Chapter 4
Draco’s still grinning like an idiot hours later. He hums Space Oddity on the way to the showers, his pajamas and dressing gown slung over his shoulder and his head so high up in the clouds that he makes nothing of the way the shadows shift under his feet till someone clasps his shoulders from behind.
He jumps and spins. The pouch with his toiletries hits the floor with a dull thud and the garments slide down, getting underfoot as he assumes a dueling stance on reflex, wand in hand.
“Whoa!” cries Benjamin Sallow, staggering back with his hands in the air.
Draco’s heart races, though this is hardly unusual. Sallow often hunts after curfew, pouncing from dark corners along Draco’s beaten path. But thanks to the ever so slightly pathological vigilance Draco’s developed during the occupation of his home, Sallow has never managed to actually surprise him before. With his wand trained on Sallow’s shocked face, he realizes it’s been a good few weeks—perhaps an entire month?—since he last got down on his knees for him; and that he hasn’t missed it; and that he doesn’t feel like doing it again; now, or ever.
“Malfoy,” Sallow says, making a pathetic attempt at laughter. “Relax, won’t you? We’re all friends here.”
Which is when it occurs to Draco that Sallow is afraid. Because Draco has never once lifted a finger in self-defense, let alone his wand. The wand that had killed the Dark Lord.
“Get lost,” he says.
Sallow puts his hands down, although Draco shows no intention of doing the same. “Now, now, Malfoy,” he says, trying, and failing, to make it look like they’re having fun. Like it’s all just a game. “Let’s not do anything rash. A friend wouldn’t refuse to lend a helping hand, would he? Just like a friend wouldn’t report drug trafficking on the grounds.”
“And incriminate yourself in the process?” Draco scoffs. “Please.”
“So that’s how it is.” Sallow nods, then shakes his head, while his features tremble: the cheeks, the brows. The humiliation, mild as it may be from Draco’s overdeveloped point of view, is too much for him to handle. It’s when people like him—cowardly, weak, and above all, proud—are at their most unpredictable, their most dangerous. Draco would know.
Objectively, the best thing to do, in terms of his future safety, would be to lower his wand, pretend to laugh it off, and give Sallow what he wants. But the internal resistance is both novel and formidable, and there’s no time to interrogate it right now, to seek out its roots and decide if it’s a weed that needs yanking out or something he may wish to water and eventually, bring out into the sun.
He flicks his wand, and though he didn’t cast, Sallow yelps, turns, and runs.
“You look like you have questions,” he says after the spliff changes hands a few times and the silence stretches thin enough to see through. They’re back in his Forest hideout. It’s grown even more lush and jungle-like since last night, and they barely managed to free the wooden cups they’d left lying on the ground from the grasp of ambitious vines seeking to reclaim them.
“Yeah, I.” Potter clears his throat, thoughtfully knocking off the ash. He’s been quiet even by the high standards of their strange… companionship? Friendship? Courtship? “I’ve been wondering if there’s any truth to the things people are saying about you.”
“What are they saying?” Not that he can’t guess. You can’t realistically suck as much cock as he did without it becoming a gossip staple.
“That you’ve, er. Been with a lot of blokes.”
Draco lifts an eyebrow. “When you say, ‘been with’, you mean…?”
“Er. Dunno.” Potter’s blushing, quite deeply, and Draco could watch him stumble over this for days and not get bored. “Like, er. Dating? Snogging? Fucking?”
“No, no and no.” Draco laughs, genuinely amused. “I just suck cock, Potter. That’s it. No dating—Merlin, can you imagine? I don’t even talk to them. No snogging, and definitely no fucking.”
Potter’s eyes are very wide and very green. “Like… ever?”
“Which part?”
“The er. Last part.”
“No. You?”
Potter shrugs uneasily. “With Ginny.”
“Well, there you go, then. You win, again. Hooray!”
Potter snorts. “Hardly. I never sucked cock.”
Draco upends his cup of water, waiting for the last few drops to slide into his parched mouth, achingly aware of the weight of Potter’s gaze on the apple of his throat.
“So… why’d you do it?”
“Hm?”
“Is sucking cock that good, or what.”
“It’s pretty good. Can you refill this?”
Potter takes the cup from him. “But the rest—going out, and talking, and snogging—you’re not interested in that?”
“Not with random blokes, no.”
“But you might be interested if it were someone… Dunno. Special?”
Draco laughs. “You could say that.”
“Is there? Someone special?”
Draco lets his mirth fade and stays pointedly silent.
“Sorry.”
“What for?”
“Prying.”
“Nah, you’re good.”
“Yeah? I can… ask you stuff? About being gay and er. Sucking cock?”
“Sure.”
But instead, Potter falls silent. He fills Draco’s cup, and his own, and they sip till Draco concludes the conversation isn’t going to resume.
Then Potter says, “I guess I’d like to know what it’s like.”
“Being gay?”
“Sucking cock.”
Which sends a hot pulse through Draco’s cock. He’s hard. Very much so, and he didn’t even realize. He stares in Potter’s eyes brazenly a few moments, and Potter stares back. There’s definitely a challenge in there. And haven’t they been moving towards this for a while now? But it still feels like a huge bloody risk. His heartbeat thunders in his ears and throbs in his groin. “Would you like to try?”
Potter blinks. Once, twice. He’s breathless when he speaks. “What, like…?”
Draco spreads, showing off the straining bulge in his trousers. “I’m up for it, if you are.”
Potter’s gaze is so fucking thirsty, Draco thinks he might be able to come just from being ogled like that. But then the haze clears, and Potter looks him in the eye again, cool and lucid. “And how many of those random blokes have done that for you?”
“Oh, let me see.” He pretends to think about it. “None?”
“Huh?”
“The one and only person who ever sucked my cock was Pansy, when we were sixteen, and I can tell you that neither of us were thrilled with the experience.”
He doesn’t like to remember it. She was at once overeager and disgusted and though she tried to pretend she was having fun, he knew her far too well to buy it. And he was miserable through and through. His life was collapsing everywhere he turned and he didn’t want to die a complete virgin. He came so quickly and so abruptly there’d been no time to warn her and she choked and nearly vomited and spat it all out and kept coughing and spitting until finally, she laughed. And Draco, he laughed too, and only cried later, in Myrtle’s bathroom.
“I never let any of them touch me,” he goes on, when Potter says nothing. His face is heated, but he’s not sure why. The list of things he’s ashamed of is long and diverse, but sucking random cock is not on it. “I hardly ever touch myself. What?” A slight frown has pulled Potter’s brows together. “You think you’re the only one who’s messed up?” He scoffs. “Figures.”
Potter shakes his head impatiently. “But you’d let me touch you?”
Draco swallows. He walked right into that, didn’t he? “You’re not some random bloke, Potter.”
“Yeah. I bet you’d like to see me kneel.”
A snort of nervous laughter bubbles out of him. “I won’t deny that has a certain appeal.”
Potter’s frown deepens.
“Well.” Trembling, Draco flashes his best smile, and crosses his legs. He’ll cry later. Perhaps he’ll even go to Myrtle’s bathroom, to complete the circle. “Let us just forget I—”
“Alright.”
“Hm?”
“I’ll do it.” For a breathless, weightless moment, they’re frozen, mirroring each other’s terrified stares. “If, you’re, er. If you’re still up for it.”
“We’ll make do,” Draco mutters. His eyes are so dry they burn, but he’s afraid to blink. Is this real? Is he dreaming?
Potter takes a swig from his cup, swashes it around his mouth, swallows, and smacks his tongue. “My mouth might be too dry for it.”
“That’s going to be your excuse? Really?”
“I said I’d do it.”
And indeed, he swings his leg over the trunk and sinks down on the ground, but he takes his sweet time, as if he has to argue for every movement against a voice of reason ringing in his head. Draco can almost hear it. What are you doing? That’s Draco Malfoy. A spoiled little brat, a vengeful, vicious prick, and a marked Death Eater to boot! He stepped on your nose. He poisoned your best friend! And, seriously, Potter, you could do so much better. You could have anyone. Don’t you know that? Yes, he’s unbelievably good looking, and yes, perhaps there aren’t that many boys in the school who would prostrate themselves at your feet and let you do anything to them, anything you want. Potter, Harry, how can this be what you want?
But Draco knows, doesn’t he? How naive it is to assume that the one getting the blowjob is somehow more in control than the one giving it. It’s laughable. When you have a man’s cock in your mouth, you are in control: of his pleasure, of his pain, of whether he gets what he wants or remains woefully frustrated. You hold him by his balls, literally, and can divest him of all that makes him a man in a single decisive bite. And when he comes, it is he who loses control: momentarily, but completely. By giving in, he gives it up.
And while Potter walks on his knees to face Draco, and lays a hot, sweaty palm on Draco’s shin, coaxing him to spread again, there’s a voice of reason ringing in his own head, too. Can he trust Potter? Trust him enough to give it up, to give in? To be that vulnerable? His heart hammers so hard he can barely catch a breath. His hardon has flagged but it stirs with renewed vigor when Potter lifts his jumper and unbuckles his belt. Every touch sends a shiver up his spine. Their breathing sounds obscene in the silence of the woods.
Sensing hesitation, Draco takes Potter’s hand and guides it to the swell of his cock. Potter looks up, startled, but doesn’t pull away. He traces the curve of it, up to the tip pressing against the waistband of Draco’s pants, and down to where the seam of his trousers cuts between his balls, all tight and drawn up. Draco sighs. Potter squeezes harder, and Draco sighs louder. “Go on,” he whispers.
He holds his jumper and shirt and vest as Potter opens his trousers. He holds his breath, too. But then, out of nowhere, Potter grins.
“I love it,” he says, touching the tattoo. He glances up, and there’s an uncomplicated, boyish awe in his eyes that makes something in Draco’s stomach fall through. “Have I told you how much I love it?”
Draco smiles back. But he can’t keep it up: his cheeks are trembling. His neck, his back, his thighs. Can Potter feel it? The tattoo has given him an excuse to touch more freely, and now his entire hand warms Draco’s skin as his fingers weave through the sparse golden curls and finally close around the base of Draco’s cock. Potter pulls it out, tucking the waistband under Draco’s balls, and holds it loosely while he feeds his hungry eyes on it.
“So pale,” he mutters. “And pink.” He gently tugs the foreskin down. “You’re tight up here. Does it hurt?”
“No, but.” Draco gasps for air, then laughs a little. “That’s about as far as it’ll go.”
Potter licks his lips. He moves closer, then backs away. His grip tightens and, with a practiced pull, he milks a clear droplet from Draco’s slit. Then he leans in, and dips the tip of his tongue in it.
A shuddery breath huffs out of Draco’s parted lips. Potter spreads the slick over the crown with a soft, careful tongue, feeling along the taut folds of the foreskin until the head is entirely bare. “Alright?” he breathes.
“Yes,” Draco breathes back.
“I want it to be good. Tell me if—”
“It’s good. It’s—” Gods. His head rolls back when Potter takes him in. It’s so good he fears he might faint. Never mind the friction—Potter was right about his mouth being too dry. Never mind the scrape of the teeth, or the flinch when Draco’s cock hits the soft palate, robbing Potter of his air. Never mind the awkward angles of the head, the useless left hand hovering uncertainly over Draco’s thigh, neither here nor there, the thread of Draco’s jumper caught in the hinge of Potter’s glasses. It’s incredible. He’s been missing out, thanks to his stupid hangups. If Potter, who’s never done this before, can make him feel like this—
Which is when it hits him, and he looks down to make sure: that’s Potter there, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. Not Pansy. Not some random bloke. It’s Harry bloody Potter, doing what certainly appears to be his very best, to pleasure him. To please him. To give him the time of his life, just because he asked for it.
The sudden rush of emotion almost overwhelms him. He puts a hand on Potter’s cheek, pushing him away. “Slow down.” He laughs. “Slow down.”
Potter tries to lift his head, but his glasses snag on Draco’s jumper, and Draco pulls them off gently. How far can Potter see without them? Far enough to read everything from Draco’s face? His own expression is dazed. He strokes Draco slowly, and Merlin, Draco’s never been so hard. He could swear he’s an inch longer than the last time he looked.
“And?” he says. “What’s it like?”
Potter licks his lips. “I’ve been missing out.” He doesn’t wait to see Draco’s smile. He leans back in and takes the tip between his lips. Laves it and kisses it, rubs it over his mouth and chin, rough with stubble. When he takes it in again, he hollows his cheeks and sucks gently, then less so as he swallows the rest of Draco’s cock too.
“Less suction,” Draco whispers, hoping that his hand, tangled in Potter’s hair, will soften the words. “Just a bit,” he adds, when Potter, unsurprisingly, lets all the air back in. “That’s it. Fuck. Perfect.”
Which is when Potter moans, and something opens in Draco’s chest, like a bird unfurling its wings. Potter liked that.
“So good,” Draco says, to test it. But then it’s him, moaning, when Potter’s left hand descends between his own legs, to press, to rub, to soothe an ache. Gods.
Draco lifts Potter’s head with both hands on his burning cheeks. “Take it out,” he says.
It takes a moment for the words to translate. Potter blinks, casts about as if he’s forgotten where they are and what they’ve been doing, then looks down. And proceeds to do as Draco said. He undoes his belt and trousers and pushes all of it, together with his pants, halfway down his thighs. His cock pops out dramatically, hard and heavy and dark, from a full bush of dense, black hair. He palms it and gives it a firm tug. Then grabs Draco’s cock again, their fingers interlacing, and goes down on it like a starved beast.
“Fuck,” Draco croaks. Potter’s found a rhythm. An angle. Dropped the fear of gagging and choking somewhere along the way. His hand squeezes the base while he lets the tip dip into his throat, breathing in between the thrusts like a fucking pro, and all the while, he strokes himself, fast and tight. “Fuck, Potter. I’m close.”
But Potter doesn’t care to make it last. His head bobs up and down. Slurping, smacking, snorting noises race with Draco’s almost pained panting. Potter’s wanking hand is a blur. He groans through his nose, seizes, and shudders. Once, twice. But he doesn’t stop sucking, and Draco comes with an undignified grunt, making fists in Potter’s hair and kicking at some invisible foe with his convulsing legs.
Merlin and Morgana. Good gods on Olympus.
Potter makes a strange noise. Because he’s choking, and Draco’s holding his head down. Shocked, he lets go. “Sorry, I’m sorry.” He can’t catch his fucking breath. “You alright?”
Potter nods, but he’s obviously struggling. To… swallow… before he coughs. Some nameless emotion, everything all at once, grips Draco by the throat.
“Potter.”
Potter looks up, trying to project an image of composure, though his throat is working and his face is utterly wrecked. A bean-sized blob of semen rests between his chin and his trembling lower lip.
Mind wiped clean of thoughts and doubts, Draco surges forward, grabbing fistfuls of Potter’s cloak, robes, jumper and shirt, and pulls him up till they’re level. Then he scoops his seed from Potter’s skin with his tongue, and holds it out.
Dark with surrender, Potter’s eyes search Draco’s for a bewildered moment. They cross when he looks down at the offering. He takes it.
The taste’s no worse, and no better, than countless others Draco has sampled. But Potter’s kiss surprises him. He always imagined it would be forceful, spiteful, and somehow judgmental, like Potter himself. Instead, it’s slow, soft and sensual. Passive, even, but just as Draco begins to wonder if he’s taking more than was being offered, Potter’s hands rise to cup Draco’s face and his fingers slide possessively into Draco’s hair. When he releases the desperate clutch on Potter’s clothes and moves to embrace him, Potter moans and presses close, molding himself to Draco’s body, till it’s impossible to tell whose heart’s galloping faster.
They make their way back to the castle in silence, hugging their cloaks around them against the bitter wind and snow. Draco’s still high, though, and his head is buzzing.
What if? What if this, too, turns into a thing? What if they start snogging every time they meet? Would that constitute—dating? Merlin. What if they become—a couple? He laughs at the thought preemptively, before it takes root in his heart. It’s not going to happen. Potter was curious, that’s all. And even if he gets curious again, about other gay things, it’ll be when they’re high, not in… real life. He doesn’t want anything to do with Draco in real life. No one in their right mind does. It was just a hookup.
But what if? Would he still be so keen to leave if… if he had Potter… for a boyfriend?
“What?” Potter grumbles from under his hood. Apparently, Draco laughed at that one aloud.
“Nothing.”
“We’ve been walking for six bloody hours, I swear.”
Draco chuckles, and then Potter does too, and by the time they’ve reached the entrance, they’re laughing uncontrollably.
“Hush, you muppet! Or every single prefect is gonna hear us!” Potter tries to clap a hand over Draco’s mouth, but Draco tongues at the salty grooves between his fingers and then it’s Potter’s laughter echoing in the deserted hall. “Oh my god. We need to get out of here. This way, quick!”
“Is someone coming?”
“I don’t know!”
They sprint through the corridors, holding hands and laughing, and they’re thirteen again, twelve, eleven, and the castle is full of wonders, like life itself, stretching far and wide around them in every direction, and everything is possible. Up the stairs, down another, round sharp corners with their cloaks flapping like thestral wings, past gasping portraits and bedraggled suits of armor and right through Nearly Headless Nick, who gives an undignified yelp, but they’re already too far to hear the inevitable tirade.
“Sh-sh-sh!” Draco hisses, pulling Potter into a dark alcove. “Did you hear that?”
They freeze and listen, but there’s nothing. Then their eyes meet, and Draco remembers what happened in the Forest. His stomach flips. He leans down, and Potter props up on his tiptoes, and they kiss. Gently at first, just the brushing of dry lips, then fully, deeply. It’s like sinking underwater. The awareness of the world above recedes to a distant, blurry hum. Only the thrum of his pulse remains, the pull and push of the blood in his veins.
And that, your honor, is how they get caught.
A heavy hand yanks Draco out of Potter’s arms. Filch! And he’s not alone. Professor Stewart is there, the new Muggle Studies teacher, and Professor Guerrero, the new Defense teacher, and when Potter and Draco are made to turn out their pockets, the half a baggie of the Sicillian is found, and torn open, and sniffed, and identified, and Draco can just see all those possibilities and paths that were open a minute ago collapsing into a single, gloomy road lined with litter and barbed wire, leading back to Borgin and Burke’s, or worse, to Azkaban. The cold, hard end of his lovesick dreams.
But he truly isn’t the person he used to be, because that old, fifth-year Draco would go blind and deaf with panic; that Draco would probably do something terminally stupid, like try to run, which would be as bad as confessing, or try to pin this on Potter before Potter inevitably pins it on him, which would be worse.
Instead, he reaches within for what had kept him safe and (arguably) sane for the past two years. Occlumency.
He can feel it loosen the tension in his muscles even as he’s shoved against a wall; smoothen his features as a smeared lantern reeking of grease dangles in his face; slow his galloping heartbeat to a dignified canter as Filch’s hand, splayed spider-like over his chest, holds him in place. He calmly assesses the situation.
Across the way, Stewart and Guerrero have crowded Potter with lit wands and questions and threats. From disappointment to expulsion, criminal charges, involvement of the Muggle police, and he should consider carefully what that will mean for his widely known wish to become an Auror. Because the baggie was in his pocket, as were the papers, the tobacco, the entire kit, and where did he get it? Who did he buy it from? Potter isn’t saying anything, but he’ll have to, sooner or later, he will have to.
At the height of the shouting, Draco clenches his teeth and cracks his middle knuckle. It hurts. Unnatural warmth spreads through his hand, so strange and intense it makes him think he’s bleeding, but he can’t afford to look. Several floors above, all the goods in his stash—worth over two hundred galleons in gold—are incinerated. Several hundred miles away, in London, poor Leo is about to get a talking to from a howler. Draco can almost hear it amidst the din: a collection of Mr Borgin’s recorded rants, cut and stitched to say, “Get off your lazy bottom”—and in a slightly different pitch—“Lionel—and I better not find anything—untoward—when I go in there—did you hear me? Not tomorrow! Not later! Now!”
“From my Muggle cousin!” Potter cries at last.
There’s a stark silence. McGonagall has appeared as well, wearing a hair net and a dressing gown and carrying a lantern of her own. Mrs Norris sits at her feet, looking smug. Further down the corridor, another figure skulks in the restless shadows, eyes twinkling with malice. They catch Draco’s gaze, widen, and make themselves scarce.
It’s Sallow. Despite the Occlumency, something rises inside Draco, like water in a kettle coming to a boil. He’s astonished to recognize it as anger. It’s been so long since he felt it. Months, perhaps years of placid acceptance, of unchallenged belief that he’d deserved all the shit that happened to him. He welcomes the scorching heat. When he catches that fucking arsehole, he’ll nail his balls to the wall.
“He sends it by owl,” Potter goes on. He shakes off the hands tangled in his robes. “It’s medicinal, okay? I need it to cope with anxiety and depression. Ever heard of PTSD?”
Draco’s eyes snap back at him. What?
Meanwhile, heads turn to Stewart, who’s wearing a harassed frown. “It’s a term from Muggle psychology. Their teachings about the mind and soul,” he explains impatiently. “It means, post-traumatic stress disorder. A condition common in… veterans of war. And yes, cannabis may help relieve the symptoms. But it’s still illegal.”
“Here,” Potter cries. “It’s legal in the Netherlands! And in America!”
Heads turn to Stewart once more. He gives a grim nod.
“Be that as it may,” McGonagall says, “surely you do not expect—”
“You don’t know what it’s like! I can’t rest! I can’t sleep! I can’t even feel like normal people!” Which is where Potter’s eyes dart to Draco, communicating in that Legilimency-like way of the weed that he doesn’t really mean a single word of it, while telling the full and awful truth, at the same time. “These—memories—they circle me like hyenas! All the time! And when they get to me—all the worst things that happened to me—they happen to me again, and again, and again!”
The hallway echoes. Everyone’s staring at Potter, while he alone can see Draco, like that first night when they smoked at the Gatehouse and he cried. Which gives Draco an idea. Careful not to draw attention to himself, he slowly lifts his hand to his face, pointing a finger at the corner of his eye. Potter catches the motion, and the slight shift in his features tells Draco that he understood.
It’s a tall order, to cry on demand. Not even Draco, who’s no stranger to either crying or playacting, has ever been able to do it reliably. And yet, here’s Potter, the epitome of strength and stoicism and all things masculine, calling forth the army of his inner demons and making it look easy. “You don’t know what it’s like,” he says, voice breaking. When he blinks, the tears roll out dramatically, heavy enough to gather at the bottom of his trembling chin. He’s looking at McGonagall. “I remember the cries of my parents as they died. It was burned into me along with this!” And he lifts his messy fringe to display the lightning bolt scar.
“Oh, Harry,” McGonagall sighs.
“Thing is,” says Stewart, squaring his arms, “we got a tip that Mr Malfoy here has been selling—”
“Seriously?” Potter scoffs, while making an excellent production of wiping his face. “Malfoy, selling Muggle drugs? Whoever told you that hasn’t done their homework. Of all the things to try and pin on an ex Death Eater.” He laughs, a bit hysterically, and Draco’s stunned by how sincere it sounds.
“I’ll have his chamber searched,” grumbles Filch, tugging Draco roughly by the arm, and then by the collar of his cloak.
Potter looks at Draco askance, and he replies with a firm, long blink. It’s fine.
“Thank you, Mr Filch,” says McGonagall. “As for you, Mr Potter. Let us continue this conversation in my office. You must understand that I cannot allow—”
But Potter, the wonderful, inimitable fool, doesn’t let her finish the sentence. His ringing voice keeps Draco company all the way to the eighth-year dormitories, where the search turns up nothing at all, and later, to his dreams as well, where Potter climbs on top of the witness stand once more, in his torn jeans and his faded t-shirt and his ratty trainers, pointing at the shocked countenances filling the courtroom and shouting. You are to blame! Yes, you. And you, and you! All of you! Not we. We were children. And he was—he is!—one of us.