𝐃𝐑𝐀𝐑𝐑𝐘 𝐅𝐀𝐍𝐎𝐍 2008

The Spell

Title: The Spell
Team: Fanon
Author: norton_gale
Prompt: The Hanged Man
Wordcount: ~7900
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Dub-con, cross-dressing.
Summary: It was extraordinary to have such power over someone to whom you longed only to submit.- Alan Hollinghurst

~*~

I. First Law of Motion: Inertia

It was six months after the war, and nothing would ever be the same.

Draco Malfoy sat upright, dark school robes bunched around his abdomen, revealing his pale thighs. His hand moved in a furious blur over his crotch; with a closer look, an observer might see the dark pink of his testes sagging below his active hand. But it was his face that Harry noticed. Malfoy's eyelids were lowered to thin slits of grey, his open mouth panted for breath, a faint flush suffused his cheeks. He was about to lose it completely, to throw back his proud head and spurt all over his fist. And then all that shattered with the bright flash, his eyes opening wide as he leapt up in trembling anger, his robes slumping over his naked lap like a curtain falling on a stage.

Harry handed the photograph back to Ron, holding it properly by its edges. "Looks like the Room of Requirement." The walls were always the same blank grey; that he remembered.

"It is!" The unevenness of Ron's wide, gleeful grin made Harry want to suggest a trip to Hermione's dentist parents. "Thank Dennis Creevey. Isn't it brilliant? I'm thinking full-colour posters, all around the school. Charmed to be invisible to anyone over the age of eighteen. What d'you reckon, fantastic, eh?"

"Dennis shouldn't have used a flash," Harry said. "Beginner's mistake; Colin never would have done it. Looks overexposed."

Ron frowned. "Who cares! Serves the bastard right for having the cheek to come back to school after the War. Have you noticed not even the Slytherins talk to him anymore?"

"Yeah," Harry said. "But why'd Dennis do this? It wasn't Malfoy who killed his brother."

"It was Malfoy's side, Harry! Remember what he said to that Death Eater – 'I'm on your side?'"

Harry shrugged. "Water under the bridge."

Ron looked as though he was about to disagree, but instead his eyes widened as they spotted something over Harry's shoulder, "Oh bloody hell, look out!" he hissed. He hastily rolled the photograph, and stuffed as much of it as he could fit into the pocket of his robes.

Harry didn't have to look to guess who it was: the bitterness in Ron's tone said it all. Even before hearing the brisk sound of her short strides as she walked up to them, without seeing the familiar profusion of wild, bushy curls which bounced with every step. Even before Hermione opened her mouth and said, "Ron, what are you trying to hide in your pocket?"

"Er... I'm just happy to see you?" Ron countered weakly. The forced quality of their banter these days unsettled Harry. Hermione had admitted to him in a private moment that it was only wartime desperation that had led her to consider Ron as a boyfriend, once upon a time.

Hermione looked equally uncomfortable. "No doubt you've got some childish trick from George and Fre--" she corrected herself, her cheeks pinkening "-- from George's shop."

"Don't you have a lesson to go to? Or an urgent need to publicly snog your precious Potions prince again? Oh, excuse me. The headmaster. Your headmaster." Ron's voice was ugly and abrupt. He hadn't had a civil conversation with Hermione since the sunny day last spring when she'd succeeded in reviving Snape from near-death using the obscure Bolivian remedy she'd memorised in the hopes of obtaining top marks in Potions. Which she got.