Chapter Text
So Draco doesn’t want to be touched.
That doesn’t mean he doesn’t like getting fucked, so long as Harry’s the one doing it.
Harry has been angry for a long time. He knows this about himself. He has a temper but Draco lets him bruise and bite and it centres Harry, right until it doesn’t.
The Drain strikes again, close to campus.
Its victim has the Rank of Mesis, and has mild control over the weather. They show a photograph of the dead girl in the Prophet. She’s a husk of a person, and you can see sinew glued to bone, flesh dried like a film over her face.
Draco is terrified. Harry has been with him for almost a year now, and he can always tell.
He shuts himself up in his room and won’t leave, not for anyone, not even Harry.
Harry’s not so sure why Draco is protecting an ability he doesn’t even like having.
Draco doesn’t speak to him for three days and Harry doesn’t know what to do with all the excess energy. He already finds it hard enough to control himself around Draco, the desire to claim and bruise, and it doesn’t do wonders for him to be locked out.
Harry fucks him up against a wall, just outside of the Potions building, close to some wizarding coffee shop that Harry hates but takes Draco to all the same.
Draco scrapes his chin raw on exposed brick, shoved up on tiptoes by the thick plug of cock. There’s a lot of spit and not much patience, and Harry knows he’s gonna have to go easy on Draco later, but there’s nothing like the sob Draco makes when he comes.
“C’mon. You hurt? Did I hurt you?”
Draco breathes out “yes yes yes,” like it matters, and Harry presses a barely-there kiss onto the crown of his head.
-
Theo goes missing three days before the end of term.
Blaise is a wreck, cursing his day off and telling them that Theo’s supposed to stay on Institute land--he knows that, doesn’t he know that, Harry?
Harry looks at where Draco is curled in on himself, his eyes fixated on the wireless, his cheeks sunken.
They have an exam tomorrow. Draco is holding colour-coded slips of parchment as though they’re the missing link.
“You’re scaring him,” Harry says firmly.
Blaise looks at him like he’s insane, his recently buzzed head hovering just under Harry’s chin.
“I’m--damn right, I’m scaring him. We should all be fucking scared! We’re Pleons too, Harry! Or did you not think of that? Do you think the Drain doesn’t want to take what we have too?!”
Blaise grabs Harry’s shoulder, shaking him violently.
“Wake the fuck up, mate! Wake the fuck up!” He points to Draco. “Watch him!”
Blaise is still trying a locator spell as he wanders out, and Draco doesn’t flinch when Harry rests a palm in his hair.
-
They haven’t found Theo a month later, and Blaise moves back home. He withdraws all standing applications for Companionship but he and Harry both know it won’t be long until the Ministry makes use of him again.
There’s always going to be a Pleon that needs protection from themself.
It’s still dark when Harry returns from his day off, even though he technically doesn’t need to be back until tomorrow morning.
His body is still humming, light-bright, and he lets himself in as quietly as he can.
Draco is sitting in the one armchair in the sitting room, facing the shaft of moonlight that slants in through the curtains.
Harry is taken aback.
“You want to go to bed, baby?” Harry says, walking close, and Draco shrinks in on himself, but he doesn’t flinch.
“How long.”
Draco’s voice is unsteady, and fearful, and Harry straightens instinctively.
“How long, what?” Harry replies.
Draco takes a deep breath, meeting Harry’s eyes.
“How do you do it. Why? Why are you doing it?” Draco’s voice is pinched.
Harry drops to his knees, resting both palms on the armrests.
“It’s not a good name, you know,” Harry says thoughtfully, tugging one of Draco’s gloved hands into his own.
I’m sure there are actual Drains out there, but that’s not what I do. I’d prefer the name Syphon. If they’d let me choose.”
The words hang in the air, and Draco shakes so hard his teeth rattle in his head.
“You were tested. You said so. You said that. You’re a Null.”
Harry laughs, loving how small and sweet Draco looks, shaking in his chair. “I’m a Companion. I said that, baby, yes.” Draco’s eyes flick toward his.
“That’s the beauty of being me, huh? That’s how I get them. I Nullify them first, so they can’t fight back.” Harry says, shrugging. “That’s all they were testing for. That’s all I wanted them to see.”
Draco nods, the motion jerky.
“It only ever happened after you came back from your days off. Like clockwork.” Draco says, and Harry smiles.
“You’re so brilliant, sweetheart,” Harry says, finally feeling as though he can breathe, now that Draco knows. “I can syphon at any time. I just need skin-to-skin contact,” Harry says.
Draco’s lashes flutter. He’s colourless.
“Not you, baby. Never you. It has to be prolonged contact. I can’t just brush up against someone. I’ve got to really touch them. I have to mean it.”
Harry settles back on his haunches, dropping Draco’s hand and sliding his palms closer to Draco’s trim waist.
“When I touch you a little here and there, it’s temporary. I can do what you can do.” Harry tilts his head to the side. “But it doesn’t last.”
Harry’s so close he can feel Draco breathing his air.
“I’m so much stronger than they can even understand.” Harry is apologetic. “I try to leave them alive, sometimes. And I’m sorry about Theo. I am. He didn’t even really fight. He had a lot of juice. And I needed that.”
Harry takes his chance, catching Draco by the waist. His shirt is still in the way, but they can both hear Draco’s heartbeat escalate.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Draco says, breathless, and Harry laughs.
“I Null automatically. That makes them defenceless. If I touch you for a little bit I can make a copy of your ability. I touch you for a while, and I syphon you of all of it. Your Rank, your magical core.”
Harry pauses. “It’s not their fault. They can’t even use their power as I’m taking it.”
“But the best part,” Harry says, leaning forward to kiss Draco between the eyes, feather-light, “is that I can use what they gave me against them.”
Draco cries out, strangled.
“Was it a lie? Your parents? You were never really a Null,” Draco says, frantic, and Harry shakes his head vigorously.
“No, no, no, sweetheart. No. Unlike yours, though, they did give up parental rights,” Harry says, introspectively, remembering being five and leaving the only home he’d ever known.
“I accidentally syphoned my sister during that storm,” Harry says, and his mind is over a decade away, quiet. “She almost didn’t make it.”
“I didn’t bother them again until years and years later,” Harry continues, grinning, and his fingers dance over Draco’s forearm until a crackle of electricity pinches the flesh.
Draco jerks back in mild pain, and then his face twists, helplessly.
Harry’s own face blanks out, and he inches fabric away from Draco’s abdomen, so close he could taste it.
He has a copy of Draco, right here. He’s had it for a while now.
“The question is,” Harry breathes, “what do you want from me, baby?” Harry tugs a strand of that beautiful hair in between two fingers. “I’m never letting you go now.”
Draco shivers.
“What I want,” Draco says, his brow furrowed, “is to finally know what it feels like. I want to know what’s wrong with me.”
Harry jerks Draco’s silk nightshirt up to his armpits and holds his palms an inch away from Draco’s skin. He chases the hot-tingle of Draco down his arms, feeling the flame of agony that is Draco’s ability.
“There’s nothing wrong with you, love,” Harry says, pressing the dry heat of his palms to Draco’s flesh. “You’re mine. And you’d better tell me everything.”