Thank you for the reviews on the last chapter!

Another of those chapters with a heavy slash warning. Avoid reading the fourth scene if it isn't your cup of tea. Also, the second scene contains heavy descriptions of gore, though it doesn't actually occur.

Chapter Thirty-Three: Breakthrough

Harry felt anger sweep around him. Apparently, the flooding emotions had decided to leave him at the mercy of others, and let the anger come back later. He felt it as a vast current, but hovering somewhere in the background, while fear took him first.

He panted, his eyes tightly closed, his body jerking with all the worry, all the terror, all the concern he'd forced himself to suppress in the last few weeks. Images of Connor turning his back on him flashed through his thoughts, and images of Draco killed by Shield of the Granian or the Unspeakables, and thoughts of somehow hurting Snape so badly he never recovered, and what seemed half-memories of werewolves dead and dying, as though he had been at all the attacks on the packs' safe houses himself.

It hurt.

But the fear left him, because other emotions had to take their place. Irritation bit him with sharp teeth, and skittered up and down his arms with scaly feet. How often had he wanted to scowl because someone else was making no sense, or because the Minister refused to move and refused to move, and Scrimgeour didn't see that was just as bad as what his Ministry was doing, in some ways? It made their actions seem as if they occurred under his aegis and with his approval, not independently.

He plunged so suddenly from irritation into lust that he didn't know where one emotion ended and the other began. He caught his breath as his groin tightened and his mouth dried out. He pressed his face into the pillow and tried not to think how much it smelled like Draco. That would make everything worse.

His magic lay along his skin now, warm and purring sweetly. Harry was vaguely surprised it didn't manifest more violently, but then his attention went back to the building heat in his belly and the urge to touch himself. He moaned softly and slid his hand along the pillow instead. The lust wouldn't last, and already he could feel embarrassment stinging his cheeks. He was as close as he had ever come to not caring about that, though.

The magic gave another purr, and Harry realized it wasn't violent because it wanted him to open the wards and let Draco through. Harry laughed weakly, a croaking sound given the absence of moisture in his mouth. "Not a chance," he told it. "It's going to change any moment."

A golden pinwheel whirled across the room and detonated with a long bang on the wall, as his magic began to sulk. Harry had to ignore it. Another wave of heat traveled through him, gripping his muscles and making his hips lift, and Harry closed his eyes and wished it would go away. Merlin, who knew I was suppressing this much of it?

Luckily, it did change then. Odd darts of happiness stung his skin, and he remembered when he had managed to bond with Woodhouse, when he had seen Draco appear, when he had realized that Narcissa Malfoy cared more about her son than she did about her husband. He laughed, and the sound ended in a gasp as the joy leaked away again. He hadn't been suppressing that much of it; some had come through the Occlumency pools as his own grim determination to do even more when he accomplished something.

A pause succeeded the joy. Harry felt the currents that surrounded him swirling and plunging into his body, and he thought he was prepared for the anger.

He wasn't.

Rage burst inside his head like a thunderstorm. Harry pushed his face into the pillow to muffle a scream. He felt flames springing up through his skin, and he could only hope that the wards would help with that. Ordinarily, Woodhouse would lash back at anyone who used too much fire magic here, but he was part of Woodhouse now. Parts of itself were allowed to hurt itself, under Woodhouse's sure and certain conviction that the damage wouldn't last for long.

He lifted his head, and saw his magic stalking the wards, looking for a way out. It had manifested as a Grim, the great black dog the size of a pony, the omen of death that Sirius had so resembled. Harry knew the old legends of Grims. They paced behind people walking home at night, their breath hot on the back of the walking person's neck. If the victim turned around and saw the Grim, he would die soon.

The Grim faced him. Its eyes were red, more crimson than Voldemort's when he had still had eyes. Harry met them, and felt the Grim's longing as if it were his own, the longing to hunt and tear and rip apart. The people out there had infuriated him. Why should he protect them? He could destroy them. He had the power to do that, and might made right, always.

Harry let out a low whimper. He had assumed that he could control the rage, that he only had to let it fly at the wards and the wards would hold secure. He hadn't realized the Grim would want more than that.

He shuddered, and the anger twisted like a fishhook in his belly, dragging the guts out. Why should he wait? Why should he lock himself up for the good of those who could defend themselves if they knew what was good for them? The Grim was not going to hurt those who hadn't angered Harry. It would administer a bite to some werewolves, a stab to Snape, a snap here and there to Draco…

Harry had to grip and try to reel in the rage again. This time, he didn't mean to tuck it behind Occlumency shields, but he could not let it hurt anyone else.

"No," he whispered.

The Grim's body rippled, and then the magic that made it up vanished into a whirlwind of black sparks. The sparks surged directly at Harry and bit into his face. He cried out, and then the rage and the magic were back inside him, doing pain and inflicting pain and making him see what he suffered when he locked up every bit of anger.

Insults rang in his ears as if they were being spoken for the first time. He felt the same breathless frustration he had when Connor and Draco and Parvati argued and he wanted to tell them to shut up and fuck off. His scar ached from tension, and his teeth hurt from clenching them together.

He managed to bury his mouth in his pillow just before he uttered one long, endless scream of fury that he was sure would have brought someone running to try and break into the room, wards or no. He pounded his fist beside him on the bed, hard enough to tear a wound open on his palm, and growled.

His magic ran shimmering over him in endless flames, not burning the bedcovers because once they were burned they could not resurrect and be targets for its wrath, but simply lapping him with fire again and again. And his clothes had no such protection as the blankets did. A dim part of Harry was aware that burning the blankets might bring him to burn the wooden walls and the windowsill and the other parts of Woodhouse he shouldn't burn. But carrying the flames on himself? He could do that. His clothes vanished into ashes, and then he felt the anger over every inch of his skin.

Why shouldn't he be upset over the obstructions the werewolves put in his way? If George and the others who had been part of the Department for the Control and Suppression of Deadly Beasts really wanted not to be here, they should have stayed in Tullianum and trusted to the Ministry's hospitality. Harry hadn't forced them to come with him. He had told them what they could expect, and they had had the choice. And now they whined and fussed and wanted to go home to a place where they could expect to be killed on sight? Oh, yes, that was much better than what they had here, a place where they were protected and would have Wolfsbane and could learn how to control their lycanthropy around others who had much more practice than they did.

He had done them such a wrong.

And Connor! What in the world was wrong with his brother? Didn't he see that he was falling into the same trap James had, trusting the word of the woman he loved above anything else? He had the example right in front of him! And he was doing it anyway.

And Parvati! Harry snarled through his teeth, and the bedclothes around him once more came close to igniting. But Harry concentrated, and the rage created an image of her face in front of him instead and then punched it in the teeth, sending it off into a cloud of dissipating sparks.

What right did she have to ask him to spend more time with his brother? If it was something Connor wanted, he should have come and asked Harry himself. He was a big boy, an adult. He could do that.

And then for him to insult his boyfriend, to say that Draco was a Dark wizard and they couldn't trust him—

Harry held out his hand and conjured a sphere of glass in it, the size of the time-globes the Unspeakables had used on him. He threw it at the wall, and listened with satisfaction to the sharp singing of shards. He made another and threw another, and then another, and then another. His magic swept up the shards and danced them in the air, making a maze, a mosaic, of patterns.

He had a right to ask for some consideration. And if Parvati was that afraid of powerful wizards who used Dark magic, she was probably afraid of him right now. He wondered idly if that was why Connor hadn't said anything about her the last few times they'd spoken.

And Draco! The blow of that fury caught him in the stomach and threw him backwards. He claimed to be more mature, and Harry had even thought he was, and then he insulted Connor and Parvati and refused to be quiet and cool and composed under their insults in return—even as he insisted to Harry in their bedroom at night that he was quiet and cool and composed, and what Harry thought were insults were merely truths wrapped in cutting sarcasm.

But he could not be too angry at Draco, because so much of that had been healed when he appeared in Harry's bedroom with the Portkey-bracelet, and that led to thoughts of joy and lust. Harry shied away from those and back into the rage.

Snape was next. Bloody selfish git, what did he want? Harry left him alone, and that wasn't what he wanted. Harry gave him help, and that wasn't what he wanted. He moved Snape out of the house so that Snape wouldn't hurt the werewolves or be bitten, and Snape accused him of not loving him enough. Harry gritted his teeth to hold back another scream, then decided Why not? and screamed anyway. The sound was satisfying, and the magic ornamented it with a parade of red sparks that broke apart into decorative streams of blood as Harry watched.

Nothing he could do would give Snape what he wanted, and nothing he could do would give other people what they wanted, Harry thought, his mind plunging down in a dizzying spiral. His anger wasn't right. Holding back the anger wasn't right. Rescuing them wasn't right. Leaving them to rot wasn't right. He might think he was committed to making mistakes and learning from them and going on, but how could he when every step was a mistake, including the ones he tried to make with his previous mistakes in mind?

He should have been able to find other solutions to this. He should never have let it come to war. And when the first werewolf murders began, he would have been responsible. He would have been like Scrimgeour, wringing his hands and saying he would win peace in a while and then never doing it. How many werewolves would have to die because he didn't want to kill regular wizards?

Someone like Dionysus Hornblower had more courage than he did, because at least he stood up and spoke what he honestly believed in and didn't feel guilty for fighting back. But Harry was guilty for hurting everyone he'd hurt.

Oh, here comes the self-loathing, Harry thought, as he wrapped an arm around his eyes and let the few tears that would fall. For the most part, the emotion coiled up in his gut as a black ball, too tight to permit any expression but a sore throat and burning eyes. Right on time.

He lay there while he thought through most of his actions and envisioned all the other roads he could have taken. Of course, the roads ran out when he got to the memory of the Midsummer battle; he still did not know what he could have done differently to stop Voldemort from killing those dozen children one way or another.

Not killed them yourself, whispered his conscience. Not have blood on your hands. Or at least made sure that the wards were secure beforehand, and escorted the students down to the lake yourself. That would have made more sense. Why did you never think that Voldemort would attack before Midsummer? You lured him, made him think the date important. He might wait to launch his full forces until then, but there was no reason to think he should wait until the day of the battle to arrive.

He writhed, and made a sound in his throat that was neither whimper nor sob. Then he rolled over on his back, and repeated what he had learned in the Sanctuary, the lessons Vera had drummed into his head until they stuck.

You cannot change the past. You can live for the future and try never to make those mistakes again, but if you once begin to think that you can pay for the past, then you will be paying the price for the rest of your life, until you begin thinking that even breathing is too selfish.

His breathing calmed, and he sighed out, waiting for the next emotion to come. But nothing happened. He lay where he was, a hollowed-out shell, surrounded by the pieces of glass that his magic was still dancing and dandling, and decided that the storm was done. His mind was back in its proper place.

And I'm naked, and the room's a mess, he thought, wiping at his face. Almost certainly my face as well. But I can wash, and the room can be cleaned.

Harry lowered the wards, and called the glass pieces out of existence. After making sure no small glittering shard lingered in the corners for someone else to step on, he walked towards the loo for the third time that day, wincing. His muscles ached as though he'd kicked and lashed—perhaps he had, he didn't remember—and his head was clear but hollow. He hoped that a shower would help him figure out what to do next. At the least, it should soothe the aches and pains.

Then the door opened behind him, and he heard Draco's voice ask, "Harry?"


"You can do nothing to me. I know what your Lord's like. He won't permit you to torture someone."

Snape paid no attention to the ramblings of the man who called himself Croaker as he warded the room where they'd put him. This was one of the smaller studies at Woodhouse, but that made no matter. For what Snape planned, the room did not have to be large.

He did ward the walls against the sound of screams escaping, making sure to speak the incantation aloud so that Croaker could recognize it.

"Do you think that will intimidate me?" Now that the Unspeakable had decided to speak, he seemed to have decided that Gryffindor-like bluster was the appropriate course. "I've been through more than you can imagine. I've gone through trials to approach the Stone that will make whatever you can do to me look like love taps."

Snape said nothing. He finished the warding and turned to face Croaker. The man had been stripped of his gray robe, and then his clothing. Snape wanted none of the nasty artifacts that the Unspeakables carried with them to protect Croaker during this. He'd then cast a spell to make sure that Croaker had none of the artifacts embedded into his body, and at last was satisfied.

The nakedness had been a common trick the Dark Lord used when interrogating his prisoners. Hard to feel proud, hard to feel worth something, when all the cloth that protected you from the outer world was stripped away.

"What are you going to do? Do you really want to risk your own Lord throwing you out just because you wanted to fulfill your sadistic Death Eater urges?"

Snape still said nothing. He simply looked at the man.

He knew Harry would not allow him to torture Croaker with pain curses as the fool deserved. And he knew that if he began with such curses, he could keep going, until he hit the edge of Crucio. This man had tried to kill his son. Snape could have spoken the Avada Kedavra now and succeeded, given his hatred of anyone who tried to do that.

So there were good reasons not to begin the torture.

But Snape didn't have to. He was an excellent actor, and that was what was needed to break Croaker.

"How long have you served the Stone?" he asked, his voice neutral and without inflection.

Croaker laughed. "Long enough to know what you're trying to do. It's not going to work."

Snape raised his wand and intoned another incantation, one he doubted Croaker was familiar with. He was remembering the graveyard at Midwinter, and the vines that had held Harry still so that the Dark Lord and his Thorn Bitch could do what they wanted to him.

The vine formed in the upper right hand corner of the study. It turned its head back and forth, a vegetable snake, and then began to unroll across the floor, heading steadily for Croaker. Its end thinned and sharpened as it came, growing spikes that Snape knew would look like teeth. They were supposed to.

"Have you ever imagined," Snape asked, in the same neutral tone that he'd used before, "what it is like to have something grow through you?"

"You can't frighten me, I told you that," said Croaker.

"It is exquisitely painful, I'm told," said Snape, reaching down and stroking the vine when it came to a stop beside him. The tendril rubbed against his hand. "Imagine being bound down on top of a patch of bamboo. Bamboo grows through anything. And it grows quickly. Imagine it growing through you. Imagine the ends of the stalks sharpened so that it impales you as it grows." He raised an eyebrow, and studied Croaker's face. A slight movement of his left arm, and he brought the Dark Mark into view once more.

"Now, of course, I have no bamboo, and we do not have the time for such a torture, anyway," he said. "I want you able to speak in the end, even if we have to wait for your throat to heal from screaming. But I have something almost as good." He touched his conjured vine again. "This is small, and it will grow."

He leaned forward, holding Croaker eye to eye. "Imagine if it were laid against your face," he whispered.

Croaker said nothing. His skin was pale, and a sheen of sweat had started on his forehead.

"Imagine," Snape whispered, making his voice into the one that he used on the first day of classes to tell his students about the mysteries of Potions, "that it grows as slowly as I tell it to. Imagine that you see the teeth on the end drawing closer and closer to you, inch by inch." He reached down and skimmed his finger across the end of the vine. When he lifted it, he let Croaker see the blood slipping from the small cut. "Quite sharp," he said. "So sharp that you would not feel the cut at first. But you would be waiting for it, every muscle straining, hoping against hope to sense and stop the moment when the integrity of your eye was breached.

"Slowly, slowly, it grows. Imagine it chewing through your cornea, slowly blinding you. Do you know what it would be like, to suddenly lose sight in one eye and not be able to get it back? You would sit there while the vine coiled around your skull, around the eyesocket, growing and growing, chewing and chewing.

"You may think that you would find escape in death, but that is not the case. There are spells that can keep the victim alive through this." Snape flicked his wand, murmuring, "Vita usque." The spell tightened as a silver crown around Croaker's skull, sinking into his hair. Snape smiled. "And now you will be kept.

"The vine crawls into your brain. Imagine the pain depriving you of language, of sight, of memory. The brain is a wondrous and delicate thing, Croaker. Disrupt one connection, and you may be able to think a word and not say it. Disrupt another, and you may be able to have no sight again even if I heal your eyes when this is done. And the vine, blindly burrowing, going where I tell it to, is merciless. It travels through your brain and comes back.

"Out the other eyesocket, of course. This time, you may feel the teeth chewing from the back of your cornea. Can you imagine the pain you will feel when it severs your optic nerve? Well, you need not imagine it, as you will soon enough be able to feel it for yourself.

"The vine will grow out through your other eye. Then its journey will take it to your cheek, I imagine. It will eat through the skin. I'll hold it there, because it's not often that I get to admire the sight of teeth and gums, open to the air through shattered flesh, stained with running blood.

"Then to—yes, your tongue, I imagine. It will shed its seed on the stump of your tongue, because of course I do not need that to remain when you have no intention of speaking aloud. More vines will grow from that and down your throat, the more easily to reach your stomach. Thanks to the Vita usque, you will be alive to enjoy all this, Croaker.

"The pressure on the inside of your body is intense, I'd imagine. The vines were not meant to travel the esophagus, but they will make do. And then they will reach the stomach." Snape chuckled. "That part, I must admit, I cannot wait for. The human stomach contains a number of potent acids to aid in digestion. I sometimes use distillations of them in my Potions work, though sadly, some of them must be bought on the black market, as international wizarding law frowns on the practice. Imagine what happens if the stomach lining is pierced, and those acids pour through and onto the other organs. Can you imagine? The white-hot end of a sword in the belly would be kinder, I think. It would at least take less time, because with the Vita usque, no one could—"

Croaker screamed.

Snape knew that scream. That was why he had put the wards up, so that no one would hear it and try to interfere. It was the sound of the defeated, the broken, the sound that said no more, no more, I'll tell you what you want to know, just make it stop, just make the pain stop.

And he had won this with no more than words. Snape was quietly impressed with himself.

Of course, given Croaker's training, there was always the chance that he was pretending. Snape cupped his chin and tilted it up. At his command, the vine coiled around his arm and halted with its razors not that far from Croaker's eye.

The man flinched and sobbed and almost bit, trying to yank away. Snape got a good look into his eyes, though. He had broken. And he was no Occlumens; that much, at least, Snape would have recognized. Most Legilimens could recognize an Occlumens, if not read what was behind his shields.

"You'll tell me what I want to know?" he asked, making his voice disappointed. "Truly? Or must I take an eye?"

Croaker screamed desperately. He had reached that place where one threat was as bad as another, Snape knew. He could have threatened to tie Croaker to a bed and tickle him, and he would have received the same reaction.

"Very good," Snape said softly.


Rufus stepped out of the lift and into the bare corridor that led to the black door that led to the Department of Mysteries.

He had been through the rest of it: the stares of disbelief when he had announced he was invoking the Ritual of Cincinnatus, the bellows that he couldn't do this, the comparisons to a dictator—which he had accepted, of course—and the resignation of several Ministry employees at once. But many others had stayed, and Rufus knew they were already persuading themselves that this was not so bad.

Of course they are, he thought. They were frightened enough to think the anti-werewolf laws were a good idea. At that level of terror, there's not much they won't convince themselves of.

And now he faced the Unspeakables.

He halted in front of the black door and waited for someone to come out to him. No one came. He felt the breathing pulses of the Stone in the back of his mind, and the throb of contained magical artifacts. Those felt more like a toothache than anything else. He couldn't tell what they were or what they did, and if he commanded one of them into life, Merlin only knew what would happen.

Rufus waited, giving permission for someone to use a filing spell and denying an Apparition while he did. The latter irritated him. He supposed that there were some idiots who of course would test his control over the Ministry and think that now that things had so changed, things always forbidden might be possible, but he wished the sensible people outnumbered the idiots.

The door opened at last. An Unspeakable stepped out, clad in the gray robe that covered his face, as usual. He shut the door behind him and stood in front of it. Rufus scrutinized him, but if he was actually bracing himself against the door in a defensive stance, Rufus couldn't tell.

It made his voice sharp. "You know what I've done?" he asked. "The Ritual of Cincinnatus has been invoked. Do you know what it means?"

"Of course we do, Minister." The Unspeakable's voice was a blank, bereft of tone or age or gender. It could have been the same voice that had spoken to him in his office, back when he still trusted them. It might not have been. "You control all magic used in the Ministry."

"I do," said Rufus. "And I will categorically deny you the right to use any artifact that I don't understand."

The Unspeakable shuffled a foot. Rufus had no idea if that meant discomfort, or a simple shifting of weight. "There are artifacts we are studying that we must be permitted to use, Minister," he said. "And there are people in the Department whom the artifacts keep warm and fed and sheltered. They would be uncomfortable if you severed their connections to them."

"Show me these people," said Rufus. "Let me see the magical objects that you claim are warming and feeding and sheltering them."

"Even a Minister who has invoked the Ritual of Cincinnatus cannot enter the Department without the Stone's permission," said the Unspeakable.

Rufus suffered a brief spark of shock at the defiance, and then wondered why he was surprised. The Stone must know that he distrusted it and its children, or he would have come to them for help with controlling the Ministry, instead of doing something that would explicitly give him control over the Stone and the artifacts.

"Then have it give me permission," he said evenly.

"I cannot do that," said the Unspeakable. "No one tells the Stone what to do."

"Save me, now," said Rufus.

The Unspeakable stopped moving. Then he said, "The Stone was very distrustful when it first came here, Minister Scrimgeour, frightened of the enemies of the Ministry. It built traps into its Department, traps that do not depend on magic to work. Poisons and the like."

"Are you threatening me?" Rufus made sure to keep his voice soft and his hand away from his wand. He had been in situations like this before, facing the criminals and Dark wizards he had chased as an Auror. Make the wrong move, and what was a tense but working moment would dissolve into chaos.

"I am giving you a history lesson, Minister," said the Unspeakable. "You seemed curious as to why no Minister had entered the Department without the Stone's permission. And now you know why."

They've booby-trapped their home ground. Of course they would have. Rufus evened out his breathing, as well as his anger about not being able to accomplish everything he wanted. He bowed to the Unspeakable. "Then I will not disturb the Stone," he said.

"And you will give us permission to use our artifacts?" the Unspeakable asked.

Rufus gave him a smile. He would bet that it startled the man, though the Unspeakable betrayed no emotion, so that might have been only his hope speaking. "Of course not."

"People will die, Minister."

"Which people?"

"People in our care."

"Tell me."

The Unspeakable was silent.

Rufus nodded. "I thought so. I control the magic in the Ministry, sir. You control your home ground, and presumably do so with the Stone's help. What you've forgotten is that I have no reason to trust you any longer." He sharpened his gaze. "I've heard about the attack on Woodhouse. I may be unable to stop you from using the artifacts outside the Ministry, but I can do other things."

"Those things would be, sir?" The Unspeakable's voice remained as featureless as a new snowfall.

"Watch the newspapers," said Rufus, and turned and departed with a sweep of his robes. The Unspeakable watched him go, but made no move to stop him. Of course not, Rufus thought. Any spell he might attempt, any artifact he might throw, owed its functioning to Rufus at the moment.

And if they killed him—

Rufus smiled a smile he knew was wolfish. A Minister dead during the Ritual of Cincinnatus, through no fault of his own and no natural cause, roused the magic's ire. It gained the motive and the ability to avenge itself on the Minister's killers, It would know who they were.

The Department of Mysteries, trapped or not, remained part of the Ministry's physical building. Rufus doubted they wanted to see what would happen when all the power in the building's stones was turned against them.

Besides, they would have to deal with the storm when it broke tomorrow. Rufus was rather looking forward to the storm. It would make people wail again, but there was nothing they could do in the Ministry as long as he controlled the magic there, and at least it would change the balance of power.


Draco had lingered in the corridor until he felt the wards crumple and fall away. He didn't have the strength to break through them—he didn't think anyone in Woodhouse did—and while the silence from behind them unnerved him, he wouldn't let himself think that meant anything bad.

But they were gone, and he opened the door, and saw Harry walking naked towards the loo, as if it were something he did every day. Draco was distantly aware of a cut on Harry's hand that looked as if it were already scabbing over, and of some odd scorch marks on the walls, but he was mostly aware of the fact that he had Harry in the same room with him, entirely naked, for only the second time. And this time, while Harry had suffered, it was nothing like what he had gone through in the Chamber of Secrets.

"Harry?" he called, and realized his voice was husky with arousal. He didn't care. In the moments it took Harry to turn around, he drew his wand and cast a locking spell on the door, one that would sting whoever tried the handle. He was not going to let anyone interrupt this.

Harry at last, slowly, turned to face him. Draco was delighted to see that he had an erection. Harry's skin immediately flushed red absolutely everywhere, but that was only to be expected.

Draco took a step forward.

Harry took a step back.

Draco halted, and made himself wait, difficult as that was to do against the impulses that were urging him to simply take Harry to bed, that said the lust would overcome the fear for both of them. "Harry," he said quietly.

Harry breathed in and out, and that was the loudest sound in the room for long moments. Then he shook his head slightly, and said, "Draco. I ache all over, and my face—" He gestured to it. For the first time, Draco noticed the tracks of tears there. He'd been rather more occupied in looking elsewhere on Harry's body, he had to admit. "I'm a mess. I should shower."

"I think you look fine," Draco whispered. This is perfect. It would be a crime to waste such a perfect opportunity. "Harry, tell me the truth. If I let you shower and run the aches out of your muscles, will you come back and get into bed with me and do what we both want to do?"

Harry swallowed. "I'd lose my nerve," he whispered. "No."

Draco nodded. He felt slightly detached from what was happening, soaring above it, but that was all right. The wind that carried him was dizzying arousal, heat, white-gold lust. He wasn't going to make a mistake. He didn't think there was a mistake he could make, at this juncture.

"Then come to bed with me," he said, and held out his hand.

Harry stared at it. Draco waited. He could see the longing in Harry's eyes, longing that existed. The problem wasn't that Harry didn't want him. But he was afraid of what would happen if he lost control of himself.

Draco decided that he could probably help, as the moments stretched on and Harry still didn't move. He unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it over his head. He made the movements casual, without hurry and without a deliberate slowness that would tease. He suspected Harry wasn't ready to be teased right now.

"What are you doing?" Harry whispered.

"Making your decision easier," Draco said, and laid his shirt on the floor. Then he kicked off his shoes, then his socks, and reached for his trousers. He glanced up to see that Harry's flush had deepened. Draco smiled. It's not all embarrassment this time. "You've said before that you enjoy bringing me pleasure, Harry," he murmured. "Should we start with that?"

"I do," Harry breathed, as though the words had been charmed out of him. "I've missed that."

Draco hid his joy behind a grave nod. He pulled his trousers down, then his pants. He noticed Harry's shoulders fall a little when he did. He did feel more vulnerable when he was naked and I wasn't. Good. This should calm him down, then.

Not to mention make this a hell of a lot easier.

Draco stretched out on the bed and extended his hand once more. He wouldn't force Harry to come to him. He couldn't. He let his gaze, and the evidence of his arousal, and Harry's own, do the work for him.

Harry closed his eyes and whispered, "What am I doing?" But he took a step forward.

"Nothing wrong," Draco said softly. His words seemed to die as soon as he said them. He wondered if it was his imagination that the walls were turning dark blue and purple, and then realized it wasn't; it was Harry's magic. That might be the same thing insuring his voice was quiet. "Something very right. Come here, Harry."

Harry, though still hesitant, came to the foot of the bed and stood looking at Draco for a moment. Draco waited. He could wait. Harry's magic had turned the walls a deep purple, the same color as the ianthinum he remembered from the Room of Requirement when Harry had exercised his emotions in there. Heat moved shimmering through the room, but it didn't resemble the heat of sunlight that Draco remembered from their earlier encounters; it felt like heat from a jungle, thick and old and—

Wet, Draco thought, before he could stop himself.

Harry took one final deep breath, and climbed onto the bed.

Draco clasped his hand and pulled him forward. He already leaned back against the pillows, and Harry knelt between his spread legs. Draco could feel his cock twitch with the heat, the nearness, of Harry's skin. He was glad that Harry showed no signs of backing off, now. He didn't think he could bear to let him go when he was within touching distance.

He leaned forward and did something he hadn't had the time to do before, kissing Harry gently, then deeply, then more insistently. Halfway through the kiss, Harry began to respond, leaning nearer, uttering a soft, stifled moan, taking his hand out of Draco's so that he could slide it into his hair.

Draco leaned back further. Each movement seemed subtle, as slow as a dance. Harry's elbow poked him in the stomach, and he flinched for a moment, but even that hurt less than he supposed it should. Harry was no longer trembling with fear, but suppressed eagerness. Draco felt gladness sweep through him, joining the rest of the emotions and the deep color of Harry's magic.

Merlin, he felt as if he contained music.

He shifted Harry slightly to the side, or Harry moved; at this point, Draco found it hard to tell. His head was hazy, the world slow. But he noticed it when Harry aligned their groins, and when Harry's chest came to rest against his. That added a sharpness to the heat that ran through him. Draco bucked once, then twice, and saw Harry's mouth open in a gasp he couldn't hear, saw his eyes close.

Draco thought he said something. But then, he was always thinking he said something, and in the press of Harry's magic, it kept being lost. He kissed Harry again, and lifted his hips again. He would do what he could, but he couldn't move that well, trapped by Harry's weight. It was up to Harry, too.

Harry swallowed, and opened his eyes. Looking steadily into Draco's, he braced his hand and the stump of his left wrist on Draco's shoulders, and then lifted his body and brought it down.

Draco shivered, a full-body shiver that seemed to start with his hips and end up somewhere around his lungs. This time, he definitely said, "Yes," and Harry took that for encouragement—which he bloody well should, Draco thought, somewhere through the fog—and lifted himself to come down again. Draco's hands found their way to his hips and stayed there.

Harry's face shone above him, pink and red, flushed with sweat now, his dark curls dampened with it, his green eyes bright as jungle flowers, but what Draco remembered more than anything else was the feeling of it. Heat and silence and softness and pressure, wound up and around and in and all about them, and now and then he could hear the magic crooning through the silence, a sound like a bird singing faint and far away.

He waited. He rocked between his body's rhythms and Harry's on top of him, but he knew there was a moment coming when he would be able to do something he wanted to do.

And then he knew when it was. His own body told him the time. Draco shifted, locking his legs abruptly into place behind Harry's ankles and thighs, urging him downward faster and harder than he was ready for.

Harry blinked, his face startled for half a second. Then he tilted his head back and gasped out, and Draco knew a moment of intense satisfaction as Harry permitted the pleasure to sweep over him. He could feel him jerking, the wetness splattering his own stomach, and hear Harry's soft intense cries. They were so close Draco could feel the individual muscle spasms, in fact, as Harry allowed his body to do what it wanted, for once, and stopped worrying about what it would mean for his mind and his magic.

It meant a wonderful thing for his magic, as far as Draco was concerned. The skin of heat around them wove tighter and tighter, binding them together into what felt like a cocoon. Harry couldn't stop moving, his hips flexing, and that meant Draco could tilt his own head back and give in just a moment later; he couldn't move that far away, with magic above and below insistently pressing them closer.

He held tight to Harry as pleasure ran through him like water or light, hollowing him out and sating his hunger at the same moment. The warm wetness smeared between them a moment later seemed almost an afterthought; what Draco really felt, more than just wet or warm, was good.

He let his own body move lazily, his hips rising and falling, until the cocoon of magic unbound them and the moment was done. Then he ran his fingers through Harry's hair—he had to do it twice, because it was so slippery with sweat that he lost his first grip—and lifted his head for a kiss.

Harry was smiling. Draco kissed him firmly, rolling them both to the side meanwhile so that Harry lay next to him instead of on top of him. Harry broke the kiss to yawn and stretch his arms over his head.

"Well?" Draco asked, and wondered if he should have waited to speak, given the smugness in his voice. Then he decided that, no, it didn't matter.

"That—" Harry swallowed, and Draco wondered if it was nervousness or simply awareness returning to his eyes. "That felt so good, Draco."

"You won't be so nervous doing it again, then, next time?" Draco stroked Harry's face and cheek and mouth. Harry's magic had drawn back, but Draco could still hear it singing to itself, the sound somewhere between crooning and purring.

"Only because I think it might distract me from other things," said Harry, and smiled again, and then kissed him with unexpected fierceness, driving him back into the pillows. "Thank you, Draco," he whispered into his ear when he finished. "Thank you."

Draco yawned in return and reached for his wand; while he enjoyed the warmth of the wetness on his stomach, it was turning cool and too sticky for his tastes. A wave of the wand, a muttered cleaning charm, and that was gone. Draco didn't want to Vanish the sweat, but—

"Do you still want that shower?" he asked Harry.

Harry didn't answer. When Draco glanced at him, he realized Harry was asleep, his breathing slow and quiet, blending with his magic's purring.

Draco smiled. It was the second time Harry had slept without Consopio since arriving in Woodhouse; the first time had been the night Draco joined him. He wrapped his arms around Harry and pulled them both together, luxuriating in the fact that Harry never woke, so deep and natural was his rest.

That's another reason beyond the pleasure to do this, he thought, as he let his own sated exhaustion run over him in languorous waves. He sleeps well after it. I'll have to remember to remind him of that.

The magic purred. Draco, infinitely pleased with himself, Harry, and the world, drifted off.