Draco thought he might have been one of the first people to encounter Potter after the battle had ended. Not to see him – it looked as though the whole of the wizarding world was gathered around to uselessly gape at the sight of their hero – but rather to actually go up and speak to him.
Perhaps the rest of them were just afraid to get too close to him. He might have been a something of an idol to many of them, but the reality of that wasn't as glamorous as the ideal they'd clung to during the last year of oppression. Potter had, after all, clearly survived yet another Killing Curse and taken down the most feared wizard in the last century. That sort of thing was bound to make people wonder just what else he was capable of.
Draco had never been afraid of Potter, though. Not that he would admit, anyway.
"You have something of mine," Draco announced loudly. He'd personally have loved to have avoided any sort of confrontation in front of an audience this obviously disposed to take Potter's side, but Draco was firmly hoping he'd never have to lay eyes on the stuck-up git again after all this, so now might be his last chance to reclaim his property. And if he was going to have to do this with the eyes of the wizarding world on him, Draco knew precisely what was expected of him as a Malfoy. Head held high, he fixed his glare firmly on Potter, as if the rest of them were beneath his notice.
Potter's eyes widened as if he was somehow surprised that Draco might come calling for what was rightfully his. "What?" Potter asked.
"My wand, Potter," Draco said long-sufferingly. "The one you stole from me. I want it back."
Potter frowned. "I really don't think it'll do you much good, Malfoy. Only it's... well, it's loyal to me now. I don't think it'll work for you like it used to."
Though he'd never say so, that was, of course, part of why Draco wanted it back so badly. Draco refused to believe that something that had once belonged completely to him could so easily jump onboard the Speccy Saviour Bandwagon right along with everyone and everything else. Even if it had done, Draco had no intention of letting Potter reap the benefits of the stupid thing's traitorous tendencies.
The bigger reason, though, was that Draco couldn't quite believe that all of this was over until he could walk away from Potter for good, knowing that he had no reason to seek him out again (unless Potter called in the life debt Draco now owed him, which Draco didn't even want to consider).
Clearly it took Potter's brain an embarrassing amount of time to process even the simplest of thoughts, for his eventual shrug was a long time coming. He then produced the wand from his robe, holding it out handle-first to Draco. "Doesn't worry me," he said flippantly. "I've already got a wand. Two, actually."
Smug git, Draco thought.
Had Draco known then, as he found out later, that one of those other wands in question happened to be the Death Stick of his childhood fairy tales, which Draco had also once been Master over until Potter went and robbed him, Draco might have purposely and soundly cursed Potter upon grabbing his wand back from him.
As it was, Draco merely reached out to take the wand in hand. A hair-raising sort of tingle shot up Draco's arm when his fingers accidentally brushed Potter's for an instant. Draco would have written it off as a shiver of revulsion had it not been for the distinct feeling of magic that clung to his skin in the moments afterward.
He would have accused Potter of cursing him, if not for the fact that the tip of the wand that was extended between them was actually pointed in Potter's direction. Whatever the Prophet ended up saying about Potter's 'awesome powers' over the following weeks, Draco had seen first-hand Potter's attempts to perform basic spells. Draco wasn't about to buy into his ability to suddenly either make a wand work in previously unseen ways, or to somehow cast wandless magic either.
He supposed that it might have been an odd reaction in rebellion to Draco claiming the wand again. Or maybe the wand had so thoroughly abandoned him that just by touching it Draco had accidentally cast a spell. If that was the case, Draco certainly wasn't going to draw any attention to it. Not with an entire mob of people watching the two of them, any of whom would likely have been all too pleased to tear Draco limb from limb if they suspected he'd hurt their Chosen One in any way.
So he put it down to a fluke (even though Malfoys never really believed in chance, since they knew that everything was capable of being manipulated), and went to stalk away.
"You're welcome," Potter called after him.
Draco looked incredulously back at him. "You expect me to thank you for giving me back my own wand?"
Potter smiled oddly at him in a way that inspired a true shiver, though Draco thought it was more of foreboding than revulsion this time. "I don't expect anything from you, Malfoy," Potter said. "Never have. But I just thought, since you think you can just throw your weight around and making demands... well, I must have just missed the part where you at least thanked me for saving your life, right?"
There was a strange light in Potter's eyes that reminded Draco a little too much of the wildness of the Fiendfyre. And Draco, like a moth, was almost drawn to it for a moment, as if confirming that some spell had been cast between them after all.
He snapped his eyes away easily enough, though, and didn't look back.
He just wished he could be rid of the memory of touching death that easily. Then he could stop pretending that holding onto his wand for dear life was all he needed to put this nightmare behind him.
People were processed through the courts as efficiently as customers in Diagon Alley in the days prior to the new Hogwarts term, at least back when over half the stores hadn't been deserted and warded up. It was all a matter of expedience rather than justice, as far as Draco could tell.
Just one of the many chained to the seat that day, Lucius Malfoy was sentenced to Azkaban (again) for six months, with a ridiculously exorbitant fine to be paid on top of that. Draco very nearly jumped up to express his outrage loudly and at length. His mother, however, had pressed a hand to his shoulder to keep him seated and told him to let it go.
"We can afford it, and six months in a prison free of Dementors is a much lighter punishment than it could have been," Narcissa Malfoy had whispered to him in the gallery of the courtroom as they watched his father being led away to be replaced by the next Death Eater in line. "It's not worth drawing attention to yourself right now. Your father would say the same."
Draco had conceded, since he had to admit that he was currently in a precarious sort of situation. A single step in the wrong direction was likely to bring him firmly back into the public consciousness, which was unlikely to have good consequences for him. He'd actually been stunned that there had only been the barest mention of putting him on trial before everyone involved apparently just forgot that Draco was a Marked Death Eater and was ultimately the reason Albus Dumbledore had been killed.
Of course, Severus Snape had been the one to actually murder Dumbledore, yet he was apparently to receive a posthumous Order of Merlin. Just went to show how far Potter's arm could reach when he was being openly celebrated rather than just written off as an attention-whoring nutter.
Draco hoped it hadn't been Potter's influence that had kept the Aurors' attention diverted from him, though he had a sneaking suspicion he wasn't quite lucky enough to have avoided owing Potter his freedom as well as his life. After Potter had explicitly brought up the life debt after the battle, Draco was nowhere near as certain as he once might have been that Potter was far too sanctimonious to ever come collecting.
Just the thought of that life debt made Draco feel nearly physically uncomfortable.
Of course, in the long run, the public would be no happier than Draco at the idea of Potter apparently pushing his admittedly enormous political weight around. If he was deciding who should stand trial and who should be labelled as a war hero (as Draco figured he was doing, though if he was honest he had little idea what Potter had really been up to since the war), there would eventually be a backlash. Draco imagined it would only take so long for the goodwill of Potter's adoring fans to falter. It wasn't as if it hadn't happened to Potter before, many times. Popularity was fickle that way, as the Malfoys had been uncomfortably aware as of late.
It took a grand total of sixteen days after the Dark Lord had fallen for the papers to stop gushing about how Potter was the most perfect, powerful, intelligent and handsome (Draco snorted at that last part in particular) wizard of the age, if not all time. On the seventeenth day, the Daily Prophet included a tiny snippet nearly buried on the bottom right corner of the fourth page noting almost idly that there was something Not Quite Right (their capitalisation, not Draco's) about Harry Potter since the Battle of Hogwarts. The following morning, a speculative article that war had addled his mind was featured above the fold on the front page. It was also under the fold, and on the whole of the second, third and sixth pages. As gleeful as Draco felt about seeing the idiot get his comeuppance... well, didn't the premier magical newspaper of Britain have anything at all to talk about other than Potter, for Merlin's sake?
It seemed that Draco just couldn't escape him, even when just sitting down to read the paper in the morning.
Draco had seen Potter far more frequently than he thought was fair or even explainable since the war. Despite having made brilliant plans to avoid any contact with Potter for the rest of both of their lives - not to mention how he really hadn't had any reason to be in Muggle Liverpool that one time - they kept ending up just feet away from each other. Every time their paths crossed, Draco found himself feeling almost sick at the sight of Potter. Not that Potter hadn't always made him violently ill, of course, but the feeling seemed to have now become a little more literal than Draco would have liked.
Of course, whatever was being done to him, it was clearly all Potter's fault. The Prophet's article just confirmed that Potter was mentally unstable enough to go about cursing Draco for no reason at all.
Draco wasn't really bothered by how contrary it was to assume that Potter had saved him from Azkaban but was also cursing him on the sly. The dirty hypocrite had probably saved Draco just so he could deliver his punishment personally.
Despite Draco's absolute certainty that the Prophet's story was spot on and that Potter was up to no good, as usual, the general public didn't believe a word of the frankly inspired reporting. That was, at least, until the circulation of a much longer dissertation on the meaning and recent uses of a piece of magic that old families like the Malfoys had always known, but had never been stupid enough to put into practice – Horcrux.
Most people had laughed nervously about how far some writers were willing to go to get attention. They were such obvious lies which were in considerably bad taste, others had said with more gusto. Perhaps they all would have continued to state disbelief of it all, at least mostly, had Potter bothered to speak up at all to dispute the claims.
Draco had no idea where all of that information had come from, since no source was listed and the author was anonymous, but he was certainly impressed that someone had managed to find someone near enough to Potter to know something like that about him who apparently wasn't loyal literally to the death.
People weren't as willing to believe in Potter's innate goodness and rightness once they'd found out he'd played host to a chunk of the Dark Lord's soul for pretty much his entire life. Even now that it was gone, they said, something like that couldn't have left him quite normal.
It was about time they figured that out. If they'd just listened to him, Draco could have told them Potter was weird and dangerous years ago, Horcrux or no.
It wasn't that Draco was avidly keeping up with either the news or the gossip about Potter, of course. It just so happened that he had a subscription to the Prophet, and he'd obviously bought this month's Quibbler for the Quidditch article, not because Potter's ugly mug was plastered just under the headline. And Draco really didn't even notice that the reports about Potter's instability had died out in the papers suspiciously quickly, meaning the only article about Potter for weeks on end was the one that appeared in Witch Weekly. Draco had of course only bought the magazine for the near pornographic centrefold of Nigel Fannatis, not that he'd admit thatto anyone if pressed. He'd only flicked to the Potter featurette so that he'd look busy and thus avoid being engaged in conversation by his Aunt Andromeda when his mother invited her to the Manor as a kind of peace-seeking gesture. The woman had friendly ties to Potter, after all – she was clearly beneath his notice.
The article, he'd found with a sigh of disgust, speculated on Potter's love life. As if anyone in their right mind would give a damn about that. Draco certainly didn't.
Of course, when Draco reached the part of the article that suggested that perhaps there was more than just 'friendship' between Potter and the only two friends he was ever seen with in public, Draco had thrown the magazine clear across the room in disgust, propriety in front of their 'guest' be damned. Just the idea of it made him sick (just as sick as seeing Potter in person, in fact). And honestly, couldn't they seehow out-of-place Potter looked in that photo, hanging back somewhat awkwardly from the revolting display of affection the other two were perpetrating on Draco's poor eyes?
"Something the matter, Draco?" his mother asked after her sister had finally left. Her tone that suggested that she was far more disapproving than genuinely concerned about him at that moment.
Draco shook his head, still holding onto the scowl that reading the article had brought to his face.
"Might I venture a guess that a certain boy might have something to do with it?"
The way she said boy, as though it had some meaning other than the obvious, greatly alarmed him. Draco knew he looked obviously panicked for a moment before he managed to school his expression as his father had so painstakingly taught him long ago.
She made the magazine he'd discarded hover between them, looking at it as though it was something contaminated. "Honestly, Draco, Witch Weekly? No self-respecting witch or wizard should be caught dead reading this offal, no matter what happened to be contained in it. I thought I'd taught you that much. And it doesn't do to show so much interest in Potter, either."
"I have no interest in Potter!" Draco exclaimed.
His mother made a disbelieving noise, but didn't press the issue any further. Once she'd left the room, Draco found himself withdrawing his wand (which still wasn't working quite as well for him as it used to, just as Potter had anticipated) and Summoning the magazine back to him.
He stared at that image of Potter for a long time, hoping to make himself feel better by noting how Potter clearly seemed even less happy than Draco was right then.
Somehow, that only seemed to make the hollow feeling inside him even more pronounced.
It took Potter seemingly forever to figure out what Draco had already known for a good number of weeks: that the way that they continuously ran into each other was unnatural and disturbing. It took both of them ending up on the side of a precarious cliff bordering the North Sea, with Draco having no memory of even having Apparated there, for Potter to clue in that something was possibly, just maybe, a little bit wrong there.
Well, Potter had always been both unintelligent and self-absorbed, Draco knew.
Potter reached out to grab Draco, presumably to Side-Along him to somewhere a little safer where Potter could properly question him (as if Draco was going to just let him). The energy that surged between them from that point of contact was so much stronger than what had been elicited by the touching of their hands that first time. The sensation was less like a jolt and more like... well, licks.
Draco shuddered from something other than the cold wind and jerked away from Potter reflexively, only to find his foothold dislodged by the sudden force of his movement.
He abruptly realised that he was dangling hundreds of feet above the water. The only thing holding him up was Potter's straining grip. His wand was stowed in a pocket he dared not reach for in this position. Yet Draco's foremost thoughts were not for his safety, but rather about how disconcerting (not to mention embarrassing) it was that he was somehow almost painfully turned on throughout all of that.
Potter managed to Apparate both of them to the blessedly solid ground a few yards back from the edge of the cliff top without Splinching either of them. They lay there on the grass, panting as if they'd each just made a last dash for the Snitch at the end of a nineteen hour game of Quidditch.
It took Draco a moment to realise that their hands remained joined for some time afterwards. It was Potter tugging at the grip, clearly wanting to claim his own hand back, that made Draco properly aware of it.
Draco dropped his hands to his side immediately after that, feeling inexplicably as if he'd lost something and trying not to care.
What he'd obviously lost was the flare of madness that had caught him for a second, Draco decided. Imagine willingly touching Potter.
He tried very hard not to think about, or let on, what that touching had actually done to him.
Awareness well and truly back in place, Draco Apparated away before Potter could look at him and see the way Draco's robes were very clearly tented.
It didn't occur to him until much later to wonder what Potter had even been doing hanging off a cliff in the first place.
Even with his mother often striding about the Manor, and numerous house-elves skulking about the place that Draco could pick on when things got too quiet, Draco felt oddly isolated in the Manor. It made him twitchy in a way he'd never allowed himself to experience since he'd been five years old and his father had told him that fidgeting was unbecoming of a Malfoy.
Perhaps that was why Draco kept finding himself out in the open air and sunlight among other witches and wizards without knowing how he'd got there. He'd thought he'd had his accidental magic under control for years, but he couldn't think of any other explanations. Even that one didn't make any real sense, since accidental magic usually worked to get a person what they subconsciously wanted. However much Draco might want to be free of the house for a while, it was hardly his wish to land himself in the middle of a bunch of wizards who immediately recognised him, and looked at him as if he was one of the more disgusting things that that great oaf had made them study in Care of Magical Creatures.
There was a reason he'd largely confined himself to the Manor, after all.
He also had even less of a wish to keep ending up wherever Potter was, of course. Every time their eyes met across the crowds, Draco would quickly retreat. He didn't want to have to talk to Potter at all, let alone put up with demands that he offer some sort of explanation that he just didn't have.
Annoying as those times were, though, it was much harder to get away from Potter the time that he Apparated right smack into what appeared to be Potter's house, with Potter only a few feet in front of him. For once, there were no masses of witches and wizards around to look at Draco that way that he hated so much. There was just Potter.
He thought he might dislike the way Potter was looking at him even more than those strangers did, actually, though he couldn't name the emotion in the other boy's eyes to save himself.
Draco tried to Apparate again, on the purpose this time, and found that he couldn't.
Potter launched himself at Draco like a common animal. Combined with the way Potter's body pressed Draco against the wall behind him, that move made something in Draco rise up and rebel, not against Potter's touch as much as the fact that it felt so completely wrong for Potter to be the one exerting control over him.
He whirled Potter around, using a physical strength that surprised him a little, until their positions were reversed.
"Don't touch me," Draco growled, even as he unconsciously pulled Potter closer to him.
Potter's eyes widened for a moment, probably at the way the words didn't sound as if they could possibly have come from Draco's throat. Then they narrowed once again. "Then tell me how you got in here. I get that you've taken to stalking me or something, even worse than those useless tossers from the Daily Prophet have been. What I don't know is why, or how you Apparated into a place that's warded against Apparition and that's under Fidelius and more wards than I even know about."
Well that would explain why Draco couldn't get back out again, had he still even been trying. He found himself oddly reluctant in that moment to get away from Potter anyway. He refused to believe that was about anything other than his desire to continue having the upper hand over Potter, for once.
Potter, of course, wasn't about to settle for that. He thrashed against Draco, though Draco somehow managed to hold his shoulders still. Potter's thigh brushed Draco in just the right – wrong, Draco insisted to himself – way, which made Draco's eyes fall shut and an involuntary moan slip past his lips.
Potter went suddenly still again at that. Even if he'd managed to miss the sound, Draco knew that there was no way that Potter, in such close contact with him, couldn't feel why Draco had made it. Draco kept his eyes shut as he threw himself backwards, not wanting to see the look on Potter's face.
He wanted nothing more to disappear.
His magic letting him down in the fulfilment of that deep desire, despite it apparently being so co-operative about those wishes he didn't even know about, Draco instead turned and ran.
Once he was beyond the front door of what turned out to be, even on the outside, a ramshackle-looking old house, he Apparated. He didn't care even slightly that he was clearly in a Muggle neighbourhood and that any of them could have spotted him. Even though the Dark Lord had turned out to be completely cracked, Draco had never once doubted that he'd been completely right about them. They didn't deserve a second thought.
He was still sprawled on the floor of the Manor's foyer, barely holding back tears the way he hadn't had to since the war had ended and that constant oppressive weight of dark expectation had been lifted, when his mother found him.
"There's something wrong with me," he admitted in a small voice.
His mother's hand brushed lightly through his hair.
"I did try to warn you," she said, her exasperated tone somehow making it sound like more of a comfort than a reprimand for once.
Draco, embarrassingly, let the tears flow.
Draco had thought that nothing could be as horrifying as having to admit to his mother that any boy repeatedly and frequently gave him a hard-on, let alone that the specific boy in question was Potter.
He'd been wrong about a lot of things in his life so far, from thinking that that one dark grey Every Flavour Bean looked as though it might taste all right to becoming a Marked Death Eater, but he still didn't think he'd ever been quite that wrong before.
"We'd hoped it would never be an issue," Narcissa admitted. "It never was with your father, or with his father either."
"But we're purebloods," Draco said for the third time since his mother had begun her explanation, still feeling completely dumbfounded.
His mother pursed her lips. "Your blood is as pure as it comes," she agreed. "That is, as pure as it could be without the Malfoy line having long died out from inbreeding. There came a time when there had to be some mingling to ensure the continued strength of all of the pureblood families. Of course it was better to turn to creatures such as Veela, which at least have magical benefits to offer, than some useless Muggles who'd only water down the bloodline. After that, I believe it would have been surprisingly simple to score a few unsavoury but necessary elements out of family histories."
"You might have mentioned I was some sort of half-breed before you let me sign up with the Dark Lord's pureblood regime," Draco hissed angrily.
His mother's eyes flashed with anger. "You're no such thing, and don't you dare say anything like that again. Half the blood running through your veins is mine, remember, and I won't have you disrespecting that, or your father's blood either. Family is everything, Draco. The Malfoys and the Blacks are still among the strongest families out there, whatever those currently in power might try to say about it; politics and gossip are temporary, while blood lives on. An ancestor or two from so many generations back that no one recalls exactly when all of this took place does nothing to change any of that."
Draco laughed bitterly. "It apparently changes enough to have me acting like some kind of creature. One that's keen enough on Potter to magic me to his bloody side and thoroughly humiliate myself every few days."
"That," his mother said with a frown, "is only due to a very rare meeting of circumstances. You shouldn't have fixated on anyone like that at all, of course, let alone Potter. However, we will take care of it. I promise."
"Take care of what?" Draco exclaimed. "You haven't even really told me what's happening to me!"
"I'd have thought it self-explanatory," his mother said with a raised eyebrow. "Something has happened to cause your magic to recognise Potter and to seek him out. Just Potter, mind you. I don't believe it's possible to recreate the effect with some more suitable witch or wizard, unfortunately."
"What, like he's somehow my soul mate or something," Draco scoffed.
His mother looked at him as if he'd just drooled on her 300 Galleon shoes. He shifted uncomfortably under her less-than-impressed gaze. "Be serious, Draco," she chided.
"Serious?" he exclaimed. "I've never heard anything that sounded more like a joke in my life!"
"And yet, I think you're well aware that it's no laughing matter, or you'd hardly have admitted any of this to me in the first place, would you?"
Draco scowled. "I was hoping you might be able to actually make it go away, not just offer empty promises."
Narcissa looked slightly pitying, then, which was actually much worse than the earlier look of disapproval. "It's part of you, Draco. There is no separate Veela entity that I can help you sever from yourself. The instincts are yours, and those instincts apparently believe Potter is what you're looking for. Though Merlin knows why. Honestly, Draco, you could do so much better. The hair alone –"
Draco cut her off before she could go off on one of her scathing reviews of how the wizarding world no longer seemed to care about bloodlines and history and (most importantly of all, if his mother was to be believed) basic grooming and appearance.
"Don't you think that if I'd had any real choice in it, I would've chosen anyone else? Or chosen to avoid this altogether, actually," he fumed. "I can't think of anything worse than being saddled with Potter for the rest of my life. Potter, of all people!"
"You picked him out for a reason," his mother said. "Veela mating habits are, as I understand it, based on violence and a show of strength and ability to protect. Clearly Potter proved himself to you in some way."
Violence and protection. Draco could still practically feel the licks of flame at his heels and his back as he clung to Potter on that broom. He shivered at the memory. Then there was also that whole thing with the cliff as well, Draco supposed, though that had happened long after he'd already started showing symptoms of this disease that he'd been cursed with just by virtue of being born a Malfoy.
It figured. Most wizards just ended up owing a relatively simple life debt to their rescuers. Of course Draco Malfoy had to end up pining away against his will for the rest of his life instead.
"He also tried to kill me once," Draco muttered. "You'd think that would count against him."
Draco remembered suddenly how Professor Snape had also once saved his life in that same bathroom where Potter had nearly murdered him. He shuddered with a level of disgust that put his feelings about Potter into some perspective. Right. Well. Perhaps he shouldn't complain so vociferously about his instincts' taste in partners after all. Clearly it could have been much, much worse. The hair aside, even Potter wasn't quite as bad as the idea of having sexual feelings about... him.
"Don't worry, darling," his mother continued, suddenly sounding uncharacteristically bright. "At least you'll be entirely in control of the situation. Your instincts will demand it. And luckily Potter owes me a life debt as well. If worst comes to worst, I'll just have to call it in, won't I?"
Draco imagined, for an unbearably drawn-out moment, how his mother might arrive on Potter's doorstep, with her pureblood dignity gathered around her, to inform him that she wanted him to have frequent and possibly violent sex with her son to repay her for helping him.
Really, it might have been better if Potter had just left him to die in the first place.
Draco thought, upon ending up in the Leaky Cauldron against his will, that clearly he really should get it over with and kill himself, because on top of being an insufferable and ugly git with bad hair, Potter obviously had deplorable taste. Drinking himself stupid at the Leaky Cauldron. Honestly.
His point was promptly proven when Potter (or so Draco presumed, since he couldn't actually see his attacker) bodily dragged him into the men's room. Draco shuddered at the sight of just how disgusting Potter's choice of verbal battleground was before turning around to sneer at him.
Potter was already sneering right back (though his look was much less impressive than Draco's, of course).
"I have enough problems without having to deal with you all the time, Malfoy," Potter slurred slightly, "so why don't you just let me in on your little game already."
Potter looked decidedly unstable, and perhaps borderline violent, at that moment. It was an indication of just how appalling Draco's situation was that he wasn't even put off by that. If anything, it just made him want to throw Potter against something and...
And do something that he was never ever going to even briefly think about including Potter in again, thank you.
Really, Draco thought, if his stupid Veela instincts wanted to dominate someone, wouldn't it have been better if they'd chosen someone who would actually let himself be thrown around? That way he might have ended up with someone like Blaise Zabini, who pretended at having power but then quickly fell right into line as soon as someone with any real influence pressed at him. That certainly would have been much less traumatising than having to be so close to Potter right then. Or ever.
"Tell me how you got past the wards on Grimmauld Place," Potter demanded. The way he lingered over his words, as if having to taste each one to make sure it was what he actually meant to say like the foolish drunk he obviously had become, made it even easier to deny him answers. "My house," Potter added a few moments later, as if realising that Draco couldn't be expected to keep up with the meanings of his ramblings. "Grimmauld. Is my house. In case you didn't... you know. Know."
Draco rolled his eyes and muttered, "Apparently you're an animal magnet, that's how."
"What?" Potter said sharply.
"None of your business," Draco answered more loudly. "So run along, Potter, and go finish off the rest of that barrel of cheap Firewhisky. I think there's a whole two square inches of you that doesn't smell like you've been swimming in it, and you wouldn't want to put up with that sort of lack of thoroughness, would you?"
Draco was nearly pushed into the stained wall behind him (hadn't the owners heard of Cleaning Charms?). He, however, was having none of it. He pushed back, and that same physical strength that he'd used the last time he'd battled with Potter that way made itself known again. Draco supposed Veela blood might be useful for something after all.
Draco inadvertently pushed them right into one of the stalls as a result of his show of force.
Perhaps it was a reaction to the reek of other people having clearly had sex in there not long before, which Draco could clearly make out even over Potter's Eau de Alcohol. Perhaps it was just that two fully-grown men (if Potter could be classed as 'grown' at his measly height) couldn't fit into one of those stalls together without losing all concept of personal space. Whatever the case, Draco quickly forgot just how much he didn't want to have any contact at all with the walls.
For Potter's part, Draco was pretty sure that the reasoning began and ended with Firewhisky, Firewhisky and more Firewhisky. He was probably too out of his mind to do anything but react to the knee that insinuated itself between his legs and the fingers that scrabbled at the buttons of his robes.
"What's your problem?" The words were the sum total of Potter's resistance, and even as he said them he was rubbing himself firmly against Draco in a way that made Draco's intended answer – that Potter was his problem, actually, and that this was all completely and utterly his fault – fly right out of the room before it was ever shared.
When Draco's efforts towards undoing Potter's robes revealed that he was wearing yet another layer, Draco made the executive decision that Potter's light blue shirt was of a low enough quality that it was a worthwhile sacrifice. The torn scraps were tossed aside, followed quickly by Potter's underwear. Draco did no more to remove his own clothes than undoing the buttons that were the only things restraining (rather painfully by this stage) his hard prick.
Draco realised, in retrospect, that sex against a wall with nothing more than spit and pre-come as lubricant (for, much like on that cliff weeks before, Draco was far too frantic to even think of retrieving his wand) was decidedly uncomfortable, even for him. Even though he obviously didn't care about Potter, he still winced slightly to think of how much pain he must have been in. Beyond some stifled grunts, however, Potter hadn't complained in the slightest.
If anything, Draco thought he might have been glad that it hurt.
The part of him that made him keep seeking Potter out wasn't sure how it felt about that.
He left Potter, naked and panting (and shedding completely silent tears, Draco couldn't help but noticing with an odd twinge).
Draco couldn't bring himself to look back.
Draco knew they'd see each other again soon enough, anyway, unless this had been enough to satisfy those stupid instincts of his for good (which he doubted, because he'd really never been that lucky).
For now, he needed the time in between to think.
When Draco saw the paper the next day, he knew immediately what had driven Potter to drink in the Leaky Cauldronthat night, and probably what had caused Potter to accept what must have felt, to him, like a punishment.
Ginny Weasley had apparently ended up at St Mungo's by Potter's hand, if the headline was to be believed.
For once, Draco didn't even try to pretend that reading any story related to Potter was merely an incidental, and rather unfortunate, part of his everyday life the same as was the case for every other witch or wizard with a Prophet subscription. His eyes were already running across the text avidly before he even had the chance to explain it away.
He spent the rest of the day wondering what to do with the information he'd learned, and wondering why he wanted to do anything at all. After all, being drawn to Potter on a physical level didn't mean he needed to get all soppy over him. In fact, he should have been glad that Potter had finally been completely cut back down to size.
He wasn't. In fact, he was obviously unhappy enough about it that he ended up standing outside Potter's house, just feet away from where Potter himself was sitting in the gutter despite the rain gushing directly down on him.
Idiot, Draco thought. He might even have muttered it aloud, though it would have been hard to hear over the downpour.
Draco fisted the front of Potter's robes and pulled him to his feet despite his muffled protests.
"What'd she do?" Draco asked.
Potter snorted. "What makes you think she did anything at all? Everyone else thinks I just went rabid. Which is fair enough. It's what happened, really."
"What. Did. She. Do," Draco enunciated more insistently.
"Woke me up from a nightmare," Potter said bitterly. "That's all. I try not to take Dreamless Sleep too often to avoid the side effects, and no one else was supposed to be there, so I thought it would be all right."
Draco let go of Potter's robes, glad to see that Potter at least had the wherewithal to hold himself upright. It was no fun belittling someone who was already too low to care. Well, less fun.
"You're an idiot," Draco snapped.
Potter looked at him balefully. "I don't need you to tell me that. I know what I did. I can still see the shock on her face afterwards, before she fell."
Draco rolled his eyes. "Not that! Merlin. Could you possibly be more of a heartsick witch? Honestly, blubbering about your school crush just because she was stupid enough to sneak up on someone who's obviously still suffering from the war. I know that she's a sheltered little thing, but even she should have known better."
"You shut up about her!" Potter demanded, eyes flashing in a way Draco hadn't seen since the cliff. Certainly they hadn't looked that way two days ago. They'd looked empty, then. "Ginny's worth ten of you. And twenty of me." The last bit Draco could barely make out over the noise of the rain, so he thought it might not have been meant for him.
Draco much preferred the whipping anger that had started Potter's tirade to that tone of defeat that ended it.
Draco pushed forward, getting right up in Potter's personal space.
"Who the fuck do you think you are?" Potter asked indignantly.
"Not your meek little girlfriend, obviously," Draco said with a sly grin.
Potter lunged at him. "She's not my girlfriend! You think I'd have let you do that with me, after what I did to her, if she was..."
Draco laughed. "I don't know what the hell you'd do, Potter. You're on the edge, ready to snap. You're the one hanging off the side of a cliff needing to be saved this time. Anyone can see that. And you know what? I've got at least two fucking life debts to you, and stupid instincts that make me want to be here dealing with the fallout of your pathetic sob stories, and I'm stuck with you. So it looks like I'm the one that gets to rescue you. You'd better be fucking grateful."
Draco didn't know whether the moisture he tasted so clearly on Potter's lips was all the result of the rain, or whether some of it was diluted tears as well. He didn't care. Potter was going to stop crying and being pathetic right now, if Draco had anything to say about it. Both of them were.
Potter, having taken quite some time (they'd really have to do something about speeding up those thinking processes of his, if Draco had to spend any significant amount of time with him) to decide how to respond to Draco kissing him, finally darted his tongue out into Draco's mouth.
Draco's fingers bit into Potter's sides for a moment, and then reached for the front of Potter's robes.
This time he remembered to grab his wand out of its hiding place. He also managed to find them a proper bed, though he had no idea of how he could have made the door to Potter's house open for him. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that Potter clearly wanted to get inside too. Or maybe Draco's ability to get inside Potter's private space had something to do with being part-Veela and having that ridiculous but apparently completely necessary attachment to Potter.
If so, then there was another thing that Draco didn't mind so much about being part-animal.
Potter didn't seem particularly likely to complain either.
~The End~