Title: Just a Placebo
Author:

franthephoenix
Rating: R.
Canon: Non-HBP compliant.
Length: 2,600 words.
Scenario: Harry to Draco: I promise to moan only your name.
Summary: Harry�s not pulling his weight, so Draco takes matters into his own hands - and fails spectacularly.
Disclaimer: I do not own, nor pretend to own any characters or locations within the HP Universe, they remain the sole property of J. K. Rowling, Warner Bros., Christopher Little Agency and associates. No money is made from this work, it is purely a work of fanfiction.
Notes: Thank you to

wemyss and

margotheangel for the beta.

Just a Placebo

The Pink Flamingo is heaving. The music thunders in Draco's ears and his blue silk shirt is sticking to his back. With annoying regularity, a neon light sweeps the room and hits him directly in the eyes, temporarily blinding him. Pansy is shouting something unintelligible into his ear and tugging at his sleeve. Her nails scratch at his wrist. He ignores her, scanning the densely packed nightclub for Potter.

'Draco?' shrieks Pansy. 'I'm not wearing pants!'

Or at least something like that. The blaring music is a good cover and he shrugs at her, gesturing towards his ears.

'I said I want to dance!' says Pansy more loudly, at the same blasted time that the song ends, and Draco can't pretend he didn't hear what everyone else in a ten foot radius did, all of whom have turned around to stare.

He pushes Pansy off him--she lets out a cry as she stumbles over her stilettos, and falls to the floor--and braves his way through the sticky, stinking crowd, looking for Potter.

The git is nowhere to be seen, which is more than an annoyance. It had been Potter who had asked Draco to come here in the first place ('Half eleven, don't be late.' He'd zipped up his flies and given Draco's arse a quick squeeze for good measure). And it is midnight now, and the bastard has had the audacity to stand him up.

Knocking back his drink, Draco swiftly moves to order another, but pushing through the throngs of club-goers proves more difficult than he'd assumed. A tall blond with dreadlocks repeatedly whips Draco in the face as he tries to navigate around the dance floor. A tottering woman who, from the back, looks like Pansy, clips his toe with her heel as he edges past, and when he reaches the bar queue, wincing in pain, a smallish brunette comes tumbling straight into him, knocking Draco's plastic cup of vodka and lemonade all down the front of his shirt.

He swears gratuitously, but nobody hears him. It's too fucking loud.

He reaches for his wand, but thinks better of it, and curses only in his mind. Wheeling around, he clenches his fists and elbows his way to the toilets.

The sink on the far side is less filthy than the others, and it is at this one that Draco pulls off his shirt to run it under the tap. The noise of gushing water almost cuts off the next words he hears, but not quite.

'Fuck, Zabini. Now.'

A ripping sound comes from the locked cubicle behind him. There's a banging noise, and the cubicle door shudders, and someone gasps. In a good way, Draco notes. In a good, familiar way.

'Potter? Is that you?' He's dropped the shirt in the sink now. It's getting soaked.

There is no other answer than a sigh, a grunt, and another reverberating shudder of the cubicle door.

'Potter? What the fuck are you doing?'

The shirt has clogged the plughole. The sink is nearly overflowing.

'What the--ah--fuck does it sound like, Malfoy?'

Two minutes pass, and when the toilet door bangs open the water is trickling onto Draco's shoes, but he doesn't notice. Zabini comes out of the cubicle, zipping his flies. He avoids Draco's stare and heads straight back onto the dance floor. Potter gives Draco the once over before following suit.

'You're getting all wet,' he says, and lets the door creak shut behind him.

~~~~~~

'What the fuck was that about, Potter?'

Draco's got him pinned up against the wall opposite the painting of the pears, by the kitchens. He knew the bastard would be down here; he always skips breakfast.

'What was what?' Harry doesn't even bother to struggle. Malfoy's got one hand on his neck, and the other on his hip. He bucks forward slightly. Brings his right hand up to play with Malfoy's hair.

'Zabini? I mean - Blaise fucking Zabini? What the fuck was that?'

Harry snorts. 'Jealous, Malfoy? That's sweet, but I'm hungry now. We'll do this later, all right?' He leans forward and kisses Malfoy softly on the nose, before roughly pushing him away. In two seconds' time he's disappeared into the kitchens.

Malfoy stares at the pear picture as it clicks back into place. He has no idea how Potter had managed to open it. Fuming, he stomps his way upstairs back up to the Great Hall.

~~~~~~

'Pansy, I need to borrow your owl.'

'Use your own, Draco.'

'I can't. I need to use yours.'

Draco sets his quill down just as Pansy comes over to his desk to peer at the parchment. He folds it quickly, but to no avail: the logo is on the envelope.

'Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes?' says Pansy disdainfully. 'What are you ordering from them?'

'None of your bloody business,' snaps Draco, and he folds the parchment and stuffs it into the envelope. 'I need your owl.'

~~~~~~

'Potter, we need to talk.'

Draco is standing behind them at the Gryffindor table at breakfast. Harry does not even turn around.

'As if you've got anything to say that I want to hear, Malfoy.'

'Have it your way, then.'

Malfoy leans over and ruffles Ron's hair. 'See you around.'

'What did he just do?' says Ron, understandably outraged. 'No, really--he just ruffled my hair!'

'Mmm,' says Harry.

Ron glares across the Great Hall, his eyes following Malfoy to his seat. He touches his hair with his hand. 'Did he put something in it?'

'Nope.'

'Well, he's definitely up to something.'

'Oh, so now you've cottoned on?' Harry jabs his fork into a piece of toast. 'I couldn't give a toss about that git anyway,' he says nonchalantly, but Hermione notices that he is watching Malfoy closely.

Vincent Crabbe has knocked a jug of orange juice all over the Slytherin table, and the resulting hysteria obscures Hermione's vision for a while. As she leaves the Great Hall later, she has one last look at Malfoy, and his smug smile shows he is very happy about something.

~~~~~~

'Malfoy, we need to talk.'

'Oh, do we?'

'Yes. I--er, not here. The Quidditch pitch, after class?'

'Yeah, all right.'

Draco's tone is reluctant, but when he walks down the corridor, leaving Harry far behind, it is with a swagger in his step.

~~~~~~

'So what's all this about, Potter?'

'Zabini.'

'Zabini?' Draco's heart seems to stop. Suddenly, his plan seems to have gone very, very wrong.

'Zabini. I--I don't want you to see him anymore.'

'I--what?' Potential dread vanishes, to be replaced by overwhelming confusion. Later, Draco will wonder why he didn't just tell the truth--that he doesn't know what Harry is talking about, that he was never seeing Blaise in the first place--but presently, his mind works differently. 'I won't,' he says simply. 'I promise.'

Harry beams. 'Thank you.'

And he wraps his arms around Draco and bestows upon him a series of loving, fluttering kisses, before straightening up.

'Why'd you muss up Ron's hair?' he asks eventually, knowing Ron will demand answers of him when he returns to the common room.

Draco shrugs, and swings his broom over his shoulder. 'To mess with his head.'

~~~~~~

'Would you stop smiling like that? It's unnerving.' Pansy snaps her potions book shut and sets it down on the coffee table. She settles back into the couch, eyeing Draco warily. 'I take it Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes did the job, then?'

'I don't know what you're talking about,' says Draco, trying and failing to hide his amusement.

'Yeah, right. What did you get from them?'

She says this very quickly, as if doing so will catch Draco off-guard and cause him to spill his secrets. It has not worked thus far.

'Nothing,' says Draco, and he reaches into his bag and pulls out another piece of parchment with their logo on the top--another order form. 'But I need to get more of it. Can I borrow your owl?'

'Oh, go screw yourself, Draco,' snaps Pansy. She stands up and waltzes out of the common room, leaving him behind. She cannot see his expression as she heads down the stairs to the girls' dormitory, but she knows he's still smirking.

~~~~~~

'Malfoy, do you mind if I sit here?'

Draco looks up from his copy of Advanced Potion-Making. 'You're joking, right?'

Harry is not joking. He swings his schoolbag onto the table and pulls the seat out next to Draco, sitting down. Weasley is on the other side of the classroom at a desk on his own; Malfoy thinks he looks angry about something.

'Did you have a falling out with the Weasel?' he asks Potter now.

'Of course not,' Potter says, and it strikes Draco as a lie. Potter shuffles through his bag and pulls out his own copy of Advanced Potion-Making. For some reason he frowns at it, and then slams it down on the table.

'So.. you just couldn't stand to be away from me, then? That's why you're sitting here?'

Harry shrugs. 'If you like.'

He starts to copy Malfoy's work.

~~~~~~

'Don't you think Harry's been acting strangely?'

'Stranger than usual, you mean? I can't tell anymore.'

Hermione concedes that Ron has a point. 'But still,' she says, 'he's being less... him about everything. Less argumentative. It's almost as if he's... happy, or something. It's a little creepy.'

'Worse things happened at sea,' says Ron, and then he sighs. 'But you're right. I mean, he is acting weird. He only came up to bed at half-past five this morning. And he wasn't wearing trousers.'

Hermione coughs and laughs and almost chokes, not necessarily in that order. And then she frowns. 'Do you think he's maybe... in love?'

'May-be.'

~~~~~~

'Your order's arrived, Draco,' says Pansy in a singsong voice.

He reaches forward to grab it from her, but she's clutching the package tightly in her fist. Her owl--the useless, traitorous owl--is smugly pecking at an owl treat on the table in front of her.

'I wouldn't be so mean as to keep it from you,' says Pansy, 'just as you wouldn't be so mean as to keep secrets from me.' She looks at Draco pointedly. 'Of course, I could always open it myself, or give it straight to a professor, or sell it... but we wouldn't want whatever-it-is to fall into the wrong hands.'

Draco thinks about this for a moment, before resignedly saying, 'Fine.' He lowers his voice. 'It's a love potion, if you must know. I've been slipping it into Potter's pumpkin juice.'

For a long while Pansy just stares at him, searching his face for any hint of irony or cunning or mischief. And then she laughs. Loudly. Hysterically. Seemingly, eternally. Tears roll down her cheeks.

'Would you shut up?' yells Draco eventually.

'I'm sorry,' says Pansy, wiping at her eyes and not looking sorry at all. 'It's just--I don't know which is funnier. That you wanted to make Potter love you in the first place... or that you honestly thought it was going to work!'

'What are you talking about?'

'Love potions, Draco. Everyone knows they're just placebos. The Weasels won't sell real ones anymore, not after what happened with Scrimgeour.'

Draco does not stay to hear what happened with Scrimgeour. He leaps out of his chair and heads straight out of the dungeons and towards Gryffindor Tower.

~~~~~~

'Let me in! I need to speak to Potter immediately!'

'I'm afraid I can't do that,' says a mousy-haired first year, who is quivering from head to foot. 'Slytherins aren't allowed in our common room, you see.' She looks as if she has rehearsed this line many times before in preparation for this one big moment. Draco can see she is not going to change her mind.

'It's important,' he presses, but she shakes her head. 'Can you give him a message for me?'

The girl tilts her head to the side and then nods.

'Ask him if... Ask him if he's been feeling strange lately. As if he's maybe taken a potion he shouldn't have.'

'What sort of potion?'

Draco narrows his eyes. 'Er, a love potion. Let's say,' he adds.

The girl whips around. 'Potter!' she yells through the common room. 'Draco Malfoy wants to know if you're feeling any effects of that love potion he slipped into your drink the other day at breakfast!'

She turns back to Draco, who looks horrified.

'You should work on your Occlumency,' she says. 'And the Weasleys' love potions? A placebo. Total waste of money.'

~~~~~~

It does not take long for Harry to go from happy to very fucking angry indeed.

'Well of course I was fucking jealous!' Harry yells loudly. 'How the fuck would you like it, Zabini coming up and telling you just how close me and him have been getting -'

'But you two have been! I heard it! I was there at the Pink Flamingo!'

'But that was only because he said you were shagging him first... I don't know, I was angry, I wasn't thinking...'

'I'll kill him. I'll fucking kill him.'

Harry rubs his forehead. 'This is really fucked up. I mean--a love potion?'

'Why not a love potion? Malfoys get what they want.'

'By force.' Harry takes a deep breath, and looks as if he's about to say something, but doesn't.

Malfoy frowns as something else occurs to him. 'Those bastards ripped me off! Faulty goods! I paid good money for that potion....'

Harry shakes his head. 'This is really, really fucked up.' He breathes deeply again, but this time finds the words to continue. 'I think we need to talk. I mean, actually talk. About things,' he clarifies.

The heavy feeling in Draco's stomach feels remarkably like dread. 'Or we could just laugh it off and forget about it....'

'No.' Harry has that scary, determined look about him, which Draco knows from experience means that the topic is not open for discussion. 'We need some ground rules. We need to know where we stand.'

'Fine. Number one: plenty of shagging.'

Harry smirks as his eyes wander over Draco appraisingly. 'I think I can agree to that. Number two: no fucking love potions, or any potions, for that matter. Just don't poison me, all right? Or my friends.'

Draco considers this for a moment. 'I suppose that's fair. Number three: do something about your mood swings. You're all over the place.'

'Like hell I am! I'm not changing for you. And anyway--no potions, remember?' He jabs Draco in the chest as he says this.

'That hurts!' Draco pouts. 'Do it again.'

Harry's hand travels down and comes to rest on Draco's hip, which he squeezes. 'Oh, you'll get it, all right.'

It is a conversation stopper: there does not seem need for small talk after that. Soon hands and lips and tongues say more than words ever could. It is only later, after the grappling and the biting and the heavy breathing and the groaning and the 'more!' and the whispers of love and affection and delirium and the grunts and the mess--it is only after all that, doused in sweat and tangled together in tired post-coital bliss, that Harry rolls over onto his side, nuzzles his nose into Draco's neck and says,

'We never came up with a number three.'

Draco trails a lazy finger down Harry's side and shuts his eyes momentarily. 'Number three,' he says, 'is no one else. No more Blaise fucking Zabinis, or fucking Blaise Zabinis. Only me.'

'Only you.' Harry purrs contentedly. He lifts his head so that his lips brush against Draco's ear. 'Malfoy--I promise to moan only your name.'

{About the Eros Affair • Fics by Scenario • Fics by Author • Project Notes}



	Title: Just a Placebo Author: franthephoenix Rating: R. Canon: Non-HBP compliant. Length: 2,600 words. Scenario: Harry to Draco: I promise to moan only your name. Summary: Harry�s not pulling his weight, so Draco takes matters into his own hands - and fails spectacularly. Disclaimer: I do not own, nor pretend to own any characters or locations within the HP Universe, they remain the sole property of J. K. Rowling, Warner Bros., Christopher Little Agency and associates. No money is made from this work, it is purely a work of fanfiction. Notes: Thank you to wemyss and margotheangel for the beta. Just a Placebo The Pink Flamingo is heaving. The music thunders in Draco's ears and his blue silk shirt is sticking to his back. With annoying regularity, a neon light sweeps the room and hits him directly in the eyes, temporarily blinding him. Pansy is shouting something unintelligible into his ear and tugging at his sleeve. Her nails scratch at his wrist. He ignores her, scanning the densely packed nightclub for Potter. 'Draco?' shrieks Pansy. 'I'm not wearing pants!' Or at least something like that. The blaring music is a good cover and he shrugs at her, gesturing towards his ears. 'I said I want to dance!' says Pansy more loudly, at the same blasted time that the song ends, and Draco can't pretend he didn't hear what everyone else in a ten foot radius did, all of whom have turned around to stare. He pushes Pansy off him--she lets out a cry as she stumbles over her stilettos, and falls to the floor--and braves his way through the sticky, stinking crowd, looking for Potter. The git is nowhere to be seen, which is more than an annoyance. It had been Potter who had asked Draco to come here in the first place ('Half eleven, don't be late.' He'd zipped up his flies and given Draco's arse a quick squeeze for good measure). And it is midnight now, and the bastard has had the audacity to stand him up. Knocking back his drink, Draco swiftly moves to order another, but pushing through the throngs of club-goers proves more difficult than he'd assumed. A tall blond with dreadlocks repeatedly whips Draco in the face as he tries to navigate around the dance floor. A tottering woman who, from the back, looks like Pansy, clips his toe with her heel as he edges past, and when he reaches the bar queue, wincing in pain, a smallish brunette comes tumbling straight into him, knocking Draco's plastic cup of vodka and lemonade all down the front of his shirt. He swears gratuitously, but nobody hears him. It's too fucking loud. He reaches for his wand, but thinks better of it, and curses only in his mind. Wheeling around, he clenches his fists and elbows his way to the toilets. The sink on the far side is less filthy than the others, and it is at this one that Draco pulls off his shirt to run it under the tap. The noise of gushing water almost cuts off the next words he hears, but not quite. 'Fuck, Zabini. Now.' A ripping sound comes from the locked cubicle behind him. There's a banging noise, and the cubicle door shudders, and someone gasps. In a good way, Draco notes. In a good, familiar way. 'Potter? Is that you?' He's dropped the shirt in the sink now. It's getting soaked. There is no other answer than a sigh, a grunt, and another reverberating shudder of the cubicle door. 'Potter? What the fuck are you doing?' The shirt has clogged the plughole. The sink is nearly overflowing. 'What the--ah--fuck does it sound like, Malfoy?' Two minutes pass, and when the toilet door bangs open the water is trickling onto Draco's shoes, but he doesn't notice. Zabini comes out of the cubicle, zipping his flies. He avoids Draco's stare and heads straight back onto the dance floor. Potter gives Draco the once over before following suit. 'You're getting all wet,' he says, and lets the door creak shut behind him. ~~~~~~ 'What the fuck was that about, Potter?' Draco's got him pinned up against the wall opposite the painting of the pears, by the kitchens. He knew the bastard would be down here; he always skips breakfast. 'What was what?' Harry doesn't even bother to struggle. Malfoy's got one hand on his neck, and the other on his hip. He bucks forward slightly. Brings his right hand up to play with Malfoy's hair. 'Zabini? I mean - Blaise fucking Zabini? What the fuck was that?' Harry snorts. 'Jealous, Malfoy? That's sweet, but I'm hungry now. We'll do this later, all right?' He leans forward and kisses Malfoy softly on the nose, before roughly pushing him away. In two seconds' time he's disappeared into the kitchens. Malfoy stares at the pear picture as it clicks back into place. He has no idea how Potter had managed to open it. Fuming, he stomps his way upstairs back up to the Great Hall. ~~~~~~ 'Pansy, I need to borrow your owl.' 'Use your own, Draco.' 'I can't. I need to use yours.' Draco sets his quill down just as Pansy comes over to his desk to peer at the parchment. He folds it quickly, but to no avail: the logo is on the envelope. 'Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes?' says Pansy disdainfully. 'What are you ordering from them?' 'None of your bloody business,' snaps Draco, and he folds the parchment and stuffs it into the envelope. 'I need your owl.' ~~~~~~ 'Potter, we need to talk.' Draco is standing behind them at the Gryffindor table at breakfast. Harry does not even turn around. 'As if you've got anything to say that I want to hear, Malfoy.' 'Have it your way, then.' Malfoy leans over and ruffles Ron's hair. 'See you around.' 'What did he just do?' says Ron, understandably outraged. 'No, really--he just ruffled my hair!' 'Mmm,' says Harry. Ron glares across the Great Hall, his eyes following Malfoy to his seat. He touches his hair with his hand. 'Did he put something in it?' 'Nope.' 'Well, he's definitely up to something.' 'Oh, so now you've cottoned on?' Harry jabs his fork into a piece of toast. 'I couldn't give a toss about that git anyway,' he says nonchalantly, but Hermione notices that he is watching Malfoy closely. Vincent Crabbe has knocked a jug of orange juice all over the Slytherin table, and the resulting hysteria obscures Hermione's vision for a while. As she leaves the Great Hall later, she has one last look at Malfoy, and his smug smile shows he is very happy about something. ~~~~~~ 'Malfoy, we need to talk.' 'Oh, do we?' 'Yes. I--er, not here. The Quidditch pitch, after class?' 'Yeah, all right.' Draco's tone is reluctant, but when he walks down the corridor, leaving Harry far behind, it is with a swagger in his step. ~~~~~~ 'So what's all this about, Potter?' 'Zabini.' 'Zabini?' Draco's heart seems to stop. Suddenly, his plan seems to have gone very, very wrong. 'Zabini. I--I don't want you to see him anymore.' 'I--what?' Potential dread vanishes, to be replaced by overwhelming confusion. Later, Draco will wonder why he didn't just tell the truth--that he doesn't know what Harry is talking about, that he was never seeing Blaise in the first place--but presently, his mind works differently. 'I won't,' he says simply. 'I promise.' Harry beams. 'Thank you.' And he wraps his arms around Draco and bestows upon him a series of loving, fluttering kisses, before straightening up. 'Why'd you muss up Ron's hair?' he asks eventually, knowing Ron will demand answers of him when he returns to the common room. Draco shrugs, and swings his broom over his shoulder. 'To mess with his head.' ~~~~~~ 'Would you stop smiling like that? It's unnerving.' Pansy snaps her potions book shut and sets it down on the coffee table. She settles back into the couch, eyeing Draco warily. 'I take it Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes did the job, then?' 'I don't know what you're talking about,' says Draco, trying and failing to hide his amusement. 'Yeah, right. What did you get from them?' She says this very quickly, as if doing so will catch Draco off-guard and cause him to spill his secrets. It has not worked thus far. 'Nothing,' says Draco, and he reaches into his bag and pulls out another piece of parchment with their logo on the top--another order form. 'But I need to get more of it. Can I borrow your owl?' 'Oh, go screw yourself, Draco,' snaps Pansy. She stands up and waltzes out of the common room, leaving him behind. She cannot see his expression as she heads down the stairs to the girls' dormitory, but she knows he's still smirking. ~~~~~~ 'Malfoy, do you mind if I sit here?' Draco looks up from his copy of Advanced Potion-Making. 'You're joking, right?' Harry is not joking. He swings his schoolbag onto the table and pulls the seat out next to Draco, sitting down. Weasley is on the other side of the classroom at a desk on his own; Malfoy thinks he looks angry about something. 'Did you have a falling out with the Weasel?' he asks Potter now. 'Of course not,' Potter says, and it strikes Draco as a lie. Potter shuffles through his bag and pulls out his own copy of Advanced Potion-Making. For some reason he frowns at it, and then slams it down on the table. 'So.. you just couldn't stand to be away from me, then? That's why you're sitting here?' Harry shrugs. 'If you like.' He starts to copy Malfoy's work. ~~~~~~ 'Don't you think Harry's been acting strangely?' 'Stranger than usual, you mean? I can't tell anymore.' Hermione concedes that Ron has a point. 'But still,' she says, 'he's being less... him about everything. Less argumentative. It's almost as if he's... happy, or something. It's a little creepy.' 'Worse things happened at sea,' says Ron, and then he sighs. 'But you're right. I mean, he is acting weird. He only came up to bed at half-past five this morning. And he wasn't wearing trousers.' Hermione coughs and laughs and almost chokes, not necessarily in that order. And then she frowns. 'Do you think he's maybe... in love?' 'May-be.' ~~~~~~ 'Your order's arrived, Draco,' says Pansy in a singsong voice. He reaches forward to grab it from her, but she's clutching the package tightly in her fist. Her owl--the useless, traitorous owl--is smugly pecking at an owl treat on the table in front of her. 'I wouldn't be so mean as to keep it from you,' says Pansy, 'just as you wouldn't be so mean as to keep secrets from me.' She looks at Draco pointedly. 'Of course, I could always open it myself, or give it straight to a professor, or sell it... but we wouldn't want whatever-it-is to fall into the wrong hands.' Draco thinks about this for a moment, before resignedly saying, 'Fine.' He lowers his voice. 'It's a love potion, if you must know. I've been slipping it into Potter's pumpkin juice.' For a long while Pansy just stares at him, searching his face for any hint of irony or cunning or mischief. And then she laughs. Loudly. Hysterically. Seemingly, eternally. Tears roll down her cheeks. 'Would you shut up?' yells Draco eventually. 'I'm sorry,' says Pansy, wiping at her eyes and not looking sorry at all. 'It's just--I don't know which is funnier. That you wanted to make Potter love you in the first place... or that you honestly thought it was going to work!' 'What are you talking about?' 'Love potions, Draco. Everyone knows they're just placebos. The Weasels won't sell real ones anymore, not after what happened with Scrimgeour.' Draco does not stay to hear what happened with Scrimgeour. He leaps out of his chair and heads straight out of the dungeons and towards Gryffindor Tower. ~~~~~~ 'Let me in! I need to speak to Potter immediately!' 'I'm afraid I can't do that,' says a mousy-haired first year, who is quivering from head to foot. 'Slytherins aren't allowed in our common room, you see.' She looks as if she has rehearsed this line many times before in preparation for this one big moment. Draco can see she is not going to change her mind. 'It's important,' he presses, but she shakes her head. 'Can you give him a message for me?' The girl tilts her head to the side and then nods. 'Ask him if... Ask him if he's been feeling strange lately. As if he's maybe taken a potion he shouldn't have.' 'What sort of potion?' Draco narrows his eyes. 'Er, a love potion. Let's say,' he adds. The girl whips around. 'Potter!' she yells through the common room. 'Draco Malfoy wants to know if you're feeling any effects of that love potion he slipped into your drink the other day at breakfast!' She turns back to Draco, who looks horrified. 'You should work on your Occlumency,' she says. 'And the Weasleys' love potions? A placebo. Total waste of money.' ~~~~~~ It does not take long for Harry to go from happy to very fucking angry indeed. 'Well of course I was fucking jealous!' Harry yells loudly. 'How the fuck would you like it, Zabini coming up and telling you just how close me and him have been getting -' 'But you two have been! I heard it! I was there at the Pink Flamingo!' 'But that was only because he said you were shagging him first... I don't know, I was angry, I wasn't thinking...' 'I'll kill him. I'll fucking kill him.' Harry rubs his forehead. 'This is really fucked up. I mean--a love potion?' 'Why not a love potion? Malfoys get what they want.' 'By force.' Harry takes a deep breath, and looks as if he's about to say something, but doesn't. Malfoy frowns as something else occurs to him. 'Those bastards ripped me off! Faulty goods! I paid good money for that potion....' Harry shakes his head. 'This is really, really fucked up.' He breathes deeply again, but this time finds the words to continue. 'I think we need to talk. I mean, actually talk. About things,' he clarifies. The heavy feeling in Draco's stomach feels remarkably like dread. 'Or we could just laugh it off and forget about it....' 'No.' Harry has that scary, determined look about him, which Draco knows from experience means that the topic is not open for discussion. 'We need some ground rules. We need to know where we stand.' 'Fine. Number one: plenty of shagging.' Harry smirks as his eyes wander over Draco appraisingly. 'I think I can agree to that. Number two: no fucking love potions, or any potions, for that matter. Just don't poison me, all right? Or my friends.' Draco considers this for a moment. 'I suppose that's fair. Number three: do something about your mood swings. You're all over the place.' 'Like hell I am! I'm not changing for you. And anyway--no potions, remember?' He jabs Draco in the chest as he says this. 'That hurts!' Draco pouts. 'Do it again.' Harry's hand travels down and comes to rest on Draco's hip, which he squeezes. 'Oh, you'll get it, all right.' It is a conversation stopper: there does not seem need for small talk after that. Soon hands and lips and tongues say more than words ever could. It is only later, after the grappling and the biting and the heavy breathing and the groaning and the 'more!' and the whispers of love and affection and delirium and the grunts and the mess--it is only after all that, doused in sweat and tangled together in tired post-coital bliss, that Harry rolls over onto his side, nuzzles his nose into Draco's neck and says, 'We never came up with a number three.' Draco trails a lazy finger down Harry's side and shuts his eyes momentarily. 'Number three,' he says, 'is no one else. No more Blaise fucking Zabinis, or fucking Blaise Zabinis. Only me.' 'Only you.' Harry purrs contentedly. He lifts his head so that his lips brush against Draco's ear. 'Malfoy--I promise to moan only your name.' {About the Eros Affair • Fics by Scenario • Fics by Author • Project Notes}