Archive of Our Own

When it finally happened, it was both overdue and unexpected. Flitwick had just dismissed Charms class. The seventh year Ravenclaws and the mixed group of returning eighth years were rolling up scrolls, stoppering ink bottles, and chatting quietly when warm liquid gushed from Harry's arsehole.

For a horrifying moment, he thought he had shat himself.

He straightened gingerly from where he had been leaning over his bag. It was still coming, loads of it, viscous and ticklish. He sat rigid in his sodden pants, hands curling into fists beneath the desk. His sense of smell was brightening, as if a smothering cloth had lifted from his nose. A fug of parchment, cosmetic potions, Luna's pumpkin-scented ink, and a whole riot of pheromones filled the air, a new awareness struggling into being.

He was presenting, then, over a year late, his body finally recovered from the stress of the war. He shifted a little. His pants and trousers and robes were already soaked, nothing but squelchy moisture beneath him. What the fuck, this presentation heat wasn’t hanging about. As soon as he stood up, it would be obvious. He'd have to wait until the room emptied—but the second year Gryffindors were next, weren't they? He wasn't about to let a bunch of twelve-year-olds see his sodden robes. Merlin's saggy balls.

On the other side of the classroom, Malfoy twisted around in his chair to glare at him.

Malfoy had presented alpha right on schedule: two days after his coming of age, according to the fawning article in the Evening Prophet. Alpha, like every Malfoy heir, the newest wanker in a line of wankers dating back to the Conquest. Apparently, fighting in the Second Wizarding War hadn’t been stressful enough to inhibit his presentation. No further details had been forthcoming, probably because he had presented privately, ensconced in his manor, not in the Charms classroom surrounded by thirty other students. Malfoy was the quintessential pure-blood alpha, everything Harry hated: tall and icy and elegant, with legs for miles—more liquid bubbled from his arse.

"Harry," Hermione hissed, leaning over him. Her nostrils flared. "I don't mean to be rude, but is that you?"

She had gone through her rut twice during their months on the run. Both times Ron, a beta, and Harry, still unpresented, had done their best to handle her fits of temper and weird possessiveness, even the time she locked herself in the bathroom and screamed through the door if they moved more than six feet away. She was his best friend. She would help him leave without anyone seeing. Besides, he was beginning to smell himself too, loamy and pungent. "Reckon so.” Weren’t heats meant to be sexy? His pants were plastered to his arse cheeks and he had never felt less sexy in his life.

Across the classroom, Malfoy leapt to his feet, chair clattering to the floor. “Malfoy's staring at me," Harry muttered, but no one seemed particularly interested.

"Ron, Harry's presenting!” Hermione cried. “He's an omega!"

Then Ron was there too, relieved grin on his freckled face, blocking Harry’s view of Malfoy. "Brill! Took you long enough, mate!"

“Yes, thank goodness, I was—“ Hermione straightened and Harry caught a whiff of something briny and crisp, like a spray of saltwater. You smell like the ocean, he wanted to say, but she was still talking, and anyway— “All right, Harry, you’re probably feeling gross, so let’s get you back to the Tower. Ron, oh, maybe if you drape your robes around him—or we could Tergeo his, but I don't think—"

"Malfoy," Harry said, and stood up. Slick trickled down his inner thigh.

"Here we go," Ron muttered.

"Hey, Malfoy!" called Harry, sauntering towards him, and Hermione said, "At least we tried."

Malfoy looked primed for a fight: scowling through his shiny blonde fringe, hands fisted at his sides. As Harry came close, he crushed a thin hand over his mouth and nose. Every line of his body was strained, like he was trying not to flee or sick up. That would be—funny, wouldn't it?—if Harry's heat scent made Malfoy sick up.

"Turns out I'm an omega. Bet you're happy, this is properly embarrassing." Muffled, as if underwater, he heard the thump of a backpack and a burst of whispers. His mind was going foggy, everything slow and sticky and easy.

Malfoy huffed into his palm, glaring poisonously back, his pupils dark, dark. Maybe he really was going to sick up. Harry stepped closer, close enough to smell his cologne—smoky and bitter and delicious—and Malfoy garbled something into his palm.

“You look a right tit,” Harry said cheerfully. He felt like he had taken Felix Felicis: every flicker of worry was drowning, treacle-sweet, in the confidence of this, yes, right.

Angry splotches of colour peeked from between Malfoy’s fingers. His eyes were riveted to Harry’s, practically sparking with the need to say something nasty. He did look stupid, half smothering himself with his own hand. Stupid and thwarted and furious about it, and Harry could have hugged himself with glee. “Nothing to say?” He began lazily unfastening his robes. Malfoy’s expression became impossibly more irate; it was brilliant.

“Harry,” someone said. Those silver eyes flicked away at last, but only until Harry dropped his robes and turned around.

The seat of his trousers was soaked and more was oozing out, sliding down his legs. Malfoy stared at his sodden arse as if it was disgusting. As if Harry Potter was unworthy of a Wankers-Since-the-Conquest Malfoy. “So I stink, is it? Look,” he said, even though Malfoy was already looking so hard the whites of his eyes were showing. “Look. I’m all messy.”

Finally, finally, Malfoy tore his hand away to snarl, “Have you no shame, Potter?” His thin lips were red and damp from pushing into his palm, his expression was miserable and enraged, and here was the opening Harry had been eager for.

“I don’t know, Malfoy,” he sneered, wheeling back around. “Is my gender something to be ashamed of? You would know! After all, you know so much about shame.” And, slipping the blade in, “Considering that thing on your arm!”

Malfoy went chalk-white. “I did what I had to do to save my parents! You wouldn’t know anything about that, though, would you?”

Fighting with Malfoy was like wiggling a sore tooth: a private, guilty indulgence, familiar in its awfulness. They had circled each other like feral dogs for half their lives, knowing just where to tear in. “You’re the same pathetic bully you’ve always been!” Harry spat, exhilarated. Malfoy had been so quiet this year, too quiet, but now he was incandescent, all his attention finally on Harry— “I don’t know why I bothered saving your life!”

"Gentlemen!" someone exclaimed, distantly, but all Harry could focus on were Malfoy’s panting breaths, hot against his face. On his nasally voice, hysterical with rage. "Neither do I! I didn't ask you to, you jumped-up—"

"Oh, I was meant to wait until you asked?" he shouted, rubbing at his neck. "You’d never! But you're mental if you think I'd just leave you to die!"

Somewhere nearby, Hermione said, "He's definitely in heat, Professor, but we'll take care of him."

The colour was back in Malfoy's cheeks, blotchy and unflattering. His pink little mouth fell open in impotent fury. "So I’m to fall at your feet in gratitude? I don't care that you're the bloody Saviour!”

“I never—”

“I don't need you to save me! And I didn't need your load of bullshit at my trial, for that matter! I'm not one of your—your sycophants!"

Their faces were so close that Malfoy had spat on him a little. "I know! But your sodding pride wasn't going to keep you out of Azkaban."

"What's it to you if I go to Azkaban?” he bellowed, hand twitching for his wand. “You hate me!"

"I never said that! Merlin, you're the most annoying bastard I ever met!"

"Good!" Malfoy shrieked, and Harry fingered the waistband of his trousers. It would take hardly anything to pull them down, and he was so hot.

"Harry!" snapped Hermione, as if she had said his name several times already. The rest of the classroom came abruptly into focus. The remaining students had gone. Flitwick was hovering by his stool, watching them anxiously.

She tugged at Harry's shoulder, gesturing to Ron at the door. "Come on, we ought to—"

But Harry never found out what they ought to do because Malfoy—he was looking at Malfoy again—curled his lip delicately, revealing his crooked canine, and snarled. Properly snarled, a low roll in his throat, and Hermione snatched her hand back. “Oh, I wasn’t thinking. Harry, Malfoy—“

“What was that?” Harry bit out, working the buttons of his shirt. “You’ve a problem with Hermione? Let me guess—”

“Oh, Harry!” she said again, in the exasperated voice she used when he was being particularly thick. “For heaven’s sake, stop trying to undress! Would you just come on?” Harry’s shirt was gaping open, and Malfoy was still watching him with that intense look of revulsion. “Malfoy, you’d better come too. He obviously can’t pay attention to anything but you.”

Because Harry was—well, he was, as it happened—looking at Malfoy, he saw Malfoy’s lips twitch and then curve into his most punchable smirk. And he was smirking at Hermione. Harry wanted to stomp on his posh Oxfords.

“Naturally, Granger,” he drawled. “Lead on.” His eyes slunk back to Harry’s, sparkling horribly.

Harry scowled.

The walk to the seventh floor was awkward. Malfoy swaggered along the way he hadn’t for years, trying to trip Harry every now and then as if they were twelve. It was annoying. The warm pulse in his arse was annoying, and so were the wet trousers stuck between his buttocks. But even more annoying were the comments Ron and Hermione kept making. Mum’ll be chuffed to have another omega in the family! You’re the first since Grandma Prewett. And, You’ll need a set of self-drying sheets. I saw a red one in Hayden’s Whatsits, we should look next weekend. He was only aware of a nebulous impatience thrumming beneath his skin.

He had assumed they were going to Gryffindor Tower, so it was only when Malfoy’s posture collapsed that he realised Hermione was opening the door to the Room of Requirement. “Granger—“ Malfoy began, and then snapped his mouth shut on the wobble in his voice.

Harry felt a confused flare of empathy. They had never found Crabbe’s remains. “Er, Hermione—“

“I thought it would still work,” she said, disappearing through the door. Ron followed. Harry hesitated, but Malfoy shoved past him in an enticing swirl of cologne, looking ill and snapping, “Pick up your feet, Potter.”

He picked up his feet. The Room was smaller than he had ever seen it, close and intimate. Wooden rosettes decorated every join of a vaulted ceiling, leafy vines twining around the beams. Candles twinkled around them like stars, from end tables and dressers and hovering high in the air. The rug underfoot was so plush that they were practically bouncing, and at its center, as intricately carved as the ceiling, stood a gigantic four-poster bed.

Harry blinked. The bed was still there. It was hung with gauzy curtains, an inviting nest in shades of cream and sage.

“Right,” said Malfoy, a little shrilly. “He’s been duly delivered. I’m sure you’re very grateful for my assistance—“

“Don’t forget an Incommunicable Charm,” said Hermione.

“Bite him and I’ll hex your bollocks off,” said Ron.

“He’s not—!” Harry and Malfoy exclaimed, in perfect unison, and then looked at each other in horror. Malfoy flushed violently, cheeks and forehead and all down his long neck.

“This just keeps getting funnier!” Ron gasped. “His face—!”

Hermione said, “I’ll explain to Slughorn why you aren’t in Alchemy, Malfoy, and Ron will tell Madam Pomfrey about Harry, won’t you?”

“Sure,” said Ron, grinning maniacally.

Everything was going soupy again. Harry said, to no one in particular, “My socks are wet.” Malfoy lurched a step closer to the door and he added, “Bottling it?”

“Er, mate, we just thought you’d appreciate—“

“He’s not talking to us, Ron.” Ron and Hermione were halfway out the door already. “Presentation heats are typically short, so I expect we’ll see you tomorrow!”

They shut the door and Harry took off his shirt.

“I’m dreaming.” Malfoy’s gaze was pinned to Harry’s bare chest. He looked skittish and overbred, like a baulking horse. “This is a nightmare.”

“If this is a nightmare, it’s not yours. I’m the one leaking slick into his shoes.” It was sliding out of him continuously, his body hot and throbbing.

Grey eyes snapped to Harry’s. That flush still streaked, hot and ugly, across his narrow face. “You’re revolting.”

Harry’s trainers were actually a bit damp round the edges. He toed them off, along with his socks, feeling the familiar squirm of anger in his stomach. Just looking at Malfoy made him so angry; it always had. Made him want to jam snow up his aristocratic nose and rub mud into that sleek hair. “That’s rich, coming from you. Bathing yourself in cologne won’t make anyone forget what you look like, you know.” It was reeking from him, strong and sultry and making Harry’s head spin.

“I’m not prancing around half-naked and—and shameless!” Malfoy bawled. “And I’m not wearing cologne!”

“Well, you should be!”

“I—“ Malfoy stuttered back, a graceless wobble. Somehow, they had got very close again. “I should be wearing cologne?” He sounded flabbergasted, and also like he thought Harry was a prize idiot.

“No, you tosser, the other one. Take off your clothes.”

Wrong-footing Draco Malfoy was a blissful feeling, like winning the House Cup. He looked as if someone had hit him over the head with a board. “Go on,” said Harry gleefully. “It’s hot in here, isn’t it?”

Malfoy’s accent became comically plummy, a sure sign of nerves. “Difficult as the concept may be, Potter, you’re hot because you’re in heat.”

“No, it’s bloody hot. Aren’t you hot?”

His lips went tight and displeased. My father will hear of this, Harry thought wildly. The room was silent. Malfoy’s eyes, sharp as mirror glass, dug into his. And then, in a hush of robes, he sank to one knee. He frowned up at Harry as if he had bitten into something foul, but he was unlacing his Oxfords. Say something, he had to say something, but instead they just stared at each other while Malfoy peeled off his socks.

He was too conscious of his breathing, noisy and harsh. Of the greedy throb of his dick. He felt like he had been hard for hours, for days, forever—maybe since fifth year when Malfoy had started swanning around with the Inquisitorial Squad, tall and blonde and awful. He was still tall and still blonde and still awful, defiant even on his knees: a man fighting a battle he was born to lose.

The sight of Draco Malfoy knelt at Harry’s feet was worth savouring. He was too ratty and angular to be good-looking, but he had his points. His luminous hair, for one, falling over his high forehead. The graceful way he moved. And those eyes: unnervingly pale, drowningly compelling. Not a handsome man, but a striking one.

Meeting Malfoy’s eyes had always made something in Harry feel unsettled. He had asked Ron about it once, during those strangling days in the tent when even his thoughts had torn at themselves. Malfoy’s eyes. Malfoy’s eyes, and his sneering mouth, and the way his body tensed on a broom—Proper creepy, aren’t they? he said, staring up at the bottom of Ron’s bunk. Malfoy’s eyes, I mean. Ron said nothing, for a moment, because they were all being very careful with each other. Then a wheeze of air through his teeth and Sure they are, mate. Sort of a cold shade of blue. Harry stopped himself just in time from crying out, They’re grey! as the bottom dropped out of his stomach.

Ron hadn’t known the colour of Malfoy’s eyes. Harry had known the colour of Malfoy’s eyes for as long as he could remember.

Ron didn’t wake in the night thinking of Malfoy’s eyes, or his hands, or his long neck. Of the way he flushed when he was angry or humiliated—or—sweaty, straining those lean muscles—

Malfoy was flushing now, brutally. He rose, chin lifted like the proud tosser he was, barefoot on the rug. Harry looked at his naked, bony feet and…it was the heat. It was the fucking heat. Malfoy was an alpha, and Ron and Hermione had left them alone together for some mad reason. He wasn’t even attractive. He was sallow and still whipcord thin from the war, like a vicious, half-starved cat. Like a live wire stretched taut and left to writhe and snap sparks everywhere. He had bullied Harry since they were children—although he had refused to betray him to Voldemort—and he had tried to save him from Crabbe—anyway, all of Harry’s friends hated him—“Robes,” Harry choked. His trousers were agonisingly tight.

Malfoy’s nostrils flared. Coolly, he unfastened his robes, as if he had only been trying them on at Madam Malkin’s, and dropped them to the rug. His uniform was immaculate, necktie knotted in a dashing Prince Albert, and his erection strained obscenely against the fly of his trousers.

“Oh,” Harry said, a dumb little squeak. Something steadied in him. He had expected to have to argue, to wrestle Malfoy into submission—wrestling with Malfoy, long moon-pale limbs, slim fingers squeezing Harry’s wrists, pressing him down onto the bed, onto his stomach, his wet arse exposed—he shoved down his trousers and pants, kicking away his clothes with wobbly legs as his scent exploded into the room.

“Merlin fuck,” Malfoy hissed, the curse sounding even nastier in that prim accent. He looked anxious, his posture as drawn-up and formal as the first step of a waltz. His gaze flitted over Harry’s groin.

Harry’s muscles were relaxing, his body going loose. He slid a hand between his arse cheeks, through the slippery mess of hair. “Here.” He held out a wet hand. “It’s not so bad. Smell.”

Malfoy took a gurgling breath and lunged.

Long fingers squeezed his wrist hard enough to bruise as he shoved half of Harry’s hand into his mouth. Holy shit. Harry’s mouth fell open and his head fell back, baring his throat, his body a mess of sensation. Malfoy was tonguing his fingers like he was thirsty for it—for Harry’s gross arse fluid—licking and slurping and someone was whimpering and it was probably Harry.

He clutched the front of Malfoy’s shirt, neck arched and straining, Malfoy’s narrow chest heaving against his fist. The ceiling above them was a whirl of wooden beams and candle flames. His head felt too heavy, his body too weak. He dragged Malfoy closer, or dragged himself closer to Malfoy. The tip of his cock brushed shyly against Malfoy’s trousers, sending a shock of pleasure through him, and Malfoy bit his fingers. Hard.

“Shit!” Harry heaved his head up. His glasses were gone, everything blurry round the edges. Malfoy looked completely deranged. His cheek was bulging with Harry’s fingers, a hectic blush spread all the way down his neck. His eyes, when they met Harry’s, were hungry and furious, and he felt that look like a flame running between them: as if they were one wick, burning at both ends.

This was why.

Why he had stalked Malfoy night after night for months. Why he had flown into fire. Why he had stood in that stuffy courtroom and testified, Draco Malfoy was never loyal to Voldemort, even though he didn’t know if that was true. He never knew, with Malfoy, and it had driven him mad since the age of eleven.

He wanted to know. He wanted to open Malfoy—to peel off the rind—to get at the sweet juice or bitter pulp or whatever it was he hoarded jealously inside. It didn’t even matter what it was: Harry wanted it.

He lurched forward, his naked body pressing against Malfoy’s clothed one, every inch of contact a desperate relief. He clenched Malfoy’s thigh greedily between his, smearing his cock against rough wool and hard muscle. His straining nipples crushed against Malfoy’s shirt as his fingers twined in Malfoy’s hair, thick with sweat at the roots. And all over them both, the burnt pine scent of Malfoy, his Malfoy, his alpha—

That hot mouth slipped from Harry’s fingers. He lifted a leg, tried to wrap it sluttily around Malfoy’s hips, but Malfoy stumbled back. He looked stunned and clumsy, his little slash of a mouth hanging slack. His hands flung out in front of him defensively, as if Harry was going to—do something he didn’t want—

Harry’s fingers were cold, slathered with Malfoy’s saliva. His bruised wrist throbbed in time with his arse, his dick, his dumb stupid heart.

After a moment, Malfoy dropped his hands and shook the pale hair out of his eyes. Something had been hanging open in his face, something Harry only noticed when it snapped shut. “Potter, do you even know who I am right now?”

“Of course I do,” he said, with as much dignity as a naked man with an oozing arsehole could muster. “You’re Draco Malfoy.” And, because Harry’s fingers were cold, “You’re a Death Eater.”

Malfoy flinched. It didn’t feel as good as Harry had expected.

“Well, you tried to kill me in a loo,” he spat, because Merlin, he always bounced back up fighting. His mouth was shiny with Harry’s slick, puffy from suckling at Harry’s fingers.

“I wasn’t trying to kill you! And you—“

“Oh, you accidentally almost killed me? That’s very reassuring.”

“You tried to kill Dumbledore!” He felt like a blinded, maddened bull, swinging his head this way and that as Malfoy pricked at him. If Malfoy would just—if he would just take off his sodding shirt— “You almost killed Ron and Katie!”

Malfoy looked as frustrated as Harry felt, tendons protruding from his clenched fists, but his drawl was as snide as ever. “Why, so I did! I had nearly forgotten. Thanks ever so for reminding me! What a tragedy it would have been to lose a Weasley. After all, there are so few of them.”

“Don’t you joke about Fred!” Harry roared. “Accio Wand!”

Malfoy’s eyes flared white with fear as their pile of clothing spat Harry’s wand into his hand. “Who the hell is Fred?” he shrieked, but he was no slower—shooting his wand from its holster, stepping sideways to present a smaller target—the textbook pure-blood duellist.

And then they were staring at each other over their wands, just like second year and fourth year and sixth year and every fucking year since they had met, really, and Harry couldn’t remember a single hex.

Malfoy blinked his horribly fascinating eyes. “Oh, the—! I actually had forgotten. The Weasley twin. When we…were in the corridor.”

“You weren’t there.” A sick feeling burned in his chest. “You ran.” Something was slipping away, something—

“I was there.”

—A small pale hand, lowering, rejected, to his side. The tender give of Malfoy’s stomach against his fist. A sneering voice, saying Mudblood and Saint Potter and I can’t be sure. Blood on the tiles. Grey eyes darting to Harry’s—away—and back again—over and over, hundreds, thousands of times—in the corridors, across the Great Hall—every look like a touch, a death, a fire.

Harry lowered his wand. Those eyes were the same, no matter how the face around them changed with the years. They had been the same at eleven as they were now, watching him warily, and they would be the same at eighty-five. They tugged at Harry like a Summoning Charm and he let himself, as always, be pulled. “You’re an arsehole.” That also never changed. Malfoy had probably been the arsiest baby in history; it almost explained Lucius.

Malfoy’s wand dropped and he scrubbed a hand over his face. “I don’t mean to be. I just sort of am, you know.” Unnaturally candid, as if the fox had lain down and offered its belly to the dogs.

He was so bloody manipulative, standing there all barefoot and frustrated and arresting. The candlelight shone in his eyelashes, so fair they were almost invisible, and Harry’s fingers pulsed with the dents of his teeth. Malfoy, with his gossamer hair and his calculated vulnerability. He was winding in the line, dragging Harry inexorably to shore.

“Potter?” Colour mottled his gaunt cheeks, as if Harry was the one who had admitted something embarrassing. “Are you scenting me on your hands?”

“No,” he said, the word muffled in his fists.

Malfoy’s eyebrows achieved impossible angles. “Potter. I can hear you sniffing.”

Harry whuffed at his hands just to check. They did, in fact, smell of Malfoy. Bitter. Captivating. Malfoy still hadn’t taken off his shirt, because he was the most stubborn bastard in the Northern Hemisphere. Instead, he was biting his own fingers, practically chewing on them. Harry turned around, smugly watching Malfoy eye his arse. “Oh, you fancy yourself clever. You think I want you that much?”

“Think? I—Look at you!” He gestured theatrically. He, himself, was certainly looking. “You’re practically presenting!”

“That’s a myth.”

“It’s bloody not! Salazar, this can’t be normal. I’ve never heard of such a fucked-up omega.”

“How would you know?” Harry sneered, stroking a damp arsecheek. “Shag a lot of omegas, do you?”

Malfoy made a sound like a exploding Erumpet. “Look, I don’t have to shag an omega to recognise—“

He was banging on about pheromones or something, but the words shag an omega were still trumpeting in Harry’s head. He levelled his wand. “How many omegas have you shagged, then?”

“How many do you think?” he said irritably, derailed from his monologue. “We’re eighteen, you numpty!” And hopped over the Stinging Hex Harry flung at his feet. “What the hell? Oppugno!”

The only cover was the bed, which they both dove for at once. Harry, coughing beneath a barrage of pillows, banged his shin on the side rail. “Finite! Reducto!” Malfoy sprang onto the bed in a cloud of feathers, stumbled into Harry’s Trip Jinx, and then the air was striped with spells.

Malfoy rolled off the bed as Harry slipped in the piled feathers. The Room was too small for a proper duel, but it forced Malfoy to stay close enough that Harry could see him. And he looked gorgeous: red-cheeked and furious, panting invective between incantations. “What the fuck—Levicorpus!—is wrong with you? Protego! You’re—Densaugeo! Flipendo!—completely naked, for Merlin’s sake!”

Harry’s back thudded against a dresser. He was laughing. “Tarantallegra!” His swollen cock bobbed in front of him. Several candles had toppled over, the smell of hot wax mingling with the scent of Malfoy’s arousal.

Malfoy had always been an excellent duellist, and he had got even better since sixth year. He shifted between shields and jinxes and counter-spells with every liquid flex of his wrist, his posture perfect. But the elementary spells rolling from his wand made a mockery of his narrow-eyed concentration. Neither of them had cast anything more dangerous than Locomotor Wibbly, as if they were third years again, except that Harry was unbelievably turned on and Malfoy was definitely, definitely—oh gods—a man.

Harry could hardly breathe through his laughter. “Take off—your shirt.”

The shimmer of Malfoy’s Shield Charm softened his frown. “What?”

The room lay in ruins around them. A few feathers floated lazily through the air. The blankets were on the floor, smoldering faintly, the lovely curtains half torn down. One of the bedposts was vibrating with the remnants of a Tickling Charm.

Malfoy looked ridiculous, his shirt still crumpled from Harry’s hand and his feathery hair sticking up in back. Disheveled and annoyed and Harry was still laughing at him, gasping for breath. The air smelt of smoke. “Wait a mo.” He tossed an Aguamenti at the burning blankets.

Malfoy blinked against the puff of steam and said, “What?” again, like a complete pillock.

“Don’t know how you feel about fire, do I?”

That pointy face did something strange. He said, voice serious and un-Malfoyish, “I really, really hate you.”

Harry stopped laughing. “Take off your shirt.”

The heat was warm in his veins. Nothing mattered but this pale, nervy man. Malfoy swallowed. And then, with a slice of his wand, hurled a Stinging Hex at Harry’s chest.

Harry barely yanked a Protego up in time. “Furnunculus! Rictusempra! Take off your—Reparifors!—take off your fucking shirt!”

“Fine!” Malfoy screeched, like a man on the brink, scrabbling one-handed at his buttons. “Fine! I’ll just give you whatever you want, shall I? Call it my penance! Oh—“ He gave up on the buttons and started ripping at the fabric. “Let’s shut the Chosen One up with a war criminal so he can really savour his first heat! You must be pleased! Seeing me—your scent, and your slick, and the way you keep teasing me with your damned neck—“ He tore off his forearm holster and his natty tie and then yanked until a seam gave and his shirt dangled by the sleeve of his wand arm and he was—he was scarred.

A lump on his ribcage spidered out in ropy pink lines, crawling everywhere across his chest. Over the sharp lattice of his ribs; warping the sparse hair on his stomach. A scar vanished into the hollow of his throat, another into an armpit, and several…into his trousers. “Oh,” Harry breathed, voice thin. “Oh, oh, shit.”

Were there scars splitting his pubic hair? On his soft thighs? Where had Harry cut him?

Malfoy was in full spate, brandishing his wand. “—To grovel at your feet! Poor Draco Malfoy, spending his ruts alone because of the nasty thing on his arm and all his dreadful crimes!”

It was still there, a stain on his pasty forearm. The skull, with the snake protruding like a choked-out tongue. Faded into a scar—he had so many scars, Merlin—but as recognisable as it had been the night it hung above the Astronomy Tower. The night Malfoy had yanked up his sleeve and shown it to Dumbledore and said, You don’t know what I’ve done. Because it was Draco Malfoy, the same horrid boy he had known since childhood, standing there half-naked with a massive hard-on and Harry’s dark curse spattered all over his body, and Harry wanted him so much he thought he might die of it.

A scar twisted across one pink areola, tugging it out of place, like a finger dragged through a pool of honey. “I’d be gagging to service the Arse That Lived, no matter how—” How would that puckered skin feel against his tongue? What would it taste like, the sweet hard bud of Malfoy’s nipple? “But you’re wrong! I’d shove my dick in a Blast-Ended Skrewt before I beg you for sex!”

Harry’s mouth was so full of saliva it was hard to talk. “What are you on about?” he slurred, trying to memorise that knotted web of scars. Raised enough, maybe, to get his teeth around.

“However do you manage to converse at all? It must be a spectacular effort! Now, at which point did your embattled intellect succumb to the inevitable and—what?”

“It scarred.”

“Merlin’s teeth.” Suddenly, Malfoy was wearing the expression he probably would have worn if he had ever managed to get Harry expelled. A huge, creepy grin, as if someone had hit him with a Cheering Charm. “…You like them.”

“What, do you want me to tell you they’re ugly?” Because they were, coarse and strawberry pink, ripped across the white skin of his chest. A violation. A brand. Harry’s brand.

Shit.

“You’re sick,” Malfoy breathed happily.

“Fuck you!”

He burst out laughing, the first time Harry had heard that ringing laugh in years. “Harry Potter is a dirty pervert!” he singsonged, as if they were thirteen and he was announcing it across the Great Hall.

His stomach was as soft around Harry’s fist as he remembered, Malfoy’s breath forced out, humid, into his hair. Fingernails raked across his cheek, snagging the inside of a nostril in an eye-watering sting. Malfoy was clawing at him, because with friends like Crabbe and Goyle, why would he have learnt to fight? “Flipendo!” he wheezed, evidently remembering his wand, but Harry had got one hand around a slender wrist and was squeezing, squeezing, until the fine bones ground together and Malfoy opened his hand with a cry of pain.

“You’re fucked up!” Malfoy panted, swinging awkwardly with his left hand. “Absolutely raving!” Harry’s body moved of its own accord. Dropping Malfoy’s wrist to encircle his graceful throat. Malfoy stomping viciously at his bare feet. “You’re so—“ A crack of pain against his ribs—a pointy elbow— “Bloody—“ Staggering, bodies locked together, a mouthful of blonde hair— “Difficult!” Like—

“Like you’re so easy!” Harry gasped, scrambling onto the bed.

“I would have let you just scent my wrist in the Charms classroom like a civilised person!” Bony fingers caught his ankle and yanked and Harry bounced onto the mattress, kicking wildly, heel thudding into Malfoy’s ribs. Malfoy, who was climbing on top of him, snarled, “That sodding hurt!”

“Cry about it!” He twisted away, only to be forced onto his stomach by the weight of Malfoy’s knee on his back. He choked on a moan, burying his face wet-mouthed into the mattress. His nose was bleeding a little.

Malfoy’s fingers dug into his neck. “Kick me again and I’ll tell Weasley you begged.” He shifted to kneel on Harry’s sticky thighs.

Harry’s arsehole clenched and opened humiliatingly, disgorging another liquid pulse. “Do you ever shut up?”

“I don’t know,” he hissed. “Are you finished? Do you need to insult my parents or something, or can I shag you now?”

The sheet popped off the mattress, screwed up in Harry’s fists. Malfoy applied his nails, jabbing them painfully into his neck. Raking down his back.

“Well, Potter?” One nail grazed tauntingly down the length of his spine, stopping just shy of—a tender little scrape to his tailbone—

“Shag me,” he muttered into the bedding. His thighs shook at the concession, wanting to part.

“Pardon?” Malfoy said vindictively. Not even trying to pretend he wasn’t gloating, and the burn in Harry’s stomach flared impossibly hotter.

“Shag me, you little shit!”

“My, your manners have gone begging. Maybe—“

“Malfoy, I swear to Merlin—“

“On your knees,” he snapped, that prissy voice gritted low, and Harry sobbed out a noise. Just a little one. Malfoy shifted away and Harry struggled into place, limbs heavy, rolling his forehead against the bed as Malfoy shoved his knees open. "Yesss," he hissed, tugging his arse cheeks apart, and Harry—presented, lifting his arse until his whole body was a slick begging arch.

"Told you," Malfoy panted, but his hands shook, kneading at Harry's buttocks. One thumb slipped into his furred crack. "Oh, Potter. Potter." Petting feverishly at that drenched ring of hair, and maybe he never did stop talking, the pad of his thumb skimming Harry's flexing arsehole, over and over in teasing ripples of pleasure. "Potter," he breathed again, as if he were as brainless with desire as Harry, and then his thumb was gone and his tongue was in its place.

His tongue, and his thickening scent, and his purr of contentment, as if Harry's body were feast and refuge both—Harry surrendered to the syrupy rush of instinct. He clung to the crumpled sheet, whining and writhing against that demanding tongue. His alpha was lapping at his opening, slurping the fluid from his matted hair, succumbing to the lure of Harry’s desire.

The animal part of him was viciously satisfied, glutting itself on Malfoy's attention. Malfoy was his: his mate, his match, his prize. The only alpha he would accept. You're mine, said the hungry rock of his hips, as Malfoy covered his face in Harry's slick. He finally knew exactly what he wanted, and it was Draco Malfoy's teeth in his neck. Even if he had to duel him into submission.

A damp hand slid around his hip, seeking, and closed possessively on his dick. Harry bucked into the curl of Malfoy's palm: nothing but a body, heat, sensation. Long fingers teased the hard wet length of him, their wand calluses a dragging friction. Thumb dipping against his rim and tugging, exposing Harry's shadowy insides. The steady, grinding purr against his cheeks—a pointed tongue coaxing its way past the ring of muscle—and in, Malfoy’s tongue pushing firm and hot up Harry’s arse.

Malfoy nudged his thumb against Harry’s frenulum and he came everywhere, spectacularly, in less than three minutes.

“Well,” said Malfoy, insufferable, as Harry gasped in a pool of his own spunk. His body was heavy, ringing with the echoes of pleasure. His scarred hand, limp on the sheet, swam before his eyes. “Well,” Malfoy repeated, but the gibe didn’t come. Harry dragged his head up.

Malfoy knelt behind him, ripped shirt gone, staring wild-eyed at Harry’s arse. The open fly of his trousers revealed lavender silk pants, stained at the waistband and very full of cock. He was smearing a palmful of come over his chest, shining milky strands against the puckered scars.

Harry grunted, biceps shaking as he pulled his knees back under him.

Malfoy seemed to understand. “I’ve never,” he said quietly, petting Harry’s arse with a sticky hand.

Something curled up in his chest, warm and pleased, and he shuffled his knees wider. It felt natural: the sharp cant of his back, the welcoming display of his most private places. It felt good. It felt so good that he was, come to think of it, probably gay. Malfoy had barely touched him—tongue in his arse, hand on his cock—and it was already so much better than his fumblings with Ginny, sweating and terrified in the darkness behind her bed curtains. “Well, I’ve never with a bloke.”

Malfoy’s hand retreated, the mattress dipping as he shifted. “You want me to, don’t you?” As if he didn’t quite believe it himself. “You want me.”

“Git.” Harry lolled his head to the side, baring his neck encouragingly. A forearm appeared, white-blonde hair dusted over stringy muscle, and Malfoy folded over him like a wave, naked, an overwhelming rush of hot skin. He could feel the ridges of his scars, pressed against Harry’s sweaty back. The hair of his legs scraped against Harry’s thighs and his cock fitted solidly between Harry’s arse cheeks, a perfect, satiny weight. Around them, the bitter scent of torched pine mingled with Harry’s rich leaf loam.

Harry curled a hand around that blue-veined wrist and clung, as Malfoy kissed his shoulder blades with surprising tenderness. The shift of Malfoy’s cock against his tingling crack felt so good, better than anything, pleasure shooting through his stomach and down his thighs. Too good, a needy whine breaking against his teeth. “I do hate you,” he choked, but it was there anyway, trembling in the words. Please. Yes. I want you, this, everything.

“Say you want me to.” Mouth to his back. As if what Harry had said didn’t even matter.

“No,” he spat.

Warm breath. Lips, dotting heat up his spine; wiry wrist flexing in Harry’s grip. Malfoy’s nose brushed into the hair at his nape. “Yes.” His breath hot, hot. “Say it.”

“No!” Malfoy kissed the painful arch of his neck and Harry tried, he tried so hard to stay quiet, his whole body pulsing with every touch. “No. No,” he moaned and Malfoy, like he had been waiting for it, hissed, “Call me Draco.”

And licked the oily skin of his gland.

Pleasure arced through him, staggeringly intense. He jolted forward, his dripping cock bumping the bed. He was hard again, or still, or—he rubbed himself against the sheet, mind whiting out. Shoving his arse back against that heavy cock, grabbing one-handed for Malfoy’s hip. Rocking forward, squirming towards the bed and the rough friction on his aching prick.

Malfoy was licking and sucking, working his mouth over Harry’s neck like a starving Crup. Jerking his hips, dragging his cock over and over across Harry’s slippery hole. Harry dug his nails into Malfoy’s wrist, raising vibrant beads of blood, and he was going to come, he was going to come again from nothing but the brush of cloth and the tormenting pull of his alpha’s mouth.

And he did, gagging out, “No, no, no,” in a delirious moan, spurting ropes of come onto the sodden bed. Dimly, he felt Malfoy’s quick inhale, and fingers closed over his cock, wrenching out the last bursts of pleasure.

Harry collapsed onto his stomach. As if from far away, he felt Malfoy shove his thighs together and drape his long body back over him, naked and hard and merciless. He was saying things in that cut-glass accent, breath huffing in Harry’s ear, but none of it made sense. Another sucking kiss on his gland. A bony finger pushed up Harry’s arse, too quick.

Harry garbled a protest, but Malfoy only squeezed his legs around Harry’s. His finger twisted, intrusive. It was overwhelming: Malfoy scraping pleasure out of his tender insides, Harry crushed into his own mess beneath another man’s weight. He felt stripped down to his elements, sun-warmed and malleable, like clay taking shape beneath the potter’s hands.

Malfoy found his prostate, and tears sprang horrifyingly to his eyes.

Time passed. Malfoy caged him beneath his body and made him take it, oversensitivity melting into aching, bone-deep pleasure. The world narrowed down to nothing but Malfoy, Malfoy, Malfoy. Malfoy, talking quietly in his ear, burrowing two fingers and then three into Harry’s hole. Gradually, he became aware that he was talking, too. “No,” he was saying, the vowel lazy and gaping and meaningless, lip dragging against a wet patch on the sheet. Drool, probably.

“Yes, you will,” cooed Malfoy, flicking his tongue against the curl of Harry’s ear. “You’re in heat. You’ll come as many times as I say. You’ll come until you’re dry and crying with it. And you’ll thank me.”

“No.” He was pitifully hard. It wasn’t fair, that Draco Malfoy was a dirty-talking sex god just naturally. Maybe it was an alpha thing.

He was fairly sure it wasn’t an alpha thing.

He blinked the water from his eyes, trying to think of something rude to say. Malfoy, rolling the words in his mouth like a toffee, sang, “Poor Potter!” and latched back on to his throat.

Harry lost himself once more, mewling at every plunge of Malfoy’s clever fingers. He came, at some point, and got hard again. His gland had swollen beneath that suckling mouth; it was standing out hard from the tendons of his neck, slick with sweat and oil and Malfoy’s saliva. Malfoy had shut up at last, mouth busy, and Harry could hear what was being done to him: the wet slurps, the squelch of fingers in his arse, and—himself, his loud, needy whines, his own broken voice the most erotic sound imaginable.

“Malfoy,” he whimpered, just to hear it, and shuddered.

“Draco.” Whispered against his seeping gland, Malfoy’s hair just brushing his jaw.

Draco.

He couldn’t, the name a terrifying cipher. He knew who Malfoy was, but who was Draco? Who would Draco be to him, and who would he be to Draco? A yawn of morning sunlight, a private understanding. The ribbon of a shared future was unspooling just ahead, and his neck curved imploringly.

Malfoy kissed his gland and then, as if he were a wandless Legilimens, grazed it with his teeth. “Wait,” Harry panted, and they both spoke at once.

“Wait until—“

“Don’t worry, I’m not—“

Malfoy stopped, blew out a breath against his neck.

“Wait until you’re in me.” Harry’s voice was ragged, too quiet. “The bond’ll last longer.”

“What?” He tugged his fingers out; too fast again, the tosser. “Are you daft? I’m not going to mate with you, for Merlin’s sake! We aren’t even dating! Besides, Weasley would have my head. How many brothers does he have now? Isn’t one a werewolf?”

“Ron?” said Harry, instead of What do you mean you’re not going to mate with me? He felt horrible, suddenly, his exposed arsehole no longer sexy but—

“Yes,” said Malfoy, softer now, nuzzling his way back into Harry’s neck. “Didn’t you hear him, Potter? He’ll murder me.”

“He won’t.”

“He will. I mean, he would. If I—“ His words were going breathy, offered between slick circles of his tongue. “Bit you, which—“ A kiss to the ripe swell of his gland. “Of course, I’m—“ Another scrape of teeth. Harry moaned. “Not going to,” Malfoy groaned, and the head of his cock popped past the ring of Harry’s arsehole.

Harry keened at the stretch and then snapped his mouth shut, straining to hear—what had been that sobbing noise Malfoy had made—make it again, you fucker. Malfoy was trembling against his back and bullying his way in, hard. It burned a little, despite Harry’s slick and the relaxation of the heat, and Malfoy felt—big. Big and hot and solid, shoving in in in while Harry’s arsehole spasmed in confusion. He needed to push, to shit, to—what was he doing, lying here limp while Draco Malfoy shoved things up his arse?

His heart kicked, muscles tensing against Malfoy’s weight, convulsing around the hard cock stabbed in his abdomen. Malfoy made an unholy sound and crammed his hips against Harry’s. “Potter,” he wailed, and crushed his face into Harry’s messy hair. His body throbbed around Malfoy’s. Malfoy was lodged deep inside, pulling him loose in a sweet unspooling.

The horrible feeling passed. Harry would have to fight for it, was all, like with every sodding thing involving Malfoy.

Malfoy was maybe crying into his hair, hitching out Potter and fuck in a snotty whine. Maybe this really was his first time.

Content, Harry clenched around his dick. And in response, like Christmas come early, Malfoy yowled and thrashed and came, pouring himself helplessly into Harry, like Christmas and catching the Snitch both. Harry wrenched his neck around, trying to see. A staticky tangle of pale hair in his face, and then a shocking pain as Malfoy’s teeth fixed into his shoulder. He was still coming in torrents, filling Harry’s insides.

The onslaught of sensation coalesced into molten pressure. Harry’s body was stretching still, yielding to pleasure, fawn-like in the wolf’s jaws. Malfoy writhed on top of him, growling and moaning, drooling into his skin, every stuttered movement dragging against his prostate. He was knotting, oh Merlin. It was still swelling: impossibly, punishingly big, splitting Harry open from the inside. Stop, I can’t, he tried to say, but the words dribbled out as a series of grunts and anyway, he was. He was already taking it, pinned by Malfoy’s cock and teeth, the firm bulb of Malfoy’s knot forced inescapably against his prostate.

And it was incredible. Harry tightened his grip on Malfoy’s blood-smeared wrist and cried out: at the fullness, at the heat and scent of his mate, at the possessive grip of Malfoy’s jaw. Malfoy was still shuddering his way through an extended knotting orgasm, which was apparently also not a myth. Harry’s cock, crushed thick and wet between his stomach and the mattress, ached from the brutal pressure on his prostate. He was close, so close, sore and full and overstimulated. If he could just shift himself against the mattress, or—he tried to squirm a hand beneath his hips, but it was no use; Malfoy was too heavy.

“Gerroff,” he wheezed, out of his mind. “Malfoy! It’s too—I need—“

“What?” he moaned, finally unclamping from Harry’s shoulder. He was going to have a bruise the size of Scotland in the morning.

“Get off, you prick! I can’t—“ Malfoy sucked at the reddened skin and whined, absorbed in his own pleasure. Harry was going to have to ask for it. And worse, part of him liked that he had to ask for it. “Malfoy!” He released Malfoy’s wrist to tug at his tousled fluff of hair. “I need to—to come, all right? Bastard. But I can’t. Like this.”

Malfoy laughed breathlessly, still grinding his hips into Harry’s arse. “You selfish—little slag! You’ve come—three times—”

Malfoy insulting him in the throes of orgasm made his balls tighten worryingly. He probably was a pervert.

But before he could argue, Malfoy coiled an arm around him and heaved them onto their sides. For one blinding moment, the knot strained against his abused rim—stretching him unbearably—and then settled, deep in his abdomen, huge and heavy and he couldn’t take any more—he couldn’t—

He scrabbled for his prick but Malfoy’s hand was already squeezing around it, jerking viciously. So tight it hurt, and how could Malfoy not know how to wank a dick? Did he wank—was he this rough with himself? Did it make him come, yanking at himself like this—torturing his own slick and needy cock—?

Harry screamed and came his brains out, convulsing on Malfoy’s knot. Perfect. Everything was perfect: the knot an anchor at the center of him, holding him steady through the thundering waves of ecstasy. He was safe, secure in his alpha’s arms and spitted on his cock—but his enlarged gland lay unbroken against his neck, and the blood pulsing in his ears began to slow.

Malfoy loosely cupped the base of his exhausted dick as they drifted. Harry wasn’t the Saviour of the Wizarding World or Undesirable Number One or anything special, really. He was just a young, unmated omega in heat. Just a sodden hole for Malfoy’s cock. Just—

Malfoy. Oh, shit. Draco Malfoy’s gigantic knot was wedged up his arse, and it made him want to piss, or get hard again, or maybe cry. Malfoy was pressed against his back, fine tremors still running through him. Harry’s throat felt gummy, raw from all the noises he’d made while Draco Malfoy fucked him.

He’d loved being fucked. And he was definitely gay. He looked languidly down his spent and filthy body. Malfoy’s hand looked so pretty half-curled around him, accepting the soft crumpled surrender of Harry’s dick. Slender white legs twined with his tawny ones. Pretty. Beautiful, he wanted to say. You’re so beautiful. Instead, he scraped out, “You didn’t bite.”

“I bit your shoulder.”

“You know what I mean.”

He shouldn’t have said anything, and Malfoy didn’t reply. His thighs were cold and smeared with slick. The sheet, slimy and reeking of sex, had rucked up beneath their bodies. Candles still glimmered around them, although the room was dimmer that it had been before the havoc of their duel. Malfoy was so fucking fit. Harry squirmed experimentally on his knot, and Malfoy let go of Harry’s cock to pinch his stomach.

He yelped and jolted and shit yes it was still good, the roll of the knot inside him. “Hold still,” Malfoy hissed.

“Don’t sodding pinch me, then!” Malfoy snorted. He was so obnoxious. He was so fucking fit and also obnoxious. “You do my head in.”

“You’ve been doing my head in since we were eleven. Do you suppose there’s a bathroom behind that door?”

Harry hadn’t noticed the small door, tucked next to a dresser with its drawers akimbo. “Might be. You need a piss?”

“You’re such an oik,” said Malfoy, creeping a hand over his hip. Oh. Harry was definitely a pervert, too.

“And you’re a proper bastard. How long’s this last, anyway?”

“Never knotted anyone, have I?” He was playing gently with the come-slick hairs on Harry’s stomach.

Harry smelled salt and metal and the heavy fug of pine. Sex and blood and Malfoy. Something opened unexpectedly in his chest, like a spring thaw, like earth cracking apart beneath the blade of a plow. He reached a hand back and found Malfoy’s hair.

It was awkward, lying together like this as the minutes passed. Malfoy’s fingers skittered over his stomach, scraping off drying flakes of spunk. Harry watched the flickering candles and tried not to think of anything at all. Until he did. “Bollocks, the charms!”

“I cast them before I fingered you. Protego Morbus and Sterilis, if that suits.”

“Sure,” he said, startled and—the weird feeling in his chest was growing stronger. He tightened the hand still looped through Malfoy’s hair.

“You ought to pay better attention, Potter. The charms aren’t only the alpha’s responsibility, you know. Some wizards won’t cast Sterilis because they’re afraid it’ll be permanent! Which is nonsense, of course, if you know the first thing about Charms, but I expect you’ll be shagging the hopelessly stupid ones.”

“Why would I shag—?“ –anyone but you?

“Do you know Infertilis? The wand movement is almost the same.”

“Yes,” he lied sulkily.

“I suppose you used it with the She-Weasel.” He flicked off another bit of come.

It had been a nice ten minutes of not arguing. More, Harry supposed, if you counted the sex. He took his hand out of Malfoy’s hair; it was going to sleep anyway. “Don’t call her that.”

“I think it’s going down,” said Malfoy, and tugged his hips back. It wasn’t going down. Harry barely choked back a cry. “Bit pathetic,” he continued sullenly, resettling. “Pining for her with my knot up your arse.”

“I’m gay, you bellend!” As if he hadn’t just realised it himself.

Malfoy, astonishingly, made no reply. Harry couldn’t even see his stupid face.

It was quiet for awhile, no sounds except their breathing. He was half-hard again, but he was fairly sure Malfoy hadn’t noticed. The knot just filled him so perfectly, a shivery seep of pleasure, readying him for more. What was it like for Malfoy, squeezed in the vice of Harry’s body? He rubbed the soiled sheet between his fingers, trying to distract himself from the soft thrum of arousal. “Malfoy.”

“Hm?”

“What does it feel like, for you?”

He pulled his face out of Harry’s hair. “What, being gay?”

“No, er…” He tucked the information carefully away. “Your…this, right now.”

“Eloquent,” he murmured, for once without rancour. He drummed his fingers on Harry’s stomach. “It feels…soft,” he said at last. “Hot. Tight. You’re really soft inside.”

Harry didn’t blush easily, but at that he burned a sudden, painful red. You’re really soft inside. It felt so—he couldn’t—he didn’t understand anything that was happening. You’re really soft inside. Draco Malfoy knew what the inside of his body felt like. He couldn’t remember his own name.

“Was it all right, then?” Malfoy muttered, resentfully, as if they were having two entirely separate conversations. As if he wasn’t carving away everything Harry had thought he understood.

“It was brilliant,” fell out of Harry’s mouth, hushed and naked, not gift-wrapped in venom like their usual exchanges. He was soft inside. He couldn’t think.

“Oh,” said Malfoy, a little strangely. “That’s—good.”

Harry twisted away until he could push his eyes into Malfoy’s bicep, ashamed and confused. How long was he going to stay skewered on Malfoy’s cock, saying shit and being told he was—soft? “This is taking ages,” he said hysterically.

Malfoy shifted up on an elbow, the movement inside Harry sweet and unbearable. His scent had gone sour with nervous sweat. “Kiss me,” he said, like a dare. Like they had traded conversations back between them.

Harry squeezed his eyes shut until lights flared on the backs of his eyelids, the way he had in the cupboard when the darkness was too deep. Kiss me. He didn’t want to. His heart throbbed, fallen at last into the snare, and he lifted his face up blindly.

Thin, dry lips met his, and Malfoy’s breath shuddered out against his mouth. It smelt faintly of cinnamon. Oh gods, Merlin, Malfoy was so close—he had never been so close. He was kissing Harry, touching their mouths together like the tap of rain on parched earth. Then, when Harry parted his lips: lingeringly, tugging at his lower lip with a lush hint of moisture.

Malfoy was good at this, guiding the kiss in a way Ginny never had. And Harry opened, opened, opened to it, frightened and ecstatic. Hot breaths mingling with his. Cool fingertips resting on his chin. And a clever tongue, sliding at last against his own, which felt suddenly fat and clumsy.

The kiss was slow and deep and long. Harry cupped a hand to Malfoy’s cheek, stroking his flexing jaw. Malfoy was making low sounds into his mouth and Harry was whimpering back, straining for more, when hot liquid spilled down his thigh.

Malfoy’s come, kept warm in Harry’s body all this time.

He started back. Just for a moment. Just long enough to glimpse Malfoy’s closed eyes: his almost pellucid lids, the half-seen sparkle of pale lashes. To glimpse this unknown face, every angle of it lax and supplicant with pleasure. His lips were puffed and gleaming and very, very suckable. The knot had subsided, which was good, because Harry needed to press Malfoy down and kiss his open mouth—kiss it and kiss it—glut himself on the hot, secret swell of it.

Just for a moment, and then Malfoy’s eyes snapped open, his face sliding into its familiar lines like a dagger from a sheath. “Thank Merlin,” he said, and jerked free. His come rushed down the crease of Harry’s thigh as something pinched behind his ribs. He sat up. Malfoy was rolling off the bed. He was walking naked across the room and then he was already on the other side of the closed bathroom door.

Harry put his hands over his face and breathed into them. They smelt faintly of Malfoy’s blood, of his hair: sweet and copper-sharp. His body stung with a constellation of small hurts, and wasn’t that just like Malfoy? To leave him with no real injuries, only insidious scratches and bruises that throbbed unignorably at the edge of his awareness.

Malfoy was probably right. A mating bond would last years even if Malfoy never bit him again, as good as a marriage in the eyes of wizarding law. Harry was in heat, that was all; they would never manage to get along.

It didn’t help.

“Drink this.” Malfoy was holding out a glass of water, and somehow, they had shagged without Harry seeing him naked.

He was tall and painfully thin, all ribs and tendons and legs. So whey-pale Harry could see the blue blur of veins, the purple smudge of bruises flowering across his body. Ridged scars snaked everywhere across his chest, and Harry found his favourite again, cutting into an areola. Malfoy had gorgeous nipples: pink and round and protruding, begging to be sucked. The scars continued down, over the flutter of his stomach, and—no, this one was his favourite. It split the milky skin of Malfoy’s thigh, just beyond the crease of his groin: bright and violent and so close to—his breath stuttered out. Malfoy’s dick was long and pink, dangling from a trimmed thatch of white-gold hair. It looked mouthwatering.

“Like it?” Malfoy’s blush did go all the way down his scarred chest.

“Get over here,” he said, voice shockingly deep.

Malfoy shoved the glass into his reaching hand. “Drink first, you slag. You’re undoubtedly dehydrated.”

Malfoy was back and glaring at him and his thoughts fuzzed with contentment. He drank. He was thirstier than he had expected. Malfoy disappeared into the bathroom and returned with a fresh glass.

Harry wasn’t nosy. He just noticed things about people, like how they moved and what they wore and if they weren’t where they were supposed to be. Or if they were walking back and forth for water when their wand was right there on the bedside table.

Noticing things had been useful when people were trying to kill him, but it wasn’t an especially endearing habit these days. It was none of Harry’s business, Ginny had reminded him, whether or not George was dating Angelina. It was none of his business, Luna had reminded him, if a bunch of Ravenclaws spent every night in the Great Hall, repairing the charms in the ceiling when they were meant to be asleep. And it was none of his business if—but he always had been abysmal at ignoring Malfoy.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, enjoying Malfoy’s wince. “Why not just cast a Water-Making Charm?”

“Because conjured water is less hydrating. What, couldn’t you read Granger’s handwriting in sixth-year Charms?”

Harry had mostly spent sixth-year Charms wondering what Malfoy was up to in Transfiguration, but he wasn’t about to admit that. He also wasn’t about to admit that he was, in fact, parroting Hermione. “I’m well familiar with Gamp's Law, thanks, and water isn’t one of the Principal Exceptions.”

Malfoy’s expression of shock was masterfully, wordlessly insulting, but somehow less effective when they were stark bollock naked. He tried again. “Look, just tell me if your wand’s not working properly. Maybe you could disarm me, or something.”

“My wand is fine! Obviously!”

Harry wasn’t nosy. He was just a very focussed person. “So why won’t you—?”

“Because it tastes bad!” Malfoy shrieked, and then clamped his mouth shut, looking delightfully hacked off.

Harry’s cock plumped a little. “Your Aguamenti?”

“Yes, my—Father’s tastes of magnesium, you see, it’s particularly—stop laughing, you tosser!”

Harry caught the hand flying at his face. “I’m not!” He was, but mostly at the idea of Lucius Malfoy, current resident of Azkaban Prison, and his specially delicious Aguamenti. Anyway, Malfoy wasn’t trying very hard to hit him again. “Conjure some, then, I want to try it.”

“It isn’t my fault it’s bad. Anyway, I’ve warned you. Aguamenti,” he cast into Harry’s glass.

It looked perfectly innocuous, and it tasted…. “Draco, you tit! This just tastes like water!”

“I know!” he wailed, throwing up his arms. “It’s absolutely grim! Father’s is—well, and Mother’s is sort of floral, but mine tastes like I summoned it from the bloody Black Lake!”

He must not have noticed Harry’s slip. Harry, meanwhile, felt like he was about to vomit up his heart. “It’s fine! It’s good. I mean, I like it.” He took another sip. Malfoy was smoothing his hair down like a ruffled cat, pretending to ignore him. “I wouldn’t always want water that tasted like flowers or—whatever bollocks—“

“Magnesium,” he said primly. “It tastes rather like Nixewasser, although I don’t suppose that means anything to you.”

“Not a thing,” Harry said, grinning, and Malfoy squinted at him. Draco. Maybe this was who Draco was: stubborn and dramatic, clever and sensitive. Insecure about his Water-Making Charm. Insecure about loads of things, probably.

Scared, probably.

“It’s a German mineral water, collected from—“

“Malfoy. I like it.”

Malfoy went still, watching him from behind his fringe. Maybe he was as scared as Harry.

“I like it,” he repeated. He set the half-drunk glass carefully on the bedside table.

“You don’t.” His face was like a bruise, mouth pinched in at the corners. “It’s—bad, Potter.”

They were naked, the musk of sex still heavy in the air, and he thought they probably weren’t talking about the water anymore. “It isn’t bad. It’s perfect. It’s exactly what I wanted.”

Even Malfoy’s eyes held still, cool and inscrutable on Harry’s, but splashes of red burst in his cheeks. A blush flowed silently across his skin as they stared at one another: across his forehead, his ears, pouring down his neck and his marked chest. Predator and prey, both waiting to see who would bolt first.

Slowly, slowly, Harry parted his damp thighs. “Come back to bed.” Malfoy sucked in a noisy breath. His pasty stomach looked so vulnerable, fluttering and scarred, sheened with sweat. Merlin, his nakedness had been there all this time, hidden beneath his robes. The sweet divot of his navel. The smattering of downy blonde hair on his belly. Every time they had screamed at each other. Every time they had fought, with wands or fists, Malfoy had looked like this, on the inside. “I want my mouth on you.”

He laughed breathlessly, darting a coy look through his lashes. “You just want to lick my scars, you pervert.”

“Yes,” he growled, grabbing at narrow hips, but Malfoy danced back. His beautiful cock was filling, dangling teasingly between his legs. “Come here.”

“Mm. No.”

A trick step. Harry’s heart plunged, but before he could summon his wand and make him Malfoy added, “I’m not about to lie in that. Move your arse so I can cast some charms.”

The mattress was a swamp of slick and come, speckled here and there with blood, and the wadded-up sheet was even worse. Harry wobbled his way to the bathroom. He felt raw inside, raked open, and he had to wait until his erection went down to piss.

When he emerged, Malfoy was still casting a string of charms, only half of which he recognised. The bed looked like a bed again, with fresh sheets for Harry to leak all over and a grey duvet, lumpy enough that Malfoy must have conjured it. He was turned away, and Harry drank in the sight of his pale, flat arse and the smooth, sinewy lines of his back, only a little blurred without his glasses. Malfoy’s skin was flawless from this angle, but Harry preferred his ruined chest. His Dark Mark. His strength and his flaws and their whole messy history, bared to Harry alone.

“Reparo.” Malfoy hooked his wand, charred scraps of pillow reassembling themselves in midair. “Scourgify. You called me Draco.”

The curl of lust dissipated in a wave of oh shit. “You didn’t bite me,” he shot back, because the best defense was a good offense with both Quidditch and Draco Malfoy. “And none of that ‘I bit your shoulder’ rubbish, you know what I want.”

Malfoy perched on the bed, walking his wand between his fingers the way they had all been doing in second year, a brief fad. “Do I? Because you weren’t exactly asking me to Hogsmeade before you went into heat. You haven’t so much as spoken to me all term.”

“You say it like—we’ve only been back for a month! And you haven’t spoken to me either.”

His mouth curled unpleasantly, eyes hidden behind his dangling fringe. “How remiss of me! Hullo, Harry, how were your summer hols? I spent mine freezing my bollocks off in Azkaban, wondering if my parents were dead. Thrilling! Well, you must be chuffed to be back at old Hoggy Warty Hogwarts. Did you have a nice time killing Vol—Vol—the Dark Lord?”

He might as well have ripped a bloody tendon from his heart and thrown it to the rug.

“I didn’t know what to say,” Harry whispered.

Malfoy was breathing hard. His wand wiggled through his fingers. He hadn’t forgotten the trick of it, but he had always been good at those dumb little games. Or if he wasn’t, he had been sure to bleat about how childish they were and then distract everyone with the latest gewgaw from his mother. “Well,” he said at last, “neither did I.”

Harry plucked the wand out of his hand and tossed it to the table. Grey eyes startled from their hiding place, the whites flashing up at him like the tail of a deer. “I didn’t have a nice time, ta for asking. Did you have a nice time living with him?”

“No.” Malfoy gasped out a manic laugh as Harry climbed into his lap. “No, it was perfectly horrid; blood’s hell on the parquet. And did you know you can’t Vanish corpses? We had to incinerate them on the South Lawn, and there were…bits. Should have—should have given it a miss.”

“This summer, let’s go to Morocco instead,” he said, guiding Malfoy’s head to the curve of his neck. “Bill says Wizarding Marrakesh is brilliant, and it’d be fun to try a flying carpet.”

Malfoy hiccuped a noise that might have a laugh or might have been something else. “You can’t consent to mating while you’re in heat, Potter. You don’t mean any of this.”

“I do,” he snapped. “Anyway, since when do you have scruples?”

This time, it was definitely a laugh. “Since I’m not keen to go back to prison.” He mouthed at Harry’s gland, and Harry wanted to belong with him. He wanted it with a deep, violent intensity. Malfoy’s breath was humid against his throat. “Everyone would be furious if we mated, you know. My parents. Your friends. I’m already being hexed in the streets.”

“I’ll protect you.”

But it had been the wrong thing to say.

Malfoy drew back, shoulders curling in. “Mother wants me to marry Daphne’s younger sister. She presented omega last month, and she’s willing to mate with me as well.”

It had been a long time since Harry had felt such a burst of rage. “You’re gay.”

“That’s beside the point.” He thought it was exactly the point, but he was also fighting the urge to Incarcerous Malfoy to the bedposts and shout at him so it was possible the heat was clouding his judgement somewhat. “No one in her family was Marked or imprisoned, and Aloysius Greengrass sits on the Council of Magical Law. An alliance with them would be mutually beneficial.”

Harry’s way cleared before him. He wanted a Slytherin, so he would do his wooing like a Slytherin. He slunk closer, Malfoy’s leg hair catching under his thighs, and slipped a hand into the scorching heat between his own arse cheeks. He was dribbling slick, fat globs of it. “But you want to mate with me, not her. Don’t you?”

Colour ruffled over his face, and he turned away. “It doesn’t matter,” he said stiffly.

Harry arched in his lap, wriggling against the poke of Malfoy’s dick. Malfoy’s nails dug into the soft of his waist in sparkling pricks of pain. “Don’t you?” The moment stretched. He refused to consider—all these years—maybe it was only Harry who felt—and Malfoy could be so cruel. He was poised at the edge of the Forbidden Forest, cold metal at his lips and fear in his heart. He was standing, knobbly-kneed, before the bland white paint of the cupboard door. “…Draco?”

The glimmering flutter of lashes, and a muscle flexed in the knife-sharp line of Malfoy’s jaw. “Who wouldn’t,” he drawled, thank Merlin, thank fuck— “want to mate with the Saviour of the Wizarding World?”

“Exactly.” Harry almost sicked up with relief. “I got you out of Azkaban, didn’t I? Think of the advantages. I can do more for you than Daphne’s sister. And did I mention I’m rich?” Malfoy glared at him suspiciously, but It’s too late, I’ve won was running through his head to the tune of Weasley Is Our King. He smeared his filthy palm over Malfoy’s chest, gummy strands of slick coating his scars. “Why would anyone pass up such an opportunity?”

“Filthy,” Malfoy garbled into his neck. Harry’s gland tingled at the graze of teeth.

“Yes….” But fucking Malfoy was still fighting him.

“My father,” he gritted, that fucker, Harry was not—

“I’m not helping that sack of shit! He deserves to stink up Azkaban for at least a decade.”

“That sack of shit,” Malfoy snarled, all flashing, storm-dark eyes— “is my father. I love my father. You want me? You can have me, you bastard. All right? But not without my past. Not without my family. I know he deserves it, but…I probably…well, you know what I’ve done. If he—“

“Yes, fine. Lucius, too.” This was really all worse than Harry had realised. I love my father. Fucking Draco Malfoy. He was going to make the rest of Harry’s life a sodding nightmare.

Malfoy blinked. “So…you’ll….”

“Fine,” he said irritably. “I’ll try to get Lucius Malfoy out of prison for you. But you’d better bloody marry me too.”

Malfoy’s cackle of laughter was far too loud considering how close his face was to Harry’s.

“Shut up—“

“Certainly I’ll marry you!” he wheezed. “You definitely won’t reconsider by tomorrow at all! And you’ll carry my children, naturally.”

“It’s dead funny when you do that. Keep expecting you to call me ‘old bean’ or something.”

“Pardon?”

"You get posher when you're nervous."

"I'm not nervous," Malfoy said, revolted. "Did you even hear me?" He was pitched back on his hands now, flushed chest lifting into Harry’s palm. Slick shone over his collarbone, his pecs, as Harry carefully glazed each splotch of pink.

“Of course I’ll carry our children, unless you’ve a uterus somewhere. Not yet, though. You’ll want to finish your Potions apprenticeship first." That had maybe been a bit of a stalker-ish thing to say, but if people wanted to keep their career plans private, they shouldn’t discuss them where any passer by could overhear. Especially a passer by in an Invisibility Cloak.

Malfoy didn’t seem to notice, but maybe he was just used to the stalking-Cloak thing. His brow creased. “You don’t think I’d be a terrible father?”

“No.”

He might have said more, but Malfoy was trying to eat his mouth.

Harry grunted, half in annoyance and half in encouragement, as Malfoy mauled his lower lip. This was how he had imagined Malfoy would kiss, when he had let himself imagine it, in those secret moments between waking and sleep. Malfoy’s mouth was vicious and urgent, his hands everywhere on Harry’s skin. Harry twined around him. His lip, his whole body was sore and throbbing, and he was biting, too, Malfoy’s breath puffing hot in his mouth.

He was rutting against Malfoy’s abdominals, cock slipping in his own precome and Malfoy’s sweat, by the time he recovered himself enough to break away. “Malf—ohhh, fuck, yes!”

“Yes?” Malfoy purred, digging two fingers farther up Harry’s arse. He had a livid bruise beneath his jaw Harry didn’t remember putting there, and strands of blonde hair were stuck to Harry’s fingers. “On your back, Harry. I want you on your back when I claim you.”

“Yes—wait, no.” He thrust a hand against Malfoy’s throat, holding him off, and Malfoy bared his teeth at him, gods— “Say you’ll marry me.”

“I always knew you were mad,” he rasped. “No one would listen to me.”

“Say it. Say we’ll—we’ll be—“ His arsehole was still stretched and raw, dripping over Malfoy’s relentless fingers. “Promise me, Draco.” He wanted to rip away every barrier between them. He wanted to be the air in Malfoy’s lungs.

Harry had been completely obsessed with him since—not since the day they met. He had thought Malfoy pretty that day, too pretty for a boy, although in retrospect that had been mostly the impression of the hair. Not since the train, when he had discovered that Malfoy’s face was distinctly unpretty and his manners were worse. No. It had been the afternoon Malfoy flung the Remembrall and Harry was, for the first time, untethered from the earth.

Harry had wheeled over the turrets, wind battering his face, intoxicated with freedom. Absolute freedom, for the first time he could remember. He could go anywhere on this broom; he could fly forever. And Malfoy matched him there: turn for turn, dive for dive, his companion and his goad. The broomstick was warm in his hands, his stomach falling into every drop. Malfoy’s fluttering hair shone white in the sunlight. Over the lake, over the lawn, black-robed students calling far below. The sky was blue and cold and endless and only theirs.

Those minutes in the air had been unforgettable, fizzing with magic, and he had never looked at Malfoy in quite the same way since. Draco Malfoy, the boy with the fairytale hair, to whom he had tried to prove himself from the moment they kicked into the air. To whom he had never stopped trying to prove himself, in one way or another.

Malfoy’s fingers stilled. His eerie opal eyes were fixed on Harry’s face, arrested by whatever he saw there. “Ask me tomorrow,” he said, the words shifting his throat against Harry’s palm. He could feel the frantic tremble of Malfoy’s pulse. “Ask me tomorrow, Harry, and I will.”

It was enough. Harry shoved him back onto his shoulders and bit desperately at his white throat, Malfoy smacking at him ineffectually. “Stop it, get off—“

“No,” the word smeared against his neck. “I want—“

“Bugger that, roll over—“

“Fucking bossy—“ He licked the scar on Malfoy’s collarbone, flailing a hand to fend him off.

“You’re the one who—“ Harry traced the line of the curse’s rampage with the tip of his tongue, following the swath of destruction as it thickened and coarsened. “Was so eager—!“ He tasted his work delicately as the blood pounded in his temples. As the skin puckered and the scar violated the chaste pink ring of an areola. He brushed his tongue, slowly, over one whorishly protruding nipple.

“I’m not a girl,” Malfoy jeered. “That doesn’t—oh, hell!” He arched, making a crazed grab for Harry’s head as Harry lapped at him. Doesn’t what, exactly? But even the temptation of needling Malfoy couldn’t compare to this: suckling his wet nipple, flicking the tip mercilessly with his tongue as Malfoy twisted slowly beneath him. He sucked and then bit, tormenting both nipples until they were swollen and dark with blood, shiny with his spit. Until Malfoy was shaking and making guttural sounds.

Harry mouthed his way lower, closing his teeth around each ridged scar, licking and nibbling. Smooth skin and gnarled flesh. The salt of sweat. Fine muscles trembling at the touch of his mouth. His mind emptied of everything but the jerking body beneath his, awareness coming in stuttering flashes, like the snap of a lens.

The fine grit of hair on his tongue, as he sucked his way down Malfoy’s heaving stomach. Harry pinning Malfoy’s thighs open, lapping at the crease of his groin. Sweat, beaded in humid blonde curls. A velvet-furred testicle, pulsing as Harry rolled it in his mouth. And Malfoy sobbing, tearing at the bedding, his voice thick and hurt-sounding. Harry, oh and Harry, yes and HarryHarryHarry!

Harry nuzzled with fierce joy at the base of Malfoy’s dick. It had filled out gorgeously: red and damp and twitching against his belly, lolling a little to the right. Malfoy’s scent was luscious here, oily on Harry’s tongue. He huffed another lungful and bore down harder on Malfoy’s jittering hips.

“Harry—Harry!” His posh, rounded vowels were deep and splintering open. He tossed his head against the bedding, his hair a snowy tangle. The candlelight gleamed reverently on the smooth curve of his throat. Harry rubbed his cheek against the wrinkled skin where the knot would form and then licked it adoringly. “Harry!” His name a moan. So perfect. So beautiful.

“Who’s wet now?” Harry whispered, and suckled the drooling tip of Malfoy’s cock.

It flexed hard in his mouth. Malfoy choked, wrenching Harry off by his hair. “Fucker!” he gasped, ringing his cock tightly with his free hand.

“Gonna come already?” he taunted, electric with arousal, his tongue glazed with Malfoy’s precome.

Malfoy threw him onto his back by his hair and shit yes it hurt, a cascade of pain, and he bucked up even as Malfoy’s mouth closed around his dick. “Merlin!” he gargled, caught between the throb of his scalp and the succulent hell of his alpha’s mouth. Malfoy was swallowing him down like a starving man, hot and sloppy and urgent.

Probably it wasn’t very good; it was too wet and Malfoy kept bumping him with his teeth. And Malfoy wasn’t very attractive, ratty and too thin, hunched over between Harry’s legs with Harry’s cock wedged in his mean little mouth. And it was the most astonishing gift: Draco Malfoy allowing Harry to see him, all of him, offering up his messy, hungry desire.

“Shit, Malfoy!” His hair slid pale and insubstantial between Harry’s fingers, like the feathers of a moth.

He popped off to snarl, “Draco.” A strand of spit trembled between his reddened lips and the tip of Harry’s cock, astonishingly obscene.

“Draco, yes—don’t stop!” he whined, mindless with desire, the heat roaring through his veins. “Come on, oh, Draco!”

“Ah,” said Malfoy, low, and descended on his cock again.

A few clumsy sucks, the rub of a tongue across his slit, and he was gushing into Malfoy’s mouth. Malfoy gagged, coughing. Harry’s come sheeted from his slack lips, dribbling onto his spurting cock as more—like in some erotic dream—splattered rudely onto Malfoy’s face. Harry groaned, shuddering ecstatically through his orgasm.

“Holy shit,” he croaked, stunned and panting, once he could talk again. It hadn’t even been that good. There had been teeth, for Merlin’s sake.

“You got spunk up my nose, you animal,” Malfoy said, but he didn’t sound particularly upset about it.

“Reckon that’s an improvement.” Harry’s inner twelve-year-old was chortling, delighting in that constant, petty need to fight with Malfoy, to see him mussed up and wailing in annoyance.

Malfoy was honking into a conjured handkerchief in a way Harry was certain would have horrified his prim mother. Which meant he was putting on a little show. Harry loved Malfoy’s little shows. A feeling welled up in him, from every crack and crevice he had secreted it away in, and for the first time, tentatively, he let it come. Let it stumble shyly, like a wobble-legged foal, into the sun. The war was over. Malfoy was going to be his mate and his husband. He was allowed to love—things about Draco.

Wasn’t he?

Malfoy vanished the handkerchief with a showy flourish and then hesitated. “Protego Morbus. Sterilis,” he muttered, flicking his wand. “It can’t have been three hours, but there’s no harm in recasting them. Do try to remember that, Potter,” he said, with a twisted parody of his usual sneer. “The Incommunicable Charm diminishes in effectiveness after the standard three-hour window, so your future partners—“

“Leave off,” Harry said, through his teeth. Malfoy’s insecurity was like a cockroach in a nuclear winter. “You’re my only future partner. Unless you’ve changed your mind.”

Malfoy stared at him unreadably. Cautiously, as if testing the thickness of the ice beneath his feet, he said, “I’m a terror to live with.”

“Well, I’ve a temper. And I can’t bear a mess, it used to drive Ron spare. You’ll see.”

Emotion flashed over that mobile face, and he crawled up Harry’s body before he’d even finished speaking. His eyes shone like burnished silver, so clear and open that for a moment, Harry could see all the way in. That look—oh Merlin, he could read that look perfectly. “Harry,” said Malfoy, and kissed him.

Harry opened his mouth greedily, but when Malfoy’s tongue slid in, it was still tacky with come. He jerked back, scrubbing at his mouth. “You git, that tastes foul!”

"I don't care,” he crooned, but there was a softness in his snide drawl that had never been there before. “If I have to taste it, you do too."

“Wanker,” he murmured, and found Malfoy’s mouth again. At first, Malfoy was obnoxious with his slimy tongue: thrusting it against Harry’s, flicking it everywhere, flooding his mouth with the alkaline taste of come. But the flavour dissolved, slowly, until there was only the smoky sweetness of Malfoy’s saliva and Malfoy was kissing him deeply.

They kissed for long, honeyed minutes. The demands of the heat felt muffled, far away: as if a storm was rumbling on the horizon while they lay in a field, the sun on their faces and bees still buzzing amongst the clover. But at last, the ache became unignorable. “Need your knot,” Harry murmured, lips tingling. He was lying in a clammy puddle of slick, his arsehole twitching and clenching on nothingness. Malfoy’s cock rested heavy and damp on Harry’s belly.

“Yeah, all right,” said Malfoy, for once with no artifice at all, and took one more kiss, deep and unrestrained. He was really an astonishingly good kisser. When he eventually drew back, he looked as dazed as Harry felt, a shimmering lock of hair tumbling unnoticed over his forehead. He blinked at Harry as though he had never seen him before, and there was something innocent, something young in his discomposure: he was eighteen years old and experiencing something entirely new.

Harry was probably in love with him, actually, which was quite fucked up considering. He had probably been in love with him since fifth year. He had probably been too narked off about the blood supremacy and the murder attempts and the sodding tattoo to do anything about it.

Malfoy dipped two fingers into his quivering arse, swiveling them with an affected nonchalance. “You know, I was certain you’d be an alpha. I thought I’d have to fight you if I wanted this.” And jabbed at his prostate with perfect dramatic timing.

Harry groaned and offered his neck, just like the slaggy prat Malfoy had made him out to be. “Did have to fight me,” he managed, stung.

“So I did.” Above him, Malfoy was grinning like a feral angel, pale and skinny and hard. “You’re a surprisingly poor duellist, Harry. I can’t imagine why Vol—the Dark—damnit, Voldemort!...had so much trouble with you,” he finished defiantly.

“Oh, this is awful,” Harry breathed, captivated, and yanked Malfoy’s triumphant face back to his.

More kissing, wet and hungry. Malfoy slid his mouth over Harry’s jaw. Lower. Lipped at his gland as Harry gasped for breath. The air was soupy with the smoky, astringent bite of Malfoy’s arousal, the scent so thick it coated his tongue. His alpha was dragging his cock maddeningly over Harry’s, the knot already beginning to puff at the base. Harry thrust against the springy rub of pubic hair and whined with pleasure. Malfoy’s tongue, Malfoy’s cock—the heel of Malfoy’s hand, chafing one bunched nipple— “Malfoy, Malfoy, fuck, I’m—do it, I’m—just do it!”

“Say my—“

“Draco!” Harry mewled, and squeezed out a load of spunk between their bellies.

“Bloody hell!” Malfoy gasped. “You—Harry!” And then everything happened very quickly.

Malfoy wrenched Harry’s limp thighs up, rolling his arse into the air, and slammed into his still-convulsing channel. Harry dragged his eyes open. Malfoy was staring down at him, grinding his teeth like some alpha in a porno. “I’m going to come—you’re going to make me come—you look so pretty, oh!”

“You look pretty,” Harry slurred, body rocking with the force of Malfoy’s thrusts. “C’mere.”

“Fuck bastard shit!” he moaned, curling in to mouth blindly at Harry’s neck. Everything felt easy and right, his muscles still liquid with orgasm. His gland was tight and engorged; the jostle of Malfoy’s teeth against it was a white-hot spark of pleasure.

“I need—“ Malfoy talked so much during sex; it drove him mad. He shouldn’t have wanted it so badly: to hear the voice that had tormented him for years raw and cracking with desire. “Harry, you make my teeth hurt,” he panted, raising his face from Harry’s neck with what seemed a desperate effort. His neck and face and chest burned a dull, solid red. His eyes caught Harry’s and held, even as he jolted him against the bed with deep, thudding thrusts. “Since I presented. Since I saw you—knelt in my drawing room. Since before. Merlin, fuck!”

Pale lashes fluttering. The Dark Mark, half-buried in the duvet, seemed to writhe with the shift of Malfoy’s wiry forearm. “If we—“ He forced his gaze back to Harry’s, eyes glassy and fierce, fighting the rising tide of pleasure. Fighting, the way he always had—the way he always would—Harry clung to his slippery back and cried out.

Malfoy’s hand fisted possessively in Harry’s curls. He’s about to claim me. His eyes fell to Malfoy’s pink mouth, small and gleaming with oil. A tangle of emotion slid down his throat, clenching in his stomach. “Draco, please!” The shadowed rows of Malfoy’s teeth, his crooked canine pressed coyly between its neighbors.

“Harry, if we’d been alone that day,” he gasped, “I’d have bitten you then. Understand?”

He didn’t. Harry hadn’t even been presented then; it made no sense that Malfoy would have wanted to claim him. He was teetering his way back to orgasm, mind cloudy with the growing pressure of the knot. But he tried, because his alpha—because Draco—wanted him to. “At the Manor….“

“Yes.” He latched back onto Harry’s neck, sucking feverishly.

“You’d have mated me…. But that doesn’t—you’d have had to run with us.” Almost…but the meaning behind whatever Malfoy was trying to say spiralled away in the scorch of arousal.

“Yes, it’s mad!” he cried, shrill and anguished. “But, Harry, you should know that—oh, Harry! That I want—that even if you change your mind tomorrow—I won’t.”

He tossed his head up and went still, lips drawn back in a rictus of pleasure as he emptied himself. Then, with a bruising grind of his hips, he plunged forward and sank his teeth into Harry’s neck.

Harry’s gland broke, the pain as searing as the pleasure. He sucked in a breath to scream—and instead came violently, ankles twisting and face numb, the world gone silent. The sensation of the bite was too vast to hold. It was like a remaking, as if his bones were melting and reforming: tearing and blissful and endless. Malfoy was shaking and gurgling against him. Blood and oil trickled down his neck as come splashed hot on his belly, his hips cracking open around the bulging knot.

He drifted for a time, weak and overwhelmed. The blood felt somehow heavier in his veins. Malfoy had unclamped his teeth and was licking the painful mess of his neck. Bonded. It was safe here, in the darkness behind his eyelids, beneath the soothing strokes of his alpha’s tongue. Even the massive invasion of the knot felt right: a deep, sweet soreness.

“Harry?”

He felt a ripple of worry. He had been too rough. He had hurt Draco. He blinked his eyes open in confusion as the feeling slipped away.

Pale eyes were studying him from an inch away. Red pinpricks dotted the delicate skin beneath: burst blood vessels from the strength of his orgasm. His lips and chin were splotched pink. “Potter? Are you well?”

“M’fine. Fuck, that was good.” Good hardly described it. It had been like dying and coming to life again, except without the dodgy train station. Draco’s mouth softened. His eyelids were puffy, as if he’d been blubbing again. The pain in Harry’s neck had dulled to a heavy throb. “Is it still bleeding?”

“No.” Draco’s gaze dropped to his bite. Lingered. “I’m beginning to understand your scar kink.”

“I don’t have a scar kink.”

“Mm,” he hummed absently. “I can’t believe you let me claim you.” He tongued gently at the bite and Harry lolled his head to the side, granting him better access.

What was that rubbish about claiming me at the Manor? But arguing felt like too much effort, and besides, he was fairly sure that had been Draco’s demented way of confessing his feelings.

Satisfaction. Anxiety. Emotions darted through him like the silvery flash of minnows, coming from—Malfoy raised his head, eyes tight at the corners. “Father and Mother will be furious with me.”

“I think your mum likes me,” Harry murmured, shifting his hips. The knot moved in a warm bloom of pleasure. “She saved my life during the Battle, you know.”

Malfoy’s eyebrows climbed up his forehead. “You—that was for me, you imbecile! She despises you! Well, she despises most people, but she was disgusted by how you threatened us at Madam Malkin’s.”

“So I’ll ask Arthur about your dad’s sentence, find out what we can do. Then—“

“Harry. Arthur Weasley loathes my father! Our families have been enemies since the Statute. Didn’t Ronald tell you any of this? I thought…I thought that was why you….” Why you wouldn’t be my friend. His teeth closed on the words he was too proud to say, but Harry heard them in the stutter of his lashes.

Ron had told him. The twins had joked about the pranks they used to pull on Draco, and Arthur and Molly had always laughed. “That doesn’t matter,” he said, something cold squirming through him. “They—they’ll like you.” The words fell flat, like a punctured balloon. Like a child’s absurd birthday wish.

Of course they wouldn’t like him.

“Will they?” Malfoy’s voice was snide, but he was trembling faintly against Harry’s sticky stomach. “I’m…not a very good man. And their son was turned because of…you know.”

“Bill. But he wasn’t…. They wouldn’t….” Harry trailed off uncertainly. It hardly mattered that Bill hadn’t been turned. Or that Ginny hadn’t been killed by the diary in second year. And Fred, Merlin. It had only been a few months since Fred’s murder, Molly’s round face still haggard with grief. How would she look at Harry when he told her he had let himself be claimed by a Death Eater, by Lucius Malfoy’s son? How would Ron look at him? It had been Malfoy’s fault….

“As I thought,” Malfoy said coldly, and turned his face so his fringe slipped over his eyes. He was swallowing and swallowing.

“No,” Harry gritted, bile rising hot and furious in his throat. He would face anything rather than lose the tentative trust between them. Than lose this years-long game of hide and seek with the Draco he was just beginning to know. “No, you’re right. It’ll take time. Maybe it won’t happen at all. But I won’t give you up, do you hear me?”

Fear prickled through the bond, along with something else, something urgent and dagger-bright. Malfoy cut a glance at him through his hair. “You soppy fucker.”

Harry stroked back that slippery fringe. It stood up a little, like dandelion fluff, damp at the roots. “Baby.” He watched with satisfaction as Malfoy’s eyes snapped shut. “You’re mine. You’ve always been mine, all along, haven’t you?”

He dropped his head to Harry’s shoulder, shuddering out a breath. Harry’s hand slipped down to cradle the fragile curve of his skull. A moment passed. Then he felt the jerky movement of Malfoy’s forehead, rubbing up and down. Once. Twice.

His heart clenched against a staggering burst of tenderness. “Too right,” he said, but it came out all wrong and anyway, he could feel the slow curve of Malfoy’s smile.

“Do you know, Harry,” came that maddening, affected drawl, “I can feel bits of your emotions.”

“No, you can’t.”

“Yes, I can.” Yeeees, I caaaan, like he was speaking to a particularly dim-witted toddler. His amusement sparkled through the bond, citrus-bright.

“Can’t.” Malfoy snorted against his collarbone, and Harry surrendered. “Bond’s strong,” he admitted, petting that downy tumble of hair.

Malfoy hummed and then gently, carefully, shifted his hips.

“Fuck,” Harry sighed. The too-hard roll of the knot against his prostate felt like molten lead: sliding down his spine, trickling over his thighs.

“Yes,” Malfoy whispered, brushing his lips against the throbbing bite. “Just like that, Harry.”

“I won’t give you up.”

“No,” the word a feathery thing. No. No. A secret, night-quiet prayer as he wound an arm behind Harry’s shoulders and pulled. Harry’s body felt tacky, heavy as clay, as if he might stick to Malfoy’s slender fingers. Malfoy’s fingers. They dug in and pulled until Harry came loose and rolled with him to their sides, the stretch of the knot a sudden, bright scorch.

Before he could catch his breath, Malfoy was hitching his hips again, grinding his knot across Harry’s prostate in tiny, unbearable jerks. “Fffff—what!” Harry gurgled, and twisted to escape, tugging the knot brutally against his straining rim. He couldn’t move away, and Malfoy couldn’t move much, but enough to force the knot to shift: a sore, deep, overwhelming pressure.

Malfoy caught one quivering thigh and dragged it up, wrapping Harry’s leg over his waist. Shoving himself deeper as Harry clawed at his shoulders. Excitement thrummed between them—uncertainty—yearning—Harry couldn’t tell his emotions from Malfoy’s, the bond alight.

“Oh, hell.” Malfoy traced the tip of his tongue over his thudding pulse. “You’re so full. I can feel it.”

“Git—“ Of course he could—

Malfoy stroked low on his belly, malicious. “I can feel it here. You’re bloody bulging with my knot, Potter.”

Harry wailed wordlessly and slid a shaking hand down his own stomach. Over the black curls of hair, wetted flat with sweat and spunk. Slender fingers tangled with his, drew them lower.

“You love being stuffed with cock, don’t you?” Malfoy murmured, talking, talking. “You love this. You’re going to come again, you freak.” And there it was: a faint swell, something shifting beneath his skin with every ruinous movement of Malfoy’s hips.

“Fuck, oh, fuck!” he sobbed, sensation coiling liquid in his belly. The bond arced like a living thing, desire spearing between them.

“I’ll keep you knotted all the time.” Like a threat, like that was even possible, Malfoy’s eyes glassy and distracted. “Make you walk—“

“Draco!” He writhed on the obscene stretch of it, scrabbling at Malfoy’s slick shoulders.

“Yeah, you’ll be waddling, you—you won’t be able to close your legs. Going to buy you a plug. Going to fuck you and plug you, keep you sloshing with come—“

“Shit, your mouth!” Harry couldn’t come three times in a row, not even in heat. He couldn’t. His sore cock pushed helplessly against the shifting, come-slick muscles of Malfoy’s abdomen.

“You love my mouth.” His smile was all teeth, one canine snagged deliciously on the swell of his lip. “Your little cock is so hard, kitten.”

Kitten. He was Draco’s kitten. His perfectly average cock twitched in sticky-sweet humiliation. “Shut up,” he sobbed, blind with desire. He felt small and lovely and cosseted, everything he had always been ashamed of wanting.

“Shan’t.” Cool fingers fastened around the angry throb of his erection. They fondled the tacky head, pleasure leaping through him in skittering flames. “I can feel your heartbeat on my cock. You’re so tight—“

“Soft,” he moaned. Small noises were catching and catching in his throat.

“Yes, kitten, you’re so soft and lovely inside. So warm. You feel so good.” His light tenor had dropped into a rumbling purr. “I’ll take such care of you. I will. Harry, oh, you look so damned beautiful with my mark!”

Harry lurched for his mouth and came, fumbling their lips together, spilling messily into his alpha’s palm. His mouth quivering open and lax, offered like a chalice as Draco lapped up his silent, straining cry. Draco tasted like blood and the future, like arguments and tenderness and the cold blue sky. For seconds or years Harry hung suspended in that freedom, and then he fell into Draco, stripped raw, lights floating across his vision.

He lay panting into the humid hollow of Draco’s throat, his breaths loud in the laden silence. He felt Malfoy wipe his hand on the blankets.

More of the candles had guttered out, dim shadows pooling in the corners of the room. The bed was soaked again. Malfoy’s balls, still fitted tight to Harry’s arse, were clammy with slick. He toppled them in slow motion, until Harry was draped across his bony chest and blinking back tears at the tug of the knot. Harry’s cock pressed soft and slick between their stomachs.

He didn’t want Draco to feel it. He didn’t want Draco to even guess at it: the ugly need clawing at his chest, peering hungrily into the strip of light beneath the cupboard door.

Harry wanted.

He wanted Draco’s cold, uncanny eyes on him and only him. He wanted Draco’s attention and his insults and his naked body and he wanted his love, all the time, all for Harry. More love—too much love—enough to finally glut himself on. He would never be satisfied with less than complete and total obsession and if Draco felt that through the bond he was fucked.

Malfoy’s fingers stilled, where they had been pushing into Harry’s wild curls.

He tried desperately to Occlude. “This, er, didn’t take so long last time.”

“I came again,” Malfoy muttered, sounding embarrassed. “Earlier.”

“Oh,” he said like a wally, and then they were quiet. Malfoy played with his hair, gathering it in curious fistfuls and letting it spring back. Harry crushed his face to Malfoy’s pointy collarbone and pretended there was no world beyond this room.

“Your hair is preposterous, you know. Anyone would think it charmed.”

“At least it’s not—it’s not so—“ What, soft? Shiny? Malfoy’s hair was pretty as shit. Harry bit him instead, Malfoy all hot and solid beneath him.

Malfoy tugged Harry’s head up. His eyes were soft-lidded and mocking and made Harry’s heart turn over. “Potter,” he drawled, like Harry’s surname was some kind of joke. “Can you come again?”

And then he felt it. A covetous tenderness gusted through the bond, like the cosy draft from an Aga. Like the warm, clenching swallow of a throat. Bright with the keen edge of fear, it settled into Harry’s bones like it belonged there.

Draco wanted him too.

Maybe he craved Harry’s attention the way Harry craved Draco’s. Maybe the screaming and duelling and stalking had always been about sex. Maybe in this bed, with Draco wedged as deep as he could manage into Harry and Harry naked and sweating on top of him, they understood one another at last.

The edge of fear sharpened and the feeling folded itself away. Malfoy’s face looked exactly the same: pointy and blotchy, lips set in a mean little curl. Draco.

“What?” Harry croaked, as airless as if he had been held underwater.

“I asked if you can come. Orgasm? Climax? Reach the heights of sexual pleasure?”

“Dunno if I can get hard again.” The heat was sheathing its claws, curling up like a milk-full cat.

“Get off? Experience la petite mort?”

“Will you stop?”

Malfoy jabbed a canine into his lip, failing to hold back the tide of his smile. “Blow your lump?”

Harry gagged out a cough. He wasn’t going to laugh. Fuck’s sake. “You made that up.”

“Or you’re incurably ignorant.” Malfoy grinned up at him, loose and happy. He had never, ever smiled like that at Harry, all rounded cheeks and softly dipping eyelashes. It transformed his whole face, the effect like a Stunner to the chest. “Sit up, kitten, and let’s milk your horned slug.”

Harry gave a shaky, bewildered laugh and pushed himself up on Malfoy’s chest, because what the hell else could he have done? The knot sank deeper, working a shiver up his back. Whenever he thought he was beginning to know Draco Malfoy, he surprised him again: always fascinating, always new. Knowing Draco would take a lifetime, and he wouldn’t make it easy. No, Merlin, he never made anything easy when instead he could make it a hellish tangle.

“Shit,” Harry groaned, squirming. His weight had forced Malfoy’s knot torturously deep, a fierce ache radiating through him.

“Shh, yes.” Malfoy kneaded his quaking thighs. “You look so good. Go on, move—“ And when he writhed again, “Just like that. Don’t stop. Harry.”

Harry tossed his head back and rolled his hips, letting himself sink into a rhythm. Riding Malfoy’s cock felt instinctive, like magic, like something that had been lying dormant in his blood. It felt fucking good. His prostate ground against the knot over and over as an excruciating pressure tightened inside him.

“Harry, look at me,” Malfoy pleaded, low and raw. Cool, sticky fingers brushed his tender prick.

Harry opened his eyes with a guttural sound. He had been making sounds, he realized, breathy little uh uh uhs as he worked himself on Malfoy’s knot. Malfoy lifted his flaccid dick, letting it rest in his palm like an offering. Harry’s hips twitched. “Don’t, ’s too sensitive.”

“Let me hold it,” he said intently, voice ground almost to nothing. “Harry. I just want to hold it.” Harry’s soft penis, wrinkled and damp, lay trustingly in Malfoy’s palm.

His eyes found Malfoy’s, and the expression in them was shocking.

Draco was looking at him as if he was gazing into the sun, blinded to all else. As if a new Dark Lord could rise and the world could burn and he would die in the flames just like this: worshipful, rapt, his eyes fixed on Harry, Harry, Harry.

Harry moaned, flexing his fingers against Draco’s scars. What must Draco see? A green-eyed boy writhing sinuously in his lap, bruised all over, filthy with slick and spunk and drying blood. His hair snarled and skin sheened with sweat. Only Harry, only the boy in the cupboard, and Draco was looking at him…like that.

Draco had gone finally, entirely, quiet. He cradled Harry’s soft prick and stared, lips parted stupidly. The air stank of sex. Uh uh uh, Harry grunted softly, looking into Draco’s eyes while he shuddered and squirmed around Draco’s knotted cock. The stretch was intense and obscene and almost nothing compared to the hard thump of his heart.

They watched each other. It felt like an echo from some distant future room, from some room they were going to live in together.

I love you, Harry thought and did not say. Someday, they would stop being afraid. He pressed Draco’s body in his until those beautiful grey eyes blurred. Until the best orgasm of his life was pulsing through him, his face wet with tears. Cloudy liquid dribbled from his flaccid dick, pooling in Draco’s palm.

When he came back to himself, his legs were numb and he was heaving deep animal breaths into the side of Draco’s neck. Draco was stroking his curls and murmuring. “Easy. Shh. Easy, kitten. You were incredible, gods. Harry. Hush now.”

“Draco,” he hiccuped.

“Harry. Thank you,” he said fervently, which made no sense, but Draco Malfoy was not a rational creature.

Harry’s arse was sore and finally empty, but he felt surprisingly clean. Draco must have cast some charms; even the crease of his arse was only a little sticky. He rolled away, propping himself up on delightfully crisp sheets. “Let’s have some more of your naff water, then.”

Draco quirked a little smile and sat up, his eyes like molten silver. “Calix,” he said, and plucked a cut crystal goblet out of the air. “Aguamenti,” and water poured into it from the tip of his wand. Smug arrogance slid through the bond as he handed it to Harry, the feeling practically sticking to Harry’s teeth. It was so perfectly, reassuringly Malfoy.

“Thanks. You’re aces at Conjuration,” he said, just to watch Draco’s smirk tip deep and pleased. The water tasted just like water.

“Mother taught me Avis and Serpensortia before I even left for Hogwarts. I’m a magical prodigy, if you weren’t aware.”

“Rotten luck your Serpensortia wasn’t more helpful. Bit of a flop, actually.” He bore Draco down into the bedding, remembering the pointy, whey-faced boy who’d shot a serpent at him from twenty paces. Draco’s shoulder was still pointy as hell, but he squirmed until he found a snug nook for his cheek.

“Yes, well, as with everything that I’m good at, you’re better,” he sniped, arranging the duvet carefully over Harry.

“Annoying, that.” He rubbed his mate’s chest drowsily, feeling scar tissue and the grit of almost invisible hair. “You’re cleverer than me, though.”

“I am cleverer than you.”

The astringent tang of Draco’s scent curled around him, smoke-sharp and comforting, the half-forgotten smell hidden in his Amortentia. “Mm. Could’ve been tops with Hermione if you weren’t so lazy about revising.”

“I am not lazy about—“

“You made Crabbe and Goyle write your History of Magic essays second year so you could skive off on your Nimbus. Almost failed the class.”

Draco laughed softly. He had sort of a nice laugh, when it was quiet like this, when Harry could feel his chest moving beneath his cheek. “How’d you even know about that?”

His eyes drifted shut. Lying on Draco was surprisingly cosy. “Dunno. I thought you were the Heir of Slytherin. I was keeping an eye on you.”

“You’re always keeping an eye on me,” he murmured. He swept a hand lightly, possessively, down Harry’s spine.

“M’obsessed with you.” He slung a leg over Draco’s thigh, nudging his spent, wrinkled cock against his mate’s warm skin. It felt fantastic. “Draco. M’gonna sleep. Gonna ride you again when I wake up.”

Draco’s hand tensed on his back. “The heat’s breaking. I can smell it.”

“Yeah. Hope I won’t be so wet every time, it was gross.”

“I liked it,” Draco whispered, almost inaudibly, and Harry slept.

Light glowed red behind Harry’s eyelids. He was naked, in a warm cocoon beneath the conjured duvet. He had slept deliciously, still floating in the peace of it as he stretched and woke the scatter of hurts across his body. Nose and shoulder and fingers, thighs and arse. Even the ache of his inner muscles felt refreshing, as if he had been hammered into a brand-new shape. The air smelt of sausages and the dry scent of tea and still, faintly, of sex.

He blinked his eyes open. Candles blazed above the sheer canopy in a cheerful mimicry of sunlight. He had thought, yesterday, that his mind had been clear enough, but now the difference was obvious. His thoughts were sharp-edged and vibrant, fully his own again. Malfoy was gone from the bed, if he had even stayed—but the flex of the bond tugged his awareness towards his mate. He smiled at the canopy. “I can still feel your cock.” Even his throat hurt.

“Good morning to you too,” came a dry voice.

Yesterday felt like a fever dream. Had Harry really tried to strip off in front of Hermione and Professor Flitwick? Had he really duelled Malfoy whilst naked in some kind of fucked-up mating display? Had he really—Merlin—rubbed his slick into Malfoy’s Sectumsempra scars? And liked it?

Yes.

He had rubbed his slick into Malfoy’s Sectumsempra scars and liked it. He remembered how those twisting scars had felt between his teeth and stretched again, shivering. Harry was gay and a pervert and bonded to Draco Malfoy and even the knowledge of how furious everyone was going to be hardly disturbed his contentment. At least Malfoy had remembered the Sperm-Be-Gone Charm, that fit, clever fucker.

He sat up, smoothing his hair pointlessly, and found his wand and glasses on the nightstand. The room looked even more terrible now that he could properly see. Half the furniture was toppled and there were scorch marks on the plush carpet. Cold wax splattered the walls; candles and feathers were everywhere. He winced, feeling both guilty and vaguely turned on.

Beyond the foot of the bed was a small table and chairs that hadn’t been there yesterday. The table was covered with dishes and in one of the chairs sat Draco Malfoy.

His mate was watching him, eyes unreadable. He was barefoot and dressed in a shirt and trousers, his hair swept immaculately into place. He was poised amidst the destruction like a bird on a branch: both present and apart, ready at any moment to be gone into the sky. He had been eating, evidently, a fork with a bit of egg perched in his hand.

He hadn’t healed himself. The bruise under his jaw from Harry’s mouth was a deep maroon, and the clotted marks of Harry’s nails peeked from his pristine white cuffs. It was a little embarrassing, the way Harry had thrown himself at Malfoy, but—he hadn’t healed himself. Even if you change your mind tomorrow, he had said, I won’t.

Harry hunted for his pants with the buoyant sense of possibility he had only felt whilst absolutely trollied. He didn’t need the anxiety prickling through the bond to know Malfoy’s mood. The bond felt good, sturdy: like a collar, or a blanket round his shoulders. He liked being bonded to Malfoy—no, Draco. He would always be Draco to him now. Two Tergeos and a Scourgify later, his pants were still gummy when he pulled them on.

The egg splatted from Draco’s fork to his plate. He didn’t seem to notice. “You’re truly abysmal at cleaning charms, Potter.”

Potter. Harry smiled to himself as he wandered towards the table. That adder’s tongue lost its sting when he remembered his Draco pink with arousal and crying out his name, thighs shaking and cock leaking over Harry’s tongue. He had seemed to love saying Harry’s name. He would be saying it again soon. “You’ll have to teach me. Draco. What’s all this?”

Colour splotched the high cuts of his cheekbones. “The house-elves brought it. All your favourites; you must be frightfully popular with them. Was that shirt you were wearing one of their hand-me-downs?”

“Posh,” Harry murmured, heart pounding. Draco’s lips twisted into a trembling sneer, a question lurking in his eyes. “What’ve we got, then? Draco.”

“Pumpkin juice,” he said, crystal-sharp, like he was addressing the bloody House of Lords. “Toast, kippers, fried tomatoes, and two kinds of egg. Tea, naturally, and those herbed sausages you’re fond of.”

“Brill.”

“I expect there’s porridge in that tureen. Sugar. For the tea.”

“Yeah, lush.”

Harry was going kiss that little pink mouth quiet, or maybe until it was panting Harry again. Then he was going to eat too many sausages and probably the entire tureen of porridge because he felt as if he hadn’t eaten in a week. Then he was going to ask Draco a question to which he already knew the answer. Ask me tomorrow, and I will. Maybe on Saturday they could go to Diagon for rings, unless Draco wanted to use some horrible heirlooms. He probably would. Merlin’s ballsack, Harry was going to have Lucius Malfoy for a father-in-law.

It would be a long road. He knew it, and Draco knew it. But gods, it would be worth it.

Draco set his fork down with the faintest chink, colourless eyes fixed on Harry’s. Every movement was a half-step away from his usual manner, as if he couldn’t quite close what had been wedged open between them and wasn’t quite sure he wanted to. “The elves were rather cross about the mess, Harry.”

He could see him sitting like that at twenty-eight, wrists lighting on the edge of the table Continental-style. Haughty and content, his body recovered from the ravages of war. He could see him at forty-eight, eyes crinkled at the corners, waiting for Harry at the breakfast table with croissants and complaints. Smelling like charred pine and solace.

"Oh," he said, the bond sure and steady between them, "They'll be all right."

And slowly—just for Harry—Draco smiled.