Cometh I

It's where my reason stops
And something else comes in

*

It’s a dark and stormy night in late September when it happens.

The rain is whipped in sheets against the windows of Grimmauld Place, and the mug of tea that Harry is staring into has long since gone cold. He’s sitting on a chair by the rickety table in the basement kitchen, despite Kreacher having complained for months that it was ‘unfitting behaviour for Master, when there is perfectly fine dining room upstairs, good enough for all the Masters before’. Harry has tried to reason with him on multiple occasions, even gotten proper angry with him, once or twice. Lately, though, he’s managed nothing more than: ‘You know I like this better. Leave me be’.

Come to think of it, though, Kreacher hasn’t actually complained much recently. Done nothing but stare at him, really, with those overlarge eyes of his narrowed.

Harry blinks, shakes off the thought, and reminds himself that he wants to be rid of Kreacher’s nagging. That getting his house-elf to let him eat in his own damn kitchen is to be counted as a victory, and so the thought of him leaving it be - as asked - oughtn’t settle so sour in his stomach.

Oughtn’t feel like letting yet somebody else down.

Shimmering spots are floating on the surface of his tea, hardly larger than specs of dust. Harry thinks that they are there because of the honey Kreacher put in his tea, but he supposes it might just as well be down to a dirty mug. It gives his eyes something to rest on, though, as he tilts the liquid this way and that.

One hundred and forty-eight days since.

He glances up at the clock.

Well.

One hundred and forty-nine.

Harry’s fists clenches so hard that thitherto faded words appear in white on the back of his right hand. His scar hurts; a perfectly ordinary headache and nothing more.

Then the room floods with white light.

Harry is on his feet so fast that the chair topples and clatters to the floor, his wand in his hand and a spell on his lips.

“They’re outside,” a voice speaks from the luminescent mist, magic barely enough to carry the sound; it’s stripped to a featureless monotone, far away like an echo. “I can’t hold them off much longer. I need help, Potter.”

Harry stares as the mist dissolves, its dazzling brightness leaving floating spots of colour on his retinas. Eyes watering, wand still clenched in his hand, he says:

“Fuck.” 

He can’t explain how – the patronus incorporeal and unidentifiable, the voice made bland by the magic too feeble to hold it in full, and the message itself without any hint or guidance – but he knows exactly who has sent it. Where he must go.

He apparates.

The wind that had howled distantly outside his walls in London tears at his clothes in Wiltshire, pushes and pulls so hard that it nearly drags him off balance. The rain is like icy whips against his face and the black night is lit by spells, the wards of Malfoy Manor an iridescent sphere of gold from the repeated strikes.

The attackers are more than a quidditch pitch’s length away from him, but Harry has good aim even as he runs.  

“EXPELLIARMUS!”

There are five attackers, and one of them is flung against the magical barrier, wand swallowed up near immediately by the dark.

They shout, yell at each other, and Harry hears the fear in it. It hadn’t been his intention, but of course they immediately know him by his choice of spell.

“It can’t be!” one wizard yells, half insistence and half plea. “It can’t!”

Harry runs, firing off bolt after bolt of magic. They hardly even seem to think to shoot back; a stunner that he deflects easily, something yellow that goes a mile wide without any intervention.

“Expelliarmus!” Harry yells “Expelliarmus!”

A disjointed part of him, as though watching from outside the single-minded panic-calm that has descended upon him, feels almost like he’s a caricature of himself; always that one spell that he clings to so firmly that it was his chosen weapon even in a duel to the death. But what else is he supposed to do? He is not an auror, and so can’t detain any captives. He doesn’t want to hurt, or to maim. He just wants them gone.

A crack of apparition, and finally he gets his wish.

He’s close enough to make out the skulls of their masks, contours caught in the hazy light of the wards, when the last of them flee.

Harry slows, comes to a stop, panting. His heart is beating so hard that his whole face seems to throb with it, hot despite the rain. Unspent magic tingles beneath his skin, and he feels… wrongfooted. Put off course. Like he’s gathered strength to pick up something heavy, only to find that it’s practically weightless.

He sways as the wind beats against his body, blinks away the rain that runs down his face and clings to his lashes. He stares into the dark, where the Death Eaters had been, and realizes that he should want to chase after them.

He turns away. 

The doors of Malfoy Manor are flung open, and there is light coming from within. Harry stares at it, wondering if he’s perhaps meant to just go back to his cold cup of tea now.

A silhouette appears.

His stomach sinks as he realizes the opportunity for it has passed, that he’ll have to go over to him now. He hesitates for another moment, then heads towards the open doors. He meets no resistance when he passes the spot where the barrier had glowed during the onslaught.

Draco Malfoy looks small and young, standing on the steps to his father’s house. Harry hasn’t seen him since the Battle of Hogwarts. Hasn’t spoken to someone not Ron or Hermione since-…

With the wind howling and rain beating down, he needs to step up onto the stairs before he’s close enough that they can speak without the storm snatching their words away. Malfoy is standing just inside the threshold, and the rain hits the open space in front of him as though there were a window there.

“Potter,” he says. “You came.”

He’s too reserved to really sound shocked – or any shade of surprised at all, really. But it comes through still, somehow. 

It makes Harry feel self-conscious for reasons he cannot name. 

He can think of nothing better to say than: “Yeah.”

Malfoy wears a pair of black slacks and a collared white shirt, looking a mere step away from being able to pull on his Hogwarts robes, despite it being the middle of the night – save for the fact that he is barefoot. The image of crisp perfection is also somewhat ruined by how dishevelled his hair is, strands clinging to his damp brow, and how his chest is still heaving slightly from whatever exertion he’d undertaken to keep the Death Eaters out of his home.

Again, Harry thinks of his tea.

“You can come inside,” Malfoy says, then. “Unless you prefer the wind and the rain.”

They stare at each other.

Then Harry nods, and steps through the magical barrier.

He hadn’t realized how much he’d been straining against the wind until it’s suddenly gone, how much he’d hunched in on himself to protect himself against the rain. His shoulders fall, and he shakes the worst of the wetness from his hair. 

Malfoy raises his wand at him.

Harry flinches and Malfoy pales.

“I only meant-“ he starts, but then closes his mouth on the rest of it so hard that Harry hears his teeth clack together.

“I’m jumpy,” Harry says, admission approximating an apology.

He wonders if he really thought that Malfoy would attempt to do him harm.

He taps his own wand against his clothes and dries them with a charm, figuring that that was what Malfoy had thought to do. He leaves his hair alone, because he knows from experience that nothing good will come of drying it with magic. Rivulets run down his neck, though, and he wipes at them with the now dry sleeve of his sweater.

Malfoy trails his movement with dark eyes and says nothing, smoothing back his own hair with a careless hand through it.

Why did you send your patronus to me?, Harry doesn’t ask, and the silence weighs heavy on them.

The foyer is made of stone, marble floors and marble pillars holding up an intricately carved stone ceiling that might be marble too, for all that Harry knows. It’s glossy and hard and even the silence seems to echo, somehow.

Harry’s muggle clothing feels ridiculous, anachronistic.

“This is a warding circle,” Malfoy says suddenly into the silence, pointing at the floor by his bare feet.

Pointing at a gold inlay in the floor, hardly visible in the dim light from the candles, Harry realizes. The circle is perhaps three yards in diameter, and it’s filled with intricate swirls and patterns, converging around different spots, like a clock with too many hours on it.

“The head of the house can manipulate the wards from here, strengthen them and focus the power and such,” Malfoy says.

That’s why I was in here and not out there, fighting, Malfoy says, with other words. I’m not a coward.

“Okay,” Harry says, nodding.

Malfoy stares at him, and Harry notices him clenching his fists. He recognizes that look on Malfoy’s face, that feeling of having prepared to fight only to find no meeting resistance and then stumbling through the process of finding one’s feet again. And perhaps Harry ought to fight with him, dredge up some scorn just to give Malfoy something to argue against; an attack against which he could mount his defence. But… he just can’t. Can’t care less about whether Malfoy is brave or not, whether he prefers to stay in hiding to going out to fight.

What sort of person in their right mind would willingly leap into battle, after everything that they’ve been through?

But Malfoy’s fists aren’t unclenching, and Harry feels like he has to give him something, for all that he really just wants to go back home.

“Why did they come now?” he asks.

He’s referring to the fact that the youngest Malfoy’s evasion of time spent in Azkaban is old news, if it ever counted as news at all.

With the number of hearings that were to be held, Draco’s misdeeds hadn’t even warranted him a proper one; his greatest one had been committed under duress and while underage, it was deemed, and the rest were mostly crimes of association. Harry had been called in to leave testimony before the arguers handling the case, both affiliated with the ministry but representing one party each, and it’d been held in a regular office instead of a courtroom. The arguers had both been pallid and plainly overworked, sitting at either end of the other side of a long desk, but their eyes had shone as they’d looked at him. Looked at him as though he were a thing and not a person; looked at him the way everyone did. The Saviour.

“He lied for us,” Harry had said firmly, watching them write down that below every other word he’d said, as though it were some sort of sermon.

“Are you sure-…” the man representing the prosecution had asked, wetting his lips, the quiet and entreating way he spoke seeming to urge Harry to let him in into some sort of confidence. “Are you sure he wasn’t actually confused about your identity?”

Harry had stared at him until he’d shrunk back in his seat. “Very.”

He can’t actually know how much his testimony affected the outcome, naturally, but it hadn’t been a week later when he’d read – in an article detailing the latest events in Rodolphus Lestrange’s trial (… Draco Malfoy, nephew to Lestrange by marriage …) – that he’d been released. Fines, wand-monitoring, and a note about actions taken to further the causes of the resistance, taken at his peril, was the final verdict.

“Because they knew that I am alone, now,” Malfoy answers, pulling Harry back to the present. “Father’s and Mother’s sentencing were published today.”

His voice is blank of emotion when he speaks the words, and so is his face.

“I’m sorry,” Harry forces himself to say; for the first part, if not the latter.

“Don’t be,” Malfoy replies shortly.

Harry wonders if it’s just his imagination that tacks on the I’m not, at the end.

“Your mother…” Harry starts, somewhat haltingly, thinking about the forest.

“Could have gotten herself out of this far earlier, had she wanted,” Malfoy snaps, anger breaking through. Then, near immediately, he bites it back, reins it in. “It’s a few months. She’ll live.”

She’ll live, Harry notes, thinking about Lucius’ significantly longer sentence, but doesn’t comment.

“Anyway, my father being out of the picture for the foreseeable future opened the way for them to retaliate against me without fear of any imminent reprisal,” Malfoy says, finally flicking the wand in the direction of the heavy wooden doors and making them close. They do so with a heavy thump, the howl of the wind immediately muted. “Wouldn’t surprise me if they feel entitled to the house, as well.”

“The house?” Harry asks, frowning, turning his eyes back to Malfoy. “Why would they feel entitled to the house?”

“Because it was the last place where the Dark Lord lived, the headquarters of the Death Eaters at their prime,” Malfoy said, bitter distaste plain in every word. “A part of their history, their legacy. But it was mine before it was theirs.”   

His childhood home, Harry thinks. The childhood encroached upon far before the home was.

And they’ve both ended up being this ridiculous mixture of young and old, Harry realizes then, knowing things that they shouldn’t and not knowing things that they should. They’ve just come at the whole thing from opposite directions.  

Eighteen, and Harry already feels tired of the world.

“It is mine now…” Malfoy says, more quietly than before, almost to himself as his head tilts up to look at the carved ceiling. “Father’s right to property has been revoked for the duration of his imprisonment, and the Manor is exempt from marital assets.”

Harry thinks of how he’s been saddled with Grimmauld Place and wonder if Malfoy feels anything like he does about the inheritance of ancestral homes. Personally, Harry finds that the old walls fit him about as well as Dudley’s handed-down clothes had done, overlarge and somehow tainted.

“Perhaps that’s why I’m having trouble with the wards,” Malfoy says suddenly, a contemplative frown on his face.

“What?”

Malfoy startles slightly, as though he’d forgotten that Harry was there. Nevertheless, though, he answers.

“It’s my mother’s,” he says, holding up his – her – wand. “The wards shouldn’t have any trouble keeping out only five attackers, and yet-…”

He shrugs, something twisted in his face as he does.

It could be shame, Harry thinks. Of not being able to protect himself, or of not being able to take proper ownership of the house through the wards. Or perhaps it’s nothing like it. Perhaps he’s just annoyed that something that should be working, doesn’t.

“Would your father’s wand have worked better, do you think?” Harry asks, mostly just to keep the conversation going.

“My own would be best,” Malfoy answers, but then seems to catch himself. He looks almost frightened for a moment, like a small child being caught saying a bad word, and then his eyes go wary. “I-…”

Malfoy does not make any further attempts at completing the sentence. Realization strikes Harry, nevertheless.

“Oh,” he says, stupidly.

Of course, he knows that he has Malfoy’s wand in his possession, still. It’s just that… that he hasn’t really connected his having to a corresponding not having, on Malfoy’s part. He feels guilty and oddly defensive, all at once, thinking of all the months that have gone by.

He also immediately realizes that he wants to keep it.

The reasons for it he could not possibly name, but he’s struck by the urge to shut his mouth and disappear into the night before Malfoy can say any more on the subject. And the worst part is: he knows that he could get away with it. Knows that the particular arrangement of Malfoy’s pride, Harry’s hero-status, and the situation wherein Malfoy had lost his wand, is such that he’d never hound Harry to get it back. The fact that he hasn’t reached out about it thus far is proof enough of that.

Which means that Harry has to decide to return it.

And he is so fucking tired of having to be selfless that he wants to scream.

I should have just gone back, Harry thinks, closing his eyes for a brief moment. I should have just scared them off and gone back to my tea.

He takes a deep breath.

“Do you want it back?” he makes himself ask, after a moment’s pause.

Malfoy stares at him.

“What?”

“Your wand,” Harry clarifies – needlessly, he feels, salt in the wounds. Slowly and clearly, he repeats the entirety of his offer once more: “Do you want your wand back?”

Malfoy keeps staring, jaw slack and eyes wide, his usual composure gone.

Finally, tentatively, like someone moving towards something they think might be a trap, he answers: “… yes.”

He shifts his feet, like he wants to come closer but then regrets it before he can actually take a step. His stare is unwavering, feverish nearly, but his jaw is clenched and so is his hand around his mother’s wand.

The behaviour is grating when all Harry is doing is being self-sacrificial all over again.

“I haven’t brought it with me,” he says, perhaps more sharply than strictly warranted.

Malfoy flinches back at his words, a flush blooming across his cheeks.

“Of course not,” he snaps. “Not good enough for you any longer, is it?”

“Well, it’s yours, isn’t it?” Harry replies in annoyance, and truly means nothing more than what he says: the wand is Malfoy’s, and Harry has his own, now, so what legitimate reason does he have to go around using it?

At Malfoy’s deepening flush and tightening of lips, though, Harry realizes how his words have come across. Despite the evidently perceived insult, Malfoy says nothing; remains quiet and passive in his anger. It feels wrong, off-script for them, and now it’s Harry’s turn to find himself lacking in justification to come to his own defense, to shout and to argue. The things he wants to say - that he didn't mean it like that - seem impossible to get out without the running start provided by vitriol and anger. 

They are left stewing silently as they stare at each other, both their angers too lopsided and byzantine to be put into any sort of action. Harry resents this, too, his conscience overburdened as it is, every interaction overcrowded by expectation.

“It’s at home,” Harry says, finally, abruptly, wanting to have this stupid night over with. “Do you want it now?”

Again, Malfoy’s features slacken in surprise.

“Now?” he asks, and this time the shock comes through clear. “I can-…? Yes…?”

He answers in questions. More of that wary, am-I-walking-into-a-trap suspicion from before. And, Merlin help him, if he could, Harry would just throw the bloody thing at him.

“I’ll apparate us,” he says, stalking forward to grab Malfoy’s arm.

Just as he’s about to graze his robe with his fingers, Malfoy flinches back.

Harry snatches back his hand, something sour twisting unpleasantly in his stomach. Malfoy flushes, then, but if it is at Harry’s reaction or his own, he couldn’t guess. Barely has he noted his embarrassment, though, before Malfoy sticks up his nose in the air. Harry thinks perhaps that he means to look haughty.

He has missed the mark by quite a bit.

Merlin. This is why Harry has barely left Grimmauld Place since he moved in.

Gritting his teeth and closing his eyes for yet another moment, he then holds his arm out for Malfoy to take.

“I’ll take us to the kitchen,” Harry says, the closest thing to a peace-offering he thinks he can muster.

Malfoy looks at him for several long moments, that look on his face slowly melting away. Finally, he just looks tired.

“Okay,” he says, long fingers wrapping gingerly around Harry’s elbow, as though he might end up pricking his fingers if he grabs on too hard. “I’ll lower the wards of the Manor.”

They come into the kitchen with a pop, Malfoy’s barely-there grip on his forearm releasing instantly. Harry shakes off the vertigo and steps away. His motive is to put distance between them, which it naturally does achieve… but somehow the more palpable effect is him seeing Draco Malfoy in his home.

Draco Malfoy, feet bare.  

The basement room is not one of the house’s more extravagant areas by any stretch of the imagination, having originally been a space reserved for elves. Malfoy makes an ill fit for it, an inversion of how Harry feels in practically all the other rooms in the building – and all the more incongruous for the little homely touches of Molly Weasley lingering here and there from the time of the Order’s residence. Even though the kitchen is always kept well cleaned – Kreacher has even swept away Harry’s mug from earlier – Malfoy looks pristine in it, white-blonde hair catching the faint light of the fire in the hearth, in a way that makes Harry irrationally feel like his home is going to dirty him.

His mere presence had been enough to feel like a splinter underneath his skin, and this thought prickles further. Hot annoyance bubbles up again, as though the sentiment had come from Malfoy and not from within Harry’s own head.

“That way,” he says shortly, snapping Malfoy away from his inspection of the space, gesturing in the direction of the staircase. “To the right, up the stairs.”

Malfoy glances at him at the instruction, and purses his lips slightly. He says nothing, though, and instead merely sets off.

“And keep it down,” Harry adds, stepping after him.

He receives a look over the shoulder at that, but still there is no comment forthcoming – although, it is perhaps a rather meaningful silence, this time. Being too loud, was I?

Harry grits his teeth and spells their steps silent as they come upon the hallway landing, gesturing wordlessly for him to continue up the next set of stairs. There’s not so much as a ripple in Walburga’s curtains as they move past, and Harry’s spells keep the old steps from creaking.

High on the wall above them, there are shapes of crests still visible as un-faded bits of wallpaper. The actual wood upon which the heads of house-elves past had been mounted are long gone, the heads buried in the garden under the pear tree. Malfoy studies the dark spots as they move upwards, but thankfully he remains quiet.

Up on the next landing, past the sound-muffling cloud of magic that lingers from all the silencing spells Harry has cast, it's safe enough to speak again.

“There’s a painting,” he explains, voice terse, annoyed even before he begins at himself for feeling the need to do so. “Behind the curtains. It yells your bloody head off if you dare make a sound.”

Malfoy narrows his eyes slightly at him in contemplation, as though he’s considering whether he might actually be an idiot.

“You haven’t… considered removing it?” he asks.

“Of course I have,” Harry snaps. “Feel free to give it a go on your way out and you’ll-“

Malfoy’s attention disappears from him from one moment to the next, eyes looking past him and face going lax in surprise. Harry cuts himself off, turns around to see what has caught his eye. He finds that door on the eastern wall is standing ajar, a strip of firelight painted bright on the dark floors of the stairway.

The door to the Tapestry Room.

Oh.

Malfoy walks towards it as though magnetized, pushing the door completely open and stepping through. Harry trails behind uncomfortably, stops by the threshold, and watches Malfoy spin in a slow circle as he takes in his ancestors sprawled across walls that now belong to Harry. Malfoy’s own name, Harry knows, is down in the corner of the wall to his right.

“This…” Malfoy says, poorly concealed awe in his voice, still not looking at Harry. “… this is Grimmauld Place. This is the Black ancestral home.”

“Yes,” Harry confirms.

Malfoy, having completed two full rotations, comes to a stop facing him.

“You live here?” he asks.

“Yes,” Harry says again.

“In my great aunt Walburga’s house?”  

“She’s the portrait,” Harry replies.

“Oh,” he says, some dawning understanding plain in the single syllable.

“Yeah,” Harry agrees.

The realization of the identity of the portrait, though, is evidently nowhere near enough to draw Malfoy away from the larger revelation. He stares at Harry as though he has never quite seen him properly before, eyes trailing him up and down. It makes it hard to merely stand there, but he forces himself to bear it. Malfoy’s scrutiny makes him feel… lacking. As though he’s encroaching on a space that isn’t truly rightfully his, no matter what Sirius’ will might have said. The picture Malfoy paints against the backdrop of the sprawling branches of his forebearers is a complete and cohesive one – a far more suitable one than Harry in his jeans and sweater and hair that still always looks like he just got out of bed.

Harry’s twenty years old, the closest thing he’s ever had to a home is a school that he’s aged out of, and the house he lives in was a hated prison to the godfather he inherited it from – and rightfully belongs to his childhood nemesis.

He feels like stomping his feet like a sullen toddler, yelling mine and you can’t have it and leave me alone, and chasing him out of the house at the tip of his wand and never giving back the one he came for.  

Would serve him bloody right.

He grits his teeth down on it all.

“Come on,” he snaps finally, more waspishly than warranted, and turns and starts walking without waiting for reaction or response. “My bedroom is upstairs.”

“Your bedroom?” Malfoy asks, rather sharply.

“That’s where your wand is,” Harry says without turning around, already halfway up the next set of stairs.

The door to Harry’s bedroom, too, stands ajar.

There’s a welcoming glow coming from within, and it soothes his temper somewhat to see it; for all that the rest of the house is glum and dark and unwelcoming, this room feels like his. When he’d come back to Grimmauld Place after the War to move in, Kreacher had already set it up for him, having gathered together the most homely and comfortable furniture the house had to offer. There’s an armchair, its plush fabric matching well with both the drapes and the soft rug on the floor, and an ornately carved wardrobe in the corner that suits Harry’s needs perfectly. The bed is large and comfortable and reminds him of Hogwarts.

The room is not too large and not too small and Harry actually feels like he belongs.

And perhaps that’s why a new sort of discomfort is crawling through him as he pushes the door open and indicates for Malfoy to step inside.

Kreacher has readied the room for him to go to bed, much as he has done every night since Harry moved in. The brass scones on either side of the bed are lit, dancing flames casting an orange glow. In the corner, the intricate lamp that hangs from the ceiling glows with magic in only a slightly cooler tone. The bed is made, and one corner of the sheets folded up invitingly.

With Malfoy at his shoulder, it feels… intimate.

“Erm… yeah,” Harry says, gesturing vaguely.

He feels ridiculous immediately, because it’s not like he’s giving a bloody tour, is it? He glances quickly to his side, watching Malfoy take it all in, and then decides that he’d better get all of this over with so he can be alone again.

He steps quickly round the far side of the bed – to the side he usually sleeps on – and opens the top drawer of his nightstand. There’s nothing in there except for the wand, and inertia makes it come rolling out to the front.

Harry stares down at it.

It’s a paler wood than Harry’s own, smoother and more springy, and he knows from experience that there’s a little divot beneath a knot where his thumb always seems to end up resting when he holds it. 

It isn’t yours, Harry reminds himself, and picks it up before he can think any more about it.

Looking up, he finds Malfoy watching him with a crease on his brow.

Cheeks heating and feeling found out, Harry walks back around the bed and holds it out towards him.

“Here,” he says.

Malfoy merely looks at him for another few moments.

Then, as though magnetized, his eyes slip down to his wand. It lays in the flat of Harry’s hand, innocuous as anything.

And Malfoy just keeps looking.

Harry stares down at the wand, too; he has to.

“You know, this is the one I used,” he finds himself saying, before he’s even aware that he’s going to speak. “When we dueled, in the Great Hall, I-…”

Harry nods vaguely at the wand and finds it hard to tear his eyes from it.

And perhaps that’s enough explanation for why he doesn’t want to part from it. Not quite sentimentality, but-… His own wand, the Elder Wand… Wands had seemed so fickle, back then. But not this one. This one had worked well for him from the moment he picked it up.

And through to the very end.

He hasn’t quite managed to stop using it, is the thing, hasn’t quite stopped himself from keeping it close at hand – as its position in the nightstand is evidence of. Gasping awake from a nightmare, in the middle of the dark and the night, he has slammed the drawer open and-…

He’s clung to the excuse that it has been accidents, that he has still been half asleep and caught in dreams of the past and hasn’t actually been knowing what he’s been doing. Pretended that it’s a fifty-fifty shot between his wand and Malfoy’s, despite ending up with the latter nigh on a hundred percent of the time. It feels horribly transparent now, though, faced with the reality of being separated from it. He feels ridiculous, superstitious and immature like a child with a toy that can’t be left behind, and can’t help letting his eyes track uneasily across the wand for any tells of his illicit over-use.

There’s none, though. Just betraying signs of ill care: dirt caught in cervices, smears of black soot, and lots of fingerprints. He should have cleaned it at some point, he thinks, feeling a little bit like he had done standing before Ollivander during his fourth year.

But his eyes linger, too, on the patterns of knots, and on how the pale wood catches the light, on the familiar flowing lines of the grain.

The impulse to close his hand around it is almost overwhelming.

Malfoy picks it up, a darting movement fast enough to catch a snitch.

His fingertips graze Harry’s palm as he does.

It tickles, disproportionately so, and Harry’s palm is sweaty. He wipes it as discreetly as he can on the leg of his trousers, trying simultaneously to clear his face from any tells of his thoughts.

He realizes in the next moment, though, that any effort into subterfuge has been wasted:

Malfoy is staring at his wand as he holds it, enraptured.

Or… no. Not enraptured.

He’s… He’s frightened. 

“Try it,” Harry urges, voice hoarse for some reason. He wants to have it over with, wants to rip off the band-aid and have it be irrevocable before he changes his mind. His hands make fists by his side.

Malfoy’s eyes snap to him, and the Slytherin flushes. Then he turns resolutely back to his wand, opens his mouth and…

And closes it again. He swallows, licks his lips.

Come on, Harry wills him, trepidation rising within him, too. What if it doesn’t work? What if it’s already too late for the wand to be returned? What if Harry wanting to keep it so badly interferes with Malfoy repossessing it?

The possibility sends a thrill of hope through him, but nearly immediately it’s swept away by the thought of how embarrassing it would be to be exposed in this irrational greed of his.

Harry starts, feeling like he’s about to crawl out of his skin with anticipation: “You-“

Malfoy abruptly flicks the wand and says: “Lumos!”

Like a phantom limb, Harry feels the magic travel down his own arm, down to his fingertips, and… disperse.

The wand lights up, a whiter hue than Harrys own usually comes out; starlight instead of a fire.

Harry’s stomach sinks as hope leaves him, but Malfoy’s lips broaden in a smile and his breath comes out somewhere between a short laugh and gasp. He then quickly turns and twirls his wand at the armchair in the opposite corner of the room, which begins to float, then changes colour, then turns into an elaborate floor lamp.

Harry’s stomach curls tight as he stares at the display.

Malfoy must notice his expression, because Harry sees out of the corner of his eye how his exuberance abruptly dims. With another flick of the wand, Malfoy returns the chair to its usual position, size, shape, and colour.

“Well,” Harry says, swallowing, unable to keep his voice from coming out a bit curt. “There you go.”

“Thank you,” Malfoy replies stiffly. “I-…”

His eyebrows draw together in a frown, and Harry realizes that Malfoy is trying to figure out if he owes him anything for the return of his wand. Which leads Harry to wonder if he perhaps owes Malfoy something for taking it from him in the first place, and for keeping it for so much longer than necessary. The loss is too sharp for him to be willing to consider the idea, though, and the reminder that he never really had the right to have it sours his mood even further.

And now Malfoy will leave, taking the wand with him, and Harry will never have it again.

“At least it got to do some good,” Harry says, bitter words slipping out because that’s what he can’t help himself from thinking. Hasn’t he earned that wand? After everything else he’s sacrificed? 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Malfoy asks tightly.

Harry barks a disbelieving laugh, because is Malfoy for real?

“What do you think I mean?” Harry asks, simmering anger rising threateningly within him, sending a flush to his face.

Malfoy stares at him, mouth open in an utterly disbelieving look. Slowly, it morphs.

“You don’t even fucking realize what you did, do you?” he spits, furiously. “You’re so utterly self-absorbed that you-!“

“Self-absorbed!?” Harry bursts, incredulous at the fucking audacity – from Malfoy. “Are you-!?”

“WE HAD ONE WAND!” Malfoy bellows. “One! In a house we shared with the fucking Dark Lord and all of his ilk!”

“Because you were of his bloody ilk, weren’t you?!” Harry retorts, mocking his idiotic choice of word. “Your parents invited them all in!”

“Do you think we had a bloody choice?!” Malfoy demands. “When He asked for something, you gave, Potter, or you were dead!”

“Oh, because no one else was at a bloody risk of dying, were they?” Harry asks sarcastically. “Because of the things you did!”

“I was trying to stay alive!” Malfoy protests, red-faced with fury. “Same as everybody else!”

“At the expense of everybody else!”

Harry’s so angry that he’s shaking, now. But, in a twisted way, it almost feels good. He’s held back so much, for so bloody long; angry at nothing and at everything and trying to keep it at bay because what the hell is he supposed to do about it? But this is Malfoy, and he’s right here, and he’s such a fucking prick-

“Oh, but Saint Potter would never do anything at the expense of anyone else!” Malfoy snaps, gesturing sharply with the wand that Harry had pulled from his hands.

And, deep down he’s realizing what Malfoy is saying – that having connected to a corresponding not having, going back far earlier than just these past few months – but he doesn’t want to face that part, doesn’t want to acknowledge yet another one of his fuckups, doesn’t want to feel the weight of yet another person’s suffering settling on his shoulders.

So he argues.

“I killed Him with it!” Harry says, furiously. “I did you a bloody favour, same as everyone else!”

Malfoy suddenly has the front of his shirt in his fists, and he slams Harry bodily against his own bedroom wall. Harry’s head hits it with a loud crack!

“YOU LEFT US DEFENSELESS!” Malfoy bellows, inches from his face. “WHAT KIND OF FUCKING FAVOUR IS THAT?!”

“I didn’t have a bloody wand, either!” Harry protests, incredulous and furious that he is the one that has ended up on the defensive in this argument. “It’s not like I took it for the fun of it!” 

“You could have taken anyone’s!” Malfoy protests, pushing him into the wall again. “But you took mine! It’s always fucking me, isn’t it, Potter!?”

It’s such an incredible, outrageous, preposterous fucking claim – for Draco Malfoy to have against him – that Harry is bowled over by it, left gaping like a fish. The endless fucking temerity of this ridiculous fucking git!

And yet – the words strike true, somehow. He’s incandescent for it.

“I saved you,” Harry hisses, straight in his face, pulling out that trump card that should be an ill-fitting retort but somehow isn’t. “In the end, I pulled you from those flames and I saved your bloody life.”

Malfoy stares at him, eyes wide and wild, practically vibrating with anger.

Then he launches himself at him; nose jabbing sharp into his cheek, mouth colliding so harshly that Harry feels like his teeth make an indent on the inside of his lips, and his head again bangs back against the wall with the force of it.

He’s angry, in pain, and it takes him until Malfoy wrenches away to realize that he’s just been kissed.

Malfoy stares at him, chest heaving, furious and indignant as though their positions had been the reverse.  

Belatedly, superfluously, Harry shoves him away. It’s a hard shove, sending him stumbling back. Malfoy would no doubt have been able to recover, though, had Harry’s bed not taken him out at the knees; he stumbles, has absolutely no possibility of righting himself, and topples. The springs creak from the impact, Malfoy’s head whiplashes against the mattress, and the sheets tangle with him in their bounce-back. Harry’s on him in the next second, so angry that magic is no longer enough. He pins Malfoy’s legs down with his own, grabs his forearm so hard that his blunt nails dig deep into the skin, and shoves his wand into the flesh beneath his jaw – more stabbing implement than magical, though the threat of being hexed is no doubt palpable to Malfoy.

“What,” Harry bites out, faces once more only inches away, “the fuck!?”

He digs the wood in deeper with the words, so hard that it would no doubt snap were it anything but a wand. Malfoy’s head is forced back, but he glares at him through slitted eyes, face flushed pinker than Harry thinks he’s ever seen it.

“Fuck you,” Malfoy spits at him. “Why did you even come tonight, Potter?!”

“Why did I come?!” Harry asks, incredulously. “You called me!”

“And like a good little Saviour you just couldn’t resist a plea for help, is that it!?” Malfoy says, managing to sneer condescendingly at him despite his prone position.

Harry is so angry that he barely knows what to do with himself, so outraged that he feels out of control. Why are they even bloody talking about this?!

“YOU. CALLED. ME!” he bellows, straight into his stupid, stupid, face.

Malfoy’s flushed with anger. “And you came!”

“OF COURSE I DID!”

The words tear out of him before he has time to process them. Before he knows that they are true. Malfoy looks utterly stunned, but it is a poor consolation as his expression is little more than a mirror to how Harry feels himself.

“Why ‘of course’?” Malfoy demands, holding himself perfectly still, as though bracing for something.

Harry doesn’t know, doesn’t want to open his mouth for fear of what will spill out next.  

“Potter!” Malfoy insists, veering back towards anger. “Why ‘of course!?”

Harry wants to shrug him off, as though Malfoy is the one pinning him down and not the reverse. “Fuck off.”

Later, he will realize that there are simple half-truths he could have told. Things in the vein of I would have done the same for anyone or I wanted to get the Death Eaters. But these things don’t come to him in the moment, mind too caught up with the very question that Malfoy had put to him: why ‘of course’?

It feels like something is bubbling inside of him, simmering and nearing to boil over; standing on a precipice and clinging on tight for fear of falling. His knuckles are white as he grips his wand.

“With the Fiendfyre,” Malfoy spits, like an accusation. “I never called you then!”

And Harry feels accused, feels the need to defend himself and his face heating as though caught out. “Was I supposed to let you die!?”

“I don’t know, Potter,” Malfoy hisses, “weren’t you?”

Harry stares down at him. There is some sort of haughty righteousness emanating from Malfoy, as though he’s dealt some clever parting blow. That stupid fucking challenging look is on his face – come on, Potter, I dare you – that has been able to goad Harry into nearly anything since the day they met. Like it is something clever that he’s said, like he’s actually caught him out on something.

And Harry topples.

“You stupid git,” he says, let’s go of his arm to grab his fringe in a fist, and slams their mouths back together.

Malfoy makes a startled sound against his lips, clearly not expecting it, and, hell, Harry wasn’t expecting it, but he’s there now, can’t back away and wouldn’t be particularly interested in doing so even if he could. It’s satisfying in the way a punch would be, in the way his wand digging into his flesh is; physically taking out his aggression, giving back as good as he got. He presses down so hard on his lips that he can feel his teeth through them.

Then Malfoy’s hands – both now free – suddenly claw into his back, grasps his shirt, and pulls so hard that the collar risks strangling him.

He wrenches himself off of him, releases Malfoy’s hair to shove at his arms. They fall away without resistance and Harry tugs irritably at the collar to make his sweater go back into place.

Malfoy’s eyes are wide and wild as they stare up at him.

“What are you doing?” he demands, sounding horrified.

“You did it first,” Harry spits back.

Malfoy just continues looking up at him in shocked disbelief, as though he’s waiting for some proper explanation to emerge from the ether. There’s something about that expression that starts up a sickening churn in Harry’s belly, but he’s still too angry to be willing to give it much heed. And he feels impotent in his anger, now, because Malfoy has gone lax in his shock, which means Harry’s got nothing to struggle against. Nothing to spend all this… this wound-up-ness on.

He shoots off a stinging hex for no other reason than to provoke a reaction.

Malfoy flinches but doesn’t otherwise move. His frown remains when he opens his eyes.

“What are you doing, Potter?” Malfoy asks – actually asks.

Harry doesn’t know. He doesn’t know, and Malfoy’s staring up at him with a look that seems impossible to parse and yet there’s fear shining in his eyes and that makes Harry’s insides-

“I don’t know,” Harry says, voice hoarse.

Malfoy barks a laugh, and it’s so sharp that Harry startles.

“You don’t know?” he repeats, voice high with disbelief.

Harry pulls his wand back, suddenly mortified with having put it there in the first place. There’s a red spot beneath Malfoy’s chin where it has been digging in.

“You don’t know?” he says again.

“I told you I don’t-!”

Malfoy surges up so suddenly that Harry’s half-certain he’s going to head-butt him. Instead, for the third time, their mouths crash together. Except, this time, it’s not merely a press of lips: Malfoy’s tongue is inside of his mouth.

Harry doesn’t even think before he kisses back. It’s like a switch has been flicked and everything feels terrifyingly right; like his whole being is suddenly narrowed down to this and nothing else. Malfoy’s movements are frantic, pushing deep, his hand and on the back of his head holding him close with a grip so firm that it would take effort to wrench loose. They fall back, Malfoy dragging him down with him, and Harry manages to brace himself with the hands in the last second but is pulled down completely in the next, held fast. And he tastes him, tastes Malfoy’s mouth, and he tastes like warmth and of nothing and like a thousand things Harry couldn’t possibly name.  

He can’t say how long it lasts. When they part, it’s only some few inches; just enough to be able to see the other properly.

They stare. 

Malfoy looks like they’ve been playing quidditch, windswept, face hard-set and eyes gleaming with challenge.

Both their chests are heaving, and Harry still feels a little bit like he’s about to fall over. Malfoy’s mouth is glistening and wet, and Harry realizes that might very well just be his saliva on Malfoy’s lips and-… and he doesn’t quite know what to do with this fact. As he stares – as the realization is still reverberating through him – Malfoy pulls his lower lip slightly into his mouth and there’s a flash of tongue visible as he licks it.

A rush of blood so powerful that it leaves him lightheaded rushes south, and Harry throbs. The awareness had been distant earlier, muddled in the swirl of everything else, but now it’s forcefully brought to the forefront of his mind: he is hard.

And that is a new thing altogether, an absurd and impossible step beyond what they’ve just done. He’s gripped by the urge to run away before Malfoy can catch him at it – but realizes in the next moment that he can’t possibly stand up without making his problem instantly recognizable. Cheeks flushing to a nearly painful degree, he tries to raise himself up on his knees to create more space between their bodies.

“You kissed me back,” Malfoy says.

It could be anything: a plain statement, a wondering pronouncement, a bold assertion. Mostly, though, it sounds like a condemnation.

“Yes,” Harry agrees, voice coming out raspy and unsteady. He clears his throat and tries again: “Yes.”

Because he did. Because-… because of course he did.

Malfoy’s expression clouds further as he keeps looking at him, and Harry sees shadows playing across his jaw as it clenches. His hand still holds on to the hair on the back of Harry’s head.

“Don’t look so disturbed about it,” Malfoy says tightly. “You’re the one’s who’s got me pinned down.”

Another rush of blood and Harry aches, desperate embarrassment doing little to tamp down the arousal.

“Malfoy-,” Harry says, without even knowing where he intends to go with it, what he wants.  

For a moment, it’s obvious that Malfoy expects him to finish the sentence. Then that somehow visible expectation slips away, and, like a storm cloud, Malfoy’s face darkens.

“For fuck’s sake, Potter,” he snarls, and Harry abruptly finds himself shoved off of him.

~

Potter stumbles to his feet, away from him, and Draco feels like he can finally fucking breathe. His hands are clammy and threaten to tremble should he lift them, his face is flushed so badly that his skin feels tight from the unceasing rush of blood, and his stomach is a churning thing tied up in a tight and heavy knot. The wish to merely keep lying where he is for just a few moments floats through him, just so that his head can stop spinning, and he very nearly gives in… But then he remembers where he is – in Potter’s bed, with Potter himself standing above him.

He gets to his feet immediately.  

He keeps his eyes firmly on the floor as he brushes off some half-imaginary lint, gives his unsteady legs a moment to prepare for the hasty flight that will shortly occur. But the averted gaze is a display of weakness he’ll only allow himself for so long – can’t show fear in front of a Gryffindor – and so he… he makes himself look Potter in the eye.  

Potter looks like- Potter fucking smoulders, there are no other words for it, not with those practically glowing green eyes of his. but there is also no way that he’s aware of what he is doing. His eyebrows are pulled together, jaw tight, face flushed and… He looks angry, almost, looks dangerous and perhaps Draco should be frightened – he should be, he very much should be – but something has gone wrong in him because that look-…

Something has gone wrong with him.  

And he thought Potter had figured it out, had been about to taunt him with it – and that had made him fear – but-… but perhaps he hasn’t. It should have been obvious, though. Should have been obvious from the moment he’d pulled him back down for more, from the moment he pushed him up against the wall, from the moment he called to him for help.

From the moment Draco forgot which fucking side of things he belongs to.

He can’t keep his eyes from darting down and away again, from the sheer shame of the reminder that his own thoughts has-

Potter is hard.

Those blue denim muggle-contraptions he’s wearing are enough to spare Draco from witnessing every detail of it, but there’s really no mistaking it. It could have been a fold, perhaps, save for how the rest of the fabric lays smooth.

Draco forces himself to stop staring, to look up at Potter's face again.

Potter has plainly noticed that he has noticed, brow more deeply furrowed and jaw clenched harder and shoulders tense.

Realization washes through him, brings fourteen different impulses in its wake. Potter is looking for a bloody fuck. And Draco is there, Draco is available, Draco is- He wants to bloody hex him for the sheer bloody gall of it. What, just because he’s the fucking Saviour and Draco’s nothing more than a dirty little Death Eater, he’s just supposed to drop to his knees because Potter is feeling a little rowdy? He also wants to laugh at him, because he thinks that that might actually have a greater chance at inflicting some hurt than magic, if only to his pride – that sort of laugh he’s perhaps not managed properly since fourth or fifth year, but which always seems to have gotten under Potter’s skin. He wants to bring up girl-Weasel, tell him that she’ll put out and not him. Wants to yell angry things until Potter is dragged away by his own conscience, he wants to punch him in the face until the pain eclipses any thoughts of pleasure, wants to-

He wants.

He’s not stupid enough to think that Potter would ever actually force him, though there’s embarrassingly little doubt that he’d be magically (and, judging by how he’d pinned him down earlier, physically) capable of doing such. But. There’s a part of him that almost wishes that he would. Wishes that Potter would just bloody take him, just so that he wouldn’t have to give.

Wouldn’t have to bloody concede, again.

Because he will. He knows he will in the space of a heartbeat.

His fists are clenched with impotent anger, face flushed with embarrassment that seems to keep coming back never-endingly… and he’s hard, too, now. So bloody hard; the half-memory, half-imagining of Potter shoving him back against the bed and sparing him any option to choose swirling so powerfully in his mind that he’s almost worried that he’s projecting it, displaying his filthy and secret wants in some sort of reverse Legilimensy.

“Well?” he demands, because the anticipation might quite literally be killing him.

That shove back onto the bed had been so clear in his mind that he’s unknowingly braced for it. It makes him stumble more than he otherwise would have when Potter instead pulls him close, forward.

An arm wraps tight around his torso, the other hand threading through the hair on the back of his head, and then he’s kissed.

Potter… Potter kisses the way he seems to do just about everything. Draco feels consumed, Potter’s arms tight around him practically holding him up as his lips his mouth his tongue his teeth descend on him. It’s slower than before, pace like a mountain; steady and immoveable, like Potter can see right through him and knows that he will let him.  

Then he does move him backwards, but he does so while still holding him close, walks them both towards the bed with tiny steps, long moments between each.

As though he can’t bear to stop kissing, Draco thinks, and then promptly wants to hex himself for such ridiculous and sentimental nonsense. He does end up back on top of the bed again, though, finally. He doesn’t fall, and he isn’t pushed; he feels the edge of it hit the back of his legs and he pulls away from Potter’s mouth to sit down. Potter ends up between his parted knees, taller than him in this position, mouth kissed red and eyes dark.

Then he reaches up and takes off his glasses.

It’s such a stupid fucking thing, but since they were eleven, Draco can’t remember a single instance where he’s seen Potter without his glasses. Once, maybe, because he can’t have been wearing glasses when he’d been about to dive into the Black Lake during the Triwizard tournament, can he, but Draco had been on the stands then, a hundred yards away and not-

Not inches.

His face looks bare without them, naked and like his proportions are somehow different than how they usually are. It-… it feels intimate.

Don’t get any ideas, it’s just a bloody practicality, he has time to think, and then Potter is kissing him again. He does it in the same way as before, entirely and completely, and it’s all Draco can do to try to keep up. He gets a momentary respite when Potter begins to lean them back against the bed, and they part for Draco to be able to scoot back and lay down against the pillows. It’s brief, though, if a respite at all, because Potter climbs into bed after him and straddles him unthinkingly and immediately, and Draco has to watch him do it. He’s not even sure if he’s considered Potter’s thighs before, but now he’s witnessed them fencing in his hips. He closes his eyes when Potter’s lips descend on him again, but the image seems burned into his mind.

Potter tastes warm and rich and sweet, with something faintly earthy when his tongue pushes deep, like the scent of tea. His lips seem too soft for a man’s, pillowy against his own and a stark contrast to the scrape of his stubble that rasps against his skin with certain movements.

Draco’s hands make fists in the thick material of Potter’s sweater. There’s an excessive amount of it, and he can barely even feel Potter through it even as he holds on tight, which currently seems the safer state of affairs. Then Potter’s lips suddenly begin to from his; first to the corner of his mouth, then to his cheek, and then down to his chin. There, he begins to kiss and lick along the shape of his jaw, and Draco marvels at how he just does it. No abashment, no calculation, just- unrestrained.

Potter follows his jaw to its end, presses his lips into the divot between it and his ear and finds his earlobe. Draco’s breath hitches as he pulls it into his mouth, bites down just the slightest bit too hard. And then he’s already moving on again, down his neck, back as far as he can reach, sucking and licking and biting, and Draco has to strain to keep his hips from bucking. And then Potter has moved to the next thing, again, too fast, rushed and unrelenting in everything he wants. It makes Draco feel annoyed and stressed and overwhelmed, unable to keep up and wanting more of all the small things briefly promised him, but then Potter quickly comes upon something else that feels just as good in a different way… and Draco’s complaints get caught behind the moans he stifles before they leave his throat.

His neck, his collarbones, his Adam’s apple, his throat… all quickly yet thoroughly dealt with in this manner, and suddenly Draco finds the two topmost buttons of his shirt are undone and Potter moving down his chest. A spike of panic shoots through him:

Potter is undressing me.

This is real, this is happening, and they’re going to-… Draco struggles with getting the air through a suddenly constricted throat all the way to his equally abruptly stiff and impotent lungs.

He can’t just stop things now, can’t just pull Potter away by his hair and say, actually, no thank you, because then Potter would wonder why and Draco would-… would have nothing to say. He and Pansy had fucked each other when they were in fifth year, practically an exchange of information, as it had seemed about the time they needed to know about such things. They’d felt up their respective differing parts, Draco had come, Pansy had not and declined him working any further on it, and it had affected their friendship not at all and they’d never been inclined to do it again.

This is not that. He doesn’t even know why he’s thinking of it now, save for as maybe his only repository of knowledge on how to get anything about this under control. But this is Potter; Draco has never felt in control when it comes to Potter.

The third button comes undone, the fourth, and Potter’s tongue dips into the shallow depression between his pectorals. Is there always this much licking?, Draco wonders, feeling halfway to madness.  

Then Potter’s hand suddenly finds its way underneath the hem of his previously tucked-in shirt. It lands in the middle of his belly, so hot that it is as though he’s just held it in front of a fire. Draco feels the muscles in his stomach tighten and bunch at the unexpected touch and so, perhaps, does Potter; he makes a small noise against his chest where his mouth is currently occupied, and the tips of his fingers twitch down slightly. It should tickle, perhaps, but Draco’s nerves don’t seem to be wired for that right now.

Then Potter’s hand suddenly moves down to his thigh, and he pushes his legs apart.

Draco’s whole body flushes at the action, at the implication, at the thought of how it makes it seem like Potter is going to f-

He wants to protest, want to push him away and get off the bed and yell at him for the presumption.

He hasn’t got the voice for it, though, air stolen from his lungs, and in the next moment Potter has moved, sat himself on his knees between Draco’s spread legs.

He is still discombobulated enough that he doesn’t even notice the last two buttons of his shirt coming undone until Potter suddenly throws the fabric aside with the flick of a wrist. His stomach tightens briefly in renewed terror, but Potter makes no move to further undress him, and instead bends down over his abdomen. He can’t keep himself from inhaling sharply as Potter follows the line of a rib down to his side, then moves in from it to find his navel with his mouth. He flinches, the sensation like he’d tugged directly on his spine, but Potter moves on – again – so quickly that there’s hardly any point to bringing it up.

Potter is supporting himself on his elbows, leaning over him in such a way that Draco’s cock would have been positioned between his breasts, had he been a woman. He thinks that would likely have been a pleasant sensation. As it is, he aches from the absence of any touch, nerves and doubts and fears doing little to tamp down his arousal in the way they had when Potter first pushed him onto the bed. But he isn’t touched. Instead, Potter’s mouth moves over the plane of his stomach, finding one hipbone and then the next and then going back to the first again, so close and yet frustratingly far from what Draco wants.

Then Potter suddenly sits back on his haunches, puts his hand on Draco’s fly and has it unbuttoned before Draco has even gotten over the shock of where his hands are, and grips the hem at his sides.

“Lift,” Potter instructs.

Draco mindlessly does as told, and cants his hips upwards, allowing Potter to pull his trousers down.

It’s at that first yank, bringing them halfway down his thighs, that the reality of it sets in: Harry Potter is pulling down his trousers. It’s ridiculous. It’s completely ridiculous. It’s like- like some sort of childish nightmare he would have had about happening in the Great Hall, before he’d had proper things to be scared about and public mortification was the greatest of his worries. He has got proper things to feel frightened off now, he is no longer eleven, and they are in a setting about as far from the Great Hall as can probably be imagined. Still, though, fear grips him, makes him brace to protect the vulnerable spots that he’s developed in later years. He’s so certain of the mocking taunts that will come that he can practically already hear them:

Did you really think…!

Potter pulls his feet free from the trousers with a last tug, and Draco’s legs fall back into their place. Spread for him, Draco’s mind supplies. He lays naked save his underwear before a fully clad Potter, hard and the cotton shamefully stained with a wet spot from his precome. His belly bared both figuratively and literally. The only thing that keeps him from cringing in on himself is that knowledge that that would only serve to make him appear even more pathetic. His hands, which had abandoned Potter’s shirt in favour of the sheets a while back, clench down hard. He makes himself look straight up into Potter’s face as he waits for the axe to fall.

Potter merely stares, eyes roving up and down, face unreadable to Draco.

Then suddenly there’s a wand in his hand and he flicks it at him.

That’s my wand, Draco realizes, staring in numb horror as magic washes over him. He took my wand, and I didn’t even notice.

He’d put it in his pocket, earlier. Potter must have taken it out when he’d started to take off his trousers and put it on the bed.

It’s really only then that he notices that the warmth of a heating charm has enveloped him.

“You were trembling,” Potter tells him absently, answering the unasked question.

He flushes, because he’s not entirely certain that that had been because of the cold.

“Thanks,” he grates out, because what else is he supposed to say? Then, because he can’t possibly not, he complains: “Potter-“

And finally, Potter’s eyes move away from his body and meet his gaze. Draco very nearly flinches, because he hadn’t realized the full implication of Potter throwing the taunts literally to his face until that moment.

Instead of doing this, though, Potter leans over him and kisses him, hard enough to bruise.

“Fuck,” he breathes quietly, then, leaning his forehead against Draco’s.

Then he, single-minded as ever, moves back down onto his knees. Draco’s mind can barely keep up, still stuck on preparing for verbal or magical assault, but Potter doesn’t even stop there – he moves down further, scoots himself backwards until his knees are right at the foot of the bed until he has room enough to lay down. And then he lays down.

His face is barely an inch from Draco’s cock, only the cotton of his underwear between them.

Does Potter even like men?, Draco finds himself thinking, stupid and fearful, watching him hover above the unmistakable bulge in his pants, propped up on his elbows. And so, before he’s even managed to fully abandon the old ones, a new fear grips him: that Potter doesn’t, that this is too stark a confrontation and that he’ll balk, withdraw, that he’ll get angry and-

Potter pushes his face down against him.

Draco startles, only barely manages to muffle the sound threatening to escape him – as Potter nuzzles against him, like a bloody cat. For a moment, he can’t even think, chokes on the sound that threatens to escape him.

Does he even care what he looks like?, he wonders wildly, then, staring down at the spectacle. Potter looks wanton, lips parted to let out an exhale that’s halfway to a sigh as though it feels nice.

“God, Malfoy,” Potter says, and then elaborates no further.

What, Draco wants to demand, ‘God, Malfoy’ what? But of course, Potter has already moved on, hands and lips and tongue exploring again. He tugs at Draco’s underwear with his hands, pushes at them with his nose, keeps moving it further and further out of the way so as to not have it impede his exploration until it’s barely even covering him at all.

He doesn’t touch him directly again, though.

Slowly, steadily, the frustration of it begins to push all other thought and feeling out of his mind. Potter presses his lips against the mound of his pelvis, practically at the root of his cock and yet not close enough to actually touch. He licks along the inside of his thigh, so high up that Draco has to spread his legs further to allow him to do it, and still he does not touch.

Then he moves to the opposite side and does the same thing.

Draco pushed his head back against the pillow and squeezes his eyes shut.  

His hands buried themselves in Potter’s hair at some point, seemingly of their own accord, and are moving restlessly through the frankly excessively soft mess of it, standing it even further on end. Mostly to keep himself from tugging on it, he takes to some sort of rather twitchy soothing motions – petting – as though he could somehow calm himself through calming Potter. It’s a ridiculous thing to do, so he forces himself to stop only moments after he’s begun, ends up gripping the strands between his fingers – even though he told himself that he oughtn’t – just to make himself hold still. Finds some unevenness in Potter’s skin for his left thumb to play along just to assuage that twitchy need to move.

Potter, meanwhile, seems to be ignoring his erratic ministrations entirely, focused completely on his own all-too-thorough exploration. He’s still supporting himself on his elbows, placed on the outside of Draco’s legs so that he’s almost hanging over them, but his hands have found their way to Draco’s backside, slipped partway between him and the mattress, and is cupping in a way that is not quite a grip and yet entirely unignorably there. He also has not limited himself to continuing his exploration solely with his mouth, as Draco thinks a normal person would do, and instead seems to push his whole face against him at various points, like some sort of animal; pushes his nose against his skin and breathes in deep, strokes his cheek against the dusting of pale hair on his upper thing, licks and nips with his teeth on the divot exposed beside his hipbone by his pushed-up underwear.

Suddenly, quite out of nowhere, Draco realizes that his thumb is following a zig-zag pattern.

He freezes.

Potter stops at the sudden tensing of his body, lifts his head. Draco has to gather his courage a moment before he manages the same.

His skin looks almost completely white among the black hair, contrasted, too, by the tan of Potter’s complexion that is only painted even more bronze by the firelight. And Draco’s thumb rests right in the middle of the Chosen One’s famous scar.

He swallows thickly, bracing for what’s to come.

There’s ticking coming from somewhere to his side, each beat of it heavy, as though it has to struggle through some unnameable thickness to hit the next beat.

And Potter asks, voice a bit rough: “Did I do something wrong?”

Draco twitches, nearly a flinch, and ends up pressing his thumb firmer against the scar.

“Oh,” Potter says, realization visibly dawning, and Draco braces for- “That’s fine.”

Then he goes back to what he’d done before.  

Draco, incredibly, can hardly feel it; muffled behind a torrent of thoughts, of memories, of fears and reliefs and objections and realizations. He knows that Potter’s scar has hurt him, has seen him rub it in annoyance and in pain during classes and during meals, particularly during fifth year. He also knows, through over-heard snippets of discussions and conversations above his head he wasn’t supposed to have understood, that the Dark Lord was unable to physically lay hands on Potter for a while when they were younger. That, later, the Dark Lord’s touch brought Potter pain. And-

And he realizes that he feels shocked that his touch doesn’t seem to hurt Potter. That, through some childish and hare-brained logic he’d unknowingly cobbled together probably many years ago, he’d thought of Potter’s scar like some detector of evil. It’s a positively half-witted notion, he’s mortified for ever having held it… and yet he feels somehow absolved with his thumb against the pale line.

Then Potter licks, tongue like flame, up along the joining of his thigh and his pelvis. And Draco moans; overwhelmed by thought and sensation, too distracted to brace himself, it tears out of him entirely unmuffled. Carries sound, not only breath.

“Merlin fuck,” Potter breathes against his skin on the inside of his thigh, and does it again.

Draco has not had the time to recover, and moans again. Potter’s tongue starts so far down, half on top of his hastily shoved-aside underwear, so close to what he desperately wants that he aches.

“Potter,” Draco finds himself begging. “Potter, please.”

Shame is left no room to blossom, because Potter immediately moans in response and falls upon Draco’s still covered cock as though he’s the one desperate for relief. Draco gasps at it, clenches down on Potter’s hair, and Potter sucks on his cockhead through the cotton of his pants. He’d thought he’d felt overwhelmed before, but it is nothing, nothing, to-

Suddenly Potter has released him, is standing up on his knees and is wrenching his sweater off.

Draco is barely given a moment to take the sight of him in before Potter has pulled him up into a sitting position and is kissing him. This time he tastes of salt, and Draco realizes it's his own skin, his own precome. That, coupled with the sensation of Potter’s frantically moving hands brushing against his torso as he pulls open the fly of his muggle trousers, makes Draco’s brain move sluggishly enough that he doesn’t register Potter pushing the shirt down his arms until it’s too late.

“No.”

He wrenches himself away, but Potter's move had been a single fluid one, and his shirtsleeves are already bunched up around his wrists.

Potter stands frozen on his knees.

“No?” he asks, sounding confused.  

Draco grits his teeth, tries to shrug his shirt back on but fails because of Potter’s thumbs still hooked into the fabric, not really resisting but still inhibiting. Then, even as Potter seems to realize something of what Draco is doing and starts to pull away, the shirt instead falls off entirely.

Draco goes still, jaw tight.

Potter plainly has not yet realized what has happened. He has pulled back his hands and are holding them with his palms out at his side, even sitting back more fully on his feet to allow Draco some extra space.

I’m a fool, he thinks. Potter had so plainly been occupied by other things – Draco should have merely allowed him to pull his shirt off, kept kissing, and Potter would have seen nothing. He could have wrapped his arms around him, could have fallen back and pushed his arm beneath the pillows, could have put his arms flat against the mattress the way he had them earlier and pulled the sheet into his fists. Potter would have never noticed.

Instead, Draco had panicked and yelled – and now Potter does notice.

His eyes inevitably start roving to find the cause of Draco’s displeasure, even seemingly passes it over once before-

Before his eyes return to it and stick.

Potter merely looks for a long moment, plainly caught off guard by the sight. Then his eyes return to his face, his brow furrowed. Draco braces and…

“What, did you think that I’d forgotten?” Potter asks, and scoffs.

Shame burns through him, not merely the flustered embarrassment that has been a practically ever-present companion since he’d first sent his Patronus off, but a cutting one that leaves a nauseating chill in its wake – lead in his stomach.

“Get off me,” Draco snaps, trying to get his leg out from around Potter.

Potter, as ever, does not listen to him. He tries to get him to hold still, pushes at his limbs to keep him in place.

“Malfoy- Malfoy, Godric, would you just- Wait!”

Potter shoves him flat on his back, pins him down with his palm to the centre of his chest. He doesn’t really apply any pressure, but the gesture of it is enough to make Draco stay down. Struggling against him now would be undignified; fleeing revealing too much of his fear of Potter’s scorn.    

So Draco stays down, makes his face go blank, and stares unflinchingly up at him.

Potter is winded, too, looks disheveled and confused as he looks down at him, clearly braced for him to make another attempt at getting away.

“Wait,” he says again, unnecessarily.

Draco does nothing but: he waits.

Potter’s head begins to turn to the side, slowly, before he actually breaks eye-contact. Draco stares back, unwilling to give him even an inch.

When Potter’s eyes do finally snap away, they go immediately to his left wrist. His arm had fallen to his side when Potter had pushed him down, and it lays like it still, now. The mark not on display, but not hidden, either. Potter lifts his hand from his chest and runs it down his arm (Why must he do it like that? Why can’t he just grab it?) nearly all the way to his hand before he takes hold, rotates.

The mark, in all its hideous glory, on display.

Potter sits back and stares down at it, and Draco can do little but look down at it, too, for all that he usually avoids it. It’s an as ugly of a thing as he remembers, the dark skull made blacker somehow by the pallor of his skin. It’s no longer undulating or moving, the way it had done when its Master had been alive, and the lines of it have gone blurry abnormally fast since his demise – but these are small comforts.

“It’s disgusting,” Draco blurts before he can stop himself, fist closed so tight that muscles and tendons paint shadows upon his skin.

Potter doesn’t answer. Just keeps staring.

Draco flushes and attempts to yank his arm away, but Potter tightens his grip and keeps him in place.

Then his eyes come back to his face.

Draco feels flayed; practically naked, every last shameful bit of him bared. Potter must know everything now, must see everything now. Every betraying little thought, every cruel action; each quavering lick of desire when he had no right to want, each moment of cowardice at the expense of someone else.

And Potter just stares, one hand on his chest and the other on his wrist.

Some dawning realization comes across his face, and Draco has barely braced himself before Potter suddenly smooths his thumb across the mark.

He sucks in a sharp breath. “Stop.”

Potter does, but his thumb stays where it is. And Potter is looking at that now, barely paying the rest of him any attention, and Draco’s body is too frozen in horror to allow him to draw breath enough to protest further. Draco can’t find the words to reply, throat constricted. And Potter’s thumb is still there, right in the middle of it, like Draco’s had been on Potter’s scar but in terrible reverse.

He doesn’t touch it.

He doesn’t touch it.

In the way he doesn’t touch the foxglove growing in the gardens of the Manor, in the way he doesn’t put his hands near his face after dealing with hemlock when brewing potions, in the way he does not shove his hand into a roaring flame he doesn’t touch it. It’s thoughtless, unthinkable.  

He can’t stop staring at it, waiting for whatever horror awaits to befall them.

Carefully, Potter’s thumb begins to move. Back and forth, back and forth – Draco’s windpipe growing increasingly thin, goosebumps spreading across his skin. He wants to tell him to stop, but still can’t.  

Then Potter’ hand suddenly shift, slides back to his elbow even as he bends at the waist and leans forward towards it and-

Potter bows his head, lets his lips part, and drags his tongue from the bottom of the mark to the very top.

“Potter,” it slips out before he can stop himself. His voice comes to him as though the syllables were spoken by another: horrified, scandalized, frightened.

His hand has gone lax.

Potter does it again.

Draco knows that there is no difference in how his skin feels, knows it from the morbid curiosity when he first got it, what feels like a lifetime ago; knows there is no deviation of texture, of temperature, of the firmness of the flesh there. With his eyes closed, he hadn’t been able to tell whether his fingers were touching black or white.

But Potter isn’t touching it with his fingers. His mouth is on it, and Draco has certainly never tried that, disgusted to the point of tasting bile in his throat by the mere sight of it some days. And surely it must taste foul, some lingering darkness seeping out of it as Potter sucks down hard; poison springing from his pores. But Potter gives indication of neither ill taste nor ill effects, just sucks and licks and laves until the black ink is glistening with his saliva.

It's finally wet enough that, when Potter pulls back enough to look down upon it, it makes it look like it’s dancing in the light of the flames.

Draco holds his breath.

Then Potter leans back down and sinks his teeth into his skin. Draco gasps, barely certain if it is because it hurts – because it does – or for some other unnameable reason. He has no will to protest, however, and so doesn’t. And Potter doesn’t stop. It’s too meandering of a process to be called methodical, but Potter moves from one spot to the next in such a way that no piece of skin is left untouched. Draco’s breaths are coming through his nose, now, harshly, but still he doesn’t protest. His free hand seems to have ended up on the back of Potter’s neck at some point, which the man appears to take as some form of tacit agreement – and sucks so hard that his cheeks hollow. Draco’s head spins.

He has no idea how much time has passed when Potter finally sits back and looks down on his work, breathing harshly. Draco stares down at it, too.

The skin has already begun to purple, messing up the lines and distorting the image that lays beneath. He drags his hand, which had fallen away from Potter when he’d sat back up, across the colourful mess, transfixed.

“Potter-” Draco says again, barely more than a breath, not sure if he means to reproach or to thank or to question. He stares up at him, wonder and horror mingled

And Potter stares right back down at him, face flushed and eyes dark and looking mad with what he’s done. Then he leans in so close that his lips brush against Draco’s as he says: “It’s my mark now.”

Draco is not given a chance to reply, because Potter presses their mouths together before he’s barely even gotten the last of his own words out. Even had he not done so, however, Draco is not sure he could have managed anything.

It’s an utterly ridiculous thing to say. It is melodramatic and flippant and self-aggrandizing and presumptuous and just patently false. And yet Draco’s forearm tingles, flushed by all the blood pulled to it. It’s tender and it hurts even when not touched – but it’s nothing like the ache of the Summoning. Nothing like the torrent of pain of having it magically seared into his skin.

The bruises will fade, the ink will remain… but it is Potter’s mark now. This is what Draco will think of, seeing it, he has no doubt; Potter in his lap, kissing his senseless. He almost finds himself laughing hysterically straight into his mouth, just thinking of it – what the Dark Lord would say if he’d know that Draco would one day look upon his mark and get horny.

I’m going to masturbate to it, Draco realizes, with utter certainty, I’m going to sink my teeth into that bloody Mark and I’m going to think of Potter doing the same and I’m going to come.

It is Potter’s mark, because he’s rewritten its meaning.  

For one stupid and wild moment, he loves him for it. Loves him wholly and utterly, and without restraint.  

He almost doesn’t even fear that it shows when Potter pulls away slightly and stares down at him.

Whatever it is he’s looking for, though, he seems to see it, because he leans back in and resumes their kiss.

Potter has laid down fully, now, practically half on top of him as their twined-together bodies lay partly on their sides. The rough denim of his trousers is rubbing against Draco’s bare legs, one of his slotted between Draco’s both, and one arm holds him tight around the waist whilst the other is slowly but steadily replacing the pillow his head had laid upon. His hands are not holding still, though, but rather seems to move across every part of him they can reach. Draco’s dick, which had flagged almost completely during the previous proceedings, has very much renewed its interest.

Suddenly, almost dartingly, Potter’s hand is on his ass, and he squeezes.

A choked-off moan disappears into their kiss, and Draco’s hips stutter into Potter’s, eliminating that last bit of distance. The buttons of Potter’s fly are digging into his flesh to the point of pain – save that Draco abruptly realizes that the hot length his cock is pressed up against is Potter. Potter’s. Potter’s cock.

“Oh,” Potter breathes, as if realizing the same but opposite, and cants his own hips forward in the same moment he pulls him close by the hand on his ass.

Draco feels like he drowns in the rush to his head, senses disappearing in a towering swell that somehow feels red, makes it so the bed seems to fall away beneath him. It’s the start of an uneven rhythm, Potter’s hand foregoing exploring to dig his fingers into his flesh, and Draco doesn’t know what’s going to happen. He could come like this – oh, he could definitely come like this, hard buttons digging into him be damned – but he doesn’t know if he ought to, if it would be too fast or too much or perhaps not enough, because there are other things to be done, is there not, and Potter’s hand is bringing his mind to one, a towering and monumental one which-

Potter suddenly wrenches his mouth away from his.

“I want to suck you,” he says, voice little more than a raspy whisper.

Draco’s not sure if his eyes close or if his vision just disappears, if Potter has stopped talking or if his hearing has just gone. He clenches down so hard on Potter’s arm that little white rings bloom around his fingertips.

Finally, he realizes that Potter is waiting for a reply.

“Okay,” Draco says dumbly.

Then he is suddenly flat on his back again and Potter has disappeared down his body. He doesn’t even have the time to lift his head to look before Potter’s lips have suddenly wrapped around his cock, underwear and all.

A punched-out noise escapes him and his hands fly to Potter’s head, just to hold on.

Even with the cotton separation, it’s so hot, so damp – even Potter’s damn breath is hot and damp as it blooms across the fabric. Potter’s hands are on his hips, holding him in place with a firm grip that is entirely unnecessary – as if he’d try to get away from this. Rather the opposite, he finds himself practically frozen, terrified that any movement will scare Potter off. Not that Potter seems at risk to be startled away; he’s doing that whole-face thing again, pushing his nose and cheek and mouth against him in turn. Distantly, Draco wonders why he would do that, if it feels good, if it isn’t a very odd thing to do, but-. But it feels good to him, the sensation of it, the sight of it. Potter isn’t just-… Potter is enjoying it.

Some part of him unearth from the past wants to gloat about it: Enjoying sucking my cock, Potter?

Except even in his own mind he can’t even make it ring properly with scorn, too stuck in disbelief. It just sounds filthy. And he doesn’t even want to mock him, just want him to finally do it, not just this endless mouthing with his pants as a barrier preventing him from feeling anything fully.

Before he can change his mind, he grates out: “Merlin, fuck, Potter, just vanish them!”

Potter lifts his head to look up at him.

He can taunt you, too, that past-Draco in his head reminds him, plenty scornful. With how you keep begging.

It’s enough that a spike of cold shoots through him – but it’s gone the moment he actually properly takes in the look of Potter’s face. His stomach curls tight with want, then, instead.

“Yeah, okay,” Potter says, and starts feeling across the sheets for a wand. 

He comes up with Draco’s again – where Potter’s own has gone, he doesn’t know – and he lifts it, supporting himself on up the other elbow as he does. And, for some twisted reason, Draco likes seeing his wand in Potter’s hand, likes seeing his fingers wrapped around the wood. It’s dumb and it’s ridiculous and there are a thousand phallic parallels to be drawn, but-

But it's enough that he doesn’t even immediately realize when he’s naked.

When he does, Potter is already staring down at him.

His cock is mere inches from his face, flushed an angry pink that’s really just plain red at the tip. It curves up and to the left, bobbing a bit with how it’s suddenly been freed from its confines. It dabs a shining spot of precome against his stomach just beside the slightly coarser – but still practically transparent – hair that runs up towards his navel.

And Potter is just staring.

I’m naked, Draco thinks stupidly. I’m completely naked.

It’s the first time that has happened with another person since fifth year with Pansy. Starting sixth, he’d even made sure he was always alone in locker rooms and dormitory showers.

And he needs to bloody do something or he’s going to-

Potter’s hand wraps around his base and his mouth closes around his head.

The sound that escapes him bears very little relation to speech.

He thought that he’d gotten the general idea of the thing by the frankly excessive time Potter had spent with his mouth on him earlier, but the lack of fabric somehow makes it into a new thing altogether. Potter’s mouth is wet and soft, so soft, the glide of his tongue some frictionless velvet compared to how it had felt earlier. Even the heat of it feels more, as though he could literally be burned.

Draco’s hands shake atop Potter’s head with overwhelm, with the effort not to hold too tight.

Potter’s lips catch slightly on the un-wetted skin of his shaft as he moves to take him deeper, and when he rises back up again the mere pull of it seems to create suction that drives him mad. Up and down, up and down, each time taking him just the fraction of an inch deeper. Each time, Draco feels like he can’t take it anymore. Not necessarily because he’s going to come – although that threat is looming – but simply because it’s too much. He feels like he’s coming apart at the seams, like his very thoughts are spinning out of control, like he’s going to do something or say something and he’s just going to erupt.  

Then Potter goes down deeper, and moans.

It’s like every sensation suddenly doubles. That looming orgasm suddenly feels imminent and his hands clench down hard on innocent strands of hair.

“Potter,” he gasps, nearly a protest, because it is too much now, it is, “Potter-“

He doesn’t even know what he means, and Potter’s mouth is too full to give any reply, and- and suddenly he takes him even deeper, moaning more, as though he likes it. He’s almost completely inside Potter’s mouth now, just the ring of his forefinger and thumb encircling the base and his lips a small distance from them, a hot tightness beginning to close in around the head of his cock that he thinks might be Potter’s throat.

He can’t keep his hips still any longer, doesn’t know if he wants more or less but can’t stop the twitchy, jerky motions when they overtake him. He shouldn’t move, he knows, because that sort of thing is- is ill-mannered, or whatever the fuck it’s called when you have your dick down someone’s throat, but he can’t just lay there any longer, can’t just take it, and Potter’s hand is clamped down hard enough in his hip to stop most of it anyway.

Except it doesn’t.

It doesn’t stop him, it moves, back so that his fingers are digging into the sides of his buttocks, and the tips are curling upwards as though-

As though to encourage him.

“Potter,” Draco warns on a gasp, because he can’t, he can’t.

Potter moans, again, reverberating through Draco’s cock from how deep he is.

So Draco does move, Potter can bloody curse him for it if he likes, but he can’t stop himself any longer – his hips jut forward, a stuttering motion since he’s still half-trying to keep himself in check, but that little bit of resistance is destroyed as soon as- It’s insane, the smooth glide of it, hotter than anything he’s ever felt, Potter’s tongue against the underside of his cock and the thought of it, the thought, of Potter just letting him- of Potter liking-

He tries to stall the movement of his hips before it’s too late, but Potter makes a noise of protest at his feeble attempt to retreat and won’t let him.  It reverberates through him like some sort of lightning, freezing everything swirling within him in some blinding and terrible clarity: “I’m going to come.”

The words are barely a breath, and Potter makes no move to pull away, so Draco gasps for enough air to say it again.

“Potter, I’m going to come.” It’s like a wave, towering on the horizon, tall enough that he can see it from far off. He’s already trembling with the inevitability of it, time moving strangely, a flush rippling across his body.  “I’m going to-“

He means for him to remove his mouth, to get clear and to finish him off with his hand. What Potter does instead is this: he removes his hand, moves it to join his other on his ass, and takes him so deep into his mouth that his nose pushes into Draco’s pelvis.

Draco can’t not lift his head. He needs to see.

Potter’s back is covered in a thin sheen of sweat, gleaming in the dim light. It makes the light dance exaggeratedly across the muscles of his back as they tense and release, bunch and relax. Potter’s hips are rutting furiously, desperately against the mattress.

He pulls off of him, just barely enough to suck in a gulping breath, a noise slipping out with it that he cannot possibly have been conscious of making – and then he swallows him back down again. Eagerly. Like he’s chasing the sensation of it. Like he wants the feel of Draco filling his mouth, on his tongue, hitting the back of his throat-

Draco comes.

He comes so hard that the only sound out of him is something high and clipped, before the force of it slams into him and seizes his lungs completely. Comes so hard that his body convulses with it, trembles and shakes and burns, limbs numb and out of his ability to consciously control. Comes so hard that his head swims with it, unmoored and swirling and engulfed. And Potter swallows, fingers boring into his flesh so hard it nearly hurts, throat feeling impossibly like it’s pulsing with him, following every beat.

It extends for longer than he’s perhaps ever experienced, and Potter keeps him in his mouth until he begins to soften.

He’s still coming down from the high when Potter comes crawling up the bed and collapses at his side, winded and sweaty. He ends up close enough, by either purpose or intent, that their arms touch ever so slightly when their inhales match up.

Like the tide pulling away, the overwhelm begins to recede. His head begins to clear.

Potter is still breathing heavily beside him, heat emanating off him like a spell. He’s still in his trousers, Draco knows; can feel, his bare calf resting against the rough cloth.

And he knows what should come next.

But it feels absurd. The act completed not even a minute ago fading into memory fast like a dream, tinged with disbelief. It can’t have happened. It can’t. That Draco is naked and spent in Potter’s bed seems a poor argument in the face of the utter impossibility of it.

Yet, nevertheless.

The uncertainty of it all crawls through him like a cold blackness, spoiling any chance of the bone-deep relaxation that had briefly suffused him lingering. But surely it must be an expectation, because that is the way of these things. Especially when it’s not-… This is transactional, and thus Potter must expect some reciprocation. Draco will not be exposing himself unduly by offering it.

As he lays there, frozen by indecision, he feels the clock ticking down. The window of opportunity closing.

He wants to; it would be easier to know that he should if he didn’t.

Do it, he tells himself, just do it.

Drawing in a deep breath, he rolls over to his side and reaches out a hand and

Potter catches him by the wrist.

“No,” he says sharply.

There’s a buzzing in his ears that for some moments drowns out everything else. His cheeks burn to the point of pain for what feels like the thousandth time this night.

“I’m not even allowed to touch you, then?” Draco asks, managing a sneering and contemptuous tone – only to hear it become spoiled by the thread of bitterness running through it.

“No,” Potter replies, sending Draco’s stomach plummeting further.

Then Potter, for some Merlin-forsaken reason, shakes his head hurriedly. “Wait, yes, I mean, no, that’s not it, I-”

“Potter,” Draco demands furiously.

Potter squeezes his eyes shut, mouth a tight and unhappy line.

“Look,” he says. Takes a deep breath and opens his eyes, only to then immediately fix them on the ceiling. “I-… There’s no need.”

“No need?” Draco repeats flatly. “You don’t want to.”

“No,” Potter insists, glaring at him. “Merlin, there’s no need.”

Draco grits his teeth, face flushing at the shame of the refusal.

“Well, I’m offering,” he insists, if nothing else just to have Potter dispose of his vague dismissals. Turn him down properly.

“Fuck, Malfoy,” Potter complains, covering his face in his hands. “I came. There’s no need because I-!“  

Draco blinks.

“What.”

“I came,” Potter repeats, clearly flustered. “Before. Earlier. When you-… Just now.”

“You… came?” Draco repeats, scepticism plain.

The parts visible of Potter’s cheeks are red as he retorts: “Yes, well-… Yeah.”

His eyes are dragged downwards towards Potter’s crotch seemingly on their own. It is obvious to see that he is no longer hard, but his underwear is black and the room dark and there’s only a narrow V visible of them where the fly hangs open. Perhaps the edges of a wet spot might be visible, but it might also just be a shadow.

“Bloody hell, Malfoy,” Potter, who has removed his hands from his face, suddenly says. “Feel it for yourself then, if you don’t believe me.”

And then Draco suddenly finds his hand shoved into Potter’s underwear. It’s wet and sticky and he’s touching Potter’s softened cock.

A rush of unidentifiable emotion sweeps through him, top to bottom, like a full-body flush. Potter looks almost as struck by his own actions as Draco feels, frozen beneath him. He releases his wrist as though burnt.

“Sorry!” he says. “Sorry, I didn’t-“

“It’s fine,” Draco interrupts quickly… but his hand lingers where it is for another moment.

Then he realizes what he’s doing and snatches away, the elastic of Potter’s pants snapping down to mark his hasty retreat. His fingers come away sticky and wet, and Draco has the absurd notion of sticking them in his mouth. Then suddenly there’s a rush of magic, enough of it to make the hair on his arms stand on end, and his hand is clean. They stare at it, both of them, and Draco, unthinkingly, rubs his now-dry fingertips together. Irrefutable evidence – Potter had come. From just sucking him off and rutting against the bed.  

Potter, having risen up slightly on his side, falls back flat on his back.

“Gods,” he swears, squeezing his eyes shut; then, almost to himself: “This is why I shouldn’t be around people.”  

Draco feels numb with compound shock. “Because you end up fucking them?”

“No! What, I-“ Potter seems at a loss for how to finish the sentence, by his appearance equal amounts bewildered and outraged at the suggestion. “No, Godric, I don’t end up fucking them.”

Potter covers his face with his hands, rubs it in what seems like weary annoyance.

“I haven’t even-… I haven’t even done this before, Malfoy.”

There are many plausible options: been with another man, given a blow-job, slept with someone outside the context of gentle kisses and sweetly anticipated courting.

Potter seems to realize the need for clarification: “I haven’t had sex before.”

The statement shoots through him like sparks, cutting through the haze. Because that can’t be. Not Potter, who’s had people throwing themselves at him since fourteen. Not after sixth year, when every Valentine at the school had seemed to bear Potter’s name.

Not, after saving the wizarding world, would he pick Draco.  

“So I think maybe I wouldn’t have-” Potter starts, Draco hearing his flustered tone as from a distance, but it’s enough to capture his attention. The following sentence, also aborted before completion, he hears clearly: “I mean, maybe next time, I won’t-“

Whatever positive emotion had begun to bloom behind the shock quickly curdles. Rather than it feeling special, it feels like a first try. Something disposable, an initial attempt that doesn’t truly matter; Potter is already thinking of next time, of how he can now do it better for whatever unnamed person will follow, before Draco has even left his bed. Saying it to his face.

“Not that you’d have to, of course,” Potter adds hurriedly.

So hurriedly that Draco can’t process the meaning of it in his hurt, can only hear how Potter expects something else of him.

“Have to what?” he asks, sharp.

“You don’t have to do anything,” Potter replies, bristling at his tone even as he flushes deep. “Obviously.”

There is something in the way Potter speaks that is so incongruous with what Draco thought has been going on that it gives him pause. And he realizes, then, that Potter might actually be worried about having disappointed him. With the… sex. With- with him having come too fast.

Only then does he realize what Potter had been saying.

“You want to do this again?” he asks, staggered.

“Like I said,” Potter replies, mouth flat and tone short. “I’m not expecting anything from you.”

Draco doesn’t know what to reply. A breathy I want to wants to slip out from him, but that is too pathetic and revealing to ever truly consider. Except – then what? What’s he supposed to say to agree, to acquiesce, to get it to happen? Potter has offered and-

And now he doesn’t seem to know how to take what’s given.

Half in a panic, he leans down to press his lips against Potter’s, close-mouthed and light, just a peck. It feels a mad thing to do, head cleared from both anger and arousal, and it feels new. Like they have never been this close before, like he’s never felt Potter’s lips against his before.

Then he pulls back, nearly as fast as he’d darted down. And then his panic redoubles, because maybe that was not what Potter had been offering.

They stare at each other.

“I might be… persuaded,” Draco blurts, and he’s not even sure if he’s being humorous, poking fun at his own obvious desire, or if he’s actually attempting to keep some mask of indifference in place.

Potter looks too bowled-over to react.

Then, slowly, the corner of his mouth begins to tug upwards.

“You could, could you?” he says.

“Yes,” Draco replies, feeling wild and terrified with hope. “With effort.”

“Some more heroics, perhaps?” Potter, implausibly, offers with a small grin.

And Draco decides, fuck it.

“Or dinner.”

Potter blinks, clearly surprised. Then he smiles wide.

“Or dinner,” he agrees.