He’s always had this strange craving.
Perhaps it comes from being the sickly baby, the one with Bill and Charlie for brothers, strong and popular and perfect, and becoming used to the disappointment in the eyes of the people he loved.
You’ll never be worth as much as they are, compounded with all the attention the twins demanded from day one, compounded with the fact that Percy has just never been any good with other people. He bores them. They don’t like him. And he’s intelligent enough to see this.
He never had many friends, and the ones who accepted him did so because they couldn’t get any better ones. You’ll never be worth much.
Then when he was fifteen and realising certain things about himself, Oliver Wood realised those things about Percy too. And since Percy was the only one there, and Oliver wanted it all to be a secret and not mean anything, and Percy fulfilled his criteria, though he didn’t even like Percy…
Percy was too intelligent, that was another of his problems. He was capable of self-analysis, and he worked out those secrets he discovered in Oliver’s bed. Humiliation and abasement and the other person being emotionally cold and this not being incidental to the pleasure, but wrapped around it. Inseparable from it. And maybe it was twisted, that I don’t love you meant I love you and empty eyes made him scream, but there it was…
You’ll never be worth anything.
It was the final message, and the one he received, and the one he hated, and the one he wanted so badly he could taste it.
On days when Percy is being painfully honest with himself (and let’s be honest, Percy likes pain) he would have to admit that Oliver just couldn’t cut it. He was too decent, too honest, too Gryffindor not to lie to Percy and pretend to care just a little, and those lies made Percy faintly ill. He doesn’t want sugar, he wants to drink blood.
And he always thought he might have done well in Slytherin.
Marcus Flint, now, he was much better than Oliver. But he was stupid and easily pleased, and when he was pleased he treated Percy like he was a pet. Dismissive, yes, but there was potential there for a certain amount of affection, and his stupidity made Percy despise him faintly.
That isn’t part of the plan at all.
So Marcus was as over as Oliver by sixth year, and Percy was utterly deprived of his own particular brand of entertainment for the first few weeks…
He was reduced to acting as Penelope Clearwater’s cover for all her illicit activities. She wanted someone she could use with no regrets, she didn’t want her parents to know, and pompous unlikeable Percy was absolutely perfect.
Percy has never been interested in girls, but just now and then as he was forced to watch Penny tangle sweatily with Alicia Spinnet, as he mentioned a private get-away with Penny to others and recalled her cold amused glance over at him…
Well. Yes, now and then there were faint twinges of excitement. Now and then he even wonders if Penny was the only person who ever understood him. She knew exactly what he was getting out of helping her, and she used that. She was ruthless and cold and cruel, and if all those who Percy thinks would have done well in Slytherin had gone there, the numbers would be overwhelming.
Still, Percy was feeling… listless. All he could do was treasure up those exasperated looks his power as a prefect and his attitude towards it got him, and the treasures were cheap and unsatisfying.
They were all Percy had, though, and so when he heard a commotion going on in the courtyard he ran to interfere and stopped short, sour disappointment in his mouth, when he saw Professor Lockhart was dealing with whatever the situation had been.
Which was when it happened.
Three boys detached from the crowd, and one of them looked at Percy.
It was a single wintry look of contempt, but it shocked Percy backwards, left him still and staring at the place the boy had been as he swept off.
Because nothing had ever been so exactly right.
Nothing in any way to indicate Percy was special, but a particular dislike in that look, scorn that seemed to incorporate both his hair and his badge, and chill indifference and the casual cruelty of someone who is simply not very nice at all… In one look. One.
And it lasted for all of a second, and Percy saw it all night.
So after a couple of weeks he carefully asks his questions, and it’s all laughably easy. He noticed the cool grey eyes and the Slytherin crest, and Fred and George immediately recognise the description. They have just begun fuming over Draco Malfoy, Slytherin Seeker.
Draco Malfoy. Lucius Malfoy’s son, and they’ve all heard Father talk about Lucius Malfoy. That’s what got Percy the look, dislike utterly divorced from personal feelings. A Death Eater, and poisonous from all the twins have to say, and—and perfect.
And so terribly young. Ron’s age, and Percy feels a hot coil of self-disgust in his stomach, and that’s horrible and perfect too.
He gathers the information that Fred and George dispense so freely, even absorbs a few comments from Ron and Ron’s famous little friend. Harry Potter, Percy notes, looks angry when Draco Malfoy’s name is even mentioned.
Percy places himself in a seat where he can see easily over to the Slytherin table. He notices that several other people look over there too. The boy gives them all that chilly cursory look, and Percy wants it more than food at mealtimes.
He thought he saw shrewdness behind those icy eyes, but he was afraid that this Quidditch-playing child might be another stupid Marcus. He stole that stupid map of the twins’ to sneak in and get a look at his records, though, and the boy was clever.
Percy did not just look at records.
He watched Draco Malfoy. Watched his careless contempt of the world, how he used Quidditch to manipulate people because that was how he enjoyed using his skill. Just like he enjoyed expressing his scorn of people by mimicking them, and oh Percy loved to watch him do that. He was talented and callous and Percy could not get enough.
He made new rules with Penelope. Her trysts now had to be held near the Slytherin rooms, and as she had her fun with the latest girls he could wander the halls and catch a glimpse now and then.
Once he was doing just that, right after Penelope had left, and he bumped into the boy’s henchmen.
It was an almost voyeuristic little thrill, gazing into the dull eyes that reflected his wintry gaze so often. Percy was hardly aware of what he was saying, lost in that thought, and then Draco Malfoy’s own voice had cut into the conversation.
He’d heard his voice before, of course. He had eavesdropped for it, run it over and over again in his mind, the cool formal voice of one who has been brought up by adults. But he had never heard it addressed to him, never shuddered at the look which it accompanied.
Absolutely withering, and so good.
“And what’re you doing here, Weasley?”
The world of addictive contempt behind that name. And Percy felt hatred, and rage, and offended pride, and consuming lust.
“You want to show a bit more respect to a school Prefect! I don’t like your attitude!”
He couldn’t decide whether that was a lie or not.
But when the Malfoy boy sneered at him—God, it was more than just a look, it was his whole face turned to the purpose of contempt and the corruption of it was better than all his twisted talent. Liking didn’t matter. He wanted it.
If they hadn’t turned away just then, they would have noticed Percy shiver uncontrollably. As it was, he leaned against the wall and listened ferociously to the disappearing sounds of his voice.
“That Peter Weasley—”
He hated him then, and still knew he would replay his voice when the lights were dimmed.
“Percy.”
“Whatever,” Draco Malfoy said, and God he was sort of magnificent. “I’ve noticed him sneaking around a lot lately.”
I knew he was quick, the little bastard.
“And I bet I know what he’s up to. He thinks he’s going to catch Slytherin’s heir single-handed.”
Of course, he was still very young, and couldn’t help being occasionally naïve. Or—perhaps he was very right, and the Malfoy boy was Slytherin’s heir himself. Percy smiled. The idea appealed to him, for some reason.
That encounter filled Percy’s nights with lurid re-enactments for weeks afterwards, and then on Valentine’s Day—how oddly appropriate—he was watching the back of that fair head when he realised that he was causing trouble.
Percy couldn’t believe his luck. There was a large crowd, with Harry Potter and little Ginny and excitement, and it was such a normal thing for him to do, to interfere and to have to look and to have to listen…
“What’s all this commotion?” he demanded.
Apparently Harry Potter was getting a Valentine. Percy pretended to be dispersing the crowd as he watched Malfoy, watched that intent spiteful look on his face and finally gathered up the nerve to speak to him.
Dismissively, dismissively, he’s a child just like the others…
“Off you go, off you go, the bell rang five minutes ago, off to class, now.” He couldn’t help his tone changing, becoming more intense. “And you, Malfoy.”
The look was better than it had ever been, and then—oh, he was so lucky and it would be so good to give him detention—Malfoy stole Harry’s diary.
“Wonder what Potter’s written in this?”
“Hand it over, Malfoy,” Percy said sternly.
He had never said Malfoy’s name before this occasion, and now he had just said it twice, and Malfoy’s venomous look made Percy’s blood sing as if it were dying for poison.
Then Harry took matters into his own hands and made Percy want to put the boy’s eyes out so he couldn’t absorb that look.
He couldn’t help shouting.
“Harry! No magic in the corridors. I’ll have to report this, you know!”
Disappointment was bitter at the back of his throat, and it didn’t help when Malfoy turned the look on Ginny and snapped,
“I don’t think Potter liked your Valentine much!”
Ginny covered her face and ran into class. Percy hated it, but later he wove it all together in the darkness—thrills and hatred and jealousy and frustration and his baby sister crying and the sharp twist of pleasure he felt when he saw that, all bound up in one excruciatingly perfect nightmare.
The kind of nightmare where the house elves changed the sheets afterwards.
After the glow faded he forced Penelope to come out near the Slytherin rooms. He wanted to catch just another glimpse—and he was staring blatantly at Malfoy telling off his cronies when to his horror, Ginny came around a corner.
He pushed Penelope into a room and kissed her. At least her mouth against his spelled pure distaste, and he thought about the look, and at the flash of Ginny’s red hair he thought about seeing her cry, about the smirk on Malfoy’s face, about wanting to hurt him…
Ginny had fled in embarrassment, and Penelope had given him a leisurely look up and down.
“Why, Percy. What has you so excited?”
Later that day, Penelope was Petrified. It felt like a judgement which had accidentally hit the wrong person in that frozen embrace, and the worst thing about Percy’s horror was that it was not as bad as the almost sickening fear he felt when he heard people discussing expelling all the Slytherins.
Self-disgust was good too. It made Percy sick and aroused at once, and when he heard George saying quietly that “Percy’s in shock” he almost nodded.
Patrol duty was bad because he could no longer creep about the Slytherin rooms. Percy did not particularly fear the monster. Actually, it rather appealed to him—reptilian eyes filled with such contempt that it would freeze him, still these compulsions forever.
It might be just the kind of consummation Percy wanted.
Ginny being taken seemed precisely the kind of bleakly unjust misdirection that had turned Malfoy’s eyes to her in the corridor. He had to settle for the smouldering discontent written across Malfoy’s face as the term drew to a close.
Your father’s been discredited and you hate everyone. Even me. Oh yes, hate me…
He was locked in a pyramid briefly over the summer. The twins and Ron had run off laughing and Mother hadn’t noticed for about fifteen minutes. He’d heard their casually scornful laughs as they went and experienced a brief shuddering moment of pleasure in the hot darkness, with the smell of the long dead.
Imagining their laughs belonged to someone else.
He was made Head Boy, and there would be power now. Percy loved the idea of power, not least the power of invoking that look more, the power to torture him and have him helpless… even if that was only a dream, because part of the compulsion was that Percy could never touch him in any way.
He cherished that badge, cherished the thought of it flashing silver in those silver eyes, all the coldness and contempt in the world. He obsessed over it and guarded it jealously from the twins.
The Dementors distracted him on the train, but as he was herding the first years towards Hagrid he heard that voice again, mocking Harry. It was a soothing, familiar sound, like a lover’s murmur reassuring a normal person.
At dinner Dumbledore mentioned Percy.
“I look to the Prefects, and our new Head Boy and Girl, to make sure that no student runs foul of the Dementors.”
Percy held out his chest so the badge shone and looked around at the Slytherin table. He savoured that long, loathing look, couldn’t drink a sip of pumpkin juice, felt full to the brim with it. He also considered the idea of Draco Malfoy being helpless and under his protection.
Adorable notion, even though part of the boy’s charm was that Percy could never ever have the upper hand. Part of the beauty was the ugly yearning for that.
He kept watching. Malfoy was so thoroughly unpleasant, plotted bloody revenge against an animal with such cold-blooded ruthlessness. Percy dreamed of him plotting Percy’s own murder with a similar attitude, and woke gasping.
Yet he was never despised. Percy would never have wanted that, for him to be at Percy’s level, to ever ever be despicable. He was popular and took it for granted, students in the higher classes laughed and talked with him, and he treated them with lofty superiority. He was unbearable, but he had a certain chilly charisma, and Percy’s envy of that mingled with everything else, made it all sharper and better.
Like blood.
Percy used his power just as he’d planned, and oh, he likes power for its own sake but also for all it can do, and his ambition is twisted as the rest of himself.
One day he sees Draco Malfoy doing one of his impressions, imitating him, mocking him, his voice dripping scorn, and Percy gave him detention. And he melted the bottom of his cauldron out later that day, thinking about… thinking about…
It was then he began seriously to debate the importance of thicker-bottomed cauldrons.
Eyes like sharpened steel and a laugh like cruelty. And a gloriously awful spiral of obsession.
When the Head Boy and Girl were put in charge of the students sleeping in the Great Hall, after the first Sirius Black scare, it was the perfect opportunity to look around at every student. He was lying in a purple sleeping bag like all the others, smugly asleep as people panicked around him, one hand cupped under that pointed chin.
He looked about six. Percy kept staring.
It was only when he burrowed down in his sleeping bag that Percy called,
“The lights are going out now! I want everyone in their sleeping bags and no more talking!”
He shouted especially in Malfoy’s direction, and Malfoy propped himself up on his elbows, blinking like an owl, and murmured crossly to Crabbe.
Percy stalked over to tell him off, and the sizzling effect of that look was still with him when Professor Dumbledore came in to ask him if everything was all right.
“Everything under control, sir.”
Mother asked him to look after Harry Potter, and he agreed because Malfoy always seemed to turn up in the places where Harry was. Of course, that meant Harry got the look, but Percy had always known how to punish Harry for that.
“They make a fuss about Hogsmeade, but I assure you, Harry, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. All right, the sweetshop’s rather good, but Zonko’s Joke Shop’s frankly dangerous, and yes, the Shrieking Shack’s always worth a visit, but really, Harry, apart from that, you’re not missing anything.”
He didn’t want Malfoy brought down from his current position, and he desperately wanted him humiliated. He plotted against him purely to see him overcome the plots and to hate him more than ever.
Put a little pressure on Harry to win against Ravenclaw because then Slytherin will be less likely to win the cup, make up something about a bet and then hurry off because Malfoy was approaching and perhaps it was best that nobody saw Percy react, that nobody suspected.
Harry won.
“Well done, Harry! Ten Galleons to me! Must find Penelope, excuse me—”
The look, that slow icy burn on Malfoy’s face, was worth crawling over broken glass on his belly. Was like crawling over broken glass on his belly, too.
A couple of weeks later Malfoy almost ran Percy down hurtling out of Hogsmeade. His pale face was set, and he was covered in mud, and his glance was poison.
“Watch it, Weasley.”
Percy lay awake all night thinking of the impact of those fragile bones against his body, the mud smeared against that white flawless cheek.
When the Gryffindor-Slytherin match was approaching, everyone who crossed Malfoy’s path got the look. Which was so, so good, since he spent most of his time flying in those damned interminable practices and when he wasn’t doing that he was glaring over at Harry Potter during mealtimes.
That happened far too often.
Once Malfoy was rushing late to yet another practice, fastening his Quidditch robes as he ran, and Percy witnessed yet another snarling confrontation with Harry.
“Get the hell out of my way.”
“Go ahead, Malfoy. I know you need the practice.”
Just a brief exchange of incivilities, utterly normal, and the slightest, most unconscious glance of Harry Potter’s eyes down to the pale slope of Draco’s collarbone, disappearing between fingers and cloth.
Percy had never liked that boy.
Even though he was indebted to him for winning the Quidditch Cup. Malfoy had been just inches away, inches from catching the Snitch, and then Potter had won and the stands had erupted, the whole school screaming delight at Slytherin’s downfall, and the Slytherins had all looked betrayed and he had been one very lone, very small figure there on the Quidditch pitch.
He had given them all a sweeping glare, like virulent white-hot hatred, and Percy felt it like the most intimate touch. Even though he didn’t even see Percy. Especially because he didn’t see Percy.
Percy jumped up and down in triumph, the Gryffindors win and I am the Head Boy and look at me, but Malfoy simply stalked off.
Yes, Percy was indebted to Harry, but Harry need never know that. And there had certainly been no necessity for Harry to fly so close to Malfoy. That wasn’t normal for Quidditch. You kept away from the other fliers, fearing for your own balance, but Harry’s face had been set and he’d seemed for a minute like he was furiously intent on climbing into Malfoy’s lap and…
Percy was distinctly cold and snappish to Harry from then on. The child, never bright, assumed that he was worried about his NEWTs.
Naturally he got his top class NEWTs, though, and Malfoy’s incandescent fury over an escaped Hippogriff was a beautiful entertainment until the end of the year.
And that was where it was supposed to end.
Yes, it had been a diversion, and yes, it had been a daily fix for him and his needs, and now he was out in the world and there were new things for him, new ambitions and new people…
But once you’ve found the perfect fix…
Obsessions do not let go. They become traps. They were always traps. And steel teeth closing into the bone can feel like having an itch scratched. Hurting in all the right ways—and for Percy, that was every way.
Being pompous was less helpful in this world, but being annoyingly obsequious worked like a Charm. And his employer couldn’t have been more ideal—caught up and twisted by bitterness, wrapped in some dark secret sorrow Percy couldn’t have cared less about. He loathed Percy even as he found him barely worthy of attention, forgot his name even as he picked up on his signals and tried to erase his pain with Percy.
Yes, Percy loved that message.
I’m taking you because I’ve got to have somebody, but it could be any body, and I wish it wasn’t your body…
Back to sex. Away from games. That all made sense, and Percy’s life was very much on track, and perhaps the fact things were going well was it because that had to be it didn’t it, because he’d never even thought of him that way, certainly never fantasised while pushed up against Crouch’s desk, and still, and still…
“Draco!”
Crouch never thought to ask him who Draco was.
And for the first time Percy deceived himself. Because he was reaching his goals, he had exactly the kind of thing he wanted, he should have been happy—or as happy as Percy had ever wanted to be. He let his parents know about Crouch to support that, to reassure himself that this was all true, and also to see the look on his father’s face when Percy said bland things at the dinner table like:
“I’ve told Mr Crouch that I’ll have—it—ready by Tuesday. That’s a bit sooner than he expected it, but I like to keep… on top of things.”
The wince his father could not control almost made up for the fact that he was thinking about the Triwizard Tournament, that he could not stop thinking about it and that Crouch would probably need some help.
He talked so much about Crouch that even poor dense Ron said he was obsessed, and then he tried to pry small facts about… school from Ginny.
“Draco Malfoy?” Ginny repeated, screwing up her sweet face in concentration, and God why had his two youngest siblings been born so stupid? “I don’t know him well. Ask Harry when he comes, that awful boy’s always around him.”
Ask Harry when he comes. That calm conviction that Draco was part of Harry’s life.
When Harry did come, Percy loathed the very sound of his steps on the stairs.
“Oh, hello, Harry. I was wondering who was making all that noise.”
His puzzled little face. Oh yes, Harry was always so sweet, so clueless.
Percy shouted for silence from his bedroom until dinnertime, trying to reconstruct a person from bits and pieces warped by obsession. Didn’t matter. Didn’t matter. Eyes like frost and a face from a hated family and a cold, drawling voice, creeping over Percy like chills and ice and heat and…
“Percy, dear! Dinner’s ready!”
Waking at ten on Quidditch World Cup day, not too early not too late, perfectly natural to go a bit before the others, and Apparating to the campsite. Father and the brats nowhere nearby, good good good, and Percy was moving to the more expensive tents, the ones with trimming and the humming magic around them which meant they were palatial inside. Moving to the one with silver trim, nearest to a meadow, and in the meadow…
Of course, they were all supposed to wear Muggle clothes. It was only a sensible precaution.
Almost equally of course, Percy had never really thought of Draco Malfoy as having a body. He had been so young, and the idea of losing control over a child was faintly horrifying, and so he had been an ideal. A sort of dream, more about emotions personified, the flash of grey eyes like disdain and thrillingly cruel sneer.
That’s been changing. Changing like the flash of white skin as fingers fastened a Quidditch robe, like mid-air brawling, like the fact Percy has just remembered about sex and why he liked what he liked so much…
Draco Malfoy was older now. And Percy, who has never cared about physical attractiveness, is viciously pleased somehow that Draco has everything—as well as being furious that other people will now be watching Draco, and for no good reason.
He is also furious that he was such a fool. For watching the sneer when there was a perfectly delicious and nasty little mouth under it, watching for Malfoy features when the face was cool and beautiful. Most of all for watching for arrogant bearing when he could see that slim body now, stretched lean and taut on the grass, in exquisitely cut grey trousers and a black shirt.
The sleeves of the shirt were rolled up, and his forearms glistened like pearl. He was reading a Potions book like he enjoyed it, like he wanted to absorb it. The sun was dazzling on his pale hair, and Percy had never really noticed how extraordinary his hair was before.
“Draco!”
And that name, softly spoken, doesn’t sound like it did in Percy’s mouth that one time. A beautiful woman in a flowing dress with long blonde hair walks across the meadow to Draco, who gets up.
“Lunch,” she says, and touches his face. He leans in just a fraction to the touch, and his face is soft and for once, utterly devoid of malice.
And Percy shouldn’t be interested in this, in sweet mother-and-child moments in the sunlight, in anything beautiful and simple. But for Percy, not even perversion can be pure.
He’s always known this. He’s only just coming to realise it.
“Gorgeous,” Charlie says behind him, and Percy spins around in horror. But Charlie’s smiling, nodding. “Anyone’d look, Perce. Mind you, she’s probably a bit old—I think she’s the kid’s mother. Come on, I’m not going to tell on you, and Bill will be along in a minute.”
Charlie was always the kind one, but Percy is edgy after that. Stressing his unquestioned innocence.
“Just Apparated, Dad!” he said too loudly. “Ah, excellent, lunch!”
Doesn’t taste a mouthful.
And seeing Crouch again is almost funny, his slight panic and absurd pretending not to know Percy’s name. Percy thinks he might be starting to despise him, so maybe it’s over, and besides no matter where he looks, it’s all just jagged fragments. Like a broken mirror reflecting pale elbows and curling lips, vivid and sharp enough to cut wrists.
He’s feeling in a petty mood, so he embarrasses his father in the Top Box by fawning on all his colleagues. Even that isn’t enough to calm him down. He’s—all messed up, distracted, and when he sees Draco climbing to the Top Box with his parents he jumps so violently his glasses fall off his nose and shatter.
Harry, who is talking to the idiot Minister for Magic, gives him a puzzled glance. He shoots a glance at Harry which is pure burning…
I’m not jealous. Percy has never felt anything so simple and innocent.
It seems a pity to mend the broken lenses of his glasses. He would like to see Draco’s face through the fractured glass.
He does mend them, though, and he’s so glad that he did because as Lucius Malfoy talks to Father, Draco surveys them with the most perfect and paralysing expression of loathing.
Percy would have hated to miss that. And when the Veela are dancing and everyone is distracted, he looks over eagerly to see Draco’s humiliation, which will be sweet and bitter and destructive and which might just cure Percy.
Draco’s hands are clasped tight around his armrests. That is the only sign of strain about him. Percy admires him, hates him, watches his young unfixed profile glow against the sky.
Those cool grey eyes narrow at the sight of Harry, poised to leap from the stands, and when Harry is forced back into his chair those eyes flicker to the shamrock pinned on his chest.
Draco abruptly removes the shamrock from his own chest. Percy hopes that the pin will pierce his flesh, but his white fingers are deft and sure. It simply floats to the ground like so much rubbish.
Percy suspects that this is what happens to everything Draco has decided he doesn’t want.
“Draco, darling, what are you doing?” his mother whispers.
“I’ve changed my mind,” Draco replies with immense composure. “I’m all about the Veela now.”
He watches the match quietly, one wary eye on his father. He has never liked to look a fool, and Percy should know about Draco by now. He’s been watching him for years.
And he’s had enough of this, of stupid useless flashes like elbows and eyes, and he thinks that as he watches Draco’s small smile at Krum’s Feint—why should he care about that?—and he hears the click together of Draco’s teeth when Bulgaria lost again, at night… And he’s sick of watching, so he watches for as long and as hungrily as he could, and then lying in the darkness later he doesn’t picture a profile or a gleam of teeth, but tumbling long pale limbs into a meadow.
The world exploded into sound and light like gunfire. For a moment Percy does not realise that it is real.
Real. And automatically, he gets up, gets his wand and pulls on his clothes, because Percy has never harboured any desire to be massacred by Death Eaters.
The children are being sent off, the twins, Ron, Ginny, Harry and Hermione, and Percy is running with Charlie and Bill and then he stops short, because it occurs to him…
The children are being sent off. And Percy thinks they’re heading towards the forest.
Percy turns, without regret, as the sound of Muggle screaming fills the air.
He walks into the forest, following the trail of breadcrumbs, the knowledge he has so carefully gathered about Draco. Draco won’t think he’s in danger; he’ll be cool, he’ll stay near the action and watch, wary but trying to be casual.
The leap of bright hair in the moonlight is accompanied by a twist of—of something, and maybe there are no words, as he hears Harry Potter’s voice.
Lower than he’s ever heard it, rich and dark as blood in the night and why fancy, Mr Potter…
“Hermione’s a witch!” he snarls.
Their faces are close, chins on an exact level with each other, and Draco’s eyes are shining.
“Have it your own way, Potter,” he says softly, malice and a promise mingled.
“Well, Percy! Darling!”
Percy whips around and there’s Penelope, looking absolutely debauched with her robes falling off one shoulder and her curly hair a riot around her face.
“Be quiet,” he says coldly.
Her feet are bare. “So you didn’t miss me, lover? You never write.” She pouts wickedly, and looks over Percy’s shoulder.
To where Percy was gazing a few moments before.
Her exhalation is pure delight. “Oooh, Percy.” She sounds as if she’s being pleasured, and maybe she is. Penny loves the very thought of pain. “So it’s the little Malfoy boy. I always wondered. Are you pining for him, Percy dear? I suppose he is rather a pretty thing, if you gagged him. But then, I expect you like that thought…”
“What do you want, Penny?”
She licks her lips, her mouth an open wound in the darkness.
“Owl me, lover. My parents are starting to suspect. For now—I have my own beautiful blonde to attend to.” She jerks her head towards the trees.
There’s a blonde girl there, her perfectly shaped lips swollen and her willowy figure scarcely hidden in a white nightgown. She’s stunning, Percy would swear she has Veela blood, and there is a world of knowledge in her deep blue eyes.
Penny’s smile grows predatory. “Cold, Fleur? I can warm you up…”
“Then what are you waiting for?”
Penny tosses Percy a smile, a “Good hunting” and then she’s going towards the tree where the blonde girl is waiting, and Percy sees the slide of a foot up one slim Veela leg.
Then he’s distracted by the ice-smooth voice of Draco.
”…I wouldn’t be likely to tell you, would I, Potter?”
Hermione’s pulling Ron and an obviously reluctant Harry along; he looks back, green eyes flashing darkly, and Malfoy curls his lip at him.
Then Draco’s alone again. Leaning casually against the tree, and Percy’s mouth goes dry because of the pitiless look in Draco’s eyes as he watches the tortured Muggles. Yes, and because he’s leaning against a tree, and just a little imagination and he’s leaning like the Veela girl did, legs and lips parted in invitation, white as moonlit dreams of succubi.
Percy moves a little too sharply and Draco’s head jerks up.
“Who’s there?” Crisp and curt and yes, maybe he’s a little scared. That wicked mouth still has a soft little-boy indentation on it.
Sweet.
Percy moves out from the cover of the trees, and Draco’s eyes are unconcerned and like winter on this summer night.
“Lord help us, it’s a hostile Weasley takeover,” he sneers.
Percy’s mind is going over the years and no, he doesn’t think he’s ever been alone with Draco like this before.
The tiny summer wind lifts the feathery ends of Draco’s hair, and he’s spewing venom as his eyes reflect the stars. How has nobody else noticed the long marble line of his throat, the delicate and flawless planes of his face and that glint of meanness warping it all so perfectly?
Heartbreakingly beautiful, and Percy wants something broken.
“Why don’t you run along, Weasley?” Draco suggests, being immeasurably superior even though Percy’s grown up and a lot taller than he is. “I’d much rather be left alone—and I can’t imagine you enjoy standing here being insulted.”
He looks down, and moonlight licks lasciviously along one of his cheekbones.
He’s beautiful and he’s unbearably twisted. Percy wants him only because he’s so cold, but he watched the warm look he gave his mother and he wanted more of that too.
He’s a child, and Percy has all these adult desires.
It’s so wrong and Percy wouldn’t have it any other way, and he loves this feeling of frustration but he’s sick of flashes like glances and pale elbows, he wants to swallow this contempt whole.
“Oh, you have no idea,” he breathes, and he’s doing what he should never even have dreamed of.
Draco pinned up against the tree, like a nightmare. Worse. Better. Sharp bones and soft childish skin sliding under Percy’s hands, and a warm wet mouth, open and outraged.
He never stops fighting and his teeth are sharp too, it’s like having an animal in your arms, a child, nothing like anything permissible. Nobody could ever understand this insane assault, and Percy loves the fact that it’s indefensible and he’s despicable and he never wants this attack to end.
His tongue is in Draco Malfoy’s mouth, his hands under his shirt and he has no doubt that if Draco had a knife, its blade would be between Percy’s ribs. He thinks he might like that.
He shoves Draco into the tree again, forcing his leg between Draco’s. Draco twists his arm free and hits him savagely in the nose.
Percy’s staggering back. The cold force of Draco’s anger has always been too much for him.
And Draco, still up against the tree and with his mouth swollen and his eyes arctic, is very much a fantasy that could keep Percy warm and cold for years.
“What was that about, Weasley?” he snarls, spitting out Percy’s name. Percy vaguely wonders if he knows Percy’s name by now. It doesn’t matter.
Percy has no answers for him.
“I love you,” he says.
He’s distantly curious about that sentence.
It’s appalling, of course, but things are stark as moonlight and contempt. Past one perversion and into another, and now it’s not about a hateful emotion but a hateful individual, and he wants to map each trait of Draco’s and memorise it. That’s why he stared at his warm face in the meadow, he even wants to find out Draco’s favourite book and see him brush his hair in the mornings.
It hardly matters. It’s not as immediate as the yearning to hurt him, or the sharp sense of self-congratulation at discovering a well of pain that will never run dry.
The look on Draco’s face is like a consummation, a sweet sweet twist of agony.
His hand is scrubbing fiercely at his violated mouth, and his eyes are wide with horror and nausea.
“Oh disgusting,” he snarls, and he’s away in a whirl of moonlight.
Percy’s nose is swollen and painful. He savours the taste of blood running into his mouth as he walks back to the camp. He stares up at the macabre skull in the sky without curiosity. The serpent between its teeth reminds him of the sensation of Draco’s tongue as Percy licked and bit at his mouth.
He kind of likes it.
He meets the others and sees Harry Potter’s commiserating look at his nose. Percy is perversely amused by that, almost wishes that Harry could know how he got it. He laughs silently under his tongue, which is still tasting the velvet and metal of the blood. It’s nothing but bitter, and Percy finds that nothing but sweet.
He pushes against his nose later, relishes the stabs of agony, and thinks of Draco Malfoy’s body, whole and entire in his bed. Sickening pain is the means and the glorious end.
He lies there sated and feeling a certain strange pity, because Draco’s looks for Harry will never be anything like contempt.
Finis
before 2004