Fic: Photo album (H/D), Snapshot 8
Feb. 12th, 2006 10:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
asimplechordSorry, I meant to have this written and posted days ago, but I've not been inspired this week.
Snapshot title: Gift exchange
Rating: R-ish
Warnings: fluff, sexual activity implied
Disclaimer: Still not mine, sadly.
You know the drill - any mistakes are purely my own. And as I was distracted by watching men in tight spandex skate around the ice sheet as I typed last night, there's no telling how bad it might be. :)
The rest of the Photo album arc is here.
This meal was slightly less awkward than the previous night’s dinner. Ginny had already eaten, leaving the elder Weasleys and Ron and Hermione as Harry and Draco’s companions. Hermione was drinking tea, having had an early breakfast with students before leaving the castle for the day. She smiled at Harry when he sat down, then returned to her conversation with Ron, who was seated across the table.
Ron was not overtly hostile, but he would not look Harry in the eye. He responded when Harry addressed him, and participated when Hermione deliberately introduced a question or statement to include all three in the conversation, but was otherwise stand-offish. Harry took it as a positive sign: at least he wasn’t insulting Draco or being rude.
The arrival of Fred and George stirred things up. Fresh from brunch with Lee and Katie, they refused food but sat down at the other end of the table, chattering all the way down it to Draco with no thought to proper table manners. Their rambling friendliness forced some interaction with Ron, who still would not look at them.
When the family finally moved to the sitting room to exchange gifts, they found Ginny already there, sorting through packages. Draco tried to sit off to one side, expecting nothing and wanting to be out of the spotlight, but Harry refused to allow his retreat. Instead, he circled his hand around Draco’s wrist, drawing him to sit together on one of the sofas near the fire.
Ginny, as the youngest child, was responsible for distributing gifts to family members and guests. The rude toss of Harry’s and Draco’s in their general direction earned her a sharp word from Molly. With a resentful glance and muttered insincere apology, she returned to pick out her own gifts, leaving Harry and Draco to pick their packages up from the floor and re-sort them. After secretly admiring the gobsmacked look on Draco’s face when he realized that he had received gifts from the Weasley family, Harry directed his attention to his own presents.
From Hermione: of course she gave him a book, this one about teaching and wizarding customs. From Ron, a new Quidditch Weekly subscription and some Bertie Botts. From Molly, a new Weasley sweater and a tin of peanut brittle.
Harry paused in his unwrapping to look over at Draco, who was eyeing a Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes box set dubiously. He set it aside and picked up a lumpy package similar to the last one Harry had opened. When the ribbon and paper were drawn back, they revealed a black sweater with a small green ‘D’ embroidered near the collar. Draco lifted it with hands that Harry almost thought were shaking, his eyes suspiciously bright. The expression on his face could only be described as lost, but then the moment passed, and he smiled brightly, if fragilely, at Harry. Harry reached out and squeezed his arm.
“Well, put it on already!”
Draco pulled the sweater on over his shirt and rose to admire his reflection in the mirror above the mantle. The twins joined him, teasing him about needing red hair to wear the sweater appropriately. Harry just watched Draco, his mussed hair, the trademark friendly sneer not quite enough to mask his happiness, and his heart clenched. He hurriedly glanced away, just in time to see Ginny scowling at Draco.
Harry busied himself with his remaining gifts. There was an X-rated package from Fred and George, which he blushed upon opening and immediately hid from Mrs. Weasley’s eagle eye. An elegantly wrapped pair of packages tied together with ribbon could only have been from Draco. Opening the first, smaller box, he found a set of Chocolate Frogs. When he opened the first packet, he realized that it contained one of the few cards he didn’t already have in his collection. Quickly shifting through all of them, he found that they were all cards he didn’t have, or cards that had been updated since he had received his first copies. And all that chocolate! With an appreciative grin, Harry turned to the heavier package.
He folded back the dull silver paper to reveal a heavy leather album held closed by a silver clasp. When he tried to open it, his fingers burned and stung. Confused, he investigated the cover, which was decorated in silver script so ornate he could barely decipher it: Toujours pur, toujours belle.
The sofa shifted when Draco sat back down; he gently took the album from Harry and rubbed lightly at the clasp, then tapped it impatiently. When the clasp and its bindings loosened, he grasped Harry’s hand and pressed his fingertips to the now open lock.
“It should recognize you now. It’s a Black family album – I found it with my mother’s things when I was clearing out some of the Manor for the Ministry, and since it was a personal belonging and no charges had been levied against Mother, the Ministry let me keep it. There are some pictures of her with her cousins when they were younger. I thought you might like to see a bit more of Sirius Black’s youth.”
Off-balance, touched by Draco’s forethought, Harry couldn’t speak. Swallowing around the lump in his throat, he gestured to Draco to finish opening his gifts. The last gift was his, and now Harry thought that it didn’t seem like nearly enough.
Draco ripped off the paper – no careful untying and unwrapping for him – to find a box of dark chocolate-covered caramels and what appeared to be a blank composition notebook. Surprised, he looked at Harry inquiringly.
“It’s for your experiments, it’s a Dict-A-Quill and a potions record book combined, to take notes when you’re busy with the cauldron or your ingredients. That way no details will be forgotten. I’m sorry it looks so plain – I had to unspell the decorative charms to get the Dict-A-Quill and auto-inking ones to work. But it should work on a normal, Muggle book as well, so I could find a notebook that looks more like you want and re-cast the spells, now that I’ve worked them out, and-”
Soft fingertips against his lips stopped the flow of apologetic words.
“Thank you, Harry.”
The rest of the family had finished opening their gifts, and were now deciding on the day’s activities. Molly bustled around, clearing up crumpled gift-wrap and abandoned ribbons, sorting the unopened gifts into piles. During the flutter of activity, Remus fire-called. He looked exhausted from his transformation, but had wanted to wish everyone a Happy Christmas. Molly sent his gifts through the Floo, and reiterated her invitation for Christmas dinner and Boxing Day. Remus agreed that, health permitting, he would visit the family the next day. Privately, Harry wondered if he was reluctant to visit because of his strained body or because of the memories the house held for the last Marauder, even now. Shaking his head, he returned his attention to Hermione, who had been speaking with Draco for some time.
She broke off her conversation and went to Ron, grabbing his hand and dragging him back toward Harry and Draco. Once there, Hermione invited them to come with her to visit her parents, and then on to the Longbottoms before returning to Grimmauld Place for Christmas dinner. After checking with Molly to see that their help was not needed for the afternoon, the pair agreed, and a mostly cheerful quartet set out for a day’s socializing.
****
Late that night, Harry stumbled back into his bedroom, tipsy from the wine and eggnog he’d had before, with and after dinner. Flopping onto the bed, he gestured toward Draco, who was propped against the bedpost at the foot of the bed. When Draco joined him, he draped an arm over his chest and cuddled close.
With a soft, satisfied sigh, Harry whispered, “It’s been the best Christmas ever.”
“It’s not over yet.”
Harry pulled back and eyed Draco mischievously. “Hmm, no, you deserve your reward, don’t you? Good behavior amongst the Muggles, followed by a distinct lack of cutting sarcasm while at Longbottom House. What will you demand as your prize?”
Harry bounced back out of bed, and Draco leaned back against the headboard and watched indulgently.
Humming absently, Harry bent down to untie his shoes, giving Draco a marvelous view of his wool trousers stretched over a tight arse. With a flirtatious wink over his shoulder, Harry straightened, kicking off his shoes and peeling the socks off with his toes. His hands went to his Weasley sweater, which was quickly drawn over his head and tossed onto the chair. Next, he attacked his shirt buttons; the top one was unfastened, then the next, giving Draco tempting glimpses of tanned skin. When the plackets lay open and a wide strip of skin was bared, Harry didn’t shrug the shirt off, instead his hands moved to his trousers. He rubbed the growing bulge at his groin, then moved to unbutton the top button and draw his zipper down, revealing more tan skin, and no pants. Draco moved to the edge of the bed. Grabbing the tails of Harry’s shirt, he used them to drag Harry onto the bed and on top of him, then rolled them over and braced his elbows on the mattress above Harry’s shoulders.
“You. I want you as my reward tonight.”
With a soft sigh, Harry closed his eyes and arched upward in willing surrender.
Later, when both were completely naked and pressed together, his sighs turned to moans. Later still, when Draco had carefully prepared and entered him for the first time, the inarticulate moans had become a repetition of Draco’s name. And when the gentle lovemaking became rough and desperate, Harry was unable to hold in his begging for ‘more’ and ‘harder’, until a last desperate thrust had him bellowing Draco’s name with his orgasm.
****
Harry expected, when he and Draco came downstairs for breakfast the next morning, that tensions would be a bit relieved, particularly with Ron; he and Draco had gotten along fairly well during their Christmas Day visits. He was not expecting that Ron would go back to avoiding his eyes and acting awkward.
When he sat down with a stifled wince and reached for the teapot, he decided he would confront Ron head-on.
“What’s wrong now, Ron? I thought we were at least getting along yesterday. Without Hermione around there’s no reason to be on good behavior?”
With a face as red as his hair, Ron turned to Harry, and then risked a glance at Draco. Finally he spoke.
“Didn’t anyone ever teach you to cast a Silencing Charm?”
Silencing--oh Merlin! Ron’s room is next to mine, and Ginny’s is, too! Horrified, Harry looked over at Draco. The Slytherin merely smirked at Ron and at Ginny, who had been pointedly ignoring their arrival.
Heh. You just knew that Silencing Charm thing was going to come back to bite them, didn't you? :D I'm so evil - I love the idea of Ginny laying in bed, trying to plug her ears to keep out the sound effects. And Draco is just vindictive enough to rub her nose in his success, don't you think? He is a Slytherin, after all.
Snapshot title: Gift exchange
Rating: R-ish
Warnings: fluff, sexual activity implied
Disclaimer: Still not mine, sadly.
You know the drill - any mistakes are purely my own. And as I was distracted by watching men in tight spandex skate around the ice sheet as I typed last night, there's no telling how bad it might be. :)
The rest of the Photo album arc is here.
This meal was slightly less awkward than the previous night’s dinner. Ginny had already eaten, leaving the elder Weasleys and Ron and Hermione as Harry and Draco’s companions. Hermione was drinking tea, having had an early breakfast with students before leaving the castle for the day. She smiled at Harry when he sat down, then returned to her conversation with Ron, who was seated across the table.
Ron was not overtly hostile, but he would not look Harry in the eye. He responded when Harry addressed him, and participated when Hermione deliberately introduced a question or statement to include all three in the conversation, but was otherwise stand-offish. Harry took it as a positive sign: at least he wasn’t insulting Draco or being rude.
The arrival of Fred and George stirred things up. Fresh from brunch with Lee and Katie, they refused food but sat down at the other end of the table, chattering all the way down it to Draco with no thought to proper table manners. Their rambling friendliness forced some interaction with Ron, who still would not look at them.
When the family finally moved to the sitting room to exchange gifts, they found Ginny already there, sorting through packages. Draco tried to sit off to one side, expecting nothing and wanting to be out of the spotlight, but Harry refused to allow his retreat. Instead, he circled his hand around Draco’s wrist, drawing him to sit together on one of the sofas near the fire.
Ginny, as the youngest child, was responsible for distributing gifts to family members and guests. The rude toss of Harry’s and Draco’s in their general direction earned her a sharp word from Molly. With a resentful glance and muttered insincere apology, she returned to pick out her own gifts, leaving Harry and Draco to pick their packages up from the floor and re-sort them. After secretly admiring the gobsmacked look on Draco’s face when he realized that he had received gifts from the Weasley family, Harry directed his attention to his own presents.
From Hermione: of course she gave him a book, this one about teaching and wizarding customs. From Ron, a new Quidditch Weekly subscription and some Bertie Botts. From Molly, a new Weasley sweater and a tin of peanut brittle.
Harry paused in his unwrapping to look over at Draco, who was eyeing a Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes box set dubiously. He set it aside and picked up a lumpy package similar to the last one Harry had opened. When the ribbon and paper were drawn back, they revealed a black sweater with a small green ‘D’ embroidered near the collar. Draco lifted it with hands that Harry almost thought were shaking, his eyes suspiciously bright. The expression on his face could only be described as lost, but then the moment passed, and he smiled brightly, if fragilely, at Harry. Harry reached out and squeezed his arm.
“Well, put it on already!”
Draco pulled the sweater on over his shirt and rose to admire his reflection in the mirror above the mantle. The twins joined him, teasing him about needing red hair to wear the sweater appropriately. Harry just watched Draco, his mussed hair, the trademark friendly sneer not quite enough to mask his happiness, and his heart clenched. He hurriedly glanced away, just in time to see Ginny scowling at Draco.
Harry busied himself with his remaining gifts. There was an X-rated package from Fred and George, which he blushed upon opening and immediately hid from Mrs. Weasley’s eagle eye. An elegantly wrapped pair of packages tied together with ribbon could only have been from Draco. Opening the first, smaller box, he found a set of Chocolate Frogs. When he opened the first packet, he realized that it contained one of the few cards he didn’t already have in his collection. Quickly shifting through all of them, he found that they were all cards he didn’t have, or cards that had been updated since he had received his first copies. And all that chocolate! With an appreciative grin, Harry turned to the heavier package.
He folded back the dull silver paper to reveal a heavy leather album held closed by a silver clasp. When he tried to open it, his fingers burned and stung. Confused, he investigated the cover, which was decorated in silver script so ornate he could barely decipher it: Toujours pur, toujours belle.
The sofa shifted when Draco sat back down; he gently took the album from Harry and rubbed lightly at the clasp, then tapped it impatiently. When the clasp and its bindings loosened, he grasped Harry’s hand and pressed his fingertips to the now open lock.
“It should recognize you now. It’s a Black family album – I found it with my mother’s things when I was clearing out some of the Manor for the Ministry, and since it was a personal belonging and no charges had been levied against Mother, the Ministry let me keep it. There are some pictures of her with her cousins when they were younger. I thought you might like to see a bit more of Sirius Black’s youth.”
Off-balance, touched by Draco’s forethought, Harry couldn’t speak. Swallowing around the lump in his throat, he gestured to Draco to finish opening his gifts. The last gift was his, and now Harry thought that it didn’t seem like nearly enough.
Draco ripped off the paper – no careful untying and unwrapping for him – to find a box of dark chocolate-covered caramels and what appeared to be a blank composition notebook. Surprised, he looked at Harry inquiringly.
“It’s for your experiments, it’s a Dict-A-Quill and a potions record book combined, to take notes when you’re busy with the cauldron or your ingredients. That way no details will be forgotten. I’m sorry it looks so plain – I had to unspell the decorative charms to get the Dict-A-Quill and auto-inking ones to work. But it should work on a normal, Muggle book as well, so I could find a notebook that looks more like you want and re-cast the spells, now that I’ve worked them out, and-”
Soft fingertips against his lips stopped the flow of apologetic words.
“Thank you, Harry.”
The rest of the family had finished opening their gifts, and were now deciding on the day’s activities. Molly bustled around, clearing up crumpled gift-wrap and abandoned ribbons, sorting the unopened gifts into piles. During the flutter of activity, Remus fire-called. He looked exhausted from his transformation, but had wanted to wish everyone a Happy Christmas. Molly sent his gifts through the Floo, and reiterated her invitation for Christmas dinner and Boxing Day. Remus agreed that, health permitting, he would visit the family the next day. Privately, Harry wondered if he was reluctant to visit because of his strained body or because of the memories the house held for the last Marauder, even now. Shaking his head, he returned his attention to Hermione, who had been speaking with Draco for some time.
She broke off her conversation and went to Ron, grabbing his hand and dragging him back toward Harry and Draco. Once there, Hermione invited them to come with her to visit her parents, and then on to the Longbottoms before returning to Grimmauld Place for Christmas dinner. After checking with Molly to see that their help was not needed for the afternoon, the pair agreed, and a mostly cheerful quartet set out for a day’s socializing.
****
Late that night, Harry stumbled back into his bedroom, tipsy from the wine and eggnog he’d had before, with and after dinner. Flopping onto the bed, he gestured toward Draco, who was propped against the bedpost at the foot of the bed. When Draco joined him, he draped an arm over his chest and cuddled close.
With a soft, satisfied sigh, Harry whispered, “It’s been the best Christmas ever.”
“It’s not over yet.”
Harry pulled back and eyed Draco mischievously. “Hmm, no, you deserve your reward, don’t you? Good behavior amongst the Muggles, followed by a distinct lack of cutting sarcasm while at Longbottom House. What will you demand as your prize?”
Harry bounced back out of bed, and Draco leaned back against the headboard and watched indulgently.
Humming absently, Harry bent down to untie his shoes, giving Draco a marvelous view of his wool trousers stretched over a tight arse. With a flirtatious wink over his shoulder, Harry straightened, kicking off his shoes and peeling the socks off with his toes. His hands went to his Weasley sweater, which was quickly drawn over his head and tossed onto the chair. Next, he attacked his shirt buttons; the top one was unfastened, then the next, giving Draco tempting glimpses of tanned skin. When the plackets lay open and a wide strip of skin was bared, Harry didn’t shrug the shirt off, instead his hands moved to his trousers. He rubbed the growing bulge at his groin, then moved to unbutton the top button and draw his zipper down, revealing more tan skin, and no pants. Draco moved to the edge of the bed. Grabbing the tails of Harry’s shirt, he used them to drag Harry onto the bed and on top of him, then rolled them over and braced his elbows on the mattress above Harry’s shoulders.
“You. I want you as my reward tonight.”
With a soft sigh, Harry closed his eyes and arched upward in willing surrender.
Later, when both were completely naked and pressed together, his sighs turned to moans. Later still, when Draco had carefully prepared and entered him for the first time, the inarticulate moans had become a repetition of Draco’s name. And when the gentle lovemaking became rough and desperate, Harry was unable to hold in his begging for ‘more’ and ‘harder’, until a last desperate thrust had him bellowing Draco’s name with his orgasm.
****
Harry expected, when he and Draco came downstairs for breakfast the next morning, that tensions would be a bit relieved, particularly with Ron; he and Draco had gotten along fairly well during their Christmas Day visits. He was not expecting that Ron would go back to avoiding his eyes and acting awkward.
When he sat down with a stifled wince and reached for the teapot, he decided he would confront Ron head-on.
“What’s wrong now, Ron? I thought we were at least getting along yesterday. Without Hermione around there’s no reason to be on good behavior?”
With a face as red as his hair, Ron turned to Harry, and then risked a glance at Draco. Finally he spoke.
“Didn’t anyone ever teach you to cast a Silencing Charm?”
Silencing--oh Merlin! Ron’s room is next to mine, and Ginny’s is, too! Horrified, Harry looked over at Draco. The Slytherin merely smirked at Ron and at Ginny, who had been pointedly ignoring their arrival.
Heh. You just knew that Silencing Charm thing was going to come back to bite them, didn't you? :D I'm so evil - I love the idea of Ginny laying in bed, trying to plug her ears to keep out the sound effects. And Draco is just vindictive enough to rub her nose in his success, don't you think? He is a Slytherin, after all.
