Chapter Nine of 'Seasons of War'- Waking to the Light

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter Eight.

Title: Seasons of War (8/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Draco, Ron/Hermione
Rating: R
Warnings: Violence, torture, sex, angst, profanity, ignores the DH epilogue.
Summary: The war against Nihil enters its final stages, Harry and Draco train as partners, and they may actually survive to become effective Aurors. Maybe.
Author’s Notes: This is the final part of the Running to Paradise Trilogy, sequel to Ceremonies of Strife, and won’t make much sense if you haven’t read the first two stories. I don’t yet know how long this one will be, but based on the others, I’m guessing 45 to 50 chapters.

Chapter One.

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Nine—Waking to the Light

Harry opened his eyes slowly. He had the impression that the room was flooded with light he couldn’t see. He turned his head, trying to make out both where it was coming from and what had woken him up.

Draco was crouching over him, he realized, and thus blocked all the light from the flap of the tent but a narrow corona. His soft breathing over Harry’s ear would probably have been enough to wake him, since Harry could feel his skin tingling in the wash of it.

“Hey,” Harry said sleepily.

Draco smiled, but didn’t respond—at least, verbally. He bowed his head and caught Harry’s lips in a slow, smooth kiss that Harry found himself opening his mouth to before he’d even checked to see if the proper privacy wards were up on the tent.

Draco kissed him as though he was starving for a taste and trying to make it last at the same time. He’d planted one hand heavily on Harry’s chest, which kept him pinned to the bed even when Harry tried to move forwards. Draco’s tongue stroked the insides of Harry’s cheeks slowly, languidly. His other hand clutched Harry’s hip, and now and then he shifted so that their erections could rub together.

Harry shivered. He would have liked nothing better right then than to roll Draco over, pin him to the bed in turn, and rub them both into oblivion.

But he could tell already that Draco had something different in mind, and he had to admit, he was curious to see what it was.

Draco pulled away from his mouth and sat up across Harry’s hips, giving him an intense look that destroyed most of Harry’s warm contentment from the kiss. Draco only looked at him like that when he was going to criticize him for something. Harry shifted, wondering if he should try to get out from under Draco so that they would at least be on the same level.

He’d have a hard time doing it, though. Draco was using his weight to keep Harry completely flat, and Harry knew he’d fight back if Harry tried to flip him off. So he lay and waited for the scrutiny to end.

“I want to try something,” Draco said suddenly. They were so different from the words Harry had expected him to speak that he blinked and stared. Draco didn’t seem to notice, sucking on his bottom lip and regarding Harry with a careful gaze. “Do you trust me enough to let me do it?”

Harry licked his lips. “Well, that depends. Anything that’s connected to sex and the way you handle my body, sure. Dentistry without training, probably not.”

Draco laughed without sound and bent down to kiss Harry again. Harry’s head spun as he drifted into the kiss. Draco could snog longer without pausing to take a breath than anyone Harry had ever known.

“It’s definitely sex,” Draco said, and pulled back from Harry’s mouth, though he kept his tongue extended so that he could trace the current shape of Harry’s raised, begging tongue before he kept speaking. “Just different from what we’ve done before.”

Harry nodded and tried to look encouraging. He probably could hardly look more encouraging, because Draco chuckled again and pulled back the robes from last night that Harry still wore, beginning to kiss down his chest.

I probably smell bad, Harry thought, and reached for his wand on the bedside table, intending to cast a Cleaning Charm so that Draco at least wouldn’t have to mouth sweaty skin.

Draco reached out and seized his wrist without looking up from his task. “What are you doing?” he murmured, and then sunk his teeth into Harry’s nipple and tugged.

It took Harry about ten seconds to recover from that, by which time Draco had moved on to the other nipple, and he had to recover from that. “Was just…going to clean myself up a bit,” he gasped.

“I want you the way you are right now,” Draco said softly, nipping and then blowing on Harry’s skin above his groin so that it felt more sensitive. Harry shivered and wondered if he looked like the moron he feared he looked like for shivering from such a slight thing. But Draco’s eyes were dark with seriousness as he stared at Harry’s face, and he didn’t seem to have noticed Harry shaking. “The way you were when you saved my life and sanity.”

“Um.” Harry felt his face heat up. “I was a little more alert and crazy with fear then.”

Draco laughed yet again. “Then say I want you the way you are now,” he said, tugging Harry’s hips up and rubbing his cheek against Harry’s cock. “That will do.”

Harry would have asked why, but Draco kept touching him every time he wanted to ask a question, and that wasn’t fair. No one could have been expected to form words under the circumstances, Harry was sure.

He didn’t say anything about that, though, because Draco might suggest a comparison between Harry and other people he had touched, and the very thought made Harry boil with shallow and totally justified jealousy.

Draco seemed to bite and kiss at least half of the skin on Harry’s chest before he tugged on his trousers. Harry raised his hips, and Draco pushed the trousers and then his pants down to his ankles before Harry could panic. He also slid his mouth around Harry’s cock without so much as an invitation and sucked.

Harry gasped, thrust once before he remembered that he was ramming his cock down Draco’s throat and tried to hold still, and decided that the next time Draco wanted to do something like that, he could just go ahead and do it. Even if they were in the middle of class, it would probably be all right.

“Push if you want to,” Draco said, withdrawing his mouth long enough to speak and swirl his tongue around the head of Harry’s cock, and then he sank down again and Harry had never felt anything like this, even the other times that Draco sucked him off before, because it was so intense.

Apparently some of the time when he stares at me like he’s going to criticize me, he’s really planning to suck me until my stomach hurts with pleasure, Harry thought, writhing on the blankets and trying to hold open his legs and thrust and not-thrust and avoid bumping Draco’s chin with his knee all at the same time. I’ll remember that.

He passed from thought into pure sensation and then back again, rocking back and forth so regularly that he couldn’t catch his breath, couldn’t be ready for it, couldn’t stop. He stared at Draco’s head bobbing between his legs and occasionally caught his eye. Draco wasn’t smiling. He enjoyed what he was doing, Harry thought, but he also took it seriously, and that meant he wasn’t going to stop for the sake of something as petty as a smile.

Harry finally closed his eyes and surrendered to the last pulsing moments before his orgasm, pushing at Draco’s cheek so that he would get the signal. Draco didn’t seem to understand, since he never varied the pace or speed of his sucking. Harry practically pushed at Draco’s head, and only got an annoyed look for his efforts. Then Draco clamped his lips down and seemed to blow a new blast of superheated air all down Harry’s skin.

The world turned around, briefly, the way it had when Harry went after Draco, but this time light and fiery sensation were behind it instead of cold and darkness. Harry shuddered, made a noise that could best be described as, “Aurguh,” and came hard enough to make his head hurt.

Draco pulled back in the wake of that. He licked his lips and the sound seemed loud in the silence. Harry blinked at him stupidly and reached out a shaking hand. Draco let Harry touch his hair this time, though his eyes remained as focused as ever and he still didn’t smile.

“Give me a minute,” Harry muttered. “That was amazing and fantastic and I want to do the same to you, but it’ll take me a minute to get my strength back.”

“You don’t need to do anything to please me but lie there if you don’t wish,” Draco murmured, and reached back between Harry’s legs, fingers dancing lightly across his arse.

Harry froze, then blinked, then smiled, and then decided that he should probably collect the thoughts rolling around in his head at some point and said, “That’s what you meant when you said that you wanted to do something we’d never done before. Not the blowjob, but—that.”

“Yes, ‘that,’” Draco said, raising his eyebrows as though he didn’t know why Harry couldn’t call it fucking. “Are you ready for this?”

Harry licked his lips and tried to think about what it would be like to have Draco inside him when he was this intense. If Draco sucking his cock while this intense had been wonderful…

“Yeah,” he said, and then cleared his throat and repeated himself, because the faintness of his voice made him sound uncertain. “Yeah, I am. Come on. What are you waiting for?”

*

Draco smiled. Harry was trying to act as though he was the one whose idea this had been, now, but nothing could hide the way his eyes darted to Draco’s face and then off to the side, or the flush on his face—there already, but deepening to the point that it looked dangerous—when Draco whispered for him to spread his legs.

Draco wondered what he would say if he knew that Draco had no intention of teasing him about his reactions. He had certainly felt enough insane things when he approached Harry in Malfoy Manor. Harry couldn’t feel anything more embarrassing than he had, and Draco wasn’t one to tease when the other person knew his vulnerabilities and could use them against him.

Or maybe I’m not one to tease Harry at all, he thought, rubbing soothing circles around Harry’s knees while he drizzled the lubricant onto his fingers.

He had decided to use the slightly oily, slick potion that he sometimes massaged into his skin to make it clearer. It wouldn’t hurt Harry, at the least, and there was nothing else in the tent that would serve in a pinch. Draco wasn’t going to secure Harry’s agreement to this and then back off and make him wait while they located something else that would make this comfortable for them both.

Apart from anything else, Draco’s cock throbbed regularly between his legs, and he wasn’t sure that he could wait that long.

Harry made no objection when Draco showed him what they were using, though he furrowed his brow and bit his lip in the way he did when he was trying to conceal worry. Draco watched him steadily as he pushed the first finger in. He’d propped Harry’s arse up with pillows and waited until his breathing calmed down, but this was inevitably going to hurt. He just hoped it was the kind of pain Harry could bear.

Harry drew in his breath and held it. Draco shook his head and clucked his tongue, though he never stopped sliding his finger in and out.

“That’ll make it hurt more,” he said. “Try to relax as much as you can and keep up a regular pattern of breathing. That’ll make it better for both of us.”

Harry worked one screwed-shut eye open and stared at him incredulously. “Better for you? Who’s getting fucked, here?”

“Who’s doing the work?” Draco retorted, and massaged with his finger, frowning when he felt Harry clamp down tighter than ever. “Besides, it’s not as though I sit around rubbing my hands in delight when I come up with a new way to hurt you.”

Harry licked his lips, nodded, and let his head fall back onto the pillows as he relaxed in an ostentatious fashion, heaving his breath out. Draco rolled his eyes, since he was certain that Harry couldn’t see him from this angle. That hadn’t been precisely what he meant.

Still, it allowed his finger more passage, and he added a second one without Harry noticing. Harry appeared caught up in a steady, consciously controlled pattern of breathing that he might have learned from Portillo Lopez. As long as it worked for him, Draco wasn’t going to question it, though he thought Harry was more nervous than was flattering.

On the other hand, maybe I can take it as flattering to the size of my cock. When Harry had his eyes open, he kept glancing down, as though he could spot Draco’s erection from this angle and know how much it would hurt him by virtue of seeing it.

Draco’s wrist was getting tired before he nudged Harry’s prostate and Harry yelped in response. Draco smiled and redoubled his probing, then winced as his cock rubbed against the sheets. It was getting to the point where the pounding of his blood hurt.

Harry seemed to know that. He glanced up, met Draco’s eyes, and nodded, grabbing his legs to lift them out of the way. His face flushed more as he did so, but he never hesitated or slowed down.

Draco bent to kiss him. Courage like this amazed and humbled him, and deserved a snog at the very least.

“It’ll be all right, you’ll see,” he whispered, and then settled down between Harry’s legs and arranged them around his hips.

Harry shut his eyes, nodded, and then said, “What are you waiting for? Get on with the fucking.”

He was probably just saying the words to cover his nerves, Draco thought, but he was going to take advantage of the invitation. He was getting dizzy from lust and need and what was probably the tension of going too long without an orgasm while watching Harry explode from his. He pressed slowly forwards and in.

Harry hissed like a teakettle. Draco glanced up, but Harry gave him another glare and a wriggle of his hips, so Draco decided that he could trust him to know what he wanted. A second shove, and he had to close his eyes and pant as hard as though he was the one being penetrated.

He felt his lips move without his permission, and became aware that he was babbling. Horrified, Draco managed to focus on his words and heard them, exactly the kinds of meaningless phrases that he had always thought he would be above saying in sex. It had certainly never happened before.

“Yes, so good, um, feels so good! Warm, God yeah, I love this, love fucking you, love you, love…”

Draco bit his tongue in an effort to make himself shut up, and heard Harry chuckle. When he looked again, he saw Harry smiling at him, reaching up with one hand as if he was going to cup Draco’s cheek, though the angle was wrong for it.

“It’s fine,” he said. “You can talk like that all you like.”

Draco dipped his head in a shallow nod and shoved forwards again. At least he knew that he could trust Harry not to use the stupid things he did against him, he reminded himself again. And the tightness and heat around him really did feel great enough—almost—to honor with mumblings like that.

He slipped his hands around Harry’s hips and thighs, found a secure grip once, and felt it slip away again with the sweat and the way his hands shook. He swore. Harry laughed at him in response, and then suddenly gripped the sheets and pressed himself down and up at the same time, or so it seemed to Draco.

He thought of that later, though. At the moment, he was rather more preoccupied with the fact that Harry had just shoved himself firmly onto Draco’s cock.

Draco felt his mouth droop open. He bowed his head and whimpered, his own muscles spasming. Harry was grunting as though his were doing the same thing, but he only grabbed Draco’s hand when Draco reached out tentatively and squeezed it hard enough to crush his fingers. He didn’t speak a single word or make an audible sound of pain other than the grunts. If that was the way he wanted to handle it, Draco thought, then they would.

He pulled back, and thrust forwards, and then finally forced his eyes open and dared to look down.

Harry’s face was twisted to the point that Draco couldn’t make out which emotion was dominant, pain or pleasure. His free hand had grabbed the pillow and contorted it the way he probably wouldn’t let himself contort Draco’s fingers. His breathing would probably be audible outside the tent, Draco thought, if not for the Silencing Charms, and he turned his head back and forth, seeking some consolation Draco couldn’t offer.

“All right there?” Draco whispered.

“If I wasn’t, would I have fucking pushed myself down on you?” Harry snapped, and opened his eyes. Draco shivered. Harry had never stared at him that way, as if he loved and hated Draco both at once. He wanted to see a lot more of it. He thrust involuntarily, and Harry laughed and lifted his hips in approval.

“You promised me a fuck,” he said.

“Do you think that fucks have to be quick and rough to be worth anything?” Draco muttered, but did begin shoving and thrusting with more force. It was hardly difficult. It felt like the most glorious thing in the world, in fact, and the only thing that held him back was the fear that he might be enjoying it more than Harry was.

“Yes,” Harry said, and lifted his hips and squeezed down with his muscles as if he assumed that the experience needed to be better for Draco than it already was. “That’s practically in the word, don’t you think? That short little vowel sound and the way it ends, like someone spat it out. Fuck me like that.”

Draco couldn’t have held out against an entreaty like that if he’d had a lot more patience and experience. He was vulnerable to it like nothing else when his body was already throbbing with eagerness. He shuddered, bowed his head, and gave Harry as many thrusts as he could in a minute, sloppy and uncoordinated, but hard.

Harry moaned and continued squeezing down on Draco’s cock or moving his hips in response or grabbing Draco’s arse at irregular intervals. The gaze of his eyes never varied; Draco didn’t catch him blinking even once. He stared at Draco as if he knew every thought that was passing through his mind and forgot and forgave them the minute the next one came along.

Very soon, Draco shut down to everything but the sensation in his groin, and the warmth locked around him, and then he hunched forwards, made a sound that wasn’t much more dignified than the cry Harry had given when he came, and let his orgasm blast out of him and into Harry’s arse.

Harry muttered and murmured beneath him, twisting as though he was trying to rub his prostate against Draco’s sinking cock. Draco did his best to oblige him, but he was weary and dazed and didn’t think he was much help.

Harry sighed, reached down, and brought himself off with a few expert strokes. Draco stared at him. He hadn’t even realized that Harry was hard again. He certainly hadn’t touched him.

“Sorry,” he said.

“Yes, you should be sorry for teaching me that fucking could be fun,” Harry said, and stretched up to kiss Draco, ignoring the obscene amount of semen that squelched between them. “Don’t worry about it. I came first, and the second was a surprise.” He flopped back onto the pillow and lifted one eyebrow. “By the way, did you know you’re deaf when you top? I was asking you questions, and you didn’t respond.”

“Your arse is too good,” Draco said simply, and then dragged himself to the side, because he needed another nap and he didn’t want to take it on top of the sticky mess on Harry’s belly.

Harry appeared to consider that answer for a long, earnest time before he nodded and said, “All right. I can accept that.”

Draco snorted, shut his eyes, and rolled again to the side so that he finally slid out of Harry’s arse. Harry said something nonsensical as his cock came away. Draco thought he would ask him what it was in the morning or later in the afternoon.

At any rate. After his nap.

*

Harry turned his head sharply. Someone was pressing against their wards, and he didn’t know who it was. He didn’t even know what time it was. After Draco had fallen asleep, Harry had lain there watching him with bliss washing back and forth in great waves through his mind.

He was glad that he was there, with Draco. The thought repeated over and over again in various forms.

But now he had to put it aside and get up. Harry managed to stand, cast a Cleaning Charm, pulled on his outer robes, took a step, and promptly sprawled. He’d forgotten that Draco had pulled his trousers and pants down, not off.

That took a few more minutes of adjustment, and meanwhile, whoever it was had got impatient and started to cast Finites on their wards. Harry shook his head and called, “I’m coming!” Behind him, he felt Draco twitch but then sink deeper into sleep. Good. Harry hoped that he could have this conversation without waking Draco.

He expected to see Gregory on the other side of the wards, come with news about Nusquam, or Ron and Hermione, wanting to know where they’d been. Instead, Portillo Lopez was there, and she stepped into the tent without so much as an invitation, only nodding slightly at Harry as though she assumed that she was welcome anywhere.

“Look,” Harry started, turning around.

“Yes, I can smell the sex,” Portillo Lopez said. “I have smelled it before. That hardly concerns me.”

Harry wrapped an arm around his flaming face. He was glad that Draco had, at any rate, remained asleep, because that meant one thing was going well.

“I have discovered a way to get behind the world,” Portillo Lopez announced, “in the same place that you went into when Nihil attempted to abduct your partner yesterday.”

Harry stared at her. “How did you know about that?”

Portillo Lopez waved her hand. “It was a large exercise of necromancy in the middle of a camp without necromancers—except for you, and I no longer include you among the ranks of the true devotees of that art. I felt it, of course. And I reasoned out the details of what must have happened later, from the impressions that your struggle left in the air and the earth, as well as my knowledge of your magic.”

Harry swallowed, and made a mental note not to try and hide any secrets from Portillo Lopez. At least, not any magical secrets. “Then you must know who we were hiding in the tent.”

“What?” Portillo Lopez nodded. “Oh, yes. Nusquam is dead. You have forced Nihil to destroy her, and I do not think he will easily create again a servant that is separate from him and can think as intelligently as she could. It is a victory. But I think my discovery is more important.”

Harry nodded back. “All right. Tell me about it.”

“No. Tell us.”

Harry turned his head. Draco was on his feet, wrapped in the blanket, padding across the floor. He showed no sign of embarrassment in front of Portillo Lopez the way Harry would have thought he would, but instead wrapped an arm around Harry’s shoulders and stood there staring Portillo Lopez down.

“Yes,” Harry said, reveling in the sense of warmth and closeness he received from Draco’s presence. “Tell us.”

I can depend on him. He had known it before, but it was always nice to have it confirmed.