Draco Finds Jesus

Chapter 11: Love your enemies, love and enmity.

'Hi!' said a thin young lady wearing a pink angora cardigan. 'You're new. Have you just moved here?'

Draco looked embarrassed. Everyone in the room looked like Hufflepuffs, and he was beginning to wonder if the brimstone wasn't more him after all. Not doling it out - he'd accepted now that if there was fire and brimstone, he was going to be the one getting it. But maybe. . . Just maybe, if heaven was a big Hufflepuff convention, the brimstone would be preferable.

'Er, no,' he said weakly. 'I'm at the school.'

'Hogwarts!' pink angora said. 'I remember Hogwarts. I was in Hufflepuff, you know. Lovely days I had in Hogwarts.'

'Um. . . Quite,' Draco managed. Luckily, another member of the congregation came to rescue him. Unluckily, it was a middle-aged bespectacled man wearing a badge that said 'Jesus Loves You.' He spoke in an impossibly gentle voice. 'Hello. Who is this, Clymelda?'

'He's at the school,' she replied, enthusiastically.

'I'm Draco,' Draco said.

'Ah, Draco,' beloved badge said. 'We must be careful not to wake you.'

Clymelda laughed. 'The school motto, you know,' she added, seeing that Draco did not laugh.

'I know.'

Beloved badge cleared his throat and tried a new tactic. 'We're a very small community here. But you know, as Jesus said in Matthew 18, "where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." Most Sundays we just meet up, chat and say a few prayers together. Randall, our priest, comes round every few weeks to do a sermon. He has other communities to see to as well.'

'Sometimes,' Clymelda piped up, 'We go and hear his other sermons. Apparate you know. But we like the community spirit with there being just a few of us.' She grinned. 'And we all get on so well together.' Beloved badge turned and smiled at her. They smiled benignly at each other for a few moments. Draco felt sick. It took a supreme effort of will not to turn and run. Instead, he came straight out with it.

'Is God ok with homosexuality?'

They looked a little startled, but recovered well.

'Well Draco,' began beloved badge. 'God loves us for who we are. The God of the New Testament, the God that Jesus presents to us as a superseding of the old ideas of God, is a God of love, not of wrath. He tells us to love one another as he has loved us. No greater love has a man than that he lays down his life for his friends, as Jesus did for us. And not only our friends - we must even love our enemies.'

Love our enemies? Well, that was the plan, anyway, Draco thought. 'So it's ok?' he persisted hopefully.

'In modern times, the holy Spirit must guide us to what is right for each of us. You might well decide that it is acceptable,' he concluded reluctantly.

That was all Draco needed.

***

'Anyway,' Harry said deliberately later that day. 'I've got to go and do some stuff. Buy some boring things.' He looked meaningfully at Ron.

'Ah, right,' Ron replied conspiratorially. 'Hermione, lets go to the book shop and leave Harry.'

Hermione scowled. 'If you want to be alone, Harry, you can just say.'

'He does,' Ron confirmed.

'Well thank you very much, because I'd never have noticed.' Hermione said sarcastically.

'Bye then,' Harry said, and walked off. He didn't really want to stay for a Ron-Hermione bicker, they were such a married couple sometimes. Besides, he had things to do.

Ron took a deep breath. 'Book shop then?' he asked brightly. He turned to go.

'Ronald Weasley! You are going to tell me what's going on. Right NOW!'

Ron started and turned around, looking annoyed. 'Don't do that to me Hermione. You sounded just like my mum.'

'And don't you change the subject. What's going on with Harry?'

The word 'nothing' died on Ron's lips. He sighed. 'I can't tell you,' he said. 'It's Harry's secret.'

'But you know it!'

'But he told me.'

Hermione, if it was possible, looked even more annoyed. 'Well why didn't he tell me, then? I'm the one to talk to, you're the one who hangs around looking stupid in the background and saying "mate." What kind of a role reversal is this?'

'I never heard you say "mate" in your life,' Ron consoled her. Her eyes narrowed.

'Why am I being left out of this?'

Ron tried his best to explain. 'You've been so busy working we don't like to trouble you.' He looked anxious. 'I mean, not that you're a boring workaholic or anything. And it's not like you've not always been busy working, but this year you seem to do nothing else. The only time you talk about anything but homework these days is to slag off Draco Malfoy.' With a feeling of having said too much - having spoken too strongly, put his foot in it with Hermione, and mentioned Malfoy's name - Ron stopped. He turned bright red and tried to make urgent reparation, without success. 'Er - not that it's a bad thing to work hard. Or slag off Malfoy. Er - mate?

She turned away so he couldn't see the tears well up in her eyes. 'I'll be off back to the castle, then,' she said in a distant voice. 'To do my homework.' And she trudged off. Ron stared at her retreating back, open-mouthed. Women were so easy to offend.

***

Draco had stayed a while longer at the meeting. He had talked to Clymelda and beloved badge, whose real name had turned out to be Peter, without outwardly gagging. He had also been talked at by a loud boisterous hippy woman who had apparently studied theology at a Muggle University as part of a year in industry for her Muggle Studies degree. He had come out slightly repelled, but feeling more comfortable overall. Draco wanted to see Harry but, since he could not imagine tearing Harry away from his cronies, had resigned himself to a quiet Butterbeer. Thankfully, Archibald had left. Draco was pleasantly surprised to see Harry come in to the Three Broomsticks, alone. Harry beamed and made his way over.

'I've been looking all over for you!' he exclaimed. 'Where have you been?'

'Church,' Draco mumbled.

'Everything alright?' Harry asked, cocking his head on one side.

So thoughtful! Draco exclaimed in his head. So kind! So considerate! How cute he looked with his head tilted like that. How gorgeous did he look in his jumper, the suggestion of potential muscles under all those layers somehow more provocative than the seeing of the muscles themselves. Not, of course, that he would object to the jumper being taken off. Oh bugger, he should probably reply to what Harry had just said. What was it again? Oh yes.

'Fine,' Draco said blankly. He saw that some people were staring at them. 'Er. . . Perhaps we should behave a little more in character.'

Harry saw the stares from the corner of his eye. 'Right,' he said. 'Ok.' He gritted his teeth, and widened his stance. 'How does this look?' he uttered through the teeth.

Draco lounged back in his chair, stretched his arm over the back of the chair and tried to look bored. 'Not too bad, Potter,' he drawled. 'And how about me?'

'Oh, casually sexy as always,' Harry growled. 'You know, I've not really noticed before but this set-up isn't really fair.'

Draco looked amused. He raised one eyebrow. 'I don't know what you mean.'

'Well, I have to stand here all flustered and you get to lounge about looking laidback.'

'I can hardly help it if I make you flustered, Potter.'

Harry's mouth twitched slightly. 'If you make me laugh, that will look really suspicious.'

'Well, you'll just have to make sure you don't then, won't you darling.'

'Stop.' Harry's teeth were really gritted now, but not to stop rage.

Draco forced his face to become hard and cold. 'As you wish,' he said. 'You muggle-loving stupid Gryffindor.'

'Cold-hearted Slytherin.'

Draco's drawl came back, and he rolled his eyes. 'Oh you know that's not true, you of all people. You have come closer to my (ahem) heart than most.'

'I can't take much more of this,' Harry said, his features contorted with suppressed laughter, the kind of laughter that only tries to surface because it shouldn't. 'So I'll tell you this now. I'm going to storm out. Wait a few minutes and then meet me in that clump of trees between here and the shrieking shack.'

'In a few minutes, in the woods, we'll shack up and shriek. Got it.'

Harry couldn't help it. He exploded. He turned the laugh into a roar inexpertly. 'You watch yourself Malfoy! Or they'll be scraping you off the walls.' He stalked out immediately, missing Draco's reply.

'Tsk, tsk. Forceful, eh? If anyone's going to be up against the wall its you, Potter.'

***

A hand reached out to pull Draco's own as he sidled into the trees. He was whirled around, face to face with Harry. Harry was laughing.

'You'll be the death of me,' he said. Draco grinned, but felt a shiver down his spine. They were meant to be enemies, after all. How proud his father would be if he were responsible for the death of the Boy Who Lived. He shoved the thought out of his mind with some force, leaning forwards to kiss Harry's smiling lips, also with some force.

Harry's eyelids fluttered open as they broke apart. 'No wisecrack?' he asked, teasingly.

Draco could feel Harry's warm breath on his face in the cold air. 'It's my day off,' he said, and led Harry further into the copse. Soon he was lost in Harry; his hands running through Harry's hair, his body pressed against Harry's own, and their mouths locked together.

Almost lost. At the back of his mind, one single sentence hovered, vying for his attention.

'They believe what they want to believe.'

He pushed it away, and pulled Harry closer.