Title: Haphaestus
Author: Lassiter europe@singapore.com
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Characters, names, and places have been created by JK Rowling and are no property of mine.

Warning: Slash. Sadism. Beware the fire fetish.
Author Notes: Kudos to Kitty Daykin for betaing.

"The problem is," Harry murmurs, running his wand gently across your chest, "that you don't know how to play with fire." He brushes the bangs back from your forehead and entangles his fingers in your hair with a deliberate smile. "Ironic."

It had been a gradual thing. The deadening of eyes. The thinning of lips. He was a bright-eyed wide-eyed boy, too bewildered by his own mythology to notice anything. Too busy saving the world to notice that he can control a world right here if he should so choose. You've wondered how long it would take him to notice how the girls look at him in the halls, how the boys would shoulder each other saying "What do you think, Harry?" while he absently picked at his fingernails.

"I don't need to know," you reply.

You think it began when Cho let him kiss her. Or maybe it was when he left her to kiss Padma. You know one thing for sure, though: when he started kissing Seamus, that was it. The world was in his hands, as always, but this time he knew it. Nothing is sacred. Not even you.

Harry's mouth moves, millimetres from your ear, forming lazy indistinct words. His breath feels intrusive on your skin. Suddenly: a sharp pain on your shoulder. You look to see the tip of Harry's wand scorching your skin, a burning black bloom with every touch.

"Harry-!"

He silences you with a kiss and the pain and pleasure rip through the same corner of your mind. The heat on your shoulder, the pain, the protest against the pain, travels through your bloodstream to your mouth. In your confusion you kiss him to fight against the fire.

He trails his lips down your neck and, as you lay with gasping breath (from the burn? from his touch?), plants kisses on your blackened skin. With each kiss the pain recedes and when you look, your skin is as unblemished as before.

"You do now."