They say there is only one thing worse than dying. It's the coming back to life.
Sometimes Harry believed that he didn't live the six weeks at Number Four, he hibernated. At the end of the school year he died, and when he boarded the crimson train at Kings Cross he was born again. In between was Purgatory, a half-life meant to be existed, but not lived. He slept, ate and breathed. Everything else was incidental until term began.
Incidental that is, until now.
Harry blinked up at the ceiling. Huge and blurry without his glasses, the mildew stains in the corners had taken on the shapes of teeth, claws, heads without eyes. The sunlight steamed through the curtains leaving slashes of brilliance along the floor. His skin was sweaty and horrid from the stuffy room.
The sounds of normality forced their way in through the window like uninvited guests. The drone of a neighbour's lawnmower, the barking of the other neighbours terrier, the distant hum of the motorway, the clatter of Aunt Petunia's dishwasher.
All in all was the overriding sensation that he had woken up three weeks too early.
The last two weeks had been exquisitely difficult. Difficult, because Uncle Vernon had made several sly comments about Harry's sudden lassitude. He would have made more, crueler observations had Aunt Petunia not said "Don't forget his friends, dear," through rigidly clenched and smiling teeth.
Exquisite, because of the nights. Harry might have been subdued during the day, but at night, in the moments between sleeping and waking his mind was restless, filling him with all sorts of imaginings, sordid and sexual, leaving him panting and gasping as if all the air had gone out of the room. Every night now Harry had woken up drenched in sweat, his sheets stained, woken tired from a disturbing dream of skin, water, silver eyes and kisses upon wet stone.
A fortnight ago he had looked into darkness, and the darkness had looked back into him. He'd been given a glimpse of his secret self.
He was no longer a child. A child wouldn't be so overcome by erotic need that even Dudley's maleness was distracting. This otherwise hidden part of him had suddenly flowered into full rapacious bloom, making him more and less the boy he used to be. Sometimes the thoughts that filled him were sinfully delicious in their agony.
But most of the time they were just very, very distracting.
Even worse, Harry came to discover, was his new reaction towards the males he did feel warmth towards. His brief visit to the Weasley house confused him. Fred and George. Ron. He found he couldn't think properly when they came too close. His flesh would quiver and a weight would settle in his belly. He would contrive excuses to touch them - on the arms, the shoulders, or the small of the back.
Strongest of all was the lurch of yearning that came over him when Charlie made an unexpected visit the Burrow.
Harry couldn't help but spend the day staring at the shortest and stockiest of the Weasley brothers. Charlie's eyes had had a kind of faraway wildness, and his wind-roughened face was prematurely lined, the skin on his nose and cheeks as shiny-red as his hair. He was a man who had stood in the shadow of terrible lizards and wrested control of them, who had endured a storm of dragon's breath - the corrolis of fire and poison that will sear a person to ash where he stands.
When Charlie noticed Harry's intense attention upon him over the dinner table, he raised an eyebrow with good-humoured understanding. He winked at Harry, gave him a smile. Harry squirmed.
The next afternoon, when a simple hug turned into a clumsy kiss, Charlie couldn't help but ponder on the change that had come over Ron's normally reserved young friend.
Charlie returned the kiss long enough to be friendly. Harry was mauling Charlie as if he were starving. This was not love, but something else. With great gentleness Charlie took the boy's shoulders and moved Harry away from him.
"Dragon musth, eh?" he said to Harry.
"Excuse me?"
"Musth. Dragons are all in rut at the moment. Their bloody mating hormones soak right into human skin. It's worse than garlic."
Harry knew it hadn't been the Dragon pheromones on Charlie that had made Harry grab Ron's older brother into a rather desperate embrace. With a dragon handler's rough arrogance, that touch of danger, Charlie reminded him of someone else.
Charlie saw the confusion in Harry's eyes, and understood straight away what was bothering the boy. He was never so old not to remember what it was like to be sixteen.
"Got a bit of a crush on someone have we?"
Harry blushed. "Not you..."
Charlie laughed. "I knew that. He must be okay if I'm the substitute, eh?"
In any other situation Harry would have laughed at Charlie's ego. Instead he felt his features freeze over into a rictus.
"He's not okay."
Charlie peered into Harry's face and frowned at the shadow that had passed.
"Do you want to talk about it?"
Harry shook his head. They might have been alone in the rambling old house, but the chance was too great that someone would apparate into the middle of the room while Harry was pouring out his secrets. He knew too well - when you lose a secret, you lose a part of yourself.
"Well..." said Charlie, "Perhaps you want to tell me who it is?"
Harry recoiled from Charlie in alarm. "I couldn't!"
Charlie studied Harry. He had worked with non-humans for a long time. In some ways was better at non-verbal communication than many others of his species. These cues were vitally important, especially to a handler at the end of several tons of enraged lizard. For Charlie it had made him extremely sensitive to the unspoken reply.
When Charlie saw Harry's shock, and noted the way the blood drained from his face, the number of people who could have caused this panic reduced the likely list considerably. The culprit would not be a boy Harry's age, for Harry had clearly displayed a preference for older men. Not someone kindly and benign, for Charlie knew he himself looked dangerous, scarred and burned from his dragons. Many lovers had commented on his fire-kissed face and his rough, callused hands, his powerful, stocky body with a delicious frisson of fear.
Certainly someone whose name could not be spoken...?
No, not that either. He was too old, sixty-five and monstrous. Harry still had an appreciation for beauty. Somebody very close in kind, then.
Mentally, Charlie shook his head. Logic reduced the list too far, down to one man. That particular person was locked away in Azkaban, unreachable and evil. Harry would have had as much to do with Lucius Malfoy as he would have with the one who'd killed his parents.
But and but. Charlie knew that it was his right as a dragon handler to make a wrong call sometimes. For all that Harry was a kid like his youngest brother, he was also the Boy-Who-Lived, and that gave him - what others so aptly described as - an unknown quantity.
"This person," asked Charlie carefully, "Does he return your feelings?"
Again, Harry was evasive. "I don't know. Maybe if I let him."
"But you won't let him ... or you can't?"
"Both." Harry was already looking about, trying to find an excuse to worm out of this conversation. He suspected that Charlie suspected.
"You know," said Charlie carefully, wanting to tailor his advice to every eventuality, "You do yourself no favours by leaving yourself in limbo like this."
"I know."
Charlie withdrew from his vest a curved dagger, a wickedly sharp little dagger cut from one of the spurs on a Norwegian Rigdeback ruff. The handle sparkled with a spiral pattern of semi-precious stones.
"Harry, let me tell you a story. See this? This is a strap cutter. All of us handlers carry these knives. They're the only thing apart from magic that will slice open dragon-hide ropes." Charlie handed it to Harry, let him heft the surprising lightness of the blade.
"It has never happened to me, but ... sometimes a handler would get himself tangled in his own ropes and stuck fast to a wild dragon. He had a terrible choice to make. He either cut the ropes and hope he would fall to safety without the beast making a meal of him ... or he would remain trapped, and stay on that dragon until he died."
As Harry made to give back the knife Charlie shook his head. "See, I was a bit too clever. I made mine into a permanent portkey, it takes me anywhere I want to go."
"Anywhere...?"
"As I figure, you also need to work out whether you want to cut the ropes or stay on the dragon."
Harry didn't quite know what to say. Charlie's generosity was a part of him as he was part of his family, but not when the second-elder Weasley brother seemed to know exactly where Harry's predicaments were.
"Now get out of here. Mum isn't expecting you until dinner."
Harry didn't go anywhere. Not at first. He lay on the spare bed in Ron's room and twirled the blade between his fingers, marvelling at the glass-shard clarity of the ruff-spike and the way it inflicted paper-cuts to anywhere on his skin he tested.
He tried and failed not to think about with the wizard prison, the massive granite walls that he was sure could resist even the very end of the world, the cavernous roots of the dungeons and catacombs buried into the loamy earth, and the person kept in the very depths.
At the thought of that person he could already sense the familiar ache in his groin.
Harry rolled onto his side, hating himself for this reaction whenever he thought of the imprisoned Death Eater. Manifesting any form of desire towards Lucius Malfoy was, to him, just about the ultimate betrayal of Sirius' memory. His godfather would never have stood for such nonsense.
He would have told him to cut the damn rope.
Hedwig returned at midnight, and sat upon the windowsill patiently, her white feathers almost obscured against the unseasonal frost haze on the glass.
Ron only murmured in his sleep when Harry let her in. He saw the dark parchment tied onto her leg, and it did not escape his notice that the fibres steadily darkened as he fumbled with the string attaching the message to his owl.
Harry had only a few seconds to read the spidery handwriting before the parchment turned to ash and dissolved in his fingers.
Mr Potter:
Further to your visiting request. As you are aware non-relatives are forbidden access to our high-security inmates. But taking into account the little chat we had previously, I am sure discretion can be held on both our parts. I will be expecting you tonight. Warden - Azkaban Prison
Harry's fingers still tingled from the residual magic, and he seriously debated whether he should wake up Ron and tell him where he was going.
He decided against it. What he was about to do now was no business of Ron's. Besides, his friend would do everything in his power to keep Harry from going, even if it meant using magic himself.
Harry quickly dressed and dug out Charlie's knife. The shard reflected the glow from the brazier with a strange, kinked light. Harry steeled himself for the worst.
"Azkaban."
There was a storm out in the ocean that night, the air roaring with thunder and the great battering swells of water plunging against the jagged cliffs. The rain darkened the ominous stone of the prison until it was almost invisible, turning the edifice into an immensity blacker than the ravaged night-time sky.
The Warden was waiting for him in the shelter of the great, keyholed entrance. The Azkaban wards would not allow anyone to turn up - or leave by that matter - unannounced.
Harry drew his robe about him tighter, and met the warden's knowing smile with a cool one in return.
"Oh come now Mister Potter," said the Warden, flashing a complicit grin from his black beard, "You know as well as I do that a young lad like you is testing the water in his...preferences. For I was not so much younger than you when I discovered the sweet pleasure of being the one to wield the whip and the blade."
Harry did not acknowledge him.
"Talking about blades, I'll be needing that portkey of yours. You'll get it back when you're ... finished with him."
Harry again felt a slimy chill of revulsion. His only consolation was that this would be the last time he would have to come here. Tonight he would end his unwanted fixation with Lucius Malfoy, and bring closure to this need for revenge.
He handed Charlie's knife over the Warden and followed him into the Azkaban dungeons.
Despite the depth of the structure, the pounding sea against the cliff seemed to reverberate through stone like a slow heartbeat, a relentless driving rhythm.
"We had him ... cleaned ... for you," said the Warden, pausing at just the places to make it seem that much more had been done to ensure Malfoy's co-operation. A purplish tongue licked dry lips. Harry suspected that the Warden would arrange any indignity on Harry's request.
"I don't intend to do anything to him. I just want to talk to him, that is all."
The Warden shrugged, as if he was a little offended by Harry's rejection of the trouble he'd taken. "You might change your mind. Our visitors nearly always do."
After several minutes of descent into the dungeon, the Warden arranged himself outside a heavy wooden door.
"He's in here. You have an hour. I'll be waiting up at the watchtower for when you ... return."
The Warden pushed open the door and made to leave.
"Hang on, said Harry. Aren't you afraid he'll walk out?"
"Oh no, I assure you, he's very securely tied down."
The Warden gave another one of his horrid, knowing smiles, before leaving the way they had come.
On stepping into the cell, Harry understood what the Warden meant. The stone room was round and bare, lit by flickering brands that burnt without smoke. The shifting yellow light revealed a complicatedly adjustable wood-carved chair, canted slightly backwards and decorated - if that was the right word - with cast-iron rings and hooks of the type to secure both mundane and magical ropes.
In the chair - and now Harry's heart thrummed faster - an almost naked figure was bound, still-damp hair flowing over his shoulders taking on the colour of that cold fire, the skin touched with gold, the defiant arms constrained rigidly down his sides, modesty and vulnerability conveyed in a strip of cloth across his hips.
The bulge under the cloth served only to intensify the previous memory of Harry's last visit.
The Warden might have tried to reduce Malfoy's physical presence by having him tied into a sitting position, but had failed miserably. Even bound, Malfoy exuded arrogance. When the door slammed shut the prisoner made no sign of being aware that Harry was in the room with him, as if it were beneath his contempt to acknowledge Harry's existence.
Harry walked around behind Malfoy, wanting to calm his breathing and damp the heat that had risen in his face. A fresh welt was visible on Malfoy's back, magically healed but still obvious. The original injury had clearly been a lot worse, possibly caused by the guards trying to secure Malfoy into this position in the first place.
Harry felt his hand lift as of its own violition. He intended to snatch the offending limb away, but his own sense whispered to him: Malfoy's tied down. He can't do anything to you.
He reached out his fingers and came into contact with the marked shoulder so softly that at first Malfoy didn't seem to register his being touched.
When he did, he jerked under Harry's fingers and twisted away as far as his bonds would allow.
"Don't touch me Potter," Malfoy snarled. "Get your filthy hands off me."
Harry stepped back, then wished he hadn't. He was the one standing. He was the one in control.
Harry walked quickly around to face the pale wizard and opened his mouth to speak, to rail and shout and accuse and get it over with so that he could leave this accursed place for good.
But when he saw the body, so bold despite the position it had been tied into Harry couldn't speak. He was seized by those insolent silver eyes, the sneer on Malfoy's lips, the way his arms were still thick with muscle, cut and defined.
Then there was that part of Malfoy hidden from him by the thin cloth.
As Malfoy breathed, there was a corresponding movement to the lump under the cloth. Harry was no longer confined by the amount of space he needed to stay away from Malfoy. Yes, he had come here to finish things, but there was no reason he could not look one more time. In the last fortnight his most sharp, intense climaxes had occurred as he dwelt on his memory of Malfoy's huge prick, imagining its forbidding size in Harry's hand, betwenn his lips, in his most intimate places.
Perhaps he could look and imagine just this part of his enemy's anatomy in the future without thinking of the enemy. He could take a mental picture and keep it to himself, an image to be brought out at night, in the privacy of his bed.
As Harry stepped closer it also occurred to him that if he remembered Malfoy this way, then every other lover he would ever have would be spoilt for him, because he had chosen as his ideal something quite incredible and unattainable. He had a jolt of precognition, seeing himself in the embrace of a stranger-lover in the far future, many many years from now, and his traitorous mind skipping back to this very moment.
Harry paused, but only for a second.
Malfoy didn't say anything as Harry pulled the cloth away. A low growl of outrage escaped him.
Yes, the organ was just as Harry remembered. Darker than the rest of his skin, heavy and forbidding. Harry blushed at an obvious thought ... what would it feel like? Would it be soft skin, or stretched hard as the leather around a bludger?
Malfoy was in no position not to notice Harry's silent deliberation on his nakedness. He clearly took offence to the being made such an object of attention.
"What is the point of your vile gaping? As you see my hands have been tied so I may not perform for your amusement." He snagged his wrists against his bonds as he spoke, making his request in such a slimy, condescending tone that Harry was under no illusion as to what Malfoy thought of him. "Perhaps you should unbind me and see where the fun leads, hmm?"
Harry knew that were the bonds gone, he would have asked Malfoy to perform for him again. It was not the flaccid prick he wanted to see, but the erect one, hard and threatening and desirable, the head glistening in these firebrands as if it were on the point of penetration. Harry closed his eyes momentarily as the image seared into his mind, then opened them.
"You said my name last time," Harry said quietly. "When you came."
"I did not."
"You did."
Malfoy tilted his beautiful head up slightly. Oh, the man was so arrogant in the face of this confinement, so defiantly proud. "I am not going to get drawn into this argument," he said with finality. "Visit your torture upon me Potter, and then leave, for every minute I have a visit - invited or none - the Warden makes me suffer an equal time in compensation."
The ghosts of old injuries of Malfoy's skin told Harry that he was telling the truth.
The sound of the sea made the caverns of Azkaban grumble in commiseration. The low, subsonic pulse of the waves against the island affected Harry physically, made him more edgy, sensitive to his own skin. He was also terribly aware that on speaking to Malfoy and gazing upon him, he had developed an erection that now bent uncomfortably against the front of his trousers.
Malfoy's silver eyes glowered as Harry adjusted himself in front of the restrained man. Harry tried hard not to tremble from the contact as he manipulated himself to a kinder, less painful position. Hold on he scolded himself. This meeting is almost over, you'll go back to the bathroom in the Burrow and drag this scene into your steadily growing bank of fantasies that involve Lucius Malfoy...
Harry had to swallow, as a flush of warmth rose from his belly and groin, culminating in an anxious lump in his throat. This conversation had better be short, as he didn't know he could hold out being so painfully hard.
Malfoy watched Harry touch his fly and move the contents within, noted duly the dark rise of lust in the boy's face, and came to the wrong conclusion.
"If you put that little prick anywhere near me I'll bite it off."
Harry was rather affronted, as one particular fantasy had involved Malfoy on his knees before him, his aristocratic mouth filled with Harry, his tongue swirling enthusiastically against his glans and...
Again that flush of heat, this time scouring through his limbs like an obscene fire. Harry couldn't help but let out a gasp. He was so close. Malfoy was so close.
The most important thing was that Malfoy was bound up tight against that chair with dragon-hide rope and there was no way, save for Charlie's dagger and some hefty spell-work, that they would be untied.With slow steps Harry moved closer to Malfoy, close enough so that he could reach out and touch that skin if he so chose.
He chose.
As Harry stretched out his hand he could see the imperceptible flinch behind Malfoy's reserve. In the past month no human touch would have come to the man without agony, and Malfoy's reaction was instinctive. He shied away from Harry's finger whispering down his cheek, his nostrils flaring and his eyes closing, as if willing himself to endure the inevitable blow or slap.
When Harry lay his palm on Malfoy's cool shoulder Harry felt the deep tremor passing through Malfoy's body just like the constant thunder of the sea. He moved his hand over Malfoy's pectoral muscle, his thumb just touching the nipple and felt the heartbeat thrumming there. Amazing that Malfoy could be so wracked with apprehension and yet not show the tiniest bit in his manner or his voice.
Strange, that he could hold so much hate for this man but couldn't bring himself to hurt him.
What happened next was a decision he allowed his own body to make, his consciousness following along for the ride. He slid his hands down Malfoy's long thighs and parted them at the knees. Malfoy's ankles were bound to the chair, so he couldn't kick out at Harry, and a prisoner knows too well the consequences of not complying when there is naked vulnerability to consider. Malfoy turned his head in denial of what ever Harry was planning. His eyes were still closed. He was still expecting to be hurt.
Harry knelt before the bound man. Malfoy's prick hung resolutely downwards.
Harry squirmed his shoulders in between Malfoy's thighs and began to kiss their inner flanks, slow licks and suckles along the taut, trembling flesh, first one, then the other.
A little part of Harry that was not overcome by delicious horror at what he was doing suspected that this careful preparation was a bit like handling wild magical creatures. Everything had to be slow, gentle but decided. Despite being an utterly inexperienced lover, Harry knew not to blunder into the centre of Malfoy straight away. Not when the man was so wired with trepidation. The slightest wrong touch could be construed as threatening.
Harry continued to nuzzle and attend to those long lines of skin, tracing the muscle dips and junctions in the leg with his lips, concentrating on the bare patches where the hair had fined away. With his hands he stroked along the outside of Malfoy's thighs, coming to rest at his hips, lightly, without coercion.
Slowly Malfoy stopped flinching from Harry's tongue and the muscles relaxed slightly, allowing Harry more access. Harry darted his head forward and let his tongue graze the swelling head of Malfoy's cock. He almost backed away in alarm when the older man jolted, as if burnt.
Malfoy's breath had become ragged, and Harry suspected that in any other situation Malfoy would have been fully erect by now. The pale wizard was using all his control to keep himself from responding to Harry's touches. Harry could only do what he had done before, and that was to slowly wear Malfoy's resolve away just as water would eventually grid down stone.
He let his tongue capture the heavy glans again, testing its weight, before running the tip pointedly around the ridge, into the eye. When he felt Malfoy's thighs tense as if to push him away, Harry left Malfoy's cock alone and returned to the almost-neutral thighs and hips. He kissed and stroked these places appreciatively until Malfoy's legs opened again, and a hiss escaped him that could almost have been please.
Harry moved forward lapped at the underside of Malfoy's penis and took what he could of the organ into his hot mouth. Malfoy groaned and practically left the chair, hissing with effort. His wrists jagged against the sharp edges of the dragon-hide that bound him. Harry only had to suckle a few more times before Malfoy surrendered completely, becoming fully erect in Harry's mouth. A strong-tasting leak of precome followed, and Harry's own prick responded with a twitch that seemed to wrench his belly.
Malfoy's hips began to cant back and forth, but Harry could not tell whether he was trying to pull away or push in. Harry drew and sucked harder until his jaw ached from trying to accommodate the organ's width, before pulling back to just look at this wonderful part of Malfoy's body, the silky thickness, the way the cock veins moved but didn't quite give way under a vigorous stroke of his tongue. His mental camera was practically branding this sight onto the very surface of his skull. Oh gods he thought, This has ruined me.
Harry could not linger long on that thought because his hunger demanded he continue to devote himself to Malfoy, or at least that part of Malfoy that made him so obsessed. He licked, and each long stroke of his tongue would elicit a brutal, hoarse cry from Malfoy's lips, and each time Malfoy cried out it seemed as if the sound scored right through Harry, from the tip of Harry's aching cock to the top of his spine, and he would shake from exertion, battling not to give in to weakness again, to be strong by not being the one who came first, to show Malfoy he could have this control over him and not be affected by it. It was he who held the emotional ropes, and it would be his decision to cut them.
As Harry continued, speeding up, tasting and nipping Malfoy's balls, flicking the smooth underside of his tongue across the crimson glans, the sounds Malfoy made came faster, and his cries were higher in pitch with a desperate edge. Harry looked up from his exquisite task and wanted to groan appreciatively when he saw Malfoy's head thrown back, the silvergold hair outlined against the brands like a halo, the cords of his neck standing out in sharp relief.
Oh gods, he thought, Malfoy was glorious, especially when every muscle in him strained for release with such intensity that Harry could hear the leather of the bonds creak under the tension. More than once Harry's tongue slid off the glans on an upwards stroke, continuing up Malfoy's chest to a nipple, to a damp shoulder, to tongue the ribs and experience the latent magic that seemed to effervesce through Malfoy's sweat. No ordinary man would taste like this, so fresh and dark and seething with barely restrained power, that if Harry closed his eyes he could imagine his tongue sweeping across the flesh of some unknowable, insatiable creature, not a man at all.
Suddenly Harry feared that if he didn't kiss Malfoy now he would surely die, and he couldn't kiss him, for even at the height of his distraction Malfoy was as deadly and dangerous as any one of Charlie's dragons.
The impossibility of claiming the man's mouth with his own filled Harry with an unbelievable panic. He couldn't bear it, not with Malfoy so ready and so beautiful and untouchable and he realized if he tasted all of Malfoy, licked him to completion and let himself receive that heady spurt of come, if Malfoy cried out Harry's name like he had the last time, a circuit would trip in his mind and he'd be addicted.
He would lose himself to those eyes and that skin and be imprisoned by their hatred, and his lust and desire and necessity for this one individual alone. The need would drive him upon Malfoy's mercy, knew that he would gladly exchange his life just to be forced upon the flagstones of the cell and to open up for that massive cock and to have Malfoy pounding into him just as the relentless ocean pounded against the cliffs of Azkaban, and Harry would scream for more even as Malfoy killed him, and just knowing that he would give up his life out of such intense need filled him with sickness, dread and desire.
The fact that Harry had allowed himself to reach this juncture was the most terrifying thing of all.
A sudden rush of sensation flowed through Harry and he knew it for what it was, the drop before his own climax. He couldn't let Malfoy see him like this again, how Malfoy had affected him and continued to affect him. Harry fled the room, his prick so hard he could barely stand up, flinging open the door and throwing himself against the opposite wall.
He fumbled to free his burning prick from his trousers, the skin stretched so tight over the rigid core his fingers seemed as if they would split the flesh along the grain, and the next thing he saw was his seed jetting against the wall when it should have been against pale, sweat slicked skin. He climaxed with such agony was as if his insides were being torn from the root, his hand flung up against that terrible stone to steady himself against the unfairness and pain of his orgasm, against the unconscious crash of water against immovable earth, and most of all against Lucius sobbing and screaming in the next room, "Finish it, finish it..."
Screaming, because he could still see Harry's back shuddering against the far wall. Malfoy knew what Harry had just done and Harry wanted to cry out: I cant, I cant finish it because if he did he would be enslaved, and the worst thought was - was he already a slave? Was he too late?
He last spasm drained him. Harry slid down the wall and huddled, miserable beyond words. After several minutes he turned his head to peer back into the cell, ready for Malfoy's wrath.
Instead Malfoy was paying him no attention, hunched over as far as the chair would allow, trembling and breathing in shallow pants as if he were in pain. Malfoy was suffering the ache of coming so far but not far enough, having to wait for the blood to drain out of his unsatisfied cock and back into his body, blood poisoned with anticipation without release
Harry felt wracking sobs escaping him, as if he'd been unmanned and was just a kid again, the situation closing him like the prison walls.
"I want you Lucius, oh gods, oh Merlin you don't know how much." He heard himself say, but he wasn't in his bedroom at night, he was sitting in Azkaban with Malfoy barely ten paces away, listening intently despite the dull agony of his interrupted climax.
"Why," Harry sobbed, "why do you have to be what you are?"
Malfoy did not reply, did not even look at him, and Harry did not think he would. It was too late to turn back for either of them now. Harry had been tied on to the dragon, and had not been able to cut himself free.
Harry crawled to his feet and with agonized slowness returned to the watchtower, back to the Burrow and to Ron's confused, worried face.
TBC - Ritual