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bottom_dracoTitle: Brew a Bottle of Love
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
deathlydragon
Prompt: #145 bys0ulrunner
Pairing(s): Draco/George
Summary: To remain free of Azkaban Draco is forced to work at Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes for one year. Doesn’t sound too bad at first, but Draco soon realises how hard twelve months in the whirlwind of George Weasley’s contrasting emotions truly are…
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction set in the Harry Potter universe, all recognisable characters and settings are the property of J. K. Rowling and her associates. No money is made from this work.
Warning(s): None.
Word Count: ~17.500
Author's Notes: Beware! Puffskein and pygmy puff abuse hides between the lines! Or maybe not… I just think such fluffy creatures deserve a bit more attention, too. :D Hope someone likes this! Many thanks to my beta!
The beginning…
“These are the facilities that have offered you community service, Mr. Malfoy.”
Draco stared at the blank parchment that lay in front of him. He lifted his gaze back to the Minister’s assistant, Percy Weasley, and found himself confronted with a polite smile. Unable to tell if Weasley was joking, Draco shoved the parchment back towards him.
“There’s nothing written on it,” he drawled.
Weasley’s mouth twitched and he suddenly let out a chuckle that startled Draco. Shifting in his chair, he offered Weasley a wary look and watched the freckled cheeks slowly become red.
“Not funny?” Weasley looked hopeful, but Draco remained cold.
“Not funny,” he said and leant back in his chair, folding his arms in front of his chest. “Where’s my list?”
Weasley pointed at the blank parchment. “I’m sorry, Mr. Malfoy. This is everything we can offer you.”
“You offer me nothing?” Draco was shocked. Although he knew that after the War it would have been hard for him to find a job, he had not expected that there was not even one person that would engage him even for no money.
“There’s nothing I can do. Your name is well-known, Mr. Malfoy,” Weasley said and folded his fingers on his desk, forming a perfect triangle on Draco’s blank parchment. “The people are scared to work with a former Death Eater from V-Voldemort’s inner circle.”
“Inner circle? I wasn’t engaged in any activity of the inner circle. I was… am a teenager.” Draco hoped that his pouting mouth would give him the same advantage that it did during his hearing. Otherwise he would definitely have ended up in Azkaban for his Death Eater activities, instead of only being forced to work for the community. But if no one wanted him to even dispose of the dragon dung at Gringotts, then Azkaban was certainly waiting for him.
Weasley eyed him over the top of his glasses. “We have detailed information in which activities you were involved, Mr. Malfoy.”
Apparently, Draco’s puppy eyes did not work with Weasley. He tried harder.
“I was scared. Like everyone else,” Draco said, leaning forward to make sure Weasley saw every glittery tear Draco forced into his eyes. “Isn’t there anything you can do? I don’t want to go to Azkaban.”
“I can’t think of anyone who would want that,” Weasley replied dryly.
Draco pressed a hand against his eyes as real tears welled up. Azkaban was as good as a return to the nightmare he had lived during the last year. He would be reunited with a lot of familiar faces, who would love to see him dead because his mother helped Harry Potter. This might have helped him escape Azkaban at first, but it had not rebuilt his reputation in the wizarding community. It certainly had destroyed the last remaining bits of sympathy he had held within the Dark Lord’s circle.
Azkaban would be his death.
“There might be another option…” Weasley’s voice made Draco look up, hope suddenly flaring in his chest. “You can search yourself –”
Draco interrupted him with a snort. “I barely have time to suck up to someone until he offers me a place to work. The Ministry will send me to Azkaban before that happens.”
Weasley pressed his lips into a firm line and stared intensely at Draco. Then he cleared his throat. “I might be able to… to offer you a position.”
“At the Ministry?” Draco asked warily.
Weasley laughed. “No, no… a Malfoy at the Ministry… That would be… no…” He laughed again and turned the noise into a soft cough when Draco scowled at him. “I remember you having a talent for Potions, Mr. Malfoy?”
~*~
12 months to go…
Draco let out a heavy sigh as he took in the sight of Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes. He clung to a file with parchments from Percy Weasley – documents his brother had to sign to ensure Draco could work the next year in his shop.
“What did your puppy eyes get you into this time, Draco?” Shaking his head, Draco approached the shop, cautiously looking inside through the windows. There were too many children inside. Draco hated children. He also hated Weasleys and Percy Weasley had earned more antipathies by sending him straight to his brother.
It still was better than Azkaban, so Draco entered the shop. Promptly some laughing children bumped into him when they headed for the exit. Draco lost hold of his file and the parchments fell to the floor.
Cursing under his breath, Draco moved to gather up his documents. A pair of shoes stepped into his view and Draco looked up.
George Weasley stared back at him. From Draco’s perspective, his brown eyes seemed strangely dark and scary, especially with the blank expression he wore. His fiery red hair was combed so that it covered his missing ear. Draco tried not to stare at it.
“These are the documents?” George ducked next to Draco on the ground, picking up the parchments.
Draco pulled his hands away before he touched George’s fingers. He nodded.
“Percy owled me,” George said and straightened. He did not hold out a hand to Draco. Not that Draco expected that. “Follow me. I’ll show you where you’ll be working.” He turned around and walked at a high speed through the store, aiming for a door that apparently led into the cellar.
Draco sighed. Great. A year in a dark and moist cellar. His skin would never recover its healthy tone.
They had to climb steep stairs down and Draco had trouble not falling into George’s back. He steadied himself by holding onto the wall and grimaced when he noticed the web of a spider.
“Fred worked here most of the time, since he was in charge of the potions,” George explained when they reached the bottom of the stairs. It was a small room with long tables and half a dozen cauldrons. On the wall, shelves were filled with vials and large bottles; next to them stood an empty cage. There were also pictures hanging on the otherwise empty, cold stone walls. Draco grimaced at the sight of a barely clothed woman waving lasciviously at him, but he did not say anything.
“We’re in arrears with quite a few potions. Especially the Love Potion,” George said and placed the documents on one table, then bent down to open a drawer. He handed another parchment to Draco. “This is your to-do-list.”
Draco ripped the parchment out of George’s hand and looked it over. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed George signing the papers. A knot in his throat loosened at the sight. Goodbye Azkaban.
“For today?” Draco stayed on the opposite side of the table, not wanting to come too close to George. He had not expected a warm welcome, but even Percy Weasley had been nicer to him at their first meeting a couple of weeks ago. At least he had shaken his hand.
George looked up and seemed confused. “You have until the end of the week,” he muttered and turned back to the parchments.
Draco’s mouth twitched. A year in a cellar with lots of free time to take care of his skin. Actually, that did not sound too bad.
“What do you need Shrinking Solution for?” Draco asked as he tried to decipher George’s scrawl.
George snorted in annoyance. “Pygmy puffs.”
“The little, fluffy balls?” Draco noticed that George’s hand started shaking at this question. “Don’t tell me you truly shrink Puffskeins. Isn’t that abuse of Magical Creatures? There’s certainly a law –”
George’s quill cracked. Draco broke off, surprised. Brown eyes focused on him, and now Draco realised that it was hate that made them appear so dark.
“Don’t tell me anything about laws, Malfoy. Don’t tell me anything at all, okay? You’re not here to ask questions. You’re here to brew potions.” George pulled out his wand to fix the quill and returned to the documents.
Draco raised a hand in defence. “You’re the boss.” He would definitely not risk losing his only opportunity to escape Azkaban. It was probably better that George hated him. He would stay in this cellar and brew potions while being watched by almost naked women, instead of dealing with a Weasley. Draco could live with that.
“They don’t breed as fast as we expected,” George eventually muttered, feeling the need to explain himself. Draco smirked.
“Want me to come up with an aphrodisiac for the fluffy cuteness?” he asked, trying hard not to laugh at the image of a dozen pygmy puffs engaged in sexual activity.
George covered his laughter with a cough. “You’re not here to think, Malfoy. You do whatever I want you to do. And I don’t want to note that you’re here.”
Draco took the documents George shoved across the table. “I can manage that.”
“Great.” George walked back to the stairs. “You get along without my help.”
~*~
11 months to go…
It could have been worse. Draco’s day appeared to start early and end late, but he truly had more free time than was good for him. He spent hours sitting in front of half a dozen cauldrons waiting for his potions to become ready for the next step. Even after he had tried to brew the potions so that one was ready for the next step while the others needed to boil, it was not getting more interesting. It was simply swallowing time.
Draco, full of disgust, stared at the poster of the naked woman – and the longer he stared at it the more clothes disappeared – while he waited for the potions to cool down so that he could funnel them into vials. He had thought about asking George if he could take the poster down, but since it seemed to be the property of his brother, he felt extremely unsure about this. Everything concerning his deceased twin was a tough topic.
Even in his cellar, Draco had heard George yelling. Yelling at his own brother about making a suggestion how to improve the daily settlements, at his best friend because of something banal like breaking an old quill, and considering this, Draco rather remained silent.
“I know it’s an interesting poster, but –”
“What?!” Draco whirled around and glared at Verity, George’s only female staff member. She was also the only one who was actually polite and kind to him, probably because she was a woman. Draco had never really understood why women were unable to resist him. They should sense that he was not interested.
“The way you were staring at it is obvious,” Verity said. The way she played with her hair, tilted her head and smiled at him was ridiculously obvious.
Draco rolled his eyes. “It’s disgusting. I wish I could take it down.”
Apparently, this was not obvious enough to put an end to the clumsy flirtation. It brightened Verity’s smile.
“Oh, you don’t know how delightful it is to hear that! Sometimes I wish the others would act more gentlemanly…” Finally Verity said why she truly was down in the dungeon. “Speaking of gentlemen… I could need your help for a moment.”
Draco looked at his cauldrons and the steam swirling up from their depths. “I’ve got time, but…”
“Wonderful!” Verity grabbed his arm and pulled him upstairs, completely ignoring Draco’s attempt to remind her that George did not want him upstairs. Maybe Verity had kept this in mind, because George was not in the shop when Draco looked around.
Jordan behind the counter waved at him, his extraordinarily white teeth a high contrast to his dark skin.
“I need help putting these new products onto the shelves. Lee takes care of the customers, so you and I can totally focus on this.”
Draco stared at the quite unstable looking ladder and he reached into his pocket to pull out his wand, but Verity hastily shook his head.
“No magic,” she warned and pointed at the packages on the ground. “They’re quite fragile and we don’t want to risk –”
“Letting them fall?” Draco put his wand away.
“That they blow up the store.” Verity smiled at him and then moved to open the packages. Draco had already learned not to protest and risk this quite comfortable place to fulfil his community service. So he climbed onto the ladder and put strange glass spheres onto the shelves. Something glittered inside them; a strange misty dust of crystal that changed colour when Verity pulled them out of the package and then once more when she gave them to Draco.
“What are these?” he asked after a while, his curiosity increasing even more since Verity kept talking about her cat having kittens which he ‘really should visit because they were so, so cute!’
“Oh, they’re…”
“Verity?!” Jordan seemed to have waited for this opportunity to keep Draco’s curiosity from being satisfied. “Need you for a moment,” he called. Verity gifted Draco an apologetic look before she hurried away.
Draco felt used, but climbed down the ladder to unpack the next package. It would be way easier to just Summon them up to the shelves and he truly doubted that those glass things with crystal dust would blow anything up. It just seemed to be a rule at Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes to work in the most inefficient way; otherwise George would have long noticed that no one needed a week to brew Shrinking Solution.
Staring into the violet dust of crystal, Draco climbed back up the ladder. The dust seemed to start out white, change colours when touched, then turn back to white again as soon as he put it onto the shelf. Verity’s dust had turned green. Draco wished he knew how she had done that. He definitely preferred green to violet.
Draco continued to put the glass spheres on the shelf and from time to time looked over his shoulder. Jordan at the counter hastily lowered his arm. Suspiciously, Draco narrowed his eyes. If that bastard tried to throw something at him, again, he would take advantage of Verity’s sympathies and cry on her shoulder until she spanked that nasty bastard. But who knew – he might like it…
“What’re you doing up here, Malfoy?”
Being addressed so suddenly caused Draco to cringe. He clung to the ladder and looked down. George had come through the door and stared up at Draco like he just caught him robbing the store.
“Verity asked me for help.” Draco smiled, smiled into a face that always stayed uncommonly frosty around him.
“Verity?” While George searched the shop for hints of Verity, Draco decided that it was better to come down. After all, George did not want him up here, just in the cellar, and the cellar was Draco’s protection from Azkaban, so this year, to be precise only eleven months left, he would do what George Weasley wanted him to do.
Something hard hit his ankle when Draco went to place his foot on a lower step. He lost balance and as he fell backwards he realised that he cared more about not crashing the new products instead of his bones – because in Azkaban even all of his bones could not protect him.
Protect him, like the arms that caught him. It was a lucky coincidence that George was standing right behind Draco so that he was forced to wrap his arms at just the right moment around Draco. Draco bumped roughly against the chest suddenly in his back; he could feel every hard and every soft spot of George’s body, and almost tore him down as well.
But George was still standing, and when Draco turned his head to look at him, he yelled over his shoulder: “Damn it, Lee! I saw that!”
“I didn’t do anything!” Came the answer, which Draco knew was a lie. But he also knew that George cared more about his products – and well, maybe Draco was sort-of a product for him now. Who would brew George’s potions quickly with such quality when he died because of Lee Jordan’s dislike?
But whatever George called back about the danger Lee put his products in did not really get through to Draco, because George was still holding him. Draco stood safely on both his feet and George’s arms were still there, as though this was a comfortable position.
It was not. Definitely not. Draco gulped hard when George turned back to him. Instead of letting go, he stared at Draco out of his normally hard eyes. Whatever was wrong resulted in them softening up, and Draco feared that it may have been the little blush that had reached his cheeks.
“You all right, Malfoy?”
Draco nodded. With his tongue feeling like it was glued to the roof of his mouth, he could not say something even if anything imaginative had occurred to him.
“Good.” George stepped away from Draco, taking his sensible warmth and memorable smell with him. “Then go back into your cellar. I don’t want to see you here.”
Draco had never been gladder about this order.
~*~
10 months to go…
Ten months to go and Draco realised that sitting in a dark, lonely cellar gave him far too much time to think. And he thought about what was wrong when it came to his nasty boss.
George hated him. He looked at him like he was scum. Even Draco’s puppy eyes would not stop George from kicking him out in the rain, but still… maybe this tangible dislike was why Draco could not stop thinking about him.
He was thankful for every distraction. May it be Verity’s obvious attempts to hit on him or filling puffskeins with Shrinking Solution (although Draco much preferred the latter).
He had one pink puffskein between his legs and dripped the potion cautiously onto the large tongue that had tried to lick him earlier. Big black eyes stared at him, and even as the fluffy body shrunk, they stayed unnaturally huge.
Draco felt something similar to pity for the poor creatures. They were forced to live as small balls on the shoulders of bloody girls that would fall deeply in love with them – and receiving so much love only sounded nice as long as the large tongue stayed undiscovered, because then there was definitely no need for boyfriends.
Yes, weeks alone in a dark cellar had made him slightly weird.
Draco threw the pygmy puff into the cage that stood under the poster of the woman who still tried to get his attention – fruitlessly – and then reached for another. He must have looked so utterly pathetic – sitting beside this enormous mountain of fluffiness. No one could have held back a chuckle when entering the cellar.
Except for his nasty boss.
“Making progress?” George approached him and Draco was surprised that he did not make a comment about how stupid this looked.
“Yeah… you already need some?” Draco frowned when George shook his head. Why was he down here then?
George stopped behind the wall of puffskeins next to Draco. He picked up a vanilla coloured one to knead it while remaining silent. Draco continued to shrink them. The wall was getting smaller and smaller and Draco more uncomfortable with the decreasing barrier between him and George.
“See…” Finally, George broke the silence. “You said you could… improve their breeding?”
Draco shrugged. “Sure. I just brew them a special bottle of love.” He doubted even a pygmy puff orgy would stop his thoughts from wandering to George dangerously often.
George held out his puffskein when Draco reached for a new one. The black eyes begged for his hands and it purred in such an irresistible tone that no one could look away now. There really was something wrong with Draco, because instead he gazed up at George.
“Would you mind trying that out?” George’s eyes were still hard as steel so Draco smiled, hoping it turned into the smirk he had tried for.
“You’re the boss. Whatever you want me to do…” Draco took the puffskein out of George’s hand and noticed that George’s fingers twitched towards his direction.
George’s stare was boring into him in such an intense way that Draco even sensed it when the gaze focused on the shrinking puffskein. “Yeah, I want that. And I want it as fast as possible. When can you give me any results?”
Draco shrugged again. “Clarify results.”
George made a questioning noise.
“Do you want baby pygmy puffs by the end of the month or just a judgement of how long they’ll need to produce any?”
George shook his head and waved dismissively at Draco. “Whatever you have…”
“I’ll try my best, Boss,” Draco said, throwing the next pygmy puff into the cage. When he turned his head a huge puffskein hit his face. It whirled its tongue around Draco’s throat before it fell to the ground. When Draco grabbed it and put it into his lap, George was smirking. Draco wanted to yell at him, but he swallowed every comment. George’s smirk disappeared again.
“I don’t like that,” he said and now it was Draco’s turn to make a questioning noise. “That you’re so submissive.”
“I’m whatever I need to be to keep me here.”
“So, you’d let me treat you like shite just to stay out of Azkaban? A true coward, Malfoy.” George was just trying to provoke him now, but Draco would not let it happen. “Come on, what could happen to you there? All of your friends and even your family waits for you there.”
“Exactly,” Draco replied. He put the pygmy puff to its new friends in the cage, and George gave him another puffskein. Like they were working together. Draco felt a warm sensation filling his chest.
“You’re scared of family and friends? Damn it, Malfoy. What have you done that everyone hates you?” George’s question cooled Draco down again.
“Well…” Draco forgot everything about efficiency and stroked the fur of the puffskein for a moment, burying his fingers in rosy fluff. “You and your… kind of people hate me because of the obvious fact that I was a Death Eater. And my kind of people hate me because my family helped Harry Potter.” He shrugged and dripped the potion onto the tongue of the puffskein. It was stroking over his arm in an almost comforting way. “It’s actually not that complicated,” he added. He could not directly tell George how stupid he was not to notice that.
“Yeah… almost forgot that.” George held out the next puffskein to Draco and this time their fingers touched somewhere in the messy fur. It was as though something had burned them – they pulled back at exactly the same time and the puffskein bounced to the ground, purring delightfully.
“I need to go back upstairs,” George muttered and turned away, before Draco could even nod. He watched George hurrying up the stairs and then pulled the puffskein into his lap. Again a tongue tried to comfort him, but it was definitely not comfort he needed now.
Draco stared at the naked woman, who hastily showed him her backside. It was disgusting enough to distract Draco from the sensation that still tickled in the tips of his fingers.
~*~
9 months to go…
Pygmy puffs had a strange way of love-making. Draco had tried to find out how it worked. It was a mystery for him how they could even figure it out in that mess of fur in the cage. They rolled around and over each other; sometimes they tied their tongues around the bars and then swung from one end of the cage to the other, but no matter what it never looked like sex.
However, it did seem to work. And that was the important thing, because apparently it brought him sympathies. Except when it came to Verity. The only woman in the shop found it disgusting that Draco forced cute fluffy balls to have sex in front of him. Jordan had almost rolled over the floor laughing at Verity’s heroically delivered speech for pygmy puff privacy while the Weasel had weaselled around in the background trying to watch what he apparently was not getting at home from his Mudblood. At least Verity had finally stopped asking Draco if he wanted to have lunch with her.
Draco did not feel any regrets about this. His thoughts were with someone else, and when he returned from his lonely lunch break today, this someone stood in front of the cage and stared into it, so engaged in the rolling pygmy puffs that he did not even notice Draco sneaking up on him from behind.
“Still cute, right?” Draco smirked when George winced, but before he could turn around, Draco’s mouth was a thin line again.
“Yeah, somehow…” George turned away from the pygmy puffs and held out some parchments to Draco. “I need you to sign these. Since your period of probation is over this ensures that you’ll stay for the last nine months.”
Draco simply smiled at this. For a change it was not because of the hard look George gave him; it was because he was relieved.
“Percy stops by after half a year for, what do I know… probably to satisfy his control issue.” Most likely to make sure that Draco was not being treated like a slave – community service was not equal to slavery.
Draco nodded and turned to the table. He read the parchments quickly and then pulled a quill out of a drawer to sign them. His hand started shaking when George stepped behind him to peer over his shoulder.
“Percy said you should carefully read the fine print.” George’s arm sneaked underneath Draco’s to show him said part of the parchment. His breath was cool against the blush that crept over Draco’s neck.
“So?” Draco turned his head. It seemed so long ago that he had been able to count the freckles on George’s cheeks. “What’ll I find there? My permission to be used as your personal slave?”
George smirked at him and did not move a single inch away. He was not coming closer, but neither was he pulling back, his arm still lying underneath Draco’s, brushing his hip.
“If we leave all this bureaucratic shit aside then you are my personal slave, Malfoy. You work for me. It’s my decision where I let you work.” The corners of George’s mouth dropped. “Good for you that you’re not worth anything but potions.”
Draco tried for a smirk himself. “Don’t forget breeding pygmy puffs.”
George’s lips twitched. He opened his mouth to say something but instead of words a chuckle escaped him. He lowered his head to hide his laughter, but only succeeded in hitting Draco’s neck. Draco should have backed away. But he could almost feel George’s lips on his skin, could feel the tip of his nose, and when George took a deep breath Draco wondered if his cologne was to George’s like.
Apparently it was, because George stayed in his odd position for a long time.
“Sign them,” George breathed eventually, and it sounded so much like ‘Stay with me’ that Draco’s hand flew over the parchments. “Thanks, Malfoy.” George pulled the parchments and his entire body away as soon as Draco had signed.
He watched George walking back upstairs and opened his mouth, but asking his boss to stay and watch pygmy puffs breeding seemed a bit too desperate for his taste, so he closed his mouth again, simultaneously with the noise of the closing cellar door.
~*~
8 months to go…
Draco was unable to tell if his crush was one-sided. A few months ago he would have immediately said that only the loneliness of the cellar could make him believe that George Weasley might feel something else than hate for him, but there were moments… well, Draco was unsure about what to think of George’s long glances, the accidental touches when he walked by, and especially his softer expressions.
His brown eyes seemed to brighten, even in the dim light of the cellar, when they focused on Draco. And they did that so often…
Draco could hardly hold back a smirk when George looked again over his shoulder. George was refilling the potion ingredients on the shelf where Draco could watch from his position behind the long table. And every other minute, George turned over his shoulder, watched Draco cutting hellebore and then returned to his task. He rubbed the back of his neck, red strands standing up at his hair line. Draco had noticed the rosy spots on George’s neck. He was causing his boss to blush, not very deep though, but maybe he could change that.
The next time George looked at him, Draco smiled. The only effect was that George hastily turned away again. Tightening his grip around his knife, Draco snorted softly. Maybe he should dance and take off his clothes like the woman on the poster to get more attention.
Draco focused on the almost-black root of hellebore. His crush was not so deep that he would do anything to seduce a Weasley. He did not even know why his stomach turned into the perfect nest for butterflies whenever he was close to George. He might be handsome, and he used to be funny, but they should not like each other. A war did not change that.
The War had definitely changed George.
Draco stopped in his movement to cut through the root, eyes, without permission, wandering back to George, the not-dead-twin. Of course the loss of his twin had changed him, but Draco had never known George well enough to tell the big differences. He looked lonely and sometimes stared blankly into nothingness, but maybe George had always been like that. Maybe the sad and lost look only covered the birth of all those mischievous ideas in his head.
Maybe…
“Malfoy?”
Again, being addressed without expectation, made Draco cringe – the negative side-effect was that he slashed his knife right into his index finger.
Draco’s jaw clenched as he tried not to show any pain or pull any attention to his mistake, but George’s widening eyes told him that it was too late for that.
“Hold on, Malfoy!” George put the bottle he had been holding away.
“It’s nothing.” Draco was glad that the deep cut filled with blood so that he could not see how deep it truly was. “Happens…”
“Yeah, but that’s hellebore juice you had on your knife.” George grabbed Draco’s wrist and examined the wound.
“I’m not going to die from a drop of hellebore juice in my blood. Maybe I need to use the toilet more often or –” Draco made a high noise of surprise when George took his finger into his mouth. And he was not only sucking on it, his teeth dug hard into the flesh around the cut and increased the stinging burning.
Draco hissed. “What are you doing?”
George released his finger and spit some blood on the table. “I’m sucking the poison out.” He flashed Draco a smirk that somehow gave him the impression George only used this as an excuse to get close to him. “Don’t want you to block the toilet.”
Draco tried for a smile but it disappeared because George went back to sucking his finger. It was quite painful, and feeling George’s tongue moving over the revealed layers of skin was not as comfortable as the feel of his lips on his unharmed skin.
When George pulled back again Draco could see how deep the cut really was. Disgustedly, he grimaced and was glad when George traced his wand over the wound.
“Thanks, Boss.” Draco spotted some remaining blood at the corner of George’s mouth.
George’s bloody lips curled upwards. “You’re welcome. Need to take care of my…” His voice lapsed into silence when Draco reached out a hand. “What’re you…”
“You have some blood there,” Draco said in a whisper, because he was fascinated that George’s lips felt even softer when he wiped his fingers over them.
“I didn’t try to steal your precious blood.”
That comment had Draco retrieving his hand quickly. “Blood is blood…”
“You’re not serious about that, eh?”
Draco shrugged. “Blood is just blood. I had quite an intense lesson about that last year.” He raised his chin a little. “Well, of course, my blood is still precious because it’s my blood. And I am precious.”
George was not laughing, but he grinned like he had not grinned at Draco before. “You’re so in love with yourself it’s no wonder that Vertiy’s attempts weren’t successful.”
“No…” Draco noticed a small chance to make his attempts a bit more obvious. “Verity’s attempts were unsuccessful because of the same reasons why the poster’s attempts are unsuccessful.”
George’s grin softened and Draco was utterly glad that it neither disappeared nor turned into a devilish one. “I’ve thought so.”
Draco’s heart was pounding harshly against his chest because George did not back away from him. Encouragement bumped through Draco’s veins and he was sure that those brown eyes pulled him closer.
“And what do you think about that?”
“I’m not going to throw you out because of it.” George stepped away and pointed towards the shelves. “Do me a favour and finish that for me, Malfoy.” With that he turned around and walked patiently away, leaving Draco flushed and filled to the brim with confusion.
Next
Author:
deathlydragonPrompt: #145 by
s0ulrunnerPairing(s): Draco/George
Summary: To remain free of Azkaban Draco is forced to work at Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes for one year. Doesn’t sound too bad at first, but Draco soon realises how hard twelve months in the whirlwind of George Weasley’s contrasting emotions truly are…
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction set in the Harry Potter universe, all recognisable characters and settings are the property of J. K. Rowling and her associates. No money is made from this work.
Warning(s): None.
Word Count: ~17.500
Author's Notes: Beware! Puffskein and pygmy puff abuse hides between the lines! Or maybe not… I just think such fluffy creatures deserve a bit more attention, too. :D Hope someone likes this! Many thanks to my beta!
The beginning…
“These are the facilities that have offered you community service, Mr. Malfoy.”
Draco stared at the blank parchment that lay in front of him. He lifted his gaze back to the Minister’s assistant, Percy Weasley, and found himself confronted with a polite smile. Unable to tell if Weasley was joking, Draco shoved the parchment back towards him.
“There’s nothing written on it,” he drawled.
Weasley’s mouth twitched and he suddenly let out a chuckle that startled Draco. Shifting in his chair, he offered Weasley a wary look and watched the freckled cheeks slowly become red.
“Not funny?” Weasley looked hopeful, but Draco remained cold.
“Not funny,” he said and leant back in his chair, folding his arms in front of his chest. “Where’s my list?”
Weasley pointed at the blank parchment. “I’m sorry, Mr. Malfoy. This is everything we can offer you.”
“You offer me nothing?” Draco was shocked. Although he knew that after the War it would have been hard for him to find a job, he had not expected that there was not even one person that would engage him even for no money.
“There’s nothing I can do. Your name is well-known, Mr. Malfoy,” Weasley said and folded his fingers on his desk, forming a perfect triangle on Draco’s blank parchment. “The people are scared to work with a former Death Eater from V-Voldemort’s inner circle.”
“Inner circle? I wasn’t engaged in any activity of the inner circle. I was… am a teenager.” Draco hoped that his pouting mouth would give him the same advantage that it did during his hearing. Otherwise he would definitely have ended up in Azkaban for his Death Eater activities, instead of only being forced to work for the community. But if no one wanted him to even dispose of the dragon dung at Gringotts, then Azkaban was certainly waiting for him.
Weasley eyed him over the top of his glasses. “We have detailed information in which activities you were involved, Mr. Malfoy.”
Apparently, Draco’s puppy eyes did not work with Weasley. He tried harder.
“I was scared. Like everyone else,” Draco said, leaning forward to make sure Weasley saw every glittery tear Draco forced into his eyes. “Isn’t there anything you can do? I don’t want to go to Azkaban.”
“I can’t think of anyone who would want that,” Weasley replied dryly.
Draco pressed a hand against his eyes as real tears welled up. Azkaban was as good as a return to the nightmare he had lived during the last year. He would be reunited with a lot of familiar faces, who would love to see him dead because his mother helped Harry Potter. This might have helped him escape Azkaban at first, but it had not rebuilt his reputation in the wizarding community. It certainly had destroyed the last remaining bits of sympathy he had held within the Dark Lord’s circle.
Azkaban would be his death.
“There might be another option…” Weasley’s voice made Draco look up, hope suddenly flaring in his chest. “You can search yourself –”
Draco interrupted him with a snort. “I barely have time to suck up to someone until he offers me a place to work. The Ministry will send me to Azkaban before that happens.”
Weasley pressed his lips into a firm line and stared intensely at Draco. Then he cleared his throat. “I might be able to… to offer you a position.”
“At the Ministry?” Draco asked warily.
Weasley laughed. “No, no… a Malfoy at the Ministry… That would be… no…” He laughed again and turned the noise into a soft cough when Draco scowled at him. “I remember you having a talent for Potions, Mr. Malfoy?”
12 months to go…
Draco let out a heavy sigh as he took in the sight of Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes. He clung to a file with parchments from Percy Weasley – documents his brother had to sign to ensure Draco could work the next year in his shop.
“What did your puppy eyes get you into this time, Draco?” Shaking his head, Draco approached the shop, cautiously looking inside through the windows. There were too many children inside. Draco hated children. He also hated Weasleys and Percy Weasley had earned more antipathies by sending him straight to his brother.
It still was better than Azkaban, so Draco entered the shop. Promptly some laughing children bumped into him when they headed for the exit. Draco lost hold of his file and the parchments fell to the floor.
Cursing under his breath, Draco moved to gather up his documents. A pair of shoes stepped into his view and Draco looked up.
George Weasley stared back at him. From Draco’s perspective, his brown eyes seemed strangely dark and scary, especially with the blank expression he wore. His fiery red hair was combed so that it covered his missing ear. Draco tried not to stare at it.
“These are the documents?” George ducked next to Draco on the ground, picking up the parchments.
Draco pulled his hands away before he touched George’s fingers. He nodded.
“Percy owled me,” George said and straightened. He did not hold out a hand to Draco. Not that Draco expected that. “Follow me. I’ll show you where you’ll be working.” He turned around and walked at a high speed through the store, aiming for a door that apparently led into the cellar.
Draco sighed. Great. A year in a dark and moist cellar. His skin would never recover its healthy tone.
They had to climb steep stairs down and Draco had trouble not falling into George’s back. He steadied himself by holding onto the wall and grimaced when he noticed the web of a spider.
“Fred worked here most of the time, since he was in charge of the potions,” George explained when they reached the bottom of the stairs. It was a small room with long tables and half a dozen cauldrons. On the wall, shelves were filled with vials and large bottles; next to them stood an empty cage. There were also pictures hanging on the otherwise empty, cold stone walls. Draco grimaced at the sight of a barely clothed woman waving lasciviously at him, but he did not say anything.
“We’re in arrears with quite a few potions. Especially the Love Potion,” George said and placed the documents on one table, then bent down to open a drawer. He handed another parchment to Draco. “This is your to-do-list.”
Draco ripped the parchment out of George’s hand and looked it over. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed George signing the papers. A knot in his throat loosened at the sight. Goodbye Azkaban.
“For today?” Draco stayed on the opposite side of the table, not wanting to come too close to George. He had not expected a warm welcome, but even Percy Weasley had been nicer to him at their first meeting a couple of weeks ago. At least he had shaken his hand.
George looked up and seemed confused. “You have until the end of the week,” he muttered and turned back to the parchments.
Draco’s mouth twitched. A year in a cellar with lots of free time to take care of his skin. Actually, that did not sound too bad.
“What do you need Shrinking Solution for?” Draco asked as he tried to decipher George’s scrawl.
George snorted in annoyance. “Pygmy puffs.”
“The little, fluffy balls?” Draco noticed that George’s hand started shaking at this question. “Don’t tell me you truly shrink Puffskeins. Isn’t that abuse of Magical Creatures? There’s certainly a law –”
George’s quill cracked. Draco broke off, surprised. Brown eyes focused on him, and now Draco realised that it was hate that made them appear so dark.
“Don’t tell me anything about laws, Malfoy. Don’t tell me anything at all, okay? You’re not here to ask questions. You’re here to brew potions.” George pulled out his wand to fix the quill and returned to the documents.
Draco raised a hand in defence. “You’re the boss.” He would definitely not risk losing his only opportunity to escape Azkaban. It was probably better that George hated him. He would stay in this cellar and brew potions while being watched by almost naked women, instead of dealing with a Weasley. Draco could live with that.
“They don’t breed as fast as we expected,” George eventually muttered, feeling the need to explain himself. Draco smirked.
“Want me to come up with an aphrodisiac for the fluffy cuteness?” he asked, trying hard not to laugh at the image of a dozen pygmy puffs engaged in sexual activity.
George covered his laughter with a cough. “You’re not here to think, Malfoy. You do whatever I want you to do. And I don’t want to note that you’re here.”
Draco took the documents George shoved across the table. “I can manage that.”
“Great.” George walked back to the stairs. “You get along without my help.”
11 months to go…
It could have been worse. Draco’s day appeared to start early and end late, but he truly had more free time than was good for him. He spent hours sitting in front of half a dozen cauldrons waiting for his potions to become ready for the next step. Even after he had tried to brew the potions so that one was ready for the next step while the others needed to boil, it was not getting more interesting. It was simply swallowing time.
Draco, full of disgust, stared at the poster of the naked woman – and the longer he stared at it the more clothes disappeared – while he waited for the potions to cool down so that he could funnel them into vials. He had thought about asking George if he could take the poster down, but since it seemed to be the property of his brother, he felt extremely unsure about this. Everything concerning his deceased twin was a tough topic.
Even in his cellar, Draco had heard George yelling. Yelling at his own brother about making a suggestion how to improve the daily settlements, at his best friend because of something banal like breaking an old quill, and considering this, Draco rather remained silent.
“I know it’s an interesting poster, but –”
“What?!” Draco whirled around and glared at Verity, George’s only female staff member. She was also the only one who was actually polite and kind to him, probably because she was a woman. Draco had never really understood why women were unable to resist him. They should sense that he was not interested.
“The way you were staring at it is obvious,” Verity said. The way she played with her hair, tilted her head and smiled at him was ridiculously obvious.
Draco rolled his eyes. “It’s disgusting. I wish I could take it down.”
Apparently, this was not obvious enough to put an end to the clumsy flirtation. It brightened Verity’s smile.
“Oh, you don’t know how delightful it is to hear that! Sometimes I wish the others would act more gentlemanly…” Finally Verity said why she truly was down in the dungeon. “Speaking of gentlemen… I could need your help for a moment.”
Draco looked at his cauldrons and the steam swirling up from their depths. “I’ve got time, but…”
“Wonderful!” Verity grabbed his arm and pulled him upstairs, completely ignoring Draco’s attempt to remind her that George did not want him upstairs. Maybe Verity had kept this in mind, because George was not in the shop when Draco looked around.
Jordan behind the counter waved at him, his extraordinarily white teeth a high contrast to his dark skin.
“I need help putting these new products onto the shelves. Lee takes care of the customers, so you and I can totally focus on this.”
Draco stared at the quite unstable looking ladder and he reached into his pocket to pull out his wand, but Verity hastily shook his head.
“No magic,” she warned and pointed at the packages on the ground. “They’re quite fragile and we don’t want to risk –”
“Letting them fall?” Draco put his wand away.
“That they blow up the store.” Verity smiled at him and then moved to open the packages. Draco had already learned not to protest and risk this quite comfortable place to fulfil his community service. So he climbed onto the ladder and put strange glass spheres onto the shelves. Something glittered inside them; a strange misty dust of crystal that changed colour when Verity pulled them out of the package and then once more when she gave them to Draco.
“What are these?” he asked after a while, his curiosity increasing even more since Verity kept talking about her cat having kittens which he ‘really should visit because they were so, so cute!’
“Oh, they’re…”
“Verity?!” Jordan seemed to have waited for this opportunity to keep Draco’s curiosity from being satisfied. “Need you for a moment,” he called. Verity gifted Draco an apologetic look before she hurried away.
Draco felt used, but climbed down the ladder to unpack the next package. It would be way easier to just Summon them up to the shelves and he truly doubted that those glass things with crystal dust would blow anything up. It just seemed to be a rule at Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes to work in the most inefficient way; otherwise George would have long noticed that no one needed a week to brew Shrinking Solution.
Staring into the violet dust of crystal, Draco climbed back up the ladder. The dust seemed to start out white, change colours when touched, then turn back to white again as soon as he put it onto the shelf. Verity’s dust had turned green. Draco wished he knew how she had done that. He definitely preferred green to violet.
Draco continued to put the glass spheres on the shelf and from time to time looked over his shoulder. Jordan at the counter hastily lowered his arm. Suspiciously, Draco narrowed his eyes. If that bastard tried to throw something at him, again, he would take advantage of Verity’s sympathies and cry on her shoulder until she spanked that nasty bastard. But who knew – he might like it…
“What’re you doing up here, Malfoy?”
Being addressed so suddenly caused Draco to cringe. He clung to the ladder and looked down. George had come through the door and stared up at Draco like he just caught him robbing the store.
“Verity asked me for help.” Draco smiled, smiled into a face that always stayed uncommonly frosty around him.
“Verity?” While George searched the shop for hints of Verity, Draco decided that it was better to come down. After all, George did not want him up here, just in the cellar, and the cellar was Draco’s protection from Azkaban, so this year, to be precise only eleven months left, he would do what George Weasley wanted him to do.
Something hard hit his ankle when Draco went to place his foot on a lower step. He lost balance and as he fell backwards he realised that he cared more about not crashing the new products instead of his bones – because in Azkaban even all of his bones could not protect him.
Protect him, like the arms that caught him. It was a lucky coincidence that George was standing right behind Draco so that he was forced to wrap his arms at just the right moment around Draco. Draco bumped roughly against the chest suddenly in his back; he could feel every hard and every soft spot of George’s body, and almost tore him down as well.
But George was still standing, and when Draco turned his head to look at him, he yelled over his shoulder: “Damn it, Lee! I saw that!”
“I didn’t do anything!” Came the answer, which Draco knew was a lie. But he also knew that George cared more about his products – and well, maybe Draco was sort-of a product for him now. Who would brew George’s potions quickly with such quality when he died because of Lee Jordan’s dislike?
But whatever George called back about the danger Lee put his products in did not really get through to Draco, because George was still holding him. Draco stood safely on both his feet and George’s arms were still there, as though this was a comfortable position.
It was not. Definitely not. Draco gulped hard when George turned back to him. Instead of letting go, he stared at Draco out of his normally hard eyes. Whatever was wrong resulted in them softening up, and Draco feared that it may have been the little blush that had reached his cheeks.
“You all right, Malfoy?”
Draco nodded. With his tongue feeling like it was glued to the roof of his mouth, he could not say something even if anything imaginative had occurred to him.
“Good.” George stepped away from Draco, taking his sensible warmth and memorable smell with him. “Then go back into your cellar. I don’t want to see you here.”
Draco had never been gladder about this order.
10 months to go…
Ten months to go and Draco realised that sitting in a dark, lonely cellar gave him far too much time to think. And he thought about what was wrong when it came to his nasty boss.
George hated him. He looked at him like he was scum. Even Draco’s puppy eyes would not stop George from kicking him out in the rain, but still… maybe this tangible dislike was why Draco could not stop thinking about him.
He was thankful for every distraction. May it be Verity’s obvious attempts to hit on him or filling puffskeins with Shrinking Solution (although Draco much preferred the latter).
He had one pink puffskein between his legs and dripped the potion cautiously onto the large tongue that had tried to lick him earlier. Big black eyes stared at him, and even as the fluffy body shrunk, they stayed unnaturally huge.
Draco felt something similar to pity for the poor creatures. They were forced to live as small balls on the shoulders of bloody girls that would fall deeply in love with them – and receiving so much love only sounded nice as long as the large tongue stayed undiscovered, because then there was definitely no need for boyfriends.
Yes, weeks alone in a dark cellar had made him slightly weird.
Draco threw the pygmy puff into the cage that stood under the poster of the woman who still tried to get his attention – fruitlessly – and then reached for another. He must have looked so utterly pathetic – sitting beside this enormous mountain of fluffiness. No one could have held back a chuckle when entering the cellar.
Except for his nasty boss.
“Making progress?” George approached him and Draco was surprised that he did not make a comment about how stupid this looked.
“Yeah… you already need some?” Draco frowned when George shook his head. Why was he down here then?
George stopped behind the wall of puffskeins next to Draco. He picked up a vanilla coloured one to knead it while remaining silent. Draco continued to shrink them. The wall was getting smaller and smaller and Draco more uncomfortable with the decreasing barrier between him and George.
“See…” Finally, George broke the silence. “You said you could… improve their breeding?”
Draco shrugged. “Sure. I just brew them a special bottle of love.” He doubted even a pygmy puff orgy would stop his thoughts from wandering to George dangerously often.
George held out his puffskein when Draco reached for a new one. The black eyes begged for his hands and it purred in such an irresistible tone that no one could look away now. There really was something wrong with Draco, because instead he gazed up at George.
“Would you mind trying that out?” George’s eyes were still hard as steel so Draco smiled, hoping it turned into the smirk he had tried for.
“You’re the boss. Whatever you want me to do…” Draco took the puffskein out of George’s hand and noticed that George’s fingers twitched towards his direction.
George’s stare was boring into him in such an intense way that Draco even sensed it when the gaze focused on the shrinking puffskein. “Yeah, I want that. And I want it as fast as possible. When can you give me any results?”
Draco shrugged again. “Clarify results.”
George made a questioning noise.
“Do you want baby pygmy puffs by the end of the month or just a judgement of how long they’ll need to produce any?”
George shook his head and waved dismissively at Draco. “Whatever you have…”
“I’ll try my best, Boss,” Draco said, throwing the next pygmy puff into the cage. When he turned his head a huge puffskein hit his face. It whirled its tongue around Draco’s throat before it fell to the ground. When Draco grabbed it and put it into his lap, George was smirking. Draco wanted to yell at him, but he swallowed every comment. George’s smirk disappeared again.
“I don’t like that,” he said and now it was Draco’s turn to make a questioning noise. “That you’re so submissive.”
“I’m whatever I need to be to keep me here.”
“So, you’d let me treat you like shite just to stay out of Azkaban? A true coward, Malfoy.” George was just trying to provoke him now, but Draco would not let it happen. “Come on, what could happen to you there? All of your friends and even your family waits for you there.”
“Exactly,” Draco replied. He put the pygmy puff to its new friends in the cage, and George gave him another puffskein. Like they were working together. Draco felt a warm sensation filling his chest.
“You’re scared of family and friends? Damn it, Malfoy. What have you done that everyone hates you?” George’s question cooled Draco down again.
“Well…” Draco forgot everything about efficiency and stroked the fur of the puffskein for a moment, burying his fingers in rosy fluff. “You and your… kind of people hate me because of the obvious fact that I was a Death Eater. And my kind of people hate me because my family helped Harry Potter.” He shrugged and dripped the potion onto the tongue of the puffskein. It was stroking over his arm in an almost comforting way. “It’s actually not that complicated,” he added. He could not directly tell George how stupid he was not to notice that.
“Yeah… almost forgot that.” George held out the next puffskein to Draco and this time their fingers touched somewhere in the messy fur. It was as though something had burned them – they pulled back at exactly the same time and the puffskein bounced to the ground, purring delightfully.
“I need to go back upstairs,” George muttered and turned away, before Draco could even nod. He watched George hurrying up the stairs and then pulled the puffskein into his lap. Again a tongue tried to comfort him, but it was definitely not comfort he needed now.
Draco stared at the naked woman, who hastily showed him her backside. It was disgusting enough to distract Draco from the sensation that still tickled in the tips of his fingers.
9 months to go…
Pygmy puffs had a strange way of love-making. Draco had tried to find out how it worked. It was a mystery for him how they could even figure it out in that mess of fur in the cage. They rolled around and over each other; sometimes they tied their tongues around the bars and then swung from one end of the cage to the other, but no matter what it never looked like sex.
However, it did seem to work. And that was the important thing, because apparently it brought him sympathies. Except when it came to Verity. The only woman in the shop found it disgusting that Draco forced cute fluffy balls to have sex in front of him. Jordan had almost rolled over the floor laughing at Verity’s heroically delivered speech for pygmy puff privacy while the Weasel had weaselled around in the background trying to watch what he apparently was not getting at home from his Mudblood. At least Verity had finally stopped asking Draco if he wanted to have lunch with her.
Draco did not feel any regrets about this. His thoughts were with someone else, and when he returned from his lonely lunch break today, this someone stood in front of the cage and stared into it, so engaged in the rolling pygmy puffs that he did not even notice Draco sneaking up on him from behind.
“Still cute, right?” Draco smirked when George winced, but before he could turn around, Draco’s mouth was a thin line again.
“Yeah, somehow…” George turned away from the pygmy puffs and held out some parchments to Draco. “I need you to sign these. Since your period of probation is over this ensures that you’ll stay for the last nine months.”
Draco simply smiled at this. For a change it was not because of the hard look George gave him; it was because he was relieved.
“Percy stops by after half a year for, what do I know… probably to satisfy his control issue.” Most likely to make sure that Draco was not being treated like a slave – community service was not equal to slavery.
Draco nodded and turned to the table. He read the parchments quickly and then pulled a quill out of a drawer to sign them. His hand started shaking when George stepped behind him to peer over his shoulder.
“Percy said you should carefully read the fine print.” George’s arm sneaked underneath Draco’s to show him said part of the parchment. His breath was cool against the blush that crept over Draco’s neck.
“So?” Draco turned his head. It seemed so long ago that he had been able to count the freckles on George’s cheeks. “What’ll I find there? My permission to be used as your personal slave?”
George smirked at him and did not move a single inch away. He was not coming closer, but neither was he pulling back, his arm still lying underneath Draco’s, brushing his hip.
“If we leave all this bureaucratic shit aside then you are my personal slave, Malfoy. You work for me. It’s my decision where I let you work.” The corners of George’s mouth dropped. “Good for you that you’re not worth anything but potions.”
Draco tried for a smirk himself. “Don’t forget breeding pygmy puffs.”
George’s lips twitched. He opened his mouth to say something but instead of words a chuckle escaped him. He lowered his head to hide his laughter, but only succeeded in hitting Draco’s neck. Draco should have backed away. But he could almost feel George’s lips on his skin, could feel the tip of his nose, and when George took a deep breath Draco wondered if his cologne was to George’s like.
Apparently it was, because George stayed in his odd position for a long time.
“Sign them,” George breathed eventually, and it sounded so much like ‘Stay with me’ that Draco’s hand flew over the parchments. “Thanks, Malfoy.” George pulled the parchments and his entire body away as soon as Draco had signed.
He watched George walking back upstairs and opened his mouth, but asking his boss to stay and watch pygmy puffs breeding seemed a bit too desperate for his taste, so he closed his mouth again, simultaneously with the noise of the closing cellar door.
8 months to go…
Draco was unable to tell if his crush was one-sided. A few months ago he would have immediately said that only the loneliness of the cellar could make him believe that George Weasley might feel something else than hate for him, but there were moments… well, Draco was unsure about what to think of George’s long glances, the accidental touches when he walked by, and especially his softer expressions.
His brown eyes seemed to brighten, even in the dim light of the cellar, when they focused on Draco. And they did that so often…
Draco could hardly hold back a smirk when George looked again over his shoulder. George was refilling the potion ingredients on the shelf where Draco could watch from his position behind the long table. And every other minute, George turned over his shoulder, watched Draco cutting hellebore and then returned to his task. He rubbed the back of his neck, red strands standing up at his hair line. Draco had noticed the rosy spots on George’s neck. He was causing his boss to blush, not very deep though, but maybe he could change that.
The next time George looked at him, Draco smiled. The only effect was that George hastily turned away again. Tightening his grip around his knife, Draco snorted softly. Maybe he should dance and take off his clothes like the woman on the poster to get more attention.
Draco focused on the almost-black root of hellebore. His crush was not so deep that he would do anything to seduce a Weasley. He did not even know why his stomach turned into the perfect nest for butterflies whenever he was close to George. He might be handsome, and he used to be funny, but they should not like each other. A war did not change that.
The War had definitely changed George.
Draco stopped in his movement to cut through the root, eyes, without permission, wandering back to George, the not-dead-twin. Of course the loss of his twin had changed him, but Draco had never known George well enough to tell the big differences. He looked lonely and sometimes stared blankly into nothingness, but maybe George had always been like that. Maybe the sad and lost look only covered the birth of all those mischievous ideas in his head.
Maybe…
“Malfoy?”
Again, being addressed without expectation, made Draco cringe – the negative side-effect was that he slashed his knife right into his index finger.
Draco’s jaw clenched as he tried not to show any pain or pull any attention to his mistake, but George’s widening eyes told him that it was too late for that.
“Hold on, Malfoy!” George put the bottle he had been holding away.
“It’s nothing.” Draco was glad that the deep cut filled with blood so that he could not see how deep it truly was. “Happens…”
“Yeah, but that’s hellebore juice you had on your knife.” George grabbed Draco’s wrist and examined the wound.
“I’m not going to die from a drop of hellebore juice in my blood. Maybe I need to use the toilet more often or –” Draco made a high noise of surprise when George took his finger into his mouth. And he was not only sucking on it, his teeth dug hard into the flesh around the cut and increased the stinging burning.
Draco hissed. “What are you doing?”
George released his finger and spit some blood on the table. “I’m sucking the poison out.” He flashed Draco a smirk that somehow gave him the impression George only used this as an excuse to get close to him. “Don’t want you to block the toilet.”
Draco tried for a smile but it disappeared because George went back to sucking his finger. It was quite painful, and feeling George’s tongue moving over the revealed layers of skin was not as comfortable as the feel of his lips on his unharmed skin.
When George pulled back again Draco could see how deep the cut really was. Disgustedly, he grimaced and was glad when George traced his wand over the wound.
“Thanks, Boss.” Draco spotted some remaining blood at the corner of George’s mouth.
George’s bloody lips curled upwards. “You’re welcome. Need to take care of my…” His voice lapsed into silence when Draco reached out a hand. “What’re you…”
“You have some blood there,” Draco said in a whisper, because he was fascinated that George’s lips felt even softer when he wiped his fingers over them.
“I didn’t try to steal your precious blood.”
That comment had Draco retrieving his hand quickly. “Blood is blood…”
“You’re not serious about that, eh?”
Draco shrugged. “Blood is just blood. I had quite an intense lesson about that last year.” He raised his chin a little. “Well, of course, my blood is still precious because it’s my blood. And I am precious.”
George was not laughing, but he grinned like he had not grinned at Draco before. “You’re so in love with yourself it’s no wonder that Vertiy’s attempts weren’t successful.”
“No…” Draco noticed a small chance to make his attempts a bit more obvious. “Verity’s attempts were unsuccessful because of the same reasons why the poster’s attempts are unsuccessful.”
George’s grin softened and Draco was utterly glad that it neither disappeared nor turned into a devilish one. “I’ve thought so.”
Draco’s heart was pounding harshly against his chest because George did not back away from him. Encouragement bumped through Draco’s veins and he was sure that those brown eyes pulled him closer.
“And what do you think about that?”
“I’m not going to throw you out because of it.” George stepped away and pointed towards the shelves. “Do me a favour and finish that for me, Malfoy.” With that he turned around and walked patiently away, leaving Draco flushed and filled to the brim with confusion.
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