Title: Pomegranate Seeds

Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

Pairing: Harry/Draco

Warnings: Established relationship, Hogwarts eighth year

Rating: R

Wordcount: 1500

Summary: Harry and Draco are having a fun time deciding what they're going to be after Hogwarts. And making obscure mythological references.

Author's Notes: Another Advent fic, for gracerene, who requested Harry/Draco: end of 8th year, established relationship, making plans and figuring out their future together post Hogwarts. Preferably light-angst, and smut is always nice if it works for the ficlet. It's largely fluff.

Pomegranate Seeds

"They'll never let me into the Aurors." Draco's voice was lazy. His head dangled over the end of Harry's bed, and he had sunlight falling on his face from the open window.

"So that's another one off the list," Harry concluded, and scratched a name from the parchment scroll in front of him.

Draco opened one eye. "No one says you have to do the exact same thing I do. You could be an Auror, and I could do something else."

"No one says it," Harry agreed, stretching out along one elbow and admiring the way Draco's eyelashes looked in the sunlight. "Except me."

Draco's smile softened his face. "That's different, then." He sat up and reached for one piece of fruit on the tray he and Harry had ordered from the house-elves. "What's left?"

"Lots of things." Harry rolled on his back and held up the list above his head, making sure he could see it in the full sunlight. "For example, Hit Wizards. Do you want to be a Hit Wizard?" He looked over at Draco, but Draco was concentrating on the piece of fruit in his hands and didn't answer. "Draco?"

"Oh, yes, whatever you say," Draco responded vaguely.

"Draco." Exasperated, Harry reached out and plucked the fruit from his hands. "What do you think about Hit Wizards?"

"I find it hard to think about things when I'm hungry," Draco whined, and snatched at the fruit.

Harry tossed it to his other hand, but then Draco tackled him, and Harry's hand ended up slamming against the post on the corner of the bed. Harry blinked as he felt juice trickling down his wrist, then laughed and opened his hand. The fruit was now largely pulp and a few lonely-looking seeds floating in the juice.

"You prat." Draco folded his arms. "That was going to be my lunch."

"The house-elves sent plenty of others." Harry rolled around until he was mostly lying on his stomach and handed the list to Draco. He was tired of looking at it. "Here, you read the list and make your decisions and I'll be the one decadently opening fruit for lunch." He reached out and picked up a cluster of grapes.

"But they only sent one pomegranate." Draco ignored the list, which dropped to the middle of the bed between them. He scooped up a sticky cluster of seeds instead and held them out. "Here, do you know about the legend of the pomegranate?"

"There must be several, right?" That's what Draco was always saying when Harry dared to say he knew something about legends or pure-blood culture; there were always multiple meanings and Harry was showing disrespect for the multiple meanings by saying he knew one. Well, Harry didn't feel like arguing today. He lay back and stretched his head out into the sunlight. "Tell me the one you mean."

Something cool and sticky touched the center of his right palm. Harry forced his eyes open. Draco was pressing a mess of seeds down into his hand. Harry followed them with his gaze. They were brilliant red and shone more radiantly than he would have imagined possible.

"Persephone was kidnapped by Hades," Draco whispered to him, bending over to put his ear close to Harry's mouth. Harry didn't mind; he shuddered a little, and let himself be swept away by the tale and the names. "She remained in the underworld for what she thought would only be a short while. Her mother, Demeter, ruled the earth, and she was causing winter because she wanted her daughter back. Hades should have returned Persephone right away.

"But he couldn't."

"Couldn't?" Harry's voice was high and breathless. Even the cool touch of the seeds seemed thrilling and odd. Harry blinked and struggled with his voice. His stomach ached with arousal.

Draco shifted a little as if to remind himself that Harry's cock was there, and smiled in satisfaction. "Yes. Couldn't. Persephone had eaten six pomegranate seeds while she was in the underworld, because she was so hungry. That meant she had to return each year to spend six months with Hades underground. That's autumn and winter. When Persephone comes aboveground to return to her mother, then we have spring and summer."

Draco reached down and picked up a mess of seeds. As Harry watched with dazed eyes, Draco plucked out six, and reached down, and spread them in an intricate pattern over Harry's hand, rearranging them now and then as if he didn't like the pattern he'd formed on accident, until they were in a splayed fan.

"I wonder what would happen," Draco said, his voice soft and lulling, so Harry kept on looking at the seeds for a minute and not at him, "what would happen if I fed you six seeds. Would you stay with me forever, mine, all mine?"

Harry shook his head hard and woke from the trance that had held him motionless in wonder while his palm grew strange from the seeds. Then he surged up and kissed Draco hard. Draco squeaked and dropped the piece of mashed pomegranate. It rolled on the floor, and Harry thought about stepping on it.

But he didn't need it for the point he wanted to make. He rolled on top of Draco and held him down, staring fiercely into his face. "You don't need pomegranate seeds to hold me here," he growled. "I'm yours, and I can even give you six reasons why."

Draco stared at him in such stunned silence that Harry had to smile. But he still reached out and picked up a seed and laid it on Draco's cheek, and then moved it slowly down so there was a trail of juice left. Harry leaned in and licked it off.

"First," he said, "because you approached me in the first place, and offered me an end to the conflict about whether I had to go up to you and what would happen if I did."

Harry put a second seed on Draco's lips, and sucked it off them. Draco gasped and yearned after him, but Harry shook his head and deliberately sucked on the seed itself for a second before he spoke.

"Second, because you gave me that heated look that day in Slughorn's class, and confirmed I wasn't having delusions."

The third and fourth seeds went onto Draco's eyelids. He closed them automatically, but lay there trembling so hard that Harry didn't have the heart to keep him waiting. He flicked the seeds lightly off, and Draco's eyes were open again and gazing at him in awe.

"And third and fourth, because you apologized to Hermione unprompted, and you can get along with Ron."

Harry slid down and worked an arm around Draco's waist, ending with a hand at his groin. Draco arched with a silent parting of his lips as Harry's hand worked him relentlessly. Harry slipped under to touch smooth skin, and palmed a seed off Draco's cock.

"Fifth, because you admitted you did that just for me, and I'd never had someone just for myself before."

Harry worked his wrist and worked it again, and Draco came just like that, grabbing onto his shoulder and swearing with obscene twists of his lips. Harry kissed him, and reached down and slowly slid a seed up the length of Draco and down it again.

"Sixth," he whispered into Draco's ear, "because you're here with me, day after day, braving the press and all the other crazy people who'd like to date me. Because you admitted you did that for me, too. Thank you, Draco. I love you."

Draco lay there and shook some more. Harry smiled. Draco wasn't going to be in any shape to return the favor any time soon. He slid his hand down his own pants and closed his eyes, working his hand the same direction, but thinking of the way Draco looked when he came.

When he had recovered from his own burst of pleasure and lain there dazed beside Draco for a few minutes, Harry reached for his wand to clean them up. Draco rolled towards him and watched him with bright, calm eyes.

"I think we should be Hit Wizards," he said. "The right level of danger for me, and of prestige for you."

Harry laughed. "We could also say that the other way around."

"We could."

Harry picked some grapes from the tray. "That's one decision made, then."

And he leaned forwards and fed the grapes to Draco, delighted in the way that Draco barely opened his mouth enough to get them in, and sucked on Harry's fingers as he pulled them out. Judging by that, Draco would be ready to begin another "conversation" in just a few minutes.

He doesn't need pomegranate seeds to hold me captive.

The End.