Archive of Our Own

Come back to Hogwarts, they said. One more year, it’ll be a laugh. Do the N.E.W.T.s, have a bit of fun for once. What could go wrong?

And Harry’d said, sure. Why not? It probably would be fun! Maybe he’d go a whole school year without someone trying to kill him. N.E.W.T.s would be handy to have. He could enjoy it all, for once: the whole Hogwarts experience. Yule and the Solstice, Easter, even St Valentine’s. Quidditch, all of Hagrid’s weird and wild creatures. Maybe he’d finally learn how to turn water into rum.

What else did he have going on? Not much. He’d had a lot of lie ins, a mountain of chocolate and crisps, and thrice as many beers, and almost zero serious thoughts whatsoever.

He probably should have had a few more serious thoughts. A ponder or two, maybe a rumination. Although, there’s no way his current predicament would ever have been on his radar, not even remotely. No amount of serious thinking could have prepared him for this.

Hermione opened the invitation first, got excited, got Ron caught up in the aforementioned excitement, and moments later they were all sending back their acceptances for the eponymous eighth year. Then Harry’d done absolutely nothing, other than more late nights and later mornings, visits to the cinema and the pub, and quite a few muggy summer afternoons spent in the creek at the bottom of the Burrow with Ron and Gin and ‘Mione.

The night before the train, Harry’d chucked a few bits and bobs into his trunk: pants and socks and a box of fresh biros and spiral-bound notebooks he’d picked up at Office World. His map and his cloak and some jeans and a huge bottle of all-in-one that was supposed to clean your hair and all your other bits, too. Anything else he needed, he’d figure out when he got there. If he ended up doing Potions (unlikely) he could send off an owl order for a new cauldron or whatever. He’d figure it out, no drama.

There were no omens. No weird cats stalking the garden nor a bombardment of owls, no uncle locking him in a bedroom full of junk with bars on the window and a crazy elf trying to sabotage his life. No blown-up aunts, no mean dogs, no escaped criminals who might be coming to kill him, no nightmares and pains in his scar. No Dementors chasing him through alleyways and half-eating his cousin’s brain (a very meagre snack, sorry Dud). No sightings of Malfoy behaving suspiciously in shops.

That last one, actually, would have been helpful. Given the circumstances.

The journey to Scotland had been normal. A few of the younger students mildly freaked out when they saw him, sure. That was to be expected; that was manageable. He’d accepted a couple of boxes of chocolates and one flask of lurid pink ‘cordial’ with good grace and polite thanks, and then binned it all immediately because they were almost certainly chock-full of love potions and nobody needed a repeat of the Romilda Vane Incident (least of all Ron). Aside from all that, they’d had a very nice time. Things perhaps got a bit laddish in the compartment once Nev and Seamo and Dean had squeezed in, and Gin and Luna and Hermione’d eventually excused themselves to escape the combined nightmare fug of spearmint gum, teen boy armpit, Lynx body spray, and flatulence.

All Harry smelled of now was his all-in-one wash and a bit of embarrassment, if that had a smell.

The Welcome Feast had been fantastic. Best one since his first. Maybe it was the recent brush with death but even the elves seemed to be embracing a real carpe diem sort of attitude post-Voldie, and they’d done a Chinese buffet instead of the usual stodgy British classics that had always been lovely but not particularly interesting. This had been a proper smorgasbord with sweet and sour pork, and three kinds of rice, and green veggies Harry didn’t even know the names of slathered in magnificently salty brown sauce. Ron had eaten upwards of thirty spring rolls and a massive plate of lemon chicken, and later spent a brief portion of the evening in the Hospital Wing with indigestion and a desperate thirst. It was hard to say which he enjoyed less: the heartburn or Hermione’s lecture about self-control and moderation.

It was over dinner that Harry’d first noticed Malfoy had come back too. He hadn’t seen him at Kings Cross, or on the Express, or even in the coaches on the road from the station to the castle. Probably because of all the other people who were talking to Harry, shaking his hand, patting him on the shoulder (and whoever had patted him on the arse, the cheeky get).

If Malfoy’d found the Chinese buffet as novel or perplexing as the other students from non-Muggle families, he hadn’t shown it. He hadn’t given away much of anything, with his precise posture and perfectly arranged hair and neat uniform, and his civilised plate of equal parts egg fried rice, Mongolian beef, and the green stuff in brown sauce. He’d eaten neatly and unhurriedly and he appeared to be listening to Parkinson natter on without interruption. Unremarkable. Definitely no sign that things would go sideways so soon after.

How had Harry let things get so out of hand? He’d asked himself this question a dozen times, hurrying back to the castle over worn stone paths and fluffy lawns, the night velvet dark and just a little chilly around him. He’d stared at the tiles in the shower, his first stop after coming in tonight, and asked the grout (so many things were sentient around the castle, Harry thought perhaps it might have some wisdom to impart). What the bloody hell was he doing? Why was he trying to ruin the best year at school he’d ever had?

Perhaps he’d groaned. Moaned, maybe. Harry hadn’t managed to close the door to the little double room he shared with Ron after he’d stumbled back from his shower, still in shock. He’d put one sock on, had got his pants on all the way (thank god) and his usual t-shirt that he liked to sleep in, but he hadn’t really dried off properly first, and so the top was sticking to him uncomfortably and wasn’t sitting right around the shoulders. And his hair was dripping all over the place and that absolutely wasn’t helping matters.

So, half-wet and bedraggled, moaning quietly into his clenched fists while sitting hunched over on the edge of his bed, was how Hermione found him.

“What on earth’s the matter with you?”

Harry raised his head and moaned again. He wanted to answer, he really did. He wanted to say, “Hermione, the worst thing in the world happened in Greenhouse Five about forty-seven minutes and twenty-eight seconds ago,” but instead of that, it was more like: “Aaaaarghhhhhhhmmmmhpf.”

Hermione stood at the door and took it all in: the thorough mess of him, the singular sock, the dripping hair, the absence of trousers. Then took a deep breath and said, “So, what have you done?”

God. What had he done. Moreover, who?

“A bad thing. Terrible, awful.”

She took another deep breath and then she zapped him with a Drying Charm that left his hair and his sodden t-shirt bone dry, and came to sit by him on the bed. “Bad is subjective. I need to know where on the scale.”

“Well.” Harry scratched his chest, which was a little bit itchy in the wake of Hermione’s spellwork. “I need the parameters of the scale, first.”

“Low end is Hagrid’s rock cakes, or the smell of the tent when we went to the Quidditch World Cup. High end is…Voldemort killing your parents.”

Harry thought about it for several long minutes. “It’s somewhere around Ron scream-asking Fleur to the Yule Ball in front of everyone, and my dad hanging Snape upside down so that the whole school could see his saggy old pants.”

“So this is an embarrassing bad thing that you’ve done.”

Harry groaned. Yes, it was embarrassing. It was humiliating. On an unprecedented scale.

“And I take it there’s a…sexual element to it?”

“Why do you assume that?” Harry said defensively, even though she was absolutely right.

She patted him kindly on the arm, squeezed his shoulder comfortingly. “Your choice of terrible life events for the scale. In particular, Ron getting carried away by Fleur’s borderline non-existent Veela powers and making a complete knob of himself in front of half the school.”

She was right again. Of course she was. Consciously or otherwise, that had been a very telling example. The cool blond beauty of it all, the haughtiness, the taboo of coveting a rival that you absolutely should not be coveting—the compulsion that was impossible to fight.

Perhaps he’d been overly generous to describe himself as moaning, before. He was whimpering actually. He was a wimp.

“Okay.” Hermione brushed her hands over her uniform and stood up. “You need some medicinal chocolate. I’m going to get some from my room so I can be sure it’s safe from tampering, and while I’m gone you’re going to drink this—”, here she Conjured a class and filled it with water. “And when I’m back, you’ll lay it out for me and we can strategise. Nobody’s died or been seriously injured, so anything else is resolvable. Whatever it is, I promise it’s not the end of the world.”

She didn’t know that. Harry knew. It was the end. Finally, somebody had found a way to kill him that would stick. He hadn’t seen it coming—oh Jesus, don’t say coming, don’t think about coming.

Hermione left. Harry drank, automatically. The incident played out in the cinema of his mind again and again. How had he got here? It had been such a good start, such a good summer. He’d been so relaxed. He and Ginny were on great terms. He’d had a lot of fun, unencumbered by things like death prophecies and the end of the world for once. He wasn’t preoccupied with anything. He’d just woken up every day whenever his brain decided to stop sleeping, ate whatever he fancied, and then lazed about until it was time for bed. There were minor variations—a beach day, or a mad picnic at Luna’s, or the one time they’d taken Ron to the cricket, or the other time they’d spent the whole day figuring out how to set up the telly and VCR and then had everyone they knew around to watch Batman Forever. But every day was mellow and untroubled. It was like the Fraggles always said: dance your cares away, worries for another day. That was Harry’s new life.

And then he’d looked up at dinner. He’d been laughing at Dean who was pronouncing to a largely disinterested audience that a Chinese should always be served with an icy cold can of Diet Coke. A dumpling was halfway to his mouth and a droplet of soy sauce dripped onto his uniform tie; and he’d noticed Malfoy at the end of the Slytherin table.

Why had he looked? Why had his eyes gone there, immediately? Had he heard something, a laugh or a comment? Or was it just reflex to look towards Malfoy’s usual spot after so many years of doing exactly that? So many years of sitting right here and looking up to see what Malfoy was up to, two tables across the way.

Well, that first night it hadn’t been much, just the calm and methodical consumption of his meal in near silence. Nothing that should have inspired Harry to spend the following day with his map in his pocket, slipping it out in class to peek at where Malfoy was whenever he thought he could get away with it. Watching him over breakfast then lunch then dinner again. Pretending to read a Quidditch mag in the evening in the eighth year common room, but really watching the stairs over the top of the page until Malfoy sauntered down them and out the portrait hole.

Absolutely nothing Malfoy was doing should have concerned Harry enough to fake a loud yawn, flex his shoulders exaggeratedly, and ever-so-casually tell Ron and Hermione and anyone in their vicinity that he was off to stretch his legs before bed. Maybe stop by the kitchen and see if they had any more of those sweet egg tarts left.

Perhaps unfairly, Harry wondered if Ron could be blamed for some of this. If he hadn’t still been recovering from his earlier over-indulgence he might have offered to join Harry on this alleged stroll, and then Harry would have been thwarted. But Ron had been sprawled semi-conscious on the rug in between Harry’s armchair and the one Hermione was tucked into, occasionally being roused so Hermione could dose him with whatever the wizarding equivalent to Gaviscon was. He’d been lucid enough to (unwisely) tell Harry to bring him back an egg tart too if he found any, but not lucid enough to see the signs of a classic Harry Potter Caper in the making, and stop it. Hermione, likewise, had been completely distracted by whatever her huge book was about, and equally unable to sense the oncoming danger.

And so Harry’d found himself, inexplicably, unaccountably, unjustifiably, inevitably, following Draco Malfoy at a discreet distance, out of the castle and into the grounds, and out to somewhere unexpected.

The greenhouses.

Harry startled when Hermione took the waterglass from his hands. He hadn’t noticed her return.

“You’re really in a state Harry.” She frowned down at him, a look with which he was well familiar but which he hadn’t seen her need for months. She had a little bar of Dairy Milk that she pressed into his hands in place of the water. He unwrapped it automatically and just as he’d finished the water without really thinking, he put the chocolate in his mouth and chewed, and swallowed, until it was gone.

“Tell me what happened. Are you hurt?”

He shook his head. No, he wasn’t hurt. If anything, his body was singing.

“Is anyone else hurt?”

Again, no. Furious, maybe. “Does emotional damage count?”

“Oh, dear.” Hermione sat back down on the bed beside him and Vanished the glass. “Did something happen with Ginny?”

Harry looked at her blankly. “No. Why would you think that?”

She shrugged. “Well, emotional damage, humiliation, something possibly romantic or sexual involved. I’m just joining the most obvious dots.”

“Oh. No,” he said again, shaking his head. “No, me and Gin are good. Well behind us. This is someone different.”

She waited. Harry searched for the right words.

“I got off with someone tonight.”

“I see.”

Hermione was his best friend. She loved him. They’d shared a lot, particularly during those awful weeks alone together when Ron was gone. She was sensible and pragmatic, and it had been impossible when sharing a tent on the run to avoid the occasional embarrassing bodily function. Farts in the night, bad breath. Awkward moments at dawn when Harry had to shuffle ungracefully outside for a pee with an involuntary morning boner. Or the time Harry’d woken Hermione to swap shifts with the locket, and there’d been blood everywhere in her bed and on her pyjama bottoms, and for a panicked minute he thought the Horcrux was literally killing her. Then she’d started to laugh and told him it was just the time of the month, and they’d both had a much needed chuckle about it.

They’d been through death and life together, but the one thing they weren’t used to doing together was talking about sex stuff. This was brand new territory.

“Well. Okay. Again, just joining the dots…I take it the encounter was perhaps, um, shorter than you’d both have liked?”

Harry blinked at her for a long moment, not understanding. It had been quick, yes, mercifully quick really. The speed was not the issue. He told her so.

“Harry, you’re going to need to give me more to work with, then.” She sounded exasperated with him, which was weirdly comforting. “I know I’m clever but I’m not actually clairvoyant.”

Harry took a deep breath, and told her what he’d done.

He’d had the Marauder’s Map on him but not his cloak, and Malfoy’d had a good few minutes head start. It was still early enough that the sun hadn’t quite set yet, but equally there were very few other students out and about. It was only the second night of term and they were probably all in their House common rooms, enjoying catching up with friends before homework and essays monopolised their time. As such, Harry hadn’t been waylaid, and nobody had stopped him to ask what was so interesting about his old bit of parchment. And Harry’d followed Malfoy at an inconspicuous distance, out the huge front doors into the growing twilight, and down the path to the greenhouses.

They’d all been dark, aside from one.

There really wasn’t any subtle way of getting in there, not without his cloak, so Harry hadn’t bothered with subtlety. He’d folded his map, pushed it into his trouser pocket, and yanked the door open with a squeal of elderly hinges.

The heat always hit first, before the smell. Air that was almost suffocatingly warm, and pungent, exotic in a way that reminded him of the weird aroma of animal shit at a zoo mixed with a thick clamour of floral not unlike the fragrance aisle at a Boots.

Malfoy’d looked up sharply when he’d heard the hinges squeal and he hadn’t been happy to see Harry standing in the open door.

“Malfoy?” In the present, Hermione’s fingers tightened on his shoulder. “Wait, did you say Malfoy?”

Harry threw his hands up. “Obviously I said Malfoy, Hermione. I literally just said I was following him.”

After a moment of silence, in which Hermione merely looked at him flatly and said nothing more, Harry added, “Sorry. That was uncalled for.”

Her lips pursed just the smallest amount. “What I’m trying to clarify is, did you have a run in with Malfoy in the greenhouse and then ended up getting off with someone on the way back to the castle? Or...?” Hermione let the question hang humiliatingly in the air between them, and Harry couldn’t find the words to answer.

“I just—it’s probably best if I tell it chronologically.”

Malfoy, as Ron liked to say, had a face like a cat's bum—all pinched and scowling. The light Harry’d seen on his way down the path was from Malfoy’s Lumos of course, a warm golden ball hovering just over his shoulder.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” For the smallest of moments, before the rusted elderly hinges on the greenhouse door had screamed and announced his arrival, Malfoy had looked relaxed. Harry could see that even through the cloudy glass, grimy with centuries of condensation and moss and slime. The ball of light behind Malfoy’d lit up every hair on his forearms: still in his uniform, shirt-sleeves rolled up to his elbows, shoulders relaxed and a bit of hair flopping down into his eyes. He just seemed like any other boy at school. Or, Harry supposed, a man. He’d looked very much like a man these days.

And then swiftly he’d looked like a very pissed off man.

“My apologies your lordship,” Harry’d said as sarcastically as possible, because that was part of the routine with Malfoy. “Didn’t notice the sign on the door that said ‘Draco Malfoy’s personal greenhouse’. Oh wait, there isn’t one.” Harry’d let the door smack shut behind him, entirely unnecessarily. Professor Sprout would have given him a detention if she’d been there, for rough treatment of her window panes.

Malfoy’d rolled his eyes and sneered. “As if you’d be able to read it even if there was.”

Harry’d come in further, the humidity cloying and uncomfortable, like breathing through wet newspaper. “Was that a crack about my eyesight or my literacy?”

“Things can have more than one function simultaneously, Potter,” Malfoy’d said mildly. He’d stopped looking at Harry, had been looking down at a series of little terracotta pots that he resumed wetting down with a small glass spray bottle full of something purple-coloured. “Now, off you fuck.”

If there was anything Malfoy should have known about Harry after all these years, it should have been that Harry was tenacious. He wasn’t easily dismissed. He was more likely to double down than give up. So naturally Harry’s response to that was, “I fucking shan’t, actually.”

Malfoy’d immediately groaned. “You’ve got no business being in here. You’ve obviously come in just to harass me. Don’t you have friends, admirers? A chippy little girlfriend to snog? Surely your social life isn’t so pathetic that you’re already resorting to stalking and bedevilment.”

Harry’d ignored the jab about the girlfriend. “You talk like someone’s elderly spinster aunt.”

“Potter, seriously.” Malfoy’d glared at him. His cheeks were a hectic pink, perhaps from the heat. “You’re not supposed to be in here. Only seventh and eighth years who are taking Herbology have permission from Sprout and McGonagall to use the greenhouses after-hours for N.E.W.T. projects, and you’re not one of them.”

“I might be doing Herbology,” Harry’d said, just to be annoying. He was definitely not doing Herbology.

Malfoy’d snorted. “There are only two eighth years taking it. Longbottom’s the other one.”

“Then why don’t you send a Patronus off to Sprout right now and dob me in? Go on.” Harry’d crossed his arms. “I’ll wait.”

“A Patronus can’t transmit a message.”

“I assure you, it can.”

Malfoy just looked at him from under that hank of hair. “Well, even if that were true, I don’t know how to cast one.”

There wasn’t much Harry could say to that, so he’d opted for silence, and also, not to leave. Malfoy’d sighed again and gone back to whatever he was doing to the pots. Harry, naturally, was unable to leave well enough alone.

“What are you doing?”

Malfoy’d been carefully scooping dark, loamy soil into the pots. Unlike Harry, who would have been flinging the dirt in any which way, Malfoy was adding small amounts with delicate turns of his trowel. Like it was a spell, not just gardening.

“Moonvine has to be planted after dusk.”

“Why are you planting moonvine?”

“Because it’s part of the curriculum.”

“Then why isn’t Nev here planting moonvine too?”

“Merlin’s arse, Potter.” Malfoy’d blown a sharp breath upward in an effort to displace the hair falling into his eyes. “Longbottom planted the fucking Venemous Tentacular in the afternoon. When both our seedlings have sufficiently matured, we’ll collaborate on a grafting experiment. I can ask him to give you a thorough briefing on the coursework if that would make you feel better.”

“Keep your hair on,” Harry’d said, enjoying himself immensely. “What’s this thing?”

“A Balinese shivering lotus.”

“And what’s this one?”

Another huff. “Canadian rock daisy.”

“That doesn’t sound very magical.”

“Well it fucking barks when snow’s coming, does that sound magical enough for you?”

“You’re so grumpy, Malfoy. You should try to relax.”

Malfoy’d given him a look that was very knifey indeed.

In hindsight, Harry was already feeling sort of jittery by this point. Like, his heart was racing, now that he thought about it. And he was a bit flushed. Some of that was undoubtedly the temperature inside the greenhouse, but some of it was, perhaps, excitement.

“Excitement,” Hermione repeated, and then she got up from her seat on Harry’s bed and began to pace. “Jesus Christ.”

“Should I not…?”

“No,” she sighed somewhat wearily. “Keep going.”

Harry would not generally describe himself as stupid. He was demonstrably competent, but he was also quite demonstrably a massive dickhead too, and with a particular aptitude for dickheadery where Malfoy was concerned. And so, perhaps, it was not unsurprising that what happened next, happened.

“What about this one, Malfoy?” Harry’d picked up a nearby pot with a young plant in it that looked somewhat familiar. It wasn’t a seedling, but its flowers hadn’t yet bloomed. It looked like they might any moment, the green buds starting to blush pink at their seams. It looked sort of like some plants in the garden at Privet Drive. He’d spent enough time laying in the garden beds out there in the past to recognise all sorts of things. “What’s this one called?”

Malfoy’d given him a cursory look. “Don’t touch that one.”

Really. What had Malfoy expected him to do?

Harry’d stuck his whole face in the foliage. “Why, is this one yours as well?”

“No, but it’s at a dangerous stage of growth.”

Harry’d scoffed.

“Oh, Harry.” Hermione was really building up some speed now, marching down the space between his and Ron’s bed and back again.

“I know,” Harry groaned, and continued.

“Doesn’t look very dangerous to me. What’s it do?”

“It’s used in Love Potion counteragents. It needs to be harvested only once the flowers die. Put it down, please.”

“Won’t,” Harry’d said. “Why do you only use it once it’s dead?”

Malfoy’d come around the potting table and tried to snatch the pot away. He’d had soil on his shirt. “Stop being an idiot and give it here!”

Harry’d laughed, and pulled the pot back towards himself.

That was when, as per all the luck Harry’d ever had in his life, all the little buds sprang open. All at once, and with a great puff of electric pink pollen that sprayed Harry straight up the nose.

“You fucking wanker!”

“Oh, Harry.” Hermione stopped and put her hands over her mouth.

“I know,” Harry said miserably.

Malfoy’d rushed over to the nearest irrigation hose and drenched his head with it, rubbing his face vigorously with his other hand, and Harry’d done an enormous sneeze and puffed even more of the pollen all over himself. Then he’d finally put the fucking plant down.

“What the fuck just happened?”

“You have to be the most fuckwitted arsehole in England, Potter.” Malfoy’d seethed, absolutely drenched. Harry hadn’t mentioned that they were actually in Scotland, because he’d thought it might make things worse. As it was, Malfoy’s shirt was ruined by hot pink blotches of pollen but more alarming than that, it had grown rapidly translucent with water. Harry’d been able to see his nipples through the fabric. And it was becoming a problem. A strange and new problem that he frankly did not have time for when he’d just maybe been poisoned or worse. “Don’t you know what this is? Don’t you know anything?”

“It was an agapanthus fornicatus, wasn’t it?” Hermione asked faintly.

“Erm, yep.”

“Jesus Christ, Harry.”

“I know, Hermione, trust me. I know.” Harry sighed, and resumed his tale of woe.

Malfoy’d shouted the name at him, as if it meant a single thing to Harry. “Otherwise known as a ‘slagapanthus’. Any guesses as to why, you idiot?”

Harry’d started to have an inkling. The inkling was mainly located in his trousers.

“Right, so. What do we do? Madam Pomfrey?”

“You can do whoever you like, Potter, if older ladies do it for you.” Malfoy still managed to sneer while looking half-drowned. “But right now your school nurse fetish isn’t going to help you much.”

“That’s why I was asking,” Harry’d said through gritted teeth. Gritted due to Malfoy being a fucking enormous git as ever, but also against what was becoming a problematic throbbing between his legs. It wasn’t even really restricted to right there, but had become something more. A desperate thump of blood through his veins, a hot itch racing up the backs of his thighs and radiating out from under his arms. “Look, I can fully appreciate that this must represent an amazing opportunity for you to watch me suffer, but just a friendly reminder that I saved your arse in the very recent past, on purpose, at great risk to my own safety and to absolutely no benefit to my goal of killing Voldemort. Actually if anything, it was a massive liability. But I did it anyway, and now you’re alive and here and able to torture me, so could you possibly let this one error of judgment—” Malfoy’d scoffed noisily, “—past the Keeper and tell me what I need to do to not die here in Greenhouse Five?”

Malfoy’d glared, arms folded over his chest. “Oh, I’d love to leave you here to die in pain and watch at a safe distance, but you’re forgetting that your genius choices also led to me copping a dose directly to the face as well.”

He’d felt by this point like clawing all his clothes off and doing something weird with the thick wooden dibber on Malfoy’s potting table, clods of dirt be damned. It was just beginning to dawn on him that Malfoy must be in a very similar state.

“I am, sincerely, sorry.” He’d pulled his tie loose, yanked at the top buttons of his shirt so roughly that at least one had plipped off somewhere under a bench or between sacks of fertiliser. “You’re right, I’m wrong, I’m stupid and ugly, all the things you think of me are correct. Now, could you please tell me what the fuck can be done before the dying in pain part happens?”

“We have to come.”

Harry’d shaken his head as if to clear water from his ears. “Beg pardon?”

“We—” Malfoy’d gestured aggressively between them. “—have to come. Ejaculate. Together.”

Hermione sat abruptly down on Ron’s bed, looking pale. Harry sympathised.

“Should I finish…?” Harry cringed. “No pun intended.”

Hermione took a deep breath. “Maybe just go light on the details from this point.”

“Okay,” Harry said doubtfully. And continued.

“If we don’t, the following things will begin to happen to our bodies.” Malfoy’d started to tick them off on his fingers. “Your vision will start to look pink, and your blood will start to get dangerously hot, and you’ll break out in welts the size of your palm, and those will start to bubble like hot glass. And all the while you’ll become more and more desperately crazed with the need to ejaculate. And if you don’t, eventually your brain will explode and rain spores and goo for yards and yards. This whole greenhouse will be painted with your brains. And your dick will also fall off.”

In the moment, Harry’d felt like he was having eighteen concurrent, incompatible emotions. One for every year he’d been alive. This couldn’t be happening, he’d taken a bad step on a moving staircase and had fallen down and was in a coma and this was a wild dream. It was definitely happening and he wanted it to happen, was curious down to his bones about what it would be like to get off with Malfoy. He was going to be sick if it happened, he was going to punch Malfoy right in the eye if he even came close to him. He was going to jizz right in Malfoy’s eye and all over the rest of his face, with his dick. He was going to maybe scream, he was going to run away and hide somewhere quiet until his dick exploded and killed him instantly. He wanted to see what Malfoy’s dick was like, what colour the carpet was down there and did it match the drapes? Was it the same fine colour and texture as the little golden follicles he’d seen backlit in the Lumos and glinting, saying come on over Harry and have a little touch, we’re ever so soft.

“We have to make each other—?”

“Come. Yes. Soon. Before dire consequences—”

“Okay.”

Malfoy’d faltered then. “What do you mean, ‘okay’? Okay what?”

Harry could perhaps have spent a few more precious minutes arguing with Malfoy, but he let the most dominant theme of his roiling storm of feelings take the wheel, and while Malfoy’d been stunned and standing with his arms limp beside him (and not in punching nor hexing pose), Harry reached for him and put his hands on Malfoy’s waist, and pulled him sharply in. Spread his hands as wide as he could over Malfoy’s hips, pressed his thumbs into them and felt the bones there; slid them further around to the small of his back and nudged until Malfoy was pressed up to the the front of him, all the way from his thighs to his wet, nip-revealing chest.

“Oh,” Malfoy’d said, genuinely surprised, and Harry reckoned he was probably even more surprised when Harry kissed him.

“Oh my god.” Hermione squeaked it out between fingers that were pressed to her face again. Her cheeks were now bright red, and her hair had somehow gone out in sympathy because it seemed like it had frizzed a bit more than usual.

“I should leave it there. This is getting a bit hard and Ron will kill me if I let you have a stroke.”

“No pun intended,” she said faintly and Harry went red.

“Erm, right. Well you can probably imagine what happened next.”

Hermione got up and began pacing again, as if she couldn’t look Harry in the face. Maybe she’d imagined a bit too vigorously.

Harry knew her struggle, because it had happened to him, personally—his entire person, penis and brain (both intact) and mouth and everything—only a short sixty-eight minutes and nine seconds ago. And he’d imagined it in vivid detail in those sixty-eight minutes.

He’d imagined—no, he’d remembered—the taste of Malfoy’s mouth, of Pepper-Imps and the fading trace of milky coffee. His lips had been softer than Harry’d expected, his mouth yielding and surprised, a little cold and wet from the hose water. The muffled collision of their bodies had made his skin burn harder and his blood boil hotter, and yet had been a relief. The sound Malfoy’d made, a little gasp of surprise, a grunt of something desperate that Harry echoed back. His body was hot, even as he was sopping wet. He was hard, as Harry was.

Harry’d drawn back to take a noisy breath, to take Malfoy in: pink-cheeked (or was that the spores melting his eyes?), breathing hard, a little dazed and stupid-looking. He looked like he needed another kiss, so Harry went in again and this time Malfoy groaned, long and urgent and right into Harry’s mouth which had parted immediately on contact with Malfoy’s.

He’d got him up against the potting table, and its little rusty wheels had shrieked warningly. Malfoy’s hands—oh, they were on his chest, the heels of them pressing into Harry’s tits and the fingers probably cutting little crescents into his skin, not that Harry cared—pushed him, back and away from his table and its little terracotta pots with the purple stuff and the carefully tended sod, and the moonvine seedlings. They fetched up against a big, round barrel with a great fruiting tree in it, and when Harry’s arse had met the edge of it and Malfoy pressed between his thighs and humped, the whole tree shivered and dropped several fruits on both their heads like hard little missiles.

“Oh.” Harry remembered how high and needy he’d sounded, fumbling to unlatch his belt and thumb open the button on his trousers. Malfoy seemed so overcome that he was sort of just breathing heavily into Harry’s face and making sharp little jerks with his hips; and when Harry’d blindly groped at the placket of Malfoy’s trousers, he’d made an even more urgent noise.

And that noise had made Harry immediately come.

“God, oh god.” His brain was white noise and his insides were rushing out of him in a hurry, spurting out of the gaping space in his unzipped trousers, dripping down all over the place.

“If you stop before I’ve finished Potter I will kill you, I will kill you a thousand times and then I’ll kill you again.” Malfoy’d really been riding Harry’s thigh by then. He was getting Harry’s come absolutely everywhere.

“Keep your hair on.” Reason had started to return to Harry, although Malfoy’s body pressed all up against him was still causing all sorts of dick-brain-blood pressure chaos. “I didn’t rescue your stupid arse from a great bloody fire just to let you die of—of bloody—of sex pollen!”

“Every word out of your mouth makes me want to end your life,” Malfoy’d snarled, and Harry managed to wrestle them around the other way, so that Malfoy was getting pelted with angry little fruits, and so Harry could get his hands down into Malfoy’s trousers and get his cock out, get it in his fist. In a moment of inspiration that was rivalled only by his brief encounter with Felix Felicis, he fumbled his own still throbbing and sticky cock out too and then they were both in his fist, pressed together like two blushing truncheons. God, it had felt good, and he’d wanked them off, himself and Malfoy, the latter almost sobbing, begging, and Harry’d come again, managing a sluggish final blurt of wet over his fist and all over the head of Malfoy’s cock, and then Malfoy’d seized up, stiff all over, and absolutely painted them.

“Harry, you’ve gone sort of glazed over.”

“I’m just…” It was hard—difficult, never say ‘hard’ again—to unjumble all the feelings and translate them into something another person could understand. “I’m confused. And embarrassed.”

“Confused I can understand, absolutely. Embarrassed? You needn’t be. You were both under the influence of a powerful mind-altering substance and you had to do what was necessary to survive. Malfoy went through all the same things you did, if anything it gives you both some common ground at last!”

The only common ground Harry suspected Malfoy wanted to have with him was the sort where Harry was six feet southward, and Malfoy was pissing on his headstone.

“Hermione. Is it likely that…” Harry swallowed, felt his face burning. “Could the pollen still be active, even though we both, well. We did what was necessary.”

“I don’t think so. Herbology isn’t my strong suit but what I know from Potions is that generally those sorts of effects should wear off rapidly afterwards. Why, what’s wrong?”

Harry squirmed. “Nothing. Only. I sort of can’t stop thinking about it.”

“Oh.”

“About how his skin felt when I touched him and. Erm. The way he looked, down there, and his face when he—erm.”

“Oh sweet Christ.” Hermione paced to the door and leaned halfway out and looked down the hall.

“Sorry, have you got somewhere you need to be?” Harry said indignantly. “I’m sort of having a crisis here!”

She brushed the bulk of her hair from her face and found a fabric band in one pocket, and used it to wrangle it into submission.

“Of course not, I’m just wondering where the hell Ron’s got to. Maybe I should send a Patronus.” She took out her wand and Harry stood quickly.

“No! Don’t call Ron!”

“Why not, Harry? I really feel like we need someone with a penis for this. I’m out of my depth, it pains me to say.”

“A vagina is fine,” Harry said, wheedling. “A vagina is fantastic! Vive le vagina!”

Parvati Patil walked slowly past the open door with wide eyes, taking in Harry, still half-dressed and half-wet and shouting about vaginas at Hermione, and Harry put his hands over his face and whimpered because really, how could this get worse?

“Ron can help, Harry.”

Oh, right. Ron could be here. That would definitely be worse. “Ron will laugh at me.”

“Oh!” She looked at him with consternation. “Harry no, Ron loves you! He’s very tolerant. He’ll understand.”

Harry sighed. “Not because it's a boy—man. Because of which boy. Man.”

“That’s—well.” Hermione paused. “Well, he might do that. You have to admit that this is on some level a little bit funny. Not the sex compulsion, that’s awful. The Malfoy of it is a little bit amusing.”

Whatever his face was doing must have been bad, but in spite of it, she still whipped her wand out and flicked a Patronus out into the corridor.

It wasn’t long before Ron’s face poked around the door.

“What the bloody hell’s the matter? Patronus summons already, on the second night back?”

“Where have you been?” Hermione half-hissed it. “Leaving me here to deal with Harry’s bloody crisis on my own!”

“Bogs,” Ron said, looking around, taking it all in. “You wouldn’t believe the number that Chinese has done on me, is that normal for Muggle food?”

“Probably, if you eat one hundred and fifty spring rolls, yes.” Hermione rolled her eyes at him.

“It was only forty, don’t get carried away.” Ron rubbed his belly. “Forty-five, max.”

“I got sex pollened by a slagapanthus and had to get off with Malfoy,” Harry said loudly. “If we could please return to my problem. I’m sure your massive shits are terrifying Myrtle to a second death but I’m literally having erections about Draco Malfoy and I don’t know what to do about it.”

Ron looked out the door behind them and hastily closed it.

“You got off with Malfoy?” Ron’s eyes were absolutely huge. “When? What’s a slagapanthus? Malfoy? Where?”

“I can’t go through all that again,” Harry moaned. “Hermione, you tell him.”

“Yes he did, about an hour ago, it’s a very volatile plant with spores that cause a compulsion to have sex and may result in death, yes Draco Malfoy, and it was in one of the greenhouses.”

Ron looked between them, back again, and then a third time. “Merlin’s balls, you bloody followed Malfoy when you went on your little walk after dinner!”

Harry gave up and flopped back on his bed, then curled into the rescue position and pulled a pillow down to cover his face. “I just wanted to know what he was up to.”

“And?” Ron’s expectant tone was clear despite the bedding on Harry’s head. “What was he up to? Chucking slagapanthus petals all over the place, waiting to ambush someone?”

When Harry didn’t answer, Hermione chimed in. “He was minding his own business. Doing his Herbology homework, planting moonvine.”

“Then how did—wait.” Ron’s voice got slightly higher. “Did Harry—?”

“Yes,” Hermione said, and Harry let out his biggest, whiniest groan yet. “It was entirely Harry’s fault.”

Ron started laughing, full-bellied and long, usually a very welcome sound. But not today.

“In Greenhouse Five,” Ron wheezed. “More like Greenhouse Sixty-Nine, am I right?”

“Hermione, I told you,” Harry complained to the underside of his pillow.

“Ron, get a grip,” Hermione said sternly.

“Can’t,” Ron said breathlessly. “Harry’s got all the grips. He’s been gripping Malfoy right on his—wait, what’s Malfoy’s dick like, is he tiny? I bet he’s a little chipolata, the twat. Why are you half-naked and wet?”

Harry hugged his knees to his chest. Maybe if he could become a little ball he’d eventually compress into a diamond and he wouldn’t have to deal with any more of this.

“I hadn’t got that out of him just yet, and I don’t think you’re helping.”

“I truly don’t know why you’d think I’d be any help whatsoever with this,” Ron said honestly. “I feel like my reaction was very easy to foresee.”

“I need the expertise of someone with an actual penis,” Hermione said. “Physiologically, Harry shouldn’t be experiencing any more symptoms. The satisfaction of the copulation urge would have discharged the pollen from his system, but Harry’s still feeling some of the, erm, emotions and sensations of attraction. Is that typical of penises and the male experience of sexual activity?”

“I think it’s typical of Harry to be obsessed with Malfoy. George owes me so many Galleons. This is amazing. This is the best day of my life.”

“I’m going to take a Dumbledore off the Astronomy Tower, I think.” Harry sat up and chucked the pillow on the floor. “It’s been real. Best of luck with your N.E.W.T.s.”

“Why are you half-naked and wet?” Ron asked again.

“Because,” Harry said testily. “I had to walk back to the castle and all the way here with two loads of my own jizz in and around my pants, and at least some of Malfoy’s on me too, and Malfoy called me a fuckwad and punched me so hard in the stomach before he bloody left me there without so much as a thank-you, and I went to have a shower but then I couldn’t stop thinking about what happened, and so I had another wank about it in there too, and frankly I’ve been a bit discombobulated and drying my hair or putting on both socks was somewhat beyond me! I’ve never been so humiliated!”

“You’ve popped off three times in an hour?” Ron looked alarmed. “Mate, your sack must look like a chewed-up bit of Drooble’s by now.”

“So you don’t think what Harry’s feeling is post-spore aftershocks?”

“Hermione, I think what Harry’s feeling has been bloody inevitable since at least the Tri-Wizard Tournament.” Ron folded his arms across his chest. “I made a massive bet on it with the twins. Didn’t think it would take this long to pay off, and actually if Ginny hadn’t chucked you it might never have.”

“She didn’t chuck me, it was mutual.”

“Sure.” Ron looked smug. “It’s my expert penis-having opinion that this is coincidence—no, what is it that you always say, ‘Mione? Correlation not causation.”

Now Hermione was looking at Ron in a bit of a sex-polleny way.

“So the only other person who would know for sure is Malfoy,” Harry said slowly.

“Madam Pomfrey would probably know more, actually,” Hermione was saying, but Harry was tuning her out in favour of one growing idea.

“Right, yeah.” Harry got up from the bed and shuffled around them both, opening the door.

“Harry, where are you going? Harry. You’re still not wearing any trousers!”

“He’s going to Malfoy’s room,” Harry heard Ron say. “Want to bet on it?”

Harry slammed Malfoy’s dorm-room door open with a bang, and without knocking, and Malfoy was standing there in the middle of the room wrapped only in a damp towel.

“Close the fucking door!” Malfoy shouted, and Harry slammed it shut just as noisily as he’d opened it. “No!” Malfoy was furious. “Behind you—with you on the outside!”

“Malfoy, I’m sorry.” Harry held his hands up. “But we need to talk about what happened.”

“Like fuck,” Malfoy said, clutching the towel closed at his hips. “I’m getting Pansy to fucking Obliviate me, actually.”

There was water dripping down from Malfoy’s hair onto his shoulders. Pale, muscled. Droplets clinging to his eyelashes and slithering down his chest. His nipples were so much darker than Harry’d imagined (when? When had he been imagining this? Was Ron right about him?). His belly, skinny hips, hair that was much darker than he’d expected.

“I need to know for sure,” Harry said hoarsely, stepping closer, and Malfoy stepped back in alarm. “Can I?”

“Can you what—no you can’t!” Malfoy slapped at Harry’s hand when he reached out and tugged at the towel. “What the fuck, Potter?” And Harry didn’t think too much, just sort of crouched down and yanked the towel again, and this time it came loose, probably because Malfoy seemed to be in complete open-mouthed shock at Harry getting on his knees.

Harry put his hands on Malfoy’s thighs and looked at him—looked at his cock, pink, plump, not at all like a small breakfast sausage—and he put his mouth around it.

Malfoy tasted salty and clean and really good, and Harry moaned, and Malfoy made like five noises at the same time, and one of them might have been ‘Potter’. He must have liked it well enough because he’d got very hard indeed inside Harry’s mouth, and had even taken two handfuls of Harry’s hair right around his ears and was sort of hanging on, while Harry figured out how a blowjob worked in real time.

“Potter, you—ah! Potter, I’m going to, oh, I’m about to—”

He was about to come, Harry registered the concept moments before it happened, after hardly any time sucking on it at all, but the reality wasn’t fully clear to him until there was actual jizz spurting into his mouth and throat and sending him into the most poorly-timed coughing fit of his life.

“Wow.” His voice was hoarse. Come was a strange texture, and taste. He’d just given someone a blowie, gave Malfoy a blowie. He’d been fully heterosexual two hours ago, and now he was giving blowies to Malfoy, and enjoying it. “I think I like you, Malfoy.”

“I think you need to get out,” Malfoy said, his voice as wrecked as Harry’s. “Before Pansy gets here and sees you like this.”

Harry struggled to his feet. His knees hurt, and he was conscious now that he was wearing a damp t-shirt, pants, and one sock. And although he’d very much enjoyed that, he hadn’t got off due to the three orgasms he’d already had in the past ninety-two minutes and four seconds. He’d still got a little bit wet over it though, and he could feel the cotton of his undies sticking to the head of his dick, and all in all he probably didn’t want to get caught out by Parkinson like this, actually.

“Can we talk about it?” Harry said, backing towards the door. Malfoy was blotchy pink and breathing hard. He looked—bloody delicious, actually.

“No,” Malfoy said, although it was less than convincing. “If I never see your face again it’ll be too soon.”

“Tomorrow,” Harry said. “Greenhouse Five. Same time.”

“I won’t be there,” Malfoy shouted after him, as Harry retreated. “I won’t!”

When Harry returned to his room, a short distance down the corridor, Ron and Hermione were still there.

“I have nothing else to say on the topic,” Harry said tiredly. “But if either of you have a mint, it would be much appreciated.

Malfoy, to Harry’s delight, was there.

“Nice moonvine,” Harry said, casual as you like.

“It’s Sri Lankan jasmine.”

“That’s what I meant.”

Malfoy snorted, and looked away.

“I still think I like you, you know. Even after a full night's sleep and the bezoar Hermione made me swallow this morning, and like nine cups of very strong tea.” Tea was a universal cure, Ron’d said, and if Harry still liked Malfoy after all that, then maybe he was just crazy and not spore-afflicted.

Malfoy was pink, and it could have been the heat. But it could have been a blush.

“Pansy said she saw this coming.” Malfoy flicked some hair out of his eyes. “No pun intended.”

Christ. Harry really bloody liked him.

“Come outside for a snog?” Harry tipped his head towards the door. “Safer out there.”

“Sure.” Malfoy said it with a shrug, but Harry knew. He was keen. “I’ve got nothing better to do.”

Harry held the door open to let Malfoy pass, and he took care to bump slightly into Harry on his way by. “Don’t go falling in love with me, Potter.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Harry grinned, and he let the door slam shut behind them.