How the War Was Won

Harry Potter had always known how to shame Draco Malfoy. The fact that Potter hadn't realized it until just recently was the greatest praise Draco's acting would ever receive.

From that first day at Hogwart's, when Potter had denied his handshake - his friendship, Draco Malfoy had been ashamed. Back then, shame had made him angry.

Each time Potter had bested him on the Quidditch pitch, Draco had been sick with shame. He had even felt it each time he tricked Potter with some scheme or gotten him in some kind of trouble. Oh, there was satisfaction, certainly. But beneath it, a sense that he was no match for the other boy without resorting to treachery and underhandedness. Shame.

Draco Malfoy felt shame in a hundred different ways. There was the thickness in his throat he felt when he failed to answer a professor's question correctly, the shuddering weakness in his thighs and bowels when he had disappointed his father, and the unbearable heat that pooled in his cheeks and along his jaw when his mother turned her beautiful eyes on him in just such a way.

But there was nothing like Potter shame. Potter shame was heat, all over him just beneath his skin. Potter shame churned the bile in his stomach, tightened all the muscles in his lower back to the point of cramping, sped his heartbeat. It made the base of his teeth ache, his finger nails itch, it made him acutely aware of the bottoms of his feet and how no hole seemed likely to bloom beneath them so he could hide himself. Potter shame made him feel each beat of his unworthy, insignificant heart in his wrists and under his tongue and behind his kneecaps. Potter shame was the worst sort Draco had ever known.

And then Potter had found a way to make it worse.

-

Potter had never known what he did to Draco, hadn't known about the special, personal torture that was Potter shame. All the Boy Wonder had ever seen was the anger, a blessing of his Malfoy skin and upbringing. It hadn't been until that terrible night at the Hog's Head that Potter had discovered how weak Draco was.

Draco had been enjoying a few drinks in the peace and anonymity the 'Head afforded when Potter had walked in. He was only recently returned from a continental tour he'd taken after the defeat of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, and tanned a deeper gold than usual. Draco had managed to avoid most of the conflict by turning himself into Ministry custody early on, and emerged as head of his much-depleted family estate.

Potter took the stool right next to his at the bar, much to the dismay of Draco, whose teeth had already begun to hurt with the man's nearness, and ordered whiskey in a dark voice. Drinks served, the new barman retreated to the task of wiping dingy glasses at the other end of the bar, and Potter had begun to speak to Draco.

"Malfoy. Crawled out of your hole to foul the air again, have you?"

Draco took the last sip of his drink and scowled, outwardly composed even as his bile rose and the muscles in his back began to twitch their way into knots. "Sorry, Potter. Didn't realize I was disturbing anyone. I'll be going now." Draco had learned to back down in the year after the war, learned to turn the other cheek with a composure that had begun to earn him a respect of some sort so long as he kept his nose scrupulously clean.

And then his body betrayed him. As he moved to set his empty glass on the bar, intending only to don his cloak, settle his tab, and leave Potter and the Potter shame behind, the ice in his glass tinkled and gave away the tremor in his hands.

Potter had zeroed in immediately, and his eyes sought Draco's. There was something new in those eyes, and Draco saw it as he felt the nerves in his feet begin searching for an escape for the body to which they belonged. They were darker, deeper, and they shone with an unnatural brilliance given the dim light of the bar. "You're scared of me." As the bigger man spoke, those terrible eyes gleamed still brighter. "Aren't you, Malfoy? You're afraid of me."

"No, I'm not." Draco let the glass go, stood, and reached into his pocket to drop and little pile of sickles and galleons on the bar beside it.

"Yes you are." Potter was grinning, a dangerous smile.

"No." Draco swung his cloak over his shoulders, cursing the alcohol that had lowered his defenses enough for the tremor to show.=, and swept out of the bar.

A few long steps out the door, he heard Potter call after him. "Potter shame?"

Draco froze. Potter was a Legilimens. No. Oh Merlin, please no.

Potter was approaching him. Draco could hear the taller man's footfalls. And the suddenly Potter was just behind him, close enough that Draco could feel the hot breath on the back of his neck when the other man spoke. "Very, very interesting."

Potter was good. Draco hadn't even felt him in his head. Then, the Potter shame had been right at the front of his mind. There probably hadn't been much digging to do. "Get away from me, Potter."

The Boy Wonder had only laughed, low and intimate, before apparating away so abruptly that Draco had jumped forward, away from the sound.

-

It was the laugh that had done it, the laugh and the nearness. That night, for the first time, Draco imagined what might have happened had Potter taken his hand.

Things only got worse in the next weeks. Draco escalated, or spiraled, rapidly. He began to entertain fantasies. Waking dreams in the dark of his empty bedroom, dreams of Potter standing before him with an outstretched hand and himself turning it away. These flights of fancy were more fully feathered than the dreams of his childhood, fueled with the hateful shameful knowledge that Potter knew. Potter tainted every moment of those weeks. Symptoms of shame came and went in intolerable waves of sensation. In an effort to alleviate his discomfort one night, Draco turned to masturbation.

And Potter was there too. Propped up against his headboard, legs spread, hand plying his erection with a will, Draco still saw him. And he spiraled still lower. Images of Potter's empty hand became images of Potter's hand on his cock, the ultimate revenge. To assert himself so completely that Potter would touch him, desperate with need to gain Draco's respect.

The next night, it was worse still. Potter on his knees, forced to suck him. Potter, ashamed and humiliated, his hateful mouth wrapped around Draco's dick. Then Potter beneath him, degraded and desperate. Oh, and then Potter rimming him. No, Potter forced to rim him. That disdainful tongue worshiping his ass hole. Fucking Potter with a perfect sneer on his lips, no act of lust, but of domination.

Soon, nothing else would get him off. It had to be Potter in his head, even if it was some sweet young muggle boy in the sheets, dark hair tousled and eyes closed. Draco picked them up in clubs, and he made them close their eyes. They were never green enough.

-

Then he saw Potter again. Draco was in Flourish and Blott's minding his own business. He needed something to read. It was easier to sit and read now that he had his fantasies to ward off the Potter shame. He hadn't forgotten that Potter knew, not by any means. But the knowledge had stopped strangling him.

Draco turned from the aisle dedicated to mysteries into the aisle for horror, and it was.

Potter.

The other man looked up immediately, and his eyes narrowed in dark pleasure when he saw Draco there. His mind was screaming at him to flee, and he began his clumsy occluding, only to feel his defenses stripped harshly away. Frantic, he began throwing thoughts at that writhing otherness in his mind.

His mother in the garden, her long fingers trailing over the clear water of a fountain.

Professor Flitwick handing back his perfect charms essay.

Crabbe and Goyle as young children, laughing their way up the entrance hall of the manor.

His father's soothing hands on his brow while he lay in the throws of fever.

Anything to keep Potter out.

He failed.

Draco's defenses failed, and he knew a moment's blinding pain in his temples before the brutal force of Potter's plundering withdrew.

"Ohhhh, Malfoy." Potter's voice was warm and intimate, a mockery so obvious that even the Malfoy coloring couldn't stop the angry blush that spread across his cheeks.

"Fuck you, Potter."

"You want to." There was no teasing in the quick retort. Just fact, and the Potter shame hit him so abruptly that he actually gagged. Draco dropped the books he'd selected and apparated away, horrified in the last moment he stood in the shop to feel Potters hand close on his elbow.

-

Flee!

Draco's mind scrambled for escape from the horrible truth that Potter had side-alonged him. In the moment before he opened his eyes in the entry hall of the manor, he knew that Potter had ridden with him past the wards. Every bit of him screamed for flight, shrieked to flee, but Potter's hand was already off him, and there was no way to remove the man from his home now, short of apparating him elsewhere or begging him to leave of his own accord.

And there were only a few things Draco knew for certain - two plus two is four, asparagus is repulsive, fire burns, and Potter wouldn't go even if Draco begged. Also, Malfoy's do not beg.

"You know, Malfoy, you may be the lowest kind of scum I've ever met." Potter sounded amused. "You're a coward. Always hiding behind someone stronger, always toadying up to the biggest bad that would take you."

Draco's feet were frozen to the floor, eyes shut tight. He was aware of Potter's voice circling him, of the other man walking around his burning and shuddering body. But he was still shocked when Potter struck him. The crack of Potter's open palm across Draco's cheek echoed through the entrance hall.

"Look at me when I'm talking to you, coward." Draco forced his eyes open. The sunlit beauty of the room around Potter seemed totally out of place, Potter appearing to soak up the light that poured through the windows behind Draco. The larger man was sneering down at him, and Draco tasted his own blood, swallowed against the rising urge to vomit as bile crept up his throat. Potter Shame.

"You're a faggot, but you're in the closet because you're too frightened to come out." Potter lifted the hand he had struck Draco with and used the smear of Draco's blood on his palm to skim the energies flowing through the room. The Manor answered Draco's blood with knowledge, giving Potter a limited idea of it's layout.

Draco thought he might faint.

"And you want me. You don't want me the way you wanted the other queers you've screwed." Potter flicked his wand at Draco, who was hoisted up by one ankle in a heartbeat. His head impacted the stone floor once, painfully, but he did not cry out. His shame paralyzed him. Shame and, now, fear. Real fear.

"You want to control me, to demean me. You want to force me, to own me, to make me suffer." Potter gestured with his wand hand, now empty. Draco rotated slowly in mid-air and was propelled toward the grand staircase and up it, feeling Potter behind him as if the man's presence were cooking the flesh of his back. "You want to make me like you."

Potter directed Draco into his own bedroom and followed, shutting the heavy door behind them with a thud. Draco fell to his own bed as Potter released the jinx, his neck bending painfully on impact before he scurried frantically over, huddled against his pillows.

"But you, Draconis Lucius Malfoy, are a coward who could never, ever, actually take what you want."

Potter laughed, and Draco recognized something in that laugh that he had not heard since Voldemort's death.

"And I am nothing like you."

[A/N - This is a completed fic.]