[one-shots]: Awakening, H/D, R, 1/3

[lomonaaeren]

Title: Awakening
Summary: Draco and Harry have a forced bond. Draco and Harry have trouble getting along. Draco and Harry want freedom from the bond--no, wait, that's only Harry.
Rating: R
Pairing(s): Harry/Draco, Ron/Hermione
Warnings: Forced bond, flangst, sex, swearing.
Word Count: 29.400
Author's Notes: This was written for winterstorrm at the dracotops_harry fest; her prompt was a forced bond that Harry wanted to end while Draco kept secretly thwarting him. Thanks to my betas Linda and Christine.



Awakening

"Ah, young Mr. Malfoy."

Draco winced. There was a world of loathing in that voice, but he couldn't really blame the bloke, could he? Being held prisoner in a dungeon made out of the cellars of your house would do that to someone.

On the other hand, it would be beneath his dignity for him to take notice of the nastiness, or let it force him out of the shop. Draco straightened his shoulders, brushed the snow off his cloak as though he was brushing off the other's emotion, and strode forwards between the high shelves.

"Good morning, Mr. Ollivander," he said, voice and nod both cool and regal. "I'm looking for a new wand."

Ollivander paused. He looked positively skeletal, but Draco didn't know if that came from the changes over the war or from the large, baggy grey robe he wore. Since I have a choice, robe it is. "I remember the one you had," he said quietly. "Hawthorn and unicorn hair--"

Draco waved aside the list of his wand's specifications and leaned forwards. "Yes, but Harry Potter stole it, and it served him." Potter's name tasted bright and strange in his mouth, the way it had since the moment Draco had looked up and seen Potter standing in front of him in the Great Hall, wand held out. Potter was covered with dust and sweat and had leaves in his hair, and looked like someone who had wanted nothing more than to have the wand-trading over with, so that he could go have a nice lie-down.

It was the first time Draco had ever seen him look ordinary. He hadn't actually known Potter could.

And it was the first time he had ever felt the quickening interest that Potter always stirred in him as desire.

Draco shook off his thoughts when he realized that Ollivander was patiently waiting for him to go on. There were rumors that the old man was a Legilimens, which might explain how he knew and remembered so much about his clients. Draco wasn't anxious to let an enemy get hold of that particular thought. "Since then, it's served him, and not me." He took the hawthorn wand out of his pocket and set it solidly down on the counter. "I want a new wand that will pay its first allegiance to me."

Ollivander picked up the hawthorn, running his fingers gently over the shaft and sighting down it as though he intended to curse Draco. Draco braced himself, ready and wary. He had thought that Ollivander might do that when he handed it back, and he didn't really like anyone touching his wand, but he'd also known that Ollivander would have to do so to diagnose the problem.

"Yes," Ollivander murmured. "Well. It's no surprise that it prefers a different master."

Draco winced, then hoped it didn't show. Probably not, since Ollivander had already turned his back and was searching among the boxes on the shelves just above his head.

"Given the problematic issue with the Elder Wand, I mean," Ollivander added over his shoulder, making Draco wonder if that previous comment had been as nasty as it sounded. "Your wand is confused as to who it should serve, and would give no clear allegiance to any owner now." He paused, scrabbled, and then turned around with a box out of which he pulled a bright, slender, pale wand.

Draco caught his breath. He thought the wood was birch, but he couldn't tell the core from a glance, which was a skill his father had picked up.

His father. Draco wasn't going to think about him right now, thank you. Lucius Malfoy still had six months to go on his year-long sentence in Azkaban, but Draco was a young, nineteen-year-old wizard who'd left Hogwarts just a few months ago and should have the world at his feet. And would, as soon as he got his hands on a new wand.

"Yes, it's birch," Ollivander said, hopefully answering the expression on his face rather than the thought in his mind. "Veela hair core. A bit experimental for me, and it's proved hard to match. But this is a wand that will only serve one master, you may be certain." For a moment, a smile gleamed on his mouth, or so Draco thought, but when he dragged his glance away from the wand, it was gone again.

Draco hesitated one moment longer, wondering about a trap, but he didn't sense the telltale tingle of harmful Dark magic, which he'd become accustomed to over the few months in Malfoy Manor when the Dark Lord dwelt there. He finally reached out and picked the wand up.

The tip began to glow silver. The wood was smooth against his palm, fluid where Draco gripped it, but not slippery. Ollivander nodded encouragingly, and Draco lifted the wand and said softly, "Wingardium Leviosa." One of the first spells he remembered learning in Hogwarts. He thought it would be fitting if it was also one of the first spells he performed with his new wand.

The tip glowed again, and the wand-box sprang into the air and drifted back and forth above the desk. Ollivander looked as proud as a parent celebrating their child's first burst of accidental magic.

"Yes, it's matched, all right," he chuckled. "Proud, temperamental thing that it is."

Draco gave him another look, but he only stood there beaming as if he had made the wand specifically for Draco after all, so Draco took the hawthorn wand back and walked out.

Ollivander whispered something else, something that made Draco pause on the threshold of the shop and strain his ears. But the only thing he picked up out of the mess of sibilants was "...most unsuitable person."

"What?" Draco asked.

"Was I muttering to myself?" Ollivander cocked his head and apparently tried to look wise, something that Draco didn't think he was good at. "I apologize. A problem of the very aged, I fear."

Draco wasn't at all sure. But given that it had ended in English, he knew that it couldn't have been an incantation. He nodded as graciously back to the wandmaker as he was capable of and walked away.

Only much, much later would it occur to him that he hadn't ever paid for that wand.

And that might be one reason, although not the only one, why he'd had so much trouble.

*

Harry lunged forwards, ducking frantically beneath the burning rope that swung over his head while also trying to avoid the redcaps that grabbed at his legs. The rope went past, and Harry jumped, casting a charm at the same time that should keep his robe safe from flames.

Should have. Instead, the edge of his cloak glowed and then started to blaze. Harry swore and caught the edge of it beneath his boot as he landed, stamping the fire out (and, not entirely incidentally, breaking the fingers of one of the redcaps that was reaching for him).

"Bloody cheats," he informed the world in general, or at least all the world that consisted of this dismal, smoky, swampy place lost in a curtain of glittering silver mist, and began to slog forwards.

The mist abruptly faded, along with the water, the redcaps, and the rope as it came back for a second strike. Instead, Harry stood on a bare wooden floor in the midst of the Particularly Advanced Initiation and Near-encounters Room, which everyone except the Aurors themselves called by its appropriate acronym. Harry would never be convinced that the person who'd named the room didn't know exactly what he was doing.

"That's enough for today, Trainee Potter." The Auror who approached him, Gavriel Robinson, measured him with an expert eye and then shook his head. "You're still out of breath, after only twenty minutes' struggle against illusions. You'll have to do better than that in the real world."

Harry sneered at him. "Flames that burn through anti-flame charms? No partner? Random burning ropes with nothing to swing them? Those are the conditions of the real world?"

Robinson, as always, was unaffected by his sarcasm. "Be back here tomorrow at ten," he said, and turned away.

Harry slogged off much as he would have slogged through the swamp, muttering away to himself all the while. Yes, he understood that Auror training had to be difficult, and Robinson had a particular reputation for being a hard-arse, but they didn't have to cheat.

He managed to put the mood aside as he came out of the Ministry. He was going to meet Ron and Hermione at George's shop in half-an-hour, so that they could have a quiet dinner celebrating George coming out with a new product of some kind. What kind it was, Harry didn't remember exactly, but he knew it was supposed to be a brand new way to embarrass and humiliate your enemies. And probably your friends, too, knowing George.

Ginny might be there, too.

Harry hesitated for a moment, then huffed and forced himself on. He couldn't believe how childish he got sometimes where Ginny was concerned. They hadn't ever got back together after the war, although Ginny had clearly wanted to, because of Harry's commitment issues. Hermione had sat him down one day and taught him all the terminology, all the symptoms, and made him agree that he had it.

That still didn't mean Harry was willing to date or marry Ginny, though (or whatever else they expected him to do with her. Sometimes he thought Molly was expecting them to spend the rest of their lives on permanent honeymoon). And yes, he knew why. He wasn't ready to settle down yet. He felt like he wanted to have adventures, or at least the adventure of being an Auror and capturing a few ordinary criminals, so people would stop thinking of him as a Savior for the sake of one thing he had done.

Harry just didn't feel like his life was meant to be over yet, but that it would be if he married Ginny. But he had no grounds for that feeling, either. It was just the way things were. He would probably marry her in the end, because he did want that safe and secure home. Just not yet.

"Potter!"

Harry yelped as he abruptly tangled himself with a set of long limbs and ungainly feet (or, well, they seemed ungainly to him, at least, since he was currently stumbling over them). He tried to stand back up, and went sprawling flat. At least they were in an alley close to the Ministry that wasn't much traveled, he thought.

Things got worse when he turned his head and saw Draco Malfoy staring back at him.

"Malfoy?" Harry asked. "What the fuck are you doing here?"

"I wasn't exiled from London," Malfoy said, his voice suddenly cool. Well, maybe it had been before, too, Harry thought. It was hard to tell when someone had only spoken one word to you. "I have as much right to be near the Ministry as you do."

"You're not an Auror," Harry said. "You don't work for the Department of Mysteries, or anywhere else in the Ministry." He tried to remind himself that Malfoy had probably changed since the war--he certainly had in their last year at Hogwarts, when he had constantly stared at Harry but otherwise ignored him--and wasn't up to anything, but meeting him like this was quite the coincidence.

Malfoy turned pink, and then pale. "None of your business," he said tightly, and started to stand.

Harry decided that it probably wasn't, looked around, and saw Malfoy's wand at a short distance from his hand, in the corner of the alley. Malfoy was facing the opposite way and hadn't seen it roll. Deciding that he could owe Malfoy something because he'd been the one to bump into him and then antagonize him, Harry reached for the wand.

The moment his hand touched it, it felt as though someone had jabbed a thousand needles into his palm. Harry screamed and recoiled, but the wand came with him, attached to his hand. His wrist was burning now, and a thin beam of silver light came out of the wand and stabbed into Malfoy's back.

He fell. Harry, wobbling, bit his tongue and tried to stand, his mind occupied with dim thoughts of fetching help.

Then the silver light stabbed into him, and Harry reeled, staring dizzily into the sky, and fell, too. Coldness chased him into dreams.

*

Draco woke so slowly that he knew at once that something was wrong. His head throbbed, and his eyelids seemed to be held shut with a sort of sticky gum. He worked them up and down until they parted enough to allow in some faint light.

He was staring at a pale blue ceiling. When he managed to turn his head, he saw that he was looking at a chair. His mother started and came to her feet from it an instant later, reaching out to him with a concerned look on her face.

"Darling," she whispered. "What happened to you?"

"I don't know," Draco whispered back, his heart squeezing. He hated seeing that look on his mother's face. She had enough of it now that his father was in prison. "I--didn't the Healers tell you?" An unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar place probably meant St. Mungo's, and Draco had the impression he'd been out for several hours, time for someone to find out what was wrong.

Narcissa shook her head and settled back into the chair. She'd pulled away before she touched him, Draco couldn't help but notice, and his heart gave a single, uncoordinated thump. "No. They firecalled me and said that you had collapsed near the Ministry and been brought in. With Potter."

Draco swore, which made his mother look steadily at him. "Sorry," he muttered, groping after the few fluttering memories he had. "I--think I remember what happened. Sort of. I bumped into Potter and dropped my wand. When he touched it, I remember feeling this awful pain. And then I don't remember anything more." He held out his hand and looked at it, wondering if he would see it covered with scaly growths acquired from between Potter's horrid toenails.

Not so horrid that you didn't want to spend time around the place where he works, whispered the voice of what Draco had called his almost-conscience since the war. It told him embarrassing truths sometimes, but nothing so bad that he couldn't deal with it.

Draco scowled. Whether he had been near the Ministry for a legitimate reason didn't matter as much as the pain.

"The Healers told me not to touch you," his mother said, in her lowest and most forceful voice. "They suspect something, Draco. They won't tell me what."

Draco swallowed to deal with both his rising panic and his rising nausea. What in the world could have happened? Would he transmit a disease to his mother? Did this amount to a curse? Had Potter drained him of his magic? What--

The door opened then, and a middle-aged woman with shoulder-length grey hair who looked as if she never smiled stepped into the room. She nodded to Draco and said, "Mr. Malfoy. No one has touched you since you woke?"

"No." Draco leaned forwards. "What happened?"

"As near as we can determine," the Healer said, flicking her head to the side to keep one eye on her notes and one on him, "a crossing of your magic with Mr. Potter's." Draco listened, but he didn't hear the same hushed tone of reverence in her voice when she mentioned Potter's name that he did in most people's. Good. Maybe she's sensible. "It passed through your wand core and tied you together. It resulted in a magical bond calling on eros."

Draco hadn't had his education for nothing. He could translate from the Greek, and it made his eyes cross and his head fall back against the pillows.

"Oh," he said, very softly.

"Mere crossing of magic does not cause this," his mother said. Draco smiled at her, as much as he could when his mouth wanted to hang open. "I know something about it, and while it might cause the fainting fit, it would not cause a bond."

"I know that," the Healer said, in the tone of someone who understood that people get distressed at times. "But as I said, it passed through the wand core. Mr. Malfoy, can you tell me if you and Mr. Potter at any time used each other's wands? It would still not give us a complete answer," she added, probably to stave off Narcissa's attempt to say the same thing, "but it would give us a start."

Draco chuckled. Then he laughed. Then he cut it off, seeing the Healer's intense look. "Didn't we just," he said. "Or rather, Potter stole my original wand and stole its allegiance so thoroughly that it didn't come back to me. And it turned out that I'd once held the Elder Wand, but he stole its allegiance at the same time that he stole mine. But this is a new wand," he added, raising his head from the pillow with some difficulty. "I don't know why it would tie us together."

The Healer peered at him sternly. Draco thought she should have had glasses to peer over. "You were aware, Mr. Malfoy, that your wand core is a Veela hair?"

"What does that have to do with anything?" Draco asked, but he thought he knew, particularly when the Healer stared at the ceiling and blew air hard through her lips.

"The Veela are creatures of connection," she said. "Their hairs are valuable ingredients in lust philters and so-called 'love' potions, which of course are only a more sophisticated version of the lust philter." Draco opened his mouth to protest that he knew that, but the Healer was living in her own little lecture-world by now. "In a wand core, they have been known to create the crossing of the magic. And, rarely, bonds." She lowered her head and stared at Draco. "You do understand what this means, Mr. Malfoy?"

Draco nodded. "It means--bonds with eros components demand that the partners touch each other."

"And shag, yes," the Healer said, thereby ruining Draco's attempt to be delicate in front of his mother. "That part of the genesis of the bond, we understand. What we do not yet know the reason for is the blistering that happened under our hands when we touched your bare skin, as well as Mr. Potter's. Such bonds do not, ordinarily, react badly to the touch of someone else."

"You suspected this," his mother said.

"Suspected which part of it, Mrs. Malfoy?" The Healer glanced at her briefly before turning back to Draco. "We understand the basic reason behind the formation of the bond, yes. That does not mean that we know all its subtleties yet. I must ask your son questions to determine that."

And she did--ruthless, invasive questions that Draco was still reeling from a few minutes after she left. His mother didn't have that disadvantage, and paced back and forth across the room, her robes flying behind her.

"I do wish that ordinary things happened to you once in a while, Draco," she murmured.

Draco was about to defend himself--it wasn't as though he had asked for this bond to Potter, after all--when he had a new thought, one that all the Healer's questioning hadn't pulled from him. He sat up in bed and glared. His mother noticed and turned towards him, placing one hand at the hollow of her throat.

"Ollivander," Draco whispered. "He was saying something when I left his shop with my new wand. It might have been a curse."

"But why--" His mother went white to the lips. "Our treatment of him during the war. I should have insisted that you choose a wand from a different wandmaker."

Draco sighed. "It's not your fault, Mother. I would have expected him to refuse to see me at all if he didn't want to give me a real wand, not take revenge on me like this." He licked his lips. It ought to be easy to break the bond if it had such a simple cause.

A pity.

But Draco refused to examine all his motives for not wanting to break the bond. He started to stand up from the bed, ignoring the way his legs shook. "Come, Mother. We need to find a Floo connection. I'm sure that Blaise or Pansy would be willing to delay Ollivander for me, or at least report on his movements."

Before he could stand or his mother expostulate, the door of the room flew open. Draco looked up, half-expecting to see Ollivander there with a gloating expression on his face.

It was Potter instead. He let the door fall shut behind him, glaring at Draco with heated eyes that made Draco suddenly glad he was sitting down.

He could have done with being in a different room from Potter's voice, too, which rasped and hissed around corners. "Malfoy, what the fuck did you do to me?"

*

Harry had needed the Healers to explain the bond twice, because the first time he'd felt faint with shock. But once he understood, there was no reason to delay; of course he would seek Malfoy out and demand that the bastard remove this prank. A bond that kept Harry from touching other people and required him to--to fuck Malfoy was not on.

But Malfoy didn't react the way Harry had expected him to, either with taunts or apologies. He shook his head and said, "I didn't do it, Potter. If I'm right, then it was Ollivander, who cast a curse on my new wand when he gave it to me. He's our best hope to remove it."

Harry blinked, then nodded. It was unexpected that Malfoy wasn't the cause of the problem, for once, but for reasons that he didn't feel like going into right now, also a relief. Well, it would have been boring if the people Harry had thought were villains in school were to be the villains for the rest of his life. "Right! Well, let's go."

He turned his back to march out the door, and then found he couldn't. His feet had locked in place. Straining, he turned his head back over his shoulder to glare at Malfoy. "Do you mind?"

"It isn't me." Malfoy looked as though he was about to vomit. He closed his eyes, teeth chattering, but said through them anyway, "It's the bond, Potter. We've been apart from each other too long, and worse, other people have touched us in the meantime. It wants us to--touch and reestablish the connection."

"The fuck?" Harry said. Mrs. Malfoy gave him a quelling glance, but Harry had been quelled by Aunt Petunia and Professor Snape in his time, and she just wasn't in their league. "How do you know that if you didn't cause the bond?"

"I've read about bonds like them, okay?" Malfoy jackknifed to his feet and stretched out an unsteady hand. "Come here, Potter. Come on."

"Can't," Harry said in triumph. "I'm stuck to the floor." He tugged at one leg to prove his point.

Of course, then, it came loose easily in his hand, and he found himself turning back to Malfoy as though it was the most natural thing in the world to have done.

"I don't think you are," Malfoy said, smiling at him in a way that made Harry wonder if he was going to be sick. The expression on his face was slow and heavy, and he leaned forwards as if encouraging a reluctant animal, and his voice had gone breathy. "You might want to leave, Mother."

Mrs. Malfoy stood still a moment longer, then nodded and made her way towards the door. "Tell me when you are done, Draco."

"What do you mean?" Harry asked. His voice was slow and heavy, too. He shook his head and came to a stop, swaying, but his legs kept twitching as though someone had infected them with an electrical current that pointed straight towards Malfoy. "What do we have to do?"

Malfoy sighed. "What do you think we have to do? The bond needs to be reestablished. Touch me." He held out his hand, and Harry was bobbing forwards to touch it, as though he was a bird who was going to peck food out of Malfoy's palm, before he consciously considered it.

Their palms brushed. A spark flared to life between them, visibly blue and stinging, before it zipped up Harry's arm and towards his neck. He tried to pull back, but Malfoy had closed both his hands down over Harry's single one, and it was impossible. Harry panted, his eyes half-shutting, his neck arching as he fought to keep from feeling what that spark induced in him.

Pleasure. Slow and heavy, of course, and mind-numbing, stirring in his groin and rising towards his chest.

"Feel that?" Malfoy asked, voice shaky. "Oh, yes, I thought so." His hand fluttered gently across Harry's cheek, then down across his neck, fingers splayed and stroking. Harry felt his head droop forwards. He'd never known that the back of his neck was sensitive, but it seemed it was. He grunted.

"Oh, yes," Malfoy said, with a choke in the back of his voice that Harry didn't need to translate. He drew Harry forwards into an embrace, and Harry felt his chin brush Malfoy's neck. Malfoy swallowed and turned his head so that his lips, and then his tongue, touched Harry's cheek.

He didn't say anything about that kind of touching! Harry jerked backwards and nearly fell on his arse. Malfoy released him and stared at him with a bright flush on his face. Harry shook his head several times. It took longer to find his voice, and he tried to ignore the feeling of warm, rich purring in the back of his head, as though their bond was a living thing or a machine that was now functioning properly.

"We don't have to snog, Malfoy."

*

Draco raised one eyebrow. He could feel his confidence returning like a vine that wrapped him up and supported him. He hadn't known how he would feel when he touched Potter, beyond momentarily satisfied that the bond was getting what it needed to survive.

Now he knew. He felt fucking wonderful, as if he had taken a warm bath that energized him instead of relaxing him to the point that he fell asleep. He laughed, and watched Potter's face twist in confusion.

The half-formed way he had felt about Potter until then--liking the way he looked in the Great Hall when he handed Draco's wand back, taking the off-chance that he might be coming out of the Ministry at a certain time if Draco was going that way--twisted in his chest and became something different. All right, it was deeper than he had expected. Well, he could work with that. It would certainly make the bond more pleasant to experience than otherwise.

"Poor, poor Harry," he said. "If you thought that was a snog, you're more sheltered than I ever suspected you were."

Potter opened his mouth, and then left it dangling. Draco looked speculatively at his tongue. "Now," he added, "if you wanted to give me a closer look at that, then I reckon that could qualify as a snog."

Potter bit his tongue, and then shook his head. "We have to focus on the best way to end this bond, Malfoy. And not have sex."

"We'll need to, eventually," Draco said peacefully, and reached out to touch his knuckles to Potter's shoulder, the nearest part of him right now. Potter shuddered, twisting, and Draco sighed. Pleasure flowed back and forth between them, and he knew it would increase the longer they touched, as the bond deepened and sealed itself. There were some eros bonds that were meant to quickly establish a marriage and then grow less intense over time, but Draco didn't know when this would end, and that excited him. "That's the way with this kind of bond."

"We don't need to," Potter said, his eyes so very wide that Draco thought he could see light through them. "Are you mad? You're probably engaged to be married."

Draco laughed. "Not yet. What about you? Oh, no, I don't need to ask," he added, when Potter made a soft, strangled sound. "The Prophet would have reported that."

"The Prophet has been wrong before." Potter forced himself to straighten up, glaring at Draco. Draco wondered when he would notice that his hand had reached out to grip Draco's arm, and started a silent count.

"Not with deafening silence," Draco said. "They might be wrong about the timing of the marriage, or the reason for the marriage, or who you were marrying, but they wouldn't just remain quiet with something to say. You're not committed to--Ginevra." He would at least say it that way, since references to weasels would probably upset Potter, and then he would be more tiresome than ever. "That means you can make me your first priority for a little while."

Potter looked as though Draco was asking him to swallow a worm. "I can't," he said. "Of course I can't. I have a job, Malfoy, and people who depend on me."

"Well, you don't have to spend every spare moment with me," Draco conceded graciously. "Just long enough to snog and shag. And oh, going on dates would be good sometimes, too." He smiled as Potter's face turned a number of interesting shades.

"I want to get married someday," Potter said in a voice that made him sound like a bull about to charge. "And I don't want to be married to you. So piss off."

Draco shrugged. "I was trying to offer you an option that would let you preserve some dignity. Do you really want to be dragged to me by the bond acting like a rope around your waist? Or do you want to come in, do what needs to be done, and then leave again?"

Potter stared at him. Draco could understand why. Since the end of the war, he had decided that Potter wasn't as stupid as he'd once thought him, and he should have noticed the contradiction between Draco saying that they would only do what needed to be done and the enthusiastic reception he'd given the bond earlier.

But too much enthusiasm too fast would only make Potter fight the bond, and ensure that his kisses were short and reluctant when Draco did get them. Draco didn't want that.

He had thought that he might fancy Potter when he saw him standing there in the sunlight that came through the shattered windows of the Great Hall, holding out the useless hawthorn wand. He had allowed himself to indulge in some daydreams, and some wank fantasies, and sometimes passing by the Ministry as Potter walked home, but no more than that, because he knew it never would be more than that. It was the end of the war, and he wouldn't waste time yearning for things he couldn't have.

But now...

Now he had a chance, and he was going to hold onto it with both hands.

If he could.

*

Harry wanted to reply that the mere thought of kissing Malfoy made him want to put his wand against his temple and utter the Killing Curse.

But that wasn't true. And he had acquired an allergy, in the course of the months since the war, to making generalizations about people who had been mere rivals during his school years. He had faced pure evil, in the form of Voldemort, and heard about more since, when the Aurors training him divulged stories of past cases. That was what Harry wanted to face and fight.

Not Malfoy, who had looked so lost at his trial, as though he didn't understand why Harry would speak up for him. Not Parkinson, who had scuttled away from Harry with her head turned aside during that last year of school, as if she assumed that meeting his eyes would cause her to fall dead. (It had taken Harry months to corner her and assure her that he understood why she would have wanted to throw him to Voldemort, and even then, he didn't think she believed him). Not Zabini, who would regularly eye Ginny and then glare at Harry.

There were some people it wasn't worth hating.

Still, he couldn't let this stupid bond take him away from all his responsibilities. So he straightened, glared at Malfoy, and said, "Watch me."

"You would rather be hauled around like a puppet?" Malfoy examined him from head to foot. "Funny, I thought you were more sensible than that."

You probably think I'm fit enough for you, that's what, Harry decided. "I can fight it," he said. "The temptation to have sex with you, I mean. Watch me." He turned to face the door out of the room.

"Really? I don't think you understand the nature of this bond." Malfoy had a smile in his voice, Harry could hear that much. "I forbid you to leave the room."

Harry's feet once more stuck to the floor. He tried to lift one, and it was like lifting a boot out of heavy mud. He bent down and tugged on it, swearing.

"So you could tell me to have sex with you, and I would?" Harry glared over his shoulder at Malfoy, half his good thoughts about the git withering. "So the bond legalizes rape?"

Malfoy's eyes widened, and he shook his head. "You don't understand. Both of us can give orders to the other--and those orders can only relate to the fulfillment of the bond. So I can't order you to stop seeing your friends, or writing to people complaining about this, or even hexing me. I can order you to stay with me when moving away would ensure that the bond wouldn't be fulfilled otherwise. And you can do the same thing to me."

"I order you to let me go," Harry countered instantly.

Malfoy grimaced, and Harry's feet loosened. "Wanker," Malfoy muttered. "I should have known you would figure that out right away."

"You'll get better cooperation out of me if you don't treat me like a slave," Harry snapped, and surged towards the door.

"Harry." Malfoy's voice was gentle in a way that Harry hadn't known it could be, which was all that made him pause with a hand on the door instead of hurrying out. "I don't particularly want to. But the bond will. That's what I mean when I say that you can choose to come to me, and we can have sex of our own free will. Believe me when I say that you won't regret it." His voice deepened. "I know how to please a partner."

Harry flinched as a memory he would rather forget bobbed up in front of him. He'd been a prefect that last year, McGonagall trying to make up for lost time and honors, and he'd come around a corner one night to see Malfoy standing in front of a dark-haired Ravenclaw bloke in an alcove, touching his shoulders and his face. Just touching.

But his gaze was intense, burningly so, and the Ravenclaw had gasped and moaned and breathed like he was running a race, all from those simple little glancing caresses of Malfoy's fingertips.

Harry pushed the memory away again. He would rather not think about that, and he didn't have to. The Ravenclaw had probably been Malfoy's long-term partner, and so Malfoy knew how to handle him (so to speak) in all the important ways. There was a difference between thinking that Malfoy wasn't horribly evil and thinking that he was a good--lover, whatever--for Harry's future.

"You said that Ollivander did this," he said. "So let's go there and get him to remove the curse on your wand."

Malfoy's face fell. Did he really think that I wouldn't think of something so simple? Harry wondered in irritation, and then he shook his head. A lot of what Malfoy was saying was incomprehensible to him at the moment. He wanted to get this over and done with so that he could return to his normal life. The normal life he had been carefully building since the war, when he had decided that he was done with strange things happening to him.

"I don't think it'll be as easy as that," Malfoy cautioned.

Harry fixed him with his best stare from Auror training, which he used on Aurors who tried to trick him with old jokes about Defense spells that he knew weren't true. It made Malfoy squirm, too. "Do you have a better idea?"

"I've told all of them to you already, alas," Malfoy murmured.

Harry stomped out the door. Malfoy paused behind him for a moment, probably to say something to his mother, and then followed.

*

"I don't believe it."

Potter's voice was confident and ringing, as if by saying that he would cause the shut-up little shop to change its CLOSED sign, or the handwriting on the glass immediately below it:

SHUT PERMANENTLY
MOVED TO MADAGASCAR

Potter peered in the dim window, and then thumped on the glass, beneath the letters. They didn't move, but brightened, as if they had been enchanted to do so when someone touched them.

Draco covered his mouth with one hand, because he didn't know whether he was going to grin or laugh. He cocked his head to the side, wondering if Ollivander hadn't left yet and this sign was just up as a blind, but if it was, then the wandmaker had carefully left him no way to see beyond it. The shelves were empty. Draco didn't think it was just a good glamour, either.

"He left," Potter whispered. "And he did that just as revenge? I didn't think that was like him."

Draco snorted. "People don't go into wandmaking because of their innate goodness, Harry. It takes a certain kind of person who wants a certain kind of power, because they'll know which each wizard is capable of, magically, before they actually manage it. Not all their predictions may come true, but enough that it gives their hands and souls something to aspire to."

Potter whipped back towards him, his holly wand tight in his hand. "Don't call me Harry!"

"That's what you're upset about?" Draco leaned against the wall, ignoring the glances that people passing in Diagon Alley tossed at him. "Not about this bond, not about the fact that we've probably just lost the best chance to find out how to reverse it?"

"I thought you wanted to keep the bond the way it was." Potter eyed him and then glanced around at the corners of the shop, quick, darting glances that Draco would nevertheless have had to be drunk to miss.

"I think that, since we have an excuse, we might as well relax and enjoy ourselves," Draco said. And that this will give me the chance to find out whether I really fancy you or not. "Overall, yes, I'd like to find a way to reduce the bond. But Ollivander was only the most obvious choice to do so. We can find others. I'm sure Granger would like to have something new to research."

He'd thought he'd spoken neutrally, but Potter turned another glare on him that made him feel like he was standing in the desert at noon. "I won't have you making fun of her, Malfoy," he said, dangerously.

"A bargain," Draco said, his heart accelerating in response. God, this bond is probably going to kill me. One way or the other. "I don't make fun of your friends, and we call each other by our first names."

Potter opened his mouth as if to laugh, closed it again, and then said, "You think you have the standing to make bargains like that? You think you can?"

"I think I'm the only one who can, since I'm in the bond with you," Draco said, suddenly wondering if Potter had spent some time studying pure-blood customs. People used to act as representatives of their families in alliances or offers of marriage, and would have to make clear which promises came from the entire family and which came from them as individuals.

"This is a stupid, mistaken, childish bond that should never have happened," Potter said, lowering his voice. "I'm going to find a way to break it, and I'll share the information with you. Other than that, I suggest that you stay away from me, and I'll do the same." He turned and Apparated away.

Draco rubbed his jaw in consideration. He could have told Potter it didn't work like that, that a bond of eros would demand the presence of one partner next to the other sooner or later.

But he thought it might be more fun to let Potter find that out on his own.

*

"Why do all the bloody weird things happen to you, mate?"

Harry shook his head in response to Ron's statement and stood up to fetch another Firewhisky. He'd already had two, and Hermione had taken to poking him as well as glaring at him. But he didn't care. He had got through the day without killing Malfoy or fainting again. Surely that deserved a reward.

"I don't know," he said, when he returned to the table and found Ron still peering at him. "Because that's the way I am. Because some evil fairy cursed me when I was in the cradle to have bad things happen to me, like in those Muggle stories."

Ron shook his head. "Evil fairies? No, it would have to be at least a goddess, for something like this."

Harry smiled and tossed half the Firewhisky down his throat. When he lowered his mug, he realized that George sat on the other side of the table, leaning forwards as he regarded Harry thoughtfully.

Harry looked back, not sure what George would say next. Sometimes it seemed as if, since Fred's death, he had been twice as manic, twice as cheerful, making up for one person who couldn't do it anymore. Other times he would be quiet and brooding, hardly speaking for days at a time. Harry knew Ron was worried about his brother, which was one reason they often met here at the joke shop.

Now, George swirled a finger in his own Firewhisky, then put it on the table and scrawled a line. Harry didn't see his wand or his lips move in an incantation, but the line of moisture blazed to life with a coruscation of gold and red. Harry jerked back from it, then made himself relax when he realized there was no heat coming from it. He snorted. "Good illusion."

George bent towards the fire, holding out one strand of red hair. It caught fire, and this time Harry could smell the singeing. George put it out and then looked at him with one eyebrow raised.

Harry shook his head. "I don't know what you're trying to say to me, mate."

George opened his hand, and Harry saw a sparkle of red powder on his fingers. "Drop this in Firewhisky, and it starts burning," George said. "A hotmouth. Astonish your friends! Burn your enemies! We're calling it A Taste of Muggle." He closed his hand, and when he opened it again, the dust had vanished. "But it only works on Firewhisky, on something that has the nature of fire in the first place. It wouldn't work on butterbeer, or water. Things only burn if that's their nature." He stood up and sauntered towards the kitchen.

Harry turned and focused on Ron. Ron didn't do it perfectly, but he still understood George better than the rest of them. "Do you know what he means?"

Ron's eyes were unexpectedly clear. "I do, mate," he said. "This bond happened because of Ollivander and because you shared wands before and because of the Elder Wand--" Ron shuddered the way he usually did when he mentioned the Deathly Hallows "--but also because you and Malfoy have something between you that can burn."

"I don't understand," Harry said. He discovered his fingers rapping on the edge of the table and made them stop.

"Oh, for goodness's sake, Harry," Hermione broke in. "He means that there's something sexual between you and Malfoy."

Harry was glad that he hadn't had a mouthful of Firewhisky at that moment. As it was, his hand shook when he reached out for his napkin and dabbed at the side of his mouth. "What? Hermione, you can't mean that. George can't mean that. Ron especially can't mean that." He turned towards Ron and crossed his eyes in a silent, desperate signal that Hermione must have lost her mind.

Ron just looked stolidly back at him. "That's the way it is," he said. "A bond of eros, the way you describe it, wouldn't have formed otherwise."

Harry tried to laugh. It came out sounding like a dying cat's last shout, so he cut himself off. "But that's ridiculous," he said. "I haven't even had anything to do with Malfoy since the war, so how would I be attracted to him?" The word stuck in his throat so much he had to force it out. "And anyway, there's a way to break the bond. There has to be, or he wouldn't have had hope in Ollivander."

"I can try to help you with that," Hermione said. "But most of the solutions I've already thought of involve having clear knowledge of yourself, Harry. You have to know what you want from the bond and what you want from your life."

"Nothing," Harry said instantly. "And marriage with Ginny."

Ron had an extensive coughing fit that required his mug and his fist to cover. Harry glared at him. "All right," he said, in what he hoped were suitably withering tones, "tell me what's wrong with that."

Ron took a long swallow of Firewhisky as if to fortify himself, and then shrugged. "No offense, mate, but you haven't exactly been in a hurry to make a move since the war, even when Ginny was still pining after you. And now she's not. And Malfoy was the exception to all the rules. He was the one you decided was innocent first, he was the one you defended from other people when they said that he'd wanted to hand you over to Voldemort--even though he did--"

Harry opened his mouth to argue that, and then shut it, his face feeling painful from the extent of his blush.

"And he was the one you told me you expected to see in Auror training, even though he had no reason in the world to be there." Ron shook his head. "Exactly what does all this point to? I thought you had a thing for Malfoy last year, but nothing happened, so I put that aside. And then you just kept on talking about marrying Gin like it was a foregone conclusion, even though she's dating someone else now, and even though you never referred to her like you loved her. Sorry, Harry, but you've treated it like this dream that can protect you. And you resent Malfoy for waking you up."

Harry shook his head. His breath came in what felt like the puffs he would use to try and blow out a fire, and his body wanted to fall off the chair. He kept it sitting upright by sheer force of will.

"Even if you're right," he said hoarsely, "and I was dreaming, and Malfoy is here to wake me up--even if you're right--that doesn't mean that I need to have sex with him, or whatever it is that you think I need to have because I won't marry Ginny." Those last words made him huff again. It was like being hit in the solar plexus to hear that he would never do that at all. Sure, he had thought he might have to wait, he had known sometimes that he wasn’t really serious, but it was like--

Letting go of a cherished dream. Harry suddenly wished he could be alone.

"Oh, right, right," Ron said, bobbing his head. "No one's saying that." He paused and looked keenly at Harry. "Except that the bond will make you."

"But that would be illegal," Harry said, and stopped. That sounded a bit pathetic even to him.

"Bonds don't care about illegal or legal, Harry, only magical right and wrong," Hermione broke in. She was giving Ron an admiring glance, which Harry thought was the only reason that she hadn't interrupted before. "And this bond has decided that it's right that you and Malfoy have sex with each other. Now, you might have decided that the last thing in the world you want to do is sleep with Malfoy--"

"You've got that bloody right!"

"But you'll probably have to, at least once." Hermione whipped a scroll of parchment briskly out of her pocket and spread it across the table, starting to write notes on it. Harry knew she carried the scroll around with her everywhere so she would never be at a loss for writing material, but it still made him a bit dizzy, knowing the subject she was working on. "I think I can break the bond with one quick method, but it would involve a lot of meditation so that you can know yourself better than you do now. Or we can go with some slower methods so that you can take a few months. But it means that you'll have to have sex with Malfoy probably five or six times." She paused, head cocked as if consulting a mental calendar, and then added, "Even the shorter method, you'd need to be with him at least once."

"But--why?" Harry felt as if someone had tied him to a mass of exploding fireworks. "What difference does the kind of bond make, or the time, or how well I know myself? And why aren't you more upset that I have this kind of bond with him?"

Hermione shrugged. "I decided that he wasn't the worst person who ever attacked me. Although he might have been the most annoying," she added reflectively. "And he hasn't done anything to me since Hogwarts, or even, really, since before the war. That was the last time he insulted me. I don't like that you have a bond with him because I know that it'll be hard for you. But it would be hard for you no matter what, unless it was Ginny, so--"

"Even if it was Ginny," Ron interrupted. "I told you, mate, you don't think of her as a real person. She's just a daydream to you, just an image you can use to keep other people away. I don't know why you think of her that way, but you do."

"All right, so why aren't you more upset about the fact that I might have to fuck Malfoy?" Harry winced. Said aloud, he had thought the words would sound silly, but they didn't. "Your family hates him."

"Malfoys in general, not him." Ron nodded with the kind of wisdom that Harry thought only Firewhisky could produc. "There's a difference."

"But he was the one who let the Death Eaters into the school and made sure Greyback scarred Bill." Harry knew he was whining, but he just didn't see any other way to get his point across. Was he the only one who remembered all the awful things that Malfoy had done?

"A bond is important," Ron said, reaching out and squeezing Harry's hand. "We'll support you, Harry, don't worry. And if you're concerned about the rest of my family, then I wish you wouldn't be. Everyone will understand once you explain the situation. They'll make sure that you can put up with any shite from above or the sides." He grimaced. "Bound to find someone who'll object, once word of it gets out."

"Yes, and I'll support you even though I'm researching to find ways to break the bond." Hermione gave him an anxious little smile. "I hope I didn't sound as though I thought you should do anything rather than be with Malfoy, Harry! That's not the way I meant to come across."

Harry had known the world didn't make sense, but he had never realized just how much sense it didn't make. He sat back, shook his head, and didn't speak another word even when George came back from the kitchen and set out glasses of Firewhisky along with several enticing new jokes from his shop that he was looking for "testers" for.

He would go to bed drunk. If the bond worked the way Harry hoped it would, then Malfoy might be able to feel Harry waking up with a headache in the morning, which would serve him right.

*

Draco opened his eyes. A sharp noise had echoed through his bedroom, like someone breaking a piece of wood. He rolled over, mind still fuzzy, and saw someone draped over the foot of the bed.

His mind grew icier and clearer, and he sat up with a smile. Ah, so it begins.

The figure groaned and shifted. His eyes blinked, those long lashes that Draco had started thinking Potter must enhance with charms going up and down. He put a hand to his head and groaned, then turned as if he would scramble away from Draco and throw up in the corner. "What happened?" he was whispering. "What--how did I get here?"

Draco reached out one hand and snagged the back of Potter's cloak, dragging him inwards. When he came close enough, Draco could smell the fumes of Firewhisky, and wrinkled his nose. Well. That explained why the bond had taken advantage of Potter’s Apparition to bring him here, so soon, instead of simply forcing him to Apparate when the need grew strong enough. He might have Splinched himself otherwise, and the bond would interfere in cases of obvious physical danger.

Draco rolled him over. Potter stared up at him, his chest heaving, his eyes glazed and unfocused.

Well, we can't have that, can we? Draco thought cheerfully, and pressed down with one hand at the same time as he leaned in towards Potter and whispered, "I order you to sober up."

Potter made a complicated sound like someone throwing up backwards, and then knifed himself away from Draco and landed on the edge of the rug around his bed, swearing in shock. Draco took his time sitting up and pushing the edges of his sleeping robe back from his shoulders. He added, "I order you to have clean breath and a settled stomach. I don't want to have to deal with you vomiting in my face as we rut together." He shuddered at the image that provoked.

"What--Malfoy?" Potter had forced himself up to his elbows. "This isn't some kind of weird dream?" He looked as though he imagined that Draco had dragged him here to steal his Galleons.

"I told you the bond wouldn't let you stay away from me," Draco whispered, and then leaned down and kissed him.

"Mrrgle!" Potter said against his lips, which Draco took for a noise of assent, since he wasn't about to take it for anything else. He rolled Potter over, onto the bed, and skimmed one hand down his side, making sure that he brushed first across the shirt and then across the bare skin beneath.

Potter gasped. Draco knew what he was feeling, since the same sensation had just jumped up his arm. A shower of golden sparks, a lightning bolt of pleasure, a storm of feeling that made him want to squirm closer to it and feel it again. It was inevitable, Draco thought, panting and pushing against Potter, his cock full in his pants. It felt so good to touch like this that not even Potter could fail to see and acknowledge what was between them.

Or so Draco thought, until he found himself shoved onto the floor.

"You're insane," Potter rasped, pushing himself away from Draco on his elbows. His hair and his eyes were both wild, and his face looked as though he'd spent a long time pushing it into a vat of spaghetti sauce. "Must be. You have to know that you can't just--can't just overwhelm people like that!"

"I don't know it, no," Draco said simply, drawing back and again touching Potter's shirt, then his skin, to show him the difference. This time, it felt so good that he moaned, and saw the reflection of that sound on Potter's face.

"I can't do this," Potter said, with a pathetic sort of dignity that he gathered around him like a tattered cloak. "I'm going to get married."

"Sometime in the far future, no doubt," Draco said comfortably, rolling them over so that he was pinning Potter to the bed in a more comfortable position. "Somewhere in dreamland."

"Stop it!" Potter pushed at his shoulders. "You can't just overwhelm people, I told you! It's rape otherwise."

Draco was irritated enough that he decided to give Potter what he wanted. He sat back and spread his hands wide. "There, I'm not touching you," he said. "Now push me away and storm out of the bedroom."

Potter eyed him suspiciously. Draco bent down and breathed on his ear.

"If," he added tenderly, "that's what you really want. If it's what you really desire."

Part Two.