3 - star quality - WEBNOVELS

Chapter 3Chapter TextAs Harry gawped, open mouthed, at the inexplicable sight of Draco Malfoy's face in a Muggle shop window, it struck him that of all the terrible things Malfoy had ever done to him, this one must count as one of the worst: he'd made him drop his chips. Harry looked down at the sad bag, chips spilling out, the paper soaking up water from the flooded pavement, and felt hungrier than he'd ever felt in his life. And as he stared at the wasted food, what had happened seemed to slot into place with a dreadful clarity, the hunger and rain and the enormous irritation combining to cut through the remnants of his hangover and tell him: it's all your own fault.

Last night, he'd got drunk a lot of Firewhisky on his roof, after he'd already made a heroic attempt at drinking the Ministry's wine cellar dry. He'd thought about Draco Malfoy, and he'd felt a drunken regret for how things had turned out that, in the cold light of day, the Slytherin fucker really didn't deserve. And Harry – in his infinite wisdom – had wished things were different. He'd said it out loud, hadn't he? And, his fuzzy memory supplied, he might even have toasted the muttered wish with a slug of Firewhisky. "I didn't mean it!" Harry protested loudly, causing a nearby pedestrian to swerve, in case talking to yourself was catching. It wasn't fucking fair! When he'd wished that things were different, he'd meant – well. What had he meant? Another memory hit Harry squarely between the eyes: he'd spent far too long last night brooding about how much he hated being famous, and wishing it on Malfoy instead.

The whole thing was too ridiculous for words, Harry thought, trying to pull himself together. Magic didn't work like that. You didn't just make a wish and then, bam, the world changed beyond recognition. Harry tried to ignore the fact that he appeared to have made a wish and then, bam, the world had changed beyond recognition. He recognised bloody Malfoy, after all. And so far today, Malfoy was the first connection to the wizarding world he'd discovered, even if right now the fucker did appear to be masquerading as a – as a – as a Muggle pop star.

"I wish things were back how they were!" Harry told the serried ranks of Draco Malfoys across the street firmly – and a bit too loudly. A passing Muggle jolted and caught Harry's eye, clearly thinking he was talking to her, her eyes darting away immediately with a look of horror. Harry didn't think calling, "I'm not crazy, I swear," after her would help, so he resisted. The world hadn't changed back on his wish, of course it fucking hadn't. Wishing didn't work that way. Nevertheless, he tried it again, a bit more quietly this time, simultaneously wishing that he actually was the most powerful wizard in the world and could do wandless magic effortlessly. Why had he ever thought differently?

God. What if he was the most powerful wizard in the world now, though – because he was the only one? Harry's eye was drawn again to Malfoy's pouting smirk. Malfoy was definitely a wizard. He was a pop star wizard, and – and Harry could feel his brain attempting to melt out of his head at the thought of Malfoy being any more up himself than he had been at school. The world was cruel; Malfoy was definitely still a wizard. He'd probably turn out to be a prince, too, Harry thought crossly, knowing his luck.

Harry squared his shoulders, lifted his chin, and made a decision. He would find Malfoy, and he would strangle him until the sod agreed to help him put the world back to how it was before. It shouldn't be difficult. If Malfoy was still who Harry remembered – and he really, really hoped he was – he was unlikely to be enjoying the adulation of Muggles, of all people. Harry took a deep breath, shot a look of wistful despair at his deceased chips, now becoming one with the pavement, and set off towards the enormous shop at a quick pace.

It was difficult to sustain the quick pace. The crowds seemed to thicken even as he approached, and when he crossed the road it was almost impossible to actually get on the pavement on the other side. The paving stones outside the store were lined with damp young women talking loudly and enthusiastically to each other, some of them at painful volumes. Some of them were singing. Harry vowed that if they were singing something written by Malfoy, he'd lay waste to the whole world to put an end to this abomination. As he managed to get closer to the windows, though, he saw that there was more text on the posters than just the terrible revelation that Malfoy's album was called I love you. He was probably talking about himself, Harry thought crossly, his stomach growling again and reminding him he still hadn't had anything to eat today. The posters announced, horribly: ALBUM SIGNING TODAY, 4PM!!!

This enormous, soggy crowd – some of them, Harry realised, had brought tents, which suggested they'd been there for more than five minutes – had all come to see Malfoy. To get his autograph. They fucking were singing one of horrible Malfoy's horrible songs, weren't they? Harry didn't know why this outraged him, but it did. Malfoy had been a pop star for under twenty-four hours, and already he was taking the credit for someone else's hard work. Even if that someone was another him. Harry could feel his brain creaking as he tried to work things out. Was this wish world an odd bubble that he just had to pop? Was this another reality? An altered dimension? Or was he actually just asleep and dreaming? Harry pondered the many options and decided that he'd be quite pleased if, in the end, it turned out he really was floating somewhere in a vat of mind-altering dark potions. If it was a vat, he hadn't done this to himself. And if it was a vat, Hermione would rescue him.

A harassed-looking security guard touched him briefly on the arm and gave him a bemused stare. "Only one entrance in use today if you want to go in," he said, pointing further down the road. "Or if you're here for the signing, back of the queue's that way." He gestured in the opposite direction. Harry stood on tiptoes and strained, but he couldn't see an end to the line; it seemed to snake off into infinity, female and terrifying.

"Lots of people here to see Malfoy," Harry tried, the words feeling very peculiar in his mouth.

The security guard raised his eyebrows and looked unimpressed at this great insight. "Uh-huh," he said, and then walked off, to bully a trio of umbrella-toting girls with very short skirts – Harry tried not to look – out of the gutter and back on to the pavement. Harry could see a clutch of burly men pouring out of a side street in the distance, all carrying steel barriers. Presumably to pen in Malfoy's fans, who'd proved themselves to be insane by standing out in all weathers to get the autograph of someone so . . . so . . . so Malfoy. A poster of Malfoy caught his eye again. His gaze really was unsettling, Harry thought, and shivered – definitely with the cold. It was bizarre to see Malfoy pulling an expression that was clearly intended to be provocative and charming, rather than his usual sulky arse-face. It . . . suited him.

Harry shook himself out of his fit of madness – the rain and the hunger, combined with the vat, had clearly done terrible things to his mental state – and looked at the enormous, heaving crowd with new, dismayed eyes. Weighing up the options – hunting down a famous 'Muggle' when he had no idea where the pouting arse-face was right now, versus waiting in a queue that would inevitably put Harry in front of him – the best course of action was pretty obvious. But the queue was so long. Harry dithered for a moment, wondering if he could just slip into it without being noticed before the barriers made it impossible. He was an Auror, for fuck's sake. He hadn't had the full training course, but he'd done the basics in stealth and tracking, and he'd faced death and defeated the Dark sodding Lord. Surely he could queue-jump without too much difficulty?

He couldn't queue-jump without much difficulty. The girls seemed to transfigure themselves into an impenetrable wall of steel barriers the moment he took a step closer, their elbows jutting out to jab at him, and although no one said anything directly, he could hear the hiss of trying to push in and the nerve!!! He hastily backed away, falling into the gutter and nearly being mown down by a passing motorbike. He managed to mount the edge of the pavement again, trying not to notice the unkind giggles, and trudged along the endless line. He was wrong about it being all women, he noticed as he trudged, wondering if it would be wrong to mug a girl eating crisps – he needed them more than she did! The crowd was punctuated by bored, middle-aged men who Harry presumed had been dragged there by their daughters against their will, and scattered here and there were knots of attractive young men. Some of them were wearing eye make-up. Some of them were wearing T-shirts with pictures of Malfoy's face.

Trudge, trudge. Harry began to wonder if the queue itself was some kind of time loop, endlessly repeating itself. Was this hell? It certainly seemed like a curse – to be doomed to walk beside a line of damp people who appeared to love Malfoy more than life itself, and who could not sing but did not seem to see this as an impediment. But once he'd gone at least ten miles down Oxford Street, he finally reached the end of the queue, and inserted himself into the gap, the space behind him filling up at an alarming rate. Harry looked at his watch – it still looked, and felt, like the gift from Mrs Weasley, the thought making him feel homesick – and saw that it was only just gone one o'clock. What had the sign said? Malfoy was signing things – surely Malfoy wasn't signing things – at four? Harry's stomach rumbled, and he found this perversely cheering. There was a good chance that come four o'clock he wouldn't have to confront Draco Malfoy, face of a thousand T-shirts. Instead, his body would have eaten him alive and saved him from this fate worse than death.

^^^^^^

By ten to four, Harry had begun to vaguely wonder what he'd exchange for his invisibility cloak right now, to enable him to skip to the front of the queue. His house? Probably. The entire contents of his Gringotts vault? Definitely. He appeared to have been adopted by the – very kind, very sweet, he consciously added to his train of miserable thought – group of friends directly behind him. Samantha, Olivia and Sarah were all thirteen – Samantha was nearly fourteen, she'd emphasised – and to a woman, they all appeared to believe that when Malfoy took one look at them, he'd fall immediately and irrevocably in love. Harry hadn't had the heart to probe this scenario further, but he furtively wondered whether, if Malfoy did go off his rocker and immediately propose to one of the three, the other two would rise up to stab her first in the back, and then in the front, for stealing their man. Olivia had given him an apple, and Sarah handfuls of sticky, rubbery sweets, and unfortunately that meant he was still alive to suffer through this experience.

Worst of all, Samantha had lent him the book she'd brought along for Malfoy to sign – "I know he's signing his album today, but my mum called the shop for me and they said he might sign both if I buy another copy of I love you," she confided, which had also introduced Harry to the hideous proposition that he would have to buy a copy of Malfoy's album, and given rise to an unexpected new panic: did he even have enough Muggle money? Harry had attempted to discreetly check his wallet, only to be discovered in the act and drawn against his will into a discussion about pocket money and the unfairness of parents that had felt more painful than it should have been. There'd only been one picture in his house of his parents, hadn't there? Even in an alternate reality, he was still an orphan.

He had enough money, he'd discovered; his wallet was thick with notes. But the book . . . It had somehow conspired to take away any relief that the realisation he wasn't about to be turfed out of the queue for poverty had brought. It was an 'authorised biography', it said on the cover, and from the tiny amount of text in it Harry deduced that the author hadn't been able to find much to say about the life story of a nineteen-year-old dickhead. It was mostly photos. Harry turned the pages slowly, past pictures of Malfoy as a small dickhead with his parents – a recognisable Lucius and Narcissa, albeit in extremely expensive-looking Muggle outfits. A fifteen-year-old Malfoy in a school uniform he didn't recognise, standing in a Great Hall he fucking did recognise. And then pages and pages of photos of Malfoy as he was now. Relaxing on a sofa, noticeably exhausted but with a smile in his eyes. Surrounded by fans at an airport, a slouchy hat covering his hair as he signed a fan's outstretched magazine. On stage, dressed all in white, an angelic expression on his face.

It was all incredibly disconcerting, as if Harry was looking at the world from behind a mirror and everything was distorted. He'd rarely seen Malfoy smile, in all the years he'd known him, outside of a mean smirk. But in these pictures, Malfoy looked . . . happy. Genuinely. As if he was someone pleasant, who liked to laugh, and not just at other people. It changed his whole expression. Gone was the pinched, sharp look of dissatisfaction and envy that Harry had thought was just Malfoy's face, to be replaced by someone confident and friendly. Someone – although it made Harry hugely uncomfortable to admit it to himself – sort of attractive, in an odd, angular way. But it was one of the posed shots that was the worst. Harry knew that Malfoy was just looking at the camera, and probably thinking about his lunch, or how much money was in his vault, or how he could best crush some Muggles, or something, but Harry almost felt as if Malfoy was looking at him directly. There was something clear, and heartfelt, and deeply unnerving about the picture. As if Malfoy was someone – something – entirely new. Look at me, he appeared to be saying. I'm looking only at you.

"That one's my favourite," Samantha had said, heartfelt and serious. "It's like he's looking inside my soul. It's how I know we'd be perfect together, you know? I just feel it here—" She raised her hands to her chest. "In the very depths of my being."

"I knoooooow," Olivia chimed in, while Sarah nodded enthusiastically, and they all squealed together, before bursting into song.

"He's so perfect," Sarah said in a half-whisper, when they'd finished a painful rendition of a tuneless chorus, and to Harry's discomfort he could see tears welling up in her eyes.

Harry rummaged for a tissue in the pockets of his horrible coat, but Olivia beat him to it, whispering something shrill about mascara and prompting a panicked huddle that Harry kept well out of. He wanted to cry a little bit too. He'd just felt like a Muggle photograph of Draco Malfoy had looked into his soul, hadn't he? The exact same way a group of thirteen-year-old girls had felt.

Harry had given the book back as soon as he could, and tried not to think about it. But for some reason, the harder he'd tried, the more the image seemed to have imprinted in his brain, until every time he closed his eyes, all he could see was Malfoy looking at him.

To be fair though, Harry thought, trying to unclench his teeth and relax his aching jaw, it was hard to think about anything other than Malfoy right now, given the situation. No one else would have managed it. He checked his watch again, to find that one minute had passed since the last time he'd looked. Nine minutes to four. The girls had stopped offering him sweets now and had mostly stopped talking at all, in favour of applying and reapplying a sticky clear liquid to their lips every thirty seconds, then blotting it off again and pouting into tiny hand mirrors. The crowd had become restless in general, and there was a tension in the air mixed with something closer to hysteria. Harry was feeling pretty hysterical himself, torn between wanting to see Malfoy so he could verify he wasn't a) the only wizard left and b) not insane, and not wanting to see Malfoy in case he actually was a smiling pop star Muggle.

Someone started screaming in the distance, and Harry reached for the wand that wasn't there, before he realised it was just a scream of pure excitement, rather than one of terror. He couldn't stop his heart pounding though, and the scream was taken up by what sounded like every single other person in the queue. The queue seemed to be a living, breathing thing of its own now, bulging and writhing as it wailed in one voice. "Oh my God oh my God oh my God," Sarah shrieked from beside him as the people surrounding him craned their necks to see . . . nothing? Harry couldn't see anything at all. Everything seemed to have stopped, though, including all the traffic. He tried to crane his neck too, wishing he was a bit taller, and thought he could see a bus or something in the distance. As he stood on his tiptoes, the crowd surrounding the bus seemed to part, and there was a flash of blond hair Harry presumed must belong to Malfoy, given that the screaming increased in pitch and volume to ear-bleeding proportions. Thank Merlin this whole ordeal was nearly over, he thought fervently, sticking his fingers in his ears to try to save his eardrums.

"How long do you think it'll be?" he asked Olivia a few minutes later, when the screaming had died down but the line hadn't moved an inch. "Till we get to see the knobber— I mean Draco?"

Olivia looked closer to terrified than excited and was chewing her nails as enthusiastically as if she was as hungry as Harry, but she frowned at him at this.

Harry held his breath and tried to look like a man who hadn't just called her idol a knobber. It seemed to work, as after a frozen second her brow relaxed, as if she'd decided that what he'd said was so unlikely, she must have misheard.

"An hour?" she guessed. "Or a bit more? I hope they don't turn us away before it's our turn!" she added, sounding like she was about to cry and introducing a new note of jeopardy into the situation. It was true, Harry thought, feel a fucking annoying knot of panic tighten in his chest, that the line was very long. And knowing Malfoy like he knew him, he'd probably pretend he'd strained his wrist after three signatures to get out of it and swan off home, complaining all the way. And if he did that, then not only would all this queuing have been completely pointless, but Harry would also have to work out how to get an audience with a – how had the book Samantha'd lent him described ferret-face again? A multi-platinum international sensation. And now he was thinking about that picture again, Harry realised with genuine horror, and the way Malfoy had appeared to be looking right at him.

Harry let out a breath of relief when the line jerked forward half an inch, and then, a few minutes later, another inch. He did a quick mental calculation and worked out that at this rate he'd be in front of Malfoy by – oh – Christmas at the earliest. The girls were fiddling compulsively with their hair now, their skin tones closer to green than was healthy. Their anxiety was clearly contagious, Harry thought, swallowing hard and suddenly glad he hadn't, after all, eaten a large bag of chips. The wizarding world had to still exist somewhere, he thought ferociously. Quite apart from everything else, the thought that he could never again drink a hangover potion was a terrible one.

To Harry's relief, soon the line began moving at a marginally quicker pace. Even so, it was nearly five before he could see the shop entrance, and going on half past before he was through the door and on to the heaving shop floor. The metal barriers stretched up and down the shop, the queue doubling back on itself more than once and snaking around a corner to where, Harry presumed, Malfoy was lurking. He had a moment of disconnect – this crowd of hyperventilating teenagers was here for Malfoy? – but reminded himself they weren't really here for Malfoy. They were here because Harry appeared to have made an incredibly stupid mistake, wishing this reality into existence – how was wish magic even a thing, for fuck's sake? – so it was up to him to save these poor girls by putting things back the way they were.

Harry steeled his resolve, not helped by the occasional shrieks coming from round the corner – noises of horror on encountering Malfoy's real-life, hideous mug, he presumed – and tried to be patient as the queue moved at a snail's pace. At some point the queue wound its way past a line of tills, and he was forced to buy a copy of Malfoy's album as his entrance ticket to the signing. Why he also picked up a copy of the 'authorised autobiography' Sarah had shared with him earlier, which was also on offer by the till, he wasn't entirely sure, but he shoved it into the plastic bag the checkout girl offered him and tried not to brood. "Big fan of Draco, are you?" she asked, the words curiously like a snigger, and looked him up and down.

Harry considered this, and decided the only dignified response was silence. "He's OK," he mumbled when the girl continued to look at him, waiting for an answer. He could feel his face going all hot.

The girl actually sniggered out loud this time, before turning to the girls behind him, and Harry wished he'd gone with his original silence scheme. Did he look like a wally right now? He considered the idea gloomily and concluded that he did. Not only had he, a grown man, apparently queued up for hours to get the autograph of another grown man, but he was wearing an ill-fitting outfit that even he had to admit did him no favours. And then there was his hair to consider. It was undoubtedly doing the thing it always did. Harry didn't want to impress Malfoy, he really didn't, but he found himself reaching up to try and surreptitiously flatten his hair down into something half-acceptable, and found no comfort in the fact that Samantha tapped him on the shoulder and, with a silent look of comradeship, passed him a tiny hairbrush and her hand mirror. He brushed half-heartedly, and then glanced in the mirror only long enough to confirm that, yes, it had made absolutely no difference – had brushing it actually made it worse? – before passing it back with a 'thank you' that he tried to make sound sincere.

"Don't worry," Samantha added in a confidential whisper, leaning closer as she stowed the brush away again in her handbag, "Draco will see what's in your heart, and that's the most important thing."

Would he? Harry fucking hoped so. But he smiled weakly at Samantha, who he was still fairly sure was a pleasant if faintly irritating young woman, rather than a terrible, sarcastic monster who would have been a shoo-in for Slytherin if she hadn't been a Muggle. Besides, this was no time to pick a fight with a thirteen year old. They'd inched back and forth across the shop floor several times now, and they were finally approaching the corner around which Malfoy lurked. Harry swallowed hard and wiped the palms of his hands on his trousers, the bag with the heavy hardback book banging painfully into his thigh as he did so.

Closer. Closer. And finally around the corner, and . . . there he was. On a stage, for fuck's sake. Sitting behind a table covered in a hideous eye-sore of a table-cloth, all red and yellow squares repeated endlessly, as a girl openly wept in front of him and photographers tried to blind everyone with too-bright flashes. Harry stopped still and stared. Malfoy was wearing a white and navy striped T-shirt and a dark hoodie, the sleeves pushed up to reveal his pale forearms, and his pale-blond hair was soft and carefully styled. Had Harry ever seen him out of his robes? He didn't think so. He certainly hadn't seen him looking like this. So . . . Muggle. It was . . . He just couldn't stop looking at him. At Malfoy.

Harry felt someone behind him jab him in the small of the back, and he took a hasty step forward, on legs that didn't seem to want to obey him as normal.

"Sorry," Samantha said, not sounding sorry, and then emitted a squeak as she too clapped eyes on Malfoy. "Oh my God. I think I might die, right here on the spot. Isn't he fit?"

"Amen, sister!" called a tall, slim – and handsome – boy some way ahead of them, and his group of friends – also male, also slim, and also handsome, Harry noticed – whooped and clapped their assent.

"Draco! Draco! Over here!" Samantha called, to the obvious terror and embarrassment of Sarah and Olivia, who tried to hide behind Harry. "I love you!"

Malfoy, who was far enough away that Harry couldn't leap on him and . . . what, exactly, he was going to do once he'd got there, he still hadn't decided, torn between punching him on the nose and begging for help. But Malfoy was close enough to be able to hear Samantha, and his eyes flickered towards them, attention clearly caught by the noise. As he looked, though, Samantha lost her nerve, also ducking back and attempting to hide behind Harry. Three women couldn't hide behind one man, however hard they tried, and their scuffle attracted even more attention.

Harry watched, heart thudding hard, as Malfoy whipped his head away and back to the fan in front of him, his face doing something extremely complicated. Harry supposed it must be a shock, expecting to see a shrieking female fan and instead catching sight of your worst enemy. WasHarry Malfoy's worst enemy? He didn't want to be – hadn't hated Malfoy for years, if he was honest – but he was in no doubt that Malfoy hated him. Yesterday's buffet incident probably hadn't helped, Harry thought, trying not to wince. Malfoy still hadn't looked back at him, was, in fact, attempting to talk to the next girl in front of him – also crying, Harry noticed – but there was a stiffness to the way that he was holding himself now that there hadn't been before.

Malfoy finished signing the album booklet that the girl handed him, her whole body shaking, and then, too quick for Harry to look away and avoid his eye, shot another look in his direction. Their eyes caught for a fraction of a second, and Harry's heart rate, which had calmed down a fraction, leapt back up into overdrive. Malfoy was probably confirming that he wasn't going mad, Harry thought, feeling something akin to relief suffuse his body, even as his heart leapt about in his chest like a landed fish. If Malfoy, of all people, was shooting him sidelong glances, it was unlikely to be because he'd fallen madly, instantly in love with his messy-haired, horrible-raincoat-clad 'fan' – or with Samantha, who was emitting an unnerving series of squeaks behind him, and clearly thought she was the 'lucky' recipient of these glances. It could only be because Malfoy had recognised Harry too, and was making sure of himself before he – what? Was Malfoy also possessed of the unbearable urge to punch him on the nose, or would he beg him to change things back to how they were?

A potential problem presented itself to Harry: Malfoy might not want things to go back the way they were. But he dismissed this, after a moment's thought. However much Malfoy enjoyed being worshipped by Muggles, they were still Muggles. There was no way Malfoy would want to spend the rest of his life living as a Muggle, was there? And as Harry inched closer, another potential problem presented itself to him: what if Malfoy had a wand? Maybe Malfoy didn't want to punch him on the nose; maybe he wanted to Crucio him where he stood, for making him the object of so much Muggle attention.

Malfoy didn't seem to want to Crucio him though, Harry thought uncomfortably as he got even closer. There were now only a dozen or people ahead of him before it would be his turn to mount the stage and . . . do whatever it was he was going to do once he got there. Malfoy didn't even seem stiff or awkward any more. Instead, he seemed oddly relaxed now he'd established Harry was really there, ignoring him completely in favour of paying attention to his fans. He seemed to be coping with them extremely well, Harry couldn't help but notice, chatting with ease and calming the shaking girls with smiles as he signed what looked to be long, personalised messages. Harry once again felt gripped with the worry that it might not actually be the real Malfoy after all, just a Muggle with his face. It . . . was an acceptable face, Harry supposed, watching Malfoy pose for a photograph with good grace, now it was smiling rather than sneering.

Once Malfoy had finished posing, though, he turned his head towards Harry and raised his eyebrows, his mouth quirking into something that was midway between a smile and a smirk, before relaxing his face back into a pleasant smile as he turned towards the next person in line. Harry, suddenly feeling his face flare into something hotter than the sun to be caught staring so openly at Malfoy, only just managed to resist the urge to stamp his feet. It was the real Malfoy, all right, the absolute fucker. He was certain of it.

The queue seemed to be moving even more quickly now, and Harry was still unable to decide what he was going to say to Malfoy when he came face to face with him. He'd just decided to wing it, when he found that it was, actually, now his turn. The security guard standing in front of the table, and who was almost as wide as the table itself, stood aside and indicated that Harry should step up to His Majesty. When Harry dithered, the guard helpfully gave him a little push, so that Harry nearly tripped over his own feet. He managed to stay upright, and the tiny snort that came from Malfoy's direction – so soft it was almost inaudible – irritated him enough that he felt able to straighten up, square his shoulders and look Malfoy full in the face.

Malfoy didn't say anything, just looked at him. It was too annoying to be borne.

"Hi," Harry said, trying not to grind his teeth. He rummaged in his bag and pulled out the 'authorised biography', withdrawing it and banging it on the table with slightly more force than he'd intended. "I have this book full of pictures of your face."

Malfoy's eyes seemed drawn to the book as if he couldn't help it, but he didn't leap into action. Harry supposed at least he hadn't leapt into hexing either.

"I'm here for your autograph, Malfoy," he said pointedly, giving the book a shove across the violently coloured tablecloth towards him.

"Not my life blood?" Malfoy murmured as he opened it up and started scrawling a message on the inside page in thick black ink.

Harry frowned at that. "Why would I want that?" he said, folding his arms and trying to force himself to stand still rather than shuffle about on the spot. The more he moved, the more his hideous raincoat rustled. "Don't be thick, Malfoy. I appear to have done something to fuck up reality, if you hadn't noticed. I want your help."

Malfoy's shoulders jerked, his pen slipping on the page, and his expression flickered for a moment. He seemed to recover quickly though. "The great Harry Potter wants my help," he murmured, looking up at Harry through lowered eyelids, and then – horrors – he broke into a smile that Harry didn't think boded well for his future. It wasn't the soft, gentle smile that Malfoy had been using on his fans, at any rate. It was the full-on Malfoy smirk.

Malfoy finally turned his smirk away from him and back to the book again, to Harry's shaky relief, and continued writing for a moment, before signing his name with a flourish. "Which picture's your favourite, Potter?" Malfoy asked as he ostentatiously drew several kisses under his signature. "Perhaps you'd like me to sign that one too."

"All of them," Harry said sweetly, and had the great satisfaction of seeing Malfoy's smirk falter for a fraction of a second, before it slotted back into place. "Nice outfit, by the way," he added, unable to stop himself. "Very . . . stripy."

Malfoy stopped at that, to look Harry very slowly up and down. He didn't say anything, but he didn't really need to, Harry thought, trying not to turn scarlet. Why on earth had he ever wished that things were better for this little turd? OK, so Draco looked marginally more human dressed in Muggle clothes and with his hair falling softly in his face rather than slicked back and bullied into submission, but—

"I'm glad you like what you see," Malfoy drawled, with what sounded like deep satisfaction, turning back to the book and doodling a shower of tiny hearts. "Are you my number one fan, Potter? I hope you didn't have to wait too long to see me."

"Only six or seven millennia," Harry said sarcastically. "But don't worry, Malfoy, for someone like you, I'd wait as long as it takes."

Malfoy looked up again at that, expression strangely startled, and for a moment they stared at each other. Malfoy opened his mouth to say something, and then seemed to think better of it. Either way, it didn't seem to matter, because the constant background noise of the fans seemed to have grown louder and more petulant over the last few minutes, and a woman with a Virgin Megastore lanyard around her neck stalked on to the stage to whisper something in Malfoy's ear.

Malfoy nodded, picking up the book and flipping through it quickly until he found a page that made his lip curl in amusement. Harry leaned forward a bit to see what it was, but Malfoy tilted the book closer towards him, writing something quickly on the page and then closing the book with a sharp snap. He slid the book back over to Harry. "Catch you later then, Potter," he said, turning away as if he was done with Harry now. Harry wasn't done with him. He hadn't queued up for a thousand years to get Malfoy's literal autograph! Fucking hell. Well, if Malfoy wasn't going to be useful, and kick off an actual, proper conversation about the frankly bizarre situation Harry had accidentally plunged them into, Harry was going to—

He was going to be gently escorted away from the table and towards the exit by another burly security guard, that's what he was going to do. He didn't appear to have much choice in the matter. As he was guided out though, he turned, to look back at Malfoy in outrage. And Malfoy – the absolute fucker – blew him a kiss.

^^^^^^

What the hell was he meant to do now, Harry thought crossly once he was outside the shop. The drizzle was back again, and he tugged his hood up and over his head, the raindrops splattering his glasses. He was clearly an idiot. What else had he expected from Malfoy, of all people? Harry re-ran the brief encounter they'd just had. All Malfoy had done was laugh in Harry's face, pretty much. Clearly, he'd gone in with the wrong plan of attack. He should have led with the punching, after all, rather than the talking. Maybe Malfoy was enjoying being adored by everyone around him, despite all expectations. Harry re-ran that thought in his head. Of course Malfoy was fucking enjoying being adored by everybody! Harry really was an idiot, after all. When he got back to – to normal, he was going to hand in his resignation to the Auror department. He didn't deserve it, with these powers of deduction.

Except, Harry thought, wiping rain off his face, he bloody well wasn't going to hand in his resignation. He loved being an Auror, more than pretty much anything. It made his heart sing, chasing down and capturing the criminals who wanted to make the world a worse place. It felt like it was what he was born to do. Sod Voldemort. Sod prophecies. This was something that was his, that he'd chosen of his own free will. There was no way he was going to let that go, just because he'd felt a bit sorry for Draco sodding Malfoy and accidentally turned him into a sexy international 'Muggle' singing sensation.

Sexy. Sexy. Harry shuddered, the Malfoy in the photo giving him that soul-searing look in his brain again. He vowed he was never going to tell Malfoy that this whole mess had apparently happened because he felt sorry for him, and he was never ever going to tell him that he'd apparently wished for him to be a famous, sexy pop star. The wish magic had apparently warped Harry's mind. A tiny part of Harry's brain tried to point out that Malfoy basically looked the same as he did before, but happily a raindrop fell directly in his eye and for a moment all he could think was ow.

Did Harry even need Malfoy to turn the world back? It was his own wish, his own mess to fix. He probably did though, he concluded, life being the way it was. Harry set his jaw and gripped the plastic bag in his hand more tightly, holding it closed against the rain. Maybe he'd just have to wait until the signing was over. Malfoy would have to emerge at some point, and possibly by then he'd be ready to talk. Maybe, Harry thought dubiously, Malfoy would expect him to be waiting. A wail of black, awful despair suddenly cut through his thoughts, and he jerked, turning back towards the shop. A mass of security guards, several almost as large as Hagrid, were pouring out of a side entrance to the shop, surrounding a tall, slim figure with very blond hair. As Harry gaped, the guards practically flung Malfoy into a waiting car with heavily tinted windows, accompanied by the sound of a thousand hearts breaking. The car roared back into life and zoomed away with a screech of tires, only to get almost instantly caught up in traffic. It vanished from sight behind a screen of screaming teenagers, until a phalanx of police managed to push them back and allow the car to move off.

"He blew a kiss at you!" Samantha wailed from behind Harry, who nearly jumped out of his own skin.

"Er, I think it was to the room at large," he lied hastily. Samantha looked like she was about to cry. Scrap that; she looked like she had been crying, lines of black eye make-up tracked down her cheeks. It wasn't the rain, he was sure of it. She had a large umbrella over her head, transparent with frog ears.

Sarah and Olivia were behind her, squashed under a single black umbrella with a bent spoke, and Olivia offered her a tissue.

"No!" Samantha said dramatically. "I'm fine!"

"Wasn't he amazing?" Sarah cooed, and the three girls simultaneously squealed and jumped up and down, spraying Harry with more water from their umbrellas.

"Wait until the girls at school hear about this!" Olivia said, and went to withdraw her signed merchandise from her bag before thinking better of it and clutching it tight to her chest.

"What did he write for you?" Samantha asked. "He signed a kiss on mine."

"And on mine too!" Olivia squeaked, as Sarah nodded enthusiastically.

"Oh," Samantha said.

"Olivia – with best wishes, Draco," Olivia said, a seraphic smile on her face as if she'd been touched by an angel.

"Oh! Oh! For me, he wrote, Sarah, best wishes from Draco!" Sarah said.

"He just wrote from Draco to me," Samantha said importantly. "'Best wishes' is so formal, don't you think?"

"No-o, because they're his best wishes," Sarah protested, and all three girls turned as one to stare at Harry. "What did he write for you?"

Harry wasn't sure, and he didn't think now was the time to find out that Malfoy had written him an essay about what a monumental dickhead he was. "Oh, I just got him to sign his name," he said, and tried to look innocent under three very piercing stares.

"So, do you think he's gay then?" Samantha asked, just when Harry had thought he'd got away with it.

Harry nearly choked on his own tongue. "Um, what?"

"I think the rumours are nonsense, of course," Samantha said, seeming satisfied by Harry's unspoken response. "I'm going to marry him one day."

"Not if I get there first!" Olivia responded, and a vicious, semi-whispered argument broke out between the three of them.

"Er, good to meet you then," Harry said, thinking he was well out of this one. "Thanks for an, er, interesting afternoon!"

The girls half turned back to him, but Harry was already fleeing, dodging umbrellas and squeezing his way through the surrounding crowd of crying, rain-splattered girls. He wasn't sure if they were crying because they hadn't got their chance with Malfoy, or because they had. Either way, it was all unspeakable. Gay! There was no way Malfoy was gay. He was a pure-blood dickhead. If anyone was gay, it was—

God. Harry's head hurt again. He didn't want to think about this. No one he knew in the wizarding world was gay – at least, not openly. If anyone he'd been to school with liked blokes, they'd kept it very quiet. And Harry fancied girls, didn't he? He'd had a crush on Cho, even though that hadn't worked out! And he'd dated Ginny for a while, even though that hadn't worked out either. It wasn't as if he hadn't found any women attractive, was it? He was sick of the media attention as it was. The idea of openly propositioning a man, of it ending up in the press, made him feel sick. There was just no way he could get his feelings clear in his head without danger, so it was best not to think about it at all. Fancying blokes was . . . Well, it wasn't right, was it? Not in the wizarding world, at any rate. If it was right, he'd be surrounded by other happy gay wizards, wouldn't he, not looking around for signs that he was normal and finding absolutely nothing. Having a wife and three children with your childhood sweetheart, that was normal. Fancying another bloke? Not so much.

Harry found himself following his feet down the flight of stairs that led to Tottenham Court Road underground station. It was packed, and everything was damp, and fuck it, he just wanted to go home. Sod Malfoy. He'd been no bloody help, and hanging out in the rain for any longer was clearly not going to do Harry any good, so why should he bother? He should go home, eat his own bodyweight in takeaway pizza, and then think about buying a ticket to Scotland to track down Ron and Hermione. Hermione would know exactly what to do. In fact, it was possible she was working out a solution to this problem right now, Harry thought, cheering up a fraction as he pushed his way on to a train along with approximately half the population of London.

Harry had started to feel almost human again by the time he'd got home, pizza box in hand, and managed to first get back into his house and then into the shower and some dry clothes. OK, so his house was still wrong, and the pizza probably wasn't going to be as good as Luigi's, the tiny place he and the other Aurors practically counted as a second home, run by a wizened old man with a pointed hat so tall it almost hit the ceiling. The clothes were wrong too; all of them were just a fraction too big, as if whoever had bought them hadn't cared enough to buy clothes that fit and definitely hadn't wanted to look nice in any way. Still – he was back, and he was dry, and there was food. He plonked himself down in the drawing room and, after only a minor struggle, managed to work the remote and turn on the TV. It was the news, reporting on the 'riots' at Tottenham Court Road. "Pop star Draco Malfoy proved so popular that the fire brigade were called to deal with suspected overcrowding," the news reporter said in tones of utmost seriousness, "leading to the premature ending of the signing session." The picture cut to the scene outside the Virgin Megastore, and Harry shuddered at the memory. "Fans refused to leave the shop and the street outside, and several teenage girls were injured in the crush. They were taken to hospital and are said to be recovering well. Mr Malfoy's management have released a statement expressing their sympathy for the injured fans, and condemning the management of the shop in question for the poor security arrangements that led to disappointment for hundreds of fans."

Harry picked up the remote and clicked the TV off again. He was a wizard; he didn't need TV. He'd just eat his pizza and . . . brood. He opened up the pizza box and tugged out a slice, cheese trailing out to land on his clean trousers. It was delicious – hot and fragrant – and he burnt the roof of his mouth in his haste to eat it, but carried on eating until the whole pizza was gone. Finally, he sat back with a sigh, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and scrubbing his greasy fingers on a paper napkin. It would be wrong to say that he was feeling better, he thought, but he definitely felt more alive. And who was to say that after he'd been to sleep tonight, he wouldn't just wake up with things back to normal? It was important not to panic.

Harry remembered the book that Malfoy had signed – he hadn't forgotten it, exactly; had just chosen to ignore it – and drew the damp plastic bag towards him with reluctance. He didn't particularly want to see what the fucker had written inside it, amongst all the passive aggressive kisses and tiny hearts, but he supposed he'd better look anyway. He drew it out and, trying not to wince, opened the cover, looking down at the signed title page. "To Harry, my biggest fan, with all the love and kisses in the world, your favourite person, Draco," he read out loud, and then resisted hurling the book towards the opposite wall. Happily, he had a copy of Malfoy's album in the bag too, and that did just as well.

Once Harry had thrown the album – and stamped on it for good measure – he felt a bit childish, but also much, much better. He sat back down, and was confronted by the sodding book again. Hadn't the fucker written something else in it somewhere? Harry wasn't sure he had the stomach for it, but he gritted his teeth and started to flick through the pages. God, Malfoy was annoying, he thought as he paged through photo after photo of the git being all smiley and perky, apart from the odd picture where he was just thoughtful and poignant. If only the people here knew what he was really like, Harry thought crossly, trying to turn the pages faster and giving himself a papercut in the process.

It was still too odd for words, seeing Malfoy in Muggle clothing, Harry couldn't help but think as he sucked his injured finger, wishing he had his wand. In robes, Malfoy looked like – well, like a Malfoy dickhead. Stern, and formal, and like a clone of his revolting father, all hard angles and sharp lines. This Malfoy – the Muggle-ish one – was strangely soft and pretty in many of the photos, his pointy features lending him an almost alien air, as if he wasn't entirely real. He was often dressed . . . sort of like a girl, Harry thought uncomfortably as he flicked onwards. Soft pastels, and lace and floaty fabrics Harry didn't know the name of, and stripes of glitter, and was that eyeliner? Harry stopped at one photo to decide that, yes, it was definitely eyeliner, and then turned the page to find Malfoy in a sharp three-piece suit, his expression also sharp but his eyes oh so soft, and— Merlin. Harry needed a drink.

Harry flicked through the pages faster again, finally stopping dead at the page that had been defaced by Malfoy's bold, dark scrawl. Fucking hell. In this photo, Malfoy – who was fucking topless, his hair dishevelled – leaned back on a bed, giving Harry – giving the camera – the most blatant come on Harry had ever seen. Harry managed to tear his eyes away from this sight – this man was marketed at thirteen-year-olds? Harry thought prudishly – to actually read the writing. "Call me!" Malfoy had written, underlined three times, and underneath this instruction was a telephone number.

Harry had never been turned on by Malfoy before, and he wasn't going to start now. The fact that neither of those statements were one hundred percent true didn't help things much. Harry stared at the picture, feeling all his blood rush to his cock, apart from a small amount that lingered to make his face really, really hot. Harry had . . . sort of wished for Malfoy to be famous and loved, he thought, his heart hammering. Had he subconsciously wished for him to take his clothes off too? Surely it wasn't the act of a well-bred pure-blood to take off your fucking clothes for the media, Harry thought crossly. But Malfoy hadn't seemed disturbed when he'd found the picture, Harry remembered, trying not to wince. He'd smirked, and then had written fucking call me next to it. Harry didn't feel strong enough for this. Didn't think he'd ever feel strong enough for this.

Harry had received enough fan mail to know a come-on when he saw one. But this was Malfoy. There was no way that Malfoy fancied him, of all people. Malfoy was just taking the piss, Harry thought, to make things as difficult and uncomfortable for him as possible. Just rubbing it in, that people in this reality really wanted to see him without his top on, while no one wanted to see Harry's half-naked torso. Harry looked down at himself in his ugly overlarge clothes and gave himself a small poke in the gut. Maybe he should start eating less pizza, he thought. He wasn't in bad shape, really, but he couldn't have been accused of having a six pack. Maybe a two-pack, if you squinted, he thought doubtfully, still prodding his pizza belly.

None of this was the point though! Half-naked, toned Malfoy or not – and now Harry looked more closely, he could see the faint scratchings of the Dark Mark on Malfoy's inner arm, which cut through the unwilling arousal a fraction and helped him think – he now had Malfoy's phone number. So he should call him. And then Malfoy would help him fix reality. And then . . . Harry closed his eyes, but wrenched them open again when he found that the darkness behind his eyelids was now home to a half-naked pouting man. "And then," he said firmly out loud, standing up and brushing crumbs off his lap, "I can get back to normal."

What even was normal any more? Harry didn't know. But he did know that now he had Malfoy's phone number, he had to try and work out how to use the sodding mobile phone. He hadn't come across a landline while he'd been turning the place upside down to find his wand, of course he hadn't. He knew how to use a landline. That would be too easy.

Harry eyed the open book and its half-naked contents with dislike, and picked it up, going down a flight of stairs and into the dining room. He dropped the book on the table and went over to where the phone was charging on the dresser, disconnecting it from the lead and giving it a hard stare. It didn't seem to be on, so he looked for a button that might work, prodding at it until the screen turned on and started flashing, finally resolving into a series of icons he didn't understand.

Harry stared at it. Presumably, all he had to do was press the numbers, like a regular phone? He sat down in front of the book, gave sexy bedtime Malfoy a very hard stare, and put in the number Malfoy had scrawled down, before holding the phone to his ear. It occurred to Harry as the phone started ringing that Malfoy was the sort of fucker who'd have given someone else's number if he could have, and as a female voice said, "Hello," it also occurred to Harry to wonder how Malfoy even knew what a Muggle telephone number was in the first place.

"Oh, er, sorry," Harry started, but the voice kept on speaking, and he realised it was a recorded message.

"—you have reached the number for United Talent, representing Draco Malfoy. I'm sorry no one is available to take your call right now, but please leave a message and if you have official business with us someone will get back to you. If you're calling for the fan club, please call 020 7—"

Harry tuned this out, still staring at sexy, annoying Malfoy, who, it seemed, had managed to memorise the number of a minion, rather than his own. This was no good for Harry's blood pressure. He couldn't even shout at Malfoy now, could he? And what was he meant to say? "This is Harry, you know, the wizard one, please call me back, you wanker." There was no way that would pass the screening.

"—after the tone."

An annoying beep sounded in Harry's ear, and he realised he was probably meant to start speaking now. "Oh, er, this is Harry. Er, Harry Potter?" he said, then realised that so far no one else apart from Malfoy seemed to know who that was. "Malfoy's – I mean Draco's – I mean, Draco Malfoy's old, er, friend." That hardly covered it, did it, but what else was he meant to say? "I'd like to, er, catch up, so could you tell him to call me?" As soon as Harry said it, he realised he had no idea what his phone number was. Bollocks. "Um, I mean, maybe he could write to me," Harry amended, realising he sounded like a lunatic. "It's twelve Grimmauld Place, Islington." Postcode. What was the postcode? Buggered if he knew. "London," he added. The post office would be able to work it out, right? Muggles had their own magic, he was sure of it. "Um, bye then," he said, and then took several panicked seconds trying to hang up, before finally working out which button to press.

"So, that went well," Harry told shirtless Malfoy crossly, and slammed the book shut with a thump. Unfortunately, since the cover photo was also one of Malfoy, this didn't have the effect he'd hoped for. Harry thought it best to leave the room instead.

As he dithered in the hallway, however, unsure what to do next, he felt hit by a dizzying sense of exhaustion. It had been a bloody long and stressful day, and now the adrenaline had subsided, he felt strung out and . . . well, lonely, of all the ridiculous things. He couldn't even remember the last time he'd spent a day with more than a few minutes to himself, and the brief conversations he'd had with the girls in the queue and with King Dickhead himself barely counted. He liked to be busy, to be surrounded by his friends. It stopped him from thinking about stuff.

Harry sighed and decided that the best thing to do would be to go to bed. After all, there was a chance that when he next woke up, all this would be over. So he trudged up the stairs to brush his teeth, trying very hard not to brood. Once he'd finished in the bathroom, he found himself on the fourth-floor landing once again, and he jerked the elderly sash window open to peer out of it. It was only just dark, the sky a sulky purple black and the moon nowhere to be seen. He squinted out, but could barely see any stars, just the bright moving light of a faraway aeroplane. Could he still use his broom without his wand? It was still there on the landing, but it hadn't felt the same as usual when he'd picked it up, the magic thrumming through it so minimal that he suspected he was just wishing it into existence. Harry leaned out of the window and peered down thoughtfully at the pavement beneath him. It looked very far away, and he decided with regret that it was probably best left alone for now. If he plummeted to the ground and broke all his bones without Skele-Gro to fix them, he might end up stuck in a Muggle hospital for the next six months, while Malfoy swanned around all sexy and popular, possibly sending him affectionate, sarcastic postcards to rub it in.

Great, now he was thinking about Malfoy again. Harry looked out at the night sky and wished, very fervently, for things to go back to normal. And then he said it out loud, for good measure. Nothing happened, and it didn't make Harry feel any better. Because wish magic wasn't a fucking thing! He resisted the urge to knock his head against the window frame, and instead just stepped back and banged the window closed again, shutting out some of the hum of the traffic down below.

Once he was in bed, though, he found he couldn't sleep, the worries of the day going round and round in his head on a loop he couldn't break free of. He had his magic, so he could fix this, he kept trying to tell himself, but he didn't have his wand, and he didn't have his friends, and he didn't have, he didn't have, he didn't have. Harry opened his eyes and stared up at the blurry darkness, seeing nothing. All he had was his magic. And Malfoy.

Harry didn't want to think about Malfoy right now, but it was better than making himself panic about everything else, so he shut his eyes again and tried to breathe deeply. There was one thing that might help him sleep, he supposed. And he was in his own bed – sort of – and no one was around, and there was no need to feel guilty about this, of all things, was there?

He squirmed around to make himself more comfortable, and then slipped his right hand beneath the waistband of his pyjama bottoms, wrapping it around his cock. He was still mostly soft, but a few firm tugs had his dick waking up, a mild tingling sensation starting to build in his groin as he continued to stroke.

Harry tried to let his mind drift, to let the feelings take over. It felt pretty good, his hand on his cock, the pressure just so. And he deserved to feel good after the shocker of the day he'd had. His mind flitted idly from the rain, to the queue, to the house – its depressing emptiness – and back again to the queue. He'd had more erotic thoughts, on the whole, and he tried to guide his brain into thinking something a bit more appropriate. He was never going to come, if he kept thinking about the monotony of his day and how annoying Malfoy was.

And Merlin, Malfoy really was annoying. Especially now, Harry thought, feeling his forehead screw up into a frown, when he was trying to have a wank, and . . . starting to feel moderately turned on. A memory of Malfoy from earlier that day slipped into his mind: Malfoy in his ridiculous striped T-shirt, looking very unlike Malfoy and doodling kisses in Harry's book.

Harry wriggled about a bit on the bed, his hand tightening on his cock a fraction as he continued to stroke slowly up and down. Malfoy was a tosser, he thought, feeling pleasure coiling in his gut. God, it felt nice. Harry shuddered as he felt a small gush of liquid pulse out, to smear the head of his cock in a layer of slippery goodness.

Malfoy was . . . pretty hot, half naked, Harry thought as he pumped his cock a bit harder. In that picture . . .

Harry became aware that he was now pretty uncomfortable, his hand jamming up against the waistband of his PJ bottoms with each stroke and the elastic cutting into his forearm.

Harry let go of his cock for a moment, kicking off the covers and tugging his bottoms down his thighs. He returned his hand to his cock with a groan. God, that felt better. What was Malfoy doing right now, he wondered. It made his heart pound. He didn't fucking care. Malfoy was a wanker. But . . .

Harry could picture the photograph of him in that sodding book as clearly as if he was looking at it right now. Malfoy, leaning back on the bed, half naked. Looking at him. Merlin. Harry felt his cock twitch, felt the slickness coat his hand again as he wanked. It was . . . weird to think about another guy in bed. Kind of filthy. And although he'd thought about it before – of course he fucking had, could barely stop himself these days – he always tried hard not to let his fantasy man's face resolve into anyone specific. But . . . Harry swallowed hard, his hips trying to buck off the bed, and tried to slow down so he didn't come too fast. If he had Malfoy on the bed with him now . . . If Malfoy was leaning back, looking at him like that . . .

Harry pictured it, his heart beating out of his chest and his mouth falling open. Malfoy, in Harry's mind's eye, beckoned Harry towards him. They were on the bed, and Harry was – oh, on his knees. He could see it now. He was on his knees, straddling Malfoy's chest. Malfoy wouldn't say anything – he'd just . . . he'd just prop himself up on an elbow and reach up to take Harry's cock in his mouth.

Harry imagined what that would feel like as his hand worked up and down, every slide delicious and tormenting. Malfoy's lips stretched around him. The warmth of his mouth. The wetness. How Malfoy might look at him as he sucked. The noisesMalfoy might make. Squelches and moans and . . .

Harry lost his self control and started wanking frantically. He couldn't stop groaning, his hips rising off the bed as he pumped. He collapsed back, thighs shaking too badly to hold himself up, and for a moment lost his rhythm, before finding it again. In his mind's eye, Malfoy was letting him fuck his mouth now. His lips were slick with spit. And the groans.

Harry came all over himself.

It took a good few minutes for his heart rate to return to anything near normal, despite getting up to use the bathroom and clean himself up. Once back in bed, as he drifted off to sleep he wondered uneasily if it had been a mistake to let himself fantasise so self-indulgently about Malfoy of all people. But what harm could it do? It was only a fantasy. And Harry was straight, wasn't he? How he'd been feeling lately was just a blip, a temporary madness. All he needed to do was grit his teeth and get on with things. Soon, he'd manage to get things clear in his head again, and then he'd be OK. In any case, he told himself firmly, he'd probably wake up the next morning and find that everything was back to normal. This whole situation was too bizarre to actually be real.

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