HD 'Observed at the Punch Bowl', As Per The Prophet
"Dance with me, Malfoy."
Malfoy was wearing his usual black, but it was velvet and silk. His hair shone in the light of a thousand candlepower and his lips were red from where he'd bitten them. Harry wasn't questioning his impulse as much as he'd been a moment ago. Black suited the lean, spare frame; it brought out the dazzle of silver-shot pewter; it gave even the faint violet shadows under Malfoy's eyes a rakish air. He was heavy-lidded and looked bored to tears, lounging back by the punch bowl table, and the only desire Harry had right then was to start him up. By force, if necessary.
"No, Potter," Malfoy replied instantly. He turned back to Pansy Parkinson, who was hovering off his flank. "You were saying, Pans?"
"No, really. Just one dance, Malfoy," Harry said, firming his shoulders under his new dress robes and stepping closer. He'd get up Malfoy's nose right smart if the git didn't pay attention to him. "Once won't hurt. Besides, you owe me," he gibed.
The jaw shot back around like a whipcrack and Malfoy's glare could've sliced right through steel. His eyes flashed and the liquid sloshed in his tumbler.
"How dare you, Potter?" he hissed. "To bring life debts up here, of all places? It's true—Gryffindors have no tact, do they? Now—no! Again, no. Thank you. And be off with you, please. I'm busy."
"Draco…." murmured Parkinson, glancing speculatively back-and-forth between Harry's earnest, determined stare and Malfoy's enraged one. "Maybe…"
"Shut it, Pans!" Malfoy snapped. "I'll handle this. Did you hear me, Potter? Stop staring!"
"You're afraid, aren't you?"
Harry rocked back on his heels, nodding his head ever so slowly. He looked good, or so Hermione had assured him, in a green so deep a hue that it, too, was almost black. His hair was subdued into something that made sense for once—and didn't require a full pot of Sleekeasy's. His clothes fit, and he was fairly fit, if he did say so himself. Nothing to disgrace a Malfoy by simply dancing with him. "It must be that," he concluded, and took a sip of his own punch. "I don't look that bad tonight."
"It is not what you look like, Potter," Malfoy enunciated each word, each syllable distinctly, as if he were chewing them up and spitting them out. "It is that you are you and I am me. Now, excuse me. I was attempting to enjoy this farce and you're not helping matters. Go bother the love of your life or something. Not me."
"Don't have one," Harry shot back. He cocked his chin and met Malfoy's eyes dead-on. "Do you? 'Cause that would be one reason you don't want to dance with me, but I can't think of too many others, right off the bat. Fear, maybe."
"Don't be ridiculous, Potter!" Malfoy huffed. Parkinson was gracefully sliding away from the immediate area and she looked to be struggling manfully not to burst into giggles. Hermione, stationed across the room with Ron, met Harry's gaze briefly and nodded. "I'm not afraid of you! By no means!"
Encouraged, Harry kept on. He was nothing if not stubborn.
"Come on, Malfoy," he wheedled. "What will it hurt? Dance with me," Harry repeated, deliberately making himself purr the last three words, so that they emerged from his lips more as an invitation to something salacious than a simple request to-what? Waltz? That's what the music was, at least. Harry sighed and wished someone other than Mandy Brocklehurst had been in charge of choosing the band. Ravenclaws and raves did not mix, it seemed. No Weird Sisters within fifty leagues.
Malfoy had meanwhile elevated his chin to a very high angle and was looking down his nose.
"No, Potter," he said simply, scowling. But Harry only smirked. He'd caught the little jolt Malfoy had suffered just now, when Harry had allowed his tone to slide from reasonable to seductive. The prat was breathing a tad faster, too, if Harry wasn't mistaken.
He smiled his growing pleasure at Malfoy and this one was an open, honest smile, the type he shared with his mates when something was pleasant. Malfoy's eyes widened, and Harry set down his own half-empty glass and reached out and helped himself to Malfoy's. That, too, went on the buffet table and he'd his hand on Malfoy's arm in a split-second flat, so Malfoy wouldn't bolt.
"Potter—what?"
Malfoy seemed to be trying to decide if he wished to be furious or merely insulted. Harry stepped forward again, well into Malfoy's personal space, and looked up through his lashes. Hermione had said his eyes were one of his best features and that he should use them, damn it, to get what he wanted. He wanted his arms 'round this git who'd tormented him for seven years straight and not because they were having yet another fight, either.
"Draco, just one?" Harry murmured, and made sure to come off as both teasing and mostly harmless. Malfoy was gawping, as much as he ever gawped, but he'd not moved a muscle otherwise. Seemed to be frozen in place, on the contrary. Blond icicle. "I promise it'll be fine. I took lessons—Hermione made me."
"What? You?" Malfoy was like a helium balloon. Little bursts of startled sound escaped him. "I don't—I can't—"
He stuck a hand up abruptly, the flat of his palm waving vaguely about before Harry's face and chest, but at least it wasn't a fist. Harry took a deep breath and put his hands where he'd been wanting to for some considerable time now: one on Malfoy's hip, sliding it there beneath the swinging gape of Malfoy's gorgeously soft velvet robe and letting his palm spread wide and hot across wool so thin it was almost cellular; the other snaking around Malfoy's aimless hand and capturing it gently, wrapping his fingers tightly so it couldn't pull free.
He stepped back, away from the wall, and his motion took Malfoy with him. Another step crabwise, and they were on the edge of the dance floor. People shuffled over and made room, as they generally did for Harry Potter, these days. Post-Voldemort.
Malfoy had said nothing, though his chest was heaving and he'd opened his mouth several times, only just to close it again. Now he managed to sputter: "Potter! What in Merlin's Name do you think you're doing?"
"Dancing, Malfoy," Harry grinned, tipping his head back on his neck so he could keep his gaze locked on target. Malfoy was flushed and flustered and, by Godric, it really became him. "With you, finally. S'nice, don't you think?"
Malfoy blinked, and then set his shoulders, stepping into the waltz with purpose for the first time. He regarded Harry steadily—assessing—and then he nodded, just the once, and tightened his own fingers 'round Harry's. His hip canted forward as they swayed and turned—one-two-three, one-two-three—and fell more firmly against the heat of Harry's sweaty palm. All around them, their schoolmates were gaping and giggling and whispering, but neither Harry nor Malfoy let that bother them in the slightest. They'd more important things to settle.
"Well, alright then, Potter," he allowed finally. "If that's what you want? But I'm leading next time. If there is a next time." It wasn't a question, quite, but it was.
Harry, having accomplished this one huge thing, let his face be taken over by silly, gormless grin. He was no fool; he knew very well what exactly his dear old rival was asking. Malfoy's gaze, he noted, was a bit guarded at this moment, but hopeful.
"You can definitely lead next time, Malfoy," he chuckled, unable to keep all the boundless excitement bubbling up his throat contained. "You can lead all the time—I don't care. Hermione only taught me this one and one other, so I'm at your mercy. Sort of. In a manner of speaking, I meant."
"Are you?" Malfoy's ears practically cocked up, and the air of unease which had been hovering invisible over his tall, graceful figure vanished as if it had never been. Here again was the assured Malfoy Harry knew, but still—different. His eyes glittered and there was a tiny pleased curl to those perfectly shaped lips of his. "I'll take that under advisement, Potter. But…I wouldn't mind it."
"Mind what?" Harry asked cheerily, deftly moving them out of the way of a pair of Hufflepuffs, who'd stopping dancing altogether just to gawp. Gawping was a popular activity, this evening.
"Mind tutoring you, Potter," Malfoy murmured, and ducked his pointy chin down, so it was on level with Harry's ear. Suddenly, they were no longer the regulation foot or more apart the waltz required. Harry felt the heat rolling off the lean body he was gripping and inhaled slowly, his eyes drifting shut.
"In what subject, Malfoy?" he asked languidly, giving himself over to the real joy of waltzing. Hermione had never hinted it was so sexual! And he could distinctly feel a bulge behind the pleated plaquet front of Malfoy's trousers that perfectly matched his own. The bulge, not the trousers, of course. "I'm not exactly struggling here."
Gods, no—he wasn't. Not in any sense. Malfoy somehow managed to yank them more closely together as they twirled sedately, so that a random piece of parchment would have a terribly hard time inserting itself between them.
Harry didn't mind that development at all. Neither, apparently, did Malfoy.
"In any number of a relevant…subjects, Potter. Strikes me your formal education has been sadly lacking. 'Specially if you're relying solely on Granger, a Muggleborn."
"Hey!" Harry, annoyed at the jibe and annoyed that Malfoy made it in the first place, took himself back a step. "Don't pick on Hermione, Malfoy!"
"I'm not," Malfoy said quickly. He'd Harry hauled snug against his torso in a blink, and this time there was no mistaking how well and how closely they fit together. Hand to glove, even. Harry gulped, feeling his face heat. He'd imagined, of course, but, well…reality was a fuck of lot better.
"I only meant there's things she wouldn't know, even from all the many books available on formal etiquette. There is such a thing as learning through experience, Potter," Malfoy added, and the suave growl of his lowered voice in Harry's ear set him to shivering. "I meant no disrespect—not now. Not a bloody idiot, Potter," Malfoy insisted, and was clearly a bit irked that Harry would even consider that as a possibility.
"Yeah, okay," Harry agreed, relaxing his rigid stance, flowing back into the rhythm of step-step-turn. He shifted his head over, too, as far as he could. Malfoy's face was right there—that nose, that jaw, those eyes and their tell-tale purple shadows. The golden buzz of down on skin that likely never dared spot, if it knew its proper place.
Those lips. He'd had fantasies about those lips for months now, same as he'd fantasies about Malfoy's body heat and his elegant bones and the flesh that covered them and—well, suffice to say, it wasn't at all platonic or merely friendly, what he felt for Malfoy.
"Yes," Harry said again, and now he wasn't just agreeing to be tutored, or accepting the implicit apology or anything anywhere near that superficial.
Malfoy's beak poked against his temple. There was a brush of lips—moist from where he'd just licked them; ragged from where he'd chewed on the very center of the bottom one—across Harry's scar. Harry could feel Malfoy's heartbeat. It was thundering along at a great rate—just like his own.
"D'you mind?"
It came out a little strangled, that. But he wanted to know. It was vastly important that he know, because they couldn't exactly discuss it, not right here, right now, not at the Hallowe'en Ball. And Harry wasn't budging an inch off the dance floor if he wasn't absolutely assured Malfoy wasn't fucking with his head. Much as he wanted to.
The not-kiss on Harry's forehead was followed instantly by a half-lick, designed to smooth away the furrows frowning caused. Malfoy took a deep breath and sighed it out, and Harry, twisting them both about on automatic feet, concluded Malfoy had finally dared relax, likely for the first time that evening.
"What do you think, Potter?"
The tongue was withdrawn and it was a silent smile described against Harry's hairline. Hips rolled against his, and Harry's incredibly alert cock slithered across the inner fabric of his trousers and the mated pressure of Malfoy's groin, as distended and as swollen as his own, and he deliberately forced himself further into the heart of all that heat. Would've taken a lot more than a simple sheet of parchment to separate them now.
Malfoy gasped, an almost inaudible inhalation, and if Harry had thought his pulse was rapid before, it was nothing compared to this pace. But then, nothing he'd ever felt before compared to this, his first dance with Malfoy.
They'd drifted to a standstill, as the last notes of the waltz sounded. What had begun so tentatively was on knife-edge. There really were only two outcomes, ever, Harry thought frantically, and was afraid to open his eyes, suddenly. Afraid, for once, to confront directly what might be lurking in familiar grey ones.
One either won or lost. Relationships lasted or they failed. Some never made it past the initial stages. That was reality, as he'd experienced with Ginny and Cho. Reality was harsh bitch, and exacted her toll on everyone, even stuck-up gits and born heroes.
The hips surged forward again, robes shifting, and Malfoy shifted his hands, as well, lacing the fingers of the one more tightly with Harry's even as he stretched their arms out before them; sliding the other slowly down the small of Harry's back till his waist was located and grasped, rock steady, enveloped in a possessive handprint of warmth. There was hardly a part of them not touching, now, all down their chests and stomachs and thighs. Fabric only heightened the intimacy, it seemed.
The first bars of the next dance rang out, and Harry opened his eyes, finally. One half-millimetre forward would bring them cheek-to-cheek, shoulders knocking, facing the uncertain future head-on, fearlessly.
"Harry?" Malfoy's eyebrows quirked, in that fascinating way he had. Harry blinked, entranced. "It's the tango next. Want me to show you how?"
Harry smiled. He grinned. He pecked the underside of Malfoy's jutting jaw quick as a flash and then nipped it. He bobbled up on his toes and sank down again, hopping nearly, with glee. He impelled his eager cock against Malfoy's restrained bulge and considered cheerily what Hermione had told him about the tango. Sex on legs, that was it. Shagging on the dance floor.
"What are you waiting for, Draco?" he demanded. "An engraved invitation?"
Finite.