Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Nothing Like the Sun	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 35148 -:- Recommendations : 3 -:- Currently Reading : 4
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
- 14
- 15
- 16
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Fifteen—Trust
            "It's just that I don't think you're ready to go back to work yet," Draco explained, with a smile so angelic that Harry would have been fooled if Draco hadn't made him spend the last two days on the couch.
            "The Healers really did heal the cuts," Harry said, and stretched his arms over his head and bent at the waist to show Draco that nothing hurt. "I mean, you can insist that I stay here for your private pleasure if you want, but you would have a hard time explaining that to my bosses, and the victims of the cases I'm supposed to be working on."
            Draco's smile acquired a predatory edge, and he put down the tray of food he'd been carrying to the couch on the table nearest its arm. "I'd love nothing better than a chance to explain to some people how they haven't been appreciating you."
            "Someone who needs my help is not Frank," Harry snapped. "And just because you got to talk to Frank and Ginny doesn't mean that you'll get to talk to all my former lovers."
            "You're forgetting, I got the chance to talk to Veronica as well." Draco looked a little wistful as he picked up a scone and buttered it, then cast a Warming Charm on it before Harry could do anything. He also didn't seem to notice Harry's glare at him. True, Draco now knew how to heat the scone to the perfect consistency of flakiness and melted butter, but that didn't matter. What mattered was that Harry wasn't being allowed to do anything for himself. "But I didn't tell her who I was."
            "No," Harry said flatly, reaching for the scone. At least Draco gave it to him this time instead of insisting on feeding him by hand, the way he had when he first brought Harry to Malfoy Manor.
            "No what?" Draco took a seat on the arm of the couch and raised an eyebrow. Harry grimaced and took a bite to show willing. That he didn't let his eyes roll back in his head and his body melt down the couch after that was a testament to how much self-control he had.
            "No, you cannot go back to Veronica and tell her who you really are." Harry contrived to scrape butter off the roof of his mouth with his tongue, and not melt that time, either. "She didn't cause me as much pain as some of the others did."
            "You mean, as much as Frank did," Draco corrected, leaning forwards until he would probably have fallen off the arm of the couch if he was anyone else. "You keep making the point that most of the rest are innocent."
            "Since Ginny," Harry said, eyeing him uneasily. For Draco to be willing to dismiss the "crimes" of Ginny and the others should be a good thing, but he couldn't help the disquiet it brought up. "I did think that she hated me more than she let on until I had the chance to talk to her. And you were the one who brought that about." Perhaps Draco would stop brewing whatever plan he had in mind if Harry subjected him to enough flattery. "You were right that she never really hated me."
            Draco smiled pleasantly at him. "But no one can doubt Frank's crimes."
            "I haven't tried to deny them, at least not since he ran into us at the Cloth of Gold," Harry said, and then he caught a glimpse of Draco's non-smile, and frowned. "No."
            “No what this time?” Draco’s hands curled around Harry’s ankles, and then up his feet. Harry flexed his toes in spite of himself. Draco was the first lover he’d ever had who wanted to massage his feet. It seemed to be another way for him to get Harry to relax, and he loved doing that so much that Harry hadn’t been able to refuse. “You’ll have to speak,” Draco continued in a breathy voice, eyes fixed on him. “I can’t read your mind.”
            “I know,” Harry muttered, and sighed. “Fine, Draco. It’s like this. I don’t want you taking any more revenge on Frank than you already did.”
            Draco considered that while his fingers dug into the soles of Harry’s feet. Harry groaned and arched his back, spreading his legs. Draco’s hands didn’t wander up to his groin the way they normally would have, though. He just kept them where they were, digging in, rotating in circles, until Harry might have fallen asleep if not for Draco’s presence.
            “What happens if he comes along and hurts you again?” Draco asked.
            “Do you think he’s likely to do that?” Harry forced the words out around a yawn. “I don’t think so. You made him slink away with his tail between his legs, and doubt his own good intentions. That’s going to tempt him to stay away. A lot more than the temptation to punish me again would make him come near.”
            Draco grunted. His fingers continued the massage, so long and slow and deep that Harry let his head slump over to rest on his arm.
            “As long as you agree that I can hurt him if he comes near you again,” Draco said finally, “then I won’t approach either him or Veronica.”
            “You can hurt anyone who comes near me with the intention to actually hurt me,” Harry promised. He thought he was probably slurring the words like he was drunk, but he couldn’t help it. Draco’s massage was that good. “But not otherwise.”
            Draco seemed satisfied with that, and bent down to kiss Harry. Harry lifted his hand and let his fingers brush back and forth on the big vein in the side of Draco’s neck. Draco growled, and some of Harry’s sleepiness fled. He opened his eyes curiously.
            “There’s something I’d like to try,” Draco whispered into his mouth. “If you’ll let me.”
            Harry started to ask what it was, but Draco shook his head, looking impressive and mysterious, and waited. Harry swallowed a little. Draco was asking for this much trust, this ability to just go ahead and go along.
            He did trust Draco, he thought. Enough for this.
            “Fine,” he said, and let himself sprawl across the couch, his arms and legs both falling limp. That ought to make it easier for Draco to do whatever he wanted with Harry.
            But Draco, although he was looking at Harry with darker eyes and panting a little faster, shook his head again. He made a little turning motion with his finger, and Harry nodded and turned over, because if he did that he could keep from thinking about all the things that might come along with the motion.
            He had been with Veronica after Frank, and only in limited ways with Muggles after and before that. It was a long time since he had let another man at his arse.
            Draco’s hands stroked gently down Harry’s back at first, as if to soothe him. The hell of it was that this worked. Harry found himself shutting his eyes and burying his head in his arms. Draco was good at knowing just how to touch him, as if he had little sensors in his fingers that warned him when Harry started getting too stressed.
            Then Draco’s hands glided onto his arse.
            Harry tensed up, but sighed out the tension the way he had when he wanted to get into a new club and knew that he would get kicked out if he looked too much like he might cause trouble. And it wasn’t as though it was a hardship to feel Draco touching his arse. He liked it. He liked it enough to moan and thrust down into the couch when Draco paused.
            “Come on,” he whispered. If there was the edge of a whine in his words, well, Draco was Draco and would probably like that.
            Draco seemed to, from the way that his fingers dug earnestly into the globes of Harry’s arse a second later. They dug deep, and pulled a startled sound from Harry that probably also fit into the category of a moan. And then Draco whispered something, and the cloth above Harry’s arse that blocked Draco’s fingers disappeared.
            Harry tensed up again, and Draco bent down and stroked his bare skin, gently, tentatively. “I can put it back if you want,” Draco said. “Or we can stop and do something like this later.”
            Later. Not never.
            Well, that was fair. Harry knew that they had come too far for him to walk away from Draco forever. Draco might still choose that, in the end, but they weren’t going to break up over something as little as this.
            “No, it’s fine,” Harry said, concentrating so that the words would come out instead of getting lodged in his throat. “Keep going.”
            “I don’t want to do something you don’t like.” Draco had two fingers on his arse now, rubbing in circles towards his entrance.
            “It’s not that I don’t like it, exactly.” Harry had to think back, but he could remember his time with Frank and Karl well enough. Andy was…he wasn’t going to think about that, that was all. “It’s that I haven’t done it in a long time.”
            “Why not?” Draco’s voice was gentle, mildly interested, while his fingers kept up their stealthy rubbing. “I hardly think you could hurt someone else by letting them do this.”
            Harry frowned into his arms. Had Draco forgotten what Frank had said and what Harry had told him, or was he being deliberately obtuse?
            Maybe neither. Maybe he’s trying to urge me past what he thinks is something childish and into a more grown-up way of looking at it.
            Harry huffed into his arms this time. Yes, well, he had always known that Draco didn’t agree with the way Harry viewed sex and his past lovers.
            “It hurt Frank—I mean, it got Frank upset because he said that I didn’t respond well enough when he fucked me,” Harry mumbled. “Just lay there like a dead fish. Not enough response.”
            Draco said nothing, but his fingers kept moving. Then they retreated, and when they came back, there was something cold and slick on them. Harry leaped and cursed as Draco probed his hole with them.
            “I would say that was a response,” Draco murmured, his voice dark and insinuating.
            “You’re hysterical,” Harry said. “You know what I mean. He said that it could have been anyone in bed with him. Not me.”
            “The person who can mentally replace you with someone else is not a person I want to be around,” Draco whispered, and bent over to kiss the back of his neck. Harry found himself relaxing all in a rush. Draco had done that before, and nothing bad had happened, he reminded himself. He could do this. He could trust Draco to handle him gently and give it up if he saw that Harry was panicking, because he cared more about Harry than he did about his own pleasure. “Let me touch you inside?”
            Harry waited a few seconds to be sure that he could handle it, while Draco’s fingers didn’t probe further but didn’t retreat. Then he nodded. “All right,” he whispered, voice so tiny that he wasn’t sure Draco heard him.
            Either he had, or the nod had been enough of a signal for him. Draco’s fingers parted Harry’s arse cheeks and slid inside.
            Harry shut his eyes. It had been long enough since he was with Frank like this that the sensation had become strange again. He tried to put the sight of Frank’s face and the memory of his words out of his mind. Yes, all right, so he had disappointed one lover in the past. It didn’t mean that he would disappoint all his lovers forever or that he deserved to be shut out of this kind of pleasure, if he wanted it.
            And he wanted it.
            That decided, he could relax into the slow, delicious stroke of the fingers into his arse, and down. Draco knew how to do this, he decided, feeling the way that Draco’s fingers parted and opened inside him, twisting slightly as though he wanted to make sure that Harry got his fill of sensation. Harry panted, his head bowed this time into his arms because that was the way to cradle his head and make sure that he didn’t simply drool on the sofa cushions.
            Draco was smiling, Harry was sure of that, although he didn’t speak and that meant Harry couldn’t hear the smile in his voice. His fingers worked deeper and deeper, and Harry’s eyes slipped shut.
            Until Draco found his prostate, and Harry’s eyes popped back open, and he cried out without a voice.
            “Like that, then,” Draco said, with no question in his voice at all, because he was a bastard that way. He shifted his position and curled his fingers inwards, thrusting the way he would if he had Harry on the end of his cock.
            Harry moaned and raised himself up, scrambling, not caring that he nearly unseated Draco in his haste to reach his own cock. Draco hissed something behind him, but it couldn’t have been a spell, because he didn’t move and nothing changed. Harry decided it had been a noise of appreciation. Draco could do that, as long as he simply sat back and watched and didn’t get in the way.
            It was sheer bliss to get his hand around himself. Harry tossed his head back and squeezed hard enough to make his vision swim when he opened his eyes. Then he started stroking up and down as fast as he could, as rough as he could. He had almost forgotten that he liked this so much, but he did, and right now, he wanted to get off more than he wanted anything else.
            Draco’s breath was wet and warm on his shoulder, and he dragged Harry further up and up, until Harry was half-leaning against him. His fingers never moved from Harry’s arse. They didn’t regularly touch Harry’s prostate now, but that was okay. The important thing, the important thing, was the pleasure rising in him like a striking cobra now that he had his hand in the right place.
            Draco shifted his hand, and his balance, and ignited an even headier source of pleasure, and Harry choked and came on Draco’s fingers.
            Draco’s hand closed hard in his arse for a second, and then he shifted, rocking his hips back and forth and moaning. Harry, his head sagging in bliss, took a moment to understand what was happening. Draco was hard, too, and rubbing against Harry’s arse because it was the softest thing right in front of him.
            Well, all right, and maybe because it’s mine, Harry decided, and thought about reaching a hand back. But the angle would be awkward, and why do that when he could do something else instead?
            He began to roll his hips back, not quite in time with Draco’s, but soon he got a good counterpoint going. Draco was crying out now, gasping little breaths that panted their way over Harry’s ear. Harry reached back and touched Draco’s balls, brushing a finger over them, and that was enough for Draco, evidently, who came across Harry’s arse, cloth and bare skin alike.
            Harry sighed. Such a long time since someone had done that. And now he could think about it and deal with it without it reminding him of Frank, which was pleasant.
            “How did you do that?” Draco sounded a little stunned, his hands coming to rest on either side of Harry’s waist as though he wanted to hold him there instead of letting him rise.
            Harry had to snort. “Do what? There wasn’t any art to it, just moving my arse back and forth in a way you happen to like.” He shot a glance over his shoulder, and Draco smiled at him, a smile so shaky with wonder that Harry flushed.
            “I liked it, oh, yeah,” Draco said, his voice as deep and sticky as the hand that reached down to scrape alongside Harry’s cock. Harry sighed and twitched. He was incapable of responding with interest right now, but he would have liked to. “I just meant that I didn’t think you were ready for something like that. I thought you were barely ready for what I wanted to try.”
            “Well, I surprised myself.” Harry settled back more firmly against Draco, enjoying the sensation of Draco’s limp cock against his crack. He would enjoy more than that soon, if he kept this up, he thought. “I didn’t know that I could forget Frank like that.”
            “Did Frank ever do this with you?”
            “A few times, I think,” Harry said. From the way Draco shifted against him, he was displeased at Harry’s vagueness, but Harry really did find it hard to remember. He remembered Frank fingering him, but he didn’t think it was anything either of them had enjoyed much. “Not as thoroughly.”
            “Good,” Draco said, and his arms tightened around Harry. “I want a few things to do with you that are firsts, something that no one can ever take away from me.”
            Harry twisted around and kissed Draco sloppily. He could have tried speaking, but the words would come out the wrong way no matter what, so he used his mouth instead, and from the pleased little murmurs that Draco uttered into his mouth, it was the right choice.
*
            “I know that you might not want to talk about this, Auror Potter, but I do think it necessary.”
            Harry kept his muscles utterly relaxed, his expression faintly bored. It was the most effective way to deal with Eric Reynard, the lackey—excuse him, the Auror—in charge of discipline in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Harry kept himself from reacting, and Reynard got more and more flustered, and spent more time shuffling papers than criticizing Harry. Sometimes Harry could walk out the door, and never get more than the mildest scolding for whatever infraction he had committed.
            He still spent more time in Reynard’s office than most Aurors. Because, you see, Reynard had explained to him painstakingly, his profile was so much higher than any other Auror’s, and that meant he had to consider the impact of his actions on the public discourse.
            Reynard was pompous almost beyond bearing, but his heart was good. Harry just didn’t think that his fame, which had never given him anything good that he could remember, was sufficient excuse to single him out from the others.
            “People want to know why you’re dating Draco Malfoy.”
            Harry blinked and sat up in spite of the encouragement that would give Reynard. He had thought this was about his behavior on his last few cases, and the utterly unprofessional way he had reacted to being scarred by acid in particular. “What?” he asked. “But he has a cleared name, sir. He would never be working in the Ministry if he didn’t.”
            “Yes. But.” Reynard stared off into the distance, his fingers clenching so hard around one piece of paper that Harry wondered if it was a specific memo about him. Reynard finally turned around and thrust the paper at him.
            “I shouldn’t be doing this,” he said wretchedly. “It’s against procedure. But so is calling you in here in the first place. We aren’t supposed to pay attention to anonymous complaints about our Aurors unless they’re made to the disciplinary committee. It’s one reason that we have a disciplinary committee in the first place, so that no one can complain that we aren’t holding our Aurors in check.”
            Frowning, Harry read the paper. No, not a memo. It was simply a letter, a battered one folded so many times that the paper was growing soft. What in the world…?
            You should be warned that Harry Potter is now dating Draco Malfoy. Draco Malfoy looks like the lover that he treated badly, the one he can barely name to himself. That lover was also blond and tall and slim, and a pure-blood.
            I caution you to make sure that Potter cannot treat Malfoy as badly as he treated this past lover.
            Harry swallowed and bowed his head. He didn’t know who this was from—he doubted that the person it mentioned could have written himself—but he knew who it was about.
            “I’m sorry, Auror Potter.” Reynard was smoothing his hands back and forth, palms touching. “Do you know what they mean?”
            Harry glanced up, and felt a bitter smile touch his lips when he saw how anxiously Reynard looked at him. He half-nodded. “I had a lover once named Andy,” he said. “Andrew Vibraun. I don’t think you ever met him.”
            Reynard had the expression, now, of someone trying painfully hard to catch up. “What? He was an Auror?”
            “He was training to be one,” Harry said softly. “He never completed the training.”
            And how much did I have to do with that?
            It didn’t matter how much Ron told him that Andy would have left anyway, that he wasn’t temperamentally suited to being an Auror because he flinched from the sight of blood and the harder curses. He could still have worked behind a desk. He could have done paperwork. He could have spoken to the press and charmed them with his crooked smile. Everyone had liked Andy.
            “Does this person think you forced him out of the Ministry?” Reynard waved the anonymous letter again. “Do they think that you’ll do the same with Malfoy in his Potions job?”
            That was so far off track Harry had to smile, but he ended up with a dry throat and lips that felt as if they would crack as they bent. “I could wish it was that simple,” he murmured. “No. Andy was my—lover, and I destroyed him.”
            There. The words were out in the open at last, the words that Harry had never spoken even to Ron and Hermione, because when he tried, they started clucking at him and rushed to reassure him that he hadn’t done it, that Andy would have destroyed himself in the end. The excuses were suspiciously similar to the ones that Ron tended to make about why Andy hadn’t been able to finish his Auror training.
            “Could you explain that, please?” Reynard sounded small and scared, his large, fascinated eyes fastened on Harry.
            Harry swallowed and nodded. The memories were coming back to him now, the memories that he had turned for so long into flinches and cowering. All he had done was think of Andy’s name, not what he had done to him.
            And this time, he didn’t know how even Draco would find it in his heart to excuse him. Andy had been no Frank, to exaggerate Harry’s offenses and feel angry even when he had no reason to. Now that Draco had given him some space and some distance, Harry could see how wrong he had been about Frank. But there was no minimization for what he had done to Andy, no reason except that Harry had been too much in love with himself and his supposedly good reasons for getting angry.
            “I was really jealous over Andy,” Harry whispered. “He seemed perfect. He was gentle, unlike me, and he wanted to be an Auror because he wanted to help people. Not for the danger and the thrill of it.”
            Reynard blinked and scrabbled on his desk again as if searching for something. “I thought that you wanted to be an Auror for more reasons than the danger and the thrill, Auror Potter,” he said. “I’m sure that I was one of the ones who read over your application and decided to accept you into the training program.”
            Harry had never known that. He awkwardly cleared his throat. “I mean, thank you, but the danger and the thrill are part of it for me. They weren’t for Andy.”
            “I still don’t see why that would make it right for someone to send us a complaint about you.” Reynard was looking at all the paper on his desk as if he would find a good excuse somewhere under it.
            “I don’t know if this is Andy himself or someone writing to defend him,” said Harry. He was lowering himself into the memories slowly. It was like climbing down a dank and deep well. He shivered a little as he did it. But it had to be done, and that meant he went ahead and eased his way along. “Anyway, sir, Andy and I spent a lot of time debating about whether you could be a good Auror if you had certain motives. He explained his to me, and I explained mine to him. That’s how I know so much about the reasons he was here.”
            Long conversations, long evenings sitting across from each other talking in Andy’s flat, or Harry’s, or down at the pub that the Auror trainees had discovered and made his own. Andy wagging his cup or his glass at Harry, leaning backwards with his feet on the table, then clopping the chair and his leg down hard as he leaned forwards, gesturing with one finger at Harry. Harry had leaned forwards one evening and slipped his tongue and teeth around it.
            Andy had stared for a second as if he’d never seen Harry’s mouth before. Then a smile had wandered across his face, widening, becoming more beautiful by the second. That had been the moment when their love affair properly began, Harry thought, but it had been building towards that point for what felt like centuries sometimes.
            Centuries of talk, of hearts and beliefs shared. Something like the relationship that he now shared with Draco, in fact.
            “Auror Potter?”
            Sometimes his memories were so intense that it was difficult to remember he had an audience. Harry blinked and shook his head and cleared his throat. “Sorry, sir. I—eventually, Andy decided that he couldn’t be an Auror because of the way the program was run. Our instructors cared more about results in the things that Andy wasn’t good at than results in the things he was good at.”
            “Like helping people. Which isn’t a class.”
            Sometimes Reynard could be shrewd. Harry nodded. “He left the program, and started training to be a Healer. We were dating, and it was good, for a while.” He silently skipped over a lot that he knew Reynard probably didn’t want to hear and didn’t need to know in order to make a decision, anyway, and landed on the real truth. “But there were still some things he was uneasy about. These concerned me.”
            Andy was gentle in the best way, Harry thought despairingly. Gentle as in gentleman. Gentle as in gentleness and courtesy. And his supervisor Healers had commended him, even so early in his training program, on his manner of getting patients to calm down and pay attention when they were panicking.
            He had been too gentle with Harry.
            “There was a…time,” Harry said slowly, “when I started getting more and more involved in the Dark Arts. In defending against them, I mean, and learning the curses. And caught up in the descriptions of what they did to people.”
            He glanced quickly at Reynard, but found him nodding. “Most of us go through that, Auror Potter,” he said quietly. “We have to learn how Dark we can get, how much we’re attracted to it. We have to understand that attraction from the inside out. It helps us understand the criminals we pursue. And because we’ve been through it, we know the acceptable limits. I know that you wouldn’t have been allowed to continue in the Auror program if you hadn’t stopped yourself in time.”
            That made Harry wonder about something he’d never considered before, whether the Auror training program was sometimes used to strain and filter out people who might become Dark wizards.
            It was an interesting idea, but not one that could matter much to him right now, so he shook it away and continued. “I started talking about it to Andy, but he wasn’t that interested in it. He suggested that I stop practicing Dark Arts and concentrate on defensive magic. I told him that I had to cast some Dark curses as part of Auror training classes, but he didn’t buy it. He told me that made it all the more imperative for me to refrain from casting them, because these were the kinds of spells that criminals I would have to defend people against would use.”
            Harry could still see Andy’s face when he said that. The flush down his throat, the way he had turned away from Harry with his head bowed and his shoulders shuddering. Harry ought to have read the future from that, but he hadn’t. He had simply been horribly indignant about the idea that he might have to restrain himself.
            That’s been part of the problem all along. I just reacted without thinking, without considering what my partners might like. I didn’t think Draco wanted more than a casual relationship. I thought Frank was happy with me. I thought practicing with my mouth would make me good at sex in general.
            Reynard called him back with a gentle tap of his quill on the anonymous letter. “And something happened.”
            Harry nodded and closed his eyes. “I came home after an argument with one of my instructors. I was all tense, and I wanted to chat with Andy and calm down. But he wasn’t home when I got there. Substituting for another Healer had kept him late. So I paced up and down inside the flat, getting more and more worked up.”
            Harry did open his eyes once, to glance at Reynard, only to find him nodding. “I know very well that the kind of tension Dark magic caused is best released by something other than meditation, Auror Potter,” he said. “Continue.”
            This was still hard to say, but Harry focused on the image of Draco’s face and pushed through. The most important person he could tell this to was actually Draco, and not Auror Reynard. “Andy didn’t get home until almost nine, and then he was upset because one of his patients had nearly died. They got her stabilized, but she was always going to have some instability in her magical core. She’d never be a powerful witch again, and Andy had talked with her and knew how important developing spells was to her. She’d have to give that hobby up. Andy was hurting for her, and he needed my comfort. I nearly—”
            It was still so hard to name the emotions that had surged through him in that moment. Anger and impatience and desire, and the flinch that Andy had given him when he saw the look in Harry’s eyes had been the trigger of a predator to its prey.
            “I got so upset when I realized what he was saying, that he was upset and couldn’t comfort me, that I was the one who would have to sit down and pretend that I wasn’t feeling anything for his sake,” Harry whispered. It was neither right nor fair, but that was the cluster of emotional clouds that had arisen in him, hanging over his mind like a thunderstorm about to break. “I yelled at Andy, and when he yelled back, because even he could lose his temper at a time like that, I drew my wand.”
            The emotions had been worse when he did that. Suddenly the clouds had seemed to deepen so that Harry was standing in shadows, and he had felt a long tendril of that dark, and Dark, power reach down to his wand. He had known that he could cast a curse that would warp Andy to his will, make him what Harry wanted him to be. No need to use the Imperius Curse, which would exile Harry forever from the ranks of Auror trainees if anyone found out he had used it. There were other spells that could accomplish the same thing, if not as thoroughly, and they weren’t illegal.
            All of that had surged through him in an instant, and then he had lowered his wand and put it away again, horrified with himself for the temptation. To get that angry over a minor disagreement, to be that disappointed that Andy wasn’t right what he needed that very evening…
            Harry had been disgusted with himself.
            But not as disgusted as Andy had been.
            “He knew what I could have done to him,” Harry said now to Auror Reynard. “And he knew that I had been getting further and further involved in Dark magic. He tried to look away, tried to pretend that it didn’t matter, and it had only been one slip-up. But later he asked me about it, and I couldn’t lie to him.”
            No need, no way, to tell Auror Reynard about the content of that argument, and what had happened between their first exchange of words and their second. Auror Reynard wouldn’t want to hear it, anyway.
            That was the kind of communication Harry had to reserve for Draco.
            “That was when you broke up?” Auror Reynard sounded as if he was still a little lost why someone would have sent him an anonymous letter about Harry’s past relationship with a failed Auror trainee.
            Harry sighed and nodded. “Yes. And Andy told me that he couldn’t be with someone who was that strongly drawn to the Dark Arts to think about using them on him, even if I apologized later. Some of the other things I said convinced him that I didn’t really regret it. And I probably didn’t regret it enough, then. Not as much as later.”
            So much of everything came later.
            “Andy ended up moving out of the country,” Harry continued. “I think it was the only way he could feel safe from me. And that meant he had to leave his training at St. Mungo’s, and his friends, and his family, and everything else…” He let his voice trail off. “He might be the one who wrote you that letter. Or someone else who knows him might be. His friends and family hated me. They had a reason to.”
            Auror Reynard frowned down at the letter. “Well. It’s the sort of thing that the Ministry doesn’t interfere with, unless one of our Aurors commits an actual crime.” He looked up, and his eyes were unusually piercing. “One of the things you might consider, Auror Potter, is whether you are on the verge of that again.”
            “I talked to some people after that,” Harry said quietly. “One of them was a Mind-Healer.” That probably sounded more reassuring than it really was, since that was the Mind-Healer Harry had stopped going to after the man had pressed him to share secrets Harry didn’t feel comfortable talking about. Harry had known he wanted gossip to spread at best, blackmail to sell at worst. “But the guilt was what drove me away from the Dark Arts, more powerfully than anything else could.”
            Auror Reynard nodded, as if to reassure himself in turn that Harry had done nothing all that bad. “Thank you for confirming that this is simply a letter from a jealous former lover, Auror Potter.” He tore it up. “I can tell you that the Auror program will see no reason to inquire into your relationship with Potions master Malfoy unless one of you actually does something criminal.”
            Harry gave him a smile he hoped wasn’t mechanical and stood up. “Thank you, sir. I can safely promise you I won’t.” There was no way that he wanted to lose Draco over something like that. Harry still clung to the thought that they might break up, for self-protection as much as to ward off impossible dreams of forever, but he didn’t want to be the one to cause it.
            “I shall defend you if anyone comes to me and questions my decision.” Auror Reynard looked around the office as if he anticipated someone popping out of the wall to do just that, and looked forward to the duty.
            Harry stepped out into the corridor and shut the door behind him. That had gone better than he’d expected, but tremors were still racing through him. He hadn’t expected the emotions or the memories to come back so strongly. It had probably happened because he hadn’t looked at them in so long. He’d tried to shove Andy thoroughly out of his mind.
            He shivered again, and frowned. He probably wouldn’t be collected when he went home to fool Draco, or keep him from asking what was wrong.
            Which meant that Harry needed to tell him tonight.
            Damn it.
*
            “Can we go out for dinner tonight?”
            Draco paused and regarded Harry. He’d just stepped through the front door, and hadn’t even got his cloak off yet. He’d been exhausted, his hands shaking, from the potion he’d spent all day brewing, and he’d thought that coming through the Floo would just smudge his clothes unacceptably and ruin his day if he fell.
            But Harry was standing in the middle of his drawing room with his hands clamped to his sides, and a pleading expression that Draco knew better than to ignore. He took his cloak off slowly, watching Harry, and then nodded. “If you need to do that, then we can do it.”
            Harry’s face lit up, and he crossed the distance between them and kissed him hard on the mouth. Draco swayed as he reached up to grasp Harry’s arms. It wasn’t all because of the hard day. He could feel the passion, the desperation, the relief, in Harry’s kiss, and he was sure that it didn’t come from just Draco’s agreement.
            “What happened?” Draco whispered, stepping back and looking at Harry searchingly. “And are you sure that you wouldn’t rather stay at home to discuss it?”
            Harry looked as though he’d rather be dragged through the streets behind a centaur. “No. I think—this is better. If we go to a restaurant. If you have one that you like, you can choose, but otherwise, I thought the Leaky Cauldron might be good.”
            Draco’s senses and sense were both feeling a little battered, but his sense of horror woke at that. “Of course not, Harry,” he said. “I want to go to a place where I can taste something other than grease.”
            Harry blinked. “Not all the food there is that bad.”
            Draco held up a forbidding hand. It shook. Harry leaned forwards and focused on the small burn in the center of the palm Draco had got when he wasn’t able to duck behind his Shield Charm in time. The next instant, Harry had reached up and was cradling Draco’s wrist every bit as ardently as he had kissed him.
            “You’re hurt. You didn’t tell me that.” The look Harry gave him would have done the Heir of Slytherin proud, Draco thought absently.
            “Just the sorts of burns that I would heal on my own, but I didn’t have the magical strength right after it happened.” Draco shrugged. It was a little awkward when his arm remained extended in front of him, trapped in Harry’s tight grip. “It’s nothing. It’ll probably have cleared up by the morning. The important thing is that I finished the potion and didn’t need to stay longer at the Ministry, and so we can go eat.”
            Harry turned a silently stubborn face on him. “We can’t go out,” he said, when Draco remained staring, and Harry seemed to have realized that was a silent demand for words. “I need—there was a time in the past when I ignored what my lover needed, and it caused awful things to happen. I won’t do that this time.”
            “How many times do I have to tell you that I’m not one of those fragile flowers you used to tend?” Draco snapped. “I can survive a little lack of consideration. Or you needing something from me even when I’ve had a hard day. You’ve given me the best you had after hard days, too.”
            Harry touched his wand to the burn and healed it with a sliding spell that Draco didn’t know. His face was still stubborn, still closed. He shook his head. “I need to stay here and take care of you more than I need to go out, now. I thought—I wanted to go out so we could be in a public place and it would be…less like last time. But this is what we need to do now.”
            “Less like last time?” Draco pounced on that. “When was the last time we had an argument? Here? Or are you talking about the last time we ate out in public?” He leaned nearer to Harry. “I can’t regret that. It was one of the reasons that I got to know you at all.”
            “Less like the last time that I wanted to tell you about.” Harry was already withdrawing from him, folding his arms and frowning into the fireplace as though Draco had closed it and prevented him from Flooing anywhere. “I don’t want to alarm you, but someone sent an anonymous letter to the Aurors today, telling them that I shouldn’t be dating you and the Ministry should interfere because one of my past lovers was like you, and I hurt him.”
            Draco blinked. “Who is this paragon?” he asked. “And who sent the letter?”
            “That doesn’t matter that much,” Harry said. “I told an edited version of the story to Auror Reynard, and he ripped the letter up. I told him that I scared my lover because I almost cast a Dark spell to compel his will on him, and that much was true.” He turned his head and caught Draco’s eye deliberately. “But in the meantime, something else happened, and I don’t want to tell anyone but you about it.”
            Warmth bloomed in the center of Draco’s chest. He moved closer to Harry and put his hands on his shoulders. They trembled a little, but that was only partially weariness. The excitement of hearing another of Harry’s secrets, and even of knowing that Harry had once been that much into the Dark Arts, was the largest part. “Should we sit down? Do you want the elves to bring us some food?”
            Harry hesitated, and finally nodded. “The dining room?”
            “It would be my pleasure,” Draco murmured, and led the way, although he kept a hand on Harry’s arm the entire time. It felt as though Harry was trembling, and Draco wanted to feel and absorb the tremors at the same time.
*
            It was harder to remember the intensity of the emotions he had suffered that afternoon, when he was sitting down across from Draco, on the other side of a table full of food. This wasn’t like the scene with Andy had been, at all, and he drew in his breath to remember that scene a little, swallowing.
            But Draco was watching him, with eyes that didn’t miss any of Harry’s moves any more than Andy had that night, and Harry had eaten all he could hold. Draco looked better, too, he thought, with his hands no longer shaking and his small burns healed as Harry discovered them. Draco had a wineglass in his hand and was studying Harry with open curiosity.
            “You should know that I’m not addicted or attracted to the Dark Arts anymore,” Harry started. “This particular incident cured me. I might still sometimes use a Dark spell, but only in the heat of battle when I can’t think of anything better.”
            “Too bad,” Draco said softly, and drained his wineglass.
            “What?” Harry stared at him, thrown off the careful track he’d been intending to go down. “What do you mean, too bad?”
            “I wouldn’t mind if you were still attracted to the Dark Arts. It would mean that we would settle some of our arguments more easily, and I could trust you never to go too far.”
            “Yeah, well, you shouldn’t,” Harry snapped. This wasn’t the way he’d planned to tell the story, but Draco did have a way of upsetting his plans. “Not when you hear what I did to Andy. I would have compelled him, you know. I thought about using the Imperius Curse. Before I started trusting you, I would have Obliviated your memories of my past lovers, if I thought I could get away with it.”
            “Ah, but you’re a good judge of your own limitations.” Draco put his glass down. “You knew you couldn’t, so we didn’t have a problem.”
            Harry gritted his teeth on a scream. “The Dark Arts disgusted him. But what I did to him in the bedroom was worse.”
            Draco nodded condescendingly. “This is another case where you were supposed to read his mind, but you left your Legilimency skills at home that day?”
            “I raped him, all right?” Harry slammed his hand down on the table and made the plates leap up in the air.
            No house-elves appeared right away to clean up the drink that slopped over the side of his glass, or the bits of food that went flying. Perhaps they could sense the panting magic and charged emotion in the air, and didn’t dare come close.
            Draco leaned slowly forwards, his eyes on Harry and his face blank. It was the same expression Harry had seen him wear when he was brewing something complicated. He cocked his head and asked, “Will you tell me exactly what happened?”
            Harry reined himself in. It had been a long time since he had described what he had done to Andy that way, even in the privacy of his own head, and Draco had reasons to doubt Harry’s version of the story when it came to the way he pictured and described his lovers. “In my own words. If you want.”
            Draco nodded. He looked rapt.
            Harry closed his eyes, the better to remember, and also because he found the expression on Draco’s face a little disturbing. Then again, this was the man who had seemed to leap for glee at the idea that Harry was fascinated by the Dark Arts. Harry had to be careful here.
            “I had an argument with Andy about the Dark Arts spell, and I was upset because I’d been casting a lot of Dark curses that day. And the best way to get something Dark out is fighting or sex. But Andy was so gentle that he quit Auror training, and became a Healer, and he’d had a bad day, too. So he wouldn’t duel me, and he didn’t want to fight with me, and when he left the drawing room and went to our bedroom, I followed him down the corridor.”
            The muddy colors of the corridor swam in front of Harry’s mental eyes. He didn’t remember anymore whether they had really looked like that or whether it was his brain playing a sort of trick on him.
            “He told me in the bedroom that he was too tired for sex. I kissed him, and he didn’t push me away. I thought that meant it was okay, and I took off my clothes and just sort of…threw him on the bed, and sat on top of him. I could feel all the Dark magic humming through me, and it was encouraging me.”
            Harry had become aware that his voice was sinking, but Draco didn’t ask him to speak up. He just sat on the other side of the table, breathing softly, and Harry grimaced and continued.
            “I mean, he had his wand, and that was how I rationalized it at the time. He could have cast a spell that would have blasted me into the wall. I never took it away from him. He could have said no again. He could have done something.
            “But he didn’t do that. He did say he was too tired, and I should have…I should have listened. Not kissed him so hard it made his lips bleed, and stripped off his clothes so fast that he had marks like whips on his skin, and sat on him and made him fuck me like he was the one dying for it instead of me.”
            Harry shuddered. The second worst moment of the whole thing was the pleasure he still could remember, the pleasure he had felt when the miasma of the Dark Arts burned out of him because his body was doing something, moving in a way that resembled the energetic dancing around the room that he would have done if he was dueling.
            The worst thing was when he opened his eyes and saw the look on Andy’s face.
            “Harry?”
            It felt like a long way to the surface of his thoughts, but Harry made it. He opened his eyes and found Draco studying him.
            “You had him fuck you,” Draco said. “Sitting astride him?”
            Harry stared. “This isn’t some bloody potion that you can analyze,” he warned, and something nearly as desperate as the rage that he’d felt before, the rage that had made him slam his hand on the table, was rising inside him. “Not—not something you can make better by telling me that it wasn’t my fault. It happened, okay? And I know that I’m guilty of it. He said that he didn’t want it, and I did it to him anyway.”
            “I’m merely trying to get a better picture of the situation,” Draco said, and gave him a sympathetic smile. “You were straddling him?”
            “Yes,” Harry muttered. He didn’t want to say this, but he had come this far, and he had already decided that Draco was the only one he could tell it to, anyway. He might as well go ahead and prove that he had really decided to tell the whole.
            Draco nodded as if that was important, or as if he was picturing it, and suddenly Harry was glad that he didn’t know what Andy looked like. “You weren’t holding his hands down?”
            “At first,” Harry said. “Then—I let them go.” He flushed, and decided that, since Draco was still looking at him as if he could picture the whole thing, he wasn’t going to tell Draco that he had let go to fling himself back in pleasure on Andy’s cock, his head and his hands all lifted to the ceiling.
            Unless he asks.
            “And he had his wand,” Draco said. “Did you have yours?”
            “I put it down next to the bed,” Harry muttered. He thought he had, at least. That was where he had found it afterwards, but he couldn’t really remember what he’d done with it at the time.
            Draco sighed. “So he could have broken free because he had his wand and you didn’t. He didn’t stay in Auror training, but he probably knew some defensive spells because he’d been through it, of course. And he’d probably had to restrain temporarily cursed patients at times, and other patients who would have thought he was the enemy.”
            “What you’re saying makes sense,” Harry said, his voice hissing out. “But it can’t change what I did. He didn’t fight back, but I know what I saw on his face when he got up and walked out. And later we had another argument. He said that he’d never known I was so violent. He was so gentle, Draco. It wasn’t just the Dark Arts that disgusted him. It was the way I—what I did to him.”
            Draco just watched him. Then he said, “I can believe that it damaged him, since he was so gentle.” His voice was mocking on those last words, and Harry winced a little. “But I don’t think that means it’s the same thing as you tying him down and raping him.”
            “He didn’t want it,” Harry said loudly.
            “Yes, I know,” Draco said. “It’s complicated. It wasn’t something you should have done. But did he just lie there beneath you the whole time? Or was he fighting?”
            Harry swallowed. “He didn’t want to fight. He just lay there with his eyes closed.” That was what he remembered third best, after his pleasure and the look in Andy’s eyes afterwards—the way he had lain there with his eyes shut and his head turned a little away, as if he had been detached from what was happening to his body. “And then we argued the next day, and then I never saw him again.”
            “He said that he was tired and didn’t want to have sex,” Draco said. “Lots of people say that. Some of them are using it as an excuse, and some of them mean it at the time and change their minds if the other person keeps asking them. Some of them mean it and walk away. But I think that it’s impossible to say if you raped him without asking him. Did you ask him?”
            Harry stared at him. “I didn’t use the word.”
            “Then what was your fight about?” Draco’s voice was pleasant.
            “He told me that he’d hated being used like that. That I was too violent for him. That I shouldn’t have done anything like that, or used Dark Arts, and he was leaving, because he needed someone who would be gentler with him.”
            “Then it sounds like he was at least as upset about your use of Dark Arts as about what you did to him in the bedroom,” Draco said, and laid his hand on the table as he leaned forwards, not taking his eyes from Harry, his gaze a physical force. “And that points to a deeper problem with him. You say he was gentle? He was a coward.”
            Harry tried to force some words past the blockage in his throat, but all he got out was air.
            “He couldn’t handle you,” Draco said, and ran his eyes deliberately over Harry’s body, from head to foot. “Not your magic, not your darkness, not your passion. But instead of telling you that, he just lay there, and then walked away.”
            “He wasn’t a coward.”
            “And you weren’t well-matched with him, if he couldn’t even stay in Auror training,” Draco said. “I, on the other hand, can handle it. Can handle you.”
            Harry clenched his fists in front of him. “You aren’t listening!”
            Draco smiled at him, glittering among his dishes. “Try me.”
            “Draco—”
            “Or perhaps you were better matched than I thought. Perhaps you’re a coward, too. “
            “Draco—”
            “Come on, Harry. Or aren’t you brave enough?”
            Harry lunged across the table, and Draco laughed, and they met in the middle of it with a smash of lips and a tinkling of glass.
*
Neogetz: Thanks! I think that Harry can have peace of mind about Ginny now, so that encounter was a good thing.
moodysavage: Yes, I do too. Although in this chapter, the standing up is something that Harry would have preferred Draco not do.
CareLessLover: Not then, but next chapter will be wilder.
SP777: Well, I hope you like this one too! Thanks for the compliments by the way.
kisa: Sorry for the wait!
- 14
- 15
- 16
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Nothing Like the Sun