Paradise (Whever You Are)

I'm a whore plain and simple and there's no real shame in it, at least, now there isn't. It's not like anyone worth knowing was left after the war, so all of the people who would've hurt me with the fact are long gone. The only people who could hurt me, I should say. Plenty of people who have fucked me knew me before, or knew of me.

The Great and Powerful Draco Malfoy.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

I'm not going to pretend that I hate it. Sometimes I even get off with some bloke hammering away into my arse till my legs feel like jelly and all I can feel is this wanton need, this lust. I know they look at the perfect pale expanse of my back, the length of my neck, my platinum hair and they want to scratch me, bite me, defile me.

I look like an angel, like I need corrupting. No angels work at brothels, though. They don't want for things, they don't need them. They didn't squander what little savings they had on potions to make the pain go away.

The pain never goes away. I still keep thinking, though, that the next one will do the trick, will be the magic potion that finally erases it from being, that erases me from being. But it doesn't. The pain never goes away.

I see Potter in the lobby and he's looking around, wide-eyed and nervous. Definitely a brothel virgin, probably a real virgin for all that speccy git has going for him now. Lost an eye and his face is ridged like it was held down on a hot grill. Still, he's Harry fucking Potter, and I can't believe he can't pull.

I walk up to him and I say, "I suppose you can tell the right sorts for yourself, but on the off chance that you don't feel like thinking, I could tell you who's new." It's a reflection of our first meeting when I knew who I was talking to, but he doesn't seem to really notice a word I'm saying.

He's just staring at me like he is shocked I'm alive and I think maybe he is sincerely shocked. I didn't exactly take out an ad in the Daily Prophet to announce my lack of death. The Ministry knows, though. Old cronies of his father frequent this place, some with a predilection for young boys-- Lucius Malfoy's boy, in particular.

"Lucretia's new and Helga. But if someone forced me to do Helga, I think I'd just leave," I tell him, but when he does look away from me.

Potter's looking at men.

I suck my cheeks in and tilt my head up. "Oh, see. So that's why we're here, is it? Can't have that getting out, can we?"

Potter shrugs and acts like he doesn't much care. For all I know, he doesn't. He's never cared for other people's expectations, not really. Not beyond his friends. I get that.

"How much are you?" Potter asks.

I leer and tell him my price. My price for everything. I name every filthy act I can think of, and attach a sum to it. I don't normally do any of this, but I want to see him balk, see him blush and flee in terror.

Instead, he pulls out a bag of Galleons from his denims-- not even a proper dress robe.

"I want all of it," he says.

--

I don't think Potter's ever had his arse sucked. Either that, or he's just very loud. A screamer. His body is so responsive, his greedy little hole sucking back at my tongue as I plunge it into him, licking and kissing it deeply. I've never done this before, but I'd listed it amongst things I would do for a price and it's what he wanted. He tastes bitter, or maybe that's just my imagination because he seems bitter, or at least seemed it.

Now he's just frotting the purple velvet duvet, jeans down, exposed and vulnerable to me. I slide my hand under him, feeling his prick huge in my hand and he shoves into it, groaning louder with sex babble, making noises I've never heard anyone make. It's turning me on, which is good, because I'm rarely hard enough to fuck blokes without magic and I think I'll actually enjoy skewering Potter with my prick.

I stop sucking his arse long enough to throw off my robe, and grab the lube when he's on me, rolling me over and pinning me to the bed. He slams into me without any particular grace or caring and he's huge, bigger than I really remember any client being and all I can think is that it just figures. He can't just have won the war while I got sold into this. He can't just be taller and well-muscled while I'm waifish with a junkie figure, he's got to have a huge prick as well.

He shoves my leg up and it feels like he's sawing me in half unlubed and his face tells me he's enjoying it. He's still making those noises, looking down at me, his face flushed, wild hair dripping in sweat around his face. I grab his flimsy t-shirt and yank it up to cover his head and he pulls it the rest of the way off and grins down at me wolfishly. I drag my nails down his back as he fucks me into the bed and I'm so hard it's embarrassing, because he's hurting me, fucking me so deeply that I feel like I'm choking on his dick, but it's obvious that I love it, that I want it.

Then he kisses me. Most whores seem to have a policy on kissing but no one's ever wanted to kiss me so I never made one. I'm doubly surprised because I was just tongue fucking his arse and yet he's sucking my tongue, pulling the breath out of me till I'm smothering in him. I twist my fingers in his hair, yanking his head back to make him stop and he brings back his hand and smacks me hard across the face and calls me a whore.

All I'm seeing are stars and I can feel him coming inside of me, hear it smacking and squelching between us. When my vision centers again, he looks concerned and I wonder if he thinks I'm offended that he's called me a whore and the thought almost makes me laugh because I am a whore and probably something worse since I'm still achingly hard even after he's hit me. Possibly harder.

He's staring down at me and all I can think about was the last time he was over me like this. Well, not quite like this, but still, that he was staring down at me, his face a portrait of concern, blood gushing from my chest and face and I knew, I just knew he'd killed me. That I was going to die in the bathroom that day-- not even a boy's loo for the love of whatever god you fancy. I remember thinking Potter's face was going to be the last fucking thing I'd see and that it wasn't fair, because he always won and now he'd killed me and he probably wouldn't even be expelled.

I laugh, because that's what I seem to do now when things get to be too surreal, when they're too much and all I want is a potion or my opium, something to make it even more distant so I don't have to deal with it and Potter's smoothing my hair down and dragging his fingers along my jaw.

"I'm sorry," he says.

I laugh harder and he gives me an odd look and I lift my chin, ready for him to belt me again, but instead he kisses down my chest and drags his tongue over my hard shaft. I'm still hard, hard for Harry Potter who made me suck his arse and beat me and now he's sucking my cock and all I can do is watch. He sets his glasses on the bedside table and opens his mouth and he takes it so ungracefully I can tell he's never done it before.

Loads of men suck my cock. Some might be surprised at how many blokes just want to suck cock. They're usually fat and ugly if they have to pay for it, or have wives at home or just need the anonymity. It's a crap brothel, but one bound by Unbreakable Vows. I couldn't tell someone Harry Potter sucked my dick if I wanted to. That's what makes it safe.

"Take it slow, just the tip, yeah?" I say, talking him through it, feeding him my cock slowly even though I'd like nothing more than to grab the back of his head and to slam my prick so far into his throat that he couldn't talk without a rasp for days. I'm still smarting from the last time I grabbed him, though, and I'm not entirely sure he wouldn't just bite my prick clean off if he were angry.

He's taking it well, learning quickly. I coo him through relaxing and watch the bulk of my narrow prick vanish into his mouth, watch his lips sucked in, covering his teeth, feel the inside of his mouth. He feels exquisite, amazing, he's probably a better cock sucker than I am, but then, he wouldn't be him if he weren't better than me at everything. I'm setting it all aside, though, just to enjoy this moment: Harry Potter sucking my cock and paying for the privilege.

I'm getting close and I can barely stand it. I want to come in his mouth but I don't know if he'd let me if he knew and maybe I want him to thrash me again. It's not the same as getting high, but sometimes it makes me dizzy enough for a while, and often if it's severe enough, I've good excuse not to work.

He seems to sense it anyway and pulls his mouth off and pulls at my cock till I feel my body converging on the feeling, till my hips are bucking forward, slapping with their need to get my cock touched, to feel the ridges of his hand. Just one more stroke, just touch me in that one spot, just there, like that, one more time... and I'm coming in his hand, feeling it pulse out of me, sticky slick and warm on my chest, dripping on his hand.

When I look down at him, he's gazing at it, peering over my body like I'm his now, like he owns me, and it's such a fucking Potter thing to do, a Gryffindor thing to think that I'm stifling my laughter again because he said it best when he said, "Whore."

"Is this your room?" he asks after he slides into the bed next to me.

He pulls me next to him and just holds me and I can't believe I'm cuddling. I want to ask if he's a girl, if he thinks this a fucking date, but instead, I just say, "No. It's a room that belongs to the brothel. Some people live here, but I don't."

I don't, because I can't trust my stash here and because my clientele usually pays better because I can negotiate and because I start too many fights when I'm stuck here anyway.

"I'd like to see where you live," he says.

I reach over him for my robes, because this is too weird. Normally I don't imbibe at work, but Potter's making me feel twitchy and strange, so I pluck out my opium pipe and light up with the end of my wand. "It's a shithole," I say.

"So was my old place," says Potter.

I exhale smoke in his face and he waves it away before playing with my hair. "Yeah, I'm sure it's horrid. I'm sure they would've let the Man Who Killed Voldemort live in some shitty place." It's almost weird to say Voldemort's name, but then, it isn't a name to be feared anymore. It's just some lame name from a dead wizard.

"They can't make me live anywhere I don't want to," said Harry.

This interests me in a way. I wonder why he'd choose to live in a shithole, but then, I have my own reasons, so I hand him my pipe. He looks at it suspiciously for a moment, but doesn't ask what's in it. He just takes it and inhales.

I hated him in school, so pious and righteous. Now he seems ordinary and I think I might well like him.

"Why would you want to live in a shithole, Potter?" I ask, taking my pipe from him.

"My godfather left it to me. It's got his mother in it who screams whenever she hears me. I used to like to have parties there. I'd turn up the music over her screaming voice, to watch her tear her hair out and beat the frame," he says, a cruel smile playing at the corners of his lips.

What a load of gratuitous vindictiveness. I think I like him a lot.

"Walburga," I inform him, on the off chance he doesn't know the name of his great aunt. I'd sort of like to see that, but I'm not going to tell Potter that and give him the satisfaction of knowing I might like him a little. After all, he never liked me and it seems undignified at this point.

"Yeah," he says a little distantly. "Her." After another moment of silence, he says, "Moved out a while back, though. No point in remaining somewhere Unplottable. Not like anyone's looking for me now. I moved to Godric's Hollow."

Sad as that statement is, Harry's making himself comfortable on the bed, looking rather unconcerned. I think about the Galleons he's given me, because the notion that Potter's left alone and uncared for by the world he saved is a thought that needs time to mature for me to know how to make use of. With that kind of money, can have me for the night-- for a few nights, if I'm being honest. "Why are you here?" I ask. "Where are your hero groupies?"

It's not the sort of question I would normally ask without bracing myself for another punch, but we're high and he's told me where he lives and maybe in a sense we're like the inverse of old friends. Enemies share a certain bond, and at this point-- after the war, after all of the carnage and mayhem-- sometimes these tenuous strings of relationships are all any of us have left.

"I don't have groupies," he says, rolling onto his side. He takes the pipe and inhales again and he leans in to blow it into my mouth. I share it, feeling the smoke curling into my lungs-- sweet blowback.

It's infused with him, with his warmth and his need and maybe some of his loneliness. I take it greedily and somehow it makes me feel important, full of something.

I exhale to the side this time. "The world doesn't much have time for heroes who don't have the decency to die in a blaze of glory, does it?"

It might be the opium, but he starts to giggle and nods and shakes his head. "Maybe that's it. I should've been the last Horcrux and not left to wander the streets being an ordinary bloke to sort out his life."

I try to remember if his entourage has died, but I don't think they had. Probably got married and had ten thousand babies while their precious Potter turned out to be a queer.

Or maybe he married the ickle girly Weasley and had ten thousand babies of his own.

I don't know. I've hardly kept up.

I don't care, it's not my business.

He's closing his eyes and I realize just how tired he looks, how tired he looked when he came in. This must've been why he asked if I slept here and I figure that for the night-- if he was staying too-- that I would.

--

I wonder how long it's been since I've woken up to another body in my bed that wasn't dead of overdose. It wasn't going to be this morning, I realized as I got an arm full of pillow in answer to my optimistic reach over.

Potter had left. Fucked me and left. Treated me like a... well, a whore. The Galleons still sat on the bedside table, all wrapped up. I halfway expect that it will be filled with air. Leprechaun gold. I curse myself for not checking it as I wince and reach across the bed. I can tell that the coins are real and they amount to far more than what we did was worth.

He'll be back. I know it.

--

Two weeks later and all I have to show for it is my brooding and that Arthur Weasley came over to play "naughty son" with me. Twice. I have to ginger my hair and charm in freckles, but he doesn't call me by anyone's name. These aren't memories I want to have, this is not how I want to see people-- especially if you're going to go to the trouble of being good against evil.

Not that I care, not really. Oh sure, Arthur likes to spank me, finger me, slap me in the face with his cock before fucking my mouth, but he goes home to his wife and children and they know nothing of it. Probably wouldn't care if they did.

Maybe I'm providing a service. He could be out there with anyone, but he's here with me, folding me so my knees are at my ears and telling me what a disgusting little boy I am and always will be.

I wonder which son he's thinking of, or if he's thinking at all.

He holds me wide open, all of me exposed to him, all of it for Arthur to take. I should be crying by now, but I love it. I lose myself in the role, crying and sucking my thumb so he can pretend I'm a young lady, and he gets off. Turns his crank almost immediately and he's in and out (so to speak) in minutes.

I expect Harry to start putting feelers out to find me again, at the very least come to the brothel again. Perhaps he'd been there on a dare. Maybe he came to see how the mighty have fallen.

My breath smells like absinthe gone bad-- and worse. It's the one good thing about waking up alone, not having to deal with someone else's morning breath. Morning wood, I could always deal with, but bad breath was just wrong.

Potter wasn't there, just his bag of Galleons. I take the bag off of the table and open it. The coins are all still there. It was more than I think anyone's paid for a whore in this place. I find blind hope that he'd done it on purpose, that he intends to return to claim it, so I don't spend it. Not a Knut of it. Not even when there's a better grade of opium available.

But he doesn't come. Not for weeks.

Finally, one night, I break. I can't take it anymore. I buy what's left of the opium and a fat bottle of absinthe and I sit in my dingy flat smoking and drinking and muttering to myself about fucking Potter. I don't even know why I can't get him out of my head. He's probably at home with Arthur's daughter and ten thousand children all banging around all making a mess of their happy hovel. He's probably bitter and unsatisfied and the Weaslette has grown fat like her cow of a mum.

That thought makes me smile before I take another swig of absinthe.

When I'm good and full of bullocks, I decide that it's time to visit Potter. His house is easy to find, even in my impaired state. Probably because Godric's Hollow's still all but abandoned due to superstitious magic folk staying away and Muggle repelling charms that the Ministry hasn't bothered to remove.

He lives in a house morbidly made up to look like his parents' house, which I know because in school I'd looked up the articles about it. I thought I'd use it all against him, I thought I'd want to see him cry about it. Never went there, though. I don't know why.

I start up the walk only to see a shadow and crouch-skulk up to his house, worried that he'll see me. Peering in the window, I see him standing over the sink with a can of tuna in his hand. He's fending off a black cat, fighting for the meat and I can't imagine he lacks money to buy food with, because by newspaper accounts, he's inherited from several people. Still, I feel a twinge of guilt for wasting money he might not have on drink and drugs.

Then again, I didn't ask him to never come back any more than I asked him to overpay me.

I finish the bottle of absinthe, still watching him from the window. He doesn't finish the tuna himself, but offers the rest to the cat and all I can really think is, "how pathetic."

I stagger back, trampling through the rose garden and I get the words in my head "I never promised you a rose garden" and somehow that's hysterically funny. So funny that I drop the bottle onto the little stone partition separating it from the grass and Potter looks sharply at the window. I must be far enough back that he can't see me, or maybe the light from inside cloaks me in late darkness.

He's fast, though. Or maybe I'm just particularly slow, and he's out the door, wand out, eyes like emerald fire, and that phrase tickles me so I laugh again and he asks if I have a death wish.

I point out that he's the one living in an unprotected home.

I could've been anyone.

"You're knackered," he says.

"Blitzed." I nod.

"What are you doing here?"

I laugh. "I'm watching you, lackwit."

"Shouldn't you be off fucking someone?" he asks, throwing his hand out dramatically and I find the gesture odd. Melodrama doesn't suit him.

But somehow he's striking a chord, and I don't know why. I'm a whore and I get that. I'm self-actualized, I own it. It's what I do and I don't really care what others think, except now this complete waste of a human being who shares fish from a can with his cat is telling me off and I find myself needing his approval.

I hate him.

"Shouldn't you be eating cat food?"

He pockets his wand and crosses to me, head full of steam and I'm nearly hyperventilating, because I don't know what he's going to do and it excites me. Everyone else in this eerie world is so depressingly predictable. They behave how you'd expect. Cheaters, liars, hypocrites-- rationalizing their lives to themselves so that they can feel worthwhile. I stopped doing that ages ago. I always thought Potter was one of those, but now I feel like I've really seen him for who he is. Just a bloke. No hero. No family man with ten thousand babies or a perfect life.

He's so ordinary and he doesn't even seem to care.

His hand raises and crashes hard across my cheek and I taste blood almost immediately.

Just as suddenly, I realize that I'm angry and it's not even that I'm angry with him for hitting me. His abuse is the cost of our interactions. Always has been. That much is predictable.

"What the shit is wrong with you?" I shout to him. It would wake the neighbors, if he had any. As it stands, I'm left to scream in the dead of night as much as I want. "This is all your fault! You're my measuring stick! You were better than me, always had to have one up on me and now you're just pathetic and I have to do this to stay beneath you!"

He grabs his wand and I think that I'm going to die. Finally die. I'm surprisingly okay with that. After a lifetime of trying to survive, the only other time I seriously thought I might die was at his hands and somehow it just feels like it's coming full circle.

Potter surprises me.

He drops his wand back into his pocket and grabs me by the front of my tattered robes (not at all like the polyester fake fancy ones I wear for work) and drags me into his house. He slams the door and I wonder if I'll come out in pieces, in little plastic bags, trotted out like evidence in some lurid Muggle crime programme.

Instead, he throws me to the tiled floor in his entryway and falls on me. It knocks the wind out of me, and he sucks my breath out with his claiming kiss. He's working my robe up and rips off my pants and I know he's going to fuck me and I want him to. He's more than paid for it, and even if he hadn't, I want him inside of me. I want to feel him expanding me, making me grow to accommodate him.

I want the sting of his calloused fingers inside of me, to taste the saltiness of remnant tuna. I'm yanking at his trousers, impatient to get them off while he's stuffing two wetted fingers inside of me. I sprawl out for him, every inch the needy whore, greedy for his cock.

He's wriggling out of his trousers, staring down at me like he can't figure out why he's doing this or why I'm there. I can't answer either of those, really and I don't want to. I want blind fucking, I want to be connected to someone, to something. I want to feel something, anything, I want to be part of him, to be part of the world as much as he wants to be.

I want to have him slamming into me and to know that he sees me, that he knows who I am, all of my frailties and pettiness and that he wants to be part of that, too, because he needs it as much as I do.

As he breeches me, cock huge and it feels like it's ripping me open, I think I know why he wants this, wants me:

I'm the only one who believes he's a hero anymore. I'm the only one whom he could measure himself against and who would come out lacking. I'm worth everything because I'm so worthless to the world. All I can do is cling to him, to cling to the one person who matters to me as he plows into me.

He knows I'm the only person who still thinks he can be someone's hero.

Our bodies move together in sinewy rhythm, jostling and jolting, slapping together in harsh meeting, skin slapping, hard angles and bones poking, bruising. Potter doesn't play. He fucks right through me, touching me deeper than anyone else has, deeper than anyone else could.

He touches me, awakens me, gives me no choice but to react, to have to feel. He shakes me out of my numbness and as I look up at him, I can tell I do the same for him.

This is what I want, what I need. I need to have him pounding into me, to know that I count. The world hasn't forgotten me but for how they can mistreat me. I want to stay here and it's the first thing I can remember wanting for myself that wasn't going to make me forget. I want him because I remember. I remember who I am, what I was, that once upon a time, our schoolboy rivalry meant something.

He's my souvenir as much as I am his and I love him for that. Need him for that.

He's tearing my skin with how hard he's fucking me and I want that. I babble, telling him I want that, that I want him, that I want to stay. His expression doesn't change much, but I think the corners of his lips twitch up for a fraction of a second. Then he huffs and says "fuck" and he's coming. Coming inside of me.

He nods between the wracking waves of pleasure and my fist is around my cock. I think he means I can stay with him, but these negotiations are precise. I think about living here, about him fucking me when he wants me, about me looking at him the way he needs to be seen.

I come between us after a few moments. He's resting atop me, breath caught up with him, watching my hand on my prick, I assume.

I feel the shooting coils of pleasure quickening through me, fluttering out of my cock, leaving me spent, exhausted, happy.

Happy on the floor of Potter's tragically ugly reproduction home.

He tells me it's not much to look at, but he's got room for me.

There's only one rule: no more fucking for money.

I smile, nod and caress the side of his face. I don't care about that. I'll fix this hovel, find something else to do, because being with Harry is my jaded paradise, and it goes wherever he is.