Kneeling

Harry took his his time getting back up to the castle, carefully avoiding anyone he might have to talk to. He was absolutely not in the mood for any kind of casual talk about the weather, Quidditch, or - his mouth curved up ironically - Malfoy’s latest misdeeds. If only they knew. Now that would give them something to talk about for the rest of the year.

He shuddered at the thought. No. No one could ever find out about what had happened today. And yesterday. And, if he was honest, might just happen again. He wished he could promise himself that it wouldn’t, but today had shown him just how useless his resolutions where against Malfoy’s seductive touch.

Bad enough that he was lying to his friends, he didn’t want to lie to himself on top of that. He wouldn’t actively seek Malfoy out, no, but he also didn’t quite promise himself that he would resist if Malfoy came to him. He didn’t like the thought of how little willpower he seemed to have to resist this particular temptation, but that was just because there wasn’t really any pressing reason to resist here, wasn’t it? As long as no one found out about it - and they wouldn’t, he’d make sure of that - it wouldn’t harm anyone.

This didn’t have anything to do with lack of loyalty to his friends or to the Order, because Malfoy didn’t mean anything. He could fuck him, get rid of these urges his body seemed to have developed out of nowhere, and forget about the whole thing as soon as it was over.

Yeah. That was it. Not that he wanted it to happen again, or anything - but when the opportunity arose, well, there really wasn’t any reason to feel guilty about not saying no.


************


He found Ron still in the library, and there was a horribly awkward moment when Ron turned to him, smiled, and said: “Hey, there you are! What have you been doing, anyway?”, and the only answer that came to his mind, blocking out all other thoughts, was “I’ve been fucking Malfoy.”

There was one second when he frightened himself with the thought of how easy it would be to say it out loud. He knew that feeling - it was the feeling of standing in front of a precipice, the frightening knowledge of how easy it would be to just take one more step and fall down over the edge, and a morbid urge to do it, just for the hell of it. But as always, the strange pull of the abyss receded after a terrifying second, leaving him free to step back from the edge.
He shrugged. “Just had to be alone for a bit, think a few things through.”

The lie came easily to his lips, now. He’d had moments like that before, recently, when even the company of his friends became too much and he had to retreat for a few hours, just to be by himself - away from everyone else and the pressure he could sometimes feel suffocating him, the weight of their expectations.

He knew that it had bothered Ron and Hermione at first, but they had learned to accept that sometimes he just needed a bit of downtime. It was easy to pretend that this had been one of those times, nothing more. Ron just nodded, now, shoving his books to one side to make room for Harry at the table.

“Here, sit down. I’ve tried to get started, but this is one of those topics where there’s so much info that you don’t even know where to begin to sort it all out. I mean, it would probably be shorter just listing the things you can’t use scarab beetles for.” And, after a quick look around the room to make sure they were alone: “Damn Snape.”

Harry grinned and fell into the chair, taking a look at the material Ron had gathered so far. All the requisite books where there, but other than that, Ron seemed to have not so much been working as stalling while he’d been away. He sighed and grabbed the nearest tome, all thoughts of Malfoy getting pushed to the background by the familiar annoyance of doing homework for a teacher who seemed to assign grades at random anyway, and the familiar comfort of tackling the tedious task together with his best friend.