I Beg Your Pardon, Potter?

Chapter 13

Harry was still standing with his mouth open when Draco walked back into the room a minute later, carrying his own notes.

"Close your mouth, sweetie," Draco said, glancing over at him. "You look like a trout." Harry glared at him and pressed his lips together in a scowl. "Oh, don't give me that look."

"Well, what look am I supposed to give you?" Harry snapped. Draco's mouth twisted to the side in irritation. Then he took a deep breath and walked over to Harry, who narrowed his eyes and watched him with suspicion. Harry was very surprised, therefore, when Draco leaned over and kissed him hard on the lips.

But it didn't take him long to get over his surprise and instead get very into the kiss. Before either of them could think about the situation much, they were pressed together, hands roaming across torsos and tongues battling for real estate. Until, of course, Harry began to get too excited and instead ran cringing to the sofa, clutching his nether regions.

"Oh shit," Draco said. "I'm so sorry."

"It's ok," Harry said through gritted teeth. His shoulders were hunched in pain. "I just need to use more of the ointment. Would you mind fetching it from my bag?" Draco nodded.

"Where is it?" he asked, looking around. He spotted it next to the desk and bent down to rummage through it. Harry could not help but notice how nicely his trousers hugged his arse, and looked away quickly as that realization did not help his current predicament. It was really starting to burn now, the fresh skin stretching in ways he would really prefer that it didn't. Harry closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. He willed himself to take deep breaths.

"Did you want me to help you put it on?" Draco had reappeared in front of him, holding the jar of ointment. Harry glared up at him.

"I'm think that might, in fact, make it worse," he said. "Don't you?"

"I hadn't thought of that."

"Clearly." He reached up and took the jar from Draco. "Do you mind?" He gestured towards the door. Draco's brow furrowed in confusion. "Could you, ah, step outside for a moment?" Harry clarified.

"Right. Yes." Draco turned what he assumed was beet red, but was instead faintly pink, and scurried out of the room. As soon as the door shut behind him, Harry gingerly unbuttoned his trousers. He took a deep breath and a muttered string of 'ow's under his breath. For some reason, acknowledging the pain that way seemed to help it feel a bit better.

He cursed everything from friction to hormones to Malfoy's bloody perfect arse as he gently eased his trousers down around his thighs and then breathed a sigh of relief as he began to slather the lotion on. The pain immediately melted away, and not for the first time Harry was glad that he was a wizard and that magic existed.

And it was at that moment, the moment that Harry began to rub ointment onto his dick, that Snape entered the room followed closely by a loudly protesting Draco Malfoy.

...

"Please tell me that you understood some of what Babbling was saying," Ron said as he entered his and Pansy's room. "Because I'm not sure I did. I mean, I wrote everything down, but I may have gotten slightly distracted when she said that we could possibly, accidentally blow up our cauldron and have to start from scratch."

"That was what distracted you?" Pansy asked, dropping her books down on the table with a thump. "I was more concerned about the fact that it could potentially change the potion in some small insidious way that we wouldn't understand until we tried it and got stuck in a vision until the antidote could be brewed."

"I mean, that was also a concern. But that's more of a future concern." Pansy pursed her lips but said nothing. Ron gnawed on his lower lip and peered down at his notes. They were barely legible, but in reading through them again, he began to grasp what they were supposed to do. He sighed. There was no way that they would be leaving early. Casting the rune properly required a lot of preparation, concentration, and teamwork. There were about fifteen different ways he could see that it would go wrong and he was sure there were at least fifteen other ways that he had not yet thought of. Pansy glanced over his shoulder and frowned.