FIC: Things That Change, 23/?
Title: Things That Change [23/?]
Rating: NC17
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Summary: After Hogwarts, everything changes.
Author's Notes: Thank you so much to my beta, B, without which I wouldn't have had the drive to finish this.
[Part 1][Part 2][Part 3][Part 4][Part 5][Part 6][Part 7][Part 8][Part 9][Part 10]
[Part 11][Part 12][Part 13][Part 14][Part 15][Part 16][Part 17][Part 18][Part 19]
[Part 20][Part 21][Part 22][Part 23]
1.
Harry doesn’t know what to say to Malfoy. I’m sorry to hear your father is alive after all? I’ll fucking kill him? Don’t listen to convicts? Tell me what you want me to do?
They scatter across the house, the confusing silence a descending chaos. Harry can see Pyrrha’s eyes searching his out, asking what’s going on. He can see Viola scowling, her brow furrowed and angry. James is confused, still damp from the beach.
Malfoy disappears, wraith-like, behind the bedroom door.
Pyrrha takes James upstairs, murmuring to him about helping put on his pajamas.
Viola, as always, locks herself in her room. Harry watches her door slam shut with a tightening chest.
What has happened? he thinks, rubbing his temples. He ought to take his memories, drag them with a wand into the pensieve Hermione and Ron gave him five years ago, to see what happened, once more.
Malfoy was dead. No one could have survived being thrown over cliffs, one hundred feet above frigid waters, patrolled by occasional Dementors and wardens and Ministry officials. No one.
“Except a rat,” Harry mutters.
No one eats supper. Harry doesn’t realize there even is anything until the acrid scent of burning food filters in from the kitchen on hot, grey clouds of smoke, the smoke detectors blaring until he whips his wand and shouts, “Silencio!”
Malfoy must have been cooking something before Lucius Malfoy showed up. Dobby runs in from the linen closet, hobbling and bowing low to Harry, muttering “Dobby will clean everything, Master Harry Potter, sir. Dobby will clean it all for you.”
“It’s fine Dobby,” Harry says tersely.
“Oh, no, Master Harry Potter sir,” Dobby shakes his head, his ears flapping with intent. “Dobby will do it.”
Harry leaves Dobby in the kitchen. As he leaves, he can hear the oven door slamming open and shut, pots banging and clanking.
And in the corner of his eye, he sees Abraxas slinking up the stairs. Harry slips in behind him, following with silent footsteps. Abraxas stops at the landing, starting to turn around as Harry grabs his upper arm and presses tight with his fingers.
Abraxas makes a noise in the back of his throat, a hitch of his breath as he winces, refusing to look Harry in the eye over the frame of his glasses.
Harry pushes Abraxas into his bedroom and shuts the door with a click. Then he lets go.
His son’s bedroom is littered with dirty t-shirts and white socks. His school trunk hangs open at the end of the bed, spilling old class notes and geegaws, sticky old sweets and extendable ears over the lid. It smells of sweat, everything- teenage and a little rank, and vague hints of Everfresh Soap and something else that Harry reckons smells more like rotten cabbage, or maybe spunk.
He doesn’t want to know.
Abraxas backs up onto his mattress, rubbing his arm where Harry had grabbed him. The skin is red, but not bruised. He grimaces, his lip curling up like Lucius Malfoy’s, except it is no where near as cold or sinister.
It is penitent, if anything. A flush creeps over Abraxas’ face as Harry folds his arms over his chest.
“How long have you been going to Knockturn Alley?” he says, his voice low and slow, deliberate.
Abraxas sniffs. Or sniffles. He wipes his nose on the back of his hand and Harry sees, blink and miss, what he thinks is shining and wet in Abraxas’ dark slate eyes. “Not long,” he mumbles. Then, stronger and more forced, he says, “I just wanted to know!”
“Know what?” Harry snaps, pushing himself off the dresser and stepping closer.
“I just wanted to know about Dadd- father’s family! You never tell us anything! I just-” he stops, swallowing his words with a hitch and squeezing his eyes shut.
“You just what?” Harry presses.
“You never talk about the Malfoy side! Not you, not father- no one! I wanted to know what you were hiding!”
Harry feels himself suck in a breath. He doesn’t hear the words in his head, not until he hears himself shouting, seething, the words spitting from his mouth. “You want to know about the Malfoy family?” he yells. “The bloody Malfoy family? Lucius Malfoy tried to fucking kill me again and again- I was a BOY and he tried it! He hated everything about me! They all hated Muggles and Mudbloods- do you know what Malfoy used to call Hermione?”
Abraxas shakes his head once, but not before Harry keeps going. He can’t stop himself. This anger, this pent-up anger from his own youth surfacing with the stupid, stupid actions of his son. He wants to wring Abraxas’ neck. Shake the stupid, stupid thing he has caused from him forever, but he can’t. He steps even closer and Abraxas cowers before him, cringing as Harry seethes.
“He used to call her a MUDBLOOD at school and LAUGH in her face- that’s how much he thought of her! He hated Ron, he hated Gryffindors, he was jealous of me, hated me- it doesn’t fucking matter he was an ignorant brat! His aunt KILLED Sirius! His father was there when Cedric was KILLED! Lucius Malfoy tried to KILL Ginny! He was a fucking DEATH EATER! He served VOLDEMORT!
Do you know- do you want to know?” Harry shouts. “Do you want to know about DUMBLEDORE too? MALFOY was there when he DIED! Malfoy was sent by VOLDEMORT TO KILL HIM!” He pauses, his breathing hard and deep, his mind racing and his blood pumping. His hands shake with the force of it all and he inhales a wavering breath, trying to calm himself as he says, “That family deserved Azkaban. That’s why we don’t talk about it. Because they are smeared with the filth of their own actions. I don’t care what the hags or Borgin or any creeps you might have met might have told you- they’re rot.”
Harry closes the door behind himself, but not before he hears Abraxas whisper, “Don’t hate me, Dad,” between repressed sobs.
2.
Malfoy is sixteen again for Harry. He carries himself around with the same distracted look in his eyes, heavy purple bags under them. His skin loses what little summer colour it had in a matter of days, grey-tinged and sallow. He curls into himself almost immediately.
The first night Harry reaches out to him in bed, touching his shoulder. Malfoy hasn’t even changed from his robes, but lies rumpled on the sheets, staring out at nothing. “Malfoy?” Harry murmurs. When Malfoy says nothing, Harry tries again. “Draco?”
“Fuck off,” Malfoy hisses, but whatever malice his words might entail, the hollowness in his voice swallows it entirely into something that squeezes Harry’s insides. He, too, is sixteen again and watching Malfoy, the pity welling inside him.
“You’ve been without your father for over twenty years,” Harry says slowly. “He wouldn’t- he doesn’t- you’re different now. You’re an adult and-”
“Fuck off,” Malfoy mumbles. He rolls onto his side. Harry listens to the sounds of his breathing: too smooth, too regular for comfort, but Malfoy doesn’t want comfort, he wants to be left alone. The sharp jut of his shoulder, the tense muscles under it tell Harry everything.
He showers, the damp sea and sand still clinging to hidden places of his body from the beach. He scrubs the sand from his elbows, his knees and his hair. What had been a beautiful sunny day, blue sky and warm sea has turned into something murky, something disgusting, all by the visit of one wizard.
“Fuck you,” Harry says over the drone of the shower spray. “Fuck you, Lucius Malfoy!” He slams his hand against the tiles, but he knows Lucius Malfoy can’t feel this anger welling inside him. All it leaves Harry is a sore hand that he cradles in a towel.
Harry lies in the bed, the sheets a comfortable coolness under his damp skin. Inside, he feels anything but comfortable. He reaches a blind hand out across the bed, but it is empty. He blinks, the dim darkness a blur of shapes and masses without his glasses. In the light streaming in softly through the slitted cracks of the blinds, he can make out Malfoy, sitting by the window, staring out.
“Come to bed,” Harry says. “He’s not worth it.”
Malfoy says nothing for the longest while. Come morning, the first morning after, Harry sees him still hunched up on top of the trunk under the window. Pale sunlight lightens his features, and makes the deep, dark circles under his eyes even heavier.
“You don’t know me at all,” Malfoy mutters.
Malfoy acts like a zombie. Harry knows he’s thinking. He locks himself in the bedroom, the bathroom, the back room. He doesn’t come out to eat anything. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t sleep- he simply doesn’t do anything.
Harry wants to ask him what he’s thinking, if he can do anything to help, but he knows he can’t. And he can’t contact the Ministry about the Floo until Monday, to restrict the Floo access. Inside, he kicks himself for never preventing the Floo channels into Knockturn Alley. Not once did he think Abraxas would ever go there, or Viola, or Pyrrha.
“Why did you not say ANYTHING if you knew?” he shouts at Malfoy. “You knew he was going and you didn’t STOP HIM!” He pounds his fist into the wall. The knuckles are cracked and bleeding, bruised with anger, but there is nothing else he can do. He grabs Malfoy by the shoulders of his robes and pushes him into the wall. He wants to shake Malfoy, he wants to scream at him more- It’s your fault Abraxas was found by your father. It’s your fault Lucius Malfoy found you here. You didn’t tell me!
He wants to push Malfoy into the wall, to grab his hair and force him into the frame of the house, to lift his rumpled robes and he wants to fuck Malfoy, to make him cry, to make him hurt, to make him do something more than hide. Harry’s hard, his cock aches as it presses into Malfoy’s hip, but Malfoy does nothing to help.
His chest aches, too, and the harder he thinks on it, the harder his cock becomes, the worse he feels for imagining Malfoy whimpering into the wall, his legs spread apart as his body rocks in tune with Harry’s.
“I- he didn’t-” Malfoy shakes his head once and laughs, a bitter sounding noise that echoes in Harry’s ear. “I did the same when I was his age. There’s nothing wrong with Knockturn Alley,” he mutters, that same lifeless and hollow voice trying to mask the hurt Harry knows must be welling up inside him.
“FILTH LIKE YOUR FATHER ARE THERE!” he screams. “God- what are you STU-”
Harry stops when he hears a noise. He slowly lets his hand let the fabric of Malfoy’s robes go, his fingers uncurling. Malfoy slides against the wall down to the floor, his lip curling up and a strangled, choked noise rising in his throat. Harry closes his eyes, hating himself for the briefest moment for this, wanting to grab Malfoy and hold him tight in his arms, to kiss his salty cheeks.
But instead he follows the noise. He can’t remember if he put a Silencing Charm on the bedroom tonight or not. The children- they could have heard all this, but when he walks through the doorway, the familiar bounce of magic, like the faintest breeze across his skin, grazes his body and he knows that’s not the case.
But the noise doesn’t stop. Someone is awake. There is a clang, a rattle and a scraping of furniture, followed by three bangs.
Harry is reminded of the ghoul in the attic of the Burrow. He pulls his wand out from the breast pocket of his pajama shirt and creeps down the hallway. The carpet muffles his footsteps until he stops outside of Viola’s room. The banging has stopped, but there are strange noises continuing. Things rustling, furniture being dragged along the flooring- wood on wood.
He raps his knuckles once on her door. “Viola?” he calls out, careful to keep his voice quiet. Ghoul or not, it is well after midnight.
Something falls to the floor and bangs. He can hear Viola cursing and something rustling.
“What the…” he mutters, but his instincts are quicker than his words and Harry pushes the door open. The lock is stuck. He flicks his wand. “Alohamora!” The doorknob won’t move, still. He swishes again, and a third time, then tries a stronger locking charm. Learned in sixth year, but she might have read Pyrrha’s textbook ahead of time.
The door swings open when he pushes his shoulder into it.
In a heap of sheets on her floor, Viola lies, twisted and struggling. There are no burst pillows, no dressers shoved into the doorway. No trunks have been thrown against the wall. Her school trunk sits placid and intact in the corner, a few stray scrolls and an old book of Harry’s from school on the top of it.
“Are you all right?” he asks. He holds out his hand and helps her to her feet. Her face is flushed from the warm summer night and her legs unsteady. “What’s going on?”
“It’s fine, Dad,” Viola says.
Harry scratches his temple. Her tone is smooth and suave, like Malfoy’s was, before this rubbish with his father.
“Is there a ghoul in here?” Harry asks, deliberate. He flashes his wand about, a Lumos illuminating the far corners with a blue-tinged glow.
“No,” Viola says. She scratches her own temple and glances off behind her left shoulder. “Maybe it was the wind or something. Don’t we have ghoul-detecting charms on the house?”
Harry shakes his head. “I didn’t install them. Is there a Boggart in here?” he asks, pausing at Viola’s armoire. Books spill out from the bottom, more books from the attic, old school tomes from Harry’s time. He recognizes a fourth year Transfiguration text, over twenty years old.
“No,” Viola insists. She’s scowling at him now, her familiar teenage antagonism surfacing as she narrows her eyes. “Can I go to bed now?”
“Yeah, all right,” Harry says. His eyes sweep the room once more, but there is nothing. No boggart, no ghouls, no nothing.
When he returns to the comfort of his own bedroom, Malfoy sits in front of the window, another sleepless night passing for him. He stares out onto the back garden, covered with inky shadows and eery orange streetlamp light.
There is no wind out tonight either, Harry thinks.
3.
It isn’t supposed to be like this.
Harry had planned to have a summer hols, too. Instead, he’s standing outside the office of the Minister of Magic in the middle of the week, glaring at the doorway and the placard with fancy gold lettering.
J. Merlon Fox, Minister of Magic
“Fuck you,” Harry hisses under his breath.
The secretary makes a noise behind him at her desk. Harry glances over his shoulder and she smiles, her eyes watching him above her horn-rimmed glasses. She curls a lock of her purple-tinted hair. “He’ll be with you soon, Mister Potter. The Minister tries his hardest to meet with every wizard who wishes to see him.”
“This isn’t a social call,” Harry snaps. “He’d damn well better see me.”
“The Minister appreciates your patience,” the secretary adds. She taps her green quill on a stack of documents, her forced smile even less believable the longer Harry has to wait, and glare from the office door to her desk.
Harry’s insides lurch with anticipation, growing frustration, and then he hears a click of a door lock, and a man walks out of the minister’s office. He nods to Harry, his eyes widening ever so much when he realizes it’s Harry Potter standing in front of him. Harry is more than used to it, and yet every time he simply wants to glower and act a child and say “Stop staring at me!”
He pushes past the man and stomps into the minister’s office, slamming the doorway behind himself, his magic pulsing strong enough that his hands are unnecessary.
“Mister Potter, how may I-”
“Shut up,” Harry snaps, before the Minister of Magic has even turned around fully. Fox is an average man, average height with a bushy moustache that reminds Harry a little too strongly of Uncle Vernon’s. Fox carries himself and his position like a prince, the highest position in the British Ministry, and even though Harry can stare down his nose at the man, the puff of Fox’s chest and his pompous airwaving and blasé smile make up the height difference between the two.
But not this time.
Harry leans over the desk, spreading his palms across documents and scrolls. He flares his nostrils as he breathes, heavily, glaring at the Fox, sitting in his leather chair.
“How much are you fucking paying Lucius Malfoy to keep quiet?” he asks. “How can you stoop so fucking low?”
Fox’ dark eyes flicker with acknowledgment. He smiles, his thin lips spreading tight under his moustache, as he shakes his head. “Mister Potter, I’m not sure I follow what you-”
“You DAMN WELL know what I’m talking about!” Harry shouts. A lamp flickers behind him, the glass lampshade crackling. “Lucius Malfoy didn’t die and you’re covering it up!”
Fox continues to sit there, impassive. He folds his hands together. “Mister Potter,” he says slowly, biting his lip for a moment before continuing, “what proof do you have of your allegations? Lucius Malfoy was a prisoner at-”
“I KNOW WHO HE WAS!” Harry slams his fist down on the desk. Fox jumps in his chair, inching away. “AND THAT HE’S ALIVE AND FREE RIGHT NOW AND YOU’RE HELPING COVER IT UP!”
“Even if your allegations were true, Mister Potter, what does Lucius Malfoy matter to you?” Fox asks. He raises an eyebrow as Harry steps back and blinks. “You see, the Ministry has its own potential allegations against some unauthorized work you yourself did. And thus I feel that- even if any such accusation that Lucius Malfoy were alive this very day, which I highly think is implausible- that it would be wise you do not ever tell anyone about this.”
Harry can feel his mouth hanging open. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” he snaps. He can also feel his face flushing hot, with the memory of the long nights spent in the Ministry, years back, using the Damnatio Memoriae on all those documents, of Romilda Vane and the scandal, of Malfoy running off, right back home to where his father once lived. And lives once more.
Fox’s lips twitch. “I didn’t think you would want to accuse the Ministry of ever acting out of line. The matters with the families of the Azkaban prisoners involved in the abuse scandal have been long dealt with. And Lucius Malfoy has no recorded family alive, does he?”
“You’re fucking scum,” Harry mutters under his breath as he leaves the office.
“I have done nothing worse than yourself,” Fox murmurs back at him.
“Have a nice day!” Fox’ secretary trills as Harry walks down the hallway. He closes his eyes, wondering for a moment just what might happen if he turned around, marched into the Minister of Magic’ office and held his wand to the man’s neck.
It’s not worth it.
4.
Ron and Hermione’s home smells of baby shit and bread. Ron hands Harry a butterbeer and flops down on the couch, stretching his feet out and popping the cap of his own bottle.
“I can’t believe the fucking Ministry’s hiding Lucius Malfoy,” Ron says between gulps. “I should have guessed it. I was talking with Althea King in the filing department six months back and she said they’d been having a lot of paperwork over budgets. I should have checked out.”
“I should have known better,” Harry says. “That they’d try to fucking blackmail me over that spell. I should have known they knew.”
“Bloody fuckers,” Ron grumbles.
“Ron!” Hermione snaps behind them. She walks out from the kitchen with her youngest son, hardly more than six months old, slung over her shoulder. Ginny’s daughter toddles in behind her, chubby-faced and red-haired. “Can you possibly try to avoid language like that around them,” she says, nodding to her son and niece.
Ron shrugs and mutters an apology. “Not like the other two haven’t heard those words before,” he says, glancing towards the door. Hardly an hour previous when Harry arrived, Ron’s oldest sons rushed out the door with matching “Hi Harry!”s off to play Quidditch in the wide fields nearby.
“I’m glad you came over today, Harry,” Hermione says, passing off Andrew to Ron. She folds her arms and leans against the edge of a table. “I can’t imagine what Malfoy thought of this. His father was supposed to be dead- rightly so- and then shows up one day.”
“I meant to kill him,” Ron says, fiddling with his wand. “All those years ago, that hex was supposed to kill the bloody- er, him.”
“Believe me, I’d rather Lucius Malfoy was dead too,” Hermione says. “What if he tries to brainwash your children, Harry?”
“He won’t!” Harry says fiercely. “He’s not coming near my house again. He’s not coming near my children. He’s not coming near Malfoy ever again, either.”
“You can’t tell me Malfoy’s all redeemed now,” Ron says. He curls his lip and stands up, waving his hands around. “He bloody well deserved to serve time in Azkaban just as much as Snape. He’s a criminal and maybe he belongs with his Dad. Don’t see what you-”
“Shut up!” Harry shouts. “Shut up, you don’t fucking know him-”
“Harry!” Hermione yells.
“He’s not redeemed! He probably told Abraxas to go to Knockturn Alley- why else would he not tell you, mate?” Ron spits. His face is red, redder than his hair as he yells. “He’s probably going to run off again back to Daddy and you’ll be fucked over-”
“You don’t fucking know him! You don’t KNOW WHAT HE’S LIKE!”
“I KNOW HE’S A FUCKING BACKSTABBER AND I DON’T WANT TO SEE YOU HURT!”
“FUCK YOU!” Harry shouts. He stomps up to Ron and tries to push him into the wall, to punch him in the stomach, to shut him up, but Ron grabs his shoulders and pushes back. Harry can hear one of the children start to cry, loud shrieking wailing as they grunt and push each other, spit flying and insults too.
“He’s an ARSEHOLE! He’s ALWAYS BEEN ONE!”
“You just want me to leave him and MARRY YOUR SISTER!”
“Maybe that wouldn’t be so BAD!”
“Shut up shut up SHUT UP!” Hermione screams. Something cracks, a lamp bursts and glass shards sprinkle like little snowy knives all over the room. Harry can feel them prickle his arms, his face, and then he sees them hit Ron, too, and the blood start to prick up all over his face, red freckles, oozing down his face.
He lets go and steps back. His chest feels uncomfortably tight, then even more so when he sees the shattered expression on Hermione’s face, the quivering frown and the tears welling up in her eyes. She picks up the baby and sniffles. “You two are both fucking children,” she hisses. “Ron- don’t question Harry’s choice of life partner!”
Ron stares down at his feet, guilty. Harry feels a fleeting sense of triumph until Hermione rounds on him and snaps, “And you Harry- maybe you should listen to your friends once in a while. Malfoy’s not trouble and we know that, but it doesn’t mean we’re going to start hugging him and wishing him the best. You’re wrapped up in your own little world and you always try to fix all your own damned problems by your damned self! You know what- maybe you should damn well think about talking to Malfoy about what he feels instead of coming over here to escape him!”
Once Hermione has stomped off elsewhere into the house, Harry scuffs his trainer against the floor. “Sorry,” he mumbles at long last, once he and Ron stand silent and awkward for a good ten minutes.
“Sorry,” Ron echoes, just as uncomfortable. He looks up and the side of his mouth twists into a half smile. “If it’s any better, I hate Lucius Malfoy more than Malfoy.”
“Me too,” Harry says.
He leaves before supper, as much as Peter and Paul hang onto his arms and beg him to stay, to play some Quidditch with them, to tell embarrassing school stories about their mother and father.
“Sorry,” Harry tells them. “I have to get home and help Dobby with supper. He’s been burning the roasts more nights than not.”
Hermione’s words echo in his mind when he is home- talk to Malfoy.
I don’t escape him, Harry thinks. But as soon as he sees a shadow flicker through the hallway, silent and slinking, his stomach sinks with the knowledge and recognition that maybe he does try to escape Malfoy sometimes because now he’s home in this hollow shell that hasn’t sounded proper since Lucius Malfoy paid them a visit. Malfoy is a hollow shell, lurking and blank-faced, sleep-deprived and miserable.
He is no better when he is alone with Malfoy, the footsteps of their children having thinned out throughout the house as the sun sets, bloodied light spilling into the home, scattering the rooms into a growing darkness. When he himself goes to bed, James’ room is dark, the door cracked open slightly, but there are still lights shining softly from under the doorway of both Abraxas and Pyrrha’s rooms. From Viola’s room, there are muffled noises.
Harry’s only guess is that Viola purchased herself one of Fred and George Weasley’s ghouls-in-a-box as a gag while she was at school. There’s no sign of any real ghouls or boggarts, and no one is hiding under an Invisibility Cloak either. He set up a localized ward two nights ago. Nothing has set it off.
Malfoy is Harry’s own personal ward, setting himself off with a stiffened back as soon as Harry enters the room. He’s bothered to change from his robes into a pair of pajama trousers and sits on the bed, his arms holding up his knees, resting his chin on them.
From the angle Malfoy sits, Harry can see the outline of his cock pressing through the thin material. He swallows, his throat going dry as his own cock starts to swell. His eyes move up to Malfoy’s face, searching, but Malfoy doesn’t notice.
Harry steps closer. The moonlight falls across Malfoy’s face, casting pearly shadows under his eyes, his cheek bones, his hair outlined like a halo. Arousal pools in his belly. He wants to reach out, to touch Malfoy, to grab his cock through the pajamas and stroke it until Malfoy lies supine in front of him, gasping and begging the way things ought to be.
He doesn’t even know he’s touching Malfoy, that it’s more than a fleeting thought until he hears Malfoy gasp and feels Malfoy’s body underneath his, pressed to the bed.
“What are you doing?” Malfoy hisses. His palms splay across Harry’s chest, pushing but not pushing hard enough. “Get off me!”
Harry grinds his hips down, his hands struggling with Malfoy’s, wringing and whipping around, trying to force him to stay down and stay still. He leans down for a kiss, but Malfoy wrenches his face away and yelps when Harry’s tongue and teeth graze his ear.
“Get off me!”
“No!” Harry insists. “I want you.”
“Get OFF me!” Malfoy shouts. “Accio wa-”
“Desistere!” Harry says, waving his hand in the way. Malfoy’s wand bounces off his skin, falling to the bedroom floor. He shifts his weight, moving across Malfoy’s hips, pressing his cock into him. He wants what they had, before all of this, he wants Malfoy to curve into his body, to arch his back up, moaning and panting.
But Malfoy doesn’t moan. He pants, only through clenched teeth. His tense body, the struggles with his arms, the moving of his knees, trying to form a barrier between the two of them, everything stops. He goes slack under Harry, his eyes hooded and lifeless.
Harry stops too, and leans back on his ankles, pulling Malfoy’s arms up with him, pulling Malfoy to his chest. His chest hurts, his cock aches, too, but not as much as his insides when Malfoy falls against him and chokes.
I can’t do this, Harry thinks. “I’m sorry,” he mutters. “I’m sorry. Everything’s all fucked up and I- I don’t know how to fix it,” he says. “I’m so sorry.”
“You can’t fix it,” Malfoy mumbles, but his words are lost in Harry’s shirt, dampened down with the first prickling of tears.
Rating: NC17
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Summary: After Hogwarts, everything changes.
Author's Notes: Thank you so much to my beta, B, without which I wouldn't have had the drive to finish this.
[Part 1][Part 2][Part 3][Part 4][Part 5][Part 6][Part 7][Part 8][Part 9][Part 10]
[Part 11][Part 12][Part 13][Part 14][Part 15][Part 16][Part 17][Part 18][Part 19]
[Part 20][Part 21][Part 22][Part 23]
1.
Harry doesn’t know what to say to Malfoy. I’m sorry to hear your father is alive after all? I’ll fucking kill him? Don’t listen to convicts? Tell me what you want me to do?
They scatter across the house, the confusing silence a descending chaos. Harry can see Pyrrha’s eyes searching his out, asking what’s going on. He can see Viola scowling, her brow furrowed and angry. James is confused, still damp from the beach.
Malfoy disappears, wraith-like, behind the bedroom door.
Pyrrha takes James upstairs, murmuring to him about helping put on his pajamas.
Viola, as always, locks herself in her room. Harry watches her door slam shut with a tightening chest.
What has happened? he thinks, rubbing his temples. He ought to take his memories, drag them with a wand into the pensieve Hermione and Ron gave him five years ago, to see what happened, once more.
Malfoy was dead. No one could have survived being thrown over cliffs, one hundred feet above frigid waters, patrolled by occasional Dementors and wardens and Ministry officials. No one.
“Except a rat,” Harry mutters.
No one eats supper. Harry doesn’t realize there even is anything until the acrid scent of burning food filters in from the kitchen on hot, grey clouds of smoke, the smoke detectors blaring until he whips his wand and shouts, “Silencio!”
Malfoy must have been cooking something before Lucius Malfoy showed up. Dobby runs in from the linen closet, hobbling and bowing low to Harry, muttering “Dobby will clean everything, Master Harry Potter, sir. Dobby will clean it all for you.”
“It’s fine Dobby,” Harry says tersely.
“Oh, no, Master Harry Potter sir,” Dobby shakes his head, his ears flapping with intent. “Dobby will do it.”
Harry leaves Dobby in the kitchen. As he leaves, he can hear the oven door slamming open and shut, pots banging and clanking.
And in the corner of his eye, he sees Abraxas slinking up the stairs. Harry slips in behind him, following with silent footsteps. Abraxas stops at the landing, starting to turn around as Harry grabs his upper arm and presses tight with his fingers.
Abraxas makes a noise in the back of his throat, a hitch of his breath as he winces, refusing to look Harry in the eye over the frame of his glasses.
Harry pushes Abraxas into his bedroom and shuts the door with a click. Then he lets go.
His son’s bedroom is littered with dirty t-shirts and white socks. His school trunk hangs open at the end of the bed, spilling old class notes and geegaws, sticky old sweets and extendable ears over the lid. It smells of sweat, everything- teenage and a little rank, and vague hints of Everfresh Soap and something else that Harry reckons smells more like rotten cabbage, or maybe spunk.
He doesn’t want to know.
Abraxas backs up onto his mattress, rubbing his arm where Harry had grabbed him. The skin is red, but not bruised. He grimaces, his lip curling up like Lucius Malfoy’s, except it is no where near as cold or sinister.
It is penitent, if anything. A flush creeps over Abraxas’ face as Harry folds his arms over his chest.
“How long have you been going to Knockturn Alley?” he says, his voice low and slow, deliberate.
Abraxas sniffs. Or sniffles. He wipes his nose on the back of his hand and Harry sees, blink and miss, what he thinks is shining and wet in Abraxas’ dark slate eyes. “Not long,” he mumbles. Then, stronger and more forced, he says, “I just wanted to know!”
“Know what?” Harry snaps, pushing himself off the dresser and stepping closer.
“I just wanted to know about Dadd- father’s family! You never tell us anything! I just-” he stops, swallowing his words with a hitch and squeezing his eyes shut.
“You just what?” Harry presses.
“You never talk about the Malfoy side! Not you, not father- no one! I wanted to know what you were hiding!”
Harry feels himself suck in a breath. He doesn’t hear the words in his head, not until he hears himself shouting, seething, the words spitting from his mouth. “You want to know about the Malfoy family?” he yells. “The bloody Malfoy family? Lucius Malfoy tried to fucking kill me again and again- I was a BOY and he tried it! He hated everything about me! They all hated Muggles and Mudbloods- do you know what Malfoy used to call Hermione?”
Abraxas shakes his head once, but not before Harry keeps going. He can’t stop himself. This anger, this pent-up anger from his own youth surfacing with the stupid, stupid actions of his son. He wants to wring Abraxas’ neck. Shake the stupid, stupid thing he has caused from him forever, but he can’t. He steps even closer and Abraxas cowers before him, cringing as Harry seethes.
“He used to call her a MUDBLOOD at school and LAUGH in her face- that’s how much he thought of her! He hated Ron, he hated Gryffindors, he was jealous of me, hated me- it doesn’t fucking matter he was an ignorant brat! His aunt KILLED Sirius! His father was there when Cedric was KILLED! Lucius Malfoy tried to KILL Ginny! He was a fucking DEATH EATER! He served VOLDEMORT!
Do you know- do you want to know?” Harry shouts. “Do you want to know about DUMBLEDORE too? MALFOY was there when he DIED! Malfoy was sent by VOLDEMORT TO KILL HIM!” He pauses, his breathing hard and deep, his mind racing and his blood pumping. His hands shake with the force of it all and he inhales a wavering breath, trying to calm himself as he says, “That family deserved Azkaban. That’s why we don’t talk about it. Because they are smeared with the filth of their own actions. I don’t care what the hags or Borgin or any creeps you might have met might have told you- they’re rot.”
Harry closes the door behind himself, but not before he hears Abraxas whisper, “Don’t hate me, Dad,” between repressed sobs.
2.
Malfoy is sixteen again for Harry. He carries himself around with the same distracted look in his eyes, heavy purple bags under them. His skin loses what little summer colour it had in a matter of days, grey-tinged and sallow. He curls into himself almost immediately.
The first night Harry reaches out to him in bed, touching his shoulder. Malfoy hasn’t even changed from his robes, but lies rumpled on the sheets, staring out at nothing. “Malfoy?” Harry murmurs. When Malfoy says nothing, Harry tries again. “Draco?”
“Fuck off,” Malfoy hisses, but whatever malice his words might entail, the hollowness in his voice swallows it entirely into something that squeezes Harry’s insides. He, too, is sixteen again and watching Malfoy, the pity welling inside him.
“You’ve been without your father for over twenty years,” Harry says slowly. “He wouldn’t- he doesn’t- you’re different now. You’re an adult and-”
“Fuck off,” Malfoy mumbles. He rolls onto his side. Harry listens to the sounds of his breathing: too smooth, too regular for comfort, but Malfoy doesn’t want comfort, he wants to be left alone. The sharp jut of his shoulder, the tense muscles under it tell Harry everything.
He showers, the damp sea and sand still clinging to hidden places of his body from the beach. He scrubs the sand from his elbows, his knees and his hair. What had been a beautiful sunny day, blue sky and warm sea has turned into something murky, something disgusting, all by the visit of one wizard.
“Fuck you,” Harry says over the drone of the shower spray. “Fuck you, Lucius Malfoy!” He slams his hand against the tiles, but he knows Lucius Malfoy can’t feel this anger welling inside him. All it leaves Harry is a sore hand that he cradles in a towel.
Harry lies in the bed, the sheets a comfortable coolness under his damp skin. Inside, he feels anything but comfortable. He reaches a blind hand out across the bed, but it is empty. He blinks, the dim darkness a blur of shapes and masses without his glasses. In the light streaming in softly through the slitted cracks of the blinds, he can make out Malfoy, sitting by the window, staring out.
“Come to bed,” Harry says. “He’s not worth it.”
Malfoy says nothing for the longest while. Come morning, the first morning after, Harry sees him still hunched up on top of the trunk under the window. Pale sunlight lightens his features, and makes the deep, dark circles under his eyes even heavier.
“You don’t know me at all,” Malfoy mutters.
Malfoy acts like a zombie. Harry knows he’s thinking. He locks himself in the bedroom, the bathroom, the back room. He doesn’t come out to eat anything. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t sleep- he simply doesn’t do anything.
Harry wants to ask him what he’s thinking, if he can do anything to help, but he knows he can’t. And he can’t contact the Ministry about the Floo until Monday, to restrict the Floo access. Inside, he kicks himself for never preventing the Floo channels into Knockturn Alley. Not once did he think Abraxas would ever go there, or Viola, or Pyrrha.
“Why did you not say ANYTHING if you knew?” he shouts at Malfoy. “You knew he was going and you didn’t STOP HIM!” He pounds his fist into the wall. The knuckles are cracked and bleeding, bruised with anger, but there is nothing else he can do. He grabs Malfoy by the shoulders of his robes and pushes him into the wall. He wants to shake Malfoy, he wants to scream at him more- It’s your fault Abraxas was found by your father. It’s your fault Lucius Malfoy found you here. You didn’t tell me!
He wants to push Malfoy into the wall, to grab his hair and force him into the frame of the house, to lift his rumpled robes and he wants to fuck Malfoy, to make him cry, to make him hurt, to make him do something more than hide. Harry’s hard, his cock aches as it presses into Malfoy’s hip, but Malfoy does nothing to help.
His chest aches, too, and the harder he thinks on it, the harder his cock becomes, the worse he feels for imagining Malfoy whimpering into the wall, his legs spread apart as his body rocks in tune with Harry’s.
“I- he didn’t-” Malfoy shakes his head once and laughs, a bitter sounding noise that echoes in Harry’s ear. “I did the same when I was his age. There’s nothing wrong with Knockturn Alley,” he mutters, that same lifeless and hollow voice trying to mask the hurt Harry knows must be welling up inside him.
“FILTH LIKE YOUR FATHER ARE THERE!” he screams. “God- what are you STU-”
Harry stops when he hears a noise. He slowly lets his hand let the fabric of Malfoy’s robes go, his fingers uncurling. Malfoy slides against the wall down to the floor, his lip curling up and a strangled, choked noise rising in his throat. Harry closes his eyes, hating himself for the briefest moment for this, wanting to grab Malfoy and hold him tight in his arms, to kiss his salty cheeks.
But instead he follows the noise. He can’t remember if he put a Silencing Charm on the bedroom tonight or not. The children- they could have heard all this, but when he walks through the doorway, the familiar bounce of magic, like the faintest breeze across his skin, grazes his body and he knows that’s not the case.
But the noise doesn’t stop. Someone is awake. There is a clang, a rattle and a scraping of furniture, followed by three bangs.
Harry is reminded of the ghoul in the attic of the Burrow. He pulls his wand out from the breast pocket of his pajama shirt and creeps down the hallway. The carpet muffles his footsteps until he stops outside of Viola’s room. The banging has stopped, but there are strange noises continuing. Things rustling, furniture being dragged along the flooring- wood on wood.
He raps his knuckles once on her door. “Viola?” he calls out, careful to keep his voice quiet. Ghoul or not, it is well after midnight.
Something falls to the floor and bangs. He can hear Viola cursing and something rustling.
“What the…” he mutters, but his instincts are quicker than his words and Harry pushes the door open. The lock is stuck. He flicks his wand. “Alohamora!” The doorknob won’t move, still. He swishes again, and a third time, then tries a stronger locking charm. Learned in sixth year, but she might have read Pyrrha’s textbook ahead of time.
The door swings open when he pushes his shoulder into it.
In a heap of sheets on her floor, Viola lies, twisted and struggling. There are no burst pillows, no dressers shoved into the doorway. No trunks have been thrown against the wall. Her school trunk sits placid and intact in the corner, a few stray scrolls and an old book of Harry’s from school on the top of it.
“Are you all right?” he asks. He holds out his hand and helps her to her feet. Her face is flushed from the warm summer night and her legs unsteady. “What’s going on?”
“It’s fine, Dad,” Viola says.
Harry scratches his temple. Her tone is smooth and suave, like Malfoy’s was, before this rubbish with his father.
“Is there a ghoul in here?” Harry asks, deliberate. He flashes his wand about, a Lumos illuminating the far corners with a blue-tinged glow.
“No,” Viola says. She scratches her own temple and glances off behind her left shoulder. “Maybe it was the wind or something. Don’t we have ghoul-detecting charms on the house?”
Harry shakes his head. “I didn’t install them. Is there a Boggart in here?” he asks, pausing at Viola’s armoire. Books spill out from the bottom, more books from the attic, old school tomes from Harry’s time. He recognizes a fourth year Transfiguration text, over twenty years old.
“No,” Viola insists. She’s scowling at him now, her familiar teenage antagonism surfacing as she narrows her eyes. “Can I go to bed now?”
“Yeah, all right,” Harry says. His eyes sweep the room once more, but there is nothing. No boggart, no ghouls, no nothing.
When he returns to the comfort of his own bedroom, Malfoy sits in front of the window, another sleepless night passing for him. He stares out onto the back garden, covered with inky shadows and eery orange streetlamp light.
There is no wind out tonight either, Harry thinks.
3.
It isn’t supposed to be like this.
Harry had planned to have a summer hols, too. Instead, he’s standing outside the office of the Minister of Magic in the middle of the week, glaring at the doorway and the placard with fancy gold lettering.
J. Merlon Fox, Minister of Magic
“Fuck you,” Harry hisses under his breath.
The secretary makes a noise behind him at her desk. Harry glances over his shoulder and she smiles, her eyes watching him above her horn-rimmed glasses. She curls a lock of her purple-tinted hair. “He’ll be with you soon, Mister Potter. The Minister tries his hardest to meet with every wizard who wishes to see him.”
“This isn’t a social call,” Harry snaps. “He’d damn well better see me.”
“The Minister appreciates your patience,” the secretary adds. She taps her green quill on a stack of documents, her forced smile even less believable the longer Harry has to wait, and glare from the office door to her desk.
Harry’s insides lurch with anticipation, growing frustration, and then he hears a click of a door lock, and a man walks out of the minister’s office. He nods to Harry, his eyes widening ever so much when he realizes it’s Harry Potter standing in front of him. Harry is more than used to it, and yet every time he simply wants to glower and act a child and say “Stop staring at me!”
He pushes past the man and stomps into the minister’s office, slamming the doorway behind himself, his magic pulsing strong enough that his hands are unnecessary.
“Mister Potter, how may I-”
“Shut up,” Harry snaps, before the Minister of Magic has even turned around fully. Fox is an average man, average height with a bushy moustache that reminds Harry a little too strongly of Uncle Vernon’s. Fox carries himself and his position like a prince, the highest position in the British Ministry, and even though Harry can stare down his nose at the man, the puff of Fox’s chest and his pompous airwaving and blasé smile make up the height difference between the two.
But not this time.
Harry leans over the desk, spreading his palms across documents and scrolls. He flares his nostrils as he breathes, heavily, glaring at the Fox, sitting in his leather chair.
“How much are you fucking paying Lucius Malfoy to keep quiet?” he asks. “How can you stoop so fucking low?”
Fox’ dark eyes flicker with acknowledgment. He smiles, his thin lips spreading tight under his moustache, as he shakes his head. “Mister Potter, I’m not sure I follow what you-”
“You DAMN WELL know what I’m talking about!” Harry shouts. A lamp flickers behind him, the glass lampshade crackling. “Lucius Malfoy didn’t die and you’re covering it up!”
Fox continues to sit there, impassive. He folds his hands together. “Mister Potter,” he says slowly, biting his lip for a moment before continuing, “what proof do you have of your allegations? Lucius Malfoy was a prisoner at-”
“I KNOW WHO HE WAS!” Harry slams his fist down on the desk. Fox jumps in his chair, inching away. “AND THAT HE’S ALIVE AND FREE RIGHT NOW AND YOU’RE HELPING COVER IT UP!”
“Even if your allegations were true, Mister Potter, what does Lucius Malfoy matter to you?” Fox asks. He raises an eyebrow as Harry steps back and blinks. “You see, the Ministry has its own potential allegations against some unauthorized work you yourself did. And thus I feel that- even if any such accusation that Lucius Malfoy were alive this very day, which I highly think is implausible- that it would be wise you do not ever tell anyone about this.”
Harry can feel his mouth hanging open. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” he snaps. He can also feel his face flushing hot, with the memory of the long nights spent in the Ministry, years back, using the Damnatio Memoriae on all those documents, of Romilda Vane and the scandal, of Malfoy running off, right back home to where his father once lived. And lives once more.
Fox’s lips twitch. “I didn’t think you would want to accuse the Ministry of ever acting out of line. The matters with the families of the Azkaban prisoners involved in the abuse scandal have been long dealt with. And Lucius Malfoy has no recorded family alive, does he?”
“You’re fucking scum,” Harry mutters under his breath as he leaves the office.
“I have done nothing worse than yourself,” Fox murmurs back at him.
“Have a nice day!” Fox’ secretary trills as Harry walks down the hallway. He closes his eyes, wondering for a moment just what might happen if he turned around, marched into the Minister of Magic’ office and held his wand to the man’s neck.
It’s not worth it.
4.
Ron and Hermione’s home smells of baby shit and bread. Ron hands Harry a butterbeer and flops down on the couch, stretching his feet out and popping the cap of his own bottle.
“I can’t believe the fucking Ministry’s hiding Lucius Malfoy,” Ron says between gulps. “I should have guessed it. I was talking with Althea King in the filing department six months back and she said they’d been having a lot of paperwork over budgets. I should have checked out.”
“I should have known better,” Harry says. “That they’d try to fucking blackmail me over that spell. I should have known they knew.”
“Bloody fuckers,” Ron grumbles.
“Ron!” Hermione snaps behind them. She walks out from the kitchen with her youngest son, hardly more than six months old, slung over her shoulder. Ginny’s daughter toddles in behind her, chubby-faced and red-haired. “Can you possibly try to avoid language like that around them,” she says, nodding to her son and niece.
Ron shrugs and mutters an apology. “Not like the other two haven’t heard those words before,” he says, glancing towards the door. Hardly an hour previous when Harry arrived, Ron’s oldest sons rushed out the door with matching “Hi Harry!”s off to play Quidditch in the wide fields nearby.
“I’m glad you came over today, Harry,” Hermione says, passing off Andrew to Ron. She folds her arms and leans against the edge of a table. “I can’t imagine what Malfoy thought of this. His father was supposed to be dead- rightly so- and then shows up one day.”
“I meant to kill him,” Ron says, fiddling with his wand. “All those years ago, that hex was supposed to kill the bloody- er, him.”
“Believe me, I’d rather Lucius Malfoy was dead too,” Hermione says. “What if he tries to brainwash your children, Harry?”
“He won’t!” Harry says fiercely. “He’s not coming near my house again. He’s not coming near my children. He’s not coming near Malfoy ever again, either.”
“You can’t tell me Malfoy’s all redeemed now,” Ron says. He curls his lip and stands up, waving his hands around. “He bloody well deserved to serve time in Azkaban just as much as Snape. He’s a criminal and maybe he belongs with his Dad. Don’t see what you-”
“Shut up!” Harry shouts. “Shut up, you don’t fucking know him-”
“Harry!” Hermione yells.
“He’s not redeemed! He probably told Abraxas to go to Knockturn Alley- why else would he not tell you, mate?” Ron spits. His face is red, redder than his hair as he yells. “He’s probably going to run off again back to Daddy and you’ll be fucked over-”
“You don’t fucking know him! You don’t KNOW WHAT HE’S LIKE!”
“I KNOW HE’S A FUCKING BACKSTABBER AND I DON’T WANT TO SEE YOU HURT!”
“FUCK YOU!” Harry shouts. He stomps up to Ron and tries to push him into the wall, to punch him in the stomach, to shut him up, but Ron grabs his shoulders and pushes back. Harry can hear one of the children start to cry, loud shrieking wailing as they grunt and push each other, spit flying and insults too.
“He’s an ARSEHOLE! He’s ALWAYS BEEN ONE!”
“You just want me to leave him and MARRY YOUR SISTER!”
“Maybe that wouldn’t be so BAD!”
“Shut up shut up SHUT UP!” Hermione screams. Something cracks, a lamp bursts and glass shards sprinkle like little snowy knives all over the room. Harry can feel them prickle his arms, his face, and then he sees them hit Ron, too, and the blood start to prick up all over his face, red freckles, oozing down his face.
He lets go and steps back. His chest feels uncomfortably tight, then even more so when he sees the shattered expression on Hermione’s face, the quivering frown and the tears welling up in her eyes. She picks up the baby and sniffles. “You two are both fucking children,” she hisses. “Ron- don’t question Harry’s choice of life partner!”
Ron stares down at his feet, guilty. Harry feels a fleeting sense of triumph until Hermione rounds on him and snaps, “And you Harry- maybe you should listen to your friends once in a while. Malfoy’s not trouble and we know that, but it doesn’t mean we’re going to start hugging him and wishing him the best. You’re wrapped up in your own little world and you always try to fix all your own damned problems by your damned self! You know what- maybe you should damn well think about talking to Malfoy about what he feels instead of coming over here to escape him!”
Once Hermione has stomped off elsewhere into the house, Harry scuffs his trainer against the floor. “Sorry,” he mumbles at long last, once he and Ron stand silent and awkward for a good ten minutes.
“Sorry,” Ron echoes, just as uncomfortable. He looks up and the side of his mouth twists into a half smile. “If it’s any better, I hate Lucius Malfoy more than Malfoy.”
“Me too,” Harry says.
He leaves before supper, as much as Peter and Paul hang onto his arms and beg him to stay, to play some Quidditch with them, to tell embarrassing school stories about their mother and father.
“Sorry,” Harry tells them. “I have to get home and help Dobby with supper. He’s been burning the roasts more nights than not.”
Hermione’s words echo in his mind when he is home- talk to Malfoy.
I don’t escape him, Harry thinks. But as soon as he sees a shadow flicker through the hallway, silent and slinking, his stomach sinks with the knowledge and recognition that maybe he does try to escape Malfoy sometimes because now he’s home in this hollow shell that hasn’t sounded proper since Lucius Malfoy paid them a visit. Malfoy is a hollow shell, lurking and blank-faced, sleep-deprived and miserable.
He is no better when he is alone with Malfoy, the footsteps of their children having thinned out throughout the house as the sun sets, bloodied light spilling into the home, scattering the rooms into a growing darkness. When he himself goes to bed, James’ room is dark, the door cracked open slightly, but there are still lights shining softly from under the doorway of both Abraxas and Pyrrha’s rooms. From Viola’s room, there are muffled noises.
Harry’s only guess is that Viola purchased herself one of Fred and George Weasley’s ghouls-in-a-box as a gag while she was at school. There’s no sign of any real ghouls or boggarts, and no one is hiding under an Invisibility Cloak either. He set up a localized ward two nights ago. Nothing has set it off.
Malfoy is Harry’s own personal ward, setting himself off with a stiffened back as soon as Harry enters the room. He’s bothered to change from his robes into a pair of pajama trousers and sits on the bed, his arms holding up his knees, resting his chin on them.
From the angle Malfoy sits, Harry can see the outline of his cock pressing through the thin material. He swallows, his throat going dry as his own cock starts to swell. His eyes move up to Malfoy’s face, searching, but Malfoy doesn’t notice.
Harry steps closer. The moonlight falls across Malfoy’s face, casting pearly shadows under his eyes, his cheek bones, his hair outlined like a halo. Arousal pools in his belly. He wants to reach out, to touch Malfoy, to grab his cock through the pajamas and stroke it until Malfoy lies supine in front of him, gasping and begging the way things ought to be.
He doesn’t even know he’s touching Malfoy, that it’s more than a fleeting thought until he hears Malfoy gasp and feels Malfoy’s body underneath his, pressed to the bed.
“What are you doing?” Malfoy hisses. His palms splay across Harry’s chest, pushing but not pushing hard enough. “Get off me!”
Harry grinds his hips down, his hands struggling with Malfoy’s, wringing and whipping around, trying to force him to stay down and stay still. He leans down for a kiss, but Malfoy wrenches his face away and yelps when Harry’s tongue and teeth graze his ear.
“Get off me!”
“No!” Harry insists. “I want you.”
“Get OFF me!” Malfoy shouts. “Accio wa-”
“Desistere!” Harry says, waving his hand in the way. Malfoy’s wand bounces off his skin, falling to the bedroom floor. He shifts his weight, moving across Malfoy’s hips, pressing his cock into him. He wants what they had, before all of this, he wants Malfoy to curve into his body, to arch his back up, moaning and panting.
But Malfoy doesn’t moan. He pants, only through clenched teeth. His tense body, the struggles with his arms, the moving of his knees, trying to form a barrier between the two of them, everything stops. He goes slack under Harry, his eyes hooded and lifeless.
Harry stops too, and leans back on his ankles, pulling Malfoy’s arms up with him, pulling Malfoy to his chest. His chest hurts, his cock aches, too, but not as much as his insides when Malfoy falls against him and chokes.
I can’t do this, Harry thinks. “I’m sorry,” he mutters. “I’m sorry. Everything’s all fucked up and I- I don’t know how to fix it,” he says. “I’m so sorry.”
“You can’t fix it,” Malfoy mumbles, but his words are lost in Harry’s shirt, dampened down with the first prickling of tears.