Secrets and Lies

"Do you play Quidditch?"

Draco looked up to see that Ginny was once again trying to engage him in conversation. At first he was a little annoyed by her constant attempts to befriend him, but now he was really annoyed.

"I dabble," he told her, and turned away to continue with his Transfiguration homework. Ginny however either would not or could not take the hint.

"Why don't you try-out?" she asked. "You never know, you might make the team."

"Well, it seems like my preferred position is already taken," he muttered despite himself.

"What position do you play?" she asked. The worst part was that she seemed interested. Just like she had seemed interested in every abstract question she'd managed to think up in the past hour.

"I play Seeker." Perhaps it was best to satiate her interest. Maybe she might shut up if she knew everything about him.

"Oh," she said, looking slightly put out. It didn't last. "Maybe you could try out for Chaser."

He paused briefly to wonder what had ever happened to destroy his love of Quidditch. There was once a time when he would have jumped at the chance to play Chaser. Then he remembered it was Potter's fault. His father's motto had always been "If you can't beat them, hide."

Then maybe it was time to play Quidditch again. After all, Potter couldn't stuff him senseless if they were on the same team. And if Draco accidentally "dropped" the Quaffle in the general direction of Potter's head so be it.

"Maybe I will," he said at last. "Now if you don't mind I've got a Transfiguration essay to finish." He turned back to his essay, only to notice the last seven lines he'd written were Quidditch tactics.

"Okay I'll be there," he muttered. This apparently was the answer Ginny had been waiting for, and she seemed to decide that it might be a good idea to get on with her own homework. They sat there in silence working, until Potter came in, caught sight of the two of them and stormed over towards them.

"What are you doing?" he snapped at Draco.

"We have a Transfiguration homework, so I thought that I might do it," Draco replied, although from the look on Potter's face he immediately wished he hadn't.

"You think I don't see what you're up to," he hissed. "I just can't prove it yet." He then noticed Ginny, who looked as perplexed as Draco felt. "Oh."

"Matthew says he'll be joining us for Quidditch tryouts," she said. This seemed to suck the very last of the wind out of Potter's sails. He sat down beside Ginny, and took out a piece of parchment. He hastily scrawled Draco's name (that is to say, Matthew's name) and the words "Knobs who want to try out for Quidditch." He paused for a moment.

"You'll be trying out right?" he asked Ginny. She nodded. Potter then proceeded to add a second column.

"Pretty girls who want to try out for Quidditch." Frankly Potter's methods of flirting were embarrassing to everyone present. Except Ginny who evidently decided it was snog-worthy.

Draco found it exceptionally hard to concentrate on Defence Against the Dark Arts with that going on. They'd been at it for ten minutes before Draco remembered he'd been doing Transfiguration.

###

"Now I was never in the best position before to tell, but is Potter perhaps a little mentally unstable?" Draco asked Granger at breakfast the next morning. "And by little I mean seriously."

"Mood swings are common among teenage boys," she said frankly. She was dating a Weasley, so she would know these things. "It's probably the hormones."

"Somehow girls cope with it far better," Draco muttered. "At least better than Longbottom." He glanced to the boy sitting beside him, who was staring longingly at the Ravenclaw table.

"I think it's sweet," Granger said fondly.

"I think their children would be thrown out of Hufflepuff for being too weird," Draco told her, although Longbottom continued trying to spoon cornflakes through his cheek whilst oblivious to the world around him.

"I think all this inter-House prejudice is ridiculous," Granger said as though pleased to have found an audience who hadn't heard this speech before. It didn't matter that the audience didn't want to hear it. "I think they ought to get rid of it."

"Nonsense, we need the Houses to sort out the riff-raff," Draco explained. "Those not fit to be doorstops go to Hufflepuff, the brainy ones go to Ravenclaw, the nutcases go to Gryffindor... and the gorgeous ones go to Slytherin." The last part slipped out before he had a chance to stop it. Granger eyed him curiously.

"Do you fancy one of the Slytherins?" she asked slyly.

"I didn't say that," Draco said, desperately searching his mind to remember an attractive Slytherin other than himself and Zabini.

"Is it Zabini?"

Damn. There are none.

"Parkinson," he said at last. After all, once you got past the twisted sexual games she played with half the house she wasn't so...

"But she's a horrible person," Granger said, looking shocked. "I've always thought it would be best to lock her in a room and throw away the key."

Draco's mind flashed back to the time she'd locked Nott in a cupboard and threw the key in the lake, and promptly decided that perhaps Pansy was a plague on the world after all.

"Okay, maybe not the girls," he admitted. "But you have to admit that Zabini is a hell of a lot better looking than..." He scanned the Gryffindor table, looking for something that might resemble an attractive man under dim lighting. "Finnigan?" he tried.

"I'll admit Zabini's good looking," Granger said with a blush. "But the Gryffindor boys aren't so bad. Besides, you're a Gryffindor. Why are you so obsessed with Slytherins?"

"Maybe I'm in love with Finnigan," Draco muttered. Then, he watch vibrated suddenly. He cursed under his breath, and Granger quickly scolded him. He reached deep into his pocket and drew out his hip flask, before taking a few swift gulps of the gunk inside.

"What's that?" Granger asked.

"Ear medicine," Draco said, aware that it tasted like he'd just drank Goyle's puke (Pansy again). It probably showed on his face. "I have to go." He stood up and left, making a special point to bang into Dennis Creevey on the way out. He couldn't have people thinking he was soft after all.

###

Draco arrived early for Quidditch tryouts, only to find that the whole of Gryffindor had already got there ahead of. By the looks of it someone had invited all the Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs as well. The Slytherins hadn't been invited, but they'd just turned up anyway.

Potter arrived looking smug with Ginny hanging off his arm. Draco scowled at them while Potter divided everyone up into groups. Draco toyed briefly with the idea of telling Potter that half the people here were not in Gryffindor.

For one thing that was Anthony Goldstein trying out for Keeper.

Potter began by sending them flying around the pitch in groups. Every group seemed more disastrous than the last. Indeed most of Draco's group wound up in a pile-up on the halfway line from which Dean Thomas emerged, screaming and brandishing Dennis Creevey as a weapon. After that thirteen people had to be sent to the hospital wing. Which was weird because there were only ten people in the group originally.

Once the numbers had been thinned by injury Potter decided to test most position specific skills. First he did the Beaters, and ended up choosing the same idiots he chose last year, even Coote who looked like one good Bludger might finish him off. Then he moved onto the Keepers.

Naturally Weasley got picked.

Finally were the Chasers, who were joined by the mighty Dean Thomas, freshly from the hospital wing yet determined to prove to Ginny that she was missing something. He quickly fell off his broom, probably breaking both his arms in the process. Potter and Ginny seemed unconcerned.

The Chasers were a sorry bunch. The only real contenders were that girl Robins, Ginny and Finnigan. Sadly Finnigan kept starring up at the stands longingly. Draco made a mental note to talk to him about that later.

He almost missed the buzz of his watch. Luckily he got in a drink from his hipflask just in time. Unluckily someone had thrown the Quaffle to him at that exact moment. It sailed over his head, and hit Potter's.

Once he was done laughing at Potter's humiliation, which involved Hermione sprinting down from the stands to perform a healing charm, Potter gathered them all together to announce the final team.

"Of course there's me," he said, looking around as if expecting laughter. When it didn't come he continued. "Ron's Keeper, Ritchie and Jimmy will be Beaters, and Ginny, Demelza and Seamus will be Chasers."

To be honest, Finnigan looked as surprised as anyone. Ginny looked furious.

Draco slung his old Nimbus 2001 over his shoulder, before making his way up to the castle alone, all the while trying to ignore the vast amount of shouting that Ginny was doing in Harry's general direction. Finnigan quickly caught up with him.

"Look Matty, I'm sorry," he said as he drew up alongside him. "I don't know what Potter's playing at."

"Isn't it obvious?" Draco asked snidely. "And don't call me Matty."

###

Harry was furious too. First he hadn't been able to worm out of Slughorn what he was making for Matthew. Indeed, Slughorn seemed rather unwilling to talk to him at the moment. He'd tried asking Lupin, who had simply told him not to stick his nose where it didn't belong.

"You used to do it all the time when you were at school!" he'd snapped at his teacher.

Now Ginny was mad at him because of what happened at the Quidditch tryouts. She'd accused him of not picking Matthew just because he was the new guy, and that any half-decent human being would have welcomed him with open arms. Harry had then shouted something about how she should run back to her real boyfriend.

Actually he'd kind of accused Ginny of cheating on him in front of the whole school.

But Ginny would have to wait. Harry just had to get to the bottom of this Matthew thing soon. So, in desperation, he got it into his head that it might be a good idea to break into McGonagall's office and steal Matthew's records.

This was how he and Ron came to be under the cloak when everyone was at dinner. They confronted the statue of the gargoyle, and Harry whipped out the Marauder's Map to check the password.

"Badger's Bones?" he said in disbelief as the gargoyle slid forward to admit him. Shrugging, the two boys took off the cloak and galloped up the stairs to McGonagall's office.

"Right. Now find the records," Harry whispered. Ron nodded, and the two spread out to search the office.

It was very different from the office that Dumbledore had once occupied. For one thing it seemed... organised. Several filing cabinets lined the walls without pictures of previous Headmasters and Headmistresses, all of whom were pretending to be asleep except for Dumbledore, who was sitting in a large chair eating lemon sherbets and twiddling his thumbs.

Yet try as they might they could not find the records. They were just about to give up when they heard the gargoyle moving.

"Hide!" Ron hissed, before diving into a cupboard. Harry scanned around the room before deciding that there were no other hiding places and that he would have to join Ron in the cupboard.

Ron was not pleased with Harry's decision. There was not much room in the cupboard.

McGonagall came into the room, and strolled behind her desk. Then it hit Harry. The paintings. The paintings were sure to tell her that they'd just seen two students in her office.

Amazingly they didn't give them away. But McGonagall sat at her desk for a very long time, examining pieces of parchment and writing something down every now and then. Occasionally she would give an "Ah yes," or a "But of course."

All the while Harry was very worried. Ron's stomach was starting to rumble, and Harry needed to pee. When Harry heard a knock on the door he prayed it was someone to take McGonagall away.

"Ah, Zacharias," McGonagall said, looking far more cheerful than Harry had ever seen her. "Do come in."

"I brought you some wine Minerva," Zacharias Smith said as he came in through the door bearing a bottle of wine and two glasses.

"Oh Zacharias you do spoil me," McGonagall said playfully, before she giggled.

It curled Harry toes and made Ron turn pale. Then, McGonagall reached up behind her head and pulled out the tight bun her hair had been made into, so that her hair now flowed down over her shoulders.

"Anything for my little goddess," Smith said with an obvious wink whilst he filled up the glasses, before handing one to McGonagall.

"To young love," he proposed.

"And to not-so-young love," McGonagall added.

The half hour that followed was the worst of Harry's life.