Queer & There

Chapter One
Losing Jobs And Getting Drunk

It was the kind of summer day that made Draco Malfoy want to be outside in Diagon Alley with a cocktail, or sitting on his small excuse for a balcony in a half daze whilst lazily flipping through a copy of Womanly Witches. However, he was in neither of these places because it was a Thursday and on Thursdays, Draco went to work. Of course, Draco went to work on every weekday, but today seemed even more tedious than any other.

He had been late, of course. He was late everyday, and now it seemed that late for Draco was more like on time since it was only if he was very late that his boss, Verity Shanwick, reprimanded him. Of course, he was sleeping with Verity Shanwick on a fairly regular basis, so he often supposed that worked in his favour as well.

At the current moment in time, 3.24pm according to his magical watch (that insisted on springing out a magical bird to peck his wrist on the hour, every hour), Draco was sitting at his desk pretending to file some paperwork while actually thinking about Verity's legs. Verity most definitely had very nice legs, was Draco's current train of thought, and it had been for the past 17 minutes as he was not particularly bothered about all the work he wasn't getting done.

Working for D.E.A.T.H. (Death Eaters Alliance Trust House) would be hard work, if Draco did it. Working there would be very challenging, and very intriguing, if Draco actually paid as much attention as was required. Working there wouldn't even be something he considered if he hadn't been shagging Verity Shanwick, and if the money wasn't incredibly good for so little effort.

"Draco Malfoy, Ms Shanwick wants to see you."

Draco looked lazily up from his desk now, pulled out of his thoughts by the sound of Amelia Conway, a young receptionist whose legs were almost as nice as Verity's but Draco had decided she was almost definitely a lesbian because she had never, ever looked twice at him. This was unusual.

She only ever came to his desk to pass on messages from Verity, and now was no exception. "She says it's ever so important, and that you should not insist on sauntering to her office for once. Ms Shanwick recommends a fast trot."

Draco rose to his feet slowly after giving a slight nod, apparently not really taking any notice of Ms Shanwick's recommendations and much preferring to take a leisurely stroll to her office, which he did. Malfoys didn't trot.

* * *

"Now, Draco, you do realise that your workload is poor, don't you?" Verity was looking at him now, over the rim of her glasses and through a very thin veil of hair that hung in front of her face in the most tantalizing way. It was the sort of way that made Draco want to do something very unprofessional, but he could see today was apparently not a Sex Day. This disappointed him, because he was rather fond of Sex Days, and he could see there was going to be no other way to take his mind off the now-blistering heat.

He looked up at Verity, who raised one eyebrow expectantly, and said quite decidedly, "I wouldn't say it was poor. More like..." Draco paused in his struggle to think of the right word, biting his lip in a way that he knew made him look very sexy, and looked off out the window to think again about that cocktail in Diagon Alley.

Verity clearly wasn't in the mood for sexy lip biting or alcoholic beverages, because she snapped in response, "Nonexistent? Completely unsatisfactory? Not even worth bloody mentioning?"

"...Well, no. I was going to say endearing." Draco flashed his best smile, and then frowned when that didn't appear to work either. He was starting to wonder if this was actually a ruse to get him into Verity's office, as he had suspected it might be. She really did seem quite genuinely angry.

His suggestion seemed to be the breaking point because Verity now stood to her feet, on four inch black heels that were impossibly thin, and lowered her voice to a hiss as she said, "You. Are. Fired. All right? I have to fire you. So piss off."

"You what?"

"Oh you heard very well what I said, Draco Malfoy. You can't work here anymore. Everybody keeps on saying I should have fired you months ago, and I think they're starting to get suspicious."

Draco's expression was a mixture of stunned and faintly amused, although this was probably just a side effect of the shock that was coursing through him. When he spoke, his voice was small and whiny, because even at twenty-one years old Draco still found himself resorting to childish whims. "But you can't fire me. We're having sex."

Verity simply clucked her tongue once again in response to this, and pointed to the door for no real reason other than to demonstrate that there were indeed other people in the world. "That's exactly why I have to fire you, aside from the fact that you're a lazy bastard with no work ethic. People are going to start talking, and I can't afford to get fired. You, on the other hand, can. You have an inheritance and a rich mother."

"That's not fair, I probably won't even see my inheritance if I get fired." Draco was starting to realise this was a lose-lose situation, and he could feel himself panicking more and more as the conversation went on. If he couldn't convince Verity to let him keep his job, then he would be unemployed, without regular sex, and very, very bored. He didn't even want his cocktail anymore, which was unusual. It was not long ago that Draco would have given anything to not be at work. "Verityyyy-" There was the whine again. "I have to have a job. I can't not have a job. Jobs are very important to people for some reason."

This only angered his (ex) boss more, and she took the opportunity to open the door to her office and look through it to the rooms outside pointedly. "Well, perhaps you should have considered that when you did nothing for the whole of last week. The whole of the last year, in fact, Mr Malfoy. You're a lazy good for nothing little boy, and I would much prefer it if you'd just leave immediately. You know where your things are."

"This," Draco replied, standing to his feet and glaring at Verity in his most menacing way, which didn't seem to have the effect on her that it used to have on students when he had been at Hogwarts, "is very mean."

And with that, he stalked out of the office feeling very irritated and unemployed, which incidentally, he was.

* * *

It was five hours later, at around 9pm, that Draco persuaded himself getting out bed was perhaps a good idea. This was only because he was hungry. However, he was in no mood to attempt cooking anything, or even to try and conjure something. His wand was being uncooperative recently, probably because he didn't really use it very much after buying a state of the art Wizard Apartment with the money he had inherited from his father's will.

The apartment more or less had a mind of its own; it knew what you wanted, when you wanted, and how you wanted it. It could clean itself, cook, wash up, and do all the little things that a house elf would do for Draco, if he had one. House elves, however, irritated Draco greatly, so he had immediately fallen in love with the apartment once he had seen it.

It was perfect - a combination of modern and classics, all green and silver with cream tones. It reminded him of his days as a Slytherin back in Hogwarts, and how the days used to be before he had to grow up and leave school. The real world had beckoned, and D.E.A.T.H. had been his final destination. His father had set him up with a nice job and a nice salary, and had more or less left Draco to get on with things in his own way.

That was, of course, until he died.

Lucius Malfoy's death had been particularly undignified for a man of his calibre and reputation- a double heart attack when he was on his own in the Manor. Draco had been at work and his mother had been out for lunch with Vincent Crabbe's aunt Bertha. Lucius had keeled over at midday and never gotten back up. When the Wizarding Paramedics got there, it was too late to use magic to revive him.

The Death Eaters had been shocked, to say the least, and had taken it far worse than Draco and Narcissa. There was a large and expensive burial, a long will reading, and five days of mourning in his dedication. The Daily Prophet had had a field day, and Draco had done eight boring interviews about his father's life and death, including one for a short live documentary that was shown across fireplaces all over the UK.

Since Lucius' death, Draco had become all the more infamous and so nobody had ever really bothered to wonder why he had kept his high profile job for such a long time, considering he openly did nothing and clearly had never really enjoyed the actual working element of, well, work. Nobody had suspected that he was sleeping with Verity and if they had known, they certainly hadn't minded. The only person who had ever said anything about it was...

But that didn't matter, because it had been two and a half years ago when Draco actually hadn't had sex with his boss, and everything was a bit more complicated. It was two and a half years ago when Draco had first started getting - the feelings. No, that was a lie. It was before then, but nothing had actually happened until that night with the bartender when Draco had been very, very exceedingly drunk. It was the drunkest he had ever been, definitely. This was why he called it a Fluke.

Draco didn't feel gay. He knew he definitely was not gay, because he loved to look at ladies; it was one of his favourite pastimes. He was a loyal subscriber to Womanly Witches, and was the first in his year at school to lose his virginity, and therefore couldn't possibly be gay. The bartender had been an Accident that he preferred not to talk about. This was why when he saw Harry Potter only two weeks after the Accident, Draco had become very nervous.

It was no secret in the wizarding world that Harry Potter was gay, or that he at least was definitely having sex with other men. Ginny Weasley had to be talked down from the roof of Draco's building when the news hit the Daily Prophet, three years ago now. Apparently she never got over it, not that Draco had ever seen her again or bothered to look her up and see what had happened to her. Draco didn't really keep in touch with anyone from Hogwarts.

So, two years ago in January, when Draco had been out on the razzle with Crabbe and Goyle (whom he now happily avoided), he was very surprised to see Harry Potter there with his tongue stuck down the throat of a boy that he clearly had only just met. Interesting, it had been, but of course Draco had pretended it was the least interesting thing in the world and continued on his way to the bar to get very drunk. Getting drunk was one of Draco's favourite things to do even now, because it gave everything a lovely glaze and made insults seem less insulting, and made ugly people far more attractive.

There was no doubt in Draco's mind that this had been why Harry had looked so attractive to him, because Draco was drunk. Draco was drunk and Harry had tried to take advantage of his utter innocence, that was what had happened. It had been very lucky, Draco always thought now, that he had come to his senses before anything took place. Otherwise, he would have had to kill himself. After all, Harry Potter was his worst enemy. He always had been.

It was that night that Harry told Draco that sleeping with the boss didn't mean he was good at his job, and that he would have to grow up someday and stop living life as a Slytherin when it didn't matter anymore. Draco had thought Harry was very stupid and quite promptly told him so. He was grown up, and he wasn't sleeping with his boss, where had Harry got that idea? The response to that had been that someone at Draco's work was friends with Harry and thought something was going on, and after that, Draco had very successfully seduced Verity Shanwick.

His mind often seemed to stray back to that evening, though, on the odd occasion when there was nothing good to do and Verity was busy. Now that he wasn't going to be seeing Verity anymore, and he had no job and there was definitely nothing good to do, Draco found it playing on his thoughts again. It was all he could do to push it away, and he was happier when his stool brought him a bottle of beer and a cheese and pickle sandwich. Drinking and eating was something to do.

So he drank, and he ate, and then realised that he very much enjoyed the drinking and perhaps this would take his mind off of the joke that currently was his life. It was occurring rapidly to Draco that if his father could see him now, he would probably slap him into shape, or have some dark and bastardly comment to make that would mean Draco would have to pull himself together. As it happened, his father couldn't see him now, which was just how Draco liked it.

Draco got up, got dressed (black trousers, black sleeveless shirt that was very much designer, and from the new Muggle Range in Diagon Alley that had taken off so well), and then looked in the mirror for about ten minutes, trying to tease his hair into a state that didn't scream Just Been Fired. Once he was happy enough, it was time to go out and find a girl. Any girl would do, because Draco hadn't been in a committed relationship since, well, he had been born. He had never had the time or the patience for all that.

"There you go," he said to his reflection, who winked back and grinned. "You look like a real man again." Ignoring the wave his reflection gave him now - apparently even the mirror had decided he was camp, which he wasn't - Draco made his best menacing face again, much like the one he had attempted on Verity earlier, and nodded.

It was time to go out and get very drunk, and very laid.

* * *

'Muggle' was in this year, and had been for a while now. Diagon Alley now had an authentic line of Muggle clothing, housing appliances, music, and clubbing. It was the clothes and the clubbing that Draco appreciated, because it made the wizarding world much a more interesting place to be. There had never been clubs before, which meant there was no place to get suitably drunk in public without being taken away by Ministry officials or kicked by little children who thought it was all very funny.

Nobody could really remember exactly when Muggle had become popular, and Draco preferred not to remember how he came to embrace it. In school, he had hated Muggles and Mudbloods, but that was years ago. Things had changed, and were still changing. After Voldemort's defeat when Draco was eighteen and in his last year of school, and the Death Eaters had become more of a representation of all things Evil than a threatening force (hence their graduation into offices), there had been less rivalry between Good and Bad. It was more of a general acceptable that some people just chose to be Bad, and there was nothing anybody could do about it, after all.

There was no big leader on either side, no big relic to worship anymore after Voldemort had been killed by Harry Potter (Of course, Draco had always thought) and people had been generally quite disheartened by how easy it had been in the end. Dumbledore had been particularly happy, and decidedly sat back from running Hogwarts alone. He was now accompanied by Professor Lupin, who had emerged out of nowhere to help fight for Good. He had been Harry's trainer, and the first to find out that Harry was gay, although Draco only knew this through speculation in the Daily Prophet. Nothing had been proven, per say, and Draco had been convinced it was just another rumour until that night in the club.

Draco was now standing outside the same club, and it was occurring to him that there must be a reason he had come here, because he had avoided the place completely for the past two years in a blatant protest. If Harry Potter went there, then Draco Malfoy didn't, and that was that. There was nothing more to say. And as for Harry Potter, well, that was the last thing he needed to think about right now. Draco was here to find a nice girl, and that was all.

Paying his way into the club, which was quite tackily named 'Wizzards' (no points for originality, and even less so for the purposeful misspelling of words), Draco looked around slowly, carefully, for someone who would be ideal prey. Women were prey, and he was a hunter. An animal. A sex God. Draco Malfoy was no joke, and he certainly didn't care that he had been fired. He didn't care about Verity Shanwick, or Amelia Conway, or D.E.A.T.H and their complete lack of ambition to truly be evil.

Draco had always thought the younger generation of Death Eaters were slack, unruthless and generally displayed a complete lack of loyalty to the cause. He couldn't deny being the same way, and that Verity was right - he didn't work, and he didn't care. It just wasn't the way of a Malfoy. Now the young girl over at the bar - she was the way of a Malfoy.

Shoulder length brown hair framed her face, which was strangely familiar, but Draco wasn't paying as much attention to that as her shapely figure, which was admirable to say the least. Nope, definitely not gay. It was moments like this that left Draco feeling very self-assured and confident, and moments like this that meant he would be an idiot if he didn't approach the person currently holding his attention.

"Malfoy?!" The girl knew him, it seemed, and not in a friendly way, because her expression was glaring in some strangely moralistic, judgmental way that - oh dear.

Draco felt suddenly very sick. "Granger? Is that you? Bloody hell-" This was not going well at all. It was only now, far too late, that Draco noticed she wasn't alone. More to the point, she wasn't alone with Ron Weasley, who was not far away at the bar getting drinks. The situation almost didn't bear thinking about. "I didn't know you went clubbing..." Cursing himself silently for sounding like a complete prat, Draco rehearsed the Menacing Face again. It continued to not work.

"I go clubbing," Hermione retorted now, her voice holding a tinge of venom that made Draco slightly uncomfortable. "I go clubbing all the time. Me and Ron like clubbing."

"Alright, alright, hold onto your underwear. Or I suppose that's Weasley's job-" There was a pause, and then Draco just felt he had to add, "I'm going to pretend I didn't say that." The very thought made him physically nauseous.

Hermione rolled her eyes now, although Draco was sure she looked somewhat flushed, and this made him smirk and feel a bit less pathetic, a bit more like his old self. "That's none of your business, Malfoy. What do you want, anyway? If you just came over to make insults, I'm not interested. And neither is Ron. In fact, he'd probably go mental if he saw you, so piss off."

Being told to piss off twice in one day was not something Draco found impressive, not at all. Being told to piss off by Hermione Granger, of all people, was just - disheartening. Unnatural. Scary, even. Mild swear words did not suit her at all and once again, Draco felt uncomfortable. He was having to deal with a situation where five minutes ago he had seriously considered taking Hermione home with him, when all he wanted to do was forget that today was a very bad day indeed.

"I will not piss off," Draco insisted. "Not on your terms anyway. I just thought I'd come over and say hello." It wasn't a total lie, Draco had been very prepared to come over and say hello when he hadn't known Hermione was Hermione. "See how you all are."

The expression on Hermione's face could only be described as scathing, and she picked up her purse now from the table she was sitting at. "Well, all of us are just fine, whoever you mean by all of us. And if you won't piss off, I will." She left the table, shooting one more Look at Draco before returning to Ron's side at the bar.

Draco walked to the bar after a moment, not to follow, but to get himself a much needed stiff drink. He was suddenly scared of his own brain. He was clearly going insane.

* * *

He had almost made it out of Wizzard's exit, but that was before Harry Potter grabbed him on the arm and tried to tug him back in.

At first, Draco didn't recognise who it was, and shoved what just appeared to be another drunken mess out of the way to stalk out of the club and into the air. The drunken mess, however, persisted and followed him. Draco suddenly wished that he had drank more, because he definitely wasn't drunk enough to not let this piss him off.

"Bugger off!"

"Is that you, Malfoy?"

It was at this point that Draco realised who the drunken mess was, and he turned around, unable to help but give a little smirk at the sight that was Harry Potter after having consumed entirely too much alcohol. His glasses were very slightly tilted to one side, his hair was even more unruly than usual, and the expression on his face was one of a lost little boy. This was how Draco had hoped to look by the end of the evening, but that was before he realised he didn't have enough money in his pocket to look like that, and Gringotts had just seemed far too unappealing. Instead, he just stayed in the club and tried to soak up the music as best he could.

Looking at Harry now, whose lost expression was turning into a lopsided grin that unnerved Draco slightly, all he could really manage was, "Yeah, it's me. What the bloody hell do you want?"

"I got off with you, didn't I?"

Draco sighed. Unintelligible drunk talk was not enjoyable at the best of times, but this was something he preferred not to be reminded of. Ever. "Many, many years ago when I was going through my insane phase, yes. Why don't you go back inside and find Weasley and Granger?"

Harry shrugged and looked around, for what Draco didn't know. "Don't want to go inside. Feel sick."

"If you throw up anywhere near me, Potter, I will be forced to kill you." This conversation was going down a route that Draco didn't like. In fact, the very point that it was a conversation in the first place was the problem; Draco just had the urge to collapse in front of his fire, on his sofa that was more comfy than his bed, and forget all about today. Today was a bad day, and most definitely wasn't going to be any sort of Sex Day. "So just piss off."

Harry's voice was whiny now, something Draco had never really expected it could be. "Can you take me home? I want to go home and sleep-"

"I'm not taking you home, Potter. I don't even know where you live, for fuck's sake."

"Well, I could tell you. I can remember, sort of- I live near Hermione." Harry was looking more and more pathetic (and more and more pale, Draco hastened to notice) by the second.

Sighing deeply, Draco pushed his hands in his pockets and felt his watch buzz against his wrist. This meant it was 2a.m, and a part of him felt bad about leaving the poor bugger in front of him all alone in the streets at this time of the night, drunk and disorderly to say the very least. "That doesn't really help me, seeing as I don't where she lives either."

Looking incredibly pleased with himself, Harry suddenly announced, "You know where you live."

Another deep sigh from Draco, and it took him a moment before he marched over and grabbed Harry by the arm none too lightly. "Fine. You're obviously going to be an awkward bastard until I say yes, so just be quiet, walk in a straight line and don't throw up in my house."

"You're funny when I'm drunk," was Harry's mumbled reply.

"Shut up, Potter."