White Horses

She noticed the young man's wry smile and quickly added, "Not that I haven't enjoyed it - I was thrilled to work with you. Um, I mean, with the group - the group, of course." She laughed nervously and then fell into an embarrassed silence as they walked into the carpeted elevator.

She couldn't believe that she was making such a fool of herself in front of the absolutely hottest guy in their class of four hundred people. She'd heard rumours that he was really clever, and dryly funny, and sexily athletic, and mysteriously private, and of course rich. That was obviously true enough, from his apartment building.

But he smiled down at her easily and was actually the one to sound apologetic and embarrassed as he said, "Well, I hope you don't regret it. I did tell you that my flatmate is insane, right?"

She twittered and thought to herself gleefully, 'Flatmate'! Oh, thank god for British accents! Then she realized that she should make some sort of response and said, "Oh, I'm sure it'll be fine. That is, if you're sure you don't mind… We could still go to the library…"

Shaking his messy black head of hair, he said easily, "Oh, no. I wouldn't want to be the death of you." And she silently cheered as he led her down the muffled hall to a highly polished wooden door.

Harry Potter inserted his key into the lock of the heavy mahogany door and pulled it open, effectively unsealing the Silencing spell that was always in place, to protect his neighbours. A high, ranting voice with a distinctly upper class British accent exploded into the hallway.

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU 'OFFERED' OUR PLACE? YOU CAN'T OFFER SOMEONE ELSE'S HOME, YOU BLOODY DAFT BINT! WHAT'VE YOU GONE AND-"

Even Harry seemed stunned for a moment by the waves of furious sound that were crashing over them, but then he regained himself with an apologetic smile and - with some vaguely appeasing motions - led the way into the apartment. For the first time, the blond girl thought she might just regret coming. Apparently Harry hadn't been exaggerating when he'd said that his roommate was insane.

The young Englishman hurried ahead of her, yelling in his still-adorable-but-perhaps-not-worth-it accent, "Draco! Put a bloody lid on it!"

The dangerous voice quieted slightly as it locked on Harry, but the mysterious 'Draco' person sounded no less angry and the refined and furious voice hissed, "Oh, Potter, don't you start with me. Have you heard what that - that - that Granger has gone and done now?"

"No, but I suspect that anyone else within ten kilometres probably has," came the dry retort from Harry, who was leaned against the edge of an open doorway. Out of it came striding another young man, who the girl noticed was - despite being the complete opposite of the illustrious Harry Potter - just as hot. Too bad he was insane.

This 'Draco' had impossibly white blonde hair, which paired with his equally impossible silver eyes and his milky white skin made him look like some sort of angel. A fallen angel, most likely. He kicked the wall futilely and explained in a curt voice, "Bloody Head Girl has gone and told the Weaselette that she can stay here - here! - all damn summer! As if she doesn't have her own place! That's it, I'm Apparating right over there and-"

He broke off, for the first time noticing the girl standing behind Harry in the hallway, and asked in a more normal voice, "What's the Muggle doing here?"

Harry whacked the other boy sharply on the head and said, "Don't use that word! And she's a classmate of mine, here to work on a project."

The girl didn't recognized the word 'muggle.' It must have been some obscure British slang, but given Harry's reaction, she didn't think it could be a very nice word. Her dislike of the fair boy grew, but before she could say anything for herself, there was a loud pop! and another voice joined into the fray.

Apparently walking in from another room (or from nowhere?) was a thin and freshly pretty girl, with a large amount of shiny brown hair falling about her shoulders. Her face, however, was screwed up in an angry glare and she was now attacking the blonde boy in yet another British accent, "I can't believe that you hung up on me, Draco Malfoy! You are such a histrionic little girl!"

Before any of this could go anything further, Harry bellowed out, "Shut up! Both of you, just shut up!" The other two turned on him with glowering expressions, but he stepped aside to reveal to Hermione as well the girl standing behind him and said desperately, "I have a visitor, for Salazar's sake! Could you guys not just act like normal, rational human beings for two minutes!"

The new girl's face changed as if a switch had been flicked and she immediately was sweet and apologetic, "Oh, Harry, I'm sorry. I wasn't even - I didn't-" She reached around the boy and held out a hand to the blonde girl, smiling, "I'm so sorry you had to see all that. I'm Hermione Granger. It's very nice to meet you."

The American student took the other girl's hand mutely and shook it. There was no similar gesture from the silvery boy, though, who stalked off into another room in a huff. Harry followed him and then after another friendly smile from Hermione, the two girls followed more slowly behind.

"Now why've you got your knickers in a twist, Draco? You like Ginny, for Salazar's pity!" Harry was standing over the sulky boy with his hands on his hips.

From the obviously expensive and tremendously fashionable couch, Draco sniffed, "Well, yeah…"

Harry shook his head in exasperation, but he had a doting smile on his face as he said, "You're just impossible, you know that."

Strange words were spat from the pale boy's sneering lips, "Ferme-la, vous branleur. Je ne dois pas écouter vous. C'est mon appartement, aussi, vous bon savent." The French flowed effortlessly from him and the girl standing in the room's doorway was left wondering if she'd mislabeled him in her mind as a Brit or if all Europeans were this multilingual. Bastard, she thought bitterly, since it was obvious that the other boy had said something snide. She was beginning to feel distinctly out of place in this fancy apartment, with the three strange but beautiful people and their barely comprehensible argument. She began to edge out of the room and called out to Harry, "Look, we can wrap this up another time, Harry. It looks like you've got your hands full here."

The black-haired boy looked up guiltily, his brilliantly green eyes surprised behind his glasses. As if he had forgotten she was there. "Oh, no - I mean, we can still.. well..."

He gave up as he saw her shaking her head and continuing to back down the hall, "Don't worry about it. I'll let myself out." And then she practically lunged for the door and escaped into the thankfully normal corridor. She pressed the button for the elevator, listening to the reassuring beeps and hums of the machinery, and somehow felt like a damsel who had just watched her prince end up with the dragon instead of her. She could have no idea how right she was.

MUCH, MUCH LATER THAT NIGHT, after Draco had finally calmed down, after they had all shared some disgusting pizza delivery and the three friends had spent a relaxing night watching (and making fun of) mindless American telly, Hermione finally got up to go. Without much of a farewell, since they saw each other nearly everyday, she Disapparated from the boys' apartment with another loud pop.

"Thank god for Silencing charms," Harry murmured into Draco's silvery hair, "Or we'd have been kicked out of here long ago."

They were still sprawled on the obviously expensive and tremendously fashionable couch, Draco's head lying on the hard pillow of Harry's thin chest. The former Slytherin rolled over with a contented sigh and buried his face into the familiar chest, muttering suggestively, "Yes, it does come in handy for so many things. Good thing we reinforced the charms around our bedroom."

Harry snorted, ruffling Draco's hair, "Oh, really? And, speaking of the bedroom, don't you think you owe me something for getting rid of 'the Muggle?'"

It was Draco's turn to snort derisively and he propped himself up on his elbows, one digging into Harry's side and making the boy grimace painfully. He punctuated his words with jabs of his long white finger, carefully aimed at Harry's most ticklish spots, "Fat. Lot. That. You. Did." Harry was squirming and half laughing, half crying, and so Draco desisted, just to watch the boy beneath him. "My hero, riding in a white horse," he sneered at the recovering Harry, but softened his insult with a quick kiss dropped onto Harry's protesting mouth.

The Boy Who Lived Again swallowed his argument and arched up to capture those laughing lips again. He murmured into their kiss, "Don't you know there are no white horses?"

NOTES

Because they would have messed up the flow earlier, here are translations and explanations from the last chapter:

Draco's plea: “By his mercy. Please – be merciful. Take pity on us. I beg you."

The so-called Sending is a hodgepodge of La Cantilene de Sainte Eulalie and La Chanson de Roland. Translated into Modern English, it would approximate something like:
Whoso had seen that shattering of shields,
Whoso had heard those shining hauberks creak,
And heard those shields on iron helmets beat,
Whoso had seen fall down those chevaliers,
And heard men groan, dying upon the field,
Some memory of bitter pains might keep.
It is most hard to endure, indeed.
It gathers force.
And neither for gold, neither for money, neither for jewels
Neither by the threat nor by the prayers of the king
Nothing could ever make it fold nor to bring
Passes the night, the clear day opens now.
They're well confessed, absolved, from sin set free;
In the shape of a dove, it flies away with the sky.
So that our Death has pity on us
By his mercy
(And let's us come to him)

In this chapter, Draco's angry exclamation is approximately, "Shut up, you bastard! I don't have to listen to you. This is my apartment, too, as you well know."