[one-shots]: Speaking in Tongues, R, 2/2
Jan. 9th, 2010 01:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lomonaaerenSecond part of a two-part one-shot. Don't start reading here.
Harry didn't know what else he could do. He didn't know why he cared.
Maybe because there had been something lost and lonely behind Malfoy's carefully polished carelessness, as if he had taken to building masks not because he wanted to but because other people would expect it. Harry knew all about other people's expectations by now, and he knew what he had looked like when he was spending his life trying to meet them. Stressed. Strained.
As if he had been able to take Hermione's suggestion to forget about the war seriously.
Over the next few days, Malfoy seemed to spend less and less time in the Great Hall and the library and other places where people could see him. Harry saw him ducking past into the classes they shared or turning sharply away when he had a chance of running into Harry, but that was different. There was never more than a fleeting glimpse of the pointy face, not enough time to confirm Harry's impressions that he had changed, grown paler and thinner.
Finally, he saw Malfoy standing near a window on the third floor, staring out towards the Forbidden Forest. With the breeze ruffling his hair, he looked far more like a tragic hero than Harry thought he had ever managed. Malfoy's hand clutched the windowsill, and his face was entirely without color.
Harry caught his breath. Yes, it hadn't been his imagination. Malfoy looked as though he had been polished by wind and rain down to a diamond-shadow of his former self. Beautiful, but hard enough to cut anything it touched. Including himself.
Harry blinked. I don't think this way. Someone else is thinking these thoughts for me.
A chuckle drifted out of the depths of his mind. Harry shook his head furiously to dismiss it and stepped forwards.
Malfoy's head snapped sideways, and he immediately put his hands up as if they could ward Harry off by themselves. "Stay back," he said. His voice was very fragile.
"Why should I?" Harry prowled a little closer. "I think you're hurting yourself. That practically makes it my duty to interfere." He tried to smile, wondering if Malfoy would appreciate a joke. "Hero of the war, remember?"
You are not, said a voice in his thoughts that was deadlier than the voice of the Dark Mark.
"Go away," Malfoy whispered, and ran so fast that Harry knew he wouldn't stand a chance of catching up.
Harry bit his lip and shrugged angrily, turning towards the library, where Hermione had called for an emergency NEWTs revising session.
Why should I care, anyway? I care about too many things that I shouldn't, and that's just one of them.
*
Draco was swimming in poison.
The stab of the snake's fangs into him had begun it. This time, there were no red lines of infection, no burning line that stabbed for his heart and which he knew would kill him when it arrived there. There was nothing but a soft sigh, as if even magical snakes regretted it when they had to kill someone-
Or is it regretting that it put me out of my misery without giving me more pain first?
And two small puncture marks, which Draco ran a finger around twice before he felt any other effects.
His muscles tensed. His throat froze. He stopped breathing, but for some reason, he was still alive. He knew his fate then, as if the snake had spoken it into his ears in Parseltongue suddenly intelligible. He would be left forever in the same place, walled with magic, kept impossible for someone to find, with his mind able to think, his body aware and able to feel, but unable to move.
How soon will I go mad?
Then that image melted, and another intruded. Draco saw himself moving through life until the snake bit him. It was on an autumn evening when he sat in the Malfoy Manor library with a book and a cup of wine and no one else. He knew from the dusty, neglected state of the library that even house-elves didn't often visit this part of the house. Or perhaps he didn't have house-elves anymore.
He hadn't had the chance to catch his breath from that dreadful revelation when the bite came.
And the house around him crumbled gently to leaves, with the books running down the shelves like trickles of blood and the walls melting like fog. Draco sat in a pile of leaves, and blinked at the world until he realized that he recognized these leaves after all. They were walls, not leaves, and he was in St. Mungo's.
"Will he ever wake up, do you think?" asked someone on the other side of him, sounding wistful.
"I don't think so," said a sharper, snippier voice. "With a case this hopeless, and with as many years as have gone by? No, I don't think so. He can look forward to excellent care, at least, until he dies, perhaps a century in the future."
Before Draco could get his voice back and shout that he was here, he was right here, and ask why they couldn't hear him, the walls changed again, and then he was back in Malfoy Manor, in the dusty library, the book on his lap and good wine in his hand.
And, in his head, the certainty that it would happen, over and over again, and he would never know which was the reality.
The third vision of poison came as a vision of Draco walking calmly and steadily through his life until the snake bit him. And then he became possessed of a mad fancy that what he needed most of all was just ahead of him. It would be possible to catch up with it if he just ran a bit faster. He could do this. He could.
Ignore the burning in his legs. Ignore the horrible certainty that his vision would always flit ahead of him, determined not to be caught. Ignore the pitying glances from people around him, who did not share the hunt and could not understand the secret.
If he could simply catch the transmuting creature that danced ahead of him, now gold, now green, now shadowy, now invisible, and eat it, then he would be content.
If he could catch it.
Again the poison within him manifested itself as certainty, this time the certainty that he never would.
And then Draco woke. All those had been the dreams of only one night.
He sat with his head in his hands after the second week of that happening, and decided, slowly and with much pain, that it might be worth seeking out Potter's help again after all.
On his arm, the snake hissed in what sounded like happiness.
*
Malfoy didn't attempt to meet him this time, or even walk up to him and ask him haughtily to spare a moment of his time. Instead, Harry became aware, as he walked towards the Forbidden Forest to visit Cynosure, that he had a shadow, and the shadow was too white and too silent.
Harry altered his path so that he was going towards the lake instead. After a scant moment's hesitation, Malfoy followed him. Part of Harry licked nonexistent lips and sniffed the air with a nose that he didn't have.
Harry sat down beside the water and tossed a stone into it to watch the ripples. That also gave him an excuse not to watch Malfoy as he settled awkwardly to the shore and dug his fingers into the grass. Harry went on staring across the lake as he asked neutrally, "What is it?"
"It's hissing again," Malfoy whispered, as if afraid that spies were lurking behind the empty air to overhear him and recite his secret in loud voices. Harry heard the rustle of cloth that probably meant he'd pulled his sleeve back. "And giving me dreams that make me forget where the world is, sometimes."
Harry sighed and glanced down at the snake. "I told you, I can't understand it. We'll probably have to go to Cynosure after all-" He didn't want to do that. Cynosure had been extraordinarily scornful of the idea that anyone might not be able to understand magical snakes.
To his astonishment, the hissing that met his ears was clearer than it had been. Harry bent in and listened as closely as he could. This time, it was like hearing a language he'd been familiar with as a child but hadn't studied since; he could make out perhaps one word in three.
And since all the words were basically the same, he had no idea if that was any great accomplishment.
". . .need. . .want. . .desire. . .need. . .much. . .abundance. . .pleasure. . .famine. . ."
It was the second pair of ears he had, the ones that didn't grow on the outside of his head, that were hearing those words, Harry was certain of it.
"I can't tell you anything that Cynosure didn't already tell you," Harry murmured. The snake on the Dark Mark had stopped hissing and was staring up at him as if it recognized him, extending a tentative tongue. "But I can tell you that it needs to be pleased. And since it's you, that means that you need to please yourself. Perhaps eating different kinds of food-"
"I've tried that," Malfoy interrupted. His voice cracked, and he sounded, for the first time, as tired and desperate as he looked. "All it makes me do is hunger for the things that I used to enjoy."
"Well, then, get the things you used to enjoy," Harry said. He realized when he looked up that he must have been peering too closely at the snake on Malfoy's arm, because it seemed that he'd spoken in Parseltongue. He repeated himself in English.
Malfoy's expression closed. "That would be too much like an indulgence," he muttered. "I can't afford it."
"Why not?" Harry asked, but Malfoy didn't answer. Harry sighed in frustration. "Well, then, sex."
Malfoy jerked back and stared at him. Even without the savage polishing that his face had received from harsh dreams and unsatisfied yearning, Harry thought he would have looked that proud, that cold, that offended at the suggestion.
That pure.
The force that had haunted Harry since Voldemort's death tensed. Harry jerked forwards, and found that his hand had risen without his permission to cup Malfoy's cheek. Malfoy moved at the same time so that Harry wasn't actually touching him, but his intention was clear.
"What are you doing?" Malfoy's voice was high and shrill.
"You're a virgin, aren't you." Harry didn't make it a question. It wasn't one. His voice was deep and had a trace of a hiss to it, as if it had come from a lipless mouth. The darkness and the cold inside him swirled into a maelstrom, dragging his spirit down. Or was it warmth and light that he descended to embrace, light and warmth that he needed to melt the coldness within him?
There was coldness before him, coldness that he could melt. There was purity before him, purity that he could consume. There was light before him, if broken and shattered light, that he could drown.
Malfoy stared at him for so long Harry thought he might actually endure another attempt to touch him. Then he jerked to his feet and ran, the hissing of his snake trailing back to Harry like the forlorn cry of someone snatched by enemies.
Harry put his hands over his face and sagged forwards. His elbows hit the warm dirt. He stayed there, uncomfortable as the position was, for a long time.
*
Draco understood the look he had seen in Potter's eyes perfectly well. He understood the reaching hand, and the sudden, unaccountable longing to caress him.
It was desire.
Draco was going to leave desire behind. He could not afford to give into it.
He ran, and it seemed that part of him never stopped running. The separate part of him, the one that could hold still, sat down at the table in the Great Hall with his friends and ate lunch and other meals. That part of him went to classes and worried about NEWTs and never heard the hissing.
But the rest of him could hear it.
The world around him melted and ran like blood down his thighs. The snake bit him again and again, and the poison flowed into his muscles and chilled them. Sometimes Draco woke and didn't know that he'd woken. The deep colors of the dungeons, of his bedsheets and curtains, seemed no stranger than the deep colors of his dreams.
He had dreams of being tied up, of being stalked and hunted and consumed, and of being held down and talked to until he simply dissolved in tears. Then Pansy would shake his arm and he would realize he was in the middle of class and Slughorn or McGonagall or Flitwick had asked a question. He would answer, but sometimes he didn't even manage to speak all the words before the dreams would surge back up around him and bear him away.
He was losing his grip on reality, but he had not surrendered. That was his pride. His snake, or the magic left in the Dark Mark, had had to batter him into submission. Perhaps he would die from the bites and the poison he had received, assuming the poison was real, but he had not yielded. He was not weak.
It went on until he could have said that he moved through a sea of poison and spoken the truth. He expected to look down and see his arms and legs covered with the black and green trickles of venom instead of clothing.
He fell through a complicated system of layers into pain and loss. The memories of the war rose around him strongly enough that he sometimes thought he stood in Malfoy Manor again, with the Dark Lord forcing him to use the Cruciatus Curse on someone who didn't deserve it.
Why could you use the Cruciatus Curse? he asked himself, in the voice of an instructor. At least, he thought he was the one asking him the questions. Perhaps it was the snake, assuming it ever left off speaking Parseltongue. That requires a lot of passion: hatred and anger. Not something a Malfoy should possess. You should always be calm, detached.
Sometimes he thought of an even more terrifying question.
Where has all that passion gone, now that you have decided not to feel it anymore?
He opened his eyes one night, and there was another dream with him, a warm and breathing dream this time. Potter crouched over him, his hands on either side of Draco's head, his knees locked around Draco's legs, his eyes piercing his.
The snake began to hiss again.
*
Harry had never known a need like this one. It had grown on him like a disease, or a fungus.
The second set of muscles in his body that followed the first set had swollen with power that Harry didn't think he had put into them. The second voice spoke more and more often in his thoughts, soft and insistent as a shadow. The thoughts in his head slowed and became crystalline structures, solidified by the need for Malfoy.
What the need was, Harry didn't think he knew yet, except that it was a need to consume. Where it came from, he did know, but he very carefully didn't think the name when he intimidated a first-year Slytherin into giving him the password for that week.
He didn't think when he walked into the Slytherin common room and cast a spell that would allow him to locate Malfoy's bedroom. He must have been thinking-something very specific-when he cast the spells that would tie the curtains shut and allow no movement, light, or sound to pass them, as well as the ball of powerful light that would let him see Malfoy in the darkness, but he didn't remember the thinking.
The craving had grown on him until he dared do nothing but acknowledge it. And now here he was, with Malfoy beneath him, the way he had wanted for days and days.
It was like having a whole feast of fruit and pasties and meats and sandwiches available to him after a summer at the Dursleys'.
Malfoy stared up at him after he opened his eyes for endless moments, as if he couldn't believe that Harry would actually dare attempt this. Then he rolled over, reaching for his wand.
"No," Harry breathed, and pinned Malfoy's wrists down with one hand, while he used the other to hold his head in place as he bent to kiss him.
Malfoy stiffened and thrashed, but Harry had positioned himself carefully-during that thinking he didn't remember-and could simply fall forwards, pinning Malfoy's body to the bed with his own weight. He groaned, letting the groan pass into Malfoy's unresponsive mouth. It was so luxurious to use his weight this way, to force someone to do what he wanted.
Malfoy kept his lips shut, but Harry didn't care, because he knew he could force him to respond, too. He nipped along the line of Malfoy's mouth, pausing now and then to rub it with his tongue. Then he licked down to Malfoy's chin and bit it. The satisfaction of doing so made him gasp.
Malfoy cried out, but the silencing spells on the curtains were strong-more powerful ones than Harry knew, but not more powerful than someone else had once known. Harry reared back, quickly enough that Malfoy was caught off-guard and couldn't move, and spelled Malfoy's hands stuck to the sheets. He thought about doing his legs, too, but he wanted to feel some fight left in his conquest.
He leaned forwards again, and Malfoy tried to slam his knees up against Harry's chest. Harry held back his legs with one arm and smiled at him. He didn't know what he looked like, but it was enough to make Malfoy shut his mouth on the scream he'd been about to utter and blink at him.
"Keep still," Harry breathed. "Or don't, and see how good I can make you feel anyway."
He lapped at Malfoy's neck first, admiring how it changed from less salty near the top to saltier near the bottom, where the sweat had collected in the hollow of his throat. The skin changed texture, too. It was smoother where Malfoy's shirt had covered it. But when Harry spelled the shirt to strips that fell off Malfoy's shoulders, that was no longer a problem.
Harry moved out along the line of his shoulders next, biting often enough that Malfoy flinched, but never in any regular pattern, so he didn't have time to get used to it. Once he locked his teeth into the flesh and sucked for a long time, as if he was a vampire drawing nourishment from Malfoy's blood-or someone drawing poison out of a snakebite.
Malfoy shuddered. Harry looked up, hoping to see some sign of his feelings in his eyes, but they were squinted tightly shut in denial.
Harry sucked again on the bite, for the pleasure of feeling skin and muscle meet in his teeth, and then moved on.
Malfoy's chest was covered with silvery scars. Harry thought several of them might have been caused by the Sectumsempra spell, but not all of them. He ran his fingers along them, and Malfoy squirmed and tried to lift his hands over his head, apparently forgetting they were stuck down.
"You're sensitive," Harry said. He had to say it twice, because the first time, his mouth was so full of saliva and the taste of broken skin that the words couldn't get past. "Let's see what happens when I touch these."
And he ran his fingers up and down, sideways and then backwards, now and then treading onto unmarked skin so that Malfoy stood no more chance of getting used to this than he did the bites on his shoulders. Harry flicked his nipples once, but they didn't seem to be as sensitive. It was his scars that made Malfoy's hair spread out on the pillow, his teeth clench in an attempt to hold back the slight sounds that delighted Harry much more than furious cries, and his head turn back and forth as if he thought he could stop pleasure by saying no to it.
Harry tickled the scars down to his stomach, and then leaned back. Malfoy stared up at him, flushed and pale by turns, his eyes alternating between flaring wide and squeezing shut. He looked so conflicted that a thrill of sweetness ran down to Harry's groin, and he touched his erection lightly, with the intention of teasing himself and no more. His enjoyment was going to happen as a consequence of Malfoy's enjoyment, or not at all.
"Do you want this?" he whispered. "Any of this at all? Do you?"
Malfoy shut his eyes again. Harry, breathing hard, feeling sweat dry under his shoulder blades, wondered if he would say no. The thought chilled the sweetness in his gut, and he tried to sit very still and listen, so he wouldn't miss the tiny acknowledgment that might be all Malfoy could offer out of his inner conflict.
". . .Yes."
Harry snapped his head up. Yes, he had been listening, but that didn't mean that his hopes hadn't fooled him. "What?" he demanded.
Malfoy turned back to him with his eyes wide open now, filled with a challenging light of the sort that Harry had missed since the end of the war.
"I said yes, Potter," he snapped. "How much clearer do you want me to be? Or is teasing someone until they consent and then walking away how you get off?"
Harry laughed giddily and reached down to unstick Malfoy's hands. He could hear the snake hissing as he did so, and he understood the Parseltongue perfectly now, the language blending with the words that echoed and rippled through the back of his head from that second voice.
"You repressed it," he whispered, as he dragged Malfoy up his body and into their first mutual kiss. "You kept down your own need so much that it struggled to find a way to come out, and the snake was the only way it could do so. Maybe that was the most magical part of you." He grinned at Malfoy, and waited for him to react to the insult as he had never done reliably since the beginning of this school year.
*
Draco surged forwards, and knocked Potter to the bed. Potter went laughing, damn him, his clothes flapping around him, his hands sprawling out as if Draco might do anything he liked with him and welcome.
Draco experienced a moment's intense regret that he wouldn't get to tie down an unwilling victim the way Potter had been able to do with him.
Then he put the thought out of his mind and concentrated on what he did have: a truly alert mind for the first time in what felt like months; a hunger growling unsatisfied in his belly that was not for food; the contented hiss of the snake on his arm.
And a warm and willing body in front of him to do whatever he liked with.
He Vanished Potter's shirt, tossed his wand aside, and returned favor for favor, biting Potter on the shoulder so hard he tasted blood. Potter cried out, and his fingers rose falteringly, tangling in Draco's hair as if he didn't know whether to push him aside or hold him close. Draco laughed smugly and shoved a knee between his, rocking cock to cock for a moment in a tantalizing promise.
Potter tried to roll himself so he was on top, but Draco distracted him by starting to pull off his trousers. Then Potter had to pull off Draco's trousers, and they tangled arms and hands and slammed their heads into each other's. Draco's mouth tasted of copper for a moment and his vision swam sickeningly, but even that didn't matter, because the desire was breaking through his skin like flames coming from the inside.
At last the trousers and the pants were gone, and they were rolling and scrabbling over each other again, biting and scratching and pinching, in an attempt to find a position that would please them both. Draco won when he bit Potter's shoulder again, and, keeping his teeth clenched in place, pushed their cocks together and began to wank them both at once.
Their skin slid against each other's, slippery and hot. Draco could feel the heat building between their bodies, in fact, a humid glow that made him shudder in revulsion and delight both at once when he thought about how long he would need to shower afterwards.
I am being tainted by a half-blood's spunk. I'm giving him mine.
Draco laughed, but never moved his teeth, chewing and sinking them further and deeper as he focused his mind on sensation.
Their two cocks together shoved against his fingers, which felt barely strong enough to contain them, even with the help of Potter's hand that had somehow wriggled down to help. The squeaking and the gasping and the grumbling of the bed's old springs as they rocked on top of it wove into a terribly twisted mesh in Draco's ears, not at all the sort of melody that he would have wished to hear the first time he heard sex-but now that he had it, he wouldn't trade it for delicate sighs or refined grunts. The taste of blood in his mouth grew stronger and stronger, and he swirled his tongue in the limited space he had to get more of it. The smell of Potter's skin-common skin, skin marked with dirt and the marks of physical labor-grew worse and worse as they struggled on, strong and sour and sharp and present in a way that no other scent Draco had smelled had ever been. He could see very little except that sometimes he caught a glimpse of Potter's tossing hair and naked chest-not marked nearly enough-and crazed eyes.
Potter came first, spurting into Draco's fist and between his fingers, making his grip suddenly hard to keep. He was crying out his pleasure, and the mixture of sounds changed yet again. Draco felt Potter's free hand claw at his hip, and the sting of new scratches was acute and delicious. The smell and the taste did not change, but Draco saw the way Potter's lips parted and his eyelashes fluttered and his head dropped back as if he was as spent of bodily strength as he was of semen.
Draco rolled to the side and began to rub against Potter's hip, using his body with fine disdain, to show that he no longer felt compelled to keep touching Potter once Potter wasn't participating anymore. A dirty thrill surged through him, because Potter was passive, head turned towards him, mouth gasping, tongue drooping uselessly, and the taste of blood still blossomed in Draco's mouth, and his teeth ached from being kept clenched-
He came.
Pleasure shook him, made him arch painfully and grind his cock into Potter's hipbone harder than he should have. His orgasm welled up from so deep in his belly that Draco thought he could feel his muscles shifting to make room for it. It wrenched a stupid cry from his throat and made him tear a line across Potter's face with his nails, if the shredded skin he felt under them was any indication.
But it also allowed him to understand the hissing of his snake completely, for one moment.
To share the darkness.
Draco opened his eyes and turned his head, even though he wanted to simply lie there and pant in the aftermath of his climax.
He was just in time to see a dark film gleaming on Potter's face, connected by a thin, wavering line of black to his left arm. The snake had reared up to meet it, and it seemed as though the surface of Draco's skin had parted like water, letting its forked tongue meet the line. Draco could have sworn that he saw a shadow leave the snake and trail up along the line like a hooked fish.
Then the blackness vanished, and so did the shadow of the snake. Draco blinked and looked back at his arm. The Dark Mark was still there, but less vivid than it had been.
And Potter lay blinking and looking at him along the corner of his pillow, with something like sanity in his eyes. The scratch Draco had given him extended up over the bridge of his nose and onto his cheek.
Draco opened his mouth and spoke his first uncalculated words for almost a year. "I enjoyed that."
*
Harry swallowed and nodded in return, feeling too worn out to speak. His thoughts, though, were brilliant and feverish and revolved around a hole carved in the center of his mind, reciting the same thing over and over in a few different words.
Will it ever be that wonderful again?
A hand shoved against his shoulder. Harry had the impression that it wasn't the first time Malfoy had tried to distract him from his thoughts. He blinked and looked along the pillow again-
To confront a familiar sneer.
"Get out of here, Potter."
Harry recoiled, more stung by the words than by the scratches and bites that Malfoy had given him. (The one on his shoulder was still stinging, absurdly painful for a bite so small). He stared into Malfoy's eyes, looking for some echo of the fever that consumed him.
Malfoy simply reinforced the sneer and the push, this time almost sending Harry flying into the tied and spelled curtains. "You heard me. Why should I share my most private place with you?"
Harry bit back an angry comment. Already the memories were changing in his head, losing some of their warmth and fading like pressed flowers. The emotions still revolved, though, and now the hole in his mind was filled with uncertainty.
I wanted-but I forced him into it-but he enjoyed it and took control-but it was wrong-
Did I only do this because of the pieces of Voldemort that I carry in my head? Does he know that, and is that the reason he's kicking me out?
Well, fuck him, anyway. Why should I want to stay?
Harry gathered up his clothes, those he could find, looking at Malfoy from the corner of his eye. Malfoy made no attempt to help, or dress. He lounged against his pillows as if he had always been here and Harry had simply intruded in on him being naked and stared at Harry coldly.
This time, Harry thought, gaining back a little heart, it wasn't the coldness that had made Malfoy determined to ignore what Cynosure had said. It was the coldness Harry expected, the arctic flash of contempt when he made a mistake, the nasty smile that would come before an arrogant remark.
And Malfoy's Dark Mark was a little faded.
Just, Harry thought as he gave up on finding his shirt and Transfigured a pillow into a makeshift cloak that he could drape around himself until he reached Gryffindor Tower, like part of Voldemort is gone. Not all of it, but some. The second voice had been a murmur before; now it was a whisper in the back of his head.
It made Harry wonder if they might come together again after all. Their darkness had been reduced, but not banished. Malfoy might want another go, if only to ease the burden he carried.
Will that be the only reason it happens again, if it happens?
He shook his head and released the spells on the curtains, having to mutter multiple Finites. He was sure there were more specific countercharms, but he couldn't remember them. God knew he didn't even remember much about casting these spells.
He slid to the edge of the bed and shivered. It felt cold, and he didn't think that was only because he didn't have a real shirt.
Malfoy sighed impatiently behind him.
Harry clenched his fists and looked over his shoulder. Malfoy lifted an eyebrow at him. "Yes, Potter?" he asked. He pretended to look around at the blankets. "Did you leave something here, besides your virginity?" He smiled at Harry under lowered eyelids this time.
I'm the one who risks my courage by asking. No one else can do it. Malfoy can't.
Harry snatched one question clear of the somersaulting confusion in his head. "Can I come again?"
"That will depend on if you wank, won't it?" Malfoy answered promptly.
Harry rolled his eyes. He should have known that he would be deliberately misunderstood. "Forget it," he said, and started to roll off the bed.
"Wait."
Harry paused and savored the sweet unexpectedness of that question for long moments before he glanced over his shoulder. He tried to make his expression as cool as Malfoy's, though he had the impression that he didn't succeed. "Yes? Was there something?"
Malfoy stared at him. This time, Harry saw his eyes flicker and change before he averted them, and that was enough to satisfy him. At least someone else doesn't know what he should really want, either.
"The answer to your question is perhaps," Malfoy said, and then snapped the curtains about his bed shut.
As Harry made his way out of the Slytherin dorms, sneaking across the common room under a Disillusionment Charm, he heard the muted voice chuckling and murmuring something about pleasure. But Harry ignored it, because he tasted something at once deeper and lighter than that.
Hope.
Which mingled marvelously with the remnant of broken skin on his tongue.
The End.
Harry didn't know what else he could do. He didn't know why he cared.
Maybe because there had been something lost and lonely behind Malfoy's carefully polished carelessness, as if he had taken to building masks not because he wanted to but because other people would expect it. Harry knew all about other people's expectations by now, and he knew what he had looked like when he was spending his life trying to meet them. Stressed. Strained.
As if he had been able to take Hermione's suggestion to forget about the war seriously.
Over the next few days, Malfoy seemed to spend less and less time in the Great Hall and the library and other places where people could see him. Harry saw him ducking past into the classes they shared or turning sharply away when he had a chance of running into Harry, but that was different. There was never more than a fleeting glimpse of the pointy face, not enough time to confirm Harry's impressions that he had changed, grown paler and thinner.
Finally, he saw Malfoy standing near a window on the third floor, staring out towards the Forbidden Forest. With the breeze ruffling his hair, he looked far more like a tragic hero than Harry thought he had ever managed. Malfoy's hand clutched the windowsill, and his face was entirely without color.
Harry caught his breath. Yes, it hadn't been his imagination. Malfoy looked as though he had been polished by wind and rain down to a diamond-shadow of his former self. Beautiful, but hard enough to cut anything it touched. Including himself.
Harry blinked. I don't think this way. Someone else is thinking these thoughts for me.
A chuckle drifted out of the depths of his mind. Harry shook his head furiously to dismiss it and stepped forwards.
Malfoy's head snapped sideways, and he immediately put his hands up as if they could ward Harry off by themselves. "Stay back," he said. His voice was very fragile.
"Why should I?" Harry prowled a little closer. "I think you're hurting yourself. That practically makes it my duty to interfere." He tried to smile, wondering if Malfoy would appreciate a joke. "Hero of the war, remember?"
You are not, said a voice in his thoughts that was deadlier than the voice of the Dark Mark.
"Go away," Malfoy whispered, and ran so fast that Harry knew he wouldn't stand a chance of catching up.
Harry bit his lip and shrugged angrily, turning towards the library, where Hermione had called for an emergency NEWTs revising session.
Why should I care, anyway? I care about too many things that I shouldn't, and that's just one of them.
*
Draco was swimming in poison.
The stab of the snake's fangs into him had begun it. This time, there were no red lines of infection, no burning line that stabbed for his heart and which he knew would kill him when it arrived there. There was nothing but a soft sigh, as if even magical snakes regretted it when they had to kill someone-
Or is it regretting that it put me out of my misery without giving me more pain first?
And two small puncture marks, which Draco ran a finger around twice before he felt any other effects.
His muscles tensed. His throat froze. He stopped breathing, but for some reason, he was still alive. He knew his fate then, as if the snake had spoken it into his ears in Parseltongue suddenly intelligible. He would be left forever in the same place, walled with magic, kept impossible for someone to find, with his mind able to think, his body aware and able to feel, but unable to move.
How soon will I go mad?
Then that image melted, and another intruded. Draco saw himself moving through life until the snake bit him. It was on an autumn evening when he sat in the Malfoy Manor library with a book and a cup of wine and no one else. He knew from the dusty, neglected state of the library that even house-elves didn't often visit this part of the house. Or perhaps he didn't have house-elves anymore.
He hadn't had the chance to catch his breath from that dreadful revelation when the bite came.
And the house around him crumbled gently to leaves, with the books running down the shelves like trickles of blood and the walls melting like fog. Draco sat in a pile of leaves, and blinked at the world until he realized that he recognized these leaves after all. They were walls, not leaves, and he was in St. Mungo's.
"Will he ever wake up, do you think?" asked someone on the other side of him, sounding wistful.
"I don't think so," said a sharper, snippier voice. "With a case this hopeless, and with as many years as have gone by? No, I don't think so. He can look forward to excellent care, at least, until he dies, perhaps a century in the future."
Before Draco could get his voice back and shout that he was here, he was right here, and ask why they couldn't hear him, the walls changed again, and then he was back in Malfoy Manor, in the dusty library, the book on his lap and good wine in his hand.
And, in his head, the certainty that it would happen, over and over again, and he would never know which was the reality.
The third vision of poison came as a vision of Draco walking calmly and steadily through his life until the snake bit him. And then he became possessed of a mad fancy that what he needed most of all was just ahead of him. It would be possible to catch up with it if he just ran a bit faster. He could do this. He could.
Ignore the burning in his legs. Ignore the horrible certainty that his vision would always flit ahead of him, determined not to be caught. Ignore the pitying glances from people around him, who did not share the hunt and could not understand the secret.
If he could simply catch the transmuting creature that danced ahead of him, now gold, now green, now shadowy, now invisible, and eat it, then he would be content.
If he could catch it.
Again the poison within him manifested itself as certainty, this time the certainty that he never would.
And then Draco woke. All those had been the dreams of only one night.
He sat with his head in his hands after the second week of that happening, and decided, slowly and with much pain, that it might be worth seeking out Potter's help again after all.
On his arm, the snake hissed in what sounded like happiness.
*
Malfoy didn't attempt to meet him this time, or even walk up to him and ask him haughtily to spare a moment of his time. Instead, Harry became aware, as he walked towards the Forbidden Forest to visit Cynosure, that he had a shadow, and the shadow was too white and too silent.
Harry altered his path so that he was going towards the lake instead. After a scant moment's hesitation, Malfoy followed him. Part of Harry licked nonexistent lips and sniffed the air with a nose that he didn't have.
Harry sat down beside the water and tossed a stone into it to watch the ripples. That also gave him an excuse not to watch Malfoy as he settled awkwardly to the shore and dug his fingers into the grass. Harry went on staring across the lake as he asked neutrally, "What is it?"
"It's hissing again," Malfoy whispered, as if afraid that spies were lurking behind the empty air to overhear him and recite his secret in loud voices. Harry heard the rustle of cloth that probably meant he'd pulled his sleeve back. "And giving me dreams that make me forget where the world is, sometimes."
Harry sighed and glanced down at the snake. "I told you, I can't understand it. We'll probably have to go to Cynosure after all-" He didn't want to do that. Cynosure had been extraordinarily scornful of the idea that anyone might not be able to understand magical snakes.
To his astonishment, the hissing that met his ears was clearer than it had been. Harry bent in and listened as closely as he could. This time, it was like hearing a language he'd been familiar with as a child but hadn't studied since; he could make out perhaps one word in three.
And since all the words were basically the same, he had no idea if that was any great accomplishment.
". . .need. . .want. . .desire. . .need. . .much. . .abundance. . .pleasure. . .famine. . ."
It was the second pair of ears he had, the ones that didn't grow on the outside of his head, that were hearing those words, Harry was certain of it.
"I can't tell you anything that Cynosure didn't already tell you," Harry murmured. The snake on the Dark Mark had stopped hissing and was staring up at him as if it recognized him, extending a tentative tongue. "But I can tell you that it needs to be pleased. And since it's you, that means that you need to please yourself. Perhaps eating different kinds of food-"
"I've tried that," Malfoy interrupted. His voice cracked, and he sounded, for the first time, as tired and desperate as he looked. "All it makes me do is hunger for the things that I used to enjoy."
"Well, then, get the things you used to enjoy," Harry said. He realized when he looked up that he must have been peering too closely at the snake on Malfoy's arm, because it seemed that he'd spoken in Parseltongue. He repeated himself in English.
Malfoy's expression closed. "That would be too much like an indulgence," he muttered. "I can't afford it."
"Why not?" Harry asked, but Malfoy didn't answer. Harry sighed in frustration. "Well, then, sex."
Malfoy jerked back and stared at him. Even without the savage polishing that his face had received from harsh dreams and unsatisfied yearning, Harry thought he would have looked that proud, that cold, that offended at the suggestion.
That pure.
The force that had haunted Harry since Voldemort's death tensed. Harry jerked forwards, and found that his hand had risen without his permission to cup Malfoy's cheek. Malfoy moved at the same time so that Harry wasn't actually touching him, but his intention was clear.
"What are you doing?" Malfoy's voice was high and shrill.
"You're a virgin, aren't you." Harry didn't make it a question. It wasn't one. His voice was deep and had a trace of a hiss to it, as if it had come from a lipless mouth. The darkness and the cold inside him swirled into a maelstrom, dragging his spirit down. Or was it warmth and light that he descended to embrace, light and warmth that he needed to melt the coldness within him?
There was coldness before him, coldness that he could melt. There was purity before him, purity that he could consume. There was light before him, if broken and shattered light, that he could drown.
Malfoy stared at him for so long Harry thought he might actually endure another attempt to touch him. Then he jerked to his feet and ran, the hissing of his snake trailing back to Harry like the forlorn cry of someone snatched by enemies.
Harry put his hands over his face and sagged forwards. His elbows hit the warm dirt. He stayed there, uncomfortable as the position was, for a long time.
*
Draco understood the look he had seen in Potter's eyes perfectly well. He understood the reaching hand, and the sudden, unaccountable longing to caress him.
It was desire.
Draco was going to leave desire behind. He could not afford to give into it.
He ran, and it seemed that part of him never stopped running. The separate part of him, the one that could hold still, sat down at the table in the Great Hall with his friends and ate lunch and other meals. That part of him went to classes and worried about NEWTs and never heard the hissing.
But the rest of him could hear it.
The world around him melted and ran like blood down his thighs. The snake bit him again and again, and the poison flowed into his muscles and chilled them. Sometimes Draco woke and didn't know that he'd woken. The deep colors of the dungeons, of his bedsheets and curtains, seemed no stranger than the deep colors of his dreams.
He had dreams of being tied up, of being stalked and hunted and consumed, and of being held down and talked to until he simply dissolved in tears. Then Pansy would shake his arm and he would realize he was in the middle of class and Slughorn or McGonagall or Flitwick had asked a question. He would answer, but sometimes he didn't even manage to speak all the words before the dreams would surge back up around him and bear him away.
He was losing his grip on reality, but he had not surrendered. That was his pride. His snake, or the magic left in the Dark Mark, had had to batter him into submission. Perhaps he would die from the bites and the poison he had received, assuming the poison was real, but he had not yielded. He was not weak.
It went on until he could have said that he moved through a sea of poison and spoken the truth. He expected to look down and see his arms and legs covered with the black and green trickles of venom instead of clothing.
He fell through a complicated system of layers into pain and loss. The memories of the war rose around him strongly enough that he sometimes thought he stood in Malfoy Manor again, with the Dark Lord forcing him to use the Cruciatus Curse on someone who didn't deserve it.
Why could you use the Cruciatus Curse? he asked himself, in the voice of an instructor. At least, he thought he was the one asking him the questions. Perhaps it was the snake, assuming it ever left off speaking Parseltongue. That requires a lot of passion: hatred and anger. Not something a Malfoy should possess. You should always be calm, detached.
Sometimes he thought of an even more terrifying question.
Where has all that passion gone, now that you have decided not to feel it anymore?
He opened his eyes one night, and there was another dream with him, a warm and breathing dream this time. Potter crouched over him, his hands on either side of Draco's head, his knees locked around Draco's legs, his eyes piercing his.
The snake began to hiss again.
*
Harry had never known a need like this one. It had grown on him like a disease, or a fungus.
The second set of muscles in his body that followed the first set had swollen with power that Harry didn't think he had put into them. The second voice spoke more and more often in his thoughts, soft and insistent as a shadow. The thoughts in his head slowed and became crystalline structures, solidified by the need for Malfoy.
What the need was, Harry didn't think he knew yet, except that it was a need to consume. Where it came from, he did know, but he very carefully didn't think the name when he intimidated a first-year Slytherin into giving him the password for that week.
He didn't think when he walked into the Slytherin common room and cast a spell that would allow him to locate Malfoy's bedroom. He must have been thinking-something very specific-when he cast the spells that would tie the curtains shut and allow no movement, light, or sound to pass them, as well as the ball of powerful light that would let him see Malfoy in the darkness, but he didn't remember the thinking.
The craving had grown on him until he dared do nothing but acknowledge it. And now here he was, with Malfoy beneath him, the way he had wanted for days and days.
It was like having a whole feast of fruit and pasties and meats and sandwiches available to him after a summer at the Dursleys'.
Malfoy stared up at him after he opened his eyes for endless moments, as if he couldn't believe that Harry would actually dare attempt this. Then he rolled over, reaching for his wand.
"No," Harry breathed, and pinned Malfoy's wrists down with one hand, while he used the other to hold his head in place as he bent to kiss him.
Malfoy stiffened and thrashed, but Harry had positioned himself carefully-during that thinking he didn't remember-and could simply fall forwards, pinning Malfoy's body to the bed with his own weight. He groaned, letting the groan pass into Malfoy's unresponsive mouth. It was so luxurious to use his weight this way, to force someone to do what he wanted.
Malfoy kept his lips shut, but Harry didn't care, because he knew he could force him to respond, too. He nipped along the line of Malfoy's mouth, pausing now and then to rub it with his tongue. Then he licked down to Malfoy's chin and bit it. The satisfaction of doing so made him gasp.
Malfoy cried out, but the silencing spells on the curtains were strong-more powerful ones than Harry knew, but not more powerful than someone else had once known. Harry reared back, quickly enough that Malfoy was caught off-guard and couldn't move, and spelled Malfoy's hands stuck to the sheets. He thought about doing his legs, too, but he wanted to feel some fight left in his conquest.
He leaned forwards again, and Malfoy tried to slam his knees up against Harry's chest. Harry held back his legs with one arm and smiled at him. He didn't know what he looked like, but it was enough to make Malfoy shut his mouth on the scream he'd been about to utter and blink at him.
"Keep still," Harry breathed. "Or don't, and see how good I can make you feel anyway."
He lapped at Malfoy's neck first, admiring how it changed from less salty near the top to saltier near the bottom, where the sweat had collected in the hollow of his throat. The skin changed texture, too. It was smoother where Malfoy's shirt had covered it. But when Harry spelled the shirt to strips that fell off Malfoy's shoulders, that was no longer a problem.
Harry moved out along the line of his shoulders next, biting often enough that Malfoy flinched, but never in any regular pattern, so he didn't have time to get used to it. Once he locked his teeth into the flesh and sucked for a long time, as if he was a vampire drawing nourishment from Malfoy's blood-or someone drawing poison out of a snakebite.
Malfoy shuddered. Harry looked up, hoping to see some sign of his feelings in his eyes, but they were squinted tightly shut in denial.
Harry sucked again on the bite, for the pleasure of feeling skin and muscle meet in his teeth, and then moved on.
Malfoy's chest was covered with silvery scars. Harry thought several of them might have been caused by the Sectumsempra spell, but not all of them. He ran his fingers along them, and Malfoy squirmed and tried to lift his hands over his head, apparently forgetting they were stuck down.
"You're sensitive," Harry said. He had to say it twice, because the first time, his mouth was so full of saliva and the taste of broken skin that the words couldn't get past. "Let's see what happens when I touch these."
And he ran his fingers up and down, sideways and then backwards, now and then treading onto unmarked skin so that Malfoy stood no more chance of getting used to this than he did the bites on his shoulders. Harry flicked his nipples once, but they didn't seem to be as sensitive. It was his scars that made Malfoy's hair spread out on the pillow, his teeth clench in an attempt to hold back the slight sounds that delighted Harry much more than furious cries, and his head turn back and forth as if he thought he could stop pleasure by saying no to it.
Harry tickled the scars down to his stomach, and then leaned back. Malfoy stared up at him, flushed and pale by turns, his eyes alternating between flaring wide and squeezing shut. He looked so conflicted that a thrill of sweetness ran down to Harry's groin, and he touched his erection lightly, with the intention of teasing himself and no more. His enjoyment was going to happen as a consequence of Malfoy's enjoyment, or not at all.
"Do you want this?" he whispered. "Any of this at all? Do you?"
Malfoy shut his eyes again. Harry, breathing hard, feeling sweat dry under his shoulder blades, wondered if he would say no. The thought chilled the sweetness in his gut, and he tried to sit very still and listen, so he wouldn't miss the tiny acknowledgment that might be all Malfoy could offer out of his inner conflict.
". . .Yes."
Harry snapped his head up. Yes, he had been listening, but that didn't mean that his hopes hadn't fooled him. "What?" he demanded.
Malfoy turned back to him with his eyes wide open now, filled with a challenging light of the sort that Harry had missed since the end of the war.
"I said yes, Potter," he snapped. "How much clearer do you want me to be? Or is teasing someone until they consent and then walking away how you get off?"
Harry laughed giddily and reached down to unstick Malfoy's hands. He could hear the snake hissing as he did so, and he understood the Parseltongue perfectly now, the language blending with the words that echoed and rippled through the back of his head from that second voice.
"You repressed it," he whispered, as he dragged Malfoy up his body and into their first mutual kiss. "You kept down your own need so much that it struggled to find a way to come out, and the snake was the only way it could do so. Maybe that was the most magical part of you." He grinned at Malfoy, and waited for him to react to the insult as he had never done reliably since the beginning of this school year.
*
Draco surged forwards, and knocked Potter to the bed. Potter went laughing, damn him, his clothes flapping around him, his hands sprawling out as if Draco might do anything he liked with him and welcome.
Draco experienced a moment's intense regret that he wouldn't get to tie down an unwilling victim the way Potter had been able to do with him.
Then he put the thought out of his mind and concentrated on what he did have: a truly alert mind for the first time in what felt like months; a hunger growling unsatisfied in his belly that was not for food; the contented hiss of the snake on his arm.
And a warm and willing body in front of him to do whatever he liked with.
He Vanished Potter's shirt, tossed his wand aside, and returned favor for favor, biting Potter on the shoulder so hard he tasted blood. Potter cried out, and his fingers rose falteringly, tangling in Draco's hair as if he didn't know whether to push him aside or hold him close. Draco laughed smugly and shoved a knee between his, rocking cock to cock for a moment in a tantalizing promise.
Potter tried to roll himself so he was on top, but Draco distracted him by starting to pull off his trousers. Then Potter had to pull off Draco's trousers, and they tangled arms and hands and slammed their heads into each other's. Draco's mouth tasted of copper for a moment and his vision swam sickeningly, but even that didn't matter, because the desire was breaking through his skin like flames coming from the inside.
At last the trousers and the pants were gone, and they were rolling and scrabbling over each other again, biting and scratching and pinching, in an attempt to find a position that would please them both. Draco won when he bit Potter's shoulder again, and, keeping his teeth clenched in place, pushed their cocks together and began to wank them both at once.
Their skin slid against each other's, slippery and hot. Draco could feel the heat building between their bodies, in fact, a humid glow that made him shudder in revulsion and delight both at once when he thought about how long he would need to shower afterwards.
I am being tainted by a half-blood's spunk. I'm giving him mine.
Draco laughed, but never moved his teeth, chewing and sinking them further and deeper as he focused his mind on sensation.
Their two cocks together shoved against his fingers, which felt barely strong enough to contain them, even with the help of Potter's hand that had somehow wriggled down to help. The squeaking and the gasping and the grumbling of the bed's old springs as they rocked on top of it wove into a terribly twisted mesh in Draco's ears, not at all the sort of melody that he would have wished to hear the first time he heard sex-but now that he had it, he wouldn't trade it for delicate sighs or refined grunts. The taste of blood in his mouth grew stronger and stronger, and he swirled his tongue in the limited space he had to get more of it. The smell of Potter's skin-common skin, skin marked with dirt and the marks of physical labor-grew worse and worse as they struggled on, strong and sour and sharp and present in a way that no other scent Draco had smelled had ever been. He could see very little except that sometimes he caught a glimpse of Potter's tossing hair and naked chest-not marked nearly enough-and crazed eyes.
Potter came first, spurting into Draco's fist and between his fingers, making his grip suddenly hard to keep. He was crying out his pleasure, and the mixture of sounds changed yet again. Draco felt Potter's free hand claw at his hip, and the sting of new scratches was acute and delicious. The smell and the taste did not change, but Draco saw the way Potter's lips parted and his eyelashes fluttered and his head dropped back as if he was as spent of bodily strength as he was of semen.
Draco rolled to the side and began to rub against Potter's hip, using his body with fine disdain, to show that he no longer felt compelled to keep touching Potter once Potter wasn't participating anymore. A dirty thrill surged through him, because Potter was passive, head turned towards him, mouth gasping, tongue drooping uselessly, and the taste of blood still blossomed in Draco's mouth, and his teeth ached from being kept clenched-
He came.
Pleasure shook him, made him arch painfully and grind his cock into Potter's hipbone harder than he should have. His orgasm welled up from so deep in his belly that Draco thought he could feel his muscles shifting to make room for it. It wrenched a stupid cry from his throat and made him tear a line across Potter's face with his nails, if the shredded skin he felt under them was any indication.
But it also allowed him to understand the hissing of his snake completely, for one moment.
To share the darkness.
Draco opened his eyes and turned his head, even though he wanted to simply lie there and pant in the aftermath of his climax.
He was just in time to see a dark film gleaming on Potter's face, connected by a thin, wavering line of black to his left arm. The snake had reared up to meet it, and it seemed as though the surface of Draco's skin had parted like water, letting its forked tongue meet the line. Draco could have sworn that he saw a shadow leave the snake and trail up along the line like a hooked fish.
Then the blackness vanished, and so did the shadow of the snake. Draco blinked and looked back at his arm. The Dark Mark was still there, but less vivid than it had been.
And Potter lay blinking and looking at him along the corner of his pillow, with something like sanity in his eyes. The scratch Draco had given him extended up over the bridge of his nose and onto his cheek.
Draco opened his mouth and spoke his first uncalculated words for almost a year. "I enjoyed that."
*
Harry swallowed and nodded in return, feeling too worn out to speak. His thoughts, though, were brilliant and feverish and revolved around a hole carved in the center of his mind, reciting the same thing over and over in a few different words.
Will it ever be that wonderful again?
A hand shoved against his shoulder. Harry had the impression that it wasn't the first time Malfoy had tried to distract him from his thoughts. He blinked and looked along the pillow again-
To confront a familiar sneer.
"Get out of here, Potter."
Harry recoiled, more stung by the words than by the scratches and bites that Malfoy had given him. (The one on his shoulder was still stinging, absurdly painful for a bite so small). He stared into Malfoy's eyes, looking for some echo of the fever that consumed him.
Malfoy simply reinforced the sneer and the push, this time almost sending Harry flying into the tied and spelled curtains. "You heard me. Why should I share my most private place with you?"
Harry bit back an angry comment. Already the memories were changing in his head, losing some of their warmth and fading like pressed flowers. The emotions still revolved, though, and now the hole in his mind was filled with uncertainty.
I wanted-but I forced him into it-but he enjoyed it and took control-but it was wrong-
Did I only do this because of the pieces of Voldemort that I carry in my head? Does he know that, and is that the reason he's kicking me out?
Well, fuck him, anyway. Why should I want to stay?
Harry gathered up his clothes, those he could find, looking at Malfoy from the corner of his eye. Malfoy made no attempt to help, or dress. He lounged against his pillows as if he had always been here and Harry had simply intruded in on him being naked and stared at Harry coldly.
This time, Harry thought, gaining back a little heart, it wasn't the coldness that had made Malfoy determined to ignore what Cynosure had said. It was the coldness Harry expected, the arctic flash of contempt when he made a mistake, the nasty smile that would come before an arrogant remark.
And Malfoy's Dark Mark was a little faded.
Just, Harry thought as he gave up on finding his shirt and Transfigured a pillow into a makeshift cloak that he could drape around himself until he reached Gryffindor Tower, like part of Voldemort is gone. Not all of it, but some. The second voice had been a murmur before; now it was a whisper in the back of his head.
It made Harry wonder if they might come together again after all. Their darkness had been reduced, but not banished. Malfoy might want another go, if only to ease the burden he carried.
Will that be the only reason it happens again, if it happens?
He shook his head and released the spells on the curtains, having to mutter multiple Finites. He was sure there were more specific countercharms, but he couldn't remember them. God knew he didn't even remember much about casting these spells.
He slid to the edge of the bed and shivered. It felt cold, and he didn't think that was only because he didn't have a real shirt.
Malfoy sighed impatiently behind him.
Harry clenched his fists and looked over his shoulder. Malfoy lifted an eyebrow at him. "Yes, Potter?" he asked. He pretended to look around at the blankets. "Did you leave something here, besides your virginity?" He smiled at Harry under lowered eyelids this time.
I'm the one who risks my courage by asking. No one else can do it. Malfoy can't.
Harry snatched one question clear of the somersaulting confusion in his head. "Can I come again?"
"That will depend on if you wank, won't it?" Malfoy answered promptly.
Harry rolled his eyes. He should have known that he would be deliberately misunderstood. "Forget it," he said, and started to roll off the bed.
"Wait."
Harry paused and savored the sweet unexpectedness of that question for long moments before he glanced over his shoulder. He tried to make his expression as cool as Malfoy's, though he had the impression that he didn't succeed. "Yes? Was there something?"
Malfoy stared at him. This time, Harry saw his eyes flicker and change before he averted them, and that was enough to satisfy him. At least someone else doesn't know what he should really want, either.
"The answer to your question is perhaps," Malfoy said, and then snapped the curtains about his bed shut.
As Harry made his way out of the Slytherin dorms, sneaking across the common room under a Disillusionment Charm, he heard the muted voice chuckling and murmuring something about pleasure. But Harry ignored it, because he tasted something at once deeper and lighter than that.
Hope.
Which mingled marvelously with the remnant of broken skin on his tongue.
The End.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-01-09 07:13 pm (UTC)The notion that Draco so sucessfully repressed his desires they were expressed via his snake is wild. And the notion that Harry still has some of Voldemort's soul and/or influence running around in his head. Banishing the darkness together is quite an interesting concept.
Loved Cynosure, by the way.
Can't wait for the next update.
-Jolene
no subject
Date: 2010-01-12 05:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-09 07:43 pm (UTC)*shudder*
Clare
no subject
Date: 2010-01-12 05:34 pm (UTC)Don't worry. The Dark Mark's lightening coincided with the diminishing of the voice in Harry's head, not its increase. That means that the darkness of both is lessening.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-09 07:50 pm (UTC)I'm afraid I'm getting spoiled with your novel-length stories; your one-shots leave me begging for more.
Thank you!
no subject
Date: 2010-01-12 05:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-09 08:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-12 05:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-09 09:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-09 09:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-12 05:37 pm (UTC)I promise, they're not getting stronger (though I can see that you found that out yourself!) This is meant to show that Harry and Draco can overcome them together.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-09 09:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-12 05:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-09 09:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-12 05:38 pm (UTC)It wasn't conscious, but I'm pleased it seemed snake-like. A lot of the things about the characters in this story were meant to seem more snake-like than human.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-09 09:35 pm (UTC)The characterization of Draco was lovely.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-12 05:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-09 09:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-12 05:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-10 12:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-12 05:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-10 01:05 am (UTC)i really enjoyed this story. <3
no subject
Date: 2010-01-12 05:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-10 09:30 am (UTC)Still this is a nice ending. I'm glad Draco called Harry back. Though, out of all of your stories I think this is the first time I really feel like there is more to be said. Or perhaps maybe I'm just being a perv since this really was such a hot one-shot.
Lovely job with this. I really liked Cynosure as a bonus character.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-12 05:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-10 04:11 pm (UTC)I felt that it was a bit short...could have been longer with the ending and all, but I feel like that with most stories. xD But! I loved it anyway, great job.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-12 05:42 pm (UTC)I can't imagine that Harry would be happy about ignoring the war after everything that happened in it, even if he could understand the reasons for other people doing so.
It was partially short because it was a pinch-hit. On the other hand, I find it hard to know what else I would say.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-10 06:21 pm (UTC)Once again you have penned a masterpiece which I am glad to have read. Thank you. =)
no subject
Date: 2010-01-12 05:44 pm (UTC)One of the things I tried to do with this story was to let the characters be without the analysis, which I do think I overdo at times.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-11 01:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-12 05:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-21 12:55 am (UTC)Also. Healing sex!
no subject
Date: 2010-01-22 04:04 pm (UTC)