The first incarnation of this story was uploaded on on September 7, 2009. Chapters didn't span a full 500 words and though I liked the pacing, there really wasn't enough in there to create any kind of atmosphere.
This is the reincarnation.
I stopped writing this when Covid began and it's just been sitting there, unread... It came back to mind about a week ago and I decided to upload since I think I did alright tbh.
Expect a lot of psychological distress, (references to) abuse and disturbing in-char thoughts.
Chapter specific trigger/contact warnings (!) at the start of particularly triggering sentences, I didn't want to tag too much because of spoilers.
A great big THANK YOU to DocWordsmith for checking if this story had all of its limbs and betaing up to and including chapter 10.
Also thanks to Kodra for making sure they were connected the right way and to abutterflymind for picking up the odd thumb and polishing the entire thing until it was nice and shiny.
Only the presence of a window and a bed indicated that this was a room. Any semblance of walls, floor or even ceiling were absent, leaving him in a cocoon of strange cream coloured light which seemed to emanate from both everywhere and nowhere.
These visible cues gave away it was a dream, which made the knowledge that he had just made the bed unremarkable.
There was a man standing intimately behind him, someone comforting and exciting. He loved it when a pair of hands appeared on his waist, slowly travelled up his ribcage and then —
Draco's eyes shot open wide. He was in the Slytherin boy's dorm, lying on his stomach in his four poster bed with the curtains drawn, and everything was all right.
Until it wasn't.
Behind him he heard the curtains be disturbed, then felt the side of the mattress dip.
Was it that creep from his dream?
Panic swept over him and intensified when he felt a pair of hands on his back. Terrified but determined, he blindly launched a kick at the intruder.
"Happy b-… oof!" came Pansy's voice, immediately followed by the sound of her falling off his bed.
It took Draco a few seconds to come to terms with what was happening, holding his sheets up to his collarbone as he leaned over to peer down at her. Then he spat: "What are you doing here?"
Pansy disentangled herself from the bed curtains, got up off the floor and adjusted her clothes. "I was trying to wish you a happy birthday of course!" she snapped back, rubbing her bottom.
Draco frowned.
The dream had apparently disturbed him so much that he'd forgotten his own birthday…
He couldn't quite believe that, not with how he'd been rubbing it in everyone's faces for the past few days.
"No need to kick me over that -" Pansy continued, pressing a hand to her stomach where he guessed the kick had landed. He expected her to throw a rant now but to his relief, she finished with a curt; "See you at breakfast" — before turning on her heels and marching out.
Draco remained silent and was glad she left. He had been worried she would make a fuss.
As usual he dressed in the bathroom, which was otherwise unoccupied.
There he noticed that a most unwelcome spot had graced his face.
It was sitting almost victoriously in the fold of his chin, having the gall to be the size of a small pea.
He tried to get rid of it using the charm his mother had taught him, but much to his surprise it was failing.
He recast the charm, again and again, but it didn't seem to make a difference.
In a final bid to save his face he stroked over it gently with his fingers, to check just how much it bulged and if he could perhaps put something on it instead.
Nothing but smoothness.
He touched it again - nothing there.
The skin had the smooth, slightly thick structure that scar tissue does, which was probably because he had cast the charm so often, but there was definitely no spot.
When he looked in the mirror again there was indeed no spot, there was just him with something white dribbling from his mouth. It hadn't been there when he'd been fixated on the spot. He wiped it away with the back of his hand – there was nothing on it.
This gave him pause.
Slowly he raised his hand.
As he had hoped, his reflection did the same.
He adjusted his tie.
So did his reflection.
A little unnerved, he splashed some water in his face and looked up in the mirror again just to make sure it was showing what it ought to.
It did not.
His skin looked like there was liquid right underneath it.
It moved as the water started to drip, his skin rippling like the surface of a pond into which something had been dropped. His eyes widened — wider than he thought they could — and he jumped back as the top layer of skin seemed to crack and peel like old leather.
When he frantically touched his face, it felt perfectly normal.
His reflection once again behaved as it should, no matter how he moved.
Nobody had been around to see his reaction, thankfully, so the damage hadn't been that bad.
He would find out which little shit had charmed the mirror later.
When Draco finally came up for breakfast there was a small mountain of gifts on the Slytherin table.
Suddenly finding the mirror charmer didn't seem so important anymore.
Some of his house mates started to sing him 'Happy Birthday' and a few students in the other houses joined in as he walked towards his usual seat, but his focus was on the back of Potter's head.
"I wonder what my parents bought me," he said slowly and loudly when the singing was over, feeling nothing short of joy when Weasley and Potter both attempted to appear as though they had not heard him. "So many gifts! I wonder where to even put them," he added in the same tone, looking at Weasley in particular now.
He didn't truly care about what was in these packages but he opened some anyway just to exclaim how glad he was with the things he had received.
Then he instructed Crabbe and Goyle to take them to his bed, calmly had his breakfast and decided to read the letters he had received later.
Draco found that putting his concerns about the dream aside was much easier when he knew there were consequences to not paying attention, so the two consecutive hours of Transfiguration that morning were more than welcome.
Every now and then it felt good to make an effort, and Transfiguration was one of the classes he occasionally enjoyed for that reason.
After the first half hour he didn't have to work at remaining focused anymore.
Lunch was not very eventful either, apart from Weasley's face getting redder than his hair when Draco had organised to get some of his showiest gifts unpacked in the Great Hall.
His heart wasn't in it though – he'd wanted to enjoy the discomfort on the faces of the Gryffindors, but the dream and his enjoyment of it were really gnawing at him.
Maybe it was all nothing.
After lunch it was time for Potions, which asked for Draco's attention. Unfortunately it did not demand it.
Unable to distract himself by striking up a conversation or rubbing his family's status into other people's faces, he couldn't stop his mind from wandering back to his dream.
The creep had stood so close to him that he could feel the material of his robes against the back of his legs.
He had no idea who he was or what he looked like or even where it all took place for that matter, but it had all been so intimate….
And he had really liked that.
This was not how Draco saw himself.
Men did not make him feel this way, they certainly never had in his waking life and he wasn't going to allow this pervert to change that.
It made him nervous though, not knowing whether this figment of his imagination had any bearing on his waking reality.
Draco was entirely unaware of what Snape had asked them to do, and likewise had no idea what potion he was making.
This had to be the first time that Crabbe and Goyle were carrying him through an assignment.
He snapped out of his musings when he heard Pansy shriek.
"It burns!" she was grasping her stomach, but the material of her robes seemed fine.
Snape glided over to her nearly instantly and asked her what was the matter. "It burns!" Pansy shrieked again, louder this time, tears welling up in her eyes.
She looked at Draco, somehow pleading.
"I'll take her to Madam Pomfrey," Draco heard himself say.
He hadn't consciously chosen to volunteer, but then again, if he couldn't be bothered to pay attention, he might as well not be in class.
He knew Professor Snape would agree so when he got his nod of approval, he took Pansy by the upper arm and guided her out of the classroom.
They didn't even make it to the corner of the hallway before she stopped walking, leaned against a wall, and cried some more.
"What's the matter?" Draco asked, again looking at her perfectly ordinary robes.
"Didn't you hear me the first few times?" she tried to snap in response but it sounded pathetic. She held the fabric of her robes so it wouldn't touch whatever 'burn' she was having and looked like she was about to shriek again, but then the pain seemed to ebb off of her face. "I think it's gone."
"Did you do this just to get out of potions?" Draco wondered.
Pansy glared back at him. "It's been smarting ever since you kicked me off the bed! And just now it suddenly… flared up." She sounded mostly angry but her tone was laced with worry.
"Uh-huh," Draco said apathetically, but when he saw her face he added: "Do you have a bruise or something?"
"Well I haven't looked, have I," Pansy snapped again. "I'm not about to flash the entire year just because something's sore."
Draco made no attempt to fill the following silence — he was wondering how he could remember every detail of his dream as clearly as he could this morning. Usually his dreams faded quickly.
Pansy pressed her lips together, then tentatively raised the bottom of her jumper and blouse to expose the area to him.
She looked at him intently and then with her other hand, pushed down the top of her skirt and knickers a little as well.
Marring the skin of her stomach and hip was a large red area, perfectly resembling a footprint.
With some effort he could even distinguish its toes.
Amazed, he looked into her eyes.
The intensity in her gaze changed when their eyes locked, and she tried to see the area for herself.
When she looked back at him, her shock was apparent.
"Well, let's first see if we can treat this," Madam Pomfrey said, fetching some cream and opening the jar. "I'll just apply this and with luck, my dear, you should be as good as new."
Pansy was lying on one of the infirmary beds, her stomach and upper hip exposed to the room. The nurse had wanted to send Draco out, but Pansy had insisted he'd stay.
"This is caused by magic, right?" Draco asked, arms crossed, keeping his distance.
He knew Pomfrey wasn't too keen on him after The Buckbeak Incident the year before last, when he had insisted on a cast for his arm when she had been sure he had been fine.
She had been exasperated, and he had noticed she hadn't called him 'dear' since.
He didn't really care, he just saw no need to get closer to Pansy.
"Well, the shape is certainly unusual... " Madam Pomfrey agreed, applying the salve. "There, you should be all sorted."
Pansy readjusted her clothes and sat up, when realisation dawned on Madam Pomfrey's face. "Are you saying you don't know where it came from?"
"Well-," Pansy started, looking uncertainly at Draco, "He kicked me off his bed, and hours later it started to hurt pretty much exactly where his foot hit."
An uncharacteristic and perhaps unintentional "Hm," escaped Madam Pomfrey's mouth —then with pursed lips, she returned from another cabinet with a small vial. "I trust the two of you are using protection?"
"We weren't exactly expecting burns," Draco said dryly, but Pansy looked at him flustered. He realised a few seconds too late that the vial Pomfrey had handed her was a Temporary Infertility Draught.
"Right. What about the burn though?" Draco asked stiffly, strangely annoyed by the situation.
Madam Pomfrey nodded, thinking. "It didn't seem too intense and it responded well to the salve, so..." she trailed off and produced a chocolate bar, which she handed to Pansy as well. "You have some of that dear, it can't do you any harm. And if you have any more strange burns appear, come see me again and we'll try to get to the bottom of it." She smiled warmly, if a little concernedly, at Pansy, and then folded Pansy's fingers around the bottle. "You know how to use this?"
Draco and Pansy walked back to Potions class silently eating the chocolate.
Pansy looked ahead, still appearing a little flustered.
Draco was just annoyed.
He knew how and when to use the draught, his mother had given him that explanation last summer, but Pomfrey had still given them a short lecture he really could have done without.
He had no interest in Pansy, not in that way, anyway, and that realisation annoyed him even more.
After all, in his dream, some pervert had been touching his torso and he had loved it.
The heat of the big hands on him, his strength, the intimacy... it had really stirred something within him, and he could tell he was starting to blush at the thought – which put him in an even worse mood.
"So..." Pansy started as they took the stairs to the dungeons.
Draco didn't respond.
"I suppose... Now we've got this... " she awkwardly waggled the vial in her hand before hiding it in her robe pocket, making sure no portrait could see it.
When she didn't continue her sentence, Draco decided he couldn't remain entirely silent in response. "We can still catch the end of Potions," he said, before turning the corner.
A/N: General warning: The themes introduced here will intensify.
The situation will get much, much worse for him.
If (non?)con-y dreams as described here are not your jam, feel free to move on to other stories. I promise you that nobody will physically lay his hands on him in this way though.
