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The Higher Geometry	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 3534 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and I am not making any money from this story.

Chapter List
- 1-The Higher Geometry
- 1
Title: The Higher
Geometry

Pairings: Harry/Draco

Summary: The
Unspeakables have invented a device that slows down time--sort of. During its
testing in the Department of Mysteries, Harry and Draco accidentally set it
off.

Rating: R

Disclaimer: J. K.
Rowling and her associates own everything Harry Potter. I make no claim to them
and am not doing this for money.

Warnings:
Sex, angst. EWE.

Wordcount: 17,600

Author�s Notes: This
is a pinch-hit for prompt 124, which gave me most of the story. Hopefully it�s plotty enough! Thanks to my betas, Linda. and Christine.

The Higher Geometry

Before the Pendant

�� "This
is stupid."

�� No one
appeared inclined to listen to him, so Harry just had to keep his mutters to
himself as they walked down the corridor that led through the convoluted maze
of the Department of Mysteries. The department had changed a lot since the last
time Harry had been here as a student, Harry had to grudgingly admit. That
didn�t mean he was happy to be here, and so he glared in every direction he
could.

�� The walls
were flat and black, set with large stones, as though to say that the
Unspeakables were as firm as the Ministry itself. The floor, on the other hand,
shone with a long curlicue of blue light that was apparently meant to lead them
to the display they�d come to watch. Harry prodded it once with his wand; it
spat a disapproving spark at him and then continued primly running into the
distance. Harry reckoned that could represent the Unspeakables� determination
to remain independent of the rest of the Ministry. They refused an
investigation by the Aurors into their affairs every year, Harry did know that.

�� And then he
started thinking about what the torches, in golden sconces behind glass globes,
could represent, and had to give up. It was early and he had a headache, and he
had never been good at games of symbolic logic anyway. Kingsley had only given
him a stern look when he attempted to pass that class.

�� They came
out into a large room that was circular for the most part, although Harry kept
getting glimpses of unexplained angles and corners out of the side of his eye
just when he�d started to relax. All the walls shone with the blue lights, and
the central roof bent down like an inverted dome over a pentagon of golden
pillars. Someone stood next to them, an Unspeakable from the robe, studying the
device that lay on a crystal table between the pillars.

�� Harry was
relatively calm, despite the fact that he was only here because Kingsley
thought someone who had done a historic deed should witness a historic device,
until the Unspeakable turned and Harry caught a glimpse of his hair.

�� "Malfoy," he hissed, body tightening.

�� The other
two Aurors walking in front of him, both ancient sticks who had probably been
chosen to represent the Department of Magical Law Enforcement at this ceremony
because they could remember Merlin himself, turned around and frowned severely
at him. Harry frowned back and waved a hand at Malfoy. "Doesn�t it bother you
that the Ministry hires former Death Eaters to staff its most mysterious
department?" he demanded.

�� "Thank
you so much for the commendation, Potter," Malfoy said from right behind
him, making Harry jump, and then hate himself for jumping. "It�s
reassuring to know that Aurors at least have a grasp of some basic ideas, such
as the Department of Mysteries being mysterious."

�� Harry
scowled, transferring the hate for his nerves onto Malfoy. Malfoy looked
perfectly calm and bored, damn him. His hood was pulled back now, and Harry
could see not only his hair but also his face, bone-pale, with thin, red lips
that looked as if he used some special kind of makeup on them. A small, thin scar
ran from the top of his fringe to the top of his nose, between his eyes, and
then stopped. Harry wouldn�t have seen it at all, given the pallor of his skin,
except that it was a bit silvery, like the color of the scars Harry remembered
forming on Malfoy�s chest after he�d used Sectumsempra
on him.

�� Harry
realized suddenly that he was staring and turned away with another scowl. He
might have said something, but he didn�t remember it, and Malfoy was speaking
with the two other Aurors as though he hadn�t heard, anyway.

�� "You
understand that I can only provide you with a summary?" Malfoy�s eyes
darted back and forth between the two ancients.

�� They nodded
like the fools they were, and the one on the left, who had a beard that
Dumbledore would have been ashamed of, said, "We don�t need the
understanding of the magical theory behind your device, Unspeakable Malfoy. We
only need a demonstration so that we can know whether it�s safe to put in Auror
hands. Feel free to keep your secrets like the respected craftsman you are."

�� "The
respected craftsman you are," Harry mimicked under his breath. Honestly,
who talked like that?

�� Then he
abruptly realized something, and stood up. "Wait a minute. Malfoy invented this device? Why are we
in the same room with it and not a hundred miles away?"

�� Everyone
else ignored him. Malfoy walked over to the nearest of the golden pillars,
which bent inwards to the crystal table like teeth, and touched it. It began to
hum. Blue lightning extended from it like grasping hands, wavered back and
forth for a moment, hesitated, and then touched the next pillar. The lightning
was more confident in going from that pillar to the next.

�� "You
do realize that Malfoy tried to kill me more than once?" Harry asked
loudly. "Now I know why I�m here. Because someone in the Ministry wants to
get rid of me, and thought this would be the most efficient way!"

�� "Do
shut up, Auror Potter," said the second Auror, the one with a brow so
thick that Harry was surprised he could see from beneath it. He was watching
Malfoy�s humming little device with fascination.

�� Harry
huffed and crossed his arms. He almost hoped that something would go horribly
wrong, because that would be all Malfoy deserved.

*

�� Draco
hadn�t realized how hard it would be, to see him again.

�� Oh, he had
known Potter still existed; he had known Potter was an Auror. It was impossible
to get away from that, with Potter�s face always plastered on the Prophet and his eyes staring at the
camera in feigned innocence. He had to
know that the photographers were there, Draco thought, at least most of the
time. He seemed to fool most of his public, but he wouldn�t fool Draco.

�� So he had
been prepared, in some measure, by the papers.

�� But it was
easy, too, to forget Potter: to sink into his routine as an Unspeakable,
dancing the rings of time, weaving the spirals together, debating the circles. To dive so deep into an underwater world that the intrusion of
daylight was shocking.

�� Potter was
all daylight, bright and hard and unforgiving. Draco could feel Potter�s gaze
tracking him as he walked around the device, checking the strength of the
lightning bonds. It bothered him more than it should have. He had given up the
light and the dark for the shadows, willingly, and they ought to have sheltered
him more.

�� Potter
leaned against the wall and stared at him. Or he was behind Draco, on his
heels, and staring at him. Draco didn�t know his exact position, and he was
glad for that. It showed that one of his senses had escaped Potter�s
domination. He addressed Aurors Greyson and Trevors, who seemed interested in what he was doing.

�� "This
device slows down time for the criminal caught in it." He indicated the
edge of the device, a crystal, tear-shaped pendant with a small golden clock
embedded in it. Greyson and Trevors
leaned forwards and made admiring sounds. "He can only stagger along in an
endless, stretched second, while around him everything moves at a normal speed.
You can see how useful this would be for the Aurors." He gave a
confidential smile to Greyson and Trevors
and tried to ignore the feeling of diamond-pointed observation from Potter. "They
would be able to transport the criminal to Azkaban, a holding cell, or the
courtroom, anywhere they liked, while to him his transport would seem
instantaneous."

�� "I
understand that you are also thinking about applications for prison," Trevors said. "That a criminal caught in such a device
could be made to feel that he was living through a sentence of years, while he
was actually only in prison for a few seconds or days?"

�� Draco
nodded. In truth, he wasn�t quite sure about the ratio of time inside the
teardrop of the device to time outside the teardrop, but there was no way he
would tell them that. They would probably take his funding away. Always best to
remain calm and confident and never give them a reason to doubt you. "Yes.
There is some concern that criminals who spend years in Azkaban�physical
years�come out broken in health and thus unable to contribute to our society,
as well as bitter against the ones who imprisoned them and thus less likely to
achieve a full rehabilitation. My device can give them the experience of
punishment for their crimes while releasing them soon enough that they would be
able to rejoin society and find almost no time gone at all."

�� Trevors frowned. "Is that wise, Unspeakable Malfoy?"
Potter gave a childish snicker, probably at hearing Draco�s title conjoined
with his name. Draco ignored him with studied magnificence. "Yes, it would
seem like eternity to the prisoner, but everyone else would see him as having
endured no punishment."

�� "The
prisoner�s perception is more important than the public�s," Draco said. "The
Ministry can manage the perceptions of the public with ease and skill; it is
the minds of hardened criminals that we have more difficulty in cracking."

�� Through the
bright surface of the pendant, he could see Potter�s eyes roll. Draco�s
shoulders stiffened, but then he took a deep breath and made himself
relax. What did anything Potter did or said matter? Draco took Potter more
seriously than Potter took him, and that wasn�t a good idea, when Potter was
simply an overgrown child playing hero.

�� "True,"
Trevors murmured.

�� Greyson took up the litany. "How do they survive
inside the pendant? If they experience a subjective year, wouldn�t they starve
to death?"

�� Draco shook
his head with a small, smug smile. "No. I made a distinction between
physical and mental years a moment ago." Both the older Aurors nodded and
tried to look as if they had noticed said distinction; Potter just looked
confused. Draco sneered at him sideways. That
honesty will get him into trouble someday. "The body lives the
physical year, in normal time, during, say, a sojourn in Azkaban, and so must
be fed and bathed and rested. It does not live the same time inside my pendant,
only the second or minutes the prisoner is held. The mind is what experiences the passing of that year. The prisoner
will go through boredom, guilt, and endless brooding, but he will never starve
or suffer, although he might feel as if he should be hungry, and I think it
likely that most people will attempt to spend the time sleeping, so as to make
it pass faster."

�� "It�s
cruel," Potter said suddenly.

�� Draco
turned, eyebrows lifted. He had little choice but to take notice of a direct
question, irritating as Potter was. He cast an aura of heat around him, Draco thought, that could well disrupt the lightning bonds and
melt the pendant. "I beg your pardon?"

�� "It�s
cruel, to make someone suffer that," Potter said. "All
alone? Suffering for a year with no companionship?" He shook his
head, face stubborn. "Besides, I don�t see how this pendant will be useful
if you have to set up these stupid pillars in every place where you want to use
it." He swatted casually at the nearest crackle of lightning.

�� "Don�t!" Draco cried, beyond
shocked. He hadn�t thought to warn them because he had thought no one would be
that stupid, but�

�� A silent
explosion of light opened around them, and Draco felt the hard sleeting past
him that he associated with an opening shape of time. He lunged to the right,
the only direction he could think of that might let him escape�

�� And then
light abounded.

�� Within the Teardrop

�� Harry
opened his eyes slowly. His hand stung, and he brought it to his mouth and
sucked on his finger without thought. Then he winced. Ron would have told him
not to do that, that the stinging insect or scorpion that had struck him might
still have been there, and really, what kind of Auror was he, to think of danger last and pain first?

�� He looked
around at the room he lay in. He knew that some sort of explosion had happened
in the Department of Mysteries, the explosion he had been certain would happen,
because Malfoy was trying to kill him no matter what anybody said.

�� But instead
of on a hospital bed, he lay in an ovular, white room shaped like an egg. Harry
rose to his feet in some alarm. The room seemed to rock around him for a
moment, but Harry realized that must have been his head spinning, because when
he reached out and tapped the crystalline wall a few feet away, it was solid
and didn�t sway.

�� He turned
in a circle. There was no bed in the enclosure, and no bathroom. He frowned and
fought down panic. This wasn�t St. Mungo�s. He had probably got trapped in some
experimental part of the Department. Well, they would find him and let him out
in a few minutes. He started to sit down again in the same place where he�d
been.

�� Then
someone groaned.

�� Harry turned around, ready to say, "That was fast."
The last time he�d been involved in a DoM accident,
they�d left him trapped inside a small square enclosure that supposedly
contained the souls of dead philosophers for more than a day.

�� But lying
next to him was Malfoy. Harry stared, then frowned. "What
the fuck are you doing here, Malfoy?"
he demanded.

�� Malfoy
lifted his head and gave Harry a sharp stare. Then he buried his head in his
hands. Harry nodded. He could hope that Malfoy was beginning to realize how stupid
he had been, to try and kill Harry Potter in front of other Aurors, but he
still wanted to know what had happened and how Malfoy�s murder attempt had gone
wrong.

�� "My
device," Malfoy whispered. "You set it off, you idiot. We�re trapped
inside it now. God knows how long we�ll be here." Then he laughed
hollowly. "What am I talking about? It will only be a second."

�� Harry
counted a second under his breath, and nothing happened. "Well?" he
said.

�� "A second to the people outside the pendant."
Malfoy sucked in a breath. "We�re here for�thirteen months. Thirteen subjective months.
That was how much time I had set the device to imitate."

�� Harry
stared. "Like the prisoners that you wanted to punish?" he asked. "We�we
can�t be, Malfoy. We�d kill each
other."

�� "It
doesn�t matter," Malfoy said dully, shutting his eyes. "That�s what
happened. I recognize this from the description of one of the men I tested it
on. The crystalline walls and the shape of the room were just the same."

�� "You
trapped us in the pendant?"
Harry turned around again, thinking that he should be able to see faces peering
in or at least the golden clock embedded in the device stretched above or to
the sides. Wasn�t the pendant made of crystal? Crystal was transparent, and it
would act for them as a window on the world.

�� But he
discovered that not all crystals were created equal. This crystal was clouded
transparent, with patches here and there where it looked as if Harry was
staring into mist. He reached out and tapped one of them. It rang with a true,
high note, but showed no indication of breaking when Harry threw his shoulder
against it.

�� "You
crossed the barrier with your hand," Malfoy whispered. "That means
that the trapped time no longer was contained within a certain amount of space.
It expanded instead, and to redress the balance, it grabbed the first people it
could find. We must have been standing within an equal distance of the pendant
when the explosion happened."

�� "How
do we get out?" Harry asked. Much as he hated it, it seemed this had
actually occurred, and Malfoy was the expert, so he was the one Harry needed to
listen to.

�� "I
designed the pendant to be impossible to open from the inside." Malfoy
lifted his head and gave Harry an opaque look. "They�ll have to open it
for us. Don�t worry," he added, in the apparent absurd belief that he
could reassure Harry for the devastation in his expression. "No matter how
long we�re trapped in here, how much time seems to pass for us, it will only be
a second outside."

�� "But
it will seem like more than that to us," Harry whispered, and sank to the
floor. He didn�t want Malfoy to see the way his hands were trembling. The
easiest way to keep him from seeing that was to turn away.

*

�� Draco
watched Potter. He wanted to say a few more things, to explain how the device
worked, by constructing a separate circle of time within the wider circles and
spirals, and turning it sideways so that it came into alignment with the mind,
but he didn�t think Potter would understand.

�� And then
spite reared its head, and Draco turned away with a sneer that he knew was as
precious as gold and therefore not to be wasted on Potter. Why should his be the duty of reassurance? Potter
was the one who had fucked with the device and ensured that they came here in
the first place.

�� Draco
shrank from the thought of spending a year in Potter�s presence, and then
reminded himself that at least he would never need to eat or relieve himself in
front of Potter. But he would probably sleep, to pass the time, and that would
give Potter the chance to slit his throat.

�� He heard
the sound of Potter casting spells against the crystalline walls. Nothing
happened. Draco had known it wouldn�t. When he said that he had designed the
pendant not to be opened from the inside, he was speaking no less than the
truth.

�� Potter grew
more and more frustrated, from the sounds, swearing and kicking at the walls.
Draco only grunted and closed his eyes. He might as well try to sleep. It was
the only activity that he could see giving him a chance to pass some of the
endless non-time before the spell faded and the pendant opened.

�� If it did.

�� The fear he
had not confessed to Potter whispered through his heart. If Potter had crossed
the bounds of the lightning, then Draco truly was not sure what would happen.
It was possible that they would remain bound inside the pendant forever,
hopelessly trapped, unable to escape even when the
moment passed�

�� And because
every second inside the pendant passed like a year, and their bodies would not
feel the touch of time here, they might have condemned themselves to an
eternity.

�� Panic
stilled Draco�s breath. He could practically feel Potter staring at him,
though, and with an effort, he resumed breathing. He would not think of that.

�� The Spiral and the Circle

�� "How
can we be trapped in here? And how can our minds feel the passage of time when
our bodies can�t? Just tell me that."

�� Harry was
tired and frustrated. He didn�t know how much time had passed, but it felt like
a lot. Malfoy slept and glanced at him and slept again, and although Harry
never felt tired or hungry, he�d done much the same thing, when he wasn�t
prowling in circles around the crystalline walls, kicking them, and casting
spells against them. But even that was boring. The walls swallowed the spells
instead of reflecting them back, so Harry didn�t have to dodge them or deal
with boils and wounds of his own making. He had been grateful for that the
first few (what would one call them? Didn�t days have to have a sun and a moon
to make sense?) times it happened, but now, even a
broken rib would have made a welcome change.

�� Even
Malfoy�s conversation would.

�� Malfoy only
glared at him out of perfect silver eyes and refused to answer. When Harry stared
back, though, Malfoy began to speak in a flat voice. Harry suspected he was as
bored and longing for entertainment as Harry, but just didn�t want to admit it.

�� "You idiot, Potter. You have no idea, any more than
most people do, of the mysteries whirling around your head. You live in a world
where you think of time as a river, waves sliding past you in only one
direction."

�� "I
don�t think of it that way," Harry muttered. "I�ve traveled by a
Time-Turner before. I know it�s confusing."

�� "But
in practice," Malfoy repeated stubbornly, "you do. Everything goes in
one direction. People get older and eventually die, rather than younger. You�d
probably laugh if someone came up to you and told you that he had lived years
in an alternate universe, only to come back and find that no time had passed
here."

�� "Maybe
not," Harry said, thinking now of fairy tales that he�d heard Aunt Petunia
telling Dudley, where people got taken away by fairies and came back years
later, after what had seemed only a night in some hidden palace. They usually
discovered that all their friends were dead or old and that their children were
grown up. Or maybe a hundred years had passed and they recognized no one at
all.

�� "In reality?" Malfoy arched his eyebrows and
sneered a bit. "In a context like this, where you�ve seen that the power
of time is real and one can halt it, yes, I imagine that you�d be more inclined
to believe them. But without that? If you were in the
pub having a pint with your mates, or whatever it is
that you do, would you believe?"

�� He says pub and mates like they�re words in
a different language, Harry thought in amusement. Then again, Malfoy had
probably never had friends, much less ones who invited him out for a drink
rather than to plot the domination of the world. "All right," he
conceded. "It�d be less likely, anyway."

�� Malfoy
produced a brittle smile in response. Flawed glass was nothing to it for
readiness to crack, Harry thought, staring in fascination. He had assumed
without thinking about it that he would
be the first to go mental from being trapped in here, since he needed movement
and freedom and Malfoy was content to stay in the underground confines of the DoM, but perhaps he�d been wrong.

�� "Time
isn�t a river at all," Malfoy said. "It moves in different shapes�we
who study time call it the higher geometry�"

�� Of course you do, Harry thought,
stifling a snort. Ordinary names aren�t
good enough for you, in any language. But he felt that he was making
progress in being diplomatic with Malfoy, since he didn�t actually say those
words aloud.

�� "And
the most common are circles and spirals." Malfoy moved his fingers through
the shapes as he spoke. Harry fought the temptation to bury his head in his
hands. Did Malfoy really think Harry was that
stupid? "The circles are the simple repetition of time, time returning
to itself, the snake eating its tail. The spirals
are�more complex. They seem to be returning to their own beginnings at first,
but they slide past those beginnings and create slightly different times nested
within one another�"

�� "Alternate
universes?" Harry guessed.

�� Malfoy gave
him a flat look. "Yes," he added grudgingly, after waiting a bit,
probably to see if he could shake Harry�s confidence in his answer.

�� "So what
happens when someone crosses over from one universe to another?" Harry
settled himself more comfortably, or tried, and then snorted. As though he could. The pendant around him was featureless,
the floor slick and smooth, the walls cold to the touch and so utterly sheer
that reaching out to them made his fingers skate about. There was little to
focus on but Malfoy, and Harry did hate
that.

�� But since
the git was there, he might as well focus on him.

�� "It
doesn�t work like that," Malfoy said. "For that to happen, one�s
whole spiral would have to cross another spiral, and no one has the power to
control time like that."

�� Harry
waited a moment, then glanced around at the device
that imprisoned them and raised his eyebrows.

�� "Oh, I
did something much less difficult than crossing two spirals," Malfoy said,
with modesty that surprised Harry so much he would have had to sit down if he
hadn�t been already. "There are people working on that, but it violates a
basic shape of time. I don�t imagine they�ll succeed. I chopped a teardrop off
from time and isolated it, that�s all."

�� "And
that�s less difficult," Harry said.

�� "Of
course," Malfoy said, oblivious to why it might not be obvious to Harry.

�� Harry
waited some more, then sighed and gave in. "All right, why is it less difficult? Why can�t you
cross the spirals?"

�� Malfoy
smirked. Harry�s irritation rose again. That proved the git had known he was
confused all along and had wanted to wait to explain matters because�because
that was just the way he was, Harry reckoned. He resisted the temptation to
turn away and knock his head on the wall. It would hurt his forehead while not
helping his general state of knowledge.

*

�� Potter�s
undivided attention was something new in Draco�s experience. He discovered that
he liked it. He wasn�t used to encountering those who listened with such rapt
attention and a clumsy, puppy-like effort to keep up. Most of his colleagues
understood the theory behind what he was doing and would have considered themselves degraded if they inquired into it too closely.
They should be able to figure out the theory from watching Draco�s practical
effects.

�� But Potter
watched him with head cocked to the side and mind flailing away behind the
bright green eyes, and Draco found himself explaining more than he would have
to a more experienced person, as if he was rewarding Potter for his na�vet�.

�� "Do
two parallel lines meet, Potter?" he asked.

�� Potter held
up a hand, as though warding an obnoxious autograph-seeker off. Draco supposed
that he must encounter them sometimes, as well as those whose attention he
enjoyed. All classes of people had their less attractive members. "I know
this one," he said. "No?"

�

�� Draco
laughed, once, but got it under control when Potter glared at him. His body
might not ordinarily suffer in a bubble of time like this, but matters would
change if he was hit or kicked. "No," he said. "They don�t. And
you can only have two spirals of time meet if they overlap. Overlapping one
without doing it completely would cause destruction with the clashing forces of
time, as they sought to continue along their natural track and instead burrowed
through time and space occupied by another spiral."

�� "But
what if you aligned them perfectly?" Potter asked.

�� Draco had
to reluctantly nod his approval. Potter was smarter than he had thought, to ask a question that hadn�t occurred to Draco until two
minutes into his research in the nature of time. "Then one spiral would
become the other, and they would blend. We suspect that this has happened many,
many times, though of course we can�t actually observe such a thing, from
within our own limited spiral. It may account for odd phenomena like d�j� vu
and missing time."

�� "I
don�t understand how that can happen," Potter said.

�� Draco shrugged.
"There�s a limit to the knowledge of even Unspeakables," he said. "We
do the best we can to work from knowledge and theory and reason rather than
direct observation, which often is not possible."

�� "And
yet, sometimes you do come up with a practical result," Potter said, with
a long glance around the sides of the teardrop.

�� A thrill
crept down Draco�s spine. Potter had sounded�vaguely admiring. No more than
vaguely, but then again, if it had been
more, Draco might have thought the world was coming to an end.

�� "Mind,"
Potter added, "this time it�s a practical result that endangers us and
prevents us from fully engaging with the world. But it�s the thought that
counts."

�� Draco
sighed and turned over to go back to sleep.

�� "That�s
all it takes?" Potter complained to his back. "You�re sensitive."
Then he descended into mutterings of his own that Draco didn�t understand and
had no intention of listening to. He closed his eyes firmly.

�� He had
spent most of his life, at least during his school years and the trials after
the war, explaining his perspective and actions to people who had already
judged him and only gave him a chance to speak out of an idea that they were
being fair. He had no reason, as a full-fledged Unspeakable, to spend time
doing it with Potter now. Even if they were trapped together.

�� The Magic of Teardrops

�� "So,
how did you get involved with the Unspeakables? What made you want to study
time?"

�� Once, Harry
would have thought that nothing on earth could persuade him to ask that
question. What could be less interesting than Draco Malfoy�s background? Who
gave a fuck why he�d made the decisions that he had?

�� But the
pendant was less interesting, and Harry had run through every spell he knew,
twice, and had only been repelled by the crystalline walls. He�d looked for
flaws over every inch and found none. If Malfoy told him something new, it
would be, well, new, and wouldn�t
represent yet more repetition.

�� Malfoy, who
had been sitting awake and apparently meditating from the slow way he breathed
and stared at the crystal wall, turned around with an expression of annoyance. "You
didn�t seem to be interested in me as more than an obstruction and
inconvenience, if the way that you�ve referred to me in the past few hours is
real," he said. Harry saw his expression change after he spoke, and knew
that he was wondering if they really had spent only hours in the pendant. It
felt longer than that, but Harry was learning to distrust his own perception of
time.

�� He tried to
imagine spending months here and shuddered away from the thought. He would die
of boredom. He would go mad.

�� And the key
to avoiding both of those fates seemed to lie in Malfoy.

�� "I am
interested now," Harry said. "I probably wouldn�t have been if we hadn�t
been trapped here, but I am now." He leaned forwards and tried to convey
appropriate interest with an intense stare. For some reason, Malfoy turned his
head away, a reluctant smile tugging at his lips.

�� "Fine,"
he said. "I went to the Unspeakables because they were the only ones after
the war who would accept me, and I wanted to work in the Ministry. I became
interested in the field of time because it was the most prominent one in the
Unspeakables� ranks, and I knew that I would be promoted faster and receive
rewards faster. Satisfied?"

�� "Not hardly," Harry said.

�� Malfoy�s
body was stiff as he whipped back around to stare at Harry. Harry was glad that
some of his Auror lessons in reading body language had sunk in after all. Or
maybe he was simply starting to know Malfoy well after spending
several�times�cooped up with him.

�� That was a frightening thought.

�� "Why not?" Malfoy snapped. "I�m nothing more
than an enemy to you. Why won�t you accept the truth when I tell it to you?"

�� "Wouldn�t
I be more likely to think an enemy was lying?" Harry asked, but that made
Malfoy turn away with an expression on his face that Harry recognized, and he
really didn�t want the other man to retreat into silence and stillness again. "I�m
sorry," he said. "But this is a new experience for me. The thing is, I saw you with the pendant and the lightning that enclosed
it. I know that it matters more to
you than just as a source of Galleons and rewards. I saw the way you looked at
it. No one looks at something that way unless it�s important to them. A part of their soul."

�� Malfoy
narrowed his eyes as though Harry had spit at him. "It seems that I never
knew you, Potter," he said. "Such unexpected
eloquence."

�� Harry
shrugged. "I don�t usually have the words for things like this. I chose
those, and they fit." He leaned forwards again. "Did you go into the
Unspeakables intending to study time? Or did you start out the way you told me
and then change your mind? I really want to know."

�� Malfoy
waited as though searching for some sign in his face or posture that he would
lash out. Harry smiled back and tried to look relaxed. He couldn�t really be,
of course, with the possibility of eternity in here lingering in the back of
his mind, but Malfoy would probably fold up again like a hedgehog if he didn�t
try.

�� Finally,
Malfoy made a queer grunting sound and leaned forwards. "Imagine that
someone told you you could learn the secrets of the
universe," he said, whispering as if he thought that spies from the
enemies of the Ministry were in here with them. "Wouldn�t you want to do
it?"

�� Harry shook
his head. "I�ve never been interested in the secrets of the universe. I�m
interested when people hide things from me, and I�m interested in secrets about
people I know." It was a continuing source of regret to him that he would
never know if Snape had managed to come to terms with his hatred for Harry
after all, or what his mother was really like, because all the people who had
known her best were dead. "But I became an Auror to catch Dark wizards and
protect people, not solve mysteries."

�� "Perhaps
the glimpse of depth I thought I spied in you was
misplaced," Malfoy muttered.

�� Harry
arranged himself so that he sprawled on his belly with his legs extended behind
him. "Go on."

�� "I wanted
to know them," Malfoy said. "At one time, I thought I might become an
Astronomer or a Seer." Harry bit his tongue so that he wouldn�t make
unfortunate references to Trelawney, but maybe Malfoy saw them in his gaze
anyway, because his voice became sharp and haughty. "But I didn�t have the
gift of prophecy that makes a Seer, and no reputable Astronomers� school would
accept me. Besides, my father wanted me to work for the Ministry. We
compromised. The Unspeakables were the only department that satisfied my need
to learn more and my father�s desire for me to have strength in politics."

�� Harry
squinted at him, but he really didn�t think Malfoy had just admitted that he
was a plant by Lucius Malfoy to control the politics of the wizarding world.
What sense would it make to admit that? "All right," he said. "But
why did you start studying time? Why did they accept you when no one else
would?"

*

�� Strange as
it seemed to Draco, he was having a civil conversation with Potter, and one
where Potter kept asking the questions, so Draco didn�t simply have to pour his
theories and background into an unappreciative ear. He was tempted to pinch his
arm and see if he was dreaming.

�� No, he thought then, his training coming
to his rescue. There are other possibilities. The pendant makes
time rearrange itself. Perhaps it�s calling forth qualities that could have
been ours if time had flowed differently, if we had been born into a different
spiral, if Potter had taken my hand.

�� Shaking his
head at the strangeness of being caught up in such a ring after so long
studying time itself, Draco answered, "I had had time to think about the
nature of time during my year working as torturer for the Dark Lord. It wasn�t
every moment that I spent by his side, but I noticed the way that my mental
perceptions altered when I was." He was pleased that his voice was calm,
though, in truth, there was little now that could make him wince when it came
to that year. He had so often mined it for memories, so that he could compare his
thoughts about time�s passing to the thoughts of other people and those he
found recorded in books, that it had become well-disciplined and ordered in his
mind, a series of intricate, braided glass rings. He touched those rings now as
he spoke with Potter, and they did nothing more alarming than ring with faint
music. "Time lasted forever there. In the hours away from him, it expanded
and flew, and even being at Hogwarts with the Carrows seemed to go fast. As
long as I was away from him, it
worked."

�� Potter was
frowning intently. "But everyone feels that way, some of the time. I don�t
see how it�s real. I mean, when I was
a child, the days seemed to last forever, but I knew they didn�t last that way
for anyone but me."

�� Draco eyed
Potter sideways. It was tempting to ask why
his childhood had seemed to drag, given that he was the pet of everyone who
knew him, but Draco didn�t. He couldn�t use it as original research here in the
pendant, and he had nothing to write with. "Everyone feels that way
because it�s a real phenomenon. It only remained to understand the laws of that
phenomenon and codify it. In that way, I came up with the pendant."

�� Potter gave
a faint smile, though Draco didn�t see why. "But your body and your mind
aren�t separate. Your body only lives through a few seconds no matter how much
time it seems like to your mind."

�� "They�re
capable of being separated, even though they aren�t naturally," Draco
said. "Muggles have had very strange ideas about that," he felt
compelled to add. His research interests had led him in many directions, and
some of the most puzzling books he had read were actually Muggle. Not that
their ideas were challenging in the same way that Draco had seen esoteric
magical theory be challenging, but he did wonder where some of them had come up with the notion that the body was
less important than the soul or the mind. "We can separate them with
magic. That�s the source of the pendant."

�� Potter
turned his head from side to side as though the secrets of Draco�s construction
would reveal themselves to his uninitiated eyes. "So what is this? Circle or spiral?"

�� "Neither,"
Draco said. "Those are only the most common shapes for time, not the
solitary ones," he clarified, when Potter whipped his head back as if he
suspected Draco of lying to him. "This is an oval shape, exactly what it
looks like, and the clock face embedded in it provides an objective means of
assessing the passage of time. The teardrop shape enforces one of the
separations between body and mind that I was talking about. That�s why it�s
such an effective prison, because the shape is the perfect one for pinning us
and making our experience of a second seem the
experience of a year."

�� "Does
that include our words, too?" Potter cocked his head. "I would think
that we couldn�t actually speak all that many words in a second, and words come
from our bodies."

�� Draco
smiled. Who knew that Potter could be interesting
to talk to? "We aren�t actually speaking," he said. "We
imagine words, and our thoughts touch. But if someone could be in here with us
without being affected by the teardrop shape of the pendant�which, I have to
admit, is impossible�then he wouldn�t hear anything. He would only experience a
second of silence, and then he would return to the world around us. Just as
we�ll do sometime," he added, with a sharp sense of fear in his chest that
he wouldn�t allow to actually manifest.

�� "Now
you�re getting a bit too metaphysical for me, Malfoy," Potter said,
pressing his hand to his forehead as if that scar hurt. It was on the tip of
Draco�s tongue to tell him about the lightning shape and what it signified in
the higher geometry�including theories on how it might have made it possible
for him to survive the Killing Curse�but he refrained, because he could be
compassionate when it was warranted.

�� "I�m
amazed that you know a big word like that," he said.

�� Potter
scowled at him, but it was half-hearted, and although they went back to
imagined silence after that, Draco thought it more comfortable. He still ended
up falling asleep again, but he was no longer in dread of the next time that
Potter spoke to him.

�� Until it actually happened, of course.

��

�� The Shape of Thought

�� "I�ve
been thinking, Malfoy."

�� Harry
really didn�t see why that statement
made Malfoy flinch. They�d had a pleasant conversation�um, however many years
or hours ago it seemed. And Harry had been doing a lot of thinking since then,
so his statement was strictly true. There was no reason for Malfoy to sigh as
though someone was pressing the weight of the world down on his shoulders and
then stare at him with what was obviously strained politeness, just waiting for
him to make a mistake.

�� "Have
you," Malfoy said at last in a flat, discouraging tone, when he seemed to
understand that Harry was waiting for an answer.

�� Harry
nodded firmly. This was a good thought.
He wouldn�t lose his hold on it just because Malfoy would like it if he did.

�� Although maybe doing other things that
Malfoy liked wouldn�t be so bad.

�� Harry shook
his head. He had spent too much time in the teardrop, and Malfoy had said that
imagination ruled here. He was clearly hallucinating.

�� "I�ve
been thinking about what you said," he told Malfoy, looking up at the
crystal ceiling that arched overhead so he wouldn�t have to look into the git�s
eyes. That ought to suit the git, who clearly didn�t want to look at him. "About
spirals and rings and teardrops and circles. It makes me wonder if we
can imagine our way out of this place. If we can imagine
conversations and sleeping�which our bodies don�t actually need to do here�why
not a way out?"

�� Malfoy said
nothing. Harry looked at him, expecting him to be stunned by the force and
brilliance of Harry�s ideas, and instead found him shaking his head with an
expression of weary tolerance on his face.

�� "Why not?"
Harry asked, more than a bit incensed that Malfoy apparently wouldn�t even entertain the idea. "After all,
you�ve been telling me about all these amazing things that you can do with the
study of time. It stands to reason that the study of time should help us out of
this. Unless you have a better idea?"

�� "The
teardrop shape is impenetrable," Malfoy said quietly. "That�s why I
chose it for the prison I was making. Yes, you can think all you want of the
wall opening and letting you out, but that doesn�t mean it will happen. The
teardrop shape permits a limited range of interactions, rather like the spirals
permit only certain interactions to happen within them and not others, and
circles will only lead one back to the beginning again. It�s a good try,
Potter, better than I would have expected of you. But impossible."

�� Harry shook
his head back. He thought something was indeed wrong with him. Instead of
despairing over Malfoy�s words, he felt a little glow of pride that Malfoy had
thought his plan a good try.

�� To keep his
mind off that, as well as off the despair that probably would overcome him if
he gave too much credit to Malfoy�s words, Harry stood up and began to prowl
around the teardrop again. Malfoy watched him. Harry reckoned he didn�t have
much else to do.

�� When he
glanced at Malfoy, seeking some way to disprove his ideas, Harry saw that his
hair was still perfectly clean, shining, and soft, and that his face didn�t
show any traces of weariness. He hadn�t heard either of their bellies rumble,
Harry thought. It felt like they�d been here forever, but that was only the
effect of the teardrop, like Malfoy had said. It didn�t mean that they would
suffer from bodily pains while they were here.

�� At this
point, Harry would have liked to. He thought that was the only thing that would
give him an accurate idea of how much time was passing.

�� "D�you think we�ll get out?" he asked abruptly. He
wanted to see what Malfoy would say if he attacked him suddenly like that.

*

�� Draco
hesitated. He hadn�t bothered telling Potter the truth he suspected, partially
because he only suspected it, not knew it, and partially because he didn�t want
to put up with Potter�s dramatics.

�� But Potter
had acted surprisingly mature so far, and even now, there was an expression of
deep concern and thoughtfulness on his face. Draco wondered if perhaps he could
be trusted with the suspicions after all.

�� "I set
the time on the teardrop for thirteen months," he said. "To feel like
thirteen months to those inside, that is."

�� Potter
shuddered, but stopped pacing�which Draco was grateful for, as he found it
maddening to watch�and focused his attention on Draco. "But?
There�s a tone in your voice that says �but.�"

�� "No
doubt you hear that a lot," Draco snapped, again frustrated at being read
by someone he hadn�t been accustomed to think of as perceptive.

�� Potter
cocked his head wisely and waited.

�� Draco
sighed windily and started to run his fingers through his hair, before he
remembered that he had neither water nor mirror to readjust it. He let his hand
fall limply to his side instead. "When you touched the lightning, you may
have reordered the bonds between space and time that the pendant was designed
to suspend. We might be locked in here for longer than the thirteen months. We
might be locked in here for an endless second,
living forever, no matter how long actually passes in the outside world."

�� "And
if we stay in here for long enough that time actually passes in the outside world. . ." Potter�s face was ill. He
sat down hard. "No wonder you didn�t want to say that, Malfoy. It�s bloody
depressing."

�� Draco
stared at Potter. He was accustomed to understanding from his colleagues in the
matter of his calculations and experiments, but he hadn�t known that Potter
could be personally accommodating that way.

�� Potter
caught his eye and laughed ruefully. He didn�t
have any compunctions about disordering his hair, as
he proved with a hand through it. Then again, Draco thought, it already looked
like a hedgehog that had barely survived a battle with a mountain lion. Potter
couldn�t make it worse. "Yeah, Malfoy, I know. Who would have thought that
we could get along?"

�� Draco
looked away. He thought he would ruin the moment with speech. Potter waited as
if he wanted Draco to comment, and then rose and prowled again.

�� Draco
closed his eyes. He wondered if having a tolerable companion would make the
time seem to pass more or less slowly.

�� Parabola

�� There was
something.

�� Harry woke
and slept, and slept and woke, and each time he opened his eyes, there was a
tempting, teasing image in his mind, just out of reach.

�� He tried to
ignore it at first, but at last it returned so persistently he was more or less
compelled to pay attention to it. He sat up, arms
looped around his knees, and looked over to where Malfoy slept. Then he had to
look away again. There was something about the soft color of Malfoy�s lips and
his relaxed, sleeping face that made it hard to concentrate.��

�� So he
thought of the teasing image instead, fixing his mind there until his head
hurt. Then he relaxed and breathed in the way that Malfoy was always doing,
staring at the frosted crystal patterns on the walls until the thought crept
tentatively back into his mind and he could pounce on it.

�� Malfoy�s
time magic seemed to be all about shapes. There was this shape to do this and
this shape to do that. Some shapes constrained time, he said, and some shapes
constrained the body and the mind.

�� Couldn�t
they create a shape inside the
teardrop that would make a difference? Harry didn�t see why not, the longer he
thought about it. He wasn�t entirely sure what they would use to make it. So
far, none of the spells he�d used had created anything permanent, not even an
etching in the glass. But Malfoy might have some ideas.

�� Harry�s
excitement ebbed a bit when he remembered the definite way Malfoy had spoken.
If it was so simple to create a shape and get out of the trap, then Malfoy
would know about it and would have suggested it, right?

�� On the
other hand, Harry had seen lots of experienced Aurors freeze when confronted
with a situation that they hadn�t handled before. This might be the same thing.
Could Malfoy envision all the shapes that time would take? He had already
admitted that the Unspeakables didn�t know everything about time.

�� Harry held
up his wand and tried to draw shapes in the air before him, creating colored
lines of light that would linger. Nothing happened. He knelt down and tried to
scratch shapes in the floor of the pendant. Nothing happened. He sat back and
muttered something uncomplimentary about clever people in which Malfoy�s name
figured prominently.

�� "Potter? What is it?"

�� Malfoy
spoke in a sleepy voice. Harry turned to confront him, already boiling over
with possibilities and ideas that could become concrete if only Malfoy hadn�t
been so stupidly smart and restricted magic in the pendant.

�� Malfoy�s
face stopped him.

�� It was
nothing Malfoy said or did, he thought later, when he had time to analyze his
own reactions. Instead, it came from the way that Malfoy�s lower lip had a bit
of glistening wetness on it, and the defensive way his
eyelids fluttered, and the languorous blinks of his eyes. Harry couldn�t be
angry with someone who looked like that. He simply couldn�t.

�� "I. .
." He cleared his throat. "I just was thinking that it would be
easier if we had any way to write things down."

�� "Hmmm. That would be convenient for games and the like,
I agree." Malfoy blinked again. Harry expected the fragile sheen of
newness to vanish from his face at any moment, but instead, Malfoy gave him a
simple stare that wanted to be complex. "You and I could play chess, if we
had a board and pieces. If we could draw the pieces."

�� Harry
cleared his throat again. The longer Malfoy sat there looking just like anyone who�d woken up from a daze or a
trance, the more trouble he had having animosity against him.

�� Well, that
might be a good thing. They would need to work together to get out of here,
after all.

�� "I�m
talking about something else," he said. "About
getting out of here, actually."

�� Malfoy gave
him a silly smile, and then frowned. Harry wondered if his words were beginning
to trigger Malfoy�s memories, unlikely as that sounded. Then he shook his head
and snapped fully back into his usual self.

�� "I
told you, Potter, that no one can escape the pendant," Malfoy said coldly.
"It can�t be done. The teardrop is too perfect as a prison."

�� "There
ought to be another shape that�s perfect as a key," Harry countered,
relieved�and a bit mournful�that Malfoy was back to normal. "Why
not? Shapes like the teardrop aren�t made
for holding people, but you adapted this one to that purpose. Isn�t there
some other shape that could be useful as a key?"

�� Malfoy�s
brows bent down as he frowned. Harry stared back at him and wondered what
Malfoy was seeing in him, if it ever was or could be comparable to the gentle
loveliness Harry had seen in his face.

*

�� What Potter
said made sense, enough sense that Draco was ashamed of himself for not
thinking of it first.

�� He sat
there with his hair, which was somehow still windblown despite the fact that no
wind existed here, and discoursed intelligently of shapes of time. He had even
anticipated Draco�s objection that there was no shape of time that was
specifically made to free people from their imprisonment.

�� Draco
closed his eyes and pressed his fingers against his temples. He hadn�t thought
that someone who was a master of the higher geometry would ever be imprisoned
in his prison, had he? The common criminal wouldn�t have that knowledge, and
the Unspeakables dealt on their own with those of their own who went rogue.

�� So, why shouldn�t
there be a solution that he hadn�t thought existed because he hadn�t thought he
would be in this position?

�� Potter
started to speak, but Draco waved a hand at him. "Shut up for a minute,
Potter," he said sharply. "I want to think."

�� Miraculously,
Potter shut up, though from the way he glared, Draco thought he might resent
the insult. It didn�t matter. Draco had more important things to think about
than whether Potter was pleased or displeased with him.

�� Perhaps not, if you wish to
escape.

�� But even if
Potter had come up with the idea, it would be Draco�s to implement. He sat
there and forced his brain to stretch and wrap around the task, the way that he
forced it to wrap around the equations for the higher geometry, while Potter
waited impatiently next to him.

�� "Do
you have an answer?" he asked, just when numbers had started appearing in
Draco�s head to form and cradle the answers he needed.

�� He snarled
in response, and even Potter seemed to know what that meant, because he shut
up. Draco bowed his head and clasped it between his hands. He had to stop
thinking about Potter and the way he fidgeted and the way his hair smelled, and
to do that, he started to force his mind through the first list of shapes he
had ever learned, something as basic to the higher geometry as the alphabet was
to the art of writing.

�� A circle repeats. A spiral proceeds. A
teardrop holds. A square cages. A curve ends. A
parabola opens�

�� And then
Draco felt his sides relax and his breath drift away. Of course that was it. He
had been stupid not to have seen it before. Then again, he hadn�t thought the
higher geometry could be of any use to him here except to help him understand
exactly how badly they were trapped, and so it wasn�t surprising that he hadn�t
felt much interest in using it.

�� "A
parabola," he whispered. "That�s the shape that we need. If we can only create it. How can we, when we have no magic?"

�� "A parabola?� Potter had caught and understood that one
word, though from his blank stare, Draco thought it likely that he hadn�t
understood the rest. "What is that? How can we make it?"

�� "It�s
a shape," Draco said, biting back the urge to scream. Surely that it was a
shape ought to have been obvious to Potter before now? "A
sharp curve. It descends and then rises." He lifted his wand and scrawled
the shape in the air, though since he couldn�t cast a spell here, he couldn�t
create the line of colored light that would have best illustrated his point. "I
don�t know why I didn�t think of it before. The parabola has a beginning and an
end, while the middle forms a magical collecting point for time. The time brews
there until it takes the path up and out, and that means that it should be able
to combat the ultimate closing shape, the teardrop, that joins a slender stem
as a collection point to a shape that doesn�t end."

�� Potter was
smart enough not to pretend that he understood. He only listened, shook his
head when Draco finished, and then pressed ahead with what seemed to most
concern him. "Then what? How do we make it?
You�re right, we have no magic. Is there something else we can use?"

�� Draco
looked hopelessly at his straight wand, and then at his robes. Perhaps they
could tear them into strips, but without a knife or a spell that would cut them
along precise curving and straight lines, Draco didn�t know that he wanted to
trust that stopgap. They wouldn�t get
many chances to recut the robes, and only a perfect
parabola stood a chance of opening the teardrop.

�� He looked
at Potter�s hair without much expectation, either. There were twisting strands
there, but once again, they would need to be perfect, and Draco doubted that
they could hope to make them so without the kinds of measuring devices that he
usually used in the Department of Mysteries and objects to weigh them down.

�� As for his
own hair, he didn�t even consider it. The strands were simply too fine and
straight.

�� "Well?"
Potter was bouncing his useless wand off his knee, his eyes fastened on Draco
and his frown so bright that it could have been mistaken for a smile from a
distance.

�� "I
don�t know," Draco said, turning away and closing his eyes. "Leave me
alone for a little while. Let me think."

�� Potter
snorted and shifted restlessly. "You do that," he muttered. "Just
remember that the more time that passes here. . ."

�� Then he trailed
off, perhaps because he�d remembered that nothing would happen to their bodies
no matter how long they lingered here. Draco smirked wearily and shut his eyes.

�� Figures of Imagination

�� Harry was
ready to admit what he would have thought was impossible before he got trapped
in here: Malfoy was scarily intense
when he was at work.

�� He
whispered numbers to himself, long strings of numbers that didn�t repeat often
enough or form regular enough patterns for Harry to be sure what they meant. He
traced his wand across the floor and the walls and the air, and then stopped
and shook his head. Harry was actually sure that his mind was seeing the things he traced but couldn�t bring to life, and
arranging them all in a dizzying, elemental flow.

�� For the
first time, Harry thought, really thought, about the fact that Malfoy had
invented the pendant around them. He tapped on the crystal and stood up to try
and peer through the frosted walls, though as usual it was useless.

�� How smart
must Malfoy be, to understand the magic that had produced this and then bring
the magic to life? Harry had reminded him of the idea that one shape of time
could probably combat another, but Malfoy was the one who had envisioned this
teardrop and created it.

�� Harry
couldn�t know a tenth of the labor that had gone into that. And even though he
still thought it was a rather horrible idea for a prison, it did prove Malfoy
was smart.

�� Harry
started watching him more closely. He noticed the small muscles that twitched
and tightened near Malfoy�s eye when he was concentrating. He watched the way
that Malfoy�s fingers curled around his wand and then smoothed out again, and
he got to know the fluctuations that meant Malfoy�s thoughts were whirling
around futilely and the ones that meant he was being productive. He listened as
Malfoy chuckled and cursed under his breath, and he didn�t sound mad, he
sounded intelligent.

�� Reluctantly,
Harry had to admit that Malfoy was more than he had ever thought he was.

�� Harry
settled down to watch some more, until he learned enough about Malfoy to give
him the answers to the questions that were starting to bloom in his mind.

*

�� It was
easier to work than Draco had thought it would be, with Potter staring at him.

�� He had
believed that his old rival�s eyes would cut into him and make him second-guess
everything he did, which was no way for someone who wanted to find a way out of
this trap to work. He needed his full concentration at every moment to counter
the temptation to give in to despair, since he knew
much about how well-constructed the pendant was, but nothing at all about the
shape that might free them.

�� But
instead, he grew in self-confidence as Potter watched him. When Potter slept,
Draco would slow down and wait until he was awake again, staring at the crystal
walls with his mind drifting in timeless contemplation. That was another technique
that working among the Unspeakables had taught him, and it had come in useful
more than once.

�� Potter,
with his green eyes and his wild dark hair, was rapidly becoming as necessary
to Draco as the training was.

�� He didn�t
understand why. He could only work with what he understood: the shapes that
played in his mind, the knowledge he had acquired over five years of dedicated
work, and the longings and the desires that had led him to shape the teardrop
and enter the Unspeakables in the first place.

�� Acquiring
new knowledge of himself and why he might want Potter would simply have to
wait.

Making the Parabola

"It�s useless."

Harry looked up, blinking. He had
lost himself in a trance of watching Malfoy, and hadn�t woken until now,
focused as he was on the minute movements of the man�s hands. It wasn�t as
though hunger or tiredness was going to disturb him, and he had gradually
stopped wanting to sleep, because every moment he slept was a moment when he
wasn�t watching Malfoy.

"What�s useless?" he
asked, alarmed by the expression on Malfoy�s face. He was breathing rapidly,
his cheeks pink. If he had been on the verge of tears, Harry wouldn�t be
surprised, but Malfoy had just dashed his hand across his eyes, so he wasn�t
sure that was true.

�� "The attempt to make a parabola." Malfoy flung his
wand away from him and sat there, arms folded, staring at nothing. "I�ve
thought about it. Hair, robes, skin, blood�if we even had anything that could
cut into our skin, which we don�t�and magic of any kind are out, of course. I
thought about breaking my wand and bending some of the splinters into
parabolas, but I�m not sure that I could do it, and that would be a waste of a
perfectly good wand."

�� "Don�t
break your wand!" Harry cried,
appalled. "You know that the second one is never as good as the first. How
are you going to do magic when you get back if you break yours now?"

�� "I
want to get back, more than I want to go on being a wizard." Malfoy�s
bright eyes shifted towards him. "You must want that, too, Potter. Unless
you think that you really would be content to stay here for the rest of your
life."

�� "I
could find some way," was all that Harry could think of to say, stupidly
and uselessly. If Malfoy couldn�t find a way out of this trap, then how could
he? It wasn�t as though Harry understood about shapes and maths
and all the rest of it. He had come up with the initial idea, sure, but Malfoy
was the one who would need to put it into action.

�� "Really? Are you sure?" Malfoy picked up his wand
again and trailed it across the floor, watching the lines it created as though
they were the answer. Perhaps they would be, Harry thought, and determined to
ask.

�� "We
can still draw things in the air," he said. "Why shouldn�t that be
enough?"

�� Malfoy
snorted and let his head fall back so that it rested against the nearest wall. "Because
the shape needs to be permanent, Potter. The only thing that would hold the
shapes I draw in air is our eyes and our memories. I need something I can work with, something that will stay in
place as I manipulate it. Besides, no one draws a perfect parabola the first
time without magical help. One mistake, and we�re
stuck in here."

�� "Oh."
Harry could see now why Malfoy had taken so long to work through to a solution
of the problem, but he didn�t see why Malfoy hadn�t grasped the solution that
lay right in front of him. "Why don�t you use me?"

�� Malfoy gave
him a miserable, scornful look and shook his head. "You didn�t hear me,
Potter. I already considered your hair. It�s too curly. And your skin and your
robes and your wand have the same objections against them that mine do."

�� "Not
any of those things," Harry said. "I meant my body�me as a whole. I
could lie down and try to get into the right position, and you could manipulate
me as you need to." He swallowed, not sure why his face was getting so
warm. He was just talking about what he and Malfoy needed to do to stay alive.
It wasn�t as though he had offered to let Malfoy see him naked, or something.

�� Although,
when Harry thought about the errors that the robes could cause in the shape of
his body, he realized that it might come to that.

�� Malfoy
stared at him with his mouth open. Then, for some reason, he backed away until
his body bumped against the opposite wall of the pendant. Harry watched him
with confused eyes, not deigning to turn his head. He thought that, if someone
had managed to break into the pendant, he would have heard them by now. "What
is it, Malfoy?" he asked.

�� "You
would volunteer that," Malfoy whispered.

�� "Well,
yes," Harry said. "I want to get out as much as you do. I�m not sure
it�ll work," he added, thinking of the shapes that Malfoy drew in the air
and the way that he talked about them having to be perfect. "But we can
try, right? And if it doesn�t work, then we�re no worse off than we were
before."

�� Malfoy
continued to stare at him with parted lips and wide-open eyes. Harry frowned.
He didn�t know if there was something wrong here, if Malfoy perhaps had some
magical theory in mind that made what Harry was offering impossible, but he
didn�t think so. Malfoy would have let him know right away if it was something
like that, because he would love to gloat over Harry�s incompetence.

�� "What?"
he demanded, when the silence grated on his nerves as much as the boredom had
begun to do weeks, or days, or months, ago.

*

�� Draco
closed his eyes. The image that had sprung into his mind the moment that Potter
offered�the image of Potter stretched naked before him, twisting his limbs in
response to Draco�s commands�still burned there, though, and there was nowhere
he could withdraw into his mind that offered relief.

�� How can he�

�� But Potter
didn�t seem to have any idea that he might have done something unusual. He had
only offered because it was the option that a Gryffindor would think of, Draco decided, with an attempt to recover his sense
of balance. A Gryffindor would think
with his muscles instead of with his brain. That was all they were good at.

�� The image
of Potter lying naked (because of course he would have to remove the robes,
they would get nothing done with those on) was Draco�s own problem. There was
no reason to reject Potter�s suggestion out of hand because of that.

�� But still
the image burned, and still it took Potter�s impatient question to kick a
response out from behind Draco�s teeth. He swallowed and managed to murmur, "I�I
think that might work, Potter. Take your robes off."

�� He expected
an explosive reaction, and that meant he could open his eyes, and glare, and
call the whole thing off. But instead, after a minute or so of hesitation, or
what felt like a minute, Potter began removing his clothes.

�� Draco sat
there, shivering, trying to pretend that he only meditated, in silence for bellbeats of time before he opened his eyes. This isn�t real, he kept reminding
himself. Of course not. Your words are imaginary here, your bodies
don�t really move or change, and this nakedness is
going to be imaginary as well.

�� It ought to
have been easy to remind himself of that. After all,
he hadn�t felt hunger since he�d been here, and he�d slept only to ease the
boredom, not because he was tired�because of a mental sensation, not a physical
one. It made sense, of course, that this desire he
felt was only a mental sensation and not a physical one.

�� It didn�t
help.

�� Potter had
already slid out of his robes and taken off his shirt. Draco�s throat seized up
when he saw him half-clothed, bending down to take off the boots. Potter�s
shoulders bent and flexed�of course, that was what shoulders did, Draco tried
to tell himself, and it didn�t help�and his skin rippled like water traveling
over a streambed. Draco unstuck his tongue from the roof of his mouth and
cleared his throat.

�� "It�ll
have to be everything, Potter. Even an unexpected corner of cloth can cause
problems with the parabola. We have to remove everything from your body that
doesn�t need to be attached to it."

�� "Does
that mean that you want to shave my head, too?" Potter grinned at him over
his shoulder. His eyes were alight with hope that Draco hadn�t seen in them
since Potter realized none of his spells worked.

�� Draco
closed his eyes and turned his head away. His throat hurt. His heart hurt,
jumping. Sweat soaked his palms.

�� "We
can�t shave your head, Potter," he said finally,
striving for a tone as sharp as the one that had come to him without effort
only a short time ago. "Nothing to cut it with, remember? Not that even
yanking strands out by the roots wouldn�t be an improvement," he
remembered to add, because it was the sort of thing Potter would expect him to
say.

�� "Shut
it, Malfoy," Potter said, but there was no real malice in his voice. There
was a last shuffling off of cloth and then silence,
and Draco opened his eyes and turned his head, thinking Potter was finished.

�� He wasn�t.
He was lowering his pants, and Draco got to see his cock as it emerged, long
and pale and relaxed, but darker than the shade of Draco�s own skin just
because�well, because Potter was darker. That was all there was to it.

�� Draco shut
his eyes again. Then he told himself not to be such a baby, and opened them.
Potter would notice his weakness soon, if Draco didn�t conquer it.

�� He had
worked among naked statues during his training as an Unspeakable, because they
were some of the most common artifacts that Dark wizards tried to use, and
which Aurors would seize and send to them. Draco had been able to ignore them better than this. That meant he
should get used to this. Some of them were much better-endowed than Potter,
after all. Draco told himself that, while his breath came in gasps and Potter
asked concerned questions about his health.

�� Then he
looked again, and Potter lay naked on the floor of the pendant, waiting for
him, arms over his head in his own inexpert attempt to create a parabola.

�� Draco stood
up, slowly, and walked towards him. His boots hissed and clicked, far too
loudly, against the crystalline floor.

�� Because, of course, this wasn�t the same as a statue. This
was Potter�s body, willingly yielded to him, ceded to him, his to arrange and do with as he liked.

�� That Potter
trusted him that much. . .

�� Draco bent
down and began considering the position of Potter�s limbs, trying to keep his
mind off how hard he was.

�� Shapes of Desire

�� Harry laid
his head back on the crystal and tried to relax as much as he could. It was
difficult, with Malfoy hovering near.

�� But not for
the reason he had thought it would be. He didn�t really think Malfoy would try
to tear out his heart and make him a bloody sacrifice to bring Voldemort back,
or any of the stupid things he might have thought before they were trapped in
this crystal together. For one thing, Malfoy couldn�t do magic any more than
Harry could. He had built his trap too well. Harry had considered, a few�well,
some time ago�that maybe Malfoy had trapped Harry in here, but not himself, and
was sadistically pretending to be caught so that he could coax Harry into doing
something awful. But this had gone on too long for Malfoy to be playing a joke,
and Harry thought his distress was real.

�� Besides, he
trusted the great bloody blond git now.

�� Malfoy�s
hands ran over his chest and then down his sides, poking at the skin between
his ribs as if trying to measure exactly how far it stuck out. Harry swallowed.
He wondered if Malfoy had done this often for other people, and tried to think
that he hadn�t. Back in the Unspeakables� Department, he would have instruments
that could measure people without having them get naked, and he probably did
experiments on magical artifacts and animals more often than people anyway.
Despite how powerful the Unspeakables were, there were some things the Ministry
wouldn�t tolerate.

�� Well. Harry
was fairly sure about that, anyway.
If he thought about it deeply, he might not be.

�� Then he had
another problem to occupy his attention, one that very efficiently took his
mind away from the problem of whether or not Malfoy might have done this
before. His cock started to stir.

�� Goddamnit! Harry breathed through his nose and
tried to think only of calm, unexciting things, like the smoothness of the
crystal walls or the expression on Ron�s and Hermione�s faces when they would
see Harry again. They would ask what had happened and how he�d got out, and he
would tell them about Malfoy, and neither of them would believe it.

�� The thought
of their shock diverted Harry for a time, until Malfoy�s hand ended up on his
hipbone. He sucked in a startled breath and felt his chest bulge. Malfoy�s
voice interrupted in a drawling snarl, if there was such a thing. (Well, Harry
reckoned there was, now, because he�d got to hear it).

�� "Don�t
interrupt me, Potter. You always have
the worst timing."

�� "I do
have to breathe, don�t I?" Harry opened one eye in his irritation, unable
to remember when he�d closed it. "Or is breathing going to mess up your
parabola? Perhaps you�d rather kill me and use a perfect corpse that would do
just what you told it?"

�� His voice
trailed off, though, because Malfoy was staring at him with a flushed face and
a hanging mouth.

�� Malfoy
straightened and snapped his gaze away in the next moment, clearing his throat,
but Harry knew what he had seen. His cock hardened a little more.

�� "Potter,"
Malfoy whispered, after a silence that burned and clanged with more emotions
than Harry had a name for. All he knew was that arousal was among them. "Your�penis. It could mess up the shape."

�� "Sorry,"
Harry breathed, but he had the feeling that he didn�t sound sorry, and from the
look on Malfoy�s face, he didn�t feel that way, either.

*

�� Potter was
getting hard. All
from no more than a few simple touches and Draco leaning down to look more
closely at his groin.

�� The more
cynical part of Draco wondered if it was simply that Precious Potter was a
virgin, with no one to meet his high standards, and wanted to sneer. He could
offer Potter a wank, and the prat would probably fall all over himself and only
feel embarrassed later. Draco could take it as a chance to see what happened
when someone wanked inside the prison, a variable he
hadn�t taken account of in his initial tests of the pendant. After all, wanking
involved a change in the body, but a small one. Would the victim simply imagine
his pleasure and the resulting hand movements?

�� The newly
bruised, or bruisable, part of Draco was the
stronger, though, and it couldn�t imagine saying something like that, when he
was embarrassed and Potter was embarrassed. He cleared his throat and tried to
focus on solutions for the problem. He might be able to arrange Potter into a
parabola, but anything that interrupted the clean line of his body would be a
problem. The cock, the penis, jutting out from his groin like that, would put
paid to their attempt to escape right away.

�� Draco took
a deep breath of air as he realized what he would have to do. There really was only one solution.

�� He tried
not to think about how eager he was as he reached out and ran his fingers down
Potter�s cock. Was there such a thing as too eager, anyway? Of
course not. He just wanted to make it absolutely clear that he was
helping.

�� Potter took
in his own deep breath, and then whimpered. The whimper was the most exquisite
sound Draco had ever heard. It rang strangely from the crystalline walls, and
it made his hand shake.

�� "What
are you doing?" Potter whispered, but not as if he was about to ask Draco
to stop. His voice trembled, and that was exquisite, too, as was the weight and
warmth of Potter�s cock in Draco�s hand. Draco�s arse clenched down on air
despite himself, and he felt his mouth fill with saliva. He swallowed before he
could reply.

�� "You
have to be�fully hard. We have to be able to arrange it along your stomach, so
that it doesn�t interrupt the line of your body," he whispered. "We
could do something else if we had magic, but we don�t."

�� "Oh,"
Potter said.

�� Unable to
resist the temptation any longer, Draco looked at his face. Potter was flushed
and blinking, his dusty dark eyelashes sliding down over and then sliding back
from green eyes so deep and dreaming that Draco clamped his legs shut.

�� "If
you say so," Potter whispered, and shut his eyes.

�� Draco went
on stroking. The blood under his hand flooded into the cock and made it harder
and warmer. He sucked in a quiet breath, decided not to think about sucking,
and then went on stroking and caressing until the penis arched back towards
Potter�s body.

�� Letting go
of it was the hardest thing he�d ever done, and as he stood up and backed away
from Potter, he promised himself that he would do�well, he would do something, a lot of something, when they got back into their own world to make up for
it.

�� Curves and Straight Lines

�� Harry tilted
his head back. He felt deliciously full and warm, as
if he had eaten one of the meals denied him since they had come here. He could
still feel the burning imprint of Malfoy�s fingers against his cock, which was
ridiculous, because he also felt the empty coldness that told him Malfoy was no
longer touching him but standing back from his body, near one of the walls of
the pendant.

�� Harry
wanted to open his mouth and command him to come back over here and finish what
he�d started.

�� But the
whirling dash of energies through him frightened him at least as much as it
aroused him. Harry didn�t know that he was afraid of Malfoy, not anymore, but
he feared what Malfoy represented, maybe, or something like that. He didn�t
know what would happen if he met Malfoy the way he wanted to meet him right
now, bodies straining together, arms standing straight out from their chests as
they rutted together. What shape would they make?

�� Harry
swallowed. These thoughts were probably because he�d spent so much time around
Malfoy, he told himself sternly, and not from any more than that. Didn�t people
sometimes go crazy when they were locked up in prisons or attics and talk to
the walls or form relationships with people they would never look at twice
outside? This was just something like that. Malfoy was the only other person
around, the only other attractive person Harry had access to, and it was no
surprise that his blood leaped at a touch from the other man.

�� But then he
remembered the way he had looked at Malfoy over the last�time�since he�d seen
him working, and his breath caught in doubt.

�� "Potter." Malfoy�s voice was so calm and collected
and cool that Harry felt a mixture of hatred and envy for him. "I want you
to bend at the waist. Don�t bend over," he added, as Harry started to
shuffle around so that he could get up. "I want you to lie on the floor,
but arch so that your arms are reaching above your head to the left and your
legs are extending up to the right. Can you do that?"

�� Harry had
to cough and clear his throat before he could continue. "Don�t�don�t I
have to have my head encased between my arms? It would break the straight line
of the curve, anyway. If you can talk about a straight line
of a curve."

�� "Very
good, Potter," Malfoy said, and Harry wanted to smirk, because now his voice was strangled, too. "Yes,
that�s true. Turn on your left side. Rest your head between your arms. Keep
your�penis�along your stomach, or catch it between your legs if you can. It
mustn�t stick out."

�� Harry
nodded dumbly and did as Malfoy said, trying to
imagine that he was becoming one of
those shapes that Malfoy had traced in the air. He thought it was the only
thing that would help now. His hair had to flow into a smooth curve, when it
hadn�t done anything smooth in his life. His limbs had to relax enough that he
could endure lying in this position and yet remain taut enough that he could
move them if he needed to. It wasn�t easy, especially on the hard floor of the
pendant, to get comfortable.

�� But he did
it anyway, and he thought he could have done more, if Malfoy had needed him to.
He could still feel the git�s fingers.

*

�� Potter had
the natural flexibility of someone young and Auror-trained, thank Merlin. Draco
tried not to imagine what would have happened if he�d been trapped in here with
one of the older Aurors.

�� He didn�t
want to be trapped with anyone but Potter.

�� Draco
shuddered and shook himself like a dog shaking off water. He had to get rid of
this state of mind. It wasn�t a good one for dealing with the complicated
equations he would have to perform, even if Potter achieved the perfect
parabola. He couldn�t distract himself by looking at the dusky flush that had
spread along Potter�s skin or the straight perfection of his cock. He would
have to be careful, precise, delicate.

�� Since they
didn�t have access to their wands, there was only one escape from the teardrop
that Draco knew of, even assuming that they managed to form a parabola. Draco
would have to use his mind as Potter used his body, linking them both, creating
a figure of openness and connection that
would start time flowing irresistibly in a new direction and destroy the
teardrop, the figure of imprisonment and stillness, separation of body from
mind.

�� Draco was
not entirely sure what would happen when two shapes were opposed to one another
like that. Yes, he had studied the theoretical question in his normal courses,
but that wasn�t the same thing as performing the experiment.

�� But they
had no other option, so he went on adjusting Potter�s position, now and then
kneeling beside him to reinforce his orders with a touch, to smooth his hair
back into place, and to adjust the position of his cock.

�� That last
more often than might have been necessary, Draco had to admit.

�� Potter
watched him with deep eyes the entire time. Draco looked into them and then
away, not sure which was easier. Turning away might indicate cowardice, and
looking into them might show more of his own emotions than he would wish to
show�or Potter to see.

�� Draco had
to wonder about that. Potter had responded to manual stimulation the way that
any man would. That didn�t mean that it was a special reaction to Draco or
Draco�s hands, to what Draco could give him.

�� But they
had to go ahead anyway, and at last a shudder flowed down Draco�s spine and he
rose to his feet, nodding. Potter was in as perfect a parabola shape as they
were going to get. He murmured, "Be quiet, Potter, please," and then
closed his eyes and fixed his mind on the complicated, combined equations and
incantations.

�� Drawing the Figure

�� "Be
quiet, Potter, please."

�� Harry let
his eyes fall shut. Malfoy�s voice had a tremor in the back of it.

�� He also
knew that he had to keep still, or he would have arched up and voiced some
rough sound that�well, it would have revealed something that he preferred to
keep to himself for now, thank you.

�� So really,
it was all for the best that Malfoy had told him to be quiet.

�� But no one
had said that he had to keep his eyes shut, and so Harry opened them and gazed
up at Malfoy�s face, hanging over his body, his eyes focused beyond Harry, his
hand opening and closing in a regular pattern that seemed to match his
breathing. Harry counted breaths and yes, it did. He wondered if that was part
of Unspeakable magic, too, and if so, how in the world he would know what it
meant.

�� It had
become intolerable not to know everything about Malfoy. He tried to imagine
just walking away from him when they emerged from the pendant and couldn�t.
Malfoy would be the one who had got him out, the one who he�d spent all this
nameless time in prison with, and the first person he had willingly stripped
down in front of without lots of hesitation and worry about how he would look.

�� That last
was the most important, somehow. Harry watched the contours of Malfoy�s face,
keeping his arms and legs locked in the positions where Malfoy had aligned
them, and felt the prickle of those fingers through his hair and along the
curves of his ears and along his cock. He couldn�t wait to feel them again.

�� And to feel more than that.

*

�� Draco
tilted his head back, moving slowly. The air had become crystalline around him
with more than the shadows of the pendant, as the numbers flickered and came to
life in his head, blazing with magic.

�� He had a
task to keep them all balanced and whirling in his mind, none of them falling
to the ground or cracking apart, but adding, dividing, multiplying, increasing. Somewhere beneath the
shining maelstrom darted a single, solitary thought, running to shelter, that
he was grateful the Unspeakables had insisted that their initiates learn to
work without ink and parchment. Draco couldn�t have done this if he had always
relied on writing the numbers down.

�� Potter�s
body was just below him, heat, and Draco eased his fingers nearer, inch by
inch. He would have to touch Potter to spark the connection between body and
mind when he was ready, but if he touched him too soon, then the warmth would
simply distract him from the brilliant cold world of the numbers.

�� Lines building
up on either side of him, equations trotting and prancing in obedience like the
pretty pegasi his father had once taken him to see,
and still more numbers came. Draco chanted the equations, saw the parabola
hanging in his mind, and fixed it there, as equation after equation drew it and
made it real and reached out to the higher geometry, the maths
that only Unspeakables knew.

�� Draco rose,
soaring and spiraling and dipping through them, aloft on wings of numbers, his
body made of incantations. He had only felt this exalted once or twice before,
when he was working on the pendant, and he thought it a good sign that he would
feel this way now, too. That was a sign that he was approaching the state where
he had invented the pendant, and so this state might prove a match for that
one.

�� The moment
came. Draco hovered at the top of his climb, the pinnacle, and the light around
him was brilliant. Draco could feel the chill of solitude in his bones. He was
intelligent, clever, cunning, and alone.

�� He shot his
hand forwards, at the moment when he was all but pure intellect,
and his fingers curled around Potter�s solid hipbone, which he had chosen
earlier as his anchor.

�� Light
assaulted him, inside and out, and Draco cried the incantations that the
numbers dictated aloud, Latin syllables aligned with certain operations, words
breaking and spinning and reforming in the flight of symbols, the wind of maths. Draco brought his other hand up, fingers humming
with conjured magic, and touched it to the first.

�� Potter
cried out with startlement. Luckily, Draco had thought that might happen, and
it didn�t distract him; his voice rose over Potter�s, his chant so steady that
not even a Muggle machine could have interrupted it.

�� Light
abounded.

�� The Figure With
Two Backs

�� Harry
grunted and tumbled away to a floor, grainy and rough with stones. That alone
was so great a relief that he splayed his hand out, his fingers investigating
the cracks between the flags, before he remembered Malfoy and turned his head
anxiously to look for him.

�� He saw the
other two Aurors before he saw Malfoy, staring at him�at them both�with open
mouths, and lying on the floor for some reason. Harry blinked rapidly, and then
remembered what Malfoy had said about time moving in a stretched fashion in the
pendant. Of course. If he and Malfoy had only spent a
second in the pendant, then the other two Aurors would still have been diving to
try and escape the explosion from where Harry had played with the lightning.

�� No longer
interested in them, Harry turned his head and saw Malfoy lying next to him.
Harry winced when he saw a lump swelling on the side of his skull, but it
wasn�t bleeding�at least on the surface�and Malfoy�s breathing was steady. He
had only injured himself when he fell to the floor as they came back into the
real world, Harry deduced, and scrambled on elbows and knees to Malfoy�s side.

�� "Malfoy?"
he whispered, stroking his hair back from his face. "Draco?"

�� "Auror
Potter," said one of the old men behind him, voice righteously shocked. "What
happened? Why are you naked?"

�� Harry
stared down at his body. Yes, he was naked,
and erect. He hastily covered himself with one arm and then cleared his throat.

�� He had
assumed, since Malfoy had told him that no changes that happened to their
bodies in the pendant would be permanent, that the clothes would have come back
with him. He had imagined speaking to Malfoy, taking off his clothes, and getting
aroused from his touches. Hadn�t he?

�� Except that didn�t seem to have happened.

�� "The
device malfunctioned." Malfoy spoke in a voice like crumbling dirt,
coughing painfully as he finished. Harry still turned to him with a face full
of hope. He was going to be all right.
"When Auror Potter�s hand strayed across the bonds between the pillars, it
disrupted one of the connections that kept it working. Within the device, we
spent some time, perhaps a subjective month. And to escape, Auror Potter had to
use his body as a figure of the higher geometry that would allow me to make the
calculations. He is to be commended for his willingness to act."

�� Harry�s
first reaction was to shudder. A subjective month? He didn�t want to think
about what a subjective thirteen months, the way that Malfoy said he had set
the device to originally, would have felt like.

�� Then he
realized what Malfoy was saying, and lowered his head, this time, to avoid
showing his flushed cheeks as much as his erection.

�� The other
Aurors asked questions, twittering on in what Harry thought were frankly irrelevant
ways. What mattered to him, and he thought to Malfoy too, was finding some
place that they could be alone.

�� Harry
didn�t know exactly what would happen once they were. Or, no, that was a lie.
He didn�t know what would happen after. The first moments of solitude didn�t
admit of much guessing.

�� But that
was for later. For now, Harry had more important things to do, like accepting a
pair of robes conjured from one of the other Aurors� sleeves and keeping his
eyes on Malfoy to try and detect a trace of a bulge beneath those long clothes.

*

�� Draco could
feel Potter�s gaze. It made him lift his head, proud of the effect he was
having, and lent a tone of silky pride to his voice as he explained what had
happened to Trevors and Greyson.
They were suspicious, of course, but Draco could easily direct the conversation
into areas of theoretical intricacy that they knew themselves ill-equipped to
pursue. They didn�t try to follow him there, although they did give him more
than one suspicious look.

�� Soon, very
soon now, Draco would get to put one of his new discoveries�that he could
arouse Potter with his touch�to the test.

�� The other,
that he could unite body and mind even as he broke them apart, would have to
wait for more vigorous testing. Draco wondered idly if Potter would be willing
to leave his post in the Aurors and become an Unspeakable so that he and Draco
would have the ability to test the theory many, many times over.

�� That�s in the future, Draco reminded
himself. He had learned to be patient about time, since he was an Unspeakable,
though not patient enough to wait out the seemingly endless imprisonment of the
pendant. Do not be greedy.

�� And he
wasn�t, but he was still ready to scream with impatience by the time that Trevors had put his last question and backed away with a
frown, shaking his head. He seemed to think that Draco was deliberately hiding
something from him, although what that could be, Draco didn�t think he knew.

�� "Very
well, Unspeakable Malfoy," he said. "We will, of course, request a
full report on this device before we use it."

�� "Of
course, Auror Trevors," Draco said, and gave a
gracious nod to dismiss both him and the less suspicious Greyson.
Greyson managed a smile before he left, but Draco had
seen the way he eyed Potter, and thought the smile wasn�t for him.

�� The minute
that they were gone, though, he hauled Potter back to his feet and kissed him
soundly enough on the mouth to make Potter squeak. He kissed back as soon as he
recovered his balance, though, and with an enthusiasm that made Draco�s
reservations about this, about whether he wanted it more than Potter, melt
away.

�� "Come
with me," he said, and led Potter swiftly into the Department of
Mysteries, to the small room that he retained there for the times when he
wanted to sleep in the Ministry overnight to attend to an experiment, or for when
he simply lost track of the hours. He would be spending a lot more time in it
over the next few months, Draco judged, unless Potter had a place as secluded
and convenient.

�� If this fling with Potter
lasts that long.

�� Potter
seemed inclined to stand in the doorway, stare around doubtfully at the
cabinets and charts of equations on the walls, and ask questions. Draco already
knew that he needed to take a direct approach with this one, though, and so he
didn�t let Potter hang about staring and questioning for long. He flung himself
on the bed�which had been imported from the Manor and so was more than big
enough�and spread his legs, turning his arse in Potter�s general direction.

�� "Fuck
me," he demanded.

�� A Lever to Move the Earth

�� Harry had
to admit that, once Malfoy said what he wanted, it was extremely effective. He
found himself jolting forwards as though Malfoy had pulled a key that was
attached to his legs.

�� Malfoy lay
on his bed, his legs spread, his arse thrust out. He was still covered with his
robes, which Harry had to admit didn�t give the best view, but it was more than
enough to make him lick his lips.

�� Even though he hadn�t done anything like this before. Even
though it was still Malfoy, which
meant that he should hold back out of sheer suspicion that the bastard was
tricking him.

�� But he
didn�t. He couldn�t, not after the way he had showed himself to Malfoy in the
pendant and Malfoy had only done what he said he would do. Harry wasn�t going
to have anyone saying that a Slytherin was more honorable or trustworthy than a
Gryffindor.

�� "If
you�re sure that we�ll make a congenial shape," he couldn�t help muttering
as he climbed onto the bed and reached down to knead Malfoy�s arse. Malfoy
arched with a little hiss and shook his head. His eyes were half-shut, a smile
drifting across his lips that seemed strangely independent, as if even Malfoy
didn�t know how it had got there.

�� "More
than congenial," he said, and turned his head to catch Harry�s knuckles
between his teeth. "A beautiful one."

�� That was
another spur, though Harry didn�t know why it should be. He began to undress
Malfoy, his hands moving with assurance that he wouldn�t have thought he could
show. But he had more than just the way Malfoy was looking at him now to give
him motivation. He had the time they�d spent together in the pendant, and the
way he�d started watching Malfoy there, and the erection that still throbbed
between his legs, that had happened just because
Malfoy was looking at him and touching him.

�� Harry had
to admit that his body was wiser than his head, sometimes. It knew what it
wanted.

�� Malfoy
didn�t help, just lay there watching Harry with narrowed eyes, as though he was
considering whether Harry would make a good slave or house-elf. He did move his
arms when Harry wanted to pull his shirt off and then his legs when Harry had
to shimmy trousers and pants past his hips, but no more than that.

�� Harry wondered
if he was sick to be even more turned on by that. Hopefully
not, because he was going to shag Malfoy whether it was sick or not.

�� When
Malfoy�s arse was bared, though, Harry looked at the small hole rather
doubtfully. It was tempting, there
was no doubt about that, but he also didn�t like to think of Malfoy hissing and
clenching his teeth in pain when Harry was inside him. "You have lube of
some kind?" he asked.

�� Malfoy
looked at him as if Harry had asked whether he bathed. "Of course,"
he said, and gave a regal nod at the table nearest the bed. Harry searched
through the drawer and brought out a small sealed pot of what looked like a
potion, but Malfoy assured him it was lubricant. When Harry broke the seal, a
smell of mint drifted on the air.

�� He didn�t
need to say anything. He just looked at Malfoy with raised eyebrows.

�� Malfoy
flushed, but jerked his head at his own arse. "When you�re ready, Potter," he said, and lifted
his knees high, then paused and conjured a pillow beneath his hips so that he
could lift them up further.

�� Harry flung
back the Transfigured robe and knelt there, naked, in front of Malfoy, while he
slicked his fingers and reached down to Malfoy�s arse, grunting at the pressure
that enveloped his fingers. It was almost painful on them. How much better�or
worse�would it feel on his cock?

�� And all the
time Malfoy�s eyes glittered, and he gasped, and he was both the superior prat
Harry had always thought him and not,
so much more not, writhing on the covers
as his face turned pink and muttering a constant stream of words in which
Harry�s last name was immersed. He had as much decision as ever, though,
snapping his head down so that his chin struck his chest when he�d had enough
stretching.

�� Harry
hesitated, but Malfoy sneered at him. He knelt in front of him, lifted his
legs, and slowly slid inside.

�� Warm, he thought dazedly. It�s warm.

*

�� Potter
wasn�t the perfect lover by any means�he was going too slowly and acting as
though Draco was either disgusting or more beautiful than he knew himself to
be�but Draco knew potential when he saw it. The way Potter�s shoulders tensed
and trembled, the way he expelled his breath from his lungs once he was finally inside, and the way he shook his
head and stared at Draco through dazed eyes, all argued that someday he would
be the kind of bed partner that Draco most wanted.

�� Because
there was no way that they were doing this only once.

�� And then
Draco allowed himself to give up thoughts of the future and only concentrate on
the present, because Potter was filling him
and moving with him and muttering at him, and it was good.

�� Draco liked
the way that Potter gripped him behind the knees and handled him, showing less
and less gape-mouthed idiocy the more he moved. Draco pushed back into his
thrusts, and gasped in satisfaction when Potter�more by accident than by
design, of course�hit his prostate. He could convulse in pleasure then, and
Potter, although he paused and stared at Draco, had to know it was pleasure and
not pain.

�� From the
enthusiastic way he resumed his thrusting a moment later, he knew it, or had
figured it out, and Draco could arch his head back and close his eyes and
listen to his own hair rustling against the pillow and sigh with relief.

�� With
relief, because they were here in the world, again, and he had done something
that had never been done, and Potter had trusted him, and there was something
about the way Potter stared at him that healed very old wounds in Draco�s soul,
ones he had never realized weren�t scabbed over.

�� There was
the matter of his own relief, too, getting closer and closer, arching through
him like a serpent made of fire, running its tongue over Draco�s stomach and
down between his legs, touching and choosing and bringing.

�� Draco shot
all over his own stomach with a buck and a shout, ending in a gasp and a muted
whine. He didn�t sound very dignified, he thought.

�� But he was
in time to open his eyes and see the screwed-in face that Potter made when he
came, which suggested that he wasn�t the only one in the bed who had come
undone. Potter whined, too, and slammed his hips into Draco�s as though he
would be defeated, or suffer a worse fate, if a drop of his come escaped
Draco�s arse.

�� Inevitably,
some did when he slumped backwards and flopped on the bed beside Draco,
breathing harshly. Draco pulled him closer and felt him leave with some
regret�he liked people to stay inside him if they could. On the other hand,
Potter had never done this before, or Draco hadn�t heard any rumors that he
had, and he had done very well for a beginner.

�� "Well?"
Potter muttered.

�� Draco was
astonished to realize that Potter�s shoulders were tense with something. Did he
really expect Draco to reject him now, or mock and
taunt him, when he was vulnerable? He had trusted Draco more in the pendant.

�� He trusted me to cooperate with him under an
extreme set of circumstances where both our lives were at stake. That doesn�t
mean that I�ll be the same outside the pendant.

�� Draco
lowered his head and gave up a vulnerability of his own, by kissing Potter on
the temple, the first utterly tender gesture either of them had made. Potter�s
eyes flew open, and he stared breathlessly at Draco.

�� "Very
nice," Draco said. "Worth repeating."
He hesitated, wondering if the term would really matter to Potter, then added, "Well-shaped."

�� Potter�s
smile, he discovered, had the power to lift his heart
as well as any equation could, and warm it as no equation ever had.

�� The End.
- 1
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The Higher Geometry