Undisguised

Undisguised

Cptr 5: Shattered Prisms

Breaking a Prism only gives you too many rainbows to look at.

Ron looked up at the boys' stairs as he heard a door open. He groaned as Dean and Seamus stepped out and started down. He was the only one in the Common Room, so there would be no excuse this time.

"Hey, Ron," Dean said quietly with a small wave.

"Hey," Ron said back, looking first at one, then the other, as they took a seat across from him. He focused on the Transfiguration homework in front of him for a moment before sighing and pushing it away.

"So," Seamus said, "Are you finally going to tell us what we already know?"

"If you already know, then what're you doing bugging me about it?"

"Because you've been avoiding us for months, Ron," Dean said. "You've been avoiding us for so long that we've noticed a few things ourselves. We just want to know how you found out."

"Yeah," Seamus chimed in. "I don't think Harry told you, 'cause you won't say anything around him."

Ron sighed. This was the part he was worried about the least. Oh, he was still worried about it, but not as much as he was about telling them that Harry was gay. He looked at them and considered just saying that he knew everything, and that he wasn't ready to talk about the other stuff, but even the thought sounded empty. He needed to talk about this. He had been sitting on it for way too long, and he didn't think that Harry and Kayden would understand.

"I found out by watching Kaydie," Ron said, unconsciously using Harry's pet name for Kayden. "I-I kind of f-fancy him."

"Whoa!" Seamus gasped. "You like your best friend's boyfriend? That can't feel too good."

"Are you kidding?" Ron grumbled sarcastically. "It's the best feeling in the world!"

"Wow," Dean murmured sympathetically. "Does Kayden know? That you know, I mean. Not that you fancy him."

"No. I haven't told either of them. How'd you two find out?"

"We watch him, right, Dean? It seemed like every free second Harry had, he and Kayden were sneaking off together. After seeing that half a dozen times, combined with what you said, it didn't take long to figure out exactly what it was you wouldn't tell us."

"You okay?" Dean asked gently.

"Do you think I'm okay, Dean? Look at me! I'm falling for my best friend's boyfriend. I don't know if I even really like boys. And all I can do is sit here and feel guilty and feel like I'm violating Harry's trust in me just by liking the guy!

"No, I'm not okay! I'm a total wreck! But thanks for asking!"

With that, Ron slammed upstairs to the dorm, leaving the other two boys to look after him with looks of compassion on their faces.

* * *

Harry pulled up, the Snitch in his hand. The crowd let out a roar. Gryffindor had beaten Slytherin 275 to 150, winning the Quidditch cup.

Harry landed in the midst of his roaring team as the stands emptied onto the field. Harry accepted the pats on the back, then met Draco at middle field and shook hands with him.

"Good game, Captain," Draco shouted over the din.

"Same to you, Captain," Harry shouted back with a smile on his face. "See you on the pitch next year."

Draco nodded, then turned and returned to his teammates as they headed for the locker rooms.

Harry turned and smiled as Kayden walked up to him. "Great game!" Kayden yelled. "I'm envious I'm not that good!"

The response Harry started to give his boyfriend became startled laughter as he was hoisted up onto Seamus's shoulders. Kayden followed beside the Irish boy, smiling up at Harry, as the crowd headed back to the castle.

Harry's mind was reeling. He didn't know why -- maybe it was all the dreams he had been having the last few months -- but when he touched Malfoy's hand just a few moments before, his heart started in his chest. He looked down at Kayden. This is the man that I love, he thought. But if that's true, then why does my heart flutter whenever I think about Malfoy?

It just didn't make any sense, and Harry tried to push it from his mind.

* * *

Harry waited with the rest of the class for Trelawney to drop her ladder, Kayden standing with the other Ravenclaws across from him. He couldn't wait to get into the classroom. This was their last Divinations class of the year, and there would be no exam. At the last class, Trelawney had told them that she had foreseen that, if she gave them the exam, they would all fail, which would be her fault, so she was not going to test them. All he had to do was endure one more class and then he would be free of her for a summer. Sometimes he was sure that she, with her warnings of constantly impending death, was worse than his uncle and aunt.

The ladder dropped and they climbed into the familiar darkened interior.

"Harry Potter," Trelawney's voice spoke suddenly from behind him, before he could even take his seat.

Harry groaned. She had been so good this year, and now she was going to destroy it all in the last class. He sat down and looked at her over his shoulder.

"Yes, Professor?"

"I was looking over the Love Forecast Charts last night," she said as she appeared from around some veiling, "thinking that maybe that's where I had gone wrong this year with this class and Hufflepuff's class, and I found something that I thought merited an inquiry."

Harry let out a quite sigh of relief. "Yes, ma'am?"

"After Mr. Hanne stood up in class and read his report on a relationship between he and you, I asked if you would consider a relationship with him. You said that you had never considered a relationship with another boy, correct?"

"Yes," Harry replied slowly, finally seeing where this path was going.

"Then why, Mr. Potter, did you do your reading on Mr. Malfoy?"

Harry was starting to get annoyed at the tendency of Hogwarts' students to gasp in unison. He looked around to find every eye on him.

"Surely," Trelawney continued as if nothing happened, "you had considered it enough to make a reading of you and Malfoy, had you not? I am merely curious at the discrepancy, you see. Maybe that is where I went wrong this year."

Harry wasn't listening. His eyes were locked on the agonizing expression on Kayden's face, and the light yellow disbelief and sienna of hurt surrounding him. His boyfriend looked on the verge of tears, staring at him in disbelief and hurt. A tear fell down his cheek and he brushed it aside.

"Professor," Kayden said, bolting to his feet, "can I go to the restroom?"

"Certainly, Mr. Hanne," Trelawney replied with a small amount of surprise. "But I would've thought you would want to be here for the explanation."

"No, thank you," Kayden said and started for the trapdoor.

As he crossed by Harry's desk, Harry stood. "Kaydie..."

"Don't!" Kayden paused to whisper fiercely. Silvery anger slipped into his halo, resting between the yellow and sienna. "And don't call me that!"

He flew out of the room. Ron and Dean put a hand on either one of Harry's arms, and slowly he sat back down, looking from one to the other in shock.

"It will be okay," Dean whispered. "He won't leave you. He just needs time to digest this."

"How..?" Harry gawked at him.

"We guessed," Ron said from his other side.

Harry nodded, more at the yellow and gray halo around Ron than his best friend's words.

"Well, Mr. Potter?" Trelawney prompted impatiently, still behind him.

* * *

Harry wandered the halls. He had already checked every place he and Kayden had used in trying to keep their secret, but hadn't found his boyfriend anywhere. He didn't know what he expected to find just wandering the halls, and he was sure that he wouldn't just run into him, but his urgency spurred him on. He had even debated going to the Ravenclaw dorm but decided against it, as that would expose them completely, and Kayden still hadn't said he could tell anyone. If Kayden ever found out that Ron and Dean knew... Harry didn't want to think about it.

He rounded a corner and nearly ran into Malfoy.

"Watch where you're going, Malfoy!"

Draco looked up at him. He seemed lost in his own thoughts and didn't look like he had even heard Harry's biting remark.

"Hi, Harry," he said quietly, the green haloing him almost instantly.

"Will you stop calling me that?" Harry asked exasperated. "It just sounds so weird coming out of your mouth."

"Fine. Are you okay?"

"What would you care? Isn't this what you want? Me and Kayden all upset at each other so you can swoop in and save me like some silver knight?"

"I do care, okay? And where did you get that load of bullshit? I want nothing of the sort. I have enough problems at the moment with not knowing where I am going to be liv-- Never mind."

"No, it's not okay! And I really don't care what your problems are right now. I have a few of my own that are a little more pressing!"

"Like getting Kayden back?" Draco said meekly.

"Getting him back!? As far as I know he's never left! If he left at all, it's because of you. I wrote that stupid reading on you before you decided that the Great Hall was the best place to tell me you loved me. Before! And now, between that stupid reading and your stupid stunt, he thinks there's something between us! I just need to talk to him... explain things."

"I know," Draco said, looking away. "I understand, you know."

"You don't understand shit, Malfoy! All you think about is yourself. When have you ever really been in love?"

"Now," Draco said, looking him fully in the eyes for the first time.

"Like hell!" Harry spat back. Even as he said it, a part of his mind registered that the boy was still haloed in his green color of love. "You only think you're in love with me. You don't even know me! And you wouldn't know love if it jumped up and bit you in the ass!"

"That's not true," Draco whispered.

"Yeah!" Harry snapped sarcastically. "You just keep telling yourself that, Malfoy. One day I might believe that you believe yourself."

Draco suddenly looked over Harry's shoulder. "I -- uh -- gotta go."

He turned on his heel and left. Harry turned to see what had spooked the Slytherin and spun right into a full-handed slap. His head snapped to the side and he instinctively brought his hand to his cheek.

"How could you!" Bridgette demanded, sounding hurt herself, red and blue radiating from her.

"How could I what?" Harry said, sounding like he was massaging his pride as well as his cheek. "I don't think I did anything to you."

"How could you do that to Kayden!? Of all the people you could hurt, did it have to be the one that loves you the most!?"

"Does everyone know now!?" Harry threw up his hands in exasperation.

"No," Bridgette snapped and black joined the red and blue. "He kind of had to tell me, the way he was crying on my shoulder and going on the way he was. It would have taken a deaf person not to know what the hell he was talking about. How could you do that? You knew that Malfoy had professed his love for you in front of the whole school and then you do a Love Reading with him as the focus! What in Hell's name is wrong with you!?"

"You don't understand," Harry protested, raising his hands in a defensive gesture. "I did that before Malfoy pulled that load of crap in the Great Hall. And that wasn't even my real reading. I did mine on Kay--"

"Oh, don't give me that! If you did one on Kayden, then why didn't you turn that one in ?? Instead of the one on that Slytherin slut!"