Innocence of Youth

Draco barely moved as the mist curled away from the center of his line of sight. The blackness behind the pearlescent mist was not solid. It shifted constantly as if it was aching to give up secrets. Draco made out an indistinct shape now, separating itself from the darkness. First it gave up a pale oval, then white lines not too far below the oval and a touch out to the sides. And now fiercely brilliant emeralds enthralled him from the center of the oval. Now a bolt from the white struck Draco and he realized he was looking at Potter. The boy's black hair was an ebony nimbus barely discernable in front of the dark but giving occasional flashes of clarity against the ghostly fog. His lips parted and the green eyes hooded ever so slightly. His right hand came out and brushed Draco's fevered brow. Draco was unable to move, to breathe, to turn away. He felt his heart skip as Potter swooped in close; he felt his eyes go wide then shut as Potter's full lips brushed ever so slightly against the borders of his thin mouth. He felt the startling heat of Potter's gentle breath, smelling of honey, spice and mint on his face and reached out to run the back of his hand on Potter's smooth cheeks.

"Harry..." Draco whispered in a quaver, "Harry..."

Draco's hand finally made contact with Harry and -

Draco sat bolt upright, his hand pulling away from where it had been rubbing the smooth velvet of his bed hangings. His breath caught in his chest and his heart felt it might burst out of his chest like a rogue bludger through a quidditch stand. He hastily pushed his platinum hair off his face and reached under his pillow to find the silver flask he kept there at night. His father had given it to him last Christmas. It kept an endless supply of perfectly chilled, fresh water for him at all times. Lucius had had the Malfoy family crest engraved with the precision only a master wandgraver could achieve. Draco brought the heavy, cool flask to his lips and paused for a few seconds to settle his breathing and his heart beat before drinking a few sips of water.

The dream had been so vivid, he was sure he should remember every detail, but all he could remember were a pair of perfectly soft, yet firm lips pressing against his and the scent of honey, spices and mint. It was an unusual dream for Draco. He hadn't yet learned to discipline his dreams the way that Lucius constantly admonished him to discipline his waking hours, but he had never had a dream that forced him awake with his heart racing, breathless and a painful yearning in his stomach and his soul.

Draco chanced a quick glance out of his hangings and saw that it was still dark. However, a quick look at the celestiascope on his bed stand told him that the stars and moon were already set and morning was not far off. He reached into the cubby 'neath the stand and pulled his arithmancy text out to get some extra revising done. Being realistic, Draco had, at least in the darker, smaller corners of his mind, given up trying to beat Hermione for the top spot in any of his classes save for potions. But being competitive by nature and reasonably blind to some of his pragmatism, Draco soldiered gamely on in the hopes of pleasing his father.

After revising the current chapter and starting ahead on the next, Draco made his way to the showers. He let the hot water drill his muscles and the steam soften his thoughts. Something in the dream had left him feeling bereft and angry about its absence, not simply sad. He clenched his eyes as the spray stung his soft, pale skin and sluiced over the defined planes of his pectorals and abdominal muscles. He opened his eyes slowly and let his long, silvery black lashes bat away droplets.

Draco was somewhat that side of indolent, but his ancestry and a minimal diet, combined with a fairly grueling quidditch schedule, kept his long, lanky body well defined and hard. He roughly scrubbed his arms, watching the long muscles on the back of his forearms flexing in tune with his long, slender fingers tensing on the soap. His quad muscles bulged out slightly from the clean lines of his thighs as his bent down to soap his hard calves and feet.

Finally, the harsh spray, the heady steam and the rough soaping combined to send the remnants of Draco's disturbing dream down the drain. He stepped out of the stall and cast a quick drying charm on his body to ward off the sudden change from steamy heat to the bracingly chill air in the rest of the lavatory. He let the adhesive, drying robe that his mother had owled up from Gladrag's last show settle itself on his lean frame and complete the drying process as he walked back to the sixth year's dormitory.

Draco waved his wand lazily at his collapsing chest of drawers, the beautiful, matte black wood of felled elder trees expanded to full size for the school term. Draco stood in front of his mirror as he watched the intricate dance of the drawers opening. Various articles of clothing emerged, levitating to him. He let the mirror's low tones guide him into a pair of soft charcoal trousers. He knew the exquisite material, gathered from the underbelly of a Pegasus colt, draped perfectly off its flat front waist band. The waist was charmed to grow if its wearer put on weight, but that had never been a problem for Draco. The only weight he had put on in six years of school was from his growing adult muscles. His once pointy face had filled out a touch to take on a look more aristocratic than pinched. He slipped in to his school uniform white shirt, this of a beautifully woven cotton grown by some Egyptian wizards who had a small village on the upper Nile, and then let his Slytherin jumper ease itself over his head. Lastly he slid his mermaid hair-silk stockinged feet into supple wyvern skin loafers and grasped his silvery cape and his new Draconis Needliss broom as he whirled to the door and made his way to the Great Hall for breakfast. Draco would eat a light meal and then practice his Wronski feint for a bit before getting back to his studies. He needed to make the most of the weekend, after all.

Draco was sloping his way across the entrance hall toward the Great Hall when he noticed Potter enter just ahead of him.

"Blast it!" Draco caught himself just before the words could escape his mouth. Potter had his broom as well. "Of all the luck." Potter was probably planning to practice as well. Draco certainly wasn't going to let the other boy keep him from honing his quidditch skills.

But even as Draco began to let his mind wander down a distinctly nasty path, he realized he wasn't really angry with Potter. He was...just weary or anxious...or a touch confused at any rate. Draco began walking toward the Great Hall again as his stomach knotted a bit with hunger. He quickly sat down at the Slytherin table, drank a bit of hot, spiced cider and picked up a cauldron cake. He inhaled the spicy scent of the cake and drink and wondered at the empty pang it gave him before finishing both and rushed out of the Hall, hoping to beat Potter down to the pitch.

* * * * * * *

Draco kicked off the rich, loamy spring of the earth and deep, emerald grass beneath his feet. His brand new Draconis Needliss seemed to grab just enough of the air to launch him like a magicked arrow into the pale white of the morning sky. The echoing pale strands of his hair plastered themselves back over his scalp in a silver cap, fit to match his narrowed, moonstone eyes. The fine point of his nose led him forward over the handle of his perfect broom. He'd never felt its like: The ebony handle glinted with faint, milky rainbow slicks like abalone shell. It thrummed with a barely suppressed power and almost obeyed his thoughts before they were registered in the minute tightening and shifting of his inner thighs and the fingers of his right hand.

The wind swept over and around Draco's lithe body and he pressed himself flatter, like the serpentine length of a dragon's coils to the handle of the Draconis. He suddenly dove, the silver pelt of his satyr's belly-hair cape striking out to the side with his rapid change in direction. The impossibly vivid green of the pitch came rushing towards him and the wind almost seemed to take on streaked colours as he sliced through it effortlessly. Draco stretched out his long, delicate fingers for the snitch he imagined just in front of him, his alabaster perfect arm revealed from under his robes. And now, as the ground lay the barest fraction of a centimetre below the blur of Draco's hand and face, he thought of the open sky, barely let his inner thigh muscles close around the Draconis' humming handle and felt his cape drag ever so slightly on the surface of the pitch as he saw the palest thin sky once more above him almost hearing the gasp of the crowd at his daring and skill.

As Draco got to the top of his flight arc, he gave the lightest touch to the underside of his broom and edged his torso up, bringing the powerful racing broom to a near instant stop. As he did he let his silvery eyes pass over the stands and noticed the bright column of a boy standing, in Gryffindor robes, watching him.

"Perhaps the gasp wasn't in my mind," Draco smirked to himself.

"What do you think, Potter? Does it make you nervous for the coming match?" Draco slouched over his quiescent broom, feeling its power much the way he might feel laying against the flanks of a sleeping dragon.

"You've had better brooms than me before, Malfoy. It never seems to help," and here it was Harry's turn to smirk. "Does it have a snitch magnet too? That's the only way it'll help you beat me."

"Mordred's spear, you've some cheek, Potter! You may have noticed I've actually been practicing? And I know that you live with muggles so one imagines I might have gained a touch of what I like to call, 'edge' this Summer." Draco wasn't really arguing with Harry. Once again he hadn't the heart, though he couldn't explain why. The fleeting thought of how queer the situation was struck Draco.

Harry stood casually, his newfound height still surprising to Draco, the muscles of his slender forearms bulged out like slender, half wands with his fingers as his hands clasped the brown of his Firebolt handle. His face was leaner than the roundness Draco was familiar with in years past. The forever startlingly jeweled green crystal of Harry's eyes stared above the high ridge of his cheek bones and below the jagged bolt of a scar in the center of his forehead.

Even though Draco was aloft, several metres above Harry, and even though he was more comfortable in the air than on his well shod feet, somehow it seemed that he was skulking guiltily about the pitch before the haughty grandeur of Harry and not the other way around. Where had Harry gained the arrogance, the confidence, Draco mused as a smile touched the slender corners of his mouth.

"What are you smiling about Malfoy?" Harry seemed half annoyed, half knowing, as though he were somehow sharing the joke that even Draco didn't quite understand.

"The ridiculousness of you standing there like you own the pitch when I'm almost certain my father paid for its restoration before our second year. That practically makes it mine, one imagines. So why don't you show a little respect, Potter?" Draco's wrists crossed in front of him on his broom handle and he sat up straighter, relaxing slightly.

"Your father's money can't buy you my respect Malfoy," and with a flash of ruby-gold, Harry blurred into the air and shot past Draco, his wake spinning the pale boy about on his broom like a top in a wild eddy.

Harry shouted for Draco to attempt to keep up with him and darted off toward the far hoops. On the straightaway, Harry couldn't keep ahead of Draco and he knew it. He jerked up on the Firebolt and streaked above Draco. Draco didn't even mutter a curse, but rather like a flying daemon of Dis he shifted in mid-thought and zipped after Harry's crimson cape and black mop of hair.

Draco flattened himself to the Draconis and was gaining on Harry, when Harry flipped over almost on the point of his broom twigs and dropped like a stone strapped to back of a diving wyvern toward the surface of the pitch. Draco followed and as the stands cast their shadow over his blurred figure and the ground tried to grab him, the pale boy barely avoided smashing all of his bones, even with the precision of his new broom, as Harry scraped the grass with his toes and streaked across the pitch less than a metre above the ground.

By the time Draco had recovered and started after Harry, the Gryffindor was already back in the stands, enjoying a laugh at Draco's expense. Draco touched lightly down on the same bench that Harry was sitting on with a chuckle on his lips and green fire dancing in his eyes beneath his mess of thick, black hair.

"Not bad Malfoy. I hate to say it, but not bad." Harry actually let a touch of admiration coat his words.

"Now was that so hard?" Draco narrowed his eyes, "Why would it kill you to compliment me?"

Harry narrowed his eyes in response and twisted his lips to the right, "Well you have, shall we say, earned a little bit of animosity from me over the years, don't you think?"

Draco wasn't sure why Harry was being reasonably open with him, but he wasn't going to waste the opportunity. "Well perhaps we are a bit old for that. What do you think? Can we behave like adults around each other?"

"Malfoy, you and I have legitimate issues and I have to say that a truce seems almost as silly as our previous behaviour toward one another." Harry paused, his brows knitting over the bridge of his nose.

Harry's lips were, for some reason, fascinating to Draco and he couldn't help but focus on them. He'd paid so much attention to Potter for so many years, and yet he'd never really noticed Harry's lips. They were actually quite sensual. They were full and slightly puffy, as though they were bruised. And Draco felt that he almost remembered tasting them but he couldn't imagine where such an absurd notion would come from.

"Malfoy!" Draco jerked himself up. "Are you even listening to me?"

"Sorry, Potter, I guess I got distracted."

"Well, I have to go study anyway. I guess we'll have to play follow the snitch some other time Malfoy. Seriously, though, and I don't know why I bother, but I'm impressed. That was nice flying up there." Draco felt an irrational thrill and shiver at Harry's words and couldn't, once more, keep himself from staring at the other boy as Harry made his way down the stands and back up the path. Draco didn't move. He just stood still in the stands, leaning on his Draconis until Harry disappeared in the school's main gates to the whispered sigh that Draco offered through compressed lips beneath slightly sad eyes.

* * * * * * *

Running the flat of his palm over the other boy's slender arm, Draco bent to Harry's hand and traced his lifeline with the slightest brush of his lips. He felt Harry shudder under him at the sensation and then trembled in turn as his skin experienced the gliding smoothness of Harry's fingers moving across his stomach and gently toying with the band of his pants.

Draco's eye's suddenly widened but saw nothing and then languidly hooded shut as Harry slipped the very core of Draco into his fingers and gently stoked the impossibly smooth, soft flesh.

Draco's stomach tightened repeatedly under the soft inside of Harry's forearm, his thighs clenching in time to his abdominals. He threw his head back, unable to comprehend the pleasure that was spearing outward from his loins. "Merlin Potter! That's good!"

Potter growled, low in his throat, his satisfaction with Draco's pleasure obvious. Draco felt Harry's pace quicken and he thought he saw wands sending up sparks behind his eyelids. His breath caught and he felt his whole body ball tightly around the sharp shaft of intense pleasure at his centre.

"Harry!" Draco cried out and felt his body suddenly jerk over and over again with a level of tension, release and pleasure he'd never known before.

Draco opened his eyes, his arms wrapping around Harry's back and closed on...

The cold air of dim morning surrounded Draco. A "wha-?" escaped his lips and he thrust himself violently upright, groping blindly at the nothingness above him. He didn't understand what he'd dreamt and he barely remembered even the outlines as the sensations that wracked his frame subsided and he felt the cold chill of damp all over his slowly relaxing body from his sweat drenched sheets.

Perhaps all relationships have a lifecycle that is inescapable. Perhaps red always cools before blue turns temperate. Perhaps the strength to carry the burden of a grand passion is never strong enough to last a lifetime. Some days dawned too bright for Draco to open his eyes completely. All day long he would squint his eyes and only the thinnest slits of pearlescent silver would show luminous and pooling dark at the same time. Some days Draco woke with his head wrapped in the thick cotton of dreams. He would be not quite asleep and not quite awake. In either case, as Draco waved at the soft strands of sleep, as he strove to drive the tugging sands of exhaustion wrought by vivid dreams that offered no rest, when he slipped from the confines of his bed, he remembered nothing of the dreams. Whether sitting on an ancient green dragon skin settee in the Slytherin common room, studying in the library, pushing his food around in the dining hall or furiously fighting gravity and winds on the quidditch pitch, Draco was distracted, feeling as though a forgotten word was at the tip of his pointy little tongue.

Mostly, all that meant that he had little energy. He could barely keep the focus he needed to maintain a higher class rank than Hermione in potions. He had no chance at Potter in Defence Against the Dark Arts and certainly not in the Quidditch Cup competition. And for the second time in not many more months Draco realized he didn't know when it had happened, but that his feelings for Harry had changed. He pushed the thick, straight locks of his pale, blonde hair out of his hair and let the barest sigh disturb the air. It wasn't that he liked Potter by any means. They were still rivals, as it were. But he hadn't the energy for arguement as he had seen the other day when Harry and he tried to practice at the same time. The rivalry was there, but it was more the tyranny of past patterns, the prison of idiom than a living energy. Draco quite simply found himself too enmeshed in the gauzy haze of sleep, even midday, to feel up to his usual, snarky barbs.

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