abaddon (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} nothingbutfic) wrote,@ 2005-01-24 02:03:00 |
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Fic: to go wherever dreaming goes [HP, H/D, 3/3, NC17.]
[First part, notes and summary may be found here; second part may be found here.]
to go wherever dreaming goes: part the third.
Draco taps the pen against his textbook and stares out the window. He can’t see much; the view is blocked off by some shrubs and a rather sickly looking tree that Draco doesn’t recognise, although that’s no surprise – herbology was never his best subject, and Potter failed to run him through his paces when it came to botany. Botany, not herbology, and Draco is still learning the difference. He’s been ten months here, in this town, this dormitory, this life and it still doesn’t feel like home.
He figures it probably never will, and decides that’s part of the point. He can’t afford to get too comfortable, and so every day is a task in remembering all the right things to say and using all the proper words and never, ever reaching for a wand that isn’t there.
Outside, the cars drone on up and down Elizabeth Street, and the rain spatters against the window. It rains often in Melbourne, wind gusty and sky grey, and Draco is glad he can huddle in his dorm when he’s not in class – the University campus is only across the street, after all – away from the vagaries of the city’s climate. Climate, not weather, because weather is the word of a people who take everything for granted, and climate is the word of a people who seek to predict and understand and categorise the world because they cannot understand it. Draco cannot take anything for granted anymore, so he remembers to say things like climate and get over his fear of cars and can fully comprehend the goodness that is Cadbury’s chocolate, now.
He is enrolled in a Bachelor of Arts/Law, which suits him fine. If he’s going to flourish in this brave new world he’s found himself in, he has to know how it works and who to push, and he knows all societies try and shape the future with the force of their law. The arts portion of his degree is more self-indulgence, psychology and literature majors for a student who has had no concept of either up until now. Why bother finding out the inner mysteries of the human mind when you can just change a person with a flick, swish and some carefully placed words? But that avenue – like so many others – is closed to Draco now, and he so makes do with Freud and Jung and Kinsey, penis envy and anima and spectrums of sexuality, but nothing seems to explain Potter no matter how hard he searches for answers.
Potter is doing a straight Arts degree, which makes Draco snort with bitter amusement. If there’s anything Potter is now, it seems to be straight. Draco has discovered the glories of salted crisps, vodka, McDonalds; Potter has discovered girls, and makes up for whatever romantic inadequacies haunted him at school by bringing a different one back to their dorm on a semi-regular basis. It makes Potter sound like some kind of slut, except he’s not, because men can’t be, and Potter is just sowing his oats with a cocky grin and casual indulgence that only seems to emphasise his appeal. It’s insufferable, really, the way some of Draco’s female classmates ‘drop by’ to borrow notes or study or whatever excuse requires Draco to politely introduce him to his roomie, roll his eyes, pick up his books and excuse himself to the campus library. After all, there’s only so much study he can do when there’s fucking going on; Potter hasn’t gotten any less vocal with time.
Draco works hard, studies, wants to be a solicitor, wants to become a judge, make a lot of money, control what he would as best he can from his chambers and the bench. His life is a series of well-defined steps in what he can and can’t do, and what he has to do to achieve his goals. In some ways, the very concept of higher education galls him; wizards and witches simply left school, took on gainful employment and learned what they needed to. Study was an eccentricity, research no vocation whatsoever. But he is not a wizard anymore; he knows this, feels it in his bones, and at times the mark that was on his wrist still aches and the sensation of something cut still makes him wince.
Every day, he wakes and remembers how to live again. In some ways, he’s grateful for the course he’s in. Four years, at least, maybe five; time to acclimatise himself, to finally put the past behind him and get used to What Must Be. It looms ominously in his mind in capital letters, perhaps because he knows he’s not ready to let go yet, and that’s also quite galling. It’s not as if he has anything to hate, here. His marks are outstanding, his classes are interesting – well, some of them, and those that aren’t are necessary and productive – his tutors aren’t completely deficient, and all of them recognise just how intelligent he is, which is more of a compliment to them, Draco thinks, than to himself. His contributions to class discussion are generally looked forward to and lauded, and he’s lost none of his ability to argue or cut someone down to size, which sadly he has to employ more than he’d like, but then people do dare to disagree with him, and that can’t be let alone. He cuts a sharp figure darting across campus in the blustery weather, all brown hair – he’s let it grow long now, because he can – glasses and big black coat that snaps around his ankles as he walks ever onward, never looking back. He doesn’t need the glasses of course, but Potter was right – Draco Malfoy would never be seen dead in glasses, which just goes to prove how much he’s not Draco nowadays.
He should be content with everything he has, and it’s so much more than he had – isolated, penniless, impotent (in the mystical sense) and thoroughly detested. Here, he even has friends, and although he’s not gorgeous – striking, but not gorgeous, and Draco thinks he’s quite happy with being unique – he’s been propositioned a few times, for dating and for sex, and said no to both. That strikes too deep, too close to notions of home and hearth and family and settling, and Draco isn’t ready to get comfortable, not quite yet. He’s still trying to find out who he is, now that he’s not Draco. All the things that defined Draco have gone, and it doesn’t matter if his new name has the same first letter, it doesn’t matter if Potter rewrote his background so only the details changed and he’s still the little bigot who could, it doesn’t matter; because even though Potter gave him a new life and made sure Draco didn’t even have to work that hard at it, he stole Draco’s hair and his clothes and his name and his House and his family and his history and his face, and nothing can make up for that.
Draco doesn’t even have a nemesis anymore; he has a roommate, who is often out late drinking and never bothers to clean his side of the room except when the cockroaches come to nest. Draco rarely drinks, not even to stop the laughter of Voldemort that still haunts his dreams, even when the nightmares leave him haggard and bitchy into the next day, not that anyone notices the difference.
He chose this town for the wrong reason: because it looked the most like London, all grey stately buildings and steel nightmares reaching for an overcast sky. He chose this life for the wrong reason: because he had nothing left, and he figured anything was better than the necessity of defeat and his own humiliation.
Now he’s no longer sure. After all, all he has now is stability, success, potential, and even if he doesn’t have Potter, Draco counts him as yet another thing he can lose, here. Or something he’s already lost to the appeal of newer conquests and the desire to be approaching normal.
The door bursts open with a clatter that counterpoints Draco’s arrhythmic tapping of his pen, and he looks up. It’s not the boys next door, looking to invite him to the pub; it’s not the dormitory warden, come to complain about Potter’s noise; it’s not his best friend Anna, who does actually know better than to barge in on someone like that. It’s Potter, who has no concept of consideration, which is odd considering he slept in shared accommodation all his school years, but then Draco figures he doesn’t count as someone who deserves to be considered, because he is – or was – a Slytherin after all, and was – or is – an easy fuck to boot. He’s laughing at some joke, backing into the room, all tight faded jeans and leather jacket, and damn, but the view is nice from this angle, and then he steps back just a little more and pulls some woman into the room, into their room, and Draco’s lips compress to a thin line.
She’s a wilty looking thing, with a pink top and black slacks and pink heels, and it’s almost sad considering neither pink or black are her colours, not that anyone’s clearly ever told her that. Her hair is mousy brown with rather ugly blonde streaks and huge gold loop earrings that do nothing except clash with her horribly fake tan, and Draco is so incredibly jealous that he wants to be sick all over her bloody heels just for the hell of it.
“Hey,” Potter says, turning from her, still holding one hand.
“Hey,” Draco replies, and is quite impressed with how he’s managed not to strangle them both within five seconds.
“This is Kelly,” Potter introduces her, and grins, presumably because she’s got big tits and Potter is a size queen. Not one of his girlfriends – and Draco uses the word loosely – has been flat-chested, and some could even give professional opera singers a run for their money. Indeed, from the look on her face, and the shape of her chest, Draco thinks the phrase ‘tits and giggles’ has never been more apt. Kelly looks in danger of toppling over, and Draco knows he won’t remember the name tomorrow, and Potter probably won’t either. In ten months Draco has met a veritable parade of insignificant others, blond, brunette, black and redheads, tall and short and girly and butch, and all were buxom, good looking, and didn’t have a hope. All stayed at least one night, and some even made a repeat performance, but none stayed longer, and most of them at least didn’t seem to take it too badly. Kelly will just fade into memory, into the crowd, along with Maria and Toni and Cate and Belinda and Elizabeth and Susan and all the rest, and Potter will still be there, and Draco will still be studying late in the library every now and then.
In fact, Draco decides it might be a good idea to vacate the premises right now. Potter and Kelly, now that she’s been properly introduced, are looking at each other with all the subtlety of rutting ferrets, and if Draco stays any longer he might have to watch them cuddle and kiss and paw limply at their respective clothing.
The library is bright and relatively empty and thankfully clean, if one doesn’t count the number of young gay men meeting for sex in the second floor loos. Draco stays until it closes, poring over case law until he begins to think he might actually need the glasses he wears for show, before gathering up his books and departing. The law quadrangle is quiet now, still in the dark, and Draco scurries as fast he can walk, full of the wizard’s rational fear for dark places, for the wizard knows exactly what lurks amongst shadows.
He arrives back at their dorm with arms heavy from the load they carry, and he wants nothing more than to just collapse. But there’s the sound of giggling coming from inside, and it seems that Potter is going to be a very lucky young man tonight.
He turns after a few sullen seconds staring at the doorway, and lugs his bag back over his shoulders with a grunt. There’s a late night tram to Richmond to be caught, and his seething jealousy will keep him occupied in the meanwhile. He turns up on Anna’s doorstep sometime after one, and doesn’t bother to even try to make his visit sound casual.
“It’s him, isn’t it?” she asks when she opens the door, and they don’t need names, not between them.
“Yes,” he says, and sags a little, because it costs him so very much to admit it.
“Oh, you really need to get over him,” Anna points out, and holds the door open.
Draco pauses with one foot over the threshold, because it’s never been spoken before, not between them, not between anyone, but he’s he can’t go back to that room and listen to them fuck in the bed next door. “Yes,” he murmurs, and lets himself break as Anna ushers him inside.
She is his best friend, is Anna. All strawberry blonde hair (not brown!), tie dye clothing, roly-poly and a permanently ruddy face that always seems to be creased into a smile. The smell of pot is heavy in the air when he enters the living room, and sure enough, Anna is smoking a joint. She offers it to him, he declines; she’s done it before and knows better but that’s part of the point. She has introduced him to Monty Python, to Buffy, to Red Dwarf and Doctor Who. She likes The Dark Is Rising; he likes Stephen Donaldson. They bicker over fantasy, history, myth and culture, and she despairs over his taste in music and men.
That night she pops Erik the Viking into the VCR, and tells him all about her New Year’s Party, three weeks hence.
“Am I invited?” he asks, oh so sly, and they both know what he’s after.
Anna taps him on the head, never once asking why his roots are silver sometimes, and he thinks he loves her for that alone. “Yes, Cinderella, you shall go to the Ball.”
“Who’s Cinderella?” Draco asks, and she laughs because she thinks he’s joking.
***
Draco drinks idly from a tumbler, leaning against the wall and doing his best to cultivate an air of rakish, detached cool. He isn’t entirely sure what’s in the glass – Anna handed it to him, and Anna is notorious for just mixing whatever she has handy and coming up with names on the fly – but it’s fruity and bitter, so there’s probably vodka and some sort of juice involved, and it gives him a pleasant enough buzz.
It’s a good night, this New Year’s, and Potter’s somewhere milling amongst the crowd as well, not that Draco has said much to him and that’s also a good thing. He doesn’t want to have to see Potter with whatever girl he’s decided to shack up with on this fine occasion, if only because the endless array sickens him and he rather feels sorry for each and every one of Potter’s victims as much as he loathes them.
Anna is out there as well, in her element, which probably consists of wearing the most natty knitted jumper and tie-dyed skirt she could find and handing out copies of The Communist Manifesto to whichever guests are drunk enough to take them.
Luke wanders into sight. Luke who is graceless and rather deliberate in his movements, who is tall and sandy haired and bulky. Meaty might also be a good word, with a crooked nose and lips slightly too big for his mouth and a mouth too big for his face, and he raises his beer at Draco and Draco raises his glass back.
He’s a classmate, after all, and it pays to be polite to someone who might have to do a peer assessment on a presentation next year.
He takes that as some kind of cue, and makes his way over, which is good, considering that Draco tests his balance by leaning off the wall and decides not to move for a while – he’s comfortable where he is.
“Hey,” says Luke, and he never was much of a conversationalist. In class, his arguments are as structured and deliberate as his movements; he’s a plodder, not especially imaginative, but relentless, and he will keep going until he gets his point. They’ve spent the semester fencing around each other, wildly differing styles of debate, and barely said two words on a personal level.
“How’d you go on the exam?” Luke asks, like a particularly eager puppy, flexing his shoulders, and they are quite well defined shoulders, Draco notices. Must be the alcohol.
Draco fixes him with a look that used to make first years cower and wet themselves – or at least he told himself it did, and Draco Malfoy never let fact get in the way of a good ego boost – but when Luke fails to soil his pants, he sighs and declaims his final result in ringing tones.
Luke tells him he got an even higher mark, and Draco’s jaw just about hits the floor.
“Sorry,” Luke apologises, although he clearly doesn’t mean it. “I could make it up to you, if you’re really pissed off.”
“How?” Draco asks, and then it hits him. Oh. Oh.
Luke is coming onto him, plodding, dependable, solid Luke, with muscles like a football player, a jaw like a comic book hero and the kind of honest reliability that good little gayboys pray for in their boyfriends. Luke who would never leave him, never cheat on him, never fuck with his mind or anyone else, and who’d probably agitate for gay marriage just so he could make an honest man out of Draco. Luke who has one meaty hand cupping Draco’s arse and his tongue down Draco’s throat, and oh, this is nice, and Draco steps on tip toes and curls his arms around Luke’s neck and just enjoys the sensation of being kissed and cuddled and groped in a way that makes him believe that Luke would have been a Hufflepuff in a life long gone.
He loses himself in the kiss, in Luke’s smell, all sweat and male and deodorant, enjoying the interplay of tongue and lips and the feel of hand groping an arsecheek, slipping into his back pocket to take a firm handful, and then Luke is gone, Luke is being pulled away, yanked out of his grasp by someone who looks angrier than Draco’s ever since him, and twice as drunk.
“Don’t you touch what’s mine,” Potter slurs, sullen and pissy, pushing Luke up against the wall despite the fact that Luke has both weight and height on him. “Don’t you fucking dare.”
Luke stares down at him, shocked and intimidated despite himself, surprise writ large all over his face. He looks between Draco – equally shocked – and Potter, who seems to be staggering in a way that precludes shock, and suggests rather a lot of alcohol.
“And as for you,” he says, tottering on his feet, and leans forward, hand sliding to curl around Draco’s neck in a hold that isn’t exactly friendly, pinning him like a insect on a slide against the wall before the hand slides up, cups his cheek, thumb stroking over the cheekbone. “As for you,” Potter repeats, looking at him, unfocussed, and moves in to kiss him right up against the wall in front of all those people.
The kiss is long and brutal and hard, a claiming. Luke was considerate, gentle, but Potter gives no quarter and expects none, clashing teeth, biting at Draco’s lower lip, and Draco curls his fingers in Potter’s shirt and sucks on his lip in return, drawing it out with a grin, and Potter tangles his fingers in Draco’s hair and presses their mouths together again. It’s not sweet, it’s not beautiful and makes no promises beyond the now, and Draco is dimly aware of the hulking figure that launches itself off the wall a few feet away and realises they’ve both broken a heart tonight.
It makes him feel dirty and he doesn’t care. Potter is in his arms, or he is in Potter’s – there is not much difference, now, and Potter is biting at his neck – fingers pulling tight on his hair, yanking his head back, sucking and leaving marks on his skin that Draco hopes will be there for weeks, that Draco hopes will never fade, because even if everyone at the party is too drunk to remember or dies in some freak accident, all he has to do is look in the mirror and beyond the glasses and bad brown hair will be a reminder of this night, of this, of Potter, that cannot be so easily refuted. Better still, it’s one that Potter will have to look at, and remember, and Draco shudders in his arms as Potter continues to mark his neck with half-moon indentations, murmuring “Mine, mine, you’re fucking mine, I made you, I broke you, you don’t get to play with anyone else, not after seven years, not unless I say so,” against his skin.
Potter is well past it, as Anna might say, but he can get himself together enough to pull Draco into the nearest room, all shadow and darkness, and doesn’t bother to turn the lights on. He closes the door with a firm hand, and pulls Draco in for another kiss, just as hard and bruising and demanding as the one before, and even if Draco doesn’t know exactly what is being demanded of him, he’s more than willing to give it. There’s the sound of a zip being undone, and the scratchy sound of cotton rubbing against denim, and one hand reaches to absently card through his hair, and Draco can see Potter grinning like a shark in the dim moonlight.
“Be a good boy for me, Draco,” Potter breathes, hand gently pushing him down, and as if he needed any more encouragement, Potter’s other hand moves back up, fingers wet and glistening to rub across Draco’s lips and give him a taste. Sure enough, when he kneels and flicks his tongue across Potter’s slit, his precome tastes just as it did not five seconds ago. Glassy, almost with a lack of taste, just a texture that’s sticky and viscous and almost cohesive, and Draco opens his lips delicately and takes Potter between them and Potter’s cock is in his mouth and Potter’s cock is in his mouth. He’s not the most well hung man in the world, and for that Draco is rather grateful, but his cock is thick, and it feels heavy, and his tongue can only do so much with that in his mouth, but moving up and down the underside for the moment seems to be enough, from the way Potter moans and writhes and fists in his hair.
Giving his first blowjob is an interesting experience; he’s rather sloppy, by his own standards, and there’s far too much drool on his chin, although that’s probably because soon enough Potter just grabs his head and fucks his mouth, forcing open Draco’s throat without much concern as to whether he gags or not. He does gag, of course – he has muscles and a reflex and other constituent features that go along with being human – and breathes through his nose as Potter just uses him, and being used just makes Draco harder in his trousers, which probably says more about his perversities than he’d like.
Potter takes a while to come, and Draco likes to think it’s more because he has a certain amount of stamina honed by the blowjobs of all those busty women than any innate inability of his to get Potter off in as little time as possible. He chokes a little, swallowing spit and precome and thick, heavy cock into his gullet, slurping as Potter makes him bob up and down. Potter whimpers, fragile little noises that make it sound like he’ll break any time now, just shudder and sag and collapse, and when he comes, it’s a bitter taste in Draco’s mouth and the shaking of Potter’s thighs under his hand that sets him to moaning, thrashing and climaxing in his pants.
Potter smiles at him then, all tentative and blushing and shy, Potter is, and Draco licks the come off his lips, and stands before him. His pants are now sticky, and uncomfortable, but he almost doesn’t feel it – there are more important things to consider, like the way Potter sinks into his arms, still shaking, and Draco realises he’d probably collapse if not for Draco, and that, that makes him smirk against Potter’s hair.
“I’ve got you,” Draco murmurs, smelling sweat and tasting come and knowing there’s a boy who wants him, and who he wants in return. “I’ve got you.”
***
“Get out,” is all Anna tells them when they emerge back into the party, and from the look of acute displeasure on her face, she isn’t actually joking, high or setting up some kind of elaborate prank. Draco stares at her for a few moments, bewildered, before he remembers that Luke is friendly with her, or she friendly with him, and either way, getting out is the most diplomatic of options.
He grabs Potter’s hand, head held high, and drags him out into the crisp night air, and promptly refuses to shiver no matter how cold it is. The night is young, he’s just had sex, and Draco’s hardly about to let the temperature get him down. Some quick consideration, and he carts Potter down the streets and towards Richmond station, now that the trams have finished for the night.
The train ride back to their dormitory is full of glances and awkward pauses and half begun conversations that lapse into smiles. Nothing needs to be said now, nothing can be said that could possibly sum up all Draco feels, and Draco holds Potter’s hand every inch of the way, not letting go until they are back in their dorm, back home, and the door is shut behind them. Draco’s got him, he’s got him and he’s not letting go and he can forget the past because all that matters is the future.
“Call me Harry,” Potter breathes, smelling of come and cheap booze, and Draco looks up sharply from the floor, where he’s been unlacing Potter’s shoes.
“But that’s not your name anymore,” Draco points out, and is rewarded with a clumsy pat to the head.
“I know, but someone’s got to remember who the fuck I am, even when I can’t, and it probably should be you.”
Soon enough, clothes are gone and sheets are rumpled – Harry’s bed is a mess, not that that’s any surprise, the man’s a complete and utter pig but Draco can forgive any and all sins as long as Harry keeps fucking him like this. Draco’s on his back, and it still hurts the second time around, no matter how slick Harry got him with fingers and tongue, and now Draco just lies back and doesn’t think of England. Harry leans down to kiss him every so often, panting, holding his face, and Draco smiles like he’s lost all sense, legs folded up on his torso and they’ll ache after a while, and they do, but it’s worth it.
Harry thrusts into him slow and deep and languid, and the night stretches into early morning and Draco gets hard again and Harry tells him he’s gorgeous like that, crying out “Oh, God, Oh” and Draco begs for it harder at the top of his voice and soon enough, there’s a banging that doesn’t involve them, the bed or the creaking of springs.
“Shut the fuck up,” a male voice – Michael – cries through the wall, and Draco looks at Harry and Harry looks back and they both dissolve into laughter. Michael is the literal boy next door, all sharp smile, black hair and ambition. He’s a law student, one who actually thinks that ‘ruling the world’ is a fair and viable goal, and Draco feels like telling him sometimes what that sort of purpose leads to, except he figures Michael doesn’t actually want to end up fucking his best enemy and worst friend. “Some of us are trying to sleep.”
“I assumed you would have cast a silencing charm,” Draco says blithely, and wriggles in a way that makes Harry moan, and oh, that’s a pleasing sound. “I must have forgot myself. Sorry.” He doesn’t sound sorry at all, and he’s not.
“No,” Harry says, and kisses him, gentle rather than bruising, sweet and not any less all consuming for the sweetness. “I think you remembered just who we are.”
He starts to fuck Draco again, never saying another word, just breathing harshly and looking down at Draco like he’s a revelation, some kind of beautiful, until he climaxes in him and Draco never wants to forget the way Harry looks when he comes even if everything else is gone.
In the morning Draco clambers out of sheets all sticky and rather stale smelling, and makes his way to the bathroom with the stiff yet proud walk of someone who’s been lucky enough to get some. Shower, scrub, and he’s back to celebrate the New Year, which Draco figures will involve a lot of lounging around and post-coital snuggling. What he doesn’t count on is the room being deserted, and a note blu-tacked to the back of the door. ‘Gone to get milk,’ Harry has written, and never before has he been more of a poster child for instant gratification.
Draco gazes around their small room that feels like home and looks like a pig sty, and decides to do some cleaning. Harry won’t give up looking till he’s found milk, bastard cousin of a mule that he is, and Draco is alert enough to know most shops will be closed for New Year’s, so he has time to do a thorough job while Harry roams the streets of Melbourne in his quest for milk.
Harry doesn’t clean anything unless he has to. Draco understands why – for the first time in his life, Harry’s allowed to be a slob, and he’s hardly about to give such privileges up. Conversely, Draco keeps his side of the room, clean, tidy and spotless, with the faint air of someone’s who obsessive-compulsive about such things, and it never struck him not to. There’s no-one else to do the work in this life, and certain standards must be maintained. No matter how much he has changed, he is still a coward, so he decides to change his own sheets first, clean out from under his own bed. There’s rather a lot of rubbish under there, as it turns out; tidy is tidy is tidy and as long as it looked good, Draco didn’t especially care where the rubbish went. He’s oddly pleased at his tendency to take shortcuts, restored to some vital part of his slightly iffy moral compass that he thought might have gone out the window.
Harry’s side takes him several hours; first there’s the crap to pick up from the floor and sort out. He dumps most of it, but keeps the odd textbook, note, magazine (not the porn ones though; they’re all of women and Draco is jealous) in a pile on the desk for Harry to sort out later. He bundles up the dirty socks and underwear and jock straps and various and sundry items of clothing no matter how repugnant Harry’s colour coordination may be at times and dumps it all in the dorm’s laundry, on the heavy duty cycle. There’s only so much standing around and glancing at his watch he can do before it gets boring, and the pleasant ache his body has only adds to his lack of anything resembling patience, but true to form if he leaves, someone will probably steal one of Harry’s ghastly Hawaiian shirts from the washing machine, and Draco will never hear the end of it.
It’s the sort of chore only a boyfriend would do, he thinks loftily to himself, and that makes all the sense in the world to him right now.
So he stays, and does the washing, and the drying, and the folding, and it’s all so horribly domestic it makes his teeth ache, but then he’s noticed over the year that Harry doesn’t so much fold things as jam them back in drawers and that will never do. Draco Malfoy has Standards, no matter what he calls himself, and the Signicant Others of Draco Malfoy also must have Standards, if they want to get blown on a semi-regular basis. Laundry done (for this week), Draco marches back with his clothes hamper and sets about to clean under Harry’s bed. Lying on the floor, one arm outstretched is hardly a dignified position to be in but then desperate times call for desperate measures, and by the looks of things Harry hasn’t cleaned this space for months, so it qualifies as a time both desperate and interesting, in the Chinese sense.
Beyond the chocolate wrappers and empty crisp packets and bottles of V and beer and even more porn magazines (including an edition of ‘Cheerleaders Go Wet And Wild’ which Draco suspects is probably a classic of the genre), Draco’s fingers find wood. It feels like something that can’t be, because Harry told him his wand was destroyed in the backlash along with Draco’s, and even showed Draco the pieces. His fingers try to grip it, and it slides from his grasp like the smooth wood doesn’t want to be taken up. Gritting his teeth, he rolls it towards him, and manages to stop it with his hand as it rolls out from under the bed.
He recognises it immediately, and runs to the bathroom to be sick. When Potter arrives back, milk in hand, Draco is sitting on the edge of the bed. Potter holds the small carton up like a trophy, and Draco summons a grin that he doesn’t feel. Harry puts it in the small fridge they have, wraps an arm around Draco’s waist, kisses his hair. Draco lets him, and knows he won’t believe any of Potter’s lies anymore. He is Potter, after all, not Harry, and that makes all the difference.
When Potter goes down on him later that night, Draco closes his eyes, bunches his fist in his mouth and refuses to see it.
***
He dreams, and even in his dreams he wants to close his eyes, because he knows what he’ll see. Again, Potter confronts Voldemort. Again he unleashes his charm, damns Draco, changes the world. This time, when the world fades to white, Draco feels himself fall to the floor like it happens to someone else, sees himself hit his head, sees himself collapse into unconsciousness.
Potter’s wand is a scattering of fragments and splinters strewn over the stone floor, and more than a few seem to have struck his palm, his wrist, cut at the skin of his forehead. At his feet is something black and burned and twisted, and Draco thinks it might have been a phoenix feather, once.
Voldemort is nothing more than a pile of empty robes now, and Draco doesn’t care because Potter steps forward with wide, eager eyes, ignoring his own hurts and Draco’s condition to bend down and pick up his enemy’s wand, slipping it inside his robes with a furtive look.
Draco wasn’t awake to see it, but he knows that is how it must have happened, and as Voldemort’s laughter rings in his ears again, Draco struggles towards wakefulness with the realisation that he has utterly, utterly lost, and this is all the future he has to look forward to: a page just as empty and pointless as his past.
***
“Draco!” Potter’s voice is distant and hollow and loud, and he calls again. “Draco!”
Draco wakes to find Potter shaking him violently, and with the sweep of his hand he pushes Potter away and curls his sheets over him like a form of a shield, moving into the corner of the bed and up against the wall. Anything, so long as he gets his distance.
“You were having a nightmare,” Potter says, and runs fingers through his hair that he doesn’t have to dye and adjusts glasses that he wears naturally, and is used to. “You were screaming.”
“Of course I was having a nightmare,” Draco spits at him, all sound and fury, and signifying something very much indeed.
“Look, Draco, if it’s about the fact I took some of your money for the milk–” Potter says, and he’s so stupid and he must think that Draco is even more stupid, and Draco groans.
“It’s not about the motherfucking milk, you twat. You have Voldemort’s wand,” he says, and the words hang heavy in the air between them. “You can leave me any time you want and go back: a simple priori incatatem and see what he did.”
“Oh.”
“You can be a hero, save the world, win the day, get the girl. Isn’t that what heroes do? I have seen all the films, thanks to you. I know exactly what I have to look forward to.”
“Draco-”
“You can leave me any time you want,” Draco hisses, and flies at him, hands pounding at Potter’s chest. “I can’t go fucking anywhere because this is all you’ve left me with, and you can leave me any time you want!”
He breaks down into sobs, and Potter grabs his wrists and holds him there, making sure he’s helpless and impotent and all but pissing in the wind, and presses gentle kisses all over his face. “I’m not going anywhere,” he murmurs quietly, “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Prove it,” Draco dares him, nothing else he can do, and finally, Potter nods.
“Alright.”
***
It is cold in the law quad, for all that it’s January in Australia and therefore should actually be blisteringly hot during the day. It wasn’t on New Year’s, for which Draco is grateful for, as the heat makes him wilt in a way that’s most unattractive. Blame the vagaries of Melbourne’s climate, he thinks, and is a little less grateful at how cold it is at midnight in what should be summer.
Officially, he’s on watch duty, which basically means keeping his hands warm under his arms and keeping an eye out for any stray security guards. Harry is perched over the nearest rubbish bin, and Draco has no idea why they had to use this one, except maybe for some obscure symbolic meaning. Around them, the sandstone buildings seem to impress themselves against the night sky, and the arches that surround the cloisters are full of shadows.
There’s a snap, and Draco turns to see Harry chuck the two pieces of Voldemort’s wand into the bin, and follow it with lighter fluid and a lit match. The fluid catches light well enough, and the wood happily crackles away. Draco forces himself to look, watches the wand turn black. The sensation of being cut intensifies briefly; he feels light headed, dizzy, and reels backwards.
Harry catches him, steadies him. “You’d have fallen over if I wasn’t here,” he comments.
“If you weren’t here, I wouldn’t be here,” Draco points out in reply, and isn’t too ungracious to accept the kiss, when offered. Harry takes his hand, and they go home; there is still time for lounging around and post-coital snuggling.
On their way back, they see a security guard racing along towards the quad. There’s a fire hazard back there, after all, and it’s someone else’s problem to deal with, for once.
***
They wake sleepy and sated and in the same bed at what is the utterly impossible hour of 6am. Someone knocks furiously at the door, and Harry sighs, gets out of bed and slips on his boxers and pads across the floor to open it, kicking aside the Chinese take away cartons they had from last night.
Draco props himself up with one elbow on the pillow and decides to enjoy the view. Less enjoyable is Michael, who demands to know if they’ve heard the news and waves a newspaper in Harry’s face. They haven’t, so he leaves them with the paper and darts off, arms waving in the air and crying out to everyone else down the corridor.
Harry takes a few moments to read the front page, then tosses The Age over to Draco and sinks down in the chair at his desk. Draco – whose reflexes have not been slowed by his time that doesn’t involve playing Quidditch – grabs the paper before it hits his face and scans the text.
He has to read it again to properly comprehend it, and a third time to let it sink in, but he knows it’s true. He doesn’t feel cut anymore, after all.
“You knew this would happen,” Draco breathes, aghast, and Harry starts polishing his glasses on a tissue.
“I suspected,” he replies, and doesn’t look up. “Dumbledore said a few things, before he died. About what Tom had always boasted about; about how dependent we were on wands and charms and our own technology.”
“You knew this would happen, and yet you still did destroyed the wand.”
“I need you,” Harry tells him, simply, honestly, easily, like it’s his greatest truth. It probably is, Draco reflects; they’re all a little broken now, a tad incomplete. The parts mesh together, and the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. “Harry Potter needs a Draco Malfoy.”
Warm fuzzy assurances appear to be the flavour of the month. Draco begins to suspect Harry’s actually a closet romantic, not that he minds.
“Even when Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy no longer exist?”
“Especially when Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy no longer exist.”
Draco realises that again, Harry had a choice between the world, and him, and this time, Harry chose him. The paper flutters to the ground out of his grasp, ignored now. The headline still screams ‘Magic Was Real!’ and the photos depict all sorts of people in robes (not to mention the odd unicorn, centaur, goblin and the like) who just happened to appear on the streets of every major city in the world and many of the minor ones at 11pm on the night of January the First, 2000, just when Harry destroyed Voldemort’s wand and all the charms vanished from the world, including the ones that kept them all safe and secret and separate. Draco supposes if they’re lucky, they might get somewhere to stay, now they have no world of their own, now that magic is once and for all dead.
He wonders absently how they’ll cope with shampoo and tweezers.
Nothing matters now, nothing matters apart from the fact Harry’s here and he’s kissing him, and he’s not going to leave because there’s nowhere to go back to. “Mine,” Draco says without realising he is, kissing him on the lips, the eyes, the jaw, the neck, and Harry smiles and tangles his hands in the sheets and pulls them right off.
“Yours,” he says, stretching Draco out and pinning him to the bed in a way that makes no doubt as to his intentions. He’s hardly subtle, but then Draco likes him that way.
“The door!” Draco realises, swearing, and sure enough, the door is still open, precariously and looking ready to swing wide at any moment.
Harry presses him back down with a hand to his chest the moment he reflexively tries to raise up, and glances back at the door with a broad smile. The door closes itself with a click, and Draco looks at him, stunned.
“Now, you try.”
“Me? But I was stilled–”
“Do you still feel stilled?”
“...No. I haven’t. Not since last night.”
Harry scrambles off him, kisses his hair, and his eyes are shining with an emotion both tender and bold. Draco feels Harry’s arm curl around his shoulders, and snuggles in, looking up at him and thinks: love, yes, this could be love.
Expectantly, Harry ruffles his hair, and Draco, never one to try to disappoint, stares at the door with an air of a man who thinks he can move mountains. He forms the idea in his head, pictures it– and the door swings open, and shut.
“Don’t believe everything you read,” Harry tells him, and he’s still not leaving.
***
Later that night, Draco dreams. He dreams of victory and failure and apotheosis, and Voldemort’s laughter echoes yet again in his ears.
Shut the fuck up, he tells his former master, or my boyfriend will kill you. Again.
He settles into more peaceful dreams as the laughter finally subsides, never to be repeated, and the world?
Moves on.
[First part, notes and summary may be found here; second part may be found here.]
to go wherever dreaming goes: part the third.
Draco taps the pen against his textbook and stares out the window. He can’t see much; the view is blocked off by some shrubs and a rather sickly looking tree that Draco doesn’t recognise, although that’s no surprise – herbology was never his best subject, and Potter failed to run him through his paces when it came to botany. Botany, not herbology, and Draco is still learning the difference. He’s been ten months here, in this town, this dormitory, this life and it still doesn’t feel like home.
He figures it probably never will, and decides that’s part of the point. He can’t afford to get too comfortable, and so every day is a task in remembering all the right things to say and using all the proper words and never, ever reaching for a wand that isn’t there.
Outside, the cars drone on up and down Elizabeth Street, and the rain spatters against the window. It rains often in Melbourne, wind gusty and sky grey, and Draco is glad he can huddle in his dorm when he’s not in class – the University campus is only across the street, after all – away from the vagaries of the city’s climate. Climate, not weather, because weather is the word of a people who take everything for granted, and climate is the word of a people who seek to predict and understand and categorise the world because they cannot understand it. Draco cannot take anything for granted anymore, so he remembers to say things like climate and get over his fear of cars and can fully comprehend the goodness that is Cadbury’s chocolate, now.
He is enrolled in a Bachelor of Arts/Law, which suits him fine. If he’s going to flourish in this brave new world he’s found himself in, he has to know how it works and who to push, and he knows all societies try and shape the future with the force of their law. The arts portion of his degree is more self-indulgence, psychology and literature majors for a student who has had no concept of either up until now. Why bother finding out the inner mysteries of the human mind when you can just change a person with a flick, swish and some carefully placed words? But that avenue – like so many others – is closed to Draco now, and he so makes do with Freud and Jung and Kinsey, penis envy and anima and spectrums of sexuality, but nothing seems to explain Potter no matter how hard he searches for answers.
Potter is doing a straight Arts degree, which makes Draco snort with bitter amusement. If there’s anything Potter is now, it seems to be straight. Draco has discovered the glories of salted crisps, vodka, McDonalds; Potter has discovered girls, and makes up for whatever romantic inadequacies haunted him at school by bringing a different one back to their dorm on a semi-regular basis. It makes Potter sound like some kind of slut, except he’s not, because men can’t be, and Potter is just sowing his oats with a cocky grin and casual indulgence that only seems to emphasise his appeal. It’s insufferable, really, the way some of Draco’s female classmates ‘drop by’ to borrow notes or study or whatever excuse requires Draco to politely introduce him to his roomie, roll his eyes, pick up his books and excuse himself to the campus library. After all, there’s only so much study he can do when there’s fucking going on; Potter hasn’t gotten any less vocal with time.
Draco works hard, studies, wants to be a solicitor, wants to become a judge, make a lot of money, control what he would as best he can from his chambers and the bench. His life is a series of well-defined steps in what he can and can’t do, and what he has to do to achieve his goals. In some ways, the very concept of higher education galls him; wizards and witches simply left school, took on gainful employment and learned what they needed to. Study was an eccentricity, research no vocation whatsoever. But he is not a wizard anymore; he knows this, feels it in his bones, and at times the mark that was on his wrist still aches and the sensation of something cut still makes him wince.
Every day, he wakes and remembers how to live again. In some ways, he’s grateful for the course he’s in. Four years, at least, maybe five; time to acclimatise himself, to finally put the past behind him and get used to What Must Be. It looms ominously in his mind in capital letters, perhaps because he knows he’s not ready to let go yet, and that’s also quite galling. It’s not as if he has anything to hate, here. His marks are outstanding, his classes are interesting – well, some of them, and those that aren’t are necessary and productive – his tutors aren’t completely deficient, and all of them recognise just how intelligent he is, which is more of a compliment to them, Draco thinks, than to himself. His contributions to class discussion are generally looked forward to and lauded, and he’s lost none of his ability to argue or cut someone down to size, which sadly he has to employ more than he’d like, but then people do dare to disagree with him, and that can’t be let alone. He cuts a sharp figure darting across campus in the blustery weather, all brown hair – he’s let it grow long now, because he can – glasses and big black coat that snaps around his ankles as he walks ever onward, never looking back. He doesn’t need the glasses of course, but Potter was right – Draco Malfoy would never be seen dead in glasses, which just goes to prove how much he’s not Draco nowadays.
He should be content with everything he has, and it’s so much more than he had – isolated, penniless, impotent (in the mystical sense) and thoroughly detested. Here, he even has friends, and although he’s not gorgeous – striking, but not gorgeous, and Draco thinks he’s quite happy with being unique – he’s been propositioned a few times, for dating and for sex, and said no to both. That strikes too deep, too close to notions of home and hearth and family and settling, and Draco isn’t ready to get comfortable, not quite yet. He’s still trying to find out who he is, now that he’s not Draco. All the things that defined Draco have gone, and it doesn’t matter if his new name has the same first letter, it doesn’t matter if Potter rewrote his background so only the details changed and he’s still the little bigot who could, it doesn’t matter; because even though Potter gave him a new life and made sure Draco didn’t even have to work that hard at it, he stole Draco’s hair and his clothes and his name and his House and his family and his history and his face, and nothing can make up for that.
Draco doesn’t even have a nemesis anymore; he has a roommate, who is often out late drinking and never bothers to clean his side of the room except when the cockroaches come to nest. Draco rarely drinks, not even to stop the laughter of Voldemort that still haunts his dreams, even when the nightmares leave him haggard and bitchy into the next day, not that anyone notices the difference.
He chose this town for the wrong reason: because it looked the most like London, all grey stately buildings and steel nightmares reaching for an overcast sky. He chose this life for the wrong reason: because he had nothing left, and he figured anything was better than the necessity of defeat and his own humiliation.
Now he’s no longer sure. After all, all he has now is stability, success, potential, and even if he doesn’t have Potter, Draco counts him as yet another thing he can lose, here. Or something he’s already lost to the appeal of newer conquests and the desire to be approaching normal.
The door bursts open with a clatter that counterpoints Draco’s arrhythmic tapping of his pen, and he looks up. It’s not the boys next door, looking to invite him to the pub; it’s not the dormitory warden, come to complain about Potter’s noise; it’s not his best friend Anna, who does actually know better than to barge in on someone like that. It’s Potter, who has no concept of consideration, which is odd considering he slept in shared accommodation all his school years, but then Draco figures he doesn’t count as someone who deserves to be considered, because he is – or was – a Slytherin after all, and was – or is – an easy fuck to boot. He’s laughing at some joke, backing into the room, all tight faded jeans and leather jacket, and damn, but the view is nice from this angle, and then he steps back just a little more and pulls some woman into the room, into their room, and Draco’s lips compress to a thin line.
She’s a wilty looking thing, with a pink top and black slacks and pink heels, and it’s almost sad considering neither pink or black are her colours, not that anyone’s clearly ever told her that. Her hair is mousy brown with rather ugly blonde streaks and huge gold loop earrings that do nothing except clash with her horribly fake tan, and Draco is so incredibly jealous that he wants to be sick all over her bloody heels just for the hell of it.
“Hey,” Potter says, turning from her, still holding one hand.
“Hey,” Draco replies, and is quite impressed with how he’s managed not to strangle them both within five seconds.
“This is Kelly,” Potter introduces her, and grins, presumably because she’s got big tits and Potter is a size queen. Not one of his girlfriends – and Draco uses the word loosely – has been flat-chested, and some could even give professional opera singers a run for their money. Indeed, from the look on her face, and the shape of her chest, Draco thinks the phrase ‘tits and giggles’ has never been more apt. Kelly looks in danger of toppling over, and Draco knows he won’t remember the name tomorrow, and Potter probably won’t either. In ten months Draco has met a veritable parade of insignificant others, blond, brunette, black and redheads, tall and short and girly and butch, and all were buxom, good looking, and didn’t have a hope. All stayed at least one night, and some even made a repeat performance, but none stayed longer, and most of them at least didn’t seem to take it too badly. Kelly will just fade into memory, into the crowd, along with Maria and Toni and Cate and Belinda and Elizabeth and Susan and all the rest, and Potter will still be there, and Draco will still be studying late in the library every now and then.
In fact, Draco decides it might be a good idea to vacate the premises right now. Potter and Kelly, now that she’s been properly introduced, are looking at each other with all the subtlety of rutting ferrets, and if Draco stays any longer he might have to watch them cuddle and kiss and paw limply at their respective clothing.
The library is bright and relatively empty and thankfully clean, if one doesn’t count the number of young gay men meeting for sex in the second floor loos. Draco stays until it closes, poring over case law until he begins to think he might actually need the glasses he wears for show, before gathering up his books and departing. The law quadrangle is quiet now, still in the dark, and Draco scurries as fast he can walk, full of the wizard’s rational fear for dark places, for the wizard knows exactly what lurks amongst shadows.
He arrives back at their dorm with arms heavy from the load they carry, and he wants nothing more than to just collapse. But there’s the sound of giggling coming from inside, and it seems that Potter is going to be a very lucky young man tonight.
He turns after a few sullen seconds staring at the doorway, and lugs his bag back over his shoulders with a grunt. There’s a late night tram to Richmond to be caught, and his seething jealousy will keep him occupied in the meanwhile. He turns up on Anna’s doorstep sometime after one, and doesn’t bother to even try to make his visit sound casual.
“It’s him, isn’t it?” she asks when she opens the door, and they don’t need names, not between them.
“Yes,” he says, and sags a little, because it costs him so very much to admit it.
“Oh, you really need to get over him,” Anna points out, and holds the door open.
Draco pauses with one foot over the threshold, because it’s never been spoken before, not between them, not between anyone, but he’s he can’t go back to that room and listen to them fuck in the bed next door. “Yes,” he murmurs, and lets himself break as Anna ushers him inside.
She is his best friend, is Anna. All strawberry blonde hair (not brown!), tie dye clothing, roly-poly and a permanently ruddy face that always seems to be creased into a smile. The smell of pot is heavy in the air when he enters the living room, and sure enough, Anna is smoking a joint. She offers it to him, he declines; she’s done it before and knows better but that’s part of the point. She has introduced him to Monty Python, to Buffy, to Red Dwarf and Doctor Who. She likes The Dark Is Rising; he likes Stephen Donaldson. They bicker over fantasy, history, myth and culture, and she despairs over his taste in music and men.
That night she pops Erik the Viking into the VCR, and tells him all about her New Year’s Party, three weeks hence.
“Am I invited?” he asks, oh so sly, and they both know what he’s after.
Anna taps him on the head, never once asking why his roots are silver sometimes, and he thinks he loves her for that alone. “Yes, Cinderella, you shall go to the Ball.”
“Who’s Cinderella?” Draco asks, and she laughs because she thinks he’s joking.
***
Draco drinks idly from a tumbler, leaning against the wall and doing his best to cultivate an air of rakish, detached cool. He isn’t entirely sure what’s in the glass – Anna handed it to him, and Anna is notorious for just mixing whatever she has handy and coming up with names on the fly – but it’s fruity and bitter, so there’s probably vodka and some sort of juice involved, and it gives him a pleasant enough buzz.
It’s a good night, this New Year’s, and Potter’s somewhere milling amongst the crowd as well, not that Draco has said much to him and that’s also a good thing. He doesn’t want to have to see Potter with whatever girl he’s decided to shack up with on this fine occasion, if only because the endless array sickens him and he rather feels sorry for each and every one of Potter’s victims as much as he loathes them.
Anna is out there as well, in her element, which probably consists of wearing the most natty knitted jumper and tie-dyed skirt she could find and handing out copies of The Communist Manifesto to whichever guests are drunk enough to take them.
Luke wanders into sight. Luke who is graceless and rather deliberate in his movements, who is tall and sandy haired and bulky. Meaty might also be a good word, with a crooked nose and lips slightly too big for his mouth and a mouth too big for his face, and he raises his beer at Draco and Draco raises his glass back.
He’s a classmate, after all, and it pays to be polite to someone who might have to do a peer assessment on a presentation next year.
He takes that as some kind of cue, and makes his way over, which is good, considering that Draco tests his balance by leaning off the wall and decides not to move for a while – he’s comfortable where he is.
“Hey,” says Luke, and he never was much of a conversationalist. In class, his arguments are as structured and deliberate as his movements; he’s a plodder, not especially imaginative, but relentless, and he will keep going until he gets his point. They’ve spent the semester fencing around each other, wildly differing styles of debate, and barely said two words on a personal level.
“How’d you go on the exam?” Luke asks, like a particularly eager puppy, flexing his shoulders, and they are quite well defined shoulders, Draco notices. Must be the alcohol.
Draco fixes him with a look that used to make first years cower and wet themselves – or at least he told himself it did, and Draco Malfoy never let fact get in the way of a good ego boost – but when Luke fails to soil his pants, he sighs and declaims his final result in ringing tones.
Luke tells him he got an even higher mark, and Draco’s jaw just about hits the floor.
“Sorry,” Luke apologises, although he clearly doesn’t mean it. “I could make it up to you, if you’re really pissed off.”
“How?” Draco asks, and then it hits him. Oh. Oh.
Luke is coming onto him, plodding, dependable, solid Luke, with muscles like a football player, a jaw like a comic book hero and the kind of honest reliability that good little gayboys pray for in their boyfriends. Luke who would never leave him, never cheat on him, never fuck with his mind or anyone else, and who’d probably agitate for gay marriage just so he could make an honest man out of Draco. Luke who has one meaty hand cupping Draco’s arse and his tongue down Draco’s throat, and oh, this is nice, and Draco steps on tip toes and curls his arms around Luke’s neck and just enjoys the sensation of being kissed and cuddled and groped in a way that makes him believe that Luke would have been a Hufflepuff in a life long gone.
He loses himself in the kiss, in Luke’s smell, all sweat and male and deodorant, enjoying the interplay of tongue and lips and the feel of hand groping an arsecheek, slipping into his back pocket to take a firm handful, and then Luke is gone, Luke is being pulled away, yanked out of his grasp by someone who looks angrier than Draco’s ever since him, and twice as drunk.
“Don’t you touch what’s mine,” Potter slurs, sullen and pissy, pushing Luke up against the wall despite the fact that Luke has both weight and height on him. “Don’t you fucking dare.”
Luke stares down at him, shocked and intimidated despite himself, surprise writ large all over his face. He looks between Draco – equally shocked – and Potter, who seems to be staggering in a way that precludes shock, and suggests rather a lot of alcohol.
“And as for you,” he says, tottering on his feet, and leans forward, hand sliding to curl around Draco’s neck in a hold that isn’t exactly friendly, pinning him like a insect on a slide against the wall before the hand slides up, cups his cheek, thumb stroking over the cheekbone. “As for you,” Potter repeats, looking at him, unfocussed, and moves in to kiss him right up against the wall in front of all those people.
The kiss is long and brutal and hard, a claiming. Luke was considerate, gentle, but Potter gives no quarter and expects none, clashing teeth, biting at Draco’s lower lip, and Draco curls his fingers in Potter’s shirt and sucks on his lip in return, drawing it out with a grin, and Potter tangles his fingers in Draco’s hair and presses their mouths together again. It’s not sweet, it’s not beautiful and makes no promises beyond the now, and Draco is dimly aware of the hulking figure that launches itself off the wall a few feet away and realises they’ve both broken a heart tonight.
It makes him feel dirty and he doesn’t care. Potter is in his arms, or he is in Potter’s – there is not much difference, now, and Potter is biting at his neck – fingers pulling tight on his hair, yanking his head back, sucking and leaving marks on his skin that Draco hopes will be there for weeks, that Draco hopes will never fade, because even if everyone at the party is too drunk to remember or dies in some freak accident, all he has to do is look in the mirror and beyond the glasses and bad brown hair will be a reminder of this night, of this, of Potter, that cannot be so easily refuted. Better still, it’s one that Potter will have to look at, and remember, and Draco shudders in his arms as Potter continues to mark his neck with half-moon indentations, murmuring “Mine, mine, you’re fucking mine, I made you, I broke you, you don’t get to play with anyone else, not after seven years, not unless I say so,” against his skin.
Potter is well past it, as Anna might say, but he can get himself together enough to pull Draco into the nearest room, all shadow and darkness, and doesn’t bother to turn the lights on. He closes the door with a firm hand, and pulls Draco in for another kiss, just as hard and bruising and demanding as the one before, and even if Draco doesn’t know exactly what is being demanded of him, he’s more than willing to give it. There’s the sound of a zip being undone, and the scratchy sound of cotton rubbing against denim, and one hand reaches to absently card through his hair, and Draco can see Potter grinning like a shark in the dim moonlight.
“Be a good boy for me, Draco,” Potter breathes, hand gently pushing him down, and as if he needed any more encouragement, Potter’s other hand moves back up, fingers wet and glistening to rub across Draco’s lips and give him a taste. Sure enough, when he kneels and flicks his tongue across Potter’s slit, his precome tastes just as it did not five seconds ago. Glassy, almost with a lack of taste, just a texture that’s sticky and viscous and almost cohesive, and Draco opens his lips delicately and takes Potter between them and Potter’s cock is in his mouth and Potter’s cock is in his mouth. He’s not the most well hung man in the world, and for that Draco is rather grateful, but his cock is thick, and it feels heavy, and his tongue can only do so much with that in his mouth, but moving up and down the underside for the moment seems to be enough, from the way Potter moans and writhes and fists in his hair.
Giving his first blowjob is an interesting experience; he’s rather sloppy, by his own standards, and there’s far too much drool on his chin, although that’s probably because soon enough Potter just grabs his head and fucks his mouth, forcing open Draco’s throat without much concern as to whether he gags or not. He does gag, of course – he has muscles and a reflex and other constituent features that go along with being human – and breathes through his nose as Potter just uses him, and being used just makes Draco harder in his trousers, which probably says more about his perversities than he’d like.
Potter takes a while to come, and Draco likes to think it’s more because he has a certain amount of stamina honed by the blowjobs of all those busty women than any innate inability of his to get Potter off in as little time as possible. He chokes a little, swallowing spit and precome and thick, heavy cock into his gullet, slurping as Potter makes him bob up and down. Potter whimpers, fragile little noises that make it sound like he’ll break any time now, just shudder and sag and collapse, and when he comes, it’s a bitter taste in Draco’s mouth and the shaking of Potter’s thighs under his hand that sets him to moaning, thrashing and climaxing in his pants.
Potter smiles at him then, all tentative and blushing and shy, Potter is, and Draco licks the come off his lips, and stands before him. His pants are now sticky, and uncomfortable, but he almost doesn’t feel it – there are more important things to consider, like the way Potter sinks into his arms, still shaking, and Draco realises he’d probably collapse if not for Draco, and that, that makes him smirk against Potter’s hair.
“I’ve got you,” Draco murmurs, smelling sweat and tasting come and knowing there’s a boy who wants him, and who he wants in return. “I’ve got you.”
***
“Get out,” is all Anna tells them when they emerge back into the party, and from the look of acute displeasure on her face, she isn’t actually joking, high or setting up some kind of elaborate prank. Draco stares at her for a few moments, bewildered, before he remembers that Luke is friendly with her, or she friendly with him, and either way, getting out is the most diplomatic of options.
He grabs Potter’s hand, head held high, and drags him out into the crisp night air, and promptly refuses to shiver no matter how cold it is. The night is young, he’s just had sex, and Draco’s hardly about to let the temperature get him down. Some quick consideration, and he carts Potter down the streets and towards Richmond station, now that the trams have finished for the night.
The train ride back to their dormitory is full of glances and awkward pauses and half begun conversations that lapse into smiles. Nothing needs to be said now, nothing can be said that could possibly sum up all Draco feels, and Draco holds Potter’s hand every inch of the way, not letting go until they are back in their dorm, back home, and the door is shut behind them. Draco’s got him, he’s got him and he’s not letting go and he can forget the past because all that matters is the future.
“Call me Harry,” Potter breathes, smelling of come and cheap booze, and Draco looks up sharply from the floor, where he’s been unlacing Potter’s shoes.
“But that’s not your name anymore,” Draco points out, and is rewarded with a clumsy pat to the head.
“I know, but someone’s got to remember who the fuck I am, even when I can’t, and it probably should be you.”
Soon enough, clothes are gone and sheets are rumpled – Harry’s bed is a mess, not that that’s any surprise, the man’s a complete and utter pig but Draco can forgive any and all sins as long as Harry keeps fucking him like this. Draco’s on his back, and it still hurts the second time around, no matter how slick Harry got him with fingers and tongue, and now Draco just lies back and doesn’t think of England. Harry leans down to kiss him every so often, panting, holding his face, and Draco smiles like he’s lost all sense, legs folded up on his torso and they’ll ache after a while, and they do, but it’s worth it.
Harry thrusts into him slow and deep and languid, and the night stretches into early morning and Draco gets hard again and Harry tells him he’s gorgeous like that, crying out “Oh, God, Oh” and Draco begs for it harder at the top of his voice and soon enough, there’s a banging that doesn’t involve them, the bed or the creaking of springs.
“Shut the fuck up,” a male voice – Michael – cries through the wall, and Draco looks at Harry and Harry looks back and they both dissolve into laughter. Michael is the literal boy next door, all sharp smile, black hair and ambition. He’s a law student, one who actually thinks that ‘ruling the world’ is a fair and viable goal, and Draco feels like telling him sometimes what that sort of purpose leads to, except he figures Michael doesn’t actually want to end up fucking his best enemy and worst friend. “Some of us are trying to sleep.”
“I assumed you would have cast a silencing charm,” Draco says blithely, and wriggles in a way that makes Harry moan, and oh, that’s a pleasing sound. “I must have forgot myself. Sorry.” He doesn’t sound sorry at all, and he’s not.
“No,” Harry says, and kisses him, gentle rather than bruising, sweet and not any less all consuming for the sweetness. “I think you remembered just who we are.”
He starts to fuck Draco again, never saying another word, just breathing harshly and looking down at Draco like he’s a revelation, some kind of beautiful, until he climaxes in him and Draco never wants to forget the way Harry looks when he comes even if everything else is gone.
In the morning Draco clambers out of sheets all sticky and rather stale smelling, and makes his way to the bathroom with the stiff yet proud walk of someone who’s been lucky enough to get some. Shower, scrub, and he’s back to celebrate the New Year, which Draco figures will involve a lot of lounging around and post-coital snuggling. What he doesn’t count on is the room being deserted, and a note blu-tacked to the back of the door. ‘Gone to get milk,’ Harry has written, and never before has he been more of a poster child for instant gratification.
Draco gazes around their small room that feels like home and looks like a pig sty, and decides to do some cleaning. Harry won’t give up looking till he’s found milk, bastard cousin of a mule that he is, and Draco is alert enough to know most shops will be closed for New Year’s, so he has time to do a thorough job while Harry roams the streets of Melbourne in his quest for milk.
Harry doesn’t clean anything unless he has to. Draco understands why – for the first time in his life, Harry’s allowed to be a slob, and he’s hardly about to give such privileges up. Conversely, Draco keeps his side of the room, clean, tidy and spotless, with the faint air of someone’s who obsessive-compulsive about such things, and it never struck him not to. There’s no-one else to do the work in this life, and certain standards must be maintained. No matter how much he has changed, he is still a coward, so he decides to change his own sheets first, clean out from under his own bed. There’s rather a lot of rubbish under there, as it turns out; tidy is tidy is tidy and as long as it looked good, Draco didn’t especially care where the rubbish went. He’s oddly pleased at his tendency to take shortcuts, restored to some vital part of his slightly iffy moral compass that he thought might have gone out the window.
Harry’s side takes him several hours; first there’s the crap to pick up from the floor and sort out. He dumps most of it, but keeps the odd textbook, note, magazine (not the porn ones though; they’re all of women and Draco is jealous) in a pile on the desk for Harry to sort out later. He bundles up the dirty socks and underwear and jock straps and various and sundry items of clothing no matter how repugnant Harry’s colour coordination may be at times and dumps it all in the dorm’s laundry, on the heavy duty cycle. There’s only so much standing around and glancing at his watch he can do before it gets boring, and the pleasant ache his body has only adds to his lack of anything resembling patience, but true to form if he leaves, someone will probably steal one of Harry’s ghastly Hawaiian shirts from the washing machine, and Draco will never hear the end of it.
It’s the sort of chore only a boyfriend would do, he thinks loftily to himself, and that makes all the sense in the world to him right now.
So he stays, and does the washing, and the drying, and the folding, and it’s all so horribly domestic it makes his teeth ache, but then he’s noticed over the year that Harry doesn’t so much fold things as jam them back in drawers and that will never do. Draco Malfoy has Standards, no matter what he calls himself, and the Signicant Others of Draco Malfoy also must have Standards, if they want to get blown on a semi-regular basis. Laundry done (for this week), Draco marches back with his clothes hamper and sets about to clean under Harry’s bed. Lying on the floor, one arm outstretched is hardly a dignified position to be in but then desperate times call for desperate measures, and by the looks of things Harry hasn’t cleaned this space for months, so it qualifies as a time both desperate and interesting, in the Chinese sense.
Beyond the chocolate wrappers and empty crisp packets and bottles of V and beer and even more porn magazines (including an edition of ‘Cheerleaders Go Wet And Wild’ which Draco suspects is probably a classic of the genre), Draco’s fingers find wood. It feels like something that can’t be, because Harry told him his wand was destroyed in the backlash along with Draco’s, and even showed Draco the pieces. His fingers try to grip it, and it slides from his grasp like the smooth wood doesn’t want to be taken up. Gritting his teeth, he rolls it towards him, and manages to stop it with his hand as it rolls out from under the bed.
He recognises it immediately, and runs to the bathroom to be sick. When Potter arrives back, milk in hand, Draco is sitting on the edge of the bed. Potter holds the small carton up like a trophy, and Draco summons a grin that he doesn’t feel. Harry puts it in the small fridge they have, wraps an arm around Draco’s waist, kisses his hair. Draco lets him, and knows he won’t believe any of Potter’s lies anymore. He is Potter, after all, not Harry, and that makes all the difference.
When Potter goes down on him later that night, Draco closes his eyes, bunches his fist in his mouth and refuses to see it.
***
He dreams, and even in his dreams he wants to close his eyes, because he knows what he’ll see. Again, Potter confronts Voldemort. Again he unleashes his charm, damns Draco, changes the world. This time, when the world fades to white, Draco feels himself fall to the floor like it happens to someone else, sees himself hit his head, sees himself collapse into unconsciousness.
Potter’s wand is a scattering of fragments and splinters strewn over the stone floor, and more than a few seem to have struck his palm, his wrist, cut at the skin of his forehead. At his feet is something black and burned and twisted, and Draco thinks it might have been a phoenix feather, once.
Voldemort is nothing more than a pile of empty robes now, and Draco doesn’t care because Potter steps forward with wide, eager eyes, ignoring his own hurts and Draco’s condition to bend down and pick up his enemy’s wand, slipping it inside his robes with a furtive look.
Draco wasn’t awake to see it, but he knows that is how it must have happened, and as Voldemort’s laughter rings in his ears again, Draco struggles towards wakefulness with the realisation that he has utterly, utterly lost, and this is all the future he has to look forward to: a page just as empty and pointless as his past.
***
“Draco!” Potter’s voice is distant and hollow and loud, and he calls again. “Draco!”
Draco wakes to find Potter shaking him violently, and with the sweep of his hand he pushes Potter away and curls his sheets over him like a form of a shield, moving into the corner of the bed and up against the wall. Anything, so long as he gets his distance.
“You were having a nightmare,” Potter says, and runs fingers through his hair that he doesn’t have to dye and adjusts glasses that he wears naturally, and is used to. “You were screaming.”
“Of course I was having a nightmare,” Draco spits at him, all sound and fury, and signifying something very much indeed.
“Look, Draco, if it’s about the fact I took some of your money for the milk–” Potter says, and he’s so stupid and he must think that Draco is even more stupid, and Draco groans.
“It’s not about the motherfucking milk, you twat. You have Voldemort’s wand,” he says, and the words hang heavy in the air between them. “You can leave me any time you want and go back: a simple priori incatatem and see what he did.”
“Oh.”
“You can be a hero, save the world, win the day, get the girl. Isn’t that what heroes do? I have seen all the films, thanks to you. I know exactly what I have to look forward to.”
“Draco-”
“You can leave me any time you want,” Draco hisses, and flies at him, hands pounding at Potter’s chest. “I can’t go fucking anywhere because this is all you’ve left me with, and you can leave me any time you want!”
He breaks down into sobs, and Potter grabs his wrists and holds him there, making sure he’s helpless and impotent and all but pissing in the wind, and presses gentle kisses all over his face. “I’m not going anywhere,” he murmurs quietly, “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Prove it,” Draco dares him, nothing else he can do, and finally, Potter nods.
“Alright.”
***
It is cold in the law quad, for all that it’s January in Australia and therefore should actually be blisteringly hot during the day. It wasn’t on New Year’s, for which Draco is grateful for, as the heat makes him wilt in a way that’s most unattractive. Blame the vagaries of Melbourne’s climate, he thinks, and is a little less grateful at how cold it is at midnight in what should be summer.
Officially, he’s on watch duty, which basically means keeping his hands warm under his arms and keeping an eye out for any stray security guards. Harry is perched over the nearest rubbish bin, and Draco has no idea why they had to use this one, except maybe for some obscure symbolic meaning. Around them, the sandstone buildings seem to impress themselves against the night sky, and the arches that surround the cloisters are full of shadows.
There’s a snap, and Draco turns to see Harry chuck the two pieces of Voldemort’s wand into the bin, and follow it with lighter fluid and a lit match. The fluid catches light well enough, and the wood happily crackles away. Draco forces himself to look, watches the wand turn black. The sensation of being cut intensifies briefly; he feels light headed, dizzy, and reels backwards.
Harry catches him, steadies him. “You’d have fallen over if I wasn’t here,” he comments.
“If you weren’t here, I wouldn’t be here,” Draco points out in reply, and isn’t too ungracious to accept the kiss, when offered. Harry takes his hand, and they go home; there is still time for lounging around and post-coital snuggling.
On their way back, they see a security guard racing along towards the quad. There’s a fire hazard back there, after all, and it’s someone else’s problem to deal with, for once.
***
They wake sleepy and sated and in the same bed at what is the utterly impossible hour of 6am. Someone knocks furiously at the door, and Harry sighs, gets out of bed and slips on his boxers and pads across the floor to open it, kicking aside the Chinese take away cartons they had from last night.
Draco props himself up with one elbow on the pillow and decides to enjoy the view. Less enjoyable is Michael, who demands to know if they’ve heard the news and waves a newspaper in Harry’s face. They haven’t, so he leaves them with the paper and darts off, arms waving in the air and crying out to everyone else down the corridor.
Harry takes a few moments to read the front page, then tosses The Age over to Draco and sinks down in the chair at his desk. Draco – whose reflexes have not been slowed by his time that doesn’t involve playing Quidditch – grabs the paper before it hits his face and scans the text.
He has to read it again to properly comprehend it, and a third time to let it sink in, but he knows it’s true. He doesn’t feel cut anymore, after all.
“You knew this would happen,” Draco breathes, aghast, and Harry starts polishing his glasses on a tissue.
“I suspected,” he replies, and doesn’t look up. “Dumbledore said a few things, before he died. About what Tom had always boasted about; about how dependent we were on wands and charms and our own technology.”
“You knew this would happen, and yet you still did destroyed the wand.”
“I need you,” Harry tells him, simply, honestly, easily, like it’s his greatest truth. It probably is, Draco reflects; they’re all a little broken now, a tad incomplete. The parts mesh together, and the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. “Harry Potter needs a Draco Malfoy.”
Warm fuzzy assurances appear to be the flavour of the month. Draco begins to suspect Harry’s actually a closet romantic, not that he minds.
“Even when Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy no longer exist?”
“Especially when Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy no longer exist.”
Draco realises that again, Harry had a choice between the world, and him, and this time, Harry chose him. The paper flutters to the ground out of his grasp, ignored now. The headline still screams ‘Magic Was Real!’ and the photos depict all sorts of people in robes (not to mention the odd unicorn, centaur, goblin and the like) who just happened to appear on the streets of every major city in the world and many of the minor ones at 11pm on the night of January the First, 2000, just when Harry destroyed Voldemort’s wand and all the charms vanished from the world, including the ones that kept them all safe and secret and separate. Draco supposes if they’re lucky, they might get somewhere to stay, now they have no world of their own, now that magic is once and for all dead.
He wonders absently how they’ll cope with shampoo and tweezers.
Nothing matters now, nothing matters apart from the fact Harry’s here and he’s kissing him, and he’s not going to leave because there’s nowhere to go back to. “Mine,” Draco says without realising he is, kissing him on the lips, the eyes, the jaw, the neck, and Harry smiles and tangles his hands in the sheets and pulls them right off.
“Yours,” he says, stretching Draco out and pinning him to the bed in a way that makes no doubt as to his intentions. He’s hardly subtle, but then Draco likes him that way.
“The door!” Draco realises, swearing, and sure enough, the door is still open, precariously and looking ready to swing wide at any moment.
Harry presses him back down with a hand to his chest the moment he reflexively tries to raise up, and glances back at the door with a broad smile. The door closes itself with a click, and Draco looks at him, stunned.
“Now, you try.”
“Me? But I was stilled–”
“Do you still feel stilled?”
“...No. I haven’t. Not since last night.”
Harry scrambles off him, kisses his hair, and his eyes are shining with an emotion both tender and bold. Draco feels Harry’s arm curl around his shoulders, and snuggles in, looking up at him and thinks: love, yes, this could be love.
Expectantly, Harry ruffles his hair, and Draco, never one to try to disappoint, stares at the door with an air of a man who thinks he can move mountains. He forms the idea in his head, pictures it– and the door swings open, and shut.
“Don’t believe everything you read,” Harry tells him, and he’s still not leaving.
***
Later that night, Draco dreams. He dreams of victory and failure and apotheosis, and Voldemort’s laughter echoes yet again in his ears.
Shut the fuck up, he tells his former master, or my boyfriend will kill you. Again.
He settles into more peaceful dreams as the laughter finally subsides, never to be repeated, and the world?
Moves on.
