Black Sheep

Chapter Nine
In Which There Is Uninhibited Texting

HARRY WOKE UP TO A strange buzzing noise, like something vibrating. He blinked fuzzily up at his ceiling. The buzzing was followed by chiming. He didn't own an alarm clock so it surely couldn't be that. The sound seemed to be coming from right beside his left ear. He turned to look and then nearly jumped out of bed.

There was a mobile phone sitting on his pillow. But Harry didn't have a mobile phone. And there was hardly the possibility that one of his friends had left one at his house, since he didn't have any friends either. He looked at it suspiciously. It had stopped vibrating now, but the lights on its shell were flashing at him insistently. Apparently he had a message.

Harry had never used a mobile phone before, but of course he'd seen them on television and in films. He knew enough to pick the little device up and flip it open. A window popped up on the small screen, which read, "One new text message." Unable to help looking around suspiciously, Harry closed the phone. He called out warily, "Malfoy? Is this some new prank?" But there was utter silence in his small house; the blond hadn't shown up uninvited this morning.

Opening the mobile again, he saw that his little notice had gone away. "Bugger," he muttered, then started pressing keys until he found a menu of sorts, full of icons. One looked like a pulsating envelope and when selected, it read "Messaging." He clicked another button and a new list appeared, which included the promising looking option, "Inbox (1 new)." After only a few more clicks, he found himself squinting at the little screen in front of him, reading his mysterious message.

Don't come today.
Will call later. DM

Harry tried to scroll down further, but that was the end of the message. "DM?" Who else could it be, but Draco Malfoy? But how could it possibly be Malfoy? Why would Malfoy have a mobile, when Harry himself did not? Why would he send Harry a mobile? And how? Had he got a new wand? "What the hell is this?!" Harry exclaimed, for the otherwise empty house's benefit.

He noticed that a new option had appeared at the bottom of the screen: "Reply." He clicked on it and struggled with the little keypad for several minutes to produce: Malfoy? Why the hell not? And how the hell did this phone end up in my bed? It took him no little effort to input all the words - especially the extra curse words - but he found the effort worth it, to feel as if he had expressed his ill humour to some degree.

He hit send and was shocked when, less than a minute later, the phone buzzed again, playing its strange song. He opened the new message.

Yes, Malfoy. Sick Malfoy. So don't bother me. And you should know better than I how things end up in your bed. Piss off and let me sleep.

Harry hesitated for a moment. Malfoy seemed serious, but... Struggling with the mobile again, but getting more used to its layout, Harry typed out another reply.

Are you really sick? Or just trying to stop me from coming?

Again, the reply came much quicker than Harry could have ever managed.

You better mark this down on the list. YES. REALLY SICK. PISS OFF.

It was a bit amazing, really, that Harry didn't get mad reading a message like that, but merely snickered. He'd made Malfoy mad. With a wily glint in his eye, he stared at the message on his screen, contemplating what to write back to really rile the other man. He still had a lot of payback coming for the previous day's god-awful hangover. But before he started to type anything, the phone buzzed in his hand. The alert on the screen was a new one. This one read, "Incoming call: 07902528010." Before stopping to think just where the phone had come from or who might be calling it, Harry hit the accept button and lifted the phone to his ear, saying unsurely, "Hello?"

A raspy voice barked out of the other end, "Really sick. Don't write me bothersome messages. I know you thought about it. I'm going to turn off my phone now."

Harry's eyes popped open in surprise, "W-w-wait! Malfoy?!" He listened for a moment for a reply. "Malfoy! You still there?"

He heard a miserable sniffle and then a familiar whining tone, "I'm wishing I weren't."

"What's with the phones?" Harry demanded. "Why did you-"

Malfoy cut him off as soon as he heard the first question, though, with an annoyed snort. "That can wait, Potter. I'm going to sleep. And I'm turning off my phone now."

"But-"

"Now."

And then there was a click and the call was lost. Harry looked at his new phone in bemusement. He had no doubt that Malfoy would have really shut off his mobile to avoid further messages. But he was still mystified as to why Malfoy would even have a mobile. Most wizards didn't even know how to use a regular telephone, let alone own something as complicated as a mobile.

Harry flopped back against his pillow and looked at the little phone in his hand. Opening it once again, he typed out another message, though he expected no reply: Why do you have a mobile? And why did you send me one? And how? He continued to scroll through the phone's messages, slowly acclimating himself to the little piece of muggle technology. He found a number of games on the phone and tried each one, consequently giving up on each one when he died after only a few seconds. He managed to find a record of calls on the phone. At the top was the number Malfoy had called from, presumably his own mobile. After a couple of failed attempts, he saved the number and named the contact, "Wanker." There were no other numbers in the record.

Bored, Harry typed another message, getting the hang of it. Are you really asleep?

Of course, he received no reply. He wrote again: You're no fun.

Still no response. Harry closed the phone and let it fall onto his duvet. He stared up at his ceiling again, lit with the bright morning sunshine. What was he going to do now? Ever since Malfoy had gone home the afternoon before, Harry had amused himself with imagining progressively worse versions of Malfoy Manor. By the time he'd gone to bed, he'd been expecting to go the next day to find it the English home of the Marquis de Sade.

And now he had nothing to do with his day. Except, of course, the usual cooking and cleaning and daily life. But now that didn't sound nearly as promising as a romp around the surely haunted familial home of the Malfoys, complete with torture rooms and daily sacrifices.

"Hmph."

Harry chewed on his lip, thinking clearly for the first time in a while. His hangover was completely gone now and as he remembered the misery of the day before, he also remembered something Malfoy had said. The blond had been looking thoughtful and almost a bit pensive, when he'd told Harry, "It feels, hmm, interesting, I suppose, to take care of someone the way I would like to have been taken care of, all those days I woke up completely miserable and helpless."

And Harry began to grin.




It was several hours later that Harry found himself standing out in the countryside of Wiltshire, staring up at a rusty iron gate set in a crumbling stone wall. This wasn't at all what he'd expected. He wondered if he hadn't apparated to the wrong place. Remembering what Malfoy had told him years ago, he had simply concentrated on the idea of being outside Malfoy Manor and left the rest of it up to magic. Could this really be the infamous Manor, though?

Through the barred gates, he could see nothing more than overgrown forestland and what had once perhaps been a gravelled drive. He eyed the gate, which had spikes protruding outward from it to keep away any unwelcome visitors. That alone seemed like Malfoy. That and the ornate "M" that was worked into the spikes and flourishes.

Reaching warily between the spikes, Harry brushed his fingers over the iron of the gate. If this really were Malfoy's home, he would half-expect the iron bars to crush his hand, the metal to scald off his skin, or the spikes to shoot out at him like arrows. But none of those things happened, and his fingers rested on the regular old iron, unscathed. He struggled to push the ancient-looking gate and it moved barely a centimetre, with a great grinding and screeching noise. Harry winced, then reached out with his other hand to push more firmly. This time the gate gave a bit more. Grinning at his minor success, Harry gave one more great heave and the gates wrenched apart just enough for him to slip through.

He stepped carefully between the metal, making sure he didn't catch his clothing on any of the prickly spikes. Then he turned back to the wilderness he'd seen through the gate and gasped. Now that he was inside, he was staring at a completely different scene. Either he had been transported somewhere else or there was a charm on the Manor like the one on Hogwarts, which made it appear a heap of stone ruins to outsiders. Stretched in front of him now were pristine grounds as far as the eye could see. He was standing on a neat lane, paved with perfectly uniform white stones. It ran straight forward between two rows of towering poplars, their dark grey-brown bark appearing even darker amongst their sunlit and gold-tinged green leaves. At the end of their stretch, looking almost preternaturally picturesque, was what could only be described as a palace, made of warm, golden stone.

This was even harder to believe as Malfoy Manor than the earlier crumbling gate and roughly wild woods. Harry pinched himself. Then he looked around warily. Perhaps it was some sort of trick - to put interlopers at ease, before setting the hell hounds on them. But he heard no approach of slavering beasts, no alarms ringing or banshees screaming. The only sound was the gentle rustling of leaves in the breeze and the occasional twitter of an unseen bird.

Harry pulled the mobile phone from his pocket and hurriedly typed out a message. Awake yet?

After less than a minute, the phone actually did vibrate in response. Harry quickly opened the message and read, Why won't you leave me in peace? He could almost hear Malfoy's whiny voice in his head. He hurriedly selected Malfoy's number (still under "Wanker," of course) and hit the "Send" button. He held the phone up to his ear and waited nervously as it rang.

The call connected and Malfoy's voice came through the phone in the exact tone Harry had imagined. "What, Potter?"

"What does your house look like, Malfoy?"

He heard a petulant sniffle and then Draco rattled off, "Oh, you know, a great black beastly building, with turrets, and vats for boiling oil on the roof, guarded by dragons-"

Harry cut him off, as he started walking down the pristine lane. "I'll use one of my questions, so what does it really look like?"

There was an unsure silence on the other end of the line, then Draco said, "Fine, then. Check one more for yourself. It's a great, massive place, all made of Cotswold stone and in the baroque fashion. There is a pediment on the front, a nearly ridiculous number of pillars, and towers at each corner, complete with belvederes. Shall I continue? And why do you want to know?"

"Because," Harry breathed disbelievingly, staring up at the building that Draco had just described, "I think I'm standing in front of it."

The phone call cut off with a sharp click and Harry continued to stare up at the manor, the now unnecessary phone still held to his ear. Within moments, a window was flung open on the second floor of the eastern wing and Harry spotted a bright blond head craning out of it. Malfoy's frustrated yell echoed across the grounds. "Potter! You complete bastard!"

Harry grinned. He heard Malfoy next yell to someone named Merry to let their guest in, though he noted the extremely sarcastic stress on the word "guest." The front door opened almost immediately and as Harry drew closer to the house, he saw that it was held open by a withered old house elf. Harry walked up the flight of broad, shallow steps that lead to the entrance, then stepped into the shadows of the great columns that flanked the front door. As he saw the house elf up close, he thought to himself that Merry must be the most inappropriate name imaginable for the miserable little creature, which looked as if it had never ever managed anything more upbeat than "mild annoyance," let alone something that might be described as "merry."

Out of long habit, which he had Hermione to thank for, he smiled in an embarrassed sort of way and thanked the house elf. It snorted its disgust and let the door fall shut so quickly that Harry had to rush inside or it would have struck him flat on the back. He was standing in a cavernous entry way, faced with two arching stairways on each side of the room, which led up to the first and second floors. The ground floor upon which he was standing was decorated with mind-boggling mix of inlaid woods and mosaics. The walls towered around him and were covered with paintings and portraits in ornate frames. Directly in front of him was a polished mahogany table, which held a marble bust surrounded by fresh flowers. His gaze turned to the hallways that led off from the room and hinted at countless more doors. It was all terribly formal, but not in the dark, evil sort of way that he had expected. He noticed that the grumpy house elf had disappeared from his side, but then heard Malfoy's rasping voice from above him, "Well, come on up, then."

He looked back up to the top of the staircases and saw Malfoy, wrapped in a heavy black housecoat, walking away. "O-oi, wait!" he called, and started up the staircase, pulling himself along with the carved wooden handrail and taking the finely carpeted stairs two at a time. He made it to the top, short of breath and just in time to see Malfoy disappearing down the hall. He dashed after the other man and followed him into an opulent bedroom.

Malfoy threw himself face-down onto a rumpled bed, which was surely wide enough to hold another four or five people without strain, and mumbled resentfully into the silk coverlet, "What're you doing here?" He had to sit up almost immediately, to reach for a box of tissues. Dabbing at his running nose, he took the opportunity to glare at Harry meaningfully.

Harry wasn't fazed in the slightest and was still grinning as he caught his breath. "I thought I'd come divert you from your miserable condition." He looked around the wide room, which had huge windows looking out onto the path he'd just arrived from. "From what you said yesterday, it sounded like you needed some entertaining."

Draco collapsed against the mound of pillows at the head of his bed and asked tiredly, "How did you find the place?"

Harry asked in a chipper tone, "Should I get out the list?"

But Draco shook his head emphatically and said haughtily, "Oh, no, you will not. You show up uninvited at my home, when I am at my worst - and probably due to sleeping on your bathroom floor - and dare to take off my questions? No, you will answer them and I will hear no complaints."

Harry rolled his eyes, but didn't mind answering, "I simply apparated here. Don't you have any sort of wards or anything?"

Draco frowned. "We did. But I know that the aurors, when they came, took down every hex, curse and protection that even smelt Dark to them. There might not be much left."

Looking appreciatively at the ornate furniture littering the room, and the finely painted murals on the ceiling - which did not depict torture or hellish beasts, but classical nudes gallivanting joyfully between the multiple chandeliers - Harry mentioned, "Your house is really, erm, pretty."

From beneath his arms, which were crossed over his face, came Malfoy's muffled voice, "What else did you expect?"

"I don't know," Harry said honestly. "Something a lot more severe. Like you said, 'a great black beastly building.'"

Draco snorted and rolled on his side, dragging some blankets over himself. "And here instead you've found the welcoming arms of the real Malfoy Manor." He looked over at Harry, who was still fixed in the middle of the room, looking about himself in wonder. "It was built for the sweetheart of one of the earlier Malfoys, if that helps explain anything. He was apparently madly in love with his young bride and built this little love shack for her, back at the turn of the 18th century."

Harry nodded in a considering manner. "That could explain some of it." He stepped over towards the bed, sitting gingerly on the edge of it, which still left a good ten feet between himself and Malfoy, thanks to its ridiculous size. Still looking around the room, he said a bit sadly, "Though I still expected some torture devices."

"You fool, Potter," Malfoy scoffed at him, "those are kept in the dungeons, of course. No one who's anyone keeps such things in the sitting rooms."

Draco noticed that the other man was still buzzing curiosity and eyeing the door. He waved him off with a hand, saying, "Obviously you want to explore. Go to it, then."

Harry spun around to look at him and there was a hint of an embarrassed flush riding his cheeks. "No, I'm just - I mean... Really? You don't mind?"

The blond sniffled and plucked up another tissue. "Sure. I'll still be wasting away here when you get back. And there's nothing much dangerous left, after the aurors did their work. You shouldn't be in danger of losing your head or anything. The only thing to watch out for is Merry, who..." The blond trailed into thoughtful silence for a moment, then suddenly bellowed out, "MERRY!"

Harry winced, still unable to reconcile the name with the skulking creature that appeared in the room with a tired-sounding pop. He looked at the house elf again, but it was glaring at Draco with unconcealed hatred. Draco said easily, "Merry, you will not get in my visitor's way nor harass him in any way or do anything to make him uncomfortable. In fact you will not be in the same room as him except on occasions when you are specifically called for by name. And you may not set anything up in advance that will cause him any sort of trouble. If he has any wishes, you will obey him as you would me, your proper master."

The house elf muttered something in a gravelly tone, to the effect of, "Nothing proper about him, no, nothing proper or right at all..." But he disappeared again without any argument - he had no choice, after all.

Malfoy grinned and explained, "He doesn't quite approve of the direction that I've taken the family in. You know, helping depose a Dark lord and all." As he had once been as a boy, Harry was again reminded suddenly and unexpectedly of Sirius as he stared at the slightly wild smile on Malfoy's flushed face. "Now," the blond ordered, "go get your curiosity out of you or you'll annoy me endlessly. And don't break anything. Unless it's spectacularly ugly, in which case you have my permission."

Chuckling, Harry got off the bed and walked to the door, glancing back just before he left the bedroom to see Malfoy curled up on the bed, hugging his box of tissues to his chest as if it were a security blanket. He shut the door behind him and looked around at the hallway he had just re-entered. The walls were painted a slightly greyish dark green, like leaves under a winter shadow, and were accented with incredible mouldings and paintings of natural scenes. He looked back toward the stairs he'd come up and then in the opposite direction. Decided to do things properly, he headed back down to the stairs and from there, to the ground floor. Staring around the grand hall again, he chose a corridor at random and began his self-guided tour.

Feeling as if he were in some other world, Harry wandered through the ridiculously beautiful rooms. It was like a film location, but Malfoy really did live here everyday. What could he have possibly been interested in Harry's plain little house for? Here there were whole wings dedicated to different themes, Harry soon realised. The corridor in which Draco's room had been had clearly had a forest theme, but he also found a sea-side theme, where all the rooms were painted in shades of hazy blues and the statuary and paintings all depicted oceanscapes and watery gods and nymphs. There was a autumnal drawing room and set of attached rooms, decked out in warm shades of rust, brown and gold, and the dark wooden mouldings ornate with leaves, fruits and autumn flowers. Another set of rooms seemed primed for winter, and were decorated in the palest shades of blue and grey, filled with crystal and dark wood, which stood out like barren trees in a snowy landscape. Off of these rooms, Harry found the piano room.

He had to blink when he first stepped into the room. Everything was white. The walls, the trimming, the sofas and settees and even the piano itself. When he closed the door behind himself, it was painted white as well and enclosed him in unreal space. The only colour came from the large windows which dominated one wall and looked out onto a brilliant blue river, couched between rolling green hills and crossed by a stunning covered bridge, made of the same golden stone as the house and complete with fanciful turrets and positively dripping with gothic detail. Against the shocking white of the room, the window frame and even the curtains, the scene looked as unreal as a painting. Harry had to step closer to the window and actually see the clarity of the water flowing turgidly in the river to guess that it was real and not a wizarding painting.

Letting out an impressed sigh, he turned back to the flat white room. He felt too dirty to even be standing on the perfectly white marble flooring. He stepped closer to the piano, though, remembering Draco's comment about practising. Harry had never seen someone play the piano. Well, not since his Aunt Petunia had forced Dudley to learn piano for a couple years when they'd been children, and that had been more like watching someone have a seizure in front of a piano than anything that could be called music. He pried the lid up carefully and curiously, revealing the black and white keys beneath its lacquered protection. He laid his fingers lightly on the keys, not quite daring to depress them. Then he carefully pressed one down, eliciting a high clear note that hung in the silent, white air of the room.

Jumping at the sound that he himself had made, Harry's eyes crinkled in amused curiosity. He ran his fingers along the keys decisively, causing a sudden cacophony of noise which echoed loudly in the long room. As the sound faded, Harry heard a different tone. It was accompanied by a tingling vibration in his pocket and he realised that it was the mobile phone again. He pulled it out and saw that it was Malfoy. He was still laughing as he answered the call with, "Are you calling me on the phone when we're inside the same bloody house?"

"Well, how else was I going to get your attention?" came Draco's snarky reply. "Are you mucking about with my piano?"

Harry laughed again, closing the piano's cover with a sharp snap as he did so. "I confess. It was me. Did you suspect Merry, perhaps?"

Draco's wry voice echoed in his ear, "Hardly. He knows he'd have to iron his fingers if he ever touched the piano for any purpose other than the most careful cleaning."

Harry snorted at this casual mention of brutality and said, "You two sure do get on smashingly, don't you?"

Draco's laugh poured through the phone's tinny speaker and he agreed, "I know, we're just horrid to each other. But we have no one else to bother. We're both stuck here, clinging to the Malfoy name." Harry had opened the door and stepped back out of the white room, and Draco heard the soft noise of the door opening and asked, "Where are you going now?"

"Damned if I know."

Harry wandered back out of the winter rooms and into the corridor, and heard Draco suggest, "If you haven't been, you should see the library. It's quite something."

Harry looked about blankly and asked, "How might one get there?"

"You're in the grey corridor, aren't you?"

"Ye-es," Harry agreed slowly, looking around at the grey walls.

And from there, Draco gave him explicit instructions to get to the other side of the first floor, through a couple of hallways and finally landed him before the great double doors which led to the library. Harry was nearly intimidated to open them, but holding the phone up with one hand, he reached out and pushed one of the heavy doors open with his other. On the other end of the line, Draco was rewarded by hearing the other man's shocked gasp and he grinned, imagining how the library must look to a visitor.

It was a huge, circular room, at least twenty-five metres across from what he could see of the walls. It could have doubled for a ballroom, if it weren't for all the books taking up the floor space. The walls, all the way up to the domed ceiling, were covered with shelving filled with books and spotted here and there with ladders. There were two separate "floors" - though they were more like landings as they were really nothing more than narrow ledges among the books, made secure by intricate iron railings and reached by delicate spiral staircases. The centre of the room was filled with concentric rings of book shelves, each slightly shorter than the previous, until the very centre shelves were only a bit taller than Harry himself was, while the tallest towered about five feet over his head. There was a narrow ring of windows, just between the top of the shelved walls and the dome, which let dusty light pour down into the room, and Harry could make out the shadowy forms of squashy armchairs and small reading tables here and there.

Harry was shocked out of his reverie by Draco's amused voice in his ear. "You still there, Potter?"

"I think so," came Harry's unintelligent reply. He shook his head and then said more reasonably, "No wonder you're such a cocky bastard. This library is even bigger than Hogwarts'."

Malfoy's bright laugh tinkled down the line, and he asked teasingly, "Are you finally admitting that my pride is entirely entitled? Because it is, of course."

"Yes, Malfoy," Harry agreed wryly, "you have every right to be the insufferable, cocky bastard that you are." He wandered among the shelves, looking at the titles emblazoned on the hide-covered books, and remembered to ask, "So what's with the mobiles?"

"Ahh, yes," Malfoy said in an avoiding sort of tone. "The mobiles. I have quite a few, actually. Not as many as I have books, of course."

"And why, Malfoy? Why do you have muggle mobiles? And why do they even work here? I thought magic interfered with muggle technology."

This last question, at least, Malfoy seemed happy to explain. He corrected Harry, "High levels of magic interfere with muggle technology. So, Hogwarts, for example. Electronics don't work in Hogwarts because there are a couple hundred wizards and witches living there and casting spells all the day long. There are also a shocking number of wards, protections, spells and charms on the castle itself, which would also interfere. This Manor, on the other hand, has had most its magical bits stripped away - thanks to most of the magical bits having been rather Dark magic - and there are only the three of us here, and of the three of us, Merry is the only one actively using magic. There is hardly enough magical interference to bungle up a couple of mobile phones."

"But wait..." Harry said thoughtfully, thinking of another logistic problem. "How do you get a signal here? I thought mobiles don't work out in the country, and you're ages from the nearest village even."

Draco chuckled wickedly. "Never underestimate the power of money, Potter."

Harry rolled his eyes, though Malfoy couldn't see it, of course. He backed out of the library, knowing that there was no way he could see everything it had to offer in one whole day, let alone in just an afternoon. Walking back down the corridor, he headed back to the stairs and asked once more, "So why the mobiles?"

Malfoy took a moment to answer, then suggested half-heartedly, "I like playing the games?"

Taking the stairs two at a time again, Harry arrived at the second floor landing. He walked back down the green hallway, and said into his mobile, mimicking Draco's tone, "I don't believe you?"

He opened the door to Malfoy's room and the blond craned his head up from his pillows, upon which he'd been reclined. They stared at each other a moment, each still holding his phone, until Harry slowly lowered his hand and snapped the folding phone shut. Draco looked unimpressed with Harry's dramatics and fell back against his pillows tiredly. Harry looked unimpressed with Draco's dramatics and said pointedly, "I thought you needed your sleep, not to gab on the phone all day?"

"Well," Draco quickly jibed, "now that you're back again, I won't need to, as you put it, 'gab on the phone.'"

Harry scoffed and walked over to fling himself upon the foot of Draco's bed. "You know," he said, poking at Draco's feet beneath the covers and causing the other man to squirm and scold him, "I have a theory. I think that this is all divine retribution."

Draco looked at him warily and asked, "What all is?"

"This!" Harry waved his hand emphatically at Draco and his box of tissues. "You! Being sick! After all, it's only fair that you should get to be miserable after you got me drunk and made me so miserable."

Rolling his eyes, Draco agreed, "Yes, Potter. As always, you are the source of all my ills and misfortunes. You utter centre of the universe, you."

Choosing to ignore this snide remark, Harry continued on with his original questions. "So the phones - and the television - and the football - all of this muggle fascination is... what exactly? A hobby? Guilt? Morbid curiosity?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?" The blond smiled cryptically, until Harry grabbed him by the toes and squeezed painfully. He yelped, "Jeez-us! You little wanker-"

"Ah-ha!" Harry interrupted him to crow, "'Jesus!' What wizard says 'Jesus!'"

"And who in their right mind says, 'Ah-ha?'" Draco pointed out.

Harry chose to ignore this. "What sort of wizard even knows who Jesus was?"

Malfoy looked at him blankly and asked, "What, is a 'jesus' a person?" Harry looked gobsmacked and Draco laughed, "Oh, Potter, you are gullible. Yes, even wizards know about Christianity - it has been going on for a couple thousand years now, after all. And it was the Christians who loved to set us up on nice flammable stacks of wood, you'll recall."

He was still grinning at he admitted, "You're probably right, though, that it's not an expletive that most wizards use. I'm willing to concede it to the fact that I watch too much television."

"But why?" Harry asked in a bewildered tone of voice. Draco stared into those curious green eyes and his face grew serious. He opened his mouth, as if wanting to say something, but nothing came out. He searched Harry's face for several long seconds, and then something in his eyes seemed to go out, and he said in a light, twisted tone, "You're right. It's just a hobby. Soon I'll be exchanging muggle stories with Arthur Weasley."

He picked up the phone on his duvet, and ran his fingers over it familiarly. He flipped it open and told Harry in a confiding tone, "I really am very good with the games, though."