Rivaling Affections

Authors Note: This story is one of my favorites, and I hope you all enjoy the progression

Chapter 10 Tap Dance

“Infuriating,” Narcissa cried at the report Minerva had given of the boy’s daily interactions.

According to the Headmistress, things had cooled considerably since sessions began at the school. “I just don’t know what went wrong,” Minerva, mused. “I made sure they spent the entire afternoon alone together, sat them beside one another at the feast, Harry even came around fairly quickly to the idea of Teddy in Slytherin, but then something abruptly changed,” she reported.

“I saw the flowers, a brilliant idea by the way, Minnie. Harry had them in his hand when they came home, but then he went straight to his room with them. Draco looked furious, maybe even jealous, but all he managed to do was linger outside Harry’s bedroom door for several minutes before shutting himself up in his own room,” Andromeda offered.

“Draco can be so stubborn,” Narcissa sighed.

“He certainly doesn’t have the patent on it, trust me, from what I’ve seen, Harry has his own brand of stubbornness,” Minerva offered. “Why, the two have been tap dancing around each other for years, and this week was the worst. I’ve never seen two people so adept at avoidance.”

Andromeda laughed. “You should have seen them this morning. Harry got up, made breakfast, read the Quibbler and went up to his study, and the moment he went upstairs was the very moment Draco came out of his room. It was like he knew exactly where Harry was at all times.”

“He might have, Draco’s very advanced at tracing charms. He might have cast one on Potter without him even knowing,” Narcissa added, sounding very annoyed. “Which makes our job that much harder.”

“We’ll need something bigger, some way to get them in the same room with one another,” Andromeda muttered.

“Well, if the boys enjoy dancing around each other so much, maybe they need a dose of their own medicine,” Minerva offered, holding up the poster for the Halloween Ball.

The three women fell into a fit of laughter and began devising their new plan.

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Draco looked across the room at Potter, who he had convinced himself to steer clear of. The Headmistress was ruining all his scheming and if he didn’t know any better, he would think she was fully aware of her actions.

The tracking spell he had put on Potter had been working well all week, but what was the use if he were going to have to be forced into sharing a classroom with him.

Harry still avoided his gaze, ever since the welcome feast. Something had changed, cooled between them, and Draco was both thankful and full of loss and regret over it. Harry still refused to look at him, even then, when he was standing directly across from him, surrounded by tiny Gryffindor’s.

“As you should all be aware by now, the last Friday evening in October will be the Hogwart’s Halloween Ball. As such, I’m giving you students an extra opportunity to learn the art of ballroom dancing as instructed by your heads of house,” Minerva said.

There was a mixture of groaning and cheering from the students gathered and Draco sighed. These lessons were supposed to take place once a week until the week of the dance, optional for students, but mandatory for him.

“Professor Sprout, Professor Flitwick you’ll be working with your students on Wednesday evenings before dinner, and Deputy Headmaster Potter, and Professor Malfoy will be working with their students on Monday’s,” Minerva continued.

Harry paled considerably, and Draco was fairly sure that if he could get paler he would have. So much for his plan to avoid Harry.

“Professor Malfoy, Professor Potter, if you’ll join me here in the front of the room, please,” the Headmistress instructed firmly.

Draco swallowed thickly and made his slow journey to the front of the room, carefully looking away from Harry at every occasion.

“Now, your head’s of house will demonstrate some of the more traditional dances that will take place at the ball,” she said lightly.

Draco grimaced and shook his head. “Really, Headmistress, I’m a terrible dancer,” he lied.

“Nonsense Draco, I’ve seen you dance and you are lighter than air,” she complimented.

Cringing, he nodded, unable to think of anything else to get him out of this mess.

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Harry took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Draco’s constant rejection of even a simple date still stung, but he would have to suck it up and put on a brave face for his students. He only wished his first encounter with the man in over a week didn’t have to be touching, and worse, dancing. He was far less clumsy now than he had those many years ago at the Yule Ball, but dancing was by no means something he had much experience or practice at.

It appeared that he was fated to make a fool of himself after so many days of narrowly avoiding the Slytherin with the use of the Marauder’s map.

He had given himself a strict window of opportunity to try and convince Draco that he was worth a risk, and he even went over his agreed limit because it seemed as though he was making headway with the blonde. But Malfoy was as steadfastly opposed to the idea as he was in the beginning and there was no reason Harry needed to keep putting himself out there just to be turned away time after time.

At one point he almost gave into Malfoy’s wishes and slept with him, but he knew himself well enough to know that if he had sex with the beautiful Slytherin, that there would be no banishing his feelings for the other man, and then Draco’s rejection would hurt that much worse.

Now he need only ignore him until his romantic feelings dissolved and then he could work on building a new relationship based strictly on professional friendship with the other man. However, he had a sinking feeling that avoiding Draco would no longer be as easy as it had been for the last few days.

His eyes flicked up to Draco’s face, not looking directly into his eyes but just above them. “Professor Malfoy,” he said, adding a sarcastic bow. Draco rolled his eyes and appeared to ignore the snickering students.

“Potter,” he replied, just as mocking but with a hint of coldness. Obviously Draco had noticed Harry deftly avoiding him, but perhaps he wasn’t entirely indifferent to the fact. Was he angry, hurt, or perhaps regretful? Harry shook his head, deciding promptly that it didn’t matter and that he wasn’t there to play mind games or try to figure Malfoy out but rather to teach.

“Now don’t be shy professors,” Minerva called. “Take Draco’s hand, yes that’s right. We’re going to start with the English waltz.”

Harry gripped Draco’s pale hand firmly in his own and tried to repress the sudden jolt of electricity that sparked between them. He cringed slightly as Strauss’s ‘The Blue Danube’ began to play over the wireless and Minerva cleared her throat.

“The English waltz is meant to be danced slow and close,” Minerva said and Harry suppressed a groan when she pushed him and Draco closer together. “There is a step per beat, and each movement should be fluid yet sharp.”

At the Headmistress’s insistence the boy’s began awkwardly moving about the floor, Draco pressed close to him and they both trying to lead.

Minerva clucked her tongue and halted their movements, shouting over the music. “Professor’s only one of you can lead,” she called.

“I suppose you want to do the leading, since you’re the big hero,” Draco muttered, sounding annoyed.

“Actually, I was going to suggest you lead. I’m sure you’re the more experienced out of the two of us,” Harry offered, still avoiding eye contact with the blonde.

“Really?” Draco asked, looking rather shocked.

Harry nodded curtly and yielded the lead to Draco. With Draco leading their movements they were graceful and elegant, as the glided in time to the music. The students went from giggling to silent attention to their professor’s movements.

After a couple of stances Minerva began pairing students up and the floor was filled with Slytherin’s and Gryfindor’s and the professor’s were no longer the center of everyone’s focus. “You never told me you were Deputy Headmaster,” Draco said quietly.

“You never asked,” Harry replied.

“So am I supposed to ask you all about your life in order to get any information out of you?” Draco asked snidely.

“Only if you’re interested,” Harry mused, ignoring Draco’s tone.

Draco was silent for some time, which Harry took to mean he was not in fact interested. “So how did you manage to secure that title? It’s quite an achievement for someone of your age to hold it,” Draco asked suddenly, surprising him.

“It’s not as though I asked for it, or even want it really,” Harry muttered. “Also, Minerva has several years in her still, I probably won’t see that side of the desk for a decade at least, he added.

“Still, very impressive, even for you,” Draco complimented. “So what do you plan to do when you take on the Headmaster’s mantle?”

Harry shrugged. “I doubt I’ll do anything different. I love Hogwarts exactly the way it is. Sometimes it feels more like home to me than my actual home.”

“So then why live off school grounds?” Draco asked, looking genuinely curious.

Harry chuckled. “Long story,” he replied.

“If you hadn’t noticed before, the waltz is a very long dance, and I’d bet a hundred galleons that McGonagall’s not planning to cover only one instruction tonight,” Draco replied with a slight grin.

Harry rolled his eyes, but returned the smile. There were a few reasons for him to live off campus, but he could share some of it. “Fine. Well, when I first started, the war had only been over for a little more than a year. My break up with Gin was still in all the tabloids and the press followed my every movement. That first year as a professor was difficult, because students would rather gossip about me than learn from me. At night students would constantly harass me. They would make up fake ailments and problems just to have some face time with the legendary Harry Potter.”

“That sounds awful,” Draco teased.

“You have no idea. At first I had no real clue what was going on until one of the seventh year girls came onto me. Talk about awkward. It was then that I put in the request with Minerva to stay off school grounds. She accepted right away and I built the house in Hogsmeade. I love it there, but sometimes I miss living in the castle, getting to sneak through dark corridors at night and watch the moonlight from Gryffindor tower,” he replied wistfully.

“It’s the same moon at your house, Potter,” Draco laughed.

Harry shook his head. “It’s different, I mean… well, I’d have to show you, but I promise it’s different.”

“Show me tonight,” Draco replied quickly, looking away at once as if he hadn’t meant to say anything.

Harry smiled sadly and shook his head. “Better not. Some people would interpret something like that as a date.”

“Well, it’s not a date. It’s fact checking. I need to see what you’re talking about with this whole moon thing to make sure you’re not delirious,” Draco offered. “I’d feel obligated to tell the Headmistress if you weren’t fit to teach.”

Harry couldn’t contain the smile that appeared on his face as he nodded. “Alright; tonight, then.”

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Draco had been wrong, the Headmistress had stopped with the waltz and merely assigned them new dances to practice each week with their students.

Teddy came up to him afterward, fidgeting nervously. “I was rubbish, did you see me?” he asked Draco when they were alone.

“I’m sure you were fine, Teddy,” Draco soothed.

“So you didn’t see me?” Teddy corrected with a grin. “Is that because you were too busy flirting with Uncle Harry?”

“I was not flirting with Potter,” he replied quickly and maybe a bit defensively.

“Me thinks he doth protest too much,” Teddy said haughtily.

“Pardon?” Draco replied with a sneer to hide the amusement trying to bubble up to the surface.

Teddy only shrugged. “Grandmother always says it when I’m denying things.”

“Well I’m not unwarranted in denying it. I wasn’t flirting with your godfather,” Draco replied.

“We’ll keep it our little secret,” Teddy said, patting his cousin on the arm.

Draco rolled his eyes and waved the child off, sending him scurrying to catch up with his friends. He shook his head as he went to his office to finish up the last of the paperwork for the night.

He had no idea why he had suggested meeting Potter tonight. He must have been off his rocker. No doubt Potter would take the suggestion as a date and it certainly wasn’t that. There was just something in Harry’s eyes as he talked about the castle at night, something he wanted to experience for himself, and something he wanted to share with the Gryffindor.

Draco shook his head again. No, there would be no sharing, not the way Harry probably hoped, but perhaps they could strike some sort of accord. They worked together and had to live together after all. They couldn’t continue this game of avoidance, the Headmistress had made that very clear earlier.

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Dinner went smoothly. The professor’s spoke very little but everything said was friendly and civil, yet didn’t have the same biting tone as it had all week. Afterward Harry approached him and they ironed out plans to meet at the portrait of the fat lady at half past nine.

Draco was there, on time as usual and waited for Harry, who was late as usual. When the portrait swung open startling him a bit, but no one emerged from the Gryffindor common room. He sighed and began pacing the floor in front of it when he felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up and he whirled around, running smack dab into an invisible force.

The being chuckled and a moment later Harry emerged from under a flowing silvery cloth. “Merlin Potter, what the hell were you thinking?” Malfoy exclaimed, clutching his heart as if that would slow it.

“I decided you would need the full experience if you wanted to be able to report accurately to Minerva,” Harry replied with a smile.

Draco was momentarily confused until he realized the reasoning he gave Potter for coming tonight. Harry’s emerald eyes were vibrant with the light of his laughter and Draco pushed aside all thoughts of kissing that mirthful mouth. “What do you mean?” he hissed.

“My invisibility cloak,” Harry replied, holding out the cloth to Draco.

“This- Potter this isn’t just any invisibility cloak,” Draco whispered in awe. “This is one of the deathly hollows.”

Harry cringed at his words and nodded. “I know.”

“You know?” Draco replied, surprise lacing his every word. He had no idea how Potter could own something so important.

Harry shrugged. “I had all three at one point. The Peverell’s are ancestors of mine.”

Draco quivered with frustration at Harry’s overly casual demeanor. “You had all three? Potter, people have searched their entire lives for these artifacts and you had them at twenty seven?” he demanded.

“Seventeen,” Harry corrected. “And the cloak I’ve had since I was eleven. It was passed to me by my father through Dumbledore.”

“You expect me to believe that you had the Deathstick and the Resurrection Stone at the age of seventeen, and did what with them? Gave them out as Christmas gifts?” Draco hissed, trying to keep his voice down, but barely able to contain his emotions.

“No. Nothing good could ever come from owning all three. Dumbledore made it clear to me what the search for the Deathly Hallows had done to him, and I wouldn’t let the same fate befall me,” Harry replied. “So I got rid of the other two. I only kept the cloak since it belongs in my family.”

“You’re serious?” Draco asked and Harry nodded solemnly. “You’re an odd man, Harry Potter,” he mused out loud. Draco couldn’t even imagine the strength of will it would take to discard such powerful relics and to do so at the age of seventeen, barely a man? Well, he supposed it probably took extraordinary willpower to fight against the Dark Lord and win as well.

“I don’t suppose you’d tell me where they are?” Draco asked in partial jest. He had never had any real want to find the items himself, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to overlook them if he was handed a location.

“Not a chance,” Harry said with a grin.

“Probably just as well,” Draco replied and shrugged elegantly. “So, now what’s with the cloak?”

“I used to use it to sneak about the castle at night, so I thought I’d show you,” Harry told him while flinging the cloth over the both of them.

The billowing material left everything below their knees exposed as they made their slow journey through the dimly lit castle. In some corridors the torches would flare to life at their approach and startle Draco, causing Harry to chuckle lightly. It was after one of these corridors that Draco realized he was clutching Potter’s hand. Harry barely seemed to notice, but once Draco did, he couldn’t seem to think about anything else. The warm and comforting feeling of having his fingers entwined with Harry’s was leaving him with a mixture of feelings that he couldn’t even begin to explain.

“Isn’t it magical?” Harry whispered softly beside his ear and Draco was about to reply with a biting remark about how obvious that statement was when referencing a magic school, until he followed Harry’s gaze.

They were on an upper floor of the main castle, overlooking the vast open space leading down to the Great Hall. They had a perfect view of the various moving staircases, as well as the ancient stone walls covered in sleeping portraits. The ceiling above them seemed to glimmer in the faint light from the scattered amber torches and it was all covered in a twinkling haze that seemed to come from looking through the invisibility cloak.

It really was magical.

Draco couldn’t fight the slow smile forming on his lips as he nodded. “This explains so much,” he mused.

Harry looked at him quizzically. “Like what?”

“Well, it explains how you were able to get away with so much, and why you were so tired in our morning classes and why you always looked so sad on the last day when it was time to take the train back to London,” Draco answered, thinking about the haunted look in the younger Harry’s eyes on the last day of school every year.

Harry nodded and smiled. “It does partially explain all those things.”

“Partially?” Draco asked, suddenly very curious about the other explanations.

Harry didn’t say anymore though, he just looked out over the twilight covered castle with what Draco expected was the same awe he would have seen if he had spied the eleven year old Gryffindor doing the same.

“So, the moon,” Harry said at last, startling Draco from his thoughts.

“Right, the moon,” Draco replied with a nod and Harry lead the way back to the Gryffindor common room.

Draco felt odd stepping through the portrait hole, as if he were walking into enemy territory. Harry led him quietly up the staircase to the topmost dormitories. “Potter,” he hissed in warning. “We’ll wake someone.”

Harry merely shook his head, ruffling his already mussed up hair and place his finger over Malfoy’s lips. Once inside, Harry removed the cloak and smiled. “This one is empty. There aren’t as many students as there were before the war.”

It made sense. A lot of wizards and witches died and some of the survivors chose to have their children go to Beaxbatons or Durmstrang instead of Hogwarts. Too many bad memories.

Draco followed Harry as he walked over to the furthest window and sat on the wide ledge. Draco took a seat across from him and their legs, even bent at the knee, were interlaced.

Neither of them looked at the moon for a while, both just watching each other as they sat quietly on the window ledge. Harry’s eyes took on an otherworldly shine in the moonlight and framed by his long thick lashes, they called to Draco. His scar was nearly invisible, partially covered with the fringe of Harry’s raven locks and partially masked by the distortion of light through the window. In this light Draco could imagine Harry as an innocent boy, someone without the entire world on his shoulders, someone who had never even seen war let alone fought in one, someone who was perfect and pure.

He found himself quickly captivated by Harry’s very presence, as if there was something inside of Draco that would always yearn to be with him. It was odd to think that he hadn’t really known anything about the war hero except what the rest of the world knew. He thought, since he grew up so close to the boy, that he would have more knowledge about him. They were enemies in school, and who do you know better than your enemies? No one.

But there was so much more to the Gryffindor than met the eye, and Draco was eager to find out everything he could, and was happy to find that Harry didn’t mind divulging secrets with him, things that surely few others knew. “So, if the Peverell’s are your ancestors, that means that you’re related to Salazar Slytherin,” Draco said, realizing for the first time how important that bit of news was. “Were you Slytherin’s heir?” he asked at once, immediately intrigued.

Harry grimaced slightly. “Tom Riddle, Voldemort was his heir. I suppose in a way maybe I am too, but the basilisk didn’t obey me.”

Draco gaped. “So that was true? You really went into the chamber of secrets? You really killed a basilisk?”

Harry nodded glumly and sighed. “I’ve done a lot of things, Malfoy. I had more adventures and near death experiences before I turned seventeen then most people will have their whole lives.”

“Well, I’d like to hear about all of it,” Draco replied, suddenly knowing that his words were true. He wanted to know everything there was to know about Harry.

A subtle smile curled on Harry’s lips and Draco realized what that might mean. Did he want to date Harry Potter? Surely not, he just wanted to befriend the legendary man. “I’ll be happy to tell you all about it, but not tonight, okay?”

Draco nodded at once, both relieved not to have to sit in rapt attention, sinking lower and lower into the pit he found himself in, disappointed that he would hear no more tales tonight, and elated that there would be another time, another night perhaps, though certainly not a date, that he could spend alone with Harry.

Potter looked away, staring out the windows with the silvery moonlight putting all but his profile in shadow. Draco couldn’t take his eyes off the sight of him, so relaxed and peaceful, like an angel. “Isn’t it beautiful,” Harry whispered, his eyes locked on the silvery orb in the sky, and Draco had to agree, though he never once looked at the moon that night.

What Draco had the opportunity to gaze upon could not even begin to be compared with the moon.

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Authors Note:Just so everyone knows, I'm in the process of packing and moving into a new house I just recently bought. The move is being spread over a few weeks, and hopefully this will not hamper the updates in any way, but on the off chance I can't post a chapter on time, please forgive me. I am writing 2 new oneshots at the moment, one to be posted at the end of November in celebration of one of my beta's Robert and his birthday, the other which is by far the smuttiest thing I've ever written, and I'm not sure when it will be finished, but you all will be the first to know.