[one-shots]: Awakening, H/D, R, 3/3

[lomonaaeren]

This is the third part of a long one-shot; sorry for the spammage about to commence.



Draco stood waiting in front of the Manor gates, gazing at the light snow that had fallen earlier that day. He’d tuned the wards around the house to let it stay without melting, but also without getting thick enough to be troublesome. Here and there was the curled shape of a sleeping peacock, and the moonlight, refracted and strengthened by the wards until it could cast shadows, made them further white and silver. He heard Harry Apparate in behind him, but didn’t turn.

“What’s this solution of yours, then?” Harry’s voice was abrupt.

Draco reached out and took his hand, drawing him nearer. As he had thought would happen, Harry gave a token shrug, but didn’t actually struggle. The bond, winding like thread between their fingers and filling their hands with warmth, felt too good for that.

“Stay here a minute,” Draco whispered. “Look at the gardens. It ought to get you calm enough for the solution to work.”

“Is this meditation again?” Harry muttered, but Draco shook their joined hands, and Harry was silent. Draco felt him lean against his own shoulder a moment later, as if he wanted to get a better look at the shapes the peacocks made. Or perhaps the humped, ice-dusted rosebushes were the target of his gaze. Draco sighed, enjoying the view more now that the bond didn’t create a gnawing loneliness at the bottom of his stomach.

“Fine,” Harry said a timeless time later, his voice without heat now. “Is that long enough?”

“Yes, I think so,” Draco said, and straightened up and turned around to face Harry, pushing his hair back from his face. Harry stared at him, and Draco couldn’t help himself. He bowed his head and tried for a kiss.

Harry shuddered and turned his face away, which Draco had to admit hurt his feelings. He wasn’t some disgusting thing. He was Harry’s bonded, and no matter how many times he tried to prove, or Weasley and Granger argued, that it was the natural result of magic, Harry turned away.

Draco chided himself for his impatience a moment later. He had known how Harry would likely react, and had no one but himself to blame for his impetuosity. He took Harry’s hand instead and said, “There are other ways of getting to know yourself than meditation, or Occlumency for that matter. I brought you out here because there are so few distractions. Tell me, Harry, what do you really, truly want?”

“Freedom,” Harry said at once, and then blinked, as if surprised at the word, although it was no more than what Draco had expected.

“What kind of freedom?” Draco asked. He didn’t think Harry had noticed that Draco still had hold of his hand.

“Freedom to be myself,” Harry said, the words dripping off his tongue as slowly as honey. “To have the kind of life I want, to do what I want. To fall in love with someone I want,” he added, staring at Draco defiantly.

Draco smiled. “Well, I don’t know about falling in love quite yet, but you do have that last part. You’re free to be with someone you want.”

Harry’s brows puckered up, but luckily, he didn’t take the stupid tactic of denying that he wanted Draco, again. He placed a hand in the center of his chest and shoved lightly, instead, making Draco sway on his feet. “I still want to choose.”

“The first part?” Draco asked. “The part where you choose to touch someone, to watch them, to stumble after them and make embarrassing noises and feel like you want to sick up all over their shoes from embarrassment when you ask them on a date?”

Harry flushed, but to his credit, he maintained a steady stare and an even steadier nod. “Yeah. That part.”

Draco sighed. “You know I want to stay bonded, Harry. And part of it is because I fear I’ll never have something like that.” He turned his face away as his voice dipped, although part of his mind kept thinking about the way that it might manipulate Harry to know about his fear. He was trying to be honest, true to Harry and true to himself, at the same time. “No one wants to date a Death Eater in the wake of the war, much less marry one or experience a bond with him. Yeah, my dreams about you were pathetic, and I knew that even when I had them, but they were all I had.”

Harry cleared his throat. “The bond will break, and you can find someone. You’re handsome and—and good in bed. That has to count for something.”

Draco turned to him and grinned. This might not be working out quite the way he’d envisioned, but there were some benefits. “You think I’m handsome?”

Harry stared at him. “Yes,” he said. “Was I not supposed to say that?”

Draco clasped Harry’s hands and raised them, one by one, to kiss the backs. The bond surged through him at the renewed contact, the hum that was usually no more than a buzz singing now. “It’s nice to hear,” he said. “But I didn’t expect it from someone who’s made it perfectly clear that he resents being with me.”

*

Harry stirred uneasily. What the fuck was he supposed to say? He didn’t want to hurt Draco’s feelings. He didn’t want to make him feel that no one would ever want to be with him. Harry was quite fervently sure, after the memory of Draco’s tongue on his cock, that that wasn’t true.

But he had to have the bond dissolved, he thought. There was no other way for this to be real and true, for him to decide whether he liked blokes or only liked what they did to him, and for him to have what he wanted most.

Well, except that I want freedom more, I suppose. And to feel good. That had become a much higher priority after Draco had taught him how it felt.

“I can’t have children with you,” he said. “And I do want a family, Draco.”

Draco tilted his head meditatively to the side. His hair shone in the moonlight, which Harry felt embarrassed for thinking but which was true. “You can’t have children of your blood with me, no,” he said. “But is that the important thing? Do you want to give your parents grandchildren, pass on your blood and create someone whom you could leave the Potter vault to?”

Harry frowned. “No. I want people I could love.” He was definite about that. After the Dursleys and watching the Weasleys for so many years, he wanted to be surrounded by people he could love and who would—hopefully—love him in return.

“Well, then.” Draco smiled at him. “Then I could offer you a family as much as anyone else could. You have a godson we could easily adopt, if and when he wants to be adopted, with his grandmother’s permission. There’s also other children who need a home, ones who always will. There are also sometimes arrangements between pure-bloods where a woman agrees to have children for a man who doesn’t want to marry, or for a couple who can’t have children of their own, perhaps because it would endanger the mother’s health. Those children are accepted as part of the family when they’re born. I think Muggles do something similar, don’t they?”

“Yes, sometimes,” Harry muttered, more bewildered by the moment. “But your parents wouldn’t like that either, would they?”

“They might prefer that I be the one to father the child in that case, so that it would be of Malfoy blood,” Draco said calmly. “But I don’t think they would object.” He paused, then added softly, “My mother, at least. My father is a different matter. But Harry, every day after the war is a gift. My mother realizes that.”

Harry stared again. He knew he was doing that a lot, but he couldn’t help himself. Malfoy should be less bewildering if he wanted Harry to do something else. “I hadn’t thought you would feel that way,” he said. “After all, the war cost you more than it did almost anyone else.”

Malfoy abruptly shifted, but whatever gesture he was going to make it, he seemed to stop it at the last moment. He bent close instead, letting his breath tickle over Harry’s cheeks and lips. Harry had to close his eyes to control his reaction to that. “More than anyone else?” Malfoy whispered. “How can you say that, when you’re the one who walked into that forest to save us all?”

“Yes, but,” Harry began. Then he had to stop and search for words. “I always knew that things would be all right with me after that,” he said. “I mean—not that they’d be perfect, but that they’d mostly be—fine. People would accept me. They wouldn’t take away my money or throw me in Azkaban. You didn’t know that.”

“I thought I would die,” Malfoy said. “Anything after that is good. Yes, I was afraid while the trials still happened. But after that, when I knew that I would be free, even if people didn’t accept me yet, I knew I could work to make it happen. I can try to persuade them that I’m really not the evil bastard some of them still me as. And I can fight for what I want. The war taught me to do that, instead of giving in passively and going along with what someone else says.”

His gaze locked on Harry’s face, fierce and wild. Harry shuddered. “I want a family,” he said again, but his voice was weak.

“I’ve explained the ways we can have one,” Malfoy said calmly. “Do you need me to explain again?”

“No,” Harry said, and because he wanted to see what would happen as well as stop having this conversation, he lifted his head and kissed Malfoy’s mouth.

Malfoy made a soft sound, but his hands clamped down on Harry’s shoulders, holding him captive as he kissed back. The cloth beneath his fingers rustled and shifted, and he leaned closer and closer, bearing Harry back until Harry thought they would both fall to the ground.

And then they did, the earth impacting roughly against Harry’s back. Malfoy sprawled over him for a long, stunned second, then began to laugh. Harry squirmed back up, face stinging, and stared again, but this time, he didn’t think Malfoy was laughing at him.

“Come in,” Malfoy said, holding a hand out to him. “Obviously we can’t be trusted to have our fights out in the open.”

Harry hesitated a long moment, and Malfoy’s face turned serious. “If you think I’m going to hurt you,” he began.

“Not that,” Harry said. “I—don’t think that.” And he caught hold of Malfoy’s hand and pulled, hard. Malfoy stumbled towards him, almost falling again, but then they were both up, and Harry was holding his hand firmly, feeling up his arm to his shoulder with the other hand.

Malfoy licked his lips. Harry leaned closer. His belly churned. His mind spun. Thoughts of what Ron and Hermione would say, what they had said, what Ginny would do if she knew, what he wanted and didn’t want and how he could know, stirred and whirled through him.

He seized one of the whirling thoughts and rode it down into silence. He kissed Malfoy’s lips a second time, and murmured, “This time, I’m going to go with what I want and see what happens.”

“You didn’t do that the other two times?” Malfoy’s eyelids fluttered and his voice shook.

“I told myself I just got caught up in the moment,” Harry said. The bond sang around them, so thin and sharp-edged that he couldn’t hear the sound unless he concentrated. He hesitated one more time. He would have preferred this to happen when they were both free of the bond. It would mean more.

But if not for the bond, they wouldn’t have this, or a chance of this, in the first place, because Malfoy wouldn’t have tried to fight for him and Harry wouldn’t have known that he could want that. He kissed Malfoy again, curling his hand aggressively around the nape of his neck so Malfoy couldn’t back away. Malfoy stood rigid a moment longer, then kissed back, tongue hot and darting.

“Let’s go inside,” Harry whispered, and let Malfoy lead him away from the garden where peacocks slept in the moonlight on the snow.

*

Draco hadn’t ever envisioned this, because if he had, he knew it would have done no good. He preferred fantasies that were closer to reality, because then he could lose himself in them and continue believing they had a chance of happening, at least until he reached the end of his wank.

But now it was here, the thought he had only dared to touch with the corner of his mind a few times, like a tongue touching a loose tooth.

Harry Potter, undressing in the midst of his bedroom.

Harry’s face was still bright red, and he kept looking at Draco and then looking away, as his courage flooded him and then drew back. Draco didn’t flinch or encourage him to do something he was so obviously uncomfortable with, though. He looked his fill, and watched Harry’s arse and cock and chest emerge, now and then making a noise that, although he consciously decided to make it, sounded torn out of him.

Harry’s flush finally began to die, and then he started grinning at Draco, as though he couldn’t believe that they were here or that Draco was so aroused by him. He reached up, hand hesitating as though he didn’t know what to do with it, and tweaked one of his own nipples. He cried out, though he managed to turn it into a somewhat more manly grunt a moment later, and Draco groaned along with him.

“Well, that’s interesting,” Harry said a moment later, when he’d stopped panting. “So I’m the one who gets touched, but you’re the one who reacts.”

“Shut it,” Draco muttered, hanging off the bed as he stared at Harry’s cock. He’d seen it before, of course, but then, he’d been scrambling to finish sucking him off before Harry changed his mind or Granger came back. It wasn’t the same as being able to admire the way it canted slightly off to the left or the way the blood made it swell.

“Of course,” Harry said. “But I think you might not want me to do that if we’re going to suck each other off again.”

He sounded so hopeful that Draco smiled and dragged his eyes away from Harry’s groin, lying back on his bed as he studied Harry. “We can do that later, if you like,” he said. “Right now, I was thinking about something else.”

Harry studied him thoughtfully. “Really,” he said, when a few minutes had passed and Draco still hadn’t looked away or done whatever it was Harry was expecting. “What, then?”

“Let me fuck you,” Draco whispered. The bond was a series of tight rings of sound pressing against his chest and the base of his throat. He wondered if Harry didn’t feel it, too. Perhaps he did and had a higher tolerance for pain. “I want that more than anything else in the world right now.”

Harry’s throat bobbed as he swallowed. His eyes were dark, but Draco hadn’t seen that shade of darkness before and didn’t know what it meant. He waited, digging his fingers into the bedsheets beneath him. They were out of Harry’s sight; hopefully they wouldn’t reveal what he felt.

“I—I might want it, too,” Harry said. “Maybe.”

Draco grinned despite himself. “Well, make up your mind soon,” he said. “Or I’ll just wank myself off and go to sleep.” He rolled over and snaked his hand down his chest, touching the head of his cock and then running two fingers back down the shaft towards his groin. It hurt where the bond was—he would much rather have been touching Harry—but it was worth it to watch the darkness increase, spreading over Harry’s eyes and then into his face in a deep red wave.

Draco leaned his head back on the bed and gave himself up to the pleasures of his own hand, teasing Harry, tempting him, and the bond sang approvingly in his ears.

*

Fuck.

When Harry had agreed to come here, this wasn’t exactly how he’d pictured things. A bit of mutual sucking, and he had also envisioned kneeling behind Malfoy and rutting up and down the crack of his arse. God knew where that image came from. But Harry had wanted to do it.

But he wanted to do this, too. It just wasn’t an image that had entered his head before. He studied Malfoy’s cock and wondered whether he wanted it inside him, something that long and thick.

The answer rushed back to him, weakening his knees and making him have to lick a long line of saliva from his lips.

Yes.

“Stop it, and budge over,” he snapped, striding towards the bed. “I want in.”

Malfoy rolled over to receive him, arms wide and face lifted upwards. Harry knew what he wanted—a kiss—and gave it to him with abandon, his tongue plunging into Malfoy’s mouth and rubbing furiously along the sides of his cheeks. Then he shifted them around so that Malfoy’s head was lying on the pillow and muttered into him, “So do you have something you can use to ease the pressure?”

Malfoy chuckled, long and loud and deep, and rolled over. Harry didn’t see exactly what he reached into—Malfoy’s room had more furniture than one person could ever need—but he came back with a long, slender tube that he flipped open. When he squeezed a drizzling stream of blue liquid onto his finger, Harry couldn’t help wrinkling his nose. The extremely strong scent of apples had just filled the room.

“I know,” Malfoy said sympathetically. “It’s a bit much. But I use this for wanking, and it makes for a smooth—entrance.” He reached down and back, never taking his eyes from Harry.

At least partially because there was a challenge in those eyes, Harry lifted his chin and never looked away, even lifting his hips so that Malfoy would have an easier time getting the finger in. He had to grunt when it went in, though. Once again, the image of someone touching him like that wasn’t one that had ever entered his head.

“Oh, do tell me that you’ve had something up there before,” Malfoy muttered, working the finger deeper, until Harry could feel the dry skin at the knuckle teasing his own nerves. Harry would have teased him about having dry skin anywhere, but he was a bit busy at the moment. “Why wouldn’t you?”

Harry glared at him out of the corner of one eye that kept wanting to close. “I fought a war and—and thought I was straight, remember?” He had to hitch himself up on his heels a moment later, panting, as Malfoy worked himself deeper and deeper.

“That’s no excuse,” Malfoy said, and then laughed again, that sound so beautiful Harry couldn’t even mind if it was directed at him. Well, he thought it wasn’t, anyway. “Not that I’m not going to enjoy introducing a new source of pleasure to you, you poor, deprived child.” He dug deeper.

“Should you be—fucking me if you think of me that way?” Harry wriggled his hips, and even he couldn’t have said whether he was pushing closer or trying to get further away. “Given that you’re such a man and all.”

“I am a man,” Malfoy murmured, close to his ear. “I’m going to see that you don’t forget that.”

The retort dried the spit out of Harry’s mouth, and by the time he’d thought of a reply, Malfoy was kneeling above him, easing his way in with another finger this time. His eyes were so bright that Harry found it hard to look into them, the same way he would a magnifying glass with the sun behind it.

He focused on the sensation of the fingers instead, wondering if he liked it. Didn’t you have to like it to date blokes? Maybe not. That was a question Hermione would probably know the answer to, if he ever got over his embarrassment enough to ask her—

He gasped as Malfoy viciously twisted his finger, digging into what felt like Harry’s insides, rather than just his arse. “Bastard!” Harry hissed, glaring up at him.

“You’ll pay attention to me,” Malfoy said, and all the soothing reassurance had disappeared out of his voice and face. He shifted towards Harry as if he thought that his cock was going to disappear if he didn’t get it inside Harry soon. “I’m the one you’ll beg for reassurance from, got it? I’m the one you’ll be thinking about, because no one else is here and fucking you.”

Harry responded the only way he could. He wasn’t going to back down from someone who only had him at his mercy because Harry had said he could. Choice was a double-edged weapon. “Right now,” he said.

“Excuse me?” Malfoy paused and stared at him.

“I mean, no one else is here and fucking me right now,” Harry said, and gave Malfoy a condescending smile. “But someone else might be someday. I can imagine it, the way I’d have to sneak him into the Manor—”

Malfoy stole his breath and his words with a furious kiss, his hand settling on Harry’s throat as if he meant to grip and squeeze and drag his life out of him. Harry laughed back into his mouth, and shoved down onto the fingers in his arse again. Yes, he thought, he could like this, at least if Malfoy always had that flare of possessive heat in his eyes and worked his cock back and forth against Harry’s arse as if he was testing the length and smoothness of it.

“You’re ready,” Malfoy whispered, and there was wonder in his voice. “You’re ready.”

“As ready as I’ll get until it happens, I reckon,” Harry snapped back, and spread his legs. Reckless excitement charged and flashed through his veins like light on a tidal wave. This was something new, and even if he came out of this night deciding that he couldn’t stand having a bloke fuck him, it was still going to be different from anything he’d experienced before.

“I’m sure,” Malfoy said, with a sneer somewhere in the back of his voice, but he began to slide into Harry before Harry could confront it.

Harry’s eyes crossed, and he whimpered before he remembered that Malfoy would be listening for sounds like that and he should really repress them.

Yes, he thought he could learn to like this.

His arse opened to welcome Malfoy’s cock, or was forced open, and Harry thought he had never felt a more uncomfortable sensation in his life. His limbs tingled with the restraint that was necessary not to reach up and tear Malfoy out of him. Then Malfoy probed deeper and he realized that he didn’t know if he wanted to do that.

I don’t know. I don’t know anything.

Well, except that the bond was singing in his ears and that was beautiful, notes like a harp made of silk played with the fingers of spiders. Harry felt Malfoy’s hands burning against his skin, almost sinking into it. He arched his neck and grunted and took Malfoy deeper, and then—

There was a burst of pleasure that bounded through the bond and ended up in both of them. Malfoy moaned it out, his voice a complement to the music of the bond, and then richer and deeper than it was. Harry laughed back at him, the way that Malfoy had laughed at him so many times since this began.

“I do feel good,” he said conversationally, when Malfoy opened his eyes to stare at him. “So make me feel even better, or else I’ll take care of myself.” And he reached for his erection, full of blood and resting on his stomach, to prove to Malfoy that the threat was serious.

*

Fucking Potter!

Draco could hardly believe this was real, with the song in his ears and the clenching warmth around him and the shared pleasure that made him want to shiver and fly into pieces. And Harry still spoke as though he was completely unimpressed, as though he thought that Draco couldn’t fuck him into orgasm.

Draco snapped his hips forwards, and watched in satisfaction as Harry’s mouth dropped open and he afforded Draco a glimpse of slick and gleaming tongue, of his teeth as he gasped. Draco smiled and screwed sideways then, nudging his cock further and further into Harry so that he could find his prostate.

That was one good thing about Harry never having done this with anyone before, though Draco had got thoroughly exasperated by his hesitations and denials. He didn’t know anything about what Draco was going to show him, and so Draco could take him by surprise. Impress him. Make himself stand out in Harry’s mind.

Make Harry want to do this again.

Draco’s breath escaped his lungs in a rattling hiss as he realized how much he wanted a second chance at this, and then a third, and then another, for as long as the bond would last or Harry would permit it.

“Ah,” Harry said, his hands fingering air restlessly as his head moved back and forth. Draco could have wished his eyes were open and fixed on Draco’s face and, if he did say it himself, his marvelously moving body, but as long as Harry’s hands were away from his cock, that was a good beginning.

“Going—to—fuck you,” Draco said, though the words didn’t come out as a coherent, connected sentence the way he would have liked them to. He bowed his head and shuddered. His mouth dripped its own saliva. He tried to imagine what it would be like to leave this warmth clenching around him, and his mind recoiled at the thought.

“You already were, I thought,” Harry said, and somehow he was still coherent, despite the way he looked, and a thread of laughter ran through his voice. “A bit behind on current events, aren’t you?”

Draco grabbed him beneath the legs and bent him until Harry gasped, hands flying to his solar plexus as if he assumed that he would need to hold it in his body. Draco smiled sweetly at him. “You were saying?” he asked around the harsh gasps that seemed likely to cut his voice out of his body.

Harry grunted and shoved himself down again, and Draco’s rapidly changing emotions turned over into pride. He was the one who had done this to Harry. He was the one who was teaching him everything over again.

Everything new.

The problem was, Harry was teaching him new things, too. Draco had never known that he could feel this good, and his fantasies paled into ashes and then burned away. He never would have imagined the way that Harry’s eyelids fluttered, or how his hands flexed around in the blankets and then let them go again in no discernible pattern, or how he gave soft cries when Draco’s cock went in straight, although Draco didn’t think he was brushing Harry’s prostate just then.

The orgasm gathered a long way beneath Draco’s notice at first, then coiled up into his throat, and he said, “Going to come.” Or gasped it, if you wanted to be more accurate. Draco didn’t value accuracy much right now.

Harry again reached a shaking hand down to his cock. Draco batted it away and aimed his hips precisely, thrusting once, twice, thrice in a way that made his legs burn.

But it did the trick.

Harry’s cries rose to a pitch that reminded Draco of birdsong. He rushed through his orgasm, tightening around Draco, riding it out, squirming greedily after it, his hips snapping and his mouth parting as though he had to let out more and more sound in order to feel more and more pleasure. His cry faded at last into gasping little sighs. A red flush lay on his throat. Draco nearly forgot the pleasure building in his own groin as he watched him.

But then the pleasure was there, and Draco stiffened, then pumped into his fully satisfied partner, bowing his head, trying to look at Harry even as his eyes insistently closed.

It was the best moment of his life. Or the second best, because he really did think that the best was to have made Harry come without the benefit of touch.

By the time that he dropped over Harry’s body, breathless and dizzy, and rolled to the side so he could take him in his arms, his head was reeling steadily, and his breath was coming in labored pants. He’d done more work than he realized, he thought dimly, as his arms burned and his legs felt as if he’d been lifting rocks with them. And he still mourned when his cock slipped out of Harry.

Damn.

Harry rolled towards him. His eyes and hair were both wild in the moonlight coming through the window, and only then did Draco see that the fire had gone out sometime during their fucking. He lit it again with a flash from his wand, and tugged his hand back to Harry’s side. He didn’t want to get too far away from Harry’s warmth, he’d found, and the best way to stay there was to keep his hand in place.

“That was more than I ever expected,” Harry whispered.

“Low expectations, then?” Draco teased, burying his nose in Harry’s hair for the pleasure of the scent, and speaking the words for the pleasure of knowing they would be contradicted.

“Hardly.” Harry flung his head up, nearly caving in Draco’s nose with his skull. He muttered an apology and then stared into Draco’s eyes as if he were willing him to understand, which Draco could certainly appreciate. “I—I never knew that it could be like that, but I was waiting for you to do something wrong or for it to hurt more than it felt good. I was looking for an excuse to hate you and get away from what you were doing to me as soon as possible. I was looking for a way to blame it on the bond.”

“And now?” Draco asked, throat tight. He had entirely forgotten about the bond in the moments of his most intense pleasure. It had seemed as though he and Harry were the only ones in the universe, and that they had freely chosen each other. For the first time, he felt something like Harry’s resentment against the magical accident that had forced them together.

“It was a lot better than I thought it could be,” Harry whispered. “I reckon I have to consider the fact that I’m obviously into blokes, even if I wanted to be into Ginny.”

Draco felt jealousy sleet across his brain like falling stars. He pressed himself close to Harry and hissed, “It’ll be enough if you’re into me. That’s the only thing I want. You’re never going anywhere else, to anyone else.”

“We could still break the bond,” Harry said.

The calmness in his voice irritated Draco, and he drew away a little, then decided the cold was worse and went back. “Yeah,” he said shortly. “But do you want to?”

Harry was silent. Draco stroked his hair and tried to keep calm, but he could feel the tremble in his hands and suspected that he wasn’t especially fooling Harry, who was perceptive all the time in exactly the wrong ways.

*

Harry knew what he wanted to say. It was just that it would sound stupid, and that meant he would make Malfoy laugh, and while he didn’t mind listening to Malfoy laugh, he preferred it when it wasn’t at him.

He wanted to break the bond, but he also didn’t, because that would mean Malfoy would be hurt, and that was something Harry didn’t want to see or deal with in any way at all.

The bond was humming around them in lazy rings of sound now. Harry wondered how long it would be before it tightened again, though, and that would mean they had to have sex again, and…

He was tired of it. If he was going to choose Malfoy, it ought to be a free choice, not one compelled by the bond whenever he couldn’t fight against the need to fuck.

“Let me think about it,” he said. “And in the meantime, we should get some sleep.”

Malfoy curled up stiffly on the far side of the bed, at least until Harry huffed a sigh and dragged him closer. Even then, he remained resistant, so Harry treated him like the uncomfortable bed he’d had in the cupboard and manhandled him around until he found a position—his head resting on Malfoy’s shoulder, his leg curled around Malfoy’s, his arms arranged one above and one below Malfoy’s side—where he could sleep. He closed his eyes and began to breathe deeply.

“Harry?” Malfoy whispered.

Harry kept on breathing as though he’d already fallen asleep, and heard Malfoy swear. But he did turn, slowly, gingerly, as though he assumed any motion would be enough to wake Harry up. His arm crept out and around Harry’s shoulder.

Harry smiled into the cloth near his face, waited until Malfoy squirmed into position around him like a snake defending her eggs, and then slept.

*

“Are you happy, dear?”

Draco started and nearly dropped his spoon. When he looked up, his mother’s eyes were fastened on him, gentle but no less intimidating for all that.

He coughed and played with his spoon again before he continued to eat the porridge, the combinations of honey and spices that the house-elves added to it making his tongue curl with the taste. “Um,” he said.

“Oh, I know what happened,” Narcissa said. “Not the details, you understand. I don’t need all the details. But I felt the wards part when you brought Potter into your bedroom. Is that enough for you? Do you need something else to be happy, or is the bond on the way to being fulfilled?”

“I think it’s been fulfilled,” Draco said. “But Potter still doesn’t want to be in the bond with me.” He moved his tongue around, tasting the bitterness in his mouth that not even the wonderful porridge could precisely get rid of. When he woke up this morning, Harry had been gone. Draco had spent some time lying in the bed, pretending that he had just gone to the bathroom and would be back soon, but it hadn’t happened. Harry had faded away with the morning, as though they could only matter to each other by moonlight.

That thought sounded paranoid even to Draco, and he bowed his head with a little grimace and began to eat.

“Well, we must make allowances for someone raised by Muggles,” his mother murmured, in the kind of tone that said she wouldn’t be making that many allowances, no matter how understandable Harry’s differences were. “But I think I agree with Mr. Potter on this one.”

Draco stared at her. “That the bond is an unnatural thing to have happened, and he still doesn’t know if he prefers blokes?”

His mother gave a faint shudder and helped herself to a scone. “I told you, dear, that I didn’t need the details,” she said firmly. “No. What I meant was that the bond was the first thing that brought you together, but if he dislikes it so much, it can’t remain. I should think his sleeping with you would be sign enough that he’s willing to give you a chance without the bond.”

Draco shook his head, wordless. That hadn’t occurred to him, perhaps because he had slept with Harry twice before that.

“Oh, I cannot be certain, of course,” Narcissa said seriously, apparently reading his headshake as doubt. “But I think so, Draco. I really do think so. Mr. Potter is not one to date around or to give copiously of himself, whatever the papers say. In fact, whenever I have met him, I have been struck by a certain…reserve beneath the celebrated hero persona. I think he will sacrifice himself for a world, but not very often for a single person.”

“That’s true,” Draco muttered, wondering if part of the reason he had been so irritated by Harry’s refusal to accept the bond was that he had assumed Harry would sleep with him out of nobility.

“If you do have him giving of himself to you willingly, then you are perhaps closer to winning his heart than you thought you were,” Narcissa said, by all appearances addressing the scone. “Or at least his consideration.” She looked up and smiled at him. “You might as well investigate the methods of breaking the bond, and either your insecurity or his frustration will grow less in time.”

Draco reached across the table and claimed her hand, which she looked at with one eyebrow raised as if she couldn’t imagine why he would want to do that. “Thank you, Mother,” he said. “You’re much cleverer than I am.”

“Of course I am,” Narcissa said. “I am a woman, older than you, and your mother. I would be worried if you did have delusions of grandeur.”

*

“It’s official, then, I take it.”

Hermione had barely nodded when Harry came into breakfast that morning. She’d gone on eating until Harry sat down, loaded his plate, and had time to feel safe, and then looked up and fixed him with a stare that made Harry feel as if he’d turned into an ice statue filled with steel pins.

“Um.” Harry steered the toast around in the marmalade on his plate and wondered if he would look ridiculous if he attempted to eat it now. Ron had already gone to Auror training, but looking ridiculous in front of Hermione was bad enough. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said, deciding that he might as well strike out for the high ground.

“You went to Malfoy’s house last night,” Hermione said. “That’s perfectly obvious. That shirt doesn’t really hide all the bite marks on your neck, you know.”

Harry tugged at his shirt, and then saw the smug smile on her face and realized that she’d tricked him. He scowled back and said, “I could have gone there to break the bond and come back without him.”

“You don’t know how to break the bond,” Hermione said.

Harry hated the way she kept coming up with reasonable ways to get around his statements. He sighed and began lifting forkfuls of bangers to his mouth. “Fine, I went,” he said. “But I still want to break the bond.”

“I’ve decided that I’m not listening to anyone who talks with a full mouth anymore,” Hermione said serenely, rising to her feet and cleaning her dishes with a few flicks of her wand. “I’ll be in the library when you want to find me and talk to me like a civilized person.” She went, leaving Harry to gape at her back.

Well, he thought as he swallowed. I didn’t know that she would take it this calmly. I might have been more open from the beginning if she had.

Then he shook his head. Neither Ron nor Hermione had been horrified by the bond and the situation with Malfoy. Most of that emotion had been Harry’s, and he’d made up for all three of them with his constant references to it.

He—wasn’t horrified anymore.

But he did still want the bond gone. He knew Malfoy hadn’t really understood when Harry attempted to explain it, but it was like a collar around his neck. He wanted the ability to choose when he went to Malfoy and when he spent time alone, no matter whether it fulfilled the bond or not.

Then he paused, with his cup of tea halfway to his lips. When he swallowed, it was too fast, scalding his throat.

He had made the decision, then. The reference to going back to Malfoy seemed to seal it. He wanted to be with Malfoy, but he didn’t want the bond dictating how he did it.

Harry leaned back in his chair and stared up at the ceiling. Was that the end to all his dreams of a family? Did he want to stay with Malfoy for the rest of his life, or only until he got bored of him? Did this mean that he liked being fucked?

The questions were so numerous that he still hadn’t left the chair and gone in search of Hermione when someone knocked on the front door. Then the person let herself in before Harry could stand up to answer it.

“Oh, hi, Harry. Don’t mind me.” Ginny pushed past him and went for the teapot still sitting on the special tripod that Hermione had bought for it. The tripod was an ugly thing, Harry thought, to keep from thinking about the obvious. Hermione claimed that a house-elf had made it, which would fit. “I only stopped by for a quick breakfast before I go to practice.”

Harry stared at her as she put together a swift plate of toast, butter, and chocolate biscuits that she swiped from the high shelf which Hermione used to hide them from Ron. Her long red hair bounced behind her, shimmered around her. She wrote Harpies robes already, and she sipped and gulped in a way that Harry would have expected to affect him strongly only a few months before.

But he could only think that he was surprised to see her, and that he kept waiting to feel more than he did…

And feeling nothing.

“It’s strange,” he blurted suddenly. Ginny looked up at him, mouth closed around a biscuit, so that she raised an eyebrow in inquiry instead. “Seeing you again. I mean, it’s been an age, hasn’t it?”

Ginny nodded to him in a friendly way. “Yeah, it has.” She finished her breakfast by cramming three biscuits into her mouth at once and then licking the butter from her fingers. “I hope that you get this bond with Malfoy resolved soon,” she added over her shoulder as she headed for the front door again.

Harry winced. “Hermione told you about that?”

Ginny laughed. “She was over at the Burrow asking Mum about magical bonds when I was there. She kept trying to hint around the people it involved, but since it was obviously not her and Ron, there were only a few people it could be.”

“Were you surprised to hear that I’d been bonded to Malfoy?” Harry asked, and then held his breath. A moment later, he felt stupid for doing so and then let it out again.

Ginny blinked at him. “Not really,” she said, with a simplicity of manner that convinced Harry she was telling the truth. “I mean, you paid a lot of attention to him at school. He paid a lot of attention to you. I was surprised by the way the bond had formed, but it’s fairly common for things like this to happen.”

“I had no idea,” Harry said. “It’s not something anyone ever talked about when we were in school.”

Ginny snapped her fingers. “I was thinking it was strange that you didn’t know about it, but of course, you grew up with those awful Muggles.” She stepped up to him and patted his shoulder. “You’ve handled it as well as anyone could, to hear Hermione tell it,” she said gently. “You deserve a holiday from all the magic. Why don’t you take one, when the bond is broken? Go some place, and don’t tell anyone. That way, no one can find you to curse you.”

Harry dug up a smile for her, and she waved at him and exited the house, humming under his breath as she went. Harry leaned his cheek against his hand and watched her go.

Yes, he wished her well and was glad to see her; it made him happy that she was doing well and had talked to him like a friend.

But he felt no excitement looking at her, and the dreams of children and a life with her had finally faded into the mist that they should have been sent into, Harry thought, long ago.

*

Draco stared at the bittern preening itself on the table, and then at the letter that rested next to it. He didn’t want to believe that it had really come from Madagascar, but who else would have used a bittern to send him post? He picked up the letter, checked it a few times for charms, and then opened it.

Out fell two pieces of paper. One was a list of what looked like Potions ingredients, although Draco recognized the names of some woods and a paragraph he was familiar with from a book on Veela. The other was a letter, and Draco grimaced and settled down to read it, certain Ollivander would be gloating.

Dear Mr. Malfoy:

By now you should know what my final curse on you was, and my revenge for the time that I spent in the cellars of your charming establishment.

You may plead that the war was an extenuating circumstance, but you were crueler to me than my mere imprisonment deserved. I can still remember your sneer when I was being tortured, and the way that you looked away from me when I asked for a crust or a cup of water. You have a streak of thoughtlessness which is worse than deliberate malice. I wanted to do something to teach you a lesson, and to force you to feel strongly for someone besides yourself.

The curse matched you with the least suitable person possible. Though I cannot predict the outcome for certain, I think it highly likely that you will find yourself at the mercy of Harry Potter. And at the mercy of certain strong feelings for him, which the curse allows and encourages.

Draco swallowed, wondering if the heat that coiled through his belly when he watched Harry could be strictly magical. He didn’t think so, but then again, he would have said that the kind of curse Ollivander had implanted in his wand was impossible if someone had asked him.

I would enjoy being there to watch you beg and Potter refuse you. He is a strict young man, that one, focused on his goals and not one to let anyone deter him. He will put his training in the Auror program and his girlfriend above you.

Draco blinked. He knew that Harry hadn’t dated Ginny Weasley for years, and certainly hadn’t cheated on her with Draco. He paused, wondering if Ollivander was mental, but the rest of the letter drew him on.

Allow an old man to be crude and suggest that you persuade him to fuck you. The curse can be broken, but not until then.

Draco began to smile. He began to wish that Ollivander could be in England, too, but for a rather different reason.

I have sent the list of materials that you will need when you prepare to break the curse. I hope that you will abandon fantasies of avenging yourself on me for this; you will never find the place I hide, and I might suggest that your wand would turn against you if you did.

Draco tossed his head back and laughed. The bittern bobbed its head up and down, excited. Draco chuckled at it and then sat back in his chair, regarding the letter almost fondly.

He had fucked Harry, not the other way around. Ollivander had obviously seen those articles in the paper that said Harry and Ginny Weasley were dating and believed them. And he had thought that Harry would be able to resist the pull of the bond and that Draco had no previous feelings for Harry. He had smugly believed that he was creating a bond that would cause chaos and hatred in all their lives.

Draco laughed again. He would break the bond, yes, because Harry wished it so, but he would also show him Ollivander’s letter to dispel any doubts he might be feeling about whether or not the bond had created the situation between them.

“Yes, old man, I wish you were here,” he whispered, and toasted the ceiling with a flick of his wand that caused crackers to shower down for the bittern.

*

“I think this can be done without much trouble.” Hermione was scanning the list with bright eyes and nodding. “Yes, the wood’s readily available, and we don’t even have to go to a wandmaker to have it done, because all it requires is the making of a dummy wand, not the real thing.”

“Good,” Harry said. He rubbed the back of his neck and stared out the window of Ron and Hermione’s house.

“Harry?” Hermione was coming nearer, from the sound of her footsteps and voice, but Harry didn’t look at her. “Are you all right? I would have thought you would be ecstatic about this.”

“I am,” Harry said, giving her a quick smile. “Or happy, at least.”

Hermione nodded. “Because you don’t want to spend the rest of your life bonded to Draco Malfoy?”

Harry took a deep breath. Perhaps the words would sound less terrifying outside his brain than inside it. “Because I don’t want to spend the rest of my life with him if only the bond connects us.”

Hermione was quiet for long moments, and Harry wondered if she would react badly. Even Ron, as accepting as he’d been, might feel differently if he knew that Harry was planning on spending a lot of time with Draco, not just the few months that Ron seemed to have expected the bond to last.

“If that’s what you want,” Hermione said gently, “then of course I’m happy for you.”

Harry exhaled. “Yeah, I think that’s what I want. But—I don’t know how I’m going to tell him.”

“Why not?” Hermione sat down across the table and stared at him. “I’d think he would be happy. He does care for you, you know.”

Harry shrugged helplessly. “He likes the bond. He likes the way it makes us feel and the way it makes us have to spend time together. I don’t know if he’ll want it gone. But I can’t have it around.”

Hermione, much to his surprise, laughed. She went on laughing as she bent her head down and placed it between her hands, and then went on laughing even though she was obviously trying to muffle the sound against the table. Harry stared at her, nervous and a little offended. Maybe very offended.

“What?” he demanded.

Hermione lifted her head and smiled at him. “It’s just nice to see you having some romantic anxieties like everyone else,” she said cheerfully. “I used to wonder if you would ever have normal problems, like wondering if a girl—I mean, a lover—liked you. Rather than saving the world and whether you would become an Auror who would manage to save the world again.”

Harry rolled his eyes. “I’m glad that you find it so amusing. Draco might not.”

Hermione reached across the table and took his hand. “I think that you mean more to him than you realize yet.”

I hope so, Harry thought, and had to swallow back both laughter at how his position had changed and desperate anxiety that, no matter what Hermione said, Draco wouldn’t want him without the bond.

*

“That’s it.”

Granger’s words resounded in the quiet library. Draco clutched the edges of the book he’d been pretending to read all morning so that Harry wouldn’t see how anxious he was. But when the words really registered, he set the book aside and stood up to face her, his mouth dry.

“You mean that you made the dummy wand?” he demanded. He knew Ollivander’s instructions hadn’t been complex; the only reason he hadn’t followed them himself had been because the bond couldn’t be broken by a direct participant in it. But that Granger could make a wand in so short a time, when she’d never done it before, was a miracle.

Harry looked up with a shadowed face, and a moment later rose and sauntered across the library to join them. Draco glanced at him and then away. He’d shown Harry the list of ingredients for the dummy wand and Ollivander’s letter before Granger began to work on the breaking of the bond, but Harry had said little. He had looked pale and then thoughtful, and retreated to the other side of the library with a nod when Granger demanded that they stop hovering around her. Draco didn’t know if Ollivander’s letter had actually changed Harry’s mind or not.

He hoped, if it had, it had only changed it in a good way.

“Now,” Granger said, holding up the birch wand with a core of Veela hair, “I need you to stand close together and stretch out your hands to each other. Hold onto one another and stare into each other’s eyes. You need to be in a classic handfasting posture to give the bond something to focus on.”

“Even though we’re not handfasted,” Draco muttered, although he reached out his hand. “Never mind that that’s a custom no one has used for a hundred years and desperately old-fashioned.”

“I know some witches who’ve used it,” Granger said in a stiff voice.

“Then they’re old-fashioned,” Draco said, waiting for the moment when Harry’s hand touched his. He didn’t know what would happen now if Harry rejected him again the way he had when they were both children, although Draco didn’t think he would, not when he was the one who had wanted the bond broken in the first place. “Obviously.”

Granger ground her teeth, but said in the kind of patient tone Draco had heard his mother direct at him on occasion, “Harry?”

Harry gave a little hop and said, “Right.” This time, his hand grasped Draco’s without hesitation. That reassured Draco—almost—that he did want to participate in the ritual and touch Draco for what might be the last time, but that he’d been lost in a world of his own and hadn’t even heard Granger’s instructions.

Hopefully.

Harry’s hand was warm with sweat. Draco moved his fingers lightly against the back of it and remembered that the last time they’d touched, Harry’s hand had been flailing between his shoulder and hair, looking for a good grip—

“Mutatione,” Granger’s voice said clearly.

The dummy wand rang as though it was a gong someone had struck. Draco felt a shivering vibration go through him, too, perfectly touching and answering the note of the bond. A sharp, harpstring-like note came from behind Harry’s head, and they staggered away from each other, even though their hands remained joined. Draco sighed. That shock had been the last dissolution of the physical bond.

He glanced at Harry, wondering if he would take the chance to retreat. It seemed he would, since he was staring at their entwined hands as if he couldn’t believe Draco was still holding onto him. Draco winced and started to drop his hand back to his side.

Then Harry looked up at him, smiled, and moved his fingers over the back of Draco’s hand. Answering his gesture of soothing and reassurance.

After the bond was gone, and he couldn’t feel any physical pleasure from doing so.

Draco’s breath caught, and he stood straighter. I think—I think it’s going to be all right.

*

Harry hadn’t said much after reading Ollivander’s letter because he couldn’t think of what to say. And the bond would be broken soon, anyway. He had repeated that to himself over and over, to defeat any anxiety he might have about the rest of his life being determined by it.

But what the letter had revealed to him—

He had been free, in a way, even when the bond forced him to be close to Draco. He wasn’t disgusted, the way that the bond should have made him by Ollivander’s reckoning, and able to deny the yearning for touch. He’d been as affected, as helpless in the rush of physical need, as desiring of the closeness.

Ron had been right. Harry had been dreaming about Ginny and a family, and although he might not have chosen Draco to be the one who woke him up, at least he was awake now, and could choose his own course.

Draco was smiling in a tentative way, as if he had been the one with the right to be nervous. Harry stroked his hand and then drew him closer as the smile grew firmer, wrapping one arm around his neck to plant a chaste kiss on his lips.

Hermione cleared her throat loudly, but from the feel of Draco’s answering arm clamped around his shoulders, he wasn’t going to heed her wordless protests. He deepened the kiss past chaste, and Harry moaned. The library door slammed open and shut, with Hermione shouting some last admonition not to ruin the carpets.

Draco watched him with flushed cheeks and shining eyes when Harry thought to draw back from the kiss, and Harry answered by clasping both his hands this time.

“You want to?” Draco whispered. “Even though you don’t have to? Even though you didn’t choose me in the first place?”

“I choose you now,” Harry answered. “You’re—less unpleasant than I thought you were—” Draco rolled his eyes “—and the sex is utterly brilliant. I want to try.”

“Then I choose you, too,” Draco whispered back, and there was another kiss, and another, and another, until Harry’s knees weakened and he thought Hermione’s warning about the carpet might be needed after all.

He was free, and bound at the same time, by his own choice.

Harry thought he could get used to this.

The End.