There were dungeons below the Slytherin rooms.
No natural light ever filtered through these bars, no children’s feet ever rang out against these flagstones. There was just the stone, and the dark lights of a guttering torch, and the soft cold sounds of chains moving.
And, just now, the querulous sound of Draco Malfoy complaining.
“This is all your fault, Potter.”
Harry tried to keep his voice even. It came out as a growl. “Go to hell, Malfoy.”
Harry called that rich. His fault?
He certainly hadn’t asked for this. In fact, he would have given anything for Dumbledore to be at school more often. He would certainly never have supported the decision for Argus Filch to be put in charge of general school discipline in Dumbledore’s absence.
“I can’t go anywhere,” Malfoy said in the sing-song voice which made Harry want to kick him in the teeth. “I’m chained up here, if you hadn’t noticed!”
Of course, Harry could not kick him in the teeth. Because he was chained up too.
He tried to block out Malfoy’s voice, but he was still seething. He remembered back an hour ago, when the world had still retained some semblance of sanity.
It had been much more Malfoy’s fault.
Harry had just been minding his own business, walking away from the Owlery. He’d only been sending a letter to Sirius. He hadn’t been doing anything wrong.
All right, he’d only been communicating with a wanted criminal, but that wasn’t the point.
He hadn’t done anything to Malfoy. Malfoy had accosted him, smirking and waving the bloody Daily Prophet in his face.
“What do you want?” he’d snapped.
“Just trying to help you out,” Malfoy had replied innocently. “Thought you might be interested in knowing who you’re going out with this week.”
“Oh, sod off!”
But Malfoy had unfolded the paper, and was reading aloud in a falsetto voice. “Harry Potter’s closeness to the Weasley family is well known, but recently it has been suggested that he may be drawn even closer into their fold. He is rumoured to be very close to the Weasleys’ only daughter. Winsome and vivacious young Virginia Weasley has said in an exclusive report—‘I’m not his girlfriend, but—I mean, of course I like him very much, it’s not that I wouldn’t…’ She blushed, her maidenly confusion clearly showing that there was an understanding between the charming girl and her bold dark-haired hero…”
“Shut up, Malfoy!”
Harry felt his ears burn.
“Wait for it, here’s the best part,” said Malfoy, who was obviously enjoying himself hugely. “We understand that the pair are childhood sweethearts. When Virginia was in the thrall of You-Know-Who, Harry went valiantly into the dread Chamber of Secrets in order to rescue his lady love. Swinging his mighty weapon—well, that I don’t believe—”
“Would you quit spouting those lies, Malfoy!”
“Come now, Potter, it’s better than two weeks ago,” Malfoy had drawled. “I recall people suspected you of carrying on an affair with Colin Creevey—tell me, does he really kiss a picture—”
“Would you shut up? I’m trying to repress here!”
“Of course,” Malfoy agreed obligingly. “Where was I…? Oh yes, your—ahem—mighty weapon…”
“Give that here!” He’d shoved Malfoy.
Okay, that had been a mistake. Because Malfoy had almost stumbled, and looked up at him in outrage.
“Fisticuffs now, is it?” he inquired. “Maybe you should marry into the Weasleys. Only they go that low.”
“Shut up about the Weasleys!”
“Make me.”
Harry had punched him in the mouth.
And perhaps that hadn’t been exactly right as well.
Especially since Malfoy had looked at him with a cold light in his eyes, and Harry’d remembered first year. Ron tackling a boy who was taken by surprise and who hadn’t been brought up with five brothers and who had… somehow struggled up from under the larger Ron and given him a heavy nosebleed.
Malfoy’d swung, and connected, and the ringing in Harry’s voice had been pain and anger and they’d both just lunged…
Harry’s blood had been pounding and it had almost felt like he was blacking out every second, he was just so furious and tired of all this and…
He and Malfoy had been rolling on the floor, hitting the stone at every moment they weren’t hitting flesh, and Malfoy’s harsh breathing had been in his ear when Filch had loomed up behind them.
They had frozen in panic.
“Mr Potter, please get up,” Filch had said coldly.
“Okay,” Harry had said in muffled and breathless tones. “Get Malfoy off me first.”
They had been dragged into Filch’s office. He had fixed it up a bit since the last time Harry was there. There were no chains, and he had a huge new black chair with spikes on it.
He sat enthroned there, stroking Mrs Norris and generally looking like an evil mastermind.
“Prefects brawling, my sweet… Imagine that. How disgraceful.”
“Are you talking to the cat, man?” said Malfoy, who had never known when to keep his mouth shut and would never learn, since Harry vowed to kill him.
“Disrespecting the Assistant of the Chief Disciplinarian, too…” Filch noted grimly.
Harry stared at Mrs Norris, and then shared a look of cold fear with Malfoy.
“Do they have any explanation, my pretty?” mused Filch, who was a pioneer in creepiness before unknown to man.
“We were having a fight about Potter’s mi—”
“Shut up, Malfoy!” snarled Harry, who was not prepared to see Filch contemplating the mightiness of Harry’s weapon.
Ever.
“So they won’t talk, my dear. That is suspect,” Filch continued, still stroking Mrs Norris. “I think they must be punished most severely.”
“Him first,” Malfoy and Harry said in unison.
Filch sighed mournfully. “If only Dumbledore had allowed me to re-introduce the rack…”
“Him first,” Malfoy and Harry said together again, and exchanged annoyed looks.
“Still, I have a nice alternative…” Filch said. “My days of powerlessness are over. You students have to fear me now!”
Harry and Malfoy had stared at each other, and Harry had seen his own panic reflected in Malfoy’s cold eyes.
The panic had only intensified when Filch went off into a round of manic laughter.
“At last I have the authority to make you squirm now,” Filch gloated, getting up from his chair. “I no longer have to quail in guilt before this portrait!”
He went over to a huge oil painting of a man who looked like a bad-tempered ape caught in an oil slick, and studied it reverently.
“My predecessor,” he murmured in religious tones. “Oh, he could give students scars that would last forever. He was puissant, his name was spoken in low fearful tones throughout the whole school—”
“Did he have a mi—”
Harry’s foot came down quite accidentally and extremely hard on Malfoy’s foot.
“Apollyon Pringle!” Filch breathed, and embraced the picture frame. “I shall not fail your glorious memory!”
First cats and now inanimate objects.
Filch had turned to them, his eyes mad little slits.
“I have prepared a room for this very eventuality,” he murmured. “I moved my—equipment there…”
It was only then that Harry thought to wonder about where the chains were.
And now he was chained up in a dank dungeon with no idea of when they would be freed and with Malfoy of all people… and the stupid prat had the nerve to say it was his fault!
“Just—don’t talk to me, Malfoy,” Harry said in stony tones.
Malfoy glared, but said nothing for a few minutes. Then he began to mutter under his breath.
Harry glared over at Malfoy’s bowed head, even paler than usual in the darkness.
“I said, don’t—”
“I’m not talking to you!” Malfoy snapped. “I’m playing with myself!”
There was a long pause.
Then Harry said, very carefully, “Okay, firstly—ew, and secondly—we’re in chains, Malfoy, how the—”
“Good Lord, Potter, drag your feeble little mind out of the gutter before it drowns in filth!” Malfoy turned up his nose. “I was playing a Slytherin game to amuse myself.”
“Oh.”
Harry stared broodingly into the darkness.
After a few minutes, this got very tiring. He wasn’t the hero of a Victorian romance, after all, just a series of modern fantasy volumes.
“So… tell me, what is this game?”
“It’s called Sexual Innuendo Ahoy.”
Harry blinked. “Ex-excuse me?”
“You focus on every aspect of the universe, and try to make it sexual.” Draco Malfoy’s lip curled in satisfaction. “It’s surprisingly easy.”
“Oh, and I need to get my mind out of the gutter,” Harry said. “I don’t believe you.”
“Believe me,” Draco said with immense satisfaction. “Take Quidditch, for instance. Oh, it’s too easy. Four different types of ball, not to mention the fact we’re all on—”
“I don’t want to hear this!”
“Ever wondered about the amount of leather in the uniforms? Do you know how many professional Quidditch players turn out gay?”
“La la la!”
“Consider the Broomstick Servicing Kit!” Malfoy yelled.
“Oh—shut up, I own one of those!”
“Ah-ha!”
“Shut up, shut up, shut up!”
“Ludo Bagman, for instance,” Malfoy continued relentlessly. “I heard he took quite a fancy to you—huh, how strange, just before he got fired—”
“You’re sick!”
Malfoy looked bizarrely complimented.
“And Filch!” he added brightly. “The nights are long and cold and lonely with only a cat and a picture frame for company. Ever think about this little fondness of his for chaining students up—perhaps I should say fetish—can’t you just see that horrid little man with a whip and garters?”
Well, now Harry could, and he would in a thousand terrible nightmares from now on.
“Help!” Harry screamed. “I’m chained up in here with a sex maniac!”
“Oh, well done, Potter,” Malfoy sulked. “Now if anyone was coming to rescue us, they’ve just muttered ‘Lucky bastard’ and turned around.”
“Trust me, if they recognised your voice they’re running in horror to my aid.”
“My voice? I wasn’t the one screaming,” Malfoy pointed out. “You scream like a girl, Potter, has Ginny Weasley ever—”
“Shut up about the Weasleys.”
“What are you going to do, Potter? Punch me?”
Malfoy moved so his chains clinked. Harry glanced up at the metal encircling the pale insides of Malfoy’s wrists, and then resumed his stare of loathing.
Malfoy returned it with interest.
“Why don’t you go off somewhere and rot,” Harry growled.
Malfoy brought his face close to Harry’s by angling his body against the wall.
“Like a dungeon, Potter?” he suggested softly. “Sit still, stay quiet and rot like a good boy.”
“I always knew you’d end up in chains,” Harry countered, glaring back. “You little Death Nibbler.”
“Pardon me?” Malfoy snapped. “Are you suggesting that I am in any way affiliated with the Dark Lord?”
“You hate Muggles!”
“I also hate decaffeinated coffee,” Malfoy informed him. “I don’t plan to kill anyone who drinks it.” He paused. “Unless it is an extreme case, and they eat wholewheat bread too.”
“What about your f—”
“Do you mind, Potter? I have father issues.”
“Oh?” said Harry, grinning a fiendish grin in the darkness. “What are you going to do, Malfoy? Punch me?”
Malfoy was silent for a long, fuming moment.
Then he said, quite calmly, “I’m going to do this,” turned and bit Harry hard in the shoulder.
“OW! Malfoy, you—you bit me, you bloody girl!”
“What else was I supposed to do?”
“Uh, I don’t know, not bite me?”
“I had to inflict some kind of physical damage, and I’m a little chained up here.”
Malfoy sank back against the wall with a self-satisfied look.
Harry lost it, swung his body around by the chains, and pinned Malfoy further to the wall. The cuffs dug into his wrists, but the stunned look on Malfoy’s face was worth it.
“You don’t bloody well bite,” he said furiously, and made a good job of elbowing Draco Malfoy in his thick head.
Malfoy promptly sank his teeth into Harry’s elbow.
“Ow—stop it, you vicious little—”
All right, there was nothing for it. Harry’s eyes zeroed in on a rip at the shoulder of Malfoy’s robes. It must have got torn when they were fighting, and now pale skin glimmered through.
Harry bit down on it hard.
Malfoy’s body went taut with pain along Harry’s.
“Ouch,” he said, voice muffled against Harry’s skin. “Ouch, that really hurt, you bloody savage—”
He sank his teeth in again and made Harry yelp.
“Why don’t you stop biting me like a girl—”
This close, it was obvious that Malfoy was still sweaty and breathless from the earlier fight. In fact, his skin tasted like salt.
Harry was pleased to see that he was winning, as Malfoy had to try and bite through several layers.
Malfoy obviously noticed that too, since his eyes narrowed with determination and he went for Harry’s throat.
Quite literally.
Harry groaned in pain and bit down harder on Malfoy’s skin to hide it, but Malfoy now had a much larger section of skin than Harry did to work with and his head was buried in Harry’s throat and his face was extremely warm and Malfoy’s teeth were scraping along his skin and his body was taut with shock and torment and so it was only reasonable to bite really hard and try to draw blood and then he had to taste to see if it was blood but no, it was still sweat and God it tasted really good…
Malfoy groaned too, perhaps less in pain, and sucked in a bit more of Harry’s throat and it was very, very pleasant and now Harry had the distinct feeling that something was wrong because fighting wasn’t actually supposed to be pleasant, now was it?
“Er… Malfoy,” he said, and it was weird how polite his words were when his voice was rasping with sudden lust, “This isn’t fighting at all, is it—”
He tried not to shiver when Malfoy’s voice came out low and pressed against his skin.
“No kidding, Potter.”
“Then perhaps we should—” Stop was going to be the very next thing Harry said, he swore it was. But just then Malfoy licked a thoughtful trail up Harry’s neck, and all ability to process rational thought was lost.
Harry moaned rather embarrassingly, pushed his body further against Malfoy’s and when Malfoy pushed back he dipped his head down and dragged his teeth gently along the smooth edge of Malfoy’s jaw. He searched, almost blind in the darkness and too close and not willing to move back an inch, open-mouthed along Malfoy’s face for his lips and then they were there, and…
His lips were soft but the kiss was hard and desperate and still terribly shocked, tongues and teeth shoving back thought and making Harry moan frantically again. Malfoy licked inside Harry’s mouth, which was definitely too erotic to be legal, but Harry tried clumsily to reciprocate and…
There was nothing but arching and kissing and biting and moaning and the sound of chains clinking in the empty darkness. Malfoy ground his body hard as he could against Harry’s, and Harry bit down on Malfoy’s lip and ground viciously back with the ring of metal in his ears. Malfoy began to rub, slowly, slightly, against him.
“Oh God. Oh God.”
“I need my hands free,” Malfoy gasped. “You need your hands free. Bloody hell…”
“You’re doing fine without them,” Harry said in a voice of great conviction. He glanced up at Malfoy’s chained wrists.
At the lock of one of the cuffs.
“Malfoy.”
“Hmmm?” said Malfoy, biting his ear.
Harry fought valiantly against the urge to forget about it. “I—it’s just, the, ah, the, oh—key is in one of your cuffs.”
Malfoy stared. “What?”
“I think—I might be able to reach it. If I kind of,” and fine, now it was time for Harry to blush, “er, wriggle up your body just a bit—”
“Be my guest,” Malfoy said in very courteous tones.
Harry tried to do so, as well as trying to tell himself that he wasn’t rubbing up along someone all sweaty and attractive and so he shouldn’t be distracted by that…
“Ah! Malfoy, did you just bite my—er, my—?”
“Nipple. Yes I did. Is that a problem?”
“No! No, in fact—do it again, if you like.”
“You’d probably do better to concentrate.”
“On—? Oh, right! Right. Key, right.”
He inched further up Malfoy’s body and took the key between his teeth.
“Dear me, Potter,” said Malfoy’s amused voice, accompanying a movement that wasn’t doing anything to help the current situation. “I suppose the Daily Prophet wasn’t so far wrong after all…”
“Fut up,” Harry requested around the key.
Turn it and you can both get out of here, he told himself, though his lust-soaked brain seemed unimpressed with the idea.
Okay then. Turn it, and he’ll have his hands free.
One of the cuffs snapped open, and Harry sagged back into his chains. Malfoy lifted his free hand, snagged the key and got to work releasing himself.
Practically, it was a smart move. Aesthetically, though, Harry was beginning to have all sorts of disturbing thoughts about how chains rather suited Malfoy.
Malfoy was free in seconds, and then stepped up to Harry and lifted the key to one of his cuffs.
And paused.
“Hang on a second,” he said. “What are we doing here?”
“Well… currently you seem to be busy not freeing me.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Malfoy said. “What are you planning to do afterwards?”
“Er,” said Harry. “I thought, you know, we could—get out, and then have a coffee or something.”
And engage in some hands-on fumbling, but really, Harry felt that was best left implied.
“Have a coffee?”
“You said you liked coffee!”
“Potter. Why on earth would you want to have a coffee with me? I mean, yes, I admit it, I’m a very good kisser, but—pay attention, this is a life lesson—that in no way means I’m not a nasty person.”
“I’d noticed,” Harry informed him. “But, well, you said you didn’t support Voldemort, and we said things at the same time, and you made up a sexual innuendo game—”
“How did you know I’d made it up?”
Harry smiled. “It was kind of a hunch.”
Malfoy looked like he might be about to smile back, but then he looked exasperated instead.
“It was a simple arch nemesis teenage boy chains dungeon full of sexual tension experience, Potter,” he said loftily. “There’s no need to confuse the issue with—emotions, and coffee. You are insane, and I am leaving.”
He had actually turned around when Harry spoke.
“Coward,” he said softly.
As he’d expected, Malfoy turned around sharply.
“What was that?”
“You’re running away,” Harry said. “The logical conclusion is that you’re afraid. I’m the one in control here.”
“Oooh, big words from the boy in chains.”
“You’re just turning tail and running. You don’t dare stay here. I’m in control because I’m able to admit that this might mean something. You can’t face that. You can’t even consider the possibility. You—”
Malfoy lunged forward, seized the back of Harry’s head and kissed him.
Harry abruptly lost all interest in his sentence, and the English language in general.
Over-rated, he thought, his mind fragmenting as Malfoy ran his tongue over Harry’s. Really, incoherent moaning and pleading got all necessary messages across.
So did body language. Really, it was so good Malfoy had his hands free, because now he could use them and it was all extremely… good.
The English language had utterly forsaken him. But Malfoy did have bloody incredible hands.
Harry thought he almost whined when one hand strayed a little adventurously.
“No,” Malfoy said in a rich, smooth voice which should be outlawed upon the instant, “I don’t think the Daily Prophet exaggerated at all…”
“Please....”
Malfoy smiled, though his smile was almost forced and very nearly afraid.
“I’m in control,” he said. “And there’s one thing I can do.”
Harry cleared his throat. “What’s that?”
Malfoy turned on his heel and went towards the door. At the threshold, he tossed a glance over his shoulder, the exact same glance he had given Harry just before biting him, and said:
“This.”
He left.
Harry sagged, chains giving a forlorn jingle in the darkness, and contemplated the horrific idea of Filch coming to find him in chains and distinctly over-excited.
He might forget he was committed to a cat and a portrait already.
Even that thought did not calm him altogether. Nor did frantic musings on his sexuality, how to get out of this mess and how to get Draco Malfoy on his back and do depraved things to him.
Actually, that last thought pretty much answered the first thought for him. And as for escape…
Harry tried to formulate a plea for release.
He thought “Help! I’m not chained up in here with a sex maniac” might do nicely.
before March 2003