Chapter 9
Harry woke pressed up tight against Draco under the covers, Draco's hair in his face and his raging hard on digging into Draco's back. It would have been a pleasant, if unusual way, to wake, if it hadn't been for the fact it wasn't the discomfort that had woken him up. No, it was the row Draco appeared to be having with Pansy.
Harry opened his eyes in a panic, to find that Pansy wasn't actually in the room, thank Godric. She was, however, standing in the half-open doorway, her back towards them. Her back, even blurred, looked angry.
"You are meant to be doing an interview with Smash Hits in half an hour," Pansy said angrily. "What do you mean, you're not available? Stop thinking with your dick and get your clothes on. You can fuck your little shop boy tonight, when you've done your job."
Little shop boy?! Harry must have made a noise of outrage, because Draco seemed to realise he'd woken up. He gave Harry a small, and entirely unnecessary, kick in the shin with his heel.
"I love you to the moon and back, Pans," Draco said crossly, "but sometimes you can be a real cow. Apologise right now."
"Sorry, Harry," Pansy said, through what sounded like gritted teeth. "But—"
"You didn't tell me I had a magazine interview today," Draco said firmly, "and I've made other plans. Ones I can't break. You can reschedule the interview for tomorrow, if you must. And next time knock, for fuck's sake."
"Fine!" Pansy said, sounding seriously annoyed.
"And Harry will be joining me on the tour," Draco said, when Pansy started moving away, making her stop dead in her tracks. "So make whatever tedious arrangements you need to, OK?"
"Sometimes you drive me up the fucking wall, Draco," Pansy said, and she half turned to slam the door shut behind her.
"So dramatic," Draco said, sounding unimpressed.
"Yes, I wonder why you two were ever friends," Harry said.
Draco turned, rolling over and pinning Harry underneath him. His hair was a soft, floppy mess, his expression daring. He really was lovely, Harry thought dumbly, despite the fact he was a massive bell-end. "For that little jibe, you can stroke your own cock this morning," Draco said, rolling off him and getting off the bed.
This didn't strike Harry as a reasonable punishment. God, he thought, staring at the ceiling. Had he really got used to this gay thing so easily? He felt panic rise, but pushed it down; he could examine it later, when Draco wasn't there staring at him, making it impossible to think.
"Anyway, I don't think we have time," Draco said, looking at his phone. "It's already midday. We'll be cutting it fine to fit in a reunion of the golden trio and get back to Wembley on time as it is."
"Wembley?" Harry repeated, still not properly awake, but fumbling for his glasses.
"Yes, Harry, Wembley," Draco said very slowly, as if Harry was hard of thinking. "I have three nights there, and then it's on to . . ." He frowned. "I can't remember. Germany, possibly. Or is it France?"
"There's a T-shirt downstairs with your tour dates on if you can't remember," Harry said, wanting to get out of bed but feeling hugely self-conscious about being naked – and still hard – in front of Draco in the daytime. "Have you got a towel and stuff you can lend me? I really need a wash. Oh – and clean clothes, maybe. We're roughly the same size."
"Actually, I'm at least an inch taller, and I'd say you eat considerably more fried food than I do," Draco said, wrinkling his nose. Then he smiled, an edge of mischief in his expression. "But OK. Go and use the bathroom – there's spares of all the toiletries your heart could ever wish for in the cupboard, I expect, given what this hotel is like – and I'll find you something to wear."
"Are you calling me fat?" Harry asked, casting aside his dignity and getting up, leaving the safety of the duvet behind him. He gave his stomach an experimental poke. OK, so he wasn't solid muscle, but then neither was Draco!
"No, I'm sure you're just big boned," Draco said unsympathetically, then grinned as Harry threw a pillow at him before sulking out of the room towards the bathroom.
He wasn't fat, Harry thought as he looked at himself in the mirrored shower wall, the steam from the water failing to fog it up. He just wasn't as slim as Draco. After years of being scrawny, he'd filled out a bit, and the hard work of his day job – which was often a night job too – had given him lean muscles he'd never really noticed before. Draco could stand to eat more, Harry thought, although his body wasn't bony, as such, just slender and toned. As if he was a pop star, who had nothing to do other than go to the gym and be worshipped, Harry thought with irritation as he soaped himself up quickly, trying not to think too hard about Draco's naked body. He wasn't too keen on the idea of wanking solo in the shower with Draco just downstairs, and he needed a piss, a task that was much trickier than usual when combined with morning wood.
Harry finished up in the shower quickly, then brushed his teeth and used the loo. He slid his glasses back on his nose and then left the bathroom, still towelling his wet hair. Draco wasn't in the bedroom, but there was a pile of clothes on the bed that Harry presumed was for him. He looked through it – underwear, jeans, socks, and . . . Harry's tour T-shirt. Harry eyed it, then put his clothes on and went downstairs.
Draco, now dressed in a white fluffy robe, was making coffee, and his face broke out into an amazing grin when he saw Harry.
"It's only yourself you're embarrassing," Harry said levelly as Draco passed him a cup.
Draco didn't reply to that, just kept on grinning.
"Go and wash that look off your face," Harry said firmly, and Draco did a mock bow, before going back up the stairs, and soon Harry could hear the distant sound of the shower going.
Harry sat back on the sofa, taking a grateful sip of coffee. He didn't even like coffee very much, but it was the drink of the gods when your brain wasn't working right. He took his phone out of his pocket – it still held a small charge – and dialled Hermione's number.
It took her some convincing that he was serious about wanting to bring Draco over in the next hour or so, but when the Knut dropped, she made an ear-piercing shriek – something about the state of the place, Harry thought, trying not to bleed from the brain – and hung up, by which Harry presumed she was off to lay out the red carpet for a man who'd once called her a filthy little Mudblood. It depressed him briefly, but then he told himself that Draco had changed, hadn't he? And this question – of whether Draco had changed, or was just good at adapting himself to whatever situation he found himself in – occupied him until Draco emerged from the shower some time later. He looked relatively normal today, thank goodness – or at least as normal as Draco ever would in Muggle clothes, although he still glittered faintly when he caught the light.
"Sorry I took a while," Draco said cheerfully. "I had to have a wank."
"You didn't," Harry said, feeling the borrowed jeans already growing tighter than was comfortable.
"No," Draco said, still cheerful. "But how would you know for sure?" He strode about the room, finding a pair of trainers in the corner and shoving them on, before rescuing his abandoned coffee and drinking it straight down. "Come on, let's go. Is Granger going to feed us? I'm so hungry I could eat my own arm. Or your arm." He slouched over to the lift door and pressed the button, the lift doors sliding open almost immediately.
Harry sent Hermione a text when they got to the lobby, asking if she'd mind getting in a sandwich or two if it wasn't too much trouble, and Draco strode over to the reception, the man as wide as a room suddenly there by Draco's side, as if he'd appeared out of nowhere. "I need a car," Draco said to the receptionist.
"Please," Harry added, which made Draco roll his eyes at him.
"Please," he said sweetly to the receptionist. The woman giggled, lifting a telephone receiver, and shortly after a man in a peaked cap was striding towards them, ushering them towards the door.
Outside, about forty or fifty girls were waiting, very close to the door, and they started yelling Draco's name as soon as he was visible.
"Great," Draco said, sounding annoyed, but the extra-wide bodyguard was already in front of him, an impenetrable wall, and somehow they managed to make it the few steps between the hotel and the car without being crushed to death. Draco smiled the whole time, waving, but it was a fixed smile now, as if he was bored of the whole business.
"It's fun being famous, isn't it," Harry said helpfully, which Draco ignored.
"Pansy's going to kill me," he said instead, shutting his eyes against the clicks of photographers as the car pulled away.
^^^^^^
Hermione appeared to have bought out a full delicatessen, even though she didn't have space to put anything. There were platters of meats piled on thick textbooks, nestling up to boxes of delicate, frilly cakes, in turn uncomfortably close to quiches and tartlets and the tiniest sausage rolls Harry had ever seen. He almost stepped in a pie when he got in the door, and Draco was in grave danger of sitting in a trifle before Hermione swooped in to rescue it with a shrill giggle.
Draco, a fixed smile on his face, made short work of a tiny plate of elegant cakes, and then moved on to a box of chocolates, Hermione talking non-stop, apparently attempting to list every achievement Draco had ever made, starting from the time he was seven and had passed his grade eight piano.
Harry didn't stop her, thinking Draco probably deserved it, and too hungry to talk, anyway. He helped himself to a big piece of quiche and then some of the mixed meats and cheeses, before battling Draco for the last remaining chocolate in the box. It was this that ended Hermione's monologue; she stared at Harry, obviously unimpressed, and then seemed to remember what they were actually there for.
"Oh! We were going to talk about your little problem," she said, and cast a sidelong glance at Draco, as if she didn't want to say the word 'magic' out loud, in case Harry was a psychopath after all.
Draco apparently hadn't forgiven Harry for the chocolate theft. "We should wait till Ron gets here," he said, an unpleasant smile on his face. "You have told Granger about Ron, right?"
Hermione glared at Harry. "Not this again," she said, shooting another sidelong glance at Draco. "You can't mean to tell me you've invited that oaf here."
"Harry made me," Draco said sweetly.
"He's your best friend," Harry countered, which made Draco turn green and made Hermione pause for thought.
"Maybe he has hidden depths," she managed.
"What, Ron Weasley?" Draco said, raising his eyebrows.
"Ron's great," Harry said defensively. "This isn't fair, Draco, and you know it."
Luckily – or unluckily, depending on your point of view – at that moment the doorbell rang, and soon a conflicted-looking Hermione was ushering Ron into her tiny bedsit. She went to move the quiche for him to sit down, but he pounced on it, picking up a slice that was technically half a quiche rather than a portion and taking a large bite.
"I'm bloody starving," he said through a full mouth and swallowed it down. "Thanks, love."
Hermione watched him with sick fascination. "He didn't even chew," she murmured.
Ron went pink. "What was that?" he said, wiping his mouth with a finger. "I've had a hard week! I burn it all off on the pitch, anyway." He took another large bite of quiche. "Got any coke?" he said, spraying crumbs. "Full fat."
Hermione shuddered and got up, coming back after a moment and pointedly passing him a glass of water.
Ron grinned lazily and chugged it down. "What we here for then, mate?" he said to Draco. "Presumably not this bird. She doesn't look your type."
"And what is his type?" Hermione said freezingly.
"Cock and balls," Ron said, still grinning, and reached for the tiny sausage rolls. Then he seemed to realise what he'd said. "Oh, er, I mean—" he stuttered, shooting an apologetic glance at Draco. "He's more into male friends than dating right now," he managed.
"Good save," Draco said drily.
"You, er, male friends with this bloke then?" Ron said, turning to Harry and giving him the onceover.
It was the strangest thing that had ever happened to him, Harry thought: Ron checking him out, to see if he was good enough for Draco Malfoy. He resisted the urge to speak, afraid of what he might say. He was aware, too that he wanted to leap up and hug Ron, but he thought Ron might take that as a come-on, given the situation.
"He's wearing a T-shirt with your face on, mate," Ron said cheerfully to Draco, after he'd finished the examination and clearly found Harry wanting. "Just thought I'd point it out in case you'd temporarily gone blind. Surely that's a boner-killer, if ever there was one."
Hermione drew herself up to her full height. "It just shows he's a proper, devoted fan!" she said defensively.
Harry opened his mouth to say that actually, all it showed was that Draco was an unspeakable narcissist, but Draco smoothly cut him off before he'd begun. "This is Harry," he said. "You might not believe what he has to say."
Oh, bloody hell. Once again Harry found himself spectacularly unprepared to explain to a friend who didn't recognise him that magic was real. He could try what he'd said to Hermione, Harry thought dubiously. OK, so that hadn't gone brilliantly, but it had worked out OK in the end, hadn't it?
"Well, go on then, Harry," Draco said unkindly, and Hermione smiled at him, whipping out another box of chocolates from under a giant model of a tooth and handing it over.
"Er, right," Harry said, and set about the business of explaining to Ron that he was actually a wizard. It went about as well as it had done with Hermione, Harry thought, if you twisted the English language to make 'as well' mean 'much, much worse'.
"Yeah, bollocks," Ron said when Harry had finished. "Sorry, but that's a load of stinking old horseshit. Surely you don't believe it, Draco?"
Draco didn't say anything, and for a moment Harry experienced an overwhelming sensation of outrage. Was Draco going to deny it? Then Draco shot a look at Harry and winked, the dickhead. "Unfortunately, it's all true," Draco said.
Ron looked like he'd been hit on the head with a copy of Hogwarts: A History. "What, magic?" he said.
Draco nodded.
"The evil bloke with no nose?"
Draco winced, but again nodded.
"Wizards?" Ron tried again.
More nodding.
"Well, fuck me," Ron said, and lapsed into silence. "You sure you're not on drugs?" he tried after a moment.
"Pretty sure," Draco said cheerfully.
Ron's shoulders slouched. "Do some magic then," he said, turning to Harry. "You did some for Hermione."
"Please don't vanish your own trousers this time," Hermione said severely, and then she turned to Draco, an alarming light in her eye. "Why don't you . . .?" she started, and then seemed to think better of it. Her cheeks turned scarlet, and she folded her hands in her lap very primly.
"I should have brought the wand with me," Harry said out loud, realising. "Thanks for the suggestion about that, Hermione. It was a good one." He turned to Ron. "I'm not very good at wandless magic," he explained. "Only really talented wizards can cast spells reliably without their wands."
"You still have your wand?" Draco said, sounding odd, and Harry realised that maybe he should have mentioned this to Draco a bit earlier.
"No, but I, um, bought a new one," he said awkwardly. "Didn't I tell you I was doing that? It's made by a Muggle, but it does actually work. At least, it's better than nothing."
"Right," Draco said, and he closed the lid of the box of chocolates, setting it by his feet. "I see." He didn't look very well, Harry thought, feeling weird about it.
"Are you OK, Draco?" Hermione asked, before Harry could. "Can I get you anything?"
"He's just eaten too much chocolate," Ron said unsympathetically. "He always was a pig when it came to sweets."
Hermione turned to him, the light of battle in her eyes. "Draco has perfect teeth," she said haughtily, "so it's impossible that he eats too much sugar."
"He probably magicked them that way," Ron said stoutly. "With his wand, while I wasn't looking." He frowned, clearly thinking. "You knowing magic certainly explains a few things," he said reprovingly to Draco. "You could have told me earlier, you know. We could have got up to all sorts of mischief!"
"Weren't you even listening?" Hermione said, raising her eyebrows. "The Draco you know couldn't do magic. This one's different."
"I was listening hard enough to find out that in this other world, you and I apparently get it on," Ron said, and turned to Draco in appeal. "You sure you got that right? She seems a bit of a stuck-up know-it-all, if you ask me."
Hermione went red. "Better a stuck-up know-it-all than a lowlife who makes a living kicking a ball and spends his evenings slobbering over C-list women with boob jobs!" she said shrilly.
Ron replied angrily, and Draco leaned in towards Harry and said, as the argument raged on, his voice dripping ice, "If only you'd brought your wand, you could have cast Silencio on the pair of them. Pity, really."
"I was going to tell you!" Harry protested. "I wasn't keeping it a secret, I swear."
Hermione stopped whatever she was saying and said to Harry, her eyebrows raised, "Draco hasn't tried the wand yet? It seems pretty obvious to me that that's your next step. If the finishing spell didn't work for you—"
"Finite Incantatem," Harry said awkwardly as Draco's eyebrows also rose.
"—then it might well work for Draco. Either way, you should definitely work together. The pair of you seem bound by this wish magic, don't you think?"
Harry wasn't sure how he felt about being 'bound' to Draco, in any sense.
"Really," Hermione said, sounding more like Hermione again, "the two of you don't seem to have taken even the most basic steps to fix whatever it is you've done. Have you even retraced your steps to recreate the scene of the initial magic?"
"Yes!" Harry protested. "I was, er, looking at the stars when I made the wish, so when I've tried to end the spell, I've looked at the stars."
Harry could feel Draco looking at him, but didn't want to turn his face. He felt ridiculous. He couldn't even remember if he'd told Draco his theory about how he'd made the world change, which now struck him as particularly dense. It was as if he didn't actually want to fix things, deep down, which wasn't true, was it?
Was it?
Hermione snorted. "That doesn't sound very scientific to me. Where were you? What time was it? And what did you say precisely?"
"If I knew what I'd said precisely then we wouldn't be in this mess," Harry protested, while Draco remained distressingly silent. "All right. It was after an event." He tried to remember. "I was on the roof of my house. It was . . . late."
"Late?" Hermione asked.
"I'm not sure – maybe two or three in the morning. I couldn't sleep. I'd had a bit too much to drink. It had been an arse of a day."
"Poor you," Draco said pointedly in his ear, and Harry tried not to wince, remembering it hadn't exactly been a barrel of laughs for Draco either.
"Yes, all right," he said, turning to look at Draco. Draco's face was very pinched, his hands knitted tightly together. "I like to go to my roof and look at the stars after a long day," he continued apologetically, turning back to Hermione. "I . . ." He tried to remember. The stars were so bright that night, so beautiful. "I suppose I must have cast a spell to stop the street lights working – to hide the light pollution you know. The stars were very bright. Some of them seemed to be dancing across the sky."
"Oh?" Hermione said, sitting bolt upright. "No, carry on," she said, when Harry waited for her to speak.
"Yes, carry on, I'm really glad I bunked off footie training for this load of old balls," Ron said cheerfully, and Hermione elbowed him in the side.
"I had some more to drink," Harry said, ignoring Draco's soft snort of disdain, "and I wished . . ." He still couldn't remember exactly what he'd wished for. "I think I wished that things were different." He tried not to go red. "I'd been thinking about Draco a bit – we'd, uh, bumped into each other earlier. I suppose I was feeling bad about it. We have a bit of a history," he mumbled, not sure how to explain it, and not feeling able to be entirely honest, given Draco was sitting right next to him, glaring at his ear. "Then when I woke up, things were different. I could remember everything, but the wizarding world seemed to have vanished."
"The wizarding world! Couldn't you have come up with a cooler name for it?" Ron complained.
"Cooler?" Hermione said acerbically. "There are dragons in the wizarding world, Harry says. And goblins, and flying on broomsticks, and potions that cure broken bones, and you're worried about it not sounding cool enough?"
"He also said the blokes wear dresses," Ron said stubbornly. "I mean, what's that about? Don't your balls catch a chill when you're on your broomstick? And don't even get me started on the chaffing. The inside seam of my shorts is deadly enough as it is, without shoving a wooden stick between my legs too."
There was a collective shudder as they all pictured this against their will. "Right!" Hermione said briskly. "So you made this wish last . . . Tuesday, was it?" She stood up and walked over to a calendar on her wall. "I thought you said you studied Astronomy at school," she said, an air of reproof in her voice.
"The classes were at midnight!" Harry said defensively. "And what's that got to do with anything? I can name you a constellation, if you like."
Hermione sniffed. "No, thank you. I just thought you might be aware that mid April to late May is when the Eta Aquariids are most active. They tend to peak in early May. This year, I believe they were at their height on the second. Tuesday," she added, in case Harry couldn't do dates as well as stars.
"What are the Eta Whatchamacallits?" Ron asked.
"It's a meteor shower," Hermione said, looking torn between pleasure at being able to explain something and annoyance at having the person asking be Ron. "Dust and debris that exploded from Halley's Comet hundreds of years ago." Ron didn't look like this explanation had helped much. "Shooting stars?" she tried.
"You're telling me that Harry the wizard wished on a shooting star, and his mate Draco ended up a pop star in another universe?" Ron said, turning a look of bewilderment on Harry. "Sounds like the plot of a straight-to-DVD Disney cartoon."
"I'm not really his 'mate'," Draco said from next to Harry, sounding a bit peculiar. Again, Harry found he really wanted to turn to look at him, to see what sort of face he was pulling, but his neck was so rigid that he couldn't move.
"I should have known you would be a Disney fan," Hermione said with gusto to Ron. "It's just your intellectual speed." Ron opened his mouth to say something undoubtedly rude, but Hermione cut across him saying, "Anyway, if you really did wish upon a shooting star, Harry, it sounds to me like it's the meteor shower you need to focus on. And as you've only got two or three weeks left before the shower is over, you'd better get a move on. The end of the shower might mean you're stuck in this reality forever."
"Which sounds pretty good to me, mate," Ron said to Draco, "if in your reality I'm dating her."
Hermione made a noise like a kettle on a hob about to boil over. "I'll have you know I would never date anyone who has the intellectual depth of a puddle and the manners of a badly behaved cocker spaniel," she said loftily.
Ron went red with outrage, and Harry tried to turn off his own ears as the argument raged again.
"Is this what Muggles call foreplay?" Draco said with interest when Hermione and Ron both paused for breath.
"NO!" Hermione and Ron said simultaneously, but at least they shut up, both of them all red and cross, Hermione folding her arms with her chin raised high in the air, Ron angrily eating a pork pie.
"Well, do you have any ideas to help Draco and Harry?" Hermione said to Ron, very pointed.
"I dunno," Ron said. And then he said, very unexpectedly, "Not sure I want to live in a reality where my best mate is someone I hate," and he rubbed his hand through his hair awkwardly. "Bit of a kicker, that."
"You and Hermione really are very happy together," Harry tried.
Hermione raised her chin even higher. "In an emergency, I probably wouldn't turn Ron away if he had toothache," she allowed. "But other than that . . ."
"Yeah," Ron said gloomily. "I had a date with Katie Price last night, you know. Katie Price!"
Harry didn't know who that was, but thought it better for his blood pressure to remain in ignorance, particularly judging by the look on Hermione's face right now.
"Well, my theory, Harry," Hermione said, clearly talking to Draco rather than him, "is that if you want to destroy my life by making me date this Neanderthal, you'll need another shooting star to make it happen." She sniffed. "And as I said, I suggest you work together. If, that is, you're sure it will be for the best."
Harry was no longer sure of anything, really, apart from the fact that this was the most embarrassing thing that had ever happened before to anyone, ever. Even the memory of Draco confessing that he'd had dirty little fantasies about him seemed tame in comparison to the thought that Draco now knew that Harry had changed the fucking world to, by all appearances, make Draco happy.
"Thank you for your help," Draco said politely, and went as if to go.
"Oh! Would you mind signing a few things before you leave?" Hermione said, her eyes lighting up.
Draco didn't mind, it would appear, but it was only after he'd signed practically everything Hermione owned that she would let him go. By this time, Ron had already left, slapping Draco on the back as he went and favouring Harry with a very funny look.
Back in the car – which had, apparently, been waiting outside Hermione's house all that time, complete with enormous bodyguard and bored-looking driver – Draco looked at his hands and then said, sounding peculiar, "You wished on a shooting star?"
"Um, yes?" Harry said, feeling horrendously, ridiculously awkward. The car set off; towards Wembley Arena and Draco's date with the sound check, Harry presumed. "I didn't mean to! I didn't realise that would happen!" he protested. It didn't make him feel any better.
Draco glanced over at the bodyguard's bulk in the front passenger seat. "We can talk about this later," he said, and they spent the rest of the journey in silence.
^^^^^^
By the time they arrived at the venue, and they'd driven through crowds of waiting fans – Draco sliding down in his seat, clearly not convinced of the effectiveness of the tinted windows – Draco seemed to have got over his odd mood. Even Pansy's irritated greeting – "You didn't do anything stupid, did you?" – didn't seem to reawaken it.
"We left the hotel together, but otherwise no," Draco said cheerfully. And in the face of Pansy's rage, he simply shrugged and said, "Just put out that Harry's my new assistant, or something. I need a new assistant, anyway. The one I have is useless."
"I am not your assistant, jackass!" Pansy yelled as Draco half-ran away from her, dragging Harry along with him, but she sounded less angry now, more amused.
Harry stayed for Draco's sound-check, which seemed to consist mostly of Draco hanging around looking bored, occasionally singing into a microphone and sounding like Draco singing into a microphone, punctuated by periods of complete inactivity. It was nearly six by the time they were done, and then Draco vanished for half an hour to talk to 'terminally ill fans', Pansy said unsympathetically, popping up by Harry's elbow and passing him a glass of wine. "They love him, fuck knows why."
"Because he's charming?" Harry tried. He hadn't seen it personally, but he suspected Draco could be, if he pulled himself out of his own arse occasionally.
"Is he?" Pansy said curiously. "Since when?"
"You've always thought he was," Harry said, before remembering that he wasn't talking to the Pansy he remembered, but a new one, similar but not identical.
Pansy took a sip of her own wine. "You make my skin crawl sometimes," she said pleasantly. "You act like you know me, and I sometimes feel I know you, but we've never met before, have we?"
"Uh," Harry said, drinking wine as he tried to think what to say.
"And yes, I suppose I've always fancied Draco, if that's your question," she said candidly. "But it was obvious to me very early on that he was bent. I suppose we still might get married one day, if he wants to maintain his hetero image for the media, but . . ." She shrugged. "I love him, but I'm not sure I love him enough to do that."
"I don't think he'd want to!" Harry said, feeling odd.
"No?" Pansy said, and she leaned towards him and patted him on the cheek, as if he were a small child. "Have you met his parents yet?"
"Well, no," Harry said uncomfortably, resisting the urge to scrub his cheek clean. He knew there were versions of Lucius and Narcissa in this reality too, but the idea of it – of Draco having Muggle parents – was curiously itchy in his brain.
"I'm fairly sure you never will," Pansy said airily. "So don't get too attached, OK?"
Harry thought about that. "Are you trying to be horrible?" he said at last, sick of her jibes.
Pansy's eyes widened, and then she grinned, clearly delighted. "Yes!" she said, and clinked her wine glass against his. Then she laughed. "I'm just protective of Draco – both personally and professionally," she said. "I like that you give as good as you get. I think I could almost like you," she added thoughtfully, "but I'm not sure yet. It depends."
What did it depend on? Harry didn't like to ask. And he thought later as Draco pinned him against the inside of his dressing room door, kissing him hard and slow and grinding their hips together until Harry could see stars, that whatever it depended on, it was unlikely frottage in Wembley Arena with her supposedly 'straight' star would endear him to Pansy, either way.
^^^^^^
Draco spent the whole of the journey back to the hotel after the gig talking about nothing, his hand stroking the inside of Harry's thigh. He kept accidentally on purpose brushing up against Harry's enormous, take your eye out hard on, sometimes leaving his hand there, the gentle pressure sending Harry round the twist.
By the time they got to the hotel, Harry felt like he was almost ready to come. Draco shot a look at his lap, his eyes dark and steely grey, and said, "You'd better wait in the car until you've calmed down," before leaving the car, followed by the enormous security guard.
Harry gritted his teeth as the driver hummed something tuneless, and after thinking hard about Pansy's face for a good five minutes, he felt able to actually get up without causing an international incident if a photographer was lurking outside. He wasn't sure whether to be annoyed with Draco or not, and when he got inside the suite he couldn't see him, so he kicked off his shoes and took off his coat, before climbing the stairs in search of him.
Draco was . . .
Harry felt his face overheat, his hard-on springing back to life with impressive speed. Draco was lying naked on the bed, his legs spread and his hand on his cock, wanking very slowly. "I started without you," Draco said, not stopping.
Earlier, Harry had been thinking that maybe once they got back to the suite, it might be an idea to go and look at some fucking shooting stars, and it occurred to him uneasily that this was still a good idea, and he shouldn't be distracted by the sight of Draco Malfoy wanking. But . . . Draco was wanking. Right there, in front of him. For him, if Harry was any judge. They could do the star thing later, right?
For a moment, Harry stood there, torn between watching and joining in.
"Are you just going to watch?" Draco said, eyes locked on him, going pink.
Was he? Harry sat down on the edge of the bed next to Draco, trailed a finger along his inner thigh until he was nudging his balls. "Yes," he said, feeling his blood sing. The sight was amazing. Draco's body was gorgeous, and Harry thought he could watch him forever.
"OK," Draco said, and visibly swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing in his throat. His hand started to move faster, and he let out a tiny choked noise as Harry trailed a finger over his balls, spreading his legs even wider to give Harry access.
Harry cupped Draco's balls, gently massaging them as Draco's whole chest went pink, the colour spreading up his neck and reaching his ears. He was mesmerised by the sight of Draco's hand on his cock, by the look on his face – embarrassment and arousal mixed.
Harry continued to stroke Draco's balls, and Draco arched his back, raising his hips to give Harry a view of his arsehole that made him feel very, very hot.
"If . . ." Draco said, sounding very choked. He cleared his throat. "If you wanted to finger me, there's lube in the drawer."
Did Harry want to stick his finger up Draco's bum? It turned out he did, because he was reaching for the drawer before his brain was properly engaged, squirting out a clear, slippery, cold liquid into his palm and slicking up a finger with it.
Draco's arsehole was twitching now, and when Harry gingerly pressed his slippery finger against it, the tip of it slipped in much more easily than he would have expected. Draco made a guttural noise, pushing against Harry's finger and he slid in up to the first knuckle. Draco felt hot and ridiculously tight, squeezing down on his finger, and he pulled out again, the pucker of Draco's arsehole now clenching and releasing more tightly. Harry bit his lip, took a blob of lube on his finger and tried again, his finger sliding easily in and out, deeper with each push.
Draco was properly moaning now, his hand on his cock moving faster, and Harry found he didn't want this to be over so quickly. By the look on Draco's face – his neck arched, head tilted back, mouth slack – it would be, if he didn't do anything about it. So he reached over with his free hand and grabbed Draco's wrist, pulling it gently off his cock and pushing it onto the bed by Draco's side.
Draco's eyes snapped open, and he stared at Harry, lips still parted, chest heaving. His cock jutted out, red and angry and untouched. Draco didn't move to touch his cock again, but his muscles clenched down on Harry's finger and his breathing was fast and shallow, now seeming almost timed to the movements Harry was making.
They continued like this for a minute or so, Draco's breathing growing increasingly ragged, precum pooling on his belly as Harry worked his finger. "You can fuck me, if you like," Draco suddenly said, voice sounding raw, and Harry basically froze. He . . . he wanted to so much he thought he might die from it, but simultaneously, he . . .
"I . . . um . . ." he said incoherently, feeling intensely pathetic, and realising – to his actual horror – that the reason he didn't want to do it right now was because he wanted it to be romantic, and meaningful, rather than a natural progression from fingering.
Draco made a face, raising himself up on his elbows to scowl at Harry. "Are you having another crisis?" he asked, tone not very nice. "Want me to take my erection to the bathroom and leave you in peace?"
He was definitely having a crisis, all right, Harry thought; but it was a Draco crisis, rather than simply a gay one.
Harry decided he could deal with this later, though. Right now, he was too horny to give in to panic. There . . . there were other things he could try, weren't there? Things that he'd been dreaming about, but that didn't give him the same sense of falling off a cliff and watching the ground speed dizzily ever closer. He plucked up his courage and gave Draco a sharp, gentle shove that had him falling back against the pillows. Draco watched him warily as he climbed up on the bed, still fully dressed, and knelt between Draco's knees, giving his thighs another little shove to get him to widen his legs.
Harry leaned over to pick up the lube again, squeezing out another generous blob on his finger and smearing it against Draco's arsehole as Draco watched him, mouth falling open again, before he pressed his lips tight shut. "Two fingers?" Harry managed, feeling a bit like his head had been plunged into unbearably hot water, and Draco nodded sharply, so Harry went for more lube, until both his fingers and Draco's pucker were slick and wet. He pressed gently, and Draco caught his breath, before making an obvious effort to relax. Harry, who'd frozen in place, pressed gently again, and his fingers slid in more easily.
Harry worked his fingers until Draco was breathing faster, his hands gripping the bed linen, and then he stopped moving, fingers buried deep inside Draco. It felt – it looked – fucking incredible. He felt his mouth water, at the thought of what he was about to do, his heart banging in his chest like a gong. He took a deep breath and then leaned forward, supporting himself on his free hand, and took the head of Draco's cock in his mouth.
Draco made a low, amazed noise, and Harry sucked tentatively, the warm flesh feeling full and thick inside his mouth. As he sucked, taking Draco's cock in even further, there was a burst of taste, strong and with a bitter undertone, but not unpleasant. Draco made another noise, and Harry looked along his body to catch his eye. It felt amazingly odd, to look Draco in the eye while he had Draco's cock in his mouth, his fingers in Draco's arse. He didn't think he'd ever be able to look Draco in the eye again without thinking about it. But Draco's face was pleasingly contorted, and when Harry moved his mouth and his fingers in harmony, Draco pulled a face that indicated to Harry that it wouldn't be long before he was coming if Harry kept that up.
So he kept it up. A slow, steady slide with his mouth, a slow, steady pump of his fingers, with Draco falling apart right in front of his eyes.
It didn't take long for Draco to come. Harry's mouth was flooded with bitterness, but he swallowed it down, Draco thrashing on his fingers as his orgasm overwhelmed him.
After, Harry pulled out his fingers and wiped his mouth on the bottom of his T-shirt, wondering what to do next. Draco seemed to have turned limbless, boneless, he was so relaxed, and his eyes had fluttered shut. Harry decided to get off the bed and wash his hands, but as he moved, Draco cracked open an eye. "Where the fuck do you think you're going?" he asked.
"Er, to clean up?" Harry said, and Draco snorted, propping himself back up on his elbows.
"Come here, idiot," Draco said, knocking at Harry's legs with his own, and soon Harry found himself pretty much straddling Draco's chest. "Take your top off," Draco ordered, and as Harry did so – wiping his hands on it in the process ("That's my face you're defiling," Draco said snidely) – Draco reached down to undo his jeans, tugging both them and his boxers down his thighs.
Harry wasn't sure what to do next. Draco's mouth was pretty much next to his cock, but it seemed a bit presumptuous to move and unite the two.
Draco made an impatient noise, and reached round with one hand to grip one of Harry's arse cheeks, pulling him closer. Harry, face aflame, took the hint, positioning the head of his cock against Draco's mouth and pushing in. Draco parted his lips obligingly, resting back on his elbows, but barely moved, so Harry gingerly pushed in further, the sensation incredible, before pulling out again.
Draco made an encouraging noise, so Harry did it again, a rush of adrenaline making everything feel over loud, and over bright as he pushed his cock in and out of Draco's mouth. Draco was breathing heavily, but the noises he was making were ones of pleasure, his eyes soft and expression loose and relaxed as Harry pumped his hips. "God, you're incredible," Harry found himself saying as he watched his cock slide in and out of Draco's lips. "Fucking hell."
Draco made a noise of approval, his eyes fluttering shut, and then he opened his eyes wide again, to watch Harry's face. Time seemed to slow down as Harry moved his hips helplessly, mesmerised by the sight of his cock disappearing, and reappearing, into Draco's mouth. He tried to keep a steady rhythm, to not push too far, but he found himself thrusting faster as the tension in his groin started to peak. Draco started moaning loudly with every thrust, which only made it worse, and he tilted his head at an angle that seemed to let Harry's cock sink in even deeper.
Harry pumped helplessly, and Draco made a choking noise which had him wrenching himself away, stammering apologies.
Draco regarded him narrowly, and reached out to put a hand on his thigh. "There, there," he said unsympathetically. "Now, shall we try again?"
Harry wasn't sure he could, couldn't trust himself to hold back enough not to do it again.
"You really are insufferably perfect," Draco muttered, and before Harry could react – insufferable colliding with perfect – he'd leaned forward and swallowed down Harry's cock, moving his head with fast, firm pressure. Harry could feel his legs almost giving way, and then Draco reached between his legs and pressed the tip of a finger very firmly against his arsehole, not pushing it in but not removing it either. Harry held very still, the sensation against his arsehole fluttery and maddening, the feeling of Draco's mouth on his cock hot, and tight, and overwhelming.
Everything was overwhelming. When he clenched his thighs, his stomach, to stay upright, the feelings only intensified. Draco's finger. His mouth. Harry coasted on the edge of his orgasm for what felt like forever, each slide of Draco's mouth sending him higher and higher, closer and closer. And then he was coming, a white-hot explosion in his groin, except Draco slid his mouth off his cockand tipped his head back, so Harry came on him, too late to pull away, streaking his face, his hair, with come.
Draco looked hugely smug for a moment, and then startled. He said, "Owwww!", and clenched one of his eyes tight shut, his free hand coming up to rub at it, while his other hand slid away from Harry's backside.
Harry stared at him, horrified, and Draco said, in a very small voice, "You came in my eye!" and then started laughing, so hard that Harry couldn't stop himself from eventually joining in. "Fucking hell," Draco wheezed when he managed to calm himself down, his voice thick with laughter. "That was much less erotic than I'd hoped."
"You've, er, got a little –" Harry waved his hand to encompass the whole of Draco's head – "on you," he said awkwardly, which set Draco off again, laughing so hard he was nearly crying.
"Yes," Draco managed through his laughter, "I suppose I have. Owww," he said again mock-pathetically, "it really stings."
Harry slid off him and kicked his trousers and boxers off properly, then went to pick Draco up to carry him to the bathroom, but Draco creased up with laughter again, batting him away. "I have come in my eye, I haven't lost the use of my legs," he said, and he slid off the bed himself, heading towards the bathroom. He stopped and looked back at Harry through his one good eye. "Want to share a shower?"
Harry did.
Later, as they lay next to each other in bed, Draco turned off the light, and then rolled towards Harry, their faces very close together. "Would it have been hot? You know, if you hadn't tried to blind me."
"I didn't!" Harry protested, to Draco's sniggers.
"Yes, yes, I know," Draco said. "It was all my own fault. But – would it?"
Harry thought about it. It had been hot, like burning. His come on Draco's face, streaking his hair. As if he owned him. Merlin. The thought was . . . Harry swallowed hard. But at the same time, it had also made him uncomfortable. It wasn't a very nice thing to do, he thought, feeling like a prude. He didn't want to be the sort of man who treated his partners with less respect than they deserved. He . . . didn't want to be the sort of man who had more than one partner, really, a tiny voice said in his head. He wanted to fall in love, and get married, and grow old with someone. Not . . . come in their eye. Unless they really wanted him to. "I think I could take it or leave it," he said dubiously. "Did you like it?"
"I was a bit busy with the burning agony," Draco said, warm and amused, "but it was worth it to see the look on your face. You were clearly thinking 'I haven't even taken him out to dinner!'" He sniggered. "Sorry, I suppose. I'll warn you next time if I want to do something mildly deviant. You're clearly a delicate flower."
"Thanks," Harry said, stung.
"You're very welcome," Draco said, to Harry's annoyance, but he felt an arm slide around his side, Draco relaxing against him. This was nice, Harry thought fuzzily. This was what he wanted. Less come in the eye, more . . . falling asleep in each other's arms.
The thought was enough to jolt him to wakefulness. And as he lay there, Draco breathing slow and quiet beside him, it occurred to him, uneasily, that they still hadn't tried to fix the spell together, not even once.