The First Source of Happiness

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/46012654.

Rating: Explicit
Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Category: M/M
Fandom: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter, Hermione Granger & Harry Potter & Ron
Weasley
Characters: Harry Potter, Draco Malfoy, Angelina Johnson, Ron Weasley, Hermione
Granger, Original Characters
Additional Tags: Light Angst, Dom/sub, Top Draco Malfoy, Bottom Harry Potter,
Unspeakable Draco Malfoy, Auror Harry Potter, Magically Powerful
Harry Potter, Submissive Harry, Orgasm Delay, Bondage, Wandless
Magic (Harry Potter), Attempted manipulation
Language: English
Collections: Draco Tops Harry Fest 2023
Stats: Published: 2023-04-05 Words: 13,790 Chapters: 1/1
 The First Source of Happiness
by Lomonaaeren

Summary

Harry Potter is literally the most powerful wizard in the world- so powerful that the
Unspeakables keep trying to devise challenges he can't meet. But Harry is also interested in
having a lover who can take charge of him and won't be frightened off by his magic. In
Unspeakable Draco Malfoy, Harry has perhaps found someone who can satisfy all his desires,
and whose desires he can do the same with.
Title: The First Source of Happiness
Author: Lomonaaeren
Prompt: #37
Summary: Harry Potter is literally the most powerful wizard in the world- so powerful that
the Unspeakables keep trying to devise challenges he can't meet. But Harry is also interested
in having a lover who can take charge of him and won't be frightened off by his magic. In
Unspeakable Draco Malfoy, Harry has perhaps found someone who can satisfy all his desires,
and whose desires he can do the same with.
Rating: E
Warning(s): Light angst, D/s dynamics, orgasm delay, bondage, submissive Harry, attempted
emotional manipulation by a background character
Word Count: 13,600
Author's Notes:Thanks for the prompt, somberraven! I had a lot of fun with this. Thanks
also to my betas, Linda and Karen. The title comes from the Stendahl quote, "Power, after
love, is the first source of happiness."
Link to AO3:

“I bet you can’t break through this.”

Harry stood in the middle of the training room the Department of Mysteries had built just for
him, facing a shield that, he was reliably informed, had been constructed of pure diamond.
Strengthened with magic, of course. It hung in the air, pulsing with the light of numerous
wards, and Harry lifted an eyebrow as he considered it.

“It might have more strength on a wall,” he pointed out.

“I don’t want to risk the wall being shattered,” snapped the nearest Unspeakable, a tall
hooded figure with black edgings to the lining of her cloak. Harry wasn’t supposed to, but he
knew she was Angelina Johnson. His magic got bored and found things out to tell him
whether or not he wanted to know.

“It won’t be shattered!”

“There’s no way Potter can break through this!”

“I admire your optimism,” Angelina told them flatly, “but not enough to hang the shield on
the wall.”

Harry grinned and studied the shield one more time. It was enormous, well over twice his
height and as thick as half the wall of the training room. He nodded and took a step back,
raising a hand.

The Unspeakables who stood between him and the shield promptly dived out of the way,
proving that they might not be that optimistic, either.
Harry reached out to his magic and thought, Can we do this?

The answer that flooded back was not words in any way that anyone else would have
understood it. But it sang in his head and flooded through his veins, and Harry smiled. He
had never been able to hear his magic so clearly as when he had discovered that he could no
longer use the holly wand, despite its being repaired.

He refused to use the Elder Wand either, though, unless he was defending people’s lives. For
a display like this, the power he’d been born with was more than enough.

Harry faced the shield and flicked a lash of power at it, one so thin and bright that he heard
people cry out as they covered their eyes.

The lash landed in the middle of the shield, and cut through the wards that had been
protecting it as if they didn’t exist. More people screamed, although Harry thought it was
more in resentment over their labor being wasted than shock. The shield wavered, and then
the two halves fell apart from each other and hung, glittering, still supported in midair. Harry
hadn’t cut the spells holding them up.

“He didn’t cut them fully,” someone started protesting.

Angelina held up a hand, probably because she had already seen what the person complaining
hadn’t. The halves slowly tilted further and further apart from each other, the crack between
them becoming smaller and smaller towards the bottom, but existing, until they were fully
split. And still hovering.

Harry smiled around at the Unspeakables and enjoyed their chorus of complaints and the
immediate eruption of debate about what kind of wards would be able to withstand the power
of Harry’s magic. But his attention wandered towards the hooded figure with green edgings
on his robes that waited towards the back wall of the room, arms folded.

Harry knew perfectly well that he was Draco Malfoy. His magic had alerted him the minute
he’d walked into the training room for the first time, because at that point, Harry could have
still considered Malfoy a threat and his magic was hyper-alert to threats. But Malfoy had
never behaved differently from a regular Unspeakable in Harry’s presence, and so, Harry had
relaxed over the years.

Now…

Well, there was something different about Malfoy’s posture today. Maybe Harry shouldn’t
have paid that much attention to Malfoy, especially not when he wasn’t supposed to know
who this Unspeakable was, especially not when Malfoy had never given Harry the slightest
indication of attention back, but.

Today was different.

Malfoy straightened up, and Angelina raised a hand. Harry nodded a little as he watched the
respectful quiet fill the room. Malfoy did good work, obviously, and considering that he had
failed at all sorts of things when they were in school (including being a decent person to
Muggleborns), Harry was happy for him.

“I made the wards around the shield, Potter,” Malfoy said.

The Unspeakable’s hood muffled and changed his voice, but Harry could still pick out the
sharp edge. He gave Malfoy a thin smile. “Oh?”

“How did you break them?”

“I told them to break.”

There was a long pause. Even though the room was crowded with Unspeakables, Harry felt
as though the years and people had fallen away and he and Malfoy were standing there with
nothing but air and crackling energy between them.

Except the energy was different this time, of course. Malfoy wasn’t about to curse Harry—he
thought, anyway. There was something about his attention that slithered along Harry’s sides
and back and nerves. He straightened his shoulders without even realizing he was doing so,
and then decided it would be silly to slump again when he thought about it.

“Explain what you mean by that,” Malfoy whispered at last.

Harry nodded to the hovering halves of the shield. “I could feel the wards on it. You do good
work.” But Malfoy didn’t react to the compliment, so Harry had to move on, a little
awkwardly. “I told them to break the way I used to tell my wand to fire spells.”

“Or your body. Given that you weren’t using a wand.”

Did Malfoy’s voice linger on the word body? Perhaps. Harry shifted his weight. “Yes. But
that’s the only explanation I can give you.”

“It’s enough of one,” Malfoy said, and gave a decisive nod. “Come to my office, Potter. The
Obsidian Office. There’s a theory I want to test.” And he turned and marched out of the
training room without looking back.

Harry swallowed. He wouldn’t be able to explain to anyone why his mouth was flooded with
saliva right now. He glanced at Angelina and waited for her permission to leave, given that
she was chief Unspeakable.

“Yes, do go on and follow Obsidian,” Angelina said irritably, and then turned back and
waved a hand at the rest of the Unspeakables. They immediately began debating why Harry
had been able to break the shield. Harry shook his head and followed Malfoy.

He wished them luck trying to come up with a protection he couldn’t break, either a spell or a
combination of spells, but he really doubted they were going to do it.

“What you told me is frankly fantastic.”

Harry inclined his head from where he stood on the other side of the desk from Malfoy.
“That’s a nice thing for you to say, Unspeakable Obsidian.”

The temptation to say that he knew who Malfoy was was enormous. But he didn’t want to do
that when it would make Malfoy paranoid about Harry’s magic. He wanted to stay close to
Malfoy, wanted to explore magical theory together, wanted—

It wasn’t Malfoy’s fault what he wanted. Harry schooled his mind to the present as Malfoy
tilted his head and said, “I didn’t mean that it was good. I meant that it was unbelievable.”

“Oh.”

“I don’t think that you know what you’re doing with your magic.”

“Oh,” Harry repeated, and licked his lips. On the one hand, this sounded like an excuse to
spend more time with Malfoy. On the other hand, Malfoy would find out pretty quickly that
Harry did know what he was doing with his magic, or decide that he was lying, and give up
in frustration. “Sorry, Unspeakable Obsidian.”

Malfoy rose slowly to his feet and walked around the desk to stand facing Harry from a
distance of about a meter. “We’ve tested you in various defensive situations with protective
spells and shields and wards, but we haven’t seen what you would do in a real duel. I’m
going to go on the defensive. I want you to try to take my wand away.”

“All right,” Harry said, and folded his hands behind his back. Just like he thought, that made
Malfoy stand a little straighter, nodding in a way that Harry chose to interpret as approval
even if it probably wasn’t.

“Do the best you can,” Malfoy said. “And do it as quickly as you can, before I complete the
motion of the curse I’m going to use.” He started to raise his wand.

Then it wasn’t there anymore. Harry took his hands out from his back and showed Malfoy the
wand balanced on his palm. He kept as obliging an expression as he could, but, well, there
wasn’t much obliging about simply snatching someone’s wand away from them.

Malfoy looked back and forth from him to the wand in silence. Then he said, “Could you do
that only because of who I am?”

“Because you’re an Unspeakable and I don’t think you would really hurt me?”

“An unwise assumption, if it were true,” Malfoy muttered, and then pulled back his hood.
Harry stared at him as he shook his hair out. “No. I mean that you once won that wand and
used it, so it might obey you more than others would.”

Apparently Malfoy was going to say nothing about the sudden reveal of his identity. Harry
took a deep breath and tossed Malfoy’s wand back to him. “No. I could do it with any wand.”

“Prove it.”

“Do you have other spare wands around here?” Harry asked.
*

“All right, so you can do it with wands of hawthorn, oak, ebony, rowan, ash, hemlock, and
walnut,” Malfoy said, frowning at the sprawl of papers on his desk. Harry watched the side of
his face, enjoying the lines of his profile. “That doesn’t mean that you could do it with
others.”

Harry sighed. “Malfoy, what’s the point of constantly testing this? You’ve seen that it
happens every time I decide I want to summon a wand.”

“What you’re doing makes no sense, theoretically.”

Malfoy at least had thrown down the quill and turned to face him now. Harry rocked back on
his heels a little, and wondered if Malfoy always projected that commanding aura with his
hood off, or if Harry was the only one who got to enjoy it. “Why not?”

“Magical theory says that the magic around us is like heavy water.”

Harry nodded obediently. He knew this already, but it was nice to listen.

“We make ripples in it when we cast spells or summon our power or even just want
something that we think about Summoning, for example.” Malfoy made a curved gesture
with one hand. “Some people move more effortlessly through it than others, because they’re
stronger and can, as it were, swim more efficiently. But there’s still a connection between
them and the object or person they’re affecting. Apparating takes us through the fields of
magic in the world. It's only amateurs who think it really involves appearing and then
disappearing somewhere else without crossing the distance in between.

“You’re not crossing the distance. You’re not even asking, as far as I can tell. You will it, and
the object appears.”

“Surely willing it is the action that creates a connection? You said that if someone wanted to
Summon something—”

“That act of will is measurable! It’s there! You can tell how much magic someone is putting
behind the request!” Malfoy waved a hand at him. “And yours isn’t there! It’s as if the same
moment you will something, the magic performs!”

Harry nodded slowly. He could see how that would work, at least in theory—he chuckled to
himself—and how it would probably drive a theoretically-oriented Unspeakable like Malfoy
mad.

“What do you feel when you’re performing that kind of magic?” Malfoy asked abruptly. “The
emotions?”

Harry frowned a little. “Desire? I don’t know how to explain it. What do you feel when you
pick up an object and move it around?”

“That I want it to be in one place and I move it somewhere else. But most of the time, I use
my hands, not my wand, Potter.”
Harry smiled, ignoring the shiver that coursed through him at the thought of Malfoy’s hands.
“At least you’re not one of those idiots who thinks they should sit down all day and send
objects zipping through the corridors of the Ministry.”

“I bet Weasley is one of them.”

Harry stared at him for a second, and Malfoy’s cheeks turned a little pink, but he didn’t look
as if he was about to retract the statement. Harry shook his head. “You really need to keep up
on your gossip. Ron quit the Aurors a year ago to work with George in his joke shop.”

“…Oh.”

“Yeah.”

Malfoy stood there awkwardly for another moment, then took a deep breath and said, “All
right, so you can’t explain it, and we can’t analogize it to what you feel when you move an
object with your hands. Can you—do it more slowly? Will a wand to appear in your hand but
try to isolate every thought, every emotion?”

“That sounds boring.”

“Potter.”

“Yeah, all right,” Harry gave in. In truth, spending most of his afternoon with Malfoy was the
most fun he’d had in a while. The Ministry mostly flung him at threats that would take
enormous power to bring down, like a whole coven of Dark wizards. That meant Harry didn’t
spend a lot of time doing much but walking around the Ministry and heartening people by
smiling at them and talking to them.

It helped. Harry knew it did. He reassured people just by being there.

But it didn’t add much variety to his days. And it encouraged people to see him as this
untouchable bastion of power, which meant—

Ah, well. Nothing to be done about it. Harry focused on the walnut wand that Malfoy had
picked up and did his best to slow his thoughts and his magic down.

“There! That’s it!”

Harry blinked and looked up from the ebony wand he’d had floating in front of him. Malfoy
had started having Harry change what he was doing with the wands, not just Summoning
them but making them Levitate or light up with Lumos using his wandless magic. Harry
hadn’t thought it was doing much, given Malfoy’s constant scowl, but at least it had staved
off his own boredom.

And now Malfoy was scribbling furiously on a scroll in front of him, so something must have
worked.
“Yeah?” Harry asked, around a yawn, and willed the ebony wand to speed back to the table
where Malfoy had put all the others they’d been working with when Harry was done with
them. “What did you find out?”

Malfoy turned to him with his face shining. Harry’s breath caught. He looked as though he’d
swallowed the sun. Harry wanted to reach out and touch, bury his hands in Malfoy’s hair, see
if Malfoy would bury his hands in Harry’s—

Stop, Harry chided himself, and listened as Malfoy began to wave the scroll around and
babble like an over-excited first-year.

“Most of the time, we can sense it when someone casts a spell or is about to cast a spell
because there’s a distance between that wish or that action and the magic happening. But you
don’t have that distance because you are part of the magic! It’s passing in and out of your
body, enclosing you! It’s not separate! This is the most exciting thing I’ve ever heard of!”

Harry managed to keep from laughing because he doubted that Malfoy would want to hear
that, but he smiled. “Good, then you figured it out. And I reckon I can go and get something
to eat and drink?”

Malfoy stopped waving the scroll and stared at him. Harry raised his eyebrows, wondering
what was wrong now. He hoped that Malfoy hadn’t imagined some perfect model of Harry
where he never needed to do things like eat and drink.

“Yes,” Malfoy said softly. “Yes, of course you can.”

The brilliant shining in his face had disappeared, and Harry wanted it back. “I am interested
to hear about your theoretical conclusions,” he said gently. “I’m just really hungry and
thirsty.”

Malfoy nodded, still staring at him. “Yes, of course,” he repeated.

Harry cocked his head. The worst thing Malfoy could say was “no,” and Harry had grown
beyond the boy who had flinched at the thought of someone refusing his invitation to the
Yule Ball. “Do you want to come eat with me?”

“I—you would be willing to be seen in public with me?”

“Yes, of course,” Harry said, blinking. “We’re not kids anymore.”

“Yes, I’m the grown man who insulted your best mate a few hours ago.”

Harry shrugged. “Being stuck down here in an Unspeakable office and devoting all your time
to research is a pretty good reason not to know all the latest gossip.”

Malfoy carried on staring at him. Harry didn’t tap his foot or fold his arms, but he really
wanted to. How in the world can he be so smart and still this bad at understanding an
invitation to lunch?
Malfoy cleared his throat and nodded slowly. “Yes, all right. I—would like to go to the new
restaurant that opened in Diagon Alley a fortnight ago. It’s called the Golden Pear.”

Harry had passed the place from the outside but hadn’t been inside yet, and a few of the other
Aurors said the food was good. “That’s fine.”

Outside the Ministry, Malfoy was different.

Oh, he didn’t look out of place in the Golden Pear, which was a restaurant full of gleaming
gold: real gold, yellow wood, natural sunlight striking through clear glass skylights and the
crystalline windows to caress gleaming ornaments the color of platinum. He handled his
knife and fork well, and when Harry asked him a question about the theory of magic as a
weave, he spoke with the kind of confidence his childhood arrogance seemed to have turned
into.

But he seemed a little more wary, turning his head sharply towards the door each time the
bell that signaled someone else coming in rang, and nodding towards the people who nodded
to him as if he was waiting for them each to draw a wand.

Harry found it fascinating.

“Why are you staring at me, Potter?”

Harry hadn’t realized that he’d made it so obvious. He grimaced apologetically and sipped
from his glass of wine. “Just that you look as if you were expecting an attack, and I wondered
how long it was since he’d been in public in a place like Diagon Alley.”

Malfoy’s fork clattered off the edge of the plate for a second. Then he said, “I don’t see how
that’s any of your business, Potter.”

“Right, sorry. So any theories about why my magic is so different from anyone else’s that
you’ve studied?”

Malfoy blinked and seemed to reorient himself again. “A few. I don’t know if you want to
hear them.”

“Would I have asked otherwise?”

“Most of them have to do with how you defeated the Dark Lord.” Malfoy’s eyes rose and
lingered on Harry’s scar.

“So do most of mine.”

“You want to discuss this in public?”

Harry raised an eyebrow, and the air around them twitched and then assumed the glassy shine
of a Privacy Charm. “There. Now no sound can get out and no one can eavesdrop on us no
matter what spell they try to use to bypass it.”
“Using a Privacy Charm in public is considered rude, Potter.”

“I got used to it the sixth time Rita Skeeter interrupted my meal.”

Malfoy put down his fork with the last piece of veal impaled on it and leaned forwards a
little. “You’re nothing like I imagined you were.”

“You thought I would be less confident, maybe?” Harry decided there was no harm in leaning
close and lowering his voice a little. Malfoy didn’t have to respond. He did watch the way
that Malfoy’s eyelashes fluttered with delight, though. “Still inclined to blame myself for
everything? I thought you’d worked enough with me in the Department of Mysteries to
realize that wasn’t the case.”

“I thought you hadn’t really changed from the awkward boy you were. Shows me what I
know, I suppose.”

“You know a lot of magical theory. You come up with innovative wards. You’re intelligent,
Malfoy.”

“Not wards that you can’t get through.”

Harry held back a sigh. It seemed that even compliments couldn’t break through Malfoy’s
bitterness about that. “You’ve come close a few times. And when you’re facing literally the
most powerful wizard in the world, I think that’s something to be proud of.”

“Wait, what?”

Shit, maybe Harry shouldn’t have had that last glass of wine. “Uh, well, sorry, Malfoy. I was
trying to make you feel better, and I reckon I exaggerated a little.”

Malfoy was sitting bolt upright in his chair, staring at Harry with his lips slightly parted. It
was a good look on him. But abruptly he clamped his lips together and shook his head. “I’m a
Legilimens, Potter. I can tell when someone is lying. You weren’t the first time, but you are
now.”

“Shit,” muttered Harry, running his hand through his hair. “I suppose I can’t persuade you to
forget that you ever heard that?”

“No.”

Shit. Malfoy looked as if he might transform into a ferret and hunt Harry down like a mouse
if Harry even hesitated.

Harry sighed. “When my magic started manifesting the way it has since Voldemort’s defeat,
the Head Unspeakable sent out owls to various other Departments of Mysteries, or
equivalents I reckon, with an impression of my magical signature on the parchment. They
wanted to figure out if there was anyone else who could match me. That might provide a way
to train me or at least give me a challenge, which in turn would lead to working out the best
ways to use my magic for the Ministry’s benefit.
“None of the owls that came back, and there were a lot, had any matches with me.
Apparently some of the Unspeakables, or whatever they call them in other countries, went
through records of past wizards and witches, and didn’t find anything, either.”

“But why are you so powerful?”

Harry shook his head. “Don’t know. It could have something to do with being cursed by
Voldemort, or the circumstances that surrounded his defeat.” Personally, Harry thought it also
had something to do with the Horcrux, but that wasn’t something he was prepared to talk
about in public. Even behind a Privacy Charm.

Malfoy leaned across the table. “And you’re content to be used by the Ministry?”

“They’re providing me some training and giving me some good potential problems to use my
magic at. I trust myself to resist any attempts to exploit me.”

“Not what I meant. You’re content to serve the Ministry instead of something else?”

Harry told himself that even though Malfoy must have seen his face turning red, he couldn’t
possibly see or understand the swoop that had traveled through Harry at the mention of the
word serve. “There’s precious little else that I can—serve.”

“Not the cause of freeing house-elves?”

Malfoy’s voice was a little derisive. Harry leaned forwards. “You haven’t heard that
Hermione is trying the legal route? I can sure as fuck show up behind her and nod along and
let everyone know that this powerful wizard supports the cause.”

Malfoy appeared startled at the curse. Harry grimaced. Definitely too much wine.

“But you don’t want to become—I am not sure what the word would be, actually,” Malfoy
murmured, suddenly distracted by what seemed like the need to look a word up in a
dictionary. It was absurdly attractive. “Whatever the equivalent of a Dark Lord would be
when that Dark Lord is focused on serving charitable causes instead of becoming a ruler.”

Harry laughed. “Hardly. I suppose I could set up a foundation of sorts, but I would need to be
good at raising money, and I’m not. Hell, I’m not even great at the kind of small but useful
magic that goes into making clothes or cooking meals, unless I concentrate really hard. My
magic is mostly offensive, sometimes defensive. That’s it.”

Malfoy tapped his fingers slowly on the table. Harry tried not to find the rhythm
mesmerizing.

“And you’re content as an Auror?”

“Sometimes I think I could find another career that would suit me better. But I’m not actually
sure it exists.”

“Hmm.” Malfoy swept his gaze across Harry. “You know, I became an Unspeakable for much
the same reasons. Because I wished to do research and specialize in the more arcane aspects
of magic, and there were no other jobs where people would pay me to do it.”

Harry blinked. His first impulse was to say Do you have to have someone to pay you to do it?
But he remembered that the Ministry had taken a lot of the Malfoy money after the war. It
was possible that Malfoy did depend on his wages for survival.

“You couldn’t be a professor at Hogwarts?” he asked instead. “I thought I heard that

McGonagall had established some academic positions like that.”

Malfoy’s eyelashes fluttered for a second. Damn, even the shadows they made on his cheeks
was attractive. Harry looked down and ate another piece of chicken to keep himself from
staring. “I am—rather interested in subjects I am sure she would not be interested in
supporting.”

Dark Arts, Harry thought, but it could also have been offensive magic. So he just nodded and
said, “I understand.”

“Do you?”

“Er, yes,” Harry said, raising his eyebrows a little. Suddenly Malfoy was staring at him as if
Harry had made a promise without meaning to. “Like I said. I don’t really know what I would
do with myself if not for working for the Ministry.” He shrugged and reached for the piece of
parchment that had shimmered into existence when the Golden Pear decided that their meal
had ended.

“I can get that.”

“No trouble,” Harry said. “I’d prefer to.”

Malfoy didn’t protest, but settled back into his seat and stared at Harry with heavy-lidded
eyes. Harry kept his gaze away from Malfoy’s face as he busily counted out the Galleons.
Malfoy couldn’t possibly be thinking the same things Harry was, which meant he would
embarrass himself if he met the eyes of a Legilimens—

“I would like to do this again. You’re more stimulating company than I expected, Potter.”

Why did he have to use that word? But of course Malfoy had meant it innocently, and even if
he hadn’t, the likelihood that their needs would align was approximately zero. “I enjoyed our
discussion of magical theory,” Harry said. “Are you free on Wednesdays?”

“So, are you dating Malfoy?”

Harry rolled his eyes and used his magic to float the tray of biscuits over to Hermione, purely
because it would make her look at him in mingled gratitude and irritation. She thought he
shouldn’t use magic for such small things. “No. Even if he wanted to, which I have no
indication he does, what do you think he would do once we got to bed?”
“Expect you to take charge,” Ron said, lounging against the uncomfortable chair in the
drawing room of Grimmauld Place that he normally avoided. Then again, Ron was at the
stage of drunkenness where any chair was good if it kept him from falling to the floor.

Harry nodded. “It’s bad enough with the whole Chosen One thing. It’s worse among the
people who actually know my power levels.” He bit into a biscuit and felt a little smug. His
magic would never be great at cooking spells, but he could, in fact, bake decent treats the
Muggle way.

“What, someone who knew about it tried to date you?”

“Oh, yeah, one of Angelina’s new Unspeakables. She came up to me when I was leaving the
training room one day and made all these unsubtle references to how much she enjoyed being
tied up.”

Ron choked on his Firewhisky. Harry rolled his eyes and used his magic to create a short,
harsh jerk on Ron’s throat that would expel the drink without endangering his friend.
Although it sort of endangered the carpet.

“Harry! Was that you?”

“No,” Harry said automatically.

“Yes, it was,” Hermione said, and scowled at him a little as she waved her wand to Vanish the
mess Ron had made on the carpet. “You know that I don’t want you prioritizing your magic
over the use of your hands and even your wand.”

“Yes, Hermione,” Harry said, and resigned himself to another lecture. Hermione was just
concerned about him, he knew. It would be so easy to just do everything with his wandless
magic and get lost in doing nothing else, which could take him down roads that might lead to
him being a Dark Lord after all.

But as long as he had his friends to listen to him and lecture him and vomit on his carpets,
Harry sort of doubted it.

“Today was brutal.”

Harry looked up in alarm as Malfoy sat down across from him. He’d already thought it was
strange that Malfoy had sent an owl canceling their usual meeting in the Golden Pear and
asking to meet up in the Leaky Cauldron instead. Now, the words and Malfoy’s pale face and
the way he sagged back against his chair made Harry sure something was wrong.

Well, probably Hermione would ask how Harry could tell that Malfoy’s face was paler than
normal. But it was. Harry knew it was and that was the hell of it.

“What happened?” he asked, and reached out to the bar where a mug of Firewhisky was
sitting unattended while Tom spoke with someone. Harry swapped it for two Galleons sitting
in the pouch hanging from his belt. Even if Tom was a little annoyed that Harry had taken a
mug intended for another customer, the money would make up for it.

Malfoy blinked as the mug of Firewhisky appeared on the table, then shook his head and
grabbed it to swallow like it was water. Harry watched the motion of his throat and wondered
what Malfoy would say if he knew Harry wanted to go on his knees for him.

Nothing, because he would be too busy laughing.

Malfoy put the mug down and sighed. “I needed that. The Head Unspeakable assigned me to
work on a project with Unspeakable Copper.”

“I don’t think I know them,” Harry said, after searching his mind for a moment. Almost all
the Unspeakables working with him had the names of stones, not metals, and so he would
have expected to remember Unspeakable Copper.

“No, you wouldn’t,” Malfoy said, with a shade to his voice that should not have made
Harry’s cock stir. But it did. “They mostly work on the study of love. And the study of mental
magic and emotional manipulation, apparently.”

Harry sat up. “They did something to you?”

Malfoy laughed like a crow and drank what was evidently the last of the Firewhisky from the
mug. “Yeah, you could say that.”

“Come on, Malfoy, you’re worrying me. What did they do to you?”

Malfoy slammed the mug on the table, loudly enough to draw a few stares from other tables.
Harry glanced at them, and they found other things to look at. “Has it occurred to you that
there’s something strange about us meeting up like this?”

“You think this Unspeakable Copper influenced you to choose the Leaky Cauldron? I
wondered why you wanted to come here, but—”

“No,” Malfoy said, and slapped down his hand. At least that made less noise than the mug
had. “I mean—we keep meeting like this, but—we still call each other by our last names.
That’s kind of stupid, isn’t it?”

“I noticed that you hadn’t given any indication you wanted me to call you by your first
name,” Harry said slowly.

“And what did that tell you?”

“That you were still cautious around me. And didn’t think of me as a friend.”

Hermione’s accusation that he was actually dating Malfoy popped into his mind. Harry
banished it the way he had the spears that the Unspeakables had flung at him the other day.
There had been only fifty of them, not much of a challenge.
“You’re so stupid sometimes,” Malfoy murmured, his words almost slurred into a sigh. “I’ve
wanted to be your friend since we were first-years.”

“But you didn’t say anything about it after we were adults,” Harry said. He wanted to point
out that Malfoy had a funny way of showing that he wanted to be friends, but he didn’t feel
like dragging up their past. This was just a kind of distraction from the point that Malfoy had
brought up concerning Unspeakable Copper, he thought. They had to get back to that.

“I found it impossible to know how to approach you. I wasn’t even sure that I should remove
the Unspeakable hood.”

“I’m glad you did.”

Malfoy blinked and focused on him for a second. Then his face softened. “Thank you. I—I
want you to call me Draco, please. Harry.”

A warm slice traveled through Harry’s belly. He worked to keep his voice gentle and
pleasant. “Thank you, Draco. I’d be honored.” I don’t even know if he has an interest in
commanding anybody. He probably doesn’t, given that he’s working in the most secretive and
private Department in the Ministry.

“What did Unspeakable Copper do?” Harry added, because he had to get them back on the
subject or they were never going to finish the conversation.

Malfoy’s throat tensed—no, wait, Draco’s throat tensed. That didn’t help at all with Harry’s
temptation. “They released a net on me when I was walking by.”

“A weapon?” Harry had never heard of a spell that conjured nets, but he supposed he
shouldn’t be surprised. There were ones that conjured ropes, after all.

“Not in the way you’re probably thinking of it.” Draco shook his head, and Harry didn’t let
his eyes follow the motion of his pale hair. “It’s—a means of entrapping the mind. A sort of
blend of Legilimency and a compulsion charm.”

“That’s terrible!” Harry restrained his magic just in time, or a crack would have split the
middle of the table. “And they just did it for no reason?”

Draco flushed a little, maybe because he hadn’t been able to resist the spell. It was a little too
much to think that he might be flattered by Harry’s concern. “They said that they needed to
know what I was like, beneath the hood. That they thought I should stop spending all my
time alone in the Obsidian Office and find someone to love.”

His hand clenched on the tabletop for a second, but his voice was even when he added, “They
said I would be an interesting experimental subject.”

The walls of the Leaky Cauldron rattled so hard that a piece of the fireplace mantel cracked
off and some portraits crashed to the floor. People started to their feet and gave a series of
drunken yells. Tom, standing by the bar, just cast Harry an unimpressed look, and Harry
nodded to him and bit his lip and closed his eyes. He could get control of this. He would get
control of this.

“Harry?”

“Yeah, sorry,” Harry said, opening his eyes. Draco was leaning forwards over the table with a
slight frown, eyes darting about the pub as if he thought an enemy might have come in that
he would have to defend himself against. “That happens sometimes when I get upset.”

“For—me?”

“Of course for you,” Harry snapped. “Did you see any other victims of incredibly stupid
Unspeakables around here?”

“I—wouldn’t characterize myself as a victim.”

Harry reeled himself back in enough to nod. “There’s that. But they still tried to cast
something on you that could have manipulated your emotions and didn’t even ask.” He rolled
his eyes, making Draco relax enough to smile a little. “You’d think they would have got
enough unexpected results and enough of an experimental subject with me.”

“Did you volunteer for other experiments I didn’t know about?”

“Some of the Unspeakables studying love might have cast the same thing on me. I didn’t
know the name, though. They didn’t call it a net. And I knew about it ahead of time, so I
didn’t have the same problems that you did.”

Draco closed his eyes. “Why would they do that?”

“Because they were interested in how I resist the Imperius Curse. They wanted to figure that
out and they thought manipulating my emotions might make me less able to do it. I don’t
know if they were trying to discover the cause so that they could resist it themselves or make
the Imperius a better weapon, to tell you the truth.”

“What happened when they cast the Imperius on you?” Draco asked quietly.

“My magic cut through it.” Harry shook his head. “If someone else had messed with my
emotions in a non-magical way, maybe that would have affected the way I resisted it, but I
don’t think so. I was pretty angry and worried the day Crouch cast it on me. But as it was, no
magic can subdue mine.”

“Do you think…”

Draco trailed off, and Harry reached across the table and gently touched his wrist. “What is
it?”

“Do you think you can look at me and see if any remnants of the net are still influencing
me?” Draco whispered. “I thought I shrugged it off, but I don’t know for sure. Not with the
level of skill behind Unspeakable Copper’s casting.”
Part of Harry raged again, but he managed to keep it down before it could crack any tables or
rattle any walls. He nodded and sent his power flowing around Draco. He didn’t know the
process or the spell that would normally check if someone was subject to a net, but that had
never mattered. He asked his magic and it did what he wanted.

Harry studied the words floating in the air, and shook his head. “No, nothing. I suppose the
net faded when it didn’t make you confess your love?” He looked at Draco and found him
studying his hands on the table. “I’m sorry, you’d be right to say that it’s none of my
business. I didn’t mean to intrude.”

Draco took a deep breath. “No. I mean, yes, I did manage to overcome the actions the net was
urging me to take. But that’s not why I was—you do have the right to ask about it.” He
looked up, and his eyes took on a sheen that Harry hadn’t seen there since Hogwarts.

“Draco?”

Draco reached out a hand and rested it gently on Harry’s wrist. “I need to ask you
something.”

“All right,” Harry said quietly, and subdued his magic when it wanted to surge forwards. For
all that it could give him whatever he wanted most of the time, this wasn’t a defensive or
offensive spell.

And he didn’t want to force Draco into a confession that he wasn’t ready to make, even if he
wanted to make it. That would make Harry no better than Unspeakable Copper.

“You haven’t dated anyone for the last few years. Why not?”

“A few reasons,” Harry said. Draco blinked, as if he hadn’t expected Harry to be willing to
answer. Harry smiled at him a little and shrugged. “First, I had a hard time finding someone
who would put up with the attention from the press. They still talk about me all the time
when they have nothing better to do.”

Draco might not want to put up with it, either, not if he chose a career in the most hidden
Department of the Ministry.

Harry ignored that fear, though. He had no idea if that said anything about what Draco was
willing to do on a date.

“And?” Draco whispered. He cleared his throat a second later, as if he hadn’t intended to say
the word.

“Second, my magic frightens people. And third, I’m not the kind of person you might assume
me to be.”

“Not fair? Honest? Loyal?”

Harry bristled despite himself. The Daily Prophet had run stories for several days after he
broke up with Ginny insisting that he had cheated on her. “I’ve never been unfaithful,” he
said shortly.
“So tell me what you mean.” Draco hadn’t taken his hand off Harry’s, and his fingers moved
gently, stroking the back of Harry’s knuckles.

Harry closed his eyes. He didn’t want to look at Draco’s face while he said it. “I’m not the—
the conquering hero you probably assume I am, based on my magic and the way I defeated
Voldemort.” Draco flinched a little, but didn’t move back. “I’m—submissive in bed. I like
someone to give me orders.” His face was burning, and he knew it, but he didn’t look up yet.
If Draco was going to recoil in disgust, Harry didn’t want to see it.

There was silence for so long that Harry would have assumed Draco had left, except his hand
was still there, stroking the back of Harry’s. Then Draco whispered, “Harry, can you look at
me, please?”

Harry made the hardest decision he’d had to in a few years, since he’d broken up with Ginny,
and wrenched his eyes open. His breath caught at the faint illumination in Draco’s face, as if
a light was shining through his skin.

He wasn’t smiling. But he didn’t need to be.

“I think,” Draco said, and his fingers slid back and forth on Harry’s wrist until Harry felt as if
the tingles spreading down from it were about to reach his heart, “that we will get along even
better than I suspected.”

“Let me get this straight,” Hermione began.

“Not straight,” Ron said, and then snickered as Hermione whipped around to glare at him.
“Well, it’s not, is it?”

“Stop with your juvenile puns, Ron.”

Harry settled back into his usual chair near the fireplace and listened to his friends bickering,
while a warmth more potent than that of the flames flickered and soared through him. He was
still breathless from the force of his own daring, and more, that Draco had accepted that
daring. It was more than enough to enable him to wait out his friends’ bickering patiently.

“Mate!”

Harry shook himself out of the daydream that had consumed him and saw both Ron and
Hermione staring at him. “Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention. I can definitely jump in and say
that one of you is right anyway, though.”

Ron laughed a little. Hermione shot him a dark look, but the smile she gave Harry had no
shadow on it. “Harry, this is wonderful.”

“You really think so? I mean, you’re not upset that it’s Malfoy?”

Hermione snorted a little. “I would be if it was Lucius.” Harry nodded. Harry’s testimony,
and Narcissa’s, had spared Lucius Azkaban, but that meant he had just gone back to spending
his money to influence people and sneering at Muggleborns not quite beneath his breath.
“But Malfoy—I mean, Draco—has actually changed since the war, and I’ve never heard that
he has problems interacting with the Muggleborns among the Unspeakables.”

Harry nodded, appeased. Now that Hermione was working in the Ministry and known to be a
champion of Muggleborn rights as well as creature ones, gossip about Muggleborns being
mistreated found its way to her all the time. “Well, that’s good. And it’s just—he’s really
attractive. I’m not going to say that he never reminds me of his Hogwarts self, because he
does sometimes, but he really has matured.”

“Good,” Ron said. “Now maybe you can stop flinging yourself on chairs and pining after him
and telling us that he’s just a friend.”

“I was not doing that!”

Ron leaned back until he almost slid off the chair and flung his arm across his eyes. “Oh, woe
is me, because Malfoy isn’t noticing me!” he cried. “But how can I say anything to him,
because he might reject me? Woe! Woe!”

Harry narrowed his eyes, and Ron’s chair grabbed him and transformed into a cage with bars
that were still covered with fabric.

“…Oops.”

“Harry James Potter, you and your magic let Ron go right now.”

“Thanks for meeting me.”

Draco cast Harry a half-quizzical glance, smiling. “But of course. We’ve been meeting up for
weeks, haven’t we?”

Harry blushed and shoved his hands into his robe pockets. Even five years ago, he would
have been too nervous to say what he meant. But he could, now. Being the most powerful
wizard in the world did that to a person. “Of course. But this is different. It’s a date.”

Draco laughed a little and leaned back in his seat. “Is it? I never would have guessed.”

Harry rolled his eyes and took the chair across the table. The Silver Swan was a quiet, elegant
place, and Draco’s choice. Harry knew that he wouldn’t disgrace himself here, and that the
chairs (all of them placed inside the hollow backs of swan-shaped boats, which bobbed on the
back of the water that filled the restaurant) were more comfortable than they looked.
Probably their cushions were filled with down. That was all he needed to know. “Yes,” he
said, and reached across the table to run his fingers down the back of Draco’s wrist, “it is.”

Draco’s face turned a heated pink, but he didn’t flinch or pull away like Harry thought he
would have even a week ago. He held Harry’s eyes and whispered, “What if I were to ask
you not to touch any of the cutlery for the rest of the meal?”
Harry felt his own face burn and his breathing quicken. “Not even with my magic?”

“No.”

“So how would I get anything to eat?”

“Trust me to feed you instead.”

Harry had to blink and clear his throat several times. Then he whispered, softly enough that
he wondered if Draco would be able to distinguish his words from the croak, “Yes. I—I
agree.”

Draco’s smile was brilliant and triumphant, and he reached for the chain that would dip the
wings of the swan and tell the servers they were ready to order with a hand that didn’t
tremble. But looked like it wanted to.

Harry settled back with his hands firmly tucked at his sides, and restrained his eager magic
when it started to reach out towards the ice-cold cups of water that sat on the table. I want
him to feed me more than I want the food, he told his magic.

For a moment, his magic surged back and forth in his chest, wavering like a tree branch in a
high wind. Harry wasn’t sure it understood. And then it did, and it settled around his wrists in
glinting rings of restraint. Harry gasped as he looked down and saw the delicate platinum
bands actually forming there.

“Harry? Are you okay?”

“Yes,” Harry said, and turned his chair a little to the side with his feet so that Draco could see
the rings, too.

Draco sat there in silence for a few moments as their server came walking across the ramp to
the “shore” that the swan’s wing had turned into. And then he looked up, and Harry gasped in
spite of himself at the rapture burning in Draco’s gaze.

Draco gestured, and a nonverbal illusion spell shielded Harry’s hands from the server’s gaze,
while Draco turned to speak with her. Harry closed his eyes and used his magic to conceal his
fiery cheeks under a version of the same illusion.

Draco was the only one who deserved to see that.

Sure enough, as soon as the server had been sent away, Draco leaned forwards and lifted the
illusions—both of them. Harry swallowed. He was letting Draco brush away the one his own
magic had generated, but he didn’t matter, not when Draco’s gaze swept down his body like a
hand.

“I’m the only one who deserves to see your hands bound,” Draco whispered. “Your magic
did that? Why?”

“It knows that I want to give myself to you,” Harry said quietly. His blush had begun to fade.
The way Draco’s eyes still rested on him, the wonder behind his words—yes, Harry had
never been more certain about a choice in his life. “It just took a moment to understand that.
And so it made sure that I wouldn’t be able to forget about your request and reach for any of
the plates.”

Draco reached out and touched one of the bands on Harry’s left wrist, turning his hand as
much as he could when it was bound in place. Harry closed his eyes.

Then Draco’s hand closed so firmly in place that Harry’s tendon was pressed to his bone, and
he hunched forwards, gasping. He wished and didn’t wish that the bands made of his magic
were gone so that Draco’s hand was the thing holding him in place.

But then he might forget and reach for the food. Or Draco might not feed him. And the first
time they did more than this, Harry wanted to be in a bed.

“It’s good of you to understand that,” Draco whispered. “To think of that. I do want to be the
one to feed you. The one who gives you everything you require at my hands.” His fingers
brushed gently across Harry’s fringe and, for a moment, traced his scar. Harry rested his head
against the back of the chair, gasping. He couldn’t remember the last time someone who
wasn’t him or Voldemort had touched it. “The only one to see you like this.”

“Yes, please, Draco.”

Something, maybe just the huskiness of Harry’s voice, convinced Draco to sit back with a
small nod. His eyes were piercing when Harry looked again. “Keep your hands there like a
good boy and let me feed you.”

Harry’s pulse and cock jumped at the same time. Draco’s eyes dipped beneath the table, he
smiled a little, and then he cast another illusion spell as the server returned with their food.

Harry hadn’t even paid attention to what Draco was ordering, but it turned out to include a lot
of fruit and cream. Food that required Draco to move his chair closer to Harry’s and slip the
handful into his mouth, and then reach out and wipe gentle, cold fingers over the juice and
drops that slid down his face.

Harry ate in a dream, a daze, even though the fruit was cold and delicious, and the cream
much the same. He couldn’t take his eyes from Draco’s gently burning ones, couldn’t move
when Draco touched his shoulder and whispered the request for him to hold still except to
open his mouth.

And when Draco asked, “Are you all right, Harry?” he could do nothing but nod. Draco
hadn’t actually requested that he remain silent, but Harry was sure that he would want Harry
to do that anyway.

Draco took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Harry sneaked a glance downwards and
confirmed that at least he wasn’t alone in being hard.

“Look at me, Harry, please.”

Draco’s voice was so soft and appealing that Harry looked at him instinctively. Draco gave a
long shudder and whispered, “I feel like this has been building between us for a long time,
but—I want to go home alone tonight.”

Harry bit the inside of his cheek and nodded silently. He was disappointed, but he could
imagine how the heat that had built between them would keep Draco awake at night until he
cursed and reached for his cock.

When Draco did feel comfortable enough to move beyond flirting into something else, the
passion between them would be explosive.

Draco gave him a faint smile. “Thank you.”

Harry turned his head to kiss the fingertips nearest his mouth instead of offering a verbal
answer. Draco shuddered all over. Harry stifled his smug smile and leaned back in his chair,
raising an eyebrow.

“You can talk now,” Draco said, looking a little uncomfortable. Harry hoped it was because
of his erection, which now was straining against his robes.

“Thank you for a pleasant evening,” Harry said, and half-bowed. Draco stared at him. Harry
straightened back up, smiled at him, and started talking in an easy, flowing, formal manner
that he’d learned to cope with the endless parties the Ministry wanted him to attend.

Harry had a strategy right now. Of course he did. He wouldn’t start talking like Draco was a
casual pureblood acquittance for no reason.

He wanted the heat to build higher and higher, and he wasn’t opposed to various ways of
fanning the flames himself. He would retreat and build a short wall between them. He wanted
to see what Draco would make of that.

His hands, still bound to the cushion of his chair by his own magic, flexed in their bonds, and
his magic hummed through his head and chest in agreement. It didn’t hurt that Draco, even
staring in utter confusion, was adorable.

Later, in his own flat, Harry closed his eyes and tilted his head back and came to the memory
of Draco’s hand against his face.

Harry couldn’t wait until they went out again.

“Don’t you agree with me, Auror Potter?”

“I’m not sure, Mrs. Flint,” Harry said, and put on an expression that made Sheba Flint think
he was taking her seriously. “After all, if we banish all Muggleborns from Hogwarts, then I
might not exist.”

“What’s that?” Mrs. Flint tilted her head towards him.

It wasn’t the most irritating thing about her—that was definitely that she wanted to banish
Muggleborns from Hogwarts—but it was annoying to have to repeat questions and things he
didn’t think at the top of his lungs. There were charms that could help people with hearing
loss, but Mrs. Flint seemed to think she didn’t need them. “I said that I might not exist,”
Harry said, only raising his voice a little. “Since my mum was a Muggleborn and attended
Hogwarts and met my dad there.”

“Oh, of—of course I don’t mean she would be banned, Auror Potter! Or your friend Miss
Granger, either. Select Muggleborns would be allowed through.”

“Harry, there you are, darling.”

Draco’s voice was soft and warm in a way Harry hadn’t expected. They’d hardly hidden that
they were dating now, what with meeting in the Leaky Cauldron and the Silver Swan and
other public places, but Draco had acted as if he didn’t want to approach Harry at the
Ministry outside the Department of Mysteries. Harry had honored that unspoken request.

“Darling?” Mrs. Flint asked, whose hearing seemed sharp enough for gossip.

Harry found it hard to breathe when Draco circled an arm around Harry’s waist and pulled
him in close. “Yes,” Draco said simply, and kissed Harry’s temple before he turned to face
Mrs. Flint. “Harry has graciously agreed to date me.”

“Dear, dear, Mr. Malfoy. And you a pureblood!”

Harry buried his reaction, but Draco leaned forwards a little. “What was that, Mrs. Flint?”

“You, a pureblood, the son of someone who has upstanding beliefs about blood purity.” Mrs.
Flint vaguely waved her hand back and forth between Draco and Harry. “Dating a half-
blood!”

Draco stepped closer to Mrs. Flint. Harry went with him, reluctantly. He knew that Draco
would extricate them more easily than Harry could right now. Harry himself was too angry.

But Draco spoke in a calm, cold, cutting voice, and what he said was, “Harry saved all of us
from Voldemort, Mrs. Flint.” Mrs. Flint paled and pressed a ringed hand to her heart as if it
would stop beating because of Draco’s calling Voldemort by his name. “He’s handsome and
powerful and incredibly generous of spirit. Why wouldn’t I want to date him?”

“His mother—”

“Shall I bring up yours, Mrs. Flint?”

What about her mother? Harry thought. He only knew Mrs. Flint as someone irritating he
met at Ministry parties. Probably gossip about her mother had circulated at some point, but it
wasn’t like Harry would have listened to it.

“No, no, of course not,” Mrs. Flint whispered. She had at last gone pale in a way that meant
she would probably shut up. “You have made your point, Mr. Malfoy.” And she turned and
pushed her way into the crowd.
Harry leaned his head on Draco’s shoulder for a moment and let himself soak up the fact that
Draco had protected him. Draco stood there with his arm still around Harry’s waist and said
nothing. His eyes, fixed on Mrs. Flint’s back across the gala, were bleak.

“Who’s her mother?” Harry murmured. “A Muggleborn?”

Draco shook himself out of whatever trance he’d been in and snorted. “No. That would have
been all over pureblood society the minute her father married his wife. This is the kind of
thing that no one wants to talk about.” He sighed. “Her mother is in a prison aboard because
she served Grindelwald.”

Harry blinked. “And that’s the kind of thing that pureblood society thinks it should politely
ignore. Unlike a pureblood marrying a Muggleborn.”

“Got it in one.”

“Sometimes I hate society.”

Draco turned around and abruptly pressed Harry back into a dark little corner without one of
the Ministry’s automatically lighting torches. Harry blinked at him as Draco touched Harry’s
face with a hesitant hand.

“I hope that you don’t—feel such disgust for people like my father that you would regret
being with me,” Draco whispered.

Harry blinked again and reached up to curl his fingers loosely around Draco’s wrist. “Of
course not,” he breathed. “I enjoy being with you, Draco. I promise. If I didn’t, then I never
would have met up with you all the times we did. Let alone dated you.”

Draco leaned forwards and rested his forehead against Harry’s, shaking his head a little. “Of
course. I—I’m too used to the company of people like Mrs. Flint, who might have put aside
any revulsion she felt about me personally in order to earn some kind of advantage. But you
would never do anything like that.”

Harry smiled as he rubbed the back of Draco’s neck. “No. I would have turned away the
minute I heard you expressing sincere blood purist beliefs.”

Draco abruptly leaned in and kissed Harry as hard as he could. Harry let his hand rest on the
back of Draco’s neck and kissed back until his head spun and he almost hoped someone
peered into the dark corner to see them.

Draco pulled away, licked his lips, and murmured, “I still need to talk to a few people, but
then I would very much like to take you home.”

Harry felt as if a burning balloon were drifting beneath his skin, and his magic spun in joyous
wheels of sparks around him. Draco laughed a little, and Harry blushed, but he was already
doing that anyway.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’d really, really like that.”

*

“Would you like a drink?”

Harry tilted his head. They’d come through the door of what seemed to be Draco’s flat, a
neat, spare place, a few minutes ago, and Draco had practically slammed Harry against the
door to kiss him. But then he had drawn away, and now his face was averted as he dug into
what seemed to be a black lacquered cabinet against the far wall.

Harry stepped forwards and let his hands rest on Draco’s shoulders. Draco tensed and didn’t
turn to face him.

“I can go, if that’s what you want,” Harry whispered. “But I don’t need any more alcohol
than I drank at the party, and I don’t need you to feel nervous. If I didn’t want to be here,
Draco, I wouldn’t be.”

Draco turned around and stared at him, eyes wide and shining like moons in the darkness.
Harry leaned up and kissed him, hands tightening for a second as Draco stared at him instead
of moving forwards or backwards.

Then Draco whispered, “You don’t know what I am.”

“Tell me, then. Please.”

Draco shifted back and forth in place, and Harry stood there and waited, their lips still
touching. Draco finally shuddered and said, “I’m—I was alone for years after the war. I
didn’t find my place in the Unspeakables until more than a year after I began actually
working in the Department of Mysteries. My father won’t speak to me. My mother still does,
but she doesn’t understand my choices, and neither do most of the people I was friends with
in Hogwarts. Goyle still blames me for getting Crabbe killed. I was the one who persuaded
them both to join the Death Eaters. I—”

He paused again. Harry waited. He had all the time they needed, and his magic had begun to
resonate inside him, creeping outside his skin to fill the air with the softness and calmness
that Draco might need.

Draco took a great, gasping breath and said, “If you yield to me once, Harry, there won’t be
an end to it unless you say there is. I’m not going to walk away and nicely, tamely let you go.
You’re—you’re the person who’s accepted me. I won’t just give up that up. If you want to
walk away, I’ll try everything I can to persuade you not to.”

Harry smiled, and the sparks bursting through his skin lit up the room like fireworks. Draco
stared at him in wonder.

“You don’t need to worry about that,” Harry whispered. “I want to be held, Draco. I want to
be with you. And if for some reason that changed and I did have to walk away…” He spread
the wings of his power, and the wards around Draco’s flat trembled and hovered on the verge
of unweaving themselves. “That’s what I would do. You can’t stop me.”
In the silence that followed, the only sound was the click of Draco’s throat.

“I’m here because I want to be,” Harry said. “You can’t hurt me, Draco, because I would say
stop, and I have every faith that you would. But if you worry that you won’t, I can make you
stop. I yield because I want to.”

Draco practically knocked over the liquor cabinet slamming him backwards at that, and
Harry trusted, smug and pleased, that he understood.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Show me what I’m getting.”

Draco’s voice was soft and hoarse, and he had halted at the doorway after herding Harry into
his bedroom. Harry didn’t mind. He stretched his arms over his head, turned to face Draco,
and gave him a lazy smile.

Then he reached up and began to pass his fingers down the front of his formal robes, not
touching the buttons but hovering above them.

The buttons popped open anyway, of course, because Harry willed them to.

The formal robes, made of sky-blue cloth streaked with white, had the most buttons of
anything Harry owned. Draco watched him undo every single one. Harry wasn’t entirely sure
he breathed while Harry did it.

Then Harry shrugged, and the robes slid off his shoulders with a rustle of silk and down his
body to land beside his feet. His socks and boots had already removed themselves with an
easy slip off to the side, where they wouldn’t distract either of them.

Harry wore nothing underneath.

He smiled more broadly at Draco’s strangled sound. “Didn’t think I would have the courage
to go naked underneath the robes?” he murmured, and held out a hand.

“I thought you wouldn’t want to, given the way you grew up with Muggles,” Draco admitted
in a voice that sounded breathless, and eased closer to him. “I’ve heard they don’t do such
things.”

“No,” Harry said simply, and then he dropped to his knees.

Draco froze, with his voice and breath both locked in his throat. Harry tilted his head back
further and spoke what he thought was the truth. He didn’t want Draco paralyzed by this fear
that seemed to keep coming up in him, and this way, they both had it out in front of them.

If he was wrong, he would accept the dismissal Draco would probably give him.
“You’re not like your father,” Harry said, quietly, plainly, not looking away from Draco’s
eyes. “You’re not suddenly going to turn into a murderer or a raging blood purist. Hell, you
couldn’t even kill Dumbledore when you were told that your parents’ lives depended on it.”
Now Draco seemed to be frozen in a different way, with rage, but Harry just kept going. “I’m
not afraid of you. If I hand you command over me, that isn’t going to turn you into your
father.”

Draco closed his eyes, then slowly opened them. The light in the bedroom was dim, but
Harry didn’t think that was the reason he couldn’t read Draco’s expression.

“You dare to say such things to me.”

“Yes.”

“Even if you are the most powerful wizard in the world…”

Harry let his eyelids flutter a little. “Want to shut me up?”

Draco hit him like a hippogriff’s charge.

Harry went down on the floor beneath him, delighted to find, as Draco grabbed Harry’s
shoulders and pressed a knee against his chest, that he’d guessed correctly. Draco was staring
at him now with a fire behind his eyes that made him both look open and ten times more
attractive.

“I want you to stop talking now,” Draco said hoarsely. “Don’t speak again until I tell you to.”
He paused as if thinking through something, although Harry could see his throat throbbing
with how hard his pulse was beating. “Grunts and moans and the like are okay.”

Harry nodded in silence. He could feel his magic welling up to enforce Draco’s order, and his
voice stopped. He experimentally flexed his tongue the way he would to speak a word, and
found it wouldn’t move.

The shiver that consumed him made Draco smile. The smile was slow and bright and sharp-
edged.

“You’re ready, I think,” he said, and pulled back. “Get on the bed, Harry. I’m going to
undress, and I want you to watch all of it. If you look away, if you act like some shy blushing
maiden, then we won’t do anything further.”

Watching Draco wasn’t a challenge, but Harry reckoned this was important for reasons he
didn’t entirely understand. He nodded agreeably and sank onto the bed, which was covered in
sheets almost the same blue shade as the robes he’d discarded. Large, too, and comfortable.

Draco began removing his clothes.

Unlike Harry, he did wear a shirt and trousers and pants under his heavy grey robes, and he
insisted on taking them off a lot more slowly than Harry had opened the buttons on his. Harry
whimpered as he watched a few inches of Draco’s chest be bared, and then Draco edged the
trousers down his hips and paused, eyes locked on Harry. Harry didn’t bother to hide his
panting.

“Good,” Draco said throatily at last, and snapped his fingers. Harry hadn’t known Draco was
capable of wandless magic, but the surge of power in the room—grey in sensation and very
distinct from Harry’s own—blew him naked all at once.

Harry groaned.

Draco strode forwards and placed a knee on the bed beside Harry. “If you’re as powerful as
you claim you are, then you can figure out how to please me,” he said, and remained quiet,
his eyes piercing.

Harry rolled over and wriggled sideways until he was lying in front of Draco’s knee. Then he
reached up and ran his fingers lightly over Draco’s kneecap, before bowing his head and
kissing it.

Draco’s ragged gasp was louder than any sound Harry could have made himself.

Gently, Harry touched Draco’s hands and kissed them, his fingers and kissed them, his chin
and kissed it. He wasn’t using his magic to read Draco’s mind or anything like that. He was
simply flowing along with the invisible currents in the room, and he knew that any moment
he might make the wrong choice.

But he didn’t think so. Not when satisfaction at his own submission was singing through him
like blood.

For the final act, he knelt up, but made sure that he was keeping his head bowed even as he
looked Draco in the eye, and making sure he wasn’t as tall as his partner. He held Draco’s
gaze all the way through bowing his head and kissing the Dark Mark.

Silence. Draco’s eyes widened until they looked painful.

And then he was on top of Harry, bearing him down.

Harry spread his legs eagerly.

“I don’t care how much you might like a little pain with your fucking. We’re going to do this
my way.”

Harry nodded, but otherwise lay still. He didn’t know how Draco had seen Harry’s
impatience. Honestly, Harry felt as if he could lie there for hours and let Draco play with his
body.

He did want to be fucked more than he wanted to be played with, though.

Draco touched his chest, a single, heavy press down from his hand. He didn’t even have to
shake his head. He held Harry’s eyes, and Harry slowly nodded. What he wanted mattered
here, but what he wanted more than anything was what Draco wanted.

And with the thought that Draco would give it to him, instead of stumbling the way other
people had when they realized Harry wasn’t the all-conquering hero, a river of desire ran
through Harry.

His impatience burned away. He leaned back on the pillow and stretched, arching, aware that
Draco watched him with ravenous eyes. Then he laid his head back on the pillow and let his
hands fall on the bed, limp and helpless.

“Good, Harry. Good.”

The words bathed him, and Harry closed his eyes and gave himself up completely.

He felt Draco’s fingers preparing him with exquisite touches, and the soft murmur of a spell
that filled his arse with magical lubricant. It wasn’t one he’d heard before. Normally, Harry
would have paid attention to that and tried to figure out how he could duplicate it with his
wandless magic.

Now, he let himself drift.

“You will tell me instantly if you are in any discomfort.”

Harry immediately nodded, his eyes still closed.

“Look at me.”

Harry’s eyes snapped open. Draco was kneeling between Harry’s legs now, his hair hanging
down on either side of his face. His eyes, though, were the most compelling part of him right
now, an incandescent grey and more beautiful than any others Harry had ever seen.

“You understand what’s going to happen?” Draco’s hands fell to Harry’s hips.

Harry nodded.

“Good,” Draco said, and then slid into Harry.

Harry arched his neck, not because it hurt but because it felt so uncontrollably good, and he
thought he was going to come but he didn’t want to come right now—

There was an interested purr from his magic, and then something wrapped around his cock
tightly enough to make him choke.

“Oh?” Draco asked, leaning back a little and staring down. Harry followed his line of sight
and found that his cock was bulging oddly around the middle.

“That’s you?” Draco asked, staring intently at the bulge before turning back to Harry.

Harry nodded. He couldn’t speak anyway, but he hoped Draco would be able to tell from his
eyes that it was something he wanted, because he desperately didn’t want to come before
Draco did.

Draco shivered. Then he looked up, met Harry’s gaze, and smiled. “No one has ever done
anything like that for me before,” he whispered, reaching out to brush the back of his hand
down Harry’s forehead.

Harry turned his head to the side and let his tongue flicker out to touch the pads of Draco’s
fingers.

Draco closed his eyes and continued to kneel there with his dick inside Harry. Harry decided
that was enough of that, thank you, and gave his hips a sharp wriggle.

“If I said I didn’t want you to do that?” Draco asked softly, opening his eyes again.

Harry shivered and kept himself still. It was agonizing to lie there while Draco trailed one
hand across Harry’s hip and cock and chest, and stared at a few of the scars Harry had got
from a rogue hippogriff, but at last he leaned back and smiled.

“Thank you,” he said. “That is a gift no one else has given me, either.”

Harry was, at that point, content to lie still and perhaps would have dissolved into a puddle of
warm goo, except that Draco finally began to move.

Harry tossed his head back. He had thought nothing could be better than those first few initial
thrusts, when the world was afire with pleasure.

He had been wrong.

He wanted Draco thrusting into him like this. He wanted to be silent, and he wanted to not
come until Draco did, and he wanted to please Draco—

“Harry?”

Draco was touching one hand to his chest again, grounding him better than Harry had thought
anything could. He turned his head to the side and lipped a bit at Draco’s arm, his eyes wide
and bright.

“You’re with me.”

Harry nodded frantically. Of course he was. He wouldn’t be anywhere else. He struggled and
thrashed on the bed until he was a little lower down, sensing it was what Draco wanted him
to do, and then—

Then his hands flew above his head, bound with restraints of his own magic to the headboard.

Draco stared at them, and then down at Harry. His eyes were wide, and he had stopped
moving again. “I was going to ask for that,” he whispered. “But I didn’t get the chance. I
never—spoke the words. I barely formed the intention. How did you do that?”
Magical theory later, fucking now, Harry wanted to say, but of course his power was making
sure he couldn’t break Draco’s order. He gave Draco an encouraging, pleading look, and
Draco finally nodded slowly and started to move again.

And finally, finally the spiral of golden warmth was mounting through Harry and he was
panting with his mouth open, and Draco’s wondering stare at him had turned into something
more lustful, and his mouth hung open a little open, and—

Yes, yes, there!

Harry writhed under Draco, clasping his legs around Draco’s waist and moaning until it felt
like he didn’t have any voice left. Draco shuddered and moved slightly faster. Slightly.

It felt good, so good. Harry hadn’t been with someone in years he could give himself up to
completely, and the fucking, the thing he liked better even than coming, having his cock
stroked—

Draco thrust again. Precisely.

Harry’s world surged into the kind of golden-white heat that normally would have meant he
was coming. But he didn’t want to yet, and it redoubled back on him, turning into red flickers
of pain. Harry panted and turned his head, still jerking his arse down hard onto Draco’s cock.

“Harry.”

At least Draco said it in a halting, panting voice, which meant Harry didn’t have to feel bad
about being as far gone as he was. He opened his eyes, met Draco’s eyes, and mouthed, Your
will is my command.

Draco groaned and came.

Harry focused on that feeling of heat in his arse, and felt the moment the restriction on his
cock loosened and he came, too. But it was less important than Draco’s orgasm, and he tossed
his head back with a sigh only when Draco slumped over him, boneless.

His hands remained bound to the headboard. His tongue remained motionless. Because Draco
wanted those things to continue, and Harry’s magic could sense that.

Harry was fine with it. He turned his head towards Draco and closed his eyes, snuggling as
close as he could. He felt Draco’s hand stroking over and down the side of his cheek, up to
touch his wrists, so lightly touching his flank that there was no pressure, and let himself drift.

“No one has ever done that for me.”

Harry put down his fork. There had been a perfect dinner of chicken Milanese waiting for
them when they got up, which only proved that Draco did have a house-elf. “You mentioned
that. Was it because other people were frightened by the submission you wanted?”
Draco choked on the wine he’d been sipping. “How do you do that? Does your magic let you
read my mind?”

Smiling, Harry shook his head. “I think it was letting me divine your intentions in bed.” He
shifted, enjoying the soreness in his arse. His magic would have already healed that by now,
ordinarily, but it knew he was enjoying it, and so kept still. “But only because you wanted me
to. If you hadn’t wanted to, then I would have had to guess what you wanted like anyone
else.”

“Then how did you know…”

“I had sort of the opposite problem.”

Draco leaned back in his chair and swept Harry up and down with his eyes. It was so heady
that Harry found himself trembling in his seat. A smug smile lifted the corner of Draco’s
mouth. “How could someone look at you and assume you would want to—take command in
bed?”

Harry snorted. “Because most of the time, they weren’t looking at me. They were looking at
the legend of the Boy-Who-Lived, the Chosen One, the Conqueror.”

Draco looked a little ill. “They call you the Conqueror?”

“You haven’t heard that? Maybe it’s because you’re tucked away in the Department of
Mysteries. Lucky.”

Draco shook his head a little and picked up his wineglass again. “So we both see each other’s
true desires. We both—bring something to this.”

Harry cocked his head. Draco hadn’t picked his way this carefully through any conversation
they’d had so far, including the one where Harry had revealed his desire to submit. “Yes, I
think we do.”

“So you would be amenable to—continuing this?”

Harry smiled. He couldn’t help himself. “Yes,” he breathed. “Of course, Draco. I very much
want that.”

Draco lowered his glass again. “Even with the way you want to be taken in bed,” and the
words made both Harry’s arse and his magic burn, “there are people who would want to
indulge you no matter what. You have to know that you have options other than me.”

“But none of them are you.”

Harry didn’t know if it was the words themselves or the honest confusion in his voice that did
it for Draco. But he shivered, and then his eyes came up and locked on Harry, so molten that
Harry licked his lips entirely without meaning to.

“I have to have you again,” Draco whispered, and put down the wineglass again, reaching
across the table.
An owl fluttered into the dining room before Draco could touch him. Harry sat back, a little
disappointed, especially once he saw that the front of the envelope bore the seal of the
Department of Mysteries. Unspeakables had no regular hours. Draco would probably have to
go to the Ministry for the rest of the night and leave Harry all alone in that luxurious bed. Oh,
well. At least Harry would sleep well.

Draco opened the letter and read in silence for a second. Then his eyes bulged and what
sounded like a whistle escaped his lungs.

“Draco? Are you all right?”

“This says that Unspeakable Copper has been glued to the floor in their office for five
straight hours,” Draco said in a strangled voice as he waved the letter at Harry. “So I have to
take over some of their projects and potions that can’t be stopped tomorrow. They don’t think
that the charm will fade before then—” Draco’s eyes abruptly narrowed. “Unless it wasn’t a
charm?”

“I couldn’t possibly comment.”

“Harry Potter, did you get through the wards on the section of the department where we study
love and glue them to the floor?”

“They shouldn’t have done what they did to you,” Harry pointed out.

“Yes, but…”

Draco’s face cleared as he sat there. Harry blinked. He had thought Draco might be more
upset about this, or at least more upset about being assigned some of Unspeakable Copper’s
work.

“Another thing no one has ever done for me,” Draco said softly. “Not taken vengeance for
me, just because I am me, rather than because someone else might tarnish the family name.”
He closed his eyes. “Thank you.”

Harry beamed. “You’re welcome!”

Draco opened his eyes and stared at him again. This time, Harry didn’t have to wonder what
his lover wanted. His arse was suddenly loose and slick, and the pain that had been there
faded into a tingling thrum.

“What if I were to take you right on this table?” Draco whispered.

“Yes, please,” Harry said, and stretched himself out, his magic clearing plates and bowls out
of the way. Draco uttered a hungry little sound and grabbed Harry’s robes, and then he was
on top of Harry and Harry was laughing aloud in delight, and Draco was kissing him, and
Harry had never had anything like this, either.

Looking into Draco’s rapturous eyes, his face flushed with delight, Harry planned to have a
lot more.
The End.
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