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She’s not a pervert, she swears.

She’d only meant to catch him in the act of some nefarious death eater business or the other, not… not this. 

The game had been tense. What’s new? It was always tense with him. Eyes that were supposed to be seeking the snitch, constantly drifting back to his form, hovering there at the far end of the pitch on his ‘latest model, doubt you’ve heard of it, Potter’ broom. And though it was too far away to make out his face, she knew he was looking back. She’d never tell the rest of them - Ginny would smack her over the back of her head again for having a ‘seeker superiority complex’ - but the Gryffindor versus Slytherin games had never felt like an inter-team affair, only ever a her versus him. A gauntlet thrown down six years ago, that she had picked up and refused to let go of ever since. 

It was early in the game, the scoreboard low on both sides. His head had turned, nose tilted up as if scenting the air, profile backlit by a thin line of sunlight. And then he was off. Darting through the goalposts. She rose slowly skyward, pulling hard against the gut reaction that wanted to launch immediately after him. It snarled and gnashed at the leash, but she knew it would be the wrong call. The sun was in her eyes, and she was too low, and she needed to sight it first, and, bloody hell, where was it? Where, where, where… 

A flash of gold.

There. 

The leash was unclipped. Harri flew. The wind screeched in her ears, and her heart returned a joyous screech right back. Though she had attacked at a more strategic angle than him, his headstart gave him the advantage, and she found herself chasing behind as the snitch weaved around the stands. And god damn it, it was an elegant broom. And he was an elegant flyer. Her pride would allow that. He took each corner in a perfect line, executed each manoeuvre with textbook precision, and when the snitch suddenly dropped by the walls of the professors’ stand he flipped in an unusual barrel roll adjacent (that she’d never even heard of before, let alone seen!), which allowed him to one-eighty at an impossible speed. It was frankly beautiful to observe, and Harri was resolved to search for the technique this evening in The Seeker’s Handbook: Strategy and Skills. 

But, good as he was, Harri was better. To this fact her pride would not allow any argument. She took the lines harder, tighter, riskier than he ever could. True, her flying had been criticised as reckless, and not just by him. If she had to choose, she preferred the term instinctive. But labels were stupid - whatever you decided to call her flying, the only thing that mattered was that it was faster. Faster than his.

It was not long before she was nipping at his tail, ground recovered before he even had the chance to make a reach for the snitch. He knew she was behind him - she could see it in the way his shoulders tensed and his speed ratcheted up. A stolen glance as they hair-pinned around a goalpost. She made a play to overtake on the right, but he veered to block and she was forced to abandon. To the left this time. Again, blocked. She hissed in frustration. It was a dumb move on his part, and he knew it -  had he continued on course he likely would have had a clean attempt at the snitch by now, might have even won it - he was doing this just to spite her. As was always the case between them, he was less concerned with winning the overall game, and more with simply stopping her.

Well stop this, pompous git. She feigned to the left and he, predictably, moved to obstruct, but she had been feeling inspired by that pretty little barrel trick of his, so she rolled to invert in the space he had so helpfully created. She was right above him now, upside down, broom to the sky. She looked down at his silver head, grinning as it twisted around in confusion, trying to locate her. The broom was harder to steer bottoms-up like this, but it was worth it for the view: that sweet, sweet moment of realisation, when he craned his neck upwards, eyes widening in disbelief. There they were, the two of them, flying in inverted parallel, each staring up at the other, like reflections in the mirror. Grey eyes against green. His incredulous, hers taunting. 

She took advantage of his surprise to roll down ahead of him, uprighted once again,  then shifted gear and sped up. He followed suit. She could sense him hot on her trail as they zipped through the low court and oh, this was much better . This was how she liked it. Him chasing her . The funny thing was, he was actually a better flyer when he was coming after her, like the need to catch her pushed him to a level of skill he otherwise would not possess. She bet that drove him crazy .

The snitch pivoted downwards - here was her chance -  she swooped, cutting dangerously close to the ground, but the gamble paid off, and her hands were closing on cold metal, and around her the crowd erupted in noise. 

“POTTER TAKES THE SNITCH, GRYFFINDOR WINS, ONE NINETY - FIFTY” roared Jordan Lee. “TAKE THAT YOU LOUSY, CHEATING -” 

“- Jordan!” Mcgonigal's voice snapped over the loudspeaker.

Despite the uproar, when Harri dismounted there was a surprising moment of… calm. They were in the middle of the pitch, the deafening chaos of the stadium around them blurring into an indistinguishable wall of sound. It lent a bizarrely intimate setting, a private room in the eye of the watching storm. She turned to face him, and he to her, and they met each other's gaze in the middle of that thunderous quiet, chests heaving and cheeks flushed from exertion. His hands tightened on his broom, and he was looking at her like he didn’t quite know what to make of what he saw. 

And then the eye passed, the storm upon them. She was swept up by a set of gangly limbs and congratulatory hoots, and swung wildly around. She cackled and batted at the pair of ginger heads that pressed against her stomach. 

“Let - Ah, no! Fred! George! - Let me down!”

“Never!” shouted George. 

“Harri, you will not touch the ground again!” declared Fred, “walking is reserved for us mere mortals.”

“I -” Harri squeaked as they hauled her up onto their shoulders. “No - then I should be carrying you two - eek, careful Fred! - I mean, that play with Demelza was just phenomenal!”

“Well how about that Fred? Captain Potter carrying little old us?” said one half of her perch.

“Best to keep dreaming, George. Or we’d have to retire! There’d be nothing else in our careers to look forward to,” replied the other. 

Ron was bounding over to join them. He pointed the shaft of his broomstick up accusingly at her as he approached. “You are mad, Harri,” he said, face lit up in a goofy grin. “Absolutely, mad!”

“Mad is certainly one word for it,” Malfoy finally spoke. 

Fred and George spun her rapidly away from the slytherin, the momentum almost throwing her off backwards, which would have resulted in quite the fall, given their height. 

Katie, who had arrived with the remainder of the team in close pursuit, slapped a palm against Harri’s calf. “That was incredible, Harri!” But Harri’s mind was still behind her, with the silver-haired boy left standing alone on the pitch. 

So she steadied a hand upon George’s head, twisted her torso back around, and smiled down at him, baring all her teeth. “Better luck next time, Malfoy,” she called. He had a white-knuckled grip on his broom, and she was so very pleased by the sight. 

It took a considerable amount of time and hard-nosed bargaining to get the twins to release her. She was held captive upon their shoulders throughout the entirety of her post-game debrief. As she congratulated each player on their performance the twins would bounce her up and down to emphasise her points, and though she crumbled into happy laughter each time they did so, she couldn’t help but worry that they were undermining her image of authority. Surely there’s something to be said about  the new captain who can’t even get her team-members to follow a command as simple as put me down, for Merlin’s sake! 

It was only after Ron yelled at them to go get their own Harri and stop stealing his, and after Ginny reminded them that they were in desperate need of a shower, and after Harri had agreed to their ridiculous terms,  with some caveats of course - A month that’s all you get. Only If you can find me, and I promise I will not make it easy for you. Six…? No, not six months. No! Not a year, are you kidding me, Fred? A month. Final offer, any more and I’ll start hexing you, I swear - that they reluctantly placed her back on solid ground. 

By that time most of the team had already showered and begun the long trudge back to the common room, so Harri was treated to the luxury of an empty change room. 

The heat of the shower did little to settle the buzzing under her skin. And though she had always got this way after a Slytherin match, this year it was much worse than usual. This year the space Malfoy occupied in her thoughts had grown out of hand. It possessed her every moment -  the need to claw him open, rip off his mask, reveal the monster she knew to be underneath. Reveal what he truly was: one of them. One of the people who had taken Sirius - her Sirius - away from her. 

The fact that no one else could see it was infuriating . The more she talked about him, the more Hermione and Ron shared those little meaningful looks between each other, the ones that made Harri want to pull out her hair. She had no proof, sure. But she had her instinct, which never led her astray... Or at least, rarely led her astray. And her instinct knew he was bad. How else could she explain the broiling anger that gripped her whenever he was near?

Though she'd been under the spray long enough to prune her fingers and scold her skin, it could not wash away the addictive loop of her thoughts. Aggressively roughing her hair with the towel likewise had minimal effect. So, resigned to the whims of her one-track mind, she wrestled her way back into her joggers and tea-stained canons shirt, slung her bag over her shoulder, and headed out towards the promise of dinner. 

Her route took her past the Slytherin change room, where plumes of steam curled into the cold air through a crack in the high-set windows. Carried on the steam were the soft sounds of someone showering: a splatter of water upon tile, a flap of a towel, a creak of a tap, a quiet sigh. They billowed above her in a cloud of hot moisture, and tempted her feet to a standstill. It was only a breath that she had heard really, no words spoken, but she knew it was him. Perhaps she’d have known it was him even if he hadn't made a noise at all. 

She should let it go. Hermione would tell her to let it go. ( Walk away, Harri, I know he's a toad but this obsession isn’t healthy… - - No I am not taking Malfoy’s side, you know that… - - he’s only sixteen, what would… - - Honestly, now who’s acting childish? - - … No, you've already raised your concerns with Dumbledore and… and it's bordering on harassment at this point! Oh, don't look at me like that.) And Hermione was probably right. She usually is. But… but it itched. This need to know what he was up to. To catch him. It was tearing at her skin from the inside out. 

Sorry Hermione, just a peek, that’s all she’d do. A peek, only long enough to look at his arm, such that she had irrefutable proof, once and for all, that he was a death eater. She fished the invisibility cloak from her bag with remarkably steady hands. She'd taken to carrying the cloak around with her everywhere, and if that said something about her paranoia, well, who was saying things about her, and what did they know?

Slipping through the door was easy, the sound muffled by the running shower. The room was mercifully empty, only his quidditch bag placed neatly upon the bench by the occupied stall, robes arranged in folded squares, shoes aligned in perfect parallel. Harri suppressed a snort. Anal thing, wasn’t he?

Thrumming with anticipation, she weighed up her options, scanning the room. There. The mirrored wall on the far side declared itself as the most strategic vantage point for dark-mark-spotting. Thankfully, she didn’t have to wait long. From behind the closed stall door: the tap twisting off, falling water strangled quiet, a bare arm reaching out and fishing a towel from the hook, and then, he emerged. 

The towel was slung low on his hips, his hair dripped streams down the valleys on his neck, and the pale expanse of his skin bloomed red where the worst of the shower’s heat had shrouded his shoulders and back. And - jesus - he had gotten big. True, most of the male cohort had undergone a dramatic change between fifth and sixth year. Unlike the gradual, meandering climb towards womanhood that the girls had started taking several years ago, it appeared that the boys had all met up one night last summer and jumped into a vat of toxic testosterone when no one was watching, coming back with deepened voices and acne-riddled faces and a whole repulsive dictionary of new and lewd vocabulary to share. But with Malfoy, the visual was particularly jarring. Where once there had been the delicate, spoilt softness of a pureblood darling , there was now only the hardened angles and the imposing breadth of young man. And the ferocity with which he had applied himself to the seeker role the last few months appeared to have only added fuel to the fire, wet skin stretching on a frankly absurd build of muscles - the steep incline of his shoulders, the sturdy thickness of his thighs, the wide planes of his back, the… oh for merlin’s sake, what teenager in real life even had abdominals like that? And why was it that the lottery of genetics was always awarded to the most arrogant and undeserving of men? And why was it so hard to look away? And why did it feel that the heat upon her skin was no longer the residual from the scolding shower, but something else entirely? And… 

Argh. 

No. 

Focus, Harri. 

Dark mark. 

Both of Malfoy’s forearms were obstructed from her view, one reaching into his bag, the other pressed against his hip, where it gripped onto a knot of towel. Harri had halfway decided to risk the move for a closer look, when malfoy negated the need by approaching the sink himself, mere feet away from where she was standing. He wrapped his hands around its ceramic edge and leant forward, the blankness of the right arm confirmed, the left still hidden. 

He studied his reflection, and it compelled Harri to do the same, and it was as if seeing him afresh for the first time. Here, in this stolen moment, with no audience to entertain, no playwright to obey, she could remove the lens of the gryffindor, and look upon him bare-eyed. And he, in a space he thought to be alone, had abandoned all affected airs, released the mask unto which he had always gripped, and looked into the mirror as not his father’s son, not her written nemesis, but simply as he was. And, by merlin, he seemed to shrink before her very eyes. The lines of his face deepened, uncertain and tired, his gaze blunting to something sad and seeking, and down below his knuckles strained white against the sink. And Harri felt… odd.

He looked up and to the left, staring at the plane of mirror behind her - the feeling of being looked right through like that was something she'd never quite got used to. His brow drew together, only a subtle movement, before a tense stillness befell him, like a predator catching hold of a scent. She wondered what it was that he thought of, to cause his sadness to fossilise into such crystallised focus like that. 

The moment broke. He turned and made eye contact with his own reflection once again. His fingers began drumming slowly against the sink. Bah-dum bah-dum bah-dum: the only noise in the echoing silence of the room. As if that drumbeat was counting him in for something, there grew a spark of anticipation in his eyes, lighting his expression with a small smile. The spark grew to flame, and so the smile spread, the fine muscles of his face transforming one by one into a blazing grin.

He stood abruptly straight, and Harri barely managed to keep herself from jumping in fright at the sudden movement. He rapped a knuckle against the side of the sink, rolled back his shoulders, and lifted his hand to brush the hair from his eyes - wait, there! His left forearm was flashing into view in the mirror, and….

And nothing.

Harri sagged. It was unmarked. Bare if not for the threaded lacework of blue veins upon skin. 

Harri was afflicted with a feeling of sudden and overwhelming self-disgust. What was wrong with her? Why did his blank wrist warrant disappointment? Was her pride really so insatiable that she would wish him a death eater just so that she could feel vindicated? What had she been thinking? There was no great evil here. And now, If anyone was in the wrong, it was her, acting like a perverted little creep, intruding upon that which she was not welcome, desecrating the sanctuary of his own privacy, for nothing more than a half-baked and prejudiced conspiracy theory. She felt sick, and… oh god, she needed to leave, immediately. 

She ripped her eyes away from the grinning slytherin, and turned, as soundless and slow as she could manage in the throes of her guilt, to tiptoe towards the exit. She was midway to the door, and still contemplating how exactly she planned to atone for the sins she had committed here tonight - spend some hours in quiet reflection?  endure a seminar by Dr Granger on the dubious ethics of secret surveillance? Or rescue some slytherins stuck up in trees, perhaps? (The latter being the leading contender so far) - when he spoke:

“Going so soon, Potter?”

Her feet stopped, as did her heart.

As quickly as the words had registered, had her heart restarted in a scream of panicked activity, pumping hot mortification through her bloodstream. She wished nothing more in that moment than to be capable of disapparition, so that she might truly vanish, and never return to hogwarts again. 

“Oh come now, I didn't mean to bore you,” he drawled. She heard the slap of a bare foot upon tile. “Were you hoping for more of a show?”

She twisted slowly around. 

He was standing squared, his thumbs hooked into the towel, and though his eyes did not quite know where to seek out her own - skidding blindly upon the empty space above her head - they shone with a familiar fervor. It was a look she knew well from the quidditch pitch: when the rushing wind whispered he’s right there behind you , and she would risk a glance over her shoulder, meet icy grey, so close, always so unexpectedly close, never more than a broomlength behind, and the chill of his eyes and the thrill of the chase would send her muscles to shivering, and it was all she could do just to hold on tight and fly faster. 

And though the desire to bolt burned brighter than ever, this time she found herself staying right where she was.

“Tell me golden girl , what have I done to deserve this?” For five horrid seconds Harri thought he meant to lay bare the wounds she'd inflicted, and her chest constricted with the shame of it… But no, as usual, she was simply being mocked. “To think, you would honor me with your company, over your mob of faithful worshippers.”

He was still searching for her, scouring unseeing through the air to her right, and though his words were vitriolic, his voice was steady and low. “Or has the novelty of being carted around by your adoring fans worn off already?”

Harri stayed silent. She doubted she could muster a response even if she wanted to. 

“No? Why the visit then?” he continued, and took another step in her direction. His gaze now moved to the floor by her feet. He was sweeping the room for her, calm and methodic. 

“Have you come instead to gawk at the ‘mere mortals’ down here? Take a gander at the life of the unchosen? How noble that is of you Potter, to walk amongst those whose shit actually does stink.”

She was scarcely breathing, statuesque, frozen, but still he edged towards her, skirting closer and closer to her form. It made her wonder whether he could sense her presence just as easily as she did his. 

“That's not it either, is it?”

She was technically the transparent one here, but Malfoy’s intentions were just as clear to see: He was purposely trying to rile her up. 

“Those ginger freaks not doing a satisfying enough job licking your boots? They probably wouldn't know how to get them wet enough. Gryffindor’s have no patience, do they Potter? Have you come here for a better service?” 

And fuck it was working. 

“You know what they say about us Slytherins, silver-tongued and so very, very ambitious -” 

“- Malfoy.” She ripped off the cloak, the guilt now all but forgotten. The sudden appearance of her image in the mirror told her that she looked exactly as she felt, her hair a disheveled nest, her face flustered and red-cheeked. 

His eyes snapped to her. “ There you are.” He spoke in a pleased rumble, and his grin returned in full and victorious force. The look it gave him was all but canary-eating in its effect: feline, dangerous, and hungry.  

“What do you want?” Harri snapped. 

“What do I want?” He repeated. There was a pause as he waited for her to elaborate, but she stood her conversational ground. So he dropped his chin forward, voice sweetening to something condescending and slow:  “Oh Potter, have you forgotten already? You’re the one stalking me .”

The heat pulsed in her cheeks, and she looked down to the tip of her sneakers. She did not want to admit that she felt bad about it, but the Hermione-esque voice in her head scolded her to do The Right Thing, so she raised her eyes back up to meet his taunting grin. “Look Malfoy, about that, I’m….” blergh. “....I’m sorry.”  The words tasted like bile as they came out. 

She needn't have bothered. Only a slight flare of his nostrils told her that he had even heard the words at all. And really, Harri should have known. He was not interested in her guilt, nor her repentance. After all, this thing between them was too important, too cherished, to be broken by something as trivial as an apology. What they had was far more special… They were each other’s excuse. Each time that they slung insults in the halls or went head-to-head on the pitch, she saw it in him, reflected just as in her: an excuse to stretch out his claws, to weaponize his pain; An excuse to hunt and to hurt, to taste blood on her teeth; To share with each other that which they would not dare with anyone else, to remove the cloth of the lamb, the shepherded, the duty-bound, and for once in their young and disenfranchised lives, play the wolf. 

No, thought Harri, neither of them would ever choose to lay these bones to rest.

“You’re sorry ?” he scoffed. “You’ve been chasing me around the school like a dog on amortentia, Potter.”

She sneered back. “And you've been hiding like the scared little ferret you are, Malfoy.”

“Well, you’ve got me now.” He spread his arms wide. Rather than detract from his bearing, the nakedness of his torso only worked to unsettle her more, and though the step he took towards her was short, something about his expression made it feel more like a prowl. “So, how can I help you?”

Rather than face the sharpness of his gaze or the gleam of his shower-damp chest, Harri took a step back, staring instead into the empty shower cubicle to her left as she muttered: “Oh, you want to be helpful now, do you?”

“I do,” he assured insincerely, and moved closer still.

“Fine.” No use beating around the bush, especially when the bush had begun crowding her up against the frame of a shower cubicle in an annoyingly effective intimidation tactic. Might as well wack said bush directly with the proverbial stick. “Then you can tell me what you’ve been up to.” 

He rested a hand up against the tiles above her and leant forward, caging her in. She swallowed the flutter of nerves in her throat to continue: “You can tell me what you’ve been plotting with the death eaters.”

The ensuing silence was telling. When she looked back up at his face, it held the usual bored and haughty mask, but it was paler than she’d ever seen it before. The quiet sounds of the dripping faucet and their bated breaths were deafening in her ears, such that it felt almost a mercy when he finally spoke.

“Is this what Dumbledore wanted?” 

“What?” she said.

“Is this what he asked of you? His little golden girl sneaking into the boys change room so that she can - ”

“- Jesus, Malfoy -” Harri threw her arms up. 

“- That's it, hey? You leer on his targets whilst their naked and vulnerable, and then you… you use all your wiles to get them to confess -  ” 

“- My wiles !? -” 

“- well I beg to see it Potter, please, go on -” 

“- you are foul! I can't believe I ever began to think that you might be -”

“- Don’t act coy, i'm sure the weasels have taught you all kinds of tricks -”

“ - Oh, how dare you - “

“ - So beguile me then! Let's see what skills the light's little honeypot has picked up -”

She shoved her hands against his chest and snarled. “You are a disgusting piece of work, Draco Malfoy.” 

He did not flinch, a hardened wall immovable against her blows, physical and verbal both. “Well then what does that say about you Potter? Given how obsessed you are with me?”

“Obsessed!?” she spluttered.

“Everywhere I go, everywhere I look, there you are, following me, staring at me like you’re -”

“I only stare because I see you for what you truly are!” she spat.

There was silence again.

This time, when he spoke, his voice was uncharacteristically soft. “And what is that?” 

Harri floundered. 

What did she see him to be? 

A death eater? No. She’d proven that tonight. An enemy? Perhaps, but that word alone did not quite capture all that he was to her. Could she say that he was just a boy, a boy who had been misled to bigotry and wrongdoings by the influence of his family? No. She couldn’t. She respected him too much to deny him his agency, to deny him his part in crafting the deeply dislikable and complex individual that loomed before her. 

“....A shit seeker,” she finally concluded, and crossed her arms. 

The unexpected mildness of her answer startled him into a laugh, and he rocked backwards on his heels. He took a moment to stare down at her incredulously, before shaking his head, running a hand through his hair. “A shit seeker… You tell yourself that.”

She frowned. She did not appreciate that he was not taking her insult seriously. “I don't need to tell myself anything, my two wins over you this season speak for me.”

He rolled his eyes. “It is a wonder you manage to fit under that invisibility cloak, given the size of your head.”

“Pot, meet the king of kettles!” she hissed. “You and your annual ‘daddy bought me a bigger broom than yours’ .” The words were delivered as a sing-song taunt. “It makes one think you might be compensating for something.”

“Really, Potter?” He raised one haughty eyebrow again. “coming after my dick size now?”

The tips of her ears burned, and for a moment she worried that the next comeback would evade her, but she was able to shove the unwelcome feeling off to a hidden corner of her mind, and find her feet once more. “Just trying to speak a language you understand, given you’ve turned your entire existence into one big dick measuring contest.”

“Oh, I wish,” he said. “Finally, there would be one contest that you couldn’t win.”

“Please,” she scoffed. “My dick is bigger than yours.”

The grin that split his face was knife-sharp. He ducked his head down close.“You think so?”

She held her chin high. “I know so.”

He studied her face, grey eyes darting between each of her own. “...Well how fortuitous for us all then, that Harri Potter was born a girl.”

“Fortuitous?”

“Mmm. I doubt the world would survive what such an ‘enormous dick’ might actually do to your ego. It is harrowing to imagine a version of you that is more brash than you already are.”

Harri’s frown deepened. She didn’t think she would be ‘ more brash’ if she had been born a boy at all. Sometimes she wondered if maybe… well, maybe if she was a boy, she might have less to prove. 

“Fortuitous or not, this is the version of me the world gets,” she retorted. “And if it's too much for you to handle, then I believe that speaks more to your character that it does to  -”

“- Too much to handle?” He cut her off with a click of his tongue. “Come now, I didn't say that .”

The heat from his skin radiated into the thin slither of air between them, and as he looked down at her the silver strands of his hair hung forward, wet and heavy, over his forehead.

“You are always so quick to underestimate me, Potter.”

A drop of water slid from one of those strands, falling to land upon her upturned cheek. Her eyelids fluttered at the small and insulting splash of it, and the movement pulled his gaze there. He slowly lifted a hand, the soft pad of his thumb coming to brush beneath her eye, carefully wiping off the moisture that had been left behind.

 “I'm confident I'd be able to handle you just fine,” he said quietly.

Her breath curled under his unexpectedly gentle touch, and his eyes greedily traced the redness that bloomed upon her face. The hunger she saw in those eyes was so similar to that of the pursuit, the same hunger he bore as he tracked her relentlessly through the clouds. And even though she now stood upon the ground, somehow the air was thinner than it ever had been before. And the sight of it was all suddenly too much, so she ducked her head downwards, and in that action cursed herself for the cowardice it exposed. 

But the view downwards held its own surprise. it was not the large feet that bracketed either side of her own. Nor was it the fine mist of white hair upon his calves, nor the sloping muscles of his abdomen. It was the outline of a hardened length, pressing up lewdly from beneath his towel. 

“All that talk of dicks getting you hot and bothered, Malfoy?” 

“Of course,” he replied. The grin was still audible in his voice, not a hint of embarrassment to be found.  

His easy confidence only further rattled her nerves, and her mind was stuck on just how close the bulge in the towel was to her stomach, and how every breath she took shortened that gap, and she decided that actually, she didn’t want to look down here either, so she pulled her eyes back up level, and oh fuck… that wasn’t much better. The broad planes of skin, smooth and pale and unblemished to the point of implausible perfection, dominated her entire view. He was a marble statue come to life, like some carved figure of mythology, only the beating pulse at the base of his neck to prove that he was real.

So she spoke to that pulse: “Right, I suspected as much, I mean, I know how much you boys love your locker room time, sacred part of male culture and all that, and I’ve always wondered what you get up to behind closed doors, and it makes sense, all those raging hormones have to go somewhere, and slytherins lose so frequently, that wouldn’t help with all the pent-up energy, and honestly, good for you, as long as you’re keeping safe, its healthy to have an outlet for your emotions, and to experiment within a safe space, and -”

“ - You ramble when you're scared,” he observed. 

“I'm not scared,” she said, terrified. 

“Mmhm,” he replied, not in the least convinced.

“I'm not! I'm… I’m…” But her voice was rising in pitch, and she scrambled to regain control of her runaway heart, which bounced around her chest in a chaotic flurry of activity.

“Hey,” a palm slid around the back of her neck, commanding her gaze back upwards. “It’s okay, Potter. You can forfeit this round.”

“I don't forfeit anything.” her voice shook as she met his eyes. 

His expression was some strange mixture of pitying understanding and joyous victory, and his thumb swiped gently across the skin of her nape. “I think you probably should.”

Her lips parted, and she stared up at him wide-eyed, unable to pluck the words from the static of her thoughts. As if her silence had been the response to some equally unspoken question, he huffed out an amused laugh. Then, after a moment of consideration, his hand pulled away from her neck, lingering regretfully for a moment by her collarbones, before falling to his side. 

“Keep on running, Potter.” There was something almost mournful in the way he nodded his head towards the exit.  “I’m sure your fan club is waiting.”

And with that he turned away.

The dismissal stung in a way none of his other insults had -  enough to cut through her trance-like state, enough to allow the anger to bubble forth once again.

She grasped onto his shoulder, trying to halt his retreat.

“Hang on -”

But he shrugged her off, so she reached for his elbow instead. 

“Malfoy, you don't just get to -” 

He snatched onto her wrist before it could reach its target, restraining it with bruising force. It was mere reflex that had her yank her arm backwards, to try to rip it out of his possession, but his hold was unyielding, and the consequence of her counterforce was to bring him hurtling towards her. They fell, off balance, against the door, which gave not the feeblest of fights before it swung open, sending them stumbling further into the confines of the shower stall. Next she knew her back had hit hard against the tiled wall and he had fallen upon her, the heavy breathing of their chests battering against one another, her wrist still held in his grasp, his hardness now pressed into the soft flesh of her stomach where his towel had fallen free.

They both seemed equally as shocked by this new position in which they had found themselves, but it was Malfoy who found his composure first. “You think you see me for what I truly am, Potter? You have no idea.” He spoke low and hot into the space before her mouth, and she inhaled each word in short, shallow gasps. 

“But I see you,” he continued, eyes pupil-blown in the darkness of the stall. “I see you for what you truly are. The rest of them, they all think you're some fearless hero, don’t they? But you’re only a girl. A girl who is scared.”

How dare he. The embarrassment and the anger blazed hot in her lungs.

“You’re scared of all they expect of -”

She wrapped a hand around his dick and squeezed. 

He froze, words cut short. 

They stared at each other, neither moving a muscle. Slowly, as they each registered what she had done, their expressions began to twist. Hers to one of horror. His to one of surprised delight. She wasn’t sure what outcome she had been hoping to achieve. Perhaps simply to unbalance him, or to demonstrate how irrefutably not scared she was. But now, bravery had turned its back on her once again, and if any one was off-balanced it was her: the whole world tilting sickeningly around her, her stomach sliding off towards the edge of some cliff.

“...Okay...” he spoke slowly. “You’ve got us here now, Potter. What’s your next move?”

She scrambled to recollect her wits, swimming against a venerable riptide of panic. His eyebrows drew together in patronizing sympathy as he watched her desperate efforts. Her nervous system was not listening to reason. She should not be the one freaking out here. After all, she was the one in control. She had to be. She literally had him by the dick. And, Jesus, did that thought send her reeling all over again. She was holding Malfoy's hardened dick, and it was warm, and it was heavy, and it was so unexpectedly smooth. And his eyes were still laughing at her, taunting her, and so she did what she always did when being mocked by him: raised her hackles and bared her teeth. With a growl she gave his length another squeeze. Far too hard, far too rough. He hissed at what she could only assume was a terribly unpleasant sensation, and the hand that held her other wrist captive tightened in reprimand, but even still, his expression lost none of its joy.

“Of course you’d do it like this,” he said.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” she replied.

“It is honestly endearing how true to character you stay. You never were one for the subtle approach, were you?”

“Well, I'm sorry if my predictability disappointed you,” she snarked.

“Oh no, I didn't mean it in that way,” he leant forward, and brushed his lips featherlight against the shell of her ear - it was no doubt a calculated attempt to regain the upper hand. “The only thing predictable about you, Potter, is how unpredictable you are.” 

Damnit, his calculated attempt to regain the upper hand worked, her traitorous body shivering at the sensation. She could feel his answering grin. “...and I am far from disappointed,” he added.

She looked down to where she was gripping him. Her fingers, which she had only ever thought of before as being too large, now appeared so very small around the remarkable girth of him. Her core clenched, and she made some sort of noise that even she didn't know the meaning of. She felt so unbelievably out of her depth. Malfoy studied her face with a dawning realization.

“You haven't done this before, have you?” 

She spluttered. “I have too,” she lied, and to prove the point she gave him a quick tug, her palm sliding dry and abrasive against his skin. 

He hissed again at the rough treatment. “Who was the lucky guy to be treated to such skill?”

“Fuck you,” she replied. 

His eyes sparkled. “Give me your hand.”

“What?”

“Give me your hand,” he repeated. 

“You are not in a position to be making demands right now, Malfoy -” 

“Okay, I'll use this one.” He pulled her other wrist, the one still shackled in his grip, up to his face, twisting the palm open before his lips. For five absurd seconds she thought he was about to kiss it. Instead, he spat out a thick, vulgar wad of saliva. The heavy splat of it upon the skin of her palm rendered her mind blank, and he took advantage of her shock to bring her hand down, wrap it around his length, and stroke the sloppy mess up and down, the wet lubrication smoothing out the last remnants of friction. 

He gave a deep, satisfied hum, one that reverberated straight through his chest into her own. “Mm, there you go,” he said. “That's much better.” 

“Uh?” was her eloquent response.

He smiled sweetly, brushed the hair out of her eyes, and continued guiding her hand through slow, measured strokes. 

“...You spat on me,” she said breathlessly, her lagging brain finally processing the inexplicable sequence of events.

“I did.” He sounded proud.

She stared dumbly up at him, mouth pulled down in a frown. His eyes crinkled as he took in her expression. 

“Alright,” he said, and removed his hand from atop of her own. “There’s no need to glare so. Let’s see what you’ve got, Potter.” 

For a moment she simply continued stroking, mindlessly following the rhythm he had set. He slid his hand back in place around the side of her neck, and it was only then that the scrambled signal of her thoughts began to untangle into something comprehensible, and she realised that he had just set down a challenge. This was familiar ground once again. After all, If there was one thing Harri Potter knew how to do, it was best Draco Malfoy in a challenge. So she brushed aside the last remnants of panic, cleared space for willful determination, and cranked up the pace, pulling upon his length in short, speedy tugs.

“Ah,” He flinched, drawing his pelvis backwards. “No, Potter.”

She released him, eyes darting upwards in concern, but all she saw reflected in his face was amusement.

“You're alright,” he reassured, and guided her hands back into position. “Its just… best to start slow. At least to begin with.”

“Oh, okay - I mean. Um. Yeah. I knew that already.”

“Of course,” he responded gravely.

Okay. Start slow. She could do that. She turned her attention back downwards, and dedicated both hands to a series of measured, even strokes, minding to keep a firm pressure, and oh wasn't that something - the way she could feel him become harder, almost impossibly so, with every pass. And now there was an appreciative hum that played low and long underneath his breath, and gosh, that was quite a nice sound actually. 

She chanced another look up at him. “Like this?”

“Yes,” he rewarded her with a gentle squeeze upon the side of her neck, and though his tone was calm, his eyes were dark and ferociously hungry. “Like that.”

She flushed at the odd, warm feeling that licked its way up her spine.

"It's like your flying Potter. Much more effective when you try using at least some modicum of restraint."

"Fuck you," she said once again, but it lacked her previous bite, focussed as she was now on her task.

He just grinned wider. “Try deepening the pressure on the downstroke."

She scowled. On one hand, she did want to allow him the satisfaction of yielding to his demands, but on the other, she so desperately wanted to steal this win. Ultimately, the game won out. If that meant taking on suggestions, then so be it, she would temporarily lay aside her pride to see it through. So she adjusted her technique, and it was an immediate success, if the pleased rumble it elicited was anything to go by. The vibrations of his approval seemed to travel through her bones, down deep into her pelvis where they rattled inside her something hot and sweet. Feeling emboldened, she tried flicking her wrist slightly at the crest of each stroke, sliding between pressures in a smooth, twisting motion.

“Good, thats -”

A thumb across the slit and his words crumbled fully, into an open-mouthed moan . She snapped her head up to watch as it came out: his lips parting and trembling on the exhale, and fuck - the sight alone had her skin erupting to goose bumps, and the thing inside her started pulsing. And so she carried through the rolling movements with a firm grip - up and twist and down, up and twist and down - and as she did so his moan fractured, coming apart into a series of breathy chuckles. This was good, she was winning.

Malfoy clearly thought so too. “Oh good, Potter. That’s very good," he said. His head dropped forward, and the hand upon her neck slid further around, squeezing her nape between his thumb and forefinger, the short nails of his other fingers grazing lightly upon the bare skin beneath her collar. It sent whispering ripples of shivers down her back.

“Who knew how well you’d take instructions, hey?” 

Any other time she would volley back some smart retort, but as it was, her tongue had become incapacitated by the same sticky and viscous sweetness that now coated her thoughts, so all she did was stare transfixed at the pink head of his cock as it appeared through the ring of her fingers, leaking precum in silvery beads, each one as pale and pearlescent as he. She attentively collected each drop with a careful swipe of her fingers, smearing the wetness down his shaft, and - fuck - the muscles of his abdominals were now clenching with every pass of her hand. It was as if she could feel the salivating hunger inside him surge up into her own, merge between them into an indomitable force, a sum that was somehow greater than the already immeasurable parts. The hand on her neck tightened, the other sliding round the small of her back to pull her spine into an arch, and above her she felt the sharpness of his panting grin as he traced the tip of a canine against her forehead, the hot steam of his breaths dampening the skin there. “Speed it up now - yes, that’s it.”

The hand at her neck pulled upwards, forcing her to meet his gaze, and merlin - his eyes were all pupil. The blackness threatened to swallow her whole: fathomless and starving. His pelvis began rocking forward into the tightening circles of her fists. “Oh, Potter, look at how well-behaved you’re being,” it came out sounding like a growl.

Maybe she should have been embarrassed by her response, but she honest to god shook as the words landed, and she stared up at him, wide-eyed and entranced. 

“Oh - fuck - fuck. ” The cadence of his thrusts was rising, faster and faster, and her hands were wet with all that he was leaking, precum and sweat and need, and the stall was echoing with a vulgar symphony of squelching noises and gasping breaths and muttered curses. He must be part-veela, it was the only explanation for this - the way she had become hypnotised under his gaze, the sailor pinned in the siren’s net, proffering herself up to be devoured. 

“ Yeah?” he panted. “You’re being good for me, aren’t you?”

If questioned she would argue that her deference was merely strategy, a means to the end, but in truth there was no thought at all in that moment of resistance, and she nodded despite herself, all remaining willpower diverted to keeping her hands moving slick and firm across his cock, even as he thrusted into her fists with a hammering force. “Yeah, yeah you are. Fuck. Pot - Potter.” he groaned. “I’m going to - I'm going to -” 

Oh, she so desperately wanted to see it happen. She wriggled in his hold, trying to duck her chin downwards to watch, but the hand on her neck tightened, fingers digging into her flesh, restraining her head in its position. “No, Potter, look at me, look at me, please, please, look at - oh - yes,”

And that turned out to be no real imposition at all, for the view up here was breathtaking. In fact she didn’t think there was any sight in the world that could ever rival what she saw next. He was coming apart before her - his face slackening, his breath hitching off into small choking noises, his insides cracking open for her to see. And his eyes - his eyes remained fixed upon her throughout, ablaze with all-consuming desire, burning him alive, burning her alive, and it was beautiful . His hips sputtered and stalled as his chest released in a shaking groan , and she felt the warm wetness of his orgasm spill over her fists. 

Fuck. Harri had never been so turned on in her entire life.

His shoulders were heaving with the come-down, skin glowing in a sheen of sweat, looking just as he did whenever they’d gone head to head in a sprint off for the snitch. The arm behind her back pulled out to press against the wall above her, tripoding himself upright - in an effort to catch his breath, or to prevent himself collapsing forward onto her, or perhaps both. She took advantage of his limpness to break out of the shackling grip upon her neck, and looked downwards to survey the spoils of her victory. A fair portion had gotten on her Cannons shirt, white ropes that painted a shimmering contrast upon the dark fabric. But mostly it was over her hands. There was so much of it, so much more than she would have imagined, coating her fingers, dripping down her wrist, sticky and damp and wondrous. She stared at it: the tangible evidence of how she had broken him, of how she had transformed him into this panting, sweaty mess, wrung from something beautiful and true. His breaths were still blowing hard upon the top of her head, rustling through her hair there like the wind out on the high-court, and Harri felt the same she always did at the end of a match: so mighty pleased with herself. In the way the champion must kiss their trophy, she decided she must see this celebration of victory through to its natural conclusion. So she lifted her hand up towards her mouth.

She felt him stiffen.

“Potter, wait -” it came out sounding something halfway between a plea or a warning, like he couldn't bear the sight of what she intended to do.

But she couldn't be stopped, not now that she had made up her mind, and so she lapped her tongue through the cum that dripped down her forearm. He swore, and his hips bucked involuntarily forward, and the hand around her neck tightened once again, pulling her head back against the wall and wringing a surprised, strangled groan from her throat. But even still, she was able to get the coated fingers snug and secure into her eager mouth, where she immediately began sucking them clean.

It tasted… honestly…. pretty gross. Salty, and bitter, and weirdly gritty. She couldn't help that her nose automatically screwed up at the unpleasant sensation of it on her tongue. But, from the way he was staring at her as she swallowed it down -  like she was something divine - well, for that look alone, it might as well have been Molly's caramel-brandy sauce. 

“Fuck. Fuck. Look at you,” 

His hips bucked forward again, pressing one thigh up against her centre, and oh shit, that felt good. She instinctively ground her hips back down to meet him, and - yes - fuck - her breath hiccuped with the spikes of pleasure that shot up from her core, and she could hear his delighted “oh” as he watched it happen. 

His arm snuck back around her waist and pulled once again, arching her outwards, lifting her pelvis away from the wall, such that she was brought up to straddle the hard muscle of one quidditch-sculpted thigh. With their height-difference the action all but lifted her off her feet, only her toes left balancing precariously upon the ground. She was fighting gravity instead by the arm that looped behind the small of her back, the wall that pushed against her shoulders, and the thigh between her legs. And then he tugged her hips downwards and whispered a “there you go,” in her ear, encouraging her to grind herself against the meat of his quads. And she was all too happy to comply - she ground down again and again and again , and as she did a high-pitched whine managed to crawl its way up her throat, past the fingers that clogged her mouth, to echo shamelessly through the confines of the dark shower stall. 

“Look at you,” he repeated breathlessly, staring at her in nothing less than rapturous awe. “Riding my leg, licking me off you. You - You’re - oh - Gorgeous Potter.”

All she managed in response was a choked and slobbery moan, a dribble of saliva escaping past her fingers to slide down her chin. She certainly didn't feel gorgeous - in fact she was sure that her current state was about as far as one could be from gorgeous - but she was so unbelievably turned on that she simply didn't care. Her brain felt like liquid, each rocking movement of her body sending the thoughts sloshing inside her skull, the building heat of friction rising up and up and up, bringing her to boil, till she was nothing more than bubbles and steam.

He leant forward and sucked on the skin behind her ear, and from that small point of contact came a burning electricity that zapped down the wires of her nerves, meeting the heat that ascended up from her core in a head on collision. She had to rip her hand out of her mouth to claw against the smooth skin of his back, scrambling desperately for purchase against the overwhelming sensations. “Does it feel good, baby?” he pressed the words into the shell of her ear, so close she could feel each movement of his lips against the cartilage.

“Oh - oh - oh,” she gasped in reply, practically delirious, pushing herself harder and harder against his thigh. Did it feel good? Ha! It felt like reaching peak velocity in an inside loop, when she couldn't breathe through the rush of air, and the centrifugal forces pressed on her from all sides in a binding embrace, and her skin burned with some mixture of fear and joy that made her feel like she’d never really been alive until this very moment.

“Can you come like this, sweetheart? Just rubbing yourself off on me?” 

The endearment alone had her jerking in his arms, and her mouth dropped open of its own accord, the effort of keeping her jaw closed too much for her facial muscles to endure. She mouthed wordless curses into the meat of his shoulder between short, spasming breaths.

“Oh, sweetheart. Can't answer?”

She was no longer in control, her body now possessed with a mind of its own - all she could do was hold on for the ride as she rocked desperately against him, in a feverish, animal pursuit of that rising wave of pleasure. The arm around her waist looped tighter and tighter with every thrust of her hips, and he pushed her face down deep into the crook of his neck, pulling her closer with each pulsing movement, like he was trying to melt her into him, closer even than skin on skin, closer than any physical border would allow. 

“That's okay,” he panted, “you can take what you need.”

Her nails clawed, and the tension climbed, each muscle winding tight as a spring before breaking point, and she could feel the wave cresting upwards, and she was making little hitching noises into his neck. 

“Yes, thats it, thats it baby, go on, go on, go - “

The locker room door slammed open. 

She froze. The wave crashed to nothing. 

“Draco? You in here?” came a voice.

Fuck. 

Fuckfuckfuckfuck.

She leapt from his arms, but barely escaped half a metre before he had swept her back up again. His seeker reflexes had apparently recovered from the shock much faster than her own. In all the time it had taken her to process this horrifying turn of events, he had somehow managed to knock the stall door closed, spin the shower tap on to full blast, and recapture her again with an arm across the belly. Through the splattering shower stream he hauled her towards the deep wall of the stall, pulling her back up against his chest, a hand over her mouth to muffle her surprise.

“Shh,” he whispered into her hair. 

“Is that you Draco?” called the intruder.

“... Theo ?” Came Malfoy’s delayed response. The furious incredulity that lined his voice may have been well-hidden from any other distance, but at Harri's proximity, tucked beneath his chin as she was, it rang loud and clear.

“It is you!” Theodore Nott exclaimed from outside the shower stalls. “What on earth, Draco? How could you do this to me? Pansy and Blaise were adamant you’d be out by the lake knee-deep in some sad soliloquy. Not me, though. He wouldn’t miss this, not of his own freewill, no matter how poetically forlorn he’s feeling , I said! He must have been kidnapped, or fallen victim to one of those deranged weasels’ booby traps , I said! I’ll go rescue him, I said! But no, fool I am as ever for defending you! Instead, what do I find? You, still in the change-room, after all this time. Does your fastidious know no bounds, that you would bail on something so important, for a bloody spa day?”

Harri could feel more than hear the depth of Malfoy’s sigh. “Theo...”

She pushed restlessly against the restraints of his arms, her skin buzzing with the discomfort of denied satisfaction and the fear of being discovered in such a shameful state. He rubbed a hand soothingly across the side of her rib cage, her muscles trembling involuntarily beneath his touch.

“Draco, honestly, listen, your complexion is to die for, and you know I’d never begrudge you for your efforts in the pursuit of beauty, but if your routine is taking this long, then I think it might be time to take a step back, and ask yourself if you have a problem - wait, hang on…. are you only just showering now ?” 

“I got distracted.” Malfoy had to raise his voice for it to travel across the spray of the shower, and that fact alone managed to loosen something in the tangled knot of her nerves. She pushed again at the arm across her waist, murmuring a disgruntled protest into his hand when he did nothing but tighten his hold. 

“You got distracted? Distracted!?” Nott shouted back. Honestly, it was little wonder Malfoy was so goddamn dramatic all the time, if this was an example of the characters he surrounded himself with every day. “It’s been an hour, Draco! What could have distracted you for so long? Oh wait, I’m sorry, what a dumb question. Let me take a guess. Hmm. What could possibly have distracted Draco Malfoy?”

“Theo,” Malfoy growled a warning.

“You were mooning over Potter again, weren’t you?” said Nott.

Harri stiffened.

“Oh Theo , did you see the way Potter looked today? Did you see how horridly she dressed? Oh if only I were the one to dress her instead, or better yet undress her! Oh, oh, Theo , did you see the way potter played? Did you see the way Potter caught the snitch? Who does she think she is, flying so recklessly and so sexily like that -”

“Theo!”

“Oh Theo , did you see the way Potter looked at me? Did you see -”

“Okay, enough, you've made your point!” snapped Malfoy.  

It was something halfway between disbelief and delight with which Harri noticed the blush spreading on Malfoy's skin. She twisted her neck up and around to look at him, but he was pointedly avoiding her eye, glaring instead at the closed stall door. She huffed into his palm to demand back his attention. The moment he apprehensively slid his gaze down to indulge her, she waggled her eyebrows cheekily. And that just made him even pinker, and Harri didn't know if it was truly the delirium getting to her, but she suddenly felt at risk of devolving into giggles at the absurdity of this situation.

“Theo, can you please just leave me to complete my shower in peace?” called Malfoy, sounding slightly pained.

“Oh, ‘complete it in peace’, is that what you're calling it now? Puberty has transformed you in the worst of ways, Draco Malfoy! You spend the last six years calling the girl your arch nemesis, and now you want me to wait for you to wank off over her for upwards of an hour!? Complete it in peace - Ha. There's nothing peaceful about what's going on here, not for any of us! Well me, personally, I've had enough. I’m staging an intervention!”

Harri snorted. Arch nemesis? She looked up at him again, hoping to wordlessly communicate the taunt that sat loaded and ready behind her tongue. But the taunt was swallowed whole upon sight of his expression. More specifically: upon sight of the dark heat that had once again possessed his gaze.

“Alright, you’ve caught me Theo,” said Malfoy, even as his hand started creeping down across her lower belly, long fingers sneaking their way below the waistband of her joggers. “I'll submit to your intervention -” 

“Oh good, because we've got a lot to unpack here - ”

“- back in the common room, after I've showered,” said Malfoy firmly. His fingers were at her knickers now, grazing down the seams. She gave an alarmed hmmph as she realised just where this was going. He tucked her head back beneath his chin, the hand upon her mouth tightening in warning, another quiet “shhh,” pressed into her hair for good measure.

“It’s all got to be on your schedule, doesn’t it?” continued Nott, as undeterred as he was oblivious, whilst only metres away a finger began tracing patterns down the damp centre of Harri’s knickers. 

“I know you’re going through a lot, Draco, and we're trying to respect your boundaries about all that, we really are, but if you can't make the middle, could you try to at least meet us at, I don’t know, your door? It took me weeks to convince Pansy and Blaise to do this - weeks. And now I’m beholden to a Pansy favour and you know how terribly that bodes for my future. ”

Whatever Nott was rambling about, it evidently was not enough to distract Malfoy from his task, his finger moving steadily up and down over the wet patch of cloth that covered her centre. And fuck, even with so light a touch, even separated by a layer of material, Harri felt like she had been immediately  hauled straight towards the cliff-edge once again.  His mouth latched onto a patch of skin behind the angle of her jaw and he pressed a word there that was either a curse or a prayer, and she could feel his erection pressing stiffly into the small of her back.

“I thought it would be good for us to do this together. I thought it would be good for you. The least you could do is show up!”

Malfoy pulled his lips away from her skin, and gave a shaky exhale before he said: “Theo. I hear you, I appreciate you, and I promise I will be there shortly. But right now, I need to finish showering. Please.” The desperation leaked into his voice. “The faster you leave, the faster I will be in attendance.”

Nott gave an impressively long sigh. “Well if you aren’t going to come to book club on time, then I’ll just have to bring book club to you.”

“Oh please no,” said Malfoy.

“In chapter two,” Nott shouted, alarmingly loud, “as I am sure you are aware, the father makes a visit to the eligible bachelor, but does not divulge this fact with his family until later on. In this, we learn several important facts about the father’s character...”

And it seems Malfoy was done listening to Nott at this point, because Harri’s knickers were pulled to the side, and long fingers delved into their target, dipping between her folds, and even despite the presence of the other rambling slytherin, she’d never been so wet in her life. She could hear Malfoys quiet groan as he encountered the slickness. 

“Firstly,” recited Nott. “It demonstrates him to be a dedicated father. He places value in his daughters’ futures, and understands the role he must play to give them a chance at securing a good match.”

Malfoy circled teasingly around her clit. She couldn’t help the small and desperate noises she made into his hand. Her ears were aflood with the sounds: the hot rush of blood in her veins, and the spray of the shower, and panting of both of their breaths, and… and Nott’s bizarre monologuing in the background. 

“Whilst we may be quick to dismiss such an act as controlling or antiquated, we would be remiss not to consider it through the lens of the time period in which it is set. In an era in which it is inappropriate for women to seek direct introductions, the male head of the family is positioned to act as a mediator.”

Finally, finally, Malfoy put her out of her misery, touching her where she so desperately needed him to. Fuck, she was so worked up, so ablaze with anticipation, that even that gentle touch had her jerking in his arms, and god how was it possible that she was so close again already. Her hips bucked, trying desperately to deepen the pressure, and she grunted in frustration when he did nothing but hold her tighter in his embrace, and keep his fingers moving light and unhurried upon her.

“Though it seems outdated, the constraints of assigned gender roles in courtship customs persist in pureblood society even to this day. It is more subtle nowadays, sure - but, therefore, one could argue, also more insidious. Actually, Pansy has some very good points to make about this. She’s very articulate when she’s angry.”

But Draco was not listening to Nott at all, too busy dripping filth into Harri’s ear, sympathetic little coos, even as he rubbed, back and forth, back and forth, maddeningly slow: “poor thing,” and, “gorgeous girl,” and  “I’ll take care of you”. Harri wanted to sob. 

“Secondly, it reveals his good-humoured nature. It is only a small joke, sure, but it clearly establishes the mischievous dynamic between the family members. And it shows us from where our protagonist inherited her wit.”

He was speeding up now, and her breaths were becoming shorter, and the wave was building back up and up, and she looked down to where his forearm disappeared below her waistband and with the sight of the straining muscles under porcelain skin she felt herself begin to tip over that blissful edge. 

“In contrast, the mother is clearly quite dim-witted, and certainly fickle in her emotions. Truthfully, I don’t particularly like her, but I’m trying not to pass judgements so early on in the book. People can be deceiving -  I should know, given I’m friends with you!”

And then Malfoy was moving his his whole forearm in fast, staccato movements - and oh, oh god, what was happening - she scrambled desperately at his arms, fingers clawing, trying to hold on, as if that might save her from being washed away, but she was already being aflood with it, a blazing, drowning sensation that grew and spread, each muscle contracting in synchronicity, and her eyes were rolling backwards, and even if he wasn’t covering her mouth she couldn’t have made a sound, vocal cords paralysed in that incapacitating pleasure.

As the swell retreated she found herself limp and lifeless. She slumped back against him, held up by his arms alone, her own legs no longer capable of the task. Bit by bit, she became aware of her surroundings once again: the soft kisses he was pressing upon her temple, the hand he was soothing up and down upon her side. Slowly, gently, he lowered them both down to the ground, and wrapped himself tighter around her still, murmuring quiet praise even as the little aftershocks racked her body. 

“....Which is why I am particularly excited to find out what will happen at this upcoming ball  - ”

“Theo?” Malfoy’s voice rasped. 

“Yeah?” 

“Bugger off.”

Nott made an exasperated noise. “You are an uncultured twat, Draco."

"Guilty," responded Malfoy. 

"Fine, finish up your suspiciously long shower 'in peace'. I'm going back to the dungeon to surround myself with people who actually respect good literature. But I’m warning you, we won’t wait for much longer! We’re going to move on to the next chapter without you, and then where will you be?" Nott’s still rambling voice grew distant as he stomped towards the exit, the swing of the door cutting short some winding sentence about honouring commitments.

Only then did Malfoy release his palm from over her mouth, her panting breaths jarringly loud as they escaped free into the space.

His hand moved down instead to cradle her jawbone, and he tilted it upwards, straining her neck to look back at him. She met his eyes, chest still heaving, pulse still racing. And just as it had been out on the pitch, he was staring at her like he didn't quite know what to make of what he saw. But this time there was a smile - only small, but sincere - that graced his beautiful face.

“Caught you,” he said quietly. 

She blinked back at him, and her heart did something strange. And she opened her mouth to respond. Or would have, had Theodore Nott not chosen that moment to barge right back in. 

 “- Hey, Draco,  some gryffindor has left a quidditch bag out here by the door. You haven’t seen one sneaking around, have you, because it kind of looks like -”

“Fuck off, Theo!” Malfoy snarled.

“Okay then, Merlin, there is no need to be so rude. I’ll see you back in the common room. Bring the Austen, drop the attitude, grumpy pants.”