Rating:
15
House:
Schnoogle
Ships:
Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Characters:
Draco Malfoy Ginny Weasley Harry Potter Hermione Granger
Genres:
Slash
Era:
Harry and Classmates Post-Hogwarts
Spoilers:
Philosopher's Stone Chamber of Secrets Prizoner of Azkaban Goblet of Fire Order of the Phoenix Half-Blood Prince
Stats:
Published: 10/22/2006
Updated: 01/26/2009
Words: 143,258
Chapters: 29
Hits: 81,858

Black Sheep

Jackie Stevens

Story Summary:
"Black sheep is a derogatory colloquialism in the English language meaning an outsider or one who is different in a way which others disapprove of. This can be someone who has been shunned by others, or one who has chosen to be an outsider, due to actions and aims that separate them from the rest of the people or 'flock.'"

Chapter 10 - In Which There Is Potion Brewing

Posted:
05/04/2007
Hits:
3,175
Author's Note:
Thanks to me betas!

Chapter Ten
In Which There Is Potion Brewing

F
OR A TIME, ALL SERIOUS conversation was forgotten. The two men lay sprawled across Malfoy's ridiculously large bed, with Harry across the foot of the bed and Draco reclining under the covers. Harry was trying to beat Malfoy's high score on a game on the mobile. It seemed deceptively simple - all he had to do was collect jewels without falling off the path and into the (fatal) lava pits - and yet he kept on killing his character with shocking alacrity. Draco lay sniffling and nibbling on the apple slices he'd made Merry bring him.

Harry watched the words 'Game Over' flash across the mobile's screen yet again and asked distractedly, "How do you pay for all these phones?"

Draco popped another slice of apple into his mouth and mumbled, "With my body." Harry's eyes shot up to stare at the blond. Draco rolled his own grey eyes and chided Harry, "With money, of course, you daft git. Cash. Quid. Bank notes." He eyed the remaining slice of apple on his plate and explained, "The phones are all top-ups. No sense in having pesky monthly charges which would require mailing addresses, credit cards, and all sorts of bothersome things. Whenever I get a new model, I top it up for a couple hundred pounds and that normally lasts me until I get bored and buy an even newer one." He nodded toward the phone in Harry's hand. "That was my most recent purchase, until this little gem," he beamed at the Sony Ericsson in his hand. "It should still have something over a hundred pounds on it, so you should be set for a while."

"So you're really just giving me a mobile phone? Crap." The last outburst had less to do with the gift and more to do with the fact that he had just got another 'Game Over.'

Draco shrugged and picked up the last apple slice. "Why not? What do I need with it, since I have newer, prettier and better phone?" He grinned, but Harry wasn't looking up at him. He sniffled and then chanced upon a brilliant idea, sparked to life by his still running nose. "Har-ry," he started cajolingly and Harry looked up at him in alarm. "Make me a Pepper-Up Potion?"

"Is that all?" Harry asked in a snappy-yet-relieved tone of voice. Then he blinked and said stupidly, "Wait - what?"

Clutching a tissue to his red nose, Draco continued in the same disturbing, wheedling tone of voice, "Make me a Pepper-Up Potion. Then I'll be better in a jiffy and we can go drink."

Harry's eyes nearly crossed at the thought of drinking with Malfoy again. He suggested, "How about I just give you some Muggle cold medicine and, hey, it's got alcohol in it, so then we don't have to drink."

Draco seriously considered the idea for a moment. "It's got alcohol in it, you say?" But he frowned then, and said, "But I'm sure it can't be as good as my alcohol. And besides, I assume that it would not instantly cure my cold like a proper potion?"

"Well, nooo..." Harry admitted unenthusiastically. "But if I make you a potion, it might be less of an instant cure and more of an instant death." He looked at the blond doubtfully and asked, "You do recall Potions class together, don't you?"

"A Pepper-Up Potion is a third-year task, Potter! Even you couldn't be that ba-" Draco broke off and looked back at Harry with the same doubtful expression he'd just been on the receiving end of. "Ah, but you really could be that bad, couldn't you?"

Harry had the grace to at least look a bit sheepish. Draco frowned mightily and thought for several long moments. Finally he declared, "Well, there's no help for it, then. I'll just have to supervise you. House elves are rubbish at potions and unless you want to Floo to Diagon Alley-" he watched as Harry's face turned white, "-or pop over to Hogwarts-" this time it turned green, "then we're stuck with botching it up together here." Harry's face was still pasty and, as Draco had suspected, there was no longer even a whisper of protest. "Great," he said in a satisfied tone, "that's settled then."




"No, no, no! It's supposed to be simmering! I don't think you've even got it to room temperature." Draco's cheerful tone cut over the quiet crackle and pop of Wizarding fire.

"You're getting far too much amusement out of this," Harry said darkly, as he flicked his wand at the blue flames and they brightened a bit.

Draco flopped back against his pile of pillows and said mildly, "Hey, you can hardly blame me for the fact that you haven't brewed a potion since you left school." He smirked, feeling as self-satisfied gloating now in his own bedroom as he ever had in the Hogwarts' potion dungeon. He had instructed Merry to set up a table and all the necessary potions ingredients right here in his room, so that he didn't have to bother getting out of bed in order to harass Harry. And he'd had the house-elf get the old copy of his third year potions textbook from the library, since Harry had said he 'wasn't quite sure he remembered the exact measurements' - which was obviously his way of saying that he had no flipping clue how to make a Pepper-Up Potion any more, other than the fact it might very well include pepper.

So far the brewing had commenced without major disaster. That hadn't stopped Draco from nit-picking every little thing Harry did, of course. The idiot really was hopeless at potions - especially now, six years out of practice.

Still, Draco had been keeping enough of an eye on things that he was quite confident that the steaming red syrup Harry finally handed him would not kill him and so he drank it down without any real hesitation. Almost immediately, his eyes ground shut, tearing up from the pepper, as he felt the half-remembered rush of the potion. It was as if his sinuses were being blasted clean with scalding steam. His throat burnt, but in a good way, like after taking the first, impatient swig of really good coffee, and the potion's heat chased his own fever away.

Harry watched in curious amusement as steam poured out through Malfoy's silky blond hair and his usual calm, pale face scrunched up into a red, tear-streaked mess. After several moments, Draco's eyes popped up, still filled with tears but sparkling with good humour. "Woah!" he gasped, "I'd nearly forgotten..." He scrubbed at his face with the sleeves of his pyjama top and then grinned cheekily at Harry. "Brilliant, Potter. Just brilliant. And now that I feel all better, we can drink until we feel all worse again!"

"Err..." Harry's eyebrows furrowed low over his eyes. "You do remember our conversation of the other night? In the bathroom?"

Draco's face was still full of open amusement and he asked, "You mean the one about me being an alcoholic?"

"Well, er, yes." Harry looked a bit alarmed again. "That's the one." He gnawed on the inside of his lip for a moment then said, "Don't you think it might-"

"Look," Draco said quickly, cutting him off. "What's the problem with me drinking at home, safely and securely? Like I've said, I'm not hurting anyone else. I'm just trying to have a good time."

Harry still felt uncomfortable about the idea, but only said, "Well, I'm not drinking any more alcohol with you."

"Fine, fine," Draco said easily, as he pushed himself out of his wide bed. He was still wearing his pyjamas, but picked up his housecoat, earlier abandoned on an empty chaise, and pulled it back on. "You," he said pointedly, "may have whatever you'd like to drink." And he walked out of the room, a secret little smile on his face.

Harry quickly hurried after him and asked, "Where...?"

"'Where are we going?'" Draco supplied for him, glancing back over his shoulder. "To my favourite drawing room."

Harry muttered something that sounded like, "Of course you would have more than one drawing room." But he followed Draco's labyrinthine path through the huge manor house, until they arrived in a set of rooms he hadn't yet seen.

The drawing room was, like most of the house, surprisingly warm and cosy. One wall was covered in yet more bookshelves, and the adjacent wall held a great fireplace, in which a steady fire was burning merrily. There was a sofa and a settee arranged before the fire, and two armchairs around them. In the far corner was a small pianoforte, which looked like a toy when compared to the grand piano in the white room and seemed to be there for mostly decorative purposes.

Harry asked a bit cheekily, "Where's your television, then?"

"In the television room, of course," Draco said airily. Then he bellowed for Merry again, causing Harry to jump in surprise. The house elf appeared almost immediately and looked at Malfoy with wary and silent expectation.

Draco ordered quickly, "We'll be taking our dinner in winter dining room. We shall have beef bourguignon and the appropriate accoutrements, I think. It will be served at," he consulted the clock on the mantle, "seven o'clock."

And then he waved the house elf off with a dismissive hand. The small creature disappeared without a single nod. Harry glanced at the clock curiously and asked, "At seven? That's less than a half-hour from now. Much less. Can he really prepare a dinner that quickly?"

"Oh, of course," Draco said, throwing himself down on the settee. He warned Harry, "Never underestimate a house elf's magic. It's something altogether different from a wizard's, but no less powerful." Then he grinned and said, "How else do you think he could keep this whole estate running on his own?"

Harry couldn't argue with that, and so he took his own seat on the edge of the sofa. He was still looking around the room curiously. The walls were a very dark colour, which could have been brown or red or even green - they were too dim in the low firelight to tell. And there was something curious about the books on the wall. He stared at them blankly for a moment before he realised that they had no titles. He squinted at them to be sure, but there were no markings on the spines. Draco noticed his attention and raised an eyebrow. "They're magic, of course," he said. "They are connected to the library. If you ask for any subject, the books pertaining to it in the library will be duplicated in these books. It can save you a lot of trips. I used to do a lot of school work in this drawing room, over the holidays."

Harry stood up again and walked closer to the wall of blank books to peer at them curiously. He pulled one of the many out and saw that there was no writing on its face either. Letting it fall open and flipping through pages confirmed that the whole thing was empty. He asked, "How does it work?"

"Magic," Draco said flatly. "A searching spell first, of course, to find the correct books. That's combined with a complex set of linking spells, copying charms and the like. It doesn't actually transport the books for the library, only allows you to read them, temporarily, within the blank models, like you are now holding."

"Is there any way that someone else can tell what books you have copied in here? If they were in the library at the time, for example."

Draco grinned. It was obvious Harry was thinking of the same sorts of things that had occurred to him as a child - that he could read all of his father's extensive collection without anyone being the wiser. "From all I know, there would be no way for them to tell, no obvious signs, without them performing quite extensive spellwork themselves."

He watched Harry standing there with an empty book in his hands and said in an odd voice, "The spell was 'revolvo,' followed by the topic you are interested in."

Harry glanced toward him questioningly and then tried it for himself, "Revolvo Dark magic." There was a strange sort of light show, as glinting titles were suddenly traced onto the spines of the formerly empty books filling the shelves. But when the lights all died, Harry was surprised to realise how few books had appeared. More than two thirds of the shelves still held blank titles. Draco's voice came from behind him, dry and knowing, "Most the really good books on Dark magic were confiscated by the Ministry, of course. These are all the rather mundane ones that they left, which you could just as easily buy at Flourish and Blotts."

Harry nodded slowly and looked down at the book in his own hands. It now read, "A Shadowed Isle: The History of the Dark Arts in Britain." Quite mundane, indeed. He replaced it on the shelf and went back to his seat on the sofa. He noticed Draco turning to the small, spindly table that was placed between their two seats. On it was an elaborate silver decanter set. In the centre was an aged looking silver bottle, covered with scrolling baroque designs. The four crystal goblets that surrounded it looked quite plain in comparison. Draco poured himself a measure of something that looked suspiciously like red wine and then tipped the bottle over another glass, but this time the liquid came out a familiar cloudy orange.

Harry picked up the glass and sniffed it, before spluttering, "P-pumpkin juice?! But how? Or why?" He looked again between his own glass and Draco's, which were quite clearly different, despite having come from the same bottle.

Draco caressed the bottle in his hand fondly, smiling down at it like a doting parent. "This little darling," he told Harry, "is one of my most prised possessions. It will pour any drink that the drinker desires. It never runs empty and there's nothing it can't make. It is the best of magic."

He looked at Harry a bit scornfully. "I wouldn't have guessed pumpkin juice for you, though. You actually like drinking the stuff that much?"

Harry was still goggling at the glass in his hand and said in a dazed voice, "I guess so. I mean, it's just very nostalgic. I guess I must have somehow thought of it, being back in a magical place again..." He lifted the glass to his lips cautiously and took a small sip, then a much larger one. He sighed happily. It was just as he remembered, just as it had been at all those meals in the Great Hall, all those Halloween Feasts and Christmas Dinners.

Draco watched him drink with a satisfied glint in his eyes. He took a long draught from his own glass, and was rewarded with the fine aroma of a rather full-bodied merlot. It ought to go well with dinner.

He glanced at the clock and suggested, "Why don't we move to the dining room?"

Harry was suddenly stuck by the incongruity of Draco Malfoy - the Wizarding world's most infamous black sheep; the elegant, smooth, Slytherin king of their Hogwarts day; the former Death Eater turned traitor - standing in a firelit drawing room, wearing a housecoat and clutching a glass of wine and a silver decanter, inviting him to dine. He sniggered but followed Draco's lead into the adjoining dining room, though he wouldn't explain why he was laughing, despite Malfoy's curiosity.

They had come into a small, intimate dining room. It held a rectangular dinner table, sized to seat eight, but only two places were set that evening. Harry sat himself down on one side, placing his goblet of pumpkin juice next to the fine setting of engraved silver and bone china. Draco sat down opposite him and draped his napkin in his lap, leading Harry to mimic him and do the same.

Despite Merry's obvious reservations towards his master, it was clear that he still couldn't entirely deny his inclination to serve, because only moments after they sat themselves at the table, the first course - a bowl of steaming onion soup and crunchy crusts of bread - appeared in front of both men. Harry sighed as he thought of his own usually empty pantry and then picked up the soup spoon on his right. Scooping up a spoonful of the perfectly clear soup, he blew on it cautiously and said, "So this is how you live every day?"

Draco grinned and picked up his own soup spoon. "More or less."

Harry shook his head disbelievingly and then swallowed down his delicate soup. It was still quite hot but delicious. He glanced around the room again, noticing the fresh flower arrangement at the end opposite to the door they had entered by and the candelabra on the walls. They lived in completely different worlds. It wasn't just that Malfoy's world was magical - Malfoy's life was unlike anything Harry had ever experienced, at Hogwarts, in the Wizarding world, or anywhere. No wonder he'd always heard Malfoy complaining about Hogwarts' living standards when they'd both been boys.

The two men finished their soup in near silence and as soon as they had set down their spoons, their bowls disappeared from in front of them, only to be immediately followed by the main course. Now the china plate in front of Harry was nearly overflowing with food. There was a sea of beef bourguignon, with a garnish of fried mushrooms, pearl onions and bacon. This was hedged in by a great mound of fluffy, buttery mashed potatoes and a pile of crisp-looking green beans.

Draco smirked a bit, to see Harry staring so openly at the food in front of him. Then he picked up his own fork and began to eat. Harry soon followed suite and with such enthusiasm that his plate was empty again within five minutes. He slouched against his high-backed chair and groaned, rubbing his stomach ruefully. He admitted to Draco, "I don't think I've ate that well in years. It's a wonder that you don't weigh twenty stone."

Draco chuckled, still picking away at his meal, since he had none of Harry's deprived hunger. He sipped at his wine and gestured for Harry to finish his own glass of pumpkin juice, then he filled his guest's glass again with the charmed decanter. Still leaning back in his chair with a satiated smile, Harry sipped his pumpkin juice and watched Draco sedately finish his meal. He asked curiously, "Do you often have guests here?"

Plucking his napkin from his lap, Draco dabbed at his mouth before answering, "No, never." He tossed his napkin on the table and then said to the room at large - Harry assumed that Merry must be able to hear everything - "We'll take dessert in the drawing room." He picked up his goblet again and they retired back to the next room. The fire was still glowing in the dim room, but Harry did not first notice what Draco did: a new tray had appeared, on top of the small piano. Draco went and sat at the piano bench, setting his glass on top of the instrument's glossy top, next to the tray of fruit and cheese and biscuits.

Harry leaned against the piano, taking another sip from his pumpkin juice. He felt very oddly relaxed, for some reason. He eyed the dessert plate, but knew he couldn't possibly eat anything more just yet. He was still bursting full from dinner and so to pass the time, he suggested, "Play something."

Draco looked at the small piano in front of him almost in surprise. "On this thing?" he asked incredulously. He lifted the cover and let his right hand play several notes experimentally. Harry gave a curious little hum and so he proceeded to play several chords, still feeling out the unfamiliar piano. He had once used it, of course, when he had been a boy. It had been his mother's, in fact - she'd been the one who had forced him to learn. But he'd had his grand piano for so long that he was quite unused to the much smaller keyboard. He let his hands trip unconsciously across the keys as he tried to think of something fitting to play.

Harry watched in a mild sort of awe as the blond sat at the piano bench, his left hand picking out a tune - mindlessly, or so it seemed - as he reached for his wine glass with his right. After another deep draught of wine, he stopped his ambling fingers and sat up straight, stretching the fingers of both his hands above the keys for a moment, before resting just his finger tips on the ivory with a lightness and grace that must only come with practice. His bony wrists described sharp angles in the flickering light and then his right hand lifted briefly and came down again, this time with a chiming note. His fingers danced gracefully over the keys in slow, almost painful seduction, caressing the keys and drawing out their poignant tones. It was quite unlike anything Harry had ever seen before.

The music filled the small room with its haunting strains. Harry felt it wrap around him and at the same time echo through him. He'd never heard live music performed before. Not music like this at any rate. He focussed upon Malfoy again, whose eyes had nearly fallen shut as he leaned into the music. His hands skipped over the keys with an ease that seemed almost unnatural to Harry, his touch seeming impossibly light on the keys, yet bringing forth such powerful and complex sounds that it was hard to believe they were all coming from the pressure of his thin fingers and a set of ivory keys. Watching the white fingers dance across the keyboard, Harry was reminded of seeing those same fingers, next to his own, reaching out for a Golden Snitch.

The memory shook him for some reason and, picking up his goblet, he moved back to the sofa and sat down again. The music suddenly broke off and he spun around, surprised to find the room kept spinning for a moment longer than he did. Draco had turned to look at him. "Don't stop," he blurted out awkwardly and Malfoy looked at him questioningly, but turned back to the piano, resuming his song as if there had been no interruption. But the song had shifted to a happier tone.

Harry continued to drink deeply of his pumpkin juice, as he sat in his cocoon of music. Remembering playing Quidditch with Malfoy, so much more than anything else they had talked about in the last several days, made Harry suddenly aware that this was Malfoy whom he was dining with, that this was Lucius Malfoy's house that he was sitting in right now. Perhaps Lucius had sat in this very chair, plotting how to give Tom Riddle's diary to Ginny, or making plans to invade the Department of Mysteries.

And the strangest thing of all was that it didn't make him want to immediately crawl out of his skin. Despite all that, he was quite comfortable and almost, well, happy, sitting there and drinking pumpkin juice while listening to Draco Malfoy play piano, with the warm glow of good food still in his stomach and a soft sofa beneath him.

The piano music had faded again, silence retaking the room. Harry waited in stillness, hoping that Draco would continue to play. His wish was granted with a sudden furious rush of music. Harry turned quickly in his seat, to see Draco's fingers flying across the keyboard faster than he would have thought possible. He'd been able to guess that Draco must be good at piano, but surely this was too much? Normal people mustn't be able to play like this, or so Harry tried to reassure himself, since he couldn't even pick out middle C on a keyboard. Still half turned around on the sofa, Harry rested his chin on the its squashy back and watched the other man play, nearly hypnotised. Malfoy's hands were moving so quickly that they actually seemed to blur. As he watched, Harry began to realise the complete and absolute knowledge such playing must require - Malfoy's hands flew over the keys faster than thought; such movement had to be so well trained that it became instinctual.

When at last those impossible hands came to a stop again, Harry found that he'd been holding his breath and let it out in a whoosh. To mask his reaction, he took a huge swig from his glass of pumpkin juice and then spluttered, choking on the juice and letting it dribble down his chin. Draco chose this moment to turn around and look at Harry with an indescribable expression on his face. "Potter..." he started, in a serious tone of voice, "there's something I've been meaning to tell you..."

Harry blinked owlishly, once again finding his body's reaction a bit odd. After several long seconds of silence, he asked, "What is it?"

"Well, you see..." Draco looked away for a moment. "I've not been entirely honest with you." His grey eyes turned back and bore into Harry's, as he said earnestly, "What I mean to say is... that's not pumpkin juice you're drinking."

Harry blinked again. His brain seemed a bit fuzzy and Malfoy's words weren't making any sense to him. "What?"

Now Draco grinned. "You see, that decanter - well, I told you it could make any drink. What I didn't tell you is that everything it makes is alcoholic. Even if you just wanted water, it would come out alcoholic. Quite alcoholic. Whether you taste it or not." Harry's dumb expression was beginning to dawn with realisation and Draco summed himself up cheerily, "So you are actually a bit trashed right now, I'd say."

Harry looked suspiciously at the drink in his hand and protested, "But I - but that's..." He managed to glare at Malfoy quite hatefully and said, "I don't think that's very gentlemanly."

This comment sent Draco into peals of laughter and, as he wiped at his eyes, he repeated, "'Gentlemanly'?! Oh, dear, Potter, call the peers! Better yet, challenge me to a duel, why don't you, for impugning your honour with my 'ungentlemanly' conduct!" He burst into laughter again and now Harry was beginning to recognise that Draco was a couple of sheets to the wind as well. He flopped back onto his sofa sulkily, the remaining not-pumpkin juice sloshing about in his glass.

He ought to apparate back home that moment, he thought. But he didn't just yet. He heard Draco get up from the piano bench and come towards the fire, taking his own seat again on the settee. He shoved the dessert tray, which he had apparently picked up from the piano top, in front of Harry's flushed face. "Cheese?" he offered blandly.

Harry continued to pout for a moment and Draco began to move the tray away, so Harry gave up on his sulk and shot one hand out to grab a wedge of brie from the plate. Draco laughed again and took a piece of stilton and some grapes for himself. The silence in the room seemed heavy, after the rich tapestry of music that Harry had been wrapped up in before. He nibbled on his brie.

"So..." Malfoy's voice came from behind him and Harry resolutely remained facing the other direction. He heard the rustling sounds of movement and guessed that Malfoy had also laid down on his settee.

"You don't drink," Draco mused, "excepting of course the times I trick you into it." Harry could hear the smile in the other man's voice and sneered at the opposite wall, though of course Draco couldn't see it.

"You don't take part in Wizarding life," he continued, knowing from the Daily Prophet that Harry Potter was considered, on the whole, to be missing. "Your best friend is a vegetable and so you no longer make mooneyes at his sister."

Harry couldn't help snorting derisively at Draco's blunt summation of the situation. "You don't," the quiet voice continued, "socialise with anyone in your village. And, in fact," he concluded, "your most frequent visitor appears to be your former schoolboy rival."

Draco twisted his head about to gaze at the back of Harry's dark head. He asked, "Does that about sum it up?"

Harry frowned but there wasn't much to deny. He looked at the not-pumpkin juice in his hand. Then Draco asked, "So what happened between you and Granger? Did she resent what happened to the great ginger lout?"

Sucking in a sudden gasp, Harry felt his chest clench painfully. "I assume," he said in a strangled voice, "that this is one of your questions?"

"Well," Draco reasoned, "although you did impose yourself uninvited, you did also make me the potion to cure my cold, so - yes, I'd say we're even and the game is back on."

Harry sighed. "Then I have no choice, do I?" He took a sip of his drink, which still tasted like perfectly innocent pumpkin juice. "Hermione..." He paused and swallowed, surprised at the feeling of those syllables rolling off his tongue. Another name that he hadn't spoken in years. "It happened before Ron and I went for the second to last horcrux. That's why the two of us went alone for the snake, and why we planned so poorly. And perhaps that's why what happened to Ron did happen. Maybe if Hermione had still been around, he would still be okay."

He realised he was saying unnecessary things and started again, "When we went to get Hufflepuff's cup, just before the snake, everything went pear shaped. We had planned it all and everything seemed fine at first. But then we got split up, Ron and I became separated from Hermione. We had decided beforehand that if anything happened, if we got lost or attacked, we would all apparate away, back to a set place. Ron and I apparated back, but Hermione didn't come. We waited - for what seemed like forever. But really I guess it couldn't have been much more than a half hour. Finally Ron couldn't stand waiting anymore and apparated again, back to where we'd been searching for the cup. I had no choice but to follow him - what if I lost them both?

"Together we explored the ruins where we had lost Hermione. After a couple of hours, we finally found her in a hidden room. Of course she had found it much quicker than us, being so clever. But by the time we got there..." Harry wet his lips and made himself continue. "We never knew what exactly happened to her. She was lying on the floor, unconscious, and the cup nearby. We didn't yet know if anything was wrong, but we wrapped up the cup and, carrying Hermione between us, apparated away again."

The fire crackled and hissed quietly. "When she did finally wake up, the next day, she had no memory of what had happened to her in the ruins. But she had no memory of anything else, either. She didn't remember who either of us were, or who she herself was. She didn't remember about our search for the Horcruxes, about Voldemort, or even Hogwarts." He still remembered her lonely face, left alone at their safe house. He said guiltily, "We didn't know what to do with her. We couldn't send her back to her parents like that. And Hogwarts, as you know, was already unsafe for anyone. St Mungo's had been closed for months. We didn't know what else to do, so we just kept her with us. We tried to explain what we were about, and she was still able to perform magic, but... but I don't think she ever really believed or understood any of it."

Harry said nothing for several seconds and so Draco asked mildly, "What happened to her after the war, then? After you killed Voldemort?"

The bare words hung in the air between them and Harry repeated ruefully, "After I killed Voldemort... that's right, but it was actually before I killed Voldemort. I knew, going after him, what would happen. If I won, then Hogwarts would be safe again for them both. If I lost, then it wouldn't matter where they were, they would surely die. And so I sent them to Hogwarts, before I left to hunt Voldemort. McGonagall got Ron back to his family; I know that much from Ginny. I don't really know what she did for Hermione."

Draco sipped his wine, his mind ticking away smoothly, oiled by alcohol. He remembered reading something in the Daily Prophet about Granger, a couple of years ago - he was quite sure of it. He simply hadn't cared at the time. He said suddenly, "Have you ever been to Glastonbury, Potter?"

"What?" Harry asked in surprise. "Well, no - no, I haven't."

"That settles it then."

"Settles what?" Harry asked, entirely bewildered.

Draco sat up and set the tray of cheeses on the settee's cushioned seat. He stood up and moved to stand over Harry, explaining, "We're going to Glastonbury tomorrow. I hear they have this massive hill, with a tower on top. We'll climb it, and very likely realise how out of form we both are." He forced Harry up from the sofa and into a standing position. Pulling a handkerchief from the pocket of his dressing robe, he quickly piled a small mound of the dessert offerings onto the kerchief and tied the corners with a knot, forming a small bag. This he shoved in Harry's hand, as he said, "You apparate off home. Enjoy your dessert and get some sleep, because I will have no mercy for you tomorrow if you are hung over or otherwise try to dampen my amusement."

Harry's eyes were wide and confused. He asked suspiciously, "Are you trying to get rid of me?"

"Not at all," Draco said breezily, "I'm just ensuring that you will be up to our adventure tomorrow. I will be at your place at eleven. Be ready. Oh, and we'll take your car." He waved his hands at Harry and repeated, "Now, off with you!"

Harry shook his head disbelievingly, but pulled out his wand and apparated away obligingly. As soon as he was gone, Draco bellowed out for Merry, "Where are you, you miserable little spy? I'm going to need you to post a letter!"



OOPS, I DID IT AGAIN.

Those of you who know me from White Horses know how I love wasting time on photo manips and websites. Well, I've gone and made a new website for the fics, since I lost the password to the old one and can't update it any longer! New website --> HERE!

Pics of random hot blonde and brunette male models stuck together as Harry and Draco: here and here and here and here and, thank god, here. All right. I'm done now.