Not Only In Dreams
By Goddess JacquesPierre
Chapter One
Harry Potter was reminiscing. He had just gotten back from the Halloween Feast and had snuggled into his four-poster with that warm, content feeling of well-being that one gets when one has eaten just enough excellent food to satisfy one's every craving. The meal lay heavy on his stomach, and he had briefly mused how he managed to retain his slender physique despite the heavy, fat-laden meals generally served at Hogwart's. The worry quickly passed as he chalked it up to intense Quidditch training and a young metabolism, and he curled up more comfortably into his pillow and sank back onto his memories. This particular burst of nostalgia had been triggered by the recollection of rescuing Hermione with Ron back in first year, and, having had an adventure-filled life, Harry felt he was entitled to the occasional bout of going back through his various encounters. He vaguely heard Seamus say something-- incomprehensible to him, but it must have been funny because a moment after, he heard Ron and Dean laugh while Neville made noises of incomprehension. Their voices quieted after Harry did not respond-- they must have assumed he was asleep-- but their conversation continued. Harry felt this was for the best; the soft murmur of familiar voices created a blanket of white noise that allowed him to slip even deeper into his fantasy world. He had just gotten to the part where he had been in detention with Hagrid, Hermione, Neville, and Malfoy when he slipped off into sleep, his level of extreme comfort contributing to the effect. He dreamed.
-----
"... Neville, you stay with me an' Hermione, Harry, you go with Fang an' this idiot. I'm sorry," Hagrid added in a whisper to Harry, "but he'll have a harder time frightening you, an' we've gotta get this done."
So Harry set off into the heart of the forest with Malfoy and Fang. They walked for nearly half an hour, deeper and deeper into the forest, until the path become almost impossible to follow because the trees were so thick. There were splashes on the roots of a tree, as though the unicorn had been thrashing around in pain close by. Harry could see a clearing ahead, through the tangled branches of an ancient oak.
"Look--" he murmured, holding out his arm to stop Malfoy.
Something bright white was gleaming on the ground. They inched closer.
It was the unicorn, and it was dead. Harry had never seen anything so beautiful and sad. Its long, slender legs were stuck out at odd angles where it had fallen and its mane was spread pearly-white on the dark leaves. Harry had taken one step towards it when a slithering sound made him freeze where he stood. A bush on the edge of the clearing quivered... Then, out of the shadows, a hooded figure came crawling across the ground like some stalking beast. Harry, Malfoy, and Fang stood transfixed. The cloaked figure reached the unicorn, lowered its head over the wound in the animal's side, and began to drink its blood.
Malfoy screamed and locked his arms around Harry in terror. Harry dreamily felt that something was wrong, that the memory was incorrect, but his thoughts were soon obscured by a blinding pain that eclipsed any instinctive feelings of mismemory. He fell to his knees and was supported by Malfoy's arms around him.
The pain passed after a few minutes. The cloaked figure, he noticed, was gone, but Malfoy was still standing with his arms around him. In fact, the first thing his eyes had seen when they refocused was Malfoy's eyes, peering into his own in-- was that concern he saw?
"Are you okay?" asked Malfoy.
Harry answered shakily. "Yeah, I think I am." He realised he felt grateful. "Thanks for catching me."
"Mmmm..." The sound originated deep in Malfoy's throat and conveyed a distinct sense of approval. It was also unmistakably sexual in nature. Harry entertained the brief notion that an eleven-year-old Malfoy couldn't possibly have voiced any noise of pure innuendo, but then he noticed that it was a sixteen-year-old Malfoy who had neglected to move his arms from around a sixteen-year-old Harry-- the only change the blonde had made was to shift slightly so the warm pressure on Harry's lower back was only reassuring, instead of being the only thing holding Harry upright. Dizzily, Harry concluded that he must be dreaming. A tangled whirlwind of confused thoughts ran through his head, not the least of which was: "I've figured out how to lucid-dream at the worst possible time imaginable!'
Harry soon discovered, however, that his conclusion had been entirely incorrect. As Malfoy's arms drew him closer, he felt himself leaning into the Slytherin comfortably. Clearly, he was not lucid dreaming.
"I'm glad you're all right," Malfoy murmured, so close to Harry that his lips brushed Harry's ear. A thrill coursed through Harry's body, and the part of him that knew he was just dreaming longed to rebel, to run away, to affirm that he was neither gay nor attracted to Malfoy, thank you very much! The portion of his subconscious mind that had set up the dream, however, was apparently not taking suggestions. Instead, Harry found himself speculating about Malfoy's lips-- what it would be like to kiss them, what they would feel like on his bare skin...
He heard a quiet moan and then a throaty chuckle. After a struggle to sort the information through his foggy brain, Harry determined that he had been the source of the former and Malfoy of the latter. He felt a hot feeling begin to pulse at groin height as Malfoy's lips skimmed his ear again. "You want me."
The statement was correct in this dream; Harry barely recognised his voice when he agreed.
"Yes."
"Mmmm." Malfoy made another suggestive noise, and Harry shuddered. It really didn't surprise him; though he had never been at all fond of the Slytherin, it was very easy to imagine Malfoy as seductive as he now appeared. As Harry stood, unable to move, Draco began to expertly maneuver Harry to the ground, gently pressing on the back of Harry's knee and catching him when he fell.
The next thing Harry was aware of, he was on his back on his cloak in the leaves, shirtless. There was a breeze, and the cool are had moved over his chest so his nipples were peaked in the cold. Malfoy leaned over him and started toying with them, the tips of his fingers brushing back and forth. The sensations blurred in Harry's mind-- the only thing he felt was the warmth of Malfoy's body where it touched his, only heard the soft rustle of leaves, only saw the black behind his eyelids...
-----
Harry woke up with a start and an erection. He cursed quietly as the dream came back to him and made a beeline for the shower. Dreaming about Malfoy, indeed. He was certainly glad that was over.
-----
In a different part of the castle, Draco Malfoy woke up feeling satisfied. He'd just had a dream about a completely successful seduction, and though he was sure he had never experienced anything that wasn't a success, he still felt the inner glow of pride that went along with an achievement.
Then the details started trickling back. The first of these was the location-- Malfoy couldn't imagine what he would ever be doing with a woman in the Forbidden Forest.
After a few minutes, the pleasant feeling had completely subsided to be replaced by disgust. He had had a graphic dream about seducing Harry Potter? Either something was horribly wrong with his subconscious mind or some acquaintance had played a nasty trick on him. He couldn't think of who it could be, though. Goyle was a boor with the intelligence of the average nonenchanted pogo stick, the difference being that the pogo stick couldn't trip over its own feet based on sheer mathematics. Crabbe was better-- one of those idiot savant thingies, he was a brilliant cook with no interest in magic except where it could help him in his own particular area of interest. Malfoy couldn't see for the life of him why he attended Hogwart's, but suspected it had something to do with a quantity of not-so-subtle encouragement from his parents. One did not ask such questions in Slytherin. The only other boy in the dorm was Blaise Zabini, who could have both come up with the scheme and pulled it off, but Malfoy knew for a fact that such a thing would offend Blaise's aesthetic sensibilities. If Zabini had engineered a nightmare, it would have been far more symbolic in nature, rather than... this, which was just disturbing.
Outside of his dorm, Slytherin girls were alternatively obsessed with physical appearance and the rumor mill. They were useful in a limited capacity, as a source of gossip or as potential trophy brides for those wizarding families with the proper credentials. None of them would ever dream of anything like that, however, pardon the expression.
That left three houses full of potential magic users, and Malfoy eliminated Hufflepuff and most of Gryffindor right away. Hufflepuffs were a bunch of rejected losers that no one wanted to teach; the Sorting Hat had said so itself. Gryffindor... none of Harry's friends would ever think of a dream that featured their Golden Boy as a pouf, but if Harry were actually gay and lusting after him...
That did not bear thinking on. No, he would address that possibility only after he had investigated Ravenclaw, who he had to admit to himself were an enigma to him. They were intelligent, as a whole, enough to avoid getting picked on by the Slytherins, so the Slytherins tended to ignore them except for a few notable exceptions-- for example, Looney Lovegood, who was so batty that she deserved what she got from the Slytherins, or the entire Quidditch team, which was nowhere near as good as Gryffindor but had to be watched nonetheless.
He resolved to watch them.
-----
Harry was walking to Defense Against the Dark Arts with Ron. He was desperately tired but refused to admit it; he hadn't gotten back to sleep after dreaming... never mind what he had been dreaming. He shook his head to clear it. No, there was no way he'd been dreaming about Draco Malfoy like that.
He settled in and tried to concentrate on the lesson; they'd finally got another good teacher and it looked like this one'd be able to stick around a while. Professor Tofty had decided to retire from grading O.W.Ls and had settled in to teach at Hogwart's.
"Today," the lesson began, "We are going to learn Defense against spells that interfere with your dreams. The simplest of these is a hex that publicly animates your last dream-- not the most dangerous of spells, nor one you are likely to encounter, but the others are very tricky and this is an excellent starting point. Please divide up into partner pairs, and follow the instructions I have written on the chalkboard. The incantations are very simple--"
But he was cut off at that point; Neville had cast the wrong incantation at his partner and missed. Harry felt an icy sensation in his chest, a sharp pain, and then a small image of the Forbidden Forest materialised on Professor Tofty's desk. Ron peered at it for a moment, then recoiled in shock. He glanced over at Harry, who was sliding under the table, beet-red, and trying to pretend he didn't exist.
Silence descended over the classroom as person by person figured out what was happening in the little dream, in Harry's dream.
Ron broke the silence. "You've got to be kidding me."
Harry didn't say anything.
Slowly, comprehension dawned on Ron's face. The class was soon filled with teenage murmurs regarding the contents of Harry's dream...
"MALFOY?" Ron screeched.
To Be Continued...
By Goddess JacquesPierre
Chapter One
Harry Potter was reminiscing. He had just gotten back from the Halloween Feast and had snuggled into his four-poster with that warm, content feeling of well-being that one gets when one has eaten just enough excellent food to satisfy one's every craving. The meal lay heavy on his stomach, and he had briefly mused how he managed to retain his slender physique despite the heavy, fat-laden meals generally served at Hogwart's. The worry quickly passed as he chalked it up to intense Quidditch training and a young metabolism, and he curled up more comfortably into his pillow and sank back onto his memories. This particular burst of nostalgia had been triggered by the recollection of rescuing Hermione with Ron back in first year, and, having had an adventure-filled life, Harry felt he was entitled to the occasional bout of going back through his various encounters. He vaguely heard Seamus say something-- incomprehensible to him, but it must have been funny because a moment after, he heard Ron and Dean laugh while Neville made noises of incomprehension. Their voices quieted after Harry did not respond-- they must have assumed he was asleep-- but their conversation continued. Harry felt this was for the best; the soft murmur of familiar voices created a blanket of white noise that allowed him to slip even deeper into his fantasy world. He had just gotten to the part where he had been in detention with Hagrid, Hermione, Neville, and Malfoy when he slipped off into sleep, his level of extreme comfort contributing to the effect. He dreamed.
-----
"... Neville, you stay with me an' Hermione, Harry, you go with Fang an' this idiot. I'm sorry," Hagrid added in a whisper to Harry, "but he'll have a harder time frightening you, an' we've gotta get this done."
So Harry set off into the heart of the forest with Malfoy and Fang. They walked for nearly half an hour, deeper and deeper into the forest, until the path become almost impossible to follow because the trees were so thick. There were splashes on the roots of a tree, as though the unicorn had been thrashing around in pain close by. Harry could see a clearing ahead, through the tangled branches of an ancient oak.
"Look--" he murmured, holding out his arm to stop Malfoy.
Something bright white was gleaming on the ground. They inched closer.
It was the unicorn, and it was dead. Harry had never seen anything so beautiful and sad. Its long, slender legs were stuck out at odd angles where it had fallen and its mane was spread pearly-white on the dark leaves. Harry had taken one step towards it when a slithering sound made him freeze where he stood. A bush on the edge of the clearing quivered... Then, out of the shadows, a hooded figure came crawling across the ground like some stalking beast. Harry, Malfoy, and Fang stood transfixed. The cloaked figure reached the unicorn, lowered its head over the wound in the animal's side, and began to drink its blood.
Malfoy screamed and locked his arms around Harry in terror. Harry dreamily felt that something was wrong, that the memory was incorrect, but his thoughts were soon obscured by a blinding pain that eclipsed any instinctive feelings of mismemory. He fell to his knees and was supported by Malfoy's arms around him.
The pain passed after a few minutes. The cloaked figure, he noticed, was gone, but Malfoy was still standing with his arms around him. In fact, the first thing his eyes had seen when they refocused was Malfoy's eyes, peering into his own in-- was that concern he saw?
"Are you okay?" asked Malfoy.
Harry answered shakily. "Yeah, I think I am." He realised he felt grateful. "Thanks for catching me."
"Mmmm..." The sound originated deep in Malfoy's throat and conveyed a distinct sense of approval. It was also unmistakably sexual in nature. Harry entertained the brief notion that an eleven-year-old Malfoy couldn't possibly have voiced any noise of pure innuendo, but then he noticed that it was a sixteen-year-old Malfoy who had neglected to move his arms from around a sixteen-year-old Harry-- the only change the blonde had made was to shift slightly so the warm pressure on Harry's lower back was only reassuring, instead of being the only thing holding Harry upright. Dizzily, Harry concluded that he must be dreaming. A tangled whirlwind of confused thoughts ran through his head, not the least of which was: "I've figured out how to lucid-dream at the worst possible time imaginable!'
Harry soon discovered, however, that his conclusion had been entirely incorrect. As Malfoy's arms drew him closer, he felt himself leaning into the Slytherin comfortably. Clearly, he was not lucid dreaming.
"I'm glad you're all right," Malfoy murmured, so close to Harry that his lips brushed Harry's ear. A thrill coursed through Harry's body, and the part of him that knew he was just dreaming longed to rebel, to run away, to affirm that he was neither gay nor attracted to Malfoy, thank you very much! The portion of his subconscious mind that had set up the dream, however, was apparently not taking suggestions. Instead, Harry found himself speculating about Malfoy's lips-- what it would be like to kiss them, what they would feel like on his bare skin...
He heard a quiet moan and then a throaty chuckle. After a struggle to sort the information through his foggy brain, Harry determined that he had been the source of the former and Malfoy of the latter. He felt a hot feeling begin to pulse at groin height as Malfoy's lips skimmed his ear again. "You want me."
The statement was correct in this dream; Harry barely recognised his voice when he agreed.
"Yes."
"Mmmm." Malfoy made another suggestive noise, and Harry shuddered. It really didn't surprise him; though he had never been at all fond of the Slytherin, it was very easy to imagine Malfoy as seductive as he now appeared. As Harry stood, unable to move, Draco began to expertly maneuver Harry to the ground, gently pressing on the back of Harry's knee and catching him when he fell.
The next thing Harry was aware of, he was on his back on his cloak in the leaves, shirtless. There was a breeze, and the cool are had moved over his chest so his nipples were peaked in the cold. Malfoy leaned over him and started toying with them, the tips of his fingers brushing back and forth. The sensations blurred in Harry's mind-- the only thing he felt was the warmth of Malfoy's body where it touched his, only heard the soft rustle of leaves, only saw the black behind his eyelids...
-----
Harry woke up with a start and an erection. He cursed quietly as the dream came back to him and made a beeline for the shower. Dreaming about Malfoy, indeed. He was certainly glad that was over.
-----
In a different part of the castle, Draco Malfoy woke up feeling satisfied. He'd just had a dream about a completely successful seduction, and though he was sure he had never experienced anything that wasn't a success, he still felt the inner glow of pride that went along with an achievement.
Then the details started trickling back. The first of these was the location-- Malfoy couldn't imagine what he would ever be doing with a woman in the Forbidden Forest.
After a few minutes, the pleasant feeling had completely subsided to be replaced by disgust. He had had a graphic dream about seducing Harry Potter? Either something was horribly wrong with his subconscious mind or some acquaintance had played a nasty trick on him. He couldn't think of who it could be, though. Goyle was a boor with the intelligence of the average nonenchanted pogo stick, the difference being that the pogo stick couldn't trip over its own feet based on sheer mathematics. Crabbe was better-- one of those idiot savant thingies, he was a brilliant cook with no interest in magic except where it could help him in his own particular area of interest. Malfoy couldn't see for the life of him why he attended Hogwart's, but suspected it had something to do with a quantity of not-so-subtle encouragement from his parents. One did not ask such questions in Slytherin. The only other boy in the dorm was Blaise Zabini, who could have both come up with the scheme and pulled it off, but Malfoy knew for a fact that such a thing would offend Blaise's aesthetic sensibilities. If Zabini had engineered a nightmare, it would have been far more symbolic in nature, rather than... this, which was just disturbing.
Outside of his dorm, Slytherin girls were alternatively obsessed with physical appearance and the rumor mill. They were useful in a limited capacity, as a source of gossip or as potential trophy brides for those wizarding families with the proper credentials. None of them would ever dream of anything like that, however, pardon the expression.
That left three houses full of potential magic users, and Malfoy eliminated Hufflepuff and most of Gryffindor right away. Hufflepuffs were a bunch of rejected losers that no one wanted to teach; the Sorting Hat had said so itself. Gryffindor... none of Harry's friends would ever think of a dream that featured their Golden Boy as a pouf, but if Harry were actually gay and lusting after him...
That did not bear thinking on. No, he would address that possibility only after he had investigated Ravenclaw, who he had to admit to himself were an enigma to him. They were intelligent, as a whole, enough to avoid getting picked on by the Slytherins, so the Slytherins tended to ignore them except for a few notable exceptions-- for example, Looney Lovegood, who was so batty that she deserved what she got from the Slytherins, or the entire Quidditch team, which was nowhere near as good as Gryffindor but had to be watched nonetheless.
He resolved to watch them.
-----
Harry was walking to Defense Against the Dark Arts with Ron. He was desperately tired but refused to admit it; he hadn't gotten back to sleep after dreaming... never mind what he had been dreaming. He shook his head to clear it. No, there was no way he'd been dreaming about Draco Malfoy like that.
He settled in and tried to concentrate on the lesson; they'd finally got another good teacher and it looked like this one'd be able to stick around a while. Professor Tofty had decided to retire from grading O.W.Ls and had settled in to teach at Hogwart's.
"Today," the lesson began, "We are going to learn Defense against spells that interfere with your dreams. The simplest of these is a hex that publicly animates your last dream-- not the most dangerous of spells, nor one you are likely to encounter, but the others are very tricky and this is an excellent starting point. Please divide up into partner pairs, and follow the instructions I have written on the chalkboard. The incantations are very simple--"
But he was cut off at that point; Neville had cast the wrong incantation at his partner and missed. Harry felt an icy sensation in his chest, a sharp pain, and then a small image of the Forbidden Forest materialised on Professor Tofty's desk. Ron peered at it for a moment, then recoiled in shock. He glanced over at Harry, who was sliding under the table, beet-red, and trying to pretend he didn't exist.
Silence descended over the classroom as person by person figured out what was happening in the little dream, in Harry's dream.
Ron broke the silence. "You've got to be kidding me."
Harry didn't say anything.
Slowly, comprehension dawned on Ron's face. The class was soon filled with teenage murmurs regarding the contents of Harry's dream...
"MALFOY?" Ron screeched.
To Be Continued...