Chapter Text
Stupid, sexy Potter."
The words escaped Draco's mouth like a curse, muttered into the darkness of his four-poster bed. The curtains were drawn, the silencing charms up, and still he whispered it, as if saying it louder would make it more real.
It was real enough already.
He pressed his face into his pillow, the silk pillowcase cool against his burning cheeks. The image wouldn't leave him. Potter, walking across the Quidditch pitch after practice, his uniform dirt-smudged, his hair a disaster, laughing at something Weasley said. Laughing with his whole body, head thrown back, throat exposed.
That throat.
Draco's hand had drifted below his waist before he could stop it. He yanked it back, rolling onto his side, then his other side, then his stomach. Nothing helped. The heat in his blood was relentless, and it had only one source.
Stupid, sexy Potter.
He'd tried everything to make it stop. He'd thrown himself into his studies, into his Quidditch practice, into cruel taunts designed to make Potter hate him more. Nothing worked. The more he pushed, the more the obsession took root, twisting through him like Devil's Snare until he couldn't breathe without thinking of green eyes and messy hair and that infuriating, earnest face.
It wasn't fair. He was a Malfoy. Malfoys didn't obsess. They conquered. They possessed. They took what they wanted and made it theirs.
But you couldn't take what didn't want you back.
The thought was so bitter it made his chest ache. He rolled onto his back again, staring at the canopy above his bed. The green silk looked like Potter's eyes. Of course it did.
He reached for the drawer beside his bed, his fingers finding the familiar shape before his brain could stop them. The glasses. Simple, black-framed, nearly identical to Potter's. He'd had them made in Hogsmeade, slipping into the optician's shop under his cloak, heart pounding like he was committing murder rather than purchasing a prop.
He put them on.
The world shifted. Not literally—there was no prescription in the lenses—but in his mind, everything changed. When he caught his reflection in the polished silver mirror on his bedside table, he didn't see Draco Malfoy. He saw a version of himself that could be wanted. A version that might catch Potter's eye.
His hand moved again, this time with intention. He let it drift down his stomach, fingers tracing the lines of his abdomen, imagining they were someone else's. Potter's. Those rough, calloused hands that had gripped a broom handle, that had punched him, that had—
"Stop," he hissed to himself.
But he didn't stop.
He shifted, reaching for the small pot of styling cream he'd taken to keeping beside his bed. He dipped his fingers in and worked it through his hair, not the sleek, polished look his father expected, but something messier. Something that fell across his forehead. Something like Potter's.
In the darkness, with the glasses perched on his nose and his hair an artful disaster, he could almost pretend. His hand wrapped around himself, and he let his eyes fall shut.
"Potter," he breathed, so quiet even the silencing charms barely caught it. "Harry."
The name felt like a key turning in a lock he hadn't known existed. His hand moved, and for a few minutes, in the privacy of his curtained bed, he wasn't Draco Malfoy, obsessed and unwanted. He was someone Potter might look at. Someone Potter might want.
When it was over, he lay there, chest heaving, glasses askew.
And then came the part he hated most.
The cooling. The sticky, cooling reality of what he'd just done pooling on his stomach, gelatinous and obscene. The fantasy evaporated like morning fog, leaving him alone with the proof of his own pathetic neediness wet on his skin and between his fingers.
He stared at his hand. At the strands connecting his fingers like some vile spell ingredient. This was the part the stories never mentioned. The part where you had to deal with the aftermath. The part where you had to acknowledge that it was over and you were still just you, alone, with cum on your hand and an ache in your chest that had nothing to do with satisfaction.
He reached for his wand on the nightstand, casting a quiet Scourgify. The spell cleaned his hand, his stomach, the sheet beneath him, but it couldn't clean the shame. That settled over him like a second skin, familiar and suffocating.
He removed the glasses, wiping them carefully on a clean section of sheet before placing them back in the drawer. He Scourgified his hair, the styling cream dissolving into nothing, leaving his platinum locks limp and damp against his forehead.
The ceiling was just a ceiling again. His hair was a mess of regret. The glasses were just glasses.
Tomorrow, he would try again to make the obsession stop. Tomorrow, he would be cold, untouchable Draco Malfoy, who didn't need anyone, certainly not Harry Potter.
But tonight, in the dark, with the evidence of his shame Scourgified away but not forgotten, he let himself want.
---
The next morning, Draco examined himself in the mirror with a critical eye. His hair was back to its usual, immaculate state. His robes were pressed. His face was a mask of bored disdain.
But he could still feel the ghost of last night. The sticky cooling on his skin. The way his hand had trembled as he reached for his wand. The way the silence after had seemed to press in on him from all sides, full of judgment.
He pushed the thought away. Today was a new day. Today, he would try something different.
---
Pansy Parkinson had been circling him for years, like a vulture waiting for something to die. In this case, what had died was his patience.
"Draco, darling," she cooed, sliding into the seat beside him at breakfast. "You look simply dreadful. Is something the matter?"
"Nothing's the matter," he said, not looking at her. "I need your help with something."
Her eyes lit up. Draco Malfoy never asked for help. "Of course. Anything."
He turned to face her, letting his expression soften just enough. It was a calculated move, every muscle in his face performing the role of the vulnerable friend. "I need you to... talk to Potter."
Pansy blinked. "Talk to him? About what?"
"About anything. Everything." He leaned closer, lowering his voice. "I need to know what he responds to. What makes him... notice someone."
Pansy's expression shifted from confusion to understanding to something that looked almost like triumph. "Draco Malfoy, are you asking me to spy on Harry Potter for you?"
"I'm asking you to have a conversation with him. A friendly one. See what makes him tick." He kept his voice light, casual, as if this were a simple academic exercise. "Can you do that, or should I find someone more capable?"
Her spine straightened. "I can do it. I can do anything."
"Good. Tomorrow. After dinner. The library."
"Whatever you say, darling."
She swept away, and Draco allowed himself a small smile. It was a plan. Imperfect, certainly—Pansy was about as subtle as a Blast-Ended Skrewt—but it was a start. If he couldn't get Potter's attention directly, he would learn how someone else could. And then he would take that knowledge and make it his own.
---
The library was quiet that evening, the way it always was when Potter was there. He sat at a table near the window, his head bent over a Transfiguration essay, his brow furrowed in concentration.
Draco watched from behind a shelf of Potions texts, his heart doing that stupid, traitorous thing it always did when Potter was near. From this angle, he could see the way the lamplight caught Potter's hair, the way his fingers drummed against the table, the way he chewed his quill when he was thinking.
Stupid. Sexy. Potter.
Pansy entered a few minutes later, and Draco immediately wanted to sink into the floor.
She'd clearly spent the last two hours getting ready. Her makeup was thick—eyeliner that made her eyes look smaller rather than larger, lipstick that was too dark and slightly smeared at the corner, blush in two perfect circles on her cheeks like a doll. Her perfume arrived a full three seconds before she did, a cloying, floral assault that Draco could smell from his hiding spot twenty feet away. It was the kind of scent that announced itself like a butler: *Miss Parkinson is entering the room. Brace yourselves.*
She walked right up to Potter's table, her hips swinging in a way that was probably meant to be alluring but looked more like she was trying to maintain her balance on a moving train. Draco watched her approach with the kind of creeping horror usually reserved for watching someone walk toward an open manhole.
"Potter," she said, her voice pitched low and breathy. It came out sounding like she had a cold. "Fancy finding you here. All alone."
Potter looked up, his expression shifting from concentration to confusion. "Parkinson? Are you... are you okay? You sound like you're coming down with something."
"I'm *fine*," she said, drawing out the word in a way that was probably meant to be sultry but landed somewhere between a purr and a wheeze. She sat down across from him without waiting for an invitation, leaning forward on her elbows in a way that was clearly designed to give him a view down her neckline. Given that she was wearing robes that buttoned to the throat, the effect was somewhat undermined. "I just thought you could use some... company."
From his hiding spot, Draco pressed his forehead against a copy of *Moste Potente Potions* and let out a silent groan. *Company.* She'd said it like she was offering him something illicit, when all she was offering was her presence, which was currently about as welcome as a Blast-Ended Skrewt at a garden party.
"I was actually trying to work," Potter said, his tone carefully neutral. "I've got this essay—"
"Essays are *so* tedious." Pansy reached across the table and put her hand on his arm. Her nails were painted black, chipped at the edges, and she dug them in slightly, like a cat kneading. Potter glanced down at her grip with the expression of someone who'd just found something unpleasant on their shoe. "You work too hard, Potter. You need to learn to... relax."
Draco watched her other hand drift toward Potter's arm, then his shoulder, then—Merlin help him—his thigh. She was touching him like she was trying to pet a skittish animal, her movements jerky and insistent rather than smooth. Each touch landed too hard, lingered too long, or both.
Potter shifted away, his chair scraping against the floor. "Parkinson, what are you—"
"You have such *strong* arms," Pansy continued, apparently oblivious to his discomfort. Or willfully ignoring it. With Pansy, it was hard to tell. "I bet you're really good at—"
"Quidditch," Potter said quickly. "I'm good at Quidditch. That's what I was going to say. About the arms. For Quidditch."
Draco wanted to scream. *This* was what he'd arranged? This perfumed, overpainted disaster? He knew—*he knew*—that the way to get Potter's attention wasn't to simper and grab. It was to challenge him. To push back. To meet those green eyes with grey ones that weren't afraid. It was to be sharp and quick and present, not... whatever Pansy was doing.
Pansy leaned further forward, and Draco could see the moment she decided to make her move. It was written in the set of her shoulders and the way she wet her lips—leaving a smear of dark lipstick on her teeth in the process.
"You know, Potter," she said, her voice dropping to what she probably thought was a whisper but was actually perfectly audible to anyone within ten feet, "I've always thought you were quite—"
She lunged.
It was less a kiss and more a tackle. Potter jerked back so hard his chair tipped, and he barely caught himself on the edge of the table. Pansy's lips—wet with too much gloss—caught the corner of his jaw, leaving a dark smear across his cheek.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" Potter yelped, scrambling backward. His essay went flying, parchment scattering across the floor like startled birds.
"I was just—" Pansy's carefully constructed sultry expression cracked, revealing something hurt and confused underneath. "I thought you—"
"You thought I—what?" Potter was on his feet now, one hand pressed to his jaw like he'd been attacked. Which, in a sense, he had. "Parkinson, you can't just—why would you—I don't even—"
He was stammering, his face red, his eyes wide. And despite everything—despite the humiliation of watching his proxy crash and burn—Draco felt that familiar, traitorous heat in his chest. Because even flustered, even cornered, even with Pansy's lipstick smeared across his jaw like a war wound, Potter was still...
Stupid. Sexy. Potter.
"I need to go," Potter said, grabbing his bag and stuffing his scattered papers inside with shaking hands. "I need to—I have to find Ron. I need to—bye."
And then he was gone, leaving Pansy sitting alone at the table, her mouth still slightly open, a dark smear of lipstick on her teeth and a look of bewildered humiliation on her face.
From behind the bookshelf, Draco watched her expression shift from confusion to hurt to anger. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, looked at the lipstick smear, and let out a sound that was somewhere between a growl and a sob.
Draco didn't stay to comfort her. He slipped out the other side of the stacks, his mind already racing. Pansy had failed. Spectacularly. Catastrophically. She'd been too loud, too obvious, too *much*—too much perfume, too much makeup, too much touching, too much everything.
She'd made Potter feel cornered, not intrigued. Harassed, not interested. She'd approached him like a predator rather than a possibility.
And the worst part—the absolute worst part—was that Draco knew he could do it better. He knew exactly how to get Potter's attention. Not with simpering and grabbing, but with wit and challenge and the kind of sharp, electric tension that made someone look at you even when they didn't want to.
But he couldn't. Because Potter would see right through him. Because Potter already hated him. Because the very thing that would make Draco the perfect person to catch Potter's interest was the same thing that made it impossible.
He needed someone else. Someone quiet. Someone smart. Someone who could follow instructions and not reek of perfume and desperation.
Someone invisible.
---
Pansy found him later, in the Slytherin common room, her face blotchy and her makeup smeared beyond repair.
"He ran away," she hissed. "He actually ran away. Like I was some kind of—some kind of—"
"Monster?" Draco suggested, not looking up from his book.
"I was trying to *seduce* him, Draco! That's what you wanted, wasn't it?"
"I wanted you to have a conversation. A *subtle* conversation." He turned a page, his voice cool. "You practically tackled him."
Pansy's mouth fell open. "You said you wanted him to notice someone! How was I supposed to get him to notice me without—"
"Without what? Ambushing him in the library? Wearing enough perfume to knock out a Hippogriff? Leaving lipstick on his face like some kind of territorial marking?"
Her face flushed an ugly shade of red. "But you said—"
"I said I needed your help. You couldn't even manage a simple conversation without making it obvious." He closed his book and stood, straightening his robes. "Don't worry. I'll find someone who can actually deliver."
"Find someone else?" Pansy's voice rose to a shriek. "I'm not some kind of—some kind of *tool* you can just discard when it doesn't work!"
Draco paused at the door, turning back to look at her. His expression was perfectly, icily calm. "That's exactly what you are, Pansy. A tool. And a blunt one, at that."
He left before she could respond, her outraged shriek following him down the corridor.