White Horses

DRACO SCRUBBED AT HIS EYES with his right hand, waving his left distractedly to summon a couple shirts. Hermione noticed the faded Dark Mark again, as the blonde pulled a white undershirt on and tossed the extra one at Harry.

Unspeakably glad to see that both boys seemed to be wearing pyjama bottoms, she watched as Harry fumbled for his glasses on the bedside table in what seemed to be habitual move, then leaned over Draco's shoulder.

Looking grim, the Head Boy angled the paper toward his boyfriend, whose eyes widened slightly as he breathed, "Wow."

A DAILY PROPHET Exclusive!

HARRY POTTER AND DRACO MALFOY: SECRET GAY LOVERS?!

Is the Boy Who Lived having an illicit and unnatural affair with the heir to the
Darkest family in England? This DAILY PROPHET reporter reveals all.

Harry Potter, always in the spotlight for his childhood fame or his teenage infamy,
has gone too far this time. It has been reported and confirmed from reliable
sources at Hogwarts herself that Potter has pushed the limits of his previous
attention-seeking habits and has revealed his truly repugnant nature by carrying
out homosexual relations with fellow students (and who can say who else?). His
most shocking conquest: Draco Malfoy.

Malfoy, the only heir of the imprisoned Lucius Malfoy, has been implicated as a
Death Eater, though he escaped the charges against him through under-the-table
manipulations. The Dark wizard went missing after the Christmas Battle and
was presumed to be among the dead Death Eaters who were found on the Malfoy
Grounds. He has resurfaced this year only to be made Head Boy of Hogwarts
through heavy-handed influence on the part of Severus Snape, ex-Death Eater
and Head of Slytherin House, the reputably Darkest house in Hogwarts School.

We here at the DAILY PROPHET cannot remain silent when innocent children are
left to the influences of such dangerous characters. The horrifying implications
of having a queer Head Boy cannot be ignored. What can this young man be
teaching our innocent children? What harmful repercussions can Harry Potter's
perverted tendencies have upon those who still look to him as the hero of the
Wizarding world? We urge that the Ministry investigate this matter and make
moves to protect the purity and morality of our noble society.

It only continued from there, with additional stories that gave further information about the two boys. The picture that Pansy had stolen had been blown up on the front page, and there was also speculation about the disappearance of Malfoy's mother and recaps of all the (negative) news stories about Harry that had come out over the years.

Harry leaned against his boyfriend, his chin on the blonde's hunched shoulder, "I don't know if it's worse than the Triwizard Tournament or not. This story is at least true, though not at all flattering."

Draco said mutely, in a defeated echo of his usual sneer, "Hey, I made up all those stories during the Tournament, and there was at least a grain of truth in all of them."

Harry dug his pointy little chin into the boy's shoulder and said wryly, "Gee, thanks for reminding me of your part in that debacle."

The Gryffindor boy reached around his boyfriend to trace the lines of newsprint, musing aloud, "'Urge that the Ministry investigate...''

Hermione came over hesitantly and reminded Harry, "I told you, it's very serious in the Wizarding world. Sodomy, and other 'acts against nature,' can be an offence, a crime." Draco turned away and climbed off the bed as she spoke.

Without looking back at the Gryffindors, he said bleakly, "Excuse me. I'm going to take a quick shower." For such a lithe boy, he managed to look believably heavy as he struggled with the weight of this news. Hermione watched him go and wanted to burn down the Daily Prophet offices herself.

It wasn't only her familiar protective feelings for Harry that prompted the girl's sudden arsonistically-leaning urges. When she had crashed the private lie-in, and all the while that Hermione had watched the boys deal with the horrible allegations, she had been reminded of how natural the two seemed to be together - even though she had been one of the strongest against them initially.

They had grown together, and they had grown on her. She had seen entirely new facets of Malfoy, both through Harry's influence and through her own dealings with the Head Boy. She didn't want Harry to lose that new boy that she had caught glimpses of, not when that boy somehow made him the happiest she had seen him in the past seven years.

She asked quietly as she sat next to her best friend, "Is he going to be all right?"

They listened to the water start pounding against the ceramic bath tiles. Harry leaned against her tiredly and murmured, "I think so. It was a really hard night and today is only going to be worse. I don't even know what to do." Hermione put an arm around those narrow shoulders and stared unhappily at the fireplace she had come through.

"Well," she mused, "I can't help you much unless I know whether you guys want to deny it or not."

She could feel the boy next to her sigh, before he said, "We talked about that last night as well. Why bother denying it? It is true and it would probably come out after Hogwarts anyway, even if it didn't now. If we do live together, how long would people really believe that Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy were flatmates?"

Even though the boy couldn't see it, Hermione raised her eyebrows in question, as she asked speculatively, "Have you talked about living together?"

Harry cleared his throat in embarrassment as he realized what he'd accidentally said. Hermione and Ron still didn't know that the boys had lived together all summer, of course. He said roughly, "Well, not specifically. But if we do stay together for that long... Could we keep it a secret always? Would you want to, if it were you?"

She really wouldn't, she decided - imagining never being able to hold Ron's hand or curl up on the couch with him because other people might see. Harry and Malfoy wouldn't do things like that anyway, just because of their pride and reticence in public. But they had at least relaxed enough to show their feelings in front of their small group of herself, Ron and Ginny; she only realized now what a huge show of trust that had been.

The water stopped in the bathroom and Harry glanced at the door. "That was quick, even for Draco." He rose halfway off the bed, saying uncertainly, "Maybe I should check on him..."

Hermione waved him on and the black-haired boy opened the bathroom door a crack to let himself in. The Head Girl was left sitting alone in the room. She ran her hand absently over the silky bedclothes, before she thought about what might have happened in that bed. She got up quickly and tried to banish her over-active imagination. Glancing toward the bathroom door, where only the faintest thrum of voices could be heard, she walked over to Malfoy's desk to examine the box of photos she'd seen last time.

She pulled the top of the old shoebox off with a sharp tug, looking again at that pile of black and white photographs. It was still strange for her to think that Malfoy had taken these lovely, still photos. He seemed to capture motionlessness with his camera the same way other people tried to capture movement. The unusual images gave an impression of timelessness, as if the situations they showed could remain as they were forever.

Finding the same picture of Harry that had caught her attention the last time, Hermione tried to figure out what seemed so striking about it. She examined the far-away grey eyes and brushed up against an idea. The picture didn't show any of the symbols of the Boy Who Lived.

In the soft, loving photo, there was nothing to brand Harry with the persona he resented so much. His infamous scar was hidden by the hair that was blowing across his face. The round black glasses that were now synonymous with the Boy Who Lived were hanging forgotten and unimportant from those small, childlike hands. Even his staggering green eyes were reduced to an anonymous grey - still sparkling and lovely, but not distinguishable from anyone else. Had Malfoy been thinking of all that consciously when he'd taken the picture? Had he been trying to capture just Harry?

She got her chance to ask when Malfoy emerged from the bathroom alone, but she didn't feel any urge to once she saw his drawn face. Before Hermione had said a word, the boy sat heavily next to his trunk and started rummaging through it. He surprised her by pulling out a bottle of Muggle pills. The only sound in the room was that of the hard little tablets rattling around in their plastic bottle, a somehow dire sound that apparently Harry heard through the bathroom door.

He came rushing out, shoving glasses back onto his red eyes. "Malfoy!" he exclaimed, as he dropped down to his knees next to the boy. He asked unsurely, "Are you..." In a move that Hermione couldn't quite decipher, her messy-haired friend pressed his hand carefully to Malfoy's white throat, his fingers at the pulse point that beat there.

Malfoy tolerated this for a moment before he pulled Harry's hand away. "It's all right, Potter," the Slytherin reassured the boy in what was possibly the gentlest voice she had ever heard from him, "it's not bad. And Granger's here, too, so you can at least take a shower without fearing that I'll drop over dead."

He sounded faintly teasing and Harry did not look like he found it amusing at all. He slid his hand around the boy's neck to cradle that silvery-white head and, closing his eyes with a sigh, he rested his forehead against his boyfriend's for a moment.

As Malfoy's eyes fell shut as well, Hermione once again felt like she was intruding on something painfully intimate, even though there was nothing sexual or even overtly romantic about the gesture.

Harry pulled himself together and got up after planting a quick kiss on that silky hair. "I'll be right back," he promised, then rushed off to take the world's shortest shower.

Hermione stayed where she was, wondering vaguely if she was going to know every one of her Head Boy's secrets by the end of the weekend. She started out, "Malfoy, you-"

But the harsh boy cut her off brusquely, "-have a heart condition, Granger. And no, the condition is not that I'm lacking one, despite other's accusations." He looked at that small orange bottle in his hand and said ironically, "It's so awfully Muggle of me, isn't it. The Wizarding world can't even treat it." That explained the Muggle-style pills that she was used to seeing in her own home, but never at Hogwarts.

That cultured voice grew colder than she'd heard it in a while, when the boy said, "And I would appreciate you keeping this knowledge to yourself. Potter is - was - the only person at Hogwarts to know. I would not be pleased for the gawking idiots to know even more of my flaws."

Understanding that he was talking about the rush that was sure to follow today's paper, she asked seriously, concerned for her best friend's feelings, "Do you consider being with Harry as a 'flaw'?" The boy's face twisted into a painful expression that Hermione couldn't interpret; was it because the conversation matter or simply the pain in his chest?

His voice was blank as a sheet of new parchment (which is to say, not blank at all but full of miniscule variations and textures) as he said, "Being with Harry is a gift that I surely don't deserve. But being together, as two boys… is of course a flaw to the rest of the world." He looked at her sharply and said, "You thought it was, as well - if I recall correctly."

Hermione couldn't deny it, so she didn't even bother to embarrass herself by trying. She nodded shortly and said, "You're right. But I've gotten accustomed to it and I've gotten accustomed to you, you sneaky, insulting, closed-off, infuriating, smug, Slytherin bastard." Malfoy's white eyebrows kept inching higher at her description, but that artfully practiced look of disdainful shock was replaced by a real, open surprise when she said, "So, I will stick with you two through this and support both you and Harry in any way that I can."

A brilliant smile grew across the boy's face and it nearly took her breath away. The Head Boy was undeniably good-looking normally, but she had assumed it was the type of good-looks that only worked for being serious and coldly beautiful. She was taken aback by how hot the boy was when he truly smiled, with that rare and glowing expression focussing entirely on her. She thought dimly, Congratulations to Harry, fucking-A.

Then the boy was speaking gleefully, "You want to be my friend. Oh, Granger - excuse me, I mean 'Hermione' - I know that I'm rich and beautiful and, well, I don't like to toot my own horn, but who could deny my raw sexuality and desirability? Still, you don't need to throw yourself at me so blatantly-"

At about this point, and before the Head Girl could respond in any way, Harry had emerged from his shower - in which he had probably just gotten himself wet and then jumped out, given the amount of time he'd been in there. Malfoy turned to him as Hermione stared in an unrestrained bewilderment. "Oh, Harry," the boy gushed, "Hermione wants to be my friend. Isn't that just super?"

Hermione asked her fellow Gryffindor, "Is he mocking me?"

Harry impressively replied with, "Er."

He blinked at his boyfriend and then tried to bite down the smile that was trying to escape as Draco told Hermione, "Oh my gods, we can go shopping together and talk about our dense boyfriends and all the pressures of being Heads. I'll still beat you in grades, of course, but you'll resign yourself to it, because you want to be my friend."

You could see the white all around Hermione's eyes as she stared at the Head Boy. She asked in a fearful voice, "What the hell was in those pills?"

The muscles in Harry's neck were visibly straining as he tried not to laugh. He choked out, "Nothing at all unusual, Hermione. You've just made Malfoy a very happy Slytherin."

She looked back at Malfoy, who smirked at her and winked. Feeling once again as if she were on the outside of something she couldn't quite understand, she continued to address Harry as if the other boy weren't present, "Is he normally like this?"

"Most the time, yeah, I'm afraid so."

She thought she'd been getting to know the Slytherin but maybe there was still a lot more to know. Draco pouted a bit (and Hermione choked a bit) and said sulkily, "Fine. If you guys want to return to the doom and gloom about how we're all going to be burnt at the stake for being bent as S-hooks..." He fell back behind his blank, cool Malfoy mask effortlessly and the shudder that Hermione gave was real.

"Could you not do that? It's really creepy." To her surprise, the other Head complied and gave her an easy smile before settling into a thoughtful, serious expression that was at least human.

She wondered just how good of an actor the Slytherin was, and whether his dazzling smiles or his inhuman masks were closer to the real Malfoy. Then the boy said to himself, "Salazar's eyes, has it really only been a week? How are we going to make it through the entire year?"

Hermione's voice was sympathetic as she told the couple, "I don't mean this to be rude, but it's only going to get worse. So, first let's deal with today. We have to go to breakfast; to put off facing the school will only make things worse. We ought to go immediately, before most the students arrive - you do not want to arrive with the mob already assembled.

"If they'll allow it, we'll have to stick to the Hufflepuff table. Even if the Gryffindors would let us sit at our table, it would only hurt Malfoy's case even more. At least by sitting at the Hufflepuff table, it's a situation that people are used to and won't come as a complete shock." Draco was nodding along with her, impressed by the girl's reasoning skills. "We'll all act normally, you two will sit together as you usually do. I wouldn't suggest snogging at the breakfast table, but now's the time to declare yourself if you ever want to be more public with your affections - people are going to have to start getting used to it or to get their reactions out of their systems. Life will eventually move on from the shocking revelation that the Boy Who Lived is sleeping with Draco Malfoy."