The Fine Line

Part III

Till that moment, Harry had not quite grasped the precariousness of his present predicament. And as ‘precarious’ and ‘predicament’ were gathering dust in his Trying Desperately To Understand Hermione passive vocabulary, it kept slipping through his mental fingers. What he did grasp was the general pissiness of the right bloody mess he had got himself into. And like most people forced to handle pissy, bloody messes, he was not – in any metaphorical manner – a happy Harry.

Malfoy had – through a plan, by Boy Who Lived-standards, neither clever nor cunning – Harry entirely at his mercy. But had Malfoy really any mercy to hold him in? Any compassion? Any heart?

Everyone had a heart. A heart that could be stopped in an instant by that most sickening of spells; a heart that could be as cold as ice and as hard as stone. Cold as a serpent’s blood. Hard as a dragon’s hide. Like Malfoy’s vicious heart.

Though considering the ease with which he had fallen into Malfoy’s trap, had Harry ever really believed that? Or was it just Ron speaking? Ron’s view, tainted by a family feud ages deep and too infected to ever heal? Ron, who had been his steadfast guide through this strange new world. Ron, whose prejudices he had readily adopted because he longed so desperately to belong. After all, group identity is defined by Difference from the Other. Or so Hermione had claimed. She was often right.

She had also said Malfoy was not his father, no matter how horrid a little git he might be.

She was often right. Sometimes wrong. Perhaps she had made Harry less wary of Malfoy. Perhaps Harry just didn’t know what to think of Malfoy. Perhaps he never had.

Ron had Malfoy pinned as the Spawn of Satan. For Harry, it had been enough that he was the Child of his Father. Children often were. It was not something you could opt out of.

Hermione said he was not his father.

Did that mean..?

Would he? Could he? Malfoy?

‘You won’t kill me,’ said Harry with sudden confidence, surprising even himself.

‘Oh, and how is that?’

‘You might be a stuck-up little git. But you’re not a killer. You haven’t got the guts.’

There was silence. Sudden. Unexpected. Pressing.

‘In my world,’ said Draco, his tone laced with ice, ‘it takes guts not to kill.’

There was another long silence, broken at last by an indecently chipper Draco. ‘You know, Potter, this isn’t just any shield. It’s quite – special.’

‘Should I feel flattered?’

‘Yes. This particular type of shield is generally only used by Aurors.’

‘I’m so very impressed.’

‘But of course. And the reason they use it is..?’

Harry looked blank. It was an expression he had perfected over the years, no doubt with ample guidance from Ron Weasley.

‘The reason,’ Draco continued, sounding unnervingly like Hermione, ‘is that it’s double-sided.’

Harry could keep the blank look going for very extended periods of time. It was, all things considered, an expression that required very little in the way of actual effort.

‘Which means it bounces spells in both directions.’

Harry’s left eyebrow inched upwards.

‘So, it allows you,’ Draco continued, ‘– if You are creative enough – to perform a very peculiar form of wand-magic.’

The moment Draco began reciting the spell, Harry threw himself onto the floor, rolled sideways and scuttled on all four into the dark corner where his wand lay waiting.

Vaguely surprised that he had not felt any burst of magic pass over him, Harry rose to aim his wand at Draco. The Expelliarmus died on his lips as he took in the red rose in Malfoy’s outstretched hand. The rose that had not been there seconds before. The rose that rested in Malfoy’s wand-hand.

The rose, Harry realised with a start, that had previously been Draco’s killer wand.

A red rose.

The colour of blood.

Malfoy was looking at him oddly.

The colour.

Of love?

What was it they said? There’s a fine line between love and hate? But, surely, that was just…

A pretty lie.

Pretty.

‘Are you just going to stand there gawking, Potter?’ Draco snorted. ‘And you can put down your wand. It’s not a killer rose.’

The goblin sighed. Set to vanish only when a duel was completed, it had rather been hoping the rose was part of some elaborate scheme to kill or at least thoroughly maim the blond one’s befuddled opponent. It wasn’t so much that it minded not disappearing into oblivion. It just felt prudently wary of getting its hopes up. Duels always ended badly, one way or another. Though it had to concede: rose-beating seemed an impractical and very, very dull way to kill someone.

The goblin sighed pointedly at Draco.

Harry merely stared. ‘But,’ he said, feeling amazingly articulate under the circumstances, ‘why? How?’

‘You really are as dense as you look then, Potter? Bouncing magic? Ring a bell? You demonstrated it yourself, you nitwit! It makes it possible to for a wand to perform magic on itself, if properly aimed, of course.’ Draco’s manner suddenly turned deeply serious. ‘These killer wands are damn near indestructible, Potter. Unless,’ he smirked once again, ‘you’re brilliant, like me! Which you’re obviously not.’

Harry blinked. ‘But. Why?’

‘Why? Why do you think? Or rather, why don’t you think? I’ve been hurling innuendo at you ever since you stepped through that door,’ huffed Draco, gesticulating harshly in every which direction. ‘And now,’ he held up the rose, as if prepared to curse Harry with petals, ‘THIS! Why, Potter? WHY?!’

Harry blinked, and Draco no longer found it the least bit adorable. He sighed and lowered the rose carelessly, dejectedly. Dark red petals crashed into velvet blackness. One lonely, desolate petal lost its grip and fell towards the cold stone floor, tumbling helplessly against the darkness.

‘Am I really that ugly, Potter?’ Draco asked, voice low. ‘I mean, you’re confined to this bloody castle where the only dating is boy/girl, girl/boy, and even then, sex is about as common as a Hufflepuff booze-up. Still, when you look at me, you apparently see a ferrety slug. Isn’t that so, oh-so-pretty Perfect Potter?’

Harry had never seen Malfoy’s eyes look so accusing. Not even when Harry had been blamed for getting Malfoy Sr. thrown into Azkaban prison. Malfoy had been more angry than accusing then; perhaps because he knew the charges against his father were true. And yet, it was his father. A bond of pure blood. Pure anger.

Something else shone pure and clear in Malfoy’s eyes now.

But what?

‘Well,’ Draco snarled, voice back to its usual intensity, ‘however much better you think you are, however pretty and handsome and – and – and heroically boyish, this,’ Draco spread his arms wide, ‘is as good as it gets. It’s as good as you’ll get at Hogwarts. Sure, you can sneak off to Hogsmeade – you’ve done it before, oh Hovering Head – but I’m here.’ Draco paused, for effect (Malfoys were notoriously good at it), lowered his hands, stuck up his nose, ‘And I’m queer.’

Harry blinked. His eyelids were, in fact, the only part of his body that moved at all. Except. Except maybe for one other part. But Draco wasn’t looking there. Luckily.

‘And,’ Draco continued, ‘I’m sick of being ignored by you, you self-righteous bastard! I’m sick of being pushed to the sidelines! I’m a MALFOY! Am I not good enough for you? I, a pureblood, offer you – well, sex – and you just – blink! You blink, blink, blink! Twinkle, twinkle, little twink!’

After that thing about the closet, Draco had acquired material on Gay: The Muggle Way. After all, being well prepared was paramount to any successful operation. Not that it had ever helped before. Still, first time for everything and all that. And this was certainly proving to be a lot of firsts. Though Draco had, of course, hoped for still more.

Harry blinked, which was not a first. ‘You. You’re offering me. Sex?’

‘Yes! No!’ Draco breathed noisily, staring at Harry in a wild and, Harry thought, rather disturbing manner. He held out the former wand again. ‘Rose?’ He gesticulated towards the ceiling. ‘Candles? Romance? ROMANCE! Ever heard of it? I mean. What I’m saying is.’ The noisy breathing made a repeat performance. Harry found it oddly distracting. ‘I don’t know what I’m saying. Yes, I do.’ Draco stared intently at Harry. ‘You. For all your apparent shortcomings. Would. As the most eligible bachelor in the Wizarding world,’ Draco drew a deep, deep breath, ‘make a suitable – boyfriend. For me.’

‘Is this a joke?’

Draco blinked. A contagious affliction, it seemed.

‘Because,’ Harry continued, ‘if it is – it’s bloody stupid.’

‘The only thing bloody stupid,’ exclaimed Draco, ‘is YOU! If this was some kind of sick joke – which I wouldn’t put beyond myself, certainly – do you honestly think I would transfigure a priceless wand into a rose?! A bloody red rose!?’

Harry’s face seemed intent on trying to give the red of the rose a run for its flowery money. ‘Well,’ he muttered, ‘you’ve done some pretty idiotic things in the past.’

‘And I obviously haven’t stopped, HAVE I? Wasting a perfectly nice killer wand on wooing you must rate among the most IDIOTIC things anyone has ever done!’ Draco shook his head. ‘Why do you always make me embarrass myself? I don’t look good in red, you know. That’s your colour.’

‘Better red than eeediot.’

‘Oh, that’s really clever, Potter,’ snorted Draco. ‘Write my witty repartee for me, why don’t you?’

‘Your what?’ Harry blinked his way to the traditional Blank Look.

‘Oh, honestly, you’re so awfully plebeian, Potter. What I see in you, I really don’t know. Repartee: quick and witty conversation. Do take notes instead of . . . what is that you’re doing?’

Harry was giggling. There was no better word for it. Harry Potter had the giggles. It was, Draco decided, cute and annoying at the very same time. In short, it was Harry Potter in a nutshell.

‘What’s so funny?’ Draco huffed, trying to blot out distracting mental images of Harry dressed in nought but a nutshell.

‘The way you say ‘Potter’! It’s so funny!’ Harry’s giggles were upgraded to a barking laugh. ‘You sound just like Rowan Atkinson saying ‘peasant’!’

‘I don’t,’ said Draco, ‘have a clue who this rowing Atkinson is but the peasant implication certainly seems to fit. Peasant.’

‘I’m a city boy, Malfoy. I wouldn’t know an ass from a mule.’

Harry fancied he could see the gears working as Malfoy gazed haughtily at him during yet another lull in the conversation. (The goblin considered it a very dull lull.)

‘So how do you tell Weasley and Granger apart then?’ was Malfoy’s eventual contribution.

‘If that’s your so-called repartee, I really don’t see the point,’ said Harry. ‘Or perhaps that wasn’t repartee, then, as you said repartee should be – what was it? – quick and witty? A long pause plus a lame joke seems like pretty bad repartee, then. Maybe I should write it for you. Your repartee.’

‘Would you stop saying repartee, Potter?! You’re defiling the word with your – your – peasant ponderings!’

Harry felt that a demonstrative roll of his eyes said all there needed to be said. After all, unlike Malfoy, he had never claimed mastery of this repartee nonsense.

Posh git.

Peasant ponderings? Please. If Malfoy didn’t watch out, he’d start sounding like the Brain in no time at all: Are you pondering what I’m pondering? In fact, Harry could very easily see Malfoy as a small white mouse with an inflated head to match his oversized ego. Or, perhaps, an albino rat.

Harry could also easily see that Hermione might have been right when she said that he had overdosed on cartoons when visiting her house. Still, with a lost childhood, he had a lot of catching up to do. And with a lost adolescence of experimenting with quasi-sexual relationships that might have had some bearing on his future adult life, he had just as much, if not more, catching up to do, and of a physically much more urgent kind.

And perhaps now he could finally start.

But with Malfoy? Of all people?

Of course, he was rather sexy in that outfit.

The bastard.

‘Perfect,’ muttered Draco. ‘You refuse my rose – but see perfectly fit to ogle me. What is it, Potter? Some sort of kinky fascination with that which you so obviously low?’

Harry blinked.

‘Loath. That which you so obviously loath.’ Draco shook his head and sighed. ‘And to think I wasted a whole bottle of my finest wine to – well – to strengthen my resolve. Should have tried to beat it into submission with a bloody sledgehammer.’

‘Wine?’

‘Yes, Potter: wine: the upper class equivalent of Butterbeer.’

‘You’re – drunk?’

‘Tipsy. I’d call it – tipsy.’ Draco sniffed haughtily. ‘But I do, of course, have a slightly more nuanced vocabulary than you.’

‘You’re drunk.’

‘I’m tipsy!’

‘So you say. But trust me Malfoy, with you, it’s impossible to tell.’

Harry smiled widely, feeling unusually witty, for once. Must have been those Butterbeers he had had earlier during the day.

Tipsy, that’s what he was.

Tipsy, that nuanced kind of drunk.

Tipsy. Probably explained that fluttery feeling in his stomach.

‘Are you saying you DIDN’T NOTICE?’ Draco exclaimed incredulously. ‘That is an utter insult to my otherwise stunningly superior oratory skills, I’ll have you know! You horrifically uncultured peasant!’

Harry could do nothing but laugh. He laughed and laughed. And then he hooted some, for good measure. Malfoy could be so amusing sometimes. Especially when he didn’t mean to.

‘Oh, that’s just great!’ exclaimed Malfoy shrilly, ‘Here a guy goes to all the trouble of not killing you with a rose and you just laugh! How very Slytherin of you, Potter!’

‘You know,’ said Harry, calming down, ‘I almost ended up in Slytherin.’

‘Well, it’s a bloody good thing you didn’t, isn’t it?’ exclaimed Draco, flailing his hands about. ‘Because then you and I might have become friends, and with your bloody suicidal Gryffindor hero tendencies, I’d have worried till I got grey hairs and do you realise what that would have done to my mental well-being?’

‘What? The worrying?’ Harry grinned impishly, knowing full well the reply he would get. Because Draco wasn’t that far gone just yet.

‘The HAIR, you nitwit!’

‘Of course. How stupid of me.’

‘I expect nothing less.’

Harry sighed. The goblin followed his lead. There was little else to do. ‘Must you – talk so much?’

‘I’m an excellent speaker, Potter! But of course, you’re too – unrefined to appreciate such things as good conversation and witty repartee.’

‘How would you know? You just – prattle and – and babble!’

‘I’m in awe of your magnificent vocabulary, Potter.’

‘Can’t you just – keep quiet? You’re much,’ Harry paused, looked away briefly, only to turn an even more piercing glare on Draco seconds later, ‘nicer when you don’t open your mouth.’

‘Are you really naïve enough to believe that when people keep quiet they only think nice thoughts? Because, I assure you, most don’t. I don’t.’

‘I am not naïve!’ growled Harry.

‘Or perhaps you think when the mouth stops moving, the brain shuts down? Honestly, Potter, not everyone works like your friend Weasley. You should socialize with a better class of people.’ He frowned. ‘But you don’t do that sort of thing, do you? Oh Precious Perfect Potter.’

The spell hit Draco before he could even regret having turned his only weapon into a rather unimpressively barbed flower. Still, when the tingle of magic had worn off, Draco didn’t, all things considered, feel all that different. So he asked Potter, with a proper amount of indignation, just what he thought he was doing hurling pointless spells at his pureblooded person.

Or would have asked, if he hadn’t turned suddenly mute. Draco glared at Harry and mouthed, very clearly: ‘HA. HA. HA.’ Which, on the whole, made him look like a particularly murderous monkey.

[ill.] Harry grinned wickedly. It was rather sexy, but Draco wasn’t quite in the mood.

Really.

Well, being mute was terribly annoying anyway.

Potter looked at him oddly. ‘See,’ he said, ‘you’re so much nicer when you’re quiet.’

Draco glowered.

‘Now I can imagine that you’re just a dumb blond with a head full of nothingness.’

Draco glowered some more.

‘And then—’ Harry grinned crookedly, blushing faintly. ‘Then you look rather – pretty.’

Draco’s jaw dropped. Pretty? Whatever happened to dashingly handsome?

‘So no, you’re not hideous. On the outside.’ Harry sighed. ‘I just wish you weren’t so – hurtful. You say such horrible things and – and you just spoil the whole – image.’

Draco goggled. Horrible? Image? Horrible was his image. Though perhaps now in a proper past tense sense. Arrogant and snooty. He could settle for arrogant and snooty.

‘Sometimes, you’re just so – so wickedly odd,’ Harry giggled, again. It was a side to Potter which Draco had not expected. Still, it was, strangely enough, oddly appealing. Malfoys often found giggling oddly appealing. Generally in pretty peasant girls. And often with nasty results. And Draco was certainly a Malfoy. But with a twist. A twist to the right. A twist out of a twisted family. And a twist out of that walk-in closet. Whatever closet space had to do with lusting after giggly boys.

‘You’re so odd it’s actually rather adorable,’ Harry continued. ‘But then you say something really nasty and it just. It.’ He stopped, taking a break – it appeared – to gather his thoughts. ‘You’re like a puppy with a sharp bite. And rabies.’

PUPPY? mouthed Draco (in capital letters – there could be no mistaking it). He could let the rabies pass, but puppy? Puppy was going too far. If he had been in control of his vocal chords, Draco would have growled. Which certainly wouldn’t have helped clear him of the puppy charges.

‘Or,’ Harry grinned and a took a few steps towards Draco, ‘perhaps you’re really more of a kitten, with poisoned claws.’

Draco staggered back against the wall. Sure, he was a cat person. Cats had more sense than dogs, after all. Gryffindors were dogs the lot of them. Old Heroic Bloody Faithful Potter and his merry gang of misfits and mongrels. But comparing a Malfoy to a fluffy baby feline! Potter obviously had no sense of propriety whatsoever; that much was painfully clear.

Draco glared.

Harry grinned.

It was turning into somewhat of an ongoing trend.

‘Your hair is in disarray,’ a helpful Harry pointed out. ‘You do know that, right?’ He smirked as Draco’s left hand flew up to sort out his hair. While it had been only very slightly tousled before, Draco’s trembling and sweaty palm managed to throw it into complete disorder.

Perfect.

‘You know, Malfoy; drunk, disarrayed and dumb, you look rather – fetching.’

Draco’s eyebrows rose slowly. Apparently his predilection for alliteration had migrated to the nearest functioning mouth around.

Fetching.

Harry Potter had called him – Draco Malfoy – fetching.

Harry Potter obviously had no sense of verbal style whatsoever. Still, Draco appreciated the thought. But he had never thought Potter would be quite so – forward. It was rather unsettling.

Then, as if reading Draco’s mind, Harry stepped quickly backwards and his grin vanished in a most unsettling manner. He sighed and looked away. ‘I’m never myself around you, Malfoy. I—I’m usually – shy when it comes to – well, this, whatever This is. With Cho I just got – tongue-tied. And here I am, calling you – pretty and—’ He stopped, blinked a few times, and turned back to Draco, looking for all the world like one gigantic question-mark.

Maybe hero-dom brought on premature dementia. All those blows to the head.

Fetching, Draco mouthed grudgingly, eager to hear where Harry was going with his stuttering monologue.

‘I did not call you a fat chick,’ said Harry, grinning softly, and turned away again. Draco rolled his eyes. What did he see in this nitwit, really? Apart from the tousled hair, the green eyes, the dimples, the scrunched-up frowns, the single-minded righteousness, the – well, what?

‘And I’m just never that forward. But you—you make me do things. Feel things.’ For one perfectly silent moment, Harry stood rigidly still, staring into space. Then he growled and stalked away to the opposite side of the room. ‘And I hate you for it.’

Draco’s right hand fell against hard, cold stone. Thorns pierced his skin. He winced, but not from pain. Not physical pain. He should have known. Of course, he did know. He had cultivated the hate that now hit him with such blunt force that, while he had been physically mute before, his very mind now turned speechless. Thoughts, thousands, millions, rattled about his brain, unable to coalesce into any semblance of coherence.

Hate. Love. A fine line.

An impenetrable wall?

‘No,’ Harry spoke up, shrouded by darkness, shoulders hunched, voice deep and husky, ‘not hate. I don’t. I don’t hate. You. I hate Voldemort. You’re not that bad.’ He chuckled bitterly. ‘Definitely not that bad. And prettier too. Deceptively – beautiful.’

Draco chose that moment to very inconveniently forget how to breathe.

Harry took no particular notice. His shoes made barely any sound at all as he advanced towards the fine line that divided the room and separated him from Malfoy. He stopped mere inches from the border, standing perfectly still, staring intently at Draco.

He tilted his head slightly, his brow furrowing ever so slightly. ‘I don’t hate you. So I can’t cross that – that line and – and love you. Not just like that.’ He paused, nodding softly. ‘But maybe you can. You’re so very – extreme in everything you do.’

Malfoys often were. Draco cursed his name.

‘I don’t hate you. But I have – loathed you for a very, very long time. Yes. Vocabulary. It’s turning weird on me. Blame Hermione.’ His face darkened. ‘But don’t ever call her a Mudblood. Ever again. Or I will make sure you regret it for the rest of your life, rose or no rose. You’re – extreme – so maybe you can change – extremely – and extremely fast.’ He grinned slightly. ‘After this, I really think I’m through with being surprised. By anything.’

By now, Draco was nearly panting from anticipation. It was really most undignified. Of course, he had just cursed his family name. Maybe there was a curse attached to such behaviour. Malfoys were big on curses.

‘I was never this coherent with Cho,’ continued Harry wryly, ‘but perhaps – perhaps I just felt that it was – wrong somehow. As if I was trying to be something I wasn’t. That I’m not. And I don’t think I’m a particularly good actor.’ His eyed bored into Draco, hard and ruthless. ‘But I think you probably are, aren’t you, Draco?’

Draco shrugged. There was little else he could do, and he felt uncomfortably passive as it was. This was not going as planned.

Though, of course, results were what counted, which didn’t help quench Draco’s doubts. Results were rarely what counted in relation to Potter. What really counted was the incessant trying, the stylish and extravagant failures. Everything about their relationship, twisted as it was, was being turned upside down, spinning out of control, twisting into a new and hypnotising shape. Or, perhaps, untying a twisted, infected knot that had been allowed to fester for far too long.

‘You bring out something else in me. You always have. It used to be spite – and loathing. Now, suddenly it’s,’ Harry grinned wryly, ‘as Hermione would put it – spirit, which I never had with girls. Probably because I didn’t really care. Not that I care care. I. Just. Never mind.’

Coherency. It was wonderful concept.

‘But you... I thought I despised you. Perhaps I still do, in a way. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is.’

Yes?

‘That maybe there’s a fine line between loathing,’ Harry took a firm step across the faint divide etched on the floor, ‘and lust.’

Draco shivered. He didn’t know why. He certainly hadn’t asked his muscles, or indeed his nerves, to tremble and flutter like feathery leaves. Everything had been so meticulously planned. Now, everything was so – sudden. Unexpected fulfilment of wishful expectations.

Draco’s schemes never worked. They were never really supposed to. Not really. But this one was. But now, Draco sought an easy way out. It was frightening: winning after so many defeats. And from the almost predatory look in Potter’s eyes, the victory would be a defeat, the defeat a victory. Suffice to say, confusion pervaded the room. As did purpose.

Harry drew a deep breath. ‘You know, I never on my life thought I’d say this, but you look quite,’ he blushed, much to Draco’s satisfaction and unadulterated joy, ‘kissable.’

This left Draco with two options: white or red. Considering his complexion, it was probably good that he chose to pale, as if in bleak opposition to Harry’s flushed features.

‘And,’ Harry continued, moving towards Draco, ‘that rose does invite me to test my theory. Hermione always talks about testing theories. And, I really have to admit, she does give good advice, more often than either I or Ron would like to admit. And don’t call him Weasel.’ Harry stopped suddenly, staring intently at Draco who frowned back, not pleased with these commands to which he could give no vocal response. ‘At least, don’t do it unless I think he’s been really stupid. Then we can call him Weasel together.’ Harry grinned. Mischievously. And Draco no longer had any trouble seeing Harry in Slytherin. None whatsoever.

‘So, now,’ Harry continued, biting briefly into his lower lip, ‘I’m going to kiss you. You utter bastard.’

With those words, Harry Potter advanced on Draco Malfoy in a way hitherto unheard of. And Draco Malfoy placed his already mishandled rose in his own mouth, in a way unheard of since Don Juan and silly romantic comedies of the seventies.

[ill.] The rose was quite thorny.

Draco winced.

Harry stopped.

Draco glared.

Harry stared.

Draco growled.

Harry grinned.

‘Now you really look like an angry puppy.’

His plan, Draco admitted to himself, had been to foil Potter’s advances through the use of an inconveniently placed thorny rose. It had not been to suddenly, enraged and excited, thrust his body into that of his supposed opponent and try to snog him senseless. But Draco’s plans rarely worked out anyway.

Plans could be changed. Suddenly and unexpectedly. It was perfectly normal.

Though, in hindsight, not removing the rose was probably a bad idea.

It was not, however, bad enough to detract from the Very Good Idea that was the actual kiss. And by the feel of it, Potter felt the same.

It was just another fight, another kind of duel. No one would give in, and no one would give up. Backing away was not an option. This was a fight beyond compare, a battle more powerful and more dangerous than anything they had ever tried before.

What had taken them so long?

It was battle with barbs and bloodshed. And like on battlefields of yore, the blood of foes flowed together in the burning trenches, forming a compound that to the naked eye looked no different than its individual parts. Blue blood was but commonly red, and pure blood no clearer than the rest.

Draco’s hand moved towards the rose and closed over Harry’s. Neither was willing to end the kiss, but neither enjoyed the prickly obstacle that ripped at their lips and bloodied their mouths. The rose had to go. Draco’s hand clenched. The thorns broke skin. Harry bit into a tongue that wasn’t his. Then, in perfect unison, they pulled the rose free.

The thorns tore dark red gashes in their path, clung to the lips that had so lovingly caressed them, and the twisted rose shed blood-red petals as if in mourning of its loss. But neither boy backed away. Not even for a second. The rose sailed into the darkness. Hands parted to explore features they had never felt before.

Harry drew unwitting patterns of red across Draco’s pale face whilst the other’s slender fingers plotted a course through the unruly jungle of Potter’s Hair. Red blossomed around their mouths and sprinkled their clothes, forming trails and pointers to two pounding hearts, made of the mixed produce of both.

It was all quite poetical, in rather a plebeian but unquestionably passionate sort of way.

And Draco loved it. He loved it with the same angry rage and the same frustrated passion that he had, he assumed, always loved Harry Potter since that very first day he walked into Draco’s life, and out of it before they had even shook hands. The Boy Who had Lived to live a life that had put him so often, during seven long years, within arm’s reach but a world away.

The death of the Potters had placed their son not only at the other side of the wizarding world’s political spectrum, but in another world entirely. A world that Draco could never understand and never, ever respect. A world that was Harry’s as much as Harry belonged to the magical world, and wizarding history.

They would never understand each other. Not really. Nor would they ever want to. Not really. The gap – the abyss – that separated them could never be bridged. And neither of them was strong enough to make the leap across. For that, the divide was much too wide.

But if they jumped in unison, as they had now done, in an impulsive and highly disorganised sort of way, they could meet in the middle, over that seemingly bottomless depth. And then they could fall together.

Gently, softly. Kept afloat by trust. And just a little bit of pixie dust.

A fluttery feeling in both abdomens. Strong enough to levitate a minor ostrich.

Falling.

Sinking.

Nearly suffocating from a pressing need to touch, to feel, to taste, to heal.

To heal.

To mend mental wounds with ferociously physical ministrations.

Falling.

Falling.

And

(Draco felt it; he was sure.)

Fallen.

And as two pairs of lips wrestled like playful lions and two urgent tongues slithered like sensuous, lovemaking serpents, a golden light descended, a galaxy of flame spun to a slow stop around the caressing couple. New light and new shadows fell in every direction, flickering and fluctuating, turning the once so neatly divided room into a discordant but unified jumble of darkness and light, relentlessly in motion. And from inside that jungle of towering candles came the sound of a squeaky, wobbly voice crooning an ancient goblin love song.

After all, the goblin reasoned, if it was to stay in this tedious realm, it needed to look into alternate careers for creatures consisting of naught but a voice and the insubstantial afterimage of a magically conjured body. Besides, sighing despondently got rather dull once you’d been doing it for a while.

And Harry and Draco kept kissing and kissing and, to be perfectly honest, trying to snog each other perfectly senseless. It was still a fight, still a duel, but one with pillows rather than pointed weaponry. With passionate moans rather than angry groans. Though the line was fine.

To the casual observer (perchance to the eerily aware Room of Requirements) there might well have seemed something powerfully primal about the way these two inverted foes attacked each other with hands, lips, hips. Something almost bestial – what with the loud moaning and the squealing pig in the background.

But neither Harry nor Draco held any opinion whatsoever about the horny old goblin hit, having both hands overfull with each other. Unravelling, mending, undressing, clothing in caresses, unwrapping, and smearing sweat.

Messy.

Wet.

Balmy.

Maybe even barmy.

But deliciously wonderful. Aggressively beautiful.

In one word

Hot.

When they finally broke apart for some much-needed air, Harry breathlessly uttered his final words for the evening.

‘Just remember: I don’t love you.’

Draco had no time, nor wish, to reply. Miming or otherwise.

The second kiss, a still messier continuation of that very first, earth-shattering sensation, spoke to him. It carried delicate meaning amidst all the fervour and lust. It spoke to Draco – not volumes, not novels, nor even very small pamphlets. It spoke a small, crumpled note; passed in the Potions class that never was, the Care of Magical Creatures class that should have been, between friends who cared, not enemies with poisoned minds. A tiny note with one word in shaky block letters.

Just one single word. One word that made the weak candle of hope inside him explode into a crackling fire of joy and anticipation.

Just one word.

One word.

‘YET.’

Yet.

And, Draco thought, that’s as good you’re going to get.

For now.

The line is fine. But unyielding.

They were the best of enemies, the worst of friends. Perhaps now inverted but never evened out.

They were voraciously passionate, they were worlds apart, separated by a border traversable only by those true yet hard of heart. The pauper and the prince. Blood-brothers. Blood feud. Blood-red. The colour of love; the taint of anger. A fine line.

Extreme.

Times two.