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The amount of people trying to crawl into Lord Harry Potter’s bed, title, and vaults, is more than a little ridiculous. And, yes, that might be a crass way to phrase it, but it’s also accurate. Of the many wizards, witches, and wix who have sent Harry courtship offers, he’s overheard the vast majority of them speculating about one of those three things. Hell, some people mentioned all three of them.
“I’m starting to feel like the grand prize at a fair,” Harry grumbles.
“Sucks, mate,” Mister Ron Weasley replies around a mouthful of roast beef sandwich. He swallows, staring at Harry with commiseration. “On the bright side, at least you’re not a consolation prize!”
Harry snorts and continues picking at his lunch. Pomegranate serves delicious food … he’s just lost his appetite.
“It’d be nice to be wanted for something other than my money,” Harry mutters. That’s not too much to ask for, is it? He doesn’t think so. Yes, a lot of purebloods are content to arrange bondings for financial security—more power to them. It’s just not something that interests Harry. He’s not keen on the idea of twining his magic and soul with someone else’s for anything less than love.
It’s cheesy, but it’s true.
His grandparents and parents, according to every story he’s ever heard in his entire life, loved each other wholeheartedly until their deaths. That’s what he wants for himself. He wants that same devotion, that same commitment, that same—
“I’m pretty sure at least half of them want your body,” Ron says. His blue eyes sweep over Harry and he grimaces. “I don’t understand the appeal, but to each their own.”
“Prat!” Harry accuses, laughing for the first time all day. He throws one of his chips at Ron.
Ron picks it up off his lap, where it’s fallen, pops it in his mouth, and says, “Thanks for sharing, mate.”
Harry laughs so hard his stomach hurts. It’s good that Miss Hermione Granger is on holiday with her parents somewhere in Europe at the moment. She would have their heads for throwing food in a restaurant. And she certainly would have chided Ron multiple times for talking with his mouth full by now. He hopes she’s having a nice trip and that her plans to meet up with Mademoiselle Fleur Delacour go well for her.
“Are you gonna eat that?” Ron asks, gesturing at Harry’s barely touched fish and chips.
“No, you can have it,” Harry says before sliding his plate across the table. He doesn’t like wasting food and Ron’s got two hollow legs. The amount of food Ron can pack away is immense.
“Thanks, Harry.”
“Mhmm,” Harry hums absently as he fiddles with his glass of water. It’s not that he isn’t interested in courting. He would actually very much like to bond and start a family. However, he can’t help but worry that anyone he might choose to offer for will feel pressured to accept on account of him having “defeated” You-Know-Who as a baby and all that rot.
His mum, Heiress Lily Potter, is the one who defeated Voldemort with a White Magic Ritual. Not him. The only part Harry played in the whole ordeal was being the sole surviving object of her love and devotion, the focus of the ritual.
Things would be so much easier if Harry could just trust that the people offering to court him—
An obsidian athame stabs into the table mere inches from Harry’s left hand. The hand curled around the hilt of it is almost as black as the athame itself.
Crimson sparks shoot off of Harry’s signet ring.
“Bloody hell!” Ron screams.
As people knock over glasses and exclaim their shock throughout the cafe, Harry glances upward and finds a pair of piercing ice-blue eyes intently locked on his face. They belong to the handsomest pureblood wizard in Slytherin House, according to the poll that Miss Lavender Brown conducted before the end of the year.
Harry can’t argue with the results—and not just because Heir Draco Malfoy threw a tantrum upon hearing he ranked third in the poll—because Heir Blaise Zabini is ridiculously gorgeous. He’s tall, fit, and Harry’s definitely guilty of fantasizing about grabbing ahold of Zabini’s dreadlocks and pulling him down into a kiss on a semi-weekly basis.
“I’m going to need some clarification,” Harry says. The athame isn’t on a pillow, which is traditional when requesting a romantic courtship that will eventually lead to a bonding that includes sex. But Zabini didn’t casually hand it to him either, which is the proper protocol for when someone desires a bonding without sex. “None of my etiquette lessons covered an athame being stabbed into the table while I’m having lunch with my First Vassal.”
“It’s a preview of how I intend to slaughter anyone who even dares to think of harming either of us or our future children,” Blaise says, darkness edging his voice.
A lot of people would find those words disturbing. Harry doesn’t. They appeal to the part of him that’s descended from Death Itself, to the part of him that was raised at Heir Sirius Black’s knee, to the part of him that endlessly reaches for the familial magical bonds that Voldemort ripped out of Harry’s soul when he murdered Harry’s parents.
Zabini, Harry remembers, knows what it feels like to have a gaping void where familial magical bonds should be. His own father was murdered. It only makes sense that he intends to ruthlessly protect his future family so that he never has to experience such awful pain again.
“That’s a hell of a promise to make,” Harry says, tearing his gaze away from Blaise’s face to examine the obsidian athame more closely. It’s a work of art. From pommel to blade tip, it’s solid obsidian. The runes carved down the blade pulse with Blood Magic.
Mother Magic has never once refused a member of the Honorable and Most Ancient House of Potter who willingly sacrificed blood on the sacred altar in the holly grove on the Potter Estate to petition for a child. With an athame of this quality to use in the Reproduction Ritual, any children born of their blood and magic will be immensely powerful.
Harry brushes a fingertip down the blade. His magic shivers with want inside him.
“Nothing is more sacred to a Zabini than ruthlessly protecting those we love,” Blaise says.
Stilling, Harry glances back up to lock gazes with Zabini. “Love?”
Blaise stares at Harry as if Harry is the center of the universe and he will slice the throats of anyone else who dares to feel the same—as if he can claim everything for himself with the fierce intensity of his love. It’s so damnably attractive that Harry struggles to talk himself out of absconding with Zabini to bond in the Ancient Ways under the Olde Magick right bloody now.
“Really, mate?” Ron groans before thunking his head on the table. “A Slytherin who almost stabbed you?”
Grinning, heart feeling lighter than it has since Harry began receiving political courtship offers by the score, Harry winks at Blaise and says, “Yeah. A Slytherin who almost stabbed me.”
If the Potter Luck is generous, perhaps they’ll even be stabbing each other the fun way soon enough.