HP ficlet: Played for a Fool [Harry/Lucius, general]
Title: Played for a Fool Author: celandineb Fandom: HP Pairing: Harry/Lucius Rating: general Length: 780 words Warnings: reference to infidelity Summary: Lucius Malfoy has never in his life been a fool. Note: For quill_it, 100.3, prompt 95, "message". Part of the Harry/Lucius, Draco/Harry series, following "Really Happening".
No one has ever been able to call Lucius Malfoy a fool. I have done foolish things, to be sure; but I defy anyone to say he has not, at some point in his life, acted foolishly. That is not the same thing.
When I saw Harry and my son sitting together, I knew quite well what their intentions were. Draco reminded me far too clearly of myself in the first grip of a new desire, and by then I knew Harry well enough to easily read the lust in his expression.
I pretended to be unaware, of course, and flirted gently with Harry just as I would have done had I not seen how things stood between the younger men. Nothing that I said would give away to Draco the sexual relationship I had been enjoying with Harry, but Harry himself could not mistake my meaning. I am, I am afraid, petty at times. If Harry was intending to seduce my son, I wanted to ensure that I was on his mind as well.
Although I delayed my departure from their company as long as I was able, eventually I could put it off no longer, and left. Half of my thoughts remained with them, however, and I tormented myself the rest of that evening imagining what they might be doing together.
The irony of it would have made me smile, had it not been myself caught in the trap. Because of my gratitude toward Harry for saving Draco's life, I had been more than willing to teach him what he wanted to learn, and now he was putting my lessons to use with Draco. I presumed that this meant Harry would cease to meet me. We had, after all, explored many different sexual acts together already, and I was under no illusion that he was likely to feel the same affection for me that I had unintentionally and unexpectedly developed toward him.
I continued my other activities as usual, and if I was occasionally somewhat short with Narcissa, well, she had lived with my bouts of temper before. We had long since come to an agreement that we would not inquire into each other's affairs of whatever sort. She may have suspected that I had had a romantic entanglement go badly, but she gave no indication of it, just as I disregarded her own frequent absences.
Perhaps I am a fool in some respects after all, because I could not stop thinking about Harry. Even with what I had been teaching him he retained a charming naïveté, tempered by just enough Slytherin-style cunning never to be dull. I occasionally wondered what might have happened had he been Sorted into Slytherin rather than Gryffindor. He could have been one of the most outstanding members of my old House; his ability to speak Parseltongue was a strong indicator of that. He had spoken it to me on more than one occasion, and I pleasured myself now recalling it. Something about the gutturals and hisses falling from those soft red lips excited me to a remarkable extent, and even the memory of it brought me swiftly to orgasm.
Harry had always been the one to make contact when he wished to have another lesson. I would not stoop to pleading with him to return, and I assumed I would hear nothing more from him. He had always made it plain that he saw me in no light other than that of teacher, given me no cause to think he had any motive other than instruction. I resigned myself to temporary solitude, until I should find another young wizard -- or witch, perhaps -- to break it.
Yet several weeks after I left Harry and Draco sitting together at the Leaky Cauldron, a message arrived by owl at breakfast with the rest of the post. I recognised Harry's childish handwriting, and took the envelope up to my study, where I would be undisturbed. When I was in that room the house-elves knew not to enter without being specifically summoned.
I broke the seal and unfolded the parchment. Harry had written in quite the same manner he always had. He did not mention Draco at all, merely asked if I would be free in the next several days to meet and give him another lesson, the subject to be anything I wished that I felt he might enjoy learning.
Swiftly I wrote back, naming a date three days away, and suggesting a Muggle pub that we had used once before as a rendezvous. With my reply winging its way back to Harry, the tightness that I had not consciously recognised as constricting my heart eased.