Our Rules
They sat cross legged, facing each other, their knees pressed against each other. They held hands, clasped between them. The air was pensive, tense, their magic buzzing.
Draco’s gaze was trained on his betrothed as he watched it happen. There was no obvious sign, no shift in magical pressure or temperature, but when Anraí’s eyes met his, they were not the eyes he had come to know these past five years—they were not his Héri’s eyes: warm and soft and innocent.
“I’ve had enough,” his mate said, voice firm in the quiet cocoon of their closed four-poster bed. His heterochromatic green eyes were hard as they looked up at him, determined, fierce. Draco could see the power within them, animalistic, savage—the eyes of the regal predator he had once seen inside Anraí’s core. “If I’m to participate in Dumbledore’s death tournament, then it will be by my own rules.”
“Our rules,” Draco corrected, and then yelped inelegantly when he suddenly found himself on his back, hands pinned above his head. He felt his clothes shimmer on his body, and the soft, nearly transparent hair on his thighs goose-feathered as his uniform pants transformed into a skirt and thigh-high stockings.
“Our rules.” Anraí was above him, hips pressed between his thighs. Draco blinked. When did his betrothed get so big? He knew he was still taller, but he had never realized that his little Héri was no longer tiny and fragile. Anraí’s shoulders were broadening, his body lengthening. His face was no longer round and soft and cute, but Draco could make out the handsome angles and planes of manhood. And was that—Draco slipped one of his hands out of Anraí’s grip and brushed his fingertips along Anraí’s chin, it was coarse and prickly.
“You bastard!” Draco screeched. “How’d you get hair before me?”
The intensity of the moment shattered as Anraí’s forehead collapsed on Draco’s chest in a fit of laughter, the sound deeper than Draco last recalled, but still as warm and full as he had always known and loved.
The curtains snapped open to reveal Blaise and the rest of the dorm room. The Italian Slytherin perched on the corner of the bed, his eyebrow cocked judgmentally as he said, “You need a pair of black kit boots. Victorian. Leather. How much of a heel can you manage?”
Draco flushed and stuttered.
“Six inches,” Anraí answered for him, sitting up, “but he prefers a platform for anything over four and a half, says the large heels make the angles of his feet look ridiculous, otherwise.”
Draco flushed more hotly, feeling the heat of Anraí’s hands on his bare thighs, and nodded in agreement. “My arse looks the best with four.”
Anraí gave his thigh a slow squeeze at that, the boy smirking as he sat comfortably between Draco’s legs, unembarrassed at being seen in such a position by all their friends, who sat spread out through the room. So, Draco made a point of pushing down his own embarrassment.
“You’re seriously talking about shoes when Anraí has been forced into the deadliest school tournament in wizarding history?” Hermione scolded from Blaise’s bed. “Honestly!”
Blaise rolled his eyes. “She can’t manage a heel.”
“Blaise!”
“Perhaps you shouldn’t insult your witch,” Draco quipped, relaxing his legs so that one supported Anraí’s back and the other was draped across his betrothed’s lap. He also Accio’d one of his pillows to prop behind his head.
Blaise waved the warning off. “I like her feisty.”
Milli cleared her throat. “As delightfully disgusting as your sex life is, Zabini, the tournament?”
“There is no sex!” Hermione hissed.
“That must be frustrating for a slag like you,” Gregory quipped and earned himself a glare from Blaise.
“Dumbledore’s made a grievous mistake,” Anraí stated, cutting off Blaise’s retort. “He’s underestimated me, and he’s once again shown how willfully ignorant he is about Slytherin and about Hogwarts.”
Draco turned his head to look out at his friends—Blaise and Hermione, Neville, Gregory and Vincent, Milli, Susan, and Luna. They were a mixture of all the houses, but to him, they were all Slytherins, both honorary and sorted.
“This is about more than a school tournament,” Anraí continued. “I don’t know what his endgame is, but I’m sure it has to do with Harry Potter and Voldemort.”
“If he doesn’t mean to kill you, then to weaken you,” Draco said slowly, thoughtfully. “Make you dependent on his assistance.”
Anraí nodded in agreement. “I’m too young for this tournament, I should lack the same level of knowledge and ability as the other champions.”
“Rules state that champions are not to get outside help,” Hermione said.
“But we aren’t going to be playing by his rules,” Draco said, smirking as he caught onto his Héri’s thinking.
Anraí smirked back. “Our rules.”
“Our rules,” the others repeated.