Bad Faith

Notes:: A lot of developments this chapter; things heat up a little, and I hope I've given a better idea on how the trio relates these days, and then our boys blow off some steam--in more ways than one. Check the end-notes for a link to my LJ rant/post about this chapter, because my brain apparently decided to write a commentary. Should also answer some questions/crits some of you are bound to have after reading this through. Feel free to grub at me anyway, though.

Oh! Also, some times I've had people o.O at Daphne Greengrass--she's not an OC! She's canon, one of Pansy's gang, we never see her mentioned in the books, but JKR herself has listed the girl as a character on her master list, and Daphne's up there on the lexicon. Anywho, just wanted to mention that. All in all, this chapter was a lot of fun to write. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did :D

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Chapter Six

Brimstone and Fire

Aim for the gutter and you can't miss.

- David Wands

* * * * *

Okay, so Dad was a Death Eater.

Whatever. No problem.

Big deal.

All right, perhaps it was a big deal. Still, there wasn't much Draco could do to change it. Besides, he mused, his father had never taken a wrong step before. Maybe it was one of those 'adult' issues that, he was frequently reminded, he was still too young to understand. Personally, he thought that excuse was a load of waffle, but it was the most comforting idea he had to hold on to at the moment. His father had not brought up the subject since Draco had fled to his room that fateful evening, and the one time Draco had the bollocks to ask about it, he'd been shut down with a simple but firm 'It's none of your concern'.

So, Draco knew about as much as everyone else did about the end of the Triwizard Tournament. Last term he'd witnessed, along with everyone else, the end of the third task; Potter and Diggory made it to the Cup, vanished for a suspicious amount of time, and then eventually reappeared outside the maze. The only difference being that now, Diggory seemed to be dead.

That night, Draco had been the first one to suggest 'Potter killed him for the Cup!' but nobody seemed to be eager to listen to him. At the end of term, Dumbledork had treated them all to an enigmatic speech about how the Dark Lord had returned and conveniently rigged the entire Tournament just to capture Potter, murdering Diggory in the process. Somehow, though, You-Know-Who seemed to have forgotten the part about killing Harry Potter, the one he had rigged the entire Tournament for in the first place, and had then, rather than immediately resuming his reign of terror and chaos upon returning from his thirteen-year vacation, mysteriously gone into hiding.

Draco was very relieved, on returning to Hogwarts for his fifth year, to find that he wasn't the only one who found this sorry story extremely dodgy.

Sure, he now knew for a fact that Voldemort had returned; he'd seen him having tea with Father in the library. But even armed with this knowledge, Draco thought there were some very large, suspicious holes in the series of events that had supposedly transpired. Rumours were still flying high, and thanks to the Prophet and the talented quill of one Ms Skeeter, Harry Potter was finally being shown in his true light. Served him right, Draco thought. It was about bloody time.

This was the first of many good things to occur. Draco had also been made a Prefect, obviously a rare stroke of brilliance on the Headmaster's part, no doubt abetted by ample pressure from Professor Snape, whom Draco had decided was singularly the best professor Hogwarts had ever had.

This position was severely jeopardised, however, by the arrival of Professor Umbridge, with whom Draco soon found he had much in common.

For one, she hated Harry Potter; Draco liked the potential this woman held. Second, she noticed what an utterly brilliant and responsible pupil Draco was; Draco approved. Third, she made Potter's life even more of a living hell, which in turn made it even easier for Draco - on top of being Prefect - to fulfil the vengeful oath he'd made the moment Potter had refused his hand at the beginning of their first year, which was to make Potter very, very sorry; Draco was beside himself with blissful glee.

It was perhaps the best year at Hogwarts Draco had ever had.

...until that bit where Potter did an interview for The Quibbler, and fingered his father as a Death Eater.

Draco paced the length of his room methodically, over, and over, and over again. It was one of the many spoils of being a Slytherin Prefect: a private room, king-sized bed, several of his very own wardrobes, many over-sized mirrors that showered him with compliments, and a very generous fireplace. If Draco had known rooms like this existed in the Slytherin dormitories, he would have bribed his way into one years ago.

His room, usually kept immaculately clean and relatively neat through his own slightly obsessive habits and the efforts of Hogwarts' house-elves respectively, was now in complete ruin. Several mirrors were smashed, the bed hangings were half torn down, two wardrobes had been knocked carelessly on their sides, pieces of spare parchment fluttered around the room whenever a cool breeze entered through the crack below the door, and the fireplace looked as if someone had chucked a cauldron of Dungbombs down the chimney.

Draco continued to systematically pace through the wreckage, looking for something else to destroy. His Nimbus 2001, stood off in a lonely corner, shiny and unscarred, became a tempting target.

No, he decided solemnly. He would not destroy his own broom. He would not gnaw off the black polish until it became a serrated, splintery instrument that he would then use to roger the Speccy Boy Wonder. After all, the broom had done nothing wrong. It was not the broom's fault that Harry Potter was such a selfish, arrogant, ignorant, miserable, nosy, GoodForNothingAsininePillock, no more than it was Draco's fault that his father was a Death Eater.

Speaking of a certain GoodForNothingAsininePillock, that was something that definitely was at fault, and proved to be a much more appealing target for his destructive urges.

Draco exploded out of his room and down the hall without bothering to close his door. His Intent To Kill was apparently evident in his demeanour, because as he stormed through the Slytherin common room, he vaguely heard someone go 'Uh-oh'.

'Oh, shite.' That was Pansy. 'Draco, wait.'

He ignored her, his beeline for the door unwavering.

'Draco!' He continued to ignore her. The door was only ten feet away; one door closer to sweet, soothing, perfectly reasonable, cold-blooded murder.

'Draco Amadeus Malfoy, stop this instant! Oh, ye Gods, Zabini! Grab him!'

With the sort of luck Draco had come to expect after years of narrowly missing the Snitch to a bespectacled blur atop a Firebolt, Blaise Zabini chose that moment to walk through the portrait hole. Blaise was not a close friend of his, but nor was he an enemy; just another fifth-year Slytherin accomplice that came in handy when attempting to undermine the ego of a certain Speccy Pillock whom Draco was on his way to disembowel. A plan that, unfortunately, was currently being impeded by the aforementioned Slytherin, who may not have possessed the raw brute strength of Crabbe or Goyle, but was certainly bigger than Draco at any rate.

Blaise reclined against the back of the portrait, creating a formidable obstacle, unperturbed by Draco's Avada Kedavra glare. He was a good three inches taller than Draco, and more solidly built; he didn't play Quidditch, but Draco had figured the boy had to practice some sort of physical activity, and upon inquiring casually some years ago, he had discovered that this physical activity happened to be professional swordplay. It was this fact alone that stilled Draco's immediate desire to grab a pointy object and jab it in Blaise's solar plexus.

Despite his newly instated ground rule of never becoming involved in intimate relationships with those he shared a living area with, Draco had, on more than one occasion, entertained the thought that Blaise was spectacularly attractive for a guy; occasions no doubt encouraged by his father's severe warning about illegitimate procreation that previous July. Blaise's dark, curly hair, high cheekbones and olive skin gave him a handsome-yet-haunted sort of look as he stood in the darkness of the doorway, returning Draco's glare with an inquiring eyebrow--just for good measure, Draco was sure, because he had a feeling Blaise knew exactly where Draco was planning to go, what he was planning to do, and to whom, and could probably venture an accurate guess at his chosen method, too.

'Having another tantrum?' Blaise inquired mildly.

'Get out of it, Zabini,' he snarled, trying to slip by.

Blaise boldly held out an arm, leaning it against the doorframe, blocking his escape. 'Oh, come on, Malfoy. You're going to make Parkinson cry.'

Draco glared at him. 'So?'

'So, I really don't feel up to the noise, as some of us actually prefer to plot, rather than skip off in rash attempts to eradicate certain Gryffindorks and get ourselves expelled.'

Draco considered this, and then decided he didn't care. 'Piss off, Zabini.'

Blaise shrugged, conceding. 'Your funeral.'

'Zabini!' That was Pansy again, this time directly behind Draco. He felt her latch onto his elbow with both hands. 'Draco, darling, really, this is not going to help anything!'

'Oh, I think it might,' Draco snarled, trying with very little success to worm his way out of her vice-like grip. 'It will help in that I will never have to look at him again if he's dead!'

'Draco,' she said reasonably, 'killing Potter is not going to make the article disappear.'

'Perhaps not,' he replied, turning to face her. 'But it will make me feel a hell of a lot better about it!'

The portrait hole opened again. Theodore Nott and Daphne Greengrass surveyed the scene with dubious looks over Zabini's shoulder, as he was still blocking most of the entranceway.

Draco greeted Theodore with a cheerful smile. After all, his father had been named along with the others, and although he was of the quieter variety, even Draco did not step on Theodore's toes, for he had been put into Slytherin for very good reasons; Draco had not forgotten what had befallen that poor Hufflepuff that tried to saunter off with his girlfriend the previous year, nor the fact that Theodore had never been caught.

'Evening, Nott. Fancy joining me on a mission to slaughter the Boy Who Lived Only To Die A Most Painful Death?'

Theodore did not smile, but raised his eyebrows slightly and gave a curt nod. 'Sounds good to me.'

'Oh, honestly!' Pansy said, conjuring such a vivid image of That Mudblood Granger that Draco slapped her hands off his arm in disgust.

Daphne seemed to be thinking along the same lines as Pansy, however, and she moved to intercept Theodore's path, arms folded and glaring at her boyfriend. Draco had to admit that even with her nose pinched like that, she still looked very pretty.

'Theo, we just went over this.'

Not very empathetic, though.

'I've changed my mind,' Theodore declared.

Draco suddenly wondered why he had never been closer friends with the boy before. He clearly had his priorities straight: Murder, now. Sex, later.

'You'll never make it through their portrait hole,' Pansy reasoned.

'Not without being pelted by Weasels and Mudbloods and other unsanitary things,' Daphne piped in.

'You'll be expelled,' Blaise reminded them cheerfully.

'I can live with expelled,' Theodore said.

'So can I,' Draco informed them, adding, 'quite happily.'

'Can you live with being pelted by Weasels?' Daphne asked.

Draco and Theodore exchanged looks. They rarely talked, were automatically polite to one another, but he was no closer to being a friend to Draco than the portrait that guarded their common room. However, both hailed as scions of very prestigious, pure-blood wizarding families, and both had fathers that had turned out to be Very Important Death Eaters. Although this had never mattered before, it made some sort of a difference now, as they inexplicably communicated something wordlessly in that glance alone and said, together, 'I've had worse', before making for the door.

Ten minutes later, after much scuffling, cursing, shouting, and all-out hell-raising, Draco was securely pinned to the common room sofa by Vince and Greg, and Theodore was being held down in an armchair by Daphne, who apparently had astonishingly strong legs for a girl.

'Piss off,' Draco said irritably for about the fortieth time that evening. Vince and Greg exchanged guilty looks and ignored him.

Pansy sat across from him, on a black chaise with Zabini, surveying both would-be murderers with cold, dark brown eyes. 'You're both acting very immaturely, you know.'

'We're both really not caring,' Draco said. Theodore grunted his agreement.

'You know,' Blaise said slowly, 'storming out of here on a crusade, wand blazing, is a very un-Slytherin thing to do. It's more something that a--'

'Zabini, if you want to keep your testicles, you will not finish that sentence,' Draco snarled.

'--a psychotic, over-emotional teenager like yourself would do,' Blaise compromised, rolling his eyes.

'Potter sold out your fathers too,' Draco reminded his captors sourly, ignoring Blaise. 'You have every reason to want kill him. Let me go and I promise I'll save you some leftovers to pummel.'

'Stop trying to corrupt them, Draco,' Pansy reprimanded as the two lugs exchanged glances again, possibly considering that Draco had a point. 'Won't it be more gratifying to destroy Potter in some sly, much subtler manner than an onslaught of Killing Curses across the corridor?'

'Who said anything about Killing Curses?' Draco snapped. 'I am going to nail that self-proclaimed martyr to an inverted cross, erect it on the pitch, strip his skin off with a rusty peeler, and roger him with a splintery broomstick for the entire school to see.'

'Nice imagery,' Blaise remarked.

'Thank you,' Draco said politely. 'Now you lot piss the bloody well off and allow Nott and I to kill that bloody scar-headed pillock.'

'No, I don't think so,' Daphne said sweetly. 'I'm comfy.'

'My knees are numb,' Theodore remarked, 'because your arse is fat. Get off.'

'Her arse is lovely,' Pansy countered when Daphne looked mildly offended. 'We'll leave off when you two get yourselves out of your stitches. It's what friends do.'

'It's what women do,' Draco corrected her. Now he could fully appreciate his father's sentiments about how if the world empires had been predominantly based on a matriarchal system, there would be far less war--and what fun would that be? Being pinned to the couch did nothing to keep him riled up, and he could feel the adrenaline slowly but surely leaking out of his system. 'Even in Slytherin, the girls are pansies.'

'That was a horrible pun, Malfoy,' Blaise said, grimacing.

'It wasn't meant to be a pun! It was an insult!'

'But we're pretty,' Daphne said, casting him a million-dollar smile.

'And so are you,' Pansy added to Draco, as he had opened his mouth to protest again. 'You don't want to ruin your complexion by going near greasy Gryffindors.'

'I'll be a lot prettier with his brains splattered all over my robes!' Draco shouted, lunging forward only to be yanked back by Greg, who let out an exasperated sigh.

Blaise shook his head, looking like he was trying not to laugh. 'You have a very unhealthy obsession with that Potter bloke.'

'The only "obsession" I have with Potter is a need to see his blood.'

'Kinky. Is that before or after you--'

'Besides,' Pansy interrupted, elbowing Blaise as he dissolved in silent sniggers, 'mashing brains takes a lot of effort, and the stress could cause wrinkles and split ends and that wouldn't be very appealing, now would it? There are much more ingenious ways to release tension, darling.'

Draco gave her a very hard, narrow look. 'And what would you propose?'

'Virgin sacrifice?' Blaise prompted.

Pansy rolled her eyes. Theodore, taking a moment away from arguing with Daphne, said, 'Yeah, if all our birds weren't tarts.'

'Potter's probably a virgin,' Draco said suddenly, looking thoughtful. 'We could sacrifice him.'

'I told you,' Blaise said to Pansy, who was looking as though she'd resigned herself to the fact that Draco's attention was not to be so easily diverted. 'He's hopeless. Why bother? Let him go, he'll get the stuffing Stunned out of him and learn a lesson.'

'You're working your way up my list, Zabini,' Draco said warningly.

'This isn't very productive,' Pansy admitted, slouching. 'Being your friend is extremely tiring at times,' she informed Draco sourly.

'Friends don't pin friends to couches,' Draco growled.

'No,' Blaise agreed, smirking. 'Real friends help friends get even, and then help them hide the bodies.'

'You are not helping,' Pansy said stiffly.

Blaise put on a pensive look. After a moment, he grinned. 'Orgy?'

'An orgy would work,' said Pansy, looking thoughtful.

'I--what?' Draco, unwillingly diverted, glared at Blaise, who winked at him. 'Are you trying to distract me from homicide with sex?'

'Yes,' Pansy, Daphne, and Blaise chorused.

'You know,' said a young, unfamiliar female voice somewhere behind Draco, 'there are first-years in this common room.'

'The more the merrier,' Blaise said.

'Everyone's invited,' Daphne added.

'Some friends you lot are,' Draco muttered crossly, sulking.

Just then, a terrified-looking first-year clambered through the entrance to the common room, tripping over her robes as she scrambled over the threshold trying to balance her bag in one hand and carefully clutching a letter in the other. Her dark eyes darted around the room, fell on Draco, and she trotted up to them, trembling and looking like she would very much like to be elsewhere. The fifth-years were regarding her much like a pack of lions regarded their cubs over a freshly killed meal.

'T-this is for y-you,' she stuttered, quickly thrusting the roll of parchment at Draco. 'Professor S-snape gave it to me.'

As both of Draco's arms were pinned to the sofa, Pansy reached over and plucked the letter from the girl's grasp. Blaise snapped his teeth at her and ,with a terrified squeak, the girl whirled around and ran down the stairs to the girls' dormitories. Pansy gave him a withering look. He shrugged, grinning. 'At the beginning of term, Greg told all the first-years I was half-vampire. Have to keep up appearances.'

'Oh,' Pansy said after taking her eyes off Blaise long enough to look at the letter. Her eyes raised to Draco, then to Vince and Greg. 'Let him go,' she commanded and, after a quick glance to make sure the other was complying, they released his arms. Before Draco could bolt, however, she thrust the letter at him. 'It's from your father, Draco.' She looked from him to Theodore, Vince and Greg. 'It's addressed to all four of you.'

The smirk slid off Blaise's face and Theodore's eyes narrowed slightly. Draco was staring at the letter as if it might very well explode and Vince and Greg both exchanged looks again. Draco stood up, took the letter, and with a quick jerk of his thumb, ordered Daphne off Theodore's lap.

'Dorms,' Draco said tersely, eyes sweeping the other three. 'Now.'

Even Theodore, never one to be ordered around like a dog, didn't bother to argue.

* * * * *

'I'm sorry,' Hermione said after a moment. 'What?'

'You know,' Draco said, moving away from Pansy's door to stand before her. He held out his arms and did a few staccato movements with a quick head snap. He executed the moves so nimbly and fluently that she missed most of it with a blink. 'Tango.'

She stared at him. He jammed his hands in the pockets of his cloak, cocked his head, and patiently waited for an answer. Even for a girl as quick as Hermione, it took another moment for what he was asking of her to entirely sink in.

'No,' she answered firmly, shaking her head. 'No, no, no, no, no. I absolutely do not know how to tango, and I will be very happy to never learn, and I swear to Merlin if you keep grinning at me like that, Draco Malfoy--sod the Ministry's code of conduct--I will hex you.'

* * *

By the time Ron arrived on the scene that evening, chaos had already erupted.

The raid was supposed to be simple; Draco, via Snape, had pinpointed a modest, abandoned warehouse just south of Edinburgh that was playing host to a small group of Death Eater recruits. Mostly young, inexperienced idiots fresh out of various schools--Durmstrang, mostly, though some were bound to be recent Hogwarts graduates--that were gathering around, plotting random terrorisation of Muggles and so forth; hardly a priority mission, but at the same time, an easy one. Or at least, they'd assumed so.

'Sweet Merlin Jesus Mary Bloody Christmas!' Justin fell back against the wall, nearly crashing into Ron. 'It's about time you lot got here--there's got to be at least fifty of the bastards. Where the hell is Harry?'

'Coming!' Ron snapped back, irritated. The last owl they'd received from Kingsley had said 'No rush, make sure you have something for tea, it'll be a long night.' - so naturally, they had, and Harry had stopped back at his flat to make sure Dobby hadn't shut his ears in the oven before coming along, so he was a few minutes behind Ron.

It wasn't as if Harry's presence should have made that much of a difference; aside from Justin and Ron, it was just Kingsley, Tonks, Moody, Proudfoot and Dawlish at the scene--hardly a threat to fifty Death Eater-wannabes, even teenage ones. But something about Harry's presence had an effect on Dark wizards; his survival of tribulations with the Dark Lord had earned him one hell of a reputation, and on more than one occasion, Ron had witnessed perfectly able Dark witches and wizards surrendering at his wand point without a fuss.

The street lamp above them exploded and they ducked, hands covering their heads to protect against the broken glass. 'Bloody hell!' Ron checked his watch; ten minutes... he should be there any--

'POTTER! About bloody time!'

Kingsley's roar carried over the shouts of their targets, attacking from the north, and there was an odd pause in the shower of curses being hurled their way--Harry must have Ported to the safe point, just around the corner and out of sight from where Ron and Justin stood crouched behind a small alley wall.

Sure enough, Harry's answering shout followed. 'What?' There was another crash, the sound of yet another street lamp exploding, then, 'Fuck! You said this was a cinch op, you dick!'

Ron could hear Kingsley's gruff laugh. 'I lied! Get your sorry arse up here already! These kids want an arse-kicking, and I intend to give it to them!'

Ron looked at Justin, who rolled his eyes. Some people had simply too much fun with this job.

'It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye,' Justin muttered, reading his expression.

'They'll be lucky if that's all they lose. C'mon.'

'Yeah,' Justin agreed, following him towards the warehouse through the winding alley that provided the only cover. ''Cept Harry. He never gets hurt.'

The proverb 'spoke too soon' came to mind about five and a half hours later, as they stood in the lobby of St Mungo's, waiting for a room to open. Harry's wound wasn't life-threatening, so they were in the queue like everyone else, and even though it was now early morning, the lobby was still brimming with patients. Tonks was weaving her wand in complicated patterns above Harry's bloody arm, trying to slow the bleeding while they waited.

'If you say "I told you so",' Harry forced out through gritted teeth, 'I'm going to shove my wand somewhere unpleasant.'

Ron grinned at him. 'No need, Hermione will say it enough for the both of us when you get back.'

Harry opened his mouth to retort, but swore loudly instead. Tonks rolled her eyes. 'Well stop moving and it won't hurt so much. How on earth--honestly, Harry, you need to be a bit less reckless. Gawain is going to have your head for this, especially after that scene in Aberdeen. Honestly, if you were anyone else, it'd have cost you your badge by now.'

'If he was anyone else,' Ron repeated, smirking.

'Hey, it worked, didn't it?' Harry snapped defensively. 'Ow! Dammit, that stings like a--'

Of course it had worked, Ron thought. Harry's plans always seemed to; tonight it had been 'send the Patronuses in first to scatter the bastards, follow those with an onslaught of Stunning Spells in every direction, send in more Patronuses and then run in to pick off the stragglers'--which was a fine plan if there were an even number on both sides. It was a little less than safe when they were outnumbered ten to one.

But it had worked--mostly; Justin's second Patronus hadn't been quite corporeal, and several of their targets weren't befuddled by the mist, and poor Justin nearly got six Stunners to the chest. Harry's Shield Charm had protected Justin, but it had left Harry himself open for attack, and he'd been hit in the forearm with a nasty curse of some sort before the other Aurors had stepped in to Stun the remaining wizards. Moody couldn't identify it, reckoned it was some newly developed Dark Magic, and had told Harry to have McGonagall look at it. In the meantime, his wand arm was shattered and bloody and causing him a lot of pain, though he did a good job of disguising it.

'It's always this arm,' Harry muttered. 'D'you realise that? Shattered by a bewitched Bludger, lost all its bones to bloody Lockhart, bitten by a Basilisk, sliced open in the graveyard, and now hexed to bits by some idiot in a mask. It's bloody--' he hissed deep in his throat as Tonks finished threading another magical stitch, '--cursed.'

Ron tried to look sympathetic. He wasn't grinning. Really. 'Tough luck, mate. At least you're off duty until they figure out how to fix it.'

Harry rolled his eyes. 'Oh, joy, more time with Malfoy.'

At the mention of Malfoy, Ron grimaced. 'Better you than me.'

'He's not so bad,' Harry said thoughtfully. He winced as Tonks began threading another magical stitch through the wounds on his arm. They'd tried every other field-aid magic they knew, but so far, the stitches were working best at keeping the lost blood to a minimum. 'I mean, he's grown up a bit,' he continued offhandedly, shrugging. Ron snorted, which made Harry smirk. 'A very, very tiny bit, mind you. 'Course, that could just be because without a wand, he's probably worried we'll all hex him into oblivion.'

'Which I've already considered doing on more than one occasion,' Ron agreed grimly. 'I feel bad for Hermione, being stuck there all night.'

A weird, lopsided smile appeared on Harry's lips; Ron raised his eyebrows and Harry let the smile grow and said, 'To be honest, I'm not sure who I feel worse for; her, or Malfoy. You should have seen the way she handled him at the Ministry. The look on his face...' Harry laughed shortly. 'She'll be all right. Hermione can take care of herself more than you give her credit for.'

'Oh, right,' Ron said, rolling his eyes. 'I have one word for you: Bulgaria.'

'Yeah, well,' Harry said quickly, 'you're not supposed to know about Bulgaria, are you?'

'No, but you're a mate, so I do,' Ron said smugly. Harry was giving him a look, the sort he gave Dark wizards, daring them to make a move, and Ron rolled his eyes again. 'I said I won't let on, and I won't. Stop looking at me like that. Gives me the bloody creeps.'

'You better not.' Harry's fist clenched and Tonks slapped his hand, so he let his palm fall open again. 'She'll bloody kill me if she finds out I told you.'

'Well, look on the bright side,' Ron said, sitting next to him as Tonks indicated, and taking hold of Harry's elbow to hold it down. She had the ends of several threads hovering in midair, and Harry closed his eyes, set his jaw, and waited for it; Tonks snapped her wand away, tightening all the stitches with a quick jerk, and Harry's forearm jumped under Ron's steady hand, but he didn't make a sound. Ron waited half a second before finishing, 'Least now that Malfoy's around, you can use him as a human shield.'

'Tempting,' Harry admitted after a moment. He sighed heavily as Tonks, with a casual wave of her wand, cleaned the dried stains off his arm and wrapped it in a towel to absorb the fresh blood while they waited. 'Bugger this,' he muttered. Then, as an afterthought, said to Tonks, 'Thanks.'

'No worries,' Tonks said brightly, going to talk to the receptionist again, because Harry's arm was still bleeding.

'Oh, and I was meaning to tell you,' Ron said, leaning back in his seat. 'Ginny sent an owl the other morning. I completely forgot because of the whole deal with Malfoy, but--' he smiled, '--she made the team.'

Harry nodded, then blinked as the information sank in. He glanced sideways at Ron, who was smirking. 'She's on the team?'

'Bypassed reserve,' Ron confirmed, shaking his head. 'You should have seen Wood. He was all aflutter about how if he'd known Ginny could fly that well, he would have had her on the team her first year. She's apparently better than Ange now.'

'Hell,' Harry said, shaking his head.

'They still want you, you know,' Ron remarked casually. 'Wood said--'

'The answer's the same,' Harry said firmly.

'I don't understand you,' Ron said, exasperated. 'You used to live for flying.'

'I still do,' Harry said defensively. 'I just have more important things to do. I still do,' he insisted at the sceptical glance Ron gave him.

Ron raised an eyebrow. 'When's the last time you were on a broom?'

Harry opened his mouth, and then closed it.

'Uh-huh,' Ron said. 'And when's the last time you touched your Firebolt, except to move it out of the way?'

Harry still didn't answer.

'Right,' Ron went on. 'Anyway. We're going out tomorrow night to celebrate it. You know, just the guys.'

'And Ginny,' Harry reminded him.

Ron shrugged. 'She's one of the guys, Harry.' Harry snorted but didn't comment. 'Anyway, you should come. You haven't been out since bloody Malfoy came waltzing into the Ministry.'

'I have other things I need to--'

'Fred and George said they're going to come kidnap you again like they did second year,' Ron warned him.

Harry furrowed his brow. It wasn't an empty threat; he knew that as well as Ron. 'What about Malfoy? I can't ask Hermione to stick with him two nights in a row.'

Ron thought about it for a moment, then shrugged. 'Bring him.'

Harry turned to look at him, eyebrows raised in disbelief. 'You want me to bring him?'

'Sure, why not?' Ron said, shrugging again. 'I'd rather be drunk than sober around him anyway. Besides,' he added with a smirk, 'Fred and George'll be the end of him.'

Harry shook his head. 'They will,' he agreed. Then, after a moment: 'Yeah, all right. I'll ask him.'

'You'll tell him,' Ron corrected him. 'Or the lot of us will march to your door and drag you out.'

'Where are we going?'

Ron flashed him a grin. 'With Fred and George, do you even need to ask?'

Harry laughed. 'No, I suppose not.'

* * *

'I told you,' Hermione said fiercely, sweeping down on Harry the moment he stepped through his door later that morning.

Like Luna, she and Ron had free access to his flat, so he wasn't surprised to find her there. 'It's fine,' he said, making a mental note to hit Ron the next time he saw him and turning so his injured arm was out of her reach. 'Where's Malfoy?'

That distracted her from his injury. She made a face and jerked her head in the direction of the living room. 'Watching questionable things on the television,' she told him. Her eyes snapped back to his arm. 'Well?' she demanded. 'Did they find out what it was?'

'Just some curse, it's the same as I said in the owl,' Harry said, shrugging. 'What? It'll be fine in a couple of days. At least they got it to stop bleeding. Anyway, how'd the thing with Pansy--' His face fell at her expression. 'Right, I'll take that as a no. So we need to find someone else.'

Hermione twisted her hands in the hem of her blouse and bit her lip. 'Well, we, ah, might not have to.'

'Pansy might do it?'

'Well, no, Pansy won't,' she admitted. She looked at the floor and took a heavy breath before looking back up at him. 'Draco,' she said, 'thinks that I should go in her stead.'

'Malfoy, Granger,' came the irritated voice from the living room.

Harry blinked at her. 'You? But you're--I mean, not that it's a bad--but you--' He sighed. 'You know what I mean. Muggle-born.'

Hermione opened her mouth to reply just as Draco strode into the room and started talking over her. 'Unless you know a pure-blood woman the right age--that we can trust--that isn't prosaic and or a terrible actor, then I really don't think we have a choice.'

Harry blinked at him. So did Hermione.

'You think I'm not prosaic?' she asked.

'Generally, it's not considered complimentary to be the last choice,' he reminded them cheerily.

'Anyway,' Hermione said firmly as Harry opened his mouth to reprimand him, 'now that you're here, Harry, I really need to get to the office and get this whole thing approved.'

'Tomorrow,' Draco reminded her. 'Eight o'clock. Sharp, Granger.'

'Yes, yes,' she said irritably. Then, muttered to Harry, 'Good luck.' And with a snap, she Disapparated.

Draco was eyeing his injured arm with a raised eyebrow and a smirk. 'Let me guess,' he said slowly. 'Your idea?'

'Fuck you,' Harry said, turning down the hall with the intent to shower, ignoring the snickering at his back.

* * *

Draco was surprisingly easy to entertain; he'd never seen a television before coming to Harry's, and for once, Harry was glad he'd let Ron talk him into getting cable. It was more than enough to keep him occupied for the majority of the day, while Harry alternated between finishing the paperwork for the previous night's raid, resting his arm, and napping to make up for lost sleep.

At half past nine that evening, Harry gave Dobby some Muggle clothes to take to Draco's room, to which the blonde had retired after tea. Fifteen minutes later, he knocked sharply on the door. There was a quiet pause, muffled shuffling, and then the door opened a slit, revealing dark, steely eyes. 'What?'

'We're going out,' he said.

Draco blinked at him through the crack in the door. 'We?'

'Yes,' Harry said. 'We. And we're walking, so--' he gestured at the clothes Dobby'd left on the bed behind him, '--put those on.'

Grey eyes narrowed suspiciously. 'Where are we going?'

'Don't worry about it,' he said. 'Just get changed.'

'Why can't I go in robes?'

'Muggles'll see you.'

'So?'

'So,' Harry said, 'unless you'd like me to drag Hermione back over here to outline exactly where in the contract it says you have to listen to me, I suggest you just do it.'

Draco made a face and, after a thoughtful pause, closed the door in his face.

'Put those on,' Harry reminded him through the door.

'Piss off,' came the muffled reply.

'Put them on,' he said again, 'or the next thing you'll be wearing will be an Azkaban jumpsuit.'

There was a mute pause, and then Harry could hear the rustling of clothes from inside. Satisfied, he went to Floo Ron to let him know they'd meet them all there as soon as Draco was ready. Which was about five minutes later, when Draco came sauntering down the hall. He was wearing the jeans, but had left on the slate-coloured shirt he'd been wearing under his robes instead of putting on the shirt Harry'd supplied.

'What?' Draco demanded at his blank look. 'You expect me to wear that horrendous thing you call a shirt in public?' he sneered. 'I'd rather wear the stripes.'

'No--it's--you look fine,' Harry said, surprised to find that he meant it; if anyone could pull off formal wizarding attire and a pair of Muggle jeans, it had to be Draco Malfoy. The shirt was close enough to pass for a suit shirt, he supposed, if any Muggles decided to scrutinise his appearance, and his boots were black and plain and hidden well enough beneath the denim.

Draco raised a lazy eyebrow. 'I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that your sartorial expectations are severely lacking, Potter.'

'You look fine,' Harry repeated, frowning. 'Like a normal person. Which, despite what you like to think, there's nothing wrong with being.'

'Normal?' Draco snorted softly. 'Wizards are not normal people. Especially wizards,' he added slowly, 'like you and me.'

And before Harry could reply, Draco had turned into the bathroom and locked the door.

Fifteen minutes and a lot of arguing later, Harry unlocked it with a quick Alohomora. 'What the hell is taking you so...'

Draco cast him a sideways glance as he trailed off and stared, looking as if the effort pained him considerably. 'Yes?'

'I,' Harry began, then stopped and frowned.

Draco's eyes lingered on him a moment then rolled, turning back to the mirror. 'I said five more minutes.'

The broken eye contact snapped Harry out of his stupor. 'You said that five minutes ago,' he said. 'And five minutes before that.'

Draco tilted his head to the side in the mirror. He had, surprisingly enough, managed to shave sans magic without cutting himself. 'Do you have a point, Potter?' he said finally, eyes still on his reflection, brushing his hair aside with a backward motion of his hand. 'Or do you just like to watch?'

'If I wanted to watch, Malfoy, you wouldn't know I was here.' Harry smirked as that statement achieved the desired effect, and Draco looked back at him, blinking. 'We're just going out, not to a bloody soirée. Let's go.'

'Well if you remember, you failed to specify exactly what "out" encompasses,' Draco pointed out. 'Anyway, just because you go out looking like a banal pillock doesn't mean I'm going to.'

'As opposed to going out looking like a right stiff.' Harry leaned against the doorframe, watching Draco continue to attempt to perfect his appearance wandlessly. 'We're going out to meet Ron and some of the others,' he continued casually. 'Ginny made it into Puddlemere, so they wanted to have a night out, and they coerced me into going.'

The ministrations paused again; Draco had turned his head back to look at him. 'She made it into Puddlemere?' For a startled moment, Harry thought Draco might actually acknowledge her--a Weasley's--accomplishment. Draco shattered that possibility, however, as he turned back to the mirror and muttered, 'Merlin help us, England's really going downhill these days.'

'Does being a git come naturally to you?' Harry asked nastily. 'Or do you have to make an effort?'

'Insulting a Weasley hardly takes effort.'

'Then perhaps you should put an effort into refraining from it,' Harry said. 'As you're about to spend the evening with half of them, and I don't think they'll take kindly to you insulting their little sister.'

'The hell I am,' Draco snapped, pausing again. 'It's not in the agreement that I have to attend your fucking social gatherings.'

'But it is in the agreement,' Harry countered, 'that you're under my direct supervision. You go where I go.'

Draco gave him a long, hard look. 'You're mental if you think I'm subjecting myself to that.'

Harry shrugged. 'Suit yourself. I guess Dobby can babysit you, if you like. Anyway,' he added with a smirk, changing tactics, 'I suppose you don't want Ron to drink you under the table, so...'

'Piss off,' Draco snapped. 'Weasley couldn't afford to drink me under the table.' Then, as an afterthought, 'Neither could you.'

Harry raised an eyebrow. 'You sound awfully sure of yourself.'

'That would be because I am, Potter.'

Harry tossed him a jacket; Draco caught it on reflex. 'Then put your money where your mouth is, Malfoy.'

* * *

The Ashwinder was a fairly small establishment, as far as bars and clubs went, and it was open to wizards and Muggles alike; sober Muggles didn't believe in magic happening before their eyes, so drunk Muggles were certainly no trouble, and the bar owners liked the extra revenue. Harry carefully omitted this piece of information, assuring Draco that it was, indeed, a place run by wizards--which was strictly true. Wizards ran the bar, Muggles were just allowed inside.

Fred and George favoured the place because it was close to Diagon Alley, and the bar owner was an affiliate of the now very popular Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes. The 'for every ten Galleons at WWW, get a free drink!' campaign had worked out so well for both businesses that Fred and George and any guests they brought along always got in, no matter how crowded the place was. Harry didn't really care for the noise, but it was still nice to get out and away from work once in a while.

Even if he had Draco tagging along behind him whinging, 'Where the hell are we going? Are we there yet?' every two minutes.

'Here,' Harry said, stopping outside a small, black door. They were on a street just around the corner from the Leaky Cauldron and it was already dark outside. Draco wrinkled his nose at the state of the door before pushing it open and stepping inside, Harry following. Almost immediately, he was assaulted by a loud noise level and a large amount of colourful lights. Draco made a face at the elaborate display that was the dance floor, but Harry led him aside, deeper into the building and away from the groups of young people clustered together.

The bar was in the back, in the same room but slightly separate from the rest of the club. Ron was already there, hand around a bottle of lager and sitting on a high stool, along with Fred and George, both of whom were wearing their green dragon hide jackets. They grinned as Harry approached, and Fred hooked an arm around his shoulder, pointedly ignoring Draco and dragging him over to the bar.

'Good to see ya, Harry,' said Fred.

'Were getting worried about you,' George added.

'Were about to come fetch you ourselves,' Fred finished.

'Yeah, sorry,' Harry said, casting a glance over his shoulder. 'Had to drag somebody away from the mirror.'

Ron snorted. 'Still looks like a ferret to me.'

'Bit surprised you came yourself,' Draco remarked. 'I'd be right ashamed to show my face in public looking like I had a full-on case of dragon pox.'

'Where's Ginny?' Harry asked, before they could get going.

Fred all but forced him into a seat between him and Ron. 'Probably still in the bathroom.'

George smirked. 'Yeah, you know how birds are,' he said, with a deliberate look at Draco.

'Have to practically drag them away from the mirror,' Fred finished for him, sniggering.

Draco's eyes flashed; Harry saw his hand twitch and, not for the first time, considered that it was probably for the best that Draco didn't have access to his wand. It was fleeting, however; Draco's lips formed a nasty smirk, and he smoothly gave Fred the finger before slipping onto the stool on the other side of Ron without a word.

Turning around in his seat so Draco couldn't see his face, Ron raised his eyebrows at Harry, who shrugged. If Draco was going to be a prick and sulk, let him.

Ten or fifteen minutes passed in cheerful discussion between Harry and the Weasleys; Fred and George were always fun to talk to, and it was a bit of a relief to be around them again. Harry had never realised how much he enjoyed their company until they'd left Hogwarts. The pair of them were like a shining light in the gloom of war, a way to still have fun when the occasion called for it. Then Ron argued with him for a good five minutes about whether the Chudley Cannons were better than Puddlemere while Fred ordered them another round of drinks.

Draco kept to himself in stony silence on the other side of Ron. He'd gone through four Firewhiskys already and was now sitting with his back to the bar, elbows balanced on the bench. Neon hues played across his face and hair while lazy eyes stared out at the mirage of colours that constituted the dance floor.

Harry didn't notice he was staring until Draco's eyes flickered sideways and he raised an eyebrow. 'Plastered already, Potter?'

Before Harry could answer, a familiar voice snapped, 'Oh, you brought him. Joy.'

Harry looked up at Ginny. Aside from the nasty expression, she looked very pretty, dressed in a short, strapless teal dress, her flaming hair worn down and falling around her shoulders.

He shrugged. 'Have to keep an eye on him.'

'Believe me, it pains me more than you,' Draco said callously, giving her a generous once-over and wrinkling his nose.

'Congrats about the team,' Harry said absently, ignoring Draco's remark; Ginny could handle herself well enough, and had made it quite clear she did not enjoy being defended.

She smiled at him, but he could tell it was phoney. 'They still want you, you know.'

'Yeah, I've heard,' Harry said, shooting a sideways look at Ron, who shrugged apologetically.

'Honestly,' Ginny said, smile fading. 'I'm half inclined to think the only reason I got in the tryouts was because they thought I was still dating you.'

Harry rolled his eyes. 'I bet he loved that.'

Almost on cue, a very tall, blonde bloke appeared behind her, one arm casually draped around her shoulders. He nodded curtly at Harry. 'Potter.'

It was Harry's turn to wrinkle his nose. 'Smith,' he responded shortly.

Draco raised his eyebrows but didn't comment, turning his eyes back to the dance floor as Ginny and Zacharias took seats by Fred and George. Ron said, 'I'll be back' and went to join them.

Harry was about to turn back around when a young woman with short, bubblegum-pink hair emerged from the crowd. She was dressed in low-slung, black dragon hide slacks, a pink tank top that matched her hair, and a large pair of black boots.

'Wotcher, Harry,' said Tonks.

'Hey,' Harry said. 'I thought you'd be with Lupin.'

'Remus,' Tonks chided him. Harry grimaced. 'Oh, you should get used to it already,' she said lightly, picking his drink up off the table and helping herself to it. 'Anyway, he's a bit... busy tonight.' Her eyes scanned the group at the bar, coming to rest on Draco. She slipped into Ron's old seat between the two. 'Hullo, Draco.'

Draco gave her the courtesy of glancing at her, but made it look as if the generosity pained him. An up-and-down flicker of his steely eyes said, quite clearly, that she was not worth his time of day. 'Sorry,' he drawled, 'who the hell are you?'

'Oh, right,' Tonks said, handing Harry his drink back. She pinched her face up, scrunching her nose, and with a soft pop she changed; long, golden hair that fell past her shoulders replaced the pink spikes, and Harry realised with a jolt that looking at her face was like looking at Narcissa, roughly a decade younger--except Tonks had large, round brown eyes instead of blue. Draco's jaw dropped. 'Better?' she offered.

'You--' he began, then stopped himself, closing his mouth. 'You,' he said again, sounding awestruck. 'But I thought you--'

'Went to Salem and stayed there? No, unfortunately, that's just what Lucius wanted you to think. Couldn't have you investigating long-lost cousins that turned out to be half-bloods, big disgrace to the family name and all, yes I know,' she answered a bit bitterly.

With another soft pop the pink Tonks was back and she offered him a hand. 'Tonks.'

Draco looked at her for a long moment; her hand held steady, patiently, and Harry noticed a small pinch in-between his eyebrows. Finally, Draco took her hand. But instead of shaking it, he turned it over and raised her knuckles to his lips. 'Charmed. You look just like your mother.'

'So I've been told,' she said with a smile, taking her hand back. She glanced at Harry and then back to Draco again. 'So have you two been getting on all right?'

'We're alive, aren't we?' Harry said sardonically and raised his eyebrows. 'Why do you ask?'

'People at the office were taking bets,' she said. Draco, midway through his next drink, choked on it. 'I'm kidding,' Tonks said, smirking. 'But after half the stories I heard about you two at Hogwarts... ' She shrugged. 'I didn't expect to see you hanging out in a bar, that's all.'

'We are not "hanging out",' Draco cut in. 'I was dragged along against my will.'

'Kicking and screaming,' Harry added. Draco snorted, picking up another Firewhisky. Harry frowned at the empty glasses already cluttering the table around his elbow and said, 'How many of those have you had already?'

Draco downed the shot easily and tossed it on the counter. 'Not nearly enough.'

'In that case,' Tonks said brightly, turning around and hailing the bartender, 'let's have another round, shall we?'

* * *

Ron sagged against the person on his right. He felt as if they'd been here for only fifteen minutes or so, but the large collection of empty bottles and glasses suggested otherwise. Harry had wandered off with the twins to talk to the pub owner some time ago and had not returned, and Ron was feeling bored, disgruntled and slightly worried by their absence. The twins were bad enough as they were, never mind after a few drinks.

'What time is it?' he wondered aloud. He felt whomever it was he was leaning on shrug and sighed, turning the other way, and prodded the person to the left of him. 'Oi, Gin. Times'it?'

Ginny surfaced long enough to throw him a cold look over her shoulder. 'Excuse me, Ronald. I'm a bit busy.'

'Just because I'm pissed doesn't mean you can snog my sister in front of me,' Ron informed the hazy image of Zacharias with a threatening finger. Ignoring the 'Oh, grow up' from Ginny, he continued with, 'Now tell me what bloody time it is.'

'Half past, you pushy git.'

'Half past what?'

'One, you tart.'

'What's the matter, Weasley?' came a slightly slurred drawl in his right ear. 'Past your bedtime?'

Ah, so that's who was on his right. Lovely. 'Piss off,' Ron snapped.

With an upturn of his lip and a flash of teeth, Draco spun back around on his stool, turning his back to Ron once more. Tonks lit up a cigarette on the other side of him and, after a puppy-dog pout, she handed the fag to Draco and fetched herself another one. Ron wrinkled his nose at the smell, turned back around, and was met with the sight of Ginny trying to eat her boyfriend's face.

Damned on both sides, Ron slid off his stool and went to find Harry.

* * *

'You have a lot of tattoos,' Draco noted. This was done with some difficulty, as, after a double Firewhisky for every birthday he'd survived, in addition to a strange Muggle margarita Tonks had made him try, everything was beginning to blur around the edges. The neon lights, loud music, and fast-moving bodies nearby on the dance floor were all making him feel extremely dizzy, but in a good way--if it were possible to feel slightly nauseous and tossed off one's block in a positive manner.

'I only have four,' she protested, pinching her nose at him and taking another drag of her cigarette. She had a very slight slur to her words, but nonetheless ordered another margarita.

'Four?' Draco squinted at her; she had a Celtic-looking vine-like symbol tattooed just below her collarbone, a ring of Latin words around her right upper arm, and (he knew from when she'd turned around earlier) a phoenix on her shoulder blade. But, unless his drunken state had taken him beyond the capacity to count, that only made three. 'Where's the fourth?'

She made a face at him. 'Not in a place I normally display (she severely enunciated the 'dis') to the general public,' she informed him, sipping her drink. 'D'you have any?'

He smirked at her. 'One.'

She raised her eyebrows, surprised. 'You're pulling a fast one, aren't you? Prove it.'

He raised an eyebrow in return. 'What's in it for me?'

She smirked and leaned forward, lowering her voice as she said, rather casually, 'You show me yours and I'll show you mine.'

Believing she was drunk enough to do it (for he certainly was), Draco nodded. 'All right. Let's see yours then.' She raised an eyebrow and he quickly added, cordially, 'Ladies first.'

'Pfff,' she said, sliding off her stool. 'Don't try that gentlemen act with me. I knew your father and I know your mum and you, sir, are a right blighter if ever I saw one. However,' she continued in a dignified tone, standing up straight with her chin raised, 'I am very curious to see this tattoo you claim to have, so, be a chap and hold this.'

She handed him her margarita, which he finished for her while she held her fag between her lips and turned so her right side was facing him. Then, using both hands and what appeared to be a considerable amount of effort--for the leather looked extremely tight--she hooked her thumbs in the waistband of her dragon hide trousers, and attempted to tug the edge down.

'Attempted' being the operative word.

He burst out laughing at her--oh, gods, he was losing his poise already. 'You want some help with that, babe?'

'Bugger off,' she said, hopping in place, and he could see the purple strap of a thong stretched across her thumb as she tugged. She managed to yank the edge down enough to expose her hip and the very top of her thigh, on which there was a twisting black mark.

He squinted and leaned forward, bracing one hand on the bar to keep himself from falling off his seat. 'Is that a snake?'

'Serpent!' she corrected him, managing to stretch the leather down another two inches or so, exposing the body of the oriental-style reptile curling down her thigh. She grinned up at him from her bent-over position, wavering dangerously. 'Isn't it pretty?'

The cigarette bobbed in her lips as she spoke. Draco reached over, plucked it out of her mouth and lifted it to his own. 'How far around does that go?'

She snorted at him and hiked her trousers back up. 'Wouldn't you like to know?' She plucked the fag out of his mouth mid-drag, making him cough, and finished it off herself before flicking the butt aside. 'Now,' she said as he finished coughing, 'let's see yours.'

Giving a disgruntled sigh, Draco undid the first two buttons of his shirt, spun around on his stool and said, 'Tug back my collar.'

He felt her fingers brush the back of his neck, her nail snagging the chain he wore as she pulled the shirt collar down, until her fingertip was poking between his shoulder blades. 'Ooh, classy,' he heard her say. 'Very sexy. What's that mean?'

He shrugged his shirt back into place as she released his collar. 'I'll tell you sometime you'll actually remember it.'

'Mmmmmm, okay, but!' she said, snagging his hand as he turned back around and dragging him off his stool. 'Oooonly if you dance with me.'

He gave her a very hard look; this was admittedly more difficult to accomplish than it was sober. 'I'm bloody surprised I can stand on my own and you want me to dance?'

'You can dance,' she said, waggling a finger at him. 'Can't you?'

'Of course I can dance!' he declared, perhaps more loudly than was necessary. 'I am a Malfoy. These things come with the package.'

'Spiffing,' she said, smiling, and began dragging him towards the dance floor. 'Then you can teach me how, come on.'

Perhaps if he were sober, he could have thought up an acceptable excuse not to--or at least, put up a better resistance. 'Why do I have a feeling I'm going to regret this?'

She looked over her shoulder at him, smiling brilliantly as she tugged him into the crowd. 'Because you probably will. Come on!'

* * *

Ron found Harry trying to arm-wrestle Fred with his uninjured arm, with George in-between them pulling faces, trying to make one or the other lose focus. Harry was easily stronger than either of the twins, but Weasley men had always harboured their alcohol extraordinarily well, and thanks to this, Fred was putting up a decent effort against the less-than-sober Harry.

'Come on, Fred, that's not even his wand arm! Give it a good twist, go on--oh bloody hell, mate,' George said, rolling his eyes as Harry flattened Fred's arm on the tabletop. 'He's sloshed and handicapped. That's just sad.'

Fred was massaging his wrist gloomily. 'I'm getting weak in my old age,' he declared.

'You need to start wrestling Dark wizards like Harry.'

'I don't "wrestle" them,' Harry protested, but he was grinning. 'I've just been... practising.'

Fred snorted. 'With who? Hagrid?'

Harry laughed. 'Kingsley, actually.'

'Bloody hell, you're working out with Kingsley?' George said, laughing too. 'I take it back, Fred, you've nothing to be ashamed of.'

'Might have said something before you agreed to take me on,' Fred grumbled.

'You're getting soft, sitting around in that shop of yours,' Ron informed them, slipping into an empty seat beside Harry.

Harry looked at him once, grinned, then slumped forward on the bar on his left elbow, idly spinning an empty shot glass. The bartender, further down the bar serving a group of extremely giggly Muggle girls, waved his wand and a bottle of whisky floated off the shelf and refilled the glass; the Muggles, naturally, were too drunk to notice anything out of the ordinary.

Harry gave the bartender a half-hearted, two-fingered salute in thanks. Ron raised his own hand and a shot glass plopped itself on the counter and was quickly filled by the same bottle. Harry raised his glass to meet Ron's in a lazy and badly aimed 'Cheers' before draining it. When he turned to lean his back and balance his good elbow on the bar, Ron noted he was slouching slightly, his eyes had a healthy glaze and he was wearing that sneaky, lopsided smile Harry got when he was either keeping you in the dark, or was far too drunk for his own good. Considering the twins' ability to fill anyone with their fair share of alcohol twice as fast as should be legally allowed, Ron was willing to bet it was the latter.

'You know what I need,' Harry said suddenly.

'A day off?' Ron suggested.

'No, no, no,' Harry said, shaking his head far more than was necessary to get the point across.

He didn't keep talking, so Ron assumed he was supposed to continue guessing. 'To get laid?'

'No,' Harry said, shaking his head again. Then he blinked and furrowed his brow. 'Well. Yes, actually.' Ron snorted. 'I'll get back to that. What I need,' he said again, 'is to convince Gawain to allot us a portion of Headquarters' cache. Would make this job so much easier.'

Ron rolled his eyes. 'Oh, is that all? I think you'd have better luck getting laid, mate.'

'Meh,' Harry said, sulking. 'I suppose I could always bully Malfoy into it.' Ron choked on his drink. 'I meant the gold, you git. Speaking of that pillock,' he said slowly, peering around, 'where is he? You didn't kill him when I wasn't looking, did you?' Ron grinned. 'Did you?' Harry asked again, laughing.

'Unfortunately, no,' Ron admitted. 'Tonks has been keeping him occupied, oddly enough.'

'Well, they're cousins, aren't they? Maybe she knows a trick we don't,' Harry said through a yawn. 'Bloody hell, what time is it?'

'Prolly near two.'

Harry thought about that, then shrugged. 'Ah well, not like I have to work in the morning.'

'Lucky you,' Ron remarked. 'But you still have paperwork to turn in.'

'That can wait,' Harry said dismissively. Ron rolled his eyes. 'It can wait', in Harry-speech, meant it would never get done, or at least, not very well--not that Ron himself was any better. 'Have to go back to the Manor tomorrow, I think, for that bloody ball op. Did Hermione tell you--'

'Yeah, she told me,' Ron said, frowning.

Harry raised an eyebrow. 'And?'

'And what?'

'You didn't even try to talk her out of it?'

'Why waste the breath?' Ron muttered. 'She'll only do it anyway.'

* * *

Sometimes I wonder, as I look in your eyes

That, maybe, you're thinking of some other guy

- Urgent, Foreigner

* * *

'Oh come ooooon,' Draco whined. Actually whined. In public--there were literally hundreds of witches and wizards and even Muggles of many sorts, all in varying degrees of drunkenness, swaying around them on the dance floor (which, incidentally, Draco could not actually remember arriving at), and he'd just whined for the whole world to hear. This should have bothered him more than it did. 'You know you wanna.'

'What I wanna,' Tonks announced with a fabulous slur, 'is'ave 'nother fag. 'Fore I fall down. I 'ave nu idea how you drink so much an' then--' she made wild, swirly motions with her hands, '--spin an' spin an' spin round an' not fall down.' She gave him a slow, deliberate prod in his chest with her finger. 'S'not fair. Bastard.'

'I can hold you up?' he offered. It had been her idea to come out here in the first place, but now that they had, he was enjoying the break from being surrounded on all sides by nasty glares and sneers at the bar. 'I can hold you up, and then we can both spin and spin and spin around, until all the pretty colours become one and we can't tell which way is up anymore. C'mon, it'll be fun.'

'Nuu,' she protested, shoving him off. She nearly fell, but he caught her around the middle again. 'Nu,' she declared again. 'I will be sick all over an' thar'll be nu more pretty colours. I need a fag an' a coffee an' you, sir, will not coerce me--' she made the wild, swirly motions again, '--inta spinnin' about,' she finished, holding up her poky finger again, 'any--' poke, 'more--' prod. 'I am an off-duty Minishtry offishal, and I shaln't be mingly with you.'

'But,' Draco began to protest. There were Weasleys back at the bar and, even when drunk, Weasleys did not like him and he did not trust himself to remain respectable around them when so thoroughly soused. Besides, Tonks was fun. She danced and sang and spun around in crazy circles with him, and didn't care if anyone stared. She had a fantastic laugh, too, a total charmer--dead clumsy, perhaps, but charming nonetheless. He was almost willing to admit they were related. 'But, then who will spin around with me? You can't leave me out here alone. I'll get lost.' He pouted at her. 'You don't want me to get lost, d'you?'

Tonks, whom he still had by the waist to keep her from swaying, appeared as if she were struggling between a desire for a fag and the very pouty look he was gracing her with. 'But,' she said mournfully, 'I wanna fag.'

'Have one then,' said a silky voice to Draco's left.

Draco's head snapped up, and for a fleeting moment, he thought Harry had come to find them--only these green eyes were somewhat closer to hazel; two olive orbs with flecks of bright amber and gold in the middle glinted at them around heavily dilated pupils.

Draco was briefly impressed with his attention to detail, even while pissed, before he realised that the only eyes he knew that well, besides his own, were Harry's.

The stranger was taller than Harry, too, and had a head of dark brown, curly hair. His sleeves were rolled up and Draco could see he had very tan skin, several tattoos extending down his forearms, and an eyebrow piercing--and Draco thought, for half a second, that the guy was a Muggle--but there was the smooth shaft of something long and wooden behind his ear, protruding from the curls. A wizard, mid-twenties, from the look of it.

After looking him over for several moments, Tonks took the proffered fag with an absurd amount of giggling. Draco helped her stand up straight as she lit it with her wand and took a puff, and then let out a happy little sigh.

'Why don't you go have that coffee,' the stranger offered. He was looking at Draco while he spoke. 'I'll look after him for you.'

'You,' Tonks said in a loud, happy voice, 'are an angel. And see that you do, I like him very much.' And with that declaration, she gave him a generous kiss on the cheek, and stumbled in the vague direction of the bar.

Draco raised an eyebrow. 'That was the most unoriginal pickup I've ever seen.'

'Maybe,' the stranger said, smirking. 'But did it work?'

Draco deliberated; the guy was a looker. He also seemed like a bit of a dick, but... well, hell, Draco thought, when was the last time he had had company? Sixth year? And that hadn't been so much 'company' as a mutual wank in the dorms. And this guy had taken the initiative to make the first move, which, in Draco's mind, made him at least somewhat worthy. At least, worthy when Draco was this inebriated and desperately horny.

'For now,' Draco decided. 'But I warn you, my fee is high.'

He also decided, right then, that this bloke had a very alluring smile.

'I can afford you,' he said, taking Draco by the elbow and pulling him closer. 'Trust me.'

* * *

'Anyway,' Ron continued, 'it was rather hard to argue with her, what with Ginny running in circles waving her Puddlemere contract in everyone's faces and rambling hysterics. Besides, you'll kill him if he tries anything, so no worries, right?'

'Cheers,' Harry said, downing another shot.

'Done the full twenty yet?' Ron asked, indicating the empty pint glass on the bench.

'Only a dozen or so.' Harry squinted, apparently doing mass calculations in his head.

'That all?' Ron asked, surprised. Harry usually went through twenty, easily.

'Ran outta gold,' Harry said, tapping an empty pocket. 'Prolly for the best, I need to be able to walk home. And watch Malfoy.'

'Shame,' Fred said sadly on the other side of Ron.

George appeared over Harry's shoulder, finishing, 'We were hoping he'd get sloshed enough to cast a Patronus into the crowd again.'

Harry frowned while the three of them broke into grins, and Ron could hear Fred laughing over his shoulder. 'That was priceless. All the Muggles thought they were hallucinating.'

'"Did anyone else just see that big ruddy deer run by?"'

'"Augh, it's a ghost! This place is haunted!"'

'"Woah, that was some strong shite!"'

Unable to keep a straight face, Harry finally gave in to laughter at their spirited imitations of the Muggles' reactions to seeing a ghostly stag galloping through the dance floor. It hadn't been as funny to actually witness; at the sight of a corporeal Patronus, most of the witches and wizards present had near-panicked, thinking Dementors were infiltrating the club, looking for traitors. After that little ordeal, Ron had vowed never to leave Harry, the twins and alcohol together and unsupervised in public ever again.

'Anyway,' Fred said, still wheezing. 'We're heading home, got an early meeting with a client in the morn'. Evening, gents.' And with two simultaneous cracks, the pair disappeared.

'Speaking of home,' Harry said, recovering, 'I'm bloody knackered. Where's--oh, there's one,' he said, as Tonks came sauntering up to them.

She stumbled as she made it to the bar, and Ron quickly hopped off his stool and caught her. 'Had a bit much, have you?'

'Pfff,' Tonks informed him. 'You're lucky you're so tall. I'd slap you if I could reach.'

'You're welcome,' Ron said, grinning and helping her into his old seat; she needed it more than he did, so he settled for standing. 'Where's Malfoy?'

'Draco is a very good dancer,' she informed him, squinting mournfully at the butt of her cigarette. 'An' a very good drinker. An' 'as far too much money. His shirt cost more'n my broom, which is so unfair. Snarky little fucker. D'you know he 'as a tattoo?'

'He has a tattoo?' Harry asked, looking mildly interested.

'Where is he?' Ron asked again--he seemed to be the only one sober enough to realise Draco should not be anywhere without supervision.

'Uhm,' Tonks said thoughtfully. 'I think. Lost. Maybe. I don't know. Kidnapped? Knew I shouldn'ta left him with that bloke. I'll go find him!' she offered, hopping off her seat and promptly falling over. Luckily, Harry's lap was between her and the floor, and they were able to right her again without any major injuries being sustained.

'I think you've had quite enough for tonight,' Ron said. Harry was too busy laughing at her to agree, but tossed his glass back on the bench and stood up. Ron was relieved to see that he managed to do so on his own. 'Here, Harry, you help her outside, I'll go find that idiot.'

'You sure?' Harry asked. 'He might give you a hard time.'

'What's he going to do without a wand?' Ron asked.

'Irritate you to death?' Harry suggested, grinning. With Ron's help he looped one of Tonks' arms over the shoulder of his good arm while she tried to convince them she was more than able to walk on her own, thanks very much, she was just more in the mood to crawl at the moment.

Ron rolled his eyes. 'I'll Stun him if I have to.'

As Harry helped Tonks outside, Ron turned his attention to the dance floor, sighing. Even at past two in the morning on a weekday, it was buzzing with bodies, wizard and Muggle alike, most of them around his own age. The club really did need to expand, or at least relocate to larger premises, he thought grimly, squeezing his way between the odd groups and couples squashed together. One advantage to being of the taller variety in the Weasley family, however, was that it made finding people easier--and after six years of doing his best to avoid him in advance, Draco's white-blonde head was an easy beacon to locate in the frenzy of bodies and neon colours.

What Ron found when he got within full view of Draco was not, perhaps, much of a surprise.

At the moment, Draco had his front facing Ron but was completely oblivious to his presence. His attention was occupied by the bloke his back was pressed against, a man slightly taller than Draco and swarthy, hands balanced on Draco's hips and nose buried in the blonde hair falling around his ear. Draco tilted his head back against his shoulder just as the bloke leant down, eyes not quite closed, until their noses were touching. They stayed like that for a moment, frozen in motion, until one of the bloke's hands came up to Draco's jaw, and Draco's hand curled up and around the back of his head, and the stranger closed the small distance and kissed him full on the lips.

Ron wasn't really surprised; firstly, witches and wizards, much unlike Muggles, as far as he knew, did not place much importance upon sexual orientation. In fact, for those their age, it was safer to assume any given witch or wizard was willing to lean either way. Secondly, Draco was probably just as pissed as Tonks had been--though considerably better at keeping his balance--and Ron was no stranger to the effect alcohol tended to have on one's sex drive.

Draco seemed to be briefly overwhelmed by the force of the kiss before leaning in, and Ron saw a flash of tongues connecting between their mouths as Draco twisted around for a better angle. Ron hesitated, his determined impulse to grab Draco and leave briefly shunted aside by this display of intimacy; not because he cared about Draco's rights, but because he'd been raised to look away from these things, and patiently wait for himself to be acknowledged. It would be rude to interrupt--he could hear his mother's and Hermione's voices berating him already, waggling their index fingers with reproving looks fixed on their faces.

But then there was his own little voice, waving a finger back, pointing out that Draco had been nothing but rude to all of them his entire life, and he didn't care if it meant sinking to his level and being childish; Ron had no intention of granting the fucker any courtesy he hadn't earned and certainly didn't deserve.

During this brief battle inside his mind, however, Ron found that the pair had moved from in front of him. A quick scan of the room and Ron spotted them again, deep in the crowd with mouths still locked together, stumbling towards the back of the building in the vague direction of the bathrooms.

Oh, for fuck's sake, Ron thought grimly, and after a moment of disgruntled hesitation, moved to follow.

* * *

Draco had only kissed two other people before this, and both instances had been fast, feverish, inexperienced, and slightly embarrassing; this guy's tongue invaded his mouth with a confidence forged from practice, and it was well deserved--the guy was very talented in this department, or at least as far as Draco's tastes were concerned. A little rough, very determined, unforgiving--he kissed like he danced, like he'd touched and moved against Draco when Tonks had left them on the dance floor, and it was like he was reading Draco's every want in a partner, and giving it to him in full force.

For once in his life, Draco wasn't complaining.

He heard the slam echoing as the bathroom door swung closed behind them. It had been Draco's idea to come here, but only after the bloke had taken him by the hips and pulled Draco's back flush against him, and Draco had felt the firm hardness pressing into his backside. It was awkward to move and snog simultaneously and they were both stumbling, and Draco surfaced, gasping for air--only to be recaptured almost instantly in another, quicker kiss, lips and a flash of tongue and teeth lingering on his bottom lip. He groaned slightly as his mouth was released.

His partner licked his lips. 'You're really, you know, uncannily good at that. Get around, do you?'

Draco's eyes narrowed. This guy had begun to piss him off long before now, but previously he'd been willing to suffer it in exchange for the attention; now he was seriously considering whether or not he was horny enough to put up with it--but before he could make up his mind, he was roughly backed into one of the stanchions supporting the stall doors.

'Fuck,' he said, though it was more in acclamation than disapproval. Olive eyes lifted to meet Draco's while unfamiliar fingers ghosted his ribs. It tickled, making Draco's body shudder, resolve melt, and adrenaline shoot up all at once.

An eyebrow quirked. It was the same brown colour as the rest of his mussed scalp, but the dark shadows of the bathroom made it appear darker than it had on the dance floor. 'You still haven't told me your name, gorgeous,' he murmured.

Draco felt another sharp pang of irritation snap at the back of his mind. He tried to ignore it. 'Does it matter?'

The guy shrugged. 'I suppose not. Most people just tend to make introductions before they--well, you know.'

'Wank off in the loo?' Draco supplied, his voice deadpan.

A sly, suggestive smile spread across the bloke's face; the bastard really did have one hell of a sexy smile. 'Just a wank?'

'Well,' said Draco. And then he didn't say anything else, because the man had him by the lips and hips and was backing him into the stall in the corner. There was a loud, echoing smack as the door slammed shut.

Draco was aware of the fact that he coveted being touched--he'd just never quite realised how much until three years and some months ago, when the sudden lack of petting through Pansy had made it undeniably evident. Physical contact, both intimate and otherwise, had always been important to him, and having been starved of both for so long made the touches feel like magic in corporeal form against his skin. Skilled hands ran up his sides, caressing him through his shirt, over his chest, down his ribs, along his waist, slipping to his lower back, and--Draco broke the kiss long enough to gasp--over his arse, and gave a generous squeeze.

'Like that, do you?'

Irritation snapped at the back of his mind again. 'I like your mouth better when my tongue's in it,' Draco told him curtly.

'Is that so?' The hands on his arms slipped back around his waist, and thumbs ran along the lines of his hips, slipping behind the belt and under the rim of his jeans, right above his groin. Draco bit back a groan and the man leaned forward, breath ghosting his ear. 'I think you like my mouth anywhere, so long as it's on you.'

Draco grinned out of sight. Bracing one foot on the porcelain bowl of the toilet beside them, he pressed their hips together. There was a satisfied hiss by his ear and the man's hands went back to his arse, taking a firm hold and pulling Draco against him. Draco could feel their erections press and slide against each other, and he groaned appreciatively.

'Hell, you've a fantastic arse,' murmured the hot, wet, open mouth by his ear as it trailed to his jaw, down his throat, straight to the middle of his collarbone. Fingers began pulling at the buttons of his shirt collar, and, after a moment of suffering a short-circuit due to the new sensation of teeth on his collarbone, Draco's mind cleared and he grabbed the hand unbuttoning his shirt.

'Stop,' he gasped. 'Leave it on.'

Olive eyes looked up, annoyed. 'Why?'

'Just...' Draco heaved a sigh. He did not want to explain this, least of all to a total stranger. 'Leave it on,' he said again.

'Prick,' was all the other man offered, dropping his hand. Instead, it took hold of Draco's belt and gave it a little tug. 'I suppose this can come off?'

Draco's smirk was the only answer required. Undeterred by Draco's warning, however, the man lifted the bottom of his shirt a few inches, and kissed the space between his bellybutton and his trousers. Draco's entire body went rigid and a hand tangled in the curly hair. A tongue flickered out, lapping the translucent hairs that trailed down towards his groin, and his hand tightened while the man continued undoing his belt with one hand, palming his erection through the denim with the other. Draco wasn't sure how far this guy was planning to go, though from the earlier comment implicating that he was loose, Draco had a good idea; and though he had no intention of losing his virginity in a dirty bathroom stall, thanks very much, he certainly wasn't averse to getting a blowjob in one.

That said, perhaps he'd wait to mention his abstinence until after that.

Draco's head fell forward and he let his eyes close, concentrating on the way the hand was sliding up and down his cock through the jeans. The man's grip was firm and adroit, which made Draco think that this guy had done this more than his fair share of times--not that he was complaining, because having a hand on his cock that belonged to someone other than himself was the best thing he'd felt in... how long? Hell, it'd been far too long...

Just as the zipper was drawn down, and lips and tongue touched the flesh just above the elastic band of Draco's boxers, the stall door crashed open.

'Bloody fucking hell, Malfoy.'

Draco's eyes flew open, then narrowed immediately as he lifted his head. 'Oh, hullo, Weasley,' he drawled. 'I'm afraid you'll have to wait your turn.'

Olive-eyes took his hand off Draco's erection as he stood up (eliciting an aggrieved noise from Draco) and gave Ron a wrinkled-nosed once-over. 'Friend of yours?' he asked Draco.

'Nuisance of mine, more like it.'

'Fuck you,' Ron said, folding his arms. 'Get lost,' he told the stranger. 'And you,' he said, looking at Malfoy, 'are still under preventative custody, and we're leaving, so let's go.'

'Piss off,' Draco told him. 'You can wait ten minutes.'

'I can,' Ron said, evenly. 'But I'm not going to.'

'Merlin's bloody fucking beard,' the stranger snapped, straightening his shirt. He gave Draco an annoyed look. 'I'm not going to fucking wait around while you work shit out with your boyfriend here, so--'

'He's not--'

'Good,' Ron said over him to the bloke. 'So clear off.'

As he said it, he withdrew his wand from the sheath strapped to his forearm--on the back of which something small and gold glinted--and the stranger's eyes widened suspiciously. 'Yeah, all right,' he said, shooting a sideways look at Draco, and slipping past Ron without another word.

'You must love flashing that badge around,' Draco sneered, re-belting his jeans and buttoning the last few buttons on his shirt as he stepped out of the stall. 'Must make you feel much more important than you actually are.'

'Get your fucking oats in your own time,' Ron snapped. 'I know it's probably an alien concept to you, but some of us have work to go to in the morning.'

'Don't get your knickers in a knot just because you're a right ugly splotch, Weasley,' he drawled. 'What's a matter, Granger not putting out?'

Ron tensed, and Draco fully expected to be hit. Instead, Ron raised his wand and pointed it at Draco. 'Now are you going to move, or do I get to make you?'

* * *

Cursing, Hermione pulled her dressing gown on, tying the waistband haphazardly as she trotted down the stairs. The knocking on the door had not subsided, and she had a mind to hex whatever was on the other side without waiting for an explanation--after all, it was near three in the morning, and she had an early, long and, if the past few days were anything to judge by, very irritating day ahead of her.

'All right, all right, all right,' she snapped, flinging the door open, wand drawn. 'Just what on... Ron?'

'Oi,' he greeted her, with a lopsided grin.

She gaped at him. 'What is it? Is something wrong? Are you all right?'

'You,' he said, ignoring her questions, 'look very ravishing this morning.'

'Ronald Weasley,' she said sharply, 'do you have any idea what time it is?'

'No,' he said truthfully. She bristled and his grin widened as he leant in and said in a low voice, 'You're so cute when you're t'd off.'

'Ron,' she said reprovingly as he stepped over the threshold. 'Are you drunk?'

'I like your house,' he went on, closing the door behind him. 'Smells good. Except for that ruddy cat. Where are you going?' he asked as she backed up to allow him room to step in. 'I'm not going to bite.'

'I think you should get home,' she said reasonably, but stopped moving. 'We both have work in the morning, and--' she squeaked as two hands took her by the waist and pulled her close, enabling her to smell the liquor on his breath, '--and you're really quite drunk, so--'

She stopped talking abruptly as he leaned down, brushing his lips against hers as he spoke in a very low voice. 'Not that drunk, darling.'

And then she had no time to say anything in protest because his mouth enveloped hers.

She was trying to say, 'Ronald, this is really inappropriate, you're drunk, let's get you home.' What she ended up doing was giving a muffled squeak and back-pedalling into her living room, and, as his hands had a firm grip on her waist, Ron went with her, not breaking the kiss. She hadn't intended to kiss him back but, well, she was still very groggy and he was being rather insistent and--oh, hell, this could only end badly.

He backed her down onto the couch, and Hermione was once again reminded of how very enormous Ron was--or perhaps how very small she was--as his form completely covered hers, sandwiching her between the soft cushions and the firmness of his body. The hands on her hips undid the tie of her dressing gown, pushed the material aside and slipped up her sides, fingers ghosting the fabric of her nightgown.

She shivered, which seemed to encourage him, as he pulled out of the kiss, continently, feathering kisses along her jaw and down the side of her neck as his knee wedged itself between her own. She gasped as his thigh pressed up between her legs, her hands clawing at his shoulders. He burrowed his face in the crook of her neck and let out a heavy, contented sigh.

After a few seconds of inactivity, she pushed at his shoulders a little; he sagged like a very warm, dead weight atop her and she groaned.

'Ron,' she said heavily, 'are you asleep?'

A very loud snore was her only answer.

* * *

'Milk is disgusting,' Draco said firmly. He wasn't slurring as badly as Tonks had been just before Ron took her home, but he was certainly heavier. Harry shoved him off. 'I mean, whose bright idea was it to grab a cow's privates and say, "Hey, let's squeeze these and drink whatever comes out!" I mean, for all they knew, it was cow jizz. It even looks like cow jizz. Why the fuck would anyone want to drink that?'

'That's disgusting,' Harry stated.

'My point exactly!' Draco said, entirely missing the point. 'It's like, I had my share of milk when I was an infant. I'll stick to hard liquor now, if you don't mind. I'd put Firewhisky in my tea before any cow jizz or soy jizz or any other jizz-like substance you can produce, thanks much. And think of the baby cows! Think of the calves. We're depriving them of their life's blood! I hate milk,' he concluded.

He swayed slightly, and Harry resigned himself to being a crutch as they made their way down the street. Draco had been systematically taking Harry through a list of everything he despised since they had left the bar. Ron had been at the top of his list, and Harry a close second. 'Is there anything you don't hate?'

'Peanuts,' Draco said thoughtfully. 'Rainy days. Furry animals that don't attempt to maim. Like gerbils. Guinea pigs. Itty-bitty owls. Or, um...'

'Cats?' he suggested.

'Cats have claws and sharp teeth,' Draco said irritably, shaking his head. 'No. Like... like rabbits. I always wanted a pet rabbit. Or dogs. Dogs are okay.'

'Dogs have teeth,' Harry pointed out. 'And claws.'

'But dogs are cuddly,' Draco insisted. 'But I was never allowed to have one. Mum and her bloody cat--I fucking hate that cat. I want to feed it to that fucking Hippogriff, and then feed that to your Hungarian Horntail. The world would be rid of two malicious animals, a hungry dragon would be sated, and everybody's happy.'

'It's not my Hungarian Horntail. And Buckbeak is not malicious. Anyway, it's your house now,' he said reasonably. 'You could get a dog, couldn't you?'

'Mum would have a fit,' Draco said mournfully. 'She loves that stupid, nasty, scratchy, bitey, vile cat. You know he only bites me when she's not looking? He has it in for me, but she thinks I'm imagining things. I actually think I hate that cat more than I hate you and that, mate, is saying something. You know what else is really good?' Draco continued, and Harry resigned himself to the rambling. 'Apples. Really good champagne. Anything spicy. And I mean really spicy. Like burn-your-bloody-tongue-off-spicy. Sushi,' he added after a moment. 'Fish in general, really. What a wonderful invention, fish. Do you like fish?'

'Don't eat it much,' Harry admitted. 'S'expensive.'

'Mreh,' Draco said dismissively. 'You peasants and your money. Or lack thereof. If you'd taken that spot in Puddlemere you could afford fancy dinners. And fucking hell, now I'm hungry. So what do you like?'

Harry thought about it. 'Treacle tart,' he decided.

'That's dessert,' Draco insisted. 'Doesn't count.'

Harry thought about it some more. 'Treacle tart,' he decided again.

'Let me clarify the question,' Draco said intellectually. 'What do you like in which sugar is not the main ingredient?'

Harry frowned and racked his mind. 'Uhm,' he said after a moment. 'Hell, I dunno. Pizza?'

'Is that another one of your Muggle abominations you try to pass off as food?'

Harry gawked at him. 'You've never had pizza?'

'You say it like it's a sin.'

'It is a sin!' Harry protested. 'How the hell could you have never had pizza?!'

'The same way you could have never heard of Quidditch!' Draco retorted, scoffing.

The conversation continued in a similar fashion all the way back to Harry's flat. He found that talking to an inebriated Draco was very much like talking to a sober Luna--he was calm, knowing, overly confident, and argued points very well, mostly due to the fact that logic had been flung out the window. The only difference was that Draco was a lot more vulgar, and did annoying things like try to hit Harry when he made a snide comment.

'You need a car,' Draco observed as they approached his street. 'All this walking. Tiring.'

'We're too drunk to drive,' Harry pointed out.

'I could hire us a chauffeur,' Draco offered.

'Buy me a car while you're at it,' Harry remarked, rolling his eyes.

'A really cute one,' Draco continued, oblivious. 'If you tip them enough, they'll even drive topless.'

'How would you know?'

Draco grinned sideways at him. 'My father spoiled me rotten, that's how.'

Harry made a face. 'At least you admit it.'

'I've never denied it,' Draco pointed out truthfully, then moaned. 'Oh, hell, why do you have so many stairs?'

'To irritate you.'

'I don't find that hard to believe. Oi, give us a hand.'

'I'm not going to carry you.'

'Please?' Harry gave him a narrow look and Draco sighed in resignation. 'At least give me a hand, you pillock. You're supposed to be the chivalrous one. So start chivalrousing.'

'That's not even a verb.'

'I'll verb any word I damn well please,' Draco informed him. 'And if you try to tell me otherwise, I will bribe the scribes until they write it into the dictionary.'

Harry sighed, half-heaving him up the last few stairs. 'Arguing with you is hopeless.'

'So is your wardrobe,' Draco remarked, sniffing haughtily. 'I don't suppose you're pissed enough to give me back my wand?'

'Not on your life.'

'Bollocks.' Draco leaned against the door. 'Are you going to open it, or are we sleeping out here?'

'Shut up a minute, I'm checking the wards.' It wasn't entirely untrue; he was attempting to check the wards but failing miserably because of his inability to focus. And he hadn't even had that much to drink--perhaps Draco's inebriated state was wearing off on him.

'It's cold,' Draco complained. 'This jacket is hardly adequate.'

'It's July, Malfoy.'

'It's three in the morning in July,' Draco persisted. 'Open the shittin' door already.'

Too tired to argue, Harry unlocked the door with a flick of his wand and pushed inside, Draco on his heels. It was warm and dark inside, and Harry dropped his jacket on the floor somewhere beside the door--he'd really gotten too used to Dobby picking up after him--before heading towards the kitchen. 'You want some coffee?'

'I want another drink,' Draco muttered, flinging his jacket similarly on the floor.

'You've had enough.'

'Not enough to put up with you.' Draco took a disgusted look around the kitchen, eyeing some of the Muggle appliances with clear distaste. 'Why the fuck are you living like a Muggle, Potter?' he said nastily, turning to face him. 'Do you despise being a wizard that bloody much?'

'I don't despise being a wizard,' Harry told him shortly. 'I just don't like the attention.'

'Oh, so that's it,' Draco went on, sneering. 'Harry Potter doesn't hate being a wizard, he just hates all the other wizards. My mistake.'

'It's not like that!' Harry snarled. 'Muggles don't know who I am. I don't have to worry about Prophet reporters outside my bloody door every morning, that's all.'

'Ah, I see,' Draco said, with a nasty smirk that made him look like the teenager Harry had grown to loathe so many years ago. 'So this is just another one of your martyrdom stunts.'

'Fuck you.'

'You don't seem to be doing much of that, either,' Draco continued without losing a beat. 'So tell me, Potter, how long has Smith been shagging your little scarlet harlot?' Draco ducked back just as Harry moved forward--not to hit him, not yet--snickering at him tauntingly, tilting his head to the side and looking absurdly pleased with himself. 'Ooh, now there's the Potter I love to hate. Trying to fool us all with your grown-up act, weren't you?'

'Fuck you,' Harry spat again, moving further forward, until Draco had retreated backwards into the living room to keep the distance between them. 'Don't you dare talk about her that way. Don't you talk about any of them that way,' he snarled. 'You've no fucking right--'

'Oh, don't I?' Draco interrupted. 'Sorry, forgot I needed to consult the bloody Chosen One every time I decide to speak my mind--Merlin knows I can't have my own fucking opinion in your esteemed company! Hate to break it to you, Potter, but as far as I'm concerned, you'll never be more than some over-zealous, celebrated, four-eyed trite. You and your fucking redheaded sidekick and your whole bloody righteous facade can suck my fucking cock.'

'Don't you even start on Ron,' Harry snarled, rising to the bait. 'He's worth fucking ten of you, Malfoy.'

'You know, I'd love to hear how you come to that conclusion.'

'Because I don't measure people's worth by their fucking vault contents!' Harry shouted, his temper rising. 'You were just some prick! You're still just some prick, Malfoy, I don't care how much gold you have!'

'How the fuck would you know what I am?' Draco shouted back. 'You never bothered to find out, did you? Just took the word of your precious fucking Weasley, like he would know!'

'If he was wrong, then why were you always being such a spiteful, nasty shithead all of the time?'

'Why else? I wanted to hurt you!'

'Why the fuck did you want to hurt me?'

'Oh, I don't know,' Draco snarled. His voice was dangerously low. 'You only shut me down point-blank and humiliated me when I offered you friendship!'

'Oh, right, friendship. You weren't just trying to coerce the fucking Boy Who Lived into joining your little posse, no,' Harry said, rolling his eyes. 'My mistake. You wanted to be friends.'

'Of course I wanted to be your friend, you prick! I bloody revered you!'

Harry blinked, biting back his next nasty retort. He stared at Draco, who was breathing heavily and staring at the floor.

'You did?' he asked, then winced; his voice disguised none of his disbelief.

Draco's eyes looked up at him then. 'Yes, I did,' he said flatly. 'Of course I fucking did. Who didn't? You were Harry Potter, infant wizard extraordinaire. I grew up reading books about how bloody awesome and wonderful you were, defeating the most powerful wizard in history, and then found out I wasn't only going to school with you, but you were in the same God damned year as me.'

Harry didn't know what to say to this. Instead, he kept his jaw clenched shut, though he felt his temper subside slightly.

'I fucking idolised you,' Draco continued, shaking his head. 'I sent Vince and Greg up and down the platform and train looking for you that day, I was so bloody excited. Most people were looking forward to going to Hogwarts for the first time, and here I was, Malfoy scion in all his glory, running up and down the train like some besotted fangirl looking for Harry fucking Potter. And where do I find him?' Draco's lip lifted in a nasty curl. 'On the arm of a Weasley.

'That was bad enough on its own. Obviously, I mused, Harry Potter's not been well educated in the social standings of certain wizarding families. Wouldn't want him mixing with those less-than-respected because he didn't know any better.' Harry's eyes narrowed and he opened his mouth, but Draco cut him off, continuing with, 'That's what I believed, Potter. I was trying to help you. I still wanted to be your fucking friend, even if it meant enduring the Weasel until you figured out what scum he was--which,' Draco went on firmly as Harry opened his mouth to interrupt again, 'was a huge compliment to you, whether your want to acknowledge the achievement or not. And what do you do? Spit in my fucking face, right after your Weasel friend spat on my name.'

Draco gave him a long, hard look. 'Now do you still need to ask me why I wanted to hurt you?'

Harry realised his mouth was still slightly agape, and shut it. 'No,' he said quietly. 'I...' Harry's lowered his head; normally, he had no trouble holding Draco's eyes, but it was all a bit much to take in on its own, never mind while trying to match that steely gaze. 'I had no idea,' he finished. 'Hell, Malfoy, if you had just--how was I--Ron was the first person I met that didn't make me feel inadequate,' he tried to explain.

'That doesn't surprise me.'

'Fuck off,' Harry said absently. 'Ron's worth--'

'--ten of me, I heard you the first time,' Draco finished nastily. 'Whatever. I tried to be your friend, Potter. Which is more than I can say for you.'

'Oh, piss off,' Harry snapped. 'You were horrible long before Ron told me you were. With half the things you called Hermione--'

'Yes, because it's so unusual for teenagers to bully one another, Potter. Really,' Draco snorted, shaking his head. 'If half the things I heard about your bloody father and his crew are true--'

'Don't,' Harry interrupted warningly, his temper flaring back up again immediately. He wasn't sure if he was speaking more to Draco or himself; Don't keep talking--don't hit him--don't start--don't hit him--don't--

'--worst fucking bunch of punks ever to set foot in the place. Especially that shithead godfather of yours,' Draco went on spitefully, smirking. 'Merlin knows he certainly got what he deserved.'

That was the final straw. Wand arm be damned, Harry balled up his left fist and drove it as hard as he could into the bastard's face.

* * *

Everything in the Constantine household was neat and dark, and the only light was coming from the small slit in the large drapes covering the living room window, through which two figures were trying to stealthily climb. Aside from the sound of their fervent breathing, everything was very, very quiet.

Then the lamp by the windowsill was nudged off its stand.

Crash.

'Oh, shite,' came Michael's voice in a hushed whisper. 'That wasn't anything important, was it?'

Katherine stuffed her knuckles in her mouth to muffle the giggles. 'Um...' More giggling. 'Don't think so. Woah--' Clunk. 'Whoopsie.'

Katherine knew her father would see the mess, and knew she would get into trouble for it, but frankly she was too inebriated to care, and certainly too giggly to perform a simple Alohomora, hence entry through the window. She should not have been drinking, but her father didn't understand; drinking made it easier for her to get on with her life, and to pretend to be some normal teenager who'd had nothing remarkable or tragic ever happen to her. And she would be seventeen next month, anyway, so it really wasn't as if she were doing anything too irresponsible...

'You're in a right state.' Michael was laughing. 'When does your--'

'My state is your fault,' Katherine interrupted, and then giggled again, 'and Dad won't be home for at least a few hours, some stupid Wizzygoober meeting, as usual.'

'Good to know,' said a sharp, cold voice from the darkness.

The giggling stopped abruptly, because the third voice sounded familiar. Horribly, frighteningly, mind-numbingly familiar. Katherine was hovering uncertainly by what she hoped was her boyfriend. Someone--Michael, thank the gods--found her hand and gave it a good squeeze.

'A few hours...' the horribly familiar voice murmured. A dark, cloaked figure had stepped out of the darkness of the room and stopped in the small slash of orange light stretched across the room. 'That'll give us plenty of time to reacquaint ourselves,' it said, and the cloaked figure lifted its head, revealing a ghoulish, dark green mask under the hood. 'Won't it, Kathy?'

There was a flash of green light, and then somebody screamed. There was another crash, and--

Katherine woke up with a sudden start, and the harsh, bright light was the first clue that she was no longer in the same place--but for some reason, she could still hear the screaming. It took her several seconds to realise that the noise was coming from her own mouth and she stopped abruptly. There was a throbbing in her head, and as she sat up, all of the muscles in her back screamed out in agonised protest.

'Well, well, well,' someone above her chuckled, 'look who decided to rejoin the land of the living.'

Katherine froze. That voice again... oh please, God, no...

'What's the matter, doll?' Someone grabbed the back of her head by the hair and forced her to look up. He was no longer wearing the mask, and with a terrible clarity she recognised his face. The same short, dark hair, thin nose and lips, bony cheeks and pallid skin all framed a horrible slash over his left eye, rendering it opaque and blind. 'Bad dream?'

Someone behind her laughed cruelly. Katherine stared into the face for a moment, hoping that this was, in fact, a bad dream. She could feel a stream of tears already running down her cheeks, and she cursed and tried to pull away. The grip on her hair tightened.

'Oh, look, she does remember,' her captor declared cheerily, and Katherine was hauled up as he stood. He sneered down at her trembling face. 'How long has it been? A year and a half? You've come along rather well, all things considered.' He pulled her around by her hair, and showed her to the man standing behind her--this one was a little older, slightly shorter and more rugged. 'Wouldn't you say, Avery?'

'Certainly better than what I have to go home to,' Avery agreed solemnly. He was leaning up against the stone wall with his hands in the pockets of his cloak, smirking. 'Don't know what you have to complain about, though.'

Katherine was slammed into the nearest wall. It was made of dark, rough stone that cut into her cheek as he held her there. She whimpered quietly.

'You know how it is, Avery, they start to get dull after a while,' he sneered. He traced his wand down the stream of tears along her cheek, over her chin, down her throat and along her collarbone; she shuddered and tried to pull away, but between him and the wall, she had nowhere to go. 'Every once in a while it's good to get some fresh meat--' his wand continued down her chest, below the collar of her blouse, '--they're just so much more fun when they're green.'

Avery chuckled. 'You really enjoy this far too much, Nott.'

'I do,' Theodore agreed, dropping the shivering, sobbing girl back down on the floor. 'I really, really do.'

* * *

He almost kissed me walking home

I didn't even scold him

I just said where is this leading

With just a heavy sigh

And I quickened my pace
- Brimstone & Fire, Cyndi Lauper

* * *

Draco had found out very quickly how hard Harry could hit, even with his wand arm in a sling.

For the second time in a week, he was boasting a split lip. There had been a generous amount of blood in his mouth and, after deciding he wasn't drunk to the point of being disgusting enough to spit it out, he'd swallowed it.

Then he'd hit Harry back as hard as he could.

The living room bore the marks of a great calamity; the bookcase had been thrown over into the coffee table, everything not nailed or spelled down had been upturned and smashed, and Draco had fled the furious green eyes that flashed at him by way of the kitchen, only to find himself cornered and tired of running from a fight. Instead, he'd thrown one of the kitchen chairs at Harry, only to learn that Harry could take quite a beating without so much as a flinch. Thankfully, he seemed to be too drunk to remember--or perhaps sober enough to--that Draco didn't have his wand, and the weapon of choice ended up being his fists.

Well, if the pillock wanted a fight, Draco intended to give it to him.

It was a frightening experience, to see Harry this angry, his emotions so uncontrolled. The lights flickered dangerously for several minutes before burning out with a nasty spurt and the cupboard doors kept slamming of their own accord. The kitchen window shattered abruptly for no reason at all and the table slammed itself up against the bench beside the stove, and the silverware rattled noisily inside its drawer. For a while, Dobby had shadowed Harry, begging him to calm down, but Harry outright ignored him until Dobby had intervened to prevent the table from overturning itself, and Harry, blinded by his anger, had ordered him away. Teary-eyed and distraught, the elf had no choice but to depart and leave Draco alone with Harry.

Draco was terrified out of his mind at the display of power, and might have been worried if he'd been sober, but all he felt right now was a need to beat every single irritation that had stacked up over the past several years into Harry's skull and then, maybe, he'd start feeling better. Every wave of anger, every flash of his eyes, cut through Draco's chest again and again until the mark there smouldered, scorching hot and burning against his skin like white fire. The alcohol helped dull the pain somewhat, so it became more of a throbbing afterthought, overshadowed by the urge to cause as much damage as he could to Harry with his bare hands.

A new, sharp pain shot up Draco's spine as he felt the small of his back slam into the sharp edge of the kitchen table. They may have been the same height, but Harry was still bigger than he was, somehow, and Draco found himself once again overwhelmed by the torrent of pure power that Harry exuded at such close proximity; overwhelmed and completely intoxicated, inexplicably drawn to the omnipotent energy, wanting to get away from it and drown himself in it all at once. The air around them crackled and spat like hot oil, making Draco tense and wince involuntarily, cutting his breath short as he rode the power trip.

Harry grabbed his collar with his good hand just as Draco seized his, likewise; Draco braced his foot up against the opposite counter for leverage, ready to shove Harry off if need be--because ensorcelled by the power or not, Draco was not a fool, and was quite aware of how quickly this situation could go from dangerous to lethal if he pushed it in the wrong direction.

Harry had twisted his fist in Draco's collar so hard, it was close to choking him, knuckles digging unforgivingly into his throat, eliciting a hiss. Draco tightened his own fist, mirroring the rough treatment; Harry snarled and yanked hard, inadvertently closing the small space between them, and for the first fleeting moment their hips connected, Draco thought he was imagining things--and then the tense air around them flickered, snapped, and abruptly irrupted. It was as if someone had flipped a switch, and the outpouring of rage and power ceased, expelling itself elsewhere and leaving the room in a deathly, void silence.

The next moment, Draco realised he had not, in fact, imagined anything. Harry's hips were flush up against his own, and he was hard.

And fucking hell, so was he.

Draco's right hand was still behind him on the table, holding him up as he met Harry's gaze evenly and rolled his hips once, slow and hard--carefully, warily, just testing the waters. Harry's eyes closed and Draco felt him press back, imperceptibly grinding his hips into Draco's, earning a satisfied hiss. That bloke at the club had ignited sensations Draco hadn't felt in years and, thanks to Ron, he'd been stuck in that state since leaving the bathroom--and although Harry struck him as the last person who would fly both sides of the pitch, he didn't strike him as the type to stay out till three in the morning drinking at a club, either. And that sharp intake of breath he had just taken was anything but repugnant.

The struggle had left them both breathless, panting open-mouthed and starting to sweat. Harry opened his eyes as Draco tilted his head to the side, tugging Harry down by the collar, and breathed into his mouth. Harry held his gaze and didn't pull away, and Draco pressed his hips forward again; Harry didn't return the pressure, but he didn't back away either. Smirking, Draco let his eyes fall half-closed, leaned up to Harry's still-open mouth, and ran the tip of his tongue along his upper lip.

The reaction wasn't immediate. It wasn't until Draco leaned forward and licked the bottom edge of his upper lip again, and then took it between his own lips, rubbing their noses together, that Harry exhaled, releasing his collar. Harry ran his hand up the side of Draco's neck, his thumb lingering against the pulse-point under his jaw and fingers twining in the hair on the back of his neck. Draco sucked on his lip once, briefly, before pulling him forward by the shirt and seizing his mouth in a kiss.

Harry wasn't as clever with his tongue as the bloke at the club had been, but what he lacked in finesse he made up in determination. There were other subtle differences, too; Harry wasn't as clean-shaven, and Draco could feel the rough bite of stubble as he ran his hand up to cup the underside of his jaw, his thumb ghosting Harry's cheekbone. Harry's touch and tongue were just as rough and firm as the stranger's had been, but there was something more considerate to his touch, taking Draco's reactions into account when he caressed or moved against him. The kiss was also less hurried, much deeper, and ineffably hotter--Draco opened his mouth as wide as it would go, tilting his head to the side to allow Harry better access, which he took full advantage of, earning a satisfied sigh from Draco.

Draco repeated the movement with his thumb and his fingernail bumped the frame of Harry's glasses; growling softly into the kiss, he hooked his index and middle fingers around the shaft of the specs, tugging them off Harry's ear, up and away over his head, tucking them neatly in his fist while his other hand kept a firm grip on Harry's shoulder. Harry's hips rolled against his again, slowly, tenaciously, and Draco had a brief epiphany as Harry's gyrating hips and tongue tantalised his own into submission: sonofabitch, he's done this before...

And then Harry's hand, tangled in his hair, slid down his neck, over his collarbone, down his chest--and a searing, blinding pain that cut straight through his body and soul caused Draco to cry out and shove him away, hard, clutching at himself.

'Draco--?' Harry said, startled, standing back.

Draco was bent over, using the table for support, gasping, one hand still clawing at his chest, and Harry went to move forward, but Draco whirled on him, one hand raised defensively, before he could get close. 'Don't,' he snarled dangerously. 'Don't fucking touch me ever again.'

And Harry stared, bewildered, as Draco swallowed heavily and stormed from the room, leaving him alone in the chaos that had, until recently, been the kitchen. Slamming the door to the guest room, Draco sunk onto the bed, shaking hard and covered with cold sweat. The sharp, burning sensation was long gone, but a dull ache remained, making his chest feel unnaturally heavy as he tried to steady his breathing and his heartbeat. He closed his eyes and swallowed thickly, rubbing his face with his palms--and only then did he notice he still had Harry's glasses clasped in his fist.

* * *

Post-notes:

- "Hey, let's squeeze these and drink whatever comes out!" - modeled after a quote I heard from... somewhere but for the life of me I can't remember where. I just remember it purely because at the time I was attempting to go vegan (I failed miserably, I can't live without cheese *clings to her Brie*) and thought it was hilarious and made quite a good point. Please, if you recognise the quote's source, drop a note so I can add it in ^^

Edit: Apparently, this was used in Calvin and Hobbes. I swear I heard it from a video source, but I'll dump credit on the comic for now :3

- 'But I warn you, my fee is high.' - homage to The Shoebox Project and their unbelievably badass representation of Fabian Prewett. We are all dying for the next update, ladies! (That said, if you have no idea what that is, shame on you, go read it NOW, for it's perhaps the best Marauder fic I have ever set my greedy little eyes on.)

See here for some rambles thoughts on this chapter, if you're keen. Might answer some questions,if you have any ^_^