Expanded Version of a Timeless Classic

Expanded Version Of A Timeless Classic

In the lazy sunlight of an autumn afternoon, two figures on broomsticks appeared high above the treetops. Side by side they raced across the sky, then swooped around each other in midair as they performed dangerous tricks and stunts. Finally the two daredevils dropped, laughing and talking, to a grassy mound at the base of a tall tree.

They'd flown like teenagers, but as they dismounted and leaned expensive racing brooms against the tree's trunk, it became clear that the two flyers were around fifty years old. Both of them were tall and thin, with strong-looking sinewy bodies. One looked like a film star, with silver-blonde hair stylishly cut to call attention to his sharp, high cheekbones and his mocking grey eyes. As he shrugged off a long jacket of iridescent grey dragons' hide, he looked around in annoyance. "I thought we left the rucksack right here!"

The other man was dressed almost as casually as a hippie. His black hair (accented with one striking lock of pure white) was tied back in an unruly ponytail; his craggy face was notable for its piercing green eyes and the healing scars of several wounds that must once have been painful. As he peeled off a hand-knitted jumper with one hand, he stretched out the other hand and said in a voice muffled by the wool, "Accio rucksack!" And the rucksack appeared in his hand, a sleek confection of dragons' hide and grey Italian leather.

"Where was it?" said the film star crossly, taking the rucksack and opening the top.

"Who cares?" said the hippie with a smile.

"Is my memory going, that's all I'm asking."

"If it is, which I very much doubt, I know a spell that will fix it." The hippie pulled the rucksack out of the film star's hands and dropped it beside the brooms, before wrapping his arms around the film star's shoulders. "Thank you. I needed this."

Now the film star's face expressed nothing but triumph and satisfaction as he pulled his lover's body against his own. "So did I. I love the way that flying with me - " here he paused as the two men exchanged a lingering kiss, "mmm, or should I say, against me - never fails to turn you on."

"More than ever," said the hippie with a laugh, as he pulled open the film star's belt buckle with an expert jerk of his wrist, and now we'll leave them in privacy for an hour...

+++

(...almost in privacy: it's tiresome to call them film star and hippie, so let's listen as they make love. Ah, they call each other "Harry" and "Draco" - among other more intimate names - in the throes - so that's what we'll call them. And if you don't already know which is which then I'm puzzled why you're reading this. We now resume our sun-dappled afternoon in progress...)

++++

Having satisfied their most pressing hungers with sex and a light picnic, Draco and Harry sprawled in the shade. As Draco leaned against the tree trunk with Harry's head in his lap, he pulled a sheaf of papers out of his shirt pocket.

"Next week's interview," he said briskly.

Harry rolled his eyes. "Slytherin, I might have known you would have some fucking agenda."

Draco smiled. "I always have an agenda, as you well know, and of course, fucking is frequently on it..."

"What's the interview about? Not poster boys for gay rights, I hope." Harry's tone was light, but then, with a look of sudden dismay, he started to sit up. "Not another War anniversary I've forgotten!"

Draco smiled and pushed Harry's shoulders back down. "Nothing so dire. Let me read you a review. Bibliomancer gave it five wands!" He shuffled the papers and read in the mellifluous tones of a professional announcer...

"And finally, we're thrilled to see a completely revised and updated edition of Draco Malfoy's The Joy of Sex Magic, just in time for the gift giving season. This classic work by Malfoy, better known as...blah blah dull biographical stuff, now listen to this...has often been imitated but never surpassed, and this latest edition is also the best. The writing is witty, the illustrations are thoroughly entrancing, and the advice both practical and zestful for wizards and witches of all ages and persuasions. Members of our youth review board were impressed with the quality and range of the material that's been added specifically for teenagers in this new edition. 'How's Malfoy know all this when I hear he's been with the same guy for, like, thirty years? But he's got it right,' was one remark we overheard, and anyone who would like more on this provocative question is urged not to miss our upcoming double issue, which will feature a frank talk with Malfoy himself and his lover, the most eminent et cetera..."

"Oh no!" Harry said, rolling his eyes. "It is going to be poster boys..."

"There's more," said Draco gleefully.

"Even if you've already got a copy of The Joy of Sex Magic, put the old edition under a wobbling piece of furniture and grab this expanded version of a timeless classic. As was true of the previous editions, its pages are treated with permanent moisture repelling spells, and its spine holds up well even after one has repeatedly used the book to play Let's Drop The Sex Magic Manual And Try Whatever Is On The Open Page. (Not that we'd know anything about this game but we feel that as editors it's our duty to review every aspect of the book.) Malfoy advises us that the new edition has an added feature, which is that if you'd like to try something new with your partner but are feeling shy, an easy to use spell allows you to choose the page the book will open to, right before you drop it..."

Harry grinned mischievously. "After I did that to our copy?"

Draco smiled. "I made every copy, ah, suggestible. Brilliant idea you had." He paused to smooth Harry's now-sweaty hair, pulling it out of its ponytail. "Anyway, that's almost all, except the reviewer says to buy copies for everyone you love, and one for yourself."

"That's great," Harry said. "Remember when Ron first read your star chart? He said you'd find success in later life! Five wands..." Harry sighed and stretched, seeming blissfully calm.

"I owe that book a lot," Draco said somberly. "When the war ended, we'd lost so many people, most of wizarding Britain was wrecked, Hogwarts was a shambles, so I didn't whine about my personal problems, but it infuriated me that my father threw all our family's wealth away on the losing side. So initially the book was just a way to make money to live on. But over the years...the letters from people who say it's changed their lives, made me see it differently, and work hard to make it better. And you know what it means to me to be able to afford good clothes, and make sure you and I always have the hottest racing brooms on the market, even if no one besides ourselves understands why we need them."

Harry looked up at his lover. "It sounds like this is going to be an important interview for you. How honest do you want us to be?"

For a moment, Draco's arms tightened fiercely around Harry's head and shoulders. "Let's be as honest as we can be. At this point in our lives, our careers, there's no point in hiding." He shrugged and released Harry, shuffling the papers again. "I have the list of questions they're going to ask, so we can prepare witty answers."

"Forever Slytherin," Harry murmured, rolling over and sitting up. But he said it lovingly.

Draco said firmly, "First of all, on the day of the interview I'm going to pick out your clothes, and try to do something with your hair..."

"What else is new." More interested in the questions, Harry took the list and began reading. "Here's the first one, and it's easy: 'What do you appreciate most about your partner?'"

"That is easy," Draco said. "He's hung like a centaur."

"You are not saying that," said Harry firmly. "Catastrophic for discipline."

"Good for your discipline, though."

"You know what I mean!" Harry said. "And you'd sound like a size queen." He looked mischievous. "I could just as easily mention that when we go out together, you're so drop dead sexy and gorgeous that most of the women and men we meet are clearly wondering what it's like to fuck you. Whether or not they've bought the damn book."

"Point taken," Draco said. "I love attention but I don't want you telling the world how much I love it. I guess I was just winding you up."

"Just don't forget to release me afterwards," Harry said with a smile.

"How about, I've never ever been bored, because you and I continue to push our mutual limits, even after all these years together?"

"And I could say that I'm grateful you still want to push them?" Harry blushed and suddenly the erotic tension between the two lovers was palpable again. "No...that's still too personal. Let's make the answers honest but not so physical. I'll say that I appreciate the way you have worked so long and hard to help me rebuild the only...home...I've ever really known. To the point where it's once again flourishing, even better than before."

"Good," said Draco. "They'll love the way you sound all tragic and haunted when you say it, too." He ran his hands through his own hair. "Then here's mine: Harry gave me the chance to redefine what it means to be Slytherin, for all the Slytherins to come after me: cunning, ambition, even intimidation, but no longer treachery. Never again treachery."

"Is that the way you see what you're doing? I'd always wondered."

"That's what I'm trying to do." Harry knew Draco found it difficult to cry, and probably always would, so it was probably just dust in Draco's eye, troubling him for a moment. "So I might as well plug it in the article, right? Next question."

Harry read it out. "'What advice would you offer another couple who wants to have a lasting relationship like yours?' That one's easy too: make time to work on it."

"Like we're doing now. Plenty of shagging." Draco looked cheerful again. "If you can't be spontaneous, mark the calendar and sneak away with your lover every Friday afternoon from noon to four no matter what. "

"Almost no matter what," said Harry with a sigh.

"Still, we get away most Fridays, and tomorrow night we have our date, which reminds me," Draco murmured as he drew a sealed envelope from his hip pocket and passed it to Harry. "Open that when you're back at your desk. Anticipation will improve what I have in mind."

Harry smiled. "Romantic!"

"Romance is important, and so is honesty. The sex guru has spoken."

Harry folded the envelope away and turned back to the list of questions. "Here's one they're going to ask you. 'Draco, how are you and Harry planning to handle the way that one's body...slows down after the first hundred years?'"

"I'll plug the spells in my book that are especially for golden age lovers, so much neater than the drugs the Muggles use, plus our spells work on women as well, and then I'll do my speech about how the brain is the largest sex organ, and as long as the brain is pumping blood you can always have a fulfilling sex life..." Draco shrugged and stretched as he moved to rest his head in Harry's lap for a change.

"Sounds good," Harry said. "The next one's for me. You read it." He gave Draco the list.

Draco cleared his throat. "'Harry, we hear rumors that Draco has had a number of lovers besides yourself, in the years since you've been together. How do you feel about this? Have you yourself also had other lovers, or wanted to?'"

"What do you want me to tell them?" Harry said quietly.

"The truth," Draco said gently. "If I can't handle it, I'll let you know. I always have."

"Here's what I'd say then." Harry took a deep breath. "It's true that Draco has had other lovers, while he and I have been partners. The first thing I want to say is that all of them have been over 21. The last teenager he had sex with...was me."

"True. Never thought of it that way," Draco murmured.

"If that wasn't true we wouldn't be able to live and work together as we do," Harry said in a slightly pompous tone that he seemed to assume unconsciously, "so I just wanted to make that point." He seemed to be leaving time for the imaginary interviewer to finish taking a note, before he continued in a much softer tone. "No one can possess a wizard like Draco. I knew that almost at once, which was part of the rightness of how he and I got together. The only hard part of seeing him with other people is when I see one of his other lovers try to possess him, and get so unhappy when he or she can't. I could solve the puzzle for them but when the relationship is new and shiny they rarely want to hear it, especially not from me..."

"Wow," said Draco, looking pleased. "I don't think you've ever said all this to me even."

"Well, I'm saying it now," said Harry with a smile. "Where was I? Each day that I am fortunate enough to wake up with Draco, I give thanks. If he wants to take other lovers - whether for research or recreational purposes - I don't mind as long as the other lovers understand Draco's and my bond and the fact that no one can ever possess him."

"Have you ever wanted anyone else?" Draco asked softly.

"I haven't, ever," said Harry, looking down with a rueful grin. "I guess I'm a one wizard wizard. But you've been terrific about the amount of time I spend with the Weasleys and Hermione. Especially since it took them so many years to warm up to you. You've handled it all so gracefully."

"That's my aristocratic breeding," Draco said. "I'm good at overlooking things, when I want to be."

"Well, I feel we're even," Harry said.

"I'd forgotten this was on the list," Draco said, frowning at the next question. "Ugh! 'Do you two want to say anything about the war?'"

Harry sighed. "No, but let me try. How about this: none of the students now at Hogwarts were born when the Great War ended. They'll hear about it in History of Magic, but otherwise, it's ancient history to them. And that's how it ought to be."

"I mean, we fought so that it could be that way for the coming generations, so they could get all wrought up about Quidditch and school prizes rather than about witches and wizards dying all around them, every day. We're training them to recognize evil, but preserving some of their innocence, too, is very important to me." Compared to Draco, Harry had less trouble showing his emotions and now his eyes were definitely wet.

"I'll tell them not to ask that one," Draco said quietly. "Nothing to do with the book."

"Yeah," Harry said quietly.

"So here's the last one: 'Can you tell us about the time your partner scared you the most?'"

"Look at the sun, it's below the treetops already," Harry said. "We have to get back. Can I think of an answer on the way?"

Abruptly the mood of the afternoon shifted. Harry tied up his hair again as Draco stuffed the remains of their picnic into the (now much lighter) rucksack, and both men threw on their warm garments and mounted their brooms. Murmuring, "Race you!" Draco soared into the sky, followed closely by Harry, and they sped away at breakneck speed.

For a long while Harry and Draco flew in silence, high above the forest, each thinking his own thoughts yet also companionably together, until they were almost home and they had begun to decelerate. Then Draco pulled his broom closer to Harry's. "Have you thought of your answer to that last question?" he shouted. "I can tell you the time you scared me the most."

Harry was grinning ecstatically, as he always did when he flew, and always had done, since the very first time he picked up a broom. "So tell me!" he shouted back.

Draco was frowning. "Remember when you asked if I'd ever thought of having children?"

"Oh, that," Harry said with another grin. "You said you might enjoy having children and you asked how many I wanted..."

"And you said that what you had in mind was...a couple of hundred!" Draco smiled at the memory. "I was stunned! And then I realized you meant, other peoples' children..."

The impressive stone towers and battlements of Hogwarts rose beneath them. Together Harry and Draco flew to a high balcony where they landed crisply and dismounted. The doors at the back of the balcony were already open and the Headmaster's secretary, a cheerful blonde man in his late twenties, was waiting just inside. When Dennis (Creevey II, known as Junior) saw Harry and Draco he stood up and put down his inscribed copy of The Joy of Sex Magic.

"Junior," Harry said cheerfully. "What'd we miss? Professor Malfoy's messages first, please."

Dennis took a deep breath. "Madam Pomfrey asked me to remind you to owl Christine Avery's parents, about her concussion."

"Already done," said Draco, as he pulled off his rucksack and put it onto Dennis' broad shoulders. "Sent the owl before lunch. Invited them to visit tomorrow. Let Madam Pomfrey know." He whispered to Harry, "Now her memory really does need help!"

"It's the last year of her distinguished career, so cut her some slack," Harry murmured, putting both brooms away carefully in a closet just inside the door.

"True," Draco said thoughtfully. "The times she's patched me up, I guess I ought to."

Dennis continued doggedly, "The house prefects want to meet with you privately, before dinner."

Harry was struggling with his jumper. "Doubtless they've read the Bibliomancer review and now they all want signed copies," he murmured.

"Sod off, Gryffindor." But Draco's eyes were laughing. "Junior, tell them five p.m., in the upper common dungeon. And tell them not to forget the sherry and biscuits this time. I get really cranky when they forget the refreshments."

Dennis smiled as he took Draco's coat. "And finally, Professor, some of your third year DADA students are panicking about this week's homework assignment. I believe you'll find them in your laboratory." As Draco frowned at him, Dennis stepped back. "One of the Hufflepuff prefects is keeping order," he said reassuringly.

"On my way." Draco took Harry's face in his hands, kissed him quickly but thoroughly on the lips, and was gone.

Dennis sighed. "Professor Malfoy is a lot of fun, isn't he? I mean, I'm straight and all, but even I can see that he's fun."

Harry grinned as he gave Dennis his jumper. "Yes, he's fun. My messages?"

"Seven owls from the Ministry, on various subjects, including two from Percy Weasley himself," Dennis said solemnly. "All on your desk. And Professor Bones would like a word."

As they walked towards to the Headmaster's office Dennis was still bubbling. "Dad tells me that when you and he were at school together, which he talks about all the time of course, he says Hogwarts couldn't keep a Dark Arts teacher more than one year. Bad stuff kept happening to them. But Professor Malfoy knows the Dark Arts as well as any wizard in Britain..."

Junior is probably right - any living wizard in Britain, thought Harry to himself. But I'm not going to think about all the Dark wizards and witches we killed, in that final campaign. Not this afternoon.

"And he's been here for years now, and when I was in his class he said that even with regular magic it's not what we do but our intention in doing it that we need to watch out for, he's so wise even if he does seem to be laughing at us half the time...anyway it's wonderful that he's here."

Another crush on Draco, Harry thought wryly. "Yes, it's wonderful."

Harry quickly determined that most of the owled messages were routine, able to wait until Monday morning. After he dealt with the urgent owls and had a long talk with the head of Hufflepuff House, he wrote a news-filled letter to Ron, begging him once again to consider serving as Hogwarts' visiting Divination professor, since none of the post's recent incumbents had been at all capable.

I would never ask you to give up your lucrative practice, (Harry wrote) but maybe you could spend just two days a week (and the night in between) with us during the spring term. A part time professor of your quality would be so much better than an incompetent professor, full time! Show them how it's done! You wouldn't have to use that stuffy tower if you don't care for it. I'm just throwing this idea out...

Draco tells me Pierre (Ron's second son, now in his seventh year at Hogwarts) has the makings of a wonderful Auror...

When he could think of no more news, he closed the letter affectionately and sent Junior to dispatch it via one of the Hogwarts owls. Once he was alone he opened the note he had promised Draco he would read at his desk.

Harry's jaw dropped as he read a complicated map (with the notation "our private dungeon" - was Draco abusing his prerogatives as head of Slytherin House, Harry wondered? - probably not as long as the dungeon had previously been empty and not part of the dormitories - ), diagram, and instructions. Harry decided Draco, always competitive, was probably trying to top the "underwater" date Harry had organized (using custom magic spells) the preceding Saturday. Beloved, I expect you to be ready to step into the manacles at 9 p.m., Draco had written.

With a smile the Headmaster folded the note and put it safely away in his front shirt pocket, over his heart.