abaddon (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} nothingbutfic) wrote,@ 2005-01-23 01:42:00 |
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Fic: to go wherever dreaming goes [HP, H/D, 2/3, NC17.]
[First part, summary and basic notes may be found here.]
to go wherever dreaming goes: part the second.
The days pass. Draco wakes and sleeps and learns, and doesn’t do much else. His bedroom, such as it is, leads to a toilet where he can shit and a bathroom where he can shower, and that is pretty much the fundamental limit of his existence. Every day Potter allows him out of the bedroom for his exercise, two periods a day in which Draco runs up stairs and across landings and in and out of decaying rooms. Potter makes him do push-ups, presses, squats, stretches. He even finds a piece of rope and watches Draco skip, and when Draco bitingly comments that Potter is getting off on this, Potter just grins and tells him to do another twenty.
He has tried balking at first, and soon found that his lack of cooperation led to a lack of being fed and Potter’s implacable calm, the sort of resolve that made Draco feel about five years old and that it was all his fault. Now he does his skipping, and he’s grateful; it gets him out of the room, away from his studies and burns his life down to a period of strain and ache which enables him to not think about anything else for a time.
He knows there are occasionally other people in the house, not that anyone comes and sees him. Someone has to deliver all the things he uses to study, and the dilapidation of the house makes Draco think there’s no house elf. But he hears laughter sometimes, down below, muted voices, conversation. A couple of times, even shouting and screaming and things being thrown, and Potter locked him in his room and traipsed downstairs with heavy footfalls, and sure enough the sounds soon stopped. Draco considered trying to make a run for it himself, vaulting downstairs, but Potter watches him with the intensity of a lover and the constancy of a prison guard, and it’s more than a little disturbing.
Draco kept the pen, after that first lesson. He used it to mark the passage of days with small scratches against the bed frame – until Potter found it and broke the pen in front of him and took the pieces away. He was up to thirty by that stage, almost a month, but the days just kept passing on and Draco was lost amongst them. He knows he’s being trained, of course. He recognises the signs, the symptoms, the little details – at first, Potter brought him oatmeal every day for breakfast. Draco hates oatmeal but that hardly matters – it is either that or nothing, and after a week of bitching, Draco realises it wasn’t doesn’t any good, and stops complaining. A few days of good behaviour, and he received spices and honey and sugar as a reward.
Potter might as well have patted him on the head like a pet, and oh, how that galls him.
He’s definitely being trained, and as exercises in psychological perversity go, Potter’s is both more gentle and more binding than any trick of Voldemort or his father. If he studies particularly hard then Potter lets his exercise period run longer, or might not even demand he exercise at all. Potter’s generosity is as unpredictable as anything else to do with the detestable young man, but then he holds the keys to this castle and Draco knows better than to annoy whoever is in charge.
He doesn’t know how long he’s been here, but his room has been transformed. He has Muggle things now; computer and television and CD player and Playstation, and if he’s very good, Potter will let him play Grand Theft Auto or Doom, and if he’s absolutely spellbindingly brilliant (ironic phrase for you), Potter will sit down and join him, and they’ll both partake of the solemn joy of shooting the crap out of something.
Sometimes Potter’s thin, contained anger lashes out at other people; Draco will come back from a toilet break or the shower – he’s allowed to do that by himself now, Potter trusts him, and worse, Draco isn’t entirely sure he wants to betray that trust – to find Harry riffling through the assorted material waiting for him at the bottom of his bed.
“You don’t need to learn all of this,” Potter tells him one afternoon, picking up a series of thick heavy manuals and dumping them on the floor. Draco just looked at him, waiting, hands gripping the white cotton sheets as he lay there on the bed. “Just this one,” he continued, and handed a slimmer book over, with a garish yellow and black cover that immediately makes Draco think of Hufflepuffs.
“What is it?” Draco asks, curious, and pushes the cotton sheet aside when Potter beckons him over to the Pentium II with a finger. Potter just looks at him, and so Draco boots the computer, eager and impatient and slightly pleased with himself that he knows what to call it now, all the bits and pieces and gets the usage of the term ‘boot.’ Perhaps he’ll survive this insanity after all.
“It’s the Dummies Guide to HTML,” Potter tells him, and Draco wants to snicker. It is suitable for Hufflepuffs after all, but he schools his face with the kind of control he never used to have, before Potter and defeat made sure he did.
“And the rest of it?” Draco knows he’s pushing from the look Potter gives him, and doesn’t care. He’s earned his right to be pushy by now, and besides, being pushy is part of who he is, even if he’s lost everything else.
“FTP, Visual Basic, CSS...” Potter tells Draco to open up Notepad. A few clicks of the mouse, and he does. “...Hermione even thought you should learn Java, but I’ve no idea why.”
Potter’s never spoken of anyone else, not before today, and Draco clings to the name like a lifeline. “...Maybe she wants to piss you off,” he suggests, wry and tentative, and the look that Potter gives him now makes him shiver.
“Maybe she does. At any rate, that much information would be overkill. You’re going to be a student, Malfoy, a geek. I just need you to be able to make a half-arsed website should the need arise.”
“Why?” Draco pushes just that little bit more. “Can you?”
“Fuck no,” Potter says, and laughs, sliding his glasses back up his nose. “That’s why I’ll have you around, Malfoy.” He settles on the bed, on Draco’s bed, feet up and relaxing, and glances over at Draco every now and then to make sure he’s going through all the lessons.
***
Draco thinks it’s a Thursday. It could be. But then it could be a Monday or a Friday or a Sunday just as well. He just tells himself it’s a Thursday because he told himself yesterday was a Wednesday, and even if he’s wrong, he likes the illusion of consistency. He shuffles down the corridor from the toilet, as the en-suite toilet is of course not working at the moment, and Potter doesn’t seem in a hurry to fix it, not that he would be.
Draco is garbed in the green robe that’s one of the few things Potter lets him wear about the House, and stops when he hears voices in his bedroom.
“I thought I’d come and see how your little experiment is progressing.” It’s Granger, and she sounds...openly bitter.
“Quite well, no thanks to you.” In comparison, Potter’s voice is all easy calm. “He’s learning faster than I could have hoped actually, and he retains what he learns.”
“What have you been teaching him?”
“Not everything you wanted me to. We started off on general knowledge, everyday terms – car, pen, television, lamp. Then we moved to specifics; electronics, mostly – the why and the how of household appliances. Right now we’re doing culture.”
“Culture?”
“I’ve been having him read. Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Austen, Dickens...Clancy, Le Carre, Tolkien. He’s listening to music as well.”
“Ah. The giants.” She doesn’t sound impressed, not that Draco can blame her– Clancy is after all, a rabid hack. “You think he’ll be grateful?”
“He is grateful.”
“You’ve left him with no choice. Nor have you given yourself one.”
“Don’t tell me you need me.”
“We do! You should see what’s happening out there!”
“I hear stories.”
“The world is falling apart!”
“So let it fall!” Potter yells, and there’s a moment of silence that stretches out into long, lonely minutes.
“...What music have you been introducing him to?” Granger finally asks and Draco moves forward, creeps along the wall towards the open door. He doesn’t want to disturb them yet; the conversation is too enjoyable, the suggestions of fracture and dissonance and antipathy all too intriguing for a sneaky little bastard such as himself.
“You can see for yourself,” Potter tells her, dismissively, and there’s a creak as someone sits down on the bed.
He can picture her reaching to the small bedside table, and going through the CD covers there, reading out the names. “The Pet Shop Boys...Abba...Madonna...Kylie Minogue...the Spice Girls.” She sets the last one down, and if her tone was bitter before, it’s acid now. “You’re making him into quite the little queer, aren’t you? Justin would be so proud.”
“Justin’s dead.”
“I’m aware of that thank you very much! I came here to talk sense into you, despite my opinion of your proclivities, Harry, and if you call me a breeder I shall slap you! Ron and I are very happy with each other.”
“Glad to hear it,” Harry tells her, and his laugh sounds like he’s dying. “What sense did you want to talk? That you want me back? That the world needs me?”
“It does.” Granger seems to be grinding her teeth from the sounds of things, and when Draco risks a peek inside, she looks it as well, all stubborn lines, giving Potter both greeting and defiance like a warrior queen of old, and Draco remembers what happened to Boadicea. Her arms are folded under the curve of her breasts, and the choice of her blouse makes her look about twenty years older. Draco realises with a sudden insight that this is another McGonagall in the making, and grimaces slightly.
“I’m not a researcher, Hermione, and even if I was, I’d probably end up dead through trying. What possible use could I be? Rally the fucking troops? Be a figurehead? My figurehead days are over.”
“If you were ever a figurehead, Harry,” Granger spits, and turns the name into a curse, “it was by your own choice. Who always avoided actually having to do anything other than one of your famous last stands, always made up on the fly? Who always left it to others to make the hard choices, the necessary decisions?”
“And who was all too happy to make them, to consider what was necessary and what wasn’t?” Draco’s heard that tone in Potter’s voice before, that low and generous taunt. He’s been on the receiving end of it several times himself, and even Voldemort wasn’t especially enamoured of its potency. “Just like school, wasn’t it, Hermione? Your plans, your brilliance, your will and desire and need to succeed. Only difference was how many people you had to play with, and the size of the stage you could shine on.”
Granger recoils at the suggestion, and Draco actually thinks she might break down and cry, but unfortunately all she does is gasp, and come back fighting. Stubborn, angry, self-righteous; these two are Gryffindors till the end, and Draco certainly doesn’t mind watching them tear each other apart.
It’s only something he’s been waiting for since he was eleven, after all.
“Don’t you dare suggest that, Harry Potter, don’t you dare.” Granger looks ready to do violence. That would be a sight to see, considering how she never got her hands dirty during the War.
“Oh, I dare. I dare because I am Harry Potter and you took the myth I was and made of me a legend. And used that legend to swell our ranks. And used that legend to tell people it didn’t matter if they died, as long as it was for the cause, as long as it was for me, because I made our cause noble and I made sure we couldn’t lose!”
“We were in a war! Some people were always going to die! I didn’t kill them!”
“No, you just chose the most expendable amongst my friends, and sacrificed them in gambits and feints and whatever other incredibly clever tactical manoeuvres you and Ron came up with.”
“Would you have preferred to lose the war?” Granger asks bluntly, and just when Draco thinks Potter’s going to deflate, that he can’t come up with any response to that, and Granger looks at him, harder than diamonds and more self-possessed than the Dark Lord himself, just when he’s about to dismiss Potter as waste, fool and has been, Potter manages to respond.
“No,” Potter murmurs, and he sounds almost chastened, hand idly running through hair grown long and shaggy. “No, I wouldn’t have preferred to lose the war. But I’m sick of your wars and I’m sick of the way we win them. I have given you my life and my friends and my rage and my hate and this time, Hermione, I can’t just wave my wand. Pull your own fucking miracle out of your own fucking arse and leave me and mine alone. I haven’t got anything left to give you, or the world.”
Despite himself, Draco can’t help but speak. It almost seems like a cue, and any good actor knows what his lines are. “Except me.”
Potter turns with a huge and slightly creepy smile plastered across his face, brushing the fringe of his hair back from his eyes. “You were watching!”
Draco strides into the room, the very picture of self-possession, like he’s used to disturbing foes both current and former while wearing nothing more than a tatty green bathrobe. “I like to watch,” he says, grandly, and Granger applauds them both with hollow, mocking claps.
“So this is your little Eliza Doolittle in the making,” she says, and Draco smirks because he actually gets the reference. “I wonder if he’ll fetch your slippers when this is all over?” Her tone is simpering, her eyes accusatory, and if Draco ever wondered why Potter is leaving with him, he begins to get an idea. It seems there are things even myths and legends can’t leave behind, and it’s a comforting notion; very egalitarian, even, and Draco always liked the possibility of bringing Potter down to his level.
Potter looks at her, bland and expressionless, and calls Draco over to him. Draco hesitates for a moment or two, and then Potter does look at him, and he doesn’t look well pleased, brow furrowed and voice cracking like a whip. “I said come here, Draco.”
Draco finds himself half way across the room before he even knows he’s moved. Potter’s hands settle on him; one curled around his shoulders, the other lightly playing with his hair. His voice is brazenly contemptuous. “You see what he’s like? Draco wants someone to tell him what to do, needs it. He’s bent knee and tried to please his father, Voldemort–”
“So it might as well be your turn to be pleased?”
“Maybe,” Potter murmurs, and turns Draco’s head around, fingers gripping his jaw. It’s not unpleasant, exactly, grip not firm enough to bruise and the sensation of being touched has its own rewards. Potter’s other hand slides down over his shoulder, pulls open the robe, slips inside. Draco’s hard now, suddenly, achingly hard, and it seems he likes surprises. Granger’s not leaving – although when he cranes his head to look at her, and sees a glimpse of bushy hair and her face in her hands, Potter turns Draco’s gaze back with those fingers, and now they are firm enough to bruise. “Don’t stop looking now, Hermione. After I’ve gone to all this trouble, training him, and you can’t bother to see how he begs?”
Potter’s hand creeps across his stomach, slow and steady and curls around his cock. Draco whimpers, shuddering, and can’t help but watch and pump his hips as Potter’s eyes narrow into slits, and he strokes him in an aching rhythm. A flick of his other wrist, and Draco’s robe flutters to the floor. He’s naked, naked and wanting and arched, having his cock fisted by Harry Potter on the first floor of the dying and formerly noble House of Black, and Granger’s breathing is raspier than his, probably out of revulsion and fear.
“I’ll go,” she stammers.
“What makes you think I’d let you go?” Potter snarls, and the lock clicks shut on the door.
“I’ll scream,” she promises.
“What makes you think anyone can hear you?”
Granger doesn’t cry, doesn’t dare cry. She sits like a good schoolgirl with her hands trapped under her thighs probably so she doesn’t try to throw something, or claw at Potter, and for that Draco is grateful. She’s afraid of what Potter might do if he is pushed further, Draco realises, and understands that feeling all too well.
Of course, it must be worse for her, he realises, knowing that she could have stopped it, might have stopped it, but just kept pushing Potter along, and realises furthermore that he doesn’t care about her guilt or salvation, except that it’s her damned fault. This is the world Hermione Granger created; this is the legacy of Godric and Dumbledore; this is where he doesn’t belong, not anymore.
“Suck,” Potter commands, and pushes two fingers between Draco’s lips, not expecting to be refused. When Draco balks, and balks he does, with gritted teeth and a faint blush of skin, Potter uses his thumb and middle finger to dig into Draco cheeks until Draco cries out in pain, and then two fingers slide between his lips with an ease and a precision that just makes his blush deeper. Draco always considered himself good at balking – protestation and refusal were some of his many talents, along with submission and acquiescence, ironically, but he’s never been able to refuse Harry Potter, no matter how hard he tries. He laves the fingers with his tongue, getting them all nice and slick and he has a fair idea of where this is going. Potter fucks his mouth with them, drawing his lips forward, and nods to himself like this is all going according to some plan, and for all Draco knows, it is.
The thought just makes him harder, and Potter smiles like he knows this, feeling Draco’s cock twitch in his grasp. Finally, he removes his fingers, leaving a slight ache in Draco’s jaw and the feeling of emptiness in his mouth, his tongue and lips languidly buzzing from all the exertion. Potter removes his hand, and licks along the palm, tasting Draco’s precome in plain sight, and Draco would die for this man, right now, right here and consider himself to have gotten a fair deal.
“Turn,” he says, and Draco turns, feeling Potter’s arm wrap around his waist, hearing Potter undo his belt and unzip his fly, knowing the rustle of fabric and the weight of his body pressed against him. He’s never done this before, and yet it doesn’t feel new. Feels natural, and Potter pets his hair before reaching down to spread his cheeks and slide one slick finger smoothly into Draco’s arse, and Draco mews.
“Why are you doing this?” Granger asks Potter, and now that Draco’s watching her, watching her watching him being fucked, he can see her face, blotchy, and the eye red-rimmed.
“Because I can,” Potter tells her, grinning like the devil on Draco’s shoulder, chin resting there, and Draco doesn’t have to see that grin because he’s memorised it since first year. “Because I was in a war, Hermione,” he adds finger the second, and Draco arches again, “and war leaves us all a little broken, don’t you think?”
“Are you blaming me for this?” she accuses him, voice choked and ugly with emotion.
“Why ever would I? It was people like this one,” a hand tangles in Draco’s hair, pulls him sharply up, and Potter slides his cock inside, causing them both to grunt, “people like Malfoy here who did all the killing. You just gave them targets.”
“Harry, please stop.”
“What? Talking or fucking?”
“Both!”
“But Draco here wouldn’t like me to stop the fucking, and I don’t want to stop talking, so I can’t. Sorry, Hermione.” He’s thrusting now, slow and deep and steady and burning, and even if Draco hasn’t done this before, it certainly feels like Potter has, from the way he works Draco’s body, kissing and biting his neck, one arm holding him up, using and abusing and manipulating him like some kind of instrument, and always, always looking over at Granger.
Draco can feel it, and he’s jealous. Might as well just be a piece of meat, for all the consideration he’s being given, might as well be anyone, and perhaps that’s the point Potter is making: stuff your battle and fuck your war, I don’t care about anyone anymore.
It’s hardly that Draco is romantic, but this is insulting. He’s the one being fucked, after all.
“You’re only the reason Justin’s dead, and Dean, and that Seamus only has one arm, and Hannah can’t sleep at night for the screaming, and oh God, what you did to Cho,” and Potter’s laughing, laughing as he fucks Draco and reads out the list of Granger’s crimes, “what you did to Cho was so fucking masterful she would have appreciated it if she’d lived to survive it.”
“She was a security risk.” Even now, Granger’s still capable of some steel, and Draco feels strangely excluded from the debate. Not that he’s entirely sure he wants to join in and become a target, either; they were, are and will be Gryffindors, after all, and Draco should have remembered that meant they were capable of anything. Even so, it is good to have confirmed that Potter is just as vicious, just as nasty, just as petty and just as human as Draco always knew him to be.
“So. You. Said. Yes.” Potter pauses, punctuating the moment with a particularly hard thrust that pushes Draco up on his toes and makes Granger look sick. “...What else did you say when we started, Hermione? That we might as well kill all the Death Eaters, because we wouldn’t be able to find a use for them after the war was done, and they did choose their path...”
“They did!”
“I think I’ve found a use for this broken little toy,” Potter murmurs against his hair, and Draco doesn’t need to know where his beady little gaze is focussed, body shuddering at the words, tightening, climaxing.
The floor is even more stained now, and Draco realises Potter will probably not bother to clean it.
Potter comes soon after, sagging against him, and when he pulls out, Draco wobbles on increasingly unsteady legs, tired and drained and slick with cooling sweat. “I’ve got you,” Potter tells him, one arm around his waist. “I’ve got you.”
The world fades around him, leaving Draco with just the smell of Potter, musky and sweaty and male, the feel of him, holding Draco steady and keeping him still, and then Granger is violently sick on the carpet.
The spell is broken, and Draco is annoyed – it’s the only magic he has left.
***
Potter wakes him one morning, a week after they fucked. That’s how Draco thinks of it, as fucking, dirty, dirty fucking, synonymous with concepts of buggery and fornication, and maybe even capital letters and the occasional exclamation mark. Potter waking him is in itself unusual, and he looks pensive, which really doesn’t suit him, Draco reflects – Potter looks like he needs to take a laxative whenever he does any hard thinking, and Draco pats himself on the back for remembering the right Muggle term.
“Here,” he says, simply, and throws some brochures on the sheets. Draco shifts, propping himself on his pillows, and sorts through them. All glossy, and covered with bright colours, slogans, pictures of sunsets and women with skimpy clothing. Travel advertisements, loudly proclaiming the virtues of half the world (but not, of course, of England) and Draco looks up, curious.
“Where are we going?” he asks, and Potter grins a very suspect grin.
“That’s up to you,” he says blandly, and scratches his nose, and it’s all very casual and offhand and not like they had sex at all. “You’ve been here for eight months, Malfoy. Almost done. Did you want to stay in Muggle England?”
“God no,” Draco replies, automatically, and wrinkles his nose in disgust at the very idea. What he needs is escape.
“You have to decide today so we can get all the travel arrangements sorted out.” Potter picks up a brochure, holding it in front of Draco like he’s some sort of invalid. “America?”
“I will not spend the rest of my life with a bunch of colonials who can’t spell.”
“France? Germany?”
Draco gives him a withering look. “What, to play the Englishman in exile, forever dreaming of warm beer, cricket and decent fish and chips.”
“Canada?”
“They have French people there, and not even properly French ones. If I wanted to spend my time around frogs, I would go to Paris. At least they have some nice scenery.”
“You’re not making this easy.”
“I didn’t think I was supposed to.” Draco smiles, and after a few moments, so does Potter.
FUCKING!!!! His brain flashes at the sight of that easy smile, and Draco politely tells it to go away.
“Why don’t you choose, then?” Potter tells him, and Draco does, holding his preferred destination aloft.
“Australia?”
“I will spend the rest of my life with a bunch of colonials who can spell. Besides, have you seen those beaches?”
Potter pulls out a folder from his tatty jacket and hands it over. It’s nothing special, as folders go. Beige, with no title or distinguishing marks, and the paper inside is crisp and typed and Muggle, and Draco’s produced similar on his computer and with his printer. It reads like a biographical extract of someone Draco doesn’t know: name, height, weight, hair colour and eye colour and racial identity all neatly summarised at the top, followed by three pages of background, and Draco just doesn’t get it.
“What is this?”
“This,” Potter says slowly, “is your life. Learn it, and forget all about Draco Malfoy.”
“But- but his hair is brown,” Draco protests, and the only answer is Potter’s smile.
***
Draco is distinctly unimpressed. This is an aeroplane, first class seating, all the alcohol that British Airways can ply him with (not that he’d drink it, he has no taste to humiliate himself in public), all the entertainment the service can provide, and yet it seems a tad...provincial, even if the steward isn’t ugly and has a fairly decent arse. They are so many hours into their flight, so many miles high in the sky, and Draco’s spent half his school career careening around on broomsticks, which makes the technological advancement of flight not so advanced after all.
“I’m bored,” he tells Potter, not for the first time, and runs fingers through his (brown) hair. His scalp itches, despite the fact Potter swears the dye he used wasn’t inflammatory in the slightest, and he resists the impulse to scratch.
“You could always go to the loo and look at your hair again,” Potter murmurs, seemingly engrossed in the in-flight magazine, not that Draco knows why – all it seems to be is a testament to the glories of Sweden as a travel destination, buxom women wearing little clothing (presumably not in Sweden, not in those outfits) and just how much complete and utter shit is available to the discerning traveller for a fee.
If Potter wants to ogle women, he can, and if he wants to spend his money (or the Ministry’s) unwisely, he can; Draco is hardly surprised at Potter’s capacity for idiocy, but he’s not about to emulate it in either case, because he isn’t a hero and therefore hasn’t got anything to fall back on or anyone to cover up for him.
It’s a worrying thought.
“It still itches,” Draco protests, and idly tries to do something with the fringe. Potter put the dye in a week ago – telling Draco it would give him time to get used to it – but every time he looks at himself in the mirror, it seems as though there’s a stranger looking back, a stranger that Draco knows rather better than he’d like, now. A stranger with hair that flops over his eyes and refuses to be anything other than a completely undistinguished shade of brown. It’s not ashy brown, not chocolate brown, not dark brown becoming black. It’s just nondescript, run of the mill, tacky, ghastly, plebeian brown, and worse still, the stranger wears glasses – Potter’s little joke, ha ha, hee hee – and the frames pinch his nose.
“I don’t care,” Potter replies, dryly, and never have truer words been spoken, in well, truth, because it’s certainly no jest. If there is a joke to be had, Draco is it, and he doesn’t much appreciate that. “You don’t look half bad like that, you know,” and Draco blushes, and Potter watches him, and smirks, and he only said it to make Draco blush, and oh god, if he could, he’d stab Potter in the eye with the fork they gave him at lunch. Potter seems to know this, and just smirks more, and Draco realises it’s not a question of could – it was never a question of could – it was always a question of would with him and Harry Potter, and he lacks the will to make good on his threats, as Harry did and will.
Potter leans forward, hands on his arm rests, ready to move. “If you’re not going to use the loo, I will,” and Draco moves to stop him, one hand on Potter’s arm, whispering in his ear, because this, this he can do. Draco Malfoy never would have done such a thing, of course, far too gauche and dependent and perverse for good pureblood boys such as he, but then he’s not Draco Malfoy anymore and that excuses a multitude of sins.
“Maybe I should join you,” he murmurs, doing his best to sound nonchalant, and Potter turns his head to look at him, one eyebrow raised, and it seems this whole seduction thing is slightly trickier than Draco figured, no matter how husky he makes his voice sound. “Maybe I should go down on you, wrap my lips around your cock, and just suck you until you come.”
There’s only the slightest trace of a blush on Potter’s skin, and that could be embarrassment, and probably is, and Draco feels mortified at how needy he sounded, how needy he is, because Potter fucked him, Potter fucked him and told him that he had him and hasn’t followed up on either since and Draco hasn’t got anything else to cling to.
“I think you might want to watch your language,” Potter tells him, and he’s definitely amused, and Draco wants to curl up and die and stab himself in the eye with the damned fork or fling himself out the plane, except he can’t, and it doesn’t matter that he watched the damn safety lecture and knows how many seats it is from where he is to the nearest exit. He can’t die because Potter won’t let him, or maybe because Potter wouldn’t give a damn if he did die, and Draco wants to prove him wrong for that.
“Why?” Draco snipes back, reduced to scathing commentary that’s not really commentary nor particularly scathing, and how the mighty have fallen indeed.
“You have an audience,” Potter points out, leaning over to murmur in his ear as he does so, and gestures with his finger. Draco looks, and oh, there’s a young girl sitting next to him, with blue eyes and cascading dusky blonde hair that manages to be rich and vibrant in hue despite the fact it looks vaguely like a bird’s nest. Her family is sitting on the other side of the aisle by the looks of things, engrossed in movies and radio and books, and all this poor child has is her pink tracksuit, similarly clothed Barbie (whose hair, Draco notices, has also been teased and poked until it looks like a bad Salvador Dali painting), and the pervert sitting next to her for company.
Shampoo, Draco thinks, the connections forming in his head. Chemistry, organic compounds, science, and realises there’s an entire world of people whose hair can be shiny, and glossimer thick, and who he wants to go around smelling all of a sudden to see exactly what herbal extracts they all use. Those people have to use tweezers and wax, deodorants and hairspray, just like he does now, and they’ve never known anything else.
“Don’t make a scene,” Potter tells him, clapping him on the shoulder, and stands, moving past them both. He’s all gangly frame and long legs, and has a nicer arse than the steward, not that Draco would ever tell him that. “I know you’ll be a good boy for me,” and he uses the hated name that isn’t Draco, but is Draco’s now.
When Potter comes back from the loo, spick and span and smelling slightly of lemons, he finds Draco sitting in his seat with the armrest up, and the young girl curled up against him with one of his arms over her shoulders, nestled into him as he reads her Saddle Club book in precise, aristocratic tones. She’s the first to notice Potter standing in the aisle, looking at them both, and glances up at Draco with those same wide eyes and a curious expression.
Draco hushes her with a finger to his lips, and merely looks at Potter, who refuses to take the bait and shuffles back into his seat, planting a light kiss on Draco’s hair as he does that sends all sorts of butterflies scurrying through Draco’s stomach. His magazine takes up his attention again, and Draco looks at him, stunned, emasculated, all but completely and utterly confused and just as he’s about to demand an explanation, a small hand tugs at his sleeve.
“Can we go back to reading my book?” the girl lisps, and Draco nods.
“Of course we can.” His tone is cloying, almost a coo, the kind of way Draco always hated being spoken to as a child, but he doesn’t know how else to do it.
“Is he your boyfriend?” she asks, with just the hint of a nervous giggle in her tone, like she’s talking about something that’s forbidden for girls such as her.
“No,” Draco breathes, and cuddles her close as he opens up the book. “He’s not.”
That, he figures, is part of the problem. The other part being that Draco wants him to be.
[Part three may be found here.]
[First part, summary and basic notes may be found here.]
to go wherever dreaming goes: part the second.
The days pass. Draco wakes and sleeps and learns, and doesn’t do much else. His bedroom, such as it is, leads to a toilet where he can shit and a bathroom where he can shower, and that is pretty much the fundamental limit of his existence. Every day Potter allows him out of the bedroom for his exercise, two periods a day in which Draco runs up stairs and across landings and in and out of decaying rooms. Potter makes him do push-ups, presses, squats, stretches. He even finds a piece of rope and watches Draco skip, and when Draco bitingly comments that Potter is getting off on this, Potter just grins and tells him to do another twenty.
He has tried balking at first, and soon found that his lack of cooperation led to a lack of being fed and Potter’s implacable calm, the sort of resolve that made Draco feel about five years old and that it was all his fault. Now he does his skipping, and he’s grateful; it gets him out of the room, away from his studies and burns his life down to a period of strain and ache which enables him to not think about anything else for a time.
He knows there are occasionally other people in the house, not that anyone comes and sees him. Someone has to deliver all the things he uses to study, and the dilapidation of the house makes Draco think there’s no house elf. But he hears laughter sometimes, down below, muted voices, conversation. A couple of times, even shouting and screaming and things being thrown, and Potter locked him in his room and traipsed downstairs with heavy footfalls, and sure enough the sounds soon stopped. Draco considered trying to make a run for it himself, vaulting downstairs, but Potter watches him with the intensity of a lover and the constancy of a prison guard, and it’s more than a little disturbing.
Draco kept the pen, after that first lesson. He used it to mark the passage of days with small scratches against the bed frame – until Potter found it and broke the pen in front of him and took the pieces away. He was up to thirty by that stage, almost a month, but the days just kept passing on and Draco was lost amongst them. He knows he’s being trained, of course. He recognises the signs, the symptoms, the little details – at first, Potter brought him oatmeal every day for breakfast. Draco hates oatmeal but that hardly matters – it is either that or nothing, and after a week of bitching, Draco realises it wasn’t doesn’t any good, and stops complaining. A few days of good behaviour, and he received spices and honey and sugar as a reward.
Potter might as well have patted him on the head like a pet, and oh, how that galls him.
He’s definitely being trained, and as exercises in psychological perversity go, Potter’s is both more gentle and more binding than any trick of Voldemort or his father. If he studies particularly hard then Potter lets his exercise period run longer, or might not even demand he exercise at all. Potter’s generosity is as unpredictable as anything else to do with the detestable young man, but then he holds the keys to this castle and Draco knows better than to annoy whoever is in charge.
He doesn’t know how long he’s been here, but his room has been transformed. He has Muggle things now; computer and television and CD player and Playstation, and if he’s very good, Potter will let him play Grand Theft Auto or Doom, and if he’s absolutely spellbindingly brilliant (ironic phrase for you), Potter will sit down and join him, and they’ll both partake of the solemn joy of shooting the crap out of something.
Sometimes Potter’s thin, contained anger lashes out at other people; Draco will come back from a toilet break or the shower – he’s allowed to do that by himself now, Potter trusts him, and worse, Draco isn’t entirely sure he wants to betray that trust – to find Harry riffling through the assorted material waiting for him at the bottom of his bed.
“You don’t need to learn all of this,” Potter tells him one afternoon, picking up a series of thick heavy manuals and dumping them on the floor. Draco just looked at him, waiting, hands gripping the white cotton sheets as he lay there on the bed. “Just this one,” he continued, and handed a slimmer book over, with a garish yellow and black cover that immediately makes Draco think of Hufflepuffs.
“What is it?” Draco asks, curious, and pushes the cotton sheet aside when Potter beckons him over to the Pentium II with a finger. Potter just looks at him, and so Draco boots the computer, eager and impatient and slightly pleased with himself that he knows what to call it now, all the bits and pieces and gets the usage of the term ‘boot.’ Perhaps he’ll survive this insanity after all.
“It’s the Dummies Guide to HTML,” Potter tells him, and Draco wants to snicker. It is suitable for Hufflepuffs after all, but he schools his face with the kind of control he never used to have, before Potter and defeat made sure he did.
“And the rest of it?” Draco knows he’s pushing from the look Potter gives him, and doesn’t care. He’s earned his right to be pushy by now, and besides, being pushy is part of who he is, even if he’s lost everything else.
“FTP, Visual Basic, CSS...” Potter tells Draco to open up Notepad. A few clicks of the mouse, and he does. “...Hermione even thought you should learn Java, but I’ve no idea why.”
Potter’s never spoken of anyone else, not before today, and Draco clings to the name like a lifeline. “...Maybe she wants to piss you off,” he suggests, wry and tentative, and the look that Potter gives him now makes him shiver.
“Maybe she does. At any rate, that much information would be overkill. You’re going to be a student, Malfoy, a geek. I just need you to be able to make a half-arsed website should the need arise.”
“Why?” Draco pushes just that little bit more. “Can you?”
“Fuck no,” Potter says, and laughs, sliding his glasses back up his nose. “That’s why I’ll have you around, Malfoy.” He settles on the bed, on Draco’s bed, feet up and relaxing, and glances over at Draco every now and then to make sure he’s going through all the lessons.
***
Draco thinks it’s a Thursday. It could be. But then it could be a Monday or a Friday or a Sunday just as well. He just tells himself it’s a Thursday because he told himself yesterday was a Wednesday, and even if he’s wrong, he likes the illusion of consistency. He shuffles down the corridor from the toilet, as the en-suite toilet is of course not working at the moment, and Potter doesn’t seem in a hurry to fix it, not that he would be.
Draco is garbed in the green robe that’s one of the few things Potter lets him wear about the House, and stops when he hears voices in his bedroom.
“I thought I’d come and see how your little experiment is progressing.” It’s Granger, and she sounds...openly bitter.
“Quite well, no thanks to you.” In comparison, Potter’s voice is all easy calm. “He’s learning faster than I could have hoped actually, and he retains what he learns.”
“What have you been teaching him?”
“Not everything you wanted me to. We started off on general knowledge, everyday terms – car, pen, television, lamp. Then we moved to specifics; electronics, mostly – the why and the how of household appliances. Right now we’re doing culture.”
“Culture?”
“I’ve been having him read. Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Austen, Dickens...Clancy, Le Carre, Tolkien. He’s listening to music as well.”
“Ah. The giants.” She doesn’t sound impressed, not that Draco can blame her– Clancy is after all, a rabid hack. “You think he’ll be grateful?”
“He is grateful.”
“You’ve left him with no choice. Nor have you given yourself one.”
“Don’t tell me you need me.”
“We do! You should see what’s happening out there!”
“I hear stories.”
“The world is falling apart!”
“So let it fall!” Potter yells, and there’s a moment of silence that stretches out into long, lonely minutes.
“...What music have you been introducing him to?” Granger finally asks and Draco moves forward, creeps along the wall towards the open door. He doesn’t want to disturb them yet; the conversation is too enjoyable, the suggestions of fracture and dissonance and antipathy all too intriguing for a sneaky little bastard such as himself.
“You can see for yourself,” Potter tells her, dismissively, and there’s a creak as someone sits down on the bed.
He can picture her reaching to the small bedside table, and going through the CD covers there, reading out the names. “The Pet Shop Boys...Abba...Madonna...Kylie Minogue...the Spice Girls.” She sets the last one down, and if her tone was bitter before, it’s acid now. “You’re making him into quite the little queer, aren’t you? Justin would be so proud.”
“Justin’s dead.”
“I’m aware of that thank you very much! I came here to talk sense into you, despite my opinion of your proclivities, Harry, and if you call me a breeder I shall slap you! Ron and I are very happy with each other.”
“Glad to hear it,” Harry tells her, and his laugh sounds like he’s dying. “What sense did you want to talk? That you want me back? That the world needs me?”
“It does.” Granger seems to be grinding her teeth from the sounds of things, and when Draco risks a peek inside, she looks it as well, all stubborn lines, giving Potter both greeting and defiance like a warrior queen of old, and Draco remembers what happened to Boadicea. Her arms are folded under the curve of her breasts, and the choice of her blouse makes her look about twenty years older. Draco realises with a sudden insight that this is another McGonagall in the making, and grimaces slightly.
“I’m not a researcher, Hermione, and even if I was, I’d probably end up dead through trying. What possible use could I be? Rally the fucking troops? Be a figurehead? My figurehead days are over.”
“If you were ever a figurehead, Harry,” Granger spits, and turns the name into a curse, “it was by your own choice. Who always avoided actually having to do anything other than one of your famous last stands, always made up on the fly? Who always left it to others to make the hard choices, the necessary decisions?”
“And who was all too happy to make them, to consider what was necessary and what wasn’t?” Draco’s heard that tone in Potter’s voice before, that low and generous taunt. He’s been on the receiving end of it several times himself, and even Voldemort wasn’t especially enamoured of its potency. “Just like school, wasn’t it, Hermione? Your plans, your brilliance, your will and desire and need to succeed. Only difference was how many people you had to play with, and the size of the stage you could shine on.”
Granger recoils at the suggestion, and Draco actually thinks she might break down and cry, but unfortunately all she does is gasp, and come back fighting. Stubborn, angry, self-righteous; these two are Gryffindors till the end, and Draco certainly doesn’t mind watching them tear each other apart.
It’s only something he’s been waiting for since he was eleven, after all.
“Don’t you dare suggest that, Harry Potter, don’t you dare.” Granger looks ready to do violence. That would be a sight to see, considering how she never got her hands dirty during the War.
“Oh, I dare. I dare because I am Harry Potter and you took the myth I was and made of me a legend. And used that legend to swell our ranks. And used that legend to tell people it didn’t matter if they died, as long as it was for the cause, as long as it was for me, because I made our cause noble and I made sure we couldn’t lose!”
“We were in a war! Some people were always going to die! I didn’t kill them!”
“No, you just chose the most expendable amongst my friends, and sacrificed them in gambits and feints and whatever other incredibly clever tactical manoeuvres you and Ron came up with.”
“Would you have preferred to lose the war?” Granger asks bluntly, and just when Draco thinks Potter’s going to deflate, that he can’t come up with any response to that, and Granger looks at him, harder than diamonds and more self-possessed than the Dark Lord himself, just when he’s about to dismiss Potter as waste, fool and has been, Potter manages to respond.
“No,” Potter murmurs, and he sounds almost chastened, hand idly running through hair grown long and shaggy. “No, I wouldn’t have preferred to lose the war. But I’m sick of your wars and I’m sick of the way we win them. I have given you my life and my friends and my rage and my hate and this time, Hermione, I can’t just wave my wand. Pull your own fucking miracle out of your own fucking arse and leave me and mine alone. I haven’t got anything left to give you, or the world.”
Despite himself, Draco can’t help but speak. It almost seems like a cue, and any good actor knows what his lines are. “Except me.”
Potter turns with a huge and slightly creepy smile plastered across his face, brushing the fringe of his hair back from his eyes. “You were watching!”
Draco strides into the room, the very picture of self-possession, like he’s used to disturbing foes both current and former while wearing nothing more than a tatty green bathrobe. “I like to watch,” he says, grandly, and Granger applauds them both with hollow, mocking claps.
“So this is your little Eliza Doolittle in the making,” she says, and Draco smirks because he actually gets the reference. “I wonder if he’ll fetch your slippers when this is all over?” Her tone is simpering, her eyes accusatory, and if Draco ever wondered why Potter is leaving with him, he begins to get an idea. It seems there are things even myths and legends can’t leave behind, and it’s a comforting notion; very egalitarian, even, and Draco always liked the possibility of bringing Potter down to his level.
Potter looks at her, bland and expressionless, and calls Draco over to him. Draco hesitates for a moment or two, and then Potter does look at him, and he doesn’t look well pleased, brow furrowed and voice cracking like a whip. “I said come here, Draco.”
Draco finds himself half way across the room before he even knows he’s moved. Potter’s hands settle on him; one curled around his shoulders, the other lightly playing with his hair. His voice is brazenly contemptuous. “You see what he’s like? Draco wants someone to tell him what to do, needs it. He’s bent knee and tried to please his father, Voldemort–”
“So it might as well be your turn to be pleased?”
“Maybe,” Potter murmurs, and turns Draco’s head around, fingers gripping his jaw. It’s not unpleasant, exactly, grip not firm enough to bruise and the sensation of being touched has its own rewards. Potter’s other hand slides down over his shoulder, pulls open the robe, slips inside. Draco’s hard now, suddenly, achingly hard, and it seems he likes surprises. Granger’s not leaving – although when he cranes his head to look at her, and sees a glimpse of bushy hair and her face in her hands, Potter turns Draco’s gaze back with those fingers, and now they are firm enough to bruise. “Don’t stop looking now, Hermione. After I’ve gone to all this trouble, training him, and you can’t bother to see how he begs?”
Potter’s hand creeps across his stomach, slow and steady and curls around his cock. Draco whimpers, shuddering, and can’t help but watch and pump his hips as Potter’s eyes narrow into slits, and he strokes him in an aching rhythm. A flick of his other wrist, and Draco’s robe flutters to the floor. He’s naked, naked and wanting and arched, having his cock fisted by Harry Potter on the first floor of the dying and formerly noble House of Black, and Granger’s breathing is raspier than his, probably out of revulsion and fear.
“I’ll go,” she stammers.
“What makes you think I’d let you go?” Potter snarls, and the lock clicks shut on the door.
“I’ll scream,” she promises.
“What makes you think anyone can hear you?”
Granger doesn’t cry, doesn’t dare cry. She sits like a good schoolgirl with her hands trapped under her thighs probably so she doesn’t try to throw something, or claw at Potter, and for that Draco is grateful. She’s afraid of what Potter might do if he is pushed further, Draco realises, and understands that feeling all too well.
Of course, it must be worse for her, he realises, knowing that she could have stopped it, might have stopped it, but just kept pushing Potter along, and realises furthermore that he doesn’t care about her guilt or salvation, except that it’s her damned fault. This is the world Hermione Granger created; this is the legacy of Godric and Dumbledore; this is where he doesn’t belong, not anymore.
“Suck,” Potter commands, and pushes two fingers between Draco’s lips, not expecting to be refused. When Draco balks, and balks he does, with gritted teeth and a faint blush of skin, Potter uses his thumb and middle finger to dig into Draco cheeks until Draco cries out in pain, and then two fingers slide between his lips with an ease and a precision that just makes his blush deeper. Draco always considered himself good at balking – protestation and refusal were some of his many talents, along with submission and acquiescence, ironically, but he’s never been able to refuse Harry Potter, no matter how hard he tries. He laves the fingers with his tongue, getting them all nice and slick and he has a fair idea of where this is going. Potter fucks his mouth with them, drawing his lips forward, and nods to himself like this is all going according to some plan, and for all Draco knows, it is.
The thought just makes him harder, and Potter smiles like he knows this, feeling Draco’s cock twitch in his grasp. Finally, he removes his fingers, leaving a slight ache in Draco’s jaw and the feeling of emptiness in his mouth, his tongue and lips languidly buzzing from all the exertion. Potter removes his hand, and licks along the palm, tasting Draco’s precome in plain sight, and Draco would die for this man, right now, right here and consider himself to have gotten a fair deal.
“Turn,” he says, and Draco turns, feeling Potter’s arm wrap around his waist, hearing Potter undo his belt and unzip his fly, knowing the rustle of fabric and the weight of his body pressed against him. He’s never done this before, and yet it doesn’t feel new. Feels natural, and Potter pets his hair before reaching down to spread his cheeks and slide one slick finger smoothly into Draco’s arse, and Draco mews.
“Why are you doing this?” Granger asks Potter, and now that Draco’s watching her, watching her watching him being fucked, he can see her face, blotchy, and the eye red-rimmed.
“Because I can,” Potter tells her, grinning like the devil on Draco’s shoulder, chin resting there, and Draco doesn’t have to see that grin because he’s memorised it since first year. “Because I was in a war, Hermione,” he adds finger the second, and Draco arches again, “and war leaves us all a little broken, don’t you think?”
“Are you blaming me for this?” she accuses him, voice choked and ugly with emotion.
“Why ever would I? It was people like this one,” a hand tangles in Draco’s hair, pulls him sharply up, and Potter slides his cock inside, causing them both to grunt, “people like Malfoy here who did all the killing. You just gave them targets.”
“Harry, please stop.”
“What? Talking or fucking?”
“Both!”
“But Draco here wouldn’t like me to stop the fucking, and I don’t want to stop talking, so I can’t. Sorry, Hermione.” He’s thrusting now, slow and deep and steady and burning, and even if Draco hasn’t done this before, it certainly feels like Potter has, from the way he works Draco’s body, kissing and biting his neck, one arm holding him up, using and abusing and manipulating him like some kind of instrument, and always, always looking over at Granger.
Draco can feel it, and he’s jealous. Might as well just be a piece of meat, for all the consideration he’s being given, might as well be anyone, and perhaps that’s the point Potter is making: stuff your battle and fuck your war, I don’t care about anyone anymore.
It’s hardly that Draco is romantic, but this is insulting. He’s the one being fucked, after all.
“You’re only the reason Justin’s dead, and Dean, and that Seamus only has one arm, and Hannah can’t sleep at night for the screaming, and oh God, what you did to Cho,” and Potter’s laughing, laughing as he fucks Draco and reads out the list of Granger’s crimes, “what you did to Cho was so fucking masterful she would have appreciated it if she’d lived to survive it.”
“She was a security risk.” Even now, Granger’s still capable of some steel, and Draco feels strangely excluded from the debate. Not that he’s entirely sure he wants to join in and become a target, either; they were, are and will be Gryffindors, after all, and Draco should have remembered that meant they were capable of anything. Even so, it is good to have confirmed that Potter is just as vicious, just as nasty, just as petty and just as human as Draco always knew him to be.
“So. You. Said. Yes.” Potter pauses, punctuating the moment with a particularly hard thrust that pushes Draco up on his toes and makes Granger look sick. “...What else did you say when we started, Hermione? That we might as well kill all the Death Eaters, because we wouldn’t be able to find a use for them after the war was done, and they did choose their path...”
“They did!”
“I think I’ve found a use for this broken little toy,” Potter murmurs against his hair, and Draco doesn’t need to know where his beady little gaze is focussed, body shuddering at the words, tightening, climaxing.
The floor is even more stained now, and Draco realises Potter will probably not bother to clean it.
Potter comes soon after, sagging against him, and when he pulls out, Draco wobbles on increasingly unsteady legs, tired and drained and slick with cooling sweat. “I’ve got you,” Potter tells him, one arm around his waist. “I’ve got you.”
The world fades around him, leaving Draco with just the smell of Potter, musky and sweaty and male, the feel of him, holding Draco steady and keeping him still, and then Granger is violently sick on the carpet.
The spell is broken, and Draco is annoyed – it’s the only magic he has left.
***
Potter wakes him one morning, a week after they fucked. That’s how Draco thinks of it, as fucking, dirty, dirty fucking, synonymous with concepts of buggery and fornication, and maybe even capital letters and the occasional exclamation mark. Potter waking him is in itself unusual, and he looks pensive, which really doesn’t suit him, Draco reflects – Potter looks like he needs to take a laxative whenever he does any hard thinking, and Draco pats himself on the back for remembering the right Muggle term.
“Here,” he says, simply, and throws some brochures on the sheets. Draco shifts, propping himself on his pillows, and sorts through them. All glossy, and covered with bright colours, slogans, pictures of sunsets and women with skimpy clothing. Travel advertisements, loudly proclaiming the virtues of half the world (but not, of course, of England) and Draco looks up, curious.
“Where are we going?” he asks, and Potter grins a very suspect grin.
“That’s up to you,” he says blandly, and scratches his nose, and it’s all very casual and offhand and not like they had sex at all. “You’ve been here for eight months, Malfoy. Almost done. Did you want to stay in Muggle England?”
“God no,” Draco replies, automatically, and wrinkles his nose in disgust at the very idea. What he needs is escape.
“You have to decide today so we can get all the travel arrangements sorted out.” Potter picks up a brochure, holding it in front of Draco like he’s some sort of invalid. “America?”
“I will not spend the rest of my life with a bunch of colonials who can’t spell.”
“France? Germany?”
Draco gives him a withering look. “What, to play the Englishman in exile, forever dreaming of warm beer, cricket and decent fish and chips.”
“Canada?”
“They have French people there, and not even properly French ones. If I wanted to spend my time around frogs, I would go to Paris. At least they have some nice scenery.”
“You’re not making this easy.”
“I didn’t think I was supposed to.” Draco smiles, and after a few moments, so does Potter.
FUCKING!!!! His brain flashes at the sight of that easy smile, and Draco politely tells it to go away.
“Why don’t you choose, then?” Potter tells him, and Draco does, holding his preferred destination aloft.
“Australia?”
“I will spend the rest of my life with a bunch of colonials who can spell. Besides, have you seen those beaches?”
Potter pulls out a folder from his tatty jacket and hands it over. It’s nothing special, as folders go. Beige, with no title or distinguishing marks, and the paper inside is crisp and typed and Muggle, and Draco’s produced similar on his computer and with his printer. It reads like a biographical extract of someone Draco doesn’t know: name, height, weight, hair colour and eye colour and racial identity all neatly summarised at the top, followed by three pages of background, and Draco just doesn’t get it.
“What is this?”
“This,” Potter says slowly, “is your life. Learn it, and forget all about Draco Malfoy.”
“But- but his hair is brown,” Draco protests, and the only answer is Potter’s smile.
***
Draco is distinctly unimpressed. This is an aeroplane, first class seating, all the alcohol that British Airways can ply him with (not that he’d drink it, he has no taste to humiliate himself in public), all the entertainment the service can provide, and yet it seems a tad...provincial, even if the steward isn’t ugly and has a fairly decent arse. They are so many hours into their flight, so many miles high in the sky, and Draco’s spent half his school career careening around on broomsticks, which makes the technological advancement of flight not so advanced after all.
“I’m bored,” he tells Potter, not for the first time, and runs fingers through his (brown) hair. His scalp itches, despite the fact Potter swears the dye he used wasn’t inflammatory in the slightest, and he resists the impulse to scratch.
“You could always go to the loo and look at your hair again,” Potter murmurs, seemingly engrossed in the in-flight magazine, not that Draco knows why – all it seems to be is a testament to the glories of Sweden as a travel destination, buxom women wearing little clothing (presumably not in Sweden, not in those outfits) and just how much complete and utter shit is available to the discerning traveller for a fee.
If Potter wants to ogle women, he can, and if he wants to spend his money (or the Ministry’s) unwisely, he can; Draco is hardly surprised at Potter’s capacity for idiocy, but he’s not about to emulate it in either case, because he isn’t a hero and therefore hasn’t got anything to fall back on or anyone to cover up for him.
It’s a worrying thought.
“It still itches,” Draco protests, and idly tries to do something with the fringe. Potter put the dye in a week ago – telling Draco it would give him time to get used to it – but every time he looks at himself in the mirror, it seems as though there’s a stranger looking back, a stranger that Draco knows rather better than he’d like, now. A stranger with hair that flops over his eyes and refuses to be anything other than a completely undistinguished shade of brown. It’s not ashy brown, not chocolate brown, not dark brown becoming black. It’s just nondescript, run of the mill, tacky, ghastly, plebeian brown, and worse still, the stranger wears glasses – Potter’s little joke, ha ha, hee hee – and the frames pinch his nose.
“I don’t care,” Potter replies, dryly, and never have truer words been spoken, in well, truth, because it’s certainly no jest. If there is a joke to be had, Draco is it, and he doesn’t much appreciate that. “You don’t look half bad like that, you know,” and Draco blushes, and Potter watches him, and smirks, and he only said it to make Draco blush, and oh god, if he could, he’d stab Potter in the eye with the fork they gave him at lunch. Potter seems to know this, and just smirks more, and Draco realises it’s not a question of could – it was never a question of could – it was always a question of would with him and Harry Potter, and he lacks the will to make good on his threats, as Harry did and will.
Potter leans forward, hands on his arm rests, ready to move. “If you’re not going to use the loo, I will,” and Draco moves to stop him, one hand on Potter’s arm, whispering in his ear, because this, this he can do. Draco Malfoy never would have done such a thing, of course, far too gauche and dependent and perverse for good pureblood boys such as he, but then he’s not Draco Malfoy anymore and that excuses a multitude of sins.
“Maybe I should join you,” he murmurs, doing his best to sound nonchalant, and Potter turns his head to look at him, one eyebrow raised, and it seems this whole seduction thing is slightly trickier than Draco figured, no matter how husky he makes his voice sound. “Maybe I should go down on you, wrap my lips around your cock, and just suck you until you come.”
There’s only the slightest trace of a blush on Potter’s skin, and that could be embarrassment, and probably is, and Draco feels mortified at how needy he sounded, how needy he is, because Potter fucked him, Potter fucked him and told him that he had him and hasn’t followed up on either since and Draco hasn’t got anything else to cling to.
“I think you might want to watch your language,” Potter tells him, and he’s definitely amused, and Draco wants to curl up and die and stab himself in the eye with the damned fork or fling himself out the plane, except he can’t, and it doesn’t matter that he watched the damn safety lecture and knows how many seats it is from where he is to the nearest exit. He can’t die because Potter won’t let him, or maybe because Potter wouldn’t give a damn if he did die, and Draco wants to prove him wrong for that.
“Why?” Draco snipes back, reduced to scathing commentary that’s not really commentary nor particularly scathing, and how the mighty have fallen indeed.
“You have an audience,” Potter points out, leaning over to murmur in his ear as he does so, and gestures with his finger. Draco looks, and oh, there’s a young girl sitting next to him, with blue eyes and cascading dusky blonde hair that manages to be rich and vibrant in hue despite the fact it looks vaguely like a bird’s nest. Her family is sitting on the other side of the aisle by the looks of things, engrossed in movies and radio and books, and all this poor child has is her pink tracksuit, similarly clothed Barbie (whose hair, Draco notices, has also been teased and poked until it looks like a bad Salvador Dali painting), and the pervert sitting next to her for company.
Shampoo, Draco thinks, the connections forming in his head. Chemistry, organic compounds, science, and realises there’s an entire world of people whose hair can be shiny, and glossimer thick, and who he wants to go around smelling all of a sudden to see exactly what herbal extracts they all use. Those people have to use tweezers and wax, deodorants and hairspray, just like he does now, and they’ve never known anything else.
“Don’t make a scene,” Potter tells him, clapping him on the shoulder, and stands, moving past them both. He’s all gangly frame and long legs, and has a nicer arse than the steward, not that Draco would ever tell him that. “I know you’ll be a good boy for me,” and he uses the hated name that isn’t Draco, but is Draco’s now.
When Potter comes back from the loo, spick and span and smelling slightly of lemons, he finds Draco sitting in his seat with the armrest up, and the young girl curled up against him with one of his arms over her shoulders, nestled into him as he reads her Saddle Club book in precise, aristocratic tones. She’s the first to notice Potter standing in the aisle, looking at them both, and glances up at Draco with those same wide eyes and a curious expression.
Draco hushes her with a finger to his lips, and merely looks at Potter, who refuses to take the bait and shuffles back into his seat, planting a light kiss on Draco’s hair as he does that sends all sorts of butterflies scurrying through Draco’s stomach. His magazine takes up his attention again, and Draco looks at him, stunned, emasculated, all but completely and utterly confused and just as he’s about to demand an explanation, a small hand tugs at his sleeve.
“Can we go back to reading my book?” the girl lisps, and Draco nods.
“Of course we can.” His tone is cloying, almost a coo, the kind of way Draco always hated being spoken to as a child, but he doesn’t know how else to do it.
“Is he your boyfriend?” she asks, with just the hint of a nervous giggle in her tone, like she’s talking about something that’s forbidden for girls such as her.
“No,” Draco breathes, and cuddles her close as he opens up the book. “He’s not.”
That, he figures, is part of the problem. The other part being that Draco wants him to be.
[Part three may be found here.]
