Green Seventeen

Seventeen is a problematic number.

It only divides by itself and one, it's awkward and thorny, it stands alone among the reams of multiples, fractions, integers, surds, making calculations difficult and being a prime irritation all the way. To be seventeen years old is to bear many of these traits, to be lonely and introverted, awkward and ungainly, and difficult to live with.

Harry Potter was seventeen years old.

"You're still such a fucking child. Don't you ever change?" The voice was Malfoy's, the voice was raised in irritation, the voice issued from lips that were twisted into a snarl.

Harry pushed himself from against the wall as Malfoy gathered up his fallen papers into his arms. "Me?" he asked angrily. "You're the one who made my potion explode no more than two hours ago and you're calling me childish?"

"You deliberately knocked these to the floor," Malfoy muttered through gritted teeth as the loose leaves of parchment were clutched by his small, narrow hands.

"You walked into me!"

"You got in my way!" Malfoy stood up, letting his precious pieces of homework scatter themselves again.

To be seventeen is to not be sure of yourself but to still be learning the invaluable skill of disguise. At seventeen every feeling has edges that cut so deeply, every insult deserves a biting rejoinder, every ideal is free from the fissures of realism.

Malfoy looked sure of himself but Harry wondered whether it was just because he had been seventeen for longer. He was an inch or two shorter than Harry, the hair that levelled with his cheekbones worn casually and youthfully, the face unscarred by either years or abuse.

But he was an adult. They both were. Supposedly.

"Just because Snape lets you get away with murder-"

Malfoy laughed derisively. "You're still sore about today's lesson? For fuck's sake, Potter, you would have cocked up that potion far more royally without my interference. I was doing you a favour."

"A favour?" Harry spluttered, intentionally treading on the carefully penned Transfiguration notes at his feet. "You were being an arrogant bastard, like you always are!"

"You're calling me arrogant?" Malfoy looked outraged. "That's rich coming from the wizarding world's Golden Boy."

"Don't call me that!"

Malfoy's smirk returned with a lacing of bitterness. "Don't like it, Potter?"

Harry thinks the greatest fault of the wizarding world is the tendency to drown itself in fantasy. To readily believe the lies that are spread, because with the added potency of their birthright comes the increased chance for perversion of their gifts, the increased danger. To believe that children of seventeen can be ready to face the world as adults is easier than believing that they will need to be protected from it for longer. So these two boys were adults. These two boys still battling with themselves and each other, with hormones, friendships, sexuality and expectations. They still lived in a microcosm of the world and were unready to face reality.

Enemies were more acceptable when they were of a similar build and prowess to yourself, when they were pressed close to you in anger but you still had that steady bed of confidence.

"Back off, Malfoy," Harry hissed, knowing full well that Malfoy would do no such thing.

Malfoy's face flushed with what could have been anger or exhilaration. "Make me."

Harry's heart was pounding a fierce tattoo in his chest and this invitation lit a fire in his veins and sent adrenaline coursing through his body. With little ceremony he gripped both of Malfoy's arms above the elbow and slammed him bodily against the wall. Malfoy gave a gratifying grunt as the cold hard stones clicked against his spine and Harry leaned in close, pinning him fast.

"Going to start something?" Malfoy challenged, his glorious grey eyes sweeping across Harry with all the coldness of a breath of ice. Harry let out a low growl in his throat and suddenly those eyes were burning.

Maturity and adulthood is about restraint. It's about accepting consequences, being the bigger person, avoiding unnecessary conflict. Childhood is about drinking life to the full and viewing with the sharpest colours and the most razor-sharp senses until it becomes some mad parody of itself and everything fades into what will be a memory.

At this, seventeen years old, children amongst muggles, adults amongst wizards. Standing on the cusp of their life. The moment stood on the edge of a knife and time held its breath to watch whether impulse would triumph over rationality.

Harry pushed himself fully against Malfoy, aligning them from throat to toe. His raw edge of anger was changing to something equally intense, equally perplexing and as the heady smell of Malfoy's skin washed over him he wondered if he was falling...

Strong arms seemed to have caught him, strong arms with soft skin that wrapped themselves deathly tight around his waist and tugged them closer together, coaxing a searing heat between them, a stiffness that was instantly both recognizable and blurred. Harry gripped Malfoy's shoulders and slammed their mouths together, cracking Malfoy's head back on the wall as he roughly shoved his tongue into an apparently altogether willing mouth. There was a moment's frantic duelling before Malfoy slanted his lips and kissed Harry properly and it was so bizarre and strange and should have been horrible but a benefit of only seventeen years is almost perpetual confusion. It was a second or two before Harry realized that they were grinding together and Malfoy, with his back to the wall, was pink-cheeked and gasping into Harry's mouth.

Harry shoved himself still harder against the Slytherin, eliciting a throaty groan and feeling him press his wiry strength into Harry, clinging and pushing away with equal strength.

"Fight your way out of this one," Harry murmured, but was cut off as Malfoy nipped at his bottom lip and reached to grip Harry's arse through his robes. His glasses were thrown uncaringly to the floor and at that moment the world shrank and his brain, trapped by lust, was filled with the image of Malfoy with his eyes closed and his breath rasping.

"Potter," he breathed and Harry suddenly wanted as much of him as he could get.

Anyone happening upon the scene would most likely have fainted on the spot. This was something unheard of, and breaking all the rules of dynamics and of attraction. For a moment these two boys were just echoes of two completely different people and the feelings there, no matter the original nature of them, were raw and deep and full of intensity that had to be expressed somehow. It went against the order of things but it was as though a dam had burst, flooding in a tumult of noise and danger but then leaving nothing but a serene quiet. Until the rains came again.

They came instead, sticky and jagged, the breath in their lungs seeming to corrode them from the inside out. For them to raise their eyes to each other's faces took an unforeseen effort.

As ignorant of the world as most seventeen year olds are, they are understood, in part at least, by one another and in number they are less problematic.