Black Sheep

"I told her," Hermione explained in a hushed voice as they hurried down the hall, "that I would just go get some tea and biscuits from the kitchens. If I'm gone too long, I'm afraid she might make a run for it. She's acting awfully..." She seemed to search for words for a moment, then gave up and simply said, "Well, you'll see."

Harry didn't say anything; he was carefully trying not to jostle the teapot full of scalding-hot liquid that was balanced on the tea tray in his hands. Draco was brandishing a roll of McVittie's like a club, waving them about in angry frustration. "She won't be running anywhere," he growled. He was getting more than tired of the interruptions that kept popping up between him and the newly fascinating distraction of Harry's body.

Hermione looked at him knowingly and he paused in his brandishing of the biscuits. She'd done that before, he recalled. But then she hurried ahead and opened the door to her rooms. They followed close behind her and as soon as the two men appeared, a wild-looking Ginny shot up from her seat on Hermione's chaise.

"Wha - wha -" she stuttered for a minute, her darting eyes alighting briefly on the men before flying back to Hermione. "You brought Harry?"

The man in question winced at the intimate way that she breathed his name. Draco muttered, loud enough for everyone in the room to hear, "You'll probably want to not leave a clear path to the door."

Hermione had to agree, though she managed to not do so aloud, and she relieved Harry of the tea set without a word. She carried the tray over to the low coffee table and set it down with the light tinkling of porcelain cups and saucers, then took a seat opposite to Ginny. Draco took a seat on a bench along the wall, just next to the door, and pulled his knees up to his chest; he was still clutching the biscuits protectively. Harry settled into what seemed to be his place as default door-guard with a sigh.

Hermione poured out cups of tea, placing one in front of Ginny and sending two floating gently to the men. Finally she took her own cup, feeling the heat soak through the thin porcelain, and sighed happily. She took her first sip and couldn't help murmuring a soft, "Lovely." No matter how you did it, a cup of conjured tea never managed to taste as good as the real thing - in her mind, at least.

Draco tore open the plastic wrapping on his biscuits. He first stuck two in his mouth, then held the roll out to Harry. The man took one with a tolerating look. Draco took one more chocolate-covered biscuit from the package and tossed the sweet across the room in Hermione's direction, calling out belatedly, "Oi, Granger."

She had already flicked her wand, though, and the biscuit smoothly came to land on her saucer. Draco held the package to his chest and twisted the plastic wrapper impatiently, chewing on his biscuits. He looked challengingly at the red-haired woman who was, admittedly, staring at him in open-mouthed shock. She was still on her feet, and obviously wanted to disapparate in that instant - if the white-knuckled grip on her wand were any clue - but thanks to Hogwarts' wards, she dropped, discouraged, back onto the chaise.

Harry said out of the corner of his mouth, "You do realise that you're acting like a three-year-old malcontent, right?"

"You're damned right I am," Draco said, angrily eating another biscuit. Then he winked at Harry, as if he could hear the second part of the man's thought: that he found it inexplicably and frustratingly bewitching. Draco hated the meddling witch who had mucked with his life; it was protective and sort of... adorable. Harry wanted to jump the blond then and there.

Across the room, Hermione cleared her throat loudly. Perhaps she'd noticed the rising tensions in the corner; at any rate, she addressed Ginny for the first time since their rather dramatic entrance. She felt infinitely more in control of the situation now that she had a hot cup of tea in her hand.

"Now, Ginny, I think it's time we all had an honest talk." As she spoke to her friend, her voice was not unkind, but there was a hint of steel underlying it. Ginny nodded without a word, chewing her lower lip nervously. Her eyes darted to the corner where Harry and Draco waited, but she dragged them back to her lap before they made contact.

"I think," Hermione said thoughtfully, "you should start by explaining why you acted like you were helping me look for Harry all these years, when you actually knew exactly where he was." For the first time, it was apparent - from that measured, careful voice - that Hermione was actually furious about this blatant betrayal of her trust.

"I - I..." Ginny bit her lip again. She'd really painted herself into a corner now. "It wasn't just an act! I didn't know at first... I found him about six months after we started looking, when he first bought the place in Godric's Hollow." She talked as if Harry weren't standing right there in the room. "I didn't know where he was before then."

"And why," Hermione asked icily, "did you not tell me then?"

Ginny floundered wordlessly for several moments, then managed to say in a small voice, "I was trying to - to protect him."

Harry snorted derisively, but still didn't enter the conversation. He took the biscuit that Draco offered him and nibbled at it absently. He noticed that the roll was already half gone. How many of the things had Draco eaten?

Ginny didn't acknowledge Harry's interruption, but continued trying to make her excuses. "He was so broken - he wasn't ready to meet anyone. He was miserable; how could he not be? He had got you obliviated--"

"Which had already been fixed!" Hermione hissed angrily. "Why didn't you tell him that and relieve his suffering?!"

Ginny seemed taken aback. "Well - but - then there was Ron, too. He couldn't just get over letting his best friend get Kissed!"

No, Harry thought, he couldn't just get over it. And it had taken years to begin to let it slip into the past, but it had. His present was full and it had pushed his past emotional baggage away, back into some dark corner of his mind. He had escaped from the homey prison Ginny and he himself had made. He listened as the woman he'd once thought he loved continued desperately.

"He couldn't just be fine after what he did. Our family will never be fine again."

Hermione's eyes narrowed slightly. "Was this some sort of punishment, Ginny?"

"No, no, nothing like-" Ginny was practically hysterical. She looked up into the angry face of her best friend and spoke almost pleadingly. "Don't you understand? I was keeping him safe. He was safe with me. I - I always loved him. I was the only one who could take care of him! I couldn't let him out there without me; I couldn't let him face the world alone. Look what's happened now! The Prophet dragging up old scandals and making up new trash, like that story that he's having an affair with some astronomy professor!"

This time it was Hermione who snorted. Draco mumbled around a mouthful of biscuits, "She only wishes."

Hermione tapped her teacup with her wand, warming it slightly, as she explained, "Well, you don't need to worry about the truth of that rumour, at least." She nodded in Harry's direction, and Draco looked up at the man next to him. "You two are together, aren't you?"

"What!" Harry exclaimed, speaking up for the first time. "No, we're not!"

Hermione shook her head dismissively, guessing at his assumption. "No, no, not you and Marianthi. You and Malfoy."

"What!" Harry's voice seemed to jump another octave. "No, we're - oh, well, yes, I suppose we are." Draco grinned up at him, his cheeks bulging with biscuits and Harry half wanted to punch that ridiculous smile off his face - but his other half wanted to wipe that stupid smirk off his face through much more enjoyable methods. Harry noted that the package of biscuits was now completely empty. He glanced back at Hermione. "But I thought you - I mean, you acted like..."

Hermione grimaced. "You think I wanted to admit that I'd walked in on the two of you snogging and talk about what that meant? I thought I would wait for you to come to me when you were ready to talk about it." She turned back to Ginny, who looked like she was on the verge of passing out. "But I thought it was relevant to this conversation. So, you see, Ginny, Harry's been doing just fine without needing you to take care of him."

Draco swallowed the last of his cookies and interrupted gloomily, "Hey, I was just looking to get off with someone. I never promised to take care of the blighter, through sickness or health or any of that." But he was grinning, as he caught Harry's eye. "Guess I'm just shackled then."

Harry kept his silence as he leaned on the door. He couldn't imagine what he could possibly contribute to this bizarre conversation. Somehow they'd moved in the last hour from his hiding his disturbing feelings, to drunkenly confessing them, to wildly snogging with Draco, to being dragged away by an ignorance-feigning Hermione, then back to snogging, and on to Ginny's disturbance. Now Hermione and Draco were bantering about their relationship, if you could call a couple of snogs and less than a day a 'relationship.'

Ginny parted her bloodless lips and cut in with a low, shaking voice, "You... you bastard." Both of the men glanced up, not knowing who she was addressing. From the way her glare jumped from Draco to Harry and back again, it seemed as if she wasn't sure either. "How could you..." she hissed, looking more than a little unhinged after Hermione's revelation - even more than before that is.

"What?" Draco turned on her and all the humour in his voice had evaporated. "Be happy?" Moments ago, he'd looked childish, petulantly eating his biscuits, but now he looked like what he truly was: an arrogant, ruthless, former Death Eater. "You wouldn't want that, would you? You wanted him to be as miserable as you. To need you as much as you needed him. To want you as much as you wanted him" Each sentence made her flinch like a physical blow. Draco went for the kill, half-rising from his seat and snarling, "It just kills you, doesn't it, to see him happy without you. And that's exactly why he's happy, you know. Because you're not a part of his life-"

Ginny pulled her wand furiously and shrieked, "Shut up! Just shut up!" She brandished her wand at the magicless man and began to curse him, "Caput frend--!"

"Expelliarmus!"

"Petrificus totalus!"

Before she could even finish the curse that would have struck Draco down with a blinding pain, Harry had disarmed her and Hermione then petrified her before her furious expression could melt into shock.

Hermione picked up the wand that had gone flying from Ginny's now-frozen fingers. She placed it on the table next to the tea set and, falling back into her chair, looked up at the frozen witch. The spell she had attempted wasn't strictly black magic, but it was so ambiguously close to it that a right-minded witch or wizard would never use it, especially over a verbal attack. Shaking her head in a defeated manner, she said, "We should probably contact someone..."

"Who?" Harry asked, seriously. "What do you even do in this circumstance?"

Hermione shrugged tiredly. It was well past eleven, after all, and she'd been up and working since five that morning. "That's rather up to you, Harry. If you wish to press some sort of criminal charges, we should involve the ministry and they'll begin an investigation. If you want to resolve this more privately, I would suggest contacting the Weasleys and making sure she gets some kind of help."

Harry looked ill as he considered the prospect of facing the whole Weasley clan. Would they all resent him as much as Ginny seemed to, in her warped little way?

Hermione took the decision out of his hands by saying, "Well, we certainly can't leave her petrified in my sitting room and we can hardly let her go alone in this state. We'll get Madame Pomfrey to set her up down in the Hospital Wing and I'll send an owl to the Weasleys, to inform them that she's here. I don't think we should or can explain all of this in a letter, but they'll wonder if she never comes home tonight and they should be involved in whatever happens next."

Harry's relief was probably obvious. He seized the escape plan Hermione had provided. "Great. Right. Then we'll just pop down to the infirmary to wake Madame Pomfrey, shall we?"

Hermione nodded, looking sadly at the frozen witch in front of her. "Yes," she murmured, "you should."

Harry pulled the door open and was halfway down the hall before Hermione could change her mind. He slowed to a normal walking pace and looked behind himself; Draco was easily sauntering several meters behind him, seeing no need to rush about in such a dishevelled state. He waited for the blond to catch up, then they walked towards the hospital wing, their shoulders and hands brushing against one another's.

"Sooo," Draco drawled the syllable suggestively, "that was interesting."

Harry couldn't but laugh; albeit a little hysterically. He was snogging the king of the understatement. This thought made him laugh even harder. Eventually his laughter dried up and Draco was still standing there, with a tolerant look on his face. They started walking again.

"Yes," Harry mused aloud, "my kindly stalker, who was only trying to protect me..." He grimaced, as the reality of the situation sank in. "All those years. I mean, it's not like I couldn't have gone out on my own, and obviously, I didn't. But maybe if I'd known..."

Draco reassured him with a wicked grin, "Well, if you hadn't stayed locked away, you most assuredly would not have arrived at the strange junction of snogging the Wizarding World's most eligible Dark Wizard and surely that's worth living for five years in some mad woman's private fantasy." He said with a satisfied smirk, "Silver lining, Potter. Silver lining."

Harry pretended to gag. "Most eligible Dark Wizard? A powerless, albino drunkard? Thanks for reassuring me yet again that I chose the 'winning side.'"

Draco also remembered his immature threat from years before. "What does your 'winning side' have to offer, then? Neville Longbottom? I maintain that you chose the losing side."

Grinning, Harry impulsively leaned over and stole a quick nibbling kiss. The knowing smirk that greeted him afterwards gave him a thrill that ran straight from his head to somewhere not quite as far south as his toes. Then Draco shoved him none too gently, propelling him forward and saying, "We have a job to do, remember?" Before Harry could react, though, the blond whispered suggestively in his ear, "And the sooner we finish it, the sooner we can get back to what we were doing before we were so rudely interrupted by Granger." He slapped Harry on the arse and then ran away, laughing uproariously as Harry chased wildly after him through the halls. If any of the other teachers in their rooms heard the commotion, they seemed content to ignore it for now.

After arriving out of breath at the hospital wing, the men had had a brief tussle over who would dare wake Madam Pomfrey. They'd both been subject to her wrath on enough occasions that neither wanted to be the one to disrupt her sleep. It was just past midnight, after all. But they were saved from making the choice themselves when the matron herself came out of the Hospital Wing in a huff and in her nightgown, demanding to know why they were making such a fuss in front of her door at this ungodly hour of night.

Harry had no idea how to explain the situation with Ginny and in the opening that his silence left, Draco took it upon himself to tell Madame Pomfrey in quite colourful terms that, "that littlest Weasley bint has gone completely off her trolley and was waving her wand about like she wanted to have my guts for garters and, well, Bob's your uncle, Fanny's your aunt - she's Petrified up in Granger's room and needs to be locked away in a soft room, if you ask me."

While Madame Pomfrey got her head around the stream of utter wank that had just come out of Draco's mouth, Harry slowly turned a barely tolerant look towards the man he'd declared - well, not love, but lust for. "You do this on purpose, don't you?"

Draco just grinned and Harry shook his head, muttering, "You have got to watch less telly."

Eventually, they convinced Madame Pomfrey in a more sensible way to come up with them to Hermione's rooms to collect Ginny. She conjured up a stretcher there in the sitting room and levitated the Petrified witch onto it, not planning to release her from that particular spell until she had her restrained safely in the hospital wing. With Hermione's reassurances that she would be contacting the Weasley family, the mediwitch bustled her newest ward back down to her wing for further care.

The three of them watched her go in silence, which quickly grew uncomfortable. Harry thought back to Hermione's revelation earlier and suddenly felt extremely uncomfortable standing between her and Draco. He thought about quickly fleeing, but realised that him and Draco rushing off together to be alone would look even worse in its implications. He was frozen on the spot until Hermione once again handed him an easy out by saying, "Well, I can only speak for myself, but I'm exhausted. And I still need to write that letter to the Weasleys, so why don't we say good night here and when you are up and ready tomorrow, Harry, you can pop by and we'll have a little chat about what you want to do next."

Harry gave her a small, sheepish smile and said gratefully, "Yes, I'll do that." He surprised her, and himself, by giving her a quick peck on the cheek before saying goodnight.

Then of course Draco ruined the friendly mood by trying to swoop in to give Hermione a dramatic kiss goodnight and getting her fist in his stomach instead. As he followed Harry out of the room, he wheezed reproachfully, "How come only you get to act all suave?" He was still rubbing his stomach ruefully.

Harry watched him limp back across the hall to their rooms and said softly, "Do you want me to kiss it and make it better?"

Draco winked. "I'd love to see you try."

They slipped back into their temporary haven in the history professor's room and shut the door firmly behind them.