Disclaimer: I own none of the characters or settings to be found hereing.
A/N: A few weeks ago I invited readers of my livejournal to challenge me to write - within limits - any pairing and/or scenario of their choice. This is one of the results. In this instance the challenge was to write a ficlet involving Harry/Draco, Sirius/Remus, Crowley/Aziraphale, teenage angst and red plastic flowers. I think I did quite well to fit it into less than 2000 words.
Draco Malfoy was brooding. It was an art that he was becoming increasingly proficient at. He'd decided to take it up shortly after his father had been forcibly relocated to the maximum security wing of Azkaban. It had started off with the odd few minutes of low grade sulking, but had quickly progressed to spending four to five hours a night walking the corridors and dwelling on the futility of existence. At first his dark musings had mostly been mostly confined to devising methods to inflict bodily harm on Potter and thinking up ways to get Millicent Bullstrode to stop trying to feel him up in transfiguration. However, after a time his thoughts had turned to other things. His increasingly strained relationship with his mother, for one thing. Narcissa Malfoy had recently taken up mime and interpretive dance after declaring that she thought it was time that she threw off the shackles of childrearing and housework – or to be more precise the shackles of delegating the childrearing and housework to the servants and House Elves – and followed her dreams. There was also the recent revelation that his father had been going to Gringotts for a little more than just gold. Not to mention the fact that, due to an enforced tightening of the purse strings, he could no longer afford to pay Theodore Nott to do his history of magic homework. What weighed on his mind heaviest however, were the strange dreams that he'd been having lately. They were the kind of dreams that tended to leave one waking up hot, sticky and somewhat flustered. They also seemed to invariably involve Harry Potter in a number of rather odd, yet strangely enticing, scenarios. The last one had featured his scar headed nemesis inexplicably competing in the Men's 400 metre skinny dip at the Magical Olympics.
So wrapped up was he in angsting about what these torrid dreams could possibly mean that Draco didn't bother to take note of the direction that he was shuffling in. It therefore came as a bit of a surprise when he found himself in the middle of what appeared to be a long abandoned classroom, containing nothing but a few rickety tables, an out of date Tourist's Guide to Magical Botswana and a vase of horrendously tacky red plastic roses. Overcome by a sudden destructive urge, he picked up the hideous yellow vase, in which the synthetic flowers resided and prepared to smash it. Before he had time to hurl the offending item at the wall however, he became aware that his surroundings seemed to have inexplicably changed.
Instead of a disused classroom he was now standing in a brightly lit room; the décor of which seemed to heavily favour lurid reds, purples and golds. After a few brief moments he realised that he was in a shop. A shop stocking a plethora of erotic, exotic and downright bizarre wares. It was then that he saw the object of his revenge fantasies and peculiar dreams hovering next to a magazine rack with a look of puzzlement and disorientation etched onto his face.
Temporarily thrown by the situation Draco decided to fall back on the old standby that was petty name calling.
"Hello Potter. Didn't realise you were gay," he sneered, nodding towards a magazine, the explicit cover of which seemed to be holding the fascinated gaze of the Boy Who Lived.
"Oh that. I thought everybody knew. I've been out for weeks," said Harry, sounding distracted and thoroughly unconcerned.
Draco was stumped. What should have been a deadly insult had received nothing but a casual confirmation that yes Harry Potter was in fact gay. Petty insults having clearly failed Draco was forced to opt for direct questioning. "What the hell are you doing here?" he said, eventually.
"I think it was some kind of portakey. Shaped like a vase of plastic flowers. Luna said she put in there before she left."
"Luna? You mean that deranged Lovegood girl?" Draco vaguely remembered the spaced out Ravenclaw dropping out of Hogwarts the day she hit seventeen, declaring that she'd thought of a really brilliant way to fund The Quibbler's deluded search for the elusive – or to put it more accurately, nonexistent - Crumple Horned Snorback.
Harry nodded towards a garish sign proclaiming itself to be Lovegood's Love Goods of Soho.
Draco gasped with something approaching horror. "Soho! You mean this is a filthy muggle shop?"
"I think filthy's the general idea," said Harry. "But I can see why someone as naive and inexperienced as you wouldn't be able to appreciate it."
Draco felt his face flush with a combination of embarrassment and anger. "I am not inexperienced or…."
"It's not all muggle made," interrupted a singsong voice behind him. He turned to face the serene yet slightly unhinged personage that was Luna Lovegood. "Let me show you our new line of intimate magical merchandise."
Draco very nearly fainted.
In a nearby street two men were looking for a shop. It was not a shop that appeared in any phone directory, website or advertisement for the area. Very few people seemed to have any idea where it was located.
"So, you're saying that he's an angel?" said Remus, his arm firmly affixed to Sirius's waist. It was not every day that one's deceased lover returned from the dead, and he felt that a public display of clinginess was not out of order.
"He's my case worker."
"Case worker?"
"They said that everybody who gets sent back gets one. Help me adjust back to life in the land of the living. Not that I need it of course. I was supposed to go and see him as soon as I returned. But your welcome was slightly more…er… vigorous than I expected." They both grinned at this. Having been apart for so long they had felt it only right that they celebrated the reunion in the traditional fashion: with really incredible sex. Though some might have thought that doing this in five different rooms of the house was a tad excessive, not to mention exhausting.
"Is that it?" said Remus, pointing towards a discreetly decorated shop front across the road, bearing the sign Fell's Antique Books.
"That's the one."
When they found themselves inside Fell's Antique Books however, the proprietor was nowhere to been seen.
What could be heard though was the sound of voices and heavy breathing coming from what appeared to be a back room.
"Honestly Crowley what on earth are you trying to do to me now?" said a male and very English voice.
"Only trying to give you more heavenly pleasure than you'll get anywhere else this side of the pearly gates," said another male voice. This one however was practically hissing.
"Well, if you think I've forgiven you for that stunt you pulled with the entire Hogsmeade branch of the Women's Institute you'll be sorely…. Crowley not while I'm trying to berate you…. Mmmm, yes just like that…. Oh Crowley don't you dare stop." Words soon gave way to gasps and moans and the capacity for coherent sentence structure was reduced to 'Yes, please more' and 'Do that again, just there'.
"Do you think we ought to come back later?" whispered Remus, feeling rather embarrassed by the whole situation.
"Hmmm," replied Sirius, clearly preoccupied by the sound of what sounded to be very enjoyable sex filtering through the oak door behind the shop counter. "I didn't even think angels could, you know."
"It's just that I feel like a bit of a voyeur stood here."
"We'll go for dinner and then come back," said Sirius, albeit with a certain degree of reluctance. "Though whether they'll have finished by then is anybody's guess."
They walked quietly out of the shop and back into the Soho evening. "I've never been to this part of London before," said Sirius, conversationally as they turned the corner into yet another street lined with garishly decorated shops aimed at the 'adult' market. "Interesting lot of shops they've got here." His voice seemed to be hinting at something, but Remus wasn't quite sure what.
"Yes, very interesting. Did you want to look inside one?"
Sirius grinned. "Well, if you don't mind."
As the universal laws of narrative would have it however, the garishly decorated 'adults only' shop they happened passing at the time was Lovegood's Love Goods. Through the window of which it was clear to see two startled young men being shown an oddly shaped vibrating instrument the purpose of which was being enthusiastically elaborated upon by a girl who looked as though she had just stepped out of a seventies muggle hippy commune.
"That's Harry and Lucius Malfoy's son," said Sirius, stopping dead in his tracks, face flaring with sudden and obvious outrage. "That little shit's somehow managed to seduce Harry. I'll kill him, I'll… I'll."
"Steady on Sirius. This is a delicate situation."
"But Harry's only…"
"Seventeen, Sirius. He is of age. Besides you were talking earlier about how it was wrong for Dumbledor to treat him like a child."
"But he's in there with a Malfoy trying to buy a… whatever the hell that thing the girl's holding up is."
"Look, I don't like this anymore than you do, but if you just barge in there you might make things worse. They might start carrying it on in secret, and you know where that'll lead."
"What, you mean The Gallows Haunt in Knockturn Alley?"
"Exactly."
"Not while I'm his bloody godfather it's not. But what do you suggest. We can't just stand by and say nothing."
"Well, if Harry and Draco are going to have a relationship we can at least make sure that they're not taking risks."
"Right."
"Right."
Two minutes later Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy were forced to endure what would be the most excruciating and publicly humiliating lecture on safe sex of their lives.