Equinox
Fall
Harry didn’t want to wear the fucking costumes. Honestly, he didn’t see why he should have to.
In the army, the uniforms had made sense. Not that you were held to your uniform, in the north. You wore it because it was better quality than what you brought, and so the blokes on your side didn’t get confused and kill you during battle. Even so, live long enough and the outfit would wear. You didn’t get a second one unless you pulled it off a corpse. Live long enough and you’d strip the corpse. Then you’d have two or three. Warm trousers. Wool socks. Enough to keep the chill out in the winter.
There was no such purpose to all this. They survived a war for fucks sake. Who had time to care about… pageantry?
It’s important, Hermione insisted. When the fuck did Hermione start to follow Harry around to insist things? Harry supposed it started when all his other shadows vanished.
Died. Not vanished. They’d died.
Or had someone die.
Grief tore people away from Harry more surely than death. Created a dual grief in Harry, from those he lost at war and those who left him after. Next to his dual guilt. From having survived when his loved ones hadn’t. For being angry other survivors wouldn’t stay.
Self loathing became Harry’s top priority, so it fit in well that he let know-it-all Hermione sidle up to him and direct his every movement. God he hated her. It was easy to hate someone who knew all that had happened and was able to function after. Brisk, no nonsense movements and commands. The ability to direct his nascent kingdom while Harry wallowed. She wasn’t exactly unkind, but she had no patience for whatever it was Harry was. Some empty shell of a man. Someone who hardly slept. Hardly spoke. Hardly listened. When they walked together Harry would take his arm in hers so she could pinch him if he lost track of himself. She told him his people would rather see him scowl than broken.
Harry tested the scowl out on his face. Made sure it would stay put where it belonged. He shifted under the weight of forgery. He wore his attire like a lie crusting over his skin. He was dressed to act out the stories they’d made up about him. Heroic fables. Lion king, they would chant. King Potter. King Harry. He hated that he hadn’t found the energy to talk Hermione out of this madness. He hated how now he didn’t have the energy to just walk away.
Harry shuddered under the weight of everything he hated. He closed his eyes and imagined that the people on either side of him weren’t dressed up in shades of gold as ridiculous as his. He imagined familiar faces. Encouraging smiles and soft words reminding him to breathe.
It was hard to keep breathing when they went out. He hid his hitched breath behind a steady scowl. His wobble was held at bay by years of standing at attention. In the predawn the crowd before him could have been an army. More soldiers waiting for battle.
None of them were his soldiers. They were the lowest scum on the planet. The courtiers Hermione said he needed. Harry understood that he couldn’t just kill everyone but he had suggested, repeatedly, that they kill a few more. The bad ones. If they looked hard Harry was certain that someone out there had served Voldermort too faithfully and would bleed well on his blade.
Hermione, damn her, had fixed eyes colder than even Harry’s against her king and demanded how many he would need to kill to find satisfaction.
She allowed him one more. One wretch of a man who wouldn’t give Harry the satisfaction of being broken. Not even now, at his moment of death. He was the assigned man to stand for every vile and evil thing Voldermort had ever done. They should have let him languish more before dragging him out. Let his broad frame shrivel with hunger. Let his silver hair grow stringy. Force his narrow face gaunt. They hadn’t, so he stood too tall. Nearly regal. He kneeled in one graceful dip. What sort of fucking man can genuflect to an executioner without shedding a scrap of dignity? He played at contrite without hiding his sneer for those watching who he deemed beneath him. A sneer too similar to Harry’s scowling expression.
It was a fucking headtrip to see Harry’s own derision on that monster’s face. Harry knew, he knew, that Lucius had abused his power and privilege to further his personal gain. The two men weren’t alike. But it was clear as the sun rising in the morning that given half a chance Lucius would slaughter the watching crowd indiscriminately. And truthly, Harry would, too.
Maybe Lucius had broken, after all. Just like Harry.
Lucius was driven by anger and greed and desperation. The real difference was Harry’s executioner thrust his long blade through Lucius’s neck. Whereas, Harry had to live. Live with his pain and his anger and his bitterness.
Live too similar to Lucius fucking Malfoy.
Live wondering if he’d shrivel up into a husk of everything he might have hoped he could be. Shrivel up as he’d never forced Lucius to.
Live to fall lower than everyone he’d killed in order to climb out from under that staircase in the north. Out from the muddy trenches of battle. From under the weight of all the loved ones who died.
Or, god help him, live to be something Lucius and Voldermort and all their evil, vile people never had a chance for.
Live to heal.
Spring
Harry hated Hermione.
Sure, Harry had committed to himself six months or so ago that he’d become a better man. He’d recognized the risk of carrying on all doom and gloom. All self loathing and… well, everyone loathing. Even now, when he thought about it his hands twitched for a weapon so he could act on his urges. Only, he was king now. If he started killing he’d be in real trouble. These fuckers let kings get away with anything. No one wanted to tell Harry about it but it was hard not to hear the stories anyway. Harry had always heard Voldermort was a monster. But it was one thing to hear it, and another to walk through the dungeons before the bodies were cleared out. To be able to see how the corpses had been brutalized, before and after death.
Those fuckers would let a king get away with anything.
Hermione wouldn’t let Harry get away with shit.
She still walked arm and arm with him and her pinches had got harder. She’d made Harry stop drinking months ago and now refused for alcohol to be at any table with him. She quizzed him before and after every meeting to make sure he knew the details of his kingdom, and if Harry ever so much as suggested Dennis had been better at it she’d start crying.
She hated crying, he could tell, but clearly she was putting all her effort into taking care of Harry instead of herself and she didn’t have the energy to hold back the tears.
It made Harry alternate between actually trying so Hermione could take a break, and collapsing in on himself because he was a complete piece of shit who shouldn’t have been in charge of a kingdom.
Six months on the throne, with nothing to show for it. He hardly knew what progress was. He tried to imagine it.
He got held up on how he thought progress might be Dennis coming back. Dennis, who he hadn’t seen since the days after the final battle. Dennis, who had taken the offered bag of gold and his brother's corpse back to the north for a proper burial. Next to their parents, Dennis had said.
Those fuckers promised Harry that his town in the north was well fed and all the soldiers were allowed to return to their homes and rebuild. They obfuscated when Harry asked about whether there was food for everyone else. Whether all the soldiers were taken care of. When pressed, they used southern math to quantify which people should be left to die.
Harry hadn’t known shit about small councils or overseers. When those decisions had to be made he hadn’t understood the job and also didn’t care who was given the task. He’d tossed out names of those he trusted. He spoke without thinking, before remembering which of the names he suggested were dead. It hadn’t inspired confidence. He hadn’t realized he needed to inspire confidence.
Looking back, Harry could see that wasn’t the first decision his friends had taken from him. Nor was it the last. It was just that he could also see now that they had let that southern math guide their choices. When Harry finally noticed he did try. He squared his shoulders and stood up to Andromeda and demanded of her what he’d demanded of Lupin. No one starve. No one die.
Andromeda was naturally stern but just then she smiled. It was so much like Tonks that Harry’s heart ached. Andromeda had cupped Harry’s face in her hands and comforted him. But she had a spine of steel and did not bend to Harry’s dreams. Not now, she said. Not yet.
Idiot. Fool. Useless. Snape’s voice in Harry’s head.
Harry didn’t blame those grubby fuckers for spinning webs of power and influence that made it near impossible for the king to do anything. Maybe it had always been that way, maybe Voldermort had let it happen. Plenty of conniving nobles were watching, waiting, to take advantage of when Harry fucked up. They would rather he fuck up than make anything better.
Harry tried to bite down his anger. He tried to keep it off his face when he was obligated to sit before the small council. He tried to keep back his sneer each time a courtier with the tell-tale signs of old family blood greeted him warmly, as if they hadn’t fought against him in the war. He tried to hide his murderous fury each time he was confronted with someone he hated who lived when so many he loved had died. Like that unrepentant Malfoy brat who glared daggers right back. As if he was the one who’d been wronged when his family had spurred the war onward from the beginning.
He kept his battles with anger deep, deep inside him. Another secret he dare not let out. Which of his confidants would stomach Harry raving on how he still wanted to kill? He heard Snape’s sneering voice say Hermione’s words. How many he would need to kill to find satisfaction?
It was precisely because Harry knew he was being self obsessed and battling dangerous impulses that he let Hermione do everything. It was clearly wearing her down, she was pale and sickly and she’d swapped out her crisp business outfits for dull dresses that hung like sacks. Still she put everything into Harry excelling as king. She told him what to wear, who to talk to, what to say. She wrote letters and treatises and laid them before Harry to sign. She walked arm and arm with Harry and pinched him when he looked too dull or too angry. Harry had bruises up and down his arms from her fingers.
One day Hermione laid out half a dozen papers with small portraits pinned to them. Harry wasn’t sure what he was looking at, until he suddenly was. It was the middle picture, a familiar pretty face framed by bright red hair. He hissed, “You can’t marry me off.”
Hermione was past rolling her eyes at Harry’s outbursts. She’d just gaze stonily while Harry squawked before precisely cutting him down with logic. “Your promiscuity is well known, Harry. You need to secure a legitimate heir before one of our rivals finds a child they can claim is your bastard, and then uses it to go after the throne.”
Harry was sure he must have turned beet red. How had his life come to this? “I don’t have any bastards,” he gritted out.
This time Hermione did roll her eyes. “Accidents happen.”
Becoming king was a shit show that was no doubt made worse by all of Harry’s fucking secrets. He’d thought he could just ignore them. Ignore everything that happened in the north, everything that happened in the war. Most days it felt like a different man had lived that life, and King Harry was some new creature that spawned out of the husk of a former man. Harry woke up and play acted being this other person. He play acted that it didn’t make him completely livid. He play acted until it broke him down and he snapped, but usually he could hold that back until he was alone with Hermione, who he’d thought saw through his act. But maybe this was only a shit show because he was a shit person who lied to the only person he had left that he could trust. A person who he resented too much to even be honest now.
“I was always safe. Go ask Dennis if you don’t believe me, if you can even find him,” Harry’s self-loathing was mixing itself up again with how he loathed his friends who had left him.
Hermione responded testily, “Do you need me to summon a doctor to get this through your thick skull? Accidents happen. If you’re lucky, the women you laid with had anti-contraception tonics, but I doubt Dennis would be able to confirm that. I’d say you’re as likely to have a child out there as not, and those aren’t odds I want to bet the kingdom on.”
“I didn’t leave it up to other people,” Harry growled, telling himself that if he didn’t say a gender he wasn’t continuing the lie. “We always used condoms.”
Hermione leveled her most know-it-all stare. “So did I.”
Harry’s brows furrowed, but Hermione’s didn’t. She stared strong and defiant as ever.
“But you’re not-” Harry started, because he was an idiot. To his credit, he didn’t finish the sentence. He let silence sit between them and Hermione stared her stony stare and let the silence confirm the truth. “Hermione, are you pregnant?”
“Obviously,” she snapped, and it was nearly heartbreaking how she sounded the way she always did but Harry could see her stress because her eyes were too wide and showed far too much white.
Harry opened his mouth, then closed it. He looked Hermione over and for the first time in months he paid attention. She didn’t look very different, but her clothes were clearly designed to hide her shape and it wouldn’t be hard to attribute her pallor to stress. She must not have wanted anyone to know. Her own secret. And Harry could see it, the pinch in her eyes, the thinness of her mouth, the way her hands wrapped too tight in front of her. She was terrified. But she’d told him her secret, because Harry was a pig headed fool and she would always put the kingdom before herself.
Hermione wasn’t married. He didn’t see how she would have had time to sleep with a man, especially since she spent all her time with… oh hell, she was pregnant and people were going to think it was his. That’s why she was trying to find him a wife. They spent too much time alone together. It didn’t matter if the baby popped out with the classic Beauxbatons platinum blonde hair, or a head as red as the midlands… oh hell. Harry knew who the father was.
It was far past time for Harry to do more than flop his mouth open in shock. He had to say something else Hermione would glare at him so hard he’d fall through the floor. This was just earth shattering news. Selfishly, Harry didn’t know what he’d do when Hermione had a baby and couldn’t constantly be at his side. But also, there’d be a baby. Harry remembered that moment when he’d first held Teddy. The complete awe of something so little and precious being entrusted to him. How bittersweet it was to see him still, bigger and beautiful and all the best part of his parents who would never see him grow. What a gift it was, that his friends could have that, for their whole, long lives.
“This is wonderful,” in the end it wasn’t that hard to find the words. “You’re going to be such a wonderful mother.”
Clearly that was not what Hermione had expected him to say. She floundered, unable to find her own words, and then she burst into tears.
Later, much later, Hermione calmed down. Harry didn’t ask her anything, but Hermione insisted on explaining her overly complicated plan to address every possible challenge that might come from her pregnancy. Harry would get engaged to a key ally before anyone knew Hermione was pregnant. Hermione actually did know where Dennis was, and she’d write and ask him to return and staff Harry when she was no longer able. She had the next six months of council meeting agendas set, and key political decisions strategized. Andromeda would be briefed and available to advise, whens he wasn’t planning Harry’s wedding. She had charts, time tables, reports.
Harry listened the way Lupin used to listen to his own rantings. Harry wasn’t as good at responding to rantings as Lupin had been. He had nothing wise to say. So he just asked, “Why isn’t Ron here?”
Maybe this was the wrong thing to ask, because Hermione had to bite back sniffles. “You can’t tell him!” she insisted.
“He’d be here if he knew,” Harry was certain.
Only Hermione shook her head. “I won’t trap him.”
It would do no good to insist Ron wouldn’t consider this a trap. Wasn’t he mad for Hermione? But he could see the fear in her eyes. Ron had left to the midlands to help his family pick up the pieces after the war, and he hadn’t come back. That mattered more to Hermione than anything Harry could possibly say. Besides, Harry couldn’t fault Hermione for not wanting to raise a child with someone forced into parenthood. He would never let anything as awful as that happen to her child.
“You see why you must marry?” Hermione asked.
Looking at it one way, she was actually asking a very big favor of Harry. Maybe he owed her, after she helped win the war then kept his life together for half a year. He quirked his lips upwards as he considered. He remembered Lupin instructing him to share his feelings. He was a grown man, now, but that still seemed so hard. Only right now he was feeling something sharp and powerful. It felt good, nearly. Like affection. Like he wanted to help. But in a way that brought this feeling, and not the slimy dread he lived with constantly.
If he wanted to feel different he needed to try to be different. “I don’t need to get married, I’ll just tell everyone I’m gay.”
Hermione looked perplexed. “What? Why would you do that? It wouldn’t work, and you’d ruin any future prospects of a serious match.”
Harry could see what he’d done there. He was still hedging and hadn’t braved being direct. Since when was Harry a coward? Besides every day in this new world he fell into and couldn’t escape. He couldn’t live like this. He absolutely couldn’t live like this.
“It would definitely work. I can be very convincingly gay.” He had to pause to try to clear a dry throat. “Because I’m gay.”
There was no chorus singing out to celebrate his proclamation. Not a single thing was different, now that he said it. But it was out there, and it could never be unsaid.
To her credit, Hermione didn’t gape at Harry’s secret. She did pause a long enough time to be concerning. She stared at him, hard as ever, but it was sharp instead of steely. She looked him over, not too different than he’d examined her, but Harry didn’t think a gay person looked any different. He was nervous she’d think he should. He realized he hadn’t thought this through, and any minute now Hermione might laugh at him and tell him to stop joking and then brow beat him until he married one of those rich nobles and forced him to find the stomach to get one pregnant.
She didn’t say any of that. She said, “Alright. I’ll need to think on this. Let’s talk tomorrow, and I’ll have an updated plan.”
Harry was certain he’d heard wrong, but Hermione had moved on entirely. She pulled out a different piece of paper. It was his agenda for tomorrow, and as if nothing had happened at all she launched into quizzing Harry about exports in advance of a trade meeting.
There was no way to know what this meant. Obviously Hermione could ball up her feelings and hide them. Was she angry at him? Was she disgusted? The only thing Harry knew was she seemed to accept his truth as fact.
It was freeing, in a fizzy, giddy sort of way. And maybe it would have been better to wait for Hermione’s plan, but that meant she might come back and tell him to hide again. She might find a new solution, and then he wouldn’t have a reason to tell the truth. It would be just a different way to laugh it off, to tell him the truth wasn’t real. He couldn’t handle that. He hadn’t realized how trapped he had felt in his lie, and he wouldn’t go back. If he’d been a better person, a better friend, he would have talked to Hermione and told her what he needed. She was smart and would have made it work with one of her plans. For any number of reasons he was afraid and it was too easy to make any number of justifications.
Still a coward, then.
He told himself it was brave to do something else. He found one of those pretty couriers he hated so much, who dressed fancy and talked sweet to the king they’d just as soon as killed a year ago. Harry always had a knack for knowing which men were like him. Maybe gay men did look different. It didn’t matter. He took the man to bed and didn’t care who saw them along the way. Afterwards, he didn’t tell the man not to gossip.
He’d survived a war. He could survive whatever came next. He could do it, if it meant he could feel free.
In the end it wasn’t easy. Southern nobles were bastards and always had been. But it was alright. Especially a month later when Ron came back, because even in the midlands he’d heard. It was just like Ron Weasley to hunt Harry down and wrap him up in the kindest, most loving hug.
Fall
There was nothing quite like that exquisite moment when a man thrust his cock into Harry’s ass. It was always a quick fuck and Harry never waited to be fully stretched. He liked the burn of it. He liked feeling it after. He liked this moment, right now, when the man who’s name he didn’t ask for started humping and Harry’s ass burned as he whimpered, “more,” and “harder.”
The fact was, as king, most men just assumed Harry wanted to top. Harry was coming to terms with what it meant to be king, but not how courtiers were so fucking deferential. More than one man had offered him sex but couldn’t get it up for the occasion because they weren’t actually gay.
So these moments, when strange men were willing to plow Harry with all their might in whatever empty room they stumbled in, were the fucking best. Hard to doubt the man wanted him when they were this enthusiastic. This fella growled when Harry shoved his hips back to meet every thrust. Each graze over Harry’s prostate inspired a groan. Each noise caused hands to squeeze tight at Harry’s hips. The best chain reaction. Pleasure built on pleasure until one hand wrapped around Harry’s body to tug at his dick. The palm jerking over him in time with the cock up his ass. Overwhelming pleasure that built until it exploded.
It was always weird dealing with the men, after. By now, some of them were repeats. There weren’t too many gay men even at a court as large as this. And even if he were king, the southern boys still didn’t stomach well the idea that someone would admit to being gay at all.
He fucked them anyway. Sex got Harry out of his head better than anything else would and he wanted to get out of his head a lot.
None of his friends had staged an intervention yet. Probably they would, though, once they figured out whose job it was to fill Lupin’s shoes.
Harry had already stepped away from whoever this man was and started to put his clothes back together. He buttoned up enough they wouldn’t fall off and then stopped. Why the fuck couldn’t a king ever wear something practical? Harry still kept a wardrobe of soldier’s gear because those clothes didn’t make him feel like a joke. The servants would see him walking around debauched again and who knew if that would cause trouble.
Couldn’t a king get away with anything? Voldermort had skinned people alive. Surely that had to be worse than getting buggered and not knowing how to do up your dress suit after.
Damn, the man was talking to Harry. Harry perked up in case it was something worth hearing.
It wasn’t. Just some drivel about the first anniversary of the war and how hard it must be for the king.
Of course it was hard, that’s why he’d started the day off by finding a man to fuck. Harry excused himself without explanation.
None of his friends told Harry he should be moving on. Not in so many words. It went the other way. When Harry lashed out Ron would try to commiserate. Ron had his hands full with his new wife, his visiting mother, and the newborn babe, but he still made the time to help Harry.
When there were too many fights to cover up Ron stepped in. Harry needed an outlet, Ron said. How about sports?
Soldiers' games were triggering, Harry would fight brutal and then collapse as soon as he got somewhere private.
It didn’t take long for Ron to pull Harry out of boxing. He was afraid if he let it go longer Harry would kill someone.
Then Ron thought, Harry likes riding, let’s put him on a horse. Of course Harry was good at polo, he could ride a horse like no other and target all his aggression on that small ball instead of another person.
To play, they needed teams. So Ron put together teams. A whole league sprung up overnight, and the league needed horses. So he had his brother produce horses. They needed fields, so he had his soldiers adapt training fields into sports fields. There was a terrible efficiency to the way Ron put together this sport that shed light on what Hermione saw in him.
Harry hated how it helped. Ron saw what Hermione, with her planning and scheming, had obviously missed. Harry needed to get outside, to move, to work with people towards a shared goal that had nothing to do with politics. Well, almost nothing. His team was cunning and no one accused their opponents of letting them win.
Privately, Harry did accuse everyone of exaggerated fawning just because he was the king. Being active might have helped but it was a mockery of what he’d had before he was king. It was like the men he took to bed. He couldn’t trust anything they said. He could only trust what they did - on the field, or between the sheets.
He supposed he also trusted people when they called him the Queer King, even if they only ever said it in front of him once. Ron wouldn’t let him kill anyone. When Harry was most likely to Ron would threaten him with Hermione, and it worked because Harry didn’t want to pull her away from Rose.
Rose was almost as perfect as Teddy. It was more than a little devastating that it took meeting Rose to realize how distant he’d been from Teddy in the last year.
Harry wished he could spend this anniversary back at Grimmauld Place with his godson. Andromeda had told him in no uncertain words that he could not. In fact, she would be here today for the ceremony. Only afterwards, would Harry be able to get away from court.
He hadn’t meant to be a distant god father, especially not when Teddy’s actual parents were dead. Visiting had just gotten all tangled up with his fears and pain and self loathing. It probably would have stayed that way, if not for Ron’s gentle encouragement. He’d made it easy for all the family to visit Grimmauld Place, which made it easy for Harry to go back on his own. He’d missed so much of Teddy’s life, but he was doing his best to replace his guilt with happy memories.
Even if it meant seeing those damned Malfoys. Ron didn’t bother reminding Harry he couldn’t kill them. Not even when he found the brat harassing Teddy. Harry scowled and knew that he couldn’t interrupt Hermione’s thirteen point plan to “make amends” or whatever. But that didn’t stop Harry from having words with Andromeda about the servants keeping a closer eye on Draco to make sure he wouldn’t hurt Teddy.
So that was his life. Politics, sports, family, and fucking. What else could he want?
He wanted to skip a ceremony dedicated to honoring all the people he let die. That was a small price to pay, though. Go remind everyone he was a strong king who’d fought his way to the throne and could keep it with his sword if he had to. Go remind everyone he was benevolent and had let all sorts of unworthy people live. Such a small fucking price, they kept telling him.
He tried to tell himself there was nothing else he could want. Wasn’t this so much more than he ever hoped for, back north under that staircase? Wasn’t this so much more than he had, all that time he was in the war? What would he have traded this for?
He’d blink then, and try not to remember anything he might have traded this for. Certainly not the pain and terror of long nights in northern mud, with too young soldiers, and another dark-haired man, who had really just been a boy.
There were so many grown men at court Harry could have for nothing. He didn’t want to look back and remember how to want something more.
Dennis waited for Harry when Harry returned to his rooms. He’d known, then, that Harry would be a fucking mess today. He didn’t hesitate to start yanking soiled clothing off of Harry and redressing Harry until he was fit to be a king.
It was jarring when Dennis came back. He was dressed sharply in his military uniform. Too sharply for a northern man, which told Harry that Dennis also didn’t know how to go back. There was no war to wage. No family to care for.
There’d been no question that Harry would take him back.
Dennis watched everyone shrewdly, and over time every part of him changed until anyone who didn’t know better couldn’t have known he wasn’t meant to be there. Harry couldn’t tell if Dennis was play acting like him, or caught in some horrid transformation. It was excruciating to watch. Harry appreciated how Dennis was always there, like he had been before, anticipating Harry’s every need. But also Harry tried to get Dennis to slow down. Only Dennis wouldn’t ease up a little.
Dennis never talked, like he had before. The young boy who’d drank with Harry in that northern camp was long dead. This young man had grown from the husk of what the boy had left behind.
It had to be a hard day for Dennis, too, but Dennis had his own cravings he fed to avoid the past. He would take pride in ensuring Harry was pristine. The perfect king. The perfect figure head. But Dennis would not go to the ceremony. Not once had he spoken of Colin since his return, and Harry knew the only way to get Dennis to leave a job undone was to bring up his dead brother.
Play acting being southern had no soul.
Spring
They were giggling. It wasn’t just the wine. Okay, it might have been the wine. But it was more than that.
The day to day churn of reality was suffocating. No one but Harry even acknowledged it. On one side he had Hermione, already pregnant again and writing out coverage plans to keep the kingdom running when the baby came. On the other side he had Dennis, who wouldn’t budge from the act that he’d always been here as chief valet to the king. There was still Ron, who Harry had elevated to lead the army, but then Ron immediately blocked Harry out of all military discussions as if what Harry needed was distance from it.
Did they know there was no distance? Loud noises still had Harry reaching for where his sword should be. He rarely screamed, but he woke drenched in sweat. He wouldn’t let the men he fucked sleep with him. He was worried he’d get confused in the night and hurt someone.
As soon as it happened Harry knew it was probably a mistake, but he’d fucked Charley.
The easy men were too clingy. They were angling for position in Harry’s court. The lengths they went to in order to entice Harry were disturbing. These fuckers had strange assumptions about what a king wanted. Harry would hear a servant drop a bowl and the clang of metal on stone would send him spiraling. Then, if he so much as left the room, one of his suitors would follow and proposition him with an eagerness to degrade themselves for his pleasure.
Charley, bless him, would never degrade himself for Harry. Bless him again, Charley didn’t think getting fucked was degrading. Charley liked it all ways. He liked it most when Harry was affectionate. Harry hadn’t thought he could be affectionate. But at the end of a day filled with shit Council meetings filled with shit people he hadn’t been cogent enough to keep out of power, it was nice to curl up out of sight in Charley’s small bed chamber near the stables.
Of course everyone knew it was happening. There were no secrets in a castle (unless it was all his friends keeping secrets from Harry). His fucking friends saw Harry fucking Charley and were happy for him. Like, they thought maybe this was Harry getting with the damn program and moving on and settling down.
Harry liked Charley, of course he liked Charley, but he wasn't settling down with Charley. He was beginning to worry he would need to make that clear.
Any day now Harry would make that clear.
Only, Harry did like Charley and the time they spent together. Charley brought him to this party. “It’s an equinox ball!” he had snickered, but his eyes had been shining. Charley had shown him a poem written on purple cardstock.
“Gather faithful story tellers…” it started, and that’s why Charley said Harry had to come.
Ever since Harry had come back from Beauxbaton he’d started writing again. Wild stories. He didn’t know where they came from. He’d just seen a world he could never have imagined and it made him feel things and then he wrote. He couldn’t imagine telling anyone about it. Maybe he would have told Lupin, if he weren’t dead, but Harry didn’t think so. Lupin would read too much into it. He’d probably ask something insightful about why Harry was writing about exploring and being lost, and Harry knew there was no deeper meaning to it.
He could tell Charley, though, because it wasn’t any odder than the other things he told Charley. It was Beauxbaton, you see. That country was amazing. They had school for every child, universities that would put Harry’s country to shame, enough trained healers that anyone could see one, programs to help ensure everyone could eat. Harry’s advisors were quick to tell him all of the burdens on the system and hidden costs and inequities, but to Harry it had been magic. And it was the sort of thing Charley imagined, which is why he could talk with Charley about it. If Charley would entertain magic, why not Harry’s wild stories of adventure?
It wasn’t only Charley who liked stories. There was Luna, who’d Harry’d rescued from the dungeons, Dean Thomas, who apparently maintained a journal through the entire war to make sense of his struggles in a way Harry never could, the Patil sisters, who’d hid out the war overseas, Neville and his new wife, Hannah, and George, who’d brought the wine and insisted they all do poetry. Others Harry didn’t really know, but who were excited to come all the same.
It was actually the Patil sisters who planned the party. The poem had insisted everyone bring something they wrote to share. People were still let in if they hadn’t, but George did make them write incessantly and read the worst of their poetry aloud.
Everyone else was allowed to split up into pairs. Harry could see Charley leaning in to ask if Harry would partner.
Harry latched on immediately to the other person next to him. Luna. He liked Luna. They’d spent some time together, after the war. She’d been pensive and quiet. Right up until she’d looked Harry dead in the eyes and asked what it felt like to cut a man’s throat. That wasn’t the sort of question Harry would normally answer, but Luna asked it as breezily as you’d inquire about the weather. Harry had to think about it. He felt hot, or he felt cold. Most of the time he didn’t remember it afterwards. Unless he was dreaming. She asked if he’d ever tortured someone before. Harry asked what she’d meant, and she had described in detail how she’d seen Voldermort drive a spike into a man’s tongue and pull until the spike tore through his tongue and left it split down the middle like a snake.
As far as Harry knew she never asked anyone else those things. Harry thought she could look at him and see something others pretended wasn’t there. She could see it because she was like him, on the inside. He wondered if she ever woke up screaming.
It was uncertain whether or not there was anything gruesome in Luna’s poetry. Certainly there was no gore. No snake-forked tongues flapping blood about. Whatever creatures she wrote about might have offered boons to the faithful, but they didn’t sound friendly to Harry. They sounded like they might spike you like Voldermort if you didn’t prove your faithfulness. Luna smiled when she was done reading and Harry floundered through words of praise that she seemed pleased to receive.
When it was Harry’s turn, he shyly pulled out notepaper. It was just a scrap of writing. The edges of an idea. In Beauxbaton, the prime minister herself gave Harry a tour of their great university and showed him the most wondrous thing he’d ever seen. An entire room dedicated to viewing the stars. He was shown how to use the telescope. They showed him the tools they’d developed to enhance their navigation at sea. Harry’s wonder had grown, until he looked up in the sky and recognized a set of stars and all the joy and wonder came crashing down in the memory of those few nights in the woods with Sirius.
He wondered how far he would have to go not to be able to see that constellation of a dog in the sky. He wondered, what it would be like to look up and not recognize anything at all? What help would all of Beauxbaton’s knowledge and technology be then?
One day he’d written that feeling down. The feeling of being haunted by stars, and traveling as far as it took to escape what was haunting you. Only to face the fear and tragedy of being in the complete unknown, completely unprepared.
It was just an idea, not even a story, but he read it to Luna and she didn’t call it wild. Instead she leaned in, captivated.
“Can I share this with my father?” she asked. “He lived in an observatory once.”
He’d been locked up there and forced to brew poisons for Voldermort, who held his daughter hostage.
Harry folded the notepaper up and put it back in his pocket. “Um, it’s not a real thing.”
Luna stared into the distance and hummed. “You should make it real, then, and give me a copy when it’s finished.” She said it so simply as if it could just be true.
Parvati read the room and clapped to summon attention. She wore a mysterious smile and unveiled a smooth wooden box. “Honorable guests, I present to you, the Equinox poetry collection.” There were actual oohs and ahhs.
Parvati opened the box and pulled out one card at a time, reading out poem after poem. They often didn’t make sense to Harry, but many of the party goers must have understood because they began to shout out responses to the poem. “Roses!” “Sea creatures!” “Nightmares!”
“What are they doing?” Harry asked.
Luna said, “Aren’t they lovely,” instead of explaining.
“It’s a silly game,” Charley complained, suddenly sitting near Harry again.
Harry turned to Luna, “What are they?”
Luna smiled airily. “Witches!” she called out to the poetry. Then, as if just clocking Harry’s question. “Oh, they’re invitations.”
This didn’t explain anything. “To what?”
“The Equinox ball!”
They must be louder than Harry thought because George crawled over. “It was a big party. The poems are the themes, and the best ones are riddles.”
Charley scoffed. “It’s all nonsense. A huge waste of money.”
“I like the poems,” Harry said before he could think better of it. He’d never spent time on poetry, before.
“Aren’t they lovely, Harry!” Luna said at the same time Charley murmured, “Didn’t know you could be so sentimental.”
“We should do a real ball,” George said, but he made his voice boom so everyone could hear him. Silence fell over the room at the declaration.
Charley leaned over and swatted at him. “You oaf, close your mouth. We don’t have the money.”
The silence lengthened until Neville said, “We could get the money.”
“Really? Does money just grow on your trees then?” Charley snapped.
But Padma was half standing on her knees in excitement. “I bet we could. People would just love a ball. There hasn't been an Equinox Ball since-” her eyes glanced quickly at Harry and then away again, “For such a long time. My mother told me all about going to them when she was my age, and I always thought I’d get invited. There must be other people who’d want to go.”
“Are you saying we charge people to attend?” Dean asked from the other side of the room.
“No, that wouldn’t be in the spirit of it,” Hannah chimed in.
“We wouldn’t have to,” Parvati was in on the action now. Harry was realizing she and her sister were movers and shakers of court, and he was just now seeing how carefully they navigated the field. “We just need everyone to know that only King Harry’s friends are invited.” She looked at Harry then, not shyly like her sister had. It crushed the mood a little, to go from being Harry reading out his secret musings to King Harry. To go from this small party with who he thought were friends, to find himself in the midst of court like always.
Charley nudged Harry’s shoulder, staying close after the touch. “We don’t have to do it,” he said gently. For a moment Harry thought Charley understood his unease. Then Charley added, “You wanted to fund that school. These things cost a fortune, we could all just chip into the school instead.” Oh no, of course. Charley didn’t see Harry at all. This sounded like being around the small council table.
“A school! That’s perfect,” Parvati cheered. “We’ll set up the event, send out select invites, and make sure everyone who didn’t get one knows that all the invites went to people who support King Harry’s proposal for the new school. You’ll have the funding in no time, your majesty.”
Harry found he’d been slowly slinking back into his seat, trying to pull back from all the eyes looking at him.
“An Equinox Ball is a magical thing,” Luna said in her sing-song voice. “Everyone wears costumes and masks, for a night, you can be whoever you want to be.”
Charley might have snickered, but everyone’s else’s eyes were shining with promise. Maybe Harry’s were, too. It was a strange promise. One night where he didn’t have to be Harry or King Harry. He could be anyone. He could be no one. It sounded like magic.
Fall
“Costumes and masks,” Harry muttered to himself as he fiddled with his mask. Sure, he’d spent weeks twisting the straw into shape, but it looked childish now. “You can be whoever you want to be,” his own voice sounded mocking.
When Harry had collected the straw from the stable a month ago Charley had asked, “Why do you want to be anything but yourself?” Harry hadn’t fucked him that night, and they hadn’t talked since.
Stepping into his outfit felt like ditching the costume he wore every day. He’d asked Dennis to help find him something simple. Something he might have worn in the north. Dennis had found a suit that made Harry think of feasting day after the harvest. It was better made than what his uncle could ever have afforded, but Harry didn’t feel like he was play acting when he put it on. He could button up all the pieces himself. There were no strings hanging at odd angles waiting for a valet to assemble.
In the mirror, Harry didn’t look like a king. He was just a man.
The mask fit perfectly, just like it had yesterday when he’d double checked it and weeks ago when he’d assembled the last pieces. Harry laughed at his own nerves. He pulled the strings of the mask behind his head and tied it up. Harry shook his head around to make sure it was secure. He pulled it a bit tighter and then knotted it a second time. That was the point of the equinox ball, right? No one had to know what lay behind the mask.
There was no herald to announce Harry’s entrance to the room. No Hermione or Dennis to tell him how he was meant to enter, what he was meant to say. The room was filled with courtiers, probably, but he couldn’t tell who was who and he wasn’t forced into the jockeying for power he despised.
Harry’s legs were unsteady as he walked. He found a refreshment table but had no stomach for food. No one leered at him when he lifted a glass of wine. It was sweet. Harry had never taken the time to taste the drinks at court. He didn’t feel the need to gulp this one down. The buzz of people around him was pleasant, not threatening.
Harry found he was grinning into his wine cup. He sucked in the smile but the edges of his lips still twitched upwards. It was heady, being unknown.
The spectacle of the ball was not wasted on Harry. He’d helped build it over the last week. Hanna was quite the artist and had spent weeks detailing murals on the ball room’s walls. Neville and Dean banded together to construct the pillars that appeared as trees. Harry had lifted anything that needed lifting and held things steady as other people showed him how imagination could be crafted into art. Seeing all the pieces come together couldn’t spoil the final results. The ballroom was a magical forest, lit by chandeliers that shone like stars.
Fur, scale, feather were all dancing. Each person was their own spectacle. Harry might have been the simplest of them all. Certainly the simplest of the lions, which were everywhere. Look at that one, they must have plucked an entire bird to make a mane of feathers. Then that one, they’d paid to have the entire mask and the mane framing it assembled out of… no, Harry couldn’t believe it was actually gold. That went too far.
There might have been no such thing as too far in this crowd. That woman looked like a small ball of.. Spikes? No, it was meant to be quills. Like a porcupine. That tall, gangly man was wearing a skin tight fuzzy suit, and when he lifted his arms a thin membrane stretched out to show skeletal bat wings. The prosthetic ears and nose were disturbingly accurate.
And that man… leather had never looked so sinful in the army. Had he sewn the trousers onto his body? Surely the amount of wriggling it would have taken to get in otherwise… Harry found he did not mind imagining that ass wriggling. Harry’s cock twitched and he adjusted his own stance for comfort.
Leather man turned and Harry found he had a reason to stare. This man didn’t look like anyone else. The leather continued with a vest that might also have been sewn on the man. Certainly it was cut to accentuate the man’s tall, lean frame instead of following contemporary design. The whole outfit had a look of being just slightly off kilter, homemade and imperfect instead of rigidly tailored. It made harder edges, a more rugged outcome. The fur lining it was bestial. His shirt and vest were wide open at the throat, barring a wide expanse of pale skin that held only a pendant. What was it? Too far away to tell. Maybe a wolf, howling up at the moon. Because of course this fucker wasn’t following the rules. He’d patched together leather like a giant in the north, and came down south in warrior form, demanding everyone see his glory and worship him like the moon in the sky.
Fuck, Harry wanted him. He must be a southern boy, with those moon pale eyes and that dark spiky hair, but Harry wanted him anyway. It was so out of character to see a southern boy be anything less than pristine. This man was gritty. He looked like he could do things to you. Stomp on you with his buckle covered boots. Harry licked his lips as he imagined.
Harry stalked forward like the predator he pretended to be. “Wolf,” Harry said, his voice gravel low with desire.
Those gray eyes caught Harry in their gaze. The wolf tilted his head sideways, displaying even more of his neck. “Cat,” he drawled out in response.
Harry couldn’t pull back his smile this time. He didn’t even want to bite it down. No one had spotted him all evening and the anonymity gave him the confidence to be whoever he wanted. He adopted his own drawl as he flirted, “I’m more than a cat.”
The wolf’s lips twitched. Harry saw the wolf’s eyes flicker. He saw the wolf’s gaze take its time examining every line of Harry’s skin. That gaze prickled Harry’s skin and left him heated and hungry. Harry felt his cock twitch again and wouldn’t swear the wolf hadn’t seen it. It was nothing, though, to that sly smile and the words that purred out of the wolf’s mouth, “Kitty cat.”
Harry threw back his head and laughed. What was this man? Harry was emboldened by the wolf’s playfulness and Harry’s own desire. “Dance with me, Wolf,” he insisted.
Harry hadn’t considered the wolf might say no. At what point had he gotten so full of himself that rejection hadn’t been a possibility to consider? Harry had a knack for knowing which men wanted men, and he’d learned long ago he was a man that inspired want in others. And now, as king, he was fending off suitors with a stick.
Tonight he wasn’t king, though. He was just a man. It was easy for the wolf to turn down an ordinary man. Even if Harry swore he saw more in that gray gaze. Something like temptation.
The wolf was better than Harry had ever been at resisting temptation.
He was also better than Harry was at tempting others.
Harry couldn’t stop looking for him on the dance floor. And the wolf was constantly on the dance floor. Harry would have been a clumsy lout in boots like that, but the wolf moved like he walked on air. There was no doubt he was southern, with those graceful steps and the confidence he had guiding others. The man might have been made for this. He knew it, too, with how he added flare to his steps and then looked over his shoulder to see if Harry was watching. Too frequently, Harry had been watching, and the man would smile smugly and look away as if he didn’t care for Harry at all.
In the real world, Harry would have lost interest. In fact, he never would have caught interest. It must be that the wolf chose to wear a costume tonight that made him grand enough for Harry, or at least grand enough for a Harry who pretended he was an ordinary man.
A gong rang out, and Harry realized that meant it was midnight. The fall solstice technically was done. Instead of winding down, the partiers gave a big cheer and servants brought around more wine glasses. In the length of time it took Harry to pick a glass off a tray he lost sight of the wolf.
Harry stepped further into the room, turning left and right to see where the wolf could have gone. Dancers were whirling on the dancefloor, but there was no sign of wolf ears and no swirl of a fur tail. Harry turned again, looking everywhere. It was possible the wolf had just stepped out to relieve himself, but something in Harry’s gut said otherwise. It was the height of the celebration. Why would the man leave?
That was it, he must have left.
Harry all but ran out the door after him.
Outdoor air slapped Harry with its chill, but there the wolf was. He was already down the steps, walking over cobblestones towards the road like he didn’t need a carriage to get wherever he lived. Perhaps he was a real wolf and he’d soon transform and return to the woods. It might as well be the case, if Harry let him leave now.
“Wait, Wolf!” Harry called out without thinking. The wolf stopped mid step and turned to look up at Harry very much as if Harry was the wild one acting strange. Harry swallowed his unease and hopped down the steps after the younger man. “It’s early, why are you leaving?”
The wolf looked at the manor house behind Harry instead of at him. “Why not?” he sounded almost forlorn.
Harry frowned. He didn’t have real words but needed to say something. “The party isn’t over.”
The man’s sigh was heavy in a way Harry hadn’t heard in some time. A weary, forlorn heavy. One a soldier made before trudging forward in the mud and fog towards god knows what because there was nothing more to be done. What he said was, “I have to work tomorrow.”
Maddingly, that made Harry happy. Who was this man, who danced like a southern lord, dressed like a northern giant, and sighed that wearily about the day that laid ahead?
“Can I see you after work?” Harry had truly gone mad to be asking.
The wolf knew Harry was mad and burst into laughter. It barked out of him, horse and unexpected. He stifled it back until he looked at Harry again and let loose another chortle. “No, I think not!” the man said as he wiped laughter tears from his eyes.
The rejection stung harder than before. It stabbed all the way into Harry’s chest. He should never have fixated on this strange, wild man, but the wolf had grabbed his attention so thoroughly and even now when the wolf cast Harry aside it was with round, yearning eyes that wished for something different.
Was Harry imagining it? Was this all in his head? Harry could respect a man who said no, but this didn’t feel like a no. It felt like being on the cusp of something Harry didn’t understand.
What would one of those courtiers do, if they wanted to romance Harry in this situation? Ugh, they would do something awful, surely. What could he do, that would be better?
Harry took a hesitant step forward. Gingerly, with plenty of time for the wolf to pull back, Harry reached out for the wolf’s nearest hand. It was long and lanky like the man it belonged to. Warm, while the man tried to appear cold.
Harry looked at the wolf and tried to show with his eyes all the yearning he saw looking back at thim. “Then if we only have tonight,” he murmured in his deep, warm voice, “Stay a little longer,” Harry leaned closer, “with me.” Harry saw the wolf’s eyes widen and the wolf’s nearly imperceptible lean forward. Harry leaned, too, stopping just shy of the wolf’s lips. He would take no for an answer. In just a moment he would stop. He’d step back. He’d let the wolf leave his life forever.
And then the wolf surged forward and kissed him.
Harry hadn’t realized how young the man was until they were alone in the room together. His body was nobby like a youth. He’d grown tall, but not yet fully into his height. The younger man could grow insecure with his inexperience, but every time it happened he lashed out against the insecurity. He took hold of Harry entirely and bent Harry to his will. God, Harry couldn’t have been more willing.
Harry could still feel the wolf’s teeth bites on his chest when the wolf slammed himself into Harry’s ass. He was relentless in his fucking. Harry would feel it for days.
Then he yanked Harry closer and Harry scrambled to find new purchase. These thrusts weren’t as deep, but they ground down on Harry with an intensity that made him shiver. The wolf’s hand found him, began to jack him off. God, his enthusiasm. He was trying to pull Harry’s brains out through his dick. He could have them, Harry would gladly let them go.
The mind numbing bliss of orgasm came too soon. Harry basked in the feel of it, gasped at the sensation of lips back on his skin. The wolf’s tongue flickered out on the back of his neck, tasting him.
Fuck, Harry wanted more.
Suddenly, Harry’s back was cold. The wolf had pulled off. Harry’s head dropped to the desk and he decisively did not swear at the sudden absence. Instead he pushed himself over onto his tender backside so he could see the room.
What a view. Disheveled hair and kiss bruised lips. Peeks at lean muscle. That wondrous cock, still impressive even soft and swiftly being tucked away. Harry didn’t want it tucked away. This man was young, if they put their mind to it there’d be hardly any time before…
“You did well, wolf,” Harry said with orgasmic satisfaction. Maybe he spread himself further on purpose, putting more of his body on display. The man’s eyes noticed every shift in Harry’s muscles and Harry wanted the younger man to look. “Should we find a bed and go again?” Unbelievably, the wolf closed his eyes and shook his head.
Harry bit back a grown. Rejection, again. Was this like the other time, when the wolf hadn’t truly meant it? Harry could feel the spots where the wolf had claimed him and wanted the wolf’s hands back on his body. He stretched out further, like one of those men trying to tempt Harry with their wanton, seductive displays. “You said you’d make the other wolf howl. I’d quite like it if you tried that on me.” The wolf opened his eyes and looked at Harry again. He followed the line of Harry’s fingers as Harry trailed them down his chest. If this worked Harry would forgive the courtiers for all their flirtations.
“It’s too late, I’m already going to be dead on my feet tomorrow,” the wolf said.
Harry smirked. “I’ll write a letter to excuse your labor,” he joked.
He knew instantly he shouldn’t have said it. The no had been no and he’d pushed too far. The wolf’s face darkened and the scowl would have scared a real animal. The man bit out his words, “Yes, I’ll just tell them I couldn’t be bothered because a straw lion needed a good fucking.”
That was the last straw. The wolf left him.
For one magic night Harry could be whoever he wanted to be, and he’d wasted in being an asshole to a beautiful, wild man, who’d done what Harry could only have dreamed of: he’d treated Harry like he was a normal person, not a king.
Spring
The king was in hell. It wasn’t real. It was never real. Okay, maybe this time it was real.
He flinched against the long whistling and covered his ears before the explosive bang.
Harry could see the sparkling colors fly across the night sky, but his pounding blood insisted this was hell. They were back in the war and Voldermort’s army had found a new weapon to throw at him and everyone was going to die.
People were screaming. No. Not screaming. Cheering.
There was another whistling hiss. Another explosion. Yellow and orange danced across Harry’s vision and he squeezed his eyes closed because it made his heart think of fire and he could almost smell the putrid flesh of burnt corpses.
He knew they weren’t screaming. That beautiful, wild wolf was not about to die.
Harry held himself rigid until the explosions stopped and the crowd around him hushed at the next spectacle. Harry could hardly see it. He was on edge from the noises and the near death that wasn’t. He choked out a strained laugh and lamented, “What on earth did he do this time?”
The crowd was already moving. The wolf was already moving. They flowed around and past Harry, who held himself firm and tried to remember this wasn’t a battlefield.
Thank god it was Ron who found him. Ron knew what to do with Harry when he got like this. He said a lot of soldiers got like this, after battle, and it was no reason to be ashamed. He was probably right but fuck if Harry cared.
There was something to being wrapped up in a hug by a giant stick of celery that helped Harry ground himself in reality. He imagined Ron dressed like this while charging into battle and laughed for real.
He was ready, then. Together they went in.
“What on earth did he do this time?” Hermione, a rose, asked in exasperation not much later.
They’d entered the maze last and that meant it was well trodden and muddy. They kept passing by other parties who looked flummoxed.
Luna patted a hedge thoughtfully, musing, “All is not what it seems.”
It bloody well wasn’t what it seemed. George, the rat, somehow found a way to move the bushes. Ron and Harry spotted him in the act. Ron sprinted forward, calling his brother all sorts of names, and Harry sprinted after him because he knew where his loyalties lie.
Only there was another person there, too. Less pristine than earlier that evening, but still wearing that unmistakable mask. A shining sun in the pile of mud. Harry grinned at the wolf as the hedgerow closed between them.
“You nasty, slimy goblin! I’m going to murder you!” Ron hollered. They could hear George’s mocking laugh as the goblin got away.
Ron, the giant green stick, stomped off through the maze, determined to get close enough to his brother for fratricide. Everyone trudged after him good naturedly.
Now that she knew there was a trick to it, Hermione began mapping out the maze in a new light. Ron let her take over leading, but George must have known they were on his trail because he kept switching things up right before his family could catch him.
Harry slipped in mud and caught himself on a hedge. It pricked his hand, making him hiss. He stepped forward into another mud puddle and hissed again. Harry closed his eyes and breathed deeply.
It was just a game. He was in a maze with his friends and George was playing a trick on them. If he could get through this phase the scent of mud wouldn’t be so strong and he would be fine.
It would be fine. The mud did not go on forever. He was not trapped in the mud. Nothing was hiding in the mud.
“Lettuce out!” was written on the barrel when they succumbed to the maze and sent up a flare for help. Harry didn’t twitch too bad at his whistle and pop.
George mocked Ron incessantly for his failure, but he didn’t dawdle in leading everyone to sanctuary. Together they passed under an archway built of hedges with the words “Mischief managed” strung across the top.
Lanterns lit up a large clearing beyond, sprinkled with small fire circles with logs and stumps that people lounged against as they soaked in the heat. Some artist had a field day creating flower statues that were everywhere, and musicians in costume played a soft tune that encouraged you to sit down and relax after the long journey into the center of the maze.
Harry breathed in deeply. Log fires and flowers drove out the smell of mud.
Ron and Hermione accepted drinks and sank in front of a fire. They invited Harry to join them, but Harry was on edge and could see Ron was still watching him closely. Waiting for Harry to break down.
Harry remembered the twinkle of light across a sun mask in the maze, and felt compelled to seek it out instead.
It shocked Harry to see the wolf at the ball. It probably shouldn’t have been surprising, if he’d been invited to one he was more likely to be invited to the next. Maybe it had shocked him to realize that the magnificent red headed sun god was the same man as he’d fucked last fall. Harry didn’t know fashion, but he could see the same mark of handmade creation to the sun god’s… gown? The top half could have been pulled out of one of the pictures of queens past held in the castle gallery. Red puffy sleeves, a golden corset, some sort of half cone thing behind the man’s head that should have been ridiculous but also looked like a halo. It framed the sun mask and tricked the eye into thinking the light of the mask shone further. The man looked like he could feed every plant with his brilliance and Harry had wanted to taste it.
Which is when Harry realized that mask reminded him of another one, and that the wolf’s hair had been dyed black with soot.
Was he actually red headed? Was this a noble from the midlands, who’d come with the north to the castle, maybe as one of Ron’s soldiers? That would explain why he couldn’t get out of work following the previous ball. It would explain how distantly he could stare.
Harry had to trudge through the field at the center of the maze but in the end he found the wolf. He was in tatters, but still beautiful. His pale skin was mud flecked and his cheeks were rosy. The firelight danced across the mask and Harry wanted to bask in the glow.
“How is it you’re revealing more now than when we actually had sex?” Harry asked, once again losing his senses to this man. The wolf glanced over his shoulder to see Harry, and before he could argue again that he wasn’t who he was Harry climbed over the log and lay down in front of the fire.
Harry had sat very close to the younger man. He wanted to get closer, but tonight the wolf was warier than he’d been in the fall. His tone was light, but his eyes distant.
Harry had gotten better at flirting. Over the last few months he’d stopped waiting for the sleaziest courtiers to come to him and sought out men who he could stomach. He’d been through another run of hell since the fall. He’d crawled out of it scraping the edges of reality for escape from the horror of what had happened. Why not a man’s warm bed? Why not this man? Here, at the ball, Harry could be anyone he wanted and what he wanted was to be someone who had their head on straight enough that he could pull a beautiful man who didn’t know he was king.
Then fucking George crashed down between them like the cock block he took glee in being. “Don’t be one of his pretty boys,” George told the wolf, his eyes glinting dangerously at Harry as he said it.
George was such an ass. Just a complete dick of a human being. The wolf was not one of Harry’s pretty boys. Harry resented that George took glee in calling men Harry fucked pretty boys at all. The wolf was younger, but he wasn’t a boy. He was a man. So what if he was a man with long lashes and a sharp angled jaw that one might find pretty. When George said pretty boys he meant the men who threw themselves at Harry, or who Harry now sought out. Their main offense was not being Charley.
Harry didn’t want to think about Charley. Thinking about Charley meant thinking about everything back at the castle. It meant thinking about small council meetings and losing ground to Slughorn over budget negotiations. It meant counting the dead and not having enough space to burry the bodies. It meant thinking about the constant rumblings on how there was no heir and King Harry was being selfish with his dalliances when what the kingdom needed was a queen and Harry’s willingness to bed her. It meant having Hermione in one ear, and Charley in the other, and Harry telling both of them to be quiet and Charley never being willing to listen.
Harry and Charley had been fighting so long that Harry didn’t realize Charley might still think they were together. If they’d ever been together. Harry could never be with Charley. Charley could never let it go that Harry was king. Or maybe that was doing wrong by Charley. In truth, Charley could never let it go that Harry wasn’t doing everything in his power to make the world the best version of itself it could possibly be. Charley thought Harry settled. He saw Harry compromise. He saw Harry crumble under pressure and forget who his true self ever was and Charley judged him for it.
Probably would have been better if Charley just couldn’t get over Harry being king.
The wolf didn’t even know he was king. The wolf was here, at the equinox ball, wearing a silly mask and playing all the games. He never took Harry too seriously. Just seriously enough.
So Harry talked to him. Harry pretended to be the person that he wanted himself to be. Someone charming and a little goofy. Someone who’d wear a dandelion mask and had no more power and authority than a weed. Someone who didn’t need a title to make the wolf smile and blush. Someone who could say the wrong thing and have the person he addressed show it with their words or eyes, because it was safe to be standoffish to Harry at an equinox ball.
Discovering this wonder of a man felt like magic. Not the magic that granted your wishes and made your life perfect. The magic that gave you exactly what you needed and reminded you why you ever cared at all.
It was such a shock when the man said, “You wouldn’t like me out in the real world.”
Harry couldn’t imagine not liking the wolf. Maybe he was self conscious, because he was a lesser noble who still had to work in the army. “Why do you think that? Because you’re poor and forage in attics for things to sell?”
The wolf squeezed his eyes shut because Harry had once again put his foot in his mouth. “What baffles me is you truly have no idea what a condescending prick you are,” the wolf said disdainfully.
“That’s not what-”
“Stop making excuses,” the wolf snapped before Harry could speak. “I’m not some charity case. Your friends aren’t being unreasonable for wanting you to treat their family with respect. We didn’t even cheat you out of getting through the maze fairly, you just weren’t good enough at it.” the man paused to heave in a deep breath of air.
“No one talks to me like that,” Harry said because it was true. The younger man had all this pent up frustration. He felt so deeply for so many things. Harry couldn’t imagine what it took to care that much about anything.
The wolf wouldn’t even look at him. “It doesn’t matter what I say because you don’t know who I am. And it doesn’t matter what you say because you wouldn’t say it to my face.”
Harry could feel his pulse pounding in his throat. He ached to tell the younger man he’d listen to anything. He coveted his words. Please, Harry wanted to hear anything. He wanted anyone to treat him like he wasn’t a king, like he was just a man and he could still be normal. Like there had been any point in his life when he had been normal.
“At the ball, the only world that’s real is what we make for ourselves,” Harry murmured. It drew the wolf’s attention. All hope wasn’t lost. While wearing the mask Harry could be anyone. He could be someone who told the truth. “I don’t care about what happens tomorrow. I don’t judge tonight by what choices we’d make somewhere else. We’re here now, and I want to make the most of every moment. The most of any moment you’ll give me.” Harry watched the younger man nibble his lip nervously, and wished he could lean forward and taste the lips, too.
Something Harry couldn’t fathom warred behind the wolf’s eyes. An epic battle of internal struggle. Harry almost begged the wolf to share his thoughts out loud. Let some part of what happened between them be real enough to still exist tomorrow. Harry hadn’t been honest, he hadn’t meant it. He didn’t want only what the wolf would give him tonight. He wanted the next day and the day after. He wanted to know this man outside of the ball, and have him be just as wondrous even after learning Harry was a king.
“Let’s get out of here,” the wolf whispered. A promise and a proposition.
They left together and they fucked. It was more mind blowing than the last time, and Harry forgot he said he didn’t care about tomorrow.
The wolf hadn’t. He let Harry fall asleep holding him, then disappeared into the night.
Fall
“Marry me.” Harry was desperate and it was the only thing he could think to say.
“What?” the wolf asked, certain he’d misheard.
“Marry me,” Harry repeated.
The wolf’s eyes were comically wide. “You can’t mean that.”
“I do.” Harry meant it more than anything he’d ever said. His heart was beating so hard he didn’t know how the other man didn’t hear it. The only cure was the wolf. The wolf, who had somehow always known Harry was king and had never treated him differently at all.
“You don't know who I am,” the younger man argued.
Harry’s heart leapt. How he would like to know. “I’ll have a lifetime to find out.”
The younger man was still shaking his head. “You wouldn’t propose to me.”
“I already have.”
“You wouldn’t like me,” he sounded like he was begging and pleading to be understood.
Harry’s gentle gaze held the wolf firm, but didn’t give in. “I don’t like anyone, so you’re not as bad a prospect as you think you are.”
The younger man groaned out his frustration and it sounded like fear. “Why would you ever propose to a complete stranger? This is madness.”
Harry risked taking the wolf’s hand back in his. “I made the chapel trap on purpose,” he admitted. The younger man gasped. “I’ve been pressured to find a husband, and there are plenty of men who’d jump at the chance. So, I gave every eligible gentleman the chance to show me what choice they’d make under pressure. Nearly two dozen left without questioning their decision. At least one deliberately sabotaged everyone behind him, even though he already would come out ahead. You were the only one who rejected the conceit that you had to choose yourself above everyone else. You kept looking until you found another way.” He carded his hand through the wolf’s hair again, as if he couldn’t resist touching him. This man, who had never once considered southern math. “That’s the sort of man I want by my side. So marry me.”
The man was still shaking his head. “I can’t,” his voice was pleading. “Not like this, I can’t.”
Harry was crestfallen. He could take no for an answer, he could. He was so scared this was the final no and he’d never see the man again. He’d be stuck with the Coltons or some foreign prince who married him to solve their own kingdom’s equivalent of southern math. There had to be another way.
“How then?” Harry asked, still not giving up.
The younger man swallowed, nerves crashing through him even as the idea formed in his mind. “I could only ever say yes if you proposed to the real me.”
Harry surged forward with hope. It was easy, he wouldn’t even hesitate. “How do I find you?” he asked.
The wolf shook his head one final time. “You don’t.”
Something pained ripped from Harry’s chest through his throat and he knew the wolf heard it. He could tell by the answering pain in the wolf’s eyes as they stared, equally desperate, equally terrified. But the wolf ignored everything and pulled away. He grasped for his clothing, gathering up handfuls of embroidered clothes off the floor.
“Don’t go!” The king begged, even as the wolf walked out the door.