Author Note (small disclaimer): In this chapter, when Harry experiences déjà vu, a tiny portion of dialogue for Uncle Vernon was sampled from OotP and is not original to me.

MEMORY VIAL 18: A PRINCESS AND HIS PRINCE (YEAR 5)

One week into the summer holidays, Hedwig appeared at Harry's window with a black and white-dappled owl, Oberon, who had a letter tied by a red string to his downy, tufted leg. Harry's stomach twisted on itself—half in hope and half in fear—but a quick glance at the envelope showed Pansy Parkinson's name and address scrawled in dark green script across the front and not his own. Disappointed, he refrained from untying the cord and said to Oberon in a disconsolate tone of voice, "You've got the wrong house."

Harry apologized to Hedwig, who screeched from on top his desk, then motioned for Oberon to jump back out the window and get the letter delivered to the right person.

"Go on, now. Get!"

He did not want to be responsible for Draco's girlfriend not receiving her letters, and he also did not want Oberon hanging around as an unpleasant reminder of his recent falling out with the boy whom he had cursed the last time he'd seen him.

The moment Harry jabbed his finger at the handsome bird's plumage in an attempt to make him skitter off the sill, Oberon screeched and pecked at his knuckles, drawing blood, so that Harry yanked his hand back in alarm.

"Ouch! What was that for?" He sucked at the wound. "I already told you, this isn't Pansy's house!"

Oberon fluttered purposefully onto the coverlet, raked the air with his burdened leg and then tore viciously at the envelope with his hooked beak.

"Stop that," Harry scolded, while the owl chipped away at the black wax seal until it broke. "Great! Now look what you've done. Don't think I'll be able to seal it properly again, not without magic."

Oberon fixed him with a bored and condescending look that was reminiscent of its smug-faced owner, and, once again, he wriggled his tied leg in the air as a way of demanding Harry to claim the misdelivered piece.

Prompted by Oberon as much as he was moved by his own rankling jealousy toward Pansy, Harry untied the letter and opened the envelope's flap, resolved on resealing it later as best he could, if he did not destroy it first for feeling envious of its contents.

When Oberon's leg was free, he swiveled his head with a haughty blink and hooted coquettishly at Hedwig who was staring at him from beside a crumb-ridden plate on the desk. She feigned disinterest, however, floated on top of her cage, but then bounced into a defensive stance when Oberon rattled the narrow bars with his talons as he joined her.

Harry watched as his own owl warmed back up to Draco's gradually. He snorted softly when they eventually nuzzled beaks and then settled into a squatting cuddle, which he imagined had to be uncomfortable in their position, although they seemed content enough.

"Glad to see I'm not the only one with relationship problems," Harry said. Then he glanced down at the letter, and from the very first line he realized it was addressed to him after all, which explained Oberon's insistent behavior.

"Sorry, Potter," it said, "I had to address this to Pansy because my letters are being looked at before I send them. I switched out the fake one I wrote to her and then put yours in the envelope when he wasn't looking."

He? Harry wondered. Who is "he"?

"I told Oberon to find you if he could, or to come home otherwise, but under no circumstances was he to go anywhere near Pansy's house."

Harry swallowed, feeling unsettled by those opening remarks. It seemed unnecessary to be stating all that—what was the purpose? Who in the world would be snooping through Draco's mail, and why?

"I know you're probably still angry," the letter went on, "but I need to tell you this. It's important. My parents found out."

The parchment crinkled in Harry's grip, but he continued reading.

"Not about us specifically, but I think Moody sent a letter to my parents after finding us on Christmas night, and he thankfully never mentioned your name. I forgot he could see through things with that magical eye of his, and it definitely slipped my mind the night he caught us, so I'm in really big trouble." Harry's blood began to boil at Barty Crouch Jr.'s audacity. "I was lucky I told the truth right away, otherwise Mr. Thorne says he would've performed Legilimency on me to make sure I was really innocent and wasn't lying."

Legilimency? Harry thought. What on earth…?

"I'm doing what my parents want to straighten me out because it's what I want too. Mr. Thorne says he can change me, so I've been telling him everything, and he hasn't used Legilimency yet, because apparently it's all a part of establishing the patient/psychomancer relationship. Or at least that's how he puts it. I'm really lucky, because if he saw any memories of us together and was able to interpret that it wasn't just a stupid fantasy, I'd be dead, especially after everything that happened in June."

Harry knew what events Draco was referring to, and it wasn't just about what they had done together on his fifteenth birthday. Voldemort's return presented more complications for Draco because of the so-called cleansing the Dark wizard sought to enact upon the world. Draco must have heard the whole story about Voldemort from his father, and Harry felt nauseous at the thought of Lucius calmly conveying the story to his son, as if it were a triumph that the Dark Lord had returned.

"Good thing is, he doesn't want to poke around my mind if he doesn't have to because it might affect me. He says I could shut down on him in the long run if I feel like my privacy's been invaded, which would damage my prognosis. He says trust between us is essential for long-term success, and he'll only feel the need to use Legilimency if he starts suspecting I've become resistant or that I'm lying. So I told him about my birthday, and about the dreams I often have of you. I avoid using your name, and I've also confessed my thoughts about other boys too and steered clear of naming them."

Harry paused and then backtracked to that line again, "and about the dreams I often have of you." There was a constricted feeling in his chest.

So, he wasn't alone. Harry had also not been able to stop thinking about Draco ever since coming back to Privet Drive.

"What Mr. Thorne is making me do has been painful so far, but I know I'll be happy when it's all over. As for him going through my letters—don't write to me, by the way—he's only checking that I'm not writing to any unknown boys, and offered to help me court Pansy a bit more seriously. You've moved on already, I suppose. Now, I'll be able to as well."

But I haven't moved on, Harry thought vehemently. He had only been at the Dursleys for a week now, which did not seem like enough time to work out how he was feeling.

"Check the envelope again. There's a concentrated Sleeping Draught in there. I bought it off Dingle and used it on Blaise the night we flew. Blaise isn't a rat, but I didn't want him wondering what I was up to. What's left in that vial will knock six people out for twelve hours, and you've got the last of it there, so use it on those filthy Muggles you live with if you ever want a night to yourself.

" ̶L̶o̶ Regards, Draco."

Harry's eyes burned like coals at that last part. "Regards," he muttered indignantly to himself. "After everything that happened between us, you sign off with something as stupid as 'regards'…"

Harry threw the letter onto his bed.

Was Draco really moving on? Part of him hoped that wasn't the case, but the other part wanted to shove Draco off a cliff so that Harry could see him "move on" into the next life or something, but not really…

Harry looked at Hedwig, who was snoozing against the sleek, dark feathers of Oberon. They had fallen asleep and were likely dreaming about soaring through dense trees in search of quick-footed dormice, and Harry wished that his own dreams could be so peaceful.

SEVERAL WEEKS LATER

Harry hadn't been outside all day, and yet when he came down from his room for a glass of water around dinnertime, Aunt Petunia puffed and fumed the moment she laid eyes on him while stirring a pot of rancid-smelling stew. "Tracked in all that mud," she said between clenched teeth. "For shame! And after I just cleaned the floor today. All over the carpet too! Ought to make you scrub it by hand, I ought to."

Harry followed the furious jabbing of Aunt Petunia's finger to the enormous smears blotched over the linoleum at the doorway which led into the back garden. The great slopping footsteps led right to where his cousin Dudley was sitting on the sofa watching television in the living room, the white bottoms of his sneakers covered in thick, clayish gobs of grass and soil.

"No dinner for you tonight!" Aunt Petunia barked at Harry, who pushed his eyebrows together in bewilderment when he realized she was overlooking the obvious fact that Dudley had done whatever she was accusing him of.

"You think that I did that?" Harry said incredulously.

"I don't think," Aunt Petunia sniffed, "I know!"

"But I've been inside all day. I haven't come down from my room till now 'cause I'm thirsty, and—Dudley's feet are covered in mud!" Which did not make sense now that Harry thought about it. The summer was unusually hot, and everything outside was as dry as straw and dust, so how on earth had Dudley come upon that much mud?

Uncle Vernon spoke from the armchair in the living room, startling Harry, since it was as if the corpulent man had Apparated from Grunnings right into the room. "Only because you framed him by using the M-word on him!"

A protuberant vein throbbed dangerously over Uncle Vernon's clammy temple, reminding Harry of the Dermaradix Creeper he had heard about from Neville, a parasitic plant known for burrowing under the host's skin, where it would deposit seeds, which would mature into bloodsucking bulbs that were often mistaken for tumors.

"You seriously think I used magic to frame him?" Harry said, voice rising with his temper.

The word magic, however, seemed to trigger a sort of seizure in his uncle's frontal lobe. Uncle Vernon threw the remote control at the glass front of the television. The remote snapped into three pieces while the screen sputtered and sparked before going out.

"Don't — you — dare — use — the — M-word — in — my — house — boy!" hollered Uncle Vernon abrasively, "or I swear I'll make you regret it!"

"And not only that, Vernon dear," Aunt Petunia said as she slopped stew into three bowls until the broth was running over the sides like a greasy sludge, "but he stole the healthy chunk of low-fat cheesecake I picked up for Duddykins early this morning. I hid it in the back of the refrigerator, but that horrible, good-for-nothing wastrel still got to it somehow."

Harry frowned at Dudley then, glaring at the empty plate covered in crumbs that was lying tilted in his lap. To say nothing of the lavish white smear that was caked over his stout chin.

"If you weren't such an old bat," Harry grumbled in a low voice, while gesturing angrily at his cousin, "then maybe you'd notice he's the one with the empty plate. Not to mention, he's the one with mud all over his sneakers. I've done nothing but sit quietly in my room all day, and I didn't come down once."

"You dare talk to my wife like that, you—you scoundrel?" Uncle Vernon raged.

Harry felt the floor shudder as the man stood up and took several great galumphing strides toward him into the kitchen, while shaking his meaty fists at Harry threateningly.

"Apologize now, or you'll pay what you owe my wife and son with your own bruises!"

Harry was only surprised that he'd been given a choice at all. Usually, he was beaten without options ever being presented to him like this.

"Go ahead and hit me then," Harry said boldly. In the silence that followed, the busted television caught fire, but no one seemed to notice, not even Harry. Aunt Petunia slopped more stew into Dudley's overflowing bowl and splattered the countertop with the grayish excess, which began to bubble and burn a hole like a corrosive potion. "I've been everyone's punching bag here for the last fourteen years, so one more go would hardly put a dent in me." But for all his bravado, Harry couldn't shake the feeling of déjà vu that was coming over him just then.

Uncle Vernon swelled, his great purple face stretching so that his eyes popped outward and askew like an iguana's. "Well then, that settles it!" he said savagely, his shirt front straining as he inflated himself. "If punishment is no longer effective on you, then what's the use? Your delinquency is incurable—so you can get out of this house, boy!"

"What?" said Harry.

"You heard me—OUT!" Uncle Vernon bellowed, and even Aunt Petunia and Dudley jumped from where they were. "OUT! OUT!"

"Vernon," Aunt Petunia hissed in an eerily calm voice, for while her husband was busy indulging in his tantrum, she had just seen something flitter in the darkness over his rounded shoulder beyond the garden window.

"I should've done this years ago!" Uncle Vernon continued to rave. "Owls treating the place like a rest home—puddings exploding—"

"Vernon." Aunt Petunia's voice was trembling horribly now, having taken on a warning tone. "Gh… ghost… It's coming closer… it's coming closer…"

"—half the lounge destroyed! Dudley's tail! Marge bobbing around on the ceiling, and—"

Dudley wailed as his mother rushed to wrap her arms around him on the sofa. He inadvertently smeared mud all over her white flower-print dress, and they both goggled at the mysterious figure slowly taking shape beyond the windowpane.

"Vernon!" Aunt Petunia pointed a long, knobbled finger across the room. "A d—d—d—demen…t—t—tuh…!" Her voice gave out.

Harry sensed a prickling at his nape when he realized what she'd been trying to say. But he hadn't felt anything at all the whole time Aunt Petunia had been trying to get her husband's attention. "It can't be a dementor," he said calmly.

Harry's uncle snarled. "Oh, I'll make sure the dismemblers dismember you, boy, and cook you in the fireplace! If you can't be sent to that prison-for-freaks, Azkablam, then burning you alive and committing you to the Devil ought to do the trick!" He eyed the fizzing television screen with morbid interest, apparently fantasizing about tying the boy down onto its electrical flames, but then he whirled to face the kitchen window when Aunt Petunia screamed.

Uncle Vernon's face went pasty white. His mouth fell open with horror.

Harry's sense of déjà vu was replaced by a peculiarly lucid feeling as he turned to look where his uncle had his bloodshot eyes fixed. It was difficult to see clearly with the bright interior of the Dursleys' home reflecting their own likenesses against the twilit background of the outdoors, which seemed to churn shapelessly like a sepulchral void beyond the curtains. But Harry knew immediately that what he was looking at was the furthest thing from a dementor.

A wizard clad in all-dark robes was approaching the garden door. The sleekness of the unannounced visitor's hair was an all-too-recognizable platinum blond, which made Harry's heart give a tremendous leap, especially when he was able to discern the pale, pointed face which loomed closer to the door like a brilliant lantern in the gloam.

"Who the devil is that?" Uncle Vernon spat while gnashing his teeth.

"My boyfriend," Harry said automatically with a grin.

When his uncle shouted, "Your what?" Harry rushed to the door and opened it for the boy who was waiting just outside.

Draco Malfoy entered the room and smiled enigmatically at Harry as he stepped gracefully past him. He was wearing the same shining black shoes Harry had trampled all over at the Yule Ball almost eight months ago, and they were still scuffed and covered with Harry's print marks.

With an air of haughtier, Draco paced the cramped kitchen space, his black robes swishing and making him stand out like a dark angel among all of Aunt Petunia's porcelain knickknacks and worthless curios. Meanwhile, the television set continued to snap and throw sparks hither and thither, the electrified embers catching onto the curtains and rug.

"This is where you live?" Draco asked Harry in a drawling, careless voice that indicated he was not at all impressed.

"This is it," Harry said in resignation, knowing that it was nothing compared to what he must be used to. Harry was anxious as to what this unexpected visit meant; he had a vague sense that their relationship was supposed to be in shambles at the moment, but he was struggling to remember the details of the fallout.

Draco took his time examining the kitchen while the Dursleys stared in mute apprehension. Though strangely attired like all the other wizards that they hated, Draco was the epitome of elegance and class.

Draco smoothed the luxurious fabric of his robes, which were inlaid with what appeared to be crushed stardust. His eyes glittered like circlets of ice as they took in the polished appliances and tawdry décor, but even the Dursleys noticed how his frosty gaze flooded with warmth the moment he glanced in Harry's direction.

Emboldened by the look Draco was giving him then, Harry asked, "Why'd you come here?"

"To see you, love," Draco said without hesitation, "and to get you out of here, of course."

Dudley made a gagging noise, and Draco snapped his head towards him with a lethal glare. Dudley flinched.

"These are…," Draco's eyes narrowed, calculatingly, "the scum you live with, I presume? The Dursleys?" The daggers of his eyes scanned the hapless mound of Muggles who had flattened themselves against the living room wall. Dudley's rump crushed a framed picture of himself wrestling an older boy the same size as him, and one of his cast-bronze trophies toppled off the altar that his parents had constructed for him.

"That's them," Harry said in a downcast voice.

"Was that fat Muggle-fucker threatening you just now before I came in?"

"Yep."

"And they dress you in rags like that?"

"My cousin's old clothes," Harry said with a nod.

Draco bared his teeth. "Bloody worthless swine…" A moment later Draco took out his wand and announced to the lot of them, "I've known for a while now you've been mistreating my boyfriend."

Harry's heart fluttered happily at what Malfoy had just called him. His feelings were still requited then, even after the row that had set them up for a miserable separation over the summer—and he remembered all the details of the fight now and how Draco had begged Harry to simply talk to him.

"Not feeding him well," Draco continued, as if he were addressing a slew of dim-witted servants. "And it shows for how thin you've allowed him to get—as if he should be eating peasant slop like that anyhow." Draco scowled at the steaming bowls of slush that were sitting on the kitchen counter, uneaten. "But no matter. I'm taking him with me, and he's going to eat like the prince he is. Or would you prefer I called you my princess?" Draco said loudly over his shoulder to Harry, who blushed more deeply at this inquiry.

"Um…" Harry shrugged, not really caring either way as long as it meant he was taken far away from the Dursleys' home. But then he looked at the grimace on his uncle's face and the revolted curl of his aunt's lip, and he couldn't help but answer, "Princess." The less normal their relationship sounded to the Dursleys, the angrier it would make them, and the happier Harry would be as a result, to watch them have to cope with yet another abnormal thing about him that didn't fit their tidy script for how things in the world ought to be.

"You hear that?" Draco said lightly to the three of them. "Potter is my princess, and it kind of has a ring to it. Although, 'Prince Potter' has an even nicer ring to it, now that I think about it."

Uncle Vernon's face went livid purple; he frothed and foamed at the mouth like a rabid dog. "I've had enough of this!"

"Do you know what? So have I," Draco said casually, and he pointed his wand at Mr. Dursley as if it were a saber. "Psychrolutes Marcidus!"

Uncle Vernon's face seemed to become puffier, if it was possible, and he melted like a candle out of his clothes, shrinking and shrinking until he was nothing but a slimy, gelatinous creature with flabby, pinkish skin and beady black eyes.

A blobfish, Harry realized, feeling impressed at the advanced magic Draco had just pulled off. It was the type of Transfiguration magic he remembered Hermione telling him during the Triwizard Tournament that only sixth-year students were allowed to study.

Aunt Petunia shrieked at the shapeless glob of flesh lying on her rug, and Draco grinned maliciously as he pointed his wand at her next and then reduced her—or upsized her, rather—to a horse, with another loudly proclaimed Transfiguration spell. "Equus Caballus!" Aunt Petunia whinnied in horror, backing into tight circles against the far corner of the room on clomping hooves.

Dudley stared dumbstruck at his unrecognizable parents. Draco rushed at him next, grabbing a fistful of Dudley's shirt and slamming him—impossibly, because of how lean and whiplike Draco was in comparison—against the living room wall as if to make a show of his strength for Harry, who was already impressed and could not stop smiling.

"If there's one thing I hate more than a Muggle," Draco said humorlessly, "it's a Mudblood. But compared to even Mudbloods, I hate you, Dudley Dursley, the most." A murderous gleam twinkled in his unblinking eyes as he stared Harry's lifelong bully down. "I ought to turn you into a Flobberworm for everything you ever did to my princess—" Harry choked on a snigger because of how much Draco was playing the princess bit up "—but I think we'll turn you into exactly what you look like, that way you can join your revolting parents. What do you say? Should we make you into a pig, or is that too obvious?"

Dudley merely stared at Draco's wand, unable to speak, sweat sprouting from his pores like toxin from a frightened toad.

"I agree," Draco sniffed, "a pig is way too obvious." Then he tapped the end of his wand on Dudley's shoulder and uttered the words, "Pongo Pygmaeus…"

Dudley neither shrank nor grew. He accumulated a layer of bristly, bright orange hair all over his body, and his back twisted and bended forward into a muscular hunch. His arms elongated so that his blackened knuckles scraped over the drugget—which Harry had forgotten was still burning from the television sparks—and his face flattened, eyes retaining their tiny, beady appearance.

"All of you are filthy animals." Draco spat on the blobfish before punting it at Aunt Petunia for good measure. The horse reared up, wild-eyed, bucking to get away, and the orangutan wheezed and howled in distress.

Harry was not at all put off by Draco's demonstration of cruelty towards the Dursleys. His cheeks were flushed with admiration when the blond turned away from the chaos he had created in order to take stock of Harry.

Draco stashed his wand inside his robes as Harry's arms swung around his neck. Draco stumbled backwards into the countertop of the kitchen with a bit of a laugh and drew Harry in by the waist. "You all right, Potter?"

"I missed you," Harry mumbled into the silk of Draco's robes, and he was so lost in Draco now that he forgot that the Dursleys were even there, smashing furniture and glassware in their panic. Even the fire from the television was still spreading throughout the house, but he paid no mind to it. "Aren't you going to get expelled for this?"

"If you're getting expelled, then so am I. I'd rather not go back to Hogwarts if you're not there."

"Your father won't stand for that, will he?"

Ignoring the question, Draco said, "So, where do you keep your things?"

Harry looked up at him questioningly, wondering why it mattered where his trunk was kept.

Draco's harsh expression softened in the glow of the strip lighting when he met Harry's large, green eyes. A red hue spread over the bridge of his slender nose. "Cute as ever, aren't you?" he said, before moving on to the subject at hand. "Did you forget what I said earlier? I mean to take you out of here, so I'll deal with this filth while you go and get your things."

But Harry could not move. He felt like if he did, then Draco would vanish like a mirage, and Harry would be left to fend for himself all over again.

"What're you doing just standing there? You belong with me, right?"

"Yeah," Harry said, although he still could not command his legs to move. Not for the first time, he was losing himself in Draco's silvery eyes, and he felt sorry for ever believing that Lucius or Voldemort posed a threat to their relationship.

"I've always belonged with you, haven't I?" Harry went on. No matter what either of their blood relatives said, nothing would ever come between them, except maybe their own stupidity.

The television popped as more of the hardware ignited, but Harry was safe now, and it didn't matter if the whole house burned down. His home was with Draco, and he didn't care what the world thought because he was in love, and he refused to believe that love could ever be wrong.

"I'm sorry I doubted you, Malfoy. I'm sorry for assuming—"

"That I would put my father first?" Draco snorted. "I'll have you punished for it soon enough, so don't worry. Now, do as I say, love. Go get your things. I'm taking you away from all this, and in a flying carriage, just like I promised."

Harry's spirits soared at the mere thought, and all his hopes for returning to the bustling domicile of the Weasleys' Burrow faded like a quaint and distant memory. He tried to imagine what living with Draco would be like, to be clothed in wizard robes that were more expensive than the Dursleys' house. He wanted to share a bedroom with Draco more than anything, to cuddle at night with him under the duvet where they would sneak in a bit of rough-and-tumble play before fondling each other through their pajamas. He wanted to listen to Draco's heartbeat until he fell asleep, swaddled in his arms, in the afterglow of their mutually spent orgasms, and he imagined kissing Draco's cheek in the late morning when they woke up, and racing to the shower, where they would taunt each other like brothers, until they gave in to another spell of exploratory touching. They would always be together, pretending to be friends, yet always being more, sneaking behind furniture and doors, snatching kisses in the brief moments when no one was looking, when the rush of adrenaline felt the sweetest.

The imagined affair stirred something in Harry, and he grabbed Draco's hand, then said, "Come help me pack." He meant to lure the boy upstairs to the small rickety bed that he had waiting for them.

Draco followed, sounding urgent while he said, "We have to go now, Potter," but halfway up the stairs, Harry wrapped his arms around Draco's neck and kissed him. They fumbled up the remaining treads, giggling nervously, blind to their surroundings. Sooner than Harry expected, they were sprawled in a cramped position on the bed, and Harry's legs were clamped playfully around the other boy's hips.

The room was dark with the approaching night. Hedwig hooted serenely from her cage, but Harry did not care if she watched—their clothes were coming off now, and the skin of their bellies was touching, and Harry had no idea how to do it with another boy, but he was ready to learn, and he was hard from the anticipation and was getting harder…

Harry whispered Draco's name, but he couldn't tell which part of the name that he had used, and it didn't matter. All his whispers were drowned out by Draco's tongue, and the room tilted out from underneath him as he met Draco's kiss with a groan from deep inside his throat.

A minute later, Harry's jeans were being jerked down to his knees. He felt hot all over as Draco's lips skimmed up the slope of his neck.

"Potter, do you want…? Should we try it?"

Slowly, Harry nodded.

Hands grazed over Harry's torso, feeling hot as irons, and Draco's fingers fondled the shallow valleys between Harry's ribs, tracing little circles as they moved gradually downward.

Something in the living room crashed.

Harry glimpsed a mischievous smirk as Draco bunched Harry's trousers down to his ankles, and Harry's eyes rolled back as he felt hands stroking on his cock, teasing it mercilessly while he writhed and moaned into his pillow. Being touched by Draco felt so much better than doing it himself…

But then, Draco let go of him.

Not fair, Harry thought, frustrated. Not after how long they had been apart. "Quit teasing," he said hoarsely. "Let's do it, Malfoy… I don't wanna wait…"

"Will you be a good boy if I do?" Draco's words sounded sinister and eager at the same time. "Will you obey me? If I promise to drive you out of your mind right now before we leave, will you surrender and obey?"

"I'll do whatever you want, Malfoy—just fucking do it…"

"Will you let me control you?"

Hands smoothed over Harry's belly, making him shiver, and he didn't feel at all self-conscious about how thin he had gotten over the summer, not now that he was being admired for who he was. "No," he said feebly. "No one gets to control me…"

Not even me, Harry thought darkly.

"Not even if it feels good?"

Harry closed his eyes when he felt Draco's hands creeping lower down his stomach, but his erection remained painfully untouched. After a minute of waiting for something to happen, Harry opened his eyes again, but Draco was gone. In his place was Cedric Diggory, hollow-cheeked and pale as death. Harry's heart raced harder than ever, and he flailed, but the corpse collapsed on top of him, stiff with rigor mortis and too heavy to move, as if all the weight in the world had been siphoned into the lifeless body.

Harry opened his eyes a second time and found himself in the same room as Ron at number twelve, Grimmauld Place. The silence was deafening. His heart was thundering, but he was not in any real imminent danger.

Another nightmare, he thought grimly, checking to see if he had accidentally woken up Ron, but the redhead merely snored and turned over in his sleep. Another lucid wet dream ruined by the horrific events of last year. But none of his dreams about Cho were ever interrupted, which only served to make him feel more frustrated about Draco than ever before.