Title: Lessons Returned

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

Pairings: Harry/Draco preslash

Rating: R

Warnings: Hogwarts "eighth year" fic, profanity, innuendo, UST.

Wordcount: 2700

Summary: Harry returns the "favor" Malfoy shared with him.

Author's Notes: So it appears that this is becoming a series of fics after all. Thanks to the people who asked for a sequel to "Kinesthetic Learners"; here it is.

Lessons Returned

Draco had been looking about for Potter since the day of the Quidditch game. He had wanted to see the expression on his face when he glanced at Draco and then away. He had wanted to watch the curl of his lips and the flutter of his eyelids.

He would look down, at first. His cheeks would be bright with embarrassment and confusion. He would probably whirl away with a toss of his head, as much to say that no one could cheat him like that and get away with it.

And Draco knew that it would sting like a betrayal, at first. He was prepared for Potter to have a hard time coming back to him.

But he would.

No one could stay away from Draco forever, at least no one who had felt the touch of the flame that Draco carried with him. He didn't know where it came from, that flame. He only knew that sometimes he looked at someone, and the moment and the intuition and the person came together, and he knew how to talk to them, how to touch them, how to get exactly what he wanted from them.

How to make them his.

He hadn't used that gift often since he discovered it; there honestly weren't that many people he wanted to sleep with, and fewer he wanted hanging all over him the way they might if he exercised that power of attraction too often. But he wanted Potter.

Or he might want Potter. He hadn't known for sure that he did before that moment in the sky, shared between them on their brooms, only that he had been jealous of the She-Weasel and grateful when she and Potter broke up. But he had always been jealous of anyone or anything that claimed Potter's attention, down to the broom he rode. This might have been another manifestation of that jealousy rather than a new thing.

Draco knew he had held Potter trembling on the ends of his fingers, as truly as he would if they were inside Potter. Only the need to reach for the Snitch and win the game for once had made him ruin the moment.

Now Potter would come to him, because he had to.

Instead, Draco barely saw at him all at meals or in the corridors, and Potter presented him mostly with the back of his head in Potions and Defense, the only classes that Draco felt confident enough about to spend time staring at Potter instead of the professor in. Draco had begun to wonder if he had actually frightened Potter, sent him spinning away to the end of the fragile thread that stretched between them.

Which had not been his intention.

But Potter would return, because he had to.

Draco hurried down the stairs, panting. He had fallen asleep in the library, and he would be in trouble if he broke curfew. McGonagall, while she remained fair as Headmistress, wasn't likely to pass up such a legitimate chance to get a Slytherin student in trouble.

He turned the corner at the top of the dungeon stairs, praying that this wasn't the day that Peeves was waiting for him there.

Someone else was, instead.

A fine filament grabbed Draco out of the air as he raised his foot over the first step and twisted him to the side. Draco clung grimly to his books with one hand and reached for his wand with the other. Some Gryffindors playing tricks, probably. He would show them what a quick, harsh education under the Carrows could do. Draco normally didn't like thinking about the Carrows and the devastation they had brought to Hogwarts, but he never abandoned anything useful he might have learned.

He cast in front of him, but no one stood revealed from his hasty charm, and no one cried out in pain from the one that followed. Meanwhile, the filament had been joined by others. Draco found himself bound to the wall, his feet dangling a good way from the floor.

He stared in every direction, unable to understand what enemy would tie him up here and still leave him his wand.

Then Potter stepped out of the shadows in the entrance hall and approached him slowly.

Draco stared for another reason now. Potter's face was pale, his glasses glittering—and his eyes glittering beyond them, with a malevolence that Draco had never seen before. Potter stopped a good foot away and studied Draco in silence.

Draco wasn't about to beg to be released. Perhaps it wasn't in quite the way he had envisioned, but what he had to remember was that he had won, here. Potter had yielded and come to him after all.

"What's the matter, Potter?" Draco asked finally, keeping his voice as gentle as the fantasies that Potter must have in his head. "Struck speechless by my beauty?"

"You were a bastard the other day," Potter told him casually, without a flinch or a sign that he had heard Draco other than a small flicker of his eyes. "Don't think I've forgotten that. You touched me in a new way, and then you ruined it by taking the Snitch."

Draco felt a light heat play over his skin. This was another moment of the flame, another moment when he understood exactly what he had to say to get what he wanted. He had no shame in using that skill. He let his eyelids fall until his eyes looked heavy and alight with strange glimmers—or so Blaise and the mirror had told him more than once—and murmured, "I'm a Slytherin. I told you that. Is it really so strange that I would want to win at all costs?"

Which includes you. He wondered if Potter even understood the complex of desires that had drawn him here, at this time of the night, rather than keeping him safe in Gryffindor Tower among his little friends. The night was a Slytherin's time.

"Not strange," Potter said judiciously, rubbing one finger against his palm as he studied Draco. "But disappointing, yes. I would have thought you could understand what meant more, a temporary victory or a permanent one."

Draco blinked, disoriented. Potter couldn't be referring to what Draco thought he was, because that would mean Potter understood the game far better than any Gryffindor had a right to.

"Of course it's a permanent victory," he said. "My teammates are going to remember it. And I wager that yours will, too, since you lost the last game against Slytherin House you ever had the chance to play." There. That little dart would sting and awaken Potter to a proper sense of what he should say and do.

All it did, it seemed, was twist Potter's mouth to the side. "And next year we'll leave Hogwarts," he said calmly. "In twenty years, if this is the story you're still telling by your fireside, you'll look pretty bloody pathetic."

Draco knew his control slipped for a moment before he could stop it. Potter laughed at him, faint, ghostly laughter that Draco couldn't count on anyone hearing so they could rescue him. He struggled against the web that bound him, suddenly, hoping to catch Potter off-guard, but the threads were still as strong as the weaving of a very patient spider.

Potter moved closer. Draco snapped his gaze back to him and waited for the Stinging Hex that he was certain would come his way. No matter how clearly Potter understood the issues, he couldn't understand them all, and a hex was the childish means of revenge that he would undoubtedly choose.

But Potter came closer still, and his eyes were bright and dark at once, and his lips were pursed, and he reached out and placed his hand on the wall beside Draco's head. Draco swallowed. The click of his throat made Potter's lips relax into a smile. Draco felt his balls tingle and tighten with the implications of that smile.

"I'm generous," Potter said softly. "I've decided that I'll give you a better memory instead."

He leaned so close to Draco's face that Draco parted his lips in sheer reaction. But Potter didn't kiss him. Instead, he blew gently against Draco's mouth, changing the direction and force of his breath as he moved his head back and forth. Then he flicked his tongue out, close enough that Draco could sense a drop of clinging wetness, but couldn't actually feel it.

Potter paused, studied Draco's expression, and smiled lazily. Then he moved down, blowing across Draco's neck as if he was playing a flute. Draco closed his eyes and turned his head away. At least he could deny Potter the luxury of a reaction to this.

Then the breath came closer and warmer and wetter, and he couldn't help opening his eyes with a gasp. Potter laughed. Even those vibrations made Draco arch pleadingly. It didn't matter that he wanted to kill himself in the next second, or at least disown all of his body beneath the waist. He'd done it.

And Potter would never forget it.

"Why should I let you get off that easily?" Potter murmured, as if in reply to a question, and whistled across Draco's shoulder, pulling back his shirt so that Draco's skin would have to feel his breath. Draco told himself that Potter's breath would be sour. His mouth would be filled with the taste of the horrid treacle tart Draco had seen him eating at dinner. He wouldn't want to smell or taste it anyway.

That didn't keep him from wishing Potter would kiss him, so he could make sure.

Potter trailed his fingers along Draco's ribs, above his clothes, quick eyes missing no movement he made. Draco stared back, enchanted and transfixed. Where had Potter learnt to do something like this?

The obvious answer was the She-Weasel. Draco hated the obvious answer. He tensed the muscles of his thighs so that he wouldn't arch this time, and Potter let his hand linger on Draco's hipbone, brushing with enough force to stir Draco's nerves to tingling life.

"You don't know this," Potter said. "How could you? No one does. But the Sorting Hat considered me for Slytherin."

Draco groaned for the first time. He wasn't responding to Potter's touches as much as he was to Potter's declaration. He was thinking about Gryffindor generosity and bravery matched with the cunning of a Slytherin. Potter would be the hottest thing he'd ever touched, if that was true. And even if it wasn't, Potter had more than his fair measure of cunning, to know how such a lie would turn Draco on.

Potter's hand hovered above his groin and then withdrew. Potter knelt in front of him. Draco stared wildly down at him and tried to avoid counting all the times that he'd pictured Potter like this.

Potter smiled up at him. His hair was tousled, falling over his heavy-lidded green eyes. Bedroom eyes, Draco thought, but he had never realized that Potter knew how to use them that way. Or was Draco the one who had taught him? Draco would gladly claim credit for that, as long as Potter untied him and let Draco teach him even more.

"I never would have thought of this, if not for you." Perhaps that was a confession. Potter reached out and shaped his fingers as if he would grip the head of Draco's cock, straining against the cloth of his trousers now.

Draco cried out. He managed to cut off most of the sound before it escaped, but it was enough to make him flush.

"You," Potter said, the single word. He dropped his hand and leaned in to breathe over the shape of Draco's trapped erection.

This was not fair. This would never be fair. Draco dropped his head back against the wall and shut his eyes. He could feel sweat trembling to life under his arms, in the interstices of groin and hip, and on the planes of his face. But that was nothing to the boiling heat that surged to life in his cock.

Potter moved his head back and forth, lofting hot, damp breath right and left, up and down and in circles. Draco could feel the tease. He knew enough, from dreams and a few hurried, sloppy experiences with Blaise, what it would be like, and he forgot dignity and thrust his hips imploringly forwards.

Potter leaned back, so that Draco didn't even brush his cheek, and waited patiently for a moment, until Draco slumped back in the filaments and hung there. Potter breathed out again, this time keeping up a steady stream of air, like a singer holding the same high note through the reaches of a ridiculously long song.

Draco jerked and cried and whimpered like an animal in a trap. He tried to say Potter's name, but it seemed to have changed to a thickish lump in the middle of his throat. He could feel sheer want stripping away his defenses, leaving him a panting, huddled form. He was a body without a mind to guide it, only conscious of what would satisfy its lusts, demanding only that.

Then the cloth constricting him was gone.

Draco opened his eyes and looked down to see Potter open his mouth and hold his lips an inch from the head of Draco's dick.

Draco felt the gush of air directly on his skin this time. He felt, or imagined he felt, the ghost of a tongue. Pearly drops of Potter's saliva soared out and clung, trembling, to his cock, like drops of dew.

He choked on his words and banged against the wall, held by the filaments—which Potter must have woven tighter when he wasn't looking—from getting any closer.

Potter winked at him and rose to his feet. He was, Draco noted, having trouble walking. But he never let his gaze waver or his voice rise above a low pitch that stroked through Draco's muscles like fingers.

"You've had a taste of me. I refuse to give you the full meal. That's it. We're done."

Draco stared at him. "You must be mad," he said at last, when he could work enough spit into his throat to speak. "You can't—there has to be more. How can you come that close and back off?"

Potter surged abruptly into his face. He was so close that Draco could feel his eyelashes when he blinked. The warmth beat from his body as if he was breathing with his whole skin now. And he could have reached one hand down and brushed a finger across Draco's cock, and he would have come.

"Because," Potter said, "I have a streak of Slytherin in me. And you took the Snitch. Accio Malfoy's wand."

Draco hung there, staring, while Potter caught his wand, smiled at him, and laid it on the floor, just out of Draco's reach. Then he studied the position of Draco's limbs in the webbing and the way his trousers and pants hung open with a small, happy smile and a nod. Finally, he lifted his own wand and cast a Tempus Charm that made the numbers flicker to life right in front of Draco's eyes.

Two minutes to curfew.

"Oops," Potter said brightly. "Look how late it's getting."

As he galloped away, mocking laughter trailing after him, Draco told himself that the bright tone was too false, too innocent. It contrasted too much with what had gone before. Potter couldn't have pulled all this off for the sake of the trick. The way he knelt at Draco's feet and breathed on him had been real.

But that didn't lessen his embarrassment when Vector came around the corner on her rounds and found him, dangling from the wall, still-hard cock jutting into the air, and wand at his feet as if he had willingly surrendered it.

It also didn't lessen his intention to tug on the thread that bound them both and draw Potter closer to him, into the fire again.

Potter. You can no more walk away from me permanently than I could have surrendered the game to you.

The End.