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Harry notices it when she catches up to him on their way to lunch.

"Glamour's gone," he says under his breath. 

"Oh, hell." Hermione shifts her textbooks to the other arm and fumbles for her wand. The massive love bite purpling just under her jaw fades away. "Honestly," she says, flustered, "I don't know where my mind's at." Harry has some idea, but keeps it to himself as she continues to mumble. "I should've just used concealer, it lasts so much longer."  

"You missed one," Harry says, "on the other side." 

She makes an agitated noise, turning pink. 

"Ron and his big mouth, I know," Harry says, when they resume walking and she turns to him with a woeful sort of look. "It's fine, Hermione."

"I just don't want you to think—"

"I don't," Harry says easily, and lets whatever else she says be lost to the noise of the Great Hall as they step inside. "It's fine."

— 

It's fine in the way that everything after has to be, if only by virtue of not being a war any longer. They've picked up the pieces best as they know how and carry them close; some are lucky enough to carry them together. Harry isn't bitter, but he's not lucky, either. 

There's a bruise on his bicep that he got from he doesn't know where. It's faded from a sharp, throbbing pink to a dull yellow now, and he has to dig his thumb in hard to feel anything at all. When he's lying back in his new bed in the same old castle, curtains drawn, he wanks with the bruised arm—his left arm—so he can press into the bruise with the other, press, press, press with every pull on his cock. Some days he's determined, and keeps on until his arm is tired and his abs ache from tensing and releasing, until it doesn't even feel good anymore, not really, and relief, when it comes, is that it's over. 

But most days he can't even get himself hard all the way. He falls asleep with his briefs around his ankles and face in the pillow, one hand on his prick and the other on his arm, trying to make the bruise bloom again. 

—

"And if you're going as well, maybe I'll see you there," says one of the Gryffindor sixth-years who crowd him these days. She's pretty, not a shiny hair out of place, lipstick the colour of a fresh welt. 

"She means, she hopes she'll see you there," says her friend with a grin, and she grimaces.

"Bye, Harry," she says, like they're old friends and he hadn't just learned her name two minutes ago. As they walk away he sees her grab her friend's arm and pinch her, hard. 

It keeps replaying in his head throughout the day. He rubs at his own arm, but the bruise is long gone. 

It's been years since someone pinched him. No, not someone— there's only ever been one person determined enough to torment Harry with so much variety. He can still remember how it felt: the shock of it, the persistent throb. Malfoy's snicker in his ear turning into an ow when Harry stomped on his foot in retaliation, the sullen nothing, Professor, and Harry squirming away from him in the crowd to escape the next pinch. 

They were kids. Malfoy always went for the bits that would hurt the most, even then: where Harry's robe had fallen aside and left his side vulnerable, the thin skin of his wrist. Once, when they were herded along the corridors like so many sheep, tripping over each other—the back of his neck. He was quick and mean. He'd twist. 

Harry doesn't realise he's staring until Malfoy looks back at him and raises his eyebrows. What?

Harry looks away before he can stop himself, an admission of guilt as much as anything. On his left, Ron and Hermione are so engrossed in acting like they're not playing footsie under the table that they wouldn't notice if Harry spontaneously combusted. 

Malfoy's long fingers are drumming on the table, nails neat. The back of Harry's neck prickles. 

—

"Sorry," Harry says, backing out of the room as quickly as he entered it, and it's genuine. He is sorry—that Neville and Ginny couldn't find anywhere but the eighth year dormitory to snog, that Harry had lingered for half a second too long and seen more than he wanted to, that now he's going to have to have, undoubtedly, a conversation about it. 

Ginny comes out first, and he's halfway across the common room by then. He'll spend another hour pretending to study in the library if it means he can avoid talking about this. 

"Harry," she says, and the tone of her voice makes him slow. They exit the portrait together. There's no one on the landing. 

Ginny's face is a splotchy red, and so is her neck. Harry can't tell if that's from embarrassment or Neville's fastidious mouth.

"Go on, then," she says, crossing her arms over her chest. She's pulled her jumper on backwards. "Call me a slag, if you want. Ron already did." 

Before Neville, it was Dean. Before Dean, it was the fifth-year Hufflepuff beater who was "a mistake, obviously, he's so young, it's weird," and before that it was Dean again. What feels like a few lifetimes ago now, it was Harry.

When Harry says nothing, she lets out a frustrated breath. "I know you're not happy about it. You don't exactly hide it." 

Does he have to be happy about it? This is what you wanted, Hermione said, so can't you be happy for her? Maybe if he was happy for himself, it would be easier. Coming back to Hogwarts has given him more time to reflect than he really wanted, and he's learned he never quite stopped being the envious little boy in the closet. Wanting and wanting, never to have. 

"It's fine," Harry says, because she's watching him, expectant. "I'm not, like—I don't care. It doesn't bother me." 

"It looks like it really, really does," Ginny says. 

Harry doesn't know how to convince her that it's nothing as simple as jealousy, so he just shrugs. 

"I can't blame you for moving on to someone who can actually get it up." 

"Fuck off, that's a shitty thing to say," Ginny snaps, clearly not seeing the humour in the situation. Harry wonders if she ever found him funny, and then wonders if she'd think that was shitty of him to wonder. "That's shit, Harry. You know that's not why—" 

"Yeah, look," Harry says, cutting her off because this particular conversation is so well-worn it can't be had one more time without falling apart at the seams. "I'm saying, honestly, it's fine—"

"—and you don't get to make it sound like that was my decision, after everything—" 

"Ginny—" 

"—because it wasn't me who gave up, so don't walk around with that look on your face! I'm not the bad guy—" 

 "Ginny," Harry says, raising his voice to be heard over hers, no longer bothered that it's close to a shout. "I don't care, alright? Just maybe, don't do it where I sleep, if you don't want to see the look on my face." 

She falls silent, mouth pinching. "I was only there to say goodnight. We—we just got carried away." 

Harry nods like he knows what that feels like. "I'm for the library, anyway. You should go back in." 

He doesn't come back to the tower until he's sure everyone's asleep, curtains drawn and snoring. That night, he gets himself off like he has something to prove. It's stupid, and not the least because it takes him fifteen minutes of persistence just to get hard. Wanking to the memory of a mouth on him is worthless if he stays soft before the real thing, but still, he pulls out the good oil and warms it in his hands, casts a silencing charm and tries to be nice about it, coax his prick to attention instead of demand. 

Thinking of Ginny only makes him go cold, so he thinks of someone—anyone—else, a face that's a thousand faces with a soft, hot mouth on his balls, the insides of his thighs. He pets himself there, runs his fingers over the thin, sensitive skin, and tries to let that be enough. When it isn't, he scratches, in short little bursts and then longer, drawn out, digging in deep. That mouth works over his thighs the way his hand does, sucking bruises that he'll press on later. It bites, and his cock twitches in his hand, yes, bites hard. 

He pinches himself without meaning to. His balls draw up tight. Again. It drags a sound from him, and then he's not thinking of a mouth at all, but long fingers with neat nails. Orgasm builds in the base of his spine, the soles of his feet, but he doesn't trust it, strips his cock harder, pinching carelessly. Those fingers run over his balls, cup him, squeeze, then catch the skin where his leg meets groin and twist.

He comes, and it takes him so by surprise that it's as if it's over before it's begun.

—

"Neville thinks you're cross with him," says Hermione in a low voice. 

The rhythmic rocking of her knife on the cutting board doesn't slow, so Harry continues chopping his own flobberworms. 

"Why would he think that?" 

At this, she gives him a look. Steam from her cauldron and banked irritation has turned her face pink. On her other side, Ron is engaged in trying to clear the billywig guts he's spilled onto the floor and all over his shoes, not paying them any attention. Harry used to be sat in the middle. He can't say he didn't like it.

"Harry." 

"He's not the first of my friends to sleep with my ex," Harry says with a little shrug. "Probably won't be the last." 

Hermione turns to him fully now. "That's an awful thing to say."

Harry's getting tired of hearing this. "Sorry." 

"She doesn't owe you anything, you know," Hermione says, voice pitched even lower. "You weren't even together, not really. You never made anything official." 

"Yeah," Harry says. "I know. I'm not cross." He meets her eyes. "With Neville, or anyone. I told her that, too." 

"Then why are you acting like—" She cuts herself off as Ron looks over and leans in. He opens his mouth and then at whatever he reads on her face, changes his mind and goes back to peering intently at his cauldron. Hermione's mouth is pursed. "You walk around looking like the world's ended, Harry." 

"Oh," Harry says. "Almost like I was just off fighting a war, or something." 

"You weren't the only one fighting," she says, but then her hand wraps around his wrist, and squeezes. "You know that."

Then why has everyone else moved on? he wants to ask. Why has everyone else started finding comfort in each other, in stupid, silly things like knocking their feet together in class, or holding hands, or leaving love bites and getting carried away, when he can't get through one night without an ugly heaving pressure on his chest and no release to be found?

He doesn't say any of those things. Behind Hermione's tired face, there is a flash of white-blond hair—Malfoy, shoulder to shoulder with Zabini, their heads bent together, nearly touching. Even Malfoy, he thinks, isn't without someone; Harry remembers what he looked like, before, with his head in Parkinson's lap, her hands in his hair. She would drape her arms over his shoulders and kiss his neck, sometimes.

She isn't here now, but Zabini is. There have always been rumours about what Slytherins get up to, in the dungeons—maybe one is tame, for Malfoy. Maybe he has a line of people waiting for him. Maybe it's easy, and good. 

The direction of his thoughts is unsettling. Hermione squeezes his wrist again and brings him out of it. 

"I'm not saying you shouldn't feel upset," she says, and rushes ahead before can interrupt her, "or however it is you feel. It's not nice, any of this—it's awkward, and uncomfortable, but everyone's just doing the best they can. We're all just trying to find—something." 

Harry wonders if she knows how she leans into Ron, even when she's not looking at him, as if pulled by some invisible thread. 

"Yeah," Harry says. "I know." 

On their way out of class, he knocks into Malfoy hard enough to unbalance them both. Malfoy staggers against the door, one hand splayed on the old wood and the other around Harry's arm, fisted in his cloak. The heel of his boot catches Harry's shin.

"Sorry," Harry says, but they've done this song and dance so many times before that there's no room left for pretence. 

Malfoy's eyes narrow, searching. They're civil, these days. In this, at least, the war has left its mark; he and Malfoy are nothing of how they used to be, defanged and cautious, uncertain. It's only a second that they look at each other, Harry thinks. Couldn't have been any longer, for all that it feels like a century.

Hermione and Ron have stopped halfway down the corridor to turn back, having only just realised he's not with them. 

"Careful," Malfoy says as he straightens. His mouth barely moves around the word.

Harry's shin throbs.

— 

When Harry sits down next to him, Neville's earnest, familiar face goes so slack with relief that guilt grips Harry's insides and, for a moment, renders him mute. 

"Oi, Harry!" Seamus jumps up from his seat on the sofa opposite and runs over to grab him by the shoulders and shake. "There it is, Harry makes ten! We only need four more—let's round up a few of the sixth-years, then, can't hurt—" 

Ron's shaking his head. "You're getting ahead of yourself, mate. I'm telling you, McGonagall would be mad to let us—" 

"She can't stop us," Seamus says with a scowl, "we're of age and it's in our free time, plus our own equipment—" 

"It's her school," Ron argues, "and, dunno if you forgot, but we are still her students." 

Seamus gapes at him. "Do you even hear yourself? Am I talking to Ron, or Hermione?" 

"Oh, piss off," Ron says, but ducks his head and turns a pleased sort of pink. 

Harry is content to let the conversation continue without his input, but Neville, emboldened by the fact that they're within talking distance of each other for the first time in weeks, leans in to explain. 

"They're trying to round up enough people to play Screaming Sevens, now that it's nice out." 

Harry wouldn't call the gloomy February weather nice by any stretch of the imagination, but the snow has melted and for a few minutes every day when the sun comes out, the cold is nearly bearable. Seamus, in an industrious spirit ever since their return from Christmas break, has been trying to organise a new something or other every week.

"We can count you in, right, Harry?" he demands now, raising his voice to be heard over Ron's grumbling. "You'll play, won't you?" 

"Yeah," Harry says, "'course." 

Ron rolls his eyes. "He doesn't know what it is." 

Harry shrugs and doesn't deny it. "I'll play." 

Despite Ron's protests, not being allowed to play Quidditch as eighth years has left them all feeling aggrieved. The competition this year is fiercer than usual, and the pitch is booked by one house or another for practice nearly every day; free flying is allowed, but Harry misses the edge of playing against someone. He misses winning. 

Seamus is rubbing his hands together in glee. "You're going to love it," he promises, "you'll be one of our starters for sure, right in the middle of the action—"

At that, Ron seems to forget his reluctance. "Are you mad? He has to play wing, if anything—Neville can hold down the front—" 

Neville doesn't look very much like he'd enjoy holding down the front, but he looks at Harry and gives him a lopsided smile. "As long as we're on the ground." 

He's sat hunched over, nearly folded in on himself, like he doesn't quite know what to do with his newly broad frame if there's no snakes to fight. Maybe not everyone's moved on, then. Harry leans into him, and he leans back. 

He think of the solid press of Neville's shoulder against his at night, palming himself through his briefs. There's shuffling from the other beds, a familiar creaking. Seamus never remembers to put up the silencing charm. Harry stares up at the canopy and empties his mind, tries to fill it with one vague fantasy after another until the chore of it is what puts him to sleep, long after everyone else has gone silent and still.

—

Harry isn't expecting it, when Malfoy falls in step with him on their way back from Herbology. His boots slip on the muddy ground when he turns to look at him. Malfoy's looking back, grey eyes feigning warmth in the light of a midday sun. 

"Potter," he says. "Did you want something?" 

Harry's mind goes blank. 

"What?" 

Anyone else, Harry thinks, wouldn't be able to see the flicker of irritation on Malfoy's smooth face. But Harry knows him well; in this, at least, better than anyone.

"You keep looking at me," Malfoy says, and it's as if every word takes another second to form, to check. So careful, Harry thinks. They're so careful, these days. 

"No, I don't," Harry says, and the irritation solidifies. 

"Potter—" 

"Malfoy," comes Ron's voice, just ahead of his body, angling in between the two of them. He's taller than Malfoy now, and broader, too, but somehow Malfoy still manages to loom over them both, chin up and looking down his nose. "What's all this, then?"

Hermione appears at his other side, heavy book bag swinging, knocking into his hip. In the middle only when he doesn't want to be, Harry thinks, and it's sort of funny, really.

"Does your guard dog know any other tricks, Potter?" Malfoy says, and his mouth hooks up into a little smile as he gives Ron a onceover. "Down, boy. Roll over." 

"Yeah, alright," Harry says, and catches Ron around his tensed arm to pull him back. "I think you've done enough rolling over for all of us, Malfoy." 

The smile drops. Behind him, Zabini's stood waiting by the greenhouse. They go as a pair, now, in a way they never used to do. Harry wonders what it means. 

Hermione grabs Harry's hand and tugs them all forward. "Come on, we're going to be late. Let's go." 

"Prick," Ron mutters, turning his head back every few seconds to scowl at the two of them. They're walking close enough that their shoulders brush with each loping step. "What did he want?" 

"Nothing," Harry says, keeping his eyes straight ahead. "Just Malfoy being Malfoy." 

Did you want something? Harry wishes he knew.

— 

Screaming Sevens, Harry discovers, is rather literal. The ball Seamus has delivered is about the size of a bludger, elongated and leathery in texture, with ridges along the sides that fit to your fingers. When held for longer than thirty seconds, it begins to warm. When dropped, the seams rip open to reveal a gaping maw that screams bloody murder.

Neville winces and picks it up again, fumbling to pass it back to Dean. 

"You can't be afraid of it," Seamus is telling him, impatient. "It can smell your fear, mate, it'll just get hotter faster." 

Neville is shaking out his hands, palms turned a bright pink already. Harry catches Dean's pass and Ron begins to backpedals at his signal, hands up, but Seamus knocks the ball out of the air before it can reach him. It hits the ground with a scream that makes Harry's teeth rattle.

"Looks to be in working condition," Seamus says happily. He scoops it up, slaps and drops it into an old, holey sack that's seen generations of Finnegans through.

"I can't believe you got McGonagall's go-ahead," Ron marvels. Under the anaemic sun his hair is the brightest thing on the training grounds. "I didn't think you could do it, honestly. This is brilliant, mate."

"Oh, he hasn't told you all of it, yet," says Dean, grin splitting his face. 

"All of what?" 

Ron's barely got the question out when the what arrives. Malfoy stalks across the field like he owns it, broad shoulders and long legs and none of the hesitation that comes with growing into ones body, like he's always been exactly so. Harry's stomach twists. Zabini is, once again, on his heels.

"No," Ron says, shaking his head, "no bloody way." They all turn on a Seamus that puffs his chest out in indignation. "Tell me you didn't invite those tossers to play." 

"Had to, didn't I?" Seamus scowls at them. "McGonagall wouldn't hear of it unless we opened it up to all the houses, said it wasn't fair to leave Slytherin out. Inter-house unity, and all that rot." He squints against the sun at Malfoy's approaching form. "Only, I didn't think they'd actually show up." 

"You didn't think Malfoy might want a free pass to knock any one of us down?" Dean says with a snort, and Harry can't picture it, until he can.  

"That's if I don't clock him first," Ron says, glowering. 

"Look, there's Corner," Seamus says, relieved, pointing at the group of boys crossing the courtyard behind Malfoy. "And Boot, too, there's a good lad. Look, see—we're all just here to play, innit? Game's a game." 

Malfoy, clad in crisp white trousers and his dragon-hide boots, looks like playing ball in the mud is the last thing he's come to do. Harry's absurdly aware of his own long shorts, stopping just shy of his knobby knees, his mismatched socks and Ron's old vest, but Malfoy doesn't even look at him, nodding instead at Seamus and coming up just short of joining their group. 

"Here, Malfoy," Seamus says, fishing the ball out of its sack, "catch." 

Malfoy plucks it out of the air with one hand, and tosses it behind his back to Zabini, who doesn't even blink. They toss it between themselves twice more, easy, sideways and back again, while Ron's face gets redder than his hair. 

Seamus, try as he does to hide it, looks positively thrilled at the prospect of playing with someone who isn't clueless. He catches the ball when Malfoy returns it to him, and stuffs it back in the sack. The rest of the Ravenclaw boys reach them, Corner at the front, and nods are exchanged all around. Inter-house unity, Harry thinks, as Malfoy inclines his head just so, never looked stranger.

"Teams?" says Zabini in his low, smooth drawl.

"You head up one, then, Zabini," Seamus says, with a magnanimous little shrug. "I'll head the other. Your pick." 

"Potter," says Zabini. 

Everyone's eyes swing to him, then to Zabini, and then—to Malfoy, who looks as blank as ever, unconcerned. 

"Yeah, alright," Seamus says over the Gryffindor's protests, eyes narrowed. "Malfoy."

They rearrange themselves. Zabini slides up next to him, while Seamus explains the rules—all of three—and Harry barely hears him over the sound of everyone's grumbling. 

"You know what you're doing, Potter?"

"Catch the ball," Harry says thoughtfully. "Don't drop the ball. Run." 

Zabini's straight white teeth flash in a smile. Behind him, Dean and Coner join in Malfoy's huddle. "Do not drop the ball." 

It's an instruction Harry would be happy to follow, if he managed to get a hold of the ball in the first place, but once the game begins it becomes clear who's been playing Screaming Sevens since they could crawl. 

Malfoy keeps possession of the ball half the time and Boot the other. Stupid, Harry thinks, to have them on the same team, because Malfoy's fast enough to stay out of everyone's grasp, and Boot's gotten so damn big that tackling him doesn't keep him down. It takes a pile-up of Ron and Macmillian and Zabini to wrench the ball from him at last, and then Harry's got it, and sprinting, everyone's shouts lost to the rush of wind in his ears. 

Running isn't anything like flying. The impact of his feet against the damp earth ricochets all the way up to his teeth, and his destination remains elusive no matter how fast he runs, just a little too far away, just outside his reach. The ball's heating up where he's clutched it against his chest, but he can't risk shifting it to his other hand. Do not drop the ball. He won't. It's burning him, now, real pain in his fingertips, his palms—and the goal line isn't getting any closer, why is he so slow—

The slam of a body against his knocks the breath from him before he even hits the ground. 

"Foul!" comes a yowl, and then, "there's no such thing—and Malfoy's on our team, Dean, you idiot—" 

There's an arm hooked under his jaw and a knee digging into his back, the ball like an ember and not enough leverage to toss it. The pain of it is so shocking that it slips from Harry's grasp, falls— 

Malfoy catches it before it can hit the ground and then he's scrambling to get up. Harry kicks a leg out before he can and Malfoy drops, the full weight of him on Harry's back and fuck—he's heavy, Harry didn't think he would be—but not before he swings his arm back and up and the ball flies through the air again.

Someone must catch it, because there are no screams, but Harry couldn't tell you who. His arm is trapped under his body, palm blistering, and Malfoy's knee is at his side. One of his hands finds Harry's shoulder, and the heel of it drives in as he lifts himself up, a new kind of pain that makes Harry's heart climb into his throat. 

Not so far away, there's shouting. Someone scored. The weight of Malfoy's body on him is all Harry can think about, insides seizing with an unfamiliar panic. Then he's gone—it must have only been seconds, but Harry's body is alight with it, even as he picks himself up again and rejoins the fray, flexing his hand, the skin gone tight from the burn. His knee throbs as he runs. There's not enough air in his lungs. 

The ball comes back to him. He can't even feel the heat of it, anymore. No one catches him in a tackle this time—he scores, then regains possession from Ron's frantic pass and scores again. The game blurs past that way—catch the ball, don't drop the ball—run—run— 

They lose, badly. Seamus looks like he'd pull Malfoy into a hug if he were anyone else, and under Ron's furious glare settles for a nod and thump on the back. Malfoy's covered in mud, grass stains scrubbed deep into his fancy trousers. There's even mud in his hair—a streak of it along his jaw, and he's working his arm back and forth to ease an ache in his shoulder. He's not laughing like the others, but there's something of it playing just on his mouth, a familiar glint in his eyes when they catch Harry's. 

He doesn't look, Harry thinks in a daze, like he'd be so heavy. 

— 

"This is barbaric," Hermione says, slathering another layer of ointment on Harry's palm. "Why on earth didn't you wear gloves?" 

"'gainst the rules," Ron mumbles from his bed, face in the pillows. His own hands, pink and raw looking, though nowhere near as bad as Harry's, hang plaintively off of the side. "Not allowed." 

"And I suppose you don't care that you need these hands to, I don't know, write? I hope you know there's only so much balm left, and I won't be making any more if you're determined to burn yourselves on purpose." She finishes wrapping up Harry's hands and then nudges him in the side, scowling when he winces. "This was all Malfoy, wasn't it?" 

Harry shrugs. "I had the ball." 

Hermione gives him a sharp look. "I know we're all trying to get along now, but—" 

"Yeah," Harry says, drowned out by Ron's scoffing. "I know." 

"It's only that—he is still Malfoy. You can't trust him, not really. If he saw an opportunity—" She cuts herself off, brows down, conflicted. "Of course, people can change, I'm not saying—"

"Yeah, I know," Harry says again. "It's Malfoy." 

"Right," she says with a frown. "Where else did you get hurt? I have some Bruise-Be-Gone. Your knee—no, your shoulder—"

"No, it's fine," Harry says, and then, at her dubious look: "Really. Just a little sore. It's not bad."

"I could use some attention," Ron says loudly, "if it isn't too much of a bother." 

"You're free to go to Pomfrey, if you're so in need," Hermione says primly, and Ron rolls his head around to give her a slow smile. 

"Pomfrey wouldn't do my back," he says, and then Harry has to kick Hermione off his bed and draw his curtains closed to avoid seeing the look on either of their faces. 

Harry casts an imperturbable charm more ostentatiously than is probably necessary, but even if he can't see or hear what they're up to now he's witnessed enough in the past that it's easy to imagine: Ron's big hands on Hermione's waist, in her hair. He'd smother her if he got on top, with how heavy he is, but maybe she likes that. The weight. 

He might like that. 

Harry doesn't want to get off to the thought of his best friends, even as half-formed and nebulous as it is, and definitely not with them in the room, just a few feet away—but isn't that what they're up to, anyway? Isn't that what anyone does these days? Why should Harry be any different, when his cock is finally chubbing up without a fight, filling up with every pump of his heart, easy like it never is. He knows from the first touch of his hand that it won't take long, and that's a thrill in and of itself, because he can't remember the last time he didn't have to work for it. 

It takes a tug of his teeth to get the bandages off, and then his salve-slick hand on his prick has his toes curling. Everything hurts, and he's dizzy with it, pushing his shoulder back into the bed to feel the ache. He runs his free hand over his ribs and feels out the sorest one, presses his face into the pillow and then—gives in, turns onto his front, cock trapped between his body and the sheets. He ruts into his bed like that, and if he holds his breath he can feel the phantom weight of a body on his back, knee at his side, a hand on him—pressing—so heavy he can't hope to move, pain sharp and dull and everywhere, in everything. 

He comes, just like that. Easy.

—

Malfoy takes to wearing a ring on his right hand, a heavy silver thing that looks far too big on his slim fingers for all that it sits perfectly just below the knuckle. Harry wonders if it's his father's, passed down through generations of pureblood fanatics, and then he stops wondering, because Malfoy turns his head and looks right at him. 

Harry doesn't look away, this time. Between them lies an entire sea of attentive students, the rapid scratch of quills and shuffling of parchment. Someone's humming. Hermione's hair obstructs half his vision. 

Malfoy holds his gaze and rests his pointy chin on his palm. He blinks once, slowly. 

Now what, Potter?

His ring catches the sunlight where it sits against his jaw. If Harry leans into the edge of their bench table at just the right angle, it presses up against that sore spot on his ribs. Blood pounds at his temples, and he has to bite the inside of his cheek at the perfect spark of pain. Malfoy's eyes narrow. 

"Harry," comes a voice, and then Hermione's frowning face, blocking Malfoy from view. She turns to see what he's staring at, and then back to him, frown deepening, eyebrows raised. "Really?" 

"He started it," Harry lies, and goes back to his notes, bunching his robes up further in his lap, just in case. 

Harry looks up just one more time, once his cock's stopped throbbing in time with his heart. Malfoy's eyes are still on him.

— 

With NEWTs looming in the distance, they don't get a chance to play as often as any of them would like, and half of the Ravenclaws drop out of Seamus' painstakingly scheduled games to study. They have more luck rousing the sixth-years, but fewer people than Harry would have expected are so inclined to suffer bodily harm for sport. 

"You could always ask some of the girls," offers Hermione. 

"Girls can't play," Ron says immediately, and then, at her look, amends: "They can't play with boys, I mean, obviously."

"Why obviously? " 

Ron looks at him for help, and Harry blinks back. "Because—because it's physical, innit, it's rough, and they might get hurt—" 

"But you don't get hurt, of course," Hermione says, "because you're big strong men, and you can handle a bit of rough play." 

"Well, yeah—I mean, no, but—girls would get more hurt," Ron argues, and out of the corner of his eye Harry can see Hermione's mouth twitch. "Look, I just don't fancy tackling any girls and beating on them to get at a ball, alright? I don't think there's anything sexist about—" He finally catches sight of the badly disguised amusement on Hermione's face and his mouth settles into a grim line. "Right, you're in for it now."

Hermione doesn't shriek when he picks her up and makes to swing her over his shoulder, because they're in the library and already under threat of being banned for life if they can't shut the hell up , but her face is red, mouth open on a silent laugh. Harry shakes his head and goes back to his notes with a snort, but it's physical rings in his head. It's rough. 

It is rough. Harry gets better at it, dodges easier, but can avoid being knocked to the ground as much as he can avoid burning his hands—which is to say, not at all. He's not as big as some of the other boys, even though he's grown well past his short, scrawny— malnourished, Hermione would say—self but he's still lean, and fast. Harry can't be bothered with humility in his own head—he knows he's the fastest. The only one who comes close is Malfoy, but for all that Harry anticipates his collision every game, it doesn't arrive: when he's taken down, it's by Corner's hands scrabbling at his vest, or Boot's massive chest appearing out of thin air. Once he's piled on by four of them, the ball's blood curdling scream ringing in all of their ears as they struggle to get it off the ground. 

Even then, Malfoy is stood a few feet away. Keeping his distance.

Harry doesn't plan to do it. He doesn't know if that's better or worse, that it's just some instinct, to see Malfoy an arm's length away and run him down, Harry's shoulder to his chest, their legs tangling as balance is lost and they fall. Both of his arms are around Malfoy's waist, surprisingly solid for how slim it is, and Harry hits the ground first, takes the impact on his sore shoulder. Malfoy has them rolled over in an instant, arm against his throat, knee at his thigh. 

"Potter, what the fuck ," he snarls, "I don't have the ball, you knob." 

His hair falls into his eyes. The game's just begun, and his uniform was pristine, before this. Harry's the reason for the dirt on him now.

"Sorry," Harry says, but Malfoy's up and gone, run back to the game before Harry's even got his breath back.

"Alright?" Ron says, panting as he comes up behind him and scoops him upright again. He's sweating already, face red from exertion and creased with worry. "Harry?" 

"Yeah, good," Harry says, "brilliant," and claps him on the back and avoids his eyes. 

A scream rends the air as Neville drops the ball, and they're groaning as the other team takes their penalty. Malfoy scores twice before he falls back and lets Boot take the lead, and by then no one's paying any attention to Harry, who's come up to where Malfoy is jogging back to his side of the field.

"Sorry," Harry says again, after he swipes Malfoy's legs out from under him and sends them both crashing. He can see the exact moment when Malfoy's face shifts from incredulous to enraged, and then a heavy boot connects with his ankle and the heel of Malfoy's hand jams down on his sore shoulder with a perfect, perfect spark of pain. Harry has to bite the inside of his mouth to keep the gasp from escaping, because he worries it wouldn't be a gasp at all. 

"Watch yourself, Potter," Malfoy hisses, and with the sun at his back he looks like he's lit up with fury. "You don't want to start this." 

Harry kind of really does, but the game is over before he gets another chance. They're trudging back to the locker rooms, Malfoy and Zabini attached at the hip again as though retreating back to their real teams, and it's stupid—it's obvious, how Harry gets in his way. He doesn't know how Malfoy isn't expecting it, but he trips on Harry's outstretched foot and goes down hard, with a bone-rattling impact that has everyone stopping in their tracks to cringe.

There are eyes on Harry. No one says anything, so neither does he, just keeps walking. He doesn't look back to see if Malfoy's picked himself up, or if Zabini helped him. The cool darkness of the locker room is nearly blinding after being out in the field for so long. Harry leans against the farthest wall by the equipment and closes his eyes. 

"Mate," Ron mutters as he shuffles in next to him. "What's going on with—" 

"Nothing," Harry says. 

By the time his vision clears and Ron returns to him, the room's half empty and the sound of so many showers has faded to the slow gurgle of water running into the drain. The air is muggy from cooling steam, and a few curtains are still drawn. Maybe Malfoy is in one of the stalls. Maybe he's grabbed his things and left for the dungeons already.

Harry doesn't think so.

"Go, I'll see you at dinner," he says to Ron, who's towelling his hair over a worried brow. "I think it'll take me a while." 

"I'll wait," Ron says stubbornly, crossing his arms over his chest.

"Hermione's out of Arithmancy by now," Harry says, and Ron shrugs, affecting nonchalance even as he turns red, like Harry doesn't know they shag after every game, probably more than once. The burn balm is depleting awfully fast. Harry rolls his eyes. "It's fine, mate. Go on." 

"Look," Ron says, scanning the dark room, hovering on the curtained stalls, the bodies moving in the shadows. Looking for Malfoy. When he doesn't find him, his eyes land on Harry's again. "If you're thinking—I don't know, just, don't—"

"I won't," Harry lies, "I'm not," and must put on an earnest enough expression that Ron sighs explosively and leaves him. 

He keeps the shower short and cold for the sake of his raw hands, and takes his time drying himself. Boot is the only one visible when Harry steps back out, shouldering his bag and giving him a nod and a "good game," and gone. Maybe, Harry thinks, there's no one else in here after all. Maybe he's sat on the bench half naked and shivering as water drips down his neck for nothing. Maybe he'd misread the look in Malfoy's eyes after he'd hit the ground—maybe. Still, he waits. 

When Malfoy appears, he's fully dressed, as clean and prim as though he's never seen dirt in his life, boots shiny, collar starched. His hair is wet, slicked back, and he's put his robes back on. Harry's stomach twists.

Malfoy stops at the other end of the bench, rows of lockers looming at his back. Without his glasses, Harry can't make out the look on his face, everything a blur.

"You've been spoiling for a fight, haven't you, Potter?" His voice is so low Harry has to strain to hear it. "Why? There are easier ways to get me expelled, surely." 

"Yeah," Harry agrees, standing to face him. 

Another drop of water runs a freezing trail down his back. Harry bites back a shiver and braces himself.

Malfoy's eyes go from his face to the tense line of his shoulders. Lower. His wand is in hand and pointed at him before Harry even sees him move.

"You do want to fight, then." 

"Yeah," Harry says, on a shaky sort of breath. He doesn't move.

Malfoy looks at him, then at the pile of his clothes on the bench. Harry's wand is buried somewhere in the pocket of his robes. When Harry doesn't summon it, Malfoy's eyes swing back to his, searching.

Harry takes a step toward him, then another. Malfoy's wand doesn't waver, doesn't drop until Harry's right up against it, the tip at his sternum, Malfoy's magic arcing between them like a nervous current. When he lowers it, his wand sparks heat where it drags over Harry's skin. His ring is back on his finger.

"Potter," he says. It's not quite a question, and not quite anything else.

"Hit me," Harry says. 

It's satisfying, to see his eyes widen. "What?" 

"You heard me," Harry says. "That's what I want. Hit me." 

Malfoy's nostrils flare, jaw firmed once again. "I don't know what you think you're playing at—"

"I'm not playing," Harry says, and takes another step. In any other circumstance, it would be funny how Malfoy takes a step back. "Are you really going to act like you don't want to?"

"Oh, I want to," Malfoy says, teeth bared. They're not even, canines a little too pronounced. Sharp. The way his lip curls over them when Harry moves in closer makes them look even sharper. His wand is still held at his side, clutched in a white-knuckled fist, like he's just waiting for Harry to make the first move. 

Harry's never shied away from that, at least. 

"Then do it," Harry says, and shoves him. Malfoy stumbles, and Harry shoves him again before he can get his bearings. "The invitation is practically fucking engraved. Come on." He's backed them both past the showers, and the tiles under his bare feet are no longer damp. The next shove has Malfoy up against the lockers. "Are you scared? I promise I won't hit you back." 

That gets him Malfoy's hand on his wrists, rough, nails digging into the skin. Harry's stomach swoops. 

"Yeah," he says, without meaning to, and Malfoy releases him like he's been burned. His wand is raised again, and this time Harry knows he's going to hex him and leave, no hands on him at all and no sign left behind. "Never needed to convince you, before," Harry says, crowding in further, hearing the desperation colouring his own voice. "I didn't have to wind you up for a fight, Malfoy. You were ready for it. What's changed? I didn't think it was possible for you to become even more of a coward—"

The backhand lands with enough force to whip his head to the side and blind him, so unexpected that Harry staggers back without thinking about it. His face is on fire, eyes watering. There's a ringing in his ears. His pulse pounds just behind his eyes, and he can feel it in his lips, the sweet sting of it, and he gets hard faster than he ever has, blood draining to his cock and leaving him dizzy. 

"Fuck," Malfoy says, voice shaky, and Harry realises that he can see it—his reaction, how obscenely his towel tents. He can't focus his eyes enough to make out the expression on Malfoy's face. "What the fuck is wrong with you?"

Something wet, at the corner of his mouth. Harry licks at it. Blood. He blinks to clear the tears from his eyes, and sees Malfoy's hand at his chest, clenching and unclenching. His ring. The look on his face, like Harry's some fearsome, untethered thing. Unknown. 

His cheek is hot to the touch. Harry tongues at the corner of his mouth and tastes iron. Again, he wants to say, please, but the way Malfoy's stood, on the verge of flight, makes him swallow it down. 

"Come off it," he says instead, sucking in a slow breath. His voice is steady. "Everyone knows what goes on in the dungeons, Malfoy. Don't tell me you and Zabini haven't gotten up to worse."

Harry's cock throbs, and he wonders what Malfoy would say if he grabbed at it, if he started jerking himself in front of him, while his face still burns and the cut on his lip is fresh and brightly painful. Malfoy's still looking at him like he's never seen him before.

"You are fucked in the head," he says, finally, and way he says fucked makes Harry's stomach clench fiercely, even as Malfoy firms his jaw and pushes past him. "Sort yourself out, Potter. And stay the fuck away from me." 

—

He doesn't go to dinner, and is cocooned in his bed by the time everyone else gets back to the tower. They're too exhausted to worry about what's gotten into him, even Ron, so that night Harry smothers his burning face in one pillow and drives his cock into another, bruised cheek throbbing in time with his heart. He tongues open the cut at every opportunity, relishes the sting and comes without a hand on him. The next morning, when his face has pinked from the bruise just enough for someone who was paying attention realise, he catches Malfoy's eye as he walks into the Great Hall. Tongue to cut. Watches as he falters. 

Hermione looks at him carefully in the bright, overcast light as they cross the courtyard. "From the game?" 

"Yeah," Harry says, and it's not a lie, not really. 

Malfoy doesn't come to the next game. The cut's healed up by then, despite Harry's best efforts, and he chews on the frustration, struggles against seeking Malfoy out and crowding him against the wall, saying, what are you so scared of? because he doesn't think that will work, not again. He doesn't know what else to do but get in Malfoy's way—reach for the same vial of armadillo bile, stop abruptly when they're walking into class so Malfoy can't help but run into him, knock their shoulders together when they leave. He doesn't know if anyone else notices, if they can sense his mounting desperation from all the nights he spends lying in bed and staring at the ceiling and trying to recover the memory of that first brilliant wash of pain. 

Stay the fuck away from me. Harry can't. The days get warmer, brighter. It seems everyone but Harry is flush with desire, necking in every empty shadow of the castle and crowding onto the grass by the lake in pairs, tugging blankets over themselves to get in a cheeky snog or more, whatever they can get away with. 

Hermione gets her first ever Acceptable on an exam because she forgoes preparation in favour of spending hours in Ron's bed, curtains drawn and charms up, and can't even do Harry the courtesy of seeming embarrassed about it. Ginny's back on with Dean, Harry thinks, until he sees her the next day with Neville again, and then with Dean and Neville both, caught between them and pink in the face, looking like he's never seen, like he didn't know she could look.

What's Harry to do, then, with all the want clogging up his chest? When running into Malfoy for weeks doesn't get any reaction beyond a clenched jaw, he doesn't have a choice, does he—he has to grab him in the middle of the bloody corridor, in plain view of whoever cares to look, and pulls him close, say, "Malfoy," and look into his pale, tense face and say, " you owe me. " 

Then it's Malfoy gripping him, steering him out of the corridor and into an alcove that opens up to a cramped little dungeon room, empty save for an old, dusty desk and handful of cracked cauldrons and broken chairs. There's no light in here other than the green glow of the wall-lamps, and as soon as the door creaks shut behind them Malfoy steps right up to him, wand out, eyes slits and mouth twisted. 

"Calling in a life debt because you want me to hurt you this badly, Potter? Are you certain?" He snarls the word. "Crucio." 

Harry doesn't flinch. He doesn't even blink. Malfoy's eyes widen in surprise, and then narrow again in renewed fury—to think that Harry knew he couldn't do it, hadn't believed it even for a second. He's getting hard, Harry realises in a vague sort of way, already, from nothing but the look on Malfoy's face and the promise of violence. 

He's close enough for Malfoy to slap him again. Harry tilts his head, just so, to present his cheek. 

"No," Malfoy says, on a shuddery sort of breath, and then, before Harry's stomach has had a chance to cramp from disappointment: "Against the wall." 

The cold stone is rough under his palms. He lets his head drop between his shoulders, blurry eyes on the ground. His glasses slip down his nose and his heart knocks against his chest like it's trying to break out. 

There's a rustle of movement, and then silence. He can barely hear anything at all over his heartbeat.

"No cuts," Malfoy says from behind him. His voice is hoarse. "No blood."

"Yeah," Harry says, breathless. "Yeah, alright. No blood." 

"Take off your cloak," Malfoy says, and he's barely got the words out before Harry's shrugged it off. He wrenches off his vest, too, and his shirt, lets it all crumple to the floor. There's silence, nothing beyond the sound of his shallow breathing as he braces himself against the wall again, cold air making the hair on the back of his neck rise and skin pebble. Harry wants to touch himself—his throat, his nipples, his cock—hands twitching with the urge to run over his skin, but Malfoy said against the wall. He stands. He waits. 

The first strike catches him across his shoulderblades. He doesn't know what it is, and doesn't have time to think before he's hit again, and then again—a rhythm that his own gasps fall into, ah, ah, ah— and it's not until he's shaking from it that he realises it's a belt, the sound as it whips through the air scratching some itch so deep in him that he has to drop one hand to fumble with his trousers, trembling. 

It's only when the sound stops that he understands Malfoy has gone still, because the pain is still fresh, throbbing. 

"Come on," Harry gasps, "don't—keep going, I need—" and there it is, cutting through the air and landing flat on his stinging back. 

Harry strips his cock as fast as he dares, buzzing with it, all rhythm lost. He should have counted, he thinks stupidly, working his cock harder—he should have counted how many times Malfoy swung, how many bruises he can expect to adorn his back. Next time, Harry thinks, and maybe it's that thought that has his balls drawing up, has him coming all over the wall and his hand, belt landing through the wrenching pull of orgasm and driving him further and further, until he can't hold himself up anymore. He sinks to the floor, forehead to the stone, back screaming in pain and cock pulsing still. 

By the time he's stopped shaking enough to turn around, Malfoy is gone.

—

"Same teams again, boys?" Seamus asks hopefully. 

His team's won three of the five games they've played, and the last one was only lost because Malfoy's absence was filled by a terrified sixth-year Hufflepuff who screamed every time the ball did. 

Malfoy is present for this one, white trousers and jumper abandoned for shorts and a soft-looking jersey that stretches across his shoulders and hugs the curve of his bicep. He doesn't look at Harry, not until Ron smacks him companionably on the back and Harry chokes on a gasp, pain ricocheting through his whole body. Malfoy's eyes are bright, colourless. Harry walks past him and can't resist brushing their shoulders together—not rough, not mean, just—a hello. Remember when—

Harry's braced for the pain, looking forward being knocked down and feeling the belt all over again, but he doesn't expect Malfoy to grab him not by the waist but across the shoulders, roll with him so that he's pressed flat against Harry's back, legs between his. The weight of him drives all the breath from Harry's chest and then the rising swell of pain hollows him out so thoroughly he can't even make a noise. The ball screams for him, slid across the ground as it slips from his nerveless fingers, and amid the commotion, everyone scrambling to grab it, Malfoy splays a hand on the ground in front of his face and drives his hips down, down. 

Harry doesn't know how he gets up again, after that. The game's pressed on, one penalty and then another. Harry gets back to it, joins in the pile to take possession from Seamus, every fleeting touch to his back like his cock being stroked. Like Malfoy rutting up against him. He was hard, Harry thinks dumbly as he fumbles for the ball, loses it, grabs it again. He was hard, because—he—

Malfoy's eyes catch on him, and then away. His fingers are bare. 

Harry gets in the shower last and stays under the spray for so long that Ron has no choice but to stomp off, and then longer still, until all he can hear is the sound of his own rapid breathing and the water beating down around him, each droplet like the prick of a needle against his sore back. He wants to jerk himself off. He wonders if Malfoy's doing the same, a few stalls down, holding his breath to keep in the noise. Does he do it hard, like it's a chore, or does he like to take his time and play with himself, tug the foreskin to and fro, smear spit and precome all over until everything is wet and good? Thinking about Malfoy's cock makes Harry's own twitch as much as his burning back, and when he steps out of the shower at last he's half expecting to see Malfoy just there, as naked as he is, hand on his prick. 

Malfoy is there, but dressed. The fall of his cloak shields him from Harry's eyes, takes him somewhere far away. He's untouchable. 

His eyes drop from Harry's face for just a second, nearly imperceptible. The hiss that leaves him when Harry turns to grab a towel is shockingly obvious in comparison. 

Harry knows what he's seen—the orgiastic mass of purpling welts that make up his back, from the tops of his shoulders to the dip of his arse. There's no pattern that Harry could make out when he'd looked in the cringing mirror, just a chaotic array of bruises, some so raw to the touch that Harry's unsure how the skin didn't break. No cuts, he thinks as he turns to face Malfoy again. No blood. 

"What do you tell girl Weasley about that, Potter?" Malfoy's wand is in hand, held at his side. He licks his lip, a pink flash of tongue there and gone again. "Or doesn't she know? Do you only fuck with the lights off?"

"I didn't know you cared how I fucked," Harry says evenly, and lets his eyes drop from Malfoy's mouth to his chest. Lower. "Think about it a lot, do you?" 

"You're the one with your cock out," Malfoy says. His jaw ticks. Harry wonders what he would do if he got on his knees. Wonders when he started wanting to.

"Yeah," Harry says instead. Raising his hands to towel his hair sends a fresh wave of pain through him and his cock jumps. Leaks. Malfoy blinks once, and again. Harry drops the towel and spreads his arms, palms out, come on, then.

Malfoy raises his wand to ward the door and then turns it on him, sends off a wordless stinging hex. It glances off Harry's chest next to his nipple, a stinging burn that feels as good as it does wrong, has Harry's stomach clenching and cock throbbing. 

"No," he says without meaning to, "don't," and Malfoy's arm drops like a string's been cut. "No, I mean—I want—your hands." 

The look on Malfoy's face is unreadable. Harry's face warms.

"Or the belt," he says. "Just not—magic." 

"Why?"

"I don't know," Harry says, and it's not the whole truth, maybe, but not a lie—he doesn't know how to explain that it's as if it's come from very far away and then gone, just like that. Magic doesn't linger the way he needs it to, won't sink into his skin and rearrange him the same way. It's too much and not enough, the signature so familiar that it makes Harry cramp with longing. Panic. His body recognizes Malfoy's magic in a way that he doesn't know how to untangle and brings with it a different kind of hurt. 

Malfoy says nothing, until. "The belt, then." 

"Yeah," Harry says, "fine, whatever," and turns to present his back and hide his face, still burning. Your hands. A stupid thing to ask for. 

The feel of Malfoy's hands, then, drives a sound from him—shockingly loud. Needy. It's only his palm, flat on Harry's back, long fingers splayed and driving in the sensation. His thumb digs in along his spine and Harry sways, nothing holding him up but that one aching point of contact. Malfoy's other hand rests against the dip of his lower back, knuckles dragging over the worst of the welts. Harry can't keep in a shaky moan. 

"I owe you," Malfoy says, almost absently. His cloak brushes Harry's legs, his bare arse. "Isn't that what you said?"

"Your life," Harry tells him, and the dig of Malfoy's thumb turns cruel. The edge of his nail draws a long line of fire.  " Fuck. Just—do it, I want— "

Malfoy takes in a sharp breath through his nose. "Bend over." 

Harry doesn't know which wall to hold himself up against. Malfoy mistakes his hesitation for something else and his hands fall away from Harry's back as he scoffs. 

"Don't get ahead of yourself. I'm not about to bugger you, Potter." 

"Are you sure about that?" Harry turns just to see his mouth flatten. He's flushed, pink over the bridge of his pointy nose, his cheeks. His mouth is wet. I could feel you, Harry wants to say, how hard you were, but Malfoy would just deny it. 

"You're the freak who gets off on this," Malfoy says, and his voice is dismissive but his eyes keep straying to Harry's mouth, his throat and bare chest, before being dragged back up again through sheer force of will. "I'm paying off a debt."

"Right," Harry says, and can't help himself: "So you're not hard right now." 

He does it without thinking, and so quickly Malfoy doesn't have a chance at stopping him—grabs Malfoy's prick and palms it, and he is hard, the lying bastard, but before Harry can crow about it there's a hand on his throat shoving him back, cutting off his air with a vicious squeeze.

"Keep your fucking hands to yourself," Malfoy snarls, and Harry sucks in a breath when his hand falls away and backs up further, until he hits the wall. The flush on Malfoy's face is higher, but Harry knows now it's not just from anger; his cock was thick in Harry's hand, hard in the way that Harry is, not a maybe but a please. Malfoy's hands drop to his belt, and Harry has to squeeze the base of his cock and tug on his balls to keep from giving into the feeling, the physical reaction that the sound of Malfoy's belt coming loose triggers in him now. 

Malfoy wraps the belt around his hand and Harry can't look anymore. He turns away and rests his forearms to the wall and his head to his forearms, spreads his legs and tries to keep his thighs from shaking.

It's not his arse that Malfoy hits, but the backs of his thighs. Harry chokes out one, dizzy already, trembling all over. This pain is duller this time, slams into him and spreads. Two. Three. Over his arse now, twice in the same pulsing spot. Four. 

"Stop it," Malfoy says. "What are you doing? Shut the fuck up, Potter," and Harry didn't know he was counting on a shout but he can't stop now, why would Malfoy ask him to, ten, eleven. "Shut up."

"Fuck," Harry gasps, "oh—fuck—twelve—thir—" He can't get the word out, and Malfoy's sped up and so has Harry's hand to match it, stripping his cock as it drips with precome. His arse is on fire, no respite, and Malfoy's arm must be sore too, to swing at him again and again just so, it must burn. Harry has to keep count, sixteen, and his face is burning, too, wet from—from—he doesn't know, his eyes are squeezed shut and all he can see are bright blooming sparks in the darkness, the heat of his own breath stinging his upper lip, the sting—the sting—

He comes on twenty-one and Malfoy's shaky curse.

— 

"Is everything alright," Hermione asks, once Ron's left them to play a round of Exploding Snap. "Harry?" 

"Yeah," Harry says. "Why? Don't I look alright?"

"You do," she says slowly, like maybe that's the problem. Even pressed against the forgiving cushion of the sofa, his back throbs in time with his heartbeat. His arse is too sore to sit on anything harder, and he's dreading class in the morning, but it's the kind of dread that makes heat pool at the base of his spine and cock chub up. 

When he's in bed, he doesn't have to think anymore. He can just feel—the cool sheets against his raw skin, his pulse in the base of his throat, the shiver rising up from his toes and over his thighs. He doesn't have to think, but he does anyway: of Malfoy's careful eyes and flat mouth, the way his hair looks under the sun and the way it looks wet from the shower, slicked back. The smile that plays on his mouth once they've won another game, every time he scores, better than Harry at something at last. 

He thinks of the sound Malfoy makes when Harry comes, like it's been punched out of him, instead. He thinks about his hands.

His hands, wrapped up in the supple leather of his no-doubt expensive belt. Curled around a quill. Braced against the worn wood of their bench tables, tapping at the edge. Long fingers, neat nails. His ring. Harry doesn't get to have his hands, but he can look, and that's enough, he thinks, until. 

Zabini's head is bent over Malfoy's cauldron, distorted by the steam rising from it. He's laughing at what he sees, and Harry can't see Malfoy's face, but he must be laughing too—Harry's seen it often enough, how he looks at Zabini—and then his hand settles on the back of Zabini's neck, so familiar as to be perfunctory. Harry's heart squeezes as Malfoy's hand does, like he's reached inside his chest and gripped him, too. Just so.

It's all he can see. His hand. Zabini's neck. Harry's stopped making a nuisance of himself in class, now that he gets what he wants outside of it, but just then he can't keep himself from it, shoves Malfoy on his way out hard enough that he hits the wall. Doesn't look back.

Malfoy doesn't say anything when they meet next, just looks at him with his cool eyes and takes off his belt.

"Harder," Harry grits out, tasting salt. It's been minutes, or hours. He didn't count—couldn't, couldn't stop thinking about— "Stop fucking around, Malfoy—I want it harder." 

Malfoy stops, instead. Harry swings his head back to look at him and his face is blank, nothing of him that boy in the classroom who was loose and happy and so free with his affection. Harry opens his mouth to say something else, another taunt or—he doesn't know, anything to get a reaction, but then Malfoy's waving his wand, and the heavy manacles hitched to the ceiling of this dungeon drop down with a clang of chains. They're in the centre of the room, and when Harry feeds his hands through them he realises this way Malfoy will have access to every angle of his body, can whip him from any direction. 

The chain is cold in his grip, old, rusted from disuse, and the manacles tighten just enough that his hands can't slip free. Another flick of Malfoy's wand and they begin to draw back up, Harry's shoulders straining to keep his feet on the ground until he's nearly in the air, aching from his fingertips to his toes. Malfoy doesn't have to say don't let go. 

It's harder to breathe. Malfoy's come to stand in front of him, now, and they've never done it like this—not this way, where Harry can see the belt around Malfoy's hand, and see the way his arm pulls back—see it before he hears it before he feels it, lashed across his thighs. He doesn't know what sort of sound he makes, but it makes Malfoy's jaw clench. The belt lands on his hip next, and then again, precise, perfect. 

His shoulders are screaming, feet straining for purchase. Harry can feel the length of his body in a way he hasn't ever before, every muscle stretched, trembling, while Malfoy persists, one strike after another, moving around him in slow, loping circles and swinging his arm to some rhythm only he knows. He won't look at Harry's face.

"Harder," Harry mangages, fighting against the searing burn overwhelming his entire body, "do it—"

The backs of his thighs. The tender curve where his arse meets his leg, just there, again and again. Breath comes in shallow little pants, and he doesn't know if he's closed his eyes or his vision is going spotty, whether light bleeds into the darkness or the other way around. His fingers have cramped from clutching the chain, couldn't release it now if he tried. The manacles dig into his skin anyway and he can't get enough air in his lungs and still, harder, he says, do it harder, but what he means is touch me. What he wants is Malfoy's hand on the back of his neck, that smile, his laugh, and he wants it without having to ask, he wants—he wants—

"Potter," Malfoy's saying, but he doesn't sound like himself, "Potter! Rennervate. Here, look, look at me— look at me, open your eyes." 

Open your eyes. Were his eyes closed? It takes effort to make any part of him move. Something is crushing him, sat on his chest and driving him into the ground. He's cold, and his lungs are cramped, tired, struggling to fill. 

"Potter," Malfoy says, and there's that awful hitch to his voice again. There's a hand on his face, Harry thinks. A hand, gripping his jaw, slapping at his cheek, but just gently. Not like the time— "Please. Fuck! Rennervate! Look at me." 

The word sounds foreign coming from Malfoy's mouth. Please. Has Harry ever heard him say it? Not like this. He has to see him, then, to make sure Malfoy's real, because he doesn't sound real any more. When his face swims into view Harry's chest seizes, because he's in a memory, isn't he, thrown into a pensieve and made to relive that moment when Malfoy looked into the mirror and saw him through his tears. 

He's closer, now, close enough to touch. How did he get so close? Is he bleeding, Harry wonders. Had he cut him open yet— 

"Fuck," Malfoy says, "fuck, okay, alright," and the hand on Harry's face lifts to wipe at his trembling mouth. 

"What—" Harry says, but it comes out too low to be heard, not even a breath of a sound, so he tries again: "What's wrong?" 

This, too, is part of the memory: Malfoy's face twisting in fury. 

"What do you fucking think, Potter?" 

He hasn't reached for his wand yet, so Harry reaches for him. Maybe this time will be different. Can he change a memory? His arm is too heavy. Is something still on him? He's crushed. Why can't he move? 

"I don't know," Harry says. His vision is clearing, but he's lost his glasses, so everything beyond Malfoy's face is a blur. He doesn't mind it. "I don't—know, what happened?"

"You passed out," Malfoy says, and he's gone stiff and cold for all that his cheeks are still streaked with tears. "I couldn't wake you."

They're on the floor, Harry thinks. He hurts, but in a distant way, like his body's recognized the threat but doesn't have the energy to fear it just yet. He's cold, and naked, or he's cold because he's naked, but Malfoy's looking at him like he's gone and died again, but he's—"alright," Harry says, "no, I'm alright. I want—"

"You want," Malfoy cuts him off, bloodless lips barely moving in a bloodless face, "you want, oh, I know what you fucking want. It's all about what you want. Fuck you, Potter. I don't care about—I don't care what you want anymore. I don't want this." 

"What? Yes, you do," Harry argues without knowing what they're even talking about, because Malfoy's shaking his head and getting smaller—moving, he's moving away. "You do want it. You're like me, you—"

"Like you?" Malfoy spits. "Is that what you think? Is that why you've picked me, because you think I'm—I'm just as fucked up as you are? You think I like hurting people, Potter? That I get off on it?" 

"Don't you?" Harry says, confusion fogging what part of his mind the pain hasn't gotten to. He means to say more, but it's lost on the way to his mouth. Malfoy's face has gone bone-white, eyes wide and dark, shiny in the dim light of the dungeon. 

"Fuck you," he says again, nearly soundless, and then he's on his feet and—

"Wait," Harry says, "don't," and wants to rise and catch him, but no part of him consents to being moved, so all he can do is say, again, "don't go—don't go," but he does. 

The silence is unbearable, broken only by Harry's own shallow breathing. His heart seems to have expanded to fill every empty corner of him, pounding in agony behind his eyes and in his throat and fingertips, in all the forgotten places. He summons his glasses, and rolls himself onto his side, but that's all he can manage before the screaming pain in his shoulder and back renders him immobile. He wants to call out for Malfoy again, and maybe he does, stupidly—but no one comes. He's alone, and the thought makes him shake worse than the pain, closes up his throat and makes his chest ache. Malfoy left him, just like that, even after Harry told him not to, said over and over, don't go, don't go, don't go— 

"I'm here," someone says—no, not someone—Malfoy—and then there's hands on him, pressing into the throbbing mass of Harry's back and making him cry out. "I'm here, look at me," Malfoy says, so Harry does.  

There's a wand pointed at him. Harry closes his eyes again, and the hitching wave of a healing spell lifts away the pain in his shoulder. It moves down his arm, and then around his back, and Harry must protest, because he doesn't want to lose the bruises he earned, needs to keep the reminder, he hadn't counted, he needs to count, but Malfoy is relentless. Soon the pain has faded to so close to nothing that Harry's eyes begin to burn with loss. He turns his face towards Malfoy, seeking, and feels the soft wool of his cloak against his skin, burrows into it while he's shifted and turned until he's nearly upright, leaned back against something solid and warm and breathing. 

Malfoy's chest shudders under him, in little bursts that Harry dimly recognizes but can't name. One of his hands is on Harry's back, and the other Harry can see in front of him, braced on the cold stone floor. 

"Can you," Harry mumbles, but Malfoy doesn't let him finish.

"No." 

His voice sounds raw. Harry reaches for his hand and Malfoy yanks it out of his grasp, but Harry's not hurting enough to slow him down—he's not hurting at all—so it's easy to grab it again and bring it up to his face. Malfoy strains in his grip but Harry holds him fast until Malfoy lets out a shaky breath and settles his hand on Harry's head, sinks his fingers into his hair. 

Harry can't bring himself to say, touch me, keep touching me, so he keeps his grip on Malfoy's wrist, and moves him how he wants, how he needs itt: stroking over his face, his hair, the back of his neck. 

The back of his neck. 

He squeezes, just a little. Harry buries his face in Malfoy's damp throat and shivers and comes back to him, one slow breath at a time.

—

"You didn't come up, last night," Ron says, low enough that Hermione won't catch it. He doesn't say, where were you?

"Yeah," Harry says, swallowing his mouthful. There's too many people in the Great Hall to make out who's at the Slytherin table. Ron's eyes are tired, searching. There's a love bite just under his collar in the shape of Hermione's prim mouth. Harry almost smiles to see it. "It's not bad. It's—I'll tell you." He doesn't say, but not now.

 Ron nods. Beyond him, Hermione glances their way. "Game today." 

"Yeah," Harry says. "I think I'll sit this one out." 

It's childish, spelling a piece of parchment to seek someone. Malfoy's done it enough times, horrid little notes landing on Harry's hair and in his food, crude cartoons of him getting maimed or just a few words in Malfoy's neat script: be careful and don't hurt yourself, while Malfoy glowed with malicious glee just across the room, but Harry's never felt the urge. He's never wanted someone this way before, someone just outside of his reach. 

He doesn't know how to fold the note up like Malfoy does, into birds or dragons or—once, on Valentine's Day, a pulsing heart that just said, get fucked Potter— so Harry turns it into a square, neat as he can make it, sends it off. 

"I wanted to talk," Harry says, when Malfoy finally arrives. 

"Did you," says Malfoy. He's no darker for having been out in the sun for so many months, still a sort of pale that doesn't look quite real in the shadows of the broomshed. Maybe Harry should've picked a different location, but the dungeons feel too raw and the locker room will be occupied. For an absurd moment, Harry thinks of bringing Malfoy up to the tower and his red-and-gold canopy bed, closing the curtains around them and drawing him down over his body, taking the full weight of him, on him, and in him—just—having him. 

The thought makes him shiver. Malfoy notices because, Harry thinks, he notices everything.

"Do you remember," Harry says, "what you asked me, after—after the—" Battle, when he found Malfoy sat on the front steps alone amongst the rubble, as pale as he is now, eyes as tired, as luminous. 

"Yes," Malfoy says. His throat bobs on a swallow.

"You asked me if it was over." It wasn't so long ago. Harry can see him so clearly. 

"You said you didn't know," Malfoy says, quiet. He had been quiet then, too. Lost. Searching.

"I still don't," Harry says, trying to find the words. "I don't know what will make things better. I don't know what I want, most of the time." He doesn't even know if what he's saying makes any makes sense. "Most of the time." 

Malfoy's mouth twists. "I can't read your fucking mind, Potter." 

"You can," Harry says, helpless and stupid with it. "If you want." I'd let you, he doesn't say, because the end of that sentence holds infinite things. I'd let you—I want—-

There's not so much distance to cross, for all that it feels like it takes Harry forever to do it. He stops an arm's length from him, and tries to find the answer in his face. Malfoy looks at him, and then away. His hands go to his belt, and his jaw is clenched tight. 

He's scared, Harry thinks with a horrible little lurch. Scared of Harry, of himself, and of whatever this is—this yawning ache between them that won't stop growing, years and years of it finally solidifying into something they can't ignore anymore. He's scared, but he undoes his belt anyway. You can't trust him, but he does, Harry thinks, gone numb; he trusts him with his life. Harry watches Malfoy wrap that belt around a trembling hand and the feeling overwhelms him, draws his chest so tight he can't breathe for a quick, blinding moment, and he doesn't even know he's moved until his hands are on Malfoy's shoulders and his mouth is under his.

If Malfoy makes a sound it's lost in the kiss. Harry cups his face with both hands, moves him how he wants and runs his thumbs along the hinge of his jaw until his mouth opens against his. It feels like wriggling the key into a tricky lock and hearing it click, so deeply satisfying that Harry shivers with it and has to close his burning eyes. It turns wet—hungry—and Harry's stomach swoops with every slide of Malfoy's tongue, the feel of his too-sharp tooth and how soft his skin is, now that Harry's allowed to touch: the sensitive little spot behind his ear, his sullen lower lip, and just beneath his eyes. He kisses like he's done everything else—too careful, until Harry drags him into the chaos.

Harry wants more—wants all of it—and he rides the swell of victory when Malfoy doesn't stop him from unfastening his cloak and letting it fall to the dirty floor, doesn't stop him from untucking his shirt from his trousers and sliding his hands underneath, to feel the hot, soft skin of his back, muscles tensing under his palms. Harry touches him like he's never wanted to do anything else and Malfoy lets him, keeps kissing him, mouthing at his chin and jaw, sloppy, never breaking apart, not even for a moment.

The door to the shed opens to chatter and a high-pitched, "oh!" and then closes just as fast. There's laughter, somewhere outside.

"Fuck," Malfoy says, "my wand," is on the floor, along with Harry's and half their clothes, and Harry doesn't care to search for them, doesn't want to bother with locking the door and warding it when he could catch Malfoy's mouth instead and kiss him again, harder, deeper. "Potter—someone—" 

"Yeah," Harry agrees, and fumbles to unbutton his trousers, "good," lets them fall, and cups Malfoy's cock through his poncy silk briefs, says, "oh—you feel—" 

Hot, and thick, big enough that the head of his cock is poking out of the band and leaking plaintively against his belly. So Harry has to drag his briefs down, of course, doesn't have a choice in the matter, and wrap his hand around him properly. Malfoy makes a hurt little noise when Harry tugs at him, when he swipes his thumb over the head to smear in the precome he's leaking and then spoil him with long, lavish strokes, a twist at the end that makes him shudder. 

"'s good," Harry says, kissing his jaw, his throat, frantic, wet, open-mouthed kisses wherever he can reach, "good, isn't it—" and then there's hands on him, too, pulling his cock out, Malfoy's long fingers wrapped around him, his ring—oh— 

"I'm going to," Harry gets out, and Malfoy says, "yes," and bites him just as he digs in the nails of his free hand into Harry's back and drags them down in a brilliant shuddering spark of pain. His hand comes around Harry's side, long quick fingers finding the most sensitive patch of skin just below his ribs. And there—a pinch.

Harry comes all over them both, shaking with it, and Malfoy pinches him again, twists in that awful, mean way of his, quick and precise, and sucks Harry's sore, throbbing lower lip into his mouth and worries at it until Harry's cock is pulsing empty, twitching from oversensitivity. His hand is on Malfoy's cock but he's lost all rhythm, barely moving, and then Malfoy folds a hand over his, still slick with Harry's come, and guides him into every pull, mouth at Harry's jaw and then his ear.

"Good," he says against Harry's ear, and Harry's insides lurch with panic because he can't come again, not so soon, can he, and because it feels like he will, like he has to, when Malfoy says, "yes, like that," in that voice, breath searing Harry's skin.

His cock is hot in Harry's hand, trapped between their bodies, and when Harry squeezes him just so Malfoy says good, and it is. By the time he comes, Harry's gone dizzy with pleasure and the bright, awful, perfect edge of pain. He doesn't know they've sunk to the floor until he registers the hard packed dirt under his bare knees. He should tug up his briefs, at least, because anyone could come in, but the more he thinks on it, what they'd see—the two of them, tangled together, Malfoy sitting in the dirt and Harry on him, kissing him and kissing him like they'll die if he stops—the more he wants it. Another want, he thinks, another little thing taking root.

Malfoy's hands are on his face, thumb at his sore lip. It didn't bleed. No cuts. Harry mouths at his fingers, kisses the ring.

He recognizes the signet. Malfoy's eyes are so dark. 

"My mother's," he says, and Harry has to duck his head to hide his burning face because it would give all of it--everything--away. The rise and fall of Malfoy's chest under him is another memory, his shirt soft against Harry's cheek but softer still is his skin, so Harry presses in and feels it with his mouth, his tongue. He's aimless, floating, and sunk so deep there's no hope left of seeing the surface. 

There is a hand in his hair. It trembles as it sinks in. 

Harry tries to hide his smile in Malfoy's throat. 

"What?" Malfoy says, and his hand curls into a fist. He tugs, just gently, until Harry's head lifts and he can look at his face. "What, Potter? That's what you wanted, isn't it?"

There's a flush stealing across his face, a perfect pink. Harry wants to laugh.

"Will you give me everything I want, Malfoy?" he asks, and the sweep of Malfoy's lashes says yes, yes, yes.