Draco Malfoy eating chocolate pudding straight from the container was an undeniably sensual sight. He would dip his silver spoon into the pudding, carefully fill it with a dollop of creamy chocolate goodness and transport the whole affair to his mouth with the sort of concentration he usually reserved for catching the snitch and creating lovebites. In fact, the deliberate manner in which he parted his lips before sliding each spoonful of chocolate into his mouth probably would have qualified as a sexual act in some places. And if that weren't enough to ensure its classification, the way he slowly sucked the chocolate off, hollowing his cheeks and forming his lips into a perfect little 'o' really should have caused things to burst into flames. That they didn't could only be attributed to the fact that they were frozen in place by the sight of him withdrawing the spoon from his mouth, centimetre by empty centimeter, until he had once again released the entirety of it – and then, once it had been freed, taking to licking. Laving the bowl with the whole of the flat of his tongue, using the tip to get every last speck of chocolate off the rim, twisting it around to work the spoon's backside and finally, finally swirling the tip in a manner that should have spoiled the effect by highlighting the ridiculous artifice of it all, but instead only caused his audience to bite back a moan of frustration after every single bite. To Harry Potter, this seemed to be a situation that called for a Clever Plan - and he thought he had just such a one.
Now, to understand whence this plan had come, you must know that for his 21st, Harry had had an excellent birthday for once. His friends had had the splendid idea of getting together and buying him all the toys he hadn't had as a child. Hermione had bought him books, of course, but even she had managed to make them things like Roald Dahl and The Wind In the Willows and The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13-and-Three-Quarters. Ginny had chosen a traveling games set whose chief feature was a board that transfigured to allow one to play wizarding chess or gobstones or checkers or even exploding snap on green baize specially charmed to take no damage from the cards. However, it was the presents that Dean had talked the rest of the Gryffindor boys into getting that had kept him occupied for the past month. There were dinosaurs and robots and cars and planes and even one largish black dragon that walked and flew and spat sparks of coloured light. And all of them came with remote control handsets that allowed him to direct them where he would. At the party, the whole group of them had become quite silly and pitted the dinosaurs against the robots with the cars and planes racing around the edges like so many overexcited 3rd years. Since then, however, Harry had managed to acquire a multi-channel handset that allowed him to control not just one, but all of the toys at once. At first this had been a messy business, which resulted in far more crashes than anything else, but with practise he had learnt the trick of directing a fleet of things under the power of electricity rather than magic and by now he was really quite good. So good, in fact, that he could spend hours absorbed in choreographing intricate war dances for his creatures to perform.
He had spent the part of the afternoon already past occupied with that very activity: setting the dinosaurs and robots to battling, in groups and one-on-one; racing the cars round and round the room and having them bump up against eachother and the furniture; dive-bombing Draco and Hedwig with the planes and even, very occasionally, the dragon. Hedwig had departed for calmer skies after only a few encountres with a plane, but Draco had remained throughout it all, seemingly taking no notice of any of the commotion around him and continuing to eat chocolate pudding as though it were the most absorbing activity in the world. Now, however, if Harry's plan succeeded, he would be forced to take notice of the very things he had so far seemed oblivious to.
Draco was, in fact, rather more aware of the goings-on than Harry thought, but in the end that would not matter, as the chief merit of this Clever Plan was that it could be implemented almost entirely using objects that Draco rarely deigned to notice and would proudly admit that he didn't understand. Now, to give him his due, he had made something of an effort when Harry had first brought the things home, but it hadn't taken him long to discover that a remote control handset was nothing like a wand and that its most important difference in relation to him was that he had no innate talent for using it. In his mind, that had settled the issue: he hadn't been keen on the silly things to begin with and he had no interest whatsoever in having a proper go at learning to make them work. Thereafter, he had given the appearance of ignoring them and, by extension, Harry, completely, whenever Harry took to fiddling with them.
It was Draco's intentional lack of knowledge and facade of indifference that served Harry well here, for while Draco might be keenly aware of exactly where Harry was at any give time (currently: perched on the dragonhide hassock in front of the grate) and precisely how long it had been since Harry had last paid him anything resembling proper attention (wizarding watches were useful - the Harry Otherwise Occupied counter his had sprouted read 2 hours, 37 minutes, 11 seconds), the only significance he attributed to the manoeuvers Harry dreamt up for his playthings was that they meant Harry was paying attention to something that was not him. As a result, when Harry started to subtly alter the paths his toys followed, Draco thought nothing of it.
When the largest of the robots turned its hypnotically whirling eyes from its brethren with more dignity than one would expect a metallic purple automaton to possess, it did not occur to Draco to pay attention to anything other than dipping his spoon into the container of pudding yet again. When the cluster of smaller robots then followed their leader in charging directly at the dinosaurs, he merely did what he had done next every single time before and pulled the spoon free again, temptingly laden. Whilst the dinosaurs neatly sidestepped the sudden attack and began to regroup, his spoon began to traverse the distance between container and mouth, sliding easily through motions that had long since become rote. And so it went: the dinosaurs joined battle with the robots to the accompaniment of his lips parting, the cars joined the fray in counterpoint to the spoon sliding between them, and the planes, the planes dove recklessly at their grounded comrades as though spurred on by the sight of Draco pressing his lips against the spoon whilst he pulled it out again.
For a moment, time almost came to a standstill. Draco sat perfectly motionless, attention completely occupied by the weight of chocolate lading his tongue. Harry froze as well, freshly entranced by the look of preoccupation ghosting over Draco's features. The planes seemed to hover in midair, adding an aerial component to the martial tableau formed by their land-bound brethren. And then everything simply flowed on: Draco swallowed his mouthful of chocolate, Harry turned his attention back to his mock-war, and the robots and dinosaurs and cars and planes all took up their tasks precisely where they had left off.
Things were only allowed to go on as they had been for a moment, though, before the event which Harry had been waiting for occurred: immediately on swallowing, Draco started in on his habitual spoon-licking. Of course, the young man in question thought nothing of any of this for, as things stood, he had no reason to. He had been eating his pudding in exactly the same manner as he had just done, all afternoon, and all to no effect as far as he could tell. Harry had once again simply gone on playing with his toys, just as he had every single last time and, really, that was more than enough. The chocolate was lovely, of course, but it was hardly a suitable audience for his witty repartee, since it couldn't make gratifying responses when he insulted it and ordering it to go to the kitchen and fetch him a butterbeer would likely have had little discernable effect. Even if Harry wasn't completely up to standard in regards to everything, he could at least be trusted to fetch.
It was not Harry doing the fetching, however, when Draco suddenly found himself deprived of his spoon. In fact, by the time he had managed to comprehend the true grievousness of the situation, the black dragon had flown back to its master with the shiny silver trophy and was perched next to him on the hassock. That the dragon should deprive him of both Harry's attention and his means of consuming the remainder of his chocolate surrogate was more than could be borne. But perhaps it would not have to be. Perhaps he could continue eating and recapture Harry's attention all in one go.
For this new gambit, Draco abandoned all pretense of subtlety. He resigned himself to the indignity of eating an inappropriate foodstuff with his fingers, took his pudding container firmly in hand and returned to eating with every appearance of having meant to do it this way all along. Now this wasn't his finest moment when it came to concealing his true intentions, but it didn't need to be, because, you see, while Draco Malfoy eating chocolate pudding with a spoon might have been undeniably sensual, Draco Malfoy lapping it off his index finger and then inserting that same finger and its neighbour into his mouth up to their bases so that he could maneuver them in and out and make sure he took care of every last bit of errant chocolate (which required no pretence at all) – that came close to being unbearably arousing.
Harry was so transfixed, in fact, that it was only some time later that he realised that he'd let his handset fall to the floor beside the hassock, redirected his hands to other, more immediately gratifying activities, and allowed his eyes to slide closed for a moment. When he opened them again, he found Draco looking equally transfixed by the way Harry was working the index and middle fingers of one of his hands in and out of his mouth and simultaneously trailing the fingers of the other over the sensitised flesh of his chest and belly. And if all that hadn't been enough to make clear to Harry what needed to happen next, the way his chest tightened at the sight of Draco's faintly flushed throat and pale grey eyes gone suddenly dark would likely have done the trick. As it was, these sights were certainly enough to spur Harry into somehow getting to his feet and carrying on from there – at the same time that Draco, perhaps propelled by similar forces, rose fluidly from his seat on the sofa and started towards Harry. Which was how they came to meet in the middle of the carpet, amidst all of Harry's now abandoned toys, and halt there, suddenly unsure whose move it was meant to be next.
They held this position – standing, mere inches apart, tensed and ready to react to whatever might happen next – for a terribly long moment before something shifted and they were freed from their indecision. In the space of a thought one or the other of them had leant forward and pressed their lips together. And in one more they found themselves in the midst of a kiss so possessive it left no room for argument. It was not long at all before any arguments either one of them might have made had been completely obliterated by the intensity of their shared passion and an even shorter time after that before things progressed far beyond kissing.
In later years they were known to remark upon the rarity of occasions when one manages to both win and lose at something.