Pet

~*~*~**~
SIXTEEN
~*~*~**~
Lucius dangled Harry’s choker chain, letting the heavy links pool into the palm of his hand. He tracked down the chain using a locator spell, but when he had found it, it was attached to a multi-pierced black woman. She had gotten the necklace from a friend of a friend of a man who bought it from a pawnshop.

He visited several pawnshops in the area before locating a clerk who remembered the chain and the nervous little “girl” it had been attached to. The clerk admitted that he had been forced to cut the chain when neither of them could release the catch. Normally he would have not accepted a damaged piece of jewelry, but it was the holiday season and the little girl, thrown out by her father for disgracing the family with an out of wedlock child, needed train fare to get to a maiden great aunt who had agreed to shelter them.

Lucius set the chain on the corner of his desk. He would have to send it to a jeweler for repair; whoever had repaired the chain had soldered it crudely. He would have the jeweler place an unbreakable charm on the links this time; unable to remove the chain himself due to the bond of ownership, Harry had convinced another to cut it off. Clever pet, he thought.

~*~*~*~
Harry set down a box of budget dishware. Mark and one of his bouncer friends from the leather bar carried a futon frame through the doorway of Harry’s first apartment.

It wasn’t much; just a tiny studio apartment in a fifth floor walkup, but it was his. He had lived with Mark for a little over a month before Mark’s considerable contacts unearthed this room several blocks from Fiddlesticks. Rose sucked on her toes, safely out of the way in a proper crib tucked in the corner.

Mark reached into the crib and tickled the infant’s tummy.

“You be good to your Mummy, Rosie.”

His friend laughed, thinking it was a joke.

~*~*~*~
From the shadows, Harry watched as his co-workers arrived for work. Mark was pinned against the wall by a muscular bleached blond he had been dating exclusively for several weeks. Some others were kissing their significant others good-bye. Harry hugged Rose closely to his chest and entered the dark club; more and more he was feeling isolated, alone.

He wished he had someone of his own, but he didn’t know anyone but the people he worked with and the regular customers. Frankly the customers scared him and, although his co-workers liked to tease him, none of them were looking for anything more than a quick fuck. With the responsibility of caring for Rosamond, Harry needed stability, a serious relationship, something not to be found at a place like Fiddlesticks.

Sometimes he thought he saw Lucius in the crowd, but it was always some overly bleached blond. Harry wasn’t sure how he felt about his master, but he could still feel the gentle pull of the bond. He wondered if Lucius could still feel him; he wasn’t sure if that notion comforted him or alarmed him. He often had explicitly sexual dreams about the arrogant blond and it confused him that he was not horrified by it.

Rose was a little cranky and hard to settle; she was happy only when Harry held her. In the kitchens, he danced with his tiny daughter to the amusement of the cook. The graceful sprite rocked his hips to the beat of an Oldies radio station. Playfully he teased the cook the same way he’d seen some of the dancers tease their patrons.

Harry glanced at the door and stopped abruptly. Two of the waiters began to clap slowly, but not loud enough to frighten the baby. Sid stood behind them, a calculating expression on his face.

~*~*~*~
“I can’t do this,” Harry whispered, his stomach in knots and his nerves shot.

Kevin, one of the club’s transvestite singers, adjusted his headpiece. “Emerald, love. You’ll be brilliant. The first time is always the worst…it’s just stage fright.”

Harry slipped a costume emerald drop earring into a recently pierced earlobe. Kevin feathered some cover stick makeup over the lighting bolt scar. “You’ll need to find something better to cover that…the stage lights are going to catch that scar.”

Glancing into the port-a-crib tucked into the corner of the male entertainers’ dressing room, Harry focused on his precious daughter. He shivered; the green and blue silk veils making up his costume offered little in the way of warmth.

Harry checked his reflection in the mirror a final time. The heavy kohl around his eyes looked alien to him. Hell, the entire reflection looked alien.

Sid appeared in the dressing room, his hands resting on Harry’s slim hip. The slight wizard sidestepped the manager and slipped into the backstage hallway. The man followed close on his heels.

“Ready for your debut, beautiful?” Leering, he tucked a loose corner of a veil back into position, brushing his hand across Harry’s crotch. “It’s not too late to change your mind.”

“Please don’t touch me, Mr. Toffler.” Harry backed away, wishing he could empty his nervous stomach on Sid’s overly shined shoes.

Sid was the reason Harry was standing backstage waiting for his debut as a male stripper while dressed like a B-Movie version of a harem girl. The manager, tired of Harry repulsing his advances, gave him an ultimatum. Rose would no longer be able to stay at work with Harry unless he did one of two things – Harry would either dance two nights a week in a costume of Sid’s choosing or he would let Sid fuck him on a regular basis.

Harry put him off for a week before being forced to make a decision. He had tried to find another job and had even applied with several employment agencies, but with Rose and not enough money for daycare, rent and diapers, Harry really had no choice. He had even briefly thought of calling Aunt Petunia or Mrs. Figg.

Harry’s cue to go on came and he glanced at Kevin’s reassuring face a final time. He emptied his mind, thankful for the Occulmency lessons Severus taught him. With the stage lights in his eyes, he couldn’t see the audience and for that he was grateful.

Harry’s hips rotated to the slightly Arabian beat of the music as he slowly divested himself of the green and blue silk veils. The audience wasn’t sure what to make of the classically sensual strip tease; they were used to the blatant burlesque version. But skin was skin, and Harry was showing plenty of it.

~*~*~*~*
Harry was nauseous at the memory of the men touching him as they tipped him for his dance, as they invited him for a drink, as they inquired his price for a private performance. He showered and scrubbed his body until his flesh felt raw. Roughly, he braided his still damp hair into a long braid; the men couldn’t keep their hands out of that either.

Without waiting for his shift to end, Harry gathered up Rose and left the club. As they walked home, he passed the leather bar’s open door and winced at the lewd comments sent his way. Normally he could ignore them or laugh them off, but the trauma of his first night as a stripper was fresh.

Thankfully, Rose drifted off to sleep with just a warm bottle and a dry diaper. He didn’t think he would have managed to cope with a stressed out baby as well.

He sat on the edge of his futon, removing his shoes and socks. He removed his jeans; wadded up pound notes fell to the floor. Seven pounds. He had taken off his clothes and flirted with a room of strangers for seven pounds.

His stomach heaving, Harry hurried to the bathroom. As he emptied his stomach contents into the commode, the long black braid hung over one shoulder. Harry scowled at it as if his hair was somehow to blame for his predicament. Straightening up, he rinsed the bile from his mouth into the sink. His eyes fell on a pair of shears.

The slender young man grabbed his braid at the base of his heck and slid it between the blades. He looked at himself in the mirror and then set the shears onto the sink. Cutting his hair off would solve nothing; it would just leave him with a ragged mess he would have to fix in the morning.

Harry fell into a fitful sleep, dreaming that he was stripping in a room filled with men who all looked like Lucius Malfoy.

~*~*~*