A/N: First of all, THANK YOU for all the lovely reviews I got for the last chapter! They truly motivated me to continue writing.

Some have wondered why it took me so long to update. My original beta reader disappeared mysteriously after I'd sent them this chapter. I was patient and only after two months I started looking for a new beta reader. So, BlueMonkeyz8 deserves a huge thank you for doing a fastastic job!

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Chapter five: Exploitation

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Knowing that Emerson would not say a word and trusting that the other guards wouldn't dare to report the SS-Oberführer's son, I dragged the gasping, stumbling man all the way to a tool shed by a building site and slammed the door shut behind us. Through the small cracks between planks, there were bright beams of light coming in. The wooden shed had no windows at all and the small light bulb hanging from the ceiling was broken.

The man in front of me was shaking with dread and anticipation, but nevertheless he tried to maintain a defiant posture. I was glad to see how life was back in his eyes, vibrant and hot.

His voice was tight and he tried to mask his obvious fear as he breathed out quickly, "If you want to kill me –"

"- I would have done it already."

Gaping at me with bloodshot eyes, the blond man backed up against the wall. "Then what –"

"I don't know."

He frowned in confusion and tried to get his breathing under control.

"I – I really don't know," I said, more to myself than him. It felt as if the gravity of the situation had just hit me. Just what was I doing?

The other man, Draco Malfoy, coughed as dust apparently got into his lungs. He tried to stifle the sound, but it jerked me out of my own thoughts and I turned to look at him again, to look at the man that had made my life quite a bit more complicated than what I had wished for.

"Just what are you?" I snapped in frustrated irritation.

"I, er, what do you mean?"

Maybe I should not have said it out loud.

"Shit."

I ran my fingers through my hair, not knowing what to do next. There was no one to give me guidelines as to how to handle this perplexing turn of events that I had brought upon myself.

"Alright, listen to me. You go back to… wherever and keep your mouth shut about this, understand? This didn't happen. You weren't in that queue. Someone made a mistake, mixed you up with someone else. This never happened!"

At some point my voice had risen and he was now nodding frantically. "Yes, yes, right, never happened. Um…"

There were beads of sweat forming above my upper lip and on my forehead. Despite being in the shade, the shed was hot and the air was stuffy. "Good, good, brilliant. Okay, so –" But I didn't know how to continue.

With a strangely small voice, the blond said tentatively, "I guess I need to thank you for what you did. So, thank you."

"Don't!" I barked, "Don't you dare to thank me, you little fucker! You are – You are -!"

"People like you put me here. I don't owe you a thing. But I do thank you for this, no matter how ashamed I feel for doing that."

"Why are you here?" I gasped out. Right after saying those words my eyes darted to the sign attached to his striped shirt that indicated his reason for being captured. There was a yellow equilateral triangle on the shirt, with another pink triangle positioned on top of it so that the two triangles formed a star. My breath got caught in my throat and my stomach churned.

"For being born the way I was and for doing what felt natural to me," he said calmly.

My head was pounding; it felt like something nasty had slid down my throat. "Natural? Just how natural could it be when two men are – are doing those disgraceful and lecherous things to each other? Like animals, like dirty, disgusting primitive animals!"

He kept silent but I went on. "There is nothing natural about those things! Fuck, I should have let you get gassed! What the fuck was I thinking, you're no different from the other freaks of nature here! Fuck!"

Draco Malfoy was apparently trying to blend into the wall, into the shadows in the corner. "You don't know before you try."

At that, my eyes blazed and cold fury rose within me.

"Get out."

The man started moving towards the door.

"GET OUT!"

Rushing out of the door in a blink of an eye, the blond man disappeared and I was left standing alone in the middle of a dark, dusty tool shed. Only my own shallow breathing was there to break the suffocating silence.

;16th of June, 1944, a forest close to Buchenwald

It was a Saturday night and my roommates and I, plus the men from the room next to ours, were out drinking by the forest close-by. Someone before us had brought a wooden table and a few benches with them under a big oak and that was where we were laughing, joking, and drowning bottles and bottles of beer down our throats. The place was clearly in rather frequent use since the grass around the table was brown and dead.

Some of us were pissed out of our faces. Jerry, who had lost way too much money in card games, had stumbled back to the barracks an hour earlier, muttering something about a rabbit and ergophobia. Blaise was entertaining everyone willing to listen with his elaborate stories and imitations as the beer he was attempting to drink at the same time dribbled down his chin and onto his shirt. Ron's cheeks were almost as red as his hair and he giggled at nothing and everything, although later on he vehemently denied ever having done such a thing. Another funny case was Beckenbauer, of course, who had probably never been that drunk before in his life. Blaise repeatedly called him a mummy's darling and made lewd comparisons between his libido and his ability to hold his alcohol.

Our new roommate, who slept in Alvin's former bunk, was there with us as well. His name was Ritter, and had quite a lot in common with Blaise. He too was very talkative and appreciated the kind of humour that elderly people often frowned upon, but unlike Blaise, Ritter wasn't an upper-class snob, but instead could outsmart most of us any day. He was clearly an extremely intelligent and witty young man who had a great, academic career ahead of him. I was sure we would all hear more of him sometime in the future after Buchenwald.

"Oi! Emerson! Wha' are you moping about over there?"

"Leave him be, he's feeling sick, Blaise."

"Or then he's just not a happy drunk, eh, how is it Emerson?" Blaise gave Emerson a companionate pat in the back, making Emerson retch then and there as he was crouching down by a bush. "Ah. Not feeling very good then, no."

"Just fine and dandy," Emerson bit back and lowered his head back down.

"Oh… Hell…," Merrill moaned, and Emerson continued emptying the contents of his stomach for a good while, standing on his wobbly knees.

Not wanting to look at that particular scene, I turned to my own beer and took a big gulp. Slightly too big, perhaps, since it resulted in me sputtering some of it out of my mouth and I could feel it burn in my nose a bit as well.

"Easy there, Harry," Ron patted me in the back. "There's no hurry."

I coughed a bitter thanks and saw Blaise coming back to the table, sitting opposite to me.

"D'you think there's any possibility of going to the town today? I'd really want some pussy right now."

Some other guys were murmuring in agreement, wide grins spreading across their faces.

"Hey, Harry, you think you could borrow Mr. Potter's Mercedes?"

"No way, Blaise!" I hurried to exclaim, "Leave me out of this! Your prick, your problem."

"Aww, but Harry, look at me!"

Idid and saw nothing out of ordinary about Blaise. This obviously showed onmy face and Blaise started flailing his arms exasperatedly. "I'm a man with needs!"

"A man with some severe addictions, I'd say," Ron commented dryly. "You should have kept your mouth shut about Beckenbauer's sex life," he stated. "Or the lack of it. You're both extreme cases."

"Pha! You're just a bunch of dickless wussies, that's what you are." Having said that, Blaise charged for his next beer and let the issue be. Perhaps he even forgot about it. He most certainly was not going to remember a big part of the night the next morning.

"I'm going to follow Jerry's suit and go to sleep this off. Oh, gods," Emerson groaned and held his abdomen. "Why I join you every time, I'll never know."

"It's because you love us!" Blaise declared loudly as Emerson started staggering towards the camp.

Not getting any response, Blaise scowled for a second or two and started handing the others new bottles of beer.

"Hey, I'm not finished with my last one, either!"

"Stuff it, Ron, and be a man. You've been sipping at that bottle for the whole evening."

"No, this is actually my –"

"Blaah! Save your Irish eps – esclanations and hand me my cigarettes, would you?"

"Here you go," Ron sighed. "And I'm not Irish."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah." Blaise bent over the table but lost his balance, toppling over onto the table and spilling his drink across the surface. In the process, he also hit his nose against its surface so that it started to bleed.

All I could do was watch Blaise with pity. Maybe he still blamed himself for Alvin's suicide, I wasn't sure.

"Alright, Blaise, you've had enough. It seems that you're not the only one who needs to have a lie down, a long, sobering lie down."

"Harry, you're not dunk. Drunk." Ritter was pulling Blaise up, handing him a handkerchief and helping him tip his head so that it would stop bleeding.

As a matter of fact, I was quite inebriated, but unlike Blaise, I didn't show it off with flamboyant gestures or flush bright red like Ron. My vision was slightly blurry and movements felt soft and steps light, which was a clear indication to my state of intoxication. "Let's get you to your bed, ok? You're making a fool out of yourself and you are going to regret this in the morning."

"Harry! When did you become such a spoilsport? First you deny me… something that I must have thought was of great importance and now this?"

"Yes, Blaise, I'm a bad person. Now, up you go."

"Have fun dealing with that old sailor, Harry!" Ron yelled as I started dragging Blaise down the path that led to a sandy road a bit further away. Despite my own state of drunkenness, I still had enough sense not to make a shortcut across a muddy meadow.

So we left the others in the forest, making our way slowly down the path covered with old leaves and twigs. It wasn't very dark yet, although the sun had hidden behind the trees just a few minutes ago. The birds had stopped singing in the trees, but the quietness of the evening was broken by the calming sounds of grasshoppers chirping in the tall grass.

I draped Blaise's arm over my shoulders, as the poor lad was barely able to walk. "Oi, mate, take a hold of yourself. You are not a petite ballerina and I have problems with the coordination of my own legs, too, so please, help me out a bit!"

I wasn't sure if Blaise heard me or not but after slapping him in the cheek lightly, he clearly put a bit more effort into walking. "Srree," he slurred, and I took a firmer hold of his waist.

The walk was long and satiated with physical agony. Blaise managed to tumble down every two hundred feet and once he was very close to falling into a trench by the road. I don't think I had ever cussed so much in my life over such a short period of time.

The guards at the gates laughed at Blaise's state mercilessly, but let us in without too many fitting remarks.

"Just a couple of more steps and we're there, Blaise."

"'M fine…"

The floor boards were creaking as we walked down the corridor, passing doors to other men's rooms.

"Okay, we're here. Do you think you can climb to your own bed?"

Muttering something unintelligible, Blaise gradually crawled up into his own bunk. I had not been looking forward to giving him my own bed, so this was a relief to me. The second his head hit the pillow, he was fast asleep and I took his boots off for him, trying not to feel disgusted at their state.

Jerry had managed to change into his night clothes and was sleeping in his own bed peacefully, snoring lightly. I opened the window for a bit because the room reeked of alcohol and mud and something else that I did not want to name.

I made my way to the bathroom and discovered Emerson splashing water onto his face. As I opened the door wider, he lifted his gaze and saw me in the reflection of the mirror in front of him.

"So the others stayed in the forest?"

"Yes," I answered curtly and moved to rinse my own mouth of the taste of beer.

There was a moment of silence during which Emerson went back to the room where Jerry and Blaise were sleeping soundly. I brushed my teeth and washed my face, feeling better already. I looked at myself in the mirror on the wall in front of me, leaning to the cold edges of the sink with my hands.

Yes, I still looked the same, despite the strangeness of the past few days. My pupils were dilated from alcohol, but otherwise it was me staring back with those green, those goddamn green eyes. Eyes that were nothing like Draco Malfoy's.

The thought of the blond man made my face twist into a grimace. At that moment I really wanted to punch something.

I wondered what he was doing, whether he was still alive or not. Quite often inmates killed each other for the food tokens each prisoner was given, so during the night one had to be alert even when they were asleep. It was evident that not all of the dead bodies that were carted away from the inmates' barracks each morning had died of natural causes; sometimes they were strangled to death or clearly beaten to death.

Giving myself a final look in the mirror, I headed back to my bed and changed into something more appropriate to sleep in.

Emerson was also changing into his night clothes by his own bed. His caramel brown hair was pointing in every direction and as he removed his shirt, tanned, golden skin was revealed.

'You don't know before you try.'

The lamp on a small table was casting a warm glow onto the other man's naked back. The skin looked smooth as silk.

I walked closer to Emerson who still had his back turned towards me. He hadn't heard my steps.

I reached out, but before I could touch him, he turned around.

"Harry?"

I froze and dropped my hand to my side.

"What're you doing?"

'… born the way I was… doing what felt natural to me…'

"Uh… Harry? Are you there?"

'Not quite,' I thought to myself. "Yeah, of course I am."

"Right…" Emerson said doubtfully and pulled a shirt on. "If you say so."

"I do!"

"I said 'right', didn't I? Ah, well, whatever," Emerson said, sounding annoyed, and turned to go to bed.

This attitude insulted me, unbelievably so, probably because I was still drunk and it was Emerson, the flaming tosser, who was being cocky. "Don't use that tone of me, you poof."

He turned back to look at me over his shoulder and whispered, "Don't… The others might hear and I'd –"

"Like I give a shit about what happens to the likes of you."

"Harry, can't you just let it be? I told you, I'd do anything if you kept these… things to yourself. I have too much to lose."

"Damn right you have." A hangover was starting to creep into my skull already.

"A family –"

"- with a mother and a father."

He gulped. "Yes."

"I don't know how you can live with yourself."

"It wasn't up to me!"

"Like fuck it wasn't! Who's forcing you to do and think the way you do? Who?"

"Harry, you couldn't possibly understand…"

"And I wouldn't want to."

There was a pause and Emerson sat onto his bed, elbows perched against his knees. Wearily, he asked, "Why are you doing this?"

"Because you deserve nothing better," I hissed and narrowed my eyes at him maliciously. My, it felt good to see him suffer.

"Could you speak a bit quieter?" He said. "And what about you? Is what you're doing right?"

I charged at him and grabbed his throat. Leaning in, I growled with a low voice, "Scared, pup? Afraid that Blaise and Jerry will hear and go straight to my father? Or are you afraid of the beating you would get from them before handing you in?"

His eyes were bright and wide, hands trying to pry my fingers away from his throat. He coughed and rasped, "Let go of me!"

"It would be so easy to kill you right here, right now, you know? It would save the others the bother." I squeezed a bit harder and felt his trachea between my fingers as I cut his air supply.

"You – You wouldn't –"

"Surely I would have a lot of explaining to do, but I would get out of this clean and innocent. Sexual molestation is very condemnable, especially if my father happened to hear I was the victim."

He was trashing and trying to pull my hands away from his throat. His breathing was wheezing and getting raspy. "H-harry – Please – L-let go!"

The sensation was insanely satisfying. I saw how his eyes started to gradually go out of focus and his face was beginning to lose its healthy colour. I leaned a bit closer and his eyes started to flutter closed due to lack of oxygen. I could smell him and feel warmth radiating from him.

I smiled and pushed him away.

"Not a very big man after all, are you, Emerson?"

Emerson was gasping for air on his bed, massaging the abused skin of his throat and looking at me with pure terror written across his face.

I moved closer again and he backed up against the wall of his bunk. "Don't come any closer!"

"Or what? You'll scream?"

I grabbed his hair, pushing his face into the mattress. I leaned over him and rested the fingers of my other hand lightly on the back of his neck, drawing small circles there. I whispered in his ear, very intimately, "Go on, scream. I would love to tell the others what happened here."

I brushed my nose against the shell of his ear, breathing in his scent. Emerson's muffed voice stuttered, "I don't – You win."

"I know," I stated, amused, and gave his neck a small, experimental lick. I felt him shudder beneath me.

"What on earth are you doing?" He shifted towards the post of his bed, but I held on. I twisted his arm behind his back and squeezed his wrist so hard in my grip that he yelped in pain, trying to get free.

Lifting my mouth next to his ear again I said, "Isn't this what you do to that – what was his name – Franz?"

I continued my ministrations and threaded my fingers into his hair, massaging his scalp.

"What would you do if he was brought here? If he was sent to a concentration camp?"

He turned his head to the side a bit, looking at me with an interesting combination of emotions on his face. "If it was your doing, I would kill you."

I chuckled and turned to look at him deep into his blue eyes, speaking softly but dangerously, "Or maybe he's somewhere already, like in Dachau or Auschwitz." His eyes flickered and glared daggers at me. "Or maybe he's nowhere anymore. Maybe he's been dead for a long time already but you just haven't been told."

Pressing my lips forcefully onto his, I closed my eyes for a few seconds. At first it wasn't all that different from kissing a woman but then he started kissing me back, hesitantly at first but then opening up for me. All of a sudden there was a warm, wet tongue touching mine, fearfully exploring my mouth and tasting and feeling me.

I was kissing a man. Another man.

My head was swimming with all the foreign stimuli I was receiving. It was bolder and more straight-forward and oh my, it was different. The angles, the smell, the feel of rougher skin against mine… I had lowered my hand so that it rested on Emerson's lower back. The body of another man's felt completely different under my palm, the fragile softness wasn't there and the generous feminine swells and curves were conspicuous by their absence. Under my palm the muscles were tensed in a way that a woman's never were, and I didn't feel the need to keep myself under constant control at all. It was easy to let go and satisfy the hunger I felt by simply not holding back.

'You don't know before you try.'

There truly was a difference and it felt like something had clicked inside my head in a very unnerving way. My fingers were digging into Emerson's skin in a way that probably felt painful. I didn't care, though, and neither did Emerson, it seemed.

'Look how the mighty have fallen', the little voice gibed, but I pushed it aside.

After what felt like a small eternity, I broke away from the kiss to catch my breath. Sitting up, I looked down at him again, and what I saw got me completely off guard.

His cheeks were flushed pink and his lips were slightly swollen and red. Emerson was watching me with a look that I interpreted as a shocked realisation, and slowly he inched to lean against the bed post. The sight was positively intriguing.

"I don't know what to say," Emerson said, slightly out of breath himself.

Taking a deep breath, I stood up and straightened my clothes. "Well I do."

His posture tensed again at my sharp tone. His eyes were watching my every movement.

I gave him one more nasty smile.

"That was disgusting and I hope that I'll be there to witness how you and your faggot friend die a horrible way."

A/N: You know what to do, or at least I hope so. I have started on the sixth chapter, actually it's finished already and only needs some polishing... It's also going to be unnaturally long, about 6,000 words long so hopefully I'll find a beta who doesn't mind taking such an enormous task. I alsofinished the next chapter for Acrobat over two months ago but it's been really troublesome to look for betas -.- My RL's been more hectic than ever.

Hmm, a small teaser might motivate you to motivate me. Some may be able to tell that I was listening to Kubb's song called 'Wicked Soul' while writing the chapter. You will also get to know how exactly Draco ended up in Buchenwald.

Once again, it was only him and me.

"Get up."

The blond slowly eased himself up and cautiously raised his head. I narrowed my eyes. 'All this humbleness must be an act of sorts.'

"What are you going to –"

"Shut your mouth and come this way."

-Devilita.