I awoke to the sound of the door creaking. Opening only one eye, I first examined the figure aside me. Ashen hair lay scattered and stray across the pillow. A long, straight nose ending in the rosy pink curve of his mouth. His chest rose and fell slowly. I smiled. As it should be. I then opened the other eye to examine the figure whose lithe form seemed pressed by the vastness of the doorframe.
He stood with his hands in his pockets. His strong nose downturned, culminating in a pair of thick, full lips. His dark hair amassing in a styled but unruly coif. He coughed.
I leaned forward, blushing as the sheets slid down to reveal a bare chest. As I did this, Draco awoke, sitting upright and rubbing his messy hair in his hands. He eyed the figure in the doorway, but chose instead to stretch his long arms over his head and yawn in a way that was particularly cat-like. The male in the doorway shuffled slightly.
"Good morning, Theo." His voice crackled in the first moments of waking, but was the same smooth song I had grown so accustomed to. I pulled the sheets to cover myself.
"No point in standing there, come in." He continued, ushering the stranger - Theo - into the room and consequentially to the edge of the bed.
He was familiar to me, though I couldn't quick knick it. A student. A friend? He glanced between Draco and myself.
"Mmm." Draco muttered and yawned once more in a wide-mouthed gesture. He waved a delicate hand between us. "Harry, this is Theo. Theo Nott. Slytherin. Was, like me, I suppose."
I nodded, confused, and reached out a hand to shake his. I suppose he did look familiar. Quidditch player, maybe. He'd aged. The angles of his face were well-cut, almost feminine. His dark, chocolatey eyes were wide but set deep into his pale skin, and seemed alarmed. He was actually handsome. Incredibly so. I shifted slightly to stop looking into those eyes.
"I think this is a bad time." Theo's voice was deep and rumbly, despite his effeminate form. I looked between he and Draco, who nodded.
"Yeah, okay." Draco replied surprisingly honestly, his eyes glittering as they met the chocolate eyes of the delicate Slytherin.
Theo stood and rubbed the back of his neck with a large palm. As he did, the hem of his shirt lifted slightly above his belt and I caught a glimpse of a pink scar against his stomach. He hovered for a moment, as if unsure of his next move, and then repeated Draco's last words before leaving quickly. As he turned to close the door, he glanced once more at Draco, avoiding me entirely.
I looked into Draco's sleepy eyes. His face was unsmiling but glowing slightly. I was confused. How many wayward Slytherins were Remus and Tonks keeping locked away in this strange, London brownstone? I opened my mouth to speak but snapped it shut again as he slid from under the covers and stood next to the bed. Naked and pale and silhouetted by the soft light of morning. I devoured every curve of his exquisite form. Burned it into my mind. As he moved, I watched him. Let my brain drift off as my eyes hungrily analyzed.
In my mind, I watched sweat form and glisten within the tight blonde curls of his strong chest. Veins throbbing in his arms as he leaned over top of me. Abs pulled taunt, scarred like flecks of light cutting through window blinds, deliciously sweet.
I rubbed my forehead and adjusted myself. He had found a pair of undergarments and donned them while I was elsewhere, but he had clearly been observing my fantasy. His arms were crossed across his chest and his thin mouth was lined with the curl of a smirk.
"Don't you ever get tired of watching me?" He asked, self righteously and with the thick slathering of venom that I had decided was, most likely, inherent.
"No." I responded, breathlessly. The voice in my head sounded far more in control that the one attached to my mouth. "How many people are staying here?"
"Oh, just me." He responded, indifferently.
"It's…" I leaned over to the end table and handled his watch. The beautiful crystalline face ticked wildly as 18 different hands shown times from here to New Zealand. I studied it for a moment before concluding that I had an approximate time of 8:15 am, which I declared.
He sat down on the edge of the bed and let his hand rest on the sheet against my leg. He was a smart man, and though his nonchalant attitude would have suggested otherwise, he knew the answer that I was looking for. He opened his mouth, thought about his words, and then deciding that they were sufficient, he spoke.
"Ah, we're fucking."
—
I politely declined breakfast as Tonks swept through the kitchen with a respectful speed. Instead, I sipped at a cup of strong, black coffee and furrowed my eyebrows in anger and self-pity. He dusted the table of crumbs and placed them onto his plate in a well-brought-up manner that only made me furious.
"Look, Harry. I've known Theo for a very long time. Since we were children, in fact. Our fathers are very close, and much like me, he would not have faired very well in the dark arts." He began speaking with his eyes fixed on the gentle motion of the sweeping and setting of toast particles but ended with two steely blue orbs locked solidly with my own.
"He's handsome." I concluded, offhandedly.
"Oh, yes." His mouth bean to twitch into a small smile but he suppressed it.
"Are you fucking kidding me?" I felt my temper slipping. "A year? Back and forth between that crummy flat. Always waiting for you. Always watching after you. That fucking night. In your room. You were so, God, so nice to me." I hissed the word 'nice' in a disgusted snarl and continued my rant.
"All those years spent being horrible! Awful! I've never - but I wanted - so badly. And you kissed me so - and Christmas - and I had fun." I trailed off for a moment, lost in the memory. "And then you died! I grieved. I told my friends. I became someone else! And the whole time you were here, with him. Just fucking. Yeah, casual thing." I slid my chair backwards, and it scratched so loudly against the hard wood that a door somewhere within the depths of the house clicked closed as to not hear me continue.
"Harry, you need to calm down."
"No! No I don't!" I huffed. I was angry. So angry. Tears stained my cheeks and I held up my hand, exiting the room to return to his soft bed, sheets still crumpled in its center.
When he appeared in the doorway, I was frantically attempting to tie the laces of my shoes. I didn't look up at him, but I didn't have to. He swiftly grabbed hold of my chin, not too gently, and made me fix eyes with him. They were deep and flickered with anger. I dropped my feet and slowed my breathing.
"You need to act like an adult." His words were calm but burning with the flame of anger.
"You can not for a second believe that you are the first man that I've been with, Harry. I am respectful of your naivety, and I would go so far as to say that I enjoy it. But, your inexperience is not an excuse for your behavior. I have been, if nothing else, understanding."
"I do not enjoy being here. I certainly did not enjoy having to keep the fact that I was safe hidden from you, but I knew that I needed to do what I was told, for both you and myself. I miss that flat. I dream about Christmas. But, that fire was meant to kill me. And you. It was something set in motion by what we did. Orchestrated by my sniveling, rat-faced father."
He took a deep breath, his voice softening from the spitting of his last passionate sentence to a gentle but forceful tone.
"Harry. I missed you. You are exquisite. Handsome and dark and innocent and completely foreign to me. Easily the best that - but, you need to start acting like an adult. If you don't believe that you were well on your way to becoming a man when you followed me into my room that night, you must believe that you have become one now. You are not The Boy Who Lived anymore, Harry Potter, you are someone else. Act the part."
And with a final hiss of his diatribe, he snapped my jaw away from his eyes, out of his long fingers, and sat aside me, still swelling with an anger so violent and staggering that I chewed at my bottom lip in near repent.
"I am not your boyfriend, Harry Potter." He concluded, cooly.
"I'm sorry." I responded, foolishly.
"Don't be sorry." He snapped. Then sighed. "Just don't act like that."
"Like a child."
"Like a child. You are definitely not a child."
There was a long period of silence where we let our tempers cool. I spent the time kicking off my shoes again. Lip still chewed coyly, having been reprimanded in a way that in my life, only he had done.
"You really think that I'm…well…best?" My lips curled into a smile that I couldn't control.
He raised his eyebrows and puffed out a single, suppressed laugh. Ran his long hands through ashen hair and let his lean, muscular chest rise in a deep breath.
"Get. Back." He pointed towards the mess of pillows at the head of the bed. "Go. And take off those stupid pants."
"They're your pants." I tutted. They were his pants. I stole them.
"I thought they looked familiar. Just take them off. Leave you shirt on." His voice was trailing but the last sentence he commanded.
As usual, I did as I was told. Fumbling and eager and angry and sweaty and sad. These were emotions that I had grown so accustomed to within the last year that they served a reminder as to the kind of person I was. I noted this, and leaned against the soft feather of the pillows, propped up against the headboard in a seated position.
I had never seen him move this way. Always commanding to the point of using magic against me, now he slithered from the foot of the bed towards me in a way that was more feline than his usual serpentine. His eyes, shallow and hungry, twinkled with a pleasurable secret. As he approached me, arm curled around the nape of my neck, fingers twirling in the gentle wisps of my hair, a smile cracked over his carefully composed mouth in a way that reminded me of Ginny's smile. I flushed at the thought. But as soon as the thought had manifested, it was ripped from my mind. In an instant that coy smile was replaced with hunger. His soft fingers tugged at my hair hard enough to wrench back my head, my soft cry of pain silenced by the red-hot lick of his venomous kiss and the powerful control of my arousal.
My breathing doubled. Eyelashes fluttered closed as his grip on my head loosened, occupied elsewhere. I was on the hair-trigger of anger and relief, and emitting a soft groan, I suddenly became aware of the chill of sweat that appeared quickly and now clung to my trembling body. I curled into his chest like a crumpled leaf and sighed, rubbing damp hair into the curve of his shoulder, scar warm but distant in my conscious.
—
I couldn't sleep. Alone again, in my bed. The room was filled with the soft purr of sleeping Gryffindors, hurried to bed with the thoughts that tomorrow would begin another week of study and examinations. My eyes, open, stared into the curving archways of the gothic ceiling, attempting and failing to distract a mind that worked, fervently, to imagine the ethereal image of that man entangled in the limbs of the strange brunette.
The ripple of muscles in his back. Their backs. Both scared? Both lean and pale and fighting against the friction of flesh and desire. A soft moan in that rumbling, foreign voice. Pale fingers, white with force, gripped onto the cotton sheets as if he were going to be ripped from them and flung away. The animalistic way he growled.
I emitted a soft coo, occupied by my daydream, when I heard the creak of bedsprings and someone raising in the dark.
"Harry?" The voice was hushed, breathy, and thickly painted with an Irish accent. I felt myself flush deeply and feigned slumber, but it was too late. The small form of Seamus Finnegan found the edge of my bed. He rested gently against my legs, which trembled with the idea that I had just been interrupted doing something wholly indecent.
"Hey. I'm…" I closed my eyes tightly and scrunched my face in an attempted to disperse the shame from my features and think of a lie to tell.
"I over'eard you and Ron talking." His voice did not hide the knowledge that what he was saying was true, it was almost boastful in its quiet delivery.
His deep brown eyes twinkled in the night. Even before my own had adjusted to the darkness, I could see the stars in them, cast by the moon peeking in. I must have looked as frightened as I felt because he continued.
"Don't worry, I won't tell."
His voice was now soft, almost singsong in his delivery and strangely tinged by his accent. It took me a moment to realize what it was that he wanted. When I did, I burned. His rough hand rested on my thigh, protected only by the thin sheet and several inches. His features were soft. Head round, and cropped by short brown hair. Eyes blue, but slitted, and nose broad and flat. He was not particularly handsome or beautiful, but not bad. And he was in my bed, fearlessly, in a room of our peers. I suddenly became as excited by the prospect as I was frightened by the fact.
As if reading my thoughts, he leaned over and placed a soft kiss on my lips. It was different, sweet and gentle. He smelled light, almost fruity, and his skin was soft and smooth, not broken by scar or defined by muscle. He was gentle and almost boyish, and it filled me with something that I had only felt once with Him - the desire to bite back.
—
With one hand cupped over his mouth, I silenced him. The only sounds in the room the deafening echo of my own heartbeats as they racked my brain behind my ears. Each breath that escaped my parted lips was a quiet and broken pant. The muscles in my free arm tightened from the support of my body over his, while the strain on my abdomen rolled and buckled. The bells in my ears rang, blocking out the sound of my stifled whimper. Seamus staggered to the bed, soft and entangled in cotton sheets.
I kneeled above him, back still slightly arched, chest dampened by sweat, muscles solid with tension. I rolled my neck and shook loose the cramp in my arm. For a passing moment, I felt like Him. Tall, masculine, and looming with a powerful male presence and that dark, commanding gaze. I surveyed the form on the bed, gentle and curled like an animal, but the darkness in me is always overtaken by the light. I lowered myself aside him and extended an arm around his shoulders. After several minutes of quiet breathing, he leaned upwards on his arm and overlooking my prone form, he spoke.
"There's a fantasy to check off my list!" His voice was quiet still, in the room of slumbering heads, but giddy.
"Excuse me?"
"Oh come on, Harry. You gotta know every queer in the school wants a piece of you. The famous Harry Potter. And when I 'eard you tell Ron that you were getting dicked I knew I 'ad to make a move. Can't blame me can you?"
I opened my mouth but was only met with silence. I was speechless. My head was filled with blood and I felt my sweat run cold. Nervous? Fuck. Angry.
"Shame about Malfoy. God, what a treat. 'Eaven got a fuckin' angel that day. I can see why he gave you a season pass, though. Lucky dog. You are something else." He pronounced the last sentence with dedicated pause. His eyes flashed and he leaned forward to kiss me.
I turned my cheek and furrowed heavy black eyebrows. Suddenly aware of my nudity, the slow breathing of the bodies in the room, and the warm hands of spring clawing at the windows. Before Seamus could continue his blasphemous dialog, I regained my voice.
"Get out of my bed, Seamus." My voice was cold, grave, and honest. My eyes felt almost glazed by his words. From start to finish they burned the inside of my brain.
"Uh, duly noted."
I waited until I felt the mattress give. The padding of bare feet reaching their destination of a warm four-poster. Then, I waited longer. My naivety. My fear of these people knowing. Knowing what? That it was Draco Malfoy? That it was any man. Sex, or that it was something more than sex that I was looking for? My drifting mind snapped back to reality. I leaned forward and pulled on the crinkled, flannel sleep pants that had become discarded in a ball at the foot of the bed.
Slowly, I padded down the hallway. Feet and chest bare. Mind focused. Filch's cat pawed from around a looming, stone corner. Her movements were silent but her eyes shone as two red orbs in the dark night. When she saw me, she sat, raising a paw to her face to lick it softly, then meowed. I hissed back. Dedicated. I reached the wide expanse of empty wall and waved my wand over it. As it softly began to glow, I entered. In the center of the room, again dusty and silent, the large mirror stood covered with a cloth sheet. I ripped it to the floor. Beyond the point of holding my breath, I submerged.
—
I allowed my eyes time to adjust to the darkness. The crescent moon winked at me from the window, cracked open. I scanned the bed. One body. Elegant and enveloped in dream. I leaned forward and rested one knee on the mattress. Gingerly pressing my palm against him, I felt the warmth of his skin against my own. Slowly at first, but then with force, I shook him.
"Draco, wake up."
"Mmm?" His voice was gentle, almost cooing. I had remembered him sounding irritated when woken.
"Harry?" He rubbed his eyes and strained them to check the time on the ticking watch aside his bed. Deciding it was futile, he instead groped for his pack of cigarettes. Tenderly, he placed one between his lips and stretched forward to sit upright.
I took a deep breath. Heart racing. Pupils dilated.
"Draco Malfoy. I love you."