The Erotic Adventures of Potter And Malfoy

Chapter 9

In a dark corner of a cold stone corridor sat a boy. He had fallen back against the hard blocks in the wall as if he’d collapsed with sheer exhaustion. His eyes were closed, his cheeks stained with tears. One leg was flung out straight; his other bent up and resting against the wall. One of his hands had fallen down to rest, palm-up with its fingers curled slightly, on a sharp chip of stone, and the other rested lightly on his thigh. His head was tilted against the wall, his hair falling to his eyes, and the tension of the muscles in the boy’s neck was quite obvious, and yet he didn’t move at all. He hadn’t moved for three hours.

Curled up in another corner, far away in the castle, another boy sat in the dark, this time in an empty classroom. Amid school desks and chairs, he lay sprawled on the floor as though he was a puppet, and someone had cut all his strings loose. Tears still shone in his half-closed eyes, his breath hissing harshly through his lips. His head resting against the wall, slanted at a crazy angle to the rest of his body, which lay on the floor.

Every breath the collapsed boy took shook his lungs and chest, and he stifled a sob in the darkness. His face was blank, aside from the terrible pain etched in miniature lines around his shadowed eyes. He brought his hand up to his shoulder and rested his fingers on the collarbone, and swallowed hard.

The boy in the classroom opened his eyes. They didn’t focus on their surroundings, and he didn’t blink. His hair ruffled across his head, and the great dark shadows under his eyes transformed his head into a skull in the sparse light from a window. His eyes closed again, another tear streaking down his skin as he took a deep breath and sighed.

“Please, Harry, please just eat something,” begged Hermione, but Harry just sat there, his bacon cold and untouched. His eyes latched onto the blonde head across the Great Hall. He didn’t speak.

Draco glanced up, past the goblets on the table, past the heads of the Slytherins and saw Harry watching him again. As he picked absentmindedly at his fried eggs, he stared into Harry’s eyes, only just managing to hide his despair. The glowing eyes gazing into his, the sheer emptiness visible even from here, had initially widened as Draco’s eyes met them, but now the emptiness filled with pain, and Harry closed them, hiding away their brilliance, dropping his head. Draco shook his own head and beat back his emotions, thrashing back the wounded animal inside him, attempting to veil the hurt in his eyes.

Much was hidden during the day, emotions drawn under a mask, concerned friends left wondering, a false semblance of normality conjured to hide the burning pain inside, the first choking gasp of a sobbing fit kept shackled within the throat, so that it hurt to talk and it hurt to swallow.

Even Ron had shelved his pride at the state Harry was evidently in, though he tried to hide it.
“Harry,” he said, sitting beside Harry at the Gryffindor table at dinner that evening. Harry ignored him, moving a piece of potato round and round his laden plate with his knife. “Harry, please, look at me,” Ron said, shocked at the lack of response. Harry turned his head obediently and looked at him and although Ron could see hurt and stunned pain and tears in those eyes, he couldn’t seem to find Harry.

The fall of darkness over the castle and grounds would drive them to their beds for solace, yet their sleep was haunted by dreams and visions of the other, and so they’d pass the long night wandering sleeplessly through the castle.

“He hasn’t eaten for three days,” Hermione whispered to Ron, as they watched Harry staring blankly at dust motes in the weak February sunlight. “I’m so worried about him.”
“I’ve never seen him like this, not even after the Triwizard tournament. He’s not doing well, Hermione,” Ron agreed, nodding his head solemnly, his eyes fixed on his pale friend.
“Malfoy’s not doing too well either,” Hermione continued. “I heard Pansy Parkinson gossiping about why Malfoy wasn’t eating. It’s general speculation that they’ve had a fight, but I don’t know of anything that could make them fight this badly, not when they were so in love.”
“Nor me.”

They both got progressively thinner, the focus of intense speculation and completely unaware of it. They’d haul themselves from their beds again, night after night and lose themselves about the castle in a daze, rather than have to sleep and subject themselves to the images in their heads. They were both so pale, skin drawn over their features, both so sickly, eyes and hair dulled, that Madame Pomfrey tried to capture them on more than one occasion, but they stubbornly refused to let her treat them. They avoided one another’s gaze in the corridors, avoided it completely since the time in the Great Hall.

Harry had been walking down the corridor one day, not noticing where he was going. People moved out of his ways these days, shocked at how unwell he looked, at how his eyes were just blank green, without any of their usual glittering life. He banged into someone, rebounded off and didn’t look round to see who it was, didn’t bother to say sorry. And then he noticed the silence in a corridor full of people and turned round to see Draco, looking at him with an unreadable expression.

God, thought Harry, blinking back tears at the coldness in Draco’s eyes, he looks terrible. But now Draco’s eyes had changed, now they were blinking back tears like his, full of longing and sorrow. Harry choked back a sob, but he couldn’t stop the change in his breathing as grief rose in his throat, making it sting, or his lip trembling.

Harry, what have you done to yourself? Draco thought to himself, gritting his teeth against the sob rising in his throat. He noticed Harry tremble and right himself and looked at the ceiling, so as not to see the devastation written plainly on Harry’s face.

The silent spectators saw the two boys bump and slowly turn to face each other. They heard both gasp and saw the ache in their faces and bodies, as they fought tears in front of each other and everyone else. They saw Harry move automatically towards Draco.
“Draco…” they heard him whisper and then they were suddenly pressed together, rocking in their misery. “Please, Draco…” they heard him say again, his voice hoarse and hitching with chedchedness, and Draco suddenly tensed and pushed Harry away. The expressions on their faces made many turn away and go about their business, but the remaining few saw Harry move towards Draco again
“Draco… please…” he whispered helplessly, tears falling freely now.
“No, Harry, leave it, please…leave me alone…”

Harry winced like Draco had struck him a blow, and turned and fled. Draco stayed where he was, his head bowed and his hair falling forward, before looking after the fleeing Harry with big hollow eyes. He turned on his heel and stalked away.

In a shadowed corner of a dark corridor on the fourth floor, a boy lay on the floor, crying silently, his face twisted in grief and agony, his body thrown down like that of a broken doll. He sobbed freely, not bothering to wipe the tears off his face, not bothering to shift his leg out from under him, even though his circulation had been cut off and it was tingling. He raised his hands and pressed them down hard over his eyes, trying to black it all out.

Slumped against another wall, steeped in shadow lay another boy. He lay with his eyes screwed shut and his hands pressed against his throat; trying to use what little body heat he had left to ease the pain he felt there. His eyes, dark-shadowed, focused on nothing and he choked as another cry tore from his raw throat, wracking his crumpled body.

The boy had stopped sobbing, though anguish still lingered prominently on his face. Trembling with cold, he wrapped his arms around his dreadfully thin form, not for the little warmth it offered, but to caress his own back, his hands shaking.

The boy with his hands around his throat fell down onto his side, and curled up like a child on the hard stone floor, pressing his knees protectively into his chest, shivering and shaking and trembling and crying and crying through it all.

And yet still they didn’t eat, and didn’t sleep, until they were weak and shaking from exhaustion and malnourishment. They stopped talking altogether, until the majority of the castle was out of their minds with worry. They fainted frequently, only to walk straight out of the hospital wing when they came round. And then one day the sky darkened to the menacing bruised blue-purple of blood under the skin and the howling wind ripped the clouds to shreds, and lightning rent the sky as thunder roared angrily around the castle, echoing off the nearby mountains and Draco Malfoy went missing.

He wasn’t in any of his lessons that day, nor was he at dinner. Harry was out of his mind with worry, and the first chance he got, he ran upstairs to check the Marauder’s Map. Pulling it out of his trunk, he tapped it and said, “I solemnly swear I am up to no good.” The familiar words traced across the page and Harry scanned it desperately, and then his heart skipped a beat as he saw the name.

He threw his cloak on and grabbed his Firebolt, before running to open the window. He mounted the broom and flew carefully out. Only then did he tear off into the storm, leaving the map on his bed, the map that showed Draco on the flying field.

Harry spotted Draco before Draco spotted him, and Harry halted in mid-air on his broom, the heavy raindrops spattering his glasses and soaking his hair and robes in seconds. His grip on the handle failed in the rain, and he nearly fell, but managed to save himself just in time. Draco was tearing around the pitch in a fury, diving and pulling out only just in time, doing crazy loops and rolls. If Harry hadn’t seen Draco’s balance and the concentration on his face, he’d have thought the broom had been hexed and was trying to throw him off.
“Draco!” he yelled, and the blonde, his hair plastered to his head with the rain td and and looked at him, before flying quickly off in the other direction. Fast though Draco’s broom was, Harry outstripped it and blocked him in the air.
“Draco, please, come down to the ground. Please,” Harry yelled over the noise of the storm, his voice cracking with the effort. Draco merely watched him, and Harry realised that he was blue with cold, and shaking so hard it was a wonder he’d managed to keep his fingers holding the broom. Tears were running down his face. The lightning flashed again, turning the field to black and white and Harry saw his lips move, but couldn’t hear him as the thunder seemed to crash down upon them like a tidal wave, and he gestured Draco back down to the ground. Draco shook his head mutely.
“Please, Draco! Come down to the ground! It’s too dangerous!” Harry shouted and then his voice cracked and his throat constricted in pain. Looking for a compromise, he flew to the nearest tower and alighted on it, laying his broom down safely. Draco flew a bit nearer and Harry reached out for him, and then Draco was within reach and Harry used what little strength he could to forcibly drag Draco onto the tower, nearly pulling himself off in the process. His sheer determination won, and then he and Draco were lying panting in the lee of the crenellations while the storm raged overhead. Draco was up on his feet immediately and the wind caught his robes and flapped them about him. He bent for his broom, but Harry was quicker, and he snatched it from the ground and held it behind him.
“Give me my broom!” Draco screamed at him and lunged for it, but Harry backed away quickly, scrambling up and against the crenellations, Draco’s broom wedged up behind him. He caught Draco’s hands as he swung at him furiously and threw hlf tlf to the floor, stunning them both. He pinned Draco down and had to use his whole body weight, as he was so weak.
“Draco, what the fuck are you thinking?” he shouted at him. Draco bared his teeth and snarled at Harry like a wild animal, arching his back and bucking hipships up, trying to throw him off. Harry slapped him around the face and then put botnds nds to his mouth in shock and disgust at what he’d done.

Draco had gone limp, and fallen back quietly, his chest rising and falling rapidly with the effort of fighting Harry, and tears mingling with the pounding raindrops on his face. His lips moved again, and his chest heaved as a fresh fit of sobbing broke from him. Harry put his ear closer to Draco’s mouth. For a while, there was no sound but him crying, and then he spoke again.
“What happened, Harry?” he asked, his voice broken and ragged. “What happened to us….all those words we said…. All we did…Was it all because of that fucking book? Is that book why I feel like my heart’s been torn out and every time I see you?”
“…It’s like there’s a hole in my chest, and every time I breathe it’s an icy cold draught right inside me. And I feel numb, except for the pain, Draco.” Harry finished for him.
“I can’t do this much longer, Harry. I can’t feel like this, it hurts too much.”
Harry nodded in agreement, Draco’s form blurring beneath him as the rain fell into his eyes once more, mingling with the tears already there. And so he didn’t quite see it clearly when Draco rose up and wrapped his arms around Harry and kissed him feverishly, pressing their lips together and pulling him close and stroking Harry’s tongue with his own. And they were so cold, and they were shaking together with exhaustion, wrapped around each other, trying to get closer to each other and they were never close enough, crying and kissing and shivering in the darkness and the rain, until Draco finally fell back exhausted and Harry fell onto Draco’s thin chest, his eyes shutting already.