N/B – this is a just a slightly edited version of the story I posted before.

Disclaimer: "Harry Potter" and all characters and ideas therein are the intellectual property of JK Rowling. This is a work of fanfiction and is not meant for profit in any way.

-s-s-s-s-s-

Draco Malfoy remembered a time long ago – he must have been six or seven – when a wizard who had come to visit with Lucius brought his little daughter along for Draco to play with.

The girl had been just a fair as Draco, and prettier than he was. Her long hair had fallen in ringlets long past her shoulders. As soon as Draco had seen her, standing in the garden with all the adults cooing over her, he had wanted to pull on those ringlets until she cried.

When the grown-ups were in the room, of course, he had been perfectly nice, and offered to show her all his toys. The perfect little gentleman, Narcissa had said, smugly. But when he had the girl alone he had pulled her hair, as he'd wanted, and smeared mud on her dress as well. Then, because she had looked mutinous, he had threatened her by saying that his father could get her father killed, if she said anything. She had run back to her parents, whimpering but too afraid to tell them why.

She was, you might say, his first victim.

Now, Draco Malfoy didn't believe in karma, as such. He believed in arithmancy and potion-mastery, and in divination and dark wizardry and in almost any other magical thing you might think up, because Draco Malfoy was after all a wizard, and he knew what was what when it came to that sort of thing. Karma, as it happened, was absolute bunk. Any 2-bit charm-maker or wand-mender could have told you so.

If Draco Malfoy had believed in karma, though… and not to say that he did, because he certainly didn't, but if he had… he might have wondered if teasing that little girl so many years ago – and teasing all those other people he had, between then and now, so many first years that their pinched little faces blended together, unidentifiable– might somehow have been responsible for the cosmic backlash that had, somehow, unexplicably, landed him in his current position.

And what was his current position, exactly?

Well.

Draco Malfoy was, at that precise moment, lying on his back, naked to the waist. He was trying not to shiver as nervous, sweaty hands ran down along his spin – they had stayed nice and high near his shoulders at first, but slowly, surely, were gaining confidence and inching their way downward.

What had been that little girl's name, anyway? He asked himself. He wondered if it was too late to dig up her name, to go back and apologize. Surely then karma would disapparate and leave him alone.

He heard Potter's voice – as if from a great distance – and the voice was suddenly like a rope that pulled him back to reality with force as he realized what the annoying git was trying to say.

"Malfoy… Oh, Gods, Malfoy… I want to be inside of you…"

Malfoy froze, and his sudden tenseness was apparent enough that even Harry Potter, the Oblivious Boy Wonder, noticed that something was wrong. The sweaty hands paused in their exploration of the skin under Draco's waistband, and then, as Harry Potter sighed, drew away all together.

Thank goodness, Draco Malfoy thought, as it became apparent that Potter's libido had been stopped in its tracks. Thank Voldemort, or the Goddess of the Earth, or the King of the Druids, or whoever, really, as long as I don't have to do this right now.

He had defected, gone over to the side of the light, six months ago.

It had been more or less a matter of necessity. He didn't, obviously, want to take the dark mark, but even more importantly, his mother didn't want to take it either – and they had both reached the point where they were at serious risk of getting dragged into the dungeons at any moment if they didn't, as Lucius put it, "Get with the program."

Harry Potter and his friends might be a bunch of pansy-assed, obnoxious, annoying, do-gooding know-it-all freaks, but at least they wouldn't force Draco or Narcissa to do anything really horrible – anything that they really, really didn't want to do.

Or so Draco had thought.

Naturally, getting asylum hadn't been easy. The Order of the Phoenix wasn't about to be trusting when the son and wife of the right-hand man to the Dark Lord showed up on the doorstep of 12 Grimmauld Place and claimed to be on the run. Draco had stolen all the plans for upcoming Death-Eater attacks that he could find in his father's desk, and a Horcrux that Malfoy senior had been hiding for The Dark Lord. Just to be on the safe side, he had emptied out the contents of their small home safe as well - a tidy sum at a time when he had known that the Order was particularly strapped for cash.

Even with all that, being accepted by the Order at all had in the end been a very near thing. He had had to take Veritaserum, and they still weren't totally convinced. Potter's sudden, unexpected plea on their behalf had been the only thing that really saved them.

Knowing that he and Narcissa were always only one misstep away from being shackled, with their wands broken (or, worse, thrown out onto the streets, with nothing between them and his father) Draco tried to be helpful – to ingratiate himself with the Order. He put a hex on himself so that he could be sure not to mutter the word 'mudblood' accidentally. He was perfectly mannerly to even the most bizarre Order members – even the werewolf, for God's sake! Knowing that his mother would definitely be useless, he volunteered for every degrading or dangerous job the Order felt safe to give him – he even preferred the dangerous ones, because he imagined that, should he die, the stupid Gryffindorish Order would probably protect Narcissa out of guilt.

But even the most charming Malfoy can't change his spots. Draco saw the way the members looked at him when they thought he wasn't paying attention – and sometimes when they knew he was. He saw the sneers, the suspicion, the fear. He became used to conversations that would stop abruptly when he stepped into the room. He knew that he was always on very thin ice.

And Potter was his only champion.

How this had come to be, he had no idea. From the boy's unexpected assistance in helping Draco to enter the protection of the Order, to a bit of conversation here and there – one day all of a sudden Potter seemed to be everywhere. He showed up in the kitchen as Draco ate breakfast, even though Draco was a notoriously late sleeper and Potter always rose early. He sat in the library, in the afternoons when Draco liked to read. He continued to speak up for him, over and over again, anytime some member or other began to question Draco's loyalties.

Draco was the ultimate Slytherin, so he didn't much like having his safety, and his mother's, resting on the words of just one Order member, no matter how powerful. He strove to get in good with some of the others, but was always rebuffed.

Harry it was, then.

So it was with a peculiar sense of horror that, as Draco was eating breakfast one morning, and Potter chattered, nuisance-like, at his side he heard a pause in the boy's conversation - Potter had just said something like, "I don't really know, Draco, what do you think?" – and felt a grimy, teenaged hand lightly run over his arm.

He pretended not to have noticed. He pretended not to notice again, a few days later, when Potter's hand grabbed his, just for a moment, as they were walking down the Diagon Alley together on an errand. He pretended not to notice a third time (but this was a little harder) when, during a study session with Ron and Hermione (though Hogwarts had been closed because of the war, they were required to keep up with their studies) and Harry sat so close to him that their legs were brushing together, the entire time.

Draco might not yet have had years of experience behind him, but he was still, (he considered) fairly wise in the ways of the world. He had slept with a couple of boys as well as a couple of girls back in Hogwarts, and so he knew what all the attention Potter was paying to him, and now Potter's little touches, probably meant.

The stupid hero boy had a crush on him.

It was an absolute disaster. All at once, he knew why Potter had been so vehemently protecting Draco and Narcissa. A crush was the worst, most fickle reason. Potter might like him now, for teenaged crushes could go from hot to cold in a minute. And Potter had hated him before.

When Potter went cold, then Draco Malfoy would definitely be in trouble with the Order of the Phoenix.

He was a Slytherin, so he began to scheme (Scheme, Slytherin, scheme!). All he could do was try to think up some plan, to deal with the storm before it came.

He hoped at first that Potter might be one of those very sexually repressed do-gooder types. Not even quite aware of his own deviant tendencies. If that was the case, then careful avoidance of the issue seemed a reasonable course of action. Draco didn't allow himself to shy away from Potter's touches, but he acted oblivious to them. As if a hand on his knee was normal between blokes. He managed to keep that going for almost a month, and was beginning to become complacent – thinking that he'd managed to handle Potter after all – when their relationship escalated suddenly.

It had been because of that horrible – almost impossible to remember, it was so humiliating – incident in the pub, when Harry had forced Draco to come out with him and then gotten completely smashed and then, as they had stumbled back towards headquarters, finally gotten up his courage and sort of kissed Draco, squash against the nose, and moaned that he liked him and had done for ages and please, please won't you say something, Draco?

The really humiliating part, though, wasn't so much Harry's behavior as his own – that he had ruffled Harry's hair, and rubbed his back while he got sick against a fence post, and told him, (almost affectionately, in such a voice that it sounded almost like an acceptance) that he was such a stupid git.

In the morning, Draco had tried to pretend that nothing at all had happened. He went down to breakfast as usual and saw Potter nursing a gigantic cup of coffee and said, "That was something, huh? Last thing I can remember is the Irish Car Bombs…"

It might not have been the slickest play he had ever tried, because Harry had given him a sharp, appraising look just then, and his brilliant green eyes had narrowed as if he had tested the truth of Draco's words and found them wanting.

Sure enough, he had cornered Draco in a hallway not an hour later. It had been the most aggressive that Draco had seen Harry to date. He had pushed Draco into the wall and rubbed against him, just roughly enough that Draco became – he was a seventeen year old boy, after all – slightly aroused.

"I think you do remember what I said last night, Draco. I meant it. Think about it and give me your answer, ok?"

And then he had snogged Draco, quick and again a little rough, and disappeared down the stairs before Draco could pull himself together enough to think about what would probably be the most propitious way to reply.

After a little consideration it had seemed, however, as though it would be extremely unwise to refuse Harry's offer.

And so they started going out.

Everyone was furious, except the weasel and the mudblood, who were strangely welcoming. It seemed that they had been aware of Harry's interest in him for a while, and were only worried that Harry was going to get hurt.

The other order members became even more suspicious of him. There was talk that Draco might be trying to manipulate Harry. Several times Draco heard Harry yelling from behind closed doors, things like, "No, I asked him out, ok?"

Narcissa, who spent her days sitting alone in an elegant, lonely room, allowing the psychopathic house-elf to dote on her, took the news rather better. (Draco felt it was only right to warn her about, in case the house-elf gossiped) She simply looked at him, and did not say anything. They understood each other very well. Draco would never tell her his real reasons for entering into the relationship, lest she betray him (not that he didn't trust her, but she never had been good with secrets) and Narcissa knew this and therefore didn't bother to ask.

It turned out that Harry Potter was terribly awkward when it came to relationships. He'd had two: both abortive, it seemed, one with the Ravenclaw seeker a couple of years ago and with the Weaselette, which had gone to fruition but only, from the little Harry told him about it, helped Harry to confirm that he was, indeed, a homosexual. Harry asked Draco about his sex life and Draco cut his more significant list of conquests down to just one, saying that he and Pansy Parkinson had had a thing back in school but that they'd never gotten farther than a lot of heavy petting.

To lie and claim he was a virgin was (obviously) a calculated move on Draco's part: he had figured it would slow Potter down a bit. Give them a lot of time to 'move slow' and 'see how they felt about each other'. Harry was fit, and under other circumstances Draco might have been up for it, but… for reasons he couldn't quite explain, the very thought filled him with dread. He tried out a number of explanations for this, and repeated each to himself, testing their fit. Maybe he was feeling some guilt about lying to Potter over the whole thing… no, he decided. Impossible. Maybe it was because sex would bring the relationship to a whole deeper level, making it that much harder to end neatly.

Unfortunately though, the virgin lie had the reverse of intended effect, because Harry suddenly thought that he had more experience than Draco and therefore was the natural one to take the lead in their relationship. Draco found himself being kissed more and more deeply (Harry wasn't much good with his tongue when they started, but seemed to be learning quickly) and being felt up more and more often. He struggled with how much to kiss back – he was hoping that Harry would get bored and want to break up with him at some point, so he didn't want to be too good. On the other hand, if he didn't do anything, he might seem insultingly uninterested.

Sometimes he got a little too into it in spite of himself. He made Harry moan, and that experience morphed into their first exploration into hand jobs.

Hand jobs turned into blowjobs. Harry gave the first couple, then he half-cajoled, half-bullied Draco into returning the favor. Draco found that he rather liked being bullied. Then he reminded himself that his goal was just to be a good enough boyfriend to Potter than their relationship would end on safe terms, so that Potter would continue to protect him or at least he'd be on ok terms with the order in the meanwhile.

All in all he was pretty successful in avoiding sex. It was a whole three months before Harry first made the suggestion to Draco that they might try 'everything'.

Draco replied by saying that lots of gay men mostly just liked frottage. Harry had wrinkled his brow and looked doubtful, but left it at that.

Draco told himself that he was just being ridiculous. Of course they were going to have to have sex. That was what good boyfriends did – it was requisite.

But the dread wouldn't leave him, and, too his horror, he kept freezing up. Whenever that happened, Harry knew that something was wrong, and then Harry would stop.

It was, not surprisingly, putting a bit of a strain on their relationship. Draco worried that Harry would hate him and would break up with him and then he and his mother would get kicked out of the Order all because he couldn't bring himself to sleep with just one more bloke.

He couldn't figure out what the problem was.

He had slept with (just for the sake of an example) Blaise Zambini.

He hadn't even really liked Blaise Zambini much. Draco had always seen him as a little bit of a threat. Sex with Blaise had turned into a game of one-upmanship, and at the end of it Draco had been pissed off and extremely sore. Harry Potter was an annoying self-righteous pain in the ass, but Draco was still fairly certain that he liked him more than he had liked Blaise.

Still. Soon, every time Potter tried to stick a hand down his trousers Draco's entire body would instantly become as stiff as a board, as the one part of Harry that had usually been stiff up to that point wilted, at the same moment, like a cut flower in a dry vase.

It was getting ridiculous, and frankly it was pathetic, and Draco decided that, if his own traitorous body refused to behave as he asked of it, he would just have to resort to more drastic measures to get it to behave.

That was why he decided one evening to sedate himself, to see if that would help things along a bit. But he overdid the dosages and ending up falling asleep halfway through foreplay. He only woke up again after eighteen hours, tucked into Potter's bed with an absolutely rotten, splitting hangover.

"I checked your eyes," Potter said, helpfully. "They were totally dilated. Gods, Malfoy, were you on drugs?"

Malfoy's mind spun frantically, trying to decide what to say. He couldn't let Potter think he was on drugs. But he absolutely couldn't tell him the truth, either.

Potter looked at him suspiciously. "I was sort of joking," he said.

Malfoy sighed. "I may have taken something. I thought it would help me… uh… relax." The last word was almost a whisper. Malfoy heard the stupid sentence echoing in his head, over and over. Gods, he sounded like such a stupid Hufflepuff! That was so not a Malfoy thing to say!"

"Oh, Draco…" Harry's voice sounded unsteady. "You didn't have to do that…"

Malfoy's eyes, which had been closed in horror, flew open again.

"Yes I did! You idiot! If I don't relax, we're never going to have sex," he hissed. "And if we don't have sex, you're going to break up with me, and if you break up with me… I'll…" he realized, with horror, that he was speaking out loud, and he shut his mouth, tightly.

"If I break up with you…" Harry said, gently. "If I'll break up with you, then what?"

Draco felt tears welling up behind his eyes. Furiously he blinked. This could not be happening. He hadn't cried since he was three. This absolutely positively could definitely not be happening and therefore this was probably all part of some completely dotty, drugged-out dream he was having.

"If you break up with me," He said, bringing himself back under control with incredible effort, "If you break up with me, you will no longer protect me from those in the Order who wish me to leave. And my mother and I will be forced to leave. And we have," he said, drawing the words out against his well, hating himself for it, "absolutely nowhere else to go."

He sneered, to make the insult more effective.

Potter stared at him.

He stared at Draco for so long that the blonde reached his hand out, hesitantly, and tapped Potter's cheek.

"Are you there, Potty?" he asked. He sounded like himself for the first time since he had come into the order, he thought. Hurtful. "Potty, are you all right?"

Potter shook his head, like a dog coming in from the rain. His shaggy hair flew every which way and then he stopped.

"No," he said, simply.

"What?" Draco sneered.

"No. That's not true."

"It is," Draco said. "I guarantee it."

"No," Potter said, sounding breathless and elated, all at once, as if he'd made some sort of great discovery. "It's not, because, if that was true, you'd never admit it to me, would you?"

"I just did."

"No. That's some kind of story, a lie you told yourself." Potter bent down, and looked up at Draco's face. His green eyes were as bright as stars. "I know you, Draco. You're totally in love with me. You can't admit to yourself that you might really want this."

Draco didn't answer. If Potter refused to believe everything he had just said. What was the point in arguing?

As he sat, trying to decide how to respond, somehow Potter reached across the bed and embraced him.

His arms were firm, and warm, but when Harry pulled Draco to his chest he suddenly felt Harry's heart beating very, very fast. And he knew Potter wasn't as confident as he appeared. But he had taken the risk.

He hated that Potter was so brave, and that he was so weak. He was so weak that he hadn't even been able to say it, couldn't even admit it to himself.

He probably loved Harry Potter.

"I probably love you," he said, stiffly.

Harry Potter laughed, and kissed his forehead.

"There now. That wasn't so bad, was it?" He kissed Draco again. "I probably love you too."

The End.