his sides and whispering to him, and Harry concentrated more on the fact that he was full. Full. There was something inside him.

Not something, someone.

Joy so unexpected it was like a fall of knives pierced Harry, and he smiled up and said, "I think you were going to prove something to me. Draco."

Malfoy gaped at him, and went on gaping, to the point that Harry nudged his own hips at him to get him in motion. Malfoy shook his head then, or maybe Harry should call him Draco now, and began to thrust. Harry closed his eyes again.

The joy had faded some, but it had melted back into the pleasure, and the sensation, and all the things that Harry had never been able to enjoy before this, because he had been too busy taking care of someone else. Now they were there. Now he could feel hips touching his, bumping his, and the line of heat down his own cock, and someone else's shaking, and the hand gliding up his side...

He turned his head and opened his eyes. Malfoy's hand was down near his ribs. Harry tugged on his arm and got it up near his mouth. Then he sucked on Malfoy's palm.

Malfoy immediately began to move faster. "How did you know how to do that?"

"I think I was just guessing."

For a moment, wisps of the last time he'd done that went past Harry's mind, but he let it go and focused on where he belonged: here, on the bed, beneath Malfoy, someone inside him, thrusting, moving.

The pleasure rose like water in a well forced to the surface, and bubbles seemed to burst in Harry's chest as he came. He laughed in wonder. Malfoy followed behind him with a sharp sigh that sounded like he was winded. He kept moving until Harry ached; then he fell forwards and lay there panting into Harry's collarbone.

"I actually didn't intend to make love to you like that when I came here," Malfoy finally said, his voice a little drunken as he lay in Harry's arms. "I was just going to suck you off and then talk to you."

Harry reached down and played with strands of his hair. "Well, why don't you talk to me now." He was drowsy and pleased and full. He saw nothing wrong with having this conversation right now.

Malfoy gave a short laugh and propped himself up on his elbow, studying Harry for a second. "You're different."

"I'm satiated."

"So you believe me now when I said that you never really were before?"

"Let's say that I'm entertaining the notion."

Malfoy nodded and rolled a little to the side, taking Harry with him and cradling him in his arms. "Will you tell me a little more about why? What did you think would happen if you went after something you wanted for yourself?"

Harry closed his eyes and lay there and thought about it, instead of snarling the way he once would have. It was easier than it would have been, that was certain. He could feel his thoughts ticking softly over.

"I was afraid that someone would die."

"How in the world did you reckon that?"

Harry opened his eyes and glared at Malfoy, although it was sort of hard when he was lying so close that Harry couldn't even focus on his face. "Because what if I was slow when I was an Auror? What if I cared more about my own skin than someone else's? And I hesitated? I'm not exaggerating. I've seen some people hesitate that way. When the person they faced looked harmless, or they knew they would get hurt rescuing someone else."

"What did you do when you saw that?"

"I stepped in. And usually got hurt."

"Did you blame the other Aurors who hesitated?"

"No. Because I was trained for it, and they weren't."

"How was your training different from theirs?"

Harry closed his eyes to think how to phrase it, and felt Malfoy's hands smoothing over and down his side. He sighed out, because he was still ticklish. "I mean, they didn't have the kind of childhood and adolescence I did. I know how to act fast because I had to act that way all the time with the Dursleys and during the war with Voldemort."

"And because of that, you think it always has to be you?"

"It's not surprising if it has to be, yeah."

"I think you know now that it doesn't always have to be you. You can think of different ways to act. And even if you feel compelled to save as many people as possible when you're in the field as an Auror, how does that translate to not asking some of your lovers for different things that would satisfy you?"

"They wanted me to be a hero. A hero is in charge, and he's gentle, and he doesn't want to do anything but make his partners feel safe and comfortable."

"Ah." Malfoy's voice was so soft that Harry could barely feel it on his skin. He sat up and slid his hand casually down Harry's chest. "I won't ever ask you to be a hero."

"I know." But although Harry pressed his lips into a smile, he could already feel a little shiver of doubt and dread working through him. What if he did something wrong, like fry Malfoy alive with his magic, because he was so busy enjoying himself?

"Don't tense up like that. As pleasant as it would be if I were capable of getting hard again right now."

Harry forced himself to relax. Malfoy leaned close enough that Harry could see him rolling his eyes. "And don't do that, either. One thing you ought to keep in mind is that I'm not going to want you to do things just because they please me."

"But you said—"

"This would be useless if you tried to act selfish because you thought it was what I wanted. I'm trying to make you work for what you want."

Harry curled his fingers into the sheets. He could think about relaxing with Malfoy. He could think about trying to relax in the field when he saw a chance to do something without getting hurt, even if it was less heroic. It was mental to think that he could just—want something, and take it.

"What do you want, Harry?"

Harry licked his lips. He knew. That wasn't the problem. The problem was admitting it.

"You can admit it, Harry." Malfoy was probably reading his surface thoughts again. He cupped Harry's face and leaned near enough that Harry could see every little grey glimmer in his eyes. "Come on. I won't let it go any further than this room."

"If you just used Legilimency on me, then you know what I want. Why do you want me to say it?"

Malfoy grinned. "Because I intend to help you get what you want regardless of what you say. But it'll be better for you if you can announce it aloud."

"I want—I want to stop being a hero."

Harry tensed. He almost thought the words were going to light the air on fire. But they didn't. The only fiery thing in the room was Malfoy's smile of delight.

"There you go," he said, and bent down to let his lips rest on Harry's, in what was only a kiss if a kiss didn't have to have movement.

"But," Harry said, and his lips moved under Malfoy's and he ignored the way their tongues touched briefly because of it, "what if my friends need me and I'm not there? What if the Ministry starts losing some criminals because I don't catch them? What if I make someone unhappy who needs my help? What if—"

"What would they do if you died tomorrow?"

"What?" Harry actually started to reach for his wand for a second, and then stopped. He knew, on a deep level that he didn't have words for, that Malfoy would never actually threaten him.

"I said," Malfoy repeated slowly, "what would they do if you died tomorrow? If you got killed on one of those cases that you're always taking such big risks on? They'd have to find someone else anyway, wouldn't they? It wouldn't come crashing down. They can do without Harry Potter the hero."

Harry hesitated. "My friends would be upset if I died."

"You're taking my words too literally," Malfoy said, and there was a fond, teasing note in his voice that made Harry smile instead of snap. "I meant that they can get used to doing without you. They'd have to if you died, or something happened to put you into a coma at St. Mungo's, if your friends losing you is too upsetting for you to think about. You don't have to be a hero just because they've come to expect it."

Harry frowned and tapped his fingers on the bed. "But how do I tell them I want to stop being a hero?"

"You don't tell them. You just do it."

"So suddenly I'm going to stop offering to babysit Hugo and Rose for them? Just because I want to be selfish and have some time to myself during the week?"

"Merlin, Potter. How often do you babysit them?"

"Usually two or three times a week. Friday, Saturday, and one weekday night." Harry blinked. "I would have been over there tonight, but Ron said they were too tired to go out for dinner and Hermione was sick."

"Let me guess. You do that so that they can get some time by themselves, away from the children?"

"Yeah. It's not easy—"

"I have less than no interest in Weasley and Granger, Harry. And it's a favor they'll survive without. They can have Weasley's family do it, or Granger's parents. Just because they've learned to expect it doesn't mean it's a service that you owe them."

"But you don't understand. Without time by themselves, their marriage probably wouldn't survive. Ron told me that once. Hermione works so much and coming home to the kids is so exhausting for both of them—"

"They'll need to make other arrangements," Malfoy cut in smoothly. "Why can't Granger take a less exhausting job? Why can't Weasley dump the kids on their no-doubt doting grandparents once in a while? They've made you responsible for their children and their marriage, when they should take responsibility for those things themselves."

Harry blinked. "It's not like that—"

"But it's bad enough that you're lying here feeling guilty, even though you have no reason to. Do you enjoy doing all this for them? Or would you like a holiday sometimes?"

Harry wanted to say that of course he enjoyed spending time with his godchildren, that he liked to think of Ron and Hermione having fun at a private dinner or at a Quidditch game or a movie or wherever they'd wanted to go, but the words died on his tongue. He'd looked after them as they left and envied them often enough. He'd thought that Rose and Hugo would be less exhausting if Ron and Hermione would just give them an earlier bedtime. He'd thought of Molly and how much she would enjoy babysitting and wanted to just Floo over to the Burrow and give her Rose and Hugo and go home.

"Your life is as much yours as it is theirs," Malfoy said, driving the words in like nails. "It's fine if you want to do favors. But that shouldn't be the reason you exist."

Harry licked his lips. "What would happen if their marriage did break up?"

"I neither know nor care, Harry. And you shouldn't take the responsibility on your shoulders."

Harry shut his eyes. Malfoy only waited. Now and then he shifted as if he was hot or wanted to get out of the bed, but he never did.

Harry was trying to envision giving up one part of his endless responsibilities. It wouldn't do a thing to all the others, but being able to step back, never worrying about the tense expressions on Ron's and Hermione's faces when they left the house, never having to suffer that strong tension until they came back smiling and relaxed…

"It's strange," he whispered. "I know they would be horrified if they thought they were using me this way, but it somehow evolved into them using me that way."

"That's because you encouraged it," Malfoy said. Harry glared at him. "You wanted to be thought a hero. You would have been selfish if you wanted time to yourself. But ask yourself something. Aren't they being selfish by wanting all that time away from the children they decided to have?"

"Of course not. They just need a holiday—"

"They deserve it?"

"Yes!"

"Then so do you."

Harry paused. The bed was the center of a reeling universe that he kept thinking shouldn't be that strange. He swallowed and said, "There's one thing you can't excuse. One desire I have that's too selfish."

"Oh? That sounds like a challenge. Do tell me what it is, Harry."

Harry shuddered a little from the words that felt like a caress, and his cock stirred. He swallowed and ignored the urge to lean up and kiss Malfoy again, or call him Draco. "I wanted to lie back in bed and just let my lovers do all the work."

"You never did?"

"No."

"Then that sounds like a normal desire to me. One that you can keep under control and don't need to worry about. But you were so afraid of what might happen if you let it out—were you afraid that your girlfriends would go to the papers if you did one thing that broke that façade of glittering, selfless hero?"

"Yes," Harry blurted, and then said, "No. Wait, I mean, no. Of course not. I wouldn't have dated someone like that—"

"But you were afraid of it all the same." Malfoy picked up his hand and began idly nipping at Harry's fingers one by one, never taking his eyes from him all the while. "Your fears don't have to be rational. You were afraid, and that was why you could never relax around them. And then eventually they broke up and went to find someone who was less perfect."

"But they wouldn't have forgiven me if I was less than perfect."

The words welled out of Harry like tar. Malfoy just nodded as if unsurprised. "Maybe not, although maybe that's another irrational fear. So. What we're going to do, from now on, is make sure that you have a lover who knows all about your desires and is open to fulfilling them."

"You're talking about yourself."

"Of course. Why shouldn't I be?"

"Have you ever thought that I might just use you for teaching me about gay sex and then go away and find someone else?"

Malfoy's eyes flashed once, but his voice was gentle. "No. Because you're too worried about hurting someone else to do that. Don't look at me that way," he added. "I never said that I wouldn't enjoy your selflessness while it lasts."

Harry let himself settle back with a sigh. He had to admit Malfoy was right. Betraying him was an idle threat. Harry still doubted that things would work out exactly the way Malfoy wanted them to—for one thing, he would probably break up with Harry when he got bored with him—but for now, he would relax and enjoy the ride.

And he would try not to think of how long it had been since the words "relax" and "enjoy" were regularly in his vocabulary.

"I'm not going to be able to babysit Rose and Hugo on Saturday, Ron."

It was Tuesday, which Harry thought was plenty of time to give Ron and Hermione to find another babysitter. There was no reason for the betrayed expression Ron used to gape at him. Harry turned away and rustled his paperwork, trying to get rid of the uncomfortable feeling in his gut.

"Fine," Ron said at last, his voice tight. "Got a hot date?"

"Yes, actually." Malfoy had promised to take him to the shops. Not in Diagon Alley, but somewhere else, he said. Harry didn't know whether he should be excited or not, but he knew he was looking forward to seeing what happened.

"Oh." Ron paused and then added, "You never told me and Hermione that you'd started dating someone again."

Harry's stomach tightened, and that made his voice sharper than it probably should have. "Do I need to report every move to you?"

"What? Mate, of course not!"

Harry sighed. "Anyway, this person is—more private than most of the people I've dated." And he gives exactly zero fucks about you. That felt more freeing in his head than it would if he said it aloud, he knew. "I want to keep this relationship quiet for a little while. And you know the Daily Prophet and the rest of them will never leave us alone if it gets out sooner than we want it to."

"They won't leave you alone even when it does."

"That's a bridge we're going to burn when we come to it."

Harry kept his voice light as he kicked his chair back from his desk, but he had to wonder if Malfoy had some plan for dealing with the press. He wanted to keep things secret for now, but if he dated Harry for any length of time, someone was going to sneak a photo or see them together and draw the correct conclusions. It had happened even when Harry had a Muggle girlfriend. It always did.

"I just—I just want to make sure that you're happy."

"I know. And I appreciate it, Ron. But for now, this is what we both want. So it's what'll make me happy."

"I reckon I can get Mum to take Rose and Hugo on Saturday night."

Or you don't have to spend that night away from your children. Harry blinked a little at the catty thought that showed up in his head, and smiled faintly at Ron. "I'm sure you can. You know how much she dotes on them."

"I just don't like asking her to do too much…"

But asking me for three nights a week is fine?

Malfoy was a bad influence.

Harry only shrugged and muttered in response to that, and Ron let it go, which left Harry free to daydream about Saturday and the terrible/wonderful things Malfoy might show him.

"You've never been to France, have you?"

Harry shook his head in wonder as he looked around. There was so much color swarming in front of him that he wanted to go back and paint half the buildings in Diagon Alley. The witches and wizards wore gleaming scarlet and brilliant blue and piebald colors that made dots disappear and dance across his visions. The fruit they sold seemed brighter and smelled sweeter. Potions ingredients dripped and glittered more interestingly. Malfoy guided him carefully away from a stall that smelled like delicious fish.

"Is something wrong with the fish that stall sells?" Harry asked him.

"It's not food."

"Er, okay." Harry thought about questioning that, but with the look on Malfoy's face, he didn't think it would be the best idea.

"Look at this instead," Malfoy invited, and then turned him around until Harry was almost dizzy, but he did end up staring into the window of a shop loaded with clothes.

Harry caught his breath. There were robes of those dazzling colors in the alley here, and there were thick hooded black cloaks of the kind that he thought might do well for Unspeakables, and there was a glittering garment—Harry didn't even know if it was a shirt or a tunic or the upper part of a robe—that looked as if it was woven of frost and cobwebs. His fingers did actually itch to touch it.

"You have no idea what I see in your face right now."

"Longing? Lust?" Harry asked without taking his eyes from the window of the robe shop.

"Bewilderment. As though you think that everyone except you can have these things, and you don't know what half of them are."

Harry blinked and snapped his gaze back to Malfoy. "I don't know what half of them are," he answered honestly.

Malfoy sighed and reached out as if he was going to test Harry's forehead for a fever, but ended up pulling his hand back instead. "Come on," he murmured. "You'll find out in the shop."

They entered the shop, and immediately got attacked by a tall woman with hair so red that it made Harry blink. Even Ron would have thought she had bright hair. "Are you here to buy?" she asked in accented English that reminded Harry of Fleur's. "If not, then you leave."

"We're here to buy," Malfoy said, and said a few words in French that Harry didn't know and which made Harry glance at him suspiciously. Whatever they meant, though, they must have done the trick, because the woman's eyes widened and she stepped forwards to study Harry.

"He must have new clothes," she declared.

"Yeah, I kind of knew that," Harry muttered under his breath.

The woman ignored him, and spoke in rapid French to Malfoy. Malfoy said something that seemed to be his name in return, and Harry winced, but the woman either hadn't heard of him or didn't care. She immediately whirled and disappeared into the back of the shop, returning with some of the tunic-like garments Harry had seen in the window and a set of robes that shone the color of spring grass.

"That's going to look terrible on me," Harry complained, even as he pulled his robes off over his head and dropped them in a crumpled heap on the floor.

"Remove your shirt, too. And no, it's not."

"Yes, it is. Green always looks terrible on me."

"You've never had any of Yvette's work on you before."

Harry thoughts about continuing to argue, but Malfoy looked perfectly willing to yank him out of his shirt if he tried, so he muttered and mumbled and got the shirt off. And then he had to endure Yvette walking around him and saying things to Malfoy that included a few words he recognized and made Harry blush furiously. Malfoy watched him with steadily rising eyebrows, and leaned close as Yvette turned to pick up the spring-green robes.

"Why are you blushing? They're all compliments, I assure you."

"I don't—I don't like people looking at me like that."

"She doesn't know you're a celebrity. She doesn't care. She just thinks you're handsome."

"I don't like people thinking that."

Malfoy stared at him, but Yvette had finished smoothing wrinkles out of the robes or whatever she was doing, and handed them to him with a smile. Harry didn't normally like wearing robes without shirts underneath them, but he had to admit there wasn't a single rough spot in the cloth he touched. He draped them over his head and felt them fall smoothly over him, to his feet.

He looked in the mirror, and blinked. He still didn't like the way green looked on him, but this was better than other greens.

"You see?" Malfoy asked from behind him, his hands reaching out as if to smooth yet more wrinkles away from Harry's robes. "They're magnificent, the way she said you were, and they're perfectly comfortable. They'll let you fight or dance or do whatever you need to do."

"You're cracked if you think I'm going dancing, Malfoy."

"I know that you need to dance at those Ministry functions you're invited to. That's all I'm thinking of."

Harry grunted at the words, but he did find it hard to look away from the mirror. The man there was a stranger. And it really wasn't the robes. Harry had to peer into his reflected eyes for long moments before he worked it out.

That man looked happy. Comfortable. Fine with standing in a robe shop and having his lover press his hand to his spine.

Harry released a shuddering breath. Why did it take Malfoy to make me realize how unhappy I was before?

"You're going to take the robes," Malfoy said, the slightest uncertain hint of a question in his voice. "And you're going to let me pay for them."

Harry might have argued before, but he wasn't only watching his reflection in the mirror. He was watching the way Malfoy's face hovered over his shoulder, and the way his lips were slightly parted as he looked full-on into Harry's eyes. He thought he might know why Malfoy disagreed that he'd get tired of Harry.

I can't return those feelings, not yet. But I can let him do some of what he wants.

Harry reached up and captured Malfoy's hand in his, turning his head so that it was trapped between his cheek and his shoulder. He said nothing. Malfoy was the one suddenly panting harshly, and hardly able to pull away to indicate that Harry should pull off the robes and try on the tunics, or whatever they were.

"You're getting more than the robes," he said.

Harry looked him straight in the eye. "Yes, I am."

Malfoy looked a little dazed for the rest of the robe-buying expedition, which wasn't at all a bad way for him to be, Harry found.

"You—have a date?"

Kingsley looked so stupefied that Harry had to smile. "Yes, sir, I do. And I have to leave now or I'll be late."

"But you've never missed a meeting before when you had a date."

"No," Harry agreed calmly as he set a stack of paperwork on the edge of his desk and swirled his cloak around his shoulders. "But you also usually give me more notice of the meetings than five minutes before, sir."

"None of your other dates minded if you were a bit late."

Harry clenched his fingers on the inside of the cloak, where Kingsley wouldn't notice. This was getting irritating. "This one is a bit more demanding, sir."

"You are an Auror, Harry."

"So is Ron. So are a lot of people in this Department, sir. And I can't remember the last time that one of them was asked to stay for a late meeting on Friday. Even the most urgent cases can usually wait until Saturday morning."

Kingsley frowned and glanced at Harry and opened his mouth, then ended up closing it. He studied him some more. Harry didn't let himself fidget. He did burn with guilt, on the inside, but even that had started to affect him less once he had Draco's counsel to rely on. He shouldn't be asked to do more simply because he was the bloody Boy-Who-Lived.

"Then I expect to see you here tomorrow morning at nine."

"Yes, sir," Harry replied cheerfully, and went striding to the Floo, his heart still pounding harder than it should. Had it always been that simple? He just had to stand up for himself and explain what he wanted, and that was the end of the late-night meetings and constant orders to babysit and assumptions that he would be the one covering other Aurors as they recuperated from wounds or went on holiday?

They always thought I would do it because I never protested. They probably thought I wanted to do it.

And part of him had wanted it, in a way. Harry didn't want to give anyone an excuse to say he was ungrateful or a burden or stuck-up because of his fame, so he'd almost grabbed the extra duties that came his way. So they'd thought of him as a hero. But that meant a hero was someone they could ignore and use as they wanted.

Harry still didn't think he could give in to the roaring depth of the selfishness that Draco wanted him to, but some small advances on it were nice.

He almost tumbled out of the Floo into Draco's drawing room, after having checked to make sure no one was watching him or could hear the Floo address he called. He caught himself on the mantel and a warm pillar that turned out to be Draco, who laid long cool hands on his shoulders and stared into his eyes for a disconcerting minute before he leaned in to accept Harry's kiss.

"Yes?" Harry asked, when he surfaced from the tongue-swirling, sucking mess of a kiss and smiled at Draco. He ignored his erection.

"I didn't know if you would actually come. I thought you might stay late at the Ministry the way you do so often."

"I told Kingsley I had a date. I got a bit of a scolding, but I don't have to see him again until tomorrow morning."

"Mmm." Draco's eyes were half-lidded as he led Harry through one of the greenery-covered corridors and into the dining room where they'd eaten last time Harry was at the Manor. Harry drew in his breath and shivered with pleasure at the smell of the roast pheasant on the plates. "That's the first time you've done that, right?"

"Stood up to him? Yes."

"And he didn't explode. And the world didn't end." Draco pulled out his chair for him, and Harry sat down with another shiver that had nothing to do with the feel of Draco's hand briefly sliding down his shoulder. "Do you see now how strange you were to be worried about your selfishness hurting someone else?"

"No. Because you still don't have any idea how selfish I can get, Malfoy."

"Don't I."

Harry paused to watch Draco sitting down in the chair across from his, and the new expression on his face. His grey eyes were as alive and alert as though they contained the dawn. His hands barely rested on the tablecloth or the tall glass of wine. He only seemed conscious of Harry.

"No," Harry told him, softly and surely, "you don't. For example." He sat back, folded his arms, and stared at the plate.

"Shall I have the house-elves serve something else?"

"No. I want you to feed me."

Luckily for Harry's flaming face, Draco understood what he meant without further explanation. He stood up, watching Harry still, and glided around the table. Then he reached out and picked up Harry's fork and knife. Instead of feeding Harry right away, though, he cut the slice of pheasant on the plate up into tiny pieces. Harry watched him and felt the pulse behind his ears pound.

Draco turned around with one of the small, tender bites on the fork. "Open your mouth."

It wasn't a request. Harry leaned further back in his chair and did so. Draco delicately guided the piece of meat inside, twining Harry's tongue around the fork as he withdrew. Harry shivered again, and Draco smiled. "Swallow."

Harry did. The flavors he had loved the last time they had this were still there and still intense, but they couldn't compete with the look on Draco's face.

"Good," Draco said, and went on feeding him pheasant. He fed him spoonfuls of the creamy soup when that arrived, too, and even when Harry tried to tell him he'd had enough and Draco could go sit back down and get something to eat himself, Draco only smiled and said, "But I like spoiling you. Would you deprive me of the chance?"

Harry had to shake his head in silence, and eat more soup and a delicate pudding that seemed to be made entirely of whipped cream and cherries. He wondered what Draco was going to do about the wine, until Draco picked up his glass and took a small sip.

Then he leaned over and looked into Harry's eyes. Harry opened his mouth again.

Draco leaned in and kissed him, dripping wine into his mouth at the same time. Harry swallowed around it and reached up to cup Draco's cheeks. Draco finished dripping the wine and swirled his tongue lazily. Each motion seemed to destroy more of Harry's brainpower. By the time it finished, he was leaning forwards against Draco and panting.

"What do you want?" Draco said, in a voice as soft as the flickering candles.

"Take me to bed. Please."

Draco did.

"Your holidays are a travesty, Potter."

Harry blinked up at Draco. He hadn't expected to see him in the middle of a work day at the Ministry, much less the words he'd used. "What are you talking about? I haven't taken a holiday since I started to work as an Auror."

"That's exactly what I'm talking about. I looked up your records—"

"You did what?"

"You should do something about the archivist, too. I don't have any quarrels with people who are amenable to bribes, but he agreed to one far too low to match the records' actual worth. You'll want to make sure you have someone with a cast iron spine. It only shatters with a bit of prodding."

Harry deliberately put down the parchment he held and turned to face Draco. "You're saying that you bribed someone to access my records."

"I'm telling you that, yes."

"Fuck, Draco. You can't—you can't do something like that and still expect me to have anyone left who respects me," Harry hissed. He could feel his cheeks beginning to flame as he sat there. He was only lucky that Ron was out of their shared office at the moment.

"And you can't expect to do something like this and not expect your lover to be concerned."

Harry felt his neck jerk back and his cheeks cool a little. "What did you say?"

"Are you developing problems with your hearing as well? Granted, I couldn't find the last time you'd been to see a Healer, but I thought all Aurors had to do that as part of their mandatory training each year—"

"No. I mean—what you referred to yourself as."

Draco shot him a keen glance and smiled a little. "You don't want to say the word?"

"It's too intimate." And at this point, Harry's face felt like it could burn fucking off.

"It's unexpected, maybe." Draco was studying him with the kind of eye that made Harry want to slink off and hide behind something. Neither Ellora nor the other women he had dated had ever looked at him like that. "But I am your lover. I'll say it if I want," he added, when Harry shivered a little. "And I'm telling you that you deserve a holiday off as much as any other Auror who works in this fucking Department."

"I don't want you to bribe people to look into my records again."

"You wouldn't tell me the information I wanted to know."

"You didn't fucking ask!" Harry lowered his voice from a bellow before someone could come looking down the corridor. "Ask in the future, or I mean it, Draco. We are done. This is the kind of shit I can't let you get away with."

Draco paused. Then he nodded. "I'm sorry. I assumed that you would never tell me or you would dance around it, so I attacked the problem directly. But I want to keep you more than I want to know the answers to questions like that, so I won't do it anymore."

Harry eased slowly back in his chair. The apology felt weird to him, maybe because he had never expected to win one as directly as that. "Accepted," he muttered finally. "So. What do you intend to do about my lack of holidays?"

"Ask where you want to go."

Harry shrugged. "I've had places I dreamed about, but they're all vague dreams. There hasn't been a place I set my heart on."

Draco leaned across the desk and laid his hand flat over Harry's heart. Harry swallowed.

"That's because, until now, you ignored your heart as best you could," Draco murmured. "So. Tell me one of them, and I'll start arranging the trip."

Harry blinked. Then he said, "How many trips do you intend to arrange?"

Draco smiled at him, and it was deep and warm enough that Harry shivered as though the hand on his heart had gone much further down. "As many as you want. I overstepped my boundaries today, but honestly, most of the time I do want to make you feel good, Harry. If you don't like this one, then we won't do it again. But I think you should try it once, to see what you're missing and if you miss it."

Harry laughed a little. "I never thought I would hear anyone say words like that to me and agree with them."

"But you'll agree with this?"

"Yes. All right." Harry swallowed down the protest that wanted to form and reminded himself that Draco had plenty of money. "Hawaii."

Draco gave him a small, private smile, leaned in to kiss him, and stood up and swaggered to the door. Harry saw the shimmer of a Disillusionment Charm surround him just before he disappeared out of it.

Harry touched his lips and thought about the kiss and the conversation and the heavy-lidded looks that Draco gave him and…

Holy shit. I really do have a lover.

"What the hell, mate? You're taking a whole week off? Why?"

"Because I've never been on a holiday since I started being an Auror and I want to go. And the Department can survive without me for a week."

"But—that can't be right. Kingsley would have made you take a holiday. You know he keeps track of things like that for us."

Harry thought a moment before he answered. He honestly didn't want to accuse his friends or Kingsley of being heartless, the way he knew Draco would have been happy to. But it might be true that they were thoughtless.

"I think everyone got used to seeing me here," he said. "The one who never took time off, who could always be there to do something for people. They didn't mind assigning me extra work, because they knew I would do it. They were surprised when I got sick, because they thought I never did. They were utterly shocked when I complained about something, because they thought I only complained about obstacles in the way of us catching criminals. They started seeing me as always available and not really—human. And machines or spells don't take holidays."

Ron's face turned red. "We always saw you as human, mate."

Harry gave him a quick smile. He knew Draco would point out the parallels between the way that Ron and Hermione had assumed he was always available to babysit and the ways he worked for the Aurors, but Harry wasn't Draco. "I know. You've kept me grounded. But right now, that isn't enough. So I need a holiday, and I've arranged to take one."

"She must be really something."

"Who?"

"This girlfriend you're skipping time with Rose and Hugo for. Skipping a week of work for."

Harry curled his hand into a fist for a second. His head was reeling with enough emotions that he was afraid he would say something he didn't want to.

But after a few more seconds, he smoothed out his feelings. Ron was being thoughtless, that was all. And Harry didn't want to lie about Draco being a woman, but Draco also hadn't told him what his plan was for revealing himself as Harry's lover to his friends. For now, Harry would speak the truth without it being the lie.

"Yes, the person I'm dating is pretty great," Harry said. He straightened the edge of the pile of paperwork he'd been fussing over and turned to face Ron. "And do you really think I'm abandoning Rose and Hugo? Because I'll be in Hawaii for a week?"

Ron turned as red as Harry thought he probably had when Draco talked about bribing the Ministry archivist. His hand moved restlessly enough to knock over one of his own piles of reports. "I didn't mean that."

"What did you mean? I'm interested in learning."

"I just—Harry, you know what I told you about me and Hermione."

"How your marriage can't survive if you have to take care of your children most nights of the week?"

"No! We just need time by ourselves, that's all. And we had to get Mum to babysit Friday, and we couldn't get anyone for Saturday. We tried to have this quiet dinner, but Rose and Hugo got in the way…"

"Why is asking Molly a problem? You know she adores all her grandchildren."

"But imposing on her—"

"Why," Harry asked, with a taste like blueberries in his mouth, "is asking your mum imposing on her, but asking me isn't imposing on me?"

Ron blinked at him. There was no answer right away. Harry nodded. That fit with his idea that his friends weren't using him on purpose or laughing behind their hands over how stupid he was. They just didn't think anymore about the favors they asked him, because they had asked him and he had agreed so many times.

Of course they would never laugh behind their hands at you. They're your friends.

But that was no longer enough to earn Harry's complete trust. Not since he had discovered how many things he'd been hiding about himself. And that had only been with Draco's intervention. He'd hidden harmless things, and things that didn't fit with his heroic persona, and things that he'd thought no one would want to know about him. It had got to the point where he didn't know now how his friends would react to the whole him.

We'll find that out. But a little at a time.

"You love Rose and Hugo, though," Ron said, in a tone that tilted upwards at the end into a question.

"And your mum doesn't?"

"I just—mate. Mate."

Harry shrugged and spent some more time making sure that his paperwork lined up exactly with the edge of his desk and that he didn't have any reports that should have been on someone else's desk hours ago. For now, he would continue to play the part of the utterly polite and competent Auror. The time for asking more than that hadn't come yet.

He had to smile at the thought of what would happen when it did. He hoped Draco could be at his side.

He turned around, and Ron was standing in front of him. He shook his head. Harry just waited. Draco had said this would probably happen at first, that Ron and Kingsley and maybe Hermione would deny how much they had started using him, what predictable patterns it had fallen into.

"Hermione and I just want to date sometimes," Ron said finally, weakly.

Harry patted his shoulder. "So do I. See you next week, Ron."

"There. You see it? The glint of blue-green on the edge of that wave."

Harry lay back on the warm sand, his skin mostly exposed thanks to the short trousers he wore and nothing else. Draco's quick look of approval at his bare chest and legs earlier had been all the confirmation he'd needed that he'd made the right decision. Right now, Harry was thrumming with contentment and peace. He squinted obediently in the direction Draco was pointing, but he didn't mind if he didn't glimpse the sea serpent his lover was trying to show him.

That particular word got more and more comfortable all the time.

"Where—oh!" Harry gasped as he watched the serpent rise from the water. Its neck was as long as a tree, and its body mounded and humped up and down with blue and green and white and purple and all the other shades of the ocean that Harry had ever seen. Its head was sleek and pointed, with an almost bird-like beak. It whirled around, tossing the long emerald mane that curled off its neck and might have been scales or hair, and then dived back into the waves with a lithe, supremely graceful motion.

Harry sighed out slowly. Draco's idea of coming to this particular wizarding beach, which had been established long ago by cutting off a portion of a Muggle beach and setting up spells that gave magical creatures a free place to roam without attracting attention, was brilliant.

As are most things Draco does.

Harry craned his head back to watch Draco. At the moment, he was leaning on a palm tree and had his eyes closed. His breathing was slow and deep and unhurried, the same kind of breathing Harry had been doing since they came to Hawaii. His hair was slightly darker in the sun, like his skin. He looked like a statue made of gold.

"Admiring me?" Draco murmured, without opening his eyes.

"Thinking I'd like to go back to the hotel and try something out," Harry murmured. He was startled by how husky his voice had got.

Draco opened his eyes at once and held out his hand. "Come on, then."

Harry let Draco pull him to his feet and walk with him down the beach and towards the cluster of gigantic palms that some inspired wizards had pulled together into their hotel. It was, more or less, a tower of bark and leaves, open to the air for the most part with a few sheltered alcoves in case of rain. Doves circled above the tower like ribbons of lace, and four had landed on their balcony that morning, having learned that Harry was a soft touch with his biscuits. The air rippled around them, far thicker and wetter than Harry was used to breathing in.

That only made it better. Harry had never been outside Britain—a fact that had left Draco staring in horrified shock when he heard it—and every step he made on the sliding sand, every lungful of air he took, confirmed he wasn't there now.

Their room was made of shining wood, less a room at all than a nook inside the tree. Harry flicked his wand and lit the soft globes of hovering light on the walls that were responsive to any Lumos Charm. "It's rather dark in here, and I want to see you," he told Draco.

Draco's smile was like a slower sunrise. He took off the trousers that were the only things he wore. Not even pants beneath, a touch Harry admired now more than he'd like to admit. He crawled up the enormous bed, which was made of layered lily pads, and felt strangely cool under Harry's skin when he lay on it. "Come on, then."

Harry took a deep breath and cast a Cushioning Charm on the wood underneath him. Then he knelt.

Draco's eyes flickered once and then turned a deep, shining grey. He stretched out one arm across the bed and opened his legs, making himself accessible. "Suck me, then," he murmured, his voice seeming to ring and drift around the chamber with far more echoes than it should have.

Harry leaned forwards and opened his mouth. Draco canted his hips. Harry engulfed him.

It was strangely less strange than Harry had expected it to be, when he'd only ever used his mouth on women. Draco tasted slick and hard, wet and heavy. Harry sucked down the side of his cock and made Draco buck, and sucked up the other side and made him hiss and pull back a little from a sensation that seemed to be too intense. Then he leaned in and lashed his tongue across the head, and Draco's hands shot to the back of his head and wrestled him down.

Harry caught his breath, coughed, and kept on sucking and shaking his head when Draco attempted to let him go. No, he wanted this. And he liked the way Draco clutched at him. It wasn't something his other lovers had ever done.

They hadn't wanted to do something so rude and grasping. Or they had thought, a few of them, that he had trouble with someone holding onto him after his years as a hero and they were trying to be considerate.

Draco wasn't. He moved Harry's head back and forth like it was an extension of his tongue, and muttered rough instructions under his breath. Harry, thrilled down to his veins, let him do whatever he wanted, and only tried to keep his teeth out of the way and his mouth busy in the ways that Draco preferred.

When Draco began to spurt, it was sudden and far wetter than Harry had anticipated. He pulled back this time. It was easy, since Draco's hands had gone languid when he started to come. He flopped onto the bed and sighed aloud. Harry grinned at him and managed not to wipe his mouth like a crude fuck.

"You're that satisfied?"

"Yes." Draco looked at him with fluttering eyes that seemed to be fighting the urge to simply sleep. "You're a natural. You never did that for anyone before?"

Harry heard the tone that crept into Draco's voice, and smiled a little as he let his own eyelids droop. "I never did."

"And you don't want—reciprocation?"

Harry laughed and climbed up onto the bed beside him, drawing the blanket the hotel provided over their backs. "When you look like you might fall asleep between one lick and the next? No. Go to sleep. You can do it for me when you wake up."

Draco managed to turn towards him and let his hand rest on Harry's hip. His breathing evened out immediately. His hand slipped a little, but Harry reached down and held it in place, smiling at it bemusedly.

God, this was what he wanted. Draco, in a bright-dark room with the sound of the sea coming through the window and his own erection aching, with the anticipatory kind of ache that he knew would feel even better when he'd let Draco take care of him tomorrow.

Draco.

Harry went to sleep listening to all the noises and feeling all the sensations that reminded him of his lover.

"I know there's something you're still hiding from me."

Harry, leaning breathless against the tile of the shower wall while Draco slid slowly from his body, tilted his head back and groaned. He hadn't come yet, and the throbbing consumed his senses. "Can't—imagine what it would be. Draco."

Draco trailed a finger slowly up Harry's cock, but didn't jerk him off. Harry held himself still in response. He liked getting off when Draco made him. It was just unfortunate that his thrusts this morning had been a little too fast and shallow to do that.

"Mmm. I want you to tell me."

"I want to get off."

"And we don't always get what we want, do we, Harry?" Draco breathed out against his ear, as warm and moist as the air on the beach, making Harry's head spin with vertigo. "I think you spent so many years not getting what you want, Harry, that you hide your desires even now. Tell me this last hidden one."

"Can we save the psychology for after I come?"

"You won't come if you don't tell me."

Harry knew that threat was real. He swallowed and closed his eyes, trying to focus past the hand that rested on his side and the breath on his ear. And the last thing he had never discussed with Draco came back to him.

"I want to be able to use Dark Arts."

Draco's hand fell and gave a quick pull, and Harry came with a shout of relief and a showering of his seed on the wall.

He thought Draco would forget about what he'd said. He never mentioned anything more about it during the time they spent in Hawaii, and the minute he was back in Britain, Harry was plunged head-first into a gigantic morass of a case that he suspected was partially Kingsley's revenge for needing to approve his holiday.

The case had so many branches—magical rune circles, Dark Arts books stolen from private collections, two ritual murders, a slaughter of dragons—that Harry didn't have time to catch his breath. He spoke with Draco by Floo each night, but they hadn't been together since their last night in Hawaii.

Harry missed him.

And most of all when he found himself backed against the wall of an underground cavern, with three wands aimed at him, another runic circle spreading out at his feet, and blood spilling from a wound in his side that was making the runes activate with a hazy glow.

Harry lifted his eyes. The three wizards in front of him had thrown back their hoods, perhaps thinking there was no point in hiding their identities when their adversary was about to die. Their eyes were bright with excitement. Their faces were pale, as so many Dark wizards' seemed to be.

The woman, a short blonde one who didn't look like Bellatrix except for the expression in her eyes, edged forwards. "Oh, the heroic Auror," she said. "So he dies here. You could save yourself, but you won't, will you, sweetheart? You can't ever use the magic that is the true power, the power that comes to the hands of those who strive for it."

Harry swallowed. The blood was coming faster. They shouldn't have, but the runes were drawing the life out of him, and he knew he wouldn't be able to resist for long. He knew he could die here.

He could die, being noble.

Or he could live and go back to Draco, using magic that wasn't noble.

He focused all his attention down to a single pinpoint, fixed on the end of his wand. It was oddly easy to do. Perhaps the blood loss that made his vision hazy with wavering black and red stripes was useful for something.

"Catena sanguis."

The blood lashed up from his side into a chain, with a swinging, serrated blade at one end. The runic circle grew hazy for a second longer and then exploded. Harry sank to his knees as he watched the Blood Chain whirl at his enemies.

It caught the woman around her knees and spilled her to the ground. For a second, she gasped, her cheek pressed on the stone; then the chain dropped more heavily on her neck, and she was gone, head cut in half by the blade.

One of the remaining wizards tried to cast some kind of spell at the Blood Chain. The other tried to run. The chain gathered itself and reflected the spell back, destroying the wizard's hand and wand. Then it hurled crimson links down the tunnel after the fleeing criminal.

It caught his legs, and Harry heard a single scream and the sound of crunching as the Blood Chain grew teeth.

He was faint by then, lying on the ground of the cavern like the witch he had killed as the Blood Chain came slinking back. For a moment, it swayed above him, and he thought it might consume him. That was a danger, although a small one, of Dark spells like this one that had so much power they became vaguely sentient.

But instead, the chain dived at him and forced all the blood he'd lost and which had made it up back into him. Harry shrieked, his muscles boiling under his skin and the blood running so fast that it felt as if his skin would burst. He clawed at the floor for a moment, and listened to the moans of the wizard he had deprived of his hand.

Then the boiling stopped. Harry sat up cautiously, wincing at the stretch in his side. The wound was barely healed, and he would still open it if he moved the wrong way.

But it was done. He had two dead Dark wizards and one who would live if Harry stopped him from losing any more blood. Harry quietly went about casting the healing spells and the Stunning spell he needed, all at the lowest level of power. He would make himself collapse if he attempted any more.

All the while, the relief that he was alive and the satisfaction at the way he'd saved his own life did a rapid tango in his head.

"Where were you tonight?"

Harry flinched as he stepped out of the Floo, more about the tone in Draco's voice than anything else. "Being subjected to a discussion about whether I need to go to Azkaban," he said, and pressed his hand over the wound on his side. The Healer who had worked on him at St. Mungo's had made sure that it was nothing more than a thin red line, but she had avoided his eyes the entire time.

So had Kingsley, while Ron had stared at him like he was lost and trying to understand. And the other Aurors who had come in to testify about the bodies he'd called them to retrieve had sounded sick and disappointed.

"What?"

Harry sighed and turned to step into Draco's welcoming arms, tilting his head back so that they were making eye contact. "It'll be better if you look at it than have me try to explain it to you."

Draco's lips parted a little, that was all, but Harry knew he hadn't mistaken the suppressed expression of startled greed for anything else. "You'd let me read your mind?"

"Yes."

Draco's hands trembled as he reached out and caught hold of Harry's face, gently turning his head. "The angle isn't right for Legilimency," he explained in a breathless voice. "But almost, almost…"

It must have been right. Harry felt Draco slide into his mind like liquid, far from the tearing pain that Snape used to inflict. He felt Draco's silent snarl at the thought of that pain, in fact, and regretted for a second that Snape wasn't alive to receive Draco's furious words.

What a mercenary you are, love.

Harry clutched the last word to him in silence as he watched Draco search out the memories of the battle. Harry pushed what information about the case Draco would need to make sense of the battle to the forefront of his mind. Draco accepted it, acknowledged it, and moved on to the moment when Harry had cast the Blood Chain Curse.

Draco's silent ripples of emotion traveled through Harry's mind as he observed. When Harry destroyed the witch who had taunted him, Draco snarled again, but it sounded joyous. When the Blood Chain blew up the first wizard's wand, Draco's thoughts in his almost danced. When the last wizard died, Draco laughed.

And then the Blood Chain turned around and forced its way back into Harry's body, and Draco tore free of his mind like a rising falcon.

Harry swallowed. "Draco?" he asked quietly.

Draco's hands were slipping over his shoulders as though they had been the wounded parts of Harry's body, his eyes never leaving Harry's. He said, "You fought to live so you could come back to me. You cast that spell so you could come back to me."

"Yes, I—"

Draco's mouth claimed his, crushed his. Harry let his tongue in, and Draco licked the inside of his mouth, bit the inside of his cheeks, rushing, savage, possessive.

"You fought to come back to me. That means you love me more than I ever thought you could." Draco's fingers raked down his shoulders, and Harry shivered, ignoring the faint red lines that appeared on his skin. "You used a Dark Arts spell that destroyed your perfect reputation. A sacrifice. For me."

He kissed Harry again, searching this time, and pulled back to breathe, "I want to fuck you. Will you let me?"

"Of course," Harry said, and then placed a hand over his side. "As long as we don't aggravate—"

Draco turned and waved his wand in a series of spells so complicated that Harry only saw them as streaks of light across the air of the room like shooting stars. A bed appeared in the corner of the drawing room, Transfigured from a sofa. Huge, soft rolls of blankets lined the sides of the bed, creating a hollow in the middle of them that looked just big enough for Harry to lie in. In the meantime, Draco turned around with his hands full of gleaming potion that Harry would have thought was lube if they were already naked.

"Lie on the bed," Draco whispered, his voice shaking. "Between the blankets. They'll hold you still and prevent you from moving much. And—lift your shirt."

Harry did. Draco smoothed the potion softly over the line of the wound. It shimmered and seemed to grow smaller.

"I can't heal it permanently this way," Draco said when Harry met his eyes again, speaking as if that was a fault. "But I can make sure that it doesn't get in the way, no matter how rough the sex."

Harry held out his hands. "Then what are we waiting for?"

Draco took his mouth in another thorough kiss, and led him to the waiting bed.

"You came back to me."

Draco was thrusting so fast that the words seemed to stretch and blur past Harry's ears. Harry panted, his hips twitching in the bolsters of blankets that embraced him. He tried to spread his legs further, but he couldn't, not with those blankets holding him in place.

It was unbearably tight for Draco. It must be. But Draco was still inside him, and still bright-eyed, and still shaking, a little, as if he thought that Harry might decide to reject him from inside him any second.

"Wh-what?" Harry's eyes rolled back. Draco was hitting his prostate with every move now, sending shocks of silver lightning through him. Harry began to push back, as much as he could when he was so constrained. God, this was brilliant.

"You came back to me. You fought to come back to me."

Draco slowed his movements, thrusting carefully. Harry panted and fought the urge to whimper. He could live with this. And what Draco was saying was important.

"Y-you like that?"

"Considering that you might have let yourself die before simply to preserve the heroic image?" Draco stopped moving altogether and let one hand rest on one of those rolled-up blankets as he stared at Harry. Harry whimpered pathetically and tried to move again. Draco didn't let him. "Yes, I do."

"I wouldn't have let myself die." Harry didn't really want to talk about this in the middle of getting fucked, but it looked like Draco wouldn't start again until they did, and Harry didn't have the power to change things right now. He swallowed air. "I would have used the same spell. I would just have come back and not told anyone about it."

Draco's eyes shone. His mouth twisted in a snarl of victory. "So this was me inspiring you to be more truthful as well as working harder to survive?"

"Yes—"

Draco began to thrust again. Harry cried out in bliss. The lightning was back, bouncing around his body, filling his belly with heat. He reached up and made clasping motions at Draco's hand. Draco managed to nudge one of the blankets aside enough for him to reach up and hold onto Draco's wrist.

"Everything is different because of me." Draco was gasping, but still speaking, and part of Harry wondered where he found the fucking coherence. "You want to live more because of me—you want to tell the truth because of me—"

"Yes!"

Draco bent down towards him again, his eyes wild. "You're mine. Come."

Harry did, shivering with pleasure at the orgasm and pleasure at his own obedience. It felt—it felt so damn good, so uncontrolled, just pouring because he'd been told to, not because he'd wanted to on his own, to just—

He twitched, nearly finished, and then Draco finished inside him, with a growl and a gush that made Harry shiver again. Draco promptly removed the blankets on either side of him and lay down on top of him, not pulling out yet.

"That's what I wanted," Draco told him, his voice as slurred as though he'd had three mugs of Firewhisky. "For you to do something because you wanted to please me, not just because you wanted to make people think you were a hero. It means that you want me as much as I want you."

Harry managed to convince his limp arms to move, and reached up and stroked Draco's hair back from his face. "What—why did you want me in the first place?'

He thought Draco might go to sleep before answering, but Draco did reply, in the intimate kind of voice Harry associated with sitting half-drunken in front of fireplaces.

"What I saw in your eyes. A challenge. You were so ashamed of all these things that were normal, and some that weren't for everybody but not all that strange, either, like this desire to use the Dark Arts, and you didn't want to let any of it out. I wanted to help you, but I also—wanted that focused on me. The thought of being the one who got you to lose control and do what you wanted when no one else had managed…"

The admission might have stung a few weeks ago. It couldn't now. In fact, Harry would have been more worried if Draco had confessed that he'd been carrying around some selfless love for him for years.

He snorted. "So part of it was your own vanity?"

Draco shifted and raised himself on his arms. Harry gasped. He honestly wasn't sure if it was for the sensation of Draco shifting inside him or the intent look in his eyes.

"Only part of it."

Harry wanted to duck his head to escape the intensity, but Draco folded his fingers beneath Harry's chin and didn't let him. After a long, long minute, Harry nodded. Draco relaxed in return and lay back down on him.

"Now that I have you, you're a fool if you imagine that I'll let you go." Draco's words were casual, but the way his fingers curled into the blankets next to Harry's ribs wasn't.

"I never imagined it. I want to stay with you."

That got him another kiss, and then Draco began fussing with the blankets to make sure that they were in a good position when the potion that he'd used on Harry's wound wore off and it started to ache again. Harry could have objected, could have said that Draco didn't have to do this when he was exhausted, but he just closed his eyes and rolled when Draco said to roll.

It felt good to be taken care of.

The heavy knocks on the door had Harry rolling out of bed and grasping his wand before the third one fell.

Draco raised himself much more slowly from the bed beside him, blinking. They couldn't have slept that long, Harry thought with the more analytical part of himself, or the bed would have turned back into a couch. "What's going on?" Draco asked, raking his fingers through his shining hair.

Part of Harry admired that even as the Auror part of him answered, "I don't know, but someone shouldn't be able to knock directly on the door of the Manor, right? Did you lower the wards for anyone lately?"

"Only you. I prefer to sneak through wards like the ones around your house rather than lower them." Draco's gaze was heavy and warm. "But there are some people from the Ministry who could do it. Leaving me my privacy after the war was too much for some people."

Shit. Sometimes Harry wasn't great at investigative work, but other times his brain skipped straight to an answer and turned out to be right. "It's Ron."

"What?"

"He was already suspicious of the 'woman' I was spending all this time with. And the way he looked at me when he found out I'd cast the Blood Chain Curse..." Harry turned and Summoned his Auror robes. When he ran his wand over them, sure enough, there was a tracking charm there. He cursed under his breath. "Aurors would have access to the Manor. He knows where I am and he'll break in with some story about how you have me under the Imperius or something."

"You're immune to the Imperius."

"It might take him a second to remember that." Harry reached for his pants and pulled them on, casting Cleaning Charms as he did. "How do you want to handle this?"

"Not by you hiding that you're mine."

Harry paused. Then he said quietly, "I'm not trying to. I just don't want to face Ron, if he's here, or any of the other people I work with naked."

"Good." Draco slid out of bed, not seeming to care about how naked he was, and ran his fingers through Harry's hair with a soft noise. Then he leaned forwards and kissed him hard enough to make Harry's eyes cross. "Then we'll go with a modified version."

Harry shivered. "What do you suggest?"

"Mate. Are you totally mental?"

"Only a little, and only because I've had to hide some things for so long." Harry gave Ron a smile and nodded to the other two Aurors with him, people he recognized but didn't spend a lot of time working alongside. Ron had probably chosen them because he thought they wouldn't embarrass Harry. "Hello, Auror Barthold, Auror Fenright."

They nodded back, but anything they might have said was eclipsed by Ron exploding, "You mean you've been dating Malfoy for months and we didn't know?"

"You seemed angry when you started talking about me dating him at all. Why should I have told you?"

Harry quailed a little bit as he spoke the words. They'd been Draco's suggestion. Harry hadn't wanted to say them because—although he hadn't realized this until Draco had asked him what he was so frightened of—he thought they might make Ron stop being his friend.

But Draco had taken him by the shoulders, looked him in the eye, and said, "I really don't think so. Weasley will be upset because it's me and because he's got used to you being this compliant hero for so long and now you're changing. But I think he'll stay your friend. You just need to confront him."

Now, watching Ron's face change into several different colors, Harry had to wonder if it was true. But it was undeniably true that he didn't want to lie or sneak around or pretend he wasn't dating Draco, so he would go ahead.

"You—you're gay?"

"I don't know yet," Harry said peaceably. The name for what he was was the least of the problems that bothered him right now. "Maybe not. I've dated women for a long time. I'm probably bisexual."

"But now you're dating Malfoy."

"Yes, I am." Harry switched his gaze to Barthold and Fenright, whose own faces had started to turn a bit red. "Is there a reason you're here? I promise that I'm not wounded and Draco didn't do anything to me I didn't want."

Fenright cleared her throat, but Ron burst in again before she could say anything. "You're dating the fucker who bullied Hermione!"

"That's something for him and Hermione to work out, Ron. Not you. I'd like it if he apologized."

He heard the sound of shifting behind him, in the doorway of the drawing room they'd made love in, and snorted a little. That was Draco, listening in. To be fair, he hadn't promised he wouldn't.

"He must have you under the Imperius. Why else would you suddenly be casting Dark magic?"

"I'm immune to the Imperius, Ron, and I used Dark Arts to save my life."

Ron only waved his wand and muttered a detection spell. The wound on Harry's side started glowing. Ron pointed. "Ah-ha!"

"That's glowing because Dark magic was used to create it," Harry said. "Not because Draco used something on me."

"You don't know that!"

Harry folded his arms and leaned hard on one side of the doorway. Draco had tried to talk him into wearing his Auror robes so that they would flare up and reveal naked chest underneath, but Harry had silently put a shirt on. "Yes, I do, Ron. Because I was there and I watched the magic happen to me and then I was there as Draco and I—" he braced himself "—made love."

Draco had asked him to use that phrasing, and not to deny what had happened between them if it came up at any point. Harry wasn't sure he could have brought himself to do that anyway.

"What?" Ron was staring at him in such utter bewilderment that Harry thought the word might just have slipped out.

"I said, I was there when I got wounded and when we made love. What, were you expecting a Harry Potter doppelgänger?"

Fenright intervened before Ron could say anything. "I don't want to say much about what we were expecting, Auror Potter," she murmured, with a polite smile. "And some of this does look to be an affair between friends. But it's suspicious that you immediately left Ministry custody and went to the home of a Dark wizard."

"Why?"

"Er, well, because the last anyone knew, that particular Dark wizard was your enemy."

"Draco hasn't been my enemy in more than ten years. It's true that I only recently started dating him, but so what? Because he last used Dark Arts in the war, he's tainted for life and must be doing something to me against my will?"

Fenright squirmed a little, and Barthold didn't look much better. Harry relaxed. It was true that he didn't know for sure what Dark Arts spells Draco had used since the war, but he was sure he was intelligent enough to keep them away from anyone who would report back to the Ministry.

"Harry! You're under a Dark curse!"

"You mean the wound? Of course I am—"

"I mean that you're fucking Malfoy! You would never do that in a normal state of mind! My Harry would never do that!"

"You know very well I'm immune to the Imperius, and that spell you cast would have revealed anything else," Harry reminded Ron in a cool voice. "Besides which—" And he braced himself again. "If you want to name sex acts that way, it's the other way around."

"What?"

Barthold looked as if he'd like to put his hands over his ears. Fenright cleared her throat again and tried to interrupt, but Ron said, "No, I want to know what he means. My best friend who just started dating my worst enemy!"

"If you're going to call it fucking," Harry said, holding his eyes, "Draco fucks me. Not the other way around."

Silence so deep that Harry thought he could hear a leaf fall from a tree in the Malfoy gardens. Ron took a soundless breath, still staring. He looked utterly betrayed. Fenright coughed again and said, "We're going now."

Ron spun around. "How can you? When Harry is messed up like this?"

"Auror Weasley, there's no sign of Dark magic. We were willing to come along because Auror Potter was wounded and, er, not in the best state of mind and unexpectedly heading to the house of someone who has never been his friend—"

You think I'm not in the best state of mind because you still can't come to terms with your paragon of heroism casting Dark Arts, Harry thought. But he thought it silently. Draco had sternly advised him to avoid any confrontational phrasing like that.

"But we can see he's physically fine and apparently where he wants to be." Fenright gave Harry a game smile. "And congratulations on your new relationship and making strides in, um, overcoming animosity left from the war, Auror Potter."

"Thank you." Harry lowered his eyes modestly. "I hope with time, everyone can see that love can prevail over the scars of war."

A wheezing sound behind him was Draco frantically holding in laughter.

"He's not fine!"

"That's enough, Auror Weasley." Barthold had a flat voice he didn't use often, but it meant people paid attention when he did. "There's no reason for us to interfere. We did a favor for you and Auror Potter, but we don't need to stay."

He and Fenright turned and hurried off. Harry faced Ron, who still looked as betrayed as when Harry had broken up with Ginny for the final time.

"How can you date someone who bullied Hermione and hurt you and me?" Ron whispered. "How."

"Because," Harry said quietly, "it's my life, Ron. I chose to forgive Draco for what he did to me." In truth, he hadn't thought of those teenage spats in so long he'd forgotten the details. "Hermione and you will have to decide if you forgive him or not. I understand if you don't want to, even though he'll apologize. But I'm not going to stop dating someone who makes me feel loved because of what my friends think."

Silence from behind him. Harry smiled a little. Good, think about that for a bit.

"Loved? You can't really."

And that level of thoughtlessness is a little more than I'm willing to tolerate right now. "Think whatever you want," Harry said, making his voice cooler still. "But don't tell me what I do and don't feel."

"How did you go from never thinking about Malfoy to fucking dating him?"

"He asked me out."

Ron waited, but Harry felt no inclination to share more than that. Ron wouldn't accept it even if he did. And certain things, like the irritation he still felt about some of the ways Draco had approached him, only belonged to him.

Ron finally snarled, "Fine. You're going to tell Hermione, by the way. And you're going to come over on Saturday night—"

"Draco and I have plans."

"You were in bloody Hawaii with him, too, weren't you?"

"I'm not going to lie just because it would make you feel better, Ron."

Ron turned around and walked away, yelling over his shoulder, "Sunday night! At six! Don't be late!"

Harry controlled the temptation to tell him that he and Draco had plans that night, too, because it was so freeing being able to say things like this to his friends after years of silence so he could be the good little hero and the good little friend. But he only nodded and shut the door.

And turned around into Draco's arms.

"You'll claim me, too," Draco said, sounding a little dazed. "You'll tell them that you're with me." He laid his nose on the side of Harry's neck and kissed him. Harry leaned more heavily against him.

"Only because you would never fuck me again if I didn't."

Draco pulled back to stare at him. Harry maintained his solemn stare for as long as he could—which was three seconds—before he began to snicker. Draco pushed him against the door in a second.

"You'll have to make that up to me."

"Of course," Harry breathed, unable to believe how quickly his cock was stirring. He didn't do that normally, not when he'd already had mind-melting sex.

But—he thought later, after being on his knees in two different ways—that was the difference between what he'd had before, when he'd held himself back because he was so afraid that what he wanted would seem strange and off-putting, and what he had now.

Which was both sex and love.

"Do you want me to go with you?"

"For the last time, no, Draco." Harry smoothed down the casual robes he wore. They were dark blue with silver trim, and Draco had helped him pick them out, one of the many sets of robes he'd bought at the shop in France. "They need to see me by myself and hear me explain why I want to stay with you. You being there would only set things on fire."

"Weasley might, too."

"Then he does." Harry turned to face Draco, who stood with his arms folded and his foot tapping in front of Harry's Floo. "I meant what I said. I want you to apologize—"

"I will, when they're done accusing me of convincing you to date me with Dark magic."

"But they also need to accept that it's my life. Ron and Hermione broke up for a while after the war, you know? I didn't approve of all the people they dated. Some of them were incredibly stupid. One was a Dark witch. One sneered about Hermione being a 'Mudblood,' and she dated him anyway. But the only thing I had to do was stay out of the way and support my friends. They'll learn the same lesson with me."

"Why haven't they learned it yet?"

"Because I only dated wholesome women I knew they would approve of. Women who were drawn to my heroic reputation and had probably never cast a Dark spell in their lives. You were the one who showed me what I'd done to myself, shrinking myself down to fit their boxes." Harry paused as Draco's eyes darted away from him. "What is it?"

"I'm afraid they'll convince you to leave me. That you won't come back."

Draco's voice was so quiet Harry strained to make out the words. And when he had, he reacted immediately. He drew his wand and handed it to Draco.

"What's this for?" Draco closed his hand around the wand, though.

Harry smiled at him. "I trust you to hold onto it for me. I don't want to start casting curses at Ron or Hermione when I can't hold back. And I'll come back for it. You must know that. Take it as assurance that I'll come back to you, too."

Draco grabbed him and kissed him, the kind of kiss that made everything about Harry except his cock turn liquid. "I love you," he gasped as he pulled back. "I don't care who knows it, and I don't care if you can't say it back to me yet. I love you."

Harry felt his eyes blur for a second. He leaned in and touched Draco's cheek, then his jaw, then his eyelids, which trembled and closed beneath his fingers. "I don't know if my feelings are as deep as yours, but they're going to be."

Draco cleared his throat and pulled back. "Will you leave before I forget where you're supposed to go?"

Harry smiled at him and stepped over to the Floo. He did glance back once, at Draco clutching his wand like it was his own, before flinging in the powder and calling, "Weasley-Granger Residence!"

"I didn't know you were bisexual."

"I only figured that out recently," Harry said peaceably, and helped himself to the salad. There were little crunchy bits of tomato among the lettuce that he liked. "And I don't know about the label right now. It seems like the least important thing in this whole—thing."

"I know. The most important is who you're dating."

Harry held Hermione's eyes. She sat on the other side of their wide dining room table, frowning at him. Rose and Hugo were with her parents tonight. Ron sat next to Hermione, his arms folded and his scowl silent and steadfast. He hadn't actually said a word yet, although sometimes he snorted or rolled his eyes or looked away. It seemed clear that Ron and Hermione had decided she would say everything.

"Are you also convinced that I'm under a mind-controlling curse? Something other than Imperius?"

"I'm convinced that you're under the spell of hormones, Harry. Say you're bisexual. Say this is your first time with a man, so you're exploring all sorts of sex acts that you never did before and think that you're falling in love. But it's really lust, and Malfoy will abandon you as soon as he's got what he wants, and you'll get your heart broken. I don't want to see that happen to you."

Harry caught his breath. That hurt in the center of his chest. He hadn't realized how close it was to his own fears.

But then he shook his head. "What do you think Draco wants from me, that he'll leave me after he gets?"

"Being seen with the Chosen One. You go public, and then what happens? He basks in the attention for a few months, then withdraws."

"That won't happen. But even if it did," Harry continued, seeing the way Hermione opened her mouth to speak, "I wouldn't be heartbroken. He wouldn't be the person I thought he was in that case, and I'd get over him."

"But what if you were in pain first?"

"You don't think that continually breaking up with the women I dated because none of them could give me what I needed was painful?"

Hermione turned a little red. Harry spent a moment eating his salad, then leaned forwards across the table. Honestly, they'd never commented on the relationships he had with women after Ginny, except sometimes vaguely telling him that they were happy for him. He didn't know what they thought of them. "Well?"

Hermione looked away from him, at the clock above the fireplace. It was a replica of the one Molly had, but the hands on it were for Hermione, Ron, Rose, Hugo, and him. Harry saw with intense satisfaction that his hand was pointing at "Home," meaning Ron and Hermione's house, and not at "In Mortal Danger."

Does that fluster them?

But Harry shook his head. Thoughtless, he reminded himself. Not heartless. He faced Hermione again. "What do you think?"

"I thought you—got what you needed from them."

"What did I get?"

"Someone who thought you were a hero."

Harry considered, tilting his head. Then he asked, "Did you think of me as a hero? Or someone who wanted to believe he was?"

"Both. Were you unhappy, Harry? Oh, I'm sorry, I never knew—"

Harry shook his head. "It wasn't your fault. I hid some parts of myself pretty deep. Draco was the one who found them and brought them out," he added significantly.

"It sounds like you need him right now," Hermione said. "But now that you know you're bisexual—Oliver Wood is single. Could you—"

"No."

Hermione's head snapped back, and a hurt expression appeared on her face. Harry leaned forwards, staring at her, and tried to make his voice as gentle and understanding as possible. She didn't understand. He wanted her to.

"Draco isn't some temporary solution, Hermione. It might not last forever. I know that. Someone who's broken up with as many people as I have ought to know that. But he's not someone I can find a substitute for. He saw me for who I really was, and he helped me."

"Helped you do what?" Ron finally asked. "Cast Dark Arts?"

Hermione waved a frantic hand. Harry turned to Ron. This was something ultimately separate from anything Ron believed about Draco. "You saw the Pensieve memory of me being trapped by those bastards, Ron. You heard the testimony of the one who survived."

"Yeah, I did. And the Harry Potter I knew would never do that!"

"Not even to save his life?"

Ron faltered a moment. "You were okay. You wouldn't have—"

"Yes, I would have died, Ron, if only from blood loss. And my life would have gone to power that runic circle they were using to cause even more mayhem. I wanted to prevent that and stay alive. If you want something heroic, that's it."

"But you could have found some other way."

"How? That was what came to mind at the moment."

"You've never used—"

"Imperius during the war. Cruciatus during the war. You never said anything about those. Why are Unforgivables okay when I cast them on Dark wizards but a more ordinary curse that even left one of them alive isn't?"

Ron closed his mouth, looking uncomfortable. Harry finished his salad and most of his butterbeer before Ron spoke again. "You can only use magic that Dark when you want to kill someone, Harry. Excuse me for wanting to think better of my best friend than that."

"And excuse me for wanting to live. I knew they had to die, or at least a few of them, if I was going to live. And we knew, based on their 'work,' that I wasn't going to convince them to back off with a few joke jinxes."

Ron lowered his eyes and sat there. Hermione looked worried, but she seemed to understand why Harry and Ron needed to be the ones speaking right now, and only looked back and forth between them. Finally, Ron looked up.

"You're not who I knew. So who are you? What's different?"

Harry smiled in relief. Ron at least sounded like he wanted to know, instead of rejecting Harry forever as a Dark wizard. Draco had predicted that, almost down to the words Ron had used, but Harry had had a little doubt when Ron started going on about life not being a good enough reason to cast a Dark spell. "I was someone who wanted to be seen as a hero. Who felt like I had to. And now I'm looking back and wondering where that even started. The public might have wanted that, even some of my girlfriends might have, but you would have wanted the real me."

"Of course we would have," Hermione said, reaching out to put a hand on his elbow.

Ron did the same thing with his other arm, after a second. His face had turned red again. "But—why did you do it, then?"

"I thought of myself as really selfish, and I was afraid that I would get out of control if I did a lot of things I actually wanted." Harry had to shake his head now. Of course it sounded stupid when he put it that way, but it had convinced him until Draco had come along and exploded it. "So I overcompensated. I put aside things I really wanted and did things I didn't. But it made people think of me as someone good and selfless and self-sacrificing."

"With your girlfriends, too?" Hermione's mouth was trembling a little.

Harry nodded. "Ellora even broke up with me because she thought I had no flaws and she wanted to be with someone who had them. I was too afraid to show her mine."

"What did you think would happen, mate?"

"That people would abandon me. Say that I wasn't good after all, that they always knew I was the next Voldemort, or that they couldn't believe Harry Potter would use Dark magic." Harry looked pointedly at Ron, who flinched. "I didn't want to deal with the public turning their backs on me again."

"I just wanted to know why you changed so abruptly."

"I knew that part of me was always there. It's just that Draco raised it to the surface."

"Why Malfoy, though?" Ron sounded as though he was still struggling to understand.

"Because he wouldn't take no for an answer." Harry smiled a little. "I found the way he pursued me aggravating as fuck, but there's nothing else that would have broken through my barriers. If he'd just wanted the hero like anyone else, that's what I would have played for him, and nothing would have changed."

"What do you want, besides casting Dark magic?"

Harry licked his lips. This next part wasn't as "evil" as using Dark Arts to save his life, but it was more personal. "I want to be pampered. To be spoiled. Draco's bought me fancy clothes and taken me on holiday to Hawaii and fed me rich food that I would never have bought for myself."

"But you have plenty of money."

Harry turned to face Ron. "Something you've always reminded me of."

They took a minute to get on. Hermione's face was soft. Ron turned bright red again. "You held off on spending your money because—"

"Because I didn't want to get in your face, yeah." Harry sighed. It hadn't been his only motivation, but it had been a big one. "I was also afraid of what people would say if they saw me spending all the Potter fortune. Not saving it for future generations, or being a playboy, or something. I just wanted peace."

"You can't have peace by suppressing half yourself," Hermione murmured.

"I know that now. But I didn't want anyone to dig too deep, because then they might find what else I was hiding besides my desire for a peaceful life." Harry held out his hand for another bottle of butterbeer, and Hermione passed it over. "And to a certain extent, it worked, right? The papers haven't even picked up on me dating Draco, because they don't expect to see it."

"Are you going to go public with him?"

Harry glanced at Ron. "Of course."

"When?"

"When Draco says."

"Why does he get to choose?"

"Because I'm perfectly willing, but he's going to be the one facing people who think that he's mind-controlling me," Harry said, making Ron blush, "or he's blackmailing me, or he's somehow turning me into a Dark Lord. They'll accuse me of similar things, but they'll be much worse for him. I'm trying to make sure that he has all his precautions arranged before we take the first step down that path together."

"You do sound as though you think it's going to be forever."

Harry smiled at Hermione. "I sure hope so. And I'm willing to fight to make it happen. Yeah, I could be cautious and remind myself that it might not be all the time," he added, seeing Hermione's mouth open again. "But that was what I did with Ellora and the other women I dated. And what happened? It wasn't forever. If I want Draco, I have to commit myself to him wholeheartedly. He wouldn't accept anything less, anyway."

Ron grumbled a little, but the tension had passed out of the room. Harry knew neither of them exactly approved of his choice, but they didn't like the notion that he had been hiding so much from them, either, and they'd rather discuss that.

When it came time to leave, Hermione hugged him and whispered into his ear, "Tell him to hurry up with that apology."

Harry laughed, said, "I will," and turned to Ron. Ron gave him a frustrated look and then made a noise like, "Arr," and clapped him on the shoulder.

"Next time, if you think I'll be too sensitive about you buying something, tell me, okay, mate? And—good luck with Malfoy."

"Thanks, Ron," Harry said, shaking his hand firmly. "I will."

Inside, his heart soared like a skylark. At last, he wasn't keeping secrets from his friends anymore. At last, an important part of him was free.

"I wanted to show you this room."

Draco was carefully avoiding his eyes, and speaking in a clipped way that made Harry want to yell at him in frustration. But that wasn't the way to get Draco to trust him, so he just followed silently as Draco led him through shining grey corridors, around corners that blended into each other, and at last to a thick oaken door with black wooden hinges.

Draco caressed the knob of the door for a second, and didn't look at him. Harry caught his wrist before that could go too far, and his eyes when Draco turned to look at him, startled.

"I haven't rejected you yet," Harry reminded him.

Draco finally nodded and took out a physical key from his pocket, which surprised Harry. But apparently the key itself was magical, if the heavy crimson spark that shot from the lock when Draco inserted it was any indication. The door creaked back reluctantly, and Draco stepped inside with Harry right behind him.

Harry looked around in awe. This room gleamed with light, although it didn't have torches or magical lamps in it. Instead, the light was all pale and reflective, as though shining from the surface of invisible water. The ceiling had hooks hanging from it with chains coiled on them, and everywhere Harry looked was light and iron and stone. He turned to Draco.

"What is this place?"

"A sanctuary for my family." Draco barely moved his lips as he stood near the door with his arms folded across his chest. "No one who's standing outside the door can sense any magic you do here, even with the most sophisticated spells. You can cast Unforgivables or hold necromancy rituals. It's all the same."

Harry made another one of those leaps that he did sometimes. "And you come here to practice Dark Arts?"

Draco hesitated, then nodded.

"It's brilliant," Harry said, and looked up at the hooks with chains. "Assuming those aren't for suspending people by their ankles, why are they here?"

"Some of my ancestors had interesting ideas about proper ways to practice Dark Arts," Draco said, his voice lightening. "They could punish prisoners, but they liked the idea of a fight for their lives, the insane bastards. Watch." He raised his wand at the hooks and gestured.

In a second, the heavy chains unfolded and drifted towards the floor as if they were made of down. Then the links began to writhe and flow. Harry watched open-mouthed as they became heavy, bulky shapes, vaguely human, entirely made of what seemed to interwoven metal.

"If one of them hits you with its fist, it can kill you," Draco said. He was grinning at Harry, balancing lightly on one foot. "Ready?"

"Why not." Harry drew his own wand.

Draco whistled sharply. The nearest hook retracted back into the ceiling, and the chain-monster lumbered towards them, swinging one arm. At the end of it, the steel had formed into a serrated blade that reminded Harry of the one at the end of the Blood Chain Curse, only sharper.

The thing swung its arm at Draco, and then retracted it in a blurring motion far faster than Harry had thought it could move and aimed at him instead. Harry twisted away, casting a shield in the air behind him. The fist slammed to a stop. The monster only pulled it back, unhurt, and began stalking Harry. Its feet and body rattled with slow, continuous rings as it moved.

"The only thing that can really hurt them is Dark magic," Draco said.

"Of course it is." Harry watched as the creature reared back and then aimed both fists at him. It began to spin, adding momentum to the weight of the iron.

Harry smiled a little, his heartbeat increasing. At the moment, the chain-creature wasn't focusing on Draco at all. That could change any second, but for right now, it was true.

That meant Harry could give himself permission to use whatever spell he needed to.

The fist and the blade came straight at him. Harry took a single step back and whispered, "Ventus malus."

The wind he'd called whipped past his ears with a smell of corpses and rotting fruit. It hit the left fist and immediately began to corrode the iron, little flecks of rust falling off and coating the floor. The right blow was still aimed, but Harry could easily drop and roll under it. The creature's height could be just as much a disadvantage as an advantage.

Harry leaped back to his feet and whipped his wand in a corkscrew pattern. The Ill Wind Curse was taking care of the left side of the creature's body, but it wouldn't act fast enough to disable it before it swung again. Harry needed something else. "Lux ruina."

White light opened beneath the iron being, and then struck upwards with the force of three of its fists. Harry grinned as he watched the iron creature borne off its feet, and then held for a second in cols of shimmering, pale force.

Then the light swelled, and burned, and when it drew back and dissipated, the creature was gone.

Harry closed his eyes. It wasn't even that the spells were Dark Arts, he thought. It was just that he didn't usually cast magic that powerful. He didn't usually need it to bring criminals to bay.

"Magnificent."

The harsh sound in Draco's voice shocked Harry. He turned his head sharply and met his lover's eyes.

Draco was stalking towards him, his face set, his eyes burning. He looked ready to throw his wand away and take Harry in his arms any second.

Harry grinned and repeated the motion that he'd seen Draco use to get the chains to uncoil from the hook last time, and forced his magic through his wand when he met a wall of resistance. Most of the time, he wouldn't be able to do something like this, but he was riding a high of his own power. He was sure he could.

Draco wheeled around when he heard the chains snapping together and descending. He did manage to shoot Harry one look before the iron creature formed, and it was rich with incredulity and desire.

"Prove to me that you're worthy of being accepted in my bed," Harry said, taking a step back. "That you're as powerful as me. Defeat it."

Just as he had thought might happen, the creature focused on the other person in the room instead of the one who had animated it. This one grew three arms instead of two, and used one to push into the floor and pivot around while hammering the other two at Draco.

Draco dodged once. Then he looked straight at the creature and traced a zigzag in the air with his wand.

Harry gasped. He knew that spell, even though it was wordless.

Draco gave him a triumphant look a second before the air in front of him turned dark, in the exact shape he'd traced. The huge black Z flew at the iron creature, turning end-over-end like a boomerang. The creature managed to hunch down and avoid part of it, but the end of the Z crashed into its "head."

The iron melted on contact, and the Z curled down, the rest of it framing the creature's shoulders and arms like lashing snakes. The creature struggled, and actually managed to get one arm free, but the rest of it was being crushed and eaten, with a sound like hundreds of marching footsteps slamming down together.

That arm that had got loose began to come for Draco, rolling towards him on the end of its severed stump. The knuckles cracked and shone.

Draco breathed, "Confringo maximus."

This time, the curse was pure force, simply blowing the iron to pieces so small that they wouldn't be able to crawl back together. Harry nodded in appreciation. He'd used that spell himself when he'd confronted a Dark wizard who liked to animate statues and send them after his victims.

Draco relaxed with a little sigh. "I'll have you know that I could have cast that one nonverbally most of the time, as well," he said, turning towards Harry. "But using that first spell…"

"I know. It was incredible. And it cost you in magical power." Harry paused for a second, but he did trust Draco, so he added, "The way the spells I cast did me."

Draco's smile turned wry. "So you're saying, we'll have to prove our worthiness to be in each other's beds later."

"Yes." Harry hesitated, then gave in to the exhaustion threatening him and limped over to Draco, leaning on his shoulder. "Thank you."

Draco bent his head down and placed his jaw squarely on top of Harry's head for a second. "You're always welcome to come here and use powerful magic. Like Weasley said, I believe in it. But unlike what he thought, I don't believe in using it on humans unless I need to.

"But if you need to…"

"I'll use them," Harry said. "I'll come back to you."

Draco clasped his shoulder fiercely for a moment, then let go, and they leaned on each other as they limped towards the bedroom.

And after they'd rested and then showered and then eaten, they showed each other their worthiness.

Harry glanced out of the small alley that was one of the lesser-known Apparition points off Diagon, and swallowed. He trusted Draco, he trusted that this was the best way if Draco said it was, but he still ached with uncertainty.

"It will be fine."

"I know," Harry said. "I just—shouldn't have to make a declaration like this in front of everyone to have you."

Draco ran a hand down his back. "I know. But listen. After this, it's not just that people know you're different and know you're taken and know that I've changed, too. It'll make it harder for them to accuse either one of us of anything. People who might want to accuse me will be wary of the force of the Chosen One behind me. People who might want to accuse you will get a visit from me."

Harry narrowed his eyes. "You mean they'll be afraid of a visit from you."

Draco gave him a pleased smile.

"Draco. Come on."

"You can think what you need to be comfortable, and they'll think what they need to be uncomfortable," Draco said, and kissed the top of Harry's head before he stepped back. "There's Weasley and Granger now. You know we need to time this right if it's going to work."

Harry nodded, straightened his Auror robes, and then strode out into the open with Draco right behind him. Ron and Hermione turned around when the swelling murmurs let them know something was happening. Harry watched their jaws drop. Neither of them had known this was coming.

Then again, Harry hadn't really known, either. He had only agreed to the plan in the first place because it was Draco's plan, and he trusted him.

"Ron, Hermione," he said. "Draco has something he'd like to say to you."

Draco dropped to one knee. Harry stared at him. They hadn't discussed that part.

Then he realized what Draco was on about, and wanted to groan in dismay. Of course. Draco was going to be as dramatic as possible. He had said it would be an apology that Ron and Hermione would never forget.

Ron was already turning red. Hermione looked somewhere between amused and horrified, but she was the one who took the lead and asked, "Yes, Malfoy?"

"I apologize," Draco said, and bowed his head. "For the insults that I called you in school. I should have realized long before I did how stupid blood purity is. What matters is talent and ability in magic, and Muggleborns—like you—can have as much of that as any pure-blood."

Hermione's brows were drawing together. Harry knew why. She didn't think talent and ability in magic mattered that much, either. She thought every creature and wizard should have equal rights in the eyes of the law.

But Draco was going on. "I finally changed my mind, and then I did something even more unforgivable. I didn't come and apologize then. I let it go, and I let things keep drifting, because I was ashamed and I argued to myself that I'd probably never see you again anyway. It was a shallow and self-serving argument." He looked up wryly at Hermione. "Of course, I didn't plan on falling in love with your best friend."

Harry froze, but Draco was continuing, his voice confident and smooth, and that probably kept some of the eyes that would otherwise have fastened on Harry off him.

"So, I do apologize. I apologize for calling you—the word I used, and for insulting your looks and blood the way I did at other times." Draco bowed his head further. "Do you accept?"

Hermione looked back and forth between Draco and Harry. Harry waited. He couldn't make Hermione accept. That was up to her.

"I do," Hermione said finally, although her face was doubtful. "It's true that you haven't used that word in public again since the war. Have you used it in private?"

Draco shook his head. "Thank you, Granger. The part about me changing my beliefs was true. I think Muggleborns have the right to live and work in our world and attend Hogwarts and show they're as good as any other witch or wizard."

Harry blinked a little. They honestly hadn't talked much about politics, but he supposed it made sense. Draco hadn't become a criminal or a burnt-out, bitter politician like some of the other former Death Eaters or Slytherins. He must have changed in some way, or he would have.

Draco turned to Ron next. "I'm sorry for insulting your family, Weasley. Money doesn't make you right or powerful or worth listening to. God knows that I've seen that with my father."

Draco's face closed, and Harry realized abruptly that he hadn't asked about Lucius or Narcissa at all. He knew Lucius was estranged from Draco and living somewhere other than the Manor, and that he'd become one of those bitter politicians. He didn't know why Draco's mother would be with her husband instead of her son, since Draco was so much worth loving.

It's about time that you said it, isn't it?

But he would ask. When this was done.

"I'm also sorry for the times that I taunted you when I knew you were already hurting. Some of it was to get at Harry, but some of it was because I hated you." Draco studied Ron for a second, instead of keeping his head bowed like he had with Hermione. "And now I know it's because I was jealous. I wanted good friends and people who would follow me into danger and death. I wanted Harry's regard. You had everything I wanted. Everything that was worth more than money."

Ron looked as though the last three Christmases were all happening at once. He nodded and said, "That's true, Malfoy."

Harry caught Ron's eye and frowned. Ron only looked mulishly back. Harry supposed it was too much to ask that Ron not enjoy this.

"But I suppose I can forgive you," Ron said. "As long as you're not going to taunt me again or lock Harry up in your house and spoil him into forgetting us."

"I won't," Draco said. "Never again, Weasley. And why should I spoil Harry like that, when I can spoil him in other ways?" He looked up again, and this time his gaze was so brilliant and sparkling that it made Harry feel drunk. "When I finally have everything I want."

And he stood and claimed Harry's mouth in a kiss.

Harry reached up and entwined his arms around Draco's neck. The crowd was shouting, some people making sexual remarks and some taunting and some gloating that they'd always known the Chosen One was Dark, but at the moment, they hardly mattered.

Draco mattered. Draco and the honesty he'd brought to Harry's life.

"I love you," Harry whispered into his ear, so that even though they were in public and Harry was declaring it with his actions, Draco still got to hear it before anyone else.

Draco drew back, the triumph on his features thick. He raised his wand and cast a shield that rebounded the first rock that someone tried to throw at them. Then he turned around and cast Sonorus on his throat.

"Harry Potter and I are dating now," he announced in a casual tone, but several people who'd seized things to throw or their wands froze as they looked into his eyes. "That means that he's under my protection. He's mine. Think about that before you make a move against either of us." Then he ended the charm and kissed the back of Harry's hand.

"Excuse us, Weasley, Granger," he said.

He took Harry in his arms and Apparated smoothly back into the drawing room where they'd had sex last week. Harry gave him a suspicious look as they landed.

"I thought you couldn't Apparate into the Manor."

"You and I can." Draco kissed him on the lips, and the world around Harry darkened and spun. "I'd hardly advertise it to anyone else. But in the meantime, is that really what you want to discuss? What about our next holiday, or the lovemaking that we're going to do the afternoon, or what we're going to have for dinner tonight?"

Harry laughed. Draco raised his eyebrows a little.

"Just thinking that I have the most wonderful life," Harry said. "Because of the most wonderful person." He leaned forwards and kissed Draco again, softly. "Thank you for apologizing to my friends."

"I'd do far worse than that to keep you."

The terrifying look was back in his eyes again. The Auror part of Harry had to wonder if he would make exceptions to his apparent rule of using Dark Arts on humans except in life-threatening situations, if someone attacked Harry.

The rest of him was thrilled at the thought of someone so devoted to protecting him. And it was no longer a guilty thrill.

"You'll get to keep me no matter what." Harry leaned in to rest his head on Draco's shoulder. "And the holiday next."

"Good." Draco drew him to sit down on the sofa that he'd Transfigured into a bed last week, his eyes alight. "Now, you've seen France, but only a part. What about Provence? What about the Azores? And there's islands off the coast of Canada which no Muggle's ever seen and some wizards run as sanctuaries for magical people and beings who need to relax…"

Harry listened. It all sounded wonderful. Everything, right now, sounded wonderful.

Their life was, at last, beginning.

The End.