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Chapter Two—Second Thoughts

"What happened to land you in the middle of Diagon Alley like that?"

It was the first question Potter had asked him since they left hospital. Draco had been glad enough to let Potter handle all the impertinent demands from Healers that he leave Draco in their hands, and the requests for information from the small handful of reporters who were waiting outside the doors, and the doubtful stares of people who seemed to have heard or guessed what was wrong. Draco had closed his eyes through most of it, in fact, and only opened them when Potter told him they would need to Apparate to his house. He made it a rule not to Apparate anywhere blind now.

Potter's house was larger than Draco would have expected—even given his money, he'd thought the Hero would choose a modest sort of place, not this cross between a manor house and a hotel—and he'd occupied himself wandering around the ground floor while Potter set up a bedroom for him. Or what he thought was the ground floor. Draco soon realized that there were two other floors beneath this one, plunging into the earth, excavated by powerful and skilled magic. When he sniffed, the odors of a workshop welled up the stairs that led downwards. And why not? Potter had said that he was working with experimental magic.

Draco's bedroom was more than acceptable, large and decorated in neutral brown and grey shades, with a window that could have come from one of his parents' smaller sitting rooms. Draco had touched the bed and then leaned on it, partially because it was soft and partially because he wanted to convince himself that he really was here, in Potter's house, accepting an invitation from someone who wanted to help him.

Hard to believe he was feeling hope.

Now he turned towards Potter and studied him for a long moment before he answered. Potter didn't seem to notice. He was bent over the pot that hung over the fire, an intent frown on his face, while he added carrots, sliced onions, and some kind of delicate dark meat to the soup.

When he turned his head, Draco replied, "I couldn't stand being at home anymore, away from you. I Apparated to Diagon Alley and used some Dark Arts that I hoped would release my fucking stupid energy." He paused, but Potter didn't seem offended by his language. Heartened, Draco went on. "One of my spells rebounded and cut my arm. I realized by then what I was doing, out in public no less, so I hid myself from the Aurors I assumed would show up."

"There must be a crisis elsewhere if none of them showed up before we left," Potter muttered. He suddenly frowned. "Is the cut healed now?"

Draco nodded. His throat was dry. The vision he saw around Potter again, that heavenly shimmer that made him look so much more appealing than he was, had returned again. His fingers itched, and he rubbed his hand against his trouser legs. "I healed it before you arrived. I—look, Potter, this is difficult. Can I touch you again?" His face burned with humiliation as he made the request.

But Potter had his own method of handling such things, Draco found out. He nodded and set down the tongs that he'd been using to lever a bottle of some kind of seasoning above the pot. "Briefly. We don't want dinner to spoil."

Draco half-closed his eyes in relief. He could live with this academic response on Potter's part. He stepped forwards and ran a hand down Potter's arm.

It was like having the finest cheese and wine after a long diet of nothing but bread. It was like touching velvet and silk after being condemned to a life of sackcloth. Draco shuddered and pressed closer.

Part of the difficulty of being under the Devouring Curse, Draco was discovering, came from trying to describe the sensations to someone else. He was hungry for the touch of Potter's skin, but he despised the thought of touching it at the same time. His free will remained, and it didn't; it had certainly vanished when he had the chance to snog Potter in the middle of Diagon Alley. He experienced the sensation when he brushed his hand over Potter's skin as a touch, and also as a fulfillment of hunger.

And he couldn't keep from trying to take more, despite what Potter had implied about keeping him at bay. He clasped his hands on Potter's shoulders, delighting in the solid feel of the bone, and teased gently at his ankles with one foot. He wanted Potter's legs spread. The counters in the kitchen were big enough to contain a tall person's sprawled body, Draco judged. If he could lay Potter back—

"Back, now."

The voice echoing his thoughts made Draco blink in a dazed fashion, before he realized that Potter was speaking and shoving him away. He went, clenching his hands. The disgust was in full force now. The desire to touch Potter smoldered away beneath the surface nonetheless, like a banked fire.

"I hate this," he ground out.

"I won't be so fond of it, either, by the time we're done." Potter shook a few more grains of spice, whatever it was, into the soup, and then tasted it with a spoon. Smiling, he lifted the soup free in the next instant and began to pour it into two bowls. "After we eat, we should go into my workshop and establish what will and won't show up to revealing spells. Oh, and you should send a house-elf for your clothing. I don't think I have anything likely to fit you."

Draco accepted the bowl, half in a dream. When he had pictured seeking Potter out and soothing his hunger, he had expected many shrieks about an assault on the Hero's virtue. Potter instead managed to hold him at bay and not seem as if he was doing so at the same time. It was better than Draco could have expected.

The food was good, but not satisfying. Draco watched the curl of Potter's hair and the shape of his eyes, hungry for other things.


"All right. Stand in the center of that circle in the middle of the floor."

Malfoy turned his head and stared at Harry. Since the dinner—well, since the touching session in the kitchen, Harry thought—he had acted more like his normal self. He managed to convey now, with a single skeptical glance, that he didn't look forward to being devoured by whatever entity Harry thought he might call up in the circle.

Harry had to laugh outright at the look. "It'll be all right. This circle just contains the charms that might damage other things in the lab, that's all."

"I never knew revealing spells were dangerous," Malfoy murmured, but he stepped into the circle nevertheless. Harry waved his wand and sealed the circle behind him. A quiet hum of energy sang in the back of his teeth. Malfoy seemed to notice it, too, since he started and touched his mouth for a moment before he dropped his hand.

"Not so much to ordinary people or objects," Harry admitted, picking up his notebook so that he could have it at his side to write down immediate impressions. "But a lot of these objects have charms on them already that will affect how I see the magical signatures of any incantations I use on them. Those charms could be disturbed by interaction with another revealing spell."

Malfoy shook his head. "I can't get used to it."

"Used to what?" Harry checked the distance between his feet and the circle, and then backed up. He was standing too close for using a good revealing spell on a human, or at least the theory said that. He'd never actually tried to use an experiment on a human before, except for a time when Ron had carried an unknown Dark spell into his house and Harry had had to identify it and stop it before it spread. "Good, that's perfect."

"Used to you being a researcher. An academic." Malfoy stared at him, eyes half-lidded. It didn't hide the desire in them.

"It took me a long time to get used to it, too," Harry said cheerfully. He thought that he probably would get more cooperation from Malfoy if he didn't make anything too serious. This was serious enough, and they both knew it, and Harry, at least, could feel Malfoy's kisses on his skin to remind him. His hands had felt warmer than normal when they touched Harry's bare skin, too, as if he was carrying coals.

Warmth. Well, it was at least a guess, and Harry knew that the smallest, most insignificant details of a situation could affect his ability to see the magical signature of a spell, sometimes. He reached out and picked up a vial of ashes from a campfire that he'd built on the spot where a dragon had died. He sorted out a handful and cradled them in his palm. Although they were long cold, he could feel a sort of ghost of lingering heat.

Malfoy watched him with wide eyes. "Potter, what are you doing?" He probably knew something about how magical the ashes were, Harry thought, which was a hopeful sign. He knew that in later stages, Nova Cupiditas took over a person's reactions. They wouldn't be able to sense anything but the hunger.

"Hush," Harry said, and cradled the ashes tighter, thinking of the flames of that campfire as it leaped around him, the color of the flames and the almost tangible pressure of the heat against the side of his face. Then he aimed his wand at Malfoy. Start with the simplest first, the spell that had revealed the Dark charm clinging to Ron's back. "Videtur."

The air between them turned yellow-black, like the colors that Harry saw on the back of his eyelids when he pressed down on them with a hand. A sour smell surged up and around them, and Harry winced.

"What?" Malfoy demanded, coughing. Harry thought the stink of sulfur might have been enough to make him do that, or maybe it was a reaction to the revealing spell. It might be hopeful if it was. He wrote that down, and then the color, describing it as exactly as he could.

Once it was written down, it triggered another memory. Harry blinked and turned his head so that he could look at a shelf along the far wall which carried silver vials and jars. One of the jars had a dark liquid in it, studded with fragments of bone.

"That's interesting," Harry said slowly.

"What?" Malfoy asked a second time. His voice was lower. Harry glanced at him and found him closer to the edge of the circle, watching Harry like he was for dessert.

I'll just have to get used to that, Harry told himself, although he could feel a flush creeping up his face. He'd become a lot more adult in the last few years, or at least he liked to think so, but he still didn't like concentrated attention. He cleared his throat and focused on the notebook. "It seems there's a defense built into Nova Cupiditas that prevents normal revealing charms from working. As though someone knew you might try to see the signature and determined to keep you from succeeding."

"Me?" Malfoy's face was pale, now. "The bastards who cast this on me built that in?"

Harry chuckled a bit, though it made Malfoy grew sterner and colder and more upset in those two seconds than Harry had seen him so far. "Sorry," Harry said. "Hermione keeps telling me that my lack of proper research-oriented English is going to get me in trouble, and she's right. What I meant was that anyone who might try a revealing charm would be foiled. The caster who invented the curse seemed to be concerned about that." He nodded at the shelf. "It's like a liquid I investigated last year. It turned out that a Dark wizard the Aurors were chasing used that liquid to conceal the fact that a lot of his murders were ordinary ones. He wanted to make himself look more powerful and mysterious than he was, and worry the Aurors that they were trying to capture a genius."

"But why would someone want to prevent people from seeing the spell's signature when your discipline is so new?" Malfoy frowned.

Harry closed his eye in a slow wink. "Exactly."

Malfoy twitched his head like someone trying to shake off a hand in his hair. "Fine, why don't you explain to me what it means, instead of just implying that I should know?"

Harry hadn't realized he was doing that. Then again, Malfoy was a stranger to the way that Harry usually worked. Of course he wouldn't know what Harry was expecting him to pick up, the way that Hermione would. Harry gave a short nod of apology and said, "There must be a weakness there that revealing the signature would allow us to see. Otherwise, why would the caster want to prevent an operation that would be unusual at the time the curse was made? This curse is hundreds of years old, isn't it?"

"Yes." Some of the tension bled out of Malfoy's face. Harry thought it helped him when he could contribute information about his problem in an academic way, the same way Harry intended to approach it. "First appeared around the same time as the Statute of Secrecy, as a means of punishing wizards by making them lust after Muggles."

Harry bit his tongue so that he wouldn't say what he thought of that "punishment." The curse had horrible enough consequences that just having it cast on you was bad, and never mind the effects of prejudice. "Then whoever invented it would have been clever as well as cruel," Harry said. "More than clever enough to realize the weakness and conceal it. But not enough to hide its existence altogether from someone who can work as I do."

Malfoy began to pace inside the circle, turning his head so that he could keep Harry in sight no matter how he moved. Harry saw the sweat starting on his forehead, and grimaced in sympathy. It seemed that the curse had begun to torment Malfoy again. "But how soon are you going to uncover this weakness?"

"I don't know," Harry admitted. "There are so many factors that can vary in a study like this. I'm having to discover a whole new set of natural laws and then learn how they apply. It could be months."

Malfoy's voice cracked down the middle. Harry had once thought he would pay to see Malfoy humiliated like that, but watching it now, it really wasn't a pleasant sight at all. "Months?"

"I'm sorry," Harry said quietly. "I don't know what else to tell you. It's not automatically going to take that long, but it could."

"I don't have that long." Malfoy pressed towards the edge of the circle, though even in the middle of his lust, Harry noted, he was smart enough to keep his hands from crossing the invisible barrier. "I have to have you right now. What is it going to be like when we've spent months together?"

Harry shook his head. "I don't know. I can promise you that I'll work as hard as I can to make sure it doesn't come to that. This is my number one priority for right now."

Malfoy closed his eyes, then opened them again. They were bloodshot, Harry noticed, and he wondered when that had happened. "Please," he whispered.

Harry sighed and lowered the barrier. Malfoy crossed the distance between them in what was practically a leap and then pinned Harry to the nearest shelf. Harry heard several delicate things cracking and shifting behind them and opened his mouth to scold Malfoy.

Malfoy's tongue filled it, instead of the words he had planned on. Malfoy reached out and hitched Harry's leg up and around his waist. His words were soft and urgent, although they were swallowed by moans. Harry could feel a prickling heat start to life all over his body, and had to bite back an exclamation.

He hadn't known that he would have a reaction to this. He had never been attracted to a bloke in his life, and that was why he had thought it was all right to let Malfoy kiss him. Yes, it wasn't ideal, but he wasn't going to respond and embarrass them both. It was like letting someone who was depressed cry on your shoulder. It would make you both feel a bit like you had to avoid each other's eyes when it was done. Not more than that.

Malfoy was determined to make it more, it seemed. His hands were smoothing up and down Harry's limbs, one on his left arm, the other on his right leg, and in tandem with the movements of Malfoy's tongue in his mouth. The suppressed moans were gaining quickness and urgency, and Malfoy rocked forwards, shifting his erection along Harry's groin. Harry started to get hard.

It's not like I can help it, he thought defensively. And it's not like he can help it, either. The people at fault are the bastards who cursed him to be like this. I have to remember that.

All the same, he thought it had been enough, and he reached up to pry Malfoy's mouth away from his.


This kiss was better than all the ones Draco had had, and it wasn't simply because of the hunger that vanished at last when he got his tongue inside Potter's mouth.

It was because he could feel power under his hands, restraint trembling under his assault. Potter was swaying towards a response in spite of himself. Draco could hear him hitching and gasping and gulping his whimpers. He was pulling now at Draco's hair to try and draw his head backwards.

But Draco was too fascinated. He wanted to see that restraint break and have Potter touch him freely, not because he was trying to escape. He pushed forwards and took his hand from Potter's shoulder to reach down and caress his cock.

Hardness and warmth beneath his hand, burning through the layer of robes that constricted it. Draco murmured appreciation, or tried to, though his mouth was too full of saliva for it to sound effective. He leaned in and kissed sloppily at the corner of Potter's lips, then began to stroke him.

For one moment, Potter shuddered, and his mind was gone, as Draco could see from his eyes. He smiled smugly and pressed closer. Let me touch you. You'll feel so much better, I'll feel so much better, and I won't be as helpless, if I can bring someone else into this.

Yes, everything was going to work out. Draco still remembered it, as a fact, that the curse would get worse if he yielded to his lust for a while, but it was without any impact on him now. He knew that he would feel so much better, satisfy the hunger and the thirst, if he pulled Potter into bed. Potter would get an orgasm out of it. That was much better, more important, than the abstract consequences that he knew would follow.

Potter tensed against him, and Draco murmured pleasure and surprise. Was Potter going to get off already? That didn't take long. Draco just hoped that he had a fast recovery period, since he would want Potter's company in the aftermath. He stroked harder and angled his head so that he could bite at Potter's neck.

He had exactly one second of flesh in his mouth and under his hand and the curse purring in him like a great cat before an electric shock shivered through him and flung him backwards. Draco landed on the floor with a gasp, touching his burned lips with one finger, and then reaching a hand down to his smarting arse.

"I'm sorry, Malfoy."

Only Potter could say those words in a composed tone when he was also hard, his hair mussed and his lips bright red from Draco's hands and mouth. He crouched on the floor, as if he thought that his hunching knees would manage to hide his erection, and nodded to Draco. "It was the only thing I could think of to make you back off."

Draco didn't answer, but simply buried his head in his hands. He didn't know what to do, what to say. Embarrassment flooded him, yes, but stronger was the recoil of the frustrated curse, which burned his muscles. His fingers itched, yes, but now the impulse was to direct them towards his own arms instead of Potter.

He would not start scratching and mutilating himself. Draco swallowed and looked up. "You did what you had to to preserve your honor, Potter," he said.

Potter laughed, another strange sound in the lab given what had just happened. "I don't have any virginity left to lose," he said. Draco stared, wondering why it felt as if a dark whirlwind had just moved into his chest. "I did it because I don't want you to be a rapist. I told you, you deserve to have some dignity."

He was looking at Draco with pride and compassion, but Draco couldn't bear that right now. He turned away with what he knew was an awkward hitch of one shoulder and shook his head. "Fine, Potter. I accept that. I'm going to bed."

Potter nodded and didn't try to touch him again, but did say before Draco left the room, "We'll find some way to beat this, Malfoy. I promise."

Draco pretended he didn't hear, because a coherent reply was beyond him. He shut the door of the lab behind him and climbed the stairs that led back up to the ground floor. His legs were weak. He had to pause and lean on the wall more than once along the way, his eyes shutting. Water seemed to have replaced his muscles.

All that from one kiss. All that from just the belief that he might have lured Potter into bed, never mind the disaster that would have followed if he did.

Potter's strength of will had kept him from surrendering. Only Potter's. It wasn't something Draco could have done on his own, and he knew it.

Humiliation washed through him in exquisite waves. The Mudbloods who had cast this curse on him had known what they were doing. There was no one Draco would have rather stayed away from with this weakness on him.

And even in the midst of knowing that, of wanting, intellectually, to recoil from Potter as far as he could get, he was hungry for the sight of him. It would have been easy to turn around and go back into the lab, pretending that he simply wanted to have a few more minutes of conversation.

Draco had actually turned around again before he managed to place strong reins on his will. He finished climbing the stairs and went to his bedroom, telling himself that he didn't feel stretched, as though he had left part of his soul behind, that he didn't feel hungry and parched and in need of a single glass of cool, reviving water.

He undressed and lay down in the bed that Potter had assigned him, which was comfortable enough. He closed his eyes and waited for sleep.

It didn't come until he had touched his cock and brought himself off to the remembered image of Potter's green eyes wide and surprised, and the wholly imagined one of Potter's mouth stretched around his cock. The curse retreated when he had come, but Draco could feel it still, hooking iron claws into his stomach.

He shut his eyes and went to sleep. I hate this repeated over and over in his head until the merciful darkness came.