2. Come As You Aren’t

Disclaimer: Only the costumes and some random characters are mine. If I owned the house, I'd really have something.

Harry was ready to hex his own wings off about five minutes after Al and Ana shoved him through the front door of Tatiana's townhouse. If he raised the feathered monstrosities, they spread out and bumped into things. If he closed them, the edges framed his arse in a perfect, heart-shaped outline of black feathers. He had the bloody Hall of Mirrors that lined the entrance to thank for his awareness of that particular feature and was fuming that he hadn't noticed it at home.

Why didn't they tell me about the problem in the back? How was I supposed to know? I mean, who checks out their own arse in a mirror?

Once upon a time, it would have been Ginny's job to make sure he was dressed correctly before they went out. It had also been her job to do most of the talking on such occasions, but that seemed reasonable to Harry considering that going out was usually her idea to begin with. She'd given up trying to coax him out of his shell after about a year of marriage, which meant that she'd mercifully stopped sarcastically asking if he needed to see a Healer about his neck when he responded to most greetings with no more than a stiff nod.

Dwelling on the past made Harry feel like hiding behind his wings. The attempt showed up an even worse problem than the heart-shaped arse...bringing the wings forward pointed a handful of suggestively long feathers at his crotch. The only good thing about the bloody costume was that, true to Al and Anastasia's promise, no one had recognized him. Yet.

"Glad you could make it, Harry."

Harry was so badly startled he cursed at...well, he could really only think of one person who would attempt such an elaborate Crumple-horned Snorkack costume, even at a charity event that was partly aimed at preserving their habitat.

"Bloody evil children! They promised that no one would recognize me!" It was not often that he cursed around Luna, given she usually had a curiously calming influence on him, and he felt rather badly about it.

The Charms work that went into the costume must have been incredibly complex. The creature's mouth was perfectly synced up with Luna's curiously wandering cadence to the point of being unnerving. "I didn't recognize you, I recognized the costume. They put it together in my parlor. I've been finding black feathers in my sofa all week."

And right you should for aiding the enemy.

"Well, I suppose that's all right, then."

"But, I'm glad I caught you. There's been a slight change of plans. We're having an unmasking at midnight, so we need to make doubly sure that no on can recognize you before then. That would spoil all the fun!"

"Of course," Harry said. So, I have until midnight to get my overexposed arse out of here. Good to know.

"Hold still while I fix your face."

Harry presumed that the costume's eyes were functional as well, since their glassy depths eerily echoed Luna's wide, distractedly intent stare. That didn't mean that he felt comfortable with having something that, to all intents and purposes, looked like a badly deformed bipedal goat covered in dreadlocks, point a wand at his chin. "Fix... What's wrong with my face?"

"I want to make sure that even someone who happens to spot your usual clean-cut heroic profile will think twice about guessing that it's you. Though that Hippogriff beak is a stroke of genius."

"So my children keep telling me."

"Hyperpiliosa!" Luna ran her wand along his jaw. "There. That's just enough stubble to complete the bad-boy look."

"I think I left 'boy' behind a while ago." And we're going from bad to worse.

"Nonsense, you look spectacular. If you were one of the stud Snorkacks on the preserve, we would make sure you had access to all the best breeding females to pass on those genes."

"Um... thanks?" Over a quarter of a century of friendship with Luna still wasn't quite enough to inure Harry from the sheer peculiarity of her compliments.

"I'm not the only one who thinks so. People have been staring at you ever since you walked in the door."

That was Harry's cue to edge a little farther into the corner. Maybe I could actually get behind one of the mirrors? "I haven't noticed. People tend to stare at me pretty much all the time."

"Yes, but for one, they can't recognize you right now... and for another, I don't believe that it's quite the same sort of stare you're used to. I could be wrong." Luna waved one hoof-paw around the room amiably.

Harry looked around in search of evidence supporting her assertion.

He was indeed getting stared at almost as often as he was used to. But Luna was right...instead of variations on the 'Wow, is that Harry Potter?' expression, it was a little more... primal. Harry had a nervous suspicion that it translated into something like, 'Hungry. Me want.'

"Oh, shit," he whispered. For a fleeting moment, he dearly wished for Ginny back, if for no other reason than her exceptional skill at chasing off his unwanted admirers.

"Cheer up! After all, it's time that you moved on. I mean..."

"...Ginny has. Yeah, I think I've heard that somewhere before." Harry felt a little bad about grumbling at Luna, but getting it twice in one night just wasn't on.

"You certainly can have your pick. Just like the best stud Snorkack in the herd. In fact, you probably wouldn't have to pick. More than half the room has been checking you out," she continued blithely. Either she was oblivious to his bad mood or choosing to ignore it. You can never tell with Luna, and does that statement ever cover a multitude of sins...

Harry was so caught up in relief that he hadn't disturbed Luna's pleasant mood that it took him a few moments to register the implications of her last statement.

"Luna... 'more than half' the people in the room would include a fair number of men."

"Absolutely. What can I say? When you're hot, you're hot. I bet you could get some threesome action going...though I suppose if you weren't interested in pursuing it with Ginny, you're more of a one-witch-or-wizard sort of fellow."

"Threesome?" It came out as a squeak. Harry desperately scrambled for the correct octave for his voice before he continued. "Ginny wanted to? Where did that come from?"

"Oh, she'd been hinting at it for years. I guess she should have just asked outright."

"WHAT?"

"Breathe, Harry." Luna captured a passing tray of champagne flutes and snagged a few. "Here, have a drink."

"I hate champagne."

"Maybe, but it looks like you need it." She did something mysterious around the mouth of her costume and a bit of champagne disappeared, presumably being conveyed to Luna's mouth. The charms needed to accomplish that had to be wicked hard.

I think I need something stronger, actually. Harry took the glass anyway and emptied it with a grimace. Luna promptly replaced it with a full one. After another sip, he managed to pull himself together sufficiently to articulate a question.

"Luna, what are you on about?"

"Every time we met, she made it fairly clear that she was interested in some three-way action."

Harry had an awful suspicion that this wasn't one of Luna's random delusions. "How was she hinting?"

"Little comments here and there. Three not being a crowd, if it was all right with me, of course." Luna paused thoughtfully. "I suppose it would have been, but I should have liked to watch."

"Watch... Wait..."

"Well, yes. I'd say that the 'spit roasting' comment made it fairly clear that she wanted Rolf to join you two. Though I expect that I would have been welcome enough, if that's what it took to get things moving." Luna took a meditative sip of her champagne. Harry took a medicative gulp of his.

"But... but... what made her think I would be willing to do something like that... with another guy?"

"To be honest, I didn't think it was that odd. You always seem very liberal in your appreciation of human beauty, Harry. I'm not the only one of our friends who's noticed you giving a good-looking wizard the once-over when we're out together. I always figured that you were bi."

One glass of champagne was not enough to make the room spin so. Hell, even a typical Luna conversation wasn't enough to do in Harry's equilibrium. "Where was I, again, during all this?"

"Harry, your attention to detail is unparalleled on the job. Your oblivion when it comes to interpersonal relationships is... almost as impressive."

"I love you too, Luna."

"I know. Look, we're sort of cluttering up the entrance, and there's an entire house full of party beyond this. Want to hit the bar?"

"As hard as possible if you're buying."

"We can't sell alcohol, but generous tips to the bartender, all going to the charity of course, are strongly encouraged."

"I'm not on duty tonight, you know."

"Which is why I'm trusting you to believe that none of it goes to offset the cost of the alcohol." Luna charmed a notice on one of the mirrors informing new arrivals of the unmasking policy, as if Harry's acquiescence was a done deal.

She knows me too well. Why didn't I propose to Luna before Rolf snapped her up?

"While we're there, I'll tell you all about the last time Rolf and I were out in the field. We camped right amidst the Snorkack herd for almost three months!" Luna sighed. "Poor Rolf. He'd be here tonight in the matching costume if he wasn't still nursing an injury from a run-in with a female protecting her calf."

Oh. Right.

Harry gestured resignedly with his empty glass. "Lead the way."

Between the Crup taking invitations and the outlandishly cheerful message on the mirror reminding him that 'the masks come off at midnight,' Draco was thoroughly out-of-sorts by the time he was properly in the foyer. At least there were plenty of mirrors handy for him to check his appearance...though he was highly displeased to note that his wings framed his backside with a soft, feathery heart shape.

Oh, bollocks. I should have checked my arse one last time before leaving. I know the girl is a Potter, but how could she have designed something this tacky?

Draco's definition of 'tacky' was completely re-written a few minutes later when the first thing he saw upon entering the ballroom was a man dressed as a nursing Jarvey with a plushie pup, charmed to swear, hanging off each teat.

That settles it. I'm in fancy dress hell.

His chances of knowing anyone at an event such as this were practically nil, and he couldn't use any of his typical attention-getting tactics if he wanted to keep his identity under wraps. Or under glitter, as the case may be.

When Astoria and I used to go to these things, I could always amuse myself by devising new ways to nudge her into interacting with people, if there was nothing else of interest to do. Of course, that had backfired as often as it had worked. Sometimes Astoria could be coaxed out of her natural reserve and convinced to have a good time, and the rest of the time, she simply pulled into herself, declared in a frosty tone of voice that she needed to be excused, and then Apparated home from the nearest Ladies' Room. She wouldn't even have a proper fight with him and get it all out; for the next few weeks she'd treat him to a passive-aggressive snit of Hufflepuffian proportions.

With a start, Draco realized that he was in deep brooding mode. The last time that had happened had been when the divorce papers arrived at the Manor at the exact moment Scorpius and Lily were announcing their engagement, and well... Draco liked to pretend that his alcohol-induced-actions were lost to memory. He vowed not to touch a single drop of the stuff tonight.

His resolve lasted exactly until the first charmed tray full of glasses of cheap champagne floated by.

I'll hold one and sip from it. Just for something elegant-looking to do with my hands. It's too vile to drink more than a glass.

Roughly halfway through his second glass, he resolved to leave it at two glasses. At this miserable affair, the chances were surpassingly small that someone as chivalrous and lumpily comfortable as Potter...Harry, of course, since his spawn were too busy sucking their respective mates' faces to notice anything short of the end of the world at The Engagement Debacle...would catch Draco when he fell down, pissed stupid. And this time he wasn't in his own home, with the safety of his own bedroom close at hand.

"Oi, what's with the drag, Draco?"

Draco jumped about half a foot and found himself face to...well, not exactly face...with an extraordinarily well-endowed female covered in garish feathers.

"Shit! How did you recognize me?" He envisioned all sorts of embarrassment stemming from an early unmasking. Maybe a quick Obliviate, and he could find a Floo to escape from?

"Your eyes and your arse, luv, in no particular order." A disturbingly large smile flashed under the witch's beak-like, rhinestone-encrusted mask.

"Good God, you're crude, Millie." Draco relaxed fractionally. Millicent Bulstrode (she hadn't bothered taking either of her first two husbands' names and probably wouldn't break precedent should there be an unlucky number three) was probably one of the few friends...and certainly the only Slytherin one...who wouldn't expose him to that kind of miserable situation. Part of it was because they worked together and his reputation impacted hers, but a really dedicated Slytherin pain-in-the-arse could always find a way around that.

"How else would you recognize me?"

"Not by your costume. Honestly, a Phoenix?"

"What can I say, I look hot in red." She flashed him another grin and waved her wand. Tiny flames sprouted from the red feathers on the top of her head and from approximately the nipple area of the orange feathers covering her breasts.

"Classy." If it had been anyone but Millicent, Draco's dry tone would have either made them blow up or sent them packing in a huff. Millie just grinned again.

"At my age, seeing as I've still got it...might as well flaunt it." She let her fires flare a bit.

Draco flinched. "Don't point those things at me!" Damn it, she knows I don't do open flame! Still looking askance at the damped-down incendiary devices, he remarked, "I fail to recall an age at which you didn't 'flaunt it,' dear. How did you end up at this debacle?"

"Didn't you hear? We're all pulling together to save the Snorkack habitat."

"Because we all know that you can't resist trying to save something that looks like a house-elf pulled it out of the drain and then hit it with Engorgio."

"If your house-elves pulled anything the color of a Snorkack out of the drains, I'd have to conclude that the carpet doesn't match the drapes in Malfoy Manor."

"It always comes back to sex with you, doesn't it?"

"If I can at all manage it. Speaking of which, when was the last time you..."

"None of your business."

"Holy shit. Not since she left, then!"

"I don't need to be reminded one more time of how my supposedly loving wife abandoned me with one rotten letter, as if we'd just been shacking up. Why she couldn't have divorced in a civilized manner is beyond me."

"Because, Draco dear, she probably decided that completely breaking contact with you was the only way to end it, considering your obsessive ways."

The only way to deal with such a bald misstatement was equally bald denial. At least, the way Draco saw things. "I am NOT obsessive!"

Millie coughed into her hand. Draco had never heard a cough that sounded more suspiciously like, 'Potter.' "Draco, you're only slightly less persistent than a very severe case of broom rash."

"How? Give me one example!"

"Theo's still deaf in one ear from your constant rants about the Falmouth Falcons..."

"He WOULD support Wimbourne, just because of his father..."

"...when you wanted to take Divination but didn't want to do so alone, you wore us all down to nubs until everyone but Blaise went with you..."

"Anyone could develop an Inner Eye; he's such a slacker."

"You smothered Pansy in guilt until she practically had to live with her fingers in your hair in order to have any peace..."

"I thought I only asked you for one example?"

"And if I got started on you and POTTER, I'd be here all bloody night. In the time you devoted to...whatever the fuck you were trying to accomplish with him...you could have discovered a thirteenth use for dragon's blood."

"Leave Potter out of this!"

"I'll try, but keeping him out usually requires a stout Colloportus and wards the likes of which you don't see outside Gringotts."

Draco attempted to melt a hole through the sequins on her mask with his glare.

"Fine." Millie sighed and dropped a heavy hand on Draco's shoulder. He tried not to stumble; Millie wasn't what he'd call overweight. She was just built like an industrial-strength public Floo. "Anyhow, why she did it isn't that important. What's important is that you're better off this way. I mean, your interests and personalities weren't all that compatible, the constant cold war between you must have been a right pain in the arse, and I know that it upset Scorpius to see you two put on a polite face in public and then retreat to separate wings of the bloody manor as soon as you got home."

"Well... I suppose it is more peaceful with all that drama gone."

Millie gave an even more suspicious cough than the first time.

"You might want to see a Healer about that."

"I'm done with seeing Healers. Last one only wanted to play God."

Draco didn't want to do it, but he cracked a smile.

As he feared, it had the undesired encouraging effect on Millicent. "Hey, speaking of moving on, I saw this fucking sexy black Hippogriff earlier, somewhere near the bar. Wanna help me find him? We can check out his arse."

"How many times do I have to tell you, I'm NOT gay...I'm sophisticated."

"Uh huh. It was very 'sophisticated,' the way you used to chase Potter around, trying to get his attention..."

"We were children, and I'll thank you to stop bringing up Potter! Any Potter! That female child of his seems bound and determined to count the souls of all my family amongst her minions."

"...and the way you twist the pretty office boys around your little finger."

"Don't bring work into this. And it's called charm and diplomacy."

Millie didn't bother faking a cough this time. She doubled over with hearty laughter.

Draco folded his arms over his too-bare chest. "You're being horridly insensitive."

Millie sighed and patted him...gently, this time...on the shoulder. "Have it your way, luv. Personally, I reckon you're bi, if anything."

Draco twisted his lips, and it was not a pout.

She gave his arm one last squeeze. "Well, I'm going to go try my luck with Mr. Gorgeous Arse the Hippogriff. Personally, I think he's probably the only one in the room sexy enough to begin to be a good match for you, what with him being so built and raw compared to you being slim and elegant. Hell, his costume even complements yours with the black feathers/white feathers thing. Join me if you want to."

It was still thoroughly annoying to Draco that yet another person was leaving him, but at least she was doing so in an attempt to get laid. He could sympathize more than he would have liked. "I'll pass. What is it with you and arses, anyway?"

"Tits don't do it for me," she deadpanned.

Draco managed to snort rather than laugh. "Hysterical. Still not gay."

"Yeah, but what about bisexual?"

"Millie..."

"Suit yourself. If you change your mind about the sexuality thing and want a part-time fag hag, I'm your man."

"No doubt. Luck with the Hippogriff's arse," he called after her waggling tail.

"Don't I just wish."

Notes:

The plot...thins? Is that even possible? If you notice this turning into crackfic, you're probably very observant.

SeverusLovesUs, I apologize for the abuse of punctuation and sentence torture in this chapter. It was so bad I think my husband started to notice.