HOLY SHIT FIC
Title: E Vinculis
Pairing: H/D
Rating: Decidedly R
Word Count: 4026
Warnings: Snark, mild bondage, frottage
Summary: In which a prank goes horribly wrong, Draco yells at his housemates, and there is (I hope) hot hot tied-to-the-bedposts smut.
Author’s Note: I started writing this for xylodemon’s Harry/Draco Drabble Project, but it clearly came out as more than a drabble. I trust she will forgive me, though, as she was trolling for tie!smut with the prompt anyway and I couldn’t give it to her unless I wrote beyond 200 words. Concrit requested and appreciated, and many thanks to all of my friends who’ve had to hear about this incessantly over the past couple of weeks, especially my beta, shop1442.
Draco considers his spur-of-the-moment decision to abduct Harry Potter the previous night a blaze of brilliance in the mostly humdrum world of moderately-malicious shenanigans.
Of course, then someone had somehow decided that the best way to handle the subsequent problem of what to do with Potter after Draco’s Petrificus wore off was to strip him naked, hide his clothes, and bind his hands to one of the cast-iron rings high on the wall of the sixth-year boys' dormitory using someone’s spare tie.
Obviously Firewhisky was at least partially responsible.
Under normal circumstances, Draco would have smirked and commented on how delightfully useful living in a dungeon could be. Waking up to find Potter struggling to undo the green-and-silver silk wound around his wrists, wearing nothing but his stupid glasses and with his toes barely grazing the floor, however, can hardly be construed as "normal."
The others all having gone to breakfast (they probably didn’t want to be remotely near the dungeons when I saw this - wise, really), Draco is left alone to contemplate the Git Who Lived, Only To Be Embarrassingly Bound In The Slytherin Dungeons.
Hell of a sight to wake up to.
He clearly remembers the argument that led to Potter's impromptu abduction; after Draco began by taunting Potter rather cleverly about Gryffindor's devastating fall from Quidditch grace after that loss to Ravenclaw and how nice the Cup would look in Professor Snape's office, Potter had in a stunningly un-Gryffindor example of foul play (if it had been anyone but Potter, I’d have been impressed) casually insulted both of Draco's parents in a particularly heinous fashion.
Obviously, that was not on.
Draco had declared loudly that he was going to sleep after unceremoniously dumping Potter, stiff as a board, on one of the common room couches, leaving Zabini in charge and trusting that he would take care of the situation. To his mind, this would mean a quick Memory Charm and stuffing Potter in a closet, but obviously his housemates are even worse mental infants than he’d previously thought.
It is suddenly startlingly clear how the Dark Lord’s operation could be so inefficient.
Briefly, he considers delivering the captive up to You-Know-Who, but then discards the idea as impractical owing to its assured side effect of having to leave school immediately and go into hiding.
Draco dislikes hiding, in general.
He peers out at Potter again from behind his dark-green velvet curtains.
“MALFOY!”
He can’t possibly have seen me.
That gives him a brilliant idea for an entrance, though.
After smoothing his hair and pulling on the grey trousers and black jumper neatly folded at the foot of his bed, Draco draws the curtains with one elegant hand, lifts his wand from the bedside table with the other, and inclines his head towards Potter in a mocking fashion, his second-best sneer on his face.
“Do you make a habit of calling for me whenever you’re in a sticky spot, Potter, or is today a special occasion?”
Potter’s only response is to still his struggling and glare murderously across the room before attempting to take a deep breath.
Draco smirks as Potter wheezes and chokes. “Quit that, Potter; you’re strangling in that position. Honestly, don’t you know anything about torture?” He crosses the room, stride measured for Potter’s maximum annoyance, the cold of the stone floor stinging his toes.
“I am going to fucking murder you for this, Malfoy.”
Rolling his eyes and ignoring the increasingly hostile stare, Draco briefly touches the knotted tie binding Potter to the wall. Magic crackles under his fingertips (Nott’s work, definitely) as he checks the circulation in Potter’s arms.
After touching Potter’s icy hands, Draco’s bare feet prickle in sympathy, and he briefly wonders why nobody bothered to stoke the fire (it’s February, after all). He steps back for a moment, critically examining the goosebumps covering the smooth skin, the vague look of exhaustion that lingers behind the sharp anger in the green eyes, the way the slender body turns slightly away from Draco to shield its nakedness.
“This isn’t funny, Malfoy,” Potter says, voice trembling slightly.
The smirk becomes a full-fledged sardonic grin. “Come now, Potter, wouldn’t you find it the slightest bit amusing if you found me in a similar position?”
Draco doesn’t really think that their current situation is funny, either - he’s getting angrier at Nott by the second for apparently forgetting that strangulation poses and nudity and dungeons don’t mix well unless one is attempting to do one’s captive serious damage - but he’s certainly not going to let Potter see that.
Potter’s try at a shrug leaves much to be desired, given his uncomfortable position. “Actually, I’d probably just spell you into a burlap sack and chuck you out of Gryffindor Tower.”
Draco arches an aquiline eyebrow.
“Fuck you, Malfoy.”
“You’re really not in any sort of condition to be fucking anyone, Potter.” He frowns at the ring on the wall, then raises his wand and prods the knotted tie, squinting slightly in concentration. He smiles, pleased, when the knot partially undoes itself, and when he lowers his wand again, Potter’s hands come with it as if attached to the tip. Potter fails miserably in his attempt to mask his sigh of relief but then resumes scowling as Draco half-drags him across the room.
“What the hell are you playing at?” he demands, struggling to wrench his still-bound wrists away.
“Obviously, I am saving you from the also-obvious incompetence of Nott, who is a prat of the highest order and will be hexed into next week as soon as I see him.”
In a situation any less absurd, Draco would laugh cruelly at the look of complete and utter bewilderment that crosses Potter’s features. As it is, he merely spells the tie to loop unbroken around one of his bedposts before moving to rummage around in his trunk.
“You’ll forgive me, also obviously, if I don’t consider being tied to a bedpost salvation,” Potter says, eyes flashing again, but he’s clearly happy to be down from the wall. He gazes up at the bed’s canopy for a moment, and the corners of his mouth quirk up. “Taking me to bed despite my condition, I see?”
Draco makes a rude noise and pulls a soft black quilt from his trunk, then drapes it over Potter’s shoulders. “Potter, if you think I would allow anyone, even you, to die tied naked to the wall of this dormitory, you’re extremely and ridiculously stupid.”
“You still have yet to explain why I am naked and tied up in the Slytherin dungeons!”
Draco stops short, the sneer slipping from his features for a moment. “You don’t know?”
“I am certain that you were involved, Malfoy!”
“You really don’t remember anything from last night?” Draco’s estimation of Nott improves very slightly.
Potter shifts uncomfortably, grasping at the edges of the quilt with his bound hands to pull it closer around him, fingering the embroidered silver “M” in one corner. “I remember nothing that would in any way explain the current circumstances,” he finally says, shaky voice belying the glare of messy death he shoots in Draco’s direction.
“I assure you that I had nothing to do with your being naked and tied - poorly, I might add - to my wall,” Draco says evenly, eyeing Potter’s fingers on the delicately-worked monogram. “You think that I want to wake up to a sight like that?” He pointedly looks down.
Potter reddens. “Well, I don’t see you helping!”
“I untied you from the wall and gave you a blanket!”
“Probably just so you can put me up there again!”
Draco pauses. “You don’t know that.” Frankly, I’d much rather shove you into one of the first-floor vanishing cabinets and find out if Montague’s story about the elder Weasels was true.
Potter starts, as if he had expected a denial (typical Gryffindor), then slumps, banging his forehead against the bedpost.
“I realize that you may be in shock, Potter, but abusing my furniture isn’t exactly helping, either.” For a moment, Draco wonders why he’s being so damned civil towards Potter, whom he loathes, but then he returns to mentally abusing his housemates.
Potter almost laughs. “Your bed probably deserves it,” he replies. “Trapped, wandless, starkers, and tied to Malfoy’s bed. It’s a fate worse than death!”
Well fuck you too, scarhead! Anger flares in the pit of Draco’s stomach at the insult. “Spare me the useless melodramatics, Potter,” he says in clipped syllables. “I already quite clearly stated that I was not interested in your dying in this dormitory, much less this bed.”
Potter turns around sharply with his arms still awkwardly bound to the bedpost, dislodging the quilt around his shoulders. “No problems with kidnapping me or tying me up though, there’s a laugh! Gods, I know somehow that this is all your fault!”
“My fault?” Draco is genuinely incensed now. The marvelous Harry Potter, always the victim! “Do you think I want you here? The only reason I am saving your fucking neck, Potter, is that I don’t care for a trip to Azkaban, and I would like absolutely nothing better than for you to sod off and get the hell out of my dungeons and forget any of this ever happened!”
Silver eyes flash, daring Potter to say something, anything about his father, knowing that any number of hexes would be much easier to explain than nudity and bondage. Bloody bastard Nott.
Potter opens and closes his mouth several times before he seems to conclude that it’s better not to speak.
They glower at one another for awhile.
Draco sighs. “None of this would have happened if you would have kept your bloody trap shut about my mother, Potter.” He tries not to think of how closely this resembles an apology.
Potter laughs weakly. “I don’t even want to know, Malfoy.”
Voices drift in from the corridor.
Draco sits there stupidly for a moment before the sounds can properly register. Then he panics, snatching the blanket from around Potter (ignoring the yelp of protest), grabs his wand from the bed, and whips it around. The tie around Potter’s wrists falls away, then winds itself around Potter’s left ankle. Draco Accios several more from Nott’s trunk and arranges them with another set of quick jabs from his wand.
By the time Potter thinks to struggle, he’s gagged and bound - tightly and expertly, Draco knows, smirking with satisfaction at his own skill - spread-eagled to the bed, and pretty much all he can do is wiggle ineffectually and resume his fierce glaring. Draco quickly folds and stows the black quilt in his trunk again and slips his wand into a pocket before turning towards the dormitory’s door.
His best sneer, one that he’s stolen shamelessly from Professor Snape and practiced for hours in front of a mirror that was under strict instructions to keep its bloody impertinent comments to itself, is rather frightening to behold when he’s doing it right. He turns it full-force on his housemates as they enter the dormitory, and judging from Nott’s cringing, if the recipient has a guilty conscience, it’s twice as horrifying.
Inwardly Draco smiles a very Slytherin smile.
“We weren’t going to leave him there, Malfoy, we just were having a little -“
“Your idea of fun is murdering Gryffindors in my dormitory while I sleep?”
In the long seconds of silence that follow, Nott and Zabini both turn to gape at the wall where Potter had been bound and, seeing it distinctly Potter-free, suddenly appear completely bloodless. Crabbe and Goyle just stand there dumbly.
“Goyle. Crabbe. Fetch Parkinson, and quickly.”
They hurry from the room, obviously glad to escape a Malfoy in a temper, and Draco almost sighs exasperatedly when they immediately return with Parkinson, who must have been lurking in the corridor. Good intimidation takes time, after all.
He waits another moment, and then very pointedly turns towards his bed.
Then he waits again until his housemates quit spluttering with confusion.
“The proper way to restrain a prisoner, imbeciles, is obviously a subject in which you require instruction,” Draco says slowly, folding his arms across his chest and staring squarely at Nott, who looks away and mumbles something unintelligible. “I was wrong to trust you lot not to do something incorrigibly stupid.”
He paces, stopping every few seconds to glare sternly at the others or sneak a fleeting look at Potter, who’s stopped trying to struggle and appears to be listening intently. Well. “I don’t care whose idea it was, and I don’t care why the rest of you somehow took leave of your senses long enough to implement it,” Draco continues loudly, “but I am bloody appalled as a Slytherin that any among us is so brainless as to bind someone naked in a dungeon in winter!”
Parkinson only looks abashed for a moment before her eyes narrow in defiance, but the boys collectively present the very image of silent shame. Almost a minute passes before Zabini timidly ventures “What do you want us to do?”
Go feed yourselves to the bloody squid.
“Clearly, you need practice,” Draco says, as patronizingly as possible. “Especially you, Nott. Find a first year and offer him a couple Galleons to let you tie him up for awhile. Parkinson will supervise.” The note of dismissal is clear in his voice, and his cowed housemates shuffle out of the room.
Parkinson hangs back, looking fiercely annoyed. “I didn’t have anything to do with that, Malfoy, and you bloody well know it! Find another babysitter.” She lifts her chin haughtily and walks off.
“Pansy, wait,” Draco says as he takes three quick steps after her and catches her by the wrist. “You do realize just how much shite this could mean for all of us, don’t you? I’m not even sure yet that Potter’s none the worse for wear. And I had to say something.”
She looks at him strangely for a moment and then sighs. “You know that I don’t take kindly to being ordered about, Draco.”
”Somebody has to keep that lot in line.”
She folds her arms across her chest and looks at him pointedly.
Draco rolls his eyes. “You can make them practice on Nott first.”
After thinking for a brief moment, she smiles wickedly and walks away.
He can see Potter’s eyes are wide as saucers, even from halfway across the room, as he reenters the dormitory.
Yes, Potter, we were plotting your bloody demise in the corridor. We’ll be sure to notify your next of kin and find you some clothes when we’re through.
After shutting the door, Draco crosses the room and looms over the bed - difficult for someone with his slight figure, but still imposing - with his expression carefully dispassionate, watching. He murmurs a quick Evanesco a moment later, and the gag disappears.
Potter cringes in terror until he realizes that his head hasn’t been Vanished. Draco settles himself on the edge of the bed and Potter tries to turn away, contorting his body to get as far from Draco as possible.
Without thinking, Draco reaches out to press Potter's hip back down onto the bed. He jerks his hand away a split-second afterward, as Potter is still very naked and has suddenly remembered his powers of speech.
"Don't bloody touch me again, Malfoy, or I swear you'll regret it!" Potter flushes, eyes fluttering shut, heat blossoming across his cheekbones and chest, but his voice is trembling again, and as Draco's eyes follow the blush down Potter's torso, he comes to a sudden realization of his own.
Merlin's balls. Potter is naked and aroused and in my bloody bed and I am not even going to think about how many times these sheets will have to be washed before they will ever be clean again and is he really that warm or is it just me?
He attempts to sternly dismiss the itch to touch Potter again (just to find out whether he’s really feverish, of course), but it's fairly difficult when his trousers are getting a little tight in certain places, much as Potter's would be if the sod were wearing any.
"We have got to find you some pants, Potter," Draco mutters before silently assuring himself that a naked body in his bed is bound to turn him on regardless of who it belongs to. He swallows hard and stands up, ostensibly to fetch clothes for the (blushing, disheveled, and utterly hot) creature tied (even hotter) to his bed.
Two seconds later, he decides that clothing is overrated, anyway, and he’s back on the bed, one hand on the brocade duvet and one on Potter’s perfect stomach, and Potter’s soft sound of protest sounds suspiciously like a moan.
“Tell me, Potter; exactly how am I going to regret this?” Draco asks, although he already knows the answer and his tongue is thick and clumsy in his mouth.
Potter whimpers as Draco drags his hand over too-thin ribs and brushes his thumb over a protruding collarbone, and the sound goes straight to Draco’s groin. He leans down and exhales, breath ghosting over Potter’s throat, and thrills when Potter’s eyes snap open, fear warring with arousal when he sees Draco so close.
Draco sits back, once again studying the slight form before him, trying his best to appear nonchalant. “You know, I’ve often thought about what I would do if I had you entirely at my mercy.” He does his best to appear extremely pensive as he pulls Potter’s glasses off his face, examines them carefully, and then throws them over his shoulder, smiling when they crack against the slate floor.
Potter’s slightly unfocused eyes widen with incredulity and then narrow in annoyance. “Malfoy, do keep in mind that I will scream if you try to do the evil genius thing right now, and actually I’d rather appreciate it if you’d just hex me to bits or whatever it is you’re going to do and get it over with,” he says, his voice strained.
Draco gives him a disdainful look. “Do you think that anyone who might hear would care? Besides, you wouldn’t know evil genius if it fucked you raw.” His trousers shrink another size at the mere thought.
Then another as Potter shuts his eyes and bites his lip in order to stifle another moan.
Draco grits his teeth. This is not how things should be going. “You aren’t supposed to be enjoying this, Potter; you’re supposed to be cringing in terror! How am I supposed to enjoy having complete power over you if you keep whinging like a bloody bitch in heat?”
Unexpectedly, Potter blushes again, pulling at the ties binding his wrists with his eyes still tightly closed and swallowing hard.
Potter likes being tied up like this. Holy fuck, hot.
Then Draco is on top of Potter and doesn’t understand anything other than the feel of Potter’s slightly swollen lower lip between his own and the insistent press of Potter’s cock against his clothed hip. Potter groans and arches against him, slipping his tongue into Draco’s mouth, and Draco is gasping and feverish when he pulls away, sitting back and fumbling gracelessly with the bedcurtains.
With the drapes drawn, all Draco can hear is ragged breathing and the sound of his heart beating in his head, and oxygen seems a thing of the past; heat arcs through the dark, enclosed space like static and sets fire to his lungs when he tries to breathe deeply. Too hot, stifling, smothering, need air…
He sighs with relief as he shucks off his trousers and jumper, throwing them to the foot of the bed, and then curses as he crawls after them to retrieve his wand. “Lumos,” he says softly, and pale light dances over Potter’s skin as Draco’s hand traces Potter’s side again.
Potter shudders and swallows another broken cry.
Draco hesitates for a second before leaning in again. “The curtains are soundproofed,” he says, lips almost touching Potter’s, and then they’re snogging again, rough and wet and needy. Thank Circe that Adrian Pucey taught me that spell fourth year because Draco is bollocks at Silencing Charms, and anyway he definitely wants to hear every sound that Potter’s making just about now.
Then Potter turns his head, breaking the kiss, and as Draco latches onto the curve of his jaw almost possessively, so intent on the flesh under his lips that he barely hears Potter’s whispered “Please” through the rush of blood in his ears, through Potter’s deliciously helpless whimpering, and he has to hear it over and over again like a mantra of need before he can stop for long enough to murmur a reply.
“Please what?”
Potter moans in frustration and shifts his hips. “Need it.”
“Need what?” But Draco’s reaching for Potter’s furiously hard cock even as the evil grin crosses his pale features, even as he assures himself that he’s still in control, even as he presses his own erection firmly against Potter’s thigh, skin burning skin even though the silk of his boxers.
And Potter pushes up into his hand, but Draco’s touch is teasingly, cruelly light even as he thrusts hard and slow against Potter’s side, and they’re both moaning now, groans of pleasure mingling with cries of need. Potter lifts his head and stares into Draco’s eyes, his own dark and wild with want.
“Malfoy - Draco - fuck,” he chokes, eyes fluttering closed. “Untie me, gods, please just fucking untie me -“
Draco’s unoccupied hand drifts down the mattress until he finds his wand with his fingertips, and is about to think about what a bad idea releasing Potter would be when Potter starts struggling, bucking his hips, and the friction rips a moan from Draco’s throat that contains a strained “Vinculis eximo” somewhere in the middle.
Potter’s hands suddenly grab at his hips and Draco suddenly finds himself on his back, pants gone and wand forgotten, as Potter presses him into the mattress.
Oh.
They’re kissing again, all clacking teeth and slavering tongues as Draco loses himself in rutting against Potter, and he distantly feels it when Potter shudders and spills between their bodies with a hoarse cry, but the pressure in his own groin is clouding his awareness and fuck, so close.
Then Potter’s fingers curl around his cock and his vision goes fluorescent as he comes, back arching almost painfully and almost sobbing because it feels that good.
Oh.
They lie quiet and still for several minutes, and Potter’s breath evens and slows until he’s asleep, half-sprawled across Draco’s chest.
Draco is less than pleased with this arrangement, and even less pleased with the quickly-drying come splattered across his torso and (Merlin bugger all!) the bedclothes. He shuts his eyes for a moment, then pulls his wand out from under his shoulder, easing the Potter’s weight off of him and onto the bed in the process.
“Leniter scourgify,” he whispers, holding his breath until he’s sure that the mild cleaning spell hasn’t woken Potter.
Potter. Utterly passed out as a result of one night spent dangling by his wrists and one extremely satisfying shag.
Draco buries his face in the clean white linen of his pillow. “Of all the bloody asinine things to do,” he mumbles, suddenly contemplating several methods of suicide and no less than sixteen ways to obliterate Potter in the process.
A hand on his elbow jerks him out of a pleasant reverie on induced autocombustion (incantation’s easy enough, but the wand movement’s tricky) and he turns over to look at Potter.
“Hi,” Potter says sleepily.
Draco blinks. “Hi?”
“What are we going to do now?”
“I have absolutely no idea, Potter.”
Potter thinks for a moment. “I won’t do anything dumb if you get me my wand.”
I’ve gone completely round the bend, I’m out of my bloody mind, I’m barking, I’m insane, I’m a danger to myself and others, a nutter, a freak, mad, mental…
”Accio Potter’s wand!” He drops it into Potter’s outstretched hand.
…and I’m utterly safe, because even if he told, who’d believe him?
And once again, inwardly Draco smiles a very Slytherin smile.
Pairing: H/D
Rating: Decidedly R
Word Count: 4026
Warnings: Snark, mild bondage, frottage
Summary: In which a prank goes horribly wrong, Draco yells at his housemates, and there is (I hope) hot hot tied-to-the-bedposts smut.
Author’s Note: I started writing this for xylodemon’s Harry/Draco Drabble Project, but it clearly came out as more than a drabble. I trust she will forgive me, though, as she was trolling for tie!smut with the prompt anyway and I couldn’t give it to her unless I wrote beyond 200 words. Concrit requested and appreciated, and many thanks to all of my friends who’ve had to hear about this incessantly over the past couple of weeks, especially my beta, shop1442.
Draco considers his spur-of-the-moment decision to abduct Harry Potter the previous night a blaze of brilliance in the mostly humdrum world of moderately-malicious shenanigans.
Of course, then someone had somehow decided that the best way to handle the subsequent problem of what to do with Potter after Draco’s Petrificus wore off was to strip him naked, hide his clothes, and bind his hands to one of the cast-iron rings high on the wall of the sixth-year boys' dormitory using someone’s spare tie.
Obviously Firewhisky was at least partially responsible.
Under normal circumstances, Draco would have smirked and commented on how delightfully useful living in a dungeon could be. Waking up to find Potter struggling to undo the green-and-silver silk wound around his wrists, wearing nothing but his stupid glasses and with his toes barely grazing the floor, however, can hardly be construed as "normal."
The others all having gone to breakfast (they probably didn’t want to be remotely near the dungeons when I saw this - wise, really), Draco is left alone to contemplate the Git Who Lived, Only To Be Embarrassingly Bound In The Slytherin Dungeons.
Hell of a sight to wake up to.
He clearly remembers the argument that led to Potter's impromptu abduction; after Draco began by taunting Potter rather cleverly about Gryffindor's devastating fall from Quidditch grace after that loss to Ravenclaw and how nice the Cup would look in Professor Snape's office, Potter had in a stunningly un-Gryffindor example of foul play (if it had been anyone but Potter, I’d have been impressed) casually insulted both of Draco's parents in a particularly heinous fashion.
Obviously, that was not on.
Draco had declared loudly that he was going to sleep after unceremoniously dumping Potter, stiff as a board, on one of the common room couches, leaving Zabini in charge and trusting that he would take care of the situation. To his mind, this would mean a quick Memory Charm and stuffing Potter in a closet, but obviously his housemates are even worse mental infants than he’d previously thought.
It is suddenly startlingly clear how the Dark Lord’s operation could be so inefficient.
Briefly, he considers delivering the captive up to You-Know-Who, but then discards the idea as impractical owing to its assured side effect of having to leave school immediately and go into hiding.
Draco dislikes hiding, in general.
He peers out at Potter again from behind his dark-green velvet curtains.
“MALFOY!”
He can’t possibly have seen me.
That gives him a brilliant idea for an entrance, though.
After smoothing his hair and pulling on the grey trousers and black jumper neatly folded at the foot of his bed, Draco draws the curtains with one elegant hand, lifts his wand from the bedside table with the other, and inclines his head towards Potter in a mocking fashion, his second-best sneer on his face.
“Do you make a habit of calling for me whenever you’re in a sticky spot, Potter, or is today a special occasion?”
Potter’s only response is to still his struggling and glare murderously across the room before attempting to take a deep breath.
Draco smirks as Potter wheezes and chokes. “Quit that, Potter; you’re strangling in that position. Honestly, don’t you know anything about torture?” He crosses the room, stride measured for Potter’s maximum annoyance, the cold of the stone floor stinging his toes.
“I am going to fucking murder you for this, Malfoy.”
Rolling his eyes and ignoring the increasingly hostile stare, Draco briefly touches the knotted tie binding Potter to the wall. Magic crackles under his fingertips (Nott’s work, definitely) as he checks the circulation in Potter’s arms.
After touching Potter’s icy hands, Draco’s bare feet prickle in sympathy, and he briefly wonders why nobody bothered to stoke the fire (it’s February, after all). He steps back for a moment, critically examining the goosebumps covering the smooth skin, the vague look of exhaustion that lingers behind the sharp anger in the green eyes, the way the slender body turns slightly away from Draco to shield its nakedness.
“This isn’t funny, Malfoy,” Potter says, voice trembling slightly.
The smirk becomes a full-fledged sardonic grin. “Come now, Potter, wouldn’t you find it the slightest bit amusing if you found me in a similar position?”
Draco doesn’t really think that their current situation is funny, either - he’s getting angrier at Nott by the second for apparently forgetting that strangulation poses and nudity and dungeons don’t mix well unless one is attempting to do one’s captive serious damage - but he’s certainly not going to let Potter see that.
Potter’s try at a shrug leaves much to be desired, given his uncomfortable position. “Actually, I’d probably just spell you into a burlap sack and chuck you out of Gryffindor Tower.”
Draco arches an aquiline eyebrow.
“Fuck you, Malfoy.”
“You’re really not in any sort of condition to be fucking anyone, Potter.” He frowns at the ring on the wall, then raises his wand and prods the knotted tie, squinting slightly in concentration. He smiles, pleased, when the knot partially undoes itself, and when he lowers his wand again, Potter’s hands come with it as if attached to the tip. Potter fails miserably in his attempt to mask his sigh of relief but then resumes scowling as Draco half-drags him across the room.
“What the hell are you playing at?” he demands, struggling to wrench his still-bound wrists away.
“Obviously, I am saving you from the also-obvious incompetence of Nott, who is a prat of the highest order and will be hexed into next week as soon as I see him.”
In a situation any less absurd, Draco would laugh cruelly at the look of complete and utter bewilderment that crosses Potter’s features. As it is, he merely spells the tie to loop unbroken around one of his bedposts before moving to rummage around in his trunk.
“You’ll forgive me, also obviously, if I don’t consider being tied to a bedpost salvation,” Potter says, eyes flashing again, but he’s clearly happy to be down from the wall. He gazes up at the bed’s canopy for a moment, and the corners of his mouth quirk up. “Taking me to bed despite my condition, I see?”
Draco makes a rude noise and pulls a soft black quilt from his trunk, then drapes it over Potter’s shoulders. “Potter, if you think I would allow anyone, even you, to die tied naked to the wall of this dormitory, you’re extremely and ridiculously stupid.”
“You still have yet to explain why I am naked and tied up in the Slytherin dungeons!”
Draco stops short, the sneer slipping from his features for a moment. “You don’t know?”
“I am certain that you were involved, Malfoy!”
“You really don’t remember anything from last night?” Draco’s estimation of Nott improves very slightly.
Potter shifts uncomfortably, grasping at the edges of the quilt with his bound hands to pull it closer around him, fingering the embroidered silver “M” in one corner. “I remember nothing that would in any way explain the current circumstances,” he finally says, shaky voice belying the glare of messy death he shoots in Draco’s direction.
“I assure you that I had nothing to do with your being naked and tied - poorly, I might add - to my wall,” Draco says evenly, eyeing Potter’s fingers on the delicately-worked monogram. “You think that I want to wake up to a sight like that?” He pointedly looks down.
Potter reddens. “Well, I don’t see you helping!”
“I untied you from the wall and gave you a blanket!”
“Probably just so you can put me up there again!”
Draco pauses. “You don’t know that.” Frankly, I’d much rather shove you into one of the first-floor vanishing cabinets and find out if Montague’s story about the elder Weasels was true.
Potter starts, as if he had expected a denial (typical Gryffindor), then slumps, banging his forehead against the bedpost.
“I realize that you may be in shock, Potter, but abusing my furniture isn’t exactly helping, either.” For a moment, Draco wonders why he’s being so damned civil towards Potter, whom he loathes, but then he returns to mentally abusing his housemates.
Potter almost laughs. “Your bed probably deserves it,” he replies. “Trapped, wandless, starkers, and tied to Malfoy’s bed. It’s a fate worse than death!”
Well fuck you too, scarhead! Anger flares in the pit of Draco’s stomach at the insult. “Spare me the useless melodramatics, Potter,” he says in clipped syllables. “I already quite clearly stated that I was not interested in your dying in this dormitory, much less this bed.”
Potter turns around sharply with his arms still awkwardly bound to the bedpost, dislodging the quilt around his shoulders. “No problems with kidnapping me or tying me up though, there’s a laugh! Gods, I know somehow that this is all your fault!”
“My fault?” Draco is genuinely incensed now. The marvelous Harry Potter, always the victim! “Do you think I want you here? The only reason I am saving your fucking neck, Potter, is that I don’t care for a trip to Azkaban, and I would like absolutely nothing better than for you to sod off and get the hell out of my dungeons and forget any of this ever happened!”
Silver eyes flash, daring Potter to say something, anything about his father, knowing that any number of hexes would be much easier to explain than nudity and bondage. Bloody bastard Nott.
Potter opens and closes his mouth several times before he seems to conclude that it’s better not to speak.
They glower at one another for awhile.
Draco sighs. “None of this would have happened if you would have kept your bloody trap shut about my mother, Potter.” He tries not to think of how closely this resembles an apology.
Potter laughs weakly. “I don’t even want to know, Malfoy.”
Voices drift in from the corridor.
Draco sits there stupidly for a moment before the sounds can properly register. Then he panics, snatching the blanket from around Potter (ignoring the yelp of protest), grabs his wand from the bed, and whips it around. The tie around Potter’s wrists falls away, then winds itself around Potter’s left ankle. Draco Accios several more from Nott’s trunk and arranges them with another set of quick jabs from his wand.
By the time Potter thinks to struggle, he’s gagged and bound - tightly and expertly, Draco knows, smirking with satisfaction at his own skill - spread-eagled to the bed, and pretty much all he can do is wiggle ineffectually and resume his fierce glaring. Draco quickly folds and stows the black quilt in his trunk again and slips his wand into a pocket before turning towards the dormitory’s door.
His best sneer, one that he’s stolen shamelessly from Professor Snape and practiced for hours in front of a mirror that was under strict instructions to keep its bloody impertinent comments to itself, is rather frightening to behold when he’s doing it right. He turns it full-force on his housemates as they enter the dormitory, and judging from Nott’s cringing, if the recipient has a guilty conscience, it’s twice as horrifying.
Inwardly Draco smiles a very Slytherin smile.
“We weren’t going to leave him there, Malfoy, we just were having a little -“
“Your idea of fun is murdering Gryffindors in my dormitory while I sleep?”
In the long seconds of silence that follow, Nott and Zabini both turn to gape at the wall where Potter had been bound and, seeing it distinctly Potter-free, suddenly appear completely bloodless. Crabbe and Goyle just stand there dumbly.
“Goyle. Crabbe. Fetch Parkinson, and quickly.”
They hurry from the room, obviously glad to escape a Malfoy in a temper, and Draco almost sighs exasperatedly when they immediately return with Parkinson, who must have been lurking in the corridor. Good intimidation takes time, after all.
He waits another moment, and then very pointedly turns towards his bed.
Then he waits again until his housemates quit spluttering with confusion.
“The proper way to restrain a prisoner, imbeciles, is obviously a subject in which you require instruction,” Draco says slowly, folding his arms across his chest and staring squarely at Nott, who looks away and mumbles something unintelligible. “I was wrong to trust you lot not to do something incorrigibly stupid.”
He paces, stopping every few seconds to glare sternly at the others or sneak a fleeting look at Potter, who’s stopped trying to struggle and appears to be listening intently. Well. “I don’t care whose idea it was, and I don’t care why the rest of you somehow took leave of your senses long enough to implement it,” Draco continues loudly, “but I am bloody appalled as a Slytherin that any among us is so brainless as to bind someone naked in a dungeon in winter!”
Parkinson only looks abashed for a moment before her eyes narrow in defiance, but the boys collectively present the very image of silent shame. Almost a minute passes before Zabini timidly ventures “What do you want us to do?”
Go feed yourselves to the bloody squid.
“Clearly, you need practice,” Draco says, as patronizingly as possible. “Especially you, Nott. Find a first year and offer him a couple Galleons to let you tie him up for awhile. Parkinson will supervise.” The note of dismissal is clear in his voice, and his cowed housemates shuffle out of the room.
Parkinson hangs back, looking fiercely annoyed. “I didn’t have anything to do with that, Malfoy, and you bloody well know it! Find another babysitter.” She lifts her chin haughtily and walks off.
“Pansy, wait,” Draco says as he takes three quick steps after her and catches her by the wrist. “You do realize just how much shite this could mean for all of us, don’t you? I’m not even sure yet that Potter’s none the worse for wear. And I had to say something.”
She looks at him strangely for a moment and then sighs. “You know that I don’t take kindly to being ordered about, Draco.”
”Somebody has to keep that lot in line.”
She folds her arms across her chest and looks at him pointedly.
Draco rolls his eyes. “You can make them practice on Nott first.”
After thinking for a brief moment, she smiles wickedly and walks away.
He can see Potter’s eyes are wide as saucers, even from halfway across the room, as he reenters the dormitory.
Yes, Potter, we were plotting your bloody demise in the corridor. We’ll be sure to notify your next of kin and find you some clothes when we’re through.
After shutting the door, Draco crosses the room and looms over the bed - difficult for someone with his slight figure, but still imposing - with his expression carefully dispassionate, watching. He murmurs a quick Evanesco a moment later, and the gag disappears.
Potter cringes in terror until he realizes that his head hasn’t been Vanished. Draco settles himself on the edge of the bed and Potter tries to turn away, contorting his body to get as far from Draco as possible.
Without thinking, Draco reaches out to press Potter's hip back down onto the bed. He jerks his hand away a split-second afterward, as Potter is still very naked and has suddenly remembered his powers of speech.
"Don't bloody touch me again, Malfoy, or I swear you'll regret it!" Potter flushes, eyes fluttering shut, heat blossoming across his cheekbones and chest, but his voice is trembling again, and as Draco's eyes follow the blush down Potter's torso, he comes to a sudden realization of his own.
Merlin's balls. Potter is naked and aroused and in my bloody bed and I am not even going to think about how many times these sheets will have to be washed before they will ever be clean again and is he really that warm or is it just me?
He attempts to sternly dismiss the itch to touch Potter again (just to find out whether he’s really feverish, of course), but it's fairly difficult when his trousers are getting a little tight in certain places, much as Potter's would be if the sod were wearing any.
"We have got to find you some pants, Potter," Draco mutters before silently assuring himself that a naked body in his bed is bound to turn him on regardless of who it belongs to. He swallows hard and stands up, ostensibly to fetch clothes for the (blushing, disheveled, and utterly hot) creature tied (even hotter) to his bed.
Two seconds later, he decides that clothing is overrated, anyway, and he’s back on the bed, one hand on the brocade duvet and one on Potter’s perfect stomach, and Potter’s soft sound of protest sounds suspiciously like a moan.
“Tell me, Potter; exactly how am I going to regret this?” Draco asks, although he already knows the answer and his tongue is thick and clumsy in his mouth.
Potter whimpers as Draco drags his hand over too-thin ribs and brushes his thumb over a protruding collarbone, and the sound goes straight to Draco’s groin. He leans down and exhales, breath ghosting over Potter’s throat, and thrills when Potter’s eyes snap open, fear warring with arousal when he sees Draco so close.
Draco sits back, once again studying the slight form before him, trying his best to appear nonchalant. “You know, I’ve often thought about what I would do if I had you entirely at my mercy.” He does his best to appear extremely pensive as he pulls Potter’s glasses off his face, examines them carefully, and then throws them over his shoulder, smiling when they crack against the slate floor.
Potter’s slightly unfocused eyes widen with incredulity and then narrow in annoyance. “Malfoy, do keep in mind that I will scream if you try to do the evil genius thing right now, and actually I’d rather appreciate it if you’d just hex me to bits or whatever it is you’re going to do and get it over with,” he says, his voice strained.
Draco gives him a disdainful look. “Do you think that anyone who might hear would care? Besides, you wouldn’t know evil genius if it fucked you raw.” His trousers shrink another size at the mere thought.
Then another as Potter shuts his eyes and bites his lip in order to stifle another moan.
Draco grits his teeth. This is not how things should be going. “You aren’t supposed to be enjoying this, Potter; you’re supposed to be cringing in terror! How am I supposed to enjoy having complete power over you if you keep whinging like a bloody bitch in heat?”
Unexpectedly, Potter blushes again, pulling at the ties binding his wrists with his eyes still tightly closed and swallowing hard.
Potter likes being tied up like this. Holy fuck, hot.
Then Draco is on top of Potter and doesn’t understand anything other than the feel of Potter’s slightly swollen lower lip between his own and the insistent press of Potter’s cock against his clothed hip. Potter groans and arches against him, slipping his tongue into Draco’s mouth, and Draco is gasping and feverish when he pulls away, sitting back and fumbling gracelessly with the bedcurtains.
With the drapes drawn, all Draco can hear is ragged breathing and the sound of his heart beating in his head, and oxygen seems a thing of the past; heat arcs through the dark, enclosed space like static and sets fire to his lungs when he tries to breathe deeply. Too hot, stifling, smothering, need air…
He sighs with relief as he shucks off his trousers and jumper, throwing them to the foot of the bed, and then curses as he crawls after them to retrieve his wand. “Lumos,” he says softly, and pale light dances over Potter’s skin as Draco’s hand traces Potter’s side again.
Potter shudders and swallows another broken cry.
Draco hesitates for a second before leaning in again. “The curtains are soundproofed,” he says, lips almost touching Potter’s, and then they’re snogging again, rough and wet and needy. Thank Circe that Adrian Pucey taught me that spell fourth year because Draco is bollocks at Silencing Charms, and anyway he definitely wants to hear every sound that Potter’s making just about now.
Then Potter turns his head, breaking the kiss, and as Draco latches onto the curve of his jaw almost possessively, so intent on the flesh under his lips that he barely hears Potter’s whispered “Please” through the rush of blood in his ears, through Potter’s deliciously helpless whimpering, and he has to hear it over and over again like a mantra of need before he can stop for long enough to murmur a reply.
“Please what?”
Potter moans in frustration and shifts his hips. “Need it.”
“Need what?” But Draco’s reaching for Potter’s furiously hard cock even as the evil grin crosses his pale features, even as he assures himself that he’s still in control, even as he presses his own erection firmly against Potter’s thigh, skin burning skin even though the silk of his boxers.
And Potter pushes up into his hand, but Draco’s touch is teasingly, cruelly light even as he thrusts hard and slow against Potter’s side, and they’re both moaning now, groans of pleasure mingling with cries of need. Potter lifts his head and stares into Draco’s eyes, his own dark and wild with want.
“Malfoy - Draco - fuck,” he chokes, eyes fluttering closed. “Untie me, gods, please just fucking untie me -“
Draco’s unoccupied hand drifts down the mattress until he finds his wand with his fingertips, and is about to think about what a bad idea releasing Potter would be when Potter starts struggling, bucking his hips, and the friction rips a moan from Draco’s throat that contains a strained “Vinculis eximo” somewhere in the middle.
Potter’s hands suddenly grab at his hips and Draco suddenly finds himself on his back, pants gone and wand forgotten, as Potter presses him into the mattress.
Oh.
They’re kissing again, all clacking teeth and slavering tongues as Draco loses himself in rutting against Potter, and he distantly feels it when Potter shudders and spills between their bodies with a hoarse cry, but the pressure in his own groin is clouding his awareness and fuck, so close.
Then Potter’s fingers curl around his cock and his vision goes fluorescent as he comes, back arching almost painfully and almost sobbing because it feels that good.
Oh.
They lie quiet and still for several minutes, and Potter’s breath evens and slows until he’s asleep, half-sprawled across Draco’s chest.
Draco is less than pleased with this arrangement, and even less pleased with the quickly-drying come splattered across his torso and (Merlin bugger all!) the bedclothes. He shuts his eyes for a moment, then pulls his wand out from under his shoulder, easing the Potter’s weight off of him and onto the bed in the process.
“Leniter scourgify,” he whispers, holding his breath until he’s sure that the mild cleaning spell hasn’t woken Potter.
Potter. Utterly passed out as a result of one night spent dangling by his wrists and one extremely satisfying shag.
Draco buries his face in the clean white linen of his pillow. “Of all the bloody asinine things to do,” he mumbles, suddenly contemplating several methods of suicide and no less than sixteen ways to obliterate Potter in the process.
A hand on his elbow jerks him out of a pleasant reverie on induced autocombustion (incantation’s easy enough, but the wand movement’s tricky) and he turns over to look at Potter.
“Hi,” Potter says sleepily.
Draco blinks. “Hi?”
“What are we going to do now?”
“I have absolutely no idea, Potter.”
Potter thinks for a moment. “I won’t do anything dumb if you get me my wand.”
I’ve gone completely round the bend, I’m out of my bloody mind, I’m barking, I’m insane, I’m a danger to myself and others, a nutter, a freak, mad, mental…
”Accio Potter’s wand!” He drops it into Potter’s outstretched hand.
…and I’m utterly safe, because even if he told, who’d believe him?
And once again, inwardly Draco smiles a very Slytherin smile.