Alluring Lullaby

Authors Note: *** To anyone who hasn't already seen, I've posted a new Oneshot called Only Fools Rush In. It's quite long, so be warned. Also, I've started a yahoo group for anyone who wishes to join which I will be using for various things related to my fiction including update alerts, story/chapter discussion and other things. If you're interested you can join at groups dot yahoo dot com/group/Digitallace/ Many thanks to my beta Shannon for her work on this chapter.

Chapter 5 Irrevocable

The proverbial trumpets sounded as Draco waited in front of Malfoy Manor watching a glistening white and silver carriage approach. His mother smoothed the collar of his emerald green robes - which only served to remind him of Harry as so many things had done over the last few days - and sighed contentedly. “You look so handsome, Draco,” Narcissa cooed.

“Don’t coddle the boy, Cissy,” Lucius ordered and focused his attention on Draco. “Stand up straight and smile,” he directed.

Draco did as his father instructed but felt no emotion to fuel his smile. Over the past few days he had resolved that the Nix no longer wanted him, and part of him wondered if the Nix was even real or if he was a figment of Draco’s marriage frightened imagination.

At night he would lay awake hoping that Harry would come to his room again, only to drift off to sleep and dream about Harry’s supple skin and otherworldly presence. He even sometimes thought he could feel the weight of the Nix’s lithe body pressed against him in his sleep but woke to find his bed empty.

As Pansy’s carriage approached, Draco’s mind went blank. He couldn’t possibly love this girl, as horrible as it might make him. His heart belonged to another and even though Harry cast it aside, it was still his for the claiming.

The tan colored horses came to a stop and Tippy the house elf scurried forward to open the carriage door. Draco held his breath and his mother whispered words of encouragement in his ear.

A foot, dressed in a pale white slipper, stepped out of the carriage followed by a lovely young girl; a girl Draco would have thought beautiful before he met Harry and understood what true beauty was.

She wore a silvery chiffon gown that flowed along behind her as she walked up to Draco’s family and curtseyed. Narcissa was the first to greet her, wrapping her pale arms around the girl and holding her to her breast.

Lucius bowed and nodded to the girl and passed her to Draco who kissed the back of her hand and held it aloft as he ushered her into the house. Draco gave her the grand tour of the manor, pointing out all the opulent and handmade details throughout. She shyly followed after him, nodding when he spoke and showing appropriate awe where expected, she was very well trained.

Draco scrutinized his new bride looking for any obvious flaw he could complain about to his father but found nothing of great importance.

Pansy was petite and giggly, her shoulder length dark hair bouncing with each new bought of laughter. She was polite and graceful, slim and pretty and showed a fair bit of cleverness in the first few hours in his home.

It disgusted Draco more than anything that she was exactly what he would have wanted just a few short weeks ago. Pansy was better than any bride he could have hoped for as far as he could tell, and that made him furious. Furious at himself for falling into a faeries trap and furious with the Nix for snaring his senses so irrevocably.

--

Dinner was no more eventful then usual.

Narcissa adored Pansy at once and offered to show her the garden after they finished eating. Lucius, who rarely liked anyone, even seemed content with the girls easy company. It was almost as if she had been part of their family for decades rather than hours.

She ate quietly, answering questions when asked directly and putting her two sense in on wizarding laws and establishments, all of which agreed with Draco’s own views. “Muggles are a pest,” she stated firmly. “But they are a part of our world for better or for worse and they serve their role.”

“It’s true,” Narcissa added. “For years our world has tried to conquer theirs, and for what? We live a fine life hidden from them, and muggles go about their day to day existence without a worry about magic surrounding them.”

“What I don’t understand are the pureblood wizards who take up with muggles, diluting our blood and our magic,” Pansy complained.

“Those are the true pestilence in our society for sure,” Lucius agreed with the closest thing to a smile Draco had ever seen on his face.

Pansy smiled back at him and then turned her beaming face toward Draco and clasped his hand, squeezing it lightly. He didn’t pull away as he would have liked to do. He thought the more practice he got with these intimate gestures toward his future wife the less he would think about Harry.

All at once there was a scream and a gasp from the dinner party as the water in Pansy’s glass bubbled and boiled over, spraying the table and soaking Pansy completely through. “Oh,” she cried, “what happened?”

Draco eyed the glass suspiciously and looked all around for a house elf who might have pulled the prank, but as the water settled on its own, Draco began to wonder if he shouldn’t be interrogating another type of magical creature, namely a Nix.

It wasn’t until Pansy got back from her walk in the garden with his mother and she reported being attacked by a ferocious blue bird that he knew for certain who the culprit was.

Worse still was when the bathwater attempted to drown her, pulling her under until she could scarcely breath and then letting go abruptly, sending her running out of the bathroom starkers and screaming.

Harry was toying with him still, after everything, after he confessed his love, offered to leave his home and be with him, gave away his heart, his mind, his soul, even his virginity to the wicked creature, still Harry felt the need to torment him from afar. Even though the sprite didn’t want him, it seemed he didn’t want him happy with anyone else either.

It wasn’t fair and Draco wouldn’t stand for it.

As soon as he bid Pansy goodnight and saw her safely to her quarters, he slipped out into the garden and looked for the watery nuisance.

--

Harry heard his name being called from the garden and he chuckled lightly to himself as he hopped down from the looming branch at the edge of the forest and skipped up to the garden wall.

“I mean it Harry, I know you’re out here,” Draco shouted. “I demand you show yourself this instant.”

With an easy grace, Harry leapt over the garden wall and landed directly behind Draco’s furious form. “You demand it, do you?” Harry asked in a breathy whisper, causing Draco to spin around and confront him.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Draco hissed.

Harry bowed so low his hair swept the rocky floor of the garden path. “I’m here, just as you wanted.” It wasn’t like the Nix to be at a human’s beck and call, but Draco wasn’t just any human, he was special to Harry.

“I want you to leave,” Draco ordered, pointing in the direction the Nix had just come from.

Harry pouted and cocked his head to the side. “But I’ve only just arrived. Did you summon me just to tell me to go?” he asked, entirely perplexed by human rationale.

“Yes, I mean, no. I called you here to tell you to leave me alone. Forever,” he amended.

“That’s what I was doing,” Harry informed him. “Then you called me.” This was both true and not true. Harry was staying out of Draco’s sight, carefully watching him during the day and waiting until he drifted off to sleep at night before carefully sneaking in and sleeping in the pale boy’s bed right beside him. But there was no reason to inform the human boy of his difficulty staying away.

There was something irresistible about the blonde, and Harry regretted letting him live out his very human destiny.

“I only called you here to tell you to leave Pansy and I alone!” Draco shouted. “You’ve done me enough damage.”

“It was only a few clever pranks, hardly anything to bat an eyelash over, love,” Harry chuckled playfully.

“Don’t call me that,” Draco demanded, stomping his foot, his face turning an unattractive shade of red. He looked like a very angry kitten and it amused Harry greatly.

Harry swept around him like a soft breeze and ran his fingers through Draco’s long blonde hair. “You smell wonderful; edible,” he sighed, and Draco pulled away, albeit reluctantly.

“No,” he shouted with less enthusiasm than before. “You’ve had your fun with me. Just let me be. I’m already destined to be miserable in a life with Pansy that I was meant to be happy with. Can’t you just leave me alone?” he cried.

“Miserable?” Harry asked, genuinely concerned. “How can you be miserable? I left you to your true life, to your human bride… you can’t be miserable.”

“I’m not the same since I met you, you changed me and then left me a hollow shell of the Draco Malfoy you met in the wood that night. You’ve ruined me,” he sobbed, falling to his knees on the harsh rocky path.

Harry felt tears emerging at the corners of his own eyes and he marveled at the sensation. Sadness and grief were such mortal emotions, and Harry didn’t have room for them. He pulled Draco to his feet and kissed him furiously, trying to banish the tears and replace them with something he was used to feeling.

Draco returned the kiss, holding the Nix close and running his fingers through Harry’s obsidian locks. Fire burned between them so fierce that Harry didn’t think he would ever come up for air.

Then Draco shoved him away.

It startled Harry so much that he stumbled, another human thing that had never once happened in all his long uncountable years.

“Stop,” Draco hissed. “Just leave me alone.”

“If that’s what you want,” Harry sighed and started to slip into the long garden shadows.

“What I want is to forget about you, forget I ever met you!” Draco shouted into the dark.

Harry stilled his movements and rushed like the wind back to Draco’s side. “Truly?”

“Yes,” Draco hissed.

“I can do that for you, if you like,” he offered sadly. “I can make you feel like it was all just a dream. You’ll never remember any details, just a gentle fog where those hours you spent with me occurred.”

“I-“ Draco began, but hesitated, which gave Harry more joy then he had anticipated.

“You must be certain. Once I do it, it cannot be undone,” Harry whispered, his lips hovering close to Draco’s and a desperate yearning to kiss him again burning in his gut.

“Do it,” Draco told him, his smoldering eyes gleaming in the moonlight.

“You’ll never see me again, never hear my voice, or feel my touch. You won’t remember anything, not the time I saved you, or the first kiss we shared or the-“ Harry started but was promptly cut off by Draco’s howl.

“Stop,” he sobbed. “Please. You don’t want me, so just let me go.”

“I can’t,” Harry admitted, wiping the tears from Draco’s eyes.

“Why not?” Draco cried, letting his body fall into Harry’s open arms.

“I’m not sure yet,” Harry told him, which was true. He cared about the boy more than was natural, more than he had ever cared for anything. “But I can tell you this, I’ve never been away from my pool for so long, and I only deprive myself of it for you.”

Draco sighed and placed delicate kisses along the Nix’s collarbone. “I want to be with you forever,” he whispered.

Harry nodded automatically, liking the way that sounded. “I’m not sure how to make that happen though. Your forever and my forever are very different things.”

“I'll come stay with you, ti’ll be like camping,” Draco offered with a smile.

Harry chuckled and ran his hands up and down Draco’s back. “Not quite. I’m not human, I don’t need to eat, I don’t get thirsty, I don’t need to sleep, I don’t even need shelter from the weather. How would you survive that way?”

“I can learn to hunt, I can drink water from your pool, you can lay with me when I sleep and I can make a home for myself using the forest trees,” Draco answered without hesitation.

Harry sighed and kissed Draco deeply, letting the taste of him chase all his worries away. He had much to think on and he needed to talk to the wood. The forest would know what the Nix would have to do, what the Nix was capable of, even better than himself.

“I need to go,” he began and kissed Draco again to quell his sudden protest. “But I’ll be back,” he promised before stepping out of Draco’s grasp and gliding into the darkness once more.

He flitted back over the wall, only sparing on last glance toward Draco, who was watching with rapt fascination.

He truly believed now that he loved the boy, for better or for worse, he adored him. What he didn’t know was what that love meant. Did it mean he should erase the boy’s memory of him and let Draco fulfill his human destiny? Did it mean that he should let the boy have his way and build himself a home by Harry’s pool, where he would no doubt live a short and fruitless life? Or was there some third option, maybe even others that Harry had not yet thought of?

It was obvious that the Pansy girl cared for him, much to Harry’s dislike. Should he leave Draco to her, let the girl try her best to make him happy? Of course that would require Harry to obscure the boy’s memory of him and he wasn’t sure he could do that, not now.

He also couldn’t bear to watch him waste away in the forest without the proper means to live that fragile humans needed.

He watched from afar as Draco went back into the manor and he saw when his bedroom light flicked on. He watched from a nearby tree as Draco stripped and climbed into bed, a soft smile on that beautiful mouth. “I put that smile there,” Harry mused to himself as he skulked closer and slipped silently into Draco’s room.

“I do love you,” Harry whispered to the sleeping blonde as he climbed into his bed, winding his limbs around him and pressing close. Draco sighed contentedly and snuggled closer, the soft smile widening in the dark of his room.

“Harry,” Draco whispered softly into the night. “My Harry.”

A grin blossomed across Harry’s face at the words. Belonging was something he was familiar with. He belonged to the water, to the woods, to the birds, and to the breeze.

So as Draco fell deeper into slumber, Harry knew exactly what he had to do.

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Authors Note: I'm accepting reviews in the form of song today, and perhaps dance....