Last year it was The Official Unwritten Slash Month, this year it's the Official Challenge Month. The similarities? A month of fics by one author. The difference? This time, YOU are in control.

Each fic will be written based on a challenge. This can be any type of challenge, from a single word to a full-blown challenge. The rules are simple, they must be Harry Potter and they must be slash. So get involved, get reviewing and together we'll make November the Challenge Month.

(Challenges can be submitted via Reviews, or, preferably, emails until the Fanfiction messages service starts to work. If your submission is anonymous, please leave an email address so I can contact you if I chose to write your fic, this address will also be kept private.)

Challenge: Fidelity, from WWOMB.

Fidelity

Fidelity. Even the word inspired horrifying images of a ball and chains. Fidelity, spending the rest of his life having sex with and loving one woman. Never having this again. Warm hands on a cool night, when the frigid bitch had kicked him out of their bed again. Dark eyes, open and vulnerable in a way that they never were outside of the bed and hers never were in it. The pleasure of sinking into a tight body and feeling a hard chest against his own, not sickening softness where he knew in truth all there was were icicles.

Fidelity. Never knowing love. Never spending hours playing chess, playing cards, playing games. Never relaxing together on a sofa and enjoying the silence. It was never silent with her, even when she never spoke. Shouted orders, accusaions, faliures rang in the air. She wanted a child, she wanted him to provide her with that child. She'd never know, never find out what he'd done. He'd rather never have a child than have her have it, and the only one who could now carry his child wasn't his wife.

Fidelity. The word carried a promise of a relationship that went beyond a private vow that, as soon as the old man finally got himself arrested or killed she would be cut off and out of the family for being a faliure. It had been four years, and she'd not fallen pregnant. She knew it was his doing, he knew it was his doing, but according to the marriage contracts it was her fault. Therefore she was the one who would lose. She was the one who would be out on the streets with only the five suitcases she'd brought with her, and anything she'd bought that he couldn't use or sell. She didn't have any options, he knew exactly how much of his money the bitch and his father had taken from him, and he would recover every single cent of it. Nostly from her dowry. She ever spent any more than the dowry had been worth and she'd ben cut off. On him, he was willing to spend a fortune. Gifts that mean more emotionally than they ever could financially. More for one Valentines Day than four years worth of birthdays and Christmases.

Fideliy. The old man had a few months left at most, and he'd had already signed the paperwork. Although he didn't know it, nothing on this earth could save him now, even if they did find a cure. Four years of torture? He wouldn't even spare his own father for that. Soon she would be gone, and the child that his lover already carried in secret could finally be acknowledged.

Fidelity? There was nothing worse, Draco thought. Not when fidelity meant not feeling Harry in his bed on stolen nights. Not seeing Harry, tousle-haired and grinning in the mornings before work. Not spending hours playing games of one kind or another or talking about everything under the sun from the best hair-care products to politics. Not feeling his own child grow in someone else's body, see the glow it produced, see the dreams of their child in the others eyes.

Fidelity, Draco thought, only truly counted when it was with someone you loved. And as soon as the bitch was gone from his bed, Draco would be completely loyal to Harry. For now, he was forced to sleep with the other woman the once or so a month she demanded it. The rest of the time, he could be completely loyal to the man he loved.