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lomonaaerenThis is the second part of a long one-shot. Don't start reading here.
Draco stepped into the bedroom and shut the door behind him.
The room was done in a theme of soft gold, to satisfy--partially--Harry's craving for a room that looked Gryffindor without yielding completely to the mad colours that he would have chosen if allowed to have his own way. The sunlight came through windows and touched, here and there, half-shrouded mirrors and crystalline lamps and picture frames with cloudy yellow stained glass in them. The effect was to tame and mute even the harshest glare, to make it the gentle, lingering light of a late summer afternoon.
The bed stood opposite the door. Draco walked over to it and twitched back one curtain that surrounded it, the heavy, pale velvet moving easily in his hand.
Potter lay on his side, his legs curled up almost to his chest, his hands folded in front of him as if he had fallen asleep praying. He wore a pair of pants and nothing else. Draco had allowed him to have a shirt at first, and then taken it away. It was time for Potter to learn that the whole world didn't do what he wanted it to do. Draco reached out and ran a light hand down Potter's bare shoulder.
Potter started up, mouth open, and then fell back against the pillows with a gasp when he saw it was Draco. He closed his eyes and ground the heel of one hand into that bloody scar on his forehead. Draco sat on the end of the bed and waited. It was months now since he had noticed the scar, much. Potter touched it more often than Draco did, treated it as a link to the Dark Lord and the war that raged outside their walls.
Draco saw no need to think about the war, when he had his own battle inside this room, if he wanted it.
"What do you want today, Malfoy?" Potter faced him, a dull sheen over the famous green eyes. "There's not much I can give you that you haven't already taken, you know."
"I want what I've always wanted," Draco said, and this time he reached out and pushed the hair back from Harry's forehead, too. Call him Harry when you were in the room, he had told himself before he entered, and although so far he hadn't obeyed, he intended to set a good example in the future, an example that Harry could learn from. "You, writhing beneath me, open and slick and ripe for the taking, while my cock plunders you and you learn how to be good to me."
Potter--no, Harry--stared at him, and shook his head. "You're sick," he said. The way he always did. "I want you to let me go, to go back to my friends. You think that you're doing me a favour keeping me here, but you're not, Malfoy, you're really not. If Voldemort wins, then you'll be in as much trouble as anyone else. He didn't order you to find me and keep me here, did he? He doesn't know where I am, either, and he'll call you disloyal when he finds out."
"You think I care for his opinion?" Draco eased closer, not intending to let the width of the bed separate them any longer. "You're beautiful, Harry, but you're not always intelligent. No, I didn't do this for him. I didn't do this for anyone but myself, and that means that I don't care what the Dark Lord thinks of it. Nor you."
He kissed Harry, and Harry made a sharp noise into his mouth. But he didn't reach up and push Draco away. Draco had kept him here, and surrounded him with light and caresses and a gentle serenity, unbroken by news of what his friends were doing without him. He knew yielding would get him out of here fastest, and it seemed he might be prepared to do it.
Draco reached up and touched Harry's forehead, easing him back into the pillows with that touch alone, this time. Harry stared at him, panting, and Draco leaned forwards to fill that mouth with his tongue. Harry accepted it, his mouth straining open, and Draco smiled. For a moment, Harry's surrender reminded him of something, something that gleamed in his memory like one of the stained-glass frames on the pictures, but then Harry raised a hesitant hand to lay it on his shoulder and Draco forgot what he had wanted to remember.
"You're--beautiful," Harry said. "Sometimes. Horribly so." He turned his head to the side, then, and bit his lip, as though he hadn't meant to say that.
Draco laughed and coaxed his mouth further open, coaxed his legs further open, coaxed his whole body to relax and flow and open. Harry whined and panted and made small, soft noises that sounded helpless. That was the way Draco wanted him, though of course he would have preferred it if Harry was helpless before his own overpowering desire for Draco than before the wish to get out no matter how he had to do it.
But this was a beginning, and where he had yielded once, it would be easier to persuade him to do it again.
Harry grunted when Draco reached down with one oily finger to his arse, and made small grumbles and grunts as Draco prepared him, too. Draco paused and braced his hand in the middle of Harry's chest when he added a second finger, wondering if he should ask Harry if he was sure.
But no, because what would happen if Harry said he wasn't? Draco would have to draw back in the effort to convince Harry he wasn't a complete monster, and that would only begin the whole process over again. Because Draco wasn't about to let Harry go, and Harry wasn't about to love this without some pressure, without some enforcing of the pleasure on his body, so that he would come to understand what he was missing.
Three fingers in, and Harry lay still, only tiny puffs of air escaping through his open mouth, his head thrown back and his hand lifted as though he would grasp Draco's hand and slow him down that way. Draco shook his head, confidence washing through him as he withdrew his fingers and lifted Harry's knees.
Harry's eyes snapped open. He said nothing, but his mouth formed the little round shape of denial that Draco had grown too familiar with to ever want to see again.
"It will be good," Draco said, and then he pushed himself inside, his eyes half-closing as the warmth opened, embraced him, and he saw Harry's head fall back, saw his lips part in a different shape, saw the tame and dreamy look that crossed his face, saw the way his legs flowed open again and this time closed around Draco's hips, felt how the heat snatched him up and carried him around in a circle and--
*
Dumped him.
Draco felt his throbbing groin, and for a moment stroked himself before he pulled his hand back. No. He knew the guards could watch. They might come at any moment to give him another meal, or they might have eyes in the ward, but he would not jerk himself off where someone could see him doing it.
His breath stuttered. His head ached. He lay back in the blankets and wondered for a moment whether the ward was meant to drive them mad with lust instead of making them go after Potter when they got out of the prison. He had been so close, had tasted a few inches of heat, and then--
There was something wrong. Draco paused and turned his head, expecting to find someone watching him from just beyond the bars. That wouldn't be the first time that his senses had warned him of someone's presence before he could actually hear or see them.
But no one was there, so it wasn't that. Draco closed his eyes for a few moments before he remembered.
He had been in the fantasy, part of it, understanding it, from the moment he stepped through the door in that dream. He had not thought, once, of how he had struggled to escape the ward, how he should continue to do so, because he did not like the way it controlled his mind.
Draco's hand snapped open and shut. He lay there, and continued thinking, listening to the buzzing of the ward, tasting the musty orange still caught between his teeth. He had no idea how much time passed in the dreams. The woman who brought him the food seemed to notice nothing untoward, but then, Draco knew the guards didn't try too hard to wake prisoners who were sleeping deeply enough not to hear them. They would take the tray away, report the prisoner "not hungry", and probably feed the leftovers to their Crups or something.
The next time, he promised himself, he would feel the ward. He would know when it was coming, and brace his mind like the mind of a traveller caught in a snowstorm. It would not take him away.
*
"You were right."
This time, it was no bare room they met in, but the largest and brightest chamber at Malfoy Manor. Draco lounged on a divan beneath the windows that stretched the length of the western wall, eating a peach and holding a shallow silver dish beneath his mouth so the juice ran down into it. He watched Potter walk towards him, his head high and his face unreadable against the brilliant light from behind.
The jewels of the collar around his neck flashed like the eyes of a cat running through the darkness. Draco set the peach aside and reached out with a leisurely hand, trusting Potter to be in the right place to let him touch it in time.
He was. Draco's hand brushed the stiff leather as Potter stumbled to a stop in front of him, and Potter closed his eyes. He didn't move, even when Draco's finger slid from the collar to his throat and traced a line around it. Draco couldn't feel him breathing. Of course, that didn't mean that much, not when he could watch the way Potter's eyelashes fluttered and the flush slid up his face, slow and almost reluctant.
"I have been right about so many things," Draco murmured, and lay back on the divan, using the hook of one finger to pull Potter with him. Potter stumbled, but he didn't fall, because Draco didn't want him to. They ended up sprawled across the divan, Potter lying on Draco's body and panting into his ear. Draco closed his eyes and tilted his head back. Potter's body was warmer than the sunlight across him except for the coolness of the collar pressing against his hand. "Remind me which of them this was."
"Bastard," Potter hissed, and then responded with a small huff, "That we were always coming here. It--I didn't have to change anything once I'd accepted the collar. Did you know that? It was natural to have it. It didn't feel wrong. I had all these arguments, but they dissipated once it was on."
Of course they did, Draco thought. Lust will do that to you. He lifted one leg and used his heel to caress the back of Potter's knee. Potter trembled, but his voice remained calm and firm, as if he was giving testimony at a trial.
"No one seemed surprised to see it on me. Ron rolled his eyes and Hermione said I should be careful, but they would say that all the time anyway." There was a pause for a gulp, probably so that Potter could gather his courage. "And I think--I think I don't mind so much that they did that."
"If you minded, you wouldn't be friends with them." The heat of Potter's breath on his neck was sweeter than the peach. Draco turned his head, wanting to meet that mouth and shut Potter up before he could say something else, something silly that would make Draco less impressed with him, and thus with his own cleverness.
Potter arched his head back and met his kiss with desperation that made Draco give a small gasp. But he never gave any surrender that he didn't intend to see matched, so he rolled his tongue deeper into Potter's mouth and wrung another gasp out of him, something sharp and needy and incoherent. Draco's hand came down on the back of Potter's neck and stroked and pulled, and another gasp came out.
He held onto the collar as he pushed Potter onto his back, and then brought his other hand up to hold it, too. "Strip," he said.
Potter made not one grumble about how difficult it would be with Draco on top of him, pinning his chest down, and making the aborted movements of his arms even more aborted. He simply did it, his grunts so breathy that Draco eased up his hold on the collar, afraid it was choking him.
But he wasn't choking. The sounds Potter made were sounds of exhilaration, as Draco realised when he listened instead of simply thought about how they must be certain things because he had decided they had to be. Draco lay above him and moved his arms only when he had to so Potter could get the shirt off. Then he arched himself up on elbows and knees so Potter could kick off his boots and socks, and remove his trousers.
Beneath them were pants, but when Potter reached for them, Draco shook his head and tightened his hands on the collar. "Those will keep, for now," he whispered.
Potter went still, eyes on him, and Draco felt his stomach tighten in turn and the hair on his neck and arms stand up. Potter was staring at him as if--
There weren't real words for that, Draco decided. Never any real words. His mouth filled with saliva, and he licked it away before he said, "I'm going to let you rise. Stand up and show me what I'm getting."
Potter closed his eyes, but in a single, slow blink that Draco suspected he would use when he approached orgasm, and not in a way that suggested he couldn't face what was between them. Draco rolled onto the couch again, using a careful finger not to upset the saucer with the peach in it, and Potter rose and rotated in front of him, arms held out from his sides.
The muscles gleamed along his ribs. Scars shone here and there, too, toughened skin that looked brighter than the blades and claws and curses that had made it to Draco under the afternoon sky. Potter's eyes caught the light, and so did the collar's jewels, but where the jewels glittered as hard and confident as Draco's will, Potter's eyes let the sunbeams pass into them, deep under the surface.
Everything was as it should be. Draco finally nodded, and Potter hastily stripped off the pants, then lifted them carefully off at the last moment, as though he knew how much it would displease Draco if he stumbled.
Draco rose and sauntered a step closer, reaching out and trailing his fingers up and down the taut scars that ran along Potter's stomach. Potter closed his eyes, and his head fell forwards. Draco touched the back of his neck, checking, but no, the collar wasn't too tight. He had done that because he wanted to.
And that was what it was about. Free will, and the surrender of free will. Choosing to be tame, in the end.
"Ah, yes," Draco said, and lowered his eyes so that he could see Potter's cock for the first time. It was wet, and the blood flushing it gave it more colour than Draco would have expected. He reached out, slowly, and Potter locked his legs so he wouldn't thrust into Draco's palm.
Draco held his hand there for a few moments, letting his fingers curl and stroke the air, before he gave in and gripped Potter. Potter swayed, but apart from a gurgle that Draco didn't think he could help and which seemed to come from his stomach more than from his mouth, he stayed silent.
"This is what I like to see," Draco told him, and began to caress Potter's skin with two fingers, keeping the others still. "You admitted that you wanted to wear the collar, in the end. You admitted that you wanted me to see you naked, said that I could, did what I said. Now, you're going to show me how obedient you are."
Potter closed his eyes, but opened them again when Draco gave a quiet warning in the back of his throat. He stared with what Draco could have called dreadful fascination in someone else, but he knew where it came from, knew what emotions made Potter's throat bob and his eyes flicker and fall and flicker open again, because he felt them himself.
He pressed forwards and against Potter's chest, watching the way that Potter's eyes continued to focus on his hand. Yes, that was as it should be. Draco hadn't given permission for anything else, and he knew Potter wanted to do as he was told.
"Such a good boy," he whispered, words soft and hot, sighed out through the curled tunnel of his tongue. "You want to do as you're told, I know you do. Such a good boy, to stand here and let me do this."
Potter gave a whimper in response, and didn't move. Draco began to stroke him with three fingers, and still they stood there, swaying a little, Draco's hand moving faster without his conscious volition that it should be so.
Potter got to him, always had, and made him change what he had done and planned and wanted to do. But that was all right, when Draco had been the one to give the collar in the first place and accept what was happening between them in the first place.
Potter moaned, and let his head fall forwards to rest on Draco's shoulder. Draco lifted a hand to stroke his shoulder blade in return.
Sweat beneath his fingers, the small mound of a mole, muscle and bone and flesh, and blood beneath that, rushing alive. Blood beneath the fingers of the other hand, too, and hardness that spoke more of will than bone.
And above it all, shining with muted reflections, the collar.
When Potter began to come, Draco's hand was in the perfect spot to catch it, because he had planned it that way.
*
The grey of the cell was worse this time.
Draco kept his eyes closed as he stretched his legs out in front of him. His breath would come fast, if he let it. He didn't intend to let it. They were still trying to hurt him with the ward. They were spying on the fantasies. They must think that they could laugh at him and they would catch him unprepared. They would flense the fantasies from his mind and ask him why he had these responses, when he had thought only the other day--the other time--the time between fantasies--that he had never desired Potter and never wanted something like these fantasies showed him.
They would say that, they would laugh, but he could endure the laughter. He had endured worse things during the months in Malfoy Manor under the Dark Lord's rule and during sixth year. Those would forever be the standards of hardship that Draco thought about from now on. Azkaban simply couldn't compare.
So he lay, and so he thought, and so the pulse pounded in his head and shifted, and so he was when the waxy woman brought him his next meal. This time, she didn't try to say anything, only looked at him and set the tray down with a clang near the bars, watching him crawl near to eat it.
Draco did, and ate the bread, and ignored her. He was doing well. He had--well, he hadn't done something that he meant to do in that fantasy of Potter with the collar, he knew that, but he had handled it like a recurring dream. He had often had dreams like that.
When?
Now, that was an odd question, Draco thought, irritated with himself. Why would he care when he had recurring dreams? They had happened sometime when he was a child, he knew that. Or when he was eleven or twelve or so. They weren't important. The point was that he had had them, and endured them, and this fantasy of the collar was neither more nor less important.
He could endure them. Those who thought they knew how to control him, how to make the ward change his mind and twist it, would learn soon enough that no one but a Malfoy could really control a Malfoy.
The waxy woman picked up the tray and left again. Draco lay back with his arms folded behind his head. Then they hurt that way, so he shifted to the side and listened to the buzzing of the ward.
So many variations in the buzzing, he noted, subtle variations that trickled up and down and altered as fast as the patterns that the eye could spot in changing flames. Draco wondered if he should try and treat the ward that way. The next time he saw a real fire might be forever away.
No. It might not. There might be a fire in his next fantasy, the way there had been in his first one, and he could concentrate on the part of his mind that the ward touched and bring forth what he wanted. Surely.
That was his next task of resistance, then. He closed his eyes and thought about the warmth of a fire, the way that sparks would leap out and touch his skin, the glow of embers on a clear night. He thought about the fire and tried to bring it to him, tried to make it real, or as real as the humming of the ward would allow it to be.
*
He didn't need a cage, this time. Oh, he could have had the cage, he liked it, he wanted it, and Potter had shown that he valued it, too. Or at least he liked it more than he would have had Draco think he did.
But he didn't need it when Potter was sprawled on his bed, drugged with nothing more than lust, a leash tying his hands to the headboard, his legs spread and his voice spiralling up and down as he pleaded.
Draco lay beside him, using one hand to play with his hair and watching the way that Potter's eyes kept opening to show off the dim darkness in the centre of them. So beautiful, Draco thought. So calm, in their own way, although I know from his body that he isn't calm at all.
The room was dim, lit only with torches on the walls. Draco wanted it that way. Torches created a delicious play of light and shadow over Potter's body, and he turned his head fervently back and forth when the shadows crept long enough, as though they were a substitute for Draco's fingers on his skin. Draco held his hand back, however, and Potter quickly whimpered and curled his tongue out, blindly searching for his fingers in the air.
"Draco, please--you have to--" The last vestiges of insolence had gone from Potter's voice, despite the way he tried to command. He opened his mouth wider, and Draco admired the sharpness of his teeth, the depth of his throat, so well-suited to sucking whatever Draco wanted him to suck. "Please."
That was what Draco had wanted, waited, wished to see. The leash holding Potter's hands wasn't sturdy. He could have broken it if he tried. There was nothing holding him here but desire, no chains but the ones he wanted as badly as Draco did. And so Draco called him Harry in his mind, and bent down to give Harry what he wanted, what he wanted, what they both wanted.
Harry sucked his fingers, tongue swirling around them, playing with the knuckles, sliding up and down the skin, finding the small places that Draco had healed cuts or bruises from his job and lingering there longest. Draco bore him down into the bed at last and drew his fingers free. When he reached for Harry's arse, Harry arched his back and spread his legs, and there was a muffled sob in his voice as his hands broke the leash. Not, Draco knew, because it hurt, but because he had done something that Draco hadn't specifically asked him to.
"Oh, please," Harry whispered. "Oh, please. Have to. Have to. Please." He turned his head and opened his eyes, and Draco stroked his hair, knew him tamed by his immense need, knew him as domesticated as any dog.
"I know," he said. "But not until I give you permission, Harry."
"Didn't mean I was going to come," Harry said, and his eyes focused so hard on Draco that it was like having someone drive little bits of bone into him. "Meant--have to do what you want me to do."
Draco took his mouth in a deep kiss, and yes, Harry's mouth was as warm and deep as he had thought it would be.
And so was his arse, and when Draco was in him and rocking, Harry spread his legs more and arched his hips up to the ceiling and extended his arms, as though imploring some invisible audience to look on him, to see how he was surrendering, to see how Draco had tamed him.
Once, he never would have done that. Once, he would have fought to the bitter end. The man who had defied the Dark Lord to his face, the man who had duelled with him and got away, the man who had survived the Killing Curse and fought a basilisk, was not the same as the one chained by lust to Draco's bed.
That was because--
Draco thrust, and his pleasure gripped him and flew up with him like a hawk ascending into the sky with its prey.
That was because that man was dead. Draco had taken him. Gentled him. Taught him to walk as he wanted him to walk, to do as he was ordered.
Taming is called "breaking" for a reason, Draco thought, as he came and broke apart in his own way, in all the most wonderful ways.
*
It felt wonderful.
For the first time since he had come to Azkaban, Draco was warm. He lay there in his bed and panted, and felt the cooling wetness of his orgasm across his groin. He reached down to stir a hand lazily over his trousers, and smiled. Yes, he would have to wait until someone came down here with a Cleaning Charm to do anything about it, to get rid of it, as he would have done in the outside world with a flick of his own wand. No wands allowed here. It was part of the taming they tried to give to people they put in the cells.
But he didn't mind. The fantasy with Potter had been fulfilling, for once, instead of jerking him away the moment he started to come, as it had the last few times. And he had cheated the fantasy, for once. The ward had done as he ordered it to do, in the silence of his mind. He had had fire--not the large, roaring hearth of his first vision, it was true, but torches on the walls. And he had forgotten about the fire when he stepped into the fantasy, seeing it only as a recurrence of the vision of the cage. But it was still there.
They cursed themselves when they decided to give me visions of Potter, he decided, stretching his arms out above his head. If I can master him, then I can master anything, including the spells they think will keep me captive.
The food came what was probably on time, along with the Cleaning Charm, but Draco couldn't care. He lay back down and listened again to the buzzing of the ward, this time trying to identify the patterns of sound that wavered up and down in it instead of merely note that they were there.
Changing shapes. Some of them were probably beasts and monsters, the kind Fiendfyre sometimes produced, or at least had produced in all the book illustrations Draco ever seen. Or would have seen for himself, if he had ever been around someone who was mad enough to actually cast the spell.
Draco snorted, then shook his head and closed his eyes. He shouldn't be lying here, wasting his mental power on idle speculations like that. He wanted to challenge the ward again, to see what it would show him this time and what he could force it to show.
He passed into darkness lying still, striving to lie more still yet, listening and wondering and feeling out. Since he had been successful in commanding fire from the ward last time, this time he would try for darkness. Quietude. An unlighted place where he was with Potter, and Potter was lost in that delightful nonresistance, being tamed, being delivered to Draco's every will and desire…
*
"Shhh. You don't have to get up. Let me take care of you."
Harry's voice lapped around him. It was like warm water. Draco let his head fall back, and smiled. A blanket crossed his face, and more wrapped him, and somewhere outside that cocoon was chill air and light. But he didn't need to face it if he didn't want to. And he didn't want to. Harry had promised.
Harry's fingers started by running down his spine, hesitated near the base of it, and then pressed home, stroking him, pressing down, easing away any tension he might still have left. Draco tilted his head back and groaned. Harry's fingers whispered past his ears, down into his blankets, around his eyesockets and jaw. Draco flicked his tongue out and managed to lap one as it went past.
Harry laughed, a slow, breathless sound. Draco thought about reaching up, cupping Harry's head and bringing him down for a kiss, but that would take too much time, and involve too much effort and disruption of his blanket cocoon. He rested his head on his forearms instead, and moaned into them as Harry found another source of tension just beneath the small of his back.
"I never realised how much you carried," Harry whispered. "How much of this came from the way you've lived your life. The war. The battles to free them. The way that you had to think about your responsibilities and go against the Ministry." His fingers dug deeper, and Draco rolled with them, quiet, boneless, his head dropping down on the pillow and his mouth opening so that he could release a heartfelt breath.
"There's a lot," Draco said, and his voice was softer and more solemn than he'd ever heard it. "But it eases when you're with me. It always did."
"Really?" Harry bent over and flicked his tongue out so that he could catch Draco behind his ear. "I don't remember that being the case at Hogwarts, during the war."
Draco raised a hand. It fell back before he could touch Harry, because it always did. It was too weak, it was too far away, he had no reason to touch Harry when he could feel Harry touching him. "Candle wax," he said. "That's what I feel like now. It eases when you're with me."
Harry laughed softly, and then went back to rolling his hands in the small of Draco's back. "You're melting like candle wax?"
Draco closed his eyes and nodded, although he had the impression that it wasn't a very good nod when his head was rolling all over the pillow. "Being reshaped," he said, and his voice slid and slackened. "Like metal melting in fire. Like heated glass, the way it bends. You're melting me."
"I would never want to do that," Harry said, gliding his tongue along the shell of Draco's ear. "And always."
Draco hummed and closed his eyes. It occurred to him that he hadn't felt any part of Harry's body but his hands and mouth. He pictured a face and hands and nothing else tending to him, bodiless, without anything heavier than that. It was a nice picture. Light. He could envision melting into nothing more than a breeze like that, and appreciating the fate.
Harry was humming under his breath, or maybe singing. Draco didn't think he had to care which it was. He closed his eyes more fully, and the thin lines of light that entered under his eyelids turned to glittering red dimness. He could have been lying in front of a fire or a setting sun, and he didn't think he could have told the difference. Both of them would leave this sort of haze of warmth spread over his face. Both of them would make him feel like he was coming to the end of a wonderful day, a noble struggle, that he could lean back and let his muscles fall limp now, and that there was no reason for him to feel that he had to get up and struggle again.
"Potter?" he whispered.
Harry laughed into his ear, but his fingers dug into Draco's lower back again, making him hum in turn and arch it. "It's been a long time since you called me that," Harry whispered. "My first name is your favourite for moaning."
Draco nodded. He knew that. But in the sliding soup of his mind, other thoughts were surfacing, thoughts that he kept strangled most of the time.
"Do you remember," he asked, doing his best to keep his voice steady and not only a steady series of moans as Harry's fingers continued to soothe the tension out of him, "the way we were rivals in school?"
"Not well," Harry said, and his tongue smoothed a long, slow, wet line down the place his fingers had just been stroking. Then he blew across it, and Draco sighed and spread his legs. Harry seemed to drift over him, because the next time Draco felt the heat of that mouth, it was down near his balls. "I just--I never think about it any more because I don't see how it's relevant."
"Not relevant?" Draco tried to lift eyelids that had grown so heavy he was surprised he remembered how to move them. The red dimness was still pleasant, but he felt, a little, like he wanted to see Harry's face. "But it led to everything we are! It led to us becoming…" His voice trailed off into a yawn.
Harry huffed a laugh that made Draco's cock stir. Or had he been hard for some time and he was just now remembering it? "That's the point, though. Or sort of the point. Do you think that we're still what we were then? Rivals, competitors, the sort of schoolboys who can't let well enough alone?"
"Well," Draco had to admit. "No." His words trailed off into another yawn, and then he sighed as Harry's mouth closed in, his tongue curling, lapping, his breath so hot on Draco's erection that Draco squirmed for a moment in what was almost more pain than pleasure. But the pain lessened, and the heat increased, and when he thrust home, Harry's throat was relaxed enough to accept him, as always.
"That's it," Harry said, his mouth in Draco's ear, or his voice in Draco's mind, at the same time as his mouth caressed and welcomed Draco's cock. "Relax and let me take care of you."
And with his muscles running like melted butter, and his mind following them, Draco did.
*
This time, he carried the warmth with him back into the cell, and let a pleased chuckle spill from his lips, even though it meant he laughed as the waxy woman was laying down the food tray in front of him. She froze and blinked at him, then backed up with her wand trained on him as though he was some kind of food-despoiler. Mood-despoiler, more likely, Draco thought, as he leaned up and bit into the apple that was waiting at the edge of the tray. It wasn't as sweet as the heat of Harry's mouth around him, but nothing was.
"You're all right?" The woman was still all wide eyes and startled breath, her hand to her chest. When Draco looked up at her, she dropped it with a scowl, but Draco had seen it, and she knew he had seen it, and he knew she knew he had seen it. The layers of knowledge could go down a long way, and still they would always lead to his victory, to his winning.
"Yes, of course," Draco said, and bit into the apple again before he continued, purely for the pleasure of the warm juice running down his face. Everything was so warm around him. The ward had given him that, because he had mastered it. His visions were visions of mastery and control, that was obvious, and if he had done what the people who put him into Azkaban wanted him to do, then he would have been the one who surrendered. Perhaps he would have dreamed of Potter fucking him. Well, that was the lie, and this was the truth. "Do you always ask the prisoners you serve if they're okay when they're laughing?"
"Most of them, it's mad laughter, that's true," the waxy woman said, staring at him. Then she shook her head. "Most of them can't wait to leave the prison and do what they did again," she said, a faint smile twisting her mouth. "Until the ward gets hold of them."
Draco snorted and licked the last juices of the apple from his fingers. "The ward has got hold of me, but I fought it, and won," he said.
The woman nodded wisely, the faint half-smile still on her lips. "And why did they toss you in here? The last I heard, you hadn't done things as bad as some of them did." She jerked her head down the corridor in a way that Draco assumed was meant to indicate the rest of the prisoners.
"Because," Draco said, and gave her a faint, pitying smile, while his mind shone bright and blank as eyes staring at the sun, "I hadn't learned to master myself sufficiently. I did stupid things and called them intelligent. Now I know the difference." And the next time he went back to sleep and into battle with the ward, he would know even more, and subdue even more.
"That would make sense," the woman said, and then said nothing more, standing with arms folded while he finished the food on the tray. It was slightly better quality than it had been, Draco noticed. For a moment he wondered if he was imagining things, if it only tasted better because of the triumph he'd achieved, but then he knew the truth. No, they were sending him better food because they knew now that they couldn't control him, and they wanted to acknowledge that. They could be gracious, the wizards who had invented this ward and this prison. They knew that they would have to let him go soon, and if they didn't placate him, then he would tell everyone back in the outside world how insufficient their defences against crime actually were.
He lay back down, smiling, and drew the dusty blanket over him. He was still relaxed, gentle, warm from his orgasm and from the way that he had lain during that vision, eyes closed and body lapsed but in total control.
What he did during the war was not important. Not memorable. Not when he could tame someone.
He closed his eyes and rushed towards the next vision the ward would give him, the next attempt the wizards who had constructed it would make towards telling him that he wasn't really fit to let free.
*
This time, Potter was the one who came crawling towards him across the floor, shuffling more on his knees than on his hands, which were bound together with intricate twists of what looked like glinting gold wire. He bowed his head and held out his hands, and yes, there was a lock on them, and the key hung on a chain around Potter's neck. The chain was too short to let Potter fit the key into the lock and unbind the wire, but it fit perfectly into Draco's grasp.
He untwisted the wire, and then bowed his head and kissed the flecks of blood, the sweet small spots of binding, that the wire had left. Potter turned his head to the side, gasping, and opened bright pale eyes, and Draco kissed them shut again and then stood up, leading him backwards, leading him to the bed.
It was large and made of pale wood, with iron bars around the sides that Draco lowered with a word and a wave of his wand so Potter could hop over them to the inside. He lay down in the blankets and spread his legs, his eyes so wide and greedy that Draco chuckled. There were flecks of grey in the green that he never noticed before, and Potter's hair had pale sheens, too, under the right light. Well, his mother had been red-haired.
There was something wrong with his mother, wasn't there? But Potter bit his lip and hunched his hips up again, and Draco could forget what it was.
"Please," Potter said, just that one word and nothing else, and then ducked his head and hid his face. His cheeks were bright, too, a delicate pink rather than the red they usually flushed when he was angry or excited, but Draco shifted his thigh to the side and touched something that left him in no doubt Potter was excited right now. He laughed again and tapped one finger against Potter's cheek; Potter immediately and obediently tilted his head to the side, dilated eyes fixed on him.
"Now, now," Draco said. "What have I told you about asking?"
Potter shook his head, the pink flush spreading further. His legs opened and he squirmed down the bed until his feet were resting against Draco's knees. Draco smiled down at him, and Potter arched his head back until all Draco could see was the madly fluttering pulse in his throat.
"You don't speak this time," Draco said. "Good." He reached out and latched his fingers into Potter's red-black hair, tugging. Potter tilted his head to the side, and a clump of pale spilled out from the rest. Draco laughed. Wouldn't it be delightful if Potter was dyeing his hair all this time, because he wanted to look more like his father or because the constant encounters with the Dark Lord at a young age had turned it white? "Don't speak right now. If you want out of this, then tap me with a closed fist. I'll understand that well enough. Understand?"
Potter shut his eyes, panting, and nodded. One hand formed into a loose fist and fell apart as Draco watched. He licked his lips, and Potter mimicked him, opening his eyes that had even more of grey in them than Draco had realised, a silvery, stony colour.
Well. He didn't think the refusal would come. He reached down and branded his fingers into Potter's hips, and Potter moaned back, his mouth falling open and his tongue poking out for a moment. Even the inside of his mouth seemed pinker than before, though perhaps that was a contrast with the other times--
Times that Draco found harder to remember. He shivered in delight. That was the point. Each time he was with Potter was more memorable than the last, memorable enough to sweep the others into shadow.
He prepared Potter with shaking hands, stretching him wide. Potter rocked against him, silent except for the soft moans that Draco felt puffed out against his hand. His hair was pale, his face was pale, his eyes were pale when he opened them, his skin was pale where the flush had been. It was like being in bed with a ghost, but a more graceful one; when Draco bent to kiss, again, the small spots of blood the wire had left, the limbs were smooth and well-shaped against his. He knew Potter had been doing the exercises Draco had taught him, then, the exercises that his parents had recommended for a healthy body and being.
They had recommended them when--
But it did not matter when they had recommended them, and it did not matter that he could not remember the time or the place. He murmured against Potter's skin, murmuring instructions and words of endearment, and he lifted those slim legs over his shoulders, and Potter shuddered and groaned with a musical touch under him, and Draco slid in.
The heat was the same as always. He lowered his head and panted near Potter's mouth, watched the way Potter's eyes fluttered open and shut and his hands rose to clutch at Draco's, and again noticed the pallor of his skin. That was probably because all the blood was heading to one place, Draco thought, and licked the bone of Potter's forehead in satisfaction. Potter started and opened his eyes, staring up at him. Draco placed his hand above Potter's brow and held it there, watching the faint, thin line of the lightning scar bob under his fingers as he began to thrust in and out.
Potter might have whispered his name, but Draco didn't think he had, because he had told him not to and Potter was occasionally good at doing what he was told. Draco thrust, and Potter bobbed in front of him, and there was another wordless murmur of pleasure and approbation, and Draco thrust home.
Home.
There was warmth all around him, melting warmth, responsive warmth, tame warmth, undefiant warmth, compliant warmth, and Draco drew breaths in through his nose and mouth that made him feel as if he were breathing in the middle of a swamp, the fetid heat, the brewing life, the bright and quick transformation of death into some new kind of life, something hatching, something coming forth, something--
He felt his chest swell and expand, and still the warmth poured in, still the warmth clasped and enclosed his cock, still he breathed it and dreamed it and lived it and bled it and was it--
He was melting, into pleasure, and when he opened his eyes and gazed down on Potter beneath him, silent and bobbing exactly the way Draco would have liked him to, it was like fucking himself, with the pallor of hair and eye and the brightness of the heat all around him, the heat of fire, that sanctifies and purifies, the heat of fire, that melts and changes.
He came, and there was a chorus of fire ringing in his ears.
*
When he opened his eyes, this time, the warmth had come with him.
Draco lay in the middle of his blankets and drifted, lost in contentment, in thoughts of how thoroughly he had changed and fooled and fouled the intentions of the wizards who had constructed the ward. It was supposed to break him down, was it? Make him less defiant? Tame him? It couldn't have done that, not when it had only encouraged his resolve to fight.
To hold onto the ideals that his parents had taught him, which were--
He paused, and the buzzing of the ward turned and changed in his ears, writhing into bright patterns, like the changing patterns in fire, changing to the ears as fire would change to the eyes.
It was--
It was light and quick, but it was an insubstantial magic that wouldn't change anything but itself. Fire couldn't change things, could it? It could burn them to ashes, but that would just destroy them, and the Wizengamot had said something about him learning better--
Why did he have to learn better? What had he done?
Draco blinked and waved a hand in front of his eyes. Up and down in front of him moved the softly changing patterns of fire, the softly changing patterns of the ward, and he wondered for a moment how he was ever supposed to see anything else. But the effects of the ward wouldn't last forever. He would leave it behind when he emerged into the world around him, and that meant--
That meant.
Draco closed his eyes and drifted in the middle of the fire, changing constantly like another fire he had been in once, although he did not know how or when it had been. He remembered Potter, and his shining eyes, and he remembered achieving what he wanted, and how good it felt, and he remembered standing before the Wizengamot and saying things that made no sense, because he didn't need to defy them to prove his point. He had already won. He had already conquered.
He had fucked Potter. He had tamed him. He had taken something hidden deep inside him, a desire he had never known was there, and subdued him. They couldn't enslave him because of the ward. They couldn't enslave him because of those desires. He was master of himself.
And he didn't need to go against the Wizengamot, did he? Because they knew the truth, and he did, and so did the wizards who had designed this ward. He need never do anything else again but master himself and walk in the consciousness of that mastery, in the consciousness that he could tame everyone around him if he wanted to, because he had tamed Potter and himself.
Draco laughed. He thought the laughter might sound mad to someone else, but he was in the midst of the ward and the fire, and it didn't sound mad to him.
He was the tamer, the one who brought down the wild ones to his level, and he didn't need to strike out. His father had taught him--
A shaft of light struck down into the middle of his brain, into the middle of his memories. It was white and harsh, like sunlight. For the first time, Draco thought he understood. He had misinterpreted so many things, but that was when he had the vision of a child. He had thought his parents were teaching him to stand up to the world, to defy the people who believed that Muggleborns were equal to pure-bloods, and to seize and hold political power no matter what.
They hadn't. Or if they had, they had been wrong. Draco's memories bent and flowed and melted, as volatile to his touch as everything else was right now, as obedient, and he understood. Of course. He didn't need to speak the kind of political insults that his father had, he didn't need to make the same kind of political enemies, because he was contained in himself and he had already done the impossible. From now on, he could smile smugly and keep silent, keep to the Manor, and marry respectably, and teach his children better than his parents had taught him.
They had taught him to savour pride and believe that he had cause for it. At least, they thought they had. He thought they had. He had thought they had.
They hadn't. Not in the same way. It wasn't the same way. Draco would marry. He would teach his children the truth. He would manage his family estates, the smaller ones the Wizengamot had left the Malfoys, and he would teach his children the truth, that it was better to be self-mastered than mastered by the lusts of the world, the lusts for greed and money and place.
His mind hardened, solidified, cooled. Thoughts settled into new shapes.
Draco looked up as the woman walked to the front of the bars and lowered a new tray for him. He smiled at her. For a moment, she paused, eyeing him, and her face was as cold as the crash of the sea and the sound of the gulls' cries. Then she nodded. "The ward did its work," she said.
"It taught me to tame," Draco said, and reached out to pick up the bowl of porridge she had left for him.
"To be tame," the woman muttered, but she was only someone who was not part of his family, who was not part of his mind, who did not matter, and Draco could ignore her easily. She knew only what she saw from outside, what she saw and misunderstood. Draco ate, and was grateful for the meal that settled into his belly.
It felt solid and real, like the first piece of the rest of his life.
*
Draco remembered leaving the island.
He remembered the grey robe they gave him, and the hawthorn wand, and the hard buzzing of the ward falling away behind him as one of the guards grasped his arm to Apparate him away from Azkaban. He remembered the images of Potter that darted and flashed through his head like bright fish, fantasies he could keep to himself.
He remembered the scared little boy he had been, and could smile in pity for. The wild little boy who had stood up to the Wizengamot, who had believed so many things that didn't make sense to Draco now.
The boy who had not gone through the fire, and who would never go home, who slumped here in some corner, never having come to the end of his dreams.
The End.
Draco stepped into the bedroom and shut the door behind him.
The room was done in a theme of soft gold, to satisfy--partially--Harry's craving for a room that looked Gryffindor without yielding completely to the mad colours that he would have chosen if allowed to have his own way. The sunlight came through windows and touched, here and there, half-shrouded mirrors and crystalline lamps and picture frames with cloudy yellow stained glass in them. The effect was to tame and mute even the harshest glare, to make it the gentle, lingering light of a late summer afternoon.
The bed stood opposite the door. Draco walked over to it and twitched back one curtain that surrounded it, the heavy, pale velvet moving easily in his hand.
Potter lay on his side, his legs curled up almost to his chest, his hands folded in front of him as if he had fallen asleep praying. He wore a pair of pants and nothing else. Draco had allowed him to have a shirt at first, and then taken it away. It was time for Potter to learn that the whole world didn't do what he wanted it to do. Draco reached out and ran a light hand down Potter's bare shoulder.
Potter started up, mouth open, and then fell back against the pillows with a gasp when he saw it was Draco. He closed his eyes and ground the heel of one hand into that bloody scar on his forehead. Draco sat on the end of the bed and waited. It was months now since he had noticed the scar, much. Potter touched it more often than Draco did, treated it as a link to the Dark Lord and the war that raged outside their walls.
Draco saw no need to think about the war, when he had his own battle inside this room, if he wanted it.
"What do you want today, Malfoy?" Potter faced him, a dull sheen over the famous green eyes. "There's not much I can give you that you haven't already taken, you know."
"I want what I've always wanted," Draco said, and this time he reached out and pushed the hair back from Harry's forehead, too. Call him Harry when you were in the room, he had told himself before he entered, and although so far he hadn't obeyed, he intended to set a good example in the future, an example that Harry could learn from. "You, writhing beneath me, open and slick and ripe for the taking, while my cock plunders you and you learn how to be good to me."
Potter--no, Harry--stared at him, and shook his head. "You're sick," he said. The way he always did. "I want you to let me go, to go back to my friends. You think that you're doing me a favour keeping me here, but you're not, Malfoy, you're really not. If Voldemort wins, then you'll be in as much trouble as anyone else. He didn't order you to find me and keep me here, did he? He doesn't know where I am, either, and he'll call you disloyal when he finds out."
"You think I care for his opinion?" Draco eased closer, not intending to let the width of the bed separate them any longer. "You're beautiful, Harry, but you're not always intelligent. No, I didn't do this for him. I didn't do this for anyone but myself, and that means that I don't care what the Dark Lord thinks of it. Nor you."
He kissed Harry, and Harry made a sharp noise into his mouth. But he didn't reach up and push Draco away. Draco had kept him here, and surrounded him with light and caresses and a gentle serenity, unbroken by news of what his friends were doing without him. He knew yielding would get him out of here fastest, and it seemed he might be prepared to do it.
Draco reached up and touched Harry's forehead, easing him back into the pillows with that touch alone, this time. Harry stared at him, panting, and Draco leaned forwards to fill that mouth with his tongue. Harry accepted it, his mouth straining open, and Draco smiled. For a moment, Harry's surrender reminded him of something, something that gleamed in his memory like one of the stained-glass frames on the pictures, but then Harry raised a hesitant hand to lay it on his shoulder and Draco forgot what he had wanted to remember.
"You're--beautiful," Harry said. "Sometimes. Horribly so." He turned his head to the side, then, and bit his lip, as though he hadn't meant to say that.
Draco laughed and coaxed his mouth further open, coaxed his legs further open, coaxed his whole body to relax and flow and open. Harry whined and panted and made small, soft noises that sounded helpless. That was the way Draco wanted him, though of course he would have preferred it if Harry was helpless before his own overpowering desire for Draco than before the wish to get out no matter how he had to do it.
But this was a beginning, and where he had yielded once, it would be easier to persuade him to do it again.
Harry grunted when Draco reached down with one oily finger to his arse, and made small grumbles and grunts as Draco prepared him, too. Draco paused and braced his hand in the middle of Harry's chest when he added a second finger, wondering if he should ask Harry if he was sure.
But no, because what would happen if Harry said he wasn't? Draco would have to draw back in the effort to convince Harry he wasn't a complete monster, and that would only begin the whole process over again. Because Draco wasn't about to let Harry go, and Harry wasn't about to love this without some pressure, without some enforcing of the pleasure on his body, so that he would come to understand what he was missing.
Three fingers in, and Harry lay still, only tiny puffs of air escaping through his open mouth, his head thrown back and his hand lifted as though he would grasp Draco's hand and slow him down that way. Draco shook his head, confidence washing through him as he withdrew his fingers and lifted Harry's knees.
Harry's eyes snapped open. He said nothing, but his mouth formed the little round shape of denial that Draco had grown too familiar with to ever want to see again.
"It will be good," Draco said, and then he pushed himself inside, his eyes half-closing as the warmth opened, embraced him, and he saw Harry's head fall back, saw his lips part in a different shape, saw the tame and dreamy look that crossed his face, saw the way his legs flowed open again and this time closed around Draco's hips, felt how the heat snatched him up and carried him around in a circle and--
*
Dumped him.
Draco felt his throbbing groin, and for a moment stroked himself before he pulled his hand back. No. He knew the guards could watch. They might come at any moment to give him another meal, or they might have eyes in the ward, but he would not jerk himself off where someone could see him doing it.
His breath stuttered. His head ached. He lay back in the blankets and wondered for a moment whether the ward was meant to drive them mad with lust instead of making them go after Potter when they got out of the prison. He had been so close, had tasted a few inches of heat, and then--
There was something wrong. Draco paused and turned his head, expecting to find someone watching him from just beyond the bars. That wouldn't be the first time that his senses had warned him of someone's presence before he could actually hear or see them.
But no one was there, so it wasn't that. Draco closed his eyes for a few moments before he remembered.
He had been in the fantasy, part of it, understanding it, from the moment he stepped through the door in that dream. He had not thought, once, of how he had struggled to escape the ward, how he should continue to do so, because he did not like the way it controlled his mind.
Draco's hand snapped open and shut. He lay there, and continued thinking, listening to the buzzing of the ward, tasting the musty orange still caught between his teeth. He had no idea how much time passed in the dreams. The woman who brought him the food seemed to notice nothing untoward, but then, Draco knew the guards didn't try too hard to wake prisoners who were sleeping deeply enough not to hear them. They would take the tray away, report the prisoner "not hungry", and probably feed the leftovers to their Crups or something.
The next time, he promised himself, he would feel the ward. He would know when it was coming, and brace his mind like the mind of a traveller caught in a snowstorm. It would not take him away.
*
"You were right."
This time, it was no bare room they met in, but the largest and brightest chamber at Malfoy Manor. Draco lounged on a divan beneath the windows that stretched the length of the western wall, eating a peach and holding a shallow silver dish beneath his mouth so the juice ran down into it. He watched Potter walk towards him, his head high and his face unreadable against the brilliant light from behind.
The jewels of the collar around his neck flashed like the eyes of a cat running through the darkness. Draco set the peach aside and reached out with a leisurely hand, trusting Potter to be in the right place to let him touch it in time.
He was. Draco's hand brushed the stiff leather as Potter stumbled to a stop in front of him, and Potter closed his eyes. He didn't move, even when Draco's finger slid from the collar to his throat and traced a line around it. Draco couldn't feel him breathing. Of course, that didn't mean that much, not when he could watch the way Potter's eyelashes fluttered and the flush slid up his face, slow and almost reluctant.
"I have been right about so many things," Draco murmured, and lay back on the divan, using the hook of one finger to pull Potter with him. Potter stumbled, but he didn't fall, because Draco didn't want him to. They ended up sprawled across the divan, Potter lying on Draco's body and panting into his ear. Draco closed his eyes and tilted his head back. Potter's body was warmer than the sunlight across him except for the coolness of the collar pressing against his hand. "Remind me which of them this was."
"Bastard," Potter hissed, and then responded with a small huff, "That we were always coming here. It--I didn't have to change anything once I'd accepted the collar. Did you know that? It was natural to have it. It didn't feel wrong. I had all these arguments, but they dissipated once it was on."
Of course they did, Draco thought. Lust will do that to you. He lifted one leg and used his heel to caress the back of Potter's knee. Potter trembled, but his voice remained calm and firm, as if he was giving testimony at a trial.
"No one seemed surprised to see it on me. Ron rolled his eyes and Hermione said I should be careful, but they would say that all the time anyway." There was a pause for a gulp, probably so that Potter could gather his courage. "And I think--I think I don't mind so much that they did that."
"If you minded, you wouldn't be friends with them." The heat of Potter's breath on his neck was sweeter than the peach. Draco turned his head, wanting to meet that mouth and shut Potter up before he could say something else, something silly that would make Draco less impressed with him, and thus with his own cleverness.
Potter arched his head back and met his kiss with desperation that made Draco give a small gasp. But he never gave any surrender that he didn't intend to see matched, so he rolled his tongue deeper into Potter's mouth and wrung another gasp out of him, something sharp and needy and incoherent. Draco's hand came down on the back of Potter's neck and stroked and pulled, and another gasp came out.
He held onto the collar as he pushed Potter onto his back, and then brought his other hand up to hold it, too. "Strip," he said.
Potter made not one grumble about how difficult it would be with Draco on top of him, pinning his chest down, and making the aborted movements of his arms even more aborted. He simply did it, his grunts so breathy that Draco eased up his hold on the collar, afraid it was choking him.
But he wasn't choking. The sounds Potter made were sounds of exhilaration, as Draco realised when he listened instead of simply thought about how they must be certain things because he had decided they had to be. Draco lay above him and moved his arms only when he had to so Potter could get the shirt off. Then he arched himself up on elbows and knees so Potter could kick off his boots and socks, and remove his trousers.
Beneath them were pants, but when Potter reached for them, Draco shook his head and tightened his hands on the collar. "Those will keep, for now," he whispered.
Potter went still, eyes on him, and Draco felt his stomach tighten in turn and the hair on his neck and arms stand up. Potter was staring at him as if--
There weren't real words for that, Draco decided. Never any real words. His mouth filled with saliva, and he licked it away before he said, "I'm going to let you rise. Stand up and show me what I'm getting."
Potter closed his eyes, but in a single, slow blink that Draco suspected he would use when he approached orgasm, and not in a way that suggested he couldn't face what was between them. Draco rolled onto the couch again, using a careful finger not to upset the saucer with the peach in it, and Potter rose and rotated in front of him, arms held out from his sides.
The muscles gleamed along his ribs. Scars shone here and there, too, toughened skin that looked brighter than the blades and claws and curses that had made it to Draco under the afternoon sky. Potter's eyes caught the light, and so did the collar's jewels, but where the jewels glittered as hard and confident as Draco's will, Potter's eyes let the sunbeams pass into them, deep under the surface.
Everything was as it should be. Draco finally nodded, and Potter hastily stripped off the pants, then lifted them carefully off at the last moment, as though he knew how much it would displease Draco if he stumbled.
Draco rose and sauntered a step closer, reaching out and trailing his fingers up and down the taut scars that ran along Potter's stomach. Potter closed his eyes, and his head fell forwards. Draco touched the back of his neck, checking, but no, the collar wasn't too tight. He had done that because he wanted to.
And that was what it was about. Free will, and the surrender of free will. Choosing to be tame, in the end.
"Ah, yes," Draco said, and lowered his eyes so that he could see Potter's cock for the first time. It was wet, and the blood flushing it gave it more colour than Draco would have expected. He reached out, slowly, and Potter locked his legs so he wouldn't thrust into Draco's palm.
Draco held his hand there for a few moments, letting his fingers curl and stroke the air, before he gave in and gripped Potter. Potter swayed, but apart from a gurgle that Draco didn't think he could help and which seemed to come from his stomach more than from his mouth, he stayed silent.
"This is what I like to see," Draco told him, and began to caress Potter's skin with two fingers, keeping the others still. "You admitted that you wanted to wear the collar, in the end. You admitted that you wanted me to see you naked, said that I could, did what I said. Now, you're going to show me how obedient you are."
Potter closed his eyes, but opened them again when Draco gave a quiet warning in the back of his throat. He stared with what Draco could have called dreadful fascination in someone else, but he knew where it came from, knew what emotions made Potter's throat bob and his eyes flicker and fall and flicker open again, because he felt them himself.
He pressed forwards and against Potter's chest, watching the way that Potter's eyes continued to focus on his hand. Yes, that was as it should be. Draco hadn't given permission for anything else, and he knew Potter wanted to do as he was told.
"Such a good boy," he whispered, words soft and hot, sighed out through the curled tunnel of his tongue. "You want to do as you're told, I know you do. Such a good boy, to stand here and let me do this."
Potter gave a whimper in response, and didn't move. Draco began to stroke him with three fingers, and still they stood there, swaying a little, Draco's hand moving faster without his conscious volition that it should be so.
Potter got to him, always had, and made him change what he had done and planned and wanted to do. But that was all right, when Draco had been the one to give the collar in the first place and accept what was happening between them in the first place.
Potter moaned, and let his head fall forwards to rest on Draco's shoulder. Draco lifted a hand to stroke his shoulder blade in return.
Sweat beneath his fingers, the small mound of a mole, muscle and bone and flesh, and blood beneath that, rushing alive. Blood beneath the fingers of the other hand, too, and hardness that spoke more of will than bone.
And above it all, shining with muted reflections, the collar.
When Potter began to come, Draco's hand was in the perfect spot to catch it, because he had planned it that way.
*
The grey of the cell was worse this time.
Draco kept his eyes closed as he stretched his legs out in front of him. His breath would come fast, if he let it. He didn't intend to let it. They were still trying to hurt him with the ward. They were spying on the fantasies. They must think that they could laugh at him and they would catch him unprepared. They would flense the fantasies from his mind and ask him why he had these responses, when he had thought only the other day--the other time--the time between fantasies--that he had never desired Potter and never wanted something like these fantasies showed him.
They would say that, they would laugh, but he could endure the laughter. He had endured worse things during the months in Malfoy Manor under the Dark Lord's rule and during sixth year. Those would forever be the standards of hardship that Draco thought about from now on. Azkaban simply couldn't compare.
So he lay, and so he thought, and so the pulse pounded in his head and shifted, and so he was when the waxy woman brought him his next meal. This time, she didn't try to say anything, only looked at him and set the tray down with a clang near the bars, watching him crawl near to eat it.
Draco did, and ate the bread, and ignored her. He was doing well. He had--well, he hadn't done something that he meant to do in that fantasy of Potter with the collar, he knew that, but he had handled it like a recurring dream. He had often had dreams like that.
When?
Now, that was an odd question, Draco thought, irritated with himself. Why would he care when he had recurring dreams? They had happened sometime when he was a child, he knew that. Or when he was eleven or twelve or so. They weren't important. The point was that he had had them, and endured them, and this fantasy of the collar was neither more nor less important.
He could endure them. Those who thought they knew how to control him, how to make the ward change his mind and twist it, would learn soon enough that no one but a Malfoy could really control a Malfoy.
The waxy woman picked up the tray and left again. Draco lay back with his arms folded behind his head. Then they hurt that way, so he shifted to the side and listened to the buzzing of the ward.
So many variations in the buzzing, he noted, subtle variations that trickled up and down and altered as fast as the patterns that the eye could spot in changing flames. Draco wondered if he should try and treat the ward that way. The next time he saw a real fire might be forever away.
No. It might not. There might be a fire in his next fantasy, the way there had been in his first one, and he could concentrate on the part of his mind that the ward touched and bring forth what he wanted. Surely.
That was his next task of resistance, then. He closed his eyes and thought about the warmth of a fire, the way that sparks would leap out and touch his skin, the glow of embers on a clear night. He thought about the fire and tried to bring it to him, tried to make it real, or as real as the humming of the ward would allow it to be.
*
He didn't need a cage, this time. Oh, he could have had the cage, he liked it, he wanted it, and Potter had shown that he valued it, too. Or at least he liked it more than he would have had Draco think he did.
But he didn't need it when Potter was sprawled on his bed, drugged with nothing more than lust, a leash tying his hands to the headboard, his legs spread and his voice spiralling up and down as he pleaded.
Draco lay beside him, using one hand to play with his hair and watching the way that Potter's eyes kept opening to show off the dim darkness in the centre of them. So beautiful, Draco thought. So calm, in their own way, although I know from his body that he isn't calm at all.
The room was dim, lit only with torches on the walls. Draco wanted it that way. Torches created a delicious play of light and shadow over Potter's body, and he turned his head fervently back and forth when the shadows crept long enough, as though they were a substitute for Draco's fingers on his skin. Draco held his hand back, however, and Potter quickly whimpered and curled his tongue out, blindly searching for his fingers in the air.
"Draco, please--you have to--" The last vestiges of insolence had gone from Potter's voice, despite the way he tried to command. He opened his mouth wider, and Draco admired the sharpness of his teeth, the depth of his throat, so well-suited to sucking whatever Draco wanted him to suck. "Please."
That was what Draco had wanted, waited, wished to see. The leash holding Potter's hands wasn't sturdy. He could have broken it if he tried. There was nothing holding him here but desire, no chains but the ones he wanted as badly as Draco did. And so Draco called him Harry in his mind, and bent down to give Harry what he wanted, what he wanted, what they both wanted.
Harry sucked his fingers, tongue swirling around them, playing with the knuckles, sliding up and down the skin, finding the small places that Draco had healed cuts or bruises from his job and lingering there longest. Draco bore him down into the bed at last and drew his fingers free. When he reached for Harry's arse, Harry arched his back and spread his legs, and there was a muffled sob in his voice as his hands broke the leash. Not, Draco knew, because it hurt, but because he had done something that Draco hadn't specifically asked him to.
"Oh, please," Harry whispered. "Oh, please. Have to. Have to. Please." He turned his head and opened his eyes, and Draco stroked his hair, knew him tamed by his immense need, knew him as domesticated as any dog.
"I know," he said. "But not until I give you permission, Harry."
"Didn't mean I was going to come," Harry said, and his eyes focused so hard on Draco that it was like having someone drive little bits of bone into him. "Meant--have to do what you want me to do."
Draco took his mouth in a deep kiss, and yes, Harry's mouth was as warm and deep as he had thought it would be.
And so was his arse, and when Draco was in him and rocking, Harry spread his legs more and arched his hips up to the ceiling and extended his arms, as though imploring some invisible audience to look on him, to see how he was surrendering, to see how Draco had tamed him.
Once, he never would have done that. Once, he would have fought to the bitter end. The man who had defied the Dark Lord to his face, the man who had duelled with him and got away, the man who had survived the Killing Curse and fought a basilisk, was not the same as the one chained by lust to Draco's bed.
That was because--
Draco thrust, and his pleasure gripped him and flew up with him like a hawk ascending into the sky with its prey.
That was because that man was dead. Draco had taken him. Gentled him. Taught him to walk as he wanted him to walk, to do as he was ordered.
Taming is called "breaking" for a reason, Draco thought, as he came and broke apart in his own way, in all the most wonderful ways.
*
It felt wonderful.
For the first time since he had come to Azkaban, Draco was warm. He lay there in his bed and panted, and felt the cooling wetness of his orgasm across his groin. He reached down to stir a hand lazily over his trousers, and smiled. Yes, he would have to wait until someone came down here with a Cleaning Charm to do anything about it, to get rid of it, as he would have done in the outside world with a flick of his own wand. No wands allowed here. It was part of the taming they tried to give to people they put in the cells.
But he didn't mind. The fantasy with Potter had been fulfilling, for once, instead of jerking him away the moment he started to come, as it had the last few times. And he had cheated the fantasy, for once. The ward had done as he ordered it to do, in the silence of his mind. He had had fire--not the large, roaring hearth of his first vision, it was true, but torches on the walls. And he had forgotten about the fire when he stepped into the fantasy, seeing it only as a recurrence of the vision of the cage. But it was still there.
They cursed themselves when they decided to give me visions of Potter, he decided, stretching his arms out above his head. If I can master him, then I can master anything, including the spells they think will keep me captive.
The food came what was probably on time, along with the Cleaning Charm, but Draco couldn't care. He lay back down and listened again to the buzzing of the ward, this time trying to identify the patterns of sound that wavered up and down in it instead of merely note that they were there.
Changing shapes. Some of them were probably beasts and monsters, the kind Fiendfyre sometimes produced, or at least had produced in all the book illustrations Draco ever seen. Or would have seen for himself, if he had ever been around someone who was mad enough to actually cast the spell.
Draco snorted, then shook his head and closed his eyes. He shouldn't be lying here, wasting his mental power on idle speculations like that. He wanted to challenge the ward again, to see what it would show him this time and what he could force it to show.
He passed into darkness lying still, striving to lie more still yet, listening and wondering and feeling out. Since he had been successful in commanding fire from the ward last time, this time he would try for darkness. Quietude. An unlighted place where he was with Potter, and Potter was lost in that delightful nonresistance, being tamed, being delivered to Draco's every will and desire…
*
"Shhh. You don't have to get up. Let me take care of you."
Harry's voice lapped around him. It was like warm water. Draco let his head fall back, and smiled. A blanket crossed his face, and more wrapped him, and somewhere outside that cocoon was chill air and light. But he didn't need to face it if he didn't want to. And he didn't want to. Harry had promised.
Harry's fingers started by running down his spine, hesitated near the base of it, and then pressed home, stroking him, pressing down, easing away any tension he might still have left. Draco tilted his head back and groaned. Harry's fingers whispered past his ears, down into his blankets, around his eyesockets and jaw. Draco flicked his tongue out and managed to lap one as it went past.
Harry laughed, a slow, breathless sound. Draco thought about reaching up, cupping Harry's head and bringing him down for a kiss, but that would take too much time, and involve too much effort and disruption of his blanket cocoon. He rested his head on his forearms instead, and moaned into them as Harry found another source of tension just beneath the small of his back.
"I never realised how much you carried," Harry whispered. "How much of this came from the way you've lived your life. The war. The battles to free them. The way that you had to think about your responsibilities and go against the Ministry." His fingers dug deeper, and Draco rolled with them, quiet, boneless, his head dropping down on the pillow and his mouth opening so that he could release a heartfelt breath.
"There's a lot," Draco said, and his voice was softer and more solemn than he'd ever heard it. "But it eases when you're with me. It always did."
"Really?" Harry bent over and flicked his tongue out so that he could catch Draco behind his ear. "I don't remember that being the case at Hogwarts, during the war."
Draco raised a hand. It fell back before he could touch Harry, because it always did. It was too weak, it was too far away, he had no reason to touch Harry when he could feel Harry touching him. "Candle wax," he said. "That's what I feel like now. It eases when you're with me."
Harry laughed softly, and then went back to rolling his hands in the small of Draco's back. "You're melting like candle wax?"
Draco closed his eyes and nodded, although he had the impression that it wasn't a very good nod when his head was rolling all over the pillow. "Being reshaped," he said, and his voice slid and slackened. "Like metal melting in fire. Like heated glass, the way it bends. You're melting me."
"I would never want to do that," Harry said, gliding his tongue along the shell of Draco's ear. "And always."
Draco hummed and closed his eyes. It occurred to him that he hadn't felt any part of Harry's body but his hands and mouth. He pictured a face and hands and nothing else tending to him, bodiless, without anything heavier than that. It was a nice picture. Light. He could envision melting into nothing more than a breeze like that, and appreciating the fate.
Harry was humming under his breath, or maybe singing. Draco didn't think he had to care which it was. He closed his eyes more fully, and the thin lines of light that entered under his eyelids turned to glittering red dimness. He could have been lying in front of a fire or a setting sun, and he didn't think he could have told the difference. Both of them would leave this sort of haze of warmth spread over his face. Both of them would make him feel like he was coming to the end of a wonderful day, a noble struggle, that he could lean back and let his muscles fall limp now, and that there was no reason for him to feel that he had to get up and struggle again.
"Potter?" he whispered.
Harry laughed into his ear, but his fingers dug into Draco's lower back again, making him hum in turn and arch it. "It's been a long time since you called me that," Harry whispered. "My first name is your favourite for moaning."
Draco nodded. He knew that. But in the sliding soup of his mind, other thoughts were surfacing, thoughts that he kept strangled most of the time.
"Do you remember," he asked, doing his best to keep his voice steady and not only a steady series of moans as Harry's fingers continued to soothe the tension out of him, "the way we were rivals in school?"
"Not well," Harry said, and his tongue smoothed a long, slow, wet line down the place his fingers had just been stroking. Then he blew across it, and Draco sighed and spread his legs. Harry seemed to drift over him, because the next time Draco felt the heat of that mouth, it was down near his balls. "I just--I never think about it any more because I don't see how it's relevant."
"Not relevant?" Draco tried to lift eyelids that had grown so heavy he was surprised he remembered how to move them. The red dimness was still pleasant, but he felt, a little, like he wanted to see Harry's face. "But it led to everything we are! It led to us becoming…" His voice trailed off into a yawn.
Harry huffed a laugh that made Draco's cock stir. Or had he been hard for some time and he was just now remembering it? "That's the point, though. Or sort of the point. Do you think that we're still what we were then? Rivals, competitors, the sort of schoolboys who can't let well enough alone?"
"Well," Draco had to admit. "No." His words trailed off into another yawn, and then he sighed as Harry's mouth closed in, his tongue curling, lapping, his breath so hot on Draco's erection that Draco squirmed for a moment in what was almost more pain than pleasure. But the pain lessened, and the heat increased, and when he thrust home, Harry's throat was relaxed enough to accept him, as always.
"That's it," Harry said, his mouth in Draco's ear, or his voice in Draco's mind, at the same time as his mouth caressed and welcomed Draco's cock. "Relax and let me take care of you."
And with his muscles running like melted butter, and his mind following them, Draco did.
*
This time, he carried the warmth with him back into the cell, and let a pleased chuckle spill from his lips, even though it meant he laughed as the waxy woman was laying down the food tray in front of him. She froze and blinked at him, then backed up with her wand trained on him as though he was some kind of food-despoiler. Mood-despoiler, more likely, Draco thought, as he leaned up and bit into the apple that was waiting at the edge of the tray. It wasn't as sweet as the heat of Harry's mouth around him, but nothing was.
"You're all right?" The woman was still all wide eyes and startled breath, her hand to her chest. When Draco looked up at her, she dropped it with a scowl, but Draco had seen it, and she knew he had seen it, and he knew she knew he had seen it. The layers of knowledge could go down a long way, and still they would always lead to his victory, to his winning.
"Yes, of course," Draco said, and bit into the apple again before he continued, purely for the pleasure of the warm juice running down his face. Everything was so warm around him. The ward had given him that, because he had mastered it. His visions were visions of mastery and control, that was obvious, and if he had done what the people who put him into Azkaban wanted him to do, then he would have been the one who surrendered. Perhaps he would have dreamed of Potter fucking him. Well, that was the lie, and this was the truth. "Do you always ask the prisoners you serve if they're okay when they're laughing?"
"Most of them, it's mad laughter, that's true," the waxy woman said, staring at him. Then she shook her head. "Most of them can't wait to leave the prison and do what they did again," she said, a faint smile twisting her mouth. "Until the ward gets hold of them."
Draco snorted and licked the last juices of the apple from his fingers. "The ward has got hold of me, but I fought it, and won," he said.
The woman nodded wisely, the faint half-smile still on her lips. "And why did they toss you in here? The last I heard, you hadn't done things as bad as some of them did." She jerked her head down the corridor in a way that Draco assumed was meant to indicate the rest of the prisoners.
"Because," Draco said, and gave her a faint, pitying smile, while his mind shone bright and blank as eyes staring at the sun, "I hadn't learned to master myself sufficiently. I did stupid things and called them intelligent. Now I know the difference." And the next time he went back to sleep and into battle with the ward, he would know even more, and subdue even more.
"That would make sense," the woman said, and then said nothing more, standing with arms folded while he finished the food on the tray. It was slightly better quality than it had been, Draco noticed. For a moment he wondered if he was imagining things, if it only tasted better because of the triumph he'd achieved, but then he knew the truth. No, they were sending him better food because they knew now that they couldn't control him, and they wanted to acknowledge that. They could be gracious, the wizards who had invented this ward and this prison. They knew that they would have to let him go soon, and if they didn't placate him, then he would tell everyone back in the outside world how insufficient their defences against crime actually were.
He lay back down, smiling, and drew the dusty blanket over him. He was still relaxed, gentle, warm from his orgasm and from the way that he had lain during that vision, eyes closed and body lapsed but in total control.
What he did during the war was not important. Not memorable. Not when he could tame someone.
He closed his eyes and rushed towards the next vision the ward would give him, the next attempt the wizards who had constructed it would make towards telling him that he wasn't really fit to let free.
*
This time, Potter was the one who came crawling towards him across the floor, shuffling more on his knees than on his hands, which were bound together with intricate twists of what looked like glinting gold wire. He bowed his head and held out his hands, and yes, there was a lock on them, and the key hung on a chain around Potter's neck. The chain was too short to let Potter fit the key into the lock and unbind the wire, but it fit perfectly into Draco's grasp.
He untwisted the wire, and then bowed his head and kissed the flecks of blood, the sweet small spots of binding, that the wire had left. Potter turned his head to the side, gasping, and opened bright pale eyes, and Draco kissed them shut again and then stood up, leading him backwards, leading him to the bed.
It was large and made of pale wood, with iron bars around the sides that Draco lowered with a word and a wave of his wand so Potter could hop over them to the inside. He lay down in the blankets and spread his legs, his eyes so wide and greedy that Draco chuckled. There were flecks of grey in the green that he never noticed before, and Potter's hair had pale sheens, too, under the right light. Well, his mother had been red-haired.
There was something wrong with his mother, wasn't there? But Potter bit his lip and hunched his hips up again, and Draco could forget what it was.
"Please," Potter said, just that one word and nothing else, and then ducked his head and hid his face. His cheeks were bright, too, a delicate pink rather than the red they usually flushed when he was angry or excited, but Draco shifted his thigh to the side and touched something that left him in no doubt Potter was excited right now. He laughed again and tapped one finger against Potter's cheek; Potter immediately and obediently tilted his head to the side, dilated eyes fixed on him.
"Now, now," Draco said. "What have I told you about asking?"
Potter shook his head, the pink flush spreading further. His legs opened and he squirmed down the bed until his feet were resting against Draco's knees. Draco smiled down at him, and Potter arched his head back until all Draco could see was the madly fluttering pulse in his throat.
"You don't speak this time," Draco said. "Good." He reached out and latched his fingers into Potter's red-black hair, tugging. Potter tilted his head to the side, and a clump of pale spilled out from the rest. Draco laughed. Wouldn't it be delightful if Potter was dyeing his hair all this time, because he wanted to look more like his father or because the constant encounters with the Dark Lord at a young age had turned it white? "Don't speak right now. If you want out of this, then tap me with a closed fist. I'll understand that well enough. Understand?"
Potter shut his eyes, panting, and nodded. One hand formed into a loose fist and fell apart as Draco watched. He licked his lips, and Potter mimicked him, opening his eyes that had even more of grey in them than Draco had realised, a silvery, stony colour.
Well. He didn't think the refusal would come. He reached down and branded his fingers into Potter's hips, and Potter moaned back, his mouth falling open and his tongue poking out for a moment. Even the inside of his mouth seemed pinker than before, though perhaps that was a contrast with the other times--
Times that Draco found harder to remember. He shivered in delight. That was the point. Each time he was with Potter was more memorable than the last, memorable enough to sweep the others into shadow.
He prepared Potter with shaking hands, stretching him wide. Potter rocked against him, silent except for the soft moans that Draco felt puffed out against his hand. His hair was pale, his face was pale, his eyes were pale when he opened them, his skin was pale where the flush had been. It was like being in bed with a ghost, but a more graceful one; when Draco bent to kiss, again, the small spots of blood the wire had left, the limbs were smooth and well-shaped against his. He knew Potter had been doing the exercises Draco had taught him, then, the exercises that his parents had recommended for a healthy body and being.
They had recommended them when--
But it did not matter when they had recommended them, and it did not matter that he could not remember the time or the place. He murmured against Potter's skin, murmuring instructions and words of endearment, and he lifted those slim legs over his shoulders, and Potter shuddered and groaned with a musical touch under him, and Draco slid in.
The heat was the same as always. He lowered his head and panted near Potter's mouth, watched the way Potter's eyes fluttered open and shut and his hands rose to clutch at Draco's, and again noticed the pallor of his skin. That was probably because all the blood was heading to one place, Draco thought, and licked the bone of Potter's forehead in satisfaction. Potter started and opened his eyes, staring up at him. Draco placed his hand above Potter's brow and held it there, watching the faint, thin line of the lightning scar bob under his fingers as he began to thrust in and out.
Potter might have whispered his name, but Draco didn't think he had, because he had told him not to and Potter was occasionally good at doing what he was told. Draco thrust, and Potter bobbed in front of him, and there was another wordless murmur of pleasure and approbation, and Draco thrust home.
Home.
There was warmth all around him, melting warmth, responsive warmth, tame warmth, undefiant warmth, compliant warmth, and Draco drew breaths in through his nose and mouth that made him feel as if he were breathing in the middle of a swamp, the fetid heat, the brewing life, the bright and quick transformation of death into some new kind of life, something hatching, something coming forth, something--
He felt his chest swell and expand, and still the warmth poured in, still the warmth clasped and enclosed his cock, still he breathed it and dreamed it and lived it and bled it and was it--
He was melting, into pleasure, and when he opened his eyes and gazed down on Potter beneath him, silent and bobbing exactly the way Draco would have liked him to, it was like fucking himself, with the pallor of hair and eye and the brightness of the heat all around him, the heat of fire, that sanctifies and purifies, the heat of fire, that melts and changes.
He came, and there was a chorus of fire ringing in his ears.
*
When he opened his eyes, this time, the warmth had come with him.
Draco lay in the middle of his blankets and drifted, lost in contentment, in thoughts of how thoroughly he had changed and fooled and fouled the intentions of the wizards who had constructed the ward. It was supposed to break him down, was it? Make him less defiant? Tame him? It couldn't have done that, not when it had only encouraged his resolve to fight.
To hold onto the ideals that his parents had taught him, which were--
He paused, and the buzzing of the ward turned and changed in his ears, writhing into bright patterns, like the changing patterns in fire, changing to the ears as fire would change to the eyes.
It was--
It was light and quick, but it was an insubstantial magic that wouldn't change anything but itself. Fire couldn't change things, could it? It could burn them to ashes, but that would just destroy them, and the Wizengamot had said something about him learning better--
Why did he have to learn better? What had he done?
Draco blinked and waved a hand in front of his eyes. Up and down in front of him moved the softly changing patterns of fire, the softly changing patterns of the ward, and he wondered for a moment how he was ever supposed to see anything else. But the effects of the ward wouldn't last forever. He would leave it behind when he emerged into the world around him, and that meant--
That meant.
Draco closed his eyes and drifted in the middle of the fire, changing constantly like another fire he had been in once, although he did not know how or when it had been. He remembered Potter, and his shining eyes, and he remembered achieving what he wanted, and how good it felt, and he remembered standing before the Wizengamot and saying things that made no sense, because he didn't need to defy them to prove his point. He had already won. He had already conquered.
He had fucked Potter. He had tamed him. He had taken something hidden deep inside him, a desire he had never known was there, and subdued him. They couldn't enslave him because of the ward. They couldn't enslave him because of those desires. He was master of himself.
And he didn't need to go against the Wizengamot, did he? Because they knew the truth, and he did, and so did the wizards who had designed this ward. He need never do anything else again but master himself and walk in the consciousness of that mastery, in the consciousness that he could tame everyone around him if he wanted to, because he had tamed Potter and himself.
Draco laughed. He thought the laughter might sound mad to someone else, but he was in the midst of the ward and the fire, and it didn't sound mad to him.
He was the tamer, the one who brought down the wild ones to his level, and he didn't need to strike out. His father had taught him--
A shaft of light struck down into the middle of his brain, into the middle of his memories. It was white and harsh, like sunlight. For the first time, Draco thought he understood. He had misinterpreted so many things, but that was when he had the vision of a child. He had thought his parents were teaching him to stand up to the world, to defy the people who believed that Muggleborns were equal to pure-bloods, and to seize and hold political power no matter what.
They hadn't. Or if they had, they had been wrong. Draco's memories bent and flowed and melted, as volatile to his touch as everything else was right now, as obedient, and he understood. Of course. He didn't need to speak the kind of political insults that his father had, he didn't need to make the same kind of political enemies, because he was contained in himself and he had already done the impossible. From now on, he could smile smugly and keep silent, keep to the Manor, and marry respectably, and teach his children better than his parents had taught him.
They had taught him to savour pride and believe that he had cause for it. At least, they thought they had. He thought they had. He had thought they had.
They hadn't. Not in the same way. It wasn't the same way. Draco would marry. He would teach his children the truth. He would manage his family estates, the smaller ones the Wizengamot had left the Malfoys, and he would teach his children the truth, that it was better to be self-mastered than mastered by the lusts of the world, the lusts for greed and money and place.
His mind hardened, solidified, cooled. Thoughts settled into new shapes.
Draco looked up as the woman walked to the front of the bars and lowered a new tray for him. He smiled at her. For a moment, she paused, eyeing him, and her face was as cold as the crash of the sea and the sound of the gulls' cries. Then she nodded. "The ward did its work," she said.
"It taught me to tame," Draco said, and reached out to pick up the bowl of porridge she had left for him.
"To be tame," the woman muttered, but she was only someone who was not part of his family, who was not part of his mind, who did not matter, and Draco could ignore her easily. She knew only what she saw from outside, what she saw and misunderstood. Draco ate, and was grateful for the meal that settled into his belly.
It felt solid and real, like the first piece of the rest of his life.
*
Draco remembered leaving the island.
He remembered the grey robe they gave him, and the hawthorn wand, and the hard buzzing of the ward falling away behind him as one of the guards grasped his arm to Apparate him away from Azkaban. He remembered the images of Potter that darted and flashed through his head like bright fish, fantasies he could keep to himself.
He remembered the scared little boy he had been, and could smile in pity for. The wild little boy who had stood up to the Wizengamot, who had believed so many things that didn't make sense to Draco now.
The boy who had not gone through the fire, and who would never go home, who slumped here in some corner, never having come to the end of his dreams.
The End.
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