FicWad

Authors Note: I know, I’ve been gone for ages. I’m sorry, but I will never abandon this fic! Thank you to all of you who have read and to all of the reviewers! You guys are amazing and I can’t possibly thank you enough! Also, thank you so much to RAfan2421 and Ruaidhri for beta-ing! As an extremely belated birthday gift, this chapter is dedicated to RAfan2421. I hope you enjoy!

Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.


Duality: Criterion

OoO


“You’re going to have to get the temperature in this place fixed before you leave. I can’t work under these conditions,” Astoria said, pausing from stitching up Daphne’s thigh to fan herself with the Sortilege Manual and getting blood all over them.

Nott went into a fit of barely-contained rage over that, snatching the papers away from her. “These are important documents!”

The blonde simply stared at him blankly before stripping her grey t-shirt off – down to her undergarments, like the rest of them – and throwing it aside. She went back to stitching the large bite in Daphne’s thigh, causing the Slytherin girl to let out a hiss of pain every time the needle went through her skin.

“Hold still,” she commanded.

“This would be a lot easier if I had a pain-relieving potion,” Daphne replied through gritted teeth.

Shrugging, Astoria continued stitching. “It’s not that bad. You’re lucky those dogs didn’t tear a chunk off of you.”

Daphne gave her a contemptuous look and Astoria poured some more alcohol on the rag Hermione had conjured, wiping the blood that bubbled up from the wound. With a breathy groan, Daphne’s head lolled back against her chair.

“Oh, stop being a big baby,” Astoria admonished and Harry was very glad that he wasn’t in Daphne’s position. Her cousin was… brutal.

“I’m not,” Daphne countered. “It hurts.”

The two Greengrass women stared at each other fiercely and Harry swore that Astoria dug the needle in a bit deeply on purpose for the next stitch, causing Daphne to grip the table but resolutely not make another noise.

Harry’s head snapped up when a red-haired glamoured Zabini barged through the door, carrying a few scrying mirrors, with Hermione trailing along behind him, stripping off her own triple-layer glamour and folding the sweater that she must have removed. She scratched at her messy curls vigourously once the glamour evaporated off of her.

She had taken to wearing Zabini’s silk boxers with her bra, instead of her jeans, over the past two days and Harry wasn’t sure what to think about it. Sure, it was probably more comfortable than wearing jeans in the heat of the warehouse, but why Zabini’s boxers? Harry would have borrowed her a pair if she asked.

“He’s all set up for interrogation if you want to take a whack at him, Potter,” Zabini said, spelling the mirrors onto the wall over the fridge with a sticking charm.

Harry’s eyebrows rose. They wanted him to interrogate Goyle as well?

“You or Theo should do it,” Daphne spoke for him, lighting up a cigarette and wincing. Astoria was nearly done with the stitches. “Harry’s busy with Draco.”

“Ooh, we could play Good Unspeakable-Bad Unspeakable,” Zabini intoned with a smirk, and Nott shrugged, removing his reading glasses and checking to make sure he had removed all of the blood that Daphne’s cousin had gotten on the Sortilege Manual.

“Why don’t you just talk to him?” Astoria suggested, tying off the last stitch and wiping her hands off on the bloodied alcohol-soaked rag. “He’s a kid in a scary situation – he’ll probably give you the information you want easily enough.”

“We’ll obviously have to in order to develop a rapport first,” Nott drawled. “And he’s not just a kid – he’s a Death Eater working for the Dark Lord.”

“Still a kid,” the blonde pointed out.

Daphne scoffed, flicking the ashes of her fag off into the ashtray. “Don’t be so bloody ageist, Astoria. ‘Kids’ have just as much potential to be as deceiving, manipulative, and dangerous as adults.”

“You expect that from Goyle? Honestly?” Hermione asked with a snort.

Nott’s lips pursed thoughtfully. “He’s not the sharpest quill in the case, but you never know. People surprise you when they’re being interrogated.”

“We already have enough information on the siege. We only need to confirm it or see if it has changed,” Harry chipped in, grabbing a can of cola from the mini fridge to press against his heated neck – it took a while to get used to the tropical temperatures in the warehouse after being away from it for any short period of time. He watched Goyle in the scrying mirrors; the Slytherin boy was wide awake and staring rather panic-stricken at his surroundings. “And if you can get anymore names of known Death Eaters that would be helpful.”

Zabini nodded, considering his words. “We’ll see what we can do. Hermione, can you throw one of your special triple-layer glamours on Theo?”

oOo

Although Harry hated to admit it, he was knackered. The lack of sleep was starting to get to him, placing him in a perpetually exhausted state and the pepper-up potion was only serving to make his heart pound and his head a bit light. That was all good and fine for keeping him awake, but it didn’t do much for his tired brain.

He was seated in a chair across from Draco Malfoy, who sat upright in his transfigured bed; his one arm was chained to the headboard and the other arm was perpetually connected to the IV drip via magic since he remained resolute about not drinking until desperate.

“What else did the Dark Lord do when he visited your house this past summer?”

Malfoy’s head rested back against the concrete wall behind him. “I don’t know,” he groaned. “I think I told you everything.”

“You think. As soon as you’re certain, we’ll move on to a different subject,” Harry said with authority, ignoring his itchy nose underneath his Tom Riddle glamour. “Or would you prefer legilimency?”

Malfoy shook his head with a frown. “He spoke with Snape a lot.”

“Yes, we’ve been over this. What did he speak with Severus Snape about?”

“I told you! I have no idea!” He ran a hand over his sweaty brow. “They were in a locked and warded room.”

“You wouldn’t be a proper Slytherin if you didn’t know a little about what they were discussing,” Harry stated evenly.

Malfoy glared balefully. “There’s no possible way I could hear anything through the Dark Lord’s wards.”

“So that leaves you with word of mouth,” Harry pointed out. “Were there any rumours amongst his Death Eaters? Any that may indicate the Dark Lord’s plans for the war?”

Malfoy’s face scrunched up and his gaze averted to the floor. “Snape never discusses anything with us.”

“You’re lying, Draco,” Harry said in a way that made it sound like a threat. “He’s your godfather. He must have said something to you or your mother at least.”

Brows furrowed, Malfoy’s eyes narrowed. “He was more concerned over trying to get in on my mission for the Dark Lord – trying to steal my glory!”

Harry smirked. “And if you had any ounce of intelligence, you would have traded information with him,” he said, thinking of what Daphne or Nott would have done in Malfoy’s shoes.

“Well maybe I’m not as smart as you think I am,” Malfoy’s tone was resentful and he pushed back the stray hair that had gotten into his face. It was a bit strange to see him without the usual gel slicking back his blonde tresses. They didn’t provide him with styling products after they let him shower and clean himself up in the tiny warehouse bathroom.

“Maybe,” Harry finally replied. “However, you’re still a Slytherin. Slytherins have a habit of getting their hands on any information that could prove useful.”

“Were you a Slytherin?” Malfoy countered.

“Yes, I was,” Harry lied easily.

“You’re despicable,” he muttered with a demure scoff. “Betraying your own kind.”

In the blink of an eye, Harry’s hand snapped forward, grabbing hold of Malfoy’s throat as he stood over the boy. “Our kind may be attracted to the Dark Arts, but that does not mean that all of us must join the Dark Lord.” He paused, pressing down where Daphne had instructed to when she walked him through this process, nearly cutting off Malfoy’s air supply. “You’re the despicable one, Draco; following a madman to your inevitable death for the chance at a sliver of glory.”

Malfoy heaved a gasp as Harry let go and the strangled redness that had formed in his cheeks started to fade. “It’s not like I had a choice!” he exclaimed, his voice rough and gravelly as though he wanted to cry but couldn’t.

Harry shook his head in disgust. “You did. And I bet you didn’t even put up a fight.”

The look on Malfoy’s face indicated that Harry had struck a nerve and he knew he wasn’t going to get much more information out of him for this session. He was tired of it anyway. What he needed most right now was a cooling charm, a giant glass of water, and some sleep.

Harry left the room without looking back at the blonde Slytherin, who was miserably curling in on himself against the wall with his arms around his knees. It caused the chain to scrape against the metallic headboard as Malfoy tugged at it, which Harry heard faintly before the door slammed shut. The detainment wards automatically clicked into place behind him.

Letting out an exhausted sigh, he closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the buzzing surface of the wards. Their magical energy caused his hair to tingle and stand on end.

“Are you having problems with your detainee?” he heard Astoria say and he opened her eyes to see her coming out of the kitchenette room with one of Crookshank’s kittens in her arms. The tiny cat batted at her shaggy shoulder-length hair playfully.

Harry shrugged. “I know when he’s going to go into useless-mode. There’s no helping him out of it.”

“From what I’ve seen, you’re very good with him.” She set the cat down on the floor when it clawed her neck, leaving a tiny scratch, and the kitten decided to attack her foot. “You could probably talk him through it with a bit of time.”

Shaking his head, Harry ran his fingers through his hair and stepped off of the door. “I’m too exhausted to try. Why don’t you go in there and talk him through it? Didn’t Daphne brief you on his case?”

“She did, but I’m not the best interrogator. Don’t have the patience for whiny little brats like him.” Astoria let out a breathy laugh. “I can’t believe that she even dated that one.”

Harry’s jaw clenched, memories of every single conversation about Malfoy that he had with Daphne flying through his head. “I don’t think you could call what they did ‘dating’,” he said stiffly, walking toward the control room.

Did Astoria even know about Daphne and Malfoy?

“I’m only being nice; if it were up to me, I’d put a bullet in each one of his legs and make him stand while I pulled them out with a pair of forceps,” she replied, her European lilt creeping into her words.

She definitely had a clue then.

Harry’s nose scrunched up in distaste, mostly due to the fact that he knew he wouldn’t stop her if she ever tried to do that to Malfoy. It was completely against his morals – and he wanted to be the better person, even if it was tempting to take an eye for an eye: punish him by forcing him into a blood ritual, assert injurious dominance and control and abuse him mercilessly. But of all the people who should have wanted to do that, it was Daphne, and she made it clear that she preferred a less torturous revenge. Something about it being more effective and satisfying – to keep him alive and afraid.

“So are you two together?” Astoria suddenly asked, which made Harry halt in his tracks in front of the door to the control room.

He looked back at her and shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Ah,” she said, a knowing smirk bubbling up onto her lips. “Well, I’m sure she’ll come around eventually.”

“It’s more me than her,” Harry retorted, pushing the door open and wiping the smirk off of Astoria’s face.

Crookshank’s kitten got through the door before him and immediately ran to Hermione’s feet. Daphne was standing by the chalkboard, taking notes on the interrogations with one hand – Nott and Zabini were still in the room with Goyle – and rubbing more dittany onto her wound with the other. Her stitches were gone; it was only temporary to stop the bleeding until the shops in Diagon Alley opened so she could go out and stock up on healing supplies.

Hermione immediately graced him with a cooling charm as he walked through the door and sat down. “I wish I could just be of age already so I could do my own damn cooling charms,” Harry muttered, yawning and pulling the fake wand out of his pocket. He never needed it with Malfoy, but he carried it anyway. Hermione liked to play on the safe side and nagged him if he forgot it.

Another wave of Hermione’s wand made the itchy glamour melt off of his face and he threw her a thankful grin, which she returned.

“I’ll take over for you,” he heard Astoria say behind him. “You and Harry should go home and get some rest. You both look dead on your feet.”

“I’ll come with,” Hermione said, closing her book, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw Daphne glance at her sharply.

“Still don’t trust me, Granger?”

Hermione’s lips pursed. “Not much, but better than before. You’re still going to have to give him a drop of your blood so he can get in and I want to make sure he makes it there safely. I also need a nap.”

“Yeah, fine,” Daphne conceded. “Whatever makes you happy.”

He’d almost forgotten about the blood ward that Daphne had on her house even though the two argued over it numerous times over the past week. What he understood was that the blood ward was put in place to bar entry from magical people, save for the few with Daphne’s blood in their system. Apparently the ward still allowed Muggles to enter and Daphne’s mum could have her friends and colleagues visit without experiencing any issues.

It seemed safe enough but, because of Hermione’s distrust, it took days before she relented enough to take a drop of Daphne’s blood so she could sleep in a proper bed. Comfort won out in the end and, begrudgingly, Harry had to admit that Zabini had a small part in it as well. He and Daphne hadn’t had the chance though, being so busy with Malfoy and often just passing out on the – occasionally transfigured – sofa in the kitchenette room.

Needle in hand, Daphne stood over him and pricked her finger, casually offering it to him. He had a feeling it wouldn’t be the last time he’d have to taste someone’s blood to get past a blood ward. It was a useful tool and with the war brewing…

Harry licked the droplet of blood clinging to Daphne’s index finger.

oOo

He could physically feel the blood ward surrounding Daphne’s house as soon as they apparated across it. It was a heavy sort of energy that weighed him down and made the tips of his fingers quiver. A lot of power went into it; he could practically taste it as he stumbled when they landed. The air was thankfully a lot warmer than the outdoor apparation point they used at the warehouse, but a hell of a lot colder than he was used to and he felt cold even in his jacket.

After straightening himself out, Harry’s brows rose as he surveyed the inside of Daphne’s house – it was nothing at all like he thought it would be. From his observations, he assumed most Slytherins were rich bastards and the way that Daphne threw money around, he thought it was the same for her. However, the house she lived in was quaint… to say the least – the whole place had a sense of decay about it, actually – from the peeling wallpaper to the stained linoleum and carpet on the floor. It was also slightly crooked from the building settling and the interior hadn’t been updated much since the 60’s. Gaudy patterns, faded garish colours, and paisley littered every surface.

“Is your mother home?” Hermione said, peering through a doorway that led to the kitchen. “Oh, she’s probably at work… I was hoping to ask her if I could borrow a few of her books.”

Daphne let out a short sardonic laugh. “Of course you’ve met my mother, Granger. That’s so you.”

“Blaise introduced me,” Hermione retorted, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Because Blaise thinks with his cock,” Daphne said with a smirk, tugging at Harry’s arm to pull him toward the stairs. “Come on, bedroom’s this way.”

Hermione trailed along behind them up the stairs. “Blaise may have his faults, but you can’t say that he’s being exceedingly courteous to me only because his goal is to sleep with me – which he hasn’t, for your information.”

“Maybe not ‘goal’, but I’m pretty sure that at least half of what he does is because he wants to sleep with you. It’s his Modus Operandi.”

The entire subject of their conversation made Harry want to both bleach his brain and hex Zabini’s balls off at the same time.

Scoffing, Hermione stared shrewdly at Daphne’s back. “Like half of what you do is because you want to sleep with Harry?”

Harry’s brows furrowed and he glanced between the two girls who had stopped to argue on the landing of the stairs.

“That’s not entirely true,” Daphne contradicted, her voice matter-of-fact. She tugged off her cloak and threw it over her arm. “Most of what I do is self-motivated and spawns from self-interests. If it helps Harry and makes him want to sleep with me, that’s a benefit, but it’s far from the actual goal.”

“Oi, I’m right bloody here, you know,” Harry interrupted before this could go any further. Hermione’s hair was starting to puff up like it always did when she got angry. “Merlin, do you two do anything but argue?”

Well, he could admit that they did, on a rare occasion. Usually Daphne and Hermione put aside their differences when it came to certain academics – like teaching each other spells, pinning each other down with legilimency, and going over wards. However, their arguing was insane sometimes, and over the most pointless things too: Earl Grey vs. chai tea, where to put the numerous cat beds and litter boxes, are those bin bags biodegradable? ‘No, that spell makes the tea taste funny, Granger! Use this one.’ And Harry had spent most of his time at the warehouse with Daphne alone or with Draco alone.

Put the two in a room together for a second and one says an opinion, all of a sudden it was like the harpies had descended to rain hell down on all of them.

“But arguing with her is fun,” Daphne said, her eyebrow peaked.

“Speak for yourself,” Hermione muttered, glaring at the Slytherin girl.

“I was.”

“Obviously…”

“Don’t sound so condescending; you like a good debate – practically thrive on it.”

“I would, given a proper opponent.”

“Are you insulting my arguments, Granger? They’re completely legitimate.”

“Ha! Legitimate. I didn’t know that was what they were calling ‘biased’ nowadays.”

“Pot to bloody kettle, my dear Gryffindor.”

“Enough!” Harry shouted with a huff of a sigh, throwing his hands up exasperatedly. They were arguing about arguing! “I’m too knackered to deal with you two right now. I just need a bed and maybe a pillow. Which door leads to one?” He gestured down the corridor which led to another set of stairs at the end of the hall. There were three painted wood doors; two on one side and one on the other.

He was directed to Daphne’s room, the first door on the left, and Daphne trailed inside the room behind him; Hermione muttered, “I’m going to go sleep in the guest room,” as she passed.

What struck him about Daphne’s room as he glanced about it was how much it fit her. There was a distinct lack of furniture, consisting of a small bed with a quilt, a wardrobe, and a bookshelf, which had a stereo system, an ashtray, and a rotary phone on top of it. Otherwise, the walls were completely bare and there wasn’t even a rug covering the hard wood floor. It was very utilitarian, as if she only had things she used – no frivolities. His eyes wandered from Daphne to the open door of the wardrobe, which had a tattered red USSR flag bunched up and hung on the inside of it, and his brow quirked.

Maybe there was one frivolity.

“You do know that the Soviet Union fell a few years ago,” Harry stated dryly, as she started stripping off her outer clothes and shoved them into the wardrobe. A nice, comforting warming charm spread throughout the room with a wave of her wand.

Daphne gave a laugh and followed his gaze. “Yeah, I do. This was a present from my grandfather,” she explained. “He likes to constantly remind me of where our family came from – the sacrifices they’ve had to make during the Cold War and all that nationalist nonsense.”

Harry folded up his shirt and set it next to hers in the nearly-empty wardrobe. “What kind of sacrifices?” He thought back to what he knew about the Cold War and learned during primary school, but it wasn’t much. He could barely remember any of it.

Shrugging, Daphne moved past him to take a seat on her bed, lighting up a half-smoked cigarette and opening the bottle of healing potion to rub onto her wound. “Well… basically, my grandfather defected and snuck his family out of the country. He was a scientist at Biopreparat, a facility that produced biological weapons – nasty stuff like smallpox and Marburg.”

She set the vial of healing potion on the shelf next to her bed. “He thought it was disgusting what they were doing and that his government thought that it was more important to feed lab monkeys who were destined to die from these weapons better than its own people. At one point, some people were encouraged to drink cooking oil so they didn’t starve to death and that’s just...” She shook her head, letting out a long breath full of smoke.

Stripped down to his boxers, Harry tiredly took a seat next to her and laid back against the pillows. He listened as she continued, looking up at him with a smirk, “So he snuck his family out of the country and traded all of the information he knew about the Soviet Union’s biological weapons program for a better life here. And the British were very good to him; they gave him a home, a job, a new identity – Greengrass. I’m kind of glad for that. Disregarding patronymics, I’d be Daphne Megrez Grebenshchikova if they didn’t.”

Harry snorted. “That’s a mouthful.”

“Try spelling it,” Daphne wryly replied, stubbing out her cigarette, lying next to him, and burrowing herself into the blankets.

“So that’s why you know… Russian?” Harry asked after a bout of silence, thinking back to those vocabulary books she had with her a few weeks ago and watching her talk to Sanguini.

“Rusty non-fluent Russian,” he heard Daphne mumble from under the quilt. She peeked up at him through the folds. “My grandmother taught me and Astoria. She used to smack us with her wooden spoon when we mis-conjugated. I’ll never be able to look at wooden spoons the same again.”

“Harsh.” Harry joined her under the quilt, relaxing into the softness of the mattress. It was so comfortable and warm that he was afraid if he closed his eyes for too long he’d fall asleep.

“It worked though,” she muttered, pressing her cheek against his shoulder. He rested his arm over her waist. “Tired?”

Just the word ‘tired’ was making him yawn. “Knackered.”

“Sleep.” He could feel her breath against his skin as she spoke. “I can tell you all about my fucked up family tomorrow if you want.”

“I’d like that.”

Closing his eyes, he wasn’t sure if he said that aloud or not before sleep overtook him. But sleep was like blinking, he was so exhausted. In one second it was mid-afternoon and in the next, it was morning – the sun cascading through the windows as dawn broke.

Harry’s eyes snapped open when he heard a loud noise and he groped for his glasses – Daphne must have taken them off of him when they fell asleep. He found them next to the stereo and nearly called out, ‘Daphne?’ as he was putting them on, but the words died in his throat.

Standing next to her wardrobe, Daphne pulled a pair of deep blue knickers off the shelf and slid them up her legs; Harry couldn’t help himself from trailing his eyes along their path and over every inch of bare skin that he could see. She brushed her fingers through her hair and piled it on top of her head with a clip, revealing even more skin.

Even with the faint bruises and injuries fading to scars, she looked exquisite.

Week’s worth of built up fantasies flashed behind his eyelids every time he blinked and he nearly touched himself to relieve the tension as he stared at the curve of her breasts, remembering how they fit so nicely in his hands. How they bounced – and how her legs felt, wrapped tightly around him as he…

Daphne reached up and grabbed her bra off the hook on the inside of her wardrobe and Harry swallowed thickly, squashing away the reluctance that usually welled up at this point.

“Leave it off,” he said, feeling bold, his voice rough from sleep.

Raising her eyebrows, Daphne turned toward him, but then her lips curled into a playful grin as she held the bra up between her fingers with a questioning nod toward the offending garment. He could read the blatant question in her eyes: ‘You mean this?’

Harry sat up, his feet dangling over the side of Daphne’s bed as he threw off the stifling blanket and gave her a nod. The cool air in the room hit him, sobering him just a bit. She had tossed the bra aside with a shrug, an amused expression on her face as she stalked toward him.

His stomach did an exhilarated flip and he licked his lips. “Take those off as well,” he directed, wondering if she would since she was so compliant about the bra. His eyes glanced down at her knickers, staring unabashedly at her cloth covered quim.

“Give me one good reason and I’ll let you take them off for me,” she drawled lightly, stopping just in front of him, her legs brushing his knees. He was eyelevel with her ribs and wanted nothing more than to lick a trail along her skin, from the waistband of her knickers to the pulse at her neck; to kiss every single bruise and scrape, and suck over the freckles on her chest.

If there was one thing he couldn’t deny, it was that he couldn’t help himself when it came to her – he couldn’t possibly stay away from her, no matter how hard he tried to push back his errant thoughts. She was manipulative, immoral, evasive… dangerous even. He knew that. He wasn’t sure what it was that attracted him to her, but he knew it was an attraction that went much deeper than physical. Maybe he couldn’t admit to himself that – even though she was all those things – he secretly enjoyed it all.

And maybe he was mental for enjoying it.

Either way, he still wasn’t sure what he wanted. Definitely not a relationship. But… this. This was how everything started. No emotions involved. That was exactly what he needed. They weren’t close enough for anything else. Not yet.

Give me one good reason…

‘We’re done,’ he distinctly remembered her saying in his dorm.

“We’re not done, but this doesn’t mean anything,” he articulated slowly, looking up at her with intent and pushing his fingers underneath the band of her knickers to tug them down her legs.

Swiftly pulling her down onto his lap to kiss her fiercely, he thought he may have caught her by surprise. Her knickers were caught around her ankles, stretching as she straddled him, and he could feel her smirk against his kiss. His glasses pressed painfully against the bridge of his nose as he scraped his teeth over her lower lip and possessively sucked it into his mouth, a low growl building in the back of his throat.

His hands trailed over her skin as she threaded her fingers through his hair and tugged, sucking at his tongue and making his toes curl. He was all sensation, uncaring about their mixed morning breath as he groped her arse and ground himself up against her. Even through the fabric of his boxers, it felt glorious. His nerve endings were pulled taut, begging him for more.

Daphne scraped her nails down his chest, stroking him roughly through his boxers as she moaned into his mouth. Not wanting to end this too soon, Harry caught her wrists in his hands and pressed her over onto the bed, settling himself between her legs. Her chest swelled as she panted unevenly, smiling up at him, her lips swollen and red.

Gaining a bit more control over himself, he bent his head down to devour her neck, licking and sucking at all the spots that he knew made her moan. He felt her toes hook into the waistband of his boxers, trying to slide them down, and he chuckled against the skin of her throat.

“Eager?” he whispered breathily into her ear, nipping at her earlobe.

“Not the only one.”

“Mhm.” Harry rubbed himself against her.

“Bloody hell. If you don’t fuck me right now, I’m going to hex your bollocks off.”

He smiled against her skin and softly bit at her pulse, causing her to let out a sharp shuddering breath. “You wouldn’t do that,” he said, letting go of her wrists and pulling back to look at her. He licked his lips. “You like them too much.”

“Bastard,” she muttered teasingly, practically ripping his boxers off as she shoved them down his legs.

“Gorgeous,” he returned in the same tone, sucking along her jaw to her mouth. She dug her heels into his arse, rubbing up against him with a moan.

He pulled away again, moving down a bit to grab at her thighs, avoiding her partially-healed injury. He pushed them apart, wide and open. “Patience,” he murmured and she glared at him, her eyes shining hungrily. It made his spine tingle thrillingly and he involuntarily shuddered.

“Should have never taught you how to control your emoti– oh god,” she gasped, arching.

Harry latched his mouth over her nipple and sucked hard, palming her other breast with his hand. He hummed contentedly against her skin as he felt her nails sharply scrape up his back, making his cock twitch and impossibly harden even further.

Two can play that game, he thought. His hand trailed over the inside of her uninjured thigh, slowly making its way up. He teased over her slit before he pushed a finger in and curled it, rubbing against that spot inside her that always made her clench around him greedily.

Licking at the freckles between her breasts, he watched her throw her head back and moan. Merlin, she was maddening. Pushing back his urgent need to get inside her, he licked a wet trail down her stomach, sucking just below her navel, which made her dig her fingers into his messy tangled hair. He wanted to make her scream and desperately wanted to try something new that he’d been curious about ever since Dean mentioned it not long after he met Daphne.

With things getting in the way at Hogwarts whenever he and Daphne met, there was never enough time for too much foreplay. He paused over her, his lips centimeters from her clit as he looked up at her half-lidded expression. Letting out a breath, he languidly licked the flat of his tongue over her, circling the tip of his tongue against her clit in the way that she liked when he rubbed her with his fingers. He added another finger insider her and rubbed at that spot at the same pace, making her tighten even more around them and writhe and moan so loud it was almost a scream.

If she wasn’t painfully grasping at his hair, he swore he would have come all over the sheets by now. Messily, he sucked at her clit, pressing his fingers harder, rubbing mercilessly and moaning against her when she growled. She was soaking wet, nearly dripping down his fingers. Harry smiled against her cunt, kissing her pulsing clit one last time before pulling his fingers out and spreading her come over his cock, making sure she was watching.

He kissed the flushed skin over her neck, wrapping her long legs around him and sheathing himself inside her; his eyes rolled to the back of his head as he slowly stretched her. Fuck, she was still pulsing.

He wasn’t going to last long at all.

Naked Snape flitted into his mind, but it didn’t do much when he was buried this deep and she was practically milking his cock as she clenched over and over, meeting his hard thrusts – raking her nails over his shoulders. She pulled his head down, nipping at that spot below his ear in a way that made his toes curl. He groaned roughly, increasing his pace as she marked him. He reached down to furiously rub her oversensitive flesh.

As if she could tell he was close, Daphne breathed jaggedly against his ear, gruffly whispering, “Don’t you dare come.” She trailed the tip of her tongue over the shell of his ear. “I’ll suck it off your cock after if you get me off first.”

Fucking hell.

Growling through his teeth, he pounded into her harder – fucking her into the mattress – causing his glasses to go askew. He bit his lip, nearly drawing blood. Squeezing his eyes shut, he felt them water as he frantically held back. She was going to be the death of him. The bedframe banged against the wall, quaking underneath them, and he felt her bite into his shoulder, forcing his orgasm from him as she tightened around his cock so hard he could barely move. He gripped her, thinking he was going to pass out any second now. The edges of his vision went black for a moment and he pressed his face against her neck, groaning her name.

He didn’t know how long it was before she flipped him over onto his back, but he felt utterly boneless until her lips wrapped around his ridiculously sensitive softening cock, and all of the muscles in his body seized at the sensation. As she sucked ruthlessly, it felt both painful and almost as if he was going to come all over again at the same time. All of the air left his lungs as he moaned loudly, feeling the tip of his cock touch the back of her throat. She doubled her efforts, sucking even harder, and his glasses fell off his face, dangling from his ear as he jerked uncontrollably.

It hurt so bad but it felt so fucking good. Staring down at her blurry form, his mouth was caught in a breathless sob of too much feeling – too many feelings. He grasped at the bed sheets, nearly tearing them. Just as he thought he was going to go mad, air flooded his lungs and she pulled away from him, his cock slipping out of her mouth slowly.

He shoved his glasses back on with shaking hands and watched her licked her lips, an overly-pleased grin pulling at them. Her dilated blue eyes trailed over his skin until she met his gaze.

Letting out a light satisfied sigh, she leaned over his torso toward the bedside table and grabbed her silver case and lighter.

They lit their cigarettes, not saying a word. Daphne still straddled his thighs and he leaned back against the bunched up pillows behind him, not taking his eyes away from her. The silence between them felt charged. He wanted to remember this moment for the rest of his life, burn it into his brain so he never forgot a second of it. He could still taste her on his lips and he ran the tip of his tongue along the seam of them before taking a drag off his cigarette.

“What are you thinking?” Harry asked, breaking the silence. Smoke curled from his mouth as he spoke.

Blinking at the question, Daphne’s grin widened. “You’ve got a bit of come on your glasses.”

“Oh.” Harry took them off, looking around for his boxers to wipe them on, but Daphne already had out her wand and did a quick evanesce. “Thanks.”

“I was thinking we should get back to the warehouse, actually,” Daphne said, staring at her stereo, which was similar to the one they were now using on Goyle for sensory overload. “I want to see how the We Know All joint questioning approach is going – see how they’re doing.”

Daphne climbed off of him and padded over to the wardrobe, plucking her knickers off the floor with her toes as she went. They got dressed silently and headed out the door, only to run into Hermione waiting for them outside.

“Do you two even know how to perform a silencing charm?” she asked, raising an eyebrow and crossing her arms over her chest. A flush crept up Harry’s neck.

“Do you make it a habit of loitering outside of places where people are fucking?” Daphne countered, mirroring the Gryffindor girl’s stance.

Hermione spluttered. “No! I was being courteous and waiting for you to be done. You’re rather lucky as well. Your mother left for work not five minutes before you started making that racket.”

That would have been mortifying.

“Eh. It’s not like she would care all that much,” Daphne said with a shrug. “Did you get the books you were after?”

“Yes.” Hermione nodded to her armful of Muggle texts. “She had a whacking load of chemistry and physics, though her collection on psychology was a bit weak compared to my parents’.”

“Obviously. She’s an industrial chemist, not a dentist,” Daphne muttered, holding out her hand to both of them, which they took.

They spun off, being twisted and squeezed endlessly through a long tube, headed toward the stifling hot warehouse.

OoO

“There’s a rumour that the Dark Lord is preparing to take the Ministry soon,” Goyle’s voice drifted gruffly from the one-way baby monitor.

It had taken them days to get to this point of openness. Nott and Zabini may have been persistent in their interrogation, but it was Nott’s ‘nice’ approach and – surprisingly – Astoria who had finally gotten to the boy in the end. Goyle’s resistance was weak at best and he was readily seduced by pleasantries and comforts and all of the baked goods that Astoria brought from home on her visits to the warehouse after work.

She may not have been a good interrogator, but she knew her way around using incentives to get what she wanted. She utilized positive reinforcement techniques – much like the ones she used on her twins – rewarding Goyle when he told them what they wanted and denying him the reward when he refused.

“Would you like another slice of cake, Gregory?” Astoria asked. Being a Muggle and one of the people who were to take care of Goyle and Malfoy after they all left for their proper holidays, she remained unglamoured.

Cutting through the rich dark chocolate pastry sitting between her and Nott, she set it onto a plate with a plastic fork.

“Yes, thank you, Miss Demirović,” Goyle said politely, staring hungrily at the dessert as it was slid to him across the table, to which the Slytherin boy was chained.

Since the name ‘Astoria Greengrass’ was an obvious giveaway as to who had a hand in capturing the two Slytherin Death Eaters, it was Daphne’s idea for Astoria to take the surname of her dead fiancé in the interrogation room. Astoria wasn’t exactly pleased with it - she apparently duped her late ex-fiancé into the engagement and, eventually, she got close enough to him to get her hands on a lighter, a pack of cigarettes, and a bottle of vodka. During her escape from the compound she was kept at in Bosnia, she tied him to a chair and murdered him in the fire she started to facilitate said escape. So, to say that she was fond of the name ‘Demirović’ was an overstatement.

“And how is the Dark Lord planning to take the Ministry?” Nott asked, resting his elbows on the table and leaning closer to Goyle. He was glamoured as a long-haired blonde bloke with pale blue eyes and a slightly ridiculous 70’s-style mustache.

“I don’t know,” Goyle mumbled through a mouthful of cake. “I mean, I’ve heard he has spies – you know, like moles – everywhere. And Yaxley told my dad that we’ve the Aurors in our pocket ever since they got rid of that Bones woman. That’s as good a start as any – take away the Aurors. Right?” He paused, looking over at Astoria. “Can I have another glass of milk with this?”

“Of course. I’ll go get that for you,” she said, getting up from her seat.

In the control room, Harry was watching the interrogation out of the corner of his eye, listening intently as he wrote down the information on the blackboard under the heading of ’Goyle’. His list of intel was starting to reach the length of Malfoy’s list. They had the updated information on the siege, which hadn’t changed much. They learned that Voldemort was very displeased with Malfoy being missing – he thought that the boy ran away and was in hiding. Narcissa was also going mental with worry searching for him; she was currently travelling around, checking the property of every acquaintance and friend in Europe, which the Dark Lord ‘graciously’ allowed. Voldemort wanted to punish Malfoy for fleeing and defying his orders so finding the blonde Slytherin suited him just fine.

Nevertheless, in Malfoy’s stead, Voldemort put Steven Cornfoot – a pureblooded Ravenclaw in Harry’s year – up to the task of fixing the vanishing cabinet. Goyle and Cornfoot were marked and inducted into the Death Eaters circle on the same night. Unfortunately, there was no talk of who was going to kill Dumbledore; that was left out of Goyle’s siege plans and Dumbledore wasn’t even mentioned. When asked about Dumbledore, Goyle simply shrugged and said, ‘I don’t know. Steven wants to let the other Death Eaters in when he’s away. Should be easy; Dumbledore’s been gone an awful lot this year.’

But it was strange because Malfoy had maintained that he was instructed to kill Dumbledore specifically – wouldn’t Voldemort find someone else suitable for the task? Why not Cornfoot? From listening to Goyle, Harry was beginning to consider it as a complete lie – it was preposterous that Voldemort would entrust someone so young to kill the great and powerful Albus Dumbledore. Harry thought that Voldemort would want to do it himself; yet, the blonde Slytherin was irrepressibly insistent about it. That insistence made Harry hold back on deciding if it was true or not. After all, it was very possible that Voldemort didn’t trust Goyle or Cornfoot with information about murdering Dumbledore.

In secret, the Dark Lord could have pulled one of the other Death Eaters involved in the siege aside and instructed them to do it.

“Are you suggesting that Scrimgeour’s replacement for Amelia Bones as the Head of the Auror Department is a mole?” Harry heard Nott ask and he paused, chalk-in-hand, listening more intently.

“Dunno.” Goyle shrugged, licking the chocolate ganache frosting off of his plastic fork. “Yaxley’s the one handling the Aurors.”

“As you’ve implied,” Nott responded patiently. “Have you seen Gawain Robards at any of the Death Eater gatherings you’ve been to?”

“Robards?” Goyle shook his head, his brows furrowing. “No – never heard of him.”

Harry wrote down, ‘Ask Malfoy about Gawain Robards,’ in another section of the blackboard, under the heading of ‘Information to Gather’.

“Do you know of any other moles that the Dark Lord has placed in the Auror office?”

“I already told you about Yaxley,” Goyle said, spooning more cake into his mouth.

Nott persevered, “Anyone else?”

“Some bloke named Thicknesse maybe? But I don’t know much about him. Yaxley’s mates with him – they work at the Auror office together.”

Writing down the information on the blackboard, Harry grabbed his biro and added ‘Thicknesse’ to his list of ‘possible MLE moles’ to ask Remus, Tonks, and Mr. Weasley about during his normal Christmas hols.

“Is there anyone else who Yaxley associates with from the Auror office?”

“Well, there’s Octavius Gibbon and Yaxley’s partner, Jerimiah Plottker, but Plottker’s a mudblood – doubt he’d be a mole.”

Harry agreed, but wrote down the information anyway. Gibbon was already mentioned as a person who was to take part in the Hogwarts siege, so it was no surprise when he was mentioned as a mole.

Astoria came back into Goyle’s interrogation room with a glass of milk and a plateful of blueberry cobbler just as Harry heard Daphne and Hermione enter the warehouse corridor from outside. Those two had spent the last couple hours taking Astoria’s twin boys – Alex and Anatoli – to the pet store for more supplies and to help pick out collars for all of the bloody cats. There were probably six of them, not including Crookshanks. The kittens seemed to be everywhere outside of the interrogation rooms, causing trouble, clawing at the sofa in the room with the kitchenette – upon which Zabini was sleeping – and running around people’s feet as they walked. Crookshanks did his best to corral them, but it was a weak effort. Sometimes Harry swore that the half-kneazel was encouraging his kittens to be rambunctious little troublemakers.

“Have you heard any other rumours of the Dark Lord’s move on the Ministry?” Nott asked after Goyle gulped down a quarter of the milk and went back to his cake.

“Not really,” Goyle said, wiping his mouth off with the back of his wrist and smearing chocolate everywhere. “I think they want to take Hogwarts first before they move onto taking the Ministry. There’s more talk of that since the vanishing cabinet’s almost fixed.”

“What made you think that they won’t take the Ministry first?” Nott inquired slowly. “You did say that they have the Aurors in their pocket – why would they wait?”

“Dunno.” Goyle shrugged, scraping off the last bits of chocolate cake on his plate and eyeing the plate of cobbler that Astoria had sitting next to her. “I wouldn’t wait if I were them, but the Dark Lord wants Hogwarts.”

“Yes, but why does he want Hogwarts?” Astoria jumped into the interrogation, impatiently running her fingers through her hair.

“Maybe he wants it as his new headquarters. He kept threatening Draco’s dad about the peacocks during the meeting. Maybe he doesn’t like peacocks.”

Harry snorted. Merlin, Goyle could be ridiculously thick. Peacocks? Honestly? Voldemort would just kill them all if he didn’t like them.

But… wait, wasn’t Lucius Malfoy supposed to be in Azkaban? He hadn’t heard anything about an Azkaban breakout in the Daily Prophet – not that he trusted the bloody paper to print anything useful. ‘Stan Shunpike, Death Eater’. Yeah, right. It was a bloody injustice what Scrimgeour was doing. Perhaps he wanted to keep the breakout quiet. Either way, Harry was going to ask Mr. Weasley about it.

Nott seemed to have the same train of thought as Harry, asking, “So Lucius Malfoy broke out of Azkaban?”

“Yeah – they all did, I think,” Goyle replied, sliding aside his empty plate. “After the Dark Lord took the Dementors with him, they were being guarded by little runts - dad said he crushed this Auror bloke’s skull in and stole his wand. Probably a mudblood.”

“Right,” Nott commented dryly, which flew straight over Goyle’s head. “Do you know where the Dark Lord is keeping the Dementors?”

“No.” Goyle shook his head. “Snape might, though.”

After adding a note of that onto his parchment of intel he was bringing with him on his normal holidays, Harry quickly scrawled it onto the blackboard – accidentally in biro first, not paying attention. “Fuck,” he breathed, licking his finger and wiping it off the board. He wrote it out in chalk this time, skipping over the wet bit of blackboard.

“Would you like some blueberry cobbler to finish off your milk?” Astoria inquired, pressing the dessert closer to him.

“Oh, yeah. Your cobbler’s almost as good as my mum’s,” Goyle muttered, digging into the crumbly crust with his plastic fork.

Harry had never thought he’d meet someone with a bigger stomach than Ron, or even Dudley, but Goyle literally took the bloody cake – the whole cake. Yesterday, Hermione started worrying that they were going to rot the teeth out of his head during the interrogation, after Goyle had consumed an entire treacle tart, the giant angel food cake with macerated strawberries and whipped cream, and most of the chocolate cream pie. In one sitting. Goyle was a bottomless pit when it came to sweets. Even Muggle sweets, when Astoria brought them in this morning – unwrapped in a mound on a plate. It made Hermione cringe watching him devour it all.

Daphne, Nott, and Zabini were less shocked by Goyle’s appetite, of course, being in the same house. They had to sit at the same table during meals for the past six years. To them, this was normal.

Faintly, Harry heard Daphne speaking outside the door to the control room, “Now, we’re going to go outside and do the spinny thing to take you to your Auntie’s, okay?” There were muffled cheers from Astoria’s twins and an excited pattering of footsteps as they exited the warehouse.

Hermione walked through the control room door, carrying two collars to place on the kittens that were rolling around in the middle of the floor with a balled up piece of parchment. “How’s it going with Goyle?” she asked.

“Pretty good. I think he’s gotten through most of what we can use, though. He knew more than I expected,” Harry said, turning toward her.

In Goyle’s interrogation room, Nott and Astoria were trying to pry more from Goyle, but his answers were turning a bit useless. Harry kept an ear out for anything new while he spoke. “How was it with the twins?”

“They’re adorable – Greengrass has them thinking we’re magicians. And naturally, they want kittens. I’d say yes, but I don’t know how Astoria would feel about it. They are part kneazel.”

“Kneazels aren’t dangerous,” Harry muttered, writing down another name that Goyle mentioned – an Unspeakable named Rigoberto Dolen: possible Department of Mysteries mole. He was friends with Goyle’s mother.

“Generally, no, but they can be aggressive.”

“Not when bred with cats,” Harry responded a bit distractedly, thinking back to Care of Magical Creatures when Hagrid brought in purebred kneazels and one of them almost bit his finger off.

“Still…” Hermione stood behind him, reading over his shoulder. “Goyle said they’re going to take over the Ministry?” she asked in alarm. “Did he mention when?”

“No. Keeps saying they’re going to do it after they siege Hogwarts.”

“Oh.” Her lips parted and she got a faraway look in her eyes as she stared at the blackboard. It was as if her mind was absorbing all of the new data collected and Harry could physically see her analyzing it in her mind. “That’s not good…”

“How so?” he questioned, his brows furrowed.

“Erm – Voldemort has the Aurors – that’s probably true. They’ve been arresting strange people lately, according to the Prophet. But, anyway, that’s not the Ministry’s only defense. They have Unspeakables and other employees who are fully capable of defending.”

“Yeah, I know,” he said, nodding. That’s why he wasn’t so worried about the Ministry falling any time soon. They’d need more than the Aurors in their pocket. “What’s your point?”

Looking up at him, Hermione’s brows creased in the centre as she worried at her lower lip. “Well… a lot of these people have kids who go to Hogwarts – most of them, I’d wager. It would be… advantageous to take Hogwarts first.”

Harry’s stomach dropped and all of the air poured from his lungs as he realized what she was saying. “He wants hostages,” he muttered breathlessly.

“That’s what it looks like.”

OoO

Author’s Note: Thank you for reading!