[Solstitial Shorts]: Sunstorm, Harry/Draco, R

[lomonaaeren]

Title: Sunstorm
Pairing: Harry/Draco
Content Notes: Ignores the epilogue, Hogwarts “eighth year,” angst, present tense, magically powerful Harry, brief torture
Rating: R



Draco comes around the corner and immediately stops. He doesn’t know what Harry Potter is doing in this obscure corner of the dungeons, but it probably has something to do with Pansy, who’s standing in front of Potter with a sneer on her face.

Neither of them appears to notice him, Potter because he’s facing the other way and Pansy because she’s concentrating on Potter. Draco promptly darts back around the corner and listens.

“You said we could have it out if I came, Parkinson. I’m here. Let’s have it out.”

Potter’s voice is cold in a way that Draco hasn’t heard it at all this year, the one they’re being allowed to repeat in Hogwarts since the war messed up things for so many of them. Potter seemed happy to go back to being a vapid Gryffindor, putting off studying for exams and playing endless rounds of Quidditch with his friends. Draco shivers now at the difference in his tone.

“You ruined my life.”

Draco rolls his eyes. That’s typical Pansy, starting off over-dramatic and just keeping on her way.

“You ruined it yourself. You didn’t have to make the stupid remark you did. Or go around reminding people that it was you who said it. If you’d just kept silent, no one would even remember it by now.”

“You weren’t supposed to live!”

Potter’s laughter sounds harsh enough to crack rocks. Draco licks his lips. It starts a shiver deep down inside himself, and he’s wise enough to know that it isn’t entirely one of fear.

“Well, I did. And I was content to leave you alone, but you keep sniping at me in class, and you tried to hex me in the back twice last week. And now here’s our chance to clear the air, and you’re wasting it, Parkinson. Are you going to—”

“Suffoco pulmones!”

Draco catches his breath in a gasp. That’s a spell that will completely stop someone’s lungs from working, and it can kill people in as little as thirty seconds if they aren’t already holding their breaths. Despite his resolve to keep out of it, the way he’s been ignoring Pansy’s little comments about Potter, he peers around the corner again.

There’s a—

There’s some kind of shield hanging around Potter, but nothing that Draco has seen before. It’s certainly nothing like Protego. It flares around him like the sun’s corona, except black, and it completely blocks Pansy’s curse, shredding it to nothingness.

Potter stares at her from inside the middle of that corona. Draco trembles. He can see the shield expanding, the outer edges of it reaching out to him, and he knows what it is now, even before it touches him.

Potter’s pure magical power.

Potter is powerful enough to block a curse with his magic alone, powerful enough that just the manifestation of it alone completely destroyed one of the Darkest spells Draco knows. And he’s so powerful that it’s just growing now, expanding into the air like beating wings, rising, cloaking Potter in magic—

The edge of the power reaches out and touches Pansy, and she screams in pain and panic, her hands rising to cover her eyes. Draco can see her trembling. He wonders what the magic is making her feel, or showing her.

Then he has no more time to think about that, because the edge of Potter’s magic reaches him.

There’s no buildup except the sudden awareness that his cock is lengthening, hardening. Draco gasps aloud, shudders as pleasure wracks his body from top to bottom, and comes in his pants.

Potter pauses. Draco thinks he probably felt it, and puts his hand over his mouth. He’s still trembling with his release, with the sudden and glorious cessation of worry in his head. He feels like that even though he’s worried that Potter is going to turn around and catch Draco coming on his magic.

Which sounds so wrong.

But if Potter does know Draco is there, he doesn’t turn around to confront him. He prowls towards Pansy, and she screams again, a short, cut-off sound.

“You’re feeling exactly what I felt during one day in our fifth year,” Potter says in a soft, conversational tone. “I wonder what you would do if I dumped a month on you. Fall to the ground weeping? Go mad?”

Pansy trembles. She won’t take her hands down from around her eyes. Draco wonders, dazedly, if that’s because, whatever she’s seeing at the moment, Potter would be worse.

“I’m not going to kill you,” Potter says. “I can let this go if you promise never to say a word about this or hex me again. But if you try it again, Parkinson, I am going to make you hurt.”

Pansy’s mouth must be trembling. Her words tumble out as sobs. “I pr-I promise! Please, please, please—”

“Fine. Get out of here.”

Luckily, Pansy keeps her hands over her face, and she runs down the corridor in the opposite direction instead of passing Draco. Draco is still curled around himself and trying to decide what in the world he feels. Terror? Contentment because this is the first time he’s got to come because of someone else?

Excitement?

“Malfoy. I should have known.”

Draco licks his lips and looks up at Potter. He doesn’t know what to say, whether to try to defend the wet stain he’s sure has formed on his robes or make threats or what. Not that he would seriously want to threaten Potter after what he just saw.

So he stays silent.

Potter studies him for a long moment. Then he gives a sharp smile that definitely should not excite Draco as much as it does.

“So you liked that?” he asks.

Draco nods. He doesn’t want to lie to Potter, either.

“I wonder why, so much? Surely you were around Voldemort when he was exuding power and you never reacted like that.”

Draco does have to say something now, and not just because Potter is staring at him in expectations of an answer. He shudders at the idea that he might have reacted to Voldemort like that, and clears his throat.

“My father—” Potter’s lip curls, but Draco ignores it and pushes ahead. “He said once that some wizards and witches have an affinity for a particular kind of power. He never mentioned—something like this,” and Draco gestures at his robes and looks up to meet those green eyes that are so much darker than he ever knew, “but he said that those with the right affinity would find being near the power comforting and stabilizing. If it was the wrong affinity, it would—hurt.”

Potter is silent for a second, thinking. Then he says, “Want to know a secret, Malfoy?”

Draco does, desperately. Even as he also suspects that this is pulling him into a net he might never get himself out of. He nods.

“I’ve used that little trick before,” Potter says, watching him closely. “On a reporter in Diagon Alley this summer who wouldn’t shut up about how I was responsible for the war because I didn’t kill Voldemort sooner.” Draco flinches, and is glad that Potter doesn’t stop to mock him for it. “On Goyle, the first night back, because he blamed me for killing Crabbe. Even on one Gryffindor who seemed to think I owed her because her brother died in the Battle of Hogwarts.”

Potter gives a lazy stretch and steps towards him. Draco has never been so turned on in his life.

“And plenty of others,” Potter murmurs, “didn’t get the full treatment, but did touch the edge of my power. Every single one of them reacted with pain.

“Except you.”

Draco stares at Potter, his excitement drowning every other emotion. He shivers. “You—could you always do this?”

“No. Or at least, I don’t think I could. I never tried until after the war. Then, the first time I got angry, things didn’t just explode or shake around me, the way they used to with accidental magic. That happened.” Potter’s magic stretches out around his body again, and yes, it resembles the sun in the heat that it radiates and the way Draco responds to it. “Maybe I got more powerful when the—after I died.”

There’s something else hiding there, something Draco thinks Potter isn’t going to tell him about yet, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except the intense awe inside him.

Potter is confiding in him. Draco knows something about him that he’d be willing to wager not even Weasley and Granger know. And Draco has his complete, positive attention.

It’s everything that Draco’s wanted since first year.

Potter takes a long stride forwards and catches Draco’s wrist, driving him backwards into the wall. Draco is more than happy to go. Besides, Potter’s movements are broad, slow, open. Draco could avoid them if he wanted to.

He just sees absolutely no reason to do so.

Potter smiles briefly, his eyes flickering between Draco’s mouth and his groin. Then he looks directly into Draco’s eyes as he leans in, movements broad again, to kiss him.

Draco groans as he feels a savage warmth flood through the kiss and into him. His father is absolutely right about magical affinities and the way that the right people react to them. Draco doesn’t even think Potter is sending magic through the kiss on purpose. It’s just the way Draco reacts—will react—to any touch from him.

Potter takes a step back, licking his lips, and winks at Draco. “I’ll expect to see you at midnight in my room, Draco.”

That’s right. Potter has a private room because of the amount of Death Eater threats he’s still getting, both for his sake and for the other students’, so they won’t get caught in any spellfire. Draco knows the entrance is behind a painting of a phoenix on the third floor.

He gathered that knowledge intending to use it to play a prank on Potter. Now he’s so glad he has it—and gladder still that he never attempted that prank.

Potter gives him one more heated look over his shoulder and turns away. From one second to the next, he turns into a normal student, just walking along, picking up a bag of books and adjusting the strap over his shoulder. To anyone who sees him coming out of the dungeons, Draco is sure, that’s all he’ll seem to be.

To be the only one who knows the truth sends another searing bolt of heat to Draco’s groin.

Draco goes off to find a private place to take care of that, and daydream more about what’s going to happen tonight.

And in the future, if Potter ever reveals that corona to other people…

It’s all Draco can do to hold himself in check until he gets to a loo.