Author's Note: Thanks again to Deb for the Beta. And promptness. And awesomeness. And thanks to all who reviewed part 1 *Wiggles*
Draco woke with an overwhelming sense of disorientation. His dreams had been filled with wandering, seeking something that was just out of reach. It was frustrating to say the least and left him feeling somehow lost, even though he was in his familiar bed, in his familiar room. Everything seemed…off, as if he were running five seconds behind the rest of the world.
Trying to shake it off, he got out of bed and set about his usual routine, attempting to catch up with whatever was out of balance. His mind continuously drifted back to last night, the amazing mouth and the even more amazing pleasure it had given him. He wagered this was the source of all his problems this morning. He needed more of that excitement, or maybe it was quite the opposite. Maybe he was being punished for daring to step out of his role of broody Malfoy heir. That would be his luck.
As he carefully placed his books into his bag, he vowed not to over think it. He had Herbology first, and though he detested getting dirty, he knew he could slip through that class with barely a blink; it was such a simple class. He'd helped his mother in the gardens his entire childhood, so even the most advance lessons in Herbology were easy for Draco to grasp. Then he could completely lose himself in the art of Potions. His essay was finished, he'd put the polishing touches on it last night and he dared to say it was his best work so far.
He only wished Professor Snape was still here to see it. He would have been proud. Draco ignored the tight clench in his chest as he tucked the Potions essay into his bag and set off.
It had stormed the night before, but it wasn't yet cold enough to snow. There was a silvery frost on the shore near the lake, but the rest of the grounds were just muddy and slick, particularly around the green houses. Draco's feet sank deeper with each step until mud caked the bottoms of his trousers, several inches up. It was ghastly. He grew even more irritated when he saw the Golden Trio walking smugly past him perfectly clean. Granger had apparently cast some kind of cushioning charm that allowed them to walk through the swampy grounds unhindered.
Why hadn't Draco thought of that? Because he was too preoccupied looking at everyone's mouth, wondering which one held the wicked lips that had wrapped around his prick last night. Draco shook it off and made his way into greenhouse seven where most of the students had already gathered and were chatting animatedly. Draco slunk off to his usual corner and began casting cleaning charms on his shoes and trousers.
"Get a bit dirty there, Malfoy," chimed a voice from nearby, and he looked up to see piercing green eyes beneath a smugly cocked brow.
"Oh, sod off, Potter. You'd be worse off if it hadn't been for the Mu-…Granger," he bit out. He and Potter had come to a sort of silent truce after the war. Neither of them needed to have a deep conversation about it, they weren't a couple of simpering witches after all. They'd just slipped into a civil sort of existence made of curt nods and subtle glances instead of their usual biting jabs and shouting duels. It was progress. But Draco didn't have to be told that using words like Mudblood in reference to Harry's friend would strain, if not break this tenuous truce they'd developed.
Harry's lips pursed slightly at the slip, but he didn't comment. "You're probably right, but I've never minded getting a little dirty."
Draco knew his mind was in the gutter when a comment like that from Potter made him blush. "Why doesn't that surprise me," he replied with a hint of smirk, but their banter was thankfully cut off when Professor Sprout arrived and began the lesson.
Today they would be planting their first Fanged Geraniums, a vicious plant that was prone to biting. To top off the gloomy morning, it appeared they had to work in pairs for their new assignment. He'd never seen a Professor as stubbornly set on House unity as Professor Sprout, and it had only escalated after the war. Draco knew before she even announced it that Slytherins would be paired with Gryffindors and not with students from their own house.
He tensed when it looked as though she was going to pair him up with Weasley, but let out a breath of relief when she assigned the ginger as Theo's partner instead. The look of dismay on his friend's face amused him until Draco was given Potter as his partner. He had to give Theo a quelling glare to stifle his friend's quiet laughter.
Draco jerked his head in Potter's direction and the Gryffindor joined him at the makeshift station they'd been given. "Since you enjoy being filthy so much, I thought you could do all the hands on work while I take notes. My handwriting is far superior to yours, after all," Draco pointed out with a smirk the moment Harry set his bag down.
"All the grunt work you mean? I'm not your house-elf, Malfoy. We'll split the work up evenly," Harry adjusted, grinning to himself. "Besides, it would do you some good to loosen up and spend an hour not being so utterly pristine."
'If only Potter knew', Draco mused to himself. "Fine, but I'm not packing the hole. That'll be your job."
Harry snorted so loud it drew attention to their table and Draco found himself blushing all over again. "Oh, stop being such a pervert," he chastised, but couldn't help the grin that tugged on the edge of his lips. "Gryffindors, I swear."
"If Gryffindors are all perverts, then Slytherins must all be prudes," Harry countered as he opened the bag of soil and began filling around the edges of their pot.
"We're not prudes, Potter. We're merely discrete." Draco shot Harry a smirk as he wrote a few notes about the soil's quality and the appropriate mineral proportions to use.
"Oh really?" Harry whispered skeptically, leaning in close enough for Draco to smell the earthy fragrance of the dirt and something intoxicating underneath. "What's the most debauched thing you've ever done?"
'Try having your cock sucked through a glory hole in the boys' locker room', he thought to himself, but merely said, "The very definition of discretion prevents me from answering that question, Potter."
Harry grinned and shook his head wryly as he planted the bulbs and backfilled it with dirt. "Convenient," he muttered amicably.
They worked in comfortable silence for a while, dividing up the duties. Harry was able to convince Draco to run his fingers over the stems in a soothing fashion that was supposed to keep the bulb subdued while they planted it. It left Draco feeling disgusting, but Potter wouldn't let him use another cleaning charm. "You'll only get dirty again," he reasoned, which Draco found unacceptable, but for some reason he didn't argue.
He also couldn't seem to tear his gaze away from the bloody prat. Whenever he wasn't determinedly taking notes, he caught himself staring at Harry, watching his hands work, watching his lips as he hummed to himself quietly. He didn't even find the song irritating, which was in and of itself quite irritating. "This is fucking ridiculous," he muttered under his breath.
"What?" Harry asked, frowning down at his handiwork. "What's ridiculous?"
"The way you're playing in the dirt over there," Draco lied defensively. "You're doing it all wrong."
"I'm playing in the dirt…incorrectly?" Harry repeated, a smarmy smile on his face. "Really?"
"No," Draco huffed, gesturing in the general direction of the pot. "You didn't bury it deeply enough. The textbook clearly says no more than six inches deep. That's obviously seven." He reached into the soil impulsively and began to yank the bulb out. "You'll just have to do it again."
"Draco! Wait! Don't pull it o-" But it was too late, Draco yanked the bulb and yelped as it writhed in his hand and bit his palm quite viciously. He dropped it to the table and stared in wide-eyed shock as it began chewing a hole through the table until Harry stunned it with a sigh. "The textbook also clearly states never to extract a premature geranium from its pot," he pointed out, but he still didn't seem very angry.
Professor Sprout bustled over to see what the commotion was before Draco could apologize –or whatever constituted an apology for a Malfoy- and Draco couldn't meet Harry's gaze as fifty points were deducted from both their houses. "It honestly wasn't Potter's fault, Professor," he chimed in, wondering what the hell he was saying.
"No," Harry corrected. "We're a team, which means we take the good together along with the bad."
Draco wanted to smack the noble arse but settled on ignoring him for the rest of class. They weren't able to complete the assignment after having to start from the beginning, so they'd have to pick it up again next time while the rest of the class would be moving on to venomous vines.
He didn't know if he could spend another day working side-by-side with Potter the way things had gone today. But then, he also briefly wondered what he would do without him. He wanted to scream at himself for being such a fucking girl, and quickly scooped up his things and bolted from class the second it was dismissed.
As he trudged up into the courtyard, forgetting in his hurry to cast the anti-filth charm again, he felt someone tap his shoulder and he turned to find himself looking straight into those glittering gemstone eyes again. "This fell out of your bag back there," Harry said, handing him a scroll of parchment destroyed by mud. "I hope it wasn't too important."
Draco snatched it from Harry's hand, gaping at the damage. "This was my potions essay," he said numbly.
"Shit," Harry replied with a wince. "Sorry. Did you want to snag anything from mine so you still have something to turn in?"
Why the fuck was Potter being so nice to him? Was it all part of his mission to make Draco look like the world's biggest arsehole? "As if I'd copy off that drivel," he scoffed. "No thanks."
Harry blinked, looking completely taken aback. "I see," he whispered, shaking his head like a lost man. "Have fun with that then," he added quietly before turning and stalking away.
As soon as Potter was out of sight, Draco growled and tossed the mangled parchment to the floor, stomping on it viciously. Apparently he was perfectly capable of looking like the world's biggest arsehole all on his own. But why the fuck did he care what Harry thought of him? Nothing had changed, they were still enemies, just slightly more tolerant enemies…right? He'd wanted Potter's friendship and attention since he was eleven years old, and now the fucker was making an effort and Draco had to go and ruin it. What was wrong with him?
Steeling his shoulders and banishing all Potter related lines of thought, Draco tried a cleaning charm on his parchment but it ate through the dirt and ink alike, as he'd suspected it would. He'd have to whether quite the storm from Slughorn, but at least his day would be over after that and he could finally relax.
And he knew just the little hole in the wall that could take his mind off his shit day.
Harry sat at dinner surrounded by chattering friends, none of which he was paying as much attention to as they deserved. His mind was too preoccupied on his earlier encounters with Malfoy. He'd wanted to make a fresh start at Hogwarts this year. Not all the students who'd attended prior to the war were back, but all of the seventh year students who'd been absent because of the war were given the opportunity to attend and finish their exams this year. Some people chose home tutoring and planned to take the exams when they were ready, but Harry wanted to go back and try to erase the last memories he had of this place. He didn't want his last experiences at Hogwarts to be all about war and bloodshed. This castle was his home.
Knowing that, he'd decided to put the past behind him and to leave off old animosities, which included his seven year rivalry with Draco Malfoy. At least, that's what he'd hoped. But no matter how hard he tried, it seemed Malfoy was determined to keep the status quo. It was a shame, because Draco was very pretty. Not that that mattered in the least.
The feeling of a thumb tugging gently at his bottom lip brought him out of his reverie. "You've been pouting all evening, Harry. What's wrong?" Ginny asked, nudging him tenderly.
"Hm?" he asked distractedly. "Oh. I'm not pouting," he corrected, but at her quelling look Harry sighed. "I've just got a bit of a headache is all, and it's been stormy out all day. I didn't get any time out on the pitch." That was quite true, anyway. Harry had made a point to take his brooms out every day so far since he'd been back. It gave him a sense of freedom that nothing else had matched, until recently.
"Well, I can't help you with the flying bit," she whispered close to his ear, "but we could still go out to the pitch. The locker rooms anyhow." Ginny winked at him as she pulled back to a more reasonable distance for public conversations.
Harry winced. "I'm really not feeling so good, Gin. Sorry." He felt like such an arse lying to her this way. She deserved so much better. "I'm probably going to head to bed after dinner and try to sleep it off."
She pouted for only an instant before rubbing her hand in soothing circles across his back. "That's okay. I have a few assignments I should probably focus on. I hope you feel better though."
"Yeah, me too," Harry muttered, the words honest even if the reasons behind them were not. He hated sneaking around, but he didn't know what else to do. He knew it was only a matter of time before it all blew up in his face, but Harry needed to figure this out on his own. He couldn't run to Hermione or Ron with this one.
Harry kept fairly quiet throughout the rest of dinner, his eyes occasionally darting over to the Slytherin table to see Malfoy looking equally miserable surrounded by his friends. It was always so odd how closely their lives mirrored each other and how drastically they differed at the same time. Draco had always been able to influence Harry's mood, even his actions, which he wasn't particularly proud of, but couldn't seem to put a stop to.
But right now Harry had more important things on his mind than whether or not his relationship with Draco would always consist of a bitter rivalry. As he left the table and began his show of heading to bed for the night, Harry felt both wretched and eager all at once. He knew deep down his deceit would catch up to him eventually, but whenever he thought of last night his heart started to pound with need.
As soon as the room was clear, Harry slipped his invisibility cloak over his shoulders and left the tower, silent and unnoticed, the footprints in the mud leading to the locker rooms the only thing showing what path he took, which were easily erased with a spell.
The locker room was expectedly dark when he entered, but he knew his way around enough not to have to bother with a Lumos until he entered the showers. His heart leapt into his throat and all the blood in his body seemed to pool in his groin as he saw what was waiting for him. Proud and almost fully erect, the cock was back, jutting perfectly from the hole in the wall. It twitched as Harry approached as if it could sense his hungry stare.
Harry wasted no time falling to his knees before the burgeoning flesh, his lips wrapping around the tip and holding as it jerked in surprise. He moaned at the flavor that enveloped his tongue as the prick leaked happily into his mouth and Harry took him deeper. At no point did the thought enter his mind that this was wrong, that he shouldn't be doing it, and that he was betraying the people he cared for in this very moment. Harry was completely focused on the cock in his mouth, sucking, stroking and massaging it as he moaned his own pleasure around the hardened flesh.
Harry was surprised and excited when the cock began thrusting forcefully down his throat. Harry took every inch as the man on the other side of the wall started to fuck Harry's face in earnest. His cheeks hollowed as he sucked, bobbing up and down in time with each thrust until he felt the head swell and expand in his mouth a second before shooting hot streams of fluid down his throat.
When the cock pulled away, it actually left Harry feeling bereft, as if part of himself had been torn from him. He sank to the cold tile floor and let out a shaky breath before reaching into his trousers and freeing his own prick. It only took a few strokes before he was coming with a shout, but he stayed there on the ground feeling numb, confused and elated. It was quite obvious what he wanted and he'd just have to make peace with the fact that he desired men. Tomorrow he'd have to be honest, let Ginny go, tell his friends…maybe not Ron. Maybe he'd let Hermione tell Ron.
He expected it to feel like a heavy weight on his chest, this new information about himself, but he felt lighter and more free than he could ever recall feeling, as if a missing part of his soul had been replaced. Harry smiled as he stared up at the skylight, watching the stars dance and twinkle as if they lit the sky just for him. He would be okay.
Author's Note: Now that this one is halfway finished, what should I work on next?