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lomonaaerenThis is the second part of the chapter, which has been split up because of length. Don't start reading here.
*
Harry saw Malfoy, and he knew he had to destroy him. There was no other word for it. The magic caught at his hair and his face in a white blaze, and he lunged forwards, wanting to use his teeth, like a wolf, knowing he had to use his magic, and envisioning himself tearing Malfoy’s face off—
Then the chains closed around his wrists, locking into place effortlessly, the manacles clicking shut into seamless circles of steel.
And the magic went away.
Harry still reached the full extent of the chains and fell back, the way he always had when struggling against the bonds he had conjured himself. But now there was no magic to pick them apart and strike at the weak places in the links. He could feel the magic coiled sullenly inside him, forced flat and motionless. He would get it back, he thought, but he couldn’t have it now.
Why not?
Harry raised his head and saw Malfoy standing by the door that led out from the room, studying him. His arms were folded, his legs were crossed, and one of his feet tapped the floor. He smiled. The smile made bars of violent light cross Harry’s vision, and he screamed and caused the chains to rattle with his lunge forwards again.
“Resist all you like,” Malfoy said. “I don’t think these chains will break.” He paused, and then added, “Even if I don’t understand why, yet. Why was I able to fasten them when they wouldn’t work for you?”
“Go away,” Harry said. His fury nearly choked him, and for long moments he could only stutter until he forced the insults out of his throat again. “Bastard. Arsehole. Scrapings off Voldemort’s boot. Snape’s little fucktoy. I hate you.”
“It sounds as if you do,” Malfoy said. “But I think I have a bit more experience with extreme states of mind than you do. I did what I needed to survive during the war, while you were able to be a hero. That got me used to living with shame and deciding that it didn’t much matter, as long as the shame stayed a private experience.”
“Then you ought to be able to understand exactly why I hate you!” Harry tore to the side. This was the point at which chains made of his magic would have shredded like tissue, and rage tore with sharp claws at his belly when these didn’t, although he also felt another burst of cloudy freedom. The combined emotions made his head spin and increased his desire to spit and yell. “You’re going to take this out of here, and tell Snape, and—”
“But I’m not,” Malfoy said, in a soft, controlled voice Harry hated and envied him for. “This is your business. And mine.” He came a few steps further into the room, boots clicking against the floor. His steps were far more firm and confident than Bradley’s steps had ever been under the same circumstances, or even the steps of Muggles Harry had paid, who understood all about this game and how it was played.
Harry stared at him, panting. Malfoy looked back at him with mild, curious eyes, with the kind of gaze that said he was uninstructed but willing to learn.
No. This is mental.
Harry wound his fingers in the chains, bent his shoulders, and jerked as hard as he could. The rings bounced and clanked in their settings, the headboard vibrated, but nothing parted. Harry tore again, and again, and the only things he had to show for his efforts were blood blisters along the sides of his hands.
And a growing peace in his head, a draining of the anger that made it hard even to think of new insults for Malfoy.
“You struggle like this all the time?” More quiet clicks of the boots as Malfoy moved closer. Harry raised his head, blinking away the dazzle of bliss that wanted to occlude his vision, and saw Malfoy standing at the foot of the bed now. His gaze was solemn, inward, as if he were waiting for a signal of some sort to make sense of the scene in front of him. “You can’t simply lie back and give in when you feel yourself chained?”
Harry curled his lip. That had been the part that always disconcerted everyone, even the paid Muggles. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s about the size of it.” He measured the distance between him and Malfoy with his eyes, then shifted so that his heels were beneath him. “And that’s my twisted, demented secret that my friends can barely tolerate.”
He leaped forwards, trying to claw Malfoy’s arms if he could do no worse damage. And he thought he could. At the very least, he could wrestle Malfoy onto the bed beneath him and strangle him with the chains.
His shoulders wrenched back hard enough that Harry heard a warning pop. He hissed between his teeth and sagged against a pillow that hadn’t been there a minute before, bewildered. He knew the chains had been long enough to let him reach Malfoy a minute ago. What had happened?
“Why did the pillow show up?” he muttered, the only audible sign he would give of his confusion. His arms felt like dissolving puddles of syrup, and his eyes kept wanting to close. And now he was getting aroused, but even that was soft and gentle, blood flowing to his groin in undulating waves.
“Because I required it,” Malfoy said. He was right beside the bed now, studying Harry with great interest. “Just as I required the chains to be shorter.”
Harry turned his head sharply. He had needed something that would slice through the mist in his head, and that did it.
“You have no business here, Malfoy,” he said. His throat felt metallic, like the bed, and the words rasped and scraped against it. “Why don’t you go spread rumors about the perverted Harry Potter, instead of being here?”
Malfoy leaned towards him, face intense. Harry kept one eye on his hands, ready to strike if he tried to touch him, but Malfoy made no move to do that.
Yet. Harry bared his teeth in warning and waited for his chance. Yes, the chains were reacting to Malfoy’s presence in strange ways, and it helped; Harry already felt healthier and stronger than he had since he had come to Hogwarts. But there was no way that he would allow Malfoy to play more of a part than that.
*
Potter was so fascinating that Draco would have checked for infatuation charms if he could have taken his eyes from him.
But he knew it wasn’t magic, or at least nothing more than the magic of the Room, which had permitted Draco to come in, shorten the chains, and render the bed more comfortable. It was the presence of two heated bodies together, of Potter’s need and the rising force in Draco that drove him to answer that need, of something Draco had never considered and yet which seemed like the thing he had always wanted to do.
It was the force of revelation.
I want to do this. It’s new. It’s strange. It’s curious.
He felt rather the way he did when he first began experiments with a potion. Would he succeed? Would he fail? What unexpected consequences would appear along the way, to force him to change his initial plans or do something that would change even his intentions? The number of his plans that had gone perfectly was very small. On the other hand, the right mixture of success and failure made brewing piquant. Draco would have found it boring to succeed at every attempt.
He reached out and tried to touch one of Potter’s hunched shoulders, wondering what it would feel like.
Potter lunged, his teeth clacking together. Draco pulled back, staring at him, and then laughed. He had wondered why Potter would try to bite instead of strike him, but Potter already seemed to have learned that the chains would keep him from touching Draco unless Draco willed it. He was clever and learned quickly.
“I want this,” he said, in answer to Potter’s question and to have a chance to voice his own thoughts. “Nothing you can do will drive me away.”
Potter gave him a faint half-smile. Then he pushed off the bed with his heels and somehow whirled his lower body around—he moved too quickly to let Draco see how he had done it—and kicked Draco hard in the legs.
Draco gasped in pain and stood up, because he thought it would be more dignified to do so than to sprawl on the floor the way the force of Potter’s kick might have made him do. He stared at Potter.
“Do you always fight like this?” he asked.
Potter snarled. He didn’t make any noise, but there was nothing else Draco could call the sustained baring of his teeth, combined with the wild look in his eyes that made him seem as if he would take another bite out of Draco. “Always,” he said. “Still want to risk being in bed with me now, Malfoy?”
“You need this,” Draco said. “That means there must come a time when the fighting stops.”
“Fuck you, Malfoy.”
Potter lunged against the chains again, and this time went sprawling back on the bed with a cry as the chains shortened themselves. Another pair of manacles had appeared at the foot of the bed, Draco noticed, with cuffs invitingly sized for Potter’s ankles. He moved towards them.
Potter flailed out and hit him squarely in the groin with one foot. Draco hissed, tears coming out of his squinted eyes. Then he seized his wand and Stunned Potter. While Potter lay motionless and gaping at the ceiling, he grabbed the manacles and fastened them around Potter’s feet.
Then he lifted the spell and jumped back as Potter twisted his head to the side and nearly succeeded in closing his teeth on Draco’s hand.
“Dear, dear,” Draco murmured, his heart pounding with the excitement and shock. “Am I going to have to put a collar on you as well, to keep you from interrupting when we start playing?”
“Not play.” Potter’s words were beginning to slur, but Draco doubted that came from pain of any kind. His eyes were glazed, his pupils dilated as though he’d had a really good drink—or a really good fuck. “You don’t—understand. This isn’t play to me. I only get myself chained up because it helps—with the anger. Didn’t—give you permission to put the manacles on. Take them off.”
“Of course, if you like,” Draco said, and moved towards the chains, slowly, keeping one eye on Potter all the while. He was a much better judge of people in extreme situations than he used to be, and he didn’t think he’d judged this one wrongly.
*
Harry hadn’t felt so close to the edge of pure, peaceful, natural sleep in weeks.
But that was wrong. What he felt wasn’t weariness. The emotions buzzed and shone and zoomed along inside of him, and coursed through his body as magic no longer could. Harry gave a weak kick at the manacles, more to check that they were there than anything else, and felt a deep, thick, inexplicable satisfaction when he heard the clink of the chains and felt the pressure of the cuffs around his ankles.
He thought he was close to sleep because he hadn’t been this relaxed in weeks. Perhaps not ever. He’d never thought of chaining his legs in exactly this way. Most of the time, Bradley and the other people he had tried to convince to do this only felt comfortable with the arms, and Harry had thought he was, too.
Now he realized that maybe what he could live with wasn’t what he needed.
He glanced up at Malfoy, who was reaching towards the chains, ready to loosen them, and his pride returned, a sudden surge of pure emotion that at least didn’t have any anger. Yes, maybe he did need this, but Malfoy wasn’t the one who was going to give it to him.
“Yes,” he said, although his voice wavered. “Take them off.”
Only Malfoy’s raised eyebrow said that he was surprised. He unbuckled one cuff and then reached for the second.
Harry closed his eyes. The room had begun to spin again instead of stabilizing the way it had when he wore both ankle chains. That made no sense, and it wasn’t something Harry would tolerate. He gritted his teeth, told himself that Malfoy was more intolerable than being a bit dizzy, and waited.
The second chain loosened.
As though the loosening had been a signal, thoughts of Ron and Hermione blossomed in his head again. Harry felt the anger rise in him as he thought of their petty, simpering excuses, their smug sureness that they were right, and their claim that he had to face and deal with his “issues with authority figures” in a way they approved. It wasn’t enough that he had found something that worked and hurt no one. They couldn’t be happy for him. No, they had to disagree and coo at him about how he had to do the acceptable thing, the right thing—
“You’re burning,” Malfoy said softly.
Harry opened his eyes. The stupid blanket that either the Room or Malfoy had added to the bed was on fire, and the flames were actually stinging his skin. It seemed some magic had come to the surface after all, but Harry had lost the ability to keep it from hurting him. He swore, rolled over, and kicked at the burning blanket.
A stream of water, conjured by Malfoy, poured down from above and put the fire out. Harry buried his head in his still-chained arms and tried to make them the focus of the universe.
“Why are you so opposed to me being the one to give you what so clearly need?” Malfoy asked from above him. His voice was calm and cool and interested, and he sounded as if he couldn’t care less about the answer, as if it was merely one of a series of things he was interested in and would like to know, and he would ask another question if he couldn’t get this one solved.
“You hate me,” Harry said, lifting his head with an effort. The chains were making his arms ache. He rolled over and stared up at Malfoy, hissing as his shoulders popped. The one he’d wrenched earlier still hurt, and he winced. He didn’t really relish pain that much; he just accepted it as a natural consequence of defying the chains. “Why would I want you to assist me with something so intimate?”
Malfoy smiled. The smile looked strange on his face, and Harry started, realizing only then how much he had braced himself for a sneer. “I don’t think it’s that intimate, is it? I tie you up, and then what? How would it work if you were with someone you trusted?” he added with exaggerated patience when Harry hesitated.
Harry licked his lips. He would be mad to confess the truth to Malfoy. Wouldn’t he?
But the Room wouldn’t give him what he really required on his own. That was all too clear, with the way the chains had refused to fasten until Malfoy had commanded them to. And Harry could feel the sick coil of the anger in his belly. He was so tired of feeling that way. This was the only cure he had ever found.
Of all the people in Hogwarts at the moment, laughable as it was, he would still trust Malfoy the most with something like this.
“Give me orders,” Harry said, closing his eyes so that he didn’t have to see what Malfoy’s face would look like when he said that. “It doesn’t matter what. Simple orders will do. Fifteen or twenty minutes will do.”
Malfoy was silent instead of gloating or refusing the way Harry had expected. Then he said, “And then I fuck you?”
Harry couldn’t help staring at him. Malfoy poised with one knee on the bed, head tilted as if he was examining the muscles of Harry’s stomach.
“Why would you want to?” Harry asked. “No, you don’t have to do that.”
Malfoy gave him another smile and reached down to touch Harry’s stomach, then ran his hand down Harry’s leg. Harry had to shut his eyes as the intensity of the sensation overwhelmed him. His skin was tingling again, sensitized, and the storm of anger was sinking back to join his magic in being trapped far beneath the surface.
“Oh, I want to,” Malfoy said. “But I’m not going to do it until I’ve heard you make the choice, declare that you want me.”
Harry shook his head. Malfoy kept surprising him. “I would have assumed that you’d like the fact that I’m in a difficult position and turning to you because you’re the best of a bad lot,” he said. “It feeds your idea of power, and don’t you get off on that?”
*
Draco felt his jaw tighten. It was with an effort that he forced himself to relax and give Potter a condescending look. It wasn’t rational to expect Potter to know why he would be insulted by that, after all, and Draco prided himself on his rationality.
“I was the best of a bad lot during the war,” he said. “I was the only one who could save my parents, and I could only do that by cooperation with the Dark Lord. I didn’t have any choice. And I wasn’t anyone’s first choice for anything. The Dark Lord only used me as a torturer because it amused him to see the sick expression on my face. Severus only went on the run with me because he had no choice. My friends wouldn’t stand with me until I threatened and bribed them.” He had to pause and take a deep breath so that the memories of a hurt, despised teenage boy wouldn’t overwhelm him. “After that, I promised I would only associate with people who came to me willingly.”
Potter sucked his lip, looking up at him. His eyes were dark, and Draco wondered if he would have to turn his back after all and walk out of here. He didn’t want to. There was something that made his breath catch about seeing Potter chained up like this, something that made him want to give Potter orders, and although it was a new thing to him, it wasn’t something hurtful or that he couldn’t face.
Then Potter’s eyes seemed to clear, and he nodded.
“Speak it,” Draco ordered, pressing his hand down into Potter’s stomach and making him grunt. “I want to hear you say it.”
Potter scowled at him, and fought an obviously long and silent battle with himself. Draco waited, never moving his hand or his eyes. This was unexpectedly—easy, he thought. If Potter had put on chains, he himself had shed them when he stepped into this room.
“Yes, all right?” Potter said at last. His voice was heating up again, and he had ground his fingers into the chains hard enough to tear open bloody slashes along them. “I want you to—to order me about.” His face was flushed.
“To fuck you?” Draco asked softly. His mouth was dry now. He swung his other leg onto the bed and removed his hand from Potter, which made his palm itch. He wanted to reach back down and touch him again at once.
Potter shut his eyes. There was sweat on his forehead, and his breathing had sped up to the point that Draco would have been concerned about him if he had thought there was anything legitimate to be concerned about. But he didn’t. He waited, instead, and Potter finally gratified him by snarling, “Yes.”
Draco didn’t smile. Neither did he lunge down and grasp Potter’s mouth in a furious kiss, though he thought Potter might have preferred that; it would have given him less time to think. Instead, he kissed him coolly, pressing his palm back into place on Potter’s stomach as much to hide the shaking of his hands with excitement as to indulge his desire to touch Potter again.
“Strip,” he said, sitting back on his heels.
Potter gave him a dirty look and lifted his chained wrists in silence.
“That’s up to you to figure out,” Draco said, and gave a deep laugh, surprising himself. Yes, he was flying, or felt as if he was, the taste of Potter’s mouth in his own and the feel of Potter’s skin beneath his hands propelling him to new and extravagant heights. “And don’t talk,” he added, when Potter started to open his mouth to complain. “Groaning, whimpering, and sighing are perfectly acceptable.”
*
Harry locked his teeth together and shifted back against the headboard so that he could have more slack in the chains to work with. Even then, it took him four tries to get a grip on the bottom of his shirt because his hands were shaking so hard.
The cool metal of the headboard against his back should have grounded him, but it didn’t. And he was horribly afraid that he looked stupid, with his flushed face and rapidly fluttering eyelashes and glazed eyes that made him have to blink before he could see anything like a normal person.
Bradley and the other Muggles hadn’t ordered him around like this. Bradley tended to give the orders in a nervous voice. The Muggles would snap and sound like Aurors arresting a suspect. Malfoy alone spoke in this detached, cool tone, as if he wanted to see what Harry had to offer before he would concede to become emotionally involved.
It was wonderful. Just what he needed. Coolness to soothe the fire inside him. The anger had swirled away as if going down a drain; the magic was sleeping so far beneath his skin that Harry could no longer feel it.
He couldn’t have said that it was what he needed, though. Malfoy had already taught him something new about himself, plucked a desire from thin air that Harry didn’t know he had and given it body and breath.
And that was bloody terrifying.
It’ll be all right, Harry told himself as he got the right grip finally and managed to pull the shirt back until it caught in the chains where they stretched over his shoulders. Then he had to maneuver his arms some more until the chains and his wrists both popped and the shirt worked free. We’ll only be together for a few more days, however long it takes us to solve the riddles and get around the Ministry. You can endure that long.
He did wonder, though, as he started work on his trousers, if it would be possible to become addicted to Malfoy’s way of handling him in one session. That could be disastrous when he left Malfoy behind.
It didn’t matter, he reassured himself again. He would deal with it the same way he had dealt with not being able to get what he needed from Bradley all the time: ignore the issue, and sometimes take the smaller steps of chaining himself with magic or hiring Muggles when it became intolerable. Somehow, he would get through it. He would live.
He stripped himself quickly of trousers, and followed it with his pants. Then he turned and glanced defiantly up at Malfoy. He knew that he didn’t look like a model or the impossibly beautiful young men he sometimes saw in Muggle magazines. He had too many scars. He was too thin. He had lived too long under stress, and that showed in the boniness of his legs and the way his limbs sometimes waved about because he didn’t know how to handle himself.
But Malfoy watched him with a greedy expression that made Harry shiver, because he realized now that Malfoy might want to devour him, and he wasn’t sure that he could prevent that or hold it back.
“Very nice,” Malfoy said, in a murmur so soft that it was hard for Harry to distinguish from the rustling of the sheets as Malfoy leaned forwards. “Very nice. Now, sit still. I’m going to bind your feet again.”
Harry shuddered so hard that Malfoy, staring as obsessively at Harry’s stomach as he was, couldn’t have missed it. He raised an eyebrow. “Do you object to that? Nod if you do.”
Harry licked his lips. He wasn’t afraid of being bound. He was afraid of what it would do to him, of the intensity of sensation he would experience.
Malfoy seemed to know that, because his face turned bright with his sneer. “How have you survived so long? Most people I know like this are comfortable and at home with their desires. The ones who aren’t confine them to fantasy. They don’t come halfway like you and then hesitate as if they’re about to run home.”
Harry glared at him and thrust his feet out. Malfoy could chain him, fine. He would be the one who had to deal with it if Harry suddenly panicked or started thrashing around and hit him in the face with his elbow. He would be the one who had to deal with it if this was a less than satisfying sexual experience for him.
Malfoy laughed at whatever he saw in Harry’s face, and linked the cuffs of the chains around Harry’s feet. Then he bent and whispered to them, and suddenly the chains shortened on both sides, so that Harry found himself stretched taut across the bed before he even thought about what might happen.
He shut his eyes. God, he was dizzy with the relief that coursed through him, the sudden ease of stress and the feeling that he was cradled and held, as if the chains were protective armor guarding him from the world. He moaned.
“Good,” Malfoy said, his voice throbbing down deep in Harry’s midsection. “Spread your legs.”
That wasn’t easy for Harry to do, either, given the chains on his ankles, but he had long since accepted that Malfoy didn’t care about that. It made it more exciting, actually. Malfoy was trusting Harry to find the solution, and that was about the level of authority that Harry could handle right now. He drove his legs apart as far as they would go, and groaned again when his bonds pulled in resistance.
The bed dipped. Harry blinked, frowned a bit when he realized that sheets now covered it—when had that happened?—and tipped his head back to look at Malfoy.
“Nod if you require much preparation,” Malfoy whispered.
Harry nodded to him. He could feel his face heating up more. Malfoy was still clothed, and Harry was naked. And—well, fuck, it wasn’t as if he did this all the time. Bradley didn’t always fuck him. And Harry had held off as long as he could before he went to Bradley or someone else for his relief.
“Ah,” Malfoy said, and looked even more pleased than usual. Instead of pulling lube out of a pocket, though, he started to undress.
Harry’s eyes focused on his cock when it emerged first, and it was so dark with blood, against Malfoy’s pale skin, that he didn’t think he could look anywhere else.
*
Potter’s eyes were wonderfully large as they focused on his erection. Draco gave one of his private smiles and shoved his trousers and pants down his hips with one motion, before he went back to his shirt.
Potter’s body was wonderful, as well. He seemed to act as if he had hideous blemishes, but Draco didn’t see why. There were no Weasley freckles, for example. There were scars, but Draco carried his own share of those, like the silvery scars on his chest he was now revealing to Potter’s eyes. He was perhaps thinner than was fashionable, but that made it more exciting for Draco. He imagined that it would be like fucking a slim, lithe cat.
Besides, Potter was held-down, trapped and helpless, on the bed, of his own free will. Potter could have had freckles and Draco would still have enjoyed it.
He dragged off the last of his clothes and sat still, letting Potter look at him all he liked. Potter was already biting the inside of his cheek and sucking on his lip. Draco enjoyed those expressions of lust, especially since he’d forbidden Potter to speak. He wondered if Potter knew he was making them.
He glanced once at the manacles holding Potter’s feet and pondered if he should lengthen them so that Potter could spread his legs more. Then he shook his head. Potter would have to actually be in pain before Draco would want to change anything about this moment.
He reached out a commanding hand, and the small table he had envisioned, with the pot of lube on it, manifested by the time he finished the gesture. Draco smiled again—he didn’t know the last time he’d smiled so much—and uncapped the pot, dipping his fingers into the liquid inside. It was orange, and orange-scented.
Draco rolled it between his hands as he studied Potter thoughtfully. He was going to enjoy this, yes, but he hadn’t really done this sort of thing very often. He thought he wouldn’t want to do it with anyone other than Potter.
He didn’t know if he could get Potter to do it again, though.
Think about that later, he told himself, and reached down to Potter’s arse. You don’t even know that this is going to be good enough to want to repeat.
Potter tensed and shivered when Draco stuck his fingers in, and when Draco added more lubricant, it didn’t make any difference. Draco looked up and found that his face was pale, his eyes shut and his breathing shallow.
“Do you want to stop?” Draco asked. Potter could still nod even if he couldn’t speak a refusal. Besides, Draco thought he would break his self-imposed rule of obeying Draco’s orders if he was in real danger.
Potter opened his eyes and gave him a dirty look. Draco shrugged and slid his fingers home. Potter’s breath caught, and his face turned paler still. But he didn’t groan in pain or scream a rejection, so Draco pushed his fingers further in still, sighing aloud at the thought of the warmth that would surround his cock soon.
“Up,” he told Potter. “Spread your legs further.”
Potter grunted and heaved himself up, his eyes opening with a calmer, saner look in them. He used the order as a means to cling to sanity, Draco thought as he spread his fingers and slid a third one in between them. Why? Who knew. Draco wasn’t yet interested enough in the intricacies of Harry Potter’s psychology to spend a lot of time thinking about them.
Potter was regularly closing and opening his eyes the next time Draco looked, for all the world as if he were trying to blink a signal to someone. Draco rolled his eyes and chose to ignore that. His attention was for that wonderful warmth, easing open and shut now in nearly the same rhythm as Potter’s eyes.
He tried to reach Potter’s prostate, but didn’t manage to. He shrugged. He could always order Potter to fuck himself on Draco’s cock.
Then he was putting the lubricant aside with a hand that, annoyingly, shook—at least Draco didn’t think Potter was in the right kind of mood to notice—and pressing himself into the sheath that Potter’s body had become with a groan.
Potter stopped breathing altogether. Draco didn’t mind the extra tightness, but he’d prefer not to have to stop their fucking because Potter had fainted.
“Breathe,” he said, in the same light, cold tone he had used to give the other orders.
Potter choked on air or his tongue but began breathing again, a surprised expression on his face. Draco slid all the way in and waited to hear what other sounds he would make, to see what other expressions he would have.
Potter’s mouth fell open, his face twisted and reddened, and he spent a few moments panting in what looked like agony. Then he gave a groan that shook as much as Draco’s hand had, and his head banged back against the pillows, flattening one and scattering the other. His second sound was a tiny whimper.
An ecstatic whimper.
Draco smiled. He’d had too many lovers not to recognize the sound. He pushed himself forwards once again, taking a grip on Potter’s hips, and released as much tension as he could in the thrusts of a brutal, hard fucking.
*
No one had ever been inside him like this.
Harry’d had lovers before. Of course he had. Sometimes the Muggles he paid had fucked him. He’d been Bradley’s lover in other scenarios and situations than this particular one, especially since Bradley was so jumpy about doing this unless Harry spent several days talking him into it first. It had been fun enough, pleasant enough. Even with the Muggles, Harry had drifted, paying more attention to the chains around his limbs and the orders they gave until the moment when they began to stroke his cock.
But this time…
It hurt, and it was glorious, because Harry could hear the orders echoing in his head, feel the chains around both his wrists and ankles, and feel, too, the relentless push of Malfoy’s hips all at once. Malfoy demanded that he pay attention, rather than floating away into a world of his own where he only had to experience the most powerful and pleasant sensations. And that made Harry, in turn, more aware of things like the roughness of the blanket beneath his back and the ache in his hips where he was spreading his legs against the pull of the manacles.
How was Malfoy doing that? Was it just that he wasn’t a Muggle, or that they were fucking in a magical room that would obey his will as well as Harry’s?
That had to be it, Harry decided with a slight gasp as Malfoy forced himself deeper. There was no reason for this to be so different from his other fucks except that the ankle chains and magic were involved.
Malfoy rocked above him. Harry stared up and found that Malfoy’s eyes were fixed on his face, his expression keen with pleasure, his face flushed with blood that made it darker than Harry had ever seen.
“Push back with me,” Malfoy said. “Move with me.” And those could have been things that anyone would say to a lover, which would have broken the spell for Harry, except that he used the same tone of voice. They were demands. He didn’t care about Harry’s comfort or the problem the ankle chains would present.
It was so refreshing to have someone just give Harry what he needed and otherwise seek his own pleasure that Harry complied without thinking about it, pushing back as hard as he could. Shocks ran through him, both because Malfoy had found his prostate and because Malfoy was suddenly pressed deeper inside. Harry had thought he was deep before, that he couldn’t get any deeper. Now he knew better.
He started to say, “So good,” but that would have meant violating the order. It was astoundingly easy to push the words down and just moan in approval.
“Yes,” Malfoy said, and kept it up, a stream of mindless yeses as he moved above Harry, head thrown back, eyes dreamy.
Harry watched him hungrily. He looked even better when he lost that keen focus of attention and Harry could feel that he didn’t matter, that he wasn’t that important in this situation. In fact, maybe that was the difference. Most of his lovers had to keep a focus on him to please him, and Bradley liked to know what Harry thought every step of the way.
Harry was sick of all that attention, though. He got it enough outside of the bedroom, if not as much of it as he used to. He could use a little ignoring.
Now Malfoy’s expression stabbed him forcefully in his brain, which Harry knew was just as much an erotic organ as anything in the body. He writhed and lifted his hips and yelped and yowled, and couldn’t have said why.
It did bring Malfoy’s attention back to him, though. He smiled a bit and reached out to stroke Harry’s cock.
Harry shook his head frantically, and would have spoken if he’d thought it would have any other result than Malfoy stopping at once. He didn’t know much about this new version of Malfoy who was willing to do things like sleep with him, but he did think that he was a man of his word, and that he would slide out of Harry altogether if Harry violated one of his orders.
“Oh?” Malfoy retracted his hand slowly, fingers spread as though he wanted Harry to see them all and understand what he was giving up. “You want to come untouched?”
A storm of roaring shot through Harry’s head, and he felt like himself for the first time in almost a year, although he could feel his face painfully flushing at the same time because of Malfoy speaking those words aloud. He bobbed his head in exaggerated fashion and then tilted it back against the pillows, welcoming what he knew was going to happen.
The anger was gone. The magic was gone. He was the man he wished to be and couldn’t be most of the time, someone who felt happy.
The happiness mingled with the pleasure as white flashes crossed his vision and his hips jerked up. Harry lifted his head in time to see himself coming all over Malfoy’s stomach and his own, the wetness leaking down his legs and getting on the blankets. Then he lost all that strength and let his head fall back, because he didn’t have a lot of choice.
“Oh,” Malfoy said, voice breathy and restricted. His hips tensed, too, and he buried himself so deep that Harry croaked out one more cry of protest. Then he came, bouncing and sighing, his breath rattling out through his teeth at the last.
In the aftermath, Harry shut his eyes and lay there. He was drained, empty, still, spent, at peace—
And himself.
That was what he really sought in those adventures with Bradley and the other Muggles, and now with Malfoy. Not to be dominated, not to be free of control, but to be himself, the person he could remember being before the war and his unreasonable anger. He got to lie there with random thoughts drifting through his head and feel his hands as though they belonged to him. His mind was clear in the way that he wanted it to be, without succumbing to other impulses.
One experience of control was necessary to free himself from the control of everything else.
Harry smiled. It was a bright, pointed thought, at least halfway intelligent, and he knew that he never would have had it ordinarily. He flicked his eyes open lazily and moved his hands out from the sides so that he could look at the chains around his wrists.
“Mind removing these, Malfoy?” he asked.
*
Draco didn’t let himself fall on Potter, because that was undignified.
And because he liked the position he was in, his elbows resting on Potter’s stomach, his head dangling, his cock still buried and twitching. The wetness drying on his stomach would bother him in due time, as would kneeling between Potter’s legs like this, but right now it didn’t.
That had been—intense. Exhilarating. The kind of experience that brewing a new potion often gave him, without the danger.
Draco opened his eyes and looked down at Potter. He was smiling. Draco licked his lips. It might not be a bad thing to be able to cause smiles like that, always provided, of course, that one didn’t have to pay too high a price for it.
He would have reached down and stroked Potter’s cheek, but just then Potter opened his eyes and spoke, violating Draco’s order. Draco was brought back so suddenly to the world outside the Room that he actually missed what Potter said, until he glanced up in annoyance, rattled the chains, and asked, “I said, would you take these off?”
Draco licked his lips again. “I think you’ve forgotten something, Potter,” he said, and if his voice was not quite the whipcrack he wanted it to be, it was a good approximation.
“Oh, that you ordered me to be quiet?” Potter shook his head. He was sitting up now, though he had the sense to lean back against the headboard enough so that the chains wouldn’t cut into his skin more than they already had. “Well, that’s over, now. But I think the Room still has to have your command to get rid of the chains, so—”
The chains around Potter’s ankles and wrists abruptly sprang open. Potter stared at them, not looking more surprised at the moment than Draco felt. Then he shrugged, grinned, and pulled away from Draco. Draco gasped as he slid out, but Potter didn’t bother glancing at him. Instead, he rose and started to cast Cleaning Charms on himself.
Draco fell on the bed and stared blankly at the solid, bending curve of Potter’s back. How could he leave something so intense behind him as if it had never happened?
“Where are you going?” he asked. His voice was a rasp. He didn’t like that, and turned to pick up his own wand.
“Out,” Potter said. “Thanks for fucking me like that. It gets the anger out.” He was getting dressed now, and making for the door of the Room at the same time.
“You never stay with your lovers?” Draco asked. “Not even when they—” do this for you, he was going to say, but he didn’t want to reveal that the experience had meant more to him than Potter. He settled for pinching his lips shut instead.
Potter stared at him over his shoulder. He stared for so long that Draco finished the Cleaning Charms and reached for his own clothing. He remained still after that, though, because he didn’t want Potter to think he was using the clothes as a shield.
Potter pushed his straggling curls back over his shoulders, shoved his foot into a final boot, and shrugged. “It’s not about the sex for me,” he said simply. “That’s just a convenient conduit. If I could find some other way to get rid of the anger, then I would.” His face darkened for a moment. “And that way, I probably wouldn’t have fought with Ron and Hermione.”
“That was the source of your row?” Draco tried to take pleasure in this new knowledge, to stop feeling like he had just been kicked. It was difficult.
Potter nodded. “They think it’s pathological for me to like being ordered around by a big, powerful man after that’s what Dumbledore did.” He flushed abruptly. “Not that you’re big. But the point stands.”
Draco struggled for long moments to find the right words. “What’s pathological,” he said at last instead, “is your attempt to say that it’s not about the sex for you. Haven’t you ever thought about why that’s so? Haven’t you ever tried to find a lover who wouldn’t mind doing this for you?”
Potter’s face closed as tight as the wards of Severus’s lab. “I don’t ask questions like that,” he said shortly. “They never go anywhere I want to go.”
Draco realized a moment later why that would be true, and cursed himself for a fool. Granger and Weasley kept trying to get Potter to question the foundations of his sexuality. He wouldn’t want to do the same thing with Draco involved.
Potter flung open the door and left, sending it spinning against the wall. Draco watched him go, and then sat in motionless thought for a few more moments.
He knew only two things at the end of that period of thought, however.
He wanted to do that with Potter again.
And this was considerably more complicated than Potter just being able to take orders from him, and Draco being able to give them.
*
Harry saw Malfoy, and he knew he had to destroy him. There was no other word for it. The magic caught at his hair and his face in a white blaze, and he lunged forwards, wanting to use his teeth, like a wolf, knowing he had to use his magic, and envisioning himself tearing Malfoy’s face off—
Then the chains closed around his wrists, locking into place effortlessly, the manacles clicking shut into seamless circles of steel.
And the magic went away.
Harry still reached the full extent of the chains and fell back, the way he always had when struggling against the bonds he had conjured himself. But now there was no magic to pick them apart and strike at the weak places in the links. He could feel the magic coiled sullenly inside him, forced flat and motionless. He would get it back, he thought, but he couldn’t have it now.
Why not?
Harry raised his head and saw Malfoy standing by the door that led out from the room, studying him. His arms were folded, his legs were crossed, and one of his feet tapped the floor. He smiled. The smile made bars of violent light cross Harry’s vision, and he screamed and caused the chains to rattle with his lunge forwards again.
“Resist all you like,” Malfoy said. “I don’t think these chains will break.” He paused, and then added, “Even if I don’t understand why, yet. Why was I able to fasten them when they wouldn’t work for you?”
“Go away,” Harry said. His fury nearly choked him, and for long moments he could only stutter until he forced the insults out of his throat again. “Bastard. Arsehole. Scrapings off Voldemort’s boot. Snape’s little fucktoy. I hate you.”
“It sounds as if you do,” Malfoy said. “But I think I have a bit more experience with extreme states of mind than you do. I did what I needed to survive during the war, while you were able to be a hero. That got me used to living with shame and deciding that it didn’t much matter, as long as the shame stayed a private experience.”
“Then you ought to be able to understand exactly why I hate you!” Harry tore to the side. This was the point at which chains made of his magic would have shredded like tissue, and rage tore with sharp claws at his belly when these didn’t, although he also felt another burst of cloudy freedom. The combined emotions made his head spin and increased his desire to spit and yell. “You’re going to take this out of here, and tell Snape, and—”
“But I’m not,” Malfoy said, in a soft, controlled voice Harry hated and envied him for. “This is your business. And mine.” He came a few steps further into the room, boots clicking against the floor. His steps were far more firm and confident than Bradley’s steps had ever been under the same circumstances, or even the steps of Muggles Harry had paid, who understood all about this game and how it was played.
Harry stared at him, panting. Malfoy looked back at him with mild, curious eyes, with the kind of gaze that said he was uninstructed but willing to learn.
No. This is mental.
Harry wound his fingers in the chains, bent his shoulders, and jerked as hard as he could. The rings bounced and clanked in their settings, the headboard vibrated, but nothing parted. Harry tore again, and again, and the only things he had to show for his efforts were blood blisters along the sides of his hands.
And a growing peace in his head, a draining of the anger that made it hard even to think of new insults for Malfoy.
“You struggle like this all the time?” More quiet clicks of the boots as Malfoy moved closer. Harry raised his head, blinking away the dazzle of bliss that wanted to occlude his vision, and saw Malfoy standing at the foot of the bed now. His gaze was solemn, inward, as if he were waiting for a signal of some sort to make sense of the scene in front of him. “You can’t simply lie back and give in when you feel yourself chained?”
Harry curled his lip. That had been the part that always disconcerted everyone, even the paid Muggles. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s about the size of it.” He measured the distance between him and Malfoy with his eyes, then shifted so that his heels were beneath him. “And that’s my twisted, demented secret that my friends can barely tolerate.”
He leaped forwards, trying to claw Malfoy’s arms if he could do no worse damage. And he thought he could. At the very least, he could wrestle Malfoy onto the bed beneath him and strangle him with the chains.
His shoulders wrenched back hard enough that Harry heard a warning pop. He hissed between his teeth and sagged against a pillow that hadn’t been there a minute before, bewildered. He knew the chains had been long enough to let him reach Malfoy a minute ago. What had happened?
“Why did the pillow show up?” he muttered, the only audible sign he would give of his confusion. His arms felt like dissolving puddles of syrup, and his eyes kept wanting to close. And now he was getting aroused, but even that was soft and gentle, blood flowing to his groin in undulating waves.
“Because I required it,” Malfoy said. He was right beside the bed now, studying Harry with great interest. “Just as I required the chains to be shorter.”
Harry turned his head sharply. He had needed something that would slice through the mist in his head, and that did it.
“You have no business here, Malfoy,” he said. His throat felt metallic, like the bed, and the words rasped and scraped against it. “Why don’t you go spread rumors about the perverted Harry Potter, instead of being here?”
Malfoy leaned towards him, face intense. Harry kept one eye on his hands, ready to strike if he tried to touch him, but Malfoy made no move to do that.
Yet. Harry bared his teeth in warning and waited for his chance. Yes, the chains were reacting to Malfoy’s presence in strange ways, and it helped; Harry already felt healthier and stronger than he had since he had come to Hogwarts. But there was no way that he would allow Malfoy to play more of a part than that.
*
Potter was so fascinating that Draco would have checked for infatuation charms if he could have taken his eyes from him.
But he knew it wasn’t magic, or at least nothing more than the magic of the Room, which had permitted Draco to come in, shorten the chains, and render the bed more comfortable. It was the presence of two heated bodies together, of Potter’s need and the rising force in Draco that drove him to answer that need, of something Draco had never considered and yet which seemed like the thing he had always wanted to do.
It was the force of revelation.
I want to do this. It’s new. It’s strange. It’s curious.
He felt rather the way he did when he first began experiments with a potion. Would he succeed? Would he fail? What unexpected consequences would appear along the way, to force him to change his initial plans or do something that would change even his intentions? The number of his plans that had gone perfectly was very small. On the other hand, the right mixture of success and failure made brewing piquant. Draco would have found it boring to succeed at every attempt.
He reached out and tried to touch one of Potter’s hunched shoulders, wondering what it would feel like.
Potter lunged, his teeth clacking together. Draco pulled back, staring at him, and then laughed. He had wondered why Potter would try to bite instead of strike him, but Potter already seemed to have learned that the chains would keep him from touching Draco unless Draco willed it. He was clever and learned quickly.
“I want this,” he said, in answer to Potter’s question and to have a chance to voice his own thoughts. “Nothing you can do will drive me away.”
Potter gave him a faint half-smile. Then he pushed off the bed with his heels and somehow whirled his lower body around—he moved too quickly to let Draco see how he had done it—and kicked Draco hard in the legs.
Draco gasped in pain and stood up, because he thought it would be more dignified to do so than to sprawl on the floor the way the force of Potter’s kick might have made him do. He stared at Potter.
“Do you always fight like this?” he asked.
Potter snarled. He didn’t make any noise, but there was nothing else Draco could call the sustained baring of his teeth, combined with the wild look in his eyes that made him seem as if he would take another bite out of Draco. “Always,” he said. “Still want to risk being in bed with me now, Malfoy?”
“You need this,” Draco said. “That means there must come a time when the fighting stops.”
“Fuck you, Malfoy.”
Potter lunged against the chains again, and this time went sprawling back on the bed with a cry as the chains shortened themselves. Another pair of manacles had appeared at the foot of the bed, Draco noticed, with cuffs invitingly sized for Potter’s ankles. He moved towards them.
Potter flailed out and hit him squarely in the groin with one foot. Draco hissed, tears coming out of his squinted eyes. Then he seized his wand and Stunned Potter. While Potter lay motionless and gaping at the ceiling, he grabbed the manacles and fastened them around Potter’s feet.
Then he lifted the spell and jumped back as Potter twisted his head to the side and nearly succeeded in closing his teeth on Draco’s hand.
“Dear, dear,” Draco murmured, his heart pounding with the excitement and shock. “Am I going to have to put a collar on you as well, to keep you from interrupting when we start playing?”
“Not play.” Potter’s words were beginning to slur, but Draco doubted that came from pain of any kind. His eyes were glazed, his pupils dilated as though he’d had a really good drink—or a really good fuck. “You don’t—understand. This isn’t play to me. I only get myself chained up because it helps—with the anger. Didn’t—give you permission to put the manacles on. Take them off.”
“Of course, if you like,” Draco said, and moved towards the chains, slowly, keeping one eye on Potter all the while. He was a much better judge of people in extreme situations than he used to be, and he didn’t think he’d judged this one wrongly.
*
Harry hadn’t felt so close to the edge of pure, peaceful, natural sleep in weeks.
But that was wrong. What he felt wasn’t weariness. The emotions buzzed and shone and zoomed along inside of him, and coursed through his body as magic no longer could. Harry gave a weak kick at the manacles, more to check that they were there than anything else, and felt a deep, thick, inexplicable satisfaction when he heard the clink of the chains and felt the pressure of the cuffs around his ankles.
He thought he was close to sleep because he hadn’t been this relaxed in weeks. Perhaps not ever. He’d never thought of chaining his legs in exactly this way. Most of the time, Bradley and the other people he had tried to convince to do this only felt comfortable with the arms, and Harry had thought he was, too.
Now he realized that maybe what he could live with wasn’t what he needed.
He glanced up at Malfoy, who was reaching towards the chains, ready to loosen them, and his pride returned, a sudden surge of pure emotion that at least didn’t have any anger. Yes, maybe he did need this, but Malfoy wasn’t the one who was going to give it to him.
“Yes,” he said, although his voice wavered. “Take them off.”
Only Malfoy’s raised eyebrow said that he was surprised. He unbuckled one cuff and then reached for the second.
Harry closed his eyes. The room had begun to spin again instead of stabilizing the way it had when he wore both ankle chains. That made no sense, and it wasn’t something Harry would tolerate. He gritted his teeth, told himself that Malfoy was more intolerable than being a bit dizzy, and waited.
The second chain loosened.
As though the loosening had been a signal, thoughts of Ron and Hermione blossomed in his head again. Harry felt the anger rise in him as he thought of their petty, simpering excuses, their smug sureness that they were right, and their claim that he had to face and deal with his “issues with authority figures” in a way they approved. It wasn’t enough that he had found something that worked and hurt no one. They couldn’t be happy for him. No, they had to disagree and coo at him about how he had to do the acceptable thing, the right thing—
“You’re burning,” Malfoy said softly.
Harry opened his eyes. The stupid blanket that either the Room or Malfoy had added to the bed was on fire, and the flames were actually stinging his skin. It seemed some magic had come to the surface after all, but Harry had lost the ability to keep it from hurting him. He swore, rolled over, and kicked at the burning blanket.
A stream of water, conjured by Malfoy, poured down from above and put the fire out. Harry buried his head in his still-chained arms and tried to make them the focus of the universe.
“Why are you so opposed to me being the one to give you what so clearly need?” Malfoy asked from above him. His voice was calm and cool and interested, and he sounded as if he couldn’t care less about the answer, as if it was merely one of a series of things he was interested in and would like to know, and he would ask another question if he couldn’t get this one solved.
“You hate me,” Harry said, lifting his head with an effort. The chains were making his arms ache. He rolled over and stared up at Malfoy, hissing as his shoulders popped. The one he’d wrenched earlier still hurt, and he winced. He didn’t really relish pain that much; he just accepted it as a natural consequence of defying the chains. “Why would I want you to assist me with something so intimate?”
Malfoy smiled. The smile looked strange on his face, and Harry started, realizing only then how much he had braced himself for a sneer. “I don’t think it’s that intimate, is it? I tie you up, and then what? How would it work if you were with someone you trusted?” he added with exaggerated patience when Harry hesitated.
Harry licked his lips. He would be mad to confess the truth to Malfoy. Wouldn’t he?
But the Room wouldn’t give him what he really required on his own. That was all too clear, with the way the chains had refused to fasten until Malfoy had commanded them to. And Harry could feel the sick coil of the anger in his belly. He was so tired of feeling that way. This was the only cure he had ever found.
Of all the people in Hogwarts at the moment, laughable as it was, he would still trust Malfoy the most with something like this.
“Give me orders,” Harry said, closing his eyes so that he didn’t have to see what Malfoy’s face would look like when he said that. “It doesn’t matter what. Simple orders will do. Fifteen or twenty minutes will do.”
Malfoy was silent instead of gloating or refusing the way Harry had expected. Then he said, “And then I fuck you?”
Harry couldn’t help staring at him. Malfoy poised with one knee on the bed, head tilted as if he was examining the muscles of Harry’s stomach.
“Why would you want to?” Harry asked. “No, you don’t have to do that.”
Malfoy gave him another smile and reached down to touch Harry’s stomach, then ran his hand down Harry’s leg. Harry had to shut his eyes as the intensity of the sensation overwhelmed him. His skin was tingling again, sensitized, and the storm of anger was sinking back to join his magic in being trapped far beneath the surface.
“Oh, I want to,” Malfoy said. “But I’m not going to do it until I’ve heard you make the choice, declare that you want me.”
Harry shook his head. Malfoy kept surprising him. “I would have assumed that you’d like the fact that I’m in a difficult position and turning to you because you’re the best of a bad lot,” he said. “It feeds your idea of power, and don’t you get off on that?”
*
Draco felt his jaw tighten. It was with an effort that he forced himself to relax and give Potter a condescending look. It wasn’t rational to expect Potter to know why he would be insulted by that, after all, and Draco prided himself on his rationality.
“I was the best of a bad lot during the war,” he said. “I was the only one who could save my parents, and I could only do that by cooperation with the Dark Lord. I didn’t have any choice. And I wasn’t anyone’s first choice for anything. The Dark Lord only used me as a torturer because it amused him to see the sick expression on my face. Severus only went on the run with me because he had no choice. My friends wouldn’t stand with me until I threatened and bribed them.” He had to pause and take a deep breath so that the memories of a hurt, despised teenage boy wouldn’t overwhelm him. “After that, I promised I would only associate with people who came to me willingly.”
Potter sucked his lip, looking up at him. His eyes were dark, and Draco wondered if he would have to turn his back after all and walk out of here. He didn’t want to. There was something that made his breath catch about seeing Potter chained up like this, something that made him want to give Potter orders, and although it was a new thing to him, it wasn’t something hurtful or that he couldn’t face.
Then Potter’s eyes seemed to clear, and he nodded.
“Speak it,” Draco ordered, pressing his hand down into Potter’s stomach and making him grunt. “I want to hear you say it.”
Potter scowled at him, and fought an obviously long and silent battle with himself. Draco waited, never moving his hand or his eyes. This was unexpectedly—easy, he thought. If Potter had put on chains, he himself had shed them when he stepped into this room.
“Yes, all right?” Potter said at last. His voice was heating up again, and he had ground his fingers into the chains hard enough to tear open bloody slashes along them. “I want you to—to order me about.” His face was flushed.
“To fuck you?” Draco asked softly. His mouth was dry now. He swung his other leg onto the bed and removed his hand from Potter, which made his palm itch. He wanted to reach back down and touch him again at once.
Potter shut his eyes. There was sweat on his forehead, and his breathing had sped up to the point that Draco would have been concerned about him if he had thought there was anything legitimate to be concerned about. But he didn’t. He waited, instead, and Potter finally gratified him by snarling, “Yes.”
Draco didn’t smile. Neither did he lunge down and grasp Potter’s mouth in a furious kiss, though he thought Potter might have preferred that; it would have given him less time to think. Instead, he kissed him coolly, pressing his palm back into place on Potter’s stomach as much to hide the shaking of his hands with excitement as to indulge his desire to touch Potter again.
“Strip,” he said, sitting back on his heels.
Potter gave him a dirty look and lifted his chained wrists in silence.
“That’s up to you to figure out,” Draco said, and gave a deep laugh, surprising himself. Yes, he was flying, or felt as if he was, the taste of Potter’s mouth in his own and the feel of Potter’s skin beneath his hands propelling him to new and extravagant heights. “And don’t talk,” he added, when Potter started to open his mouth to complain. “Groaning, whimpering, and sighing are perfectly acceptable.”
*
Harry locked his teeth together and shifted back against the headboard so that he could have more slack in the chains to work with. Even then, it took him four tries to get a grip on the bottom of his shirt because his hands were shaking so hard.
The cool metal of the headboard against his back should have grounded him, but it didn’t. And he was horribly afraid that he looked stupid, with his flushed face and rapidly fluttering eyelashes and glazed eyes that made him have to blink before he could see anything like a normal person.
Bradley and the other Muggles hadn’t ordered him around like this. Bradley tended to give the orders in a nervous voice. The Muggles would snap and sound like Aurors arresting a suspect. Malfoy alone spoke in this detached, cool tone, as if he wanted to see what Harry had to offer before he would concede to become emotionally involved.
It was wonderful. Just what he needed. Coolness to soothe the fire inside him. The anger had swirled away as if going down a drain; the magic was sleeping so far beneath his skin that Harry could no longer feel it.
He couldn’t have said that it was what he needed, though. Malfoy had already taught him something new about himself, plucked a desire from thin air that Harry didn’t know he had and given it body and breath.
And that was bloody terrifying.
It’ll be all right, Harry told himself as he got the right grip finally and managed to pull the shirt back until it caught in the chains where they stretched over his shoulders. Then he had to maneuver his arms some more until the chains and his wrists both popped and the shirt worked free. We’ll only be together for a few more days, however long it takes us to solve the riddles and get around the Ministry. You can endure that long.
He did wonder, though, as he started work on his trousers, if it would be possible to become addicted to Malfoy’s way of handling him in one session. That could be disastrous when he left Malfoy behind.
It didn’t matter, he reassured himself again. He would deal with it the same way he had dealt with not being able to get what he needed from Bradley all the time: ignore the issue, and sometimes take the smaller steps of chaining himself with magic or hiring Muggles when it became intolerable. Somehow, he would get through it. He would live.
He stripped himself quickly of trousers, and followed it with his pants. Then he turned and glanced defiantly up at Malfoy. He knew that he didn’t look like a model or the impossibly beautiful young men he sometimes saw in Muggle magazines. He had too many scars. He was too thin. He had lived too long under stress, and that showed in the boniness of his legs and the way his limbs sometimes waved about because he didn’t know how to handle himself.
But Malfoy watched him with a greedy expression that made Harry shiver, because he realized now that Malfoy might want to devour him, and he wasn’t sure that he could prevent that or hold it back.
“Very nice,” Malfoy said, in a murmur so soft that it was hard for Harry to distinguish from the rustling of the sheets as Malfoy leaned forwards. “Very nice. Now, sit still. I’m going to bind your feet again.”
Harry shuddered so hard that Malfoy, staring as obsessively at Harry’s stomach as he was, couldn’t have missed it. He raised an eyebrow. “Do you object to that? Nod if you do.”
Harry licked his lips. He wasn’t afraid of being bound. He was afraid of what it would do to him, of the intensity of sensation he would experience.
Malfoy seemed to know that, because his face turned bright with his sneer. “How have you survived so long? Most people I know like this are comfortable and at home with their desires. The ones who aren’t confine them to fantasy. They don’t come halfway like you and then hesitate as if they’re about to run home.”
Harry glared at him and thrust his feet out. Malfoy could chain him, fine. He would be the one who had to deal with it if Harry suddenly panicked or started thrashing around and hit him in the face with his elbow. He would be the one who had to deal with it if this was a less than satisfying sexual experience for him.
Malfoy laughed at whatever he saw in Harry’s face, and linked the cuffs of the chains around Harry’s feet. Then he bent and whispered to them, and suddenly the chains shortened on both sides, so that Harry found himself stretched taut across the bed before he even thought about what might happen.
He shut his eyes. God, he was dizzy with the relief that coursed through him, the sudden ease of stress and the feeling that he was cradled and held, as if the chains were protective armor guarding him from the world. He moaned.
“Good,” Malfoy said, his voice throbbing down deep in Harry’s midsection. “Spread your legs.”
That wasn’t easy for Harry to do, either, given the chains on his ankles, but he had long since accepted that Malfoy didn’t care about that. It made it more exciting, actually. Malfoy was trusting Harry to find the solution, and that was about the level of authority that Harry could handle right now. He drove his legs apart as far as they would go, and groaned again when his bonds pulled in resistance.
The bed dipped. Harry blinked, frowned a bit when he realized that sheets now covered it—when had that happened?—and tipped his head back to look at Malfoy.
“Nod if you require much preparation,” Malfoy whispered.
Harry nodded to him. He could feel his face heating up more. Malfoy was still clothed, and Harry was naked. And—well, fuck, it wasn’t as if he did this all the time. Bradley didn’t always fuck him. And Harry had held off as long as he could before he went to Bradley or someone else for his relief.
“Ah,” Malfoy said, and looked even more pleased than usual. Instead of pulling lube out of a pocket, though, he started to undress.
Harry’s eyes focused on his cock when it emerged first, and it was so dark with blood, against Malfoy’s pale skin, that he didn’t think he could look anywhere else.
*
Potter’s eyes were wonderfully large as they focused on his erection. Draco gave one of his private smiles and shoved his trousers and pants down his hips with one motion, before he went back to his shirt.
Potter’s body was wonderful, as well. He seemed to act as if he had hideous blemishes, but Draco didn’t see why. There were no Weasley freckles, for example. There were scars, but Draco carried his own share of those, like the silvery scars on his chest he was now revealing to Potter’s eyes. He was perhaps thinner than was fashionable, but that made it more exciting for Draco. He imagined that it would be like fucking a slim, lithe cat.
Besides, Potter was held-down, trapped and helpless, on the bed, of his own free will. Potter could have had freckles and Draco would still have enjoyed it.
He dragged off the last of his clothes and sat still, letting Potter look at him all he liked. Potter was already biting the inside of his cheek and sucking on his lip. Draco enjoyed those expressions of lust, especially since he’d forbidden Potter to speak. He wondered if Potter knew he was making them.
He glanced once at the manacles holding Potter’s feet and pondered if he should lengthen them so that Potter could spread his legs more. Then he shook his head. Potter would have to actually be in pain before Draco would want to change anything about this moment.
He reached out a commanding hand, and the small table he had envisioned, with the pot of lube on it, manifested by the time he finished the gesture. Draco smiled again—he didn’t know the last time he’d smiled so much—and uncapped the pot, dipping his fingers into the liquid inside. It was orange, and orange-scented.
Draco rolled it between his hands as he studied Potter thoughtfully. He was going to enjoy this, yes, but he hadn’t really done this sort of thing very often. He thought he wouldn’t want to do it with anyone other than Potter.
He didn’t know if he could get Potter to do it again, though.
Think about that later, he told himself, and reached down to Potter’s arse. You don’t even know that this is going to be good enough to want to repeat.
Potter tensed and shivered when Draco stuck his fingers in, and when Draco added more lubricant, it didn’t make any difference. Draco looked up and found that his face was pale, his eyes shut and his breathing shallow.
“Do you want to stop?” Draco asked. Potter could still nod even if he couldn’t speak a refusal. Besides, Draco thought he would break his self-imposed rule of obeying Draco’s orders if he was in real danger.
Potter opened his eyes and gave him a dirty look. Draco shrugged and slid his fingers home. Potter’s breath caught, and his face turned paler still. But he didn’t groan in pain or scream a rejection, so Draco pushed his fingers further in still, sighing aloud at the thought of the warmth that would surround his cock soon.
“Up,” he told Potter. “Spread your legs further.”
Potter grunted and heaved himself up, his eyes opening with a calmer, saner look in them. He used the order as a means to cling to sanity, Draco thought as he spread his fingers and slid a third one in between them. Why? Who knew. Draco wasn’t yet interested enough in the intricacies of Harry Potter’s psychology to spend a lot of time thinking about them.
Potter was regularly closing and opening his eyes the next time Draco looked, for all the world as if he were trying to blink a signal to someone. Draco rolled his eyes and chose to ignore that. His attention was for that wonderful warmth, easing open and shut now in nearly the same rhythm as Potter’s eyes.
He tried to reach Potter’s prostate, but didn’t manage to. He shrugged. He could always order Potter to fuck himself on Draco’s cock.
Then he was putting the lubricant aside with a hand that, annoyingly, shook—at least Draco didn’t think Potter was in the right kind of mood to notice—and pressing himself into the sheath that Potter’s body had become with a groan.
Potter stopped breathing altogether. Draco didn’t mind the extra tightness, but he’d prefer not to have to stop their fucking because Potter had fainted.
“Breathe,” he said, in the same light, cold tone he had used to give the other orders.
Potter choked on air or his tongue but began breathing again, a surprised expression on his face. Draco slid all the way in and waited to hear what other sounds he would make, to see what other expressions he would have.
Potter’s mouth fell open, his face twisted and reddened, and he spent a few moments panting in what looked like agony. Then he gave a groan that shook as much as Draco’s hand had, and his head banged back against the pillows, flattening one and scattering the other. His second sound was a tiny whimper.
An ecstatic whimper.
Draco smiled. He’d had too many lovers not to recognize the sound. He pushed himself forwards once again, taking a grip on Potter’s hips, and released as much tension as he could in the thrusts of a brutal, hard fucking.
*
No one had ever been inside him like this.
Harry’d had lovers before. Of course he had. Sometimes the Muggles he paid had fucked him. He’d been Bradley’s lover in other scenarios and situations than this particular one, especially since Bradley was so jumpy about doing this unless Harry spent several days talking him into it first. It had been fun enough, pleasant enough. Even with the Muggles, Harry had drifted, paying more attention to the chains around his limbs and the orders they gave until the moment when they began to stroke his cock.
But this time…
It hurt, and it was glorious, because Harry could hear the orders echoing in his head, feel the chains around both his wrists and ankles, and feel, too, the relentless push of Malfoy’s hips all at once. Malfoy demanded that he pay attention, rather than floating away into a world of his own where he only had to experience the most powerful and pleasant sensations. And that made Harry, in turn, more aware of things like the roughness of the blanket beneath his back and the ache in his hips where he was spreading his legs against the pull of the manacles.
How was Malfoy doing that? Was it just that he wasn’t a Muggle, or that they were fucking in a magical room that would obey his will as well as Harry’s?
That had to be it, Harry decided with a slight gasp as Malfoy forced himself deeper. There was no reason for this to be so different from his other fucks except that the ankle chains and magic were involved.
Malfoy rocked above him. Harry stared up and found that Malfoy’s eyes were fixed on his face, his expression keen with pleasure, his face flushed with blood that made it darker than Harry had ever seen.
“Push back with me,” Malfoy said. “Move with me.” And those could have been things that anyone would say to a lover, which would have broken the spell for Harry, except that he used the same tone of voice. They were demands. He didn’t care about Harry’s comfort or the problem the ankle chains would present.
It was so refreshing to have someone just give Harry what he needed and otherwise seek his own pleasure that Harry complied without thinking about it, pushing back as hard as he could. Shocks ran through him, both because Malfoy had found his prostate and because Malfoy was suddenly pressed deeper inside. Harry had thought he was deep before, that he couldn’t get any deeper. Now he knew better.
He started to say, “So good,” but that would have meant violating the order. It was astoundingly easy to push the words down and just moan in approval.
“Yes,” Malfoy said, and kept it up, a stream of mindless yeses as he moved above Harry, head thrown back, eyes dreamy.
Harry watched him hungrily. He looked even better when he lost that keen focus of attention and Harry could feel that he didn’t matter, that he wasn’t that important in this situation. In fact, maybe that was the difference. Most of his lovers had to keep a focus on him to please him, and Bradley liked to know what Harry thought every step of the way.
Harry was sick of all that attention, though. He got it enough outside of the bedroom, if not as much of it as he used to. He could use a little ignoring.
Now Malfoy’s expression stabbed him forcefully in his brain, which Harry knew was just as much an erotic organ as anything in the body. He writhed and lifted his hips and yelped and yowled, and couldn’t have said why.
It did bring Malfoy’s attention back to him, though. He smiled a bit and reached out to stroke Harry’s cock.
Harry shook his head frantically, and would have spoken if he’d thought it would have any other result than Malfoy stopping at once. He didn’t know much about this new version of Malfoy who was willing to do things like sleep with him, but he did think that he was a man of his word, and that he would slide out of Harry altogether if Harry violated one of his orders.
“Oh?” Malfoy retracted his hand slowly, fingers spread as though he wanted Harry to see them all and understand what he was giving up. “You want to come untouched?”
A storm of roaring shot through Harry’s head, and he felt like himself for the first time in almost a year, although he could feel his face painfully flushing at the same time because of Malfoy speaking those words aloud. He bobbed his head in exaggerated fashion and then tilted it back against the pillows, welcoming what he knew was going to happen.
The anger was gone. The magic was gone. He was the man he wished to be and couldn’t be most of the time, someone who felt happy.
The happiness mingled with the pleasure as white flashes crossed his vision and his hips jerked up. Harry lifted his head in time to see himself coming all over Malfoy’s stomach and his own, the wetness leaking down his legs and getting on the blankets. Then he lost all that strength and let his head fall back, because he didn’t have a lot of choice.
“Oh,” Malfoy said, voice breathy and restricted. His hips tensed, too, and he buried himself so deep that Harry croaked out one more cry of protest. Then he came, bouncing and sighing, his breath rattling out through his teeth at the last.
In the aftermath, Harry shut his eyes and lay there. He was drained, empty, still, spent, at peace—
And himself.
That was what he really sought in those adventures with Bradley and the other Muggles, and now with Malfoy. Not to be dominated, not to be free of control, but to be himself, the person he could remember being before the war and his unreasonable anger. He got to lie there with random thoughts drifting through his head and feel his hands as though they belonged to him. His mind was clear in the way that he wanted it to be, without succumbing to other impulses.
One experience of control was necessary to free himself from the control of everything else.
Harry smiled. It was a bright, pointed thought, at least halfway intelligent, and he knew that he never would have had it ordinarily. He flicked his eyes open lazily and moved his hands out from the sides so that he could look at the chains around his wrists.
“Mind removing these, Malfoy?” he asked.
*
Draco didn’t let himself fall on Potter, because that was undignified.
And because he liked the position he was in, his elbows resting on Potter’s stomach, his head dangling, his cock still buried and twitching. The wetness drying on his stomach would bother him in due time, as would kneeling between Potter’s legs like this, but right now it didn’t.
That had been—intense. Exhilarating. The kind of experience that brewing a new potion often gave him, without the danger.
Draco opened his eyes and looked down at Potter. He was smiling. Draco licked his lips. It might not be a bad thing to be able to cause smiles like that, always provided, of course, that one didn’t have to pay too high a price for it.
He would have reached down and stroked Potter’s cheek, but just then Potter opened his eyes and spoke, violating Draco’s order. Draco was brought back so suddenly to the world outside the Room that he actually missed what Potter said, until he glanced up in annoyance, rattled the chains, and asked, “I said, would you take these off?”
Draco licked his lips again. “I think you’ve forgotten something, Potter,” he said, and if his voice was not quite the whipcrack he wanted it to be, it was a good approximation.
“Oh, that you ordered me to be quiet?” Potter shook his head. He was sitting up now, though he had the sense to lean back against the headboard enough so that the chains wouldn’t cut into his skin more than they already had. “Well, that’s over, now. But I think the Room still has to have your command to get rid of the chains, so—”
The chains around Potter’s ankles and wrists abruptly sprang open. Potter stared at them, not looking more surprised at the moment than Draco felt. Then he shrugged, grinned, and pulled away from Draco. Draco gasped as he slid out, but Potter didn’t bother glancing at him. Instead, he rose and started to cast Cleaning Charms on himself.
Draco fell on the bed and stared blankly at the solid, bending curve of Potter’s back. How could he leave something so intense behind him as if it had never happened?
“Where are you going?” he asked. His voice was a rasp. He didn’t like that, and turned to pick up his own wand.
“Out,” Potter said. “Thanks for fucking me like that. It gets the anger out.” He was getting dressed now, and making for the door of the Room at the same time.
“You never stay with your lovers?” Draco asked. “Not even when they—” do this for you, he was going to say, but he didn’t want to reveal that the experience had meant more to him than Potter. He settled for pinching his lips shut instead.
Potter stared at him over his shoulder. He stared for so long that Draco finished the Cleaning Charms and reached for his own clothing. He remained still after that, though, because he didn’t want Potter to think he was using the clothes as a shield.
Potter pushed his straggling curls back over his shoulders, shoved his foot into a final boot, and shrugged. “It’s not about the sex for me,” he said simply. “That’s just a convenient conduit. If I could find some other way to get rid of the anger, then I would.” His face darkened for a moment. “And that way, I probably wouldn’t have fought with Ron and Hermione.”
“That was the source of your row?” Draco tried to take pleasure in this new knowledge, to stop feeling like he had just been kicked. It was difficult.
Potter nodded. “They think it’s pathological for me to like being ordered around by a big, powerful man after that’s what Dumbledore did.” He flushed abruptly. “Not that you’re big. But the point stands.”
Draco struggled for long moments to find the right words. “What’s pathological,” he said at last instead, “is your attempt to say that it’s not about the sex for you. Haven’t you ever thought about why that’s so? Haven’t you ever tried to find a lover who wouldn’t mind doing this for you?”
Potter’s face closed as tight as the wards of Severus’s lab. “I don’t ask questions like that,” he said shortly. “They never go anywhere I want to go.”
Draco realized a moment later why that would be true, and cursed himself for a fool. Granger and Weasley kept trying to get Potter to question the foundations of his sexuality. He wouldn’t want to do the same thing with Draco involved.
Potter flung open the door and left, sending it spinning against the wall. Draco watched him go, and then sat in motionless thought for a few more moments.
He knew only two things at the end of that period of thought, however.
He wanted to do that with Potter again.
And this was considerably more complicated than Potter just being able to take orders from him, and Draco being able to give them.
