Author's Note:
This was just a little drabble exercise! I thought I might as well post it. Warnings for implied sexual stuff? I don't know how to tag stuff on here.
Disclaimer:
I own nothing from the franchise itself.
The King of Ephyra was condemned to push a rock endlessly up a hill for eternity. It wouldn't have mattered how steep the hill was, nor how heavy the rock became with each step. The frustration came when the hill was finally conquered, and the rock rolled all the way down to the bottom again, landing a painful distance away.
In the stifling heat of the dungeons, there was little to break the silence but the bubble of cauldrons and soft swearing as instructions were misinterpreted. With each clockwise stir of his viscous potion, the pounding in Harry's heart grew heavier and deeper. He was not cursed. There was no magical affliction rifling through his ventricles. But he could feel his pulse in his temples, and he could taste his left atrium, and Hermione would insist it was all far from normal.
"Pay attention, Potter."
Images filled Harry's mind. The snapping of hips, skin sliding against skin, the beading of sweat in awkward hollows and joints. It was a wellspring of heat—and there at the end was a deep, unending quiet. Satisfaction given voice was depicted best through silence.
It was infuriating that a slow, derisive drawl could spark all of that.
Malfoy quirked an eyebrow. He was Draco only in Harry's mouth at night. It was tentative, this slip and slide from enemy to something else. In a way, Malfoy was still the cruel boy who crunched his nose underfoot. But he was also the pale man trembling in his own home, eaten up by fear. And he was something new too, something quieter and sharper and softer all at once, eighteen and pressing forward.
"Cat got your tongue?" Malfoy murmured.
This was the initial push of the rock, the moment where Harry opened his mouth and engaged him. The back and forth they had developed was the slide of stone against rock. The sulphurous wit that spilled from Malfoy's lips was tempered with age, but no less heated. Closer and closer they would get, pressed together over the spitting mess of their half-baked antidote, mindless of the smoke in far corners of the room, careless of the way their classmates watched with curious eyes, heedless of the hill coming to a peak.
"Pay attention," announced the teacher. "You should be seeing significant changes in the viscosity of your potion by now."
Malfoy smirked at him over the cauldron. Harry glanced at the thin, watery liquid under his ladle and scowled.
The King of Ephyra at least deserved his punishment.
Word Count: 421