White Horses

HARRY AND DRACO WERE WORKING silently in the Potions lab, even though they were the only ones there. They were remaking the ruined invisibility potion, and also completing a far-seeing potion that Draco had missed from the last year. Luckily, helping Draco to catch up on his Potions didn't demand such a huge amount of work as his other classes did, thanks in part to Draco's skill in Potions and also to Snape's habit of spending weeks at a time on a single brew. While they were completing the two potions today, they had also begun a potion that would allow you to understand any language spoken to you, an aging potion and a superior potion for fast-growing plants; all of which would take a couple weeks fully complete brewing.

Once they had started all these potions, the boys carefully left them in the locked student cabinets, until the next steps would need to be performed. They completed their invisibility potion easily, and all the while Harry alternately lectured and quizzed Draco on History of Magic.

In sixth year they had at last gotten past goblin rebellions and troll wars, and had actually made it up to the history of the modern magical world. They had spent most of the end of the year discussing the various magical communities in the world, such as Africa (where the Wizarding world was not kept secret) or America (where there was no magical government and the Muggle government didn't even know about magic - except perhaps for a few people in the CIA and FBI). And History of Magic stopped being a compulsory course after sixth year, due to the difficulty of N.E.W.T. courses, so at least there was nothing new to learn.

They were keeping themselves busy and trying desperately not to think about Pansy Parkinson. Hermione had tried to perform a location charm on the girl, but with no success. While they worked, Harry left the Marauder's Map - commanded to flash brightly when Pansy came within its border - open on the table next to them. But there was no sign of the girl's return. Where had Pansy gone and what was she going to do with that picture? It was all they could do not to think about it as they furiously worked.

IT WAS ONLY THREE IN the afternoon by the time they finished their potions, which left them with far too much time to wait and worry about Parkinson. Harry suggested that they go talk to Salazar Slytherin, because he wanted to ask the man in the picture whether there was some way he could get directly to Draco's room - short of a portkey, which the teachers would frown on more than a little. With no better suggestion to fill the long hours, the Head Boy agreed and they started quietly past the Slytherin entrance and down to the hidden portrait.

"Ah, my Slytherin Gryffindor. Back again with your secret boy, though he still hasn't told you his secrets-"

Harry smiled a bit forcedly at the thin young man with dangerous grey eyes, "Hello again, Lord Slytherin, and please don't talk about any of Draco's secrets."

The Head of all Slytherins gave him a measuring look and asked silkily, "What? You didn't enjoy the last secret?" He paused and smiled, "I know you did. It frightened you, so much that even now your pulse races to think about it. But that's not just fear making your heart pound. It's because you l-"

The boy's voice was desperate as he hissed, "Please. Please. Just don't say anymore about it. That isn't why we're here."

Flopping into the leather chair in his painting, the man asked disinterestedly, "Then why are you here, little Lion?"

Harry cleared his throat and ventured, "We... I need another secret. I need a way into the Head Boy's room, if there is one. A direct way that no one else will know about."

The man in the portrait slouched even further into his chair and hissed slyly, "So, you are here for love after all."

Before Harry could protest, Slytherin had continued, "There is such a way, perhaps. But it will cost you. Don't look so alarmed, I only want some information." Harry still looked wary, remembering when Draco had thought of everything in terms of cost, and he was surprised when Salazar said quietly, "Find out what really happened between Godric and I. I need to know."

Harry turned to his boyfriend and gave him a brief recap. "He says there is a way, but in return we have to find out what really happened between Gryffindor and Slytherin."

"How?"

The Gryffindor didn't have much idea himself. He said unsurely, "The books are all biased. Maybe a portrait, but I've never heard of a portrait of Gryffindor... just that one statue, and I've never seen it talk..."

A sharp hiss interrupted his musing, as Salazar told him, "If I might suggest something, you may want to try the original Gryffindor House, down in the dungeons."

"YOU'RE SURE?" DRACO ASKED THE Gryffindor for the fourth time, glancing at their private dungeon room as they passed its tapestry-covered door.

Harry pulled him along, saying shortly, "Yes, I'm sure. He said that Gryffindor used to also be in the dungeons, under the forest. Where else could it be but down this corridor?"

Draco wondered aloud, "But then why is Gryffindor now in the Tower?"

The Gryffindor shrugged inelegantly, hurrying down the hall, "Maybe someone was trying to compensate. We do live in a giant phallic symbol, after all." He noticed Draco staring and exclaimed, "What? Like you've never thought it? Probably just penis envy."

Now the blonde burst out laughing, and Harry had to stop and wait for him. "I'm sorry, but," Draco gasped, "'penis envy'?"

"You know... Freud."

Apparently he didn't know, because Draco was still staring at him with an incredulous expression.

Harry's face was beginning to get red as he explained, "You've really never heard of Freud? He was a huge psychologist, I don't know, a hundred years ago or something. His idea of, er, 'penis envy' was originally that women were jealous of men, I think. Nowadays, people say it a lot because men are jealous of men. Always comparing size and whatnot."

"You want to... compare size, Potter?"

The Head boy was still snickering like a little third year and Harry had to drag him onward with a flustered, "Maybe later, Malfoy." At least the atmosphere was less tense as they trooped through the dark corridors, with Harry's handful of bluebell flames lighting the way. They reached a split in the corridor and Harry asked uncertainly, "Should we split up?"

Draco quickly disagreed and pulled Harry down the left-branching path, saying hurriedly, "Ah, no. We can come back and explore the other side, if need be." As it turned out, taking the left path was the right way anyhow, and the other branch was quickly forgotten.

Old classrooms and empty halls began to appear. They often found rooms still complete with dusty old desks and ancient chalkboards. In one classroom, they were boggled to find a message left on the chalkboard, reading: "VVynnefred vvaf heare, in the Yeere of ovr Lovrde 1650."

Harry grinned at Draco and the blonde raised an eyebrow sceptically. After a brief tussle over the crumbling piece of chalk, Harry ended up leaving a message for them, reading: "Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter stopped by in 1997. Sorry we missed you, Winnie."

They left the room laughing and in high spirits, both of them chasing after Harry's flames which he had charmed to zoom about like snitches. The two boys were so caught up in their illusion that this was a worry-free afternoon to be spent exploring that they nearly missed the entrance.

Harry felt a jolt, almost like an electric shock, and stopped suddenly. He looked at the door they had just passed and called, "Hey, Malfoy - wait up."

The Slytherin jogged back to where Harry was frozen and asked, "What is it?"

The black-haired boy took a step closer to the solid oak door, and said, "This is it."

Looking at the door and the surrounding hall, Draco saw no sign that this was the Gryffindor house, so he asked doubtfully, "How d'you figure that one?" It got him a quick elbow in the side.

"Hey, maybe I ought to be a Slytherin, but I am still marked as a Gryffindor. I can feel... I don't know, an affinity to this place."

Looking rather sceptical about any 'affinity' of Harry's, Draco tried the door which, unsurprisingly, didn't open. He turned back to Harry with an expression that clearly said, "Now what, genius?"

Hoping it would work and he wouldn't look like an idiot (as if that were ever possible around Draco), Harry tried the door himself and it swung open easily. He broke into a grin and said, "Gryffindor, remember?"

Ignoring his gloating boyfriend, the Head Boy walked into the abandoned common room. It was a large room, with dull red walls and a vaguely octagonal shape. The most immediately diverting thing was the fact that the beams supporting the walls and ceiling seemed to actually be massive tree roots, polished to a satiny sheen. Harry lobbed his flames into the air, letting them explode and fill the room with a haze of light. He tweaked his fingers and the light changed from that ominous blue to a warm golden hue.

There was a central ring of arm chairs, and more couches against the walls. Each one of the roughly even eight walls had a door in it, except for the one immediately to their right. It housed a great hearth and, hanging above it, a portrait of a greying Godric Gryffindor. The boys glanced at each other then walked over to the painting, the subject of whom seemed to be sleeping.

Gryffindor looked like a craggy man, rather rugged with grizzled red hair and, when he opened them to stare at his two visitors, eyes as startling green as Harry's himself. It was the Gryffindor student who first spoke, asking hesitantly, "Godric Gryffindor?"

The young lovers were both dismayed though, when the man responded in an incomprehensible language. Draco asked his boyfriend, "What if he doesn't speak modern English?"

Harry frowned and hazarded, "I guess we could try a potion, but that would only work for us, not on a portrait. Maybe a charm-"

The man in the portrait spoke again, saving them from continuing, "Begging your extreme pardon, but you will find neither potion nor charm to be necessary. I do speak your tongue, though it has been such a long lapse since there were visitors here and I haven't heard speech in your manner in many scores of years." The sharp old eyes noticed Draco's Slytherin robes and said, "Slytherins, be you not?"

Harry's glance flicked to the patch on his boyfriend's smooth chest, as the founder of his House addressed him, "You have a look about you of Salazar, boy, though your eyes would try to proclaim you a Gryffindor."

Harry rubbed his scar in a gesture that Draco hadn't seen in months. As he wondered what had prompted it, the dark-haired boy told his Head of House, "Well, sir, that is perhaps why I am a Gryffindor, though I don't wear my robes on the weekend."

The bright green eyes flicked between the two young men and Gryffindor asked, "One of mine? With a Slytherin?"

Draco spoke out for the first time and introduced himself, "Yes, sir. I am Draco, Lord Malfoy, of Slytherin house and the Head Boy of Hogwarts School. It is precisely because the strained relations between the Gryffindor and Slytherin houses that Harry Potter and I have come here today."

The blonde turned to his boyfriend, who was goggling at him a bit. He smirked.

Harry had never heard Draco introduce himself using his title before, and he would have assumed that it would be the sort of thing the git would lord about, no pun. But perhaps it was just assumed that everyone would already know, since even the thousand year-old man in the portrait seemed to recognize the title.

Harry got a hold of himself and ask the waiting portrait, "Can you tell us what actually happened between you and Salazar to cause the rift between our houses?"

The old man looked at Harry for a moment without answering, then revealed, "It was not we two who caused the rift, but the houses themselves whom cleaved."

When both his inquisitors exclaimed, "What!" the forgotten man indulged them with an explanation.

"It has become immemorial, as I understand it, but Salazar and I never had any great disturbance, nor did he part from the school with a hateful heart. He did not leave as an act of rebellion, though he did depart from this life before we were even thirty years of age. He was only eight and twenty when he died, and if there may be a blame to be had, I blame the problems betwixt our houses upon his absence. Without him, his students could not keep themselves from their flaming desire and fell quickly in stature by becoming too ambitious. They wanted this school to be only for those born into wholly magical families. There was some talk of the Slytherin house in whole leaving, to attempt the formation of a new institute founded upon those values they expounded.

"I was Salazar's most dear friend. I thought it was my responsibility to step in and reason with the mutinous house. Yet I am afraid that the situation became even further inflamed upon my interference, and the Slytherins began to hate the Gryffindors above all the other houses. It did not take long for the revulsion to prove mutual. My students, I'm afraid, tend to be equally fiery in their passions and if they feel they are being mistreated, it does not take much else to prompt them to hatred."

Draco glanced at Harry and thought that it was probably still an accurate description for most Gryffindors.

Harry asked in a dazed voice, "But... what about the Chamber of Secrets though? The Chamber was built by Slytherin to house the basilisk and purge all the Muggleborns! It even has a great, big statue... of... him..." Now that Harry had seen the portrait of Slytherin though, he realized that the statue really didn't resemble the Hogwarts founder at all.

Gryffindor was looking at him in curiosity and said thoughtfully, "When we were young, Salazar had private quarters that he would refer to as his 'chamber of secrets,' though merely in jest. But he would never have built the place you described, not without telling me of its existence." Harry thought to himself, So the Chamber wasn't made by Salazar? Or it was changed by someone else?

He realized Draco had raised a question and listened as the blonde asked reasonably, "Why were the Gryffindor dorms moved, sir?"

The red-headed man looked bitter, his green eyes stagnant and poisonous as he said, "Oh, it was said to be due to the isolation of these dorms. But I must believe that it was truly a political move; I was left down here where I cannot influence anyone, after all."

Harry remembered Sir Cadogen waltzing through the school's portraits to lead them to Trelawney's room and asked, "You can't visit the other portraits?" He was surprise to see Gryffindor turn to the side, looking past the edge of his frame.

"It is possible, in theory," he explained, "and long ago I dared to make that journey. Before they moved the dorms there were many paintings and it was only a short leap to the next one. But now I am so far away that if I search in vain for another painting, I find only an endless absolute white that even I dare not step into, for fear that I will lose myself." Harry was wondering if he could somehow smuggle the portrait into the current Gryffindor dorms somehow, and missed the portrait's question about why they needed to know about the history of the houses.

"Well, Harry and I have a conundrum, because he cannot, er, visit me in my house - due to the general Slytherin aversion. Likewise, I cannot go to Gryffindor house because most of them hate me, as well as the damage it would do to my reputation. We spoke with someone who might know a way for Harry to be able to come to my room, the Head's room, directly - but we were given the provision to find out what truly happened between the two houses."

Following Draco's rather convoluted explanation, the painting of Godric said mildly, "It was that young painting of Salazar, was it not? Which means that you must gifted with that dread affliction, Parseltongue."

Draco blinked at him in surprised and the man laughed, "Salazar and I are the only two ever to know of a most secret passage between the Head's rooms - they were, as it were, once our very own rooms - and we neither of us divulged this secret to any other living soul. And so I understood that you must have consulted with him, my old friend."

Harry agreed, "That's right, but actually I am the Parselmouth, not Draco."

"You!" the portrait exclaimed, looking at the boy closely even though he didn't share Salazar's ability to see secrets. He said wonderingly, "You are truly a most unusual pair. I suppose I shall tell you the way then, since you have been the most entertainment that I've had in many a long century, and since it would seem that Salazar approves."

He pointed them to a door directly across the room and said, "Through that door you will find my old quarters. There is in that chamber a wall of windows, much like that you've probably found in Salazar's room. The left-most window, you may find, can be opened like a door. Passing through that door will take you to the Slytherin room, if my pigment and canvas memory does serve me correctly."

Thanking the old man profusely but hurriedly, the two went eagerly to see if his information was correct. The room Gyrffindor had indicated opened without even a password and the bedroom was quite similar to Draco's, excepting all the dust.

Examining the windows, Harry saw that there was indeed a small latch on the left-most section and he heard a gravely shout from the common room, "Intone the words, 'Revelum Salazar!'"

He did so and found himself staring through the window directly into Draco's room. The boys grinned at each other. Other than the fact that Harry's housemates might begin to wonder where he was all the time, they now had a way to in which Harry could spend whole days (and nights, of course) in the Slytherin's private room.

"Do you want to test it?" Harry asked, having enough experience with magical transportation to not want to simply jump out a window and hope it would take where he wished.

Draco looked a bit surprised by this bit of forethought from Harry, but he agreed. The Gryffindor ended up waiting in the dusty room as his boyfriend hurried back to his own dormitory.

Harry looked around, disappointed that there had been many Head Boys and Girls staying in this room in the time between Gryffindor's own life and the moving of the Gryffindor house dorms, so there was nothing personal left of his house's founder. Nonetheless, Harry was examining the ancient desk when he noticed that Draco had made it to his own room. The boy was looking at his windows in mild consternation and Harry opened the window-door from his side, sending Draco skittering backwards.

The Gryffindor leaned through the window a bit, but stayed firmly on his side, "How bizarre."

Draco drawled acerbically, "How accurate, Potter."

Rolling his eyes at the cynic, Harry tugged off one of his trainers and threw it at the blonde. Draco caught it with his stomach and turned a merciless silver glare on his boyfriend, who was waving his hands innocently, "It was a test, a test for the door-thingy!"

The excuse was less effective when he was snickering even as he protested. Draco threw the shoe back and it hit the laughing boy in the shoulder. "Look, it works both ways."

Finally, Harry dared to step through the mysterious door - although with Harry this equated to closing his eyes and leaping across the space, so that he crashed into the Head Boy and sent them both sprawling spectacularly to the ground. He heard a wheezing voice below him drawl, "Now, that wasn't very Gryffindor. Unless, of course, you count the blind stupidity."

The sulky (and slightly crushed) Slytherin was pacified though, by a sweet kiss from Harry. He soon pushed the other boy up a bit, so he could snag the glasses that had been poking him. "Glasses, off," he reprimanded the boy before tossing them carelessly aside. They both froze, millimetres from resuming their kiss, when they heard the sharp tinkling of glass breaking.

Harry growled dangerously, "Malfoy-"

The Slytherin's eyes were wide and grey as he protested, "No, hey, you're the one who crushed me!" But he didn't really need to worry because Harry gave him his kiss anyway, before he pushed himself up to go fix his glasses. Sighing, he used one of Hermione's old standards, Occulus reparo, and the familiar cheap frames were as crappy as ever, but at least in one piece.

Harry looked over at the destroyer of his glasses, and found the blonde still lying on the ground, propped up on his elbows and looking deliciously rumpled. He went back over to Draco and sat lightly straddling the prone boy. Poking one finger into that hard chest, he said, "All right, here's what we'll do. I need to go talk to Salazar to fulfil our part of the deal. Then it's nearly dinnertime. Do you want to tempt fate by having dinner together again?" Before the Head Boy could answer, Harry amended his question, "Let me rephrase that. Should we tempt fate by having dinner together again?"

Draco had a better idea, though. He told Harry, "Bugger all your temptations of fate. We'll have dinner here. If you insist, we could even invite Ginevra, or Granger and her Weasel."

Harry chewed on his lip, but decided they wouldn't invite the others, though he provisioned that Draco would have to contact Hermione to let her know that they were staying in and to see if she had managed to find out anything about Pansy.

Harry left back through the window and pulled the window shut behind him. Draco stared at those fake sunny windows for a minute, before he gave into his urge and fumbled to find the secret latch, to pull the false window open. But Harry was already gone and the far-away Gryffindor room was dark.

Meanwhile, Harry was backtracking his way past the Slytherin dorms and to the entrance that Salazar's portrait guarded. He told the man in the painting what they'd learned from Gryffindor. The young Salazar looked relieved as he said, "So, we were friends till the end, then."

Harry nodded a bit uncomfortably, not having told the young man that he had died not long after his portrait had been made. Salazar gifted him with a rare smile and told him, "For this relief, I may owe you a couple more secrets. Come ask me if there's anything I might be able to tell you."

He thanked the original Slytherin for what he knew was a huge favour, and then raced down to the school's kitchens. Only afterward did he realise that Slytherin must've pulled the secret of his own untimely death from Harry's mind, as well.

Behind the large painting of the fruit bowl, the house elves were in their biggest rush of the day, as they flew about to get everything ready for the school's dinner. Dobby managed to fight his way over to Harry and asked eagerly, "Mr Harry Potter, sir? What can Dobby be helping you with tonight?"

The boy had to speak loudly over the din of clattering platters and bright silverware, but he told Dobby that he and Draco wanted dinner in the Head Boy's room, if possible.

"Of course, Harry Potter, of course! Dobby'll be having it up in just a few minutes!"

The Gryffindor smiled gratefully and patted the awkward little creature, "Thanks, Dobby. You're a life saver."

LOOKING THROUGH THE WINDOW IN Godric's room, Harry reminded himself to ask Hermione if he could shrink a portrait and move it, or to help him sneak down her one night to help lug the whole thing away. He muttered, "Revelum Salazar," and was once again peering into Draco's room. The main purpose of the spell had been just to check that the Slytherin was alone, but he found himself watching the boy instead of opening the strange door.

Draco was sitting on the edge of his bed, one knee up to take off his shoe, but he seemed to have become lost in thought, one hand still resting limply on his shod foot and the other buried in his fine hair. He looked entirely abstracted as he let his hand drop into his lap, staring down at the white palm.

Harry stepped quickly into the room and asked in a normal voice, "All right there, Malfoy?"

He expected scorn but not for Draco to say distantly, "Not all right."

Pausing unsurely by the windows, Harry asked, "What is it?"

His boyfriend closed off and reassured him tonelessly, "It's nothing." The blonde stared at him with blank silver eyes that seemed opaque and empty.

Feeling concerned, Harry said carefully, "It doesn't seem like nothing."

Those mirrored eyes twitched. "Well, it is, so leave it alone, Potter."

Harry felt an unreasonable wave of anger when Draco tried to push him away by using his surname so pointedly. In retaliation, he snapped sharply, "No, I think I'll not, Draco. So, tell me what the hell is wrong. What've you to be afraid of?"

It had been a rhetorical question, but apparently the Head Boy was feeling literal as he struggled to answer, "What've I to... Potter, you wanker, I'm afraid of damn near everything!" Harry's anger died and he spluttered as Draco continued, "I'm afraid of what Pansy has done and what will happen tomorrow. I'm afraid for you, when I'm not afraid of you. I'm afraid that this is all isn't real and maybe more afraid that it is. I'm afraid of what I've done. I'm afraid that I'm not the person that I always thought I was, and that you'll want nothing to do with me because I'm acting like such a prat and because maybe the bitch was right."

The Slytherin was still looking at his hands, as if remembering all the things they'd done. Harry was speechless for two entire minutes before he managed to ask weakly, "Right about what?" He wasn't sure just who 'the bitch' was, since there were so many candidates for that role.

Draco clenched his hands into tight fists and bit out, "Nothing. It was nothing, or it should have been. But she made me fucking ask. If I didn't play her games, things always ended up worse."

Assuming by now that the boy must be talking about his mother, Harry thought to himself, Maybe Ginny was right. Maybe we do have to talk about these things. "What did she make you ask?"

"'Don't you love me?'"

When he heard the blonde's question, Harry felt a momentary rush of weightless disorientation. But he grounded himself when he realized that the question was not directed at him, but had been directed at the boy's mother. Of course. Draco wouldn't - Not to me - "What happened then?"

Those stunning silver eyes were shut as the boy tasted the memories, repeating her haunting words in a pained voice, "'Who could love you? No one would want something so flawed.'"

Harry didn't know whether he ought to reach out to Draco or not, as the blonde sat so painfully self-contained. But I... I...

Draco murmured without thinking, "I'm still so flawed, even though I try to hide it. And now everyone will know. By tomorrow everyone will know."

Flawed... being with me makes him 'flawed'... Harry felt a sharp pain in his chest as he suggested, "Well, there's an easy way to fix that: we break up and you can deny that there was ever anything between us."

The Slytherin's eyes had flown open but he didn't look up from his lap as he said blankly, "Yes, that would be the... easy thing to do, wouldn't it?"

Realizing that the proud, perfect Head Boy was seeing this as rejection, Harry moved forward to grab his boyfriend's hands. He said fiercely, "It would be the hardest thing. But I will - for you - if that's what you need me to do."

Draco stared at him. It seemed that he came back to himself as he breathed out in a shocked exhalation, his face open and uncertain, "You'd... for..."

Wrapping his hands back around the smaller ones clutching at him, he tripped over his words uncharacteristically. "No. That would - I'd... I don't want you to, don't want to..."

Draco pulled himself back into control, hearing his own reprehensible incoherence. He looked down at their tightly clasped hands before meeting those Gryffindor green eyes again. "I couldn't even imagine it. Let's not let that be our 'easy' way out."

HERMIONE DRAGGED RON DOWN TO breakfast at seven a.m. on Sunday morning, an act completely incomprehensible to the boy prefect. Luckily he wasn't truly awake and so he just stumbled after her like a zombie, until she let him slump into a chair while she stood impatiently waiting for the owls to come with the early papers and morning mail.

Her express owl arrived at precisely 7:05, before there were more than a dozen people in the Great Hall, but every one of those present turned to stare when they heard her shriek. Ron watched in bewilderment with the rest of the breakfasters as she ran out of the room, tightly clutching her copy of the Daily Prophet.

HERMIONE HAD GONE STRAIGHT TO Gryffindor tower and, after seeing that Harry was not in his dorm room, the Head Girl rushed back into her own room and stormed Malfoy, via the fireplace. "Malfoy, you've-" She bit off her words abruptly, suddenly feeling out of breath as she stared at the two boys spooned together on the bed. Seemingly nude. No way.

As she struggled to breath, Hermione let the scene fully sink in. Her sweet Harry was lying peacefully asleep with his blonde boyfriend curled around him. Their black and white hair mixed shockingly on the pillow and she saw that their hands were clasped even in sleep. Cheeks burning as she looked on to their intimate scene, she didn't even notice Harry's eyes begin to flutter open.

Seeing his best friend frozen by the fireplace, Harry's eyes popped open wide. He also became aware of a familiar pressure against his backside and, although being excited in the morning might be a perfectly normal reaction for boys, Draco was out of luck this morning. Sitting up in bed and not even worrying about the scar on his chest, he shook his boyfriend roughly, "Malfoy, wake up, you damned sot!"

The blonde grumbled sleepily and pulled Harry back down against him, muttering, "Too early, Harry. Later."

Flaming bright red and not daring to look at the Head Girl, he choked out, "For the love of all things unholy, open your eyes, Malfoy. Hermione is here."

That got his attention and Harry was able to wriggle free as Draco blinked silvery eyes, "Granger? Here?"

Hermione had recovered enough to say sarcastically, "Yes. Granger. Here." She threw the paper onto that sinful black silk bed and then warned them, "With bad news."