The morning light in the Slytherin common room felt too bright and too sharp. Draconia sat at a small side table, her fingers tracing the smooth wood as she waited for the familiar weight of her wand to return to her hand. It had been a long night of heavy breathing and frantic skin, yet the ache in her hips reminded her that the exchange had been thorough. Harry Potter had been efficient in his payment, leaving her physically spent and mentally dazed. Now, the absence of her wand felt like a missing limb, a void that made her feel strangely unanchored.
She looked across the room to see Harry Potter sitting near the fireplace. He was not looking at her, but his posture was too rigid to be natural. He was staring at a piece of parchment as if the ink were a puzzle he could not solve. It was a known fact that they were both struggling with their magic today. The spells she tried to cast in the corridor earlier had sputtered like dying embers, and his attempts at a simple cleaning charm had resulted in a puff of grey smoke.
"You look ridiculous," Draconia said, her voice dry.
Harry Potter looked up, his eyes meeting hers with a flicker of annoyance. "I feel ridiculous. My magic is acting like a sodden sponge."
"That is because you have no sense of direction without a proper focus," she replied, leaning back in her chair.
"It is not just the focus, Draconia. It is the intention," Harry said, standing up to walk toward her.
He reached the table and leaned over, his hands resting on the edge of the wood. He did not look like a man who had been unravelling her in a dark antechamber only hours ago. He looked like a man who was winning a silent war.
"You are the one who kept my wand," Harry reminded her, his voice dropping an octave. "You decided that the price of my performance was the possession of my wood. You cannot complain about the consequences of your own greed."
"It was not greed; it was a trade," she corrected him. "I told you the price, and you paid it. If your magic is sluggish, it is because you are still distracted by the memory of how my pussy felt around your cock."
Harry Potter did not flate or blush; he simply gave a short, sharp laugh that made her heart stutter. "Is that what we are calling it? A distraction? It felt more like a collision."
"You are a clumsy lover, Potter," she said, though she felt the heat rising in her cheeks.
"A clumsy lover who left you breathless," he retorted.
He reached out, his hand hovering near her sleeve. "I believe it is my turn to collect a debt. You have had my wand for far too long."
"I do not see a wand in your hand," she observed, watching his fingers.
"You will," Harry said.
He did not use a spell. He used his hands, moving with a sudden, predatory grace that caught her off guard. He reached into the pocket of his robes and pulled out her wand, which he had pilfered from her bedside table while she was distracted by the morning sun. He did not wave it; he simply held it between two fingers, a silent taunt.
"Give it back, Harry," she commanded, her eyes narrowing.
"Not until you admit that you feel empty without it," Harry said.
He flicked his wrist, and for a second, the air around her felt charged. He tried to cast a simple levitation charm to pull the wand from her reach, but the spell misfired. Instead of the wand rising, a small burst of sparks erupted from the tip, singeing the edge of her sleeve.
"See?" Harry said, his grin widening. "It is useless. We are both broken."
"It is not broken; it is just temperamental," she insisted.
She tried to snatch the wand from him, but he pulled it back just in time. Their hands collided, skin against skin, and the contact felt electric. The magic between them was a tangled, messy thing, a knot of sensation that refused to be untied.
"You are keeping it because you like the power," Harry said, his voice growing more serious. "You like knowing that a part of me is tucked away in your pocket."
"I like knowing that you are incomplete without me," she whispered.
They stood in the middle of the room, two people caught in a cycle of theft and retribution. The air was not heavy, but it was vibrant with the tension of their shared frustration. Neither of them could cast a single spell with any degree of precision, and the frustration was a physical weight.
"If we cannot cast, how are we supposed to survive the next lesson?" she asked.
"We will manage," Harry said. "We always manage."
He moved closer, the scent of him filling her senses. He was not a man of flowery words, and he did not pretend to be a master of the subtle arts. He was blunt and direct, much like the way he had used his body to pay her the price she had demanded.
"Try again," she challenged. "Try to cast something besides a spark."
Harry Potter took a deep breath and gripped her wand. He tried to channel his intent into a simple light charm, but the wand jerked in his hand. A dull, thudding sensation pulsed through the air, and a cloud of soot settled on his forehead.
"That was pathetic," she remarked, though she was smiling.
"It was a valiant effort," he countered.
They were both exhausted, not just from the magic, but from the sheer intensity of the last twenty-four hours. The secrecy of their encounter left them feeling exposed in the bright light of the common room.
"We need to go to the Great Hall," she said, standing up to smooth her robes. "We have a breakfast to attend, and a reputation to maintain, even if we are both currently magical mbecks."
"A lopsided reputation at best," Harry said, following her toward the door.
As they entered the Great Hall, the chatter of the other students rose to meet them. The movement of the crowd was a blur of colours and voices. Harry and Draconia moved through the aisles, their shoulders occasionally brushing. They were trying to act as though nothing had changed, but the way Harry held her wand in his pocket made him look suspicious.
At the high table, the professors were already seated. The atmosphere was one of routine, but for the two of them, the world felt skewed. They sat down at the Slytherin table, and the breakfast was a chore of silence and avoided glances.
"You have soot on your face," she whispered, leaning toward him.
"It is a mark of my struggle," Harry said, his eyes fixed on his plate.
A shadow fell over them as a tall, dark figure approached the table. Severus Snape moved with a predatory elegance, his eyes scanning the room with a practiced disdain. He stopped beside them, his gaze lingering on the way Harry was clutching a piece of wood that clearly did not belong to him.
"It seems," Snape said, his voice a low drawl, "that some of you are finding the transition between the night and the morning rather difficult to navigate."
Harry and Draconia froze. The silence was not thick, but it was pointed.
"Is there a problem, Professor?" Harry asked, trying to sound casual.
Snape looked at the wand in Harry's hand, then at Draconia's empty hand, and finally at the soot on Harry's forehead. He looked as though he had seen through the layers of their deception with a single, sweeping glance.
"The problem, Potter, is that your magic is currently as erratic as your temperament," Snape said. He turned his gaze to Draconia, who met him with a defiant tilt of her chin. "And