A soft click and a curse breaks the silence in the room. Harry looks up from the book and papers spread across his knees. Malfoy, long bones folded into the window seat, is staring into his lap, looking nettled. "Hm?"
"Nothing. Almost got it," Malfoy mutters. Raindrops skitter on the glass outside, most muted and clear, a few bright green.
Harry straightens his back, curious. He's been curious for, oh, ten months, since a dark night and a tall tower, when Malfoy twitched his wand and suddenly made himself interesting. Grey light sidles across feathery pale hair and slim shoulders, washing away all but the faintest traces of human colour from the thorny creature crammed against the pane. Green flashes again. Harry rises and pads over dark wood and thick carpet and peers down.
It's a Chinese finger trap. Silver snake heads gleam in the muted light from the window, their jaws closing over Malfoy's index fingers. Emerald eyes glitter as Malfoy twists the device back and forth, studying the markings, stroking with his thumbs.
Harry reaches out, crooks a finger underneath the trap and lifts it—and Malfoy's hands—to inspect the runes etched between delicate scales. Malfoy tilts his face up. Harry says thoughtfully, "Stuck, are you?" Malfoy snorts.
Harry's hands are bigger than Malfoy's and a little squarer. Harry knows Malfoy has a grip like a fox trap, but now his hands are startled and compliant. He covers them casually, broom calluses not quite skating over unlovely knuckles, and hitches one knee onto the cramped ledge.
"Isa," he says. "Stultified conditions; the formation of the personality; grievances. Nice one. Um, Eihwaz?"
"Ehwaz," says Malfoy, and colours.
Harry pauses. "Oh."
Harry turns the trap, his little finger touching the trough between fine bones on the back of Malfoy's hand, and listens as the other boy tries to give nothing away by his breathing.
Harry starts to smile, and feels something like an adrenalin rush sparkle through his body. Steady on, he tells himself, feeling unwise, but he makes his voice come out suave. "The last one's upside-down from out here," Harry murmurs. "May I come in?"
He ducks underneath the circle of Malfoy's arms.
"If I tug the trap the wrong way," Malfoy mentions, "it bites harder. I do it twice, and it'll break the skin and poison me."
Harry shakes his head, but doesn't lean away. "What Slytherins do for fun...."
"My fingers will swell up and I'll be ugly and useless for at least a day and a half." Malfoy's mouth and his wide, dark eyes have nothing to do with each other.
"Better not move, then," says Harry, and twists like an eel, one elbow smacking against the windowsill for balance. "Can't have you ugly."
Malfoy squirms and bucks. "It's Dagaz, you git. Turn around."
Harry complies, with a brief conflict of limbs in a too-small space, and settles onto the lap of his prickly turncoat colleague. Twin breaths hitch as their hips align.
Draco, forgetful, pulls his hands together at the back of Harry's neck, tugging him closer. Silver jaws release; the trap falls away.
Das ist alles.
Rune Notes:
Isa: Blocks; stultified conditions; grievances; anything that the individual
is not prepared to let go of; the formation of the personality; conditioning.
Eihwaz: Hidden influences, state of whole being.
Ehwaz: With what or whom you should work. Erotic relations. Adaptability;
joint efforts; cooperation; sexuality.
Dagaz: Area of unexpected synchronicity. Transmission; opposites; position
between light and darkness; initiation; balance between the worlds outside time
and space; cosmic consciousness; change from one thing into its opposite; new
beginnings.
(http://www.sunnyway.com/runes/layouts.html)
April 1, 2006
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