Too Darn Hot - by Sara's Girl
Disclaimer: Draco is not mine. I'll return him in roughly the same condition, i.e. dishevelled and slightly sticky.
AN – so here's another drabble FAIL. In that it's about fourteen times longer than a drabble should be, but oh well. Not to worry.
Pointless, silly, slightly cracky pre-slash. Why is Neville in NEWT-potions? Fuck knows. In fluffy!verse, anything's possible.
For WootYaoi for exam-finishing [Yay!], epic taste in British comedy and reviews that delight me.
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"For the absolute last time, Mister Longbottom, no—you may not use a Cooling Charm in my dungeon," Snape snarls, and Draco looks up briefly from his precision dicing of arrowroot to see the irritable professor swooping down upon his most inept student with an innard-liquefying glare on his face. "Not only will it interfere with the development of the potion, as I'm certain I have told you at least fifteen times now, but my faith in your ability to manage even elementary magic is, at best, non-existent," he finishes, drawing out the last words with bad-tempered relish.
Draco snorts softly and returns to his work. Apparently, Sev is in an even fouler mood than usual, which—and he has great respect for the man—is really saying something. But then, so is everyone else who is stuck in the sweaty, sticky, steam-filled dungeon for the last double period before lunch, and though it pains Draco to do so, he's actually with Longbottom on the matter of the Cooling Charm. It is, according to Pansy and the Daily Prophet, the hottest day of the year so far, and melting into a little puddle on the floor of the Potions classroom is most undignified.
Wrinkling his nose with distaste, he flicks to the relevant section of his Advanced Potions textbook and finds that, sure enough, there are certain varieties of Cooling Charm that are perfectly safe to use alongside the brewing of this particular potion. That being said, he knows better than to mess with Sev when he's got his knickers in a twist.
"Done with that arrowroot, yet, Malfoy?" Potter pipes up from beside him, and Draco jumps slightly, having almost managed to forget he was there.
Almost.
"Here," he says shortly, too heat-weary to bother addressing the contempt that Potter is probably too fed up himself to conceal.
He tips the neat little cubes into the hissing cauldron and leans back...slumps back against his desk to observe Potter. Draco had originally thought himself very clever when he'd persuaded Potter into doing the actual brewing today whilst he chopped and diced and peeled, but now he realises that his brain must be more severely fried by the heat than he'd imagined. Because now, his work is done and he has nothing to do but stare at fucking Potter.
Fucking Potter, with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows and his toned, sweat-sheened forearms and his imperfect hands that are gripping that stirring rod all wrong, but make Draco feel uncomfortably aroused all the same. Stupid Potter, with his damp, messy hair falling into his eyes, and his glasses sliding down his nose over and over until Draco wants to yank them off for him (because who needs to see to stir a bloody cauldron, anyway?) or spell them onto his face. Permanently.
Idiot Potter, with his thin shirt sticking to his back with perspiration, and his loosened tie and his three buttons undone at his collar—three!—so that it gapes, flashing a patch of tanned collarbone at Draco whenever he leans forward with that ridiculous expression of concentration on his face and that heated flush to his skin, and it's ludicrous.
He's humming under his breath as he stirs, a ridiculous tune that Draco doesn't know, or at least he didn't before today's Potions class. He now suspects that he'll have the bloody thing stuck in his head for the rest of eternity. That along with the image of the way Potter frowns, licks his bottom lip and swipes his hair out of his face with his free hand.
Draco inhales sharply and squirms uncomfortably against the desk, wrapping slippery fingers around the edge. His own shirt is sticking to him too, in all kinds of uncomfortable places, and his hair is plastered against his forehead. He scowls, wishing he could close his nostrils to the thick, pungent smoke that's giving him more and more of a headache with every breath he takes, and the murmured whingings from the rest of his classmates are not helping one bit. Fractious, sticky and fed up, Draco can no longer remember why Potions is supposedly his favourite subject, and he hates fucking Potter.
Hates him because he's a Gryffindor, and a barely-adequate Potions student, and a disaster of personal grooming, and because he looks like that stirring a Delousing Draught. Because Harry Potter stirring a Delousing Draught—badly, at that—makes his blood race and his heart twitch lazily in the stupefying heat and he really, really fucking shouldn't. It's just wrong.
"I will bring the unicorn liver around now. You should add it only when the potion has turned a pale yellow, which it should have by now, not that I'm holding out much hope." Snape's voice cuts through the fug in Draco's brain and he's grateful. Not that he's able to drag his eyes away from Potter, even as Snape begins to move around the room, dispensing slimy bits of meat.
Potter leans right over their steaming cauldron, pulling his damp shirt tight across his back. Draco groans inwardly and speaks before he can stop himself:
"If you could stir at more than a first-year level, our potion mightn't be green."
Potter turns to glare at him. "Just fuck off, Malfoy... I'm hot."
"I know you are! That's the problem!" Draco retorts, crossing his arms over his chest.
And then there's silence. Apart from inside Draco's head, which seems to be filled with the sound of horrified screaming. The heat, it seems, has stolen not only his self control, but all of his mental filters as well.
Potter stops dead, stirring rod falling completely still as he turns to regard Draco with wide green eyes. Paralysed with horror and realising that he now has the eyes of at least half the class on him as they wait with interest to see what he'll do next, Draco gulps dryly and pretends composure.
"Shouldn't you be stirring?"
At his words, the astonishment seems to fade from Potter's face, leaving only the intense stare and a strange little twist to his mouth that Draco doesn't know what to do with. His pulse accelerates out of control and, for once in his life, he hasn't a clue what to do next.
"You think I'm hot?" Potter inquires, making no attempt whatsoever to keep his voice down.
Draco dies a little inside.
"Fuck off, Potter," he mutters, not noticing the looming black shape next to him until it's too late.
"Five points from Slytherin, Mr Malfoy," Snape sighs, "for appallingly bad taste," he adds in a tone loud enough for only Draco and Potter to hear as he drops a portion of unicorn liver onto the desk.
As he sweeps away, Draco grits his teeth and fights hard against his strongest instinct, which is to curl himself into a hot, sticky ball on the stone floor and pretend he's not here.
"Did Malfoy just say Harry was hot?" Weasel-face stage-whispers from two rows behind, and Draco struggles with a second urge, the one to take out every Gryffindor in the room with that nifty little flamethrower hex he found in one of his father's old books over the summer.
"He definitely did," Blaise Zabini offers helpfully, and Draco has never been more grateful for the loyalty of his Housemates. Doom, doom, doom.
Blinking stickily, he manages at last to tune out the whispers and giggles and exploding cauldron noises around him and realises that Potter is still looking at him. Staring, in fact, stirring rod in hand and a small smile on his face. A smile that Draco has never before seen directed at him.
"What?" Draco manages, affecting a shrug and hoping he doesn't look too disgusting in this sweltering heat, just in case. Just in case of what, he's not certain, but he's willing to find out.
And then Potter is flushing in a way that definitely has nothing to do with the temperature, and Draco is biting down on his smirk and not bothering to say anything when Potter casually throws the unicorn liver into the potion at completely the wrong time, and stirs it at completely the wrong speed.
It's not his fault. He's hot.
-fin-