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lomonaaerenThis is a long one-shot. Don't start reading here; this is the second part of three.
“Draco, darling, whatever are you doing over here this early?” Pansy’s voice was languid, and she didn’t raise her head from the couch where she was lying when Draco stepped into the room. “It won’t be time for the first drink until at least one. I have some standards to maintain, you know.”
“You only maintain them because you have that tradition of sobriety for a few hours each day, and you don’t wake up until ten,” Draco responded smartly. He walked past the couch, pausing to smooth his hand over Pansy’s hair, and then stopped next to the bookshelf. “I’m here to consult your library, actually.”
“My library?” Pansy raised herself on her elbow and stared at him with such open astonishment that Draco bit his lip. Though he admitted to himself that that was less for her expression and more for the crushed tuft of dark hair that projected out from beside her ear. “Draco, when was the last time you read a book?”
“Two years ago,” Draco said. “When I wanted to make sure that ordinary hangover potions didn’t contain the ingredients of the one that Blaise sold me, remember? I wanted to see if I had grounds to sue him.”
“Oh, yes,” Pansy said, and dropped back onto the couch, tilting her head back and closing her eyes. “Well, wake me if you find something interesting.”
Draco drew out several books and went to sit down on the couch that faced Pansy’s, wondering which was the sign of a true friend—offering you whatever you wanted to drink without lecturing you about the cost or letting you near their priceless books, many of them first editions, without wanting to know what you were looking up.
Pansy’s library was a pleasant place (though, Draco thought, more when you hadn’t drunk yourself to sleep the night before) because it was so bright. The sunlight entered through several large windows that looked out on the gardens, a balcony, and a terrace where the flowers grew in such abundance that one couldn’t actually see the terrace itself. The walls were a bright blue, decorated with carved flowers, sapphires, and the Parkinson family crest, repeating itself over and over again. Draco could have wished that the crest was a little smaller, only for the sake of good taste, but then again, one didn’t have to look at it if one would rather look at something else.
He occupied himself with staring at the library walls or out the windows half the time, and looking at the books half the time. It seemed productive.
The books insisted that fairies were small, harmless creatures, and Draco nodded with a smile. That was exactly what he had told Potter, and Potter was either fooled by the glamours himself or would have to come up with a more convincing lie if he wanted Draco to believe that he was actually held captive by fairies.
On the other hand, there were tall, beautiful, deadly creatures called faeries that were decidedly different. No one had seen them in the wizarding world in generations—probably because British magic had proven too strong for them—but there were plenty of tales. They sacrificed one man or woman, an ornament of their court, to a “force of great darkness,” probably some long-dead Dark wizard they’d mistakenly deified, every seven years. They preferred mortal men and women so that no faerie had to die.
There were other interesting things. Draco read them and nodded thoughtfully. It was no wonder that faeries had been driven away from the islands, as all the books said had happened. They sounded like they would be hard put to it to face a baby with a knitting needle.
Pansy woke up when Draco put the books back on the shelves. “Going, darling?” she asked, with a stretch and a yawn. Then she glanced at the gilded clock on the wall and brightened. “One-o’clock! You’re welcome to stay for a drink, dear.”
“No, thank you,” Draco said with immense dignity. He preferred not to explain that he had an appointment to keep in his rose garden, so he just smiled at Pansy and pressed her hand for a moment instead. “I have to go away and think on my newly-gained knowledge, perhaps write it down, before I blast it out of my head with wine. And I have some purchases to make.”
“Send the house-elves to do it,” Pansy said, staring at him. She had a worried curl to her lip, but Draco didn’t know why until she leaned forwards and whispered, “You’re not—you’re not going to catch Millicent’s disease, are you, Draco?”
Draco paused, struck by that disastrous idea. He didn’t think he was becoming like Millicent, a worshipper of war-heroes and a tax-paying freak, but it might be a good idea to protect himself against the sickness just in case.
“I believe I will have that drink, Pansy,” he said, and sat down on the couch at her feet.
Pansy beamed and patted his hand.
*
“There should be nothing to it.”
His conclusion, which Draco thought hopeful and the product of more research than the problem of Potter warranted—though there was always the ten thousand Galleons to consider—met with resounding silence. Draco looked up from his notes and found Potter leaning against the nearby tree, staring at him. With difficulty, Draco had lured Potter away from the rosebushes and into a section of the gardens less visible from the house, so that, just in case any of his friends came by and couldn’t see Potter, Draco wouldn’t look ridiculous talking to thin air.
But now Potter stared at him as if all Draco’s efforts had been wasted.
“Well?” Draco tried to cover his confusion by adopting a brisk tone. “There seem to be plenty of vulnerabilities that faeries have. I can defeat them and get you back to the real world as soon as you say the word.”
“You can’t do that until the first day of autumn,” Potter said, voice oddly constricted. “And I think the books have given you a false idea. Battling faeries is not going to be easy, Malfoy.”
“Yes, it will,” Draco said stubbornly. He refused to think that permanent obstacles could get in the way of his pursuit of money. Tame Chinese Fireball, you’re as good as mine. “I’ll make it so.”
Potter gave him the same kind of dismissive look that Draco had received from him during their second meeting. “You’re a very unlikely hero,” he said.
“I know that,” Draco said. “I never signed up to be a hero. I’m a profiteer. Remember, the money and not you is my goal.”
Potter leaned back on the tree, hard enough to make it quiver with his weight—he was becoming more and more solid and real all the time—and then sighed. “Fine. The burden will fall on your head if you fail, and then I’ll be no worse off than before.”
“About to be pointlessly sacrificed to the Dark wizard they worship,” Draco felt compelled to point out.
“That’s what I meant.” Potter passed a hand through his hair and stared off into the distance. “No worse off than before.”
Draco rubbed his forehead. He was sober for the second night in a row—that one drink at Pansy’s hadn’t been enough to make his brain effervesce the way it usually would be doing by now—and irritated at the way Potter was acting. “Would you rather have no hero at all, or me?” he asked. “Try to be a little more grateful.”
Potter started and turned back to look at him. “I am,” he said. “But you must admit that it’s a little strange.” His face darkened. “And I’m not sure that you’ll be able to conjure the necessary desire to win me free of her. I mean, true love was the reason that the last victim escaped, along with the pregnancy. When you see the glamours she can come up with, what’s to keep you from fleeing?”
“The vision of the dragon I’m going to buy with the money,” Draco said firmly. “I don’t need anything else. The strongest love in my life is the love for gold.”
Potter cocked his head in confusion that Draco had to admit was pretty. He was dressed all in shades of green this evening, which he said had something to do with a faerie revel he’d attended. It did more for him than the other outfits had. “That’s interesting. I thought you’d say the strongest force was your reverence for your family and tradition.”
“The traditions that my family brought me up in are stupid,” Draco said. “No. The strongest force in my life is gold. The second’s lust. And then…” He had to pause and think about whether there was a third. He could say that his friends were important to him, but he was only loyal in the sense that he had sex inside that circle most of the time. He didn’t care about paying his taxes or saving the world or all the other shite that Gryffindors believed in. He didn’t mourn the war and the past.
“That’s it,” he said at last.
Potter stared at him again. Draco decided that being among the faeries must have given him permanent expectations of glamours on people. Draco knew he wasn’t as pretty as someone disguised with a glamour would be, but he had his own kind of honesty and dignity, and he held up against Potter’s stare.
“Lust,” Potter said at last.
“Yes,” Draco said, and then took pity. It was highly probable that Potter, virtuous hero that he was, had never heard of the concept. “You see, when you long for someone else’s body and you know that you’re not in love with them, but want to be inside them, or have them inside you, that’s called lust.”
Potter laughed, and the laugh changed his whole face. Draco stared and wondered whether the faeries had taught Potter auditory glamours. When Draco last knew him, he’d been too scrupulously fair-minded to use such things. “I know what lust means, Malfoy. I’ve spent the last seven years in and out of the Faerie Queen’s bed, as she wanted to have me or spurn me. But I didn’t think I would find someone I could do this with.”
And he took a step forwards and bent to place his lips against Draco’s.
Draco gasped. What he felt was a shivering, cool sensation, like a breeze brushing past his face; Potter wasn’t solid enough for it to be anything more than that. But it was a breeze that spoke of great skill, and when Potter darted his tongue out to brush across Draco’s mouth, he could feel an equally distant warmth that made him glad he was sitting down.
Potter a good kisser? Who would have thought? Draco had heard rumors about that, of course, but he’d assumed they were the usual sort of wild stories that collected around anyone with a hint of fame, particularly since Potter disappeared and the lunatics started to claim they were keeping him captive in their bedrooms or secret boudoirs.
“You can feel that?” Potter asked, and his voice was deeper and more distant, as if he was speaking down a tunnel. Draco nodded in a dazed way that he suspected did him no credit as someone with a lot of experience, but Potter didn’t seem inclined to question him on the number of his previous partners. He chuckled instead, whispered, “God, it’s good to kiss a human again,” and then returned his lips to Draco’s. Perhaps the sensation was a bit firmer this time.
Draco felt a brush along his cheek, and started, but, when he squinted to the side, he realized that Potter was simply caressing his face. His hand moved as slowly as his lips, and Draco moaned. He didn’t mean to; it just came out. He could have done without the wicked delight in Potter’s eyes.
On the other hand, he didn’t think that he could have done without the foot that rose and stroked his erection a moment later, and if the price of that was Potter’s laughter, then he could cackle for years as far as Draco was concerned.
Touching Draco seemed to make Potter firmer and more real. He bore Draco backwards without trouble and laid him down on the grass, which Draco felt as cooler and softer than his touch. He pulled Draco’s shirt back with slow, patient hands, and then bent down, hesitated once as if not sure he was going to be able to do it, and fastened his teeth around Draco’s nipple.
Draco raised a hand and locked it behind Potter’s head, holding him in place when he tried to withdraw. “How did you know I liked that?” he whispered.
Potter half-shrugged, as much as he could when he was bending awkwardly over Draco, trying to touch his cock and bite his nipple both at the same time. Potter released his nipple, licked around it, and then whispered, “You just looked like someone who would like to have his nipples sucked.”
Draco accepted that without further question. Blaise always claimed that he could tell random sexual facts like that about people from the way they looked, and there was no reason that he should be the only one in the world with the ability.
Potter sucked at the hollows under Draco’s ribs, too, which even Draco hadn’t known he liked, and gripped his cock in a maddening rhythm, always slowing when Draco started to thrust. Draco whined, his cock heavy and wet in his pants, and reached down to bring himself off. He would do it if Potter wouldn’t.
“Ah, ah,” Potter said, and moved to the side. Draco reckoned he was trying to do something he thought devastatingly clever, but all that happened was that he fell over Draco. But Draco could forgive him that, because his body was much heavier and more solid now, almost real, and because he managed to fall in such a way that he avoided driving a knee into Draco’s groin. He lay like that for a stunned moment, and then laughed and breathed out warm, damp air against his neck.
Draco writhed against him and wrapped his arms around Potter’s shoulders. Potter’s clothes melted off, fading like warm snow at his touch, and Draco blinked. “Were you just dressed in glamours all this time?” he asked.
“Everything is glamour with them,” Potter said, and his voice was so bitter Draco thought he might stop. But then he shifted and his hands sank home, into Draco’s hair, into his flesh, making Draco snap his teeth at the air. “But this—this is real.” His words were soft, reverent.
Draco didn’t know what Potter’s words meant, and he didn’t have to face them, because Potter was moving again. His breath tickled the hairs on Draco’s shoulders and neck and ears as he peeled him out of his shirt, using graceful, economical gestures of his hands all the time, like the steps of a dance. Draco had to thank the faeries for this, because the last time he’d seen Potter try to dance, he’d feared for the safety of everyone in the room. So one good thing had come out of Potter’s imprisonment.
And then…
And then his hands knew just how to stroke, how to part Draco’s legs and trace around his hole with touches so light that Draco shoved himself backwards to increase the pressure before he thought about how he would look, how to lick and nip Draco’s inner thighs and his balls and make him feel heavy and swollen, with both semen and desire. He drew Draco’s arms out to the side with liquid lightness, and Draco let himself be so pulled, drunk with delight. Potter kissed him one more time, tongue tapping lightly against his, then pulling back to trace Draco’s lips the way he’d traced his hole.
“Ready?” Potter’s voice whispered. Even the vibrations of the words aroused light shivers in Draco’s body that seemed to break up from his stomach to his skin. He started like a wild deer, and reached for Potter, and only then thought about the words that Potter had spoken.
“Wh-what?” he muttered. His eyelids were heavy. He shifted to the side and opened his legs further. For the first time he could remember, except once or twice with Blaise, he knew what it meant to be empty and aching to be filled. His arse clenched on air.
“Are you ready?” There was a sharp urgency to Potter’s question now, but it was still hard for Draco to open his eyes. He wondered if Potter was using a touch of faerie glamour to bend Draco to his wicked wiles. Draco wondered irritably how he could not have noticed that Draco hardly needed corrupting.
“Yes,” Draco said, and helpfully spread his legs further until his hips ached and the grass blades tickled at his knees. “Are you going to do it or not?”
Potter smiled at something, nothing, and eased forwards. Draco hadn’t felt him put the lube on, but that wasn’t remarkable, with the way that he’d been so drugged. He ended up clutching at Potter again, panting, because his cock was bigger than he had thought and it was a while since he had bottomed with someone new, whose movements he didn’t know and couldn’t anticipate, with whom it wasn’t like moving in a dance.
“Are you sure you’re ready?” Potter gasped above him, and then went still and shook as if he were the one being penetrated.
“Yes,” Draco said. “How many times do I have to say that?” His voice quivered, but still, Potter should trust him. Draco was the one having sex with a hallucination in his rose garden, where there was the possibility of thorn-pricks, and, worse, grass-stains. He was the one making the leap of faith.
Potter stared down at him with deep, soft eyes, and Draco’s breath caught at the look on his face. He didn’t think he’d ever been as important to someone as it seemed he was to Potter right now. Potter seemed on the brink of a revelation, and he continued to move slowly. Not as if Draco was fragile, Draco thought, picking the thoughts slowly out of the rose-scented mist that spread across his brain, but as if he was Potter’s first lover in a while.
Or different lover.
I’m human, Draco thought, and it made him more confident, because it meant that he didn’t have to live up to impossible, faerie-set standards. He lifted his head for a kiss, and Potter obliged.
They rocked on the grass. They danced, or at least it was more like dancing than Draco had known sex with a stranger could be. Potter was inside him, and seemed fully conscious of the privilege, because he frequently tried to put his tongue in Draco’s mouth and his fingers into the hollows of his ribs or his shoulders, as though seeking more and more entrances to him. Draco clamped his legs around Potter’s hips and flanks and held him there, half-closing his eyes, and then fully closing them, whenever he thought he could give up the sight of that brilliant green gaze so near to his.
“Oh,” Potter said once, drawing out the sound in a way that made Draco think it had escaped his lungs on a breath of wonder.
Draco knew exactly how he felt.
Inevitably, the spiral began, the spiral that usually led to completion and climax for Draco when he was beneath someone like this. But it brought him deeper instead of higher. More and more pleasure spread across his body, light as the touches of a feather, sharp in random places. He arched his back and spread his arms out, loosening his hold on Potter, feeling as though he needed to offer himself to an otherworldly power, more than he was offering himself to Potter.
Potter croaked above him. Draco turned his head, and the colors of the roses and their perfume blurred in his eyes and nose, and he gasped aloud and noisily, and came.
“Draco,” Potter cried above him.
Draco could feel the muscles of Potter’s hips flexing as he drove himself in. He could feel the wetness spreading across his stomach and the grass scratching at the back of his thighs. He could feel the soil yielding to his scrabbling fingers, and his stomach spun and soared and melted slowly back to earth in an embrace of pleasure.
Potter collapsed, and somehow kept his elbows out of the way, so that only the sleek, warm chest and the smooth body landed on top of Draco. Draco turned his head and lipped at Potter’s ear. He kept his eyes closed. He could be content to stay like this forever, beneath the languid warm weight.
But Potter kissed his ear and pulled back. “I have to go now,” he said, voice a croak. “Don’t forget me.”
“How could I?” Draco murmured, keeping his eyes closed. He would retain the sensations of smell and touch for Potter that he experienced so far, without giving himself a last vision. He thought it better that way, though he didn’t know why. Perhaps watching Potter fade would be too disheartening. “That was the best sex I’ve ever had.”
Though, he had to add conscientiously a moment later, I haven’t had sex with anyone but Blaise, Theo, Pansy, Daphne, and Astoria in years. It’s possible that Potter simply stands out as better by comparison.
“I’m—I’m glad,” Potter said. “Likewise.”
Draco smiled at that. “I’m better by comparison with this Faerie Queen, I suppose,” he murmured. “I also suppose I should be flattered.”
“If you knew how many centuries she had lived and the skills she can bring to her bed and her lovers when she wants to,” Potter said gravely, “you would be flattered, yes.” He hesitated, then added, “I wanted to do this now because I don’t think that I’ll be this solid again before the first day of autumn, and because you said that you needed another motive for rescuing me, but—but I did it because I wanted to, too. Don’t forget that.” He lowered his voice and whispered, “In case she keeps me from escaping again, which she might if she discovers how close I’ve come to a true rescue, look for me on the path that runs through crooked trees behind your house on the first day of autumn. I’ll be riding a white horse.”
Draco still kept his eyes shut, but he listened to Potter depart, too. There was the light crunch of footsteps on grass, and the swish of him brushing past roses, and then nothing.
In the back of his mind, Draco had wondered why he wasn’t getting scratched all over by the grass. Only when he opened his eyes and looked again, after a period of sleep, did he realize that Potter had spread the green cloak he’d given Draco—another thing he hadn’t noticed—beneath them, and that it was glowing with dark splotches of sweat and bright splashes of come against the shining background.
*
“You can’t be serious, Draco.”
Draco sighed and leaned back in his seat. He had decided that he had to tell one of his friends about what was happening; in case he died in this absurd attempt to win Potter back from the faeries, someone should know what had happened. And he trusted Daphne more than most of the others. She preserved a good balance, he thought, between the world of fantasies that Pansy, Blaise, and Theo sometimes seemed poised to vanish into and the horrifying world of people like that turncoat Millicent had become. Draco could have gone to Astoria, too, but she was a few years younger than her sister and not as wise. Better to speak to someone who could give him as much advice as possible.
“Then tell me where this came from,” he said, and held the cloak out.
Daphne took it with a little sniff, turning it over and staring at the stained side. Draco hadn’t removed the stains for the same reason that he hadn’t healed the ache in his arse. For one thing, he liked them both; for another thing, it proved that that which seemed incredible to him, and which Daphne refused to believe had occurred, really had happened.
But Daphne was an expert in all the kinds of fabric, and the cloak would be a different kind of evidence for her. She ran her fingers over it, stared, and then shook her head at Draco. “I haven’t encountered something this fine that wasn’t silk before,” she said. “And you couldn’t have woven it yourself.”
“Of course not,” Draco said, lounging against the back of her couch. Daphne had the most comfortable furniture. Draco had to admit there was something to be said about choosing to suit your own tastes rather than simply relying on the heirlooms of your ancestors. “Could someone have conjured it?”
“Even then, they would need a model to work from, and what kind of model could it have been?” Daphne murmured, turning the cloak back and forth. She showed no more than a slight grimace of distaste when her fingers slid over the stains, but even that, Draco thought was a little rich. He had seen her rise from a night of sleeping in the wet spot and cast Cleaning Charms on her hair, body, and teeth rather than take the time to shower properly. Showering would take up valuable drinking time, after all. “This is remarkable.” She gave Draco a grudging glance of admiration. “If you did it, it’s a bloody good fabrication. You could earn a little extra money by making more of them.”
“Work?” Draco asked in horrified tones.
Daphne cocked her head. “If your vision of Potter is real and you’re really going to be dragging him back to this world, then he might insist that you work. You know how these Gryffindor types are.” She touched the cloak again, stroking it in a way that made Draco anticipate she would offer to buy it. But her next words were entirely unexpected. “Millicent runs a robe shop, doesn’t she? You could go into partnership with her. I’m sure she would sell robes made of this like they were going out of style.”
Draco stared at her in silent outrage. Never had he thought that Daphne being a bit more practical than the rest would lead to this, or he wouldn’t have come. Draco had standards to maintain and a delicate conscience to protect, after all.
Daphne sighed. “I’m trying to help you, Draco. You act more starry-eyed about this Potter fellow, or this version of him, than I’ve seen you about any of us. And even you must realize that you can’t keep it up forever, all this sex and drinking and dancing until all hours of the night. You’ll want to find someone soon.”
“Why?’ Draco asked in dismay. “Potter was great in bed, yeah, but that doesn’t mean that he’ll want me when he—comes back.” It was still hard to say “gets rescued from being kidnapped by faeries” aloud, even though he’d had to explain it to Daphne twice.
Daphne gave him a heavy-lidded glance. “You don’t usually spend this much time talking about someone outside our group, Draco. We’ve contented you for a long time, but I don’t think we will for much longer.”
Draco sat up and clasped his hand over his heart. “I will never stop being a true Slytherin.”
Daphne raised a skeptical eyebrow. “So you would be content to see Potter thank you, leave you, and marry someone else? Perhaps that Weasley woman he was associated with before he went missing?”
Draco scowled. Daphne snapped her fingers and summoned a house-elf to hold a mirror in front of him. Draco hastily smoothed the lines out of his forehead and smiled the trim, gentle little smile that was the best, since it wouldn’t leave many wrinkles.
“I thought not,” Daphne said with some satisfaction. “Well, I wish you luck, though it rather does destroy the romantic fantasy of our group becoming three old married couples. Then again, I think Astoria has her eyes on someone else, too, and Pansy can’t seem to choose between Blaise and Theo. Perhaps they’ll settle down as a scandalous threesome, and you and Potter can be the obligatory gay couple.”
Draco had to admit that he could all too easily imagine Pansy shocking the wizarding world that way, and enjoying every minute of it. “And what about you?” he had to ask.
Daphne gave him a mysterious smile. “I think I’ll find another revolving quintet of lovers. Or—” She cocked her head. “There ought to be a lesbian couple. Maybe someday I’ll introduce you to whom I have in mind.” She shook the cloak out. “Here you are. But do consider getting in touch with Millicent.”
Draco went home and thought long and hard about what he was potentially going to do. Then he thought of the things he would be giving up. His friends, long drinking, casual fidelity or infidelity as he chose—Potter would probably be tiresome about that—sex with women, his carefree irresponsibility…
He clenched down again on the burn in his arse, and shuddered. Then he Summoned a carafe of wine and a pot of smooth oil he often used for lubricant.
He couldn’t make the decision yet. The best thing to try was drinking and wanking to images of Potter at the same time, and seeing which was better.
*
“I don’t think I’ll be able to slip away again like this.”
Draco tried to look intelligent and sympathetic. He thought Potter needed someone who could look that way. But the fact was that he was eyeing the fall of the tunic—it was a tunic, it had to be, there was no way a shirt could look that poncey even if it was bright blue and edged with lace—that he thought concealed Potter’s cock, and trying not to leer.
“Are you listening to me?”
Potter sounded irritated. Draco raised his eyebrows, and then his eyes, and then nodded when he realized that Potter was glaring at him. “Absolutely,” he said. “You said that you didn’t think you’d be able to get away again. Is that because the faeries are keeping more of an eye on you?” There. He was participating in the conversation, rather than just dreaming about being shagged again.
“Yes.” Potter pulled his knees in up in front of him, blocking the sight of his groin completely. Draco sighed in loss, but Potter didn’t magically hear, discern what he wanted, and turn around to recompense him. “She let me leave for—all sorts of reasons. A last gift, to taunt me, because she was curious to see what I would do, who knows? But the one thing the Court takes seriously is the tithe. They won’t let me leave again, and they’ll keep an eye out to make sure that I don’t take a lover from among them who might be persuaded to turn traitor and rescue me.”
“Do they suspect me?” Draco asked, a bit nervously. He thought he could deal with faeries when he was conscious, but it would be no good if they started spying on his dreams and trying to get through there.
“Suspect what?” Potter gave him a dour glare. “I doubt that you’re really planning to do anything.”
“If I was,” Draco said loftily, “it would be stupid to tell you. It sounds like this Queen could trick anything she wanted to out of you.”
Potter winced and spread one hand over his face, fingers digging into the ridges above his eyes as if he would pull them out. Draco winced in turn and planned to be elsewhere if that ever happened. “That’s probably true,” Potter whispered. “Oh, God, I wish she had never seen me. She distracted me again last night, and I don’t know what was real and what was dream.”
“Describe it to me.” Draco wasn’t sure why he wanted to know, since Potter’s description would probably be half-glamour and half-madness, but he would hear. When Potter stared at him uncertainly, Draco hunched forwards and nodded as if he were this full of decisive force all the time.
“All right.” Potter licked his lips, and his gaze grew remote. “She brought me to one of her private rooms. Of course, the whole Court belongs to her, in a way, but there are places—spaces—rooms—I don’t know how to describe them—designated for certain individuals. This was one of hers.”
Draco nodded. He could understand that. There were rooms in the Manor that had belonged peculiarly to his parents, and some that had always belonged to him. Of course, now it was all his. He wondered dreamily what Potter would look like spread out on the blankets of the Forest Room, which was decorated all in green, whether his dark hair would be startling against the emerald-colored coverlets or blend in, whether—
“She rode a white horse up to me,” Potter whispered, distracting Draco from daydreams of shagging him, which Draco thought was a much more productive use of his time. “Like she has before. I can’t describe that horse to you. It had ice for legs and swansdown for a mane. She reached out a hand, and I grasped it like someone in a dream, and she pulled me up, and I rode behind her.”
Draco frowned and rubbed his throat. There was an odd burning there. He hoped he wasn’t getting a cold. That was the last thing he needed.
“We soared over these green hills,” Potter whispered, “higher than any hills on earth, and yet they were still hills, not mountains. I’m not sure how I knew that, just that I did. And we ran across the surfaces of streams, which flowed in place. The light shone around us. Once we cantered through a forest where the trees were made of bronze. The sun was changed to blood and ashes as it fell around us.”
“Then what?” Draco demanded. The harshness of his voice startled him, as did his impatience for Potter to get on with the main event rather than babbling about the beautiful details of the Faerie Queen’s realm. Yes, this was most definitely a cold. He would have to take a medicinal potion later.
“Oh. Then. The bed.” Potter smiled, and there was an edge to the smile that Draco hated. For all Potter’s talk of wanting to be with Draco last time, wanting his fuck to be real and human, it was obvious that his sojourn among the faeries had affected him, and he was more than slightly fey. “Made of wood, grown from wood, with ferns enclosing it instead of curtains and grass for the blankets.”
“I’d wager that was scratchy,” Draco muttered.
Potter ignored him, last in some sort of dream. “Or moss. Softest moss, more like that. She laid me down and she was naked. I can’t describe her naked, Malfoy. It’s like being in bed with a storm, a wolf, a force of nature.”
Draco cocked his head to the side and squinted, to see if he could make out scratches on the little of Potter’s shoulders that showed under the tunic. Then he drew back in horror. Squinting would cause lines. He couldn’t believe that he had forgotten that for long enough to do it, even if it was only a moment.
Stupid bloody Potter and his stupid bloody effect on my bloody brain.
“She was wearing red lips this time,” Potter continued in a trance-like voice, “and bronze hair filled with light like the bronze forest, and pointed ears, and skin so pale you’d stain it by touching it with a finger. She knelt over me, and crushed her breasts down into my chest, and whispered words in her own tongue, in a voice like sharpened steel.”
“I don’t care!” Draco said loudly.
Potter blinked and stared at him. “But you said that you did,” he said. “You were the one who asked about it.”
“I don’t feel very good,” Draco said, retreating in what he knew was a childish direction. He pawed at his throat and squinted at Potter again, then remembered lines and hastily sat up straight. “I mean—I don’t want to hear how you had sex with her. It’s not like I need to know that to rescue you, do I?”
“If you do rescue me,” Potter said, and there was that fey edge to his smile.
“I will,” Draco said, and he knew now that he would. It wasn’t as though he could allow Potter to waste the rest of his life away with the faeries, could he? He had to do something to get him back, little as Potter deserved it.
Potter simply raised his eyebrows and let the moment pass in silence, and Draco made up for it by going to bed that night and wanking as though nothing could stop him, as though his cock would be yanked off his body if he didn’t wank. And then he cried out when he came loudly enough to startle a house-elf into popping into his room and to frighten the owls that had come and perched along the edges of his windows when his friends realized that he was refusing an invitation for the second night in a row.
It wasn’t as though Potter could possibly want the Faerie Queen, Draco thought drowsily as he cleaned up the wet spot and then curled up in his pillows, closing his eyes and rubbing his cheek against the cushiony feel. Not really. Not when he couldn’t know what was real about her and what was illusion.
With Draco, he would never have any doubts about that. Draco had never pretended to be any different than he was.
Part Three.
“Draco, darling, whatever are you doing over here this early?” Pansy’s voice was languid, and she didn’t raise her head from the couch where she was lying when Draco stepped into the room. “It won’t be time for the first drink until at least one. I have some standards to maintain, you know.”
“You only maintain them because you have that tradition of sobriety for a few hours each day, and you don’t wake up until ten,” Draco responded smartly. He walked past the couch, pausing to smooth his hand over Pansy’s hair, and then stopped next to the bookshelf. “I’m here to consult your library, actually.”
“My library?” Pansy raised herself on her elbow and stared at him with such open astonishment that Draco bit his lip. Though he admitted to himself that that was less for her expression and more for the crushed tuft of dark hair that projected out from beside her ear. “Draco, when was the last time you read a book?”
“Two years ago,” Draco said. “When I wanted to make sure that ordinary hangover potions didn’t contain the ingredients of the one that Blaise sold me, remember? I wanted to see if I had grounds to sue him.”
“Oh, yes,” Pansy said, and dropped back onto the couch, tilting her head back and closing her eyes. “Well, wake me if you find something interesting.”
Draco drew out several books and went to sit down on the couch that faced Pansy’s, wondering which was the sign of a true friend—offering you whatever you wanted to drink without lecturing you about the cost or letting you near their priceless books, many of them first editions, without wanting to know what you were looking up.
Pansy’s library was a pleasant place (though, Draco thought, more when you hadn’t drunk yourself to sleep the night before) because it was so bright. The sunlight entered through several large windows that looked out on the gardens, a balcony, and a terrace where the flowers grew in such abundance that one couldn’t actually see the terrace itself. The walls were a bright blue, decorated with carved flowers, sapphires, and the Parkinson family crest, repeating itself over and over again. Draco could have wished that the crest was a little smaller, only for the sake of good taste, but then again, one didn’t have to look at it if one would rather look at something else.
He occupied himself with staring at the library walls or out the windows half the time, and looking at the books half the time. It seemed productive.
The books insisted that fairies were small, harmless creatures, and Draco nodded with a smile. That was exactly what he had told Potter, and Potter was either fooled by the glamours himself or would have to come up with a more convincing lie if he wanted Draco to believe that he was actually held captive by fairies.
On the other hand, there were tall, beautiful, deadly creatures called faeries that were decidedly different. No one had seen them in the wizarding world in generations—probably because British magic had proven too strong for them—but there were plenty of tales. They sacrificed one man or woman, an ornament of their court, to a “force of great darkness,” probably some long-dead Dark wizard they’d mistakenly deified, every seven years. They preferred mortal men and women so that no faerie had to die.
There were other interesting things. Draco read them and nodded thoughtfully. It was no wonder that faeries had been driven away from the islands, as all the books said had happened. They sounded like they would be hard put to it to face a baby with a knitting needle.
Pansy woke up when Draco put the books back on the shelves. “Going, darling?” she asked, with a stretch and a yawn. Then she glanced at the gilded clock on the wall and brightened. “One-o’clock! You’re welcome to stay for a drink, dear.”
“No, thank you,” Draco said with immense dignity. He preferred not to explain that he had an appointment to keep in his rose garden, so he just smiled at Pansy and pressed her hand for a moment instead. “I have to go away and think on my newly-gained knowledge, perhaps write it down, before I blast it out of my head with wine. And I have some purchases to make.”
“Send the house-elves to do it,” Pansy said, staring at him. She had a worried curl to her lip, but Draco didn’t know why until she leaned forwards and whispered, “You’re not—you’re not going to catch Millicent’s disease, are you, Draco?”
Draco paused, struck by that disastrous idea. He didn’t think he was becoming like Millicent, a worshipper of war-heroes and a tax-paying freak, but it might be a good idea to protect himself against the sickness just in case.
“I believe I will have that drink, Pansy,” he said, and sat down on the couch at her feet.
Pansy beamed and patted his hand.
*
“There should be nothing to it.”
His conclusion, which Draco thought hopeful and the product of more research than the problem of Potter warranted—though there was always the ten thousand Galleons to consider—met with resounding silence. Draco looked up from his notes and found Potter leaning against the nearby tree, staring at him. With difficulty, Draco had lured Potter away from the rosebushes and into a section of the gardens less visible from the house, so that, just in case any of his friends came by and couldn’t see Potter, Draco wouldn’t look ridiculous talking to thin air.
But now Potter stared at him as if all Draco’s efforts had been wasted.
“Well?” Draco tried to cover his confusion by adopting a brisk tone. “There seem to be plenty of vulnerabilities that faeries have. I can defeat them and get you back to the real world as soon as you say the word.”
“You can’t do that until the first day of autumn,” Potter said, voice oddly constricted. “And I think the books have given you a false idea. Battling faeries is not going to be easy, Malfoy.”
“Yes, it will,” Draco said stubbornly. He refused to think that permanent obstacles could get in the way of his pursuit of money. Tame Chinese Fireball, you’re as good as mine. “I’ll make it so.”
Potter gave him the same kind of dismissive look that Draco had received from him during their second meeting. “You’re a very unlikely hero,” he said.
“I know that,” Draco said. “I never signed up to be a hero. I’m a profiteer. Remember, the money and not you is my goal.”
Potter leaned back on the tree, hard enough to make it quiver with his weight—he was becoming more and more solid and real all the time—and then sighed. “Fine. The burden will fall on your head if you fail, and then I’ll be no worse off than before.”
“About to be pointlessly sacrificed to the Dark wizard they worship,” Draco felt compelled to point out.
“That’s what I meant.” Potter passed a hand through his hair and stared off into the distance. “No worse off than before.”
Draco rubbed his forehead. He was sober for the second night in a row—that one drink at Pansy’s hadn’t been enough to make his brain effervesce the way it usually would be doing by now—and irritated at the way Potter was acting. “Would you rather have no hero at all, or me?” he asked. “Try to be a little more grateful.”
Potter started and turned back to look at him. “I am,” he said. “But you must admit that it’s a little strange.” His face darkened. “And I’m not sure that you’ll be able to conjure the necessary desire to win me free of her. I mean, true love was the reason that the last victim escaped, along with the pregnancy. When you see the glamours she can come up with, what’s to keep you from fleeing?”
“The vision of the dragon I’m going to buy with the money,” Draco said firmly. “I don’t need anything else. The strongest love in my life is the love for gold.”
Potter cocked his head in confusion that Draco had to admit was pretty. He was dressed all in shades of green this evening, which he said had something to do with a faerie revel he’d attended. It did more for him than the other outfits had. “That’s interesting. I thought you’d say the strongest force was your reverence for your family and tradition.”
“The traditions that my family brought me up in are stupid,” Draco said. “No. The strongest force in my life is gold. The second’s lust. And then…” He had to pause and think about whether there was a third. He could say that his friends were important to him, but he was only loyal in the sense that he had sex inside that circle most of the time. He didn’t care about paying his taxes or saving the world or all the other shite that Gryffindors believed in. He didn’t mourn the war and the past.
“That’s it,” he said at last.
Potter stared at him again. Draco decided that being among the faeries must have given him permanent expectations of glamours on people. Draco knew he wasn’t as pretty as someone disguised with a glamour would be, but he had his own kind of honesty and dignity, and he held up against Potter’s stare.
“Lust,” Potter said at last.
“Yes,” Draco said, and then took pity. It was highly probable that Potter, virtuous hero that he was, had never heard of the concept. “You see, when you long for someone else’s body and you know that you’re not in love with them, but want to be inside them, or have them inside you, that’s called lust.”
Potter laughed, and the laugh changed his whole face. Draco stared and wondered whether the faeries had taught Potter auditory glamours. When Draco last knew him, he’d been too scrupulously fair-minded to use such things. “I know what lust means, Malfoy. I’ve spent the last seven years in and out of the Faerie Queen’s bed, as she wanted to have me or spurn me. But I didn’t think I would find someone I could do this with.”
And he took a step forwards and bent to place his lips against Draco’s.
Draco gasped. What he felt was a shivering, cool sensation, like a breeze brushing past his face; Potter wasn’t solid enough for it to be anything more than that. But it was a breeze that spoke of great skill, and when Potter darted his tongue out to brush across Draco’s mouth, he could feel an equally distant warmth that made him glad he was sitting down.
Potter a good kisser? Who would have thought? Draco had heard rumors about that, of course, but he’d assumed they were the usual sort of wild stories that collected around anyone with a hint of fame, particularly since Potter disappeared and the lunatics started to claim they were keeping him captive in their bedrooms or secret boudoirs.
“You can feel that?” Potter asked, and his voice was deeper and more distant, as if he was speaking down a tunnel. Draco nodded in a dazed way that he suspected did him no credit as someone with a lot of experience, but Potter didn’t seem inclined to question him on the number of his previous partners. He chuckled instead, whispered, “God, it’s good to kiss a human again,” and then returned his lips to Draco’s. Perhaps the sensation was a bit firmer this time.
Draco felt a brush along his cheek, and started, but, when he squinted to the side, he realized that Potter was simply caressing his face. His hand moved as slowly as his lips, and Draco moaned. He didn’t mean to; it just came out. He could have done without the wicked delight in Potter’s eyes.
On the other hand, he didn’t think that he could have done without the foot that rose and stroked his erection a moment later, and if the price of that was Potter’s laughter, then he could cackle for years as far as Draco was concerned.
Touching Draco seemed to make Potter firmer and more real. He bore Draco backwards without trouble and laid him down on the grass, which Draco felt as cooler and softer than his touch. He pulled Draco’s shirt back with slow, patient hands, and then bent down, hesitated once as if not sure he was going to be able to do it, and fastened his teeth around Draco’s nipple.
Draco raised a hand and locked it behind Potter’s head, holding him in place when he tried to withdraw. “How did you know I liked that?” he whispered.
Potter half-shrugged, as much as he could when he was bending awkwardly over Draco, trying to touch his cock and bite his nipple both at the same time. Potter released his nipple, licked around it, and then whispered, “You just looked like someone who would like to have his nipples sucked.”
Draco accepted that without further question. Blaise always claimed that he could tell random sexual facts like that about people from the way they looked, and there was no reason that he should be the only one in the world with the ability.
Potter sucked at the hollows under Draco’s ribs, too, which even Draco hadn’t known he liked, and gripped his cock in a maddening rhythm, always slowing when Draco started to thrust. Draco whined, his cock heavy and wet in his pants, and reached down to bring himself off. He would do it if Potter wouldn’t.
“Ah, ah,” Potter said, and moved to the side. Draco reckoned he was trying to do something he thought devastatingly clever, but all that happened was that he fell over Draco. But Draco could forgive him that, because his body was much heavier and more solid now, almost real, and because he managed to fall in such a way that he avoided driving a knee into Draco’s groin. He lay like that for a stunned moment, and then laughed and breathed out warm, damp air against his neck.
Draco writhed against him and wrapped his arms around Potter’s shoulders. Potter’s clothes melted off, fading like warm snow at his touch, and Draco blinked. “Were you just dressed in glamours all this time?” he asked.
“Everything is glamour with them,” Potter said, and his voice was so bitter Draco thought he might stop. But then he shifted and his hands sank home, into Draco’s hair, into his flesh, making Draco snap his teeth at the air. “But this—this is real.” His words were soft, reverent.
Draco didn’t know what Potter’s words meant, and he didn’t have to face them, because Potter was moving again. His breath tickled the hairs on Draco’s shoulders and neck and ears as he peeled him out of his shirt, using graceful, economical gestures of his hands all the time, like the steps of a dance. Draco had to thank the faeries for this, because the last time he’d seen Potter try to dance, he’d feared for the safety of everyone in the room. So one good thing had come out of Potter’s imprisonment.
And then…
And then his hands knew just how to stroke, how to part Draco’s legs and trace around his hole with touches so light that Draco shoved himself backwards to increase the pressure before he thought about how he would look, how to lick and nip Draco’s inner thighs and his balls and make him feel heavy and swollen, with both semen and desire. He drew Draco’s arms out to the side with liquid lightness, and Draco let himself be so pulled, drunk with delight. Potter kissed him one more time, tongue tapping lightly against his, then pulling back to trace Draco’s lips the way he’d traced his hole.
“Ready?” Potter’s voice whispered. Even the vibrations of the words aroused light shivers in Draco’s body that seemed to break up from his stomach to his skin. He started like a wild deer, and reached for Potter, and only then thought about the words that Potter had spoken.
“Wh-what?” he muttered. His eyelids were heavy. He shifted to the side and opened his legs further. For the first time he could remember, except once or twice with Blaise, he knew what it meant to be empty and aching to be filled. His arse clenched on air.
“Are you ready?” There was a sharp urgency to Potter’s question now, but it was still hard for Draco to open his eyes. He wondered if Potter was using a touch of faerie glamour to bend Draco to his wicked wiles. Draco wondered irritably how he could not have noticed that Draco hardly needed corrupting.
“Yes,” Draco said, and helpfully spread his legs further until his hips ached and the grass blades tickled at his knees. “Are you going to do it or not?”
Potter smiled at something, nothing, and eased forwards. Draco hadn’t felt him put the lube on, but that wasn’t remarkable, with the way that he’d been so drugged. He ended up clutching at Potter again, panting, because his cock was bigger than he had thought and it was a while since he had bottomed with someone new, whose movements he didn’t know and couldn’t anticipate, with whom it wasn’t like moving in a dance.
“Are you sure you’re ready?” Potter gasped above him, and then went still and shook as if he were the one being penetrated.
“Yes,” Draco said. “How many times do I have to say that?” His voice quivered, but still, Potter should trust him. Draco was the one having sex with a hallucination in his rose garden, where there was the possibility of thorn-pricks, and, worse, grass-stains. He was the one making the leap of faith.
Potter stared down at him with deep, soft eyes, and Draco’s breath caught at the look on his face. He didn’t think he’d ever been as important to someone as it seemed he was to Potter right now. Potter seemed on the brink of a revelation, and he continued to move slowly. Not as if Draco was fragile, Draco thought, picking the thoughts slowly out of the rose-scented mist that spread across his brain, but as if he was Potter’s first lover in a while.
Or different lover.
I’m human, Draco thought, and it made him more confident, because it meant that he didn’t have to live up to impossible, faerie-set standards. He lifted his head for a kiss, and Potter obliged.
They rocked on the grass. They danced, or at least it was more like dancing than Draco had known sex with a stranger could be. Potter was inside him, and seemed fully conscious of the privilege, because he frequently tried to put his tongue in Draco’s mouth and his fingers into the hollows of his ribs or his shoulders, as though seeking more and more entrances to him. Draco clamped his legs around Potter’s hips and flanks and held him there, half-closing his eyes, and then fully closing them, whenever he thought he could give up the sight of that brilliant green gaze so near to his.
“Oh,” Potter said once, drawing out the sound in a way that made Draco think it had escaped his lungs on a breath of wonder.
Draco knew exactly how he felt.
Inevitably, the spiral began, the spiral that usually led to completion and climax for Draco when he was beneath someone like this. But it brought him deeper instead of higher. More and more pleasure spread across his body, light as the touches of a feather, sharp in random places. He arched his back and spread his arms out, loosening his hold on Potter, feeling as though he needed to offer himself to an otherworldly power, more than he was offering himself to Potter.
Potter croaked above him. Draco turned his head, and the colors of the roses and their perfume blurred in his eyes and nose, and he gasped aloud and noisily, and came.
“Draco,” Potter cried above him.
Draco could feel the muscles of Potter’s hips flexing as he drove himself in. He could feel the wetness spreading across his stomach and the grass scratching at the back of his thighs. He could feel the soil yielding to his scrabbling fingers, and his stomach spun and soared and melted slowly back to earth in an embrace of pleasure.
Potter collapsed, and somehow kept his elbows out of the way, so that only the sleek, warm chest and the smooth body landed on top of Draco. Draco turned his head and lipped at Potter’s ear. He kept his eyes closed. He could be content to stay like this forever, beneath the languid warm weight.
But Potter kissed his ear and pulled back. “I have to go now,” he said, voice a croak. “Don’t forget me.”
“How could I?” Draco murmured, keeping his eyes closed. He would retain the sensations of smell and touch for Potter that he experienced so far, without giving himself a last vision. He thought it better that way, though he didn’t know why. Perhaps watching Potter fade would be too disheartening. “That was the best sex I’ve ever had.”
Though, he had to add conscientiously a moment later, I haven’t had sex with anyone but Blaise, Theo, Pansy, Daphne, and Astoria in years. It’s possible that Potter simply stands out as better by comparison.
“I’m—I’m glad,” Potter said. “Likewise.”
Draco smiled at that. “I’m better by comparison with this Faerie Queen, I suppose,” he murmured. “I also suppose I should be flattered.”
“If you knew how many centuries she had lived and the skills she can bring to her bed and her lovers when she wants to,” Potter said gravely, “you would be flattered, yes.” He hesitated, then added, “I wanted to do this now because I don’t think that I’ll be this solid again before the first day of autumn, and because you said that you needed another motive for rescuing me, but—but I did it because I wanted to, too. Don’t forget that.” He lowered his voice and whispered, “In case she keeps me from escaping again, which she might if she discovers how close I’ve come to a true rescue, look for me on the path that runs through crooked trees behind your house on the first day of autumn. I’ll be riding a white horse.”
Draco still kept his eyes shut, but he listened to Potter depart, too. There was the light crunch of footsteps on grass, and the swish of him brushing past roses, and then nothing.
In the back of his mind, Draco had wondered why he wasn’t getting scratched all over by the grass. Only when he opened his eyes and looked again, after a period of sleep, did he realize that Potter had spread the green cloak he’d given Draco—another thing he hadn’t noticed—beneath them, and that it was glowing with dark splotches of sweat and bright splashes of come against the shining background.
*
“You can’t be serious, Draco.”
Draco sighed and leaned back in his seat. He had decided that he had to tell one of his friends about what was happening; in case he died in this absurd attempt to win Potter back from the faeries, someone should know what had happened. And he trusted Daphne more than most of the others. She preserved a good balance, he thought, between the world of fantasies that Pansy, Blaise, and Theo sometimes seemed poised to vanish into and the horrifying world of people like that turncoat Millicent had become. Draco could have gone to Astoria, too, but she was a few years younger than her sister and not as wise. Better to speak to someone who could give him as much advice as possible.
“Then tell me where this came from,” he said, and held the cloak out.
Daphne took it with a little sniff, turning it over and staring at the stained side. Draco hadn’t removed the stains for the same reason that he hadn’t healed the ache in his arse. For one thing, he liked them both; for another thing, it proved that that which seemed incredible to him, and which Daphne refused to believe had occurred, really had happened.
But Daphne was an expert in all the kinds of fabric, and the cloak would be a different kind of evidence for her. She ran her fingers over it, stared, and then shook her head at Draco. “I haven’t encountered something this fine that wasn’t silk before,” she said. “And you couldn’t have woven it yourself.”
“Of course not,” Draco said, lounging against the back of her couch. Daphne had the most comfortable furniture. Draco had to admit there was something to be said about choosing to suit your own tastes rather than simply relying on the heirlooms of your ancestors. “Could someone have conjured it?”
“Even then, they would need a model to work from, and what kind of model could it have been?” Daphne murmured, turning the cloak back and forth. She showed no more than a slight grimace of distaste when her fingers slid over the stains, but even that, Draco thought was a little rich. He had seen her rise from a night of sleeping in the wet spot and cast Cleaning Charms on her hair, body, and teeth rather than take the time to shower properly. Showering would take up valuable drinking time, after all. “This is remarkable.” She gave Draco a grudging glance of admiration. “If you did it, it’s a bloody good fabrication. You could earn a little extra money by making more of them.”
“Work?” Draco asked in horrified tones.
Daphne cocked her head. “If your vision of Potter is real and you’re really going to be dragging him back to this world, then he might insist that you work. You know how these Gryffindor types are.” She touched the cloak again, stroking it in a way that made Draco anticipate she would offer to buy it. But her next words were entirely unexpected. “Millicent runs a robe shop, doesn’t she? You could go into partnership with her. I’m sure she would sell robes made of this like they were going out of style.”
Draco stared at her in silent outrage. Never had he thought that Daphne being a bit more practical than the rest would lead to this, or he wouldn’t have come. Draco had standards to maintain and a delicate conscience to protect, after all.
Daphne sighed. “I’m trying to help you, Draco. You act more starry-eyed about this Potter fellow, or this version of him, than I’ve seen you about any of us. And even you must realize that you can’t keep it up forever, all this sex and drinking and dancing until all hours of the night. You’ll want to find someone soon.”
“Why?’ Draco asked in dismay. “Potter was great in bed, yeah, but that doesn’t mean that he’ll want me when he—comes back.” It was still hard to say “gets rescued from being kidnapped by faeries” aloud, even though he’d had to explain it to Daphne twice.
Daphne gave him a heavy-lidded glance. “You don’t usually spend this much time talking about someone outside our group, Draco. We’ve contented you for a long time, but I don’t think we will for much longer.”
Draco sat up and clasped his hand over his heart. “I will never stop being a true Slytherin.”
Daphne raised a skeptical eyebrow. “So you would be content to see Potter thank you, leave you, and marry someone else? Perhaps that Weasley woman he was associated with before he went missing?”
Draco scowled. Daphne snapped her fingers and summoned a house-elf to hold a mirror in front of him. Draco hastily smoothed the lines out of his forehead and smiled the trim, gentle little smile that was the best, since it wouldn’t leave many wrinkles.
“I thought not,” Daphne said with some satisfaction. “Well, I wish you luck, though it rather does destroy the romantic fantasy of our group becoming three old married couples. Then again, I think Astoria has her eyes on someone else, too, and Pansy can’t seem to choose between Blaise and Theo. Perhaps they’ll settle down as a scandalous threesome, and you and Potter can be the obligatory gay couple.”
Draco had to admit that he could all too easily imagine Pansy shocking the wizarding world that way, and enjoying every minute of it. “And what about you?” he had to ask.
Daphne gave him a mysterious smile. “I think I’ll find another revolving quintet of lovers. Or—” She cocked her head. “There ought to be a lesbian couple. Maybe someday I’ll introduce you to whom I have in mind.” She shook the cloak out. “Here you are. But do consider getting in touch with Millicent.”
Draco went home and thought long and hard about what he was potentially going to do. Then he thought of the things he would be giving up. His friends, long drinking, casual fidelity or infidelity as he chose—Potter would probably be tiresome about that—sex with women, his carefree irresponsibility…
He clenched down again on the burn in his arse, and shuddered. Then he Summoned a carafe of wine and a pot of smooth oil he often used for lubricant.
He couldn’t make the decision yet. The best thing to try was drinking and wanking to images of Potter at the same time, and seeing which was better.
*
“I don’t think I’ll be able to slip away again like this.”
Draco tried to look intelligent and sympathetic. He thought Potter needed someone who could look that way. But the fact was that he was eyeing the fall of the tunic—it was a tunic, it had to be, there was no way a shirt could look that poncey even if it was bright blue and edged with lace—that he thought concealed Potter’s cock, and trying not to leer.
“Are you listening to me?”
Potter sounded irritated. Draco raised his eyebrows, and then his eyes, and then nodded when he realized that Potter was glaring at him. “Absolutely,” he said. “You said that you didn’t think you’d be able to get away again. Is that because the faeries are keeping more of an eye on you?” There. He was participating in the conversation, rather than just dreaming about being shagged again.
“Yes.” Potter pulled his knees in up in front of him, blocking the sight of his groin completely. Draco sighed in loss, but Potter didn’t magically hear, discern what he wanted, and turn around to recompense him. “She let me leave for—all sorts of reasons. A last gift, to taunt me, because she was curious to see what I would do, who knows? But the one thing the Court takes seriously is the tithe. They won’t let me leave again, and they’ll keep an eye out to make sure that I don’t take a lover from among them who might be persuaded to turn traitor and rescue me.”
“Do they suspect me?” Draco asked, a bit nervously. He thought he could deal with faeries when he was conscious, but it would be no good if they started spying on his dreams and trying to get through there.
“Suspect what?” Potter gave him a dour glare. “I doubt that you’re really planning to do anything.”
“If I was,” Draco said loftily, “it would be stupid to tell you. It sounds like this Queen could trick anything she wanted to out of you.”
Potter winced and spread one hand over his face, fingers digging into the ridges above his eyes as if he would pull them out. Draco winced in turn and planned to be elsewhere if that ever happened. “That’s probably true,” Potter whispered. “Oh, God, I wish she had never seen me. She distracted me again last night, and I don’t know what was real and what was dream.”
“Describe it to me.” Draco wasn’t sure why he wanted to know, since Potter’s description would probably be half-glamour and half-madness, but he would hear. When Potter stared at him uncertainly, Draco hunched forwards and nodded as if he were this full of decisive force all the time.
“All right.” Potter licked his lips, and his gaze grew remote. “She brought me to one of her private rooms. Of course, the whole Court belongs to her, in a way, but there are places—spaces—rooms—I don’t know how to describe them—designated for certain individuals. This was one of hers.”
Draco nodded. He could understand that. There were rooms in the Manor that had belonged peculiarly to his parents, and some that had always belonged to him. Of course, now it was all his. He wondered dreamily what Potter would look like spread out on the blankets of the Forest Room, which was decorated all in green, whether his dark hair would be startling against the emerald-colored coverlets or blend in, whether—
“She rode a white horse up to me,” Potter whispered, distracting Draco from daydreams of shagging him, which Draco thought was a much more productive use of his time. “Like she has before. I can’t describe that horse to you. It had ice for legs and swansdown for a mane. She reached out a hand, and I grasped it like someone in a dream, and she pulled me up, and I rode behind her.”
Draco frowned and rubbed his throat. There was an odd burning there. He hoped he wasn’t getting a cold. That was the last thing he needed.
“We soared over these green hills,” Potter whispered, “higher than any hills on earth, and yet they were still hills, not mountains. I’m not sure how I knew that, just that I did. And we ran across the surfaces of streams, which flowed in place. The light shone around us. Once we cantered through a forest where the trees were made of bronze. The sun was changed to blood and ashes as it fell around us.”
“Then what?” Draco demanded. The harshness of his voice startled him, as did his impatience for Potter to get on with the main event rather than babbling about the beautiful details of the Faerie Queen’s realm. Yes, this was most definitely a cold. He would have to take a medicinal potion later.
“Oh. Then. The bed.” Potter smiled, and there was an edge to the smile that Draco hated. For all Potter’s talk of wanting to be with Draco last time, wanting his fuck to be real and human, it was obvious that his sojourn among the faeries had affected him, and he was more than slightly fey. “Made of wood, grown from wood, with ferns enclosing it instead of curtains and grass for the blankets.”
“I’d wager that was scratchy,” Draco muttered.
Potter ignored him, last in some sort of dream. “Or moss. Softest moss, more like that. She laid me down and she was naked. I can’t describe her naked, Malfoy. It’s like being in bed with a storm, a wolf, a force of nature.”
Draco cocked his head to the side and squinted, to see if he could make out scratches on the little of Potter’s shoulders that showed under the tunic. Then he drew back in horror. Squinting would cause lines. He couldn’t believe that he had forgotten that for long enough to do it, even if it was only a moment.
Stupid bloody Potter and his stupid bloody effect on my bloody brain.
“She was wearing red lips this time,” Potter continued in a trance-like voice, “and bronze hair filled with light like the bronze forest, and pointed ears, and skin so pale you’d stain it by touching it with a finger. She knelt over me, and crushed her breasts down into my chest, and whispered words in her own tongue, in a voice like sharpened steel.”
“I don’t care!” Draco said loudly.
Potter blinked and stared at him. “But you said that you did,” he said. “You were the one who asked about it.”
“I don’t feel very good,” Draco said, retreating in what he knew was a childish direction. He pawed at his throat and squinted at Potter again, then remembered lines and hastily sat up straight. “I mean—I don’t want to hear how you had sex with her. It’s not like I need to know that to rescue you, do I?”
“If you do rescue me,” Potter said, and there was that fey edge to his smile.
“I will,” Draco said, and he knew now that he would. It wasn’t as though he could allow Potter to waste the rest of his life away with the faeries, could he? He had to do something to get him back, little as Potter deserved it.
Potter simply raised his eyebrows and let the moment pass in silence, and Draco made up for it by going to bed that night and wanking as though nothing could stop him, as though his cock would be yanked off his body if he didn’t wank. And then he cried out when he came loudly enough to startle a house-elf into popping into his room and to frighten the owls that had come and perched along the edges of his windows when his friends realized that he was refusing an invitation for the second night in a row.
It wasn’t as though Potter could possibly want the Faerie Queen, Draco thought drowsily as he cleaned up the wet spot and then curled up in his pillows, closing his eyes and rubbing his cheek against the cushiony feel. Not really. Not when he couldn’t know what was real about her and what was illusion.
With Draco, he would never have any doubts about that. Draco had never pretended to be any different than he was.
Part Three.
