The Corresponding Emotion

"Weasley. Weasley!"

A sharp slap to the face brought Ron back to his senses, and he flailed around a little, struggling to sit up. Or rather, struggling to get away from the scowling face of Draco Malfoy.

"Malfoy!" Ron yelped, disoriented. "Get your hands off me!"

"If you weren't laid out cold in the middle of a hotel floor, I wouldn't have bothered touching you," Malfoy said, hauling Ron to his feet. "What happened?"

It took Ron a moment to remember, but when he did, he felt sick. "Harry... that girl..."

"Oh hell, Weasley, don't be such a girl. Sit," he said firmly, pushing Ron down onto the sofa. Malfoy grabbed the back of Ron's neck and pushed Ron's head between his knees, then hauled him back up. "Breathe or something before you pass out again."

"I am breathing," grumbled Ron, pushing Malfoy's hands away and sitting up. "I just – Harry – he –" That greyish swimming sensation was filling his vision again, and he put his head back on his knees.

"Get up, Weasley, and let's get you up to your room before you make an even bigger spectacle of yourself than you already have," said Malfoy.

"Room? I don't have a room," mumbled Ron against his knees. "Someone's taken my room... someone in four inch heels and a red dress...."

Malfoy made a disgusted noise. "This is the most pathetic thing I've ever seen in my life. You have to get out of here and pull yourself together. Where are your bags?"

"What do you mean, where are my bags?" Ron asked, sitting up again and looking around. "It's right here!" He reached down by his feet, where he'd dumped his rucksack when he flopped down on the sofa, but there was nothing there. "My bag! It's gone!"

"Gone? What do you mean, gone?" Malfoy shrieked. He dropped to his knees and looked under the sofa, swearing and muttering under his breath, then began yanking all the sofa cushions off and looking underneath them.

"What the bloody hell are you looking under there for, Malfoy? I didn't lose my wand, I lost my backpack!" And then he realised his wand was in his backpack, and his backpack was gone, gone, gone, along with the little bit of money he had left... "Oh... shite, SHITE – my wand, my money, my passport... my vault key!"

"What kind of idiot loses his backpack!" Malfoy screamed, his face turning a rather alarming shade of red. "How stupid are you, anyway?"

"Why are YOU getting so hacked off – it's MY bag!"

Malfoy stopped ranting as suddenly as if someone had cast Silencio on him, one sofa cushion dangling from his hand. "I – well, it's just that you're a wizard," he hissed, regaining his composure, "and we're in the middle of a herd of Muggles, and you could get us all in serious trouble with your stupidity!"

"Well, fuck off if you don't want to get in trouble, because I never asked for your help anyway!" Ron snarled, snatching the cushion from Malfoy's hand and slamming it back on the sofa.

"Oh no, I'm not going anywhere. I'll be damned if I'll let these stupid Americans think you are a shining example of British wizarding culture."

"Might I be of some assistance, gentlemen?" It was the woman from the reception desk, looking incredibly anxious at Malfoy's temper tantrum. She seemed to regard him with much less disdain than she had Ron, however, tantrum or no. Ron suspected it had to do with his annoyingly wrinkle-free trousers and perfectly shined shoes.

"Did you see anyone over here?" Malfoy snapped at both of them. "Anyone, anyone at all?"

"I only saw this gentleman here," she said, gesturing to Ron. "He came in looking for Mr Potter, and I thought he'd gone until there was this commotion and –"

"Oh no," interjected Ron, "there was someone else. This guy – he looked really familiar. I think he went to school with us," he said to Malfoy, hoping he'd get the hint. "He seemed very familiar, but I can't remember what he looked like – I know I've seen him before, though."

Malfoy scowled. "The kind of guy who you can't remember two minutes after you've seen him? Grey suit, short hair? Bit stringy and creepy?"

"Yeah," said Ron.

Malfoy stamped his foot on the floor in frustration. "Nott! Fuck!" Grabbing Ron's arm, he dragged him out of the hotel.

"Get your hands off me, Malfoy!" Ron snapped, trying to twist out of Malfoy's grip.

Malfoy didn't reply, but hauled him across the street to a parking deck, shoved him into a very expensive-looking car and tore out of the parking deck at top speed.

"Just what the sod do you think you're doing?" Ron rubbed his arm where Malfoy'd had it in a vice grip. "And how the hell do you know how to drive a Muggle car?"

"You want your bag back? Sit back and shut up and let me drive, Weasley, before I kick you out of the car."

"I'd like to see you try it," Ron muttered, but seeing as how Malfoy had a wand and he didn't, he figured it was pretty damn likely Malfoy could do just that. Malfoy zoomed the car at an alarming speed through narrow, twisted streets in a way that made Ron feel positively ill. If he'd actually eaten anything in the last half a day, he would have chucked it up all over the dashboard.

"We should have just Apparated," Ron grumbled, holding his stomach.

Malfoy's smirk was nearly audible. "Foreigners like us can't Apparate in the States without a special permit, you uneducated cretin," he said, yanking the car sharply around a corner. "Americans are a bunch of overparanoid wankers about things like that. I shouldn't have said anything though; it would have been amusing to watch you get splinched and arrested."

"Jail would be better than being cooped up in this Muggle car with you, Malfoy," said Ron.

"You're even more unpleasant than you usually are, Weasley, and that's saying something," said Malfoy. "I'm trying to help you get your bag back, in case it's escaped your Chizpurfle-like attention, so the least you could do is be polite."

"Yeah, well, I'll save the niceties until I've got my stuff back, thanks."

"What was Potter doing in that hotel, anyway?" Malfoy asked. "Must have been bad, to make you flop about on the floor like an epileptic Erupment."

It took Ron a few minutes to answer him, both because he didn't want to say it at all, and because he didn't want to admit it to Malfoy of all people, but in the end he figured it was better to just be out with it. Malfoy would probably find out on his own soon enough anyway. "Harry's got... a girlfriend."

The car swerved abruptly. "Potter's straight?" Malfoy yelped, wrestling with the steering wheel. "He left you for a girl?"

"Rub it in, why don't you?" Ron grumbled.

"An American girl? Dear Merlin, she's probably a Muggle!"

"Can we please not talk about this?"

"Why are you even wasting your time with Potter, if he's going to act like such a git?" said Malfoy. "I'm trying to understand this, and I just can't. He left you for a girl, and you're over here falling all over the place, looking like a complete idiot, trying to make him come back to you?"

"No!" Ron protested. "It's not like that at all. Harry, he... well, ever since the war he's been kind of, I don't know... just not himself, really. And this is just a phase, or something, and I thought that if I came over here and got a chance to talk to him, to his face and not just in the Floo, he'd come back to himself and get some sense again. I'd remind him of what we had together – we've been best friends forever, and now more than that, and he just needs a reminder. We had a wonderful life together – we were happy!"

"When people tell me they are happy, my arse begins to twitch," Malfoy drawled.

"We had plans, Malfoy. We had plans for after the war, the future – "

"He was obviously very attached to them."

"Shut up."

"What were you planning to do when you saw Potter, get down on your knees and beg?"

Ron looked out the window, feeling very small. "Maybe."

"I wouldn't beg. No way. Malfoys don't beg."

"Well, bully for you," Ron said. "If you're such an expert on relationships, how come the Prophet still has you listed as the wizarding world's most eligible bachelor?"

He made a dismissive gesture. "I'm done with women. Had it up to here. They're too much fucking trouble."

"Oh, I know what your problem is," said Ron.

"No you don't," said Malfoy.

"Yeah, I do. You can't stick it out."

The car nearly ran off the road again. "What?"

"You can't stick it out," said Ron. "You're afraid of commitment. That's why you never chose a side in the war – well that and because you're a coward."

"Oh," said Malfoy, getting the car under control again. "I thought you meant... er... nevermind."

"What?"

"Nothing," said Malfoy, his eyes fixed on the road.

Ron had a sudden flash of insight. "Oooh, this problem..." He raised a hand, crooking one finger down in a sort of wilting motion, thinking he was really going to enjoy needling Malfoy about this almost as much as he enjoyed the Amazing Bouncing Ferret.

"It's not a problem," said Malfoy. He gripped the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles were white.

Ron chuckled, feeling as if Christmas had suddenly come early. "You know, every guy goes through that. Well, I never did, and Harry didn't either, but I hear it's actually pretty common. You know, stress and all that."

"Shut up, Weasley. I told you, it's not a problem!" he snapped, pulling the car up in front of a block of decrepit-looking flats and jumping out, not waiting for Ron.

When Ron caught up to Malfoy, he was beating on the door of a flat and shouting in a very un-Malfoy-like way.

"Open up, Nott, I know you're in there," he said, pounding on the door. When there was no answer, Malfoy whipped out his wand, muttered a spell Ron had never heard before, and shoved the door open.

Nott jumped to his feet, looking like a scared rabbit and backing up against the wall of the one-room flat. "Malfoy?"

"What the fuck did you do with Weasel's bag, Nott?" said Malfoy, jerking open a nearby closet and rifling through it.

"Er," said Nott, clearly stunned by Malfoy's behaviour.

"Where is my wand?" yelled Ron. "My vault key, my passport? My clothes?"

"He probably sold it all," said Malfoy from inside the closet. He was tossing things out over his shoulder at an alarming rate. "Your wand was probably the first thing to go. Ollivander's wands get a fortune on the black market here, especially to expatriated former Death Eaters."

"What? Why didn't you say so an hour ago!"

"Shut up and get to looking, Weasley!"

"Did you sell my wand?" Ron yelled at Nott. "I ought to fucking kill you, you little piece of shite! How the fuck am I supposed to do anything without my goddamn wand?"

"Not to mention no passport and no money," Malfoy called, backing out of the closet with Ron's rucksack in his hands. He stalked over to the bed, turning Ron's bag upside down and shaking the remaining contents on the bed: a package of Every-Flavour Beans, (Ron snatched these up immediately and crammed them into his mouth by the handful, because he was starving), two Martin Miggs comics, his toothbrush, a two-day-old copy of the Daily Prophet, a pair of socks, a barely-used jar of lube potion (which mortified Ron to no end), and a Muggle North Carolina/South Carolina map that had never been opened.

"Where's the rest of it?" Malfoy snapped at Nott, throwing the bag carelessly at Ron.

Ron began stuffing his things back in his bag, keeping a wary eye on Nott and Malfoy.

"I sold it all!" yelped Nott, backing away from Malfoy's furious stare. "Er... except for that..." he said, gesturing to a small box on the table.

Malfoy snatched up the box, flipping the lid open briefly and snapping it shut again, clutching it carefully to his chest. "You almost lost this, you idiot! If I hadn't been able to track Weasel here down, I'd never have got it back, would I? What were you going to do, send it back to my mother?"

"You know I wouldn't do that, Draco," said Nott, trying to placate Malfoy.

"I don't think I even know you people anymore," said Malfoy, gesturing to the dingy flat with his free hand. "Living like this? What the hell's wrong with you? Don't you have any pride in what you used to be? Are you just going to forget all that and give it up for this?"

"Some of us didn't have the luxury of not choosing a side, Draco," Nott said angrily. "Some of us had to choose, and we ended up on the losing side. So you'll forgive me if I'm not really putting a lot of weight on your opinion of how I live my life now."

Ron was so confused. He had no idea what was going on here, or what Nott and Malfoy were talking about other than he knew that Nott had been a Death Eater who had eventually seemingly dropped off the face of the earth at some point after the war. But he didn't get a chance to ask any questions, because Malfoy grabbed him by the arm (again, and Ron was getting really tired of Malfoy manhandling him like this) and dragged him out of the flat, slamming the door loudly behind him.

"What is that in that box?" Ron asked when they got back in the car.

"None of your business, Weasley," said Malfoy angrily.

"Oh fuck yes it is, Malfoy, if you stuck it in my bag – when? On the plane? You let me walk through Customs with that? I bet you thought it would have been really funny if they'd stopped me with whatever it is, wouldn't you?"

"They wouldn't have stopped you – you look like a beggar," Malfoy spat, one hand on the steering wheel and the other holding the box close to his chest.

"Give me that," Ron said, trying to wrench the box from Malfoy's hand. Malfoy couldn't keep hold of the box and keep the car on the road at the same time, so Ron was able to wrench it from him with little trouble while Malfoy kept the car from running into the pavement. It was a small wooden box with an inlaid silver Malfoy crest, and when Ron flipped the lid open he was very surprised to see it filled with rich, black dirt, almost entirely covering the green velvet lining.

"You put a box of dirt in my bag?" Ron sputtered. "You've been following me around so you could get back a box of dirt?"

"Yes," said Malfoy, trying to snatch it back.

"I can't believe you. All this for a box of dirt? It's probably cursed, Merlin knows what kind of Dark magic it's got on it." He thrust the box roughly at Malfoy.

"Hey, be careful with that! Don't spill it!" Malfoy looked positively terrified at the idea of it being spilled, but Ron didn't particularly care. He was tired, starving, and now broke and wandless, and this entire day had been nothing but complete bullshit and he wanted it to be over.

"Stop the car, Malfoy," he spat, reaching for the door handle.

"What?"

"Stop the fucking CAR, Malfoy – I want out."

"Where are you going to go, Weasley?" said Malfoy, pulling the car over. "You haven't got a wand, or a passport, or anything, and you haven't got anywhere to stay, and you're such an idiot you didn't even know you can't Apparate here. What are you going to do?"

"I don't know, but whatever I do, I don't want to do it with you," Ron snapped, getting out. He heard Malfoy's door slam and his footsteps, catching up to him, but he didn't turn around.

"Look, Weasley, at least take this," Malfoy said, panting, when he caught up to Ron, and thrust a wad of Muggle money at him.

"I don't want your money," said Ron, mortally offended. No way in hell was he going to take money from Draco Malfoy.

"It's not my money – I wouldn't give you a Knut if it were me. This is what Nott got for your stuff, so it's yours. Just take it!"

Ron snatched the money from Malfoy and threw it back in his face. The bills fluttered to the ground between them, but neither of them noticed. "I. Don't. Want. Your. Money. Now go away, and stop fucking following me!" He stormed off down the pavement, and after a moment he heard Malfoy's car door slam again and the engine rev as he drove away.

He only made it a block away before his anger and humiliation began to fade, overshadowed by tiredness and hunger. What the fuck was he going to do? He had nowhere to stay, and he had no idea what to do. He turned and glanced over his shoulder for a moment to make sure that Malfoy was really gone, then he turned back and went to pick up the bills that were still lying on the ground.

It was his money, after all.