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Assistant: Title: Equally Cursed and Blessed
        Author: Moonflower_Rose Moonflower_Rose 
        Chapter: 1/1 
        Summary: Harry's back at Hogwarts to attempt his final year, again. This time he's sure there'll be no shenanigans. Well. Maybe there'll be a few.
        Contents: Summary:
            
              Harry's back at Hogwarts to attempt his final year, again. This time he's sure there'll be no shenanigans. Well. Maybe there'll be a few.
            
        

        
  Notes:

    
      For thecouchsofa.



    

    
      Absolutely honoured to write for you thecouchsofa, I'm such a fan of yours and the scream I scrumpt when I saw it was you! A very happy Erised to you, and to D and C who beta'd and S who is essentially my personal therapist now, and E who always has encouraging words for a panicking idiot. And enormous thanks to the hardworking and generous mods.
    

    (See the end of the work for more notes.)



  





    
        
          What people needed to remember, first and foremost, was that Harry had been through a lot in his short life. A lot.



It was a truth universally acknowledged, that a teenaged war hero in possession of a good bottle of Firewhisky must be in want of a party. So said Ginny Weasley, at any rate.Harry’d rarely been in possession of a good bottle of anything, so when Charlie Weasley had pressed the heavy glass shape of Ogden’s ‘Dragon’ Oak Distilled Special Edition (aged two hundred years) into his hands on his eighteenth birthday with a wink and a suggestion that he enjoy himself, Harry had felt nearly giddy with anticipation. Enjoy yourself, imagine that. Harry Potter, orphan. Harry Potter, left on a doorstep on the cusp of winter. Harry Potter, unwanted, unwelcome, and tucked unlovingly into a cupboard under the stairs. Harry Potter, who couldn’t stop being almost murdered for an unbroken seven year streak.Harry Potter, of the aforementioned trauma, had a tiny bit of practice with enjoyment. Just enough to know that he quite liked it and would appreciate some more, although unlike some a party wasn’t his preferred mode of delivery. Something quieter, smaller, that was more his speed. Sitting somewhere quiet and cosy, perhaps in a flash hotel—maybe on a significant anniversary, probably with Hermione and Ron, definitely with a nice little selection of posh cheeses with the sort of biscuits he’d only seen in passing on a platter when one of Vernon’s work clients was coming ‘round for a dinner party. He imagined time to savour it, sip it, appreciate the age and the base notes of brimstone and fig or whatever other bollocks was on the label, and most importantly toast to friends near and far. He hadn’t imagined being stinking drunk in the new eighth year common room on an insignificant Saturday in early October, smushed into an armchair with Ron (equally drunk), watching Gregory Goyle’s meaty right hand sn@tch up a licorice whip with the unlikely speed and dexterity of a Seeker.“Oi! I was going to eat that!”Ron sounded so p@ss@d. Like, emotionally as well as alcoholically. He also sounded just like he had as an eleven-year-old on summer hols, having one possession or another swiped by an older brother (or occasionally a younger sister), and that filled Harry with a warm feeling that he was pretty sure was nostalgia and not just mild indigestion brought on by an abundance of booze and crisps. Or mostly wasn’t booze and crisps. Some of it was definitely booze and crisps because he could taste both every time he quietly burped. Goyle, in a twist that surprised no one, was unsympathetic to Ron’s indignation. The tail of the last raspberry licorice strap hung smugly out of his fist like he was clutching a rat. “You snooze, you lose, Weasley.”Harry was definitely as drunk as he’d ever been, if the burps were to be trusted. Absolutely coat-hangered, entirely Trelawneyed. To be fair to him (and Harry thought it was very important to be fair, since he’d been through rather a lot) he’d had little prior opportunity (and even less inclination) to indulge in any quantity, so there was a wide gap between how drunk he was currently and the last most drunkest he’d been, which was probably not that drunk at all. Butterbeer wasn’t known for being especially potent unless you were an absolute lightweight (see: Terry Boot, Luna, Ron’s dad) or you cut it with something much stronger (like Ron was doing with a bit of dark rum). At any rate, Harry was making up for lost time today. Tonight. Or was it actually the early morning? Time was as slippery as a licorice strap in a giant, sweaty palm at the moment, but the point was, Harry was p@ss@d as a gnome.Ron turned to Harry. This was an unusually difficult task, jammed as they were into a wide armchair which nevertheless was absolutely not wide enough for two eighteen-year-old blokes. There were a lot of elbows being thrust into ribs, and quite a bit of grunting. The result was Ron’s face very close to Harry’s, breathing a sweetly-sour Butterbeer-and-rum exhalation directly into his face, and a general aroma of mild armpit. It was all wonderfully familiar and yet absolutely disgusting at the same time. Nobody should ever be this well acquainted with their best friend's armpit, or breath, and Harry reckoned at this point he could successfully pick Ron’s out of a line up.Ron, despite his pungent proximity, was rather blurry. Harry had to wonder whether that was the effect a Firewhisky and lemonade spritzer should normally have on his vision, or whether the sticky fingerprints that were ever present on his specs (to Hermione’s deep frustration) were responsible, or whether Ron was simply on the cusp of wobbling into a parallel universe.In any case, Ron looked forlorn. “Harry. I snost and I lost.”Harry wasn’t sure what Ron expected him to do about it, given Goyle had shoulders approximately eight feet wide and was apparently faster than Harry remembered, and the raspberry strap had already disappeared into his gob in several brutally efficient bites. There was no coming back from that, surely. And Ron himself was so tall that Harry could clearly see directly up his nostrils at any given time but especially now. What did he need Harry for? The last seven years of regular meals, sunshine and exercise (with the exception of that one bit where they were on the run) had helped Harry grow to a respectable and unexpected size, but he was no Ron, and definitely no Goyle. He wasn’t sure what he could offer. To leap on Goyle’s back like he was a troll in a girls’ toilet, then thrust his wand up his nose while Ron dropped a club on his head?God, Harry was drunk.He wasn’t even sure this was his own Ogden’s ‘Dragon’ Oak Distilled Special Edition (aged two hundred years) that had been blasphemously transformed into a spritzer with the addition of Tesco’s finest lemonade. The last time he’d seen his prized birthday bottle, Dean and Seamus had nicked off with it but Harry was reasonably sure the Patil’s were the ones actually in charge of the drinks. They were rumoured to be fond of a heavy pour, so this was really all their fault. They’d simply made the drinks too strong and now Harry was fused all up the right-hand side of himself with his gigantic, pongy mate.  The Patil’s were responsible for the party, although Harry did suspect Ginny had some hand in it. Wait, not a party, parties were naff and for Firsties or old farts, he’d been told that. This was a gathering, that’s how Padma had said it, with Parvati aiming her most serious eyebrows at Harry from over her sister’s shoulder. You must attend, Harry, and you must get on with the other students, yes, even the ones who tried to murder you a little bit last year Harry. We won’t tolerate a repeat of the Yule Ball in ‘94. You mustn’t sit in a corner and be a bore. You absolutely must find a decent top if you’re not going to ever sort out your hair. Harry. Harry. Harry.“Harry!”“I’m Harry,” Harry said, and a bit of spritzer dripped down his mug onto his jeans. “What?”“I really wanted that sweet,” Ron sulked, and Harry remembered he had a packet of something in his pocket.“Wait on.” Harry twisted his hips as best he could without pouring his mug all over his lap, and shoved one hand down between the armrest and his own @rs@, groping until his fingers closed around a scrunched and too-warm cellophane envelope of caramel something-or-others.“Here!” He thrust them at Ron proudly. Ron beamed. Something dark oozed ominously from the centre of one flattened caramel.“Harry, you’re a hero. You re-earn that Order of Merlin daily.” He ripped open the packet and plucked a lump of three caramels out, which had congealed into one vast misshapen caramel. Ron stuffed it unhesitatingly into his mouth and then made an interesting face. “Bit warm.”“Oi, gi’us some of those.” Goyle still had red gummed in his teeth from the last sweet he’d pilfered from Ron. Ron’s hands closed possessively over the packet with a loud crinkle.“Rack off, Goyle. Harry shared his b@m caramels with me and me alone!”“Listen to yourself,” Zabini sounded disgusted, like he couldn’t believe the state of them. He had an armchair all to himself and was sat on it like it was a throne. That’s how Zabini sat all the time, like he was the king, and Harry wanted to tell him he was the King of Posh Wankers but he was having a bit of trouble maintaining focus.“Go on Weasley, tell us more about Potter’s caramel @rs@.” That sounded like Smith, who was a knob, but the laughter that followed was unmistakably Malfoy and somehow that annoyed Harry more than Goyle’s bald-faced sweet theft, and Zabini’s disdain, and the Patil’s hectoring and irresponsible service of alcohol, and Zacharias Smith’s stupid prat face. Harry once again struggled to sit up properly, which was harder than ever now that Ron had subsided happily into the seat as if he’d forgotten he had bones. He was steadily peeling caramels from the plastic packet and stuffing them into his mouth, no longer even trying to keep to his half of the seat. Goyle and the raspberry licorice appeared forgotten.“I’ll show you whose @rs@ is caramel Smith, you little git—”“Harry. Sit.” Hermione's voice came from somewhere behind the smallest armchair in the whole of Hogwarts, and Harry sat immediately down again and knocked his cup of Firewhisky spritzer onto the rug and a bit onto his left foot.“F@ck.” He sighed. It was starting to tingle. He was fortunate it wasn’t straight Ogden’s ‘Dragon’ Oaked Special Edition (aged two hundred years) otherwise he’d be short an anklesworth of leg hair by now. He could hear Ginny’s laughter this time, the cow. He shouldn’t call his ex-girlfriend a cow, even in his own head. Hermione would be disappointed in him, even more disappointed than she would’ve been if Harry’d followed through on his threat and dropped trou to bare his allegedly caramel @rs@ to Zacharias Smith and anyone else in his immediate vicinity.“I didn’t quite catch that, Malfoy, what were you saying about my girlfriend?” Harry thought for a second that he might have misheard since he was busy patting himself down and trying to locate his wand to clear up this new mess, and there were teenaged bodies on absolutely every surface around him making all manner of noise. And there was music coming from somewhere too, and it sounded as if someone might have a horn (it was probably Seamus) and maybe even some firecrackers (probably also Seamus). Who had been in charge of keeping Seamus away from things that made noise and exploded, and also, who was responsible for this deficit of chairs? Not a Patil surely, as they would have been across this. Famously organised, those two. There was absolutely not enough seating and way too many low grade munitions. Or perhaps the chair issue had been by design? To encourage fraternisation, such as it were. Probably not part of the design to have Harry and Ron merging together like a packet of caramels melting under an @rs@cheek, but—oh, right, Ron. Ron was glaring at someone like he was about to get into a fight.Whoever’d let him get this p@ss@d had a lot to answer for.Harry looked around until he saw Malfoy, sat two Chesterfields over with Nev on one end, and Hannah and Smith inbetween. “He said Granger spoiled our fun,” Smith said gleefully, until Malfoy elbowed him in the ribs. “Ow, you prat!”“Kick him in the fork, Ron!” Seamus yelled from somewhere out of sight. The horn honked supportively. There was a worrying aroma of gunpowder and Sambuca amongst the fug of teen.“Why ‘fork’?” Nev asked. “Like, the instructions are clear, just wondering about the terminology.” Neville seemed to be struggling with his cup of Firewhisky too, which made Harry feel a bit better about how warm and sticky he was.“Got three tines, innit.” Ron said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.Harry thought about that, then frowned. “Don’t forks have four tines?”Ron once again twisted with difficulty to face Harry and made a scoffing sound. “I’ve spread a lot of rumours about Malfoy in my time but I don’t think anyone’s going to believe he has two d@cks, Harry.”There was laughter all around this time, and Ron puffed up a bit the way he sometimes would when he’d got a bit of positive attention, which was really unhelpful given their already tight situation in the armchair. His desire to kick Malfoy in the crotch seemed to have passed too, regardless of how many d@cks Malfoy allegedly possessed. Ron appeared content to flip Malfoy off, and they spent several minutes aggressively thrusting their middle fingers at each other while Harry concluded that his wand must have wobbled off into that aforementioned parallel universe, and that it didn’t matter anyway because he’d remembered that he was actually pretty good at wandless.His first Scourgify lifted about two centuries of grime and some of the pigment from the rug, as well as the more recent spill of booze. His second scoured a full hole in it, which was alarming because Harry had in fact been aiming that one at his sock.Ron’s elbow connected sharply with Harry’s belly. The finger war was getting out of hand.“Circe’s sake.” A dry voice came from Harry’s left, and abruptly the armchair widened and Ron’s wild elbow was at least a full Goyleswidth away from Harry, and even better his foot was dry and no longer gently steaming, and the hole in the carpet was closing up neatly before his eyes and was even regaining a little colour. “If I hadn’t literally seen you kill a dark wizard last year, I wouldn’t believe you capable of finding your own c@ck at a urinal, Potter.”“I know exactly where my c@ck is,” Harry said, and then registered that it was Pansy Parkinson looming over him and holding out his newly filled mug. He took it with probably a bit less suspicion than she deserved, given the past, but Padma’s voice was still trilling in his ears (even the ones who tried to murder you a little bit last year Harry!) and honestly he was pretty thirsty because it was cloyingly hot in the Common Room between all of last year's seventh years, and this year's seventh years, and someone's cousin who was visiting from Durmstrang, and so much Ron in the immediate vicinity. Pansy. Parkinson. Pansy Parkinson was looking down at him with folded arms and a raised eyebrow and a hint of a smirk. “I shan’t ask for proof of that lest I incur Grangers' wroth. Or Weasley’s.” Harry looked across at Ron, and Parkinson rolled her eyes. “Not him. Her.”“Ginny?” Harry took a large sip of his fresh drink and then coughed. “She wouldn’t care. She said I could show my c@ck to anyone I felt like, but she probably didn’t mean it like this.” That was paraphrasing it a bit, but it was the general vibe of it. He licked his lips again, perplexed. “Hey, this isn’t a Firewhisky spritzer.”“It’s Ribena,” Parkinson stepped over Harry’s legs and sat in the newly created space between him and Ron. “Just Ribena. As funny as it’s been watching you blunder around burning holes in yourself and school property, it’s probably in everyone’s best interests if you swap to something less potent than Ogdens and lemonade. Which is an abomination by the way.”Where had posh old Pansy Parkinson learned about Ribena? He squinted at her through the dirt on his glasses. She probably wasn’t trying to poison him in front of so many witnesses. You could never entirely rule it out though. “Some may appreciate the dishevelled look but it’s not my favourite version of you. Have you considered a hairbrush? Perhaps a polishing cloth for those specs?”“You have a favourite version of me?” He ignored the rest. “It isn’t a dead version, I hope. Because I’ve tried that, and it was alright but a bit boring if I’m honest, and I’m not planning on revisiting it soon.”“Dark, Potter. I like it.” She leaned a bit closer. She smelled unexpectedly like marshmallows and her lips were very shiny and pale, which seemed incongruous. Too soft. She should smell sharp, like pepper or seawater, with a blood-coloured mouth.“So, no more romance between you and Weasely?”Harry looked past her to Ron again and belatedly remembered Ginny. “Oh, yeah. Not for a while. Still friends and stuff though.”“Blaise will be thrilled to hear it,” Parkinson took Harry’s mug from his hands to have a sip. “He’s been carrying a bit of a torch.”“Mm, might’ve heard something about that,” Harry said, remembering a luggage rack and an invisibility cloak, and Zabini’s sneer, and Malfoy having his hair stroked and later stepping on Harry’s face. Zabini would have to form a queue if he was interested in Ginny. Every second wizard seemed to be interested in her and she was being pretty coy about where her own interests lay. “If you’re going to be drinking all my Ribena, it’s only fair if I can have some of your thing.”She had one of those shallow wine glasses that Lav had once told him was shaped like Marie Antoinette’s b@@b. He didn’t mention that to Parkinson. She raised that eyebrow again, razor thin and a bit intimidating, and pushed Harry’s mug back into his hands (which he managed to take mainly successfully with only a little spill on his jeans), then lifted her b@@b-glass towards him in offering. It was half full of a pale and fizzy liquid and smelled like fruit.For whatever fool reason, Harry chose to just lean forward and sip instead of taking the glass from her like she’d previously taken his mug. Like a normal person would do. They made sustained eye contact while Harry took his mouthful, and that was even weirder, and Harry felt a bit red and stupid. “Wow. Sweet.” He took a swallow of Ribena which was also very sweet and wasn’t much of a palate cleanser. “This is horrible, actually. How are you drinking it?”She shrugged, like that was to be expected at a school party. “It’s Lambrini. Not what I’d choose myself, but the twins pour and I take what I’m given.”“Well. I suppose you’re known for following instructions, historically.”“Now, now, Potter, we were getting along nicely.” She looked away, and ridiculously Harry felt slightly sorry for saying it, even though it was true and she’d been the one on the wrong side. A change of topic was in order.“How come you’ve got a proper glass and I’ve got tin with a massive dent in it?”Parkinson looked pointedly at the carpet, then Harry’s foot, then back to the tin mug, and Harry saw her point when she put it like that. “I suppose she won’t be getting jealous about how close we’re sitting, then?”“Who? Padma?”“Merlin, you’re thick. No wonder she chucked you.”Oh right, Ginny.“Nah, she’s sound. It’s been a few months.” Ginny hadn’t been that cut up about things, which was both a relief and slightly insulting. She could have mourned the end of their relationship a little bit more, but the other option was loads of tears and shouting and so Harry was pretty happy with how it’d all turned out in the end. Harry’s eyes pulled back towards Ron, and then past him. “I think you might be in a bit of trouble though.”Malfoy had a black look about him that might have seemed to the casual observer to be a garden variety glare aimed at Ron, but Harry had never been just a casual observer of Malfoy. He was pretty certain this glare was meant for him, largely because Malfoy’d really been enjoying flipping Ron off in increasingly elaborate and creative ways up til a few minutes ago, and now had grit teeth and clenched fists, and eyebrows pulled so closely together that they were merging in the centre. Parkinson looked over Ron’s shoulder and spotted him too, and let out a low chuckle. “Oh dear, I think you’re right.”No, Malfoy was definitely not having fun anymore. “I wouldn’t have thought Malfoy was the jealous type,” Harry said, the words trotting belligerently out of his mouth with absolutely no permission from his brain. He hadn’t known he was going to say that. He hadn’t known he even held that opinion.Parkinson seemed delighted and hooked her arm through his, awkwardness evidently forgotten, and this appeared to enrage Malfoy even further if the hectic pink rising on his cheeks was anything to go by. “How generous of you to think so, Potter, but have you ever known Draco to enjoy sharing his toys?”Harry snorted. “Yeah, okay. Maybe I meant he always seemed like he was too full of himself to be bothered by something like that. It’s not like you’re much of a public couple.” Why the hell did he keep speaking?“I take back what I said, drunk and dishevelled is my favourite version of you. You say the most fascinating things.” She took a sip and left a smear of pink gloss on the lip of her glass. “Draco and I aren’t a couple, to be clear. I prefer my men more on the meatier side, and Draco prefers…” Parkinson trailed off with a smirk. Harry didn't like that her gaze was turning plainly to Nev, and it seemed like Hannah wasn't that keen on it either judging by how quickly she picked up his hand.“You've upset nearly everyone on that couch,” Harry said, clocking alarm in Neville’s eyes now that he’d realised he was the object of Pansy’s gaze. “Nearly? That won’t do. I’m nothing if not thorough.” Pansy raised her voice. “—oi, Smith!”Zacharias Smith looked up. She grinned at him.“Your mum.”“My mum!”Smith was rapidly turning purple with rage and Harry had to put his Ribena down before he spilled it everywhere again. He was wheezing. At Pansy Parkinson. And for once none of his friends had been her targets, apparent l@st for Nev notwithstanding.They were attracting a bit of attention by now, understandably. It wasn’t like Parkinson calling for Harry to be seized and delivered to the enemy who wanted to murder him had been done quietly. He was pretty sure everyone was aware of it. The odds that she and Harry would be in any type of cahoot or caper together now or ever was so improbable that no one in their right mind would bet on it. Even Ron was turned to look at them, perplexed, the picture of concerned confusion, visibly tracking their proximity and their linked arms and Pansy’s obnoxiously smug expression. His eyebrows were climbing right off his forehead.“For the record, you’re not my type either, Potter. No offence.”“None taken,” Harry said honestly. If anything that was a welcome relief.Pansy squeezed his bicep in her deceptively iron grip. “You’ve filled out nicely, don’t get me wrong, but I do like my men to be on the larger side. You know, so I know they can really hold me down by the scruff of my neck and pull my hair, and tell me I’ve been ever so naughty.”“Well,” Harry said, and then he didn’t know how to finish the thought, so he just took another mouthful of his drink and hoped she wouldn’t say anything else on the topic.If Ron looked baffled before, it was nothing compared to his face when Malfoy appeared in front of their embiggened armchair for three, with an expression like thunder and all but steaming from the ears.“Pansy. A word?”Harry looked from Malfoy to Parkinson and back again. This party was outstanding. Ten points to the Patils.Parkinson fluttered her lashes and put her hand on her chest. “And but one word with one of us? Couple it with something—make it a word and a...blow.”“Pans!”“Yes, alright darling, keep your hair on. It’s only Shakespeare.” Her smirk was enormous, and now Ron’s mouth was hanging open. She unhooked herself from Harry’s elbow and stood up gracefully. “Until next time, Harry.” And then she flounced away with Malfoy following red and seething behind her.“Don’t ask me,” Harry said before Ron could give voice to the question that was clearly on his lips. “That was weird though, mate.” Ron shook his head slowly, tracking Malfoy and Parkinson across the room and out the portrait hole. “Here’s to weird!” Harry toasted, and then spilled the last of the Ribena right down the front of himself. “Ah, not again.”“I think it’s time to put you to bed, before Hermione realises how p@ss@d you are and gives you a lecture.”“Okay,” Harry said sheepishly, and allowed Ron to haul him up from the armchair.The route from eighth year improvised common room to eighth year improvised mini-dorm was not complicated. Or, should not have been, but somehow was. Ron couldn’t stop giggling, because it turned out that he was still quite p@ss@d as well, and Harry was trying his very hardest to walk upright and in a straight line, but he couldn’t stop tripping over the untied laces of his trainers, and the too long hem of his jeans which Hermione’d promised to help him take up, and the carpet runner that always had that one spot with a ripple that refused to be flattened, and finally the foot of a suit of armour that Harry was pretty sure stuck its leg out on purpose just to be a sh@t.“Right. You need to Conjure yourself a glass of water and clean that pink stuff off your good jeans before it stains.”Another cleaning charm was probably a bad idea if he wanted to keep his jeans and also his legs. Harry’s magic was still a bit much sometimes, post-Horcrux and peri-Master of Death, and being spanking drunk didn’t help with his control.“I don’t think I should risk it. I Scourgified like three-hundred years off the rug before. This time  I’ll probably flood the whole wing, or Vanish my c@ck and one of my b@lls. You’ll have to do it. For the sake of my c@ck and one of my b@lls, Ron.” Ron made a complaining noise. “I gave you my b@m caramels! And my life that one time!”“Ugh, alright.” Ron fumbled his wand out of the loop in his belt and pointed it in Harry’s direction, squinting. “Stay still.”“I am still,” Harry said, swaying.“Are not,” said Ron, then he burped possibly the loudest and longest burp Harry’d ever heard, and smacked his lips. “When did I have a pork pie?”“I love you mate,” Harry said happily. “Take your bleeding trousers off Harry, it’s nearly two in the morning. I can’t do this while you’re wafting all over the place like the Bl@@dy Baron!”Harry was extra focused on not accidentally dragging his pants down with his jeans, and forgot about removing his belt first, which made the whole endeavour harder than it needed to be, and a little too late he remembered he should probably also have taken off his trainers. Naturally the jeans got stuck around his ankles but by then he’d tugged them down so far that they were properly caught on the heels of his shoes (not to mention the belt), and he couldn’t pull them back up again either to sort any of it out. “Stop laughing at me, you git,” Harry said, laughing breathlessly. Ron took hold of one foot and tried to pull the trainer off with brute force, and Harry windmilled wildly in an effort to remain upstanding while his centre of gravity was yanked to and fro. Luck was not on his side this time, which was sort of a subtitle to his life: Harry Potter, equally cursed and blessed. Instead of finding any of his allegedly famous balance that had made him infamous as a Seeker, Harry staggered backwards completely unsteadily and toppled against the bed immediately beside his own.The thing about eighth year was, it hadn’t ever been done before. It hadn’t ever been needed before in the long history of Hogwarts (and Hermione had checked), so everything was a bit cobbled together, a bit slapdash. Their common room was an old sitting room used for adjunct professors which hadn’t been in service for so long that everyone had forgotten it existed, and their so-called dorms were actually shared triple bedrooms which had been extended by magic using various cupboards and alcoves and sundry recesses in the surrounding area. Harry hadn’t expected to be living in a cupboard again so soon (or ever), but as cupboards went, it was pretty spacious. Fit three beds abreast with good natural light and each had an ensuite shower room with quite decent water pressure. Most importantly wasn't too far from the Great Hall for meals, which was crucial for Ron who had an Undetectable Extension Charm on his appetite and a l@st for eating that was rivalled only by his love for the Chudley Cannons. The main issue with this specific bedroom was that it contained Malfoy (and Ernie Macmillan, not that he was an issue except in the sense that he wasn’t Ron and was therefore inferior), and worse than that, all sorts of Malfoy’s sw@nk possessions. And Harry had just fallen over into a pile of them.“F@ck. F@ck!” Harry yelped as he went down, grabbing hold of the bedside table which didn’t even slightly break his fall. He’d only meant to cast a little wandless Arresto Momentum to save his backside from getting battered on the flagstones, but his magic was still a bit much. Instead he ricocheted shoulder-first into Malfoy’s great big trunk like he’d been shot from a cannon, kicked the bedside table entirely over and spilled its contents far and wide, and somehow triggered what appeared to be a secret compartment full of p@rn@ mags to eject themselves from the trunk all over the floor like a bl@@dy volcano of paper and d@cks.Harry groaned. “I think I’ve dislocated my elbow.” “Oh my god Harry, you genius. You beautiful caramel-@rs@d genius.”Ron dropped to his knees, not, as Harry initially assumed, to help his best and oldest friend who had recently saved the world to his feet, but to pick up a fistful of magazines and hoot with glee like an absolute lunatic. He tossed one at Harry who caught it, still a bit dazed (@rs@ and elbow smarting) and stared unblinkingly down unsure of what he was looking at for a long moment. A very greasy looking young man was on the cover. Not greasy like Snape, or Marietta Edgecombe after the infamous pimple hex incident. Greasy like…oiled. Shiny. Naked. Really naked.“Is this—is this—”“Skin mags Harry,” Ron said. “Really gay ones!”Like many things, p@rn@ mags were artefacts which Harry had heard of, had seen in passing from time to time, had understood the context of from things other people had told him in the course of conversation and which he’d never, ever actually seen up close in real life. It was one thing to spot the plastic-wrapped head of an unnaturally blonde and spray tanned model peeping over the edge of a magazine stand at the paper shop while Aunt Petunia dragged him along with an iron grip to pick up The Surrey Advertiser and this month’s Family Circle. Dudley allegedly had a load of them stashed under his bed the summer before fifth, according to the bragging around the swings at the play park. Seamus had always claimed to have a bundle under his but he’d never actually got them out or anything. All of those had been full of girls, though, apparently. Ladies. Women. T@ts.It was another thing entirely to hold one in his hands. One that had a purposeful undersupply of t@ts.“Merlin’s bits, there’s a hundred of them.” Ron was rummaging around in the pile rapidly, squawking delightedly when he found one that particularly tickled him. He was shoving handfuls of them at Harry without really looking at him, and Harry just sat there like he’d been hit very hard in the head while magazines slithered off each other and piled up on the floor around Harry’s feet.“Ooh, look at this one—” Ron held one up that had a semi-gloss cover. “This one’s expensive!”“How do you know,” Harry asked faintly.“Black and white, s’more classy, innit. Plus the price is still on the back and it’s five whole galleons! You could pay Seamus five galleons and he’d show you his c@ck in person for as long as you’d like!”“He would?” Harry was honestly a bit light-headed. His ears were ringing, actually.“Yeah, ‘course. He’s a proper exhibitionist, everyone knows that.”Harry’s eyes were glued to the expensive one. The paper stock did feel thick and extravagant but the spine was creased like it had been opened many times. A favourite. The fellow on the front of this one was very handsome, dark curls falling into light eyes, and definitely not as shiny all over as the other ones. Lightly muscled where the first one and most of the rest scattered around them were bulging and veiny. Handsome. The word echoed around his head which was empty of other coherent thoughts. Attractive. Masculine.“There’s not even one girlie mag here. Malfoy must be super into blokes. Like, exclusively.”
  Oh.
Harry’s throat went dry but his mouth went wet.“Malfoy—gay. Do you think?”Ron shrugged one shoulder absently, more focused on flipping through a handful of skinny books with plain covers. “It’s not like you can tell by looking at a bloke, but, I mean—” Ron gestured around them, “I don’t think all this makes a good case for him liking birds.”“Don’t let ‘Mione catch you saying ‘birds’,” Harry said automatically, but honestly Hermione could come in right now and shear every hair on her head with a giant razor while singing Stubby Boardman’s greatest hits, and it would probably barely draw Harry’s attention. He was having too many thoughts at once, and none of them were very useful. It was all a jumble up there. He really wished he wasn’t so p@ss@d for this. He’d opened the magazine. He was looking at the pictures. He couldn’t look away from them. It was a wizarding mag and the models in the photographs were moving, quite slowly. Sensuously biting their lips. Flexing their pectorals. Bending…lots of bending. A light breeze ruffled through tousled hair and more than one of them winked at him.“Listen to this.” Ron cleared his throat, holding one of the books up. “‘Brock arched his back into the other man’s thrusting pelvis, and moaned ‘Oh yes, Lorenzo, f@ck me harder!’’” Ron waved the book at Harry gleefully. “This is p@rn@ too!”Harry was having an out of body experience. “Merlin’s taint. I’ve never seen so many dicks in my life. And that’s really saying something, Harry, I’ve got five brothers and go to boarding school.”“Malfoy. Gay.”“What’s the matter with you, are your ears painted on or what?” Ron snorted. “There’s more sausage here than a butchers. He’s gay as. Looks like he has a type too, loads of Quidditch stuff and I’m getting the sense he’s fond of a brunet.” Ron looked up and waggled a centrefold at him, with a long, lean and tanned man stretched out on what looked like a training room bench with nothing but wrist guards on and a quaffle in front of his bits.Harry squeaked, and Ron squinted at him momentarily before his eyes widened. “Harry. Are you—”“No,” Harry said quickly, but he was. He absolutely was. His jeans were halfway down his thighs and he absolutely, positively, unmistakably was.There was a noise down the corridor, and Ron’s eyes snapped to the open door. “Sh@t. That might be him. He’s going to murder us, we’ve got to clean this up!” Harry just looked at him while Ron whirled around picking up mag after mag, stacking them quickly together in no sort of order, and shoving them back into the trunk. He’d slammed the hidden panel closed before Harry realised he was still holding the fancy magazine with the winking, flexing men.“Ron!”Ron spotted the magazine in his hands. “You f@ck@ng kn@bh@@d! Chuck it under your bed or something, quickly!”F@ck. F@ck.The magazine left Harry’s hands like a frisbee, spinning on a low trajectory through the space between Malfoy’s bed and his own, landing with a muffled slap against the flagstones in the darkness under his bed with only seconds to spare before both Malfoy and Ernie came into the room.Harry froze. Ron froze. Both Harry’s dormmates pulled up short in the doorway.“What the f@ck?” Malfoy’s voice sounded strangled, and Ernie had his mouth open, and Harry belatedly remembered that he had his jeans around his ankles and Ron was kneeling in front of him, and Malfoy’s whole bedside table was on the floor beside them, and Harry might still have three-quarters of a hard on.“This isn’t what it looks like,” Ron said, raising his hands, and Ernie made a very disbelieving sound and hurried to his own corner of the bedroom where he promptly shut the curtains around his bed.“If you idiots,” Malfoy was brick red now, “want to play with each other’s wands so badly, I suggest you lock the f@ck@ng door at a minimum, and better yet f@ck off somewhere else to do it.”Malfoy pulled out his wand and waved it savagely at the minor carnage around Harry, and sundry personal items whisked around briskly until the bedside table was put to rights again. Malfoy Summoned one final item to him, a little jar slapping into the palm of his hand.“And use your own lube while you’re at it.”“I wasn’t—”“Shut up,” Malfoy said, and stomped off to the ensuite, slamming the door behind him.Ron was the first of them to speak again, his shoulders shaking with quiet laughter. “This isn’t going to help with those rumours.”“This isn’t funny!” God, Hermione would kill them both, she really hated those rumours.“This is hilarious,” Ron said, and he pulled Harry’s trainers off so he could finish what they’d started before unleashing p@rn@ armageddon, and then Ron Scourgified all of the Ribena stains off the jeans while Harry sat in his pants on the cold stone floor like a stunned Grindylow, wishing he’d drunk a lot less tonight.“Thank you. My magic’s still a bit…”“Yeah, I know.” Ron smiled down at him, full of inebriated affection. “You’ve been through a lot.”“I have,” Harry agreed, because he had, he really had. It wasn’t his fault he was a bit sloppy when he drank and had no tolerance for booze, and couldn’t find the magical middle ground between a mild Cleaning Charm and killing an evil overlord. He was a bit scrambled up, still. His spellcraft and his social awkwardness and his feelings. His feelings. His feelings. His—“Go to bed, mate. It’s way too late for a breakdown. That’s a Sunday afternoon job.” Ron was up and pulling Harry’s bed curtains back, turning down his linens, Conjuring a large tankard then filling it with water from the end of his wand. He shoved Harry’s shoes under his bed and tossed his now marginally cleaner jeans onto the trunk at the end of the bed, the twin to Malfoy’s, Malfoy who had a secret compartment full of p@rn@, Malfoy who’d seen at least the border and outline of Harry’s definitely not entirely flaccid p@n@s five minutes ago. Malfoy who’s p@rn@ mag was lurking under Harry’s bed, with his shoes and his Potions homework and other sundry items, and possibly his wand.“Come on, you lump.” Ron grabbed Harry’s hand and hauled him to his feet, prodding him towards his bed. “Sleep now, water later, eggs in the morning, existential crisis after lunch. Take your glasses off.” Harry did as he was told and Ron folded them neatly and placed them on Harry’s bedside table. “Good work. Sleep tight, spew if you need to but try to wake up for that first. Love you.”“Night. Love you,” Harry replied distractedly, his mind still a roiling mess of Malfoy and gay and p@rn@. Ron saluted sloppily as he closed the door after himself. Harry heard him trip in the corridor over either the lumpy carpet or the malicious armour, swearing enthusiastically. Across the bedroom there was a dim yellow light under the ensuite door but Harry couldn’t hear a peep from Malfoy, even though his ears were straining for it. No sound of the shower or anything else. The p@rn@ was still under his bed, there was an actual p@rn@ under his bed, but Harry didn’t dare retrieve it in case Malfoy came out and caught him in the act. God, Malfoy. Gay.Harry should’ve closed his curtains, but his head was so heavy, and he really was very tired and stupidly p@ss@d, and things were swirling a little now he was laying down. Gold stars on faded brown velvet, spiralling slowly. He’d do it in a minute. Sit up and take his tshirt off and get under the sheets properly, and close the curtains. He didn’t need his disobedient magic to do any of that. He was just going to rest his eyes for a moment, though, to keep the room from turning so much, and then he’d get right on it.



Harry wasn’t much of a morning person on a good day, but waking courtesy of a sudden, sharp slap on his partially bare @rs@ from Ron was not in his top three ideal ways to wake up after a massive night on the p@ss.Needless to say, giant hand connecting with backside had Harry jerking up with a yelp then a groan. Oh, he felt rotten. Evidently he’d ended up sleeping on his belly which he never enjoyed, because he inevitably woke with an ache in his lower back and deep creases from the pillow in his cheeks and a load of drool on himself. But in the grand scheme of things it was probably a stroke of his signature luck that he hadn’t slept on his back. He hadn’t even managed to close his curtains around himself or pull up the sheets, and he was wearing a pair of his least favourite undies. If he’d stayed on his back, Malfoy would have got an eyeful. Malfoy had seen enough of Harry’s bits the night before, thanks ever so. Harry’s pubes tended to poke out of the fabric like the springs of a busted old mattress, and he was prone to sleeping legs akimbo which couldn’t improve the view overmuch. It seemed very important that Malfoy did not catch him in such a state, now or ever.“Up and at ‘em.” The sting of Ron’s smack was still hot on his @rs@, and Harry’s head was sore and his body ached. He felt like he hadn’t tasted water in a hundred years. His eyes felt like they’d dried out like little green currants and his brain was thumping unpleasantly along with the noisy beat of his pulse. Drinking was horrible and he was never going to do it again.“Why are you in such good shape, @rs@hole?” Harry’s voice was as withered as his eyeballs. To add insult to injury Harry’s mouth tasted like cack and his breath was absolutely horrible. Last night’s tshirt was sweaty and rank and rucked up under his armpits. “I thought we were keeping pace.”Ron dropped onto the end of the bed, barely missing Harry’s legs. He looked smug and well hydrated, the git.“More muscles to metabolise with, my dear.” Ron tutted and reached for the untouched tankard of last night's water, which Harry snatched immediately when offered, and chugged down faster than was probably sensible. “Plus I’ve been up for ages and had my breakfast and a shower like a civilised bloke. Which is what you need to be getting on with. You’ll feel better for it, trust me.”“What’s the time?” Harry couldn’t be bothered looking for his wand. He didn’t even know where it was last night, let alone now. It always seemed to show up eventually.“Nearly eleven. Please have a wash, for all our sake’s, and we can go down to the Great Hall for an early lunch.”Ron had to practically drag him. Dragged out of bed, pushed into the ensuite, thankfully left alone to p@ss and shower in peace (although he had to hang on to the shower curtain a bit while he soaped the sweat and dried drool and lingering smell of booze off himself). Prodded again to get dressed, as if he was little Teddy chucking one of his trademark tantrums about wearing his shoes on the correct feet and his trousers the right way ‘round (or at all). And finally, quite literally pulled along the corridor until his shoulder felt like it was one tug short of total dislocation, and Harry was finally bashing his shins on the wood of a bench seat in a nearly empty Hall.“Why do you look so pleased with yourself?” Harry scowled at him and rubbed his bruised knees, and Ron kept looking smug while he assembled a plate of bits and pieces from the lunchtime platters which began to materialise on the table around them. A glass of pumpkin juice was put in front of him, then a cup of strong tea, a very substantial sandwich that took up most of the plate and which was packed to the crusts with ham and pickle and some strong and bitey cheese, with a sliced egg on the side, and a single plump apricot. Ron sat beside him and kept looking at his watch.“Eat, you look half dead,” Ron said, clearly evading the question. Harry was hungover but he wasn’t an idiot. “What are you up to?” Harry asked, but he also took a massive bite of the sandwich because he was also a hungry non-idiot. A bit of bread and cheese would go a long way to soaking up some of the alcohol still roaming around his system. Someone had told him that, although if memory served you were supposed to eat all the bread and cheese before drinking the copious volume of fancy Firewhisky and supermarket branded soft drink.“Waiting for ‘Mione, she said she’d meet us here by twelve.”That sounded truthful but also not the whole story, but Harry was honestly feeling better with every bite so he decided that Ron couldn’t be plotting anything too awful if Hermione was involved. He concentrated his focus on mowing through his lunch. The pumpkin juice was just the right balance of cold and sweet, the eggs were perfectly boiled and seasoned, and by the time he got to his tea it was the ideal temperature to swallow in large, grateful gulps that didn’t scald his throat. When Hermione arrived on the opposite side of the table with a cotton tote stuffed with scrolls and at least six quills based on the feathery tips poking out among them, Harry was just getting started on the apricot and Ron was watching the hands on his watch so intently that he almost missed her kiss of greeting until she was plastering it to the side of his forehead. “You were very specific about the time, Ron, what’s going on? Harry, you look…” She ran a critical eye over him, and seemed to decide that she didn’t need to finish that sentence. Ron held up one finger, eyes on the time. “About thirty seconds and all will be revealed.”She raised an eyebrow at Harry. “Do you know what this is about?”“Not a clue. I assumed you were in on whatever this is.”She shook her head, bemused, settled opposite to pour a mug of coffee and assemble a plate of biscuits. Harry carried on with his apricot and Ron counted down the final seconds, then abruptly slammed his hand flat on the table causing Harry’s plate and assorted drinking vessels to jump.“It’s officially the afternoon.” Ron leaned forward with glee, and Harry and Hermione leaned in too. Old habits died hard, apparently. “Harry, what did I tell you last night?”This was not what Harry was expecting, and Hermione seemed equally perplexed. “Last night. What? Something about those @rs@ caramels?”“No, what did I tell you in your room?”Harry was too hungover for this. “Clean the Ribena off my good jeans before it stains.”“Later than that, right before I left!”Harry threw up his hands. “I dunno! ‘Good night and love you’? You always say that. Did I not say it back or something? I thought I had. I love you! Alright? I’m in no fit state for riddles, Hermione, tell him.” Harry was aware he sounded whiny but honestly. Honestly. He’d been through a lot. He shouldn’t have to keep reminding people.“Ron, why are you torturing Harry, who incidentally only has himself to blame for his current state of ill-health?”Harry made a face at her and she made one back, and Ron just sat there looking smug as.“I said: ‘Sleep now, water later, eggs in the morning, existential crisis after lunch.’ Well. It’s after lunch and you’ve done all the other things on the checklist, so…”Hermione looked between them. “What’s Harry having an existential crisis about? Harry, why didn’t you tell me you were having an existential crisis?”Oh. No. No no no no no.Ron couldn't have looked more gleeful if he’d simultaneously won the Triwizard and the House Cup and Witch Weekly’s Bachelor of the Year. “This one’s brand new, literally hours old. You’re going to spew when you hear it ‘Mione—”The apricot was trying to go down the wrong pipe and Harry coughed into his hand and said ho@rs@ly, “Ron,” in a desperate sort of warning.“Last night we found out that Malfoy is super gay—”“Ron—”“—and has loads of gay p@rn@, which is how we found out the gay thing—”“Ron!”“—and Harry went and got a prong on about it!”Harry was actually about to die of asphyxiation via apricot, after all he’d been through. Here lies Harry James Potter, Order of Merlin (First Class), beloved son, occasional saviour, choked on an apricot while his best friend told his other best friend about his b@n@r. Rest in peace.“For god's sake Ron, smack him between the shoulders please before he suffocates.” She leaned across the table and right into Harry’s face, saying sternly, “Cough, Harry. Cough!”Harry did as he was told, and between that and Ron’s giant palm colliding with his spine for the second time in an hour, he managed to regain control of his respiration.“Are you alright?”Harry nodded, his eyes streaming. She topped up his pumpkin juice and Harry took a long pull.“Ron, do you think it was very kind of you to share Harry’s issues without checking that he was okay about it?”“Erm.” Some of the glee was fading from Ron’s face. “Erm.”Hermione’s expression could have peeled paint but she made a visible effort to fix her face, and then smiled encouragingly at Harry. “So. Do you think this was a random erection or was it definitely stimulated by the information about Malfoy and all of the p@rn@gr@phy?”“Hermione!” It wasn’t like the Great Hall was packed or anything given it was a Sunday following a raging party and most of the senior school were probably still sleeping it off or quietly throwing up and wishing for death, but Hermione loudly saying ‘erection’ and ‘p@rn@gr@phy’ and ‘Malfoy’ was going to attract attention. “Could you keep it down?”“Yes, sorry.” She patted him on the hand. “So, the…prong?”Harry let his head drop to the table, and then thunked it against the surface several times.“I wish you wouldn't call it that.” Was it any better than ‘erection’ though? Probably not.“Huge one,” Ron said, clapping Harry on the shoulder encouragingly. “That’s nice, isn’t it mate? Nothing to be ashamed of there!”“Hermione.”“Ron, you’re going to need surgical intervention to get your foot out of your mouth at this rate.”“I’m just saying!”“Try saying less.” Another pat. “Go on Harry.”He sighed heavily. In the nest of his own arms, his breath was a suffocating mixture of boiled egg and pickle relish and darjeeling. He wasn’t ready to show his face yet so he’d just have to endure it.“It’s not like I haven’t had thoughts before. That’s always sort of been in the background.”He could almost hear Hermione’s face struggling to remain placid as she processed this new nugget of information.“When you say thoughts, do you mean about boys in general? Or Malfoy specifically?”This was humiliating. Humiliating. After all he’d been through!“In general.” Harry paused, and then sighed another eggy-pickle-tea sigh. “And also specifically.”“Merlin’s saggy—”“Ron, I will hex your mouth closed if you don’t—”“It’s fine.” Harry lifted his head for a bit of fresh air. His cheeks were burning and he couldn’t look either of them in the eyes properly. “It’s about time I said something, I just didn’t want you to think that things between Ginny and me didn’t work out because of…because I’m…”She reached across and took his hand, and her smile was encouraging. “Above anything else, you’re Harry. Just Harry. Our Harry. And we love you just as you are, don’t we Ron?”Ron nodded vigorously. “Of course we do. None of that stuff makes any difference, I wouldn’t care if you were exclusively into centaurs!” Ron blinked, seemingly considering his own words. “It’d be weird if you were, though. Maybe don’t tell me the details if it’s something kinky like that.”Hermione sighed and rubbed her eyes. “Oh, Ron.” “What I mean is, we went through all this with Charlie years ago, so it’s no big deal. Actually, I don’t think it’s that Charlie likes blokes as such. He's like…” Ron snapped his fingers. “Androgynous.”“As@xual,” Hermione corrected, “And Harry you don’t need to rush to put yourself into any categories.” “You might be bi!”“Ron, I’m warning you—”“It’s alright. I think, yeah. I might be bi. Not into centaurs.” He groaned slightly. “And yes, I find Malfoy a little bit…” He couldn’t finish that sentence, but Ron apparently had no problem doing so.“Hot. You’ve got the horn for him.”Prongs. Horns. The stag symbolism wasn’t lost on him. Harry’s next groan was muffled, as his head had made contact with the tabletop again, and he knocked his forehead gently once or twice against it in the hope that some common sense would be restored. “Stop that.” Hermione pushed a small Cushioning charm between Harry’s face and the table. “You’re overreacting. Everyone has an unwanted crush from time to time, you don’t need to read too much into it.”Ron smothered a cough that sounded suspiciously like ‘Gilderoy Lockhart’ and Harry snorted.“Have some pumpkin juice for that cough, Ronald.” Hermione pushed the jug and a cup across the table at him with pursed lips. “And I won’t mention Fleur. Or Viktor. Or the new Cannon’s Chaser.”Ron obediently drank. Harry sat up properly and fidgeted with his plate.“When you think about it, it actually makes a lot of sense.”Hermione looked at Ron doubtfully. “How so?”“Well, he’s always had a thing for Seekers, right? Cho, then Cedric, then Cho again, then Gin. Malfoy’s just rounding out the full set, one from every House!”“Cedric,” Harry repeated. Had Ron said ‘Cedric’?Ron gave him a look. “Are you saying you didn’t fancy Diggory?”Harry opened his mouth, then shut it. “I guess you have a type, Harry.” Hermione smothered a smile behind her cup.  “And they’ve progressively got meaner, have you noticed? Like, Gin didn’t take any sh@t whatsoever from him, so Malfoy is like the next step up from that.”“Malfoy hates me,” Harry said, still trying to process the savagely accurate analysis Ron was casually sharing. Was he really this oblivious about his own feelings? He’d always thought himself reasonably smart. Good in a crisis, a few areas of natural aptitude, but this was making him feel absolutely thick.“I don’t think Malfoy hates you. I think he enjoys winding you up, actually, and you always rise to the occasion.”“Yeah he does,” Ron said, making a rude gesture, and Hermione swatted him with a scroll from her book bag. When Harry had sat there in dumbfounded silence for a little while, Ron elbowed him with an encouraging smile.“Well. That’s all turned out well, hasn’t it mate?” Another elbow. “Now everything’s out in the open and you know we fully support you, and we can all have a giggle about how many dirty books Malfoy’s got in his trunk. I think you would have liked some of the books, ‘Mione. I should have nicked one.”Harry had nicked one of the magazines. Sweet mother of f@ck. What if Malfoy noticed and confronted him about it. What would he do then?“He doesn’t look very reassured,” Ron observed, his eyes on Harry but leaning towards Hermione. Hermione raised her brows again. “It’s very sweet that you’ve taken everything in stride Ron, but Harry might need a bit more time to come to terms with all of this. I don’t think he was expecting to come out today.”“Sorry about that mate.” Ron squeezed his shoulder. “Got a bit carried away because of all the naked dicks and such.”Harry wasn’t sure what to say to that so he said something else instead. “I’m worried that I’m going to be weird around, you know, him now. Is that daft?”Hermione tilted her head. “Not at all. You know an important secret about him now—”“Two,” Ron interrupted, and when Hermione frowned at him, continued, “Don’t forget about the p@rn.”“I’m starting to wonder if you have an announcement to make, Ron.”He scoffed, and reached for a plate. “Not me. Straight as an arrow, me.”“Except for the Victor Krum thing.”“Except for that.”She rolled her eyes again. “Anyway Harry, I think what you’re feeling is quite rational under the circumstances. There’s a power imbalance now and a secret you probably would rather not be keeping. Merlin knows you’ve had enough of that in your life.”See, Hermione got it. Harry had been through a lot.“It was alright before when I didn’t know he was theoretically an option, not that he’d like me just because he likes guys. But just, I could appreciate the whole—” Harry waved his hands around as if to encompass the Malfoy of it all, “—view and such, and then go about my business.”“And now you think it’s going to be hard—” Ron opened his mouth but Hermione anticipated and uttered a sharp, warning, “Ron,” and Ron closed his mouth and put both hands in his lap without any further comment concerning the word ‘hard’. “Hard not to fixate on it.” “I mean, he sleeps right there, and what if I walk in on him changing, or if he forgets to lock the bathroom door and I walk in on him in the shower?” Harry felt his cheeks heat again. “What if I say his name when I’m having, you know, a dream or something?” He shook his head, horrified. “If last night is anything to go by, I’m going to be really stupid about it.” The urge to bang his head on the table again was strong. “I miss the days when I just had a chest monster. Things were so much simpler when I only had to suppress the urge to punch Dean in the neck and all I had to worry about was my best mate finding out I fancied his sister, and whether or not you two were going to murder each other on any given week.”Hermione raised her brows. “I feel like you’re glossing over quite a few important events during that time, but sure.” She looked over her shoulder. The Great Hall was filling up. She leaned further forward and lowered her voice again. “Having feelings for, erm, that person, well it’s definitely complicated. But you’re not planning on acting on them, so that’s all they need to be. Quiet, private thoughts.”“Yeah, mate, you’re not going to act on them. It’s just thoughts, innit?”Harry found himself absently scanning the room for blond hair. “As if I would. Malfoy would murder me properly if I tried.”Hermione scoffed and dunked a cream biscuit into her coffee. “Unlikely. In light of this new information about his s@xual preferences, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d fancied you all along.” Ron started passing over sandwiches and bits of fruit, and he and Hermione got on with having their lunch, and neither of them noticed that Harry was frozen in place, his brain caught on Hermione’s last words.
  I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d fancied you all along.
“Mate.” Harry looked up. Ron had a pumpkin pasty in a pair of tongs and was gesturing towards Harry’s plate. Harry just stared at him.“You’ve broken him Ron.”“I didn’t! You said the last thing, this one’s on you.”They bickered and ate, and Harry wondered whether he’d ever have a coherent thought again.



Given the sheer volume of brain power he’d expended thinking about all things Malfoy that day (specifically the shape of his backside and the way his bottom lip got red and plump when he chewed it when he was concentrating), it shouldn’t have been a surprise to run into him in their bedroom. Firstly, it was Malfoy’s bedroom too so it was perfectly logical of him to be there. But secondly, this was exactly the kind of situation that tended to manifest itself in his cursed/blessed existence. Be the target of a genocidal lunatic all his life, but survive all the aforementioned lunatic’s attempts to kill him. Share a bedroom with someone you find stupidly hot, but they hate you. Accidentally steal one of their p@rn mags but not have any privacy to take a closer look at it. “Sh@t.” Harry came to a sudden stop in the doorway and bashed his shoulder on the wood. “Sorry.” Then, quieter, “Ow.”Malfoy was standing in the space between their beds, folding his school scarf. He looked like he’d just come in from outside. “Sorry for what?”“Erm, interrupting?” Harry rubbed his arm where it was throbbing enthusiastically. Malfoy sneered. “I wasn’t doing anything for you to interrupt, you fool.”F@ck, Ron was f@ck@ng right. He did like when Malfoy was mean to him. What the hell was wrong with him? It had to be a sort of residual, post-Voldemort masochism. But he’d liked Ginny’s brand of obstinance and gentle bullying well before Harry’d killed any megalomaniacs, so maybe this one couldn’t be blamed on being a former Horcrux and human weapon. It might be something hereditary…his dad had fallen immediately for his mum who appeared to think he was an absolute f@ckw@t and treated him accordingly. But then again—“Potter, did you knock your head as well as your famous heroic biceps?”“My what?” Harry looked at his bicep. He wouldn’t have thought they were particularly heroic or famous. You didn’t need brawn of the physical sort to take down dark wizards. “Hello! Are you drunk again?” Malfoy snapped his fingers rapidly several times in Harry’s direction. “Do I have to call someone to take you away to Janus Thickey?”“Sorry,” Harry said again, then winced. This was exactly what he’d been worried about. “Not drunk. Just…distracted.”Malfoy rolled his eyes. “I suppose I should be thankful that you don’t have your little boyfriend with you this time.”“Ron’s not that little.” As soon as he’d said it Harry realised what it sounded like, and hurriedly added, “I mean, he’s not my boyfriend. We’re not—I’ve never got off with Ron. Or Hermione, for the record. Those are just rumours. Unfounded ones. I just mean, he’s pretty tall.”“What’s wrong with you?” Malfoy stared at him, and Harry felt the heat of approximately one thousand suns glowing in his cheeks. “I’ve been through a lot,” Harry said. “No sh@t.” Malfoy looked him up and down. It didn’t help Harry’s nerves at all.Harry swallowed the urge to say ‘sorry’ again, and walked swiftly to the ensuite because leaving the bedroom would be humiliating, but standing in the doorway looking gormless was equally bad. Once the door had clicked closed Harry put his hands over his face and groaned as quietly as he could manage. Why was his life so rubbish? Like it wasn’t wartime levels of sh@t obviously. No complaints there. Yesterday had been pretty good for the most part. They’d had jam roly poly for pudding and he’d had the good chair nearest the fireplace for ages in the afternoon without interruption, and the latest edition of Quidditch Euro. Things had gone south at the party and stayed there since. He washed his face quickly with cold water and stared at his reflection in the mirror over the sink. “Get a grip on yourself, you knob.”There was a bang at the door and Harry jumped. “Oi, Potter! Hurry up and finish gripping your knob, I need the bog.” It was Ernie.“Right-o.” Harry rubbed a cloth over his face and chucked it into the washing basket. He opened the bathroom door and Ernie pushed past him and all but slammed it again in Harry’s face. Malfoy was sprawled on his bed with Quidditch Euro open, snickering.“For the record, I wasn’t gripping anything in there.”Malfoy didn’t look up from his reading, just nodded with a knowing smirk.“Of course not. Saint Potter would never dare.”Harry sighed again, and went and flopped down on his bed too.After a few minutes of silence broken only by the sound of Malfoy turning his pages, Harry spoke.“That your copy?”“Does it matter?”Harry rolled his eyes. “I’m just trying to make civil conversation, Malfoy. But f@ck me, I guess.”“Greg’s.” Malfoy said eventually. “I don’t usually bother with Euro. Not enough coverage on the England teams. I prefer the Quarterly.”“I’ve got the next issue, if you want.” Harry offered, trying to keep his voice casual. “Decent article on the change of management at Ballycastle.”Malfoy dropped his edition and finally looked at Harry directly. “You don’t have the next issue, you can’t. It’s not out for another three weeks.”Harry leaned over to his bedside table and pulled open the drawer, then tossed the copy at Malfoy who caught it easily. “There’s a consulting editor who lives in Hogsmeade and I ran into her one day at the pub. Nice lady. Not great with her charms so I helped her carry her shopping in.” He waited for Malfoy to make some sort of standard comment about Harry getting preferential treatment or call him Golden Boy or something, but all Malfoy said was, “Thanks.”Harry shrugged, and went back to contemplating his bed hangings and doing his deep breathing exercises, and affecting an air of calm indifference about the milestone that was three whole courteous sentences exchanged between them.The bathroom door opened and Ernie exited, shutting it firmly after himself. “Wouldn’t go in there for a bit,” he said, then strode out of the bedroom again.“Charming,” Malfoy muttered, and then was silent again for a few minutes. “Potter?”“Mm?” Harry looked across at him, and Malfoy sat up properly. He looked a bit apprehensive.“I realise this isn’t a good look, but for what it's worth I was only hanging onto it because I’d planned to leave it on your bed or something when you weren’t around.”Malfoy reached under his pillow and drew out Harry’s wand.“Oh.” Harry leaned halfway over and Malfoy leaned across too and handed it back. “I was wondering where this got to.”“Stuck between the seat cushions in that chair you and Weasley were in yesterday.”“Right,” Harry laughed, and then flicked his wand to shoot a burst of rainbow sparks. “Still works. All’s well that ends well.”Malfoy was chewing his bottom lip. It was very distracting. “Don’t you feel a bit…naked without it?”He scratched the back of his neck with the tip of it, absentmindedly. “Erm, not really. I guess I got used to not having it for a while when it was broken, and I was just borrowing any wand I could.”“Broken?” Malfoy squinted at the wand as if trying to see the damage. “In what way?”“Like, in several pieces. The core hanging out. Proper broken.”Malfoy got off his bed and took the few steps needed to reach Harry’s. “B@llsh@t. Let me see.”He held the wand up and Malfoy took it carefully, holding it up to the light, turning it this way and that. “This looks practically new, aside from the smooth bits on the grip from use. Snape always told us that wands couldn’t be repaired like that.” Harry was starting to feel hot watching Malfoy run his fingers up and down the wood, circling the end with one fingertip. “Where did you find a specialist like that?”“I just used a different wand to Charm it—”“You did this?” Malfoy interrupted, incredulous. “I’m not completely useless,” Harry said testily.“Yeah but you’re not a wandsmith either.”“The other wand was a special one. Extra powerful. It was really down to the power of the wand, that’s all.” That was as close to the truth as Harry was probably allowed to say without breaking his vow to the Ministry to keep the Elder Wand under strictest secrecy. Malfoy passed the wand back to Harry again, an unreadable expression on his face. “Well. You should take better care of it, then.”Harry nodded and cleared his throat. “Will do. Thanks for finding it.”“It was nothing.” Malfoy stepped back to his bed and picked up the two issues of Euro. “I’m going to the Common Room.” He held the mags up slightly. “I’ll try to finish this tonight so you can get it back.”“No hurry,” Harry said. “I’ve finished it already.”Malfoy nodded, and headed for the door. “Fine. Well…bye.”“Bye,” Harry said, and he blew out a long breath when Malfoy’s footsteps had faded into the distance. “F@ck me.”In rapid succession, Harry flicked a spell to shut the bedroom door and then the hangings around his bed, and he leaned through the slit and over the edge to pat around on the floor under his bed until his fingers closed on the p@rn@. Harry snatched it quickly up and drew it back within the curtains, and then he proceeded to bombard them with as many privacy charms as he could remember, without bothering to try and regulate his power levels. These spells couldn’t be too strong under the circumstances, and he was pretty sure he was going to need them all, Silencing and Notice-Me-Not and the Caterwauling one which would be triggered if anyone tried to pull his curtains back by force.His Lumos was so bright that it could almost deteriorate his vision further than it already was, but he adjusted it quickly. His eyesight was integral right now. The p@rn@ lay atop the counterpane, and the handsome man with the curls in his eyes smirked at him knowingly. “Oh my god,” Harry whispered, and flipped it open. The men inside were gorgeous. Bl@@dy gorgeous. All in black and white and posing artistically on velvet ottomans and polished metal stools, and up against the glass in what looked like posh hotels. The cover model wore a miniscule pair of Muggle jogging shorts and nothing else, and you could see the shape of his c@ck clear as day where the material hugged the curve of it. Then there were two deeply tanned men laying face-down on a furry throw of some description, caressing each other’s backs and hips, the plump swell of an arsecheek tantalisingly out of frame. Next a pale torso whose face was tipped back to expose his throat, legs spread with only his cupped hand covering his bits. There was a ring of light-coloured hair around his nipples and the root of his pr@ck. Another man presenting his exquisite back, hips c@cked, arse a perfect crescent. Two delicious dimples above the cleft.Harry put his right hand down the front of his trousers and kept turning pages with his left. He’d been thickening up just looking, just thinking about looking, and now he was rock hard at the first brush of his thumb against his shaft. The next page had a man with his hands tied behind his back, jogging bottoms around his ankles, bent over a bed with his backside exposed, and as Harry watched another hand moved swiftly into frame and slapped the buttocks with sufficient force to cause the cheeks to wobble rapidly in unison.“Holy mother of f@ck.”He was w@nking outright, lube unnecessary because he was properly wet and drooling from the slit of his c@ck. He ran the tip of his forefinger over the head, and the memory of Malfoy doing the same to Harry’s wand with his long, pale fingers rose to the front of his mind. His c@ck dripped. He was so f@ck@ng wet.The next page was turned without as much care and it creased under Harry’s shaking fingers. The new image stole his breath for a long, hanging minute until his heart gave an extra hard kick as if to remind him to breathe, and Harry dragged in a massive gulp of air. The man was lanky and tall, skinny in a graceful fashion, long and pale with delicate ears and a messy sweep of pale hair across his forehead. He seemed young. Pretty. He was in nowt but his skin, and the room was white and featureless around him, and he leaned against the wall so that his narrow hips and slender thighs were visible, and the slight curve of his backside, and just the wink of a ring on his left hand as it caught a beam of light from the dusty window behind him. He looked, in fact, like he could have been Malfoy’s cousin, and Harry came in an abrupt, sticky pulse all over the centre of the page.“F@ck, f@ck, oh god.” His head was spinning with the suddenness of it, the force of it. It was seeping into the page but he couldn’t trust a charm to clean it off or he’d probably disintegrate his whole bed, with the way he was thrumming, buzzing, tingling from the head of his c@ck right up into the centre of himself. With trembling fingers he wiped the come off with the corner of his counterpane, scooped a puddle of it off with his pinky finger. Now it was smeared all over the bedding too, and the page was sticky and sort of rippled like an old textbook in the back of a damp dungeon cupboard. But the figure of the blond man was preserved. He was looking at Harry through a fan of lashes, just the hint of a smile passing over his lips, bitten and dark.Harry fell back against his pillows, breathing hard. He hadn’t even taken any of his clothes off for it.  He was in big trouble.



By the following Thursday, Harry and Malfoy had spoken amicably on sixteen short but individual occasions, and Harry had wanked about it on at least as many individual but short occasions. He’d got better at mainly not splashing directly onto the magazine but he was still coming blisteringly fast, and though he’d determinedly browsed through the rest of its many pages he ended up back at the same model’s spread at least sixteen times to date.“I’m not sleeping much,” he admitted to Ron as they watched the Gryffindor practice and occasionally yelled encouraging things at Ginny as she whipped past.“Anything we need to be worried about?” Ron leaned his shoulder into Harry’s, then bellowed, “Hartshorne, are you actually f@ck@ng blind?”“Ron!” Harry snickered into the rolls of his scarf.“He’s not actually, is he?” Ron squinted over the barrier and seemed to satisfy himself that he hadn’t just committed vilification of the visually impaired. “Back to your sleeping habits, or lack thereof. You alright?”“Yeah. To an extent.” He chewed on the skin beside his thumbnail for a minute. “Been reading that magazine of Malfoy’s a fair bit.”“Oh,” Ron said with a laugh. “Reading. Understood.” Now instead of a supportive shoulder, he was getting an elbow to the ribs. “You know it’ll fall off if you overdo it.”“Is that what happened to yours?” Harry returned, and Ron wrestled him into a headlock.“I usually find a bit of light reading at night helps my sleep, more than hinders it.” Ron dropped his elbows back against the wooden bench of the row behind them, catching his breath. “Sometimes I’m reading a couple of times a night,” Harry said, his cheeks warming in the cold. “Sometimes in the morning as well.”Ron whistled. “Wow, really making up for lost time mate.”“I’m developing a callus,” Harry said, and they both started laughing.Later, as they tromped down the rickety steps of the grandstand, Harry confessed the rest of it.“Been sort of talking to Malfoy a bit.”Ron stopped, and looked down at Harry with wide eyes. “Have you.”“Yep,” Harry said tightly, his stomach in knots.“Right,” Ron said, a little faintly, and then he resumed his descent. “You proper fancy him, I suppose.”“Looks that way, unfortunately.”Ron let out a soft but very long and rather put upon groan. “You don’t want me to get chummy with him, I hope.”Harry thumped him on the arm. “No, d@ckh@@d. No need, I’m not planning on doing anything about it. Internal thoughts only.”“Internal thoughts only.” Ron repeated. “Yeah, okay. But if that changes I’m going to need to put anything you two do very firmly into centaur territory, you get me? No details. Ever.”



On Friday night Harry was minding his own business, staring blankly into the fireplace with his feet up on a footstool and a spiced hot apple juice in a ceramic flagon on the coffee table beside him, when Pansy Parkinson landed on the other side of his two seater with a heavy thump and a huge grin.“Potter, I have great news. It’s your lucky day.”Harry blinked at her while she arranged herself just so, still coming back to himself after getting lost in the meditative flicker of the flames. She thrust something glass and square, with a purple bow stuck to the side of it, into his hands. “Hey.” It was a bottle of Ogden’s ‘Dragon’ Oak Distilled Special Edition (aged two hundred years). It was, specifically, the one Charlie had given him for his birthday. It still had a small tag that read ‘Happy Birthday Harry’ hanging from the neck. “Where did you get this?”Parkinson looked well pleased with herself. “Blaise had it. He liberated it from last weekend’s booze stash before anyone opened it and poured it in one of those horrible spritzers. Merlin, what a waste that would have been. Blaise has an eye for quality, as you know.”Harry thought of Ginny and wondered whether Zabini had made a move yet. He should probably tell her, friend to friend. Then again, she could handle herself and it might be funny to see how it played out if she didn’t know it was coming. “So he gave it to you in exchange for your intel on me and Ginny, is that it?” On closer examination the bottle appeared unopened, which was a real stroke of luck. “No, I just saw it and decided to take it. You’re welcome.”“Yes, thanks of course.” Harry cleared his throat, and Parkinson kept looking at him with an expression that made Harry feel a bit uneasy. Like she thought he owed her a favour now or something equally dangerous.“You and Draco seem like you’re mending fences.”Mending fences…that was one way of putting it. It was a bit like a thawing out of relations between warring nations, but it was also like extinguishing a forest fire in many ways, if the fire was fuelled by pathological competitiveness, oversensitivity and stubbornness. Harry’d made a joke as they’d passed each other in the Common Room two days ago, and Malfoy had actually laughed at it. Not at Harry, at the joke itself. It was like waking up in upside-down land.“Well, we—I mean, we have to share a room for the rest of the year, so. Just makes sense to get on, doesn’t it.”She grinned at him, which was actually even more disconcerting, and poked his forearm with her short and surprisingly sharp nails. They were like pink-varnished claws. “Well, isn’t that nice,” Parkinson jabbed him to emphasise each word.Over her shoulder, Harry thought he saw Malfoy cutting through the Common Room and out the portrait hole.“Very nice,” Harry agreed, and hoped Pansy would get bored with him soon, or that someone else would come to rescue him.



“You should know she’s been circling Longbottom for weeks now.”Harry was halfway into a jumper and emerged through the neckhole with his hair standing on end to see Malfoy leaning against his bedpost with his arms folded across his chest and a bored expression on his face.“Who has?”Malfoy didn’t look at him, picked specks of nothing from his school cardigan. “Pansy.”“I see,” Harry said, not seeing anything actually. “D’you reckon I should warn him or something?” He was pretty sure Nev was aware. Parkinson wasn’t particularly subtle.“I’m warning you.”“Oh, okay.” Harry pushed his fingers through his hair in an attempt to comb it out, then scratched the nape of his neck. “Erm, why though?”Malfoy finally looked at him, because he seemed to have lost his patience. “Because I’ve seen the two of you getting cosy together, you idiot.” Cosy was a bit of a stretch, he’d spoken to her twice and both of those times had been against his will. “Do…you want me to tell her to back off?”“What? Potter, I’m telling you that she might be flirting but she’s not interested in you. She’s got the horn for Longbottom! I’m trying to do you a favour!”“Right.” Harry stared at Malfoy, who was pink high in the cheeks and about five seconds away from stamping his foot in impatience if the look on his face was anything to go by. “Well, I appreciate the courtesy. I’m actually not interested in Parkinson in that way, though which sounds, erm, fortunate.”“Oh.” Malfoy’s shoulders dropped a bit and his hands relaxed. “Well. Yes, that’s probably a good thing for—you. Not that Pansy isn’t wonderful,” Malfoy seemed to remember which of them was his actual friend. “Very attractive. You’d have been lucky to have her.”Harry swallowed about ten different responses to that, and instead gestured to the door. “I’m heading to dinner, are you?”Malfoy shrugged. “Yeah, same. Greg reckons they’re doing toad in the hole tonight.”If Goyle was taking special note of it, then they’d better hurry up before there was none left for anyone else.“I’m not waiting for you, Malfoy,” Harry warned, when Malfoy didn’t move to leave.“Who asked you to?” Malfoy rolled his eyes and hip checked Harry on the way past, and they bickered all the way down to the Hall.



Around five weeks after the p@rn@pocalypse and the beginning of Harry trying to wank himself into an early grave (“It’s a wank renaissance!” Ron had said proudly, and Hermione had given them both a black look and said, “Please never say those words to me ever again.”), Harry lopped off the whole tip of his left middle finger in Potions.It happened like this: the lesson of the day was Omnilingualism, and the early stages of prep for a philtre that would take at least two weeks to brew. Ron was stirring pure moon water in a selenite vessel, one hundred careful, counterclockwise agitations with a rod of solid pewter. Harry was carefully dicing hogberries pickled in lamprey mucus. They were horrible, slippery little arseholes, and they’d need a full cup of them, so it was taking him f@ck@ng ages.Harry was also completely distracted by Malfoy, two rows in front of him, bent over his workstation with his outer robes discarded over the back of his chair. Malfoy’s school trousers were tight on his backside. Harry watched his arse move, chopping, chopping, chopping, and then there was a bright bloom of pain, and when he looked down there was blood spraying into his diced hogberries, and the end of his finger was missing from just below the nail bed.“F@ck.”Ron looked up. Took in the blood. Said ‘f@ck’ several times as well, and then fumbled for his wand and yelped, “Reparo!” repeatedly with an air of total panic.Harry’s finger did not, in fact, repair.The top of their workstation was nearly all red now, and there was blood in the moon water too, just a bit but it was definitely ruined. People were starting to look over at them. Lisa Turpin dry heaved. Slughorn would see the mess any minute. “Ron. Mate.” Harry grit his teeth. Lamprey mucus stung, he was discovering. “Could you please stop trying to Reparo my hand and help me find the rest of my finger so I can go to the Hospital Wing?"“Right, yes. Absolutely.”It wasn’t the worst injury he’d sustained at school but it was definitely the most boneheaded. He did a mental inventory of them as he walked briskly to see Madam Pomfrey, his hand held aloft to minimise the blood flow and wrapped in a long bit of bandage that Hermione had transfigured from Mandy Brocklehurst’s hair ribbon. Ron followed close beside him with the bit of chopped off finger in a small stoppered jar.There was the time he’d broken his wrist and Lockhart had Vanished all the bones in his arm, and then the Basilisk bite the same year. Several incidences of fainting in the presence of a variety of evil beings. Skull fracture during Quidditch once. Chomped by an Acromantula another time.Distracted by the arse of the biggest d@ckh@@d in their year was definitely the stupidest reason he’d ever had for medical treatment. “You look ridiculous.” Hermione patted his knee some hours later. Harry was in traction, his arm suspended straight upwards and bandaged up like he’d lost his whole hand and not just some of one finger. “Pomfrey said it was the pickled hogberry juice, it’s interfering with the healing magic. Should be able to come back tomorrow.”“Is Malfoy’s backside really that captivating?” Hermione dodged Harry’s half hearted, awkward swipe, laughing. “I’m serious! I’ll have to try and get a better look.”“Hermione.” Harry groaned, and she patted him reassuringly again.“By Christmas this will be well past internal thoughts, you mark my words.”Harry shook his head. It was unlike her, but she was wrong about this one.  “You’re barking.”



It didn’t take til Christmas.  Two and a half days later—because of course Harry had to have a weird reaction to the hogberries that took twice as long as expected to resolve, of course he did—he returned to his little mini-dorm/former cupboard while the rest of the school was at dinner. Although he no longer needed to have his arm straight up in the air at all times, he was still swaddled in the tightest, dittany impregnated bandages in the known universe, coiled all the way up to about his elbow. Harry presumed his fingertip was sewn back on, but he hadn’t seen it and probably wouldn’t for days yet, and everything felt kind of numb under the dressing. And he was absolutely exhausted, because sleeping while positioned like Hermione Jean Granger in her first year at Hogwarts was really difficult and Harry was actually really looking forward to just face planting into bed for the rest of his life.Equally cursed and blessed, Malfoy was there.“Wow. You look horrible.”“Thank you,” Harry said curtly, trying not to look at Malfoy, who really was entirely to blame for this situation. If he wasn’t so good-looking…if he’d just stood at his desk like a normal person! Instead of bending over like he was trying to distract Harry on purpose!“Rude of your friends not to be here to help you,” Malfoy said, watching Harry chuck a paper sack of ointments and painkilling elixirs onto his bed and then struggle out of his school jumper with his stiff arm.“It’s not like my legs don’t work,” Harry panted, knackered, and flopped back onto his bed without trying to take any further clothing off. After a moment he pushed his shoes off one after the other, toe to heel. “Why aren’t you at dinner?”Malfoy ignored the question. “I’ll help you, Potter.” Malfoy said it as if he were doing Harry a great favour. “I’ll keep you entertained. Shall I read to you from your favourite Quidditch Euro? I’m sure you’ve got the December issue already from your close personal friend on the inside.”Harry laughed tiredly. “I don’t know where you got the idea that that’s my favourite. All I said was there was a good article you might like in the last one.”“Oh, well then, we can’t have poor, maimed, abandoned Harry Potter left with only his second favourite reading material! Accio Potter’s favourite magazine!”If he’d had full range of movement, maybe he could have snatched it out of the air. But he was a bit sluggish from lack of sleep and pain potions, and his arm was stiff at his side like a useless wing, and he really hadn’t anticipated this as a potential outcome. The porno, wrapped in his invisibility cloak and hidden under his pillow, came shooting out of its hiding place like it had been launched from a slingshot, and slapped straight into Malfoy’s waiting hand.“No,” Harry said faintly, as all the blood rushed from his face. He sat up immediately.He watched Malfoy’s face change. Initially, smug and a little playful, clearly pleased with himself. Then, confusion as he realised he was not holding the expected sports periodical. Then shock, when the nature of the scantily clad cover model sank in. And then…Malfoy’s head snapped up. “Is this mine?”Harry’s mouth opened and closed. What could he say? Malfoy turned the mag over in his hands, spotted the price stuck to the rear cover and pursed his mouth.“It is mine. You went through my trunk!”“No.” Harry said it firmly this time. “There was an accident. I fell over and knocked over some things and your secret compartment popped open.”“What?” Malfoy went brilliantly red, bloomed like a beetroot or like the blood from a chopped off fingertip. “We put it all back, I promise you, and we didn’t go snooping through any of your other stuff!”“‘All’? You saw them all…” His voice went a bit high, and then his eyes narrowed. “Who is ‘we’?” Now Malfoy sounded like he was definitely going to kill Harry. Like, properly furious. “Not Weasley?”“Erm…” “Salazar’s f@ck@ng t@ts, you have got to be joking.”This was Harry’s worst nightmare. Not in the scheme of all time, of course, because he’d had some much worse ones when there was a bit of Voldemort stuck in him, but in recent, post-war times this was pretty much about the worst thing he could have imagined happening.“How many people have you told about me? I bet you had a great time, telling everyone that I’m a poof.”“Malfoy, no! I haven’t told anyone!” He paused, then groaned. “Ron told Hermione, but that was more about telling Hermione about how dumb I was being, not about you being gay.”“Just yell it out for the whole year level to hear, Potter! Maybe the portraits on the stairs didn’t hear you!”Harry flicked his hand at the bedroom door to slam it quickly shut, then hissed, “Nobody is out there right now, they’re all at dinner! But I’m sorry, alright, I didn’t mean it!”“I’ve been trying to be nicer, really trying, and you—you’re just going around breaking into my private property, and stealing from me, and telling people my business! Not to mention you’ve bent the cover and got creases on the spine—what the f@ck have you been doing with it?”Harry groaned and covered his face with his good hand. He had a headache. “Could you please stop yelling at me, I’ve been through a lot.”Malfoy had been pacing, shaking the magazine to emphasise every angry point, but now he’d stopped, coming to a sudden halt, dawning understanding on his face.“Potter, why is this your favourite magazine?”Oh. No. No no no no no.“I like the articles,” Harry said weakly, but Malfoy was looking at it again, flipping through it. Taking note of where the binding naturally flopped open at a certain place where it had remained spread several times a day for more than a month. Malfoy’s eye’s got a bit wider and his cheeks a bit pinker, and then he looked at Harry with a different expression altogether.Malfoy stared at Harry in silence for a long moment before Harry broke. “I’ll pay for a replacement.”“You’ve been using this.”“I’ll pay for a replacement,” Harry repeated, a bit more frantically this time. “It was honestly an accident, I was in shock and I just hid it under my bed at first and I meant to put it back, I really did, but then—”Malfoy came right up to him and looked down at Harry with an unreadable expression.“You like men.”“Yep.” Harry assumed that was a question and not a statement. “And women, but yes. So I’m not trying to out you or anything, I really—”“Shut up,” Malfoy said, and kicked Harry’s feet apart, and crowded in close to him, right between his knees, and bent down and put his tongue in Harry’s mouth.Harry’d had bad first kisses and good ones. He’d never had one that felt like someone had touched him with a live electrical wire, but that’s how this one was going so far. Malfoy had both hands around his face, cupping Harry’s jaw and the back of his head with his long fingers. His mouth was so hot. His lips were plush and insistent. It felt so good, a bit like relief to finally know that Malfoy tasted like chocolate frogs and aniseed, and that he smelled like shampoo and his cardigan was soft under Harry’s clenched fist, and he had the same sort of broom callus on his thumb as Harry did, and he could feel it when Malfoy stroked the pad of it over the hinge of Harry’s jaw. A bit like he was going to have a heart attack, because it was beating in an absolute frenzy. A bit like he was going to laugh, laugh his whole head off, because here the pendulum had swung once again and the universe or fate or whatever kept throwing the extremes of life into his pathway had chucked him a hot and mean blond boy who kissed like he’d bl@@dy invented it.“Oh my god,” Harry said hoarsely when Malfoy pulled back, and a thin strand of saliva stretched between their mouths and then broke. “You’re ridiculous.” Malfoy’s eyes were darker than Harry’d ever seen them. His mouth was very red.Harry swallowed. “I know. Is that a dealbreaker?” Harry wasn’t sure what kind of deal he meant because they’d been kissing for about point-five seconds and had not had a single conversation about it yet, but he thought it might involve Malfoy kissing him again, and maybe doing that a lot going forward.“No,” Malfoy said, and then he dropped to his knees between Harry’s legs.“Oh my god.” Harry squeaked, and Malfoy put his hand on Harry’s belt buckle and Harry squeaked again.“Say stop at any time.”“Oh my god,” Harry said instead, and Malfoy unfastened Harry’s belt and pulled it swiftly through the loops of his trousers. He said it again when Malfoy pulled down the zip over Harry’s straining c@ck. Malfoy made a noise when he pushed open the placket of Harry’s trousers and lifted his c@ck out from the slit in his pants, that Harry reckoned he would probably remember for the rest of his life. A hungry sound, an urgent one, like perhaps he was feeling as desperate about this as Harry was. “Have you done this before?” Harry’s voice was weird. Low, cracking.Malfoy tore his eyes away from Harry’s c@ck, which was sticky at the tip and ruddy with blood. “Why? Have you got standards?”“None,” Harry said truthfully. He didn’t even have a frame of reference, let alone standards. “I just meant, I haven’t done it before.”“With a boy?” Malfoy’s eyes had dropped back to Harry’s dick, and he wet his lips with his tongue.“With anyone,” Harry said, and Malfoy’s whole forehead creased as he let out a deep and throaty sound, and dropped a hand to his own lap to clasp what Harry assumed was his own aching erection. “I just want you to know that I might not be very good when I—when it’s time for me to—”“Won’t be a problem, Potter.” Malfoy licked his lips again, and looked up briefly at Harry with an expression of pure filth. “Quiet now. I’ll look after you.”As if Harry could have been quiet when Malfoy’s wet mouth brushed over his c@ck. Harry’s hands came up to push into Malfoy’s hair, his stupid bandaged flipper pressing helplessly to Malfoy’s ear. The sound was obscene. Sloppy, suckling, Malfoy’s little grunts and noisy breaths as he moved down and up on Harry’s length, his hands worrying at Harry’s trousers as if he’d like to tear them off.Malfoy pulled away and leaned back on his heels, like he’d read Harry’s mind. “This all needs to come off, right now.” His mouth was so f@ck@ng red and wet, his lips so swollen, even his eyelashes looked spiky and damp. Malfoy’s fingers were in the waistband of Harry’s pants, tugging them down his thighs, and Harry did his best to help by lifting his hips up and pushing. At least his shoes and belt were off this time. It would make things much easier.Harry’s socks came off when his trousers cleared his heels. Malfoy’s hands wandered up his legs, fingertips light on his ankles and up his calves, the soft bits behind his knees. His eyes were fixed between Harry’s thighs.“Knew you’d be like this.” Malfoy’s fingers were scratching through the coarse hair of Harry’s thighs and Harry tried not to say ‘f@ck’ and ‘oh god’ too many more times. Malfoy pinched a fingerful of pubic hair and twisted it, and Harry sucked in a wheezy breath. “You’re so f@ck@ng pretty, Malfoy, Jesus Christ, cut off my own bl@@dy finger because I couldn’t stop looking at your perfect arse—” Harry was babbling, and Malfoy’s forehead was all creased again.“Shut up—shut up, don’t tell me this now, for f@ck's sake.” And Malfoy descended on Harry’s c@ck again without another word, and Harry didn’t stop blathering, couldn’t stop, had disengaged his brain entirely from his mouth. “Malfoy, I’m gonna come, I’m gonna come in your mouth.”Malfoy pulled back again, his hand tight around Harry’s c@ck. His other hand was clutched to his own crotch, fully clothed still though his hand was working back and forth. “Not yet, f@ck not yet,” Malfoy rasped, and Harry picked himself up as much as he could from his boneless slump, chasing connection with Malfoy’s warm skin and sharp jaw.“Let me see,” Harry said, “Malfoy, c’mon, let me see you.”Malfoy leaned back on his heels, grip slackening on Harry’s dick, thighs spreading as he arched his back and pushed his hips into the air, against the heel of his own hand. His eyes closed and his entire face transformed and he moaned thickly and jerked. Malfoy was coming in his own pants. Harry felt like it was happening to him.“Quick,” Harry breathed, “Malfoy, I’m…”His chest still heaving, Malfoy leaned forward hungrily and pressed a sloppy, open-mouthed kiss to the head of Harry’s c@ck, and Harry came in heavy, ropey spurts that spilled over Malfoy’s lips and down his chin to drip onto the flagstone floor. It went on for ages, or so it seemed, and when it stopped and Harry was merely twitching with aftershocks, fallen back onto his elbows, he opened his heavy eyes again to Malfoy watching him. And Malfoy leaned in again and licked him, a kitten lick that pressed gently into his slit.Stupid things bubbled up in Harry’s throat. Things he definitely shouldn’t be saying after his first ever bl@w j@b. Things he’d better keep to himself if he wanted to have a second, or ideally to make it to a future point when it would be appropriate to say stupid and sex drunk, sentimental things. Instead of ruining all that, Harry pushed himself upright and leaned all the way forward until his mouth was on Malfoy’s again, and his tongue was in Malfoy’s salty, sticky mouth, and the taste of his own come was on his tongue and smeared on his chin too. “Next time I might even pull it out before I come.” Malfoy said it breathlessly, half laughing, mouthing at Harry’s jaw. Harry’s eyes dragged down Malfoy’s body like they were pulled by magnets.“Can I have a look now?” He sounded strange. He’d never heard his voice like this. He’d never felt like this, to be fair. He really wanted to see Malfoy’s wet dick.“A preview, then? Alright.” Malfoy looked as dumbstruck as Harry felt, giddy, and he leaned back a bit and fumbled his trousers open, pulled the soiled front of his pants away from himself with a little hiss as if he was as sensitive as Harry felt. Again, like a magnetic pull Harry leaned forward, until his head was touching Malfoy’s, and they were both looking down into the opening Malfoy had made for him. He was messy with come, lots of it, pink and softening rapidly. Harry didn’t think, just dropped his good hand between his knees and right into Malfoy’s pants. Malfoy inhaled sharply. Harry’s fingers slipped through the wet and he brought them back to his mouth and sucked on them.“Circe’s arsehole, Potter.”“I want to do that too,” Harry just let the words bubble out this time. His legs felt like rubber. “I want to put my fingers in you. Can I? Can I put my tongue there?”“Unh,” Malfoy said, and he put his hand back in his pants and pulled on his cock, hard. “Give me like ten. I’m going to come in your hair next time.”The bedroom door burst open at this inopportune moment to admit one Ernie Macmillan, who promptly got an eyeful and did not seem pleased about it.“F@ck’s sake Potter, can you please stop getting sucked off in our dorm for one f@ck@ng night!” Ernie stomped to the ensuite and slammed the door after himself.“You need to see an exorcist about your bowels, Macmillan!” Malfoy shouted after him, and then he looked at Harry. “This is going to get around now.”“Don’t give a f@ck,” Harry said. “Do you?”Malfoy shrugged. He was pink and not looking Harry directly in the eyes. “Not a problem for me, if it’s not for you.”“It’s definitely not.” Harry couldn’t stop looking at him. He was getting pinker by the minute.“You should clean up so we can get something to eat. Keep your energy up. For healing.”“For healing, yes,” Harry echoed. His face was doing something stupid, he could tell. “Could you possibly cast it for me? I think I’ve misplaced my wand.”



“Happy Christmas eve, mate!”Ron poked the fire heartily, and Hermione set three cut-glass tumblers on the polished marble top of the coffee table with a pleasant clink. Harry unravelled the ribbon from the bottle and pulled off the tag, and finally it was opened with a deep and satisfying bloop.When a generous measure of whiskey was sloshed into each of their glasses, they each held them aloft and ready for toasting.“Here’s to Zabini hooking us up with this posh hotel.”“Here’s to Ginny for not giving Zabini the time of day, so that he had to resort to a bit of old fashioned sibling bribery to try and get a good word in.” Harry wasn’t going to break the news to Ron that he was pretty sure he’d heard Ginny giving Zabini the time of day rather enthusiastically last week after the pre-Christmas hols party. Sorry. Gathering.“Halfway to graduation and nobody’s been maimed or seriously injured!”“You cut off your own finger,” Ron reminded him, as if the massive scar on his hand was not reminder enough. Malfoy liked to suck on that finger while Harry f@ck@d him. They were getting pretty good at it.“No injuries inflicted by a murderous third party,” Harry amended. “Cheers to that!”“Cheers!” Hermione and Ron agreed, and they all took a healthy sip, and they all immediately began to cough.“It’s in the name and yet I was still surprised at the burn,” Hermione said, reaching immediately for the cheese platter and stuffing a wide wodge of camembert into her mouth, then following it with three grapes and a slice of pear. “Am I tasting brimstone or have I just permanently damaged my sense of taste and smell?”“That’ll put hair on your chest alright,” Ron said raspily. That made Harry think of Malfoy’s borderline obsession with Harry’s body hair, and the way he would often tug on it sharply, and sometimes rub his face in the thatch of it on Harry’s lower belly right above his—“You’ve lost him again.” Hermione said dryly. “He’s got his sex flashback face on as usual.”Ron snorted. “I think I’ve forgotten what his normal face looks like. When’s the ferret supposed to be here again? I want to minimise how much tongue I have to see this time.”“About an hour,” Harry said, smiling stupidly. “We’ve got time to savour this bottle of absolute torture and still get you back to the Burrow before midnight.”“What time do you think you’ll be there tomorrow?” Hermione was still holding her glass but she was more intent on the cheese and biscuits. Ron was sipping dutifully and wincing after every swallow. “I don’t know how you’re going to convince yourself to check out in the morning, this hotel is absolutely lush.”“Definitely by lunch. Earlier if we don’t get distracted in the morning.”“Centaurs, Harry!”“Sorry.” Harry snorted, not sorry in the least. “He’s got a Portkey out to Saint Moritz at half-ten so I’m sure we’ll be on time.”They sat in content silence for a while. The fire crackled. Hermione chewed a fancy crispbread and then another.“Good cheese,” Ron said. “Good company.”“The best,” Harry said happily. Equally cursed and blessed, he used to think. Bit more of the latter these days. Definitely more of the latter. And he deserved it, really. He’d been through a bl@@dy lot.'
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