FEST FIC: The Higher Geometry (2/2)

[bottomdraco-mod.livejournal.com]

Previous part



Figures of Imagination

Harry was ready to admit what he would have thought was impossible before he got trapped in here: Malfoy was scarily intense when he was at work.

He whispered numbers to himself, long strings of numbers that didn’t repeat often enough or form regular enough patterns for Harry to be sure what they meant. He traced his wand across the floor and the walls and the air, and then stopped and shook his head. Harry was actually sure that his mind was seeing the things he traced but couldn’t bring to life, and arranging them all in a dizzying, elemental flow.

For the first time, Harry thought, really thought, about the fact that Malfoy had invented the pendant around them. He tapped on the crystal and stood up to try and peer through the frosted walls, though as usual it was useless.

How smart must Malfoy be, to understand the magic that had produced this and then bring the magic to life? Harry had reminded him of the idea that one shape of time could probably combat another, but Malfoy was the one who had envisioned this teardrop and created it.

Harry couldn’t know a tenth of the labor that had gone into that. And even though he still thought it was a rather horrible idea for a prison, it did prove Malfoy was smart.

Harry started watching him more closely. He noticed the small muscles that twitched and tightened near Malfoy’s eye when he was concentrating. He watched the way that Malfoy’s fingers curled around his wand and then smoothed out again, and he got to know the fluctuations that meant Malfoy’s thoughts were whirling around futilely and the ones that meant he was being productive. He listened as Malfoy chuckled and cursed under his breath, and he didn’t sound mad, he sounded intelligent.

Reluctantly, Harry had to admit that Malfoy was more than he had ever thought he was.

Harry settled down to watch some more, until he learned enough about Malfoy to give him the answers to the questions that were starting to bloom in his mind.

*

It was easier to work than Draco had thought it would be, with Potter staring at him.

He had believed that his old rival’s eyes would cut into him and make him second-guess everything he did, which was no way for someone who wanted to find a way out of this trap to work. He needed his full concentration at every moment to counter the temptation to give in to despair, since he knew much about how well-constructed the pendant was, but nothing at all about the shape that might free them.

But instead, he grew in self-confidence as Potter watched him. When Potter slept, Draco would slow down and wait until he was awake again, staring at the crystal walls with his mind drifting in timeless contemplation. That was another technique that working among the Unspeakables had taught him, and it had come in useful more than once.

Potter, with his green eyes and his wild dark hair, was rapidly becoming as necessary to Draco as the training was.

He didn’t understand why. He could only work with what he understood: the shapes that played in his mind, the knowledge he had acquired over five years of dedicated work, and the longings and the desires that had led him to shape the teardrop and enter the Unspeakables in the first place.

Acquiring new knowledge of himself and why he might want Potter would simply have to wait.


Making the Parabola

"It’s useless."

Harry looked up, blinking. He had lost himself in a trance of watching Malfoy, and hadn’t woken until now, focused as he was on the minute movements of the man’s hands. It wasn’t as though hunger or tiredness was going to disturb him, and he had gradually stopped wanting to sleep, because every moment he slept was a moment when he wasn’t watching Malfoy.

"What’s useless?" he asked, alarmed by the expression on Malfoy’s face. He was breathing rapidly, his cheeks pink. If he had been on the verge of tears, Harry wouldn’t be surprised, but Malfoy had just dashed his hand across his eyes, so he wasn’t sure that was true.

"The attempt to make a parabola." Malfoy flung his wand away from him and sat there, arms folded, staring at nothing. "I’ve thought about it. Hair, robes, skin, blood—if we even had anything that could cut into our skin, which we don’t—and magic of any kind are out, of course. I thought about breaking my wand and bending some of the splinters into parabolas, but I’m not sure that I could do it, and that would be a waste of a perfectly good wand."

"Don’t break your wand!" Harry cried, appalled. "You know that the second one is never as good as the first. How are you going to do magic when you get back if you break yours now?"

"I want to get back, more than I want to go on being a wizard." Malfoy’s bright eyes shifted towards him. "You must want that, too, Potter. Unless you think that you really would be content to stay here for the rest of your life."

"I could find some way," was all that Harry could think of to say, stupidly and uselessly. If Malfoy couldn’t find a way out of this trap, then how could he? It wasn’t as though Harry understood about shapes and maths and all the rest of it. He had come up with the initial idea, sure, but Malfoy was the one who would need to put it into action.

"Really? Are you sure?" Malfoy picked up his wand again and trailed it across the floor, watching the lines it created as though they were the answer. Perhaps they would be, Harry thought, and determined to ask.

"We can still draw things in the air," he said. "Why shouldn’t that be enough?"

Malfoy snorted and let his head fall back so that it rested against the nearest wall. "Because the shape needs to be permanent, Potter. The only thing that would hold the shapes I draw in air is our eyes and our memories. I need something I can work with, something that will stay in place as I manipulate it. Besides, no one draws a perfect parabola the first time without magical help. One mistake, and we’re stuck in here."

"Oh." Harry could see now why Malfoy had taken so long to work through to a solution of the problem, but he didn’t see why Malfoy hadn’t grasped the solution that lay right in front of him. "Why don’t you use me?"

Malfoy gave him a miserable, scornful look and shook his head. "You didn’t hear me, Potter. I already considered your hair. It’s too curly. And your skin and your robes and your wand have the same objections against them that mine do."

"Not any of those things," Harry said. "I meant my body—me as a whole. I could lie down and try to get into the right position, and you could manipulate me as you need to." He swallowed, not sure why his face was getting so warm. He was just talking about what he and Malfoy needed to do to stay alive. It wasn’t as though he had offered to let Malfoy see him naked, or something.

Although, when Harry thought about the errors that the robes could cause in the shape of his body, he realized that it might come to that.

Malfoy stared at him with his mouth open. Then, for some reason, he backed away until his body bumped against the opposite wall of the pendant. Harry watched him with confused eyes, not deigning to turn his head. He thought that, if someone had managed to break into the pendant, he would have heard them by now. "What is it, Malfoy?" he asked.

"You would volunteer that," Malfoy whispered.

"Well, yes," Harry said. "I want to get out as much as you do. I’m not sure it’ll work," he added, thinking of the shapes that Malfoy drew in the air and the way that he talked about them having to be perfect. "But we can try, right? And if it doesn’t work, then we’re no worse off than we were before."

Malfoy continued to stare at him with parted lips and wide-open eyes. Harry frowned. He didn’t know if there was something wrong here, if Malfoy perhaps had some magical theory in mind that made what Harry was offering impossible, but he didn’t think so. Malfoy would have let him know right away if it was something like that, because he would love to gloat over Harry’s incompetence.

"What?" he demanded, when the silence grated on his nerves as much as the boredom had begun to do weeks, or days, or months, ago.

*

Draco closed his eyes. The image that had sprung into his mind the moment that Potter offered—the image of Potter stretched naked before him, twisting his limbs in response to Draco’s commands—still burned there, though, and there was nowhere he could withdraw into his mind that offered relief.

How can he—

But Potter didn’t seem to have any idea that he might have done something unusual. He had only offered because it was the option that a Gryffindor would think of, Draco decided, with an attempt to recover his sense of balance. A Gryffindor would think with his muscles instead of with his brain. That was all they were good at.

The image of Potter lying naked (because of course he would have to remove the robes, they would get nothing done with those on) was Draco’s own problem. There was no reason to reject Potter’s suggestion out of hand because of that.

But still the image burned, and still it took Potter’s impatient question to kick a response out from behind Draco’s teeth. He swallowed and managed to murmur, "I—I think that might work, Potter. Take your robes off."

He expected an explosive reaction, and that meant he could open his eyes, and glare, and call the whole thing off. But instead, after a minute or so of hesitation, or what felt like a minute, Potter began removing his clothes.

Draco sat there, shivering, trying to pretend that he only meditated, in silence for bellbeats of time before he opened his eyes. This isn’t real, he kept reminding himself. Of course not. Your words are imaginary here, your bodies don’t really move or change, and this nakedness is going to be imaginary as well.

It ought to have been easy to remind himself of that. After all, he hadn’t felt hunger since he’d been here, and he’d slept only to ease the boredom, not because he was tired—because of a mental sensation, not a physical one. It made sense, of course, that this desire he felt was only a mental sensation and not a physical one.

It didn’t help.

Potter had already slid out of his robes and taken off his shirt. Draco’s throat seized up when he saw him half-clothed, bending down to take off the boots. Potter’s shoulders bent and flexed—of course, that was what shoulders did, Draco tried to tell himself, and it didn’t help—and his skin rippled like water traveling over a streambed. Draco unstuck his tongue from the roof of his mouth and cleared his throat.

"It’ll have to be everything, Potter. Even an unexpected corner of cloth can cause problems with the parabola. We have to remove everything from your body that doesn’t need to be attached to it."

"Does that mean that you want to shave my head, too?" Potter grinned at him over his shoulder. His eyes were alight with hope that Draco hadn’t seen in them since Potter realized none of his spells worked.

Draco closed his eyes and turned his head away. His throat hurt. His heart hurt, jumping. Sweat soaked his palms.

"We can’t shave your head, Potter," he said finally, striving for a tone as sharp as the one that had come to him without effort only a short time ago. "Nothing to cut it with, remember? Not that even yanking strands out by the roots wouldn’t be an improvement," he remembered to add, because it was the sort of thing Potter would expect him to say.

"Shut it, Malfoy," Potter said, but there was no real malice in his voice. There was a last shuffling off of cloth and then silence, and Draco opened his eyes and turned his head, thinking Potter was finished.

He wasn’t. He was lowering his pants, and Draco got to see his cock as it emerged, long and pale and relaxed, but darker than the shade of Draco’s own skin just because—well, because Potter was darker. That was all there was to it.

Draco shut his eyes again. Then he told himself not to be such a baby, and opened them. Potter would notice his weakness soon, if Draco didn’t conquer it.

He had worked among naked statues during his training as an Unspeakable, because they were some of the most common artifacts that Dark wizards tried to use, and which Aurors would seize and send to them. Draco had been able to ignore them better than this. That meant he should get used to this. Some of them were much better-endowed than Potter, after all. Draco told himself that, while his breath came in gasps and Potter asked concerned questions about his health.

Then he looked again, and Potter lay naked on the floor of the pendant, waiting for him, arms over his head in his own inexpert attempt to create a parabola.

Draco stood up, slowly, and walked towards him. His boots hissed and clicked, far too loudly, against the crystalline floor.

Because, of course, this wasn’t the same as a statue. This was Potter’s body, willingly yielded to him, ceded to him, his to arrange and do with as he liked.

That Potter trusted him that much. . .

Draco bent down and began considering the position of Potter’s limbs, trying to keep his mind off how hard he was.


Shapes of Desire

Harry laid his head back on the crystal and tried to relax as much as he could. It was difficult, with Malfoy hovering near.

But not for the reason he had thought it would be. He didn’t really think Malfoy would try to tear out his heart and make him a bloody sacrifice to bring Voldemort back, or any of the stupid things he might have thought before they were trapped in this crystal together. For one thing, Malfoy couldn’t do magic any more than Harry could. He had built his trap too well. Harry had considered, a few—well, some time ago—that maybe Malfoy had trapped Harry in here, but not himself, and was sadistically pretending to be caught so that he could coax Harry into doing something awful. But this had gone on too long for Malfoy to be playing a joke, and Harry thought his distress was real.

Besides, he trusted the great bloody blond git now.

Malfoy’s hands ran over his chest and then down his sides, poking at the skin between his ribs as if trying to measure exactly how far it stuck out. Harry swallowed. He wondered if Malfoy had done this often for other people, and tried to think that he hadn’t. Back in the Unspeakables’ Department, he would have instruments that could measure people without having them get naked, and he probably did experiments on magical artifacts and animals more often than people anyway. Despite how powerful the Unspeakables were, there were some things the Ministry wouldn’t tolerate.

Well. Harry was fairly sure about that, anyway. If he thought about it deeply, he might not be.

Then he had another problem to occupy his attention, one that very efficiently took his mind away from the problem of whether or not Malfoy might have done this before. His cock started to stir.

Goddamnit! Harry breathed through his nose and tried to think only of calm, unexciting things, like the smoothness of the crystal walls or the expression on Ron’s and Hermione’s faces when they would see Harry again. They would ask what had happened and how he’d got out, and he would tell them about Malfoy, and neither of them would believe it.

The thought of their shock diverted Harry for a time, until Malfoy’s hand ended up on his hipbone. He sucked in a startled breath and felt his chest bulge. Malfoy’s voice interrupted in a drawling snarl, if there was such a thing. (Well, Harry reckoned there was, now, because he’d got to hear it).

"Don’t interrupt me, Potter. You always have the worst timing."

"I do have to breathe, don’t I?" Harry opened one eye in his irritation, unable to remember when he’d closed it. "Or is breathing going to mess up your parabola? Perhaps you’d rather kill me and use a perfect corpse that would do just what you told it?"

His voice trailed off, though, because Malfoy was staring at him with a flushed face and a hanging mouth.

Malfoy straightened and snapped his gaze away in the next moment, clearing his throat, but Harry knew what he had seen. His cock hardened a little more.

"Potter," Malfoy whispered, after a silence that burned and clanged with more emotions than Harry had a name for. All he knew was that arousal was among them. "Your—penis. It could mess up the shape."

"Sorry," Harry breathed, but he had the feeling that he didn’t sound sorry, and from the look on Malfoy’s face, he didn’t feel that way, either.

*

Potter was getting hard. All from no more than a few simple touches and Draco leaning down to look more closely at his groin.

The more cynical part of Draco wondered if it was simply that Precious Potter was a virgin, with no one to meet his high standards, and wanted to sneer. He could offer Potter a wank, and the prat would probably fall all over himself and only feel embarrassed later. Draco could take it as a chance to see what happened when someone wanked inside the prison, a variable he hadn’t taken account of in his initial tests of the pendant. After all, wanking involved a change in the body, but a small one. Would the victim simply imagine his pleasure and the resulting hand movements?

The newly bruised, or bruisable, part of Draco was the stronger, though, and it couldn’t imagine saying something like that, when he was embarrassed and Potter was embarrassed. He cleared his throat and tried to focus on solutions for the problem. He might be able to arrange Potter into a parabola, but anything that interrupted the clean line of his body would be a problem. The cock, the penis, jutting out from his groin like that, would put paid to their attempt to escape right away.

Draco took a deep breath of air as he realized what he would have to do. There really was only one solution.

He tried not to think about how eager he was as he reached out and ran his fingers down Potter’s cock. Was there such a thing as too eager, anyway? Of course not. He just wanted to make it absolutely clear that he was helping.

Potter took in his own deep breath, and then whimpered. The whimper was the most exquisite sound Draco had ever heard. It rang strangely from the crystalline walls, and it made his hand shake.

"What are you doing?" Potter whispered, but not as if he was about to ask Draco to stop. His voice trembled, and that was exquisite, too, as was the weight and warmth of Potter’s cock in Draco’s hand. Draco’s arse clenched down on air despite himself, and he felt his mouth fill with saliva. He swallowed before he could reply.

"You have to be—fully hard. We have to be able to arrange it along your stomach, so that it doesn’t interrupt the line of your body," he whispered. "We could do something else if we had magic, but we don’t."

"Oh," Potter said.

Unable to resist the temptation any longer, Draco looked at his face. Potter was flushed and blinking, his dusty dark eyelashes sliding down over and then sliding back from green eyes so deep and dreaming that Draco clamped his legs shut.

"If you say so," Potter whispered, and shut his eyes.

Draco went on stroking. The blood under his hand flooded into the cock and made it harder and warmer. He sucked in a quiet breath, decided not to think about sucking, and then went on stroking and caressing until the penis arched back towards Potter’s body.

Letting go of it was the hardest thing he’d ever done, and as he stood up and backed away from Potter, he promised himself that he would do—well, he would do something, a lot of something, when they got back into their own world to make up for it.


Curves and Straight Lines

Harry tilted his head back. He felt deliciously full and warm, as if he had eaten one of the meals denied him since they had come here. He could still feel the burning imprint of Malfoy’s fingers against his cock, which was ridiculous, because he also felt the empty coldness that told him Malfoy was no longer touching him but standing back from his body, near one of the walls of the pendant.

Harry wanted to open his mouth and command him to come back over here and finish what he’d started.

But the whirling dash of energies through him frightened him at least as much as it aroused him. Harry didn’t know that he was afraid of Malfoy, not anymore, but he feared what Malfoy represented, maybe, or something like that. He didn’t know what would happen if he met Malfoy the way he wanted to meet him right now, bodies straining together, arms standing straight out from their chests as they rutted together. What shape would they make?

Harry swallowed. These thoughts were probably because he’d spent so much time around Malfoy, he told himself sternly, and not from any more than that. Didn’t people sometimes go crazy when they were locked up in prisons or attics and talk to the walls or form relationships with people they would never look at twice outside? This was just something like that. Malfoy was the only other person around, the only other attractive person Harry had access to, and it was no surprise that his blood leaped at a touch from the other man.

But then he remembered the way he had looked at Malfoy over the last—time—since he’d seen him working, and his breath caught in doubt.

"Potter." Malfoy’s voice was so calm and collected and cool that Harry felt a mixture of hatred and envy for him. "I want you to bend at the waist. Don’t bend over," he added, as Harry started to shuffle around so that he could get up. "I want you to lie on the floor, but arch so that your arms are reaching above your head to the left and your legs are extending up to the right. Can you do that?"

Harry had to cough and clear his throat before he could continue. "Don’t—don’t I have to have my head encased between my arms? It would break the straight line of the curve, anyway. If you can talk about a straight line of a curve."

"Very good, Potter," Malfoy said, and Harry wanted to smirk, because now his voice was strangled, too. "Yes, that’s true. Turn on your left side. Rest your head between your arms. Keep your—penis—along your stomach, or catch it between your legs if you can. It mustn’t stick out."

Harry nodded dumbly and did as Malfoy said, trying to imagine that he was becoming one of those shapes that Malfoy had traced in the air. He thought it was the only thing that would help now. His hair had to flow into a smooth curve, when it hadn’t done anything smooth in his life. His limbs had to relax enough that he could endure lying in this position and yet remain taut enough that he could move them if he needed to. It wasn’t easy, especially on the hard floor of the pendant, to get comfortable.

But he did it anyway, and he thought he could have done more, if Malfoy had needed him to. He could still feel the git’s fingers.

*

Potter had the natural flexibility of someone young and Auror-trained, thank Merlin. Draco tried not to imagine what would have happened if he’d been trapped in here with one of the older Aurors.

He didn’t want to be trapped with anyone but Potter.

Draco shuddered and shook himself like a dog shaking off water. He had to get rid of this state of mind. It wasn’t a good one for dealing with the complicated equations he would have to perform, even if Potter achieved the perfect parabola. He couldn’t distract himself by looking at the dusky flush that had spread along Potter’s skin or the straight perfection of his cock. He would have to be careful, precise, delicate.

Since they didn’t have access to their wands, there was only one escape from the teardrop that Draco knew of, even assuming that they managed to form a parabola. Draco would have to use his mind as Potter used his body, linking them both, creating a figure of openness and connection that would start time flowing irresistibly in a new direction and destroy the teardrop, the figure of imprisonment and stillness, separation of body from mind.

Draco was not entirely sure what would happen when two shapes were opposed to one another like that. Yes, he had studied the theoretical question in his normal courses, but that wasn’t the same thing as performing the experiment.

But they had no other option, so he went on adjusting Potter’s position, now and then kneeling beside him to reinforce his orders with a touch, to smooth his hair back into place, and to adjust the position of his cock.

That last more often than might have been necessary, Draco had to admit.

Potter watched him with deep eyes the entire time. Draco looked into them and then away, not sure which was easier. Turning away might indicate cowardice, and looking into them might show more of his own emotions than he would wish to show—or Potter to see.

Draco had to wonder about that. Potter had responded to manual stimulation the way that any man would. That didn’t mean that it was a special reaction to Draco or Draco’s hands, to what Draco could give him.

But they had to go ahead anyway, and at last a shudder flowed down Draco’s spine and he rose to his feet, nodding. Potter was in as perfect a parabola shape as they were going to get. He murmured, "Be quiet, Potter, please," and then closed his eyes and fixed his mind on the complicated, combined equations and incantations.


Drawing the Figure

"Be quiet, Potter, please."

Harry let his eyes fall shut. Malfoy’s voice had a tremor in the back of it.

He also knew that he had to keep still, or he would have arched up and voiced some rough sound that—well, it would have revealed something that he preferred to keep to himself for now, thank you.

So really, it was all for the best that Malfoy had told him to be quiet.

But no one had said that he had to keep his eyes shut, and so Harry opened them and gazed up at Malfoy’s face, hanging over his body, his eyes focused beyond Harry, his hand opening and closing in a regular pattern that seemed to match his breathing. Harry counted breaths and yes, it did. He wondered if that was part of Unspeakable magic, too, and if so, how in the world he would know what it meant.

It had become intolerable not to know everything about Malfoy. He tried to imagine just walking away from him when they emerged from the pendant and couldn’t. Malfoy would be the one who had got him out, the one who he’d spent all this nameless time in prison with, and the first person he had willingly stripped down in front of without lots of hesitation and worry about how he would look.

That last was the most important, somehow. Harry watched the contours of Malfoy’s face, keeping his arms and legs locked in the positions where Malfoy had aligned them, and felt the prickle of those fingers through his hair and along the curves of his ears and along his cock. He couldn’t wait to feel them again.

And to feel more than that.

*

Draco tilted his head back, moving slowly. The air had become crystalline around him with more than the shadows of the pendant, as the numbers flickered and came to life in his head, blazing with magic.

He had a task to keep them all balanced and whirling in his mind, none of them falling to the ground or cracking apart, but adding, dividing, multiplying, increasing. Somewhere beneath the shining maelstrom darted a single, solitary thought, running to shelter, that he was grateful the Unspeakables had insisted that their initiates learn to work without ink and parchment. Draco couldn’t have done this if he had always relied on writing the numbers down.

Potter’s body was just below him, heat, and Draco eased his fingers nearer, inch by inch. He would have to touch Potter to spark the connection between body and mind when he was ready, but if he touched him too soon, then the warmth would simply distract him from the brilliant cold world of the numbers.

Lines building up on either side of him, equations trotting and prancing in obedience like the pretty pegasi his father had once taken him to see, and still more numbers came. Draco chanted the equations, saw the parabola hanging in his mind, and fixed it there, as equation after equation drew it and made it real and reached out to the higher geometry, the maths that only Unspeakables knew.

Draco rose, soaring and spiraling and dipping through them, aloft on wings of numbers, his body made of incantations. He had only felt this exalted once or twice before, when he was working on the pendant, and he thought it a good sign that he would feel this way now, too. That was a sign that he was approaching the state where he had invented the pendant, and so this state might prove a match for that one.

The moment came. Draco hovered at the top of his climb, the pinnacle, and the light around him was brilliant. Draco could feel the chill of solitude in his bones. He was intelligent, clever, cunning, and alone.

He shot his hand forwards, at the moment when he was all but pure intellect, and his fingers curled around Potter’s solid hipbone, which he had chosen earlier as his anchor.

Light assaulted him, inside and out, and Draco cried the incantations that the numbers dictated aloud, Latin syllables aligned with certain operations, words breaking and spinning and reforming in the flight of symbols, the wind of maths. Draco brought his other hand up, fingers humming with conjured magic, and touched it to the first.

Potter cried out with startlement. Luckily, Draco had thought that might happen, and it didn’t distract him; his voice rose over Potter’s, his chant so steady that not even a Muggle machine could have interrupted it.

Light abounded.


The Figure With Two Backs

Harry grunted and tumbled away to a floor, grainy and rough with stones. That alone was so great a relief that he splayed his hand out, his fingers investigating the cracks between the flags, before he remembered Malfoy and turned his head anxiously to look for him.

He saw the other two Aurors before he saw Malfoy, staring at him—at them both—with open mouths, and lying on the floor for some reason. Harry blinked rapidly, and then remembered what Malfoy had said about time moving in a stretched fashion in the pendant. Of course. If he and Malfoy had only spent a second in the pendant, then the other two Aurors would still have been diving to try and escape the explosion from where Harry had played with the lightning.

No longer interested in them, Harry turned his head and saw Malfoy lying next to him. Harry winced when he saw a lump swelling on the side of his skull, but it wasn’t bleeding—at least on the surface—and Malfoy’s breathing was steady. He had only injured himself when he fell to the floor as they came back into the real world, Harry deduced, and scrambled on elbows and knees to Malfoy’s side.

"Malfoy?" he whispered, stroking his hair back from his face. "Draco?"

"Auror Potter," said one of the old men behind him, voice righteously shocked. "What happened? Why are you naked?"

Harry stared down at his body. Yes, he was naked, and erect. He hastily covered himself with one arm and then cleared his throat.

He had assumed, since Malfoy had told him that no changes that happened to their bodies in the pendant would be permanent, that the clothes would have come back with him. He had imagined speaking to Malfoy, taking off his clothes, and getting aroused from his touches. Hadn’t he?

Except that didn’t seem to have happened.

"The device malfunctioned." Malfoy spoke in a voice like crumbling dirt, coughing painfully as he finished. Harry still turned to him with a face full of hope. He was going to be all right. "When Auror Potter’s hand strayed across the bonds between the pillars, it disrupted one of the connections that kept it working. Within the device, we spent some time, perhaps a subjective month. And to escape, Auror Potter had to use his body as a figure of the higher geometry that would allow me to make the calculations. He is to be commended for his willingness to act."

Harry’s first reaction was to shudder. A subjective month? He didn’t want to think about what a subjective thirteen months, the way that Malfoy said he had set the device to originally, would have felt like.

Then he realized what Malfoy was saying, and lowered his head, this time, to avoid showing his flushed cheeks as much as his erection.

The other Aurors asked questions, twittering on in what Harry thought were frankly irrelevant ways. What mattered to him, and he thought to Malfoy too, was finding some place that they could be alone.

Harry didn’t know exactly what would happen once they were. Or, no, that was a lie. He didn’t know what would happen after. The first moments of solitude didn’t admit of much guessing.

But that was for later. For now, Harry had more important things to do, like accepting a pair of robes conjured from one of the other Aurors’ sleeves and keeping his eyes on Malfoy to try and detect a trace of a bulge beneath those long clothes.

*

Draco could feel Potter’s gaze. It made him lift his head, proud of the effect he was having, and lent a tone of silky pride to his voice as he explained what had happened to Trevors and Greyson. They were suspicious, of course, but Draco could easily direct the conversation into areas of theoretical intricacy that they knew themselves ill-equipped to pursue. They didn’t try to follow him there, although they did give him more than one suspicious look.

Soon, very soon now, Draco would get to put one of his new discoveries—that he could arouse Potter with his touch—to the test.

The other, that he could unite body and mind even as he broke them apart, would have to wait for more vigorous testing. Draco wondered idly if Potter would be willing to leave his post in the Aurors and become an Unspeakable so that he and Draco would have the ability to test the theory many, many times over.

That’s in the future, Draco reminded himself. He had learned to be patient about time, since he was an Unspeakable, though not patient enough to wait out the seemingly endless imprisonment of the pendant. Do not be greedy.

And he wasn’t, but he was still ready to scream with impatience by the time that Trevors had put his last question and backed away with a frown, shaking his head. He seemed to think that Draco was deliberately hiding something from him, although what that could be, Draco didn’t think he knew.

"Very well, Unspeakable Malfoy," he said. "We will, of course, request a full report on this device before we use it."

"Of course, Auror Trevors," Draco said, and gave a gracious nod to dismiss both him and the less suspicious Greyson. Greyson managed a smile before he left, but Draco had seen the way he eyed Potter, and thought the smile wasn’t for him.

The minute that they were gone, though, he hauled Potter back to his feet and kissed him soundly enough on the mouth to make Potter squeak. He kissed back as soon as he recovered his balance, though, and with an enthusiasm that made Draco’s reservations about this, about whether he wanted it more than Potter, melt away.

"Come with me," he said, and led Potter swiftly into the Department of Mysteries, to the small room that he retained there for the times when he wanted to sleep in the Ministry overnight to attend to an experiment, or for when he simply lost track of the hours. He would be spending a lot more time in it over the next few months, Draco judged, unless Potter had a place as secluded and convenient.

If this fling with Potter lasts that long.

Potter seemed inclined to stand in the doorway, stare around doubtfully at the cabinets and charts of equations on the walls, and ask questions. Draco already knew that he needed to take a direct approach with this one, though, and so he didn’t let Potter hang about staring and questioning for long. He flung himself on the bed—which had been imported from the Manor and so was more than big enough—and spread his legs, turning his arse in Potter’s general direction.

"Fuck me," he demanded.


A Lever to Move the Earth

Harry had to admit that, once Malfoy said what he wanted, it was extremely effective. He found himself jolting forwards as though Malfoy had pulled a key that was attached to his legs.

Malfoy lay on his bed, his legs spread, his arse thrust out. He was still covered with his robes, which Harry had to admit didn’t give the best view, but it was more than enough to make him lick his lips.

Even though he hadn’t done anything like this before. Even though it was still Malfoy, which meant that he should hold back out of sheer suspicion that the bastard was tricking him.

But he didn’t. He couldn’t, not after the way he had showed himself to Malfoy in the pendant and Malfoy had only done what he said he would do. Harry wasn’t going to have anyone saying that a Slytherin was more honorable or trustworthy than a Gryffindor.

"If you’re sure that we’ll make a congenial shape," he couldn’t help muttering as he climbed onto the bed and reached down to knead Malfoy’s arse. Malfoy arched with a little hiss and shook his head. His eyes were half-shut, a smile drifting across his lips that seemed strangely independent, as if even Malfoy didn’t know how it had got there.

"More than congenial," he said, and turned his head to catch Harry’s knuckles between his teeth. "A beautiful one."

That was another spur, though Harry didn’t know why it should be. He began to undress Malfoy, his hands moving with assurance that he wouldn’t have thought he could show. But he had more than just the way Malfoy was looking at him now to give him motivation. He had the time they’d spent together in the pendant, and the way he’d started watching Malfoy there, and the erection that still throbbed between his legs, that had happened just because Malfoy was looking at him and touching him.

Harry had to admit that his body was wiser than his head, sometimes. It knew what it wanted.

Malfoy didn’t help, just lay there watching Harry with narrowed eyes, as though he was considering whether Harry would make a good slave or house-elf. He did move his arms when Harry wanted to pull his shirt off and then his legs when Harry had to shimmy trousers and pants past his hips, but no more than that.

Harry wondered if he was sick to be even more turned on by that. Hopefully not, because he was going to shag Malfoy whether it was sick or not.

When Malfoy’s arse was bared, though, Harry looked at the small hole rather doubtfully. It was tempting, there was no doubt about that, but he also didn’t like to think of Malfoy hissing and clenching his teeth in pain when Harry was inside him. "You have lube of some kind?" he asked.

Malfoy looked at him as if Harry had asked whether he bathed. "Of course," he said, and gave a regal nod at the table nearest the bed. Harry searched through the drawer and brought out a small sealed pot of what looked like a potion, but Malfoy assured him it was lubricant. When Harry broke the seal, a smell of mint drifted on the air.

He didn’t need to say anything. He just looked at Malfoy with raised eyebrows.

Malfoy flushed, but jerked his head at his own arse. "When you’re ready, Potter," he said, and lifted his knees high, then paused and conjured a pillow beneath his hips so that he could lift them up further.

Harry flung back the Transfigured robe and knelt there, naked, in front of Malfoy, while he slicked his fingers and reached down to Malfoy’s arse, grunting at the pressure that enveloped his fingers. It was almost painful on them. How much better—or worse—would it feel on his cock?

And all the time Malfoy’s eyes glittered, and he gasped, and he was both the superior prat Harry had always thought him and not, so much more not, writhing on the covers as his face turned pink and muttering a constant stream of words in which Harry’s last name was immersed. He had as much decision as ever, though, snapping his head down so that his chin struck his chest when he’d had enough stretching.

Harry hesitated, but Malfoy sneered at him. He knelt in front of him, lifted his legs, and slowly slid inside.

Warm, he thought dazedly. It’s warm.

*

Potter wasn’t the perfect lover by any means—he was going too slowly and acting as though Draco was either disgusting or more beautiful than he knew himself to be—but Draco knew potential when he saw it. The way Potter’s shoulders tensed and trembled, the way he expelled his breath from his lungs once he was finally inside, and the way he shook his head and stared at Draco through dazed eyes, all argued that someday he would be the kind of bed partner that Draco most wanted.

Because there was no way that they were doing this only once.

And then Draco allowed himself to give up thoughts of the future and only concentrate on the present, because Potter was filling him and moving with him and muttering at him, and it was good.

Draco liked the way that Potter gripped him behind the knees and handled him, showing less and less gape-mouthed idiocy the more he moved. Draco pushed back into his thrusts, and gasped in satisfaction when Potter—more by accident than by design, of course—hit his prostate. He could convulse in pleasure then, and Potter, although he paused and stared at Draco, had to know it was pleasure and not pain.

From the enthusiastic way he resumed his thrusting a moment later, he knew it, or had figured it out, and Draco could arch his head back and close his eyes and listen to his own hair rustling against the pillow and sigh with relief.

With relief, because they were here in the world, again, and he had done something that had never been done, and Potter had trusted him, and there was something about the way Potter stared at him that healed very old wounds in Draco’s soul, ones he had never realized weren’t scabbed over.

There was the matter of his own relief, too, getting closer and closer, arching through him like a serpent made of fire, running its tongue over Draco’s stomach and down between his legs, touching and choosing and bringing.

Draco shot all over his own stomach with a buck and a shout, ending in a gasp and a muted whine. He didn’t sound very dignified, he thought.

But he was in time to open his eyes and see the screwed-in face that Potter made when he came, which suggested that he wasn’t the only one in the bed who had come undone. Potter whined, too, and slammed his hips into Draco’s as though he would be defeated, or suffer a worse fate, if a drop of his come escaped Draco’s arse.

Inevitably, some did when he slumped backwards and flopped on the bed beside Draco, breathing harshly. Draco pulled him closer and felt him leave with some regret—he liked people to stay inside him if they could. On the other hand, Potter had never done this before, or Draco hadn’t heard any rumors that he had, and he had done very well for a beginner.

"Well?" Potter muttered.

Draco was astonished to realize that Potter’s shoulders were tense with something. Did he really expect Draco to reject him now, or mock and taunt him, when he was vulnerable? He had trusted Draco more in the pendant.

He trusted me to cooperate with him under an extreme set of circumstances where both our lives were at stake. That doesn’t mean that I’ll be the same outside the pendant.

Draco lowered his head and gave up a vulnerability of his own, by kissing Potter on the temple, the first utterly tender gesture either of them had made. Potter’s eyes flew open, and he stared breathlessly at Draco.

"Very nice," Draco said. "Worth repeating." He hesitated, wondering if the term would really matter to Potter, then added, "Well-shaped."

Potter’s smile, he discovered, had the power to lift his heart as well as any equation could, and warm it as no equation ever had.

The End.

Comments

[ura-hd.livejournal.com]

Cool story! The time theorizing is very interesting.

[bgreenwivy.livejournal.com]

I really loved this. It was intelligent and thought provoking. I definitely had a flashback to physics theory classes in college. Even critical thinking wise it is very entertaining and the characters were very believable and in character.

[tsukiihime.livejournal.com]

The concept was really thought-provoking, although the only problem I had was that I thought Harry tried to do spells to get out of the...tear...., but it reflected it? but then later it establishes that they can't do magic at all? sorry, maybe I read wrong and I'm just tired @__@;; It's really interesting though, I really liked it :D

[kitschobrien.livejournal.com]

Very entertaining. I thought they were in-character, and I enjoyed the way their relationship progressed. The teardrop theory was pretty cool. I know nothing about physics or any of that stuff, so I don't know how plausible it is, but it certainly made for a good read!

[p-for-polkadots.livejournal.com]

This is a really intriguing concept for a story: almost the whole plot happening in one room with only two characters (and it never gets boring!). I really enjoyed Draco as the ruthless scientist all caught up in theorizing and gaining knowledge and Harry with a much more practical and hands-on approach as his counterpart.

I was seriously appalled by the whole idea of trapping people in the pendant and Draco so carelessly suggesting its use as a prison on top of that. But trust Harry to act as the conscience here :). What a nightmare to be trapped somewhere with only your own mind for company, possibly for years, and with absolutely no power to change your situation. Not even suicide as a last resort. Such a perfidious kind of torture that only seems to be more humane than a ‘traditional’ prison sentence. A classic example for psychological violence. Oh, what a twisted mind you have, mystery author.

The interaction between Harry and Draco was nice and slow and in character as they got cautiously closer together. And I was quite pleased to see Draco caught in his own invention.

I have to admit that the end was a bit abrupt for my taste. Yes, I’m quite sure that the main focus of your story was the changing dynamic between Harry and Draco in these special circumstances, and I really enjoyed that. But I would have loved to see at least a teensy bit of reflection on the moral implications of Draco’s little torture devise, because these issues were mentioned at the beginning. So I was really curious what would happen concerning the pendant, once our protagonists found a way out of it.

Nevertheless, this is a highly enjoyable, very entertaining and thought-provoking story. Thank you for sharing.

Great story!

[gi-ra-fa.livejournal.com]

The plot is very clever. Draco and Harry are believable and in character.

[nenne.livejournal.com]

I really original and interesting plot. I totally enjoyed it. Beautiful last line.

[suzyblack.livejournal.com]

OH MY GOODNESS!!!! MY PROMP!!! Oh Mystery Author you don't know how happy I was when I saw this posted!

And let me tell you it was beyond everything I had expected!!

First of all, it was a great surprise when I read and saw that you were exploring the magical devise that slows down time! I adore fics that talk about magical theories and the such and I was so so happily surprised when I discovered your theories and the way you kept giving us information and solutions!! It was amazing!

Secondly, Harry and Draco were just as IC as I wanted them to be! I was spot on XD. Draco so cool and dignified and Harry being his usual impulsive way!! It was delightful to see the way each of them started to change the mind about the other (just as I wanted it). It meant a lot!

Thirdly, the end was PERFECT XD. The smut and their uncertainties but then reassurances! It was so very real!!! I adore it =)

And lastly you were great, author XD! The way you described the places, the emotions, the action... I imagined myself inside your story the whole time!!

Really ther's nothing more I can say but that I LOVED this fic, I ADORE your wrinting and a thousand THANK YOUS XD

[mayfly-78.livejournal.com]

What a delightfully intruiging premise! I loved smart Draco and all the strange and obscure theories of time and geometry he worked with. And I definitely loved Harry and how he came around to Draco as they slowly got to know each other. Great story!

[serilla.livejournal.com]

What a totally intriging story - about time and geometry and Dracos theories on it all. Was sure at the beginning Harry and Draco would end up killing each other but in the end.......awwwwww! Well done. :)

[alovelycupoftea.livejournal.com]

I really liked the beauty and awe in how Draco thought about time and the calculations. The parabola scene was beautiful and the end was hawt! Lovely!

Wonderful and imaginative story!

[amarywagner.livejournal.com]

I think the descriptive imagery itself is a huge clue to the identity of this author! Though the line that cinches it for me is "Harry nodded firmly. This was a good thought. He wouldn’t lose his hold on it just because Malfoy would like it if he did."

I absolutely love Ms. LA's stories and vividly-in-character portrayals... brilliant!

[sony-kit82.livejournal.com]

One word: brilliant. The way you expounded so fully and weaved a theory so elaborate about time and its relativity was amazing. Not only did I enjoy the snarky comments at the beginning, the developing sexual tension at the middle, and the oh-so-satisfying climactic smut at the end but I loved the intricate theory of higher geometry, the detailed description of each concept, and the way all components just came together. This Draco is so precious. :D