Author: tigersilver
Rating: PG
Pairing: H/D
Word Count: 1900
Summary/Warnings: Post-war, EWE. Draco's got a Meet-and-Greet List and bit of sucking up to do with Harry's family. Harry's got a headache the size of Southwark.
...oh, and this bit of silly is for megyal* , who has a birthday coming! With love and kisses to my Nutmeg:) Tiger
HD Meeting the 'Rents
"Right, Mum," Harry began, having taken a deep preparatory breath to do so. He stilled his feet, which wished to shuffle, and patted both the chill marble of Lily Potter's gravestone and the solid rippling warmth of Draco's bicep simultaneously, which wasn't nearly as easy as it looked. He regained his shifting balance but barely.
"Hah! Sorry! Um, this is Draco. Er…Draco Malfoy. He and I—he and I. Well…I suppose you could say we're—"
"Involved."
Draco was never one to hide his light under a bushel. He stepped forward smartly, executing the oddest little half-bow Harry had ever seen, and bustled right into it, addressing Harry's Mum's tombstone as if it were an old and dear relative.
"Very involved. Intimately so."
"Oh, but," Harry jumped. "I was going to say—"
"I know you and your husband are likely keeping a watchful eye over Pot—Harry, here," Draco continued inexorably, stepping smartly forward a second time and practically clicking his boot heels as he came to strict attention, "and I thank you for it. However, you've no need to be unduly concerned, either of you. You'll be pleased to learn I have Potter well in hand, thanks."
"You—you—what?" Harry sputtered, struggling under the hand Draco instantly clapped on his shoulder. He ducked and shrugged, to no avail, half turning to face his companion. "Now, just a half a tick here, Malf—"
"He's perfectly healthy—and fit, as you see, Mrs. Potter." Draco exerted a fair bit of pressure with that steely grip of his, keeping Harry in check as he waved the other towards Harry's flustered face. "Not a scratch on him, really. I'm keeping him in excellent care, you see, and I'm quite wealthy. Well able to do so, and for the future. Nothing but the best for Potter, believe me—oh, and no matter what he might tell you in private, he does indeed enjoy being spoilt. Why, only yester—"
"I do not, Malfoy!" Harry yelped. "That's my Mum you're spouting off guff to—shut your bloody gob, will you? Merlin!"
"You do, Potter; don't deny it," Draco shot him a winking aside before he turned back to the matching marble headstones. "Ahem. And Mr. and Mrs. Potter, whilst I have you as a captive audience, as it were—"
"Captive audience?" Harry howled, jaw dropping. "Could—could you possibly manage to be any ruder, Malfoy?" he gasped, eyes huge behind his spec frames. "I mean, really!"
"Forgive me, do, dear Potters," Draco essayed his most charming smile, directed solely at the plot in which the mortal remains of Harry's parents resided. Harry earned a sideways glare, brief but furious. "I'm repeatedly informed by your son I am not always the most politic of conversationalists. Please do not regard it; I meant no offense. However, do please be assured—"
"You have got to be kidding me, Malfoy," Harry grumbled, rocking back on his heels, and evidently resigned to being tethered by the collarbone. He threw his hands up, flapping them about. "You're a berk, you know? No manners whatsoever, really. Dogs have better."
"Potter, dear," Draco sent him a Look from beneath lowered lashes, "we are with your parents at the moment, not your unfortunate godfather. I'll get to him, don't worry; he's on my List. For the moment, though, please have the courtesy to keep still. I'm not finished."
"Oh, lordy," Harry shook his head to-and-fro slowly. "Lordy, lordy. Bloody save us all from your damnable List, Malfoy." He reached a tentative hand out and gave his mother's monument a second fond stroke. "Sorry, Mum," he sighed, shrugging unhappily, "he's just like this. One grows accustomed."
"Potter," Draco gritted, his eyes glittering and his fingers clamping tighter than a bear trap on Harry's already cramping collarbone, "kindly shut your gob. Give me a moment, please. As a courtesy."
"Right, right," Harry huffed. "They're all yours, prat," he added, taking a pace backwards—and conveniently ending up flush against the be-robed chest of his impolitic lover. "Go on, then. Say your piece."
"I should hope not, Potter," Draco snapped, "as that would be terribly wrong and rather awfully creepy. If they were mine, which thankfully they are not. They are yours, which is, may I remind you, the whole purpose of this venture."
"Eww!" Harry exclaimed, screwing his nose up in disgust. "Oi, Malfoy! Watch it! Graveyard, prat—place of reverence, yeah?"
"Exactly," Draco nodded pointedly, as if his point had been summarily proven. "Right."
Harry grumbled, but wisely kept it to a nearly inaudible level.
"Ahem." Draco cleared his throat a second time, shifting his grip over to Harry's midsection and incidentally hauling him closer, once again turning his cool grey gaze to the dual markers. "As I was saying before your ill-mannered son so rudely interrupted me, I shall endeavour always to take the utmost care of him. He is safe with me, Mr. and Mrs. Potter. You may rest assured of that, at least."
"Hah!" Harry snorted. "Ha-ha-ha! Bugger!" he glared mutinously at his shoulder, an exaggerated wince drawn upon his features. "Suuure, Malfoy. You are so full of it, you reek!"
"Shut it, Potter," Draco growled. "Ah. Thank you," he added, when Harry clamped his lips closed, making the universally understood lip-buttoning gesture. "And, er—thank you, Mrs. Potter, for actually having him. He's a noxious little git but I do rather love him."
The breeze blew. The birds twittered. A budding leaf or two rustled softly in the quietitude of the churchyard. It was a pretty place in early May, not at all grim or forbidding.
Harry Potter's parted lips fell gradually from their disbelieving sneer into a species of attractively befuddled gape. He blushed like a little girl, the colour washing attractively up his cheekbones and staining even as far as his scarred brow.
All was still, calm and restful. The world held its collective breath, perhaps, but that may've only been fancy.
Harry followed the silent gape with a gasp: a short humid intake of air across a tongue stilled of any sensible response. He blinked rapidly as the little pool of silence expanded all about them, even taking in the faint susurration of tree limb to tree limb and hushing their tiny noises to a peaceful state of alert watchfulness. There was only the familiar feel of Draco's chest at Harry's back, moving in gentle time as he respired—and then—there!
There was the thunder of heart that matched up to—and even surpassed—his own. There…
"What?"
Harry spun 'round haphazardly on a dug-in rubber heel, slip-sliding on the scree of the walk and reaching out with all his fingers outstretched as wide as they could go, till he could practically hear his knuckles popping, his sinews and tendons stretching like bands of rubber. Reaching out till his hungry, wanting hands landed on something solid, someone he could cling to in any weather, fair or foul.
And Draco only eyed him carefully, cautiously, unblinking as the image of the dove carved upon his mother's tombstone.
"Do you?" Harry whispered, as if afraid to damage the quiet. "Do you, really?" he repeated, and found the silvery gaze all at once shyly hidden beneath pale fans of long lint-white lashes, golden only at the very tips. But they shone at him, despite that, warm and hot and filled with all manner of secretive messages, a liquid well of words Draco was loath to speak, being a git and a bloody-minded one, mostly.
"I do."
Draco's chin was quite pointy, thrust out like that. He seemed almost rather bellicose, as if he might burst out at any moment—until one peered closely. The lashes flickered unevenly; the git was holding his breath, a barely visible line of pearly teeth severely closed over a full, pouty lower lip. Malfoy, who was all nerve, all the livelong day, was-by his lights, at least-practically in a tizzy.
"And you, Pot—Harry?"
"Oh-fuck-YES!" Harry gabbled, overcome, flinging his entire body forward all at once, so that Draco staggered back under the weight of it, nearly tripping over someone else's tombstone.
"Harry!"
"Oh-fuck-yes," Harry repeated, scrambling and breathless, peppering Draco's face with a million little kisses and tousling his gorgeously silky hair into a Gordian tangle with fingers that quivered in joyous palsy. "Yes!"
Draco—that arrogant prick; so full of himself, always—pressed a quick sliding kiss to the side of Harry's mouth before Harry nuzzled his hot cheeks and brilliant smile into the sanctity of skinful shelter, burying the whole of his blushing face against the flexing hollow of Draco's throat. Harry only barely caught a glimpse of Draco's sparkling triumphant speaking glance and his supremely satisfied smirk, darting off toward the elder Potter's matched grave stones. It was such a brilliant look, it nearly rebounded.
"Well," the git purred out the word, clearly pleased as punch, his arms tightening hard and harder on Harry as his everything—all the lanky lean height of him, muscle over bone, and skin and cloth overlaying that—was snuggled 'round and against by an inexplicable moist-eyed Harry. "There you have it, Potters. Rest in peace, alright? All's perfectly well, here on this mortal coil. I've got it in hand—as you see."
The git even had the temerity to wink at them, after. To wink! Like a bleeding bawd at the circus!
"Amen to that," Harry whispered reverently, bobbing his chin in frantic agreement, but—after taking a split-second to consider matters—he did nip the throat beneath his trembling lips quite sharply, leaving a blossoming red mark as punishment. "But—you!" he growled into Draco's cascading hair, loosened where he'd tugged it from its confining ribbon. "Bloody wanker you are! 'Let me handle it, Harry', you said! 'Brilliant way with words I have, Harry', my fucking arse! Those are my parents, you bleeding freak! Show some respect!"
"…Now, Potter." Draco patted him comfortingly, all the Harry he could reach, which was most of him. He lifted his shoulders under Harry's clutching fingers, apparently entirely unrepentant. "Take a damper, do—it's just family. They'll understand."
"Oh you great git," Harry moaned, his state of sudden joy threatened by a tiny dark cloud of looming disquiet. They weren't even a quarter the way through Draco's damnable List. "You pill! You're hopeless! And we've Sirius next, don't we? Merlin help me! God only knows what you'll say to him!"
"Really, Potter," Draco's voice sounded over Harry's head, not at all perturbed. He was the very soul of sheer Slytherin confidence and obviously quite intent upon jollying Harry out of his sulks. "Never fear. I'm known to be awfully good with handling stray mutts—and stray cousins, too, even if they're unfortunately passed on. You've nothing to worry about, prat. I'll take care of it. He'll love me."
"Oh, yeah?" Harry demanded, fretfully. He raised his head finally, to peer up at the handsome set of pale features above him. "I'm not sure I trust you now, Malfoy. Not after that little show."
"Oh, Potter, you non-believer," Draco shook his head sadly. "Have a bit of faith, alright? I've brought him a biscuit."
"A—A what?" Harry exclaimed, back to gawking, pop-eyed. "Excuse...me?"
"Oh, yes. Liver-flavoured, you know," Draco assured him. "Mum says they were his very favourite. We'll lay it upon his marker together, along with a nice posy of cattails and dog violets. It'll be very touching, I promise. He'll appreciate it, I don't doubt."
"Touching! 'Touching', you say?" Harry snorted. "Are you raving, Draco?"
"What?" Draco wanted to know. He frowned down at his armful, clearly puzzled. "Mum said he liked them, Potter. I'm only attempting to curry a bit of favour here; make him take to me, as I know you were quite fond of him, git. What's the problem?"
Harry only moaned a bit, doleful, and quietly laid his woebegone head back upon Draco's shoulder, closing his eyes tight-shut and blocking out the all-too-cheerful spring day bursting at the seams all about them—as was a suitable manner of acting indeed for a visiting relative at a hallowed family graveyard.
Suitable, indeed. Hah!
Harry flinched on behalf of his poor parents—and poor, poor Sirius, about to receive a bloody dog biscuit from his godson's bloody barmy boyfriend. At least Draco's bloody Meet-and-Greet List didn't include that bitch Bellatrix. Harry did have to draw the line somewhere.
Finis