Entry Two: You Wish, Potter

It was past midnight when Harry Apparated onto the top landing of number eight, Ormond Row, his ears still ringing from the Leaky Cauldron.

He knocked, and the door opened before he had even lowered his hand.

Lyra Malfoy was wearing a green silk dressing gown, tied loosely at the waist, and her hair hung almost to her waist, so pale it was nearly white, darkened at the ends where it was still wet. She looked him up and down with her cool grey eyes, from his hair to the grass stains on the knees of his trousers.

“You’re late,” she drawled. “I said eleven, Potter. It’s a quarter past twelve.”

“Wood turned up.” Harry stepped past her into the hall. “He bought the whole team a round. I couldn’t exactly get up and leave.”

“Oliver Wood bought a round for the juniors? How terribly democratic of him.”

“He’s coming to watch the semi.”

“He came to watch ours in May,” said Lyra, unimpressed. She shut the door. “Boots off. I won’t have that pitch tramped all over Grandmother’s rugs.”

Harry toed off his boots and grinned at her. Nothing she said tonight was going to bother him. Puddlemere were in the play-offs for the first time in six years. They had beaten Appleby by a hundred and ninety points, and he had caught the Snitch in nineteen minutes with the Appleby Seeker so far behind him she might as well have stayed on the ground. Wood had clapped him on the back so hard he had spilt half his drink down McLaggen.

His mum and dad had been there too, right at the front of the east stand. His dad had shouted himself hoarse, and afterwards, outside the changing rooms, he had got Harry round the neck and messed up his hair even worse than it already was. His mum had hugged him and asked if he was coming home tonight.

“The team’s going to the Leaky,” Harry had said.

“And after the Leaky?” His dad was grinning. “That’s three weekends running you’ve not been home, Harry. Your mother thinks you’ve met someone.”

“I said nothing of the sort,” said his mum. “I said he’d started ironing his shirts.”

Harry had gone red to the ears. His mum had told his dad to leave him alone, though she was smiling just as widely, and then told Harry he could bring whoever it was home for Sunday lunch whenever he liked. His sisters would have been ecstatic.

Harry had tried to imagine Lyra Malfoy at the kitchen table in Godric’s Hollow, passing his mum the gravy, and said he was just staying at McLaggen’s.

The flat was a good deal cooler than the landing. Harry dropped onto the arm of a sofa that probably cost more than his broom. The Daily Prophet lay on the low table, under a martini glass with a slice of lemon. MUGGLE-BORN WIZENGAMOT ELDER MISSING. The photograph showed a tall house at night with Aurors moving about in front of it, and above the roof, at the edge of the picture, a smudge of green in the shape of a skull, with something coming out of its mouth. Somebody's idea of a joke, probably. Harry picked up the glass and took a sip of her drink.

“Were you at the match?” he asked.

“Top of the west stand.” She had gone to the drinks cabinet to make herself another. “Somebody had to watch you.”

“And?”

“You pulled out of the second dive early.” Now she turned, with the new glass in her hand. “Ten feet early, and you held your arm in all the way back up. It’s that shoulder again, isn’t it?”

Harry said nothing. He had hurt it in June, in practice, and he hadn’t told anyone, not even his parents and certainly not McLaggen or the team Healer, who would have grounded him.

“I knew it,” said Lyra, and looked enormously pleased with herself.

“It’s fine. I got the Snitch, didn’t I?”

“Off Appleby,” said Lyra disdainfully.

“I’ll get it off you on Saturday. In front of Wood and your father.”

“Oh, will you?” said Lyra.

She came over and stood between his knees, and ran one hand up his chest, over his shirt, until her fingers rested at the base of his throat.

“Fifteen minutes,” said Harry. “You won’t even see the snitch once.”

“You’ve said that before every match since second year, and you’ve been wrong seven times out of fourteen.” She undid his top button. “I keep count, Potter.”

She laughed at him and pulled the shirt off his shoulders. Harry caught her by the waist before she could step back. He found the knot of the dressing gown and tugged it loose, and kissed her neck, under her ear, where he knew it made her shiver, and she did shiver for a moment.

Then she took a fistful of his hair and pulled his head back and kissed him, hard. Her mouth was cool and tasted of the peppermints she kept by the bath. She bit his lip and when he tried to pull her down onto the sofa she wouldn’t go. She put both hands flat on his chest and walked him backwards out of the sitting room, down the passage and through the bedroom door, kissing him the whole way, and when the backs of his knees hit the bed she pushed, and he went down onto it.

Lyra stood at the end of the bed and let the dressing gown slide off her shoulders onto the floor.

He had seen her like this plenty of times, and he still couldn’t help but look. She was pale enough that the yellow bruise he had left on her hip a fortnight ago still showed. She was slight and narrow-hipped, all long lines like a racing broom, with small high breasts, the nipples already tight in the cool air.

She climbed onto the bed and sat astride his stomach with her hands on his chest.

“Last time you didn’t manage ten minutes,” she said.

“Still longer than you.”

“We’ll see.”

She undid his belt and dragged his trousers and pants down together before throwing them off the end of the bed. She sat back on her heels and looked at him, with his face going hot and his cock hard against his stomach, and smirked.

She took him in her hand and stroked him slowly, watching his face the whole time. When his hips came up off the bed she smiled, and bent her head, and took him in her mouth.

Harry grabbed a fistful of her sheets. She went slowly and then not so slowly, her hair spilling over his thighs, and every so often she looked up at him to see how he was getting on. He shut his eyes and thought about McLaggen’s speech in the Leaky and the Appleby Keeper’s moustache. When he opened his eyes again she had lifted her head and was watching him with her chin on his hip.

“Longer than me,” said Lyra. “Was that what you said?”

“Yeah,” said Harry through his teeth.

“Stubborn.” She crawled up the bed over him until she was kneeling over his face with one hand on the headboard. Her hair fell down round them both. She looked down at him between her own pale thighs, flushed and pleased with herself. “Well, if you’re going to be stubborn, you may as well be useful. It’s the one thing you do better than you fly, Potter.” She lowered herself an inch. “And this one doesn’t count.”

“Says who?”

“Says me. It’s my flat.”

He put his hands on her thighs and pulled her down to his mouth. She tasted of salt and her bath, and she was already wet.He licked her slowly; she let out a long breath through her teeth and leant her forehead against the headboard, and after a while she started to move, rocking her hips against his mouth at whatever pace she liked. She came grinding down on him with her hand white on the headboard and her thighs trembling either side of his head.

She stayed like that for a moment, breathing hard. She slid back down his body and sat on his stomach, and pushed her hair out of her face. She was flushed pink all the way down to her chest.

“That’s one,” said Harry.

“That didn’t count. I told you.”

She leant over to the bedside table for her wand, touched it to her own stomach and muttered the charm, and dropped it back among her hairpins. She raised herself up, took hold of him and sank down onto him, and Harry made a sound he would have been embarrassed by anywhere else.

She meant to finish him; he could see it in her face. She rode him hard and deep and did everything he liked, leaning back with her hands on his thighs so he could see all of her, her flat white stomach and the place where they were joined, frowning a little the way she frowned in a dive. Twice she clenched round him on purpose and watched his face while she did it.

“Go on,” she said, breathless. “Give up, Potter.”

He nearly did. Sweat was running down his sides and the old bed was creaking and his shoulder ached and he didn’t care about any of it; he was so close he could barely see. So he cheated. He got his hand between her legs and pressed his thumb against her, the way he knew she liked, and her rhythm stuttered.

“Don’t you dare,” said Lyra.

He didn’t stop. She was moving faster now and the smirk had gone; she leant forward with both hands on his chest and ground down on him, again and again, chasing it, and he could see she had forgotten all about winning. She said his name, his first name, which she never said anywhere but here. Then she came, her whole body tightening round him and her nails dragging down his chest.

She collapsed forward onto him, panting, her hair stuck to her neck.

“That’s two,” said Harry.

She lifted her head and glared at him before she wrapped her arms round his neck and rolled them both over and locked her legs round his waist.

“Well, get on with it,” she said in his ear.

He drove into her, hard, and she held on to him and bit his good shoulder; it didn’t take him long at all. He came with his face pressed into her hair and her name coming out of him, and then he lay on top of her, shaking, too heavy and too hot, until she shoved at him and he rolled off onto his back.

Lyra lay beside him with her hair all over both pillows and one arm flung across his chest, as though she had put it there and forgotten about it.

For a while neither of them said anything. Then she put her hand on his shoulder, the bad one, and felt along the joint, pressing until he winced.

“Get that seen to before Saturday,” she said.

“It’s fine.”

“It isn’t fine, and I am not beating your reserve. Everyone would say it didn’t—”

“You’re not beating anyone,” said Harry.

She pressed the joint again, harder, and he kept his face still.

“I want to beat you properly, in front of everybody, and afterwards you can tell Wood which of us is the better Seeker.”

Yeah, all right,” said Harry. “I’ll tell him while he’s congratulating me for winning.”

“He’ll be too busy scraping you off the pitch.”

“Bring your best, then,” said Harry. “I’ll still have the Snitch in fifteen minutes.”

She propped herself up on one elbow and looked down at him, her hair falling over one shoulder, and smirked.

“You wish, Potter.”