Alluring Lullaby

Authors note: Many thanks to my beta for this story, Shannon! Go team awesome. I'm posting this chapter early because there is a chance I might not have internet tomorrow... moving is so time consuming!!

Chapter 8 Waste Not Want Not

Harry quickly grew weary of the human world, a place where he so clearly didn’t belong.

In the immediate days after his fight with Draco, Harry found himself wandering the vast and expansive corridors of Malfoy Manor alone and wondering how he had tricked himself into thinking that this was a good idea.

He loved Draco surely; it was not a question of that. In fact, it was clearly that love, an emotion he had never felt for a human being, which brought him to the manor, to Draco’s side.

What he couldn’t be sure of is whether or not Draco was ready, or ever would be ready for a relationship with someone like him. He didn’t seem to have the maturity or the willpower to make his own decisions, and the Nix refused to make them for him. Draco would either choose to be with him, or he wouldn’t. It was very black and white

As Harry wandered down the stairs, trailing his hand along the rich wooden banister he came across Pansy, who was sitting on the bottom stair, her head buried in her hands and her delicate shoulders shaking with her silent sobs.

“What bothers you, lady?” Harry asked, though truthfully he hardly cared. He was merely bored with wandering hall after hall filled with magical portraits that sneered at him with the same Malfoy lips that he was furious at.

Pansy looked up at him, her expression startled and her face patchy with red. She wiped her small pale hands across her face and smeared the tear dampened make up around her cheeks. “Draco broke off the engagement,” she sobbed, reaching over to hug Harry for comfort, but Harry dodged her arms and let her careen into the banister.

“He left you?” Harry asked, not bothering to mask his sudden glee at the idea of Draco making a choice and the choice being him.

“Yes,” she cried. “And he was a right prat about it too. He says he’s in love with someone else, but he had to be lying because his mother’s never even seen him with another girl.”

Harry laughed before he could stop himself, and the laugh wasn’t as human as he would have normally made sure of. His happiness was making him reckless and the bell-like sound that escaped his lips made Pansy shudder.

“What is so funny?” she demanded, stomping her tiny foot on the granite stair.

“Perhaps it’s not another woman you’re being left for,” he mused with a knowing grin.

Pansy looked confused for a moment, her brow creasing into an unattractive frown, but then Harry’s words sunk in and she began to gape. “Do you think Draco’s… no he couldn’t be, could he?” she stuttered, not really looking at Harry anymore, but rather staring off into space. “But then who would he-“ the question was cut off in midstream by her own sharp gasp and she slowly turned to face Harry, her eyes widening dramatically.

“You?” she asked.

Harry shrugged and trotted up the gleaming staircase toward Draco’s quarters. “I suppose I’ll find out soon enough,” he called back over his shoulder.

----------------------------------------------------------

Draco felt retched and mildly afraid.

Pansy had come to his room early that morning seeking to talk to him about their upcoming wedding. He had been avoiding her and Harry both, trying to clear his head and figure out what he was going to do, but he could hardly turn her away when she showed up at his door.

She had come in, sat on the edge of his bed and patted the spot beside her coyly. Draco reluctantly followed her instruction but regretted it immediately as she placed her hand on his thigh and began massaging it while she spoke of decorations and guest lists.

After a brief pause, he looked over at her and she tried to kiss him.

He was barely able to dodge her and when he successfully moved away he just blurted everything. He told her that he didn’t love her, and that he loved someone else and that he wasn’t going to marry her either.

It hadn’t been pretty, but eventually she stormed from the room in search of Narcissa and he knew it was only a matter of time before his father came looking for him to give him a strict lecture and who knows what more.

When the knock sounded at his door he was reluctant to answer it, but his father couldn’t be put off. To his immense relief however, it was the Nix who graced his doorstep, looking bright and as sexy as ever.

There was a reason he had avoided Harry, and that was because it was impossible for him to think with the stunning man within his line of sight. “Harry,” he whispered.

“I hear you have news,” he mentioned, leaning in close.

“I left her,” Draco responded, admitting it out loud for the first time.

“For me?” Harry asked, more tentative and unsure then Draco had ever heard him.

“Clearly,” Draco responded with a flourishing wave across Harry’s body. “I could never choose her over you.”

Harry smiled and pushed his way into Draco’s room, coaxing the blonde toward the bed and straddling him when he finally had him there. “I think this calls for a celebration,” he purred in Draco’s ear.

Draco writhed beneath him and nodded, letting the Nix pin him to the bed and lick hot trails down his neck with his tongue. Any and all scraps of clothing were quickly banished to the corner before Harry entered him, his flesh just as silky as the first time, and his movements just as erotic.

Somehow Harry was able to roll him and twist him and it always felt perfect. Draco moaned for him, because he knew how much the Nix loved it when he was vocal, but the sound didn’t elicit the usual smug grin, but rather instead his head twisted to the side and he looked as though he was concentrating on something else.

Draco tried to pull his mind away from the glorious heat spreading through his body, but by the time he realized something was wrong it was too late and the door opened, revealing his father’s furious face.

Harry covered Draco with a sheet in a lightning quick movement, and Draco saw his father blink and his down deepen. “What the hell do you think you’re doing with my son?” he boomed.

Stepping away from Draco with feather soft footfalls Harry padded over to Lucius, still nude and glowing with an ethereal light. “We should talk about this another time Lucius,” he said firmly and Draco watched as his fathers face bent and contorted before nodding and walking briskly from the room.

“You did it again,” Draco whispered, shaking his head in disbelief. “Can you not refrain from entering my parent’s minds?”

“Would you rather him do as he was intending?” Harry asked him with arms folded over his chest in defiance.

“Isn’t there some other way?” Draco asked.

“Yes, there is,” Harry answered. “You can tell your father about us so that I don’t have to continue forming lies in his mind.”

Draco groaned and fell back onto the bed, letting the sheet slip beside him in a pool of ice blue fabric. “Why can’t we just keep this to ourselves?” Draco asked. “I can promise not to marry Pansy, not matter what my father threatens and you can stay here and we can be together in secret.”

Harry strolled, still naked over to sit next to Draco. “Is that what you really want?” he asked, his face a blank mask.

“Yes,” Draco said with a nod.

“Fine,” Harry replied, sighing and running his fingers over the pillow before getting up and quickly dressing.

“Where are you going?” Draco asked, spooked by Harry’s sullen behavior and sudden departure.

“I need to take care of your father,” he replied as he went for the door.

“What are you going to do?” Draco asked, panic filling his voice.

“Whatever I have to in order to grant your wish,” Harry sighed, turned the knob and left before Draco could say another word.

-------------------------------------------------------

Lucius was located easily enough.

He wandered the garden as if searching for something, and Harry had an idea of who he was looking for.

Him; only not the human looking incarnation, but rather the lithe water sprite.

Draco infuriated him to no end, but he didn’t suppose he could expect much more from a human boy who was a mere fraction of his own age. He could play along for a bit, so long as Draco promised to be faithful. Eventually he would tire of the game, but then maybe so might Draco.

“Lucius,” he called, and the man whirled on his, all blonde hair and pointed features. To most people Lucius and Narcissa looked so similar that it was hard to tell which traits he got from which parent, but to Harry it was simple.

Lucius’s chin was very sharp, whereas Draco’s was slightly rounded, taking after his mother. Though Draco’s eyes were the same steely gray as his father’s they sometimes contained a tint of his mother’s icy blue. His face was less pointed than his fathers’ helped by Narcissa’s genetics, but Draco’s skin matched the milky pale luminescence of his mother’s precisely.

“I know you,” Lucius hissed, stepping into the invisible circle Harry usually kept around himself to keep his distance from humans.

“I’ve been staying here for several days, of course you know me,” Harry replied easily, unwilling to back away and yield a small victory to the taller man.

“You’re hiding in this skin,” Lucius continued as if not hearing a word Harry uttered,” but I know what you really are.”

“I am no one of consequence,” Harry said, and put all of his magic into his words, but it was no use. Something was different about Lucius; something was off.

“I took a potion this morning, one that would allow me to see the truth of you. Your presences has bothered me since you’ve arrived but every time I’ve felt close to discovering the truth, my mind get befuddled and I lose the answers I was so close to grasping,” Lucius whispered as he trailed his index finger along Harry’s jaw.

The Nix refused to shudder or shrink away as he would like to do. The touch of Draco’s father, despite their similar looks, felt worlds apart. Lucius’s fingers were cold and rough, where Draco’s were warm and soft as satin.

“Why do you come here to torment me?” Lucius whispered.

“I’m here for your son, Lucius,” Harry said truthfully. “This was never about you.”

“Liar!” Lucius shouted, raising a hand to strike the Nix across the face but seemed to think better of it. “You expect me to think you came here for Draco?”

“It’s the truth,” Harry replied simply. “I love him.”

“You cannot love, you’re incapable of it,” Lucius spat. “I came to you, I loved you and you turned me away. You took something from me and I don’t even recall what it is, but I feel the void in my mind where you used to reside.”

“I never resided there, only your obsession with me did,” Harry countered, ignoring Lucius’s head shaking in protest.

“You will stay away from my son,” he demanded.

“There is nothing you can do to force me,” Harry replied, a knowing smile forming on his lips.

The smile must have snapped something in Lucius’s brain and he lashed out, grabbing the Nix’s face and pulling him close to his own. “Take me in exchange for my son. I’ll give you more than he ever could,” he pleaded and kissed Harry deeply, startling him into paralysis.

Once he was thinking clearly he pushed the man away and spat on the ground, trying to rid the taste of Lucius from his mouth. Draco’s father tasted of aggression and anger and nothing in him tasted like Draco.

His body started to glow as he shed the human glamour. Growling, his voice as menacing as any wild beast, he pointed at Lucius and narrowed his eyes. “You will never touch me again. You will leave Draco and I alone, and you will let us be happy.”

Lucius nodded dumbly, as he grabbed at his throat trying to get air that the Nix was denying him.

As Harry lowered his hand and walked back toward the manor he felt a ripple of regret. No doubt Draco wouldn’t like that he had threatened his father, but surely he would understand when he explained.

He didn’t have to wait long to explain as he found Draco, eyes staring blankly at the stairs, standing just outside his room.

“Draco?” Harry called, going straight to him.

“I saw you,” he breathed, his gray eyes filled with hurt.

“I’m sorry, Draco,” Harry apologized at once. “I had to, I couldn’t possibly let him separate us.”

“So you kiss him?” Draco asked incredulously, but the Nix could only blink in surprise.

“That’s why you’re angry?” he asked, puzzled.

“You’ve been fucking him the entire time haven’t you?” Draco shouted.

“Goddess, no,” Harry replied. “He kissed me, I made him stop!”

“It didn’t look that way from here!” Draco shouted.

Harry sighed and tried to calm down his lover, but to no avail. “Draco listen to me, I swear I never kissed him.”

“I saw you!” Draco shouted.

“I know what you saw, but that was your father attacking me. I have never and will never be attracted to him, it’s you I want,” Harry tried to assure him.

“Well I don’t want you!” Draco yelled. “I don’t want to see you ever again!”

Harry’s entire body tensed as he tried to discern whether or not Draco was being honest, but he couldn’t see. The boy’s mind was so clouded with a jealous anger that no thought could be read outside of that emotion.

He wouldn’t listen, he wouldn’t see, he wouldn’t open his mind to the possibility that Harry was telling the truth. The Nix shook his head and placed a delicate kiss on Draco’s forehead. “You’re too young,” he said with a sigh. “You’re too unsure and too angry.”

Draco’s face heated up and his lips set into a thin line, but Harry was tired. He was weary from the games and from the hiding and he grew more and more despondent being away from the water, away from his glade.

A flicker of light flashed through his vision and like a bolt he flew out the window, his body now a small blue bird, and landed once on the window sill to see Draco’s set and determined face before flying away and into the wood, glad to leave the human world behind him even if that happiness did not extend to leaving Draco behind as well.

He loved Draco dearly, but it seemed wasteful to give up his life and his magic for someone who didn’t even want him.

Authors Note: pout. Well, I hope you're enjoying the story so far. For anyone interested the move is going well so far, and I officially live in the house I bought a little over a week ago! It's nice getting to sleep here instead of just visiting it occasionally. I'll be posting pictures up on Myspace and Facebook soon if anyone cares. lol.