Punishment Detail (an Anti-Romance)

The stone floor of the dungeon was appallingly cold, and running around working like a house-elf wasn't helping Harry to keep warm. He hated Snape for doing this to them; he hated Draco for getting him, them, into this mess; and he was irritably aware that a dispassionate observer like Hermione might have said he had done at least his share. Only it was so hard, at the best of times, not to snarl when Draco sniped crossly at him, and getting harder not to resist, never mind not to resent, the iron discipline Snape used to discourage both of them.

'Allowing yourselves to be distracted' was the new cardinal sin, even worse than defiant disobedience. Harry wasn't sure what exactly had tipped the balance for Snape this time, but there was no doubt, now, that they were paying for all their sins, whether of omission or of commission.

Tonight Snape had them cleaning up the Potions classroom and store-room - without magic, of course.

He explained why, with conspicuous patience, to make sure they didn't think this was mere make-work. The information wasn't new.

"There are times when using any variety of cleansing charm in the vicinity of potions work is unacceptably dangerous. Any maker of potions has to know how to clean up after himself by hand. I am aware, Potter, that you are not likely to make a Potions Master, but you need to pass the subject at NEWT level if you wish to become an Auror."

Draco had dared to say sullenly, "I shan't need to make a living."

Snape had answered quite crisply, "If you are incompetent at potions, Draco, you will probably predecease Potter."

That had seemed horribly likely. Draco had certainly had no come-back.

Scrubbing cauldrons. Scrubbing shelves and bench tops and wooden spatulas. Polishing cauldrons and dippers and metal spatulas. Sharpening chopping knives, and more edged tools than even Aunt Petunia's kitchen had exposed Harry to.

Their only opportubnity for choice lay in the order in which they tackled the tasks. Snape criticised their decisions relentlessly. Looking back to the days when he was expected to do most of the housework at Privet Drive Harry reluctantly admitted, after a time, that initially, in their desire to avoid cooperation, they had been quite inefficient.

He made the first move. Draco was probably impeded by that ridiculous Malfoy pride.

"Give me a hand with this, Malfoy. It's so big it needs to be held down to be sure of scrubbing every bit of the inside."

Draco scowled, but he came at once to help, and having him anchoring the great round-bottomed cauldron - Merlin knew what Snape prepared in that, rendered down dead bodies, perhaps - made it much easier to clean. It no longer rocked about, taking almost all of his strength to hold in place.

Cleaning everything without magic was bad, though reasonable; it was just hard work. Harry had been set to scrubbing cauldrons in detention before, even if Draco hadn't.

Doing it cold was worse.

Doing it with Snape leaning back at his ease, reading, occasionally looking up to criticise or to demand a job be redone, was - uncomfortable. It was irritating that he should read while they worked, but far better than having him watching them the whole time. Judging by the expression on his face, though, Snape was looking often enough to keep him happy.

Doing it in company with Draco was the only tolerable thing - and what a thing to think, but he wouldn't have liked to be alone with Snape and that horribly personal interest.

It was infuriating that Professor Dumbledore allowed this. He wouldn't know about those sly looks, of course, but the thought of telling anyone about those made Harry's ears turn pink. At least Snape still didn't touch; Harry thought he might scream like a girl if Snape did, and he wasn't expecting it.

Harry had brought himself to complain, last week, after Snape had made them play a Quidditch match in shiny tights - in house colours - and precious little else. Oh, he had allowed them gloves, so they might not fumble the Snitch. They had nearly frozen to death before Harry caught the Snitch and ended the match.

Draco had looked like a half-cooked shrimp by then, the white flesh of his chest and back and arms patched with purple bruising and reddened by the icy wind's chafing, his whole body curiously shrunken after hours wrapped around his broom. Harry supposed he had looked no better, and had thankfully accepted Draco's invitation to use the Prefects' Bathroom and its luxurious bath, after they had a quick shower in the changing rooms to wash off the chilling sweat. They had stayed in the warm water for hours, while other prefects came and went, and eventually regained the energy to curse Snape up hill and down dale.

The Headmaster had looked at Harry and said mildly, with that patronising twinkle, "Dear boy, I don't know about Draco, but you're inured to most forms of punishment. A very hardy student. Professor Snape actually seems to have hit on a way to get your attention. You're clever, and lucky, but he's quite right that you need to learn self-discipline. I fear I've been too fond of you to impose it. I don't think I'll interfere."

Harry had not bothered to look pleasant for the old hypocrite as he swung round and marched off. He had humiliated himself by asking, and got nowhere.

So it was he and Draco Malfoy versus Snape. So far, Snape was ahead. Not only were they learning things they did not particularly want to know - Malfoy seemed to be far more allergic to the Dark Arts than Harry would have expected - but every time one of them put a foot wrong Snape found a new way to punish him, and usually punished them both. It always seemed to involve dressing like fools, and having Snape's beady eyes on them, enjoying the results, leering openly.

Once Harry would have thought few things more trying than being looked up and down by those cold black eyes. Being looked at when they heated was far worse. At least during that Quidditch match they had been too far away, and too busy, to feel that gaze properly, though Harry at least had sensed it in the quieter moments when he hovered aloft, hoping to spot the Snitch.

What Harry dreaded now was the moment Snape declared this job was done. Dinnertime couldn't be far off. Harry was determined to starve rather than show up in the Great Hall like this, and had no doubt Draco felt exactly the same. Unfortunately, the choice of starvation, or exposure, probably wasn't going to be theirs. He knew, now, that Snape was able to march them up there whether they willed or not. Snape would certainly enjoy the responses of the assembled students.

Draco paused in honing a knife-edge to cough. It wasn't the first time.

Harry muttered, "Are you all right?"

"Cold," Draco said briefly.

Harry said softly, "These idiot uniforms are bad enough, but lately he seems to be trying to give us pneumonia as well."

Draco's wry smile was ghastly. He looked more ill, not less. "He can hardly give us socks."

"And set us free? He'll have to let us go sometime."

Draco coughed into the back of his hand again, then lifted the top of his tea towel to wipe his mouth.

Harry turned and said accusingly to Snape, "Malfoy's freezing here!" He added, "I'm not doing so well either."

Draco's soft protest ceased. Too late now.

Professor Snape looked up from his book and examined them both leisurely. Harry flinched as the hot black eyes seemed to strip away the soft linen folds, and stood straighter, facing Snape square on. That felt as if it minimised the amount of naked flesh exposed.

Perhaps house-elves wore tea towels and pillowcases as a sign of servitude, but at least they were firmly stitched together up the sides, and of a respectable length. Harry didn't care for the embroidered initials in one corner of the tea towels (of course in house colours; Harry had gone off the idea of wearing house colours over the last few months). He would have suffered embroidery and even frills gladly, however, if only their garments had had a shred of decency about them. A few stitches at the top corners, to keep them on their shoulders, and at hip level, to hold the sides together, hardly amounted to what a real house-elf would consider propriety.

Bare feet and bare legs and arms, in the dungeon cold, had some time ago become more of a trial than humiliatingly inadequate clothing. Malfoy seemed to be worse off than himself. Not that the worn linen drapes kept what they covered warm, any more than they kept them decent.

Snape rose, saying coolly, "It's true you've both developed a sad case of gooseflesh. Most unattractive. Very well. It's almost dinnertime. You may go when you have finished your current tasks."

"Our clothes," Harry demanded.

Snape smiled. That was unattractive too. "You'll find them in your dormitories." He added, "Later tonight."

Harry muttered, "Oh, fuckfuckfuck."

It wasn't a surprise, though he had hoped their punishment would end now. Snape had had his fun, watching them, seeing their bodies, their arses, even their cocks, revealed as they went about the surprisingly heavy work of cleaning. Now he planned to humiliate them further, by making them parade about in tea towels.

Merlin, that would get Draco where he lived. Hard enough being dressed as a house-elf in the privacy of the Potions classroom; Draco would go spare if he was forced to go outside it like this. He would probably prefer to strip naked. Well, that was an option Harry was prepared to consider, too. He was accustomed to servitude without reward, but wearing such obvious markers of it made him feel edgy. He was starting to feel some sympathy for Hermione's SPEW campaign, even if the real house-elves didn't care for it.

The only good thing about their current appearance was that their long hair was plaited tight to their heads. Going by Draco, they looked as if they had ridges, from crown to nape, like some weird bird or reptile, the hair was plaited so tightly. That too could have been worse. Cleaning cauldrons with their current length of hair loose would have been maddening. It was curious that Snape hadn't made them remove their ear-rings, though. They didn't go with the rest of the outfit at all.

Draco said flatly, "I'm not going to the Great Hall like this."

"Then starve, Draco." Snape smiled again. "At least the Slytherin dormitories, and your own room, aren't far off. Gryffindor Tower, however, is quite a walk."

Draco put the knife he had been working on, and the whetstone, in the proper drawers, and Harry started tidying away the cleaning supplies. Both of them worked with neat precision, anxious to get out of here, even if they would go from private to public exposure.

Retrieving their wands from the display cupboard in the corner officially marked the end of detention.

Outside the door, there was no one in sight.

Draco muttered, "Going to make a run for it?"

Harry said carefully, as they walked away, "Someone should be waiting for me with a spare set of robes, at the top of the staircase."

Draco nodded. "Blaise said he'd wait about for me, too."

They were getting used to taking precautions against the after-effects of Snape's disciplinary regime. It didn't always work, but it was worth trying.

Draco added fretfully, "I need to get someone to unplait my hair. I know he made you do it tight, Potter, but it's giving me a headache."

Harry responded, "I feel as if I can't move my face, my hair's pulled back so hard."

"How often have you tried to cut yours?"

Harry shrugged. "Twice. Once it was the same length again the next morning, the next time it only took half an hour. You?"

"We tried four times before we gave up. The last time Pansy and Isabella tried hair-trimming charms, and they didn't work at all. It's surprising he makes us keep it long; I thought he'd just done it for that vulgar display at the New Year Party."

"Maybe he likes it. Along with everything else."

"I want to skin the bastard alive!" Draco exploded. "He's not supposed to treat Slytherins like this!"

"And Gryffindors are fair game? What do you bet that, as well as convincing Dumbledore it's all for our own good, he's spoken to your parents as well?"

"He has. Mother was sympathetic, but she said she could see, now, that she and Father had spoiled me, and it was probably better to learn the hard way now, at school, where it wasn't fatal."

Draco added grimly, "She cried when she saw my hair, though she tried not to let me see it."

"You probably looked too much like your father," Harry replied gruffly, feeling awkward expressing sympathy.

He thought, however, that Narcissa Malfoy might have quite enough to put up with, without seeing her son suddenly a replica of her husband, imprisoned for so long. Maybe Lucius Malfoy didn't look quite himself, these days.

Draco nodded. "Might as well cultivate the look, though. It still has impact in the right quarters. You should go back to those tiny ornamental plaits, Potter, instead of letting it hang down untidily like a schoolgirl's pigtail; they looked fantastic."

Harry said dryly, "My hair likes being untidy. Besides, it took Parvati and Padma and Lavender a couple of hours; I can't ask them to do that every few days. I do have to wash it, after all. A pigtail will do, until Snape gets bored with us having long hair."

"Whenever that might be."

They rounded the corner, and found Crabbe and Goyle leaning against the wall, like sloppy guards. Both goggled, finding it difficult not to laugh at Draco, though they tried, while allowing themselves to grin broadly at Harry Potter's appearance as a house-elf.

Draco said briskly, "That's enough. Vince, get Blaise. Greg, don't let anyone down here."

They waited together, in unspoken understanding that Draco would share his cloak with Harry until they were out of Slytherin territory, to a point where Harry's friends could safely await him.

Blaise was only a couple of minutes, but by that time Draco was shivering.

Harry said, "You need another soak in the bath to warm through."

"As soon as I can," Draco agreed. "Coming?"

"Thanks." He said it ungrudgingly; they could not afford to maintain their long enmity while Snape persecuted them so sharply.

Blaise had robes draped over his arm, and held them out, saying, smooth black eyebrows lifting, "Oh dear, imaginative, our Housemaster. What a thing to do to a pure-blood. Or any wizard, for that matter. You must have really got his back up, if he's playing that dirty."

Draco took the robes and flung them round his shoulders, while Harry pulled on the spare set Blaise offered him. Neither could be bothered to respond to Blaise's comments.

There was a faint double 'pop!' and the robes vanished.

Draco threw his head back and howled, "Monster! Child molester! Whoreson lobster! Blood traitor!" He seemed prepared to continue indefinitely; after three minutes he hadn't repeated himself.

Blaise propped himself against the wall and listened with interest; Crabbe and Goyle gaped, though evidently in admiration and wonder; Harry made notes, and looked around.

He let Draco get the worst of it out of his system, before he jabbed his elbow into Draco's side hard enough to get his attention, then said distinctly, "Socks."

"What?" Draco was pink in the face from yelling.

"Socks," Harry repeated, nodding towards the floor.

There lay four socks. None of them matched.

Draco laughed hysterically. "Master has given a sock!"

Harry supposed Draco's father had told him all about the loss of Dobby, possibly many times. Still, this craziness wasn't doing any good; Draco needed to snap out of it.

"We're free. Why don't we put them on, and see if it does any good?"

Blaise said, practically, "They're woollen, and thick; it'll be better than going barefoot until the charms wear off."

Draco wound down all of a sudden, collapsing to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut. However, he reached at once for the socks. Harry joined him. There was a brief, unseemly disagreement about which sock was best paired with which, and who should have which pair, then they pulled them on. Their regrettable costumes remained unchanged.

Harry leaned back against the wall and massaged his chilled feet through the wool.

"They're warm," Draco said, surprised.

Harry agreed, blissfully pulling on his toes and arching his feet, trying to get some feeling back. "Must be a warming charm on them. Decent of him."

"Your arses will get cold," Blaise pointed out.

"My whole body is frozen already," Draco replied tartly.

"You're meant to go into dinner like that?"

"He said we could starve if we preferred," Harry replied. "If it suits you, Malfoy, I'll just settle into the Prefects' Bathroom for the evening again, until it's safe to put some decent clothing on and not risk losing it."

"Best plan," Draco agreed.

They helped each other up. Blaise didn't turn a hair, though Draco's guard dogs looked boggled all over again. Most sixth year Slytherins, and even Gryffindors, were by now used to the idea that Malfoy and Potter had decided to cooperate, rather than let Snape do even worse to them.

Blaise asked briskly, "Your people will fetch you out some dinner, Potter? Draco, Vince will bring you yours. You'll have to get out of the bath long enough to let him in."

They started out on another long walk, picking up a Gryffindor escort at the top of the Slytherin stairs. By now, members of both houses were accustomed to providing a living shield for their representatives, without actually touching, never mind mingling.

Just for luck, Harry tried to put on the robe Ron offered him, but it too disappeared. Draco had already made Goyle check, and he had come lumbering back to report that the two sets of robes had reappeared on Draco's bed in his own room, lying neatly beside the clothes he had been wearing when he reported for detention. Presumably Harry's robe was now laid across his bed upstairs. Snape had prepared a neat little spell; not only did it banish any clothing they tried to put on, but it had also brought them socks. No more this time, though.

Harry said between his teeth, "Bastard's sneering at us still."

Draco answered, "He'd better enjoy this while it lasts; once we're out of school and free agents, Potter, even if we can't set things right before, we should have a good chance then."

"Not a new thought," Harry agreed.

Ron asked, shocked, "You're not going to work with Malfoy, are you, Harry?"

Harry thought testily that Ron didn't need to sound as if he was as slow on the uptake as Crabbe and Goyle. What did he think Harry had been doing for weeks now?

He said curtly, "Snape's elected himself Public Nuisance Number One, Ron; Malfoy has to take second place. I'll deal with him after Snape." After a moment's thought he added, "And Voldemort. He has to come first. Or rather, go first."

"That'll be the day," Draco observed.

"You'd better hope we get to it, all the same," Harry responded.

An hour later, shoulder deep in wonderful hot water, hair loose and soaking wet, floating on the surface, apple-scented bubbles trapped in the strands, with trays of food demolished, Harry and Draco both felt much better. Draco had even stopped coughing and shivering.

Time for the post-mortem, Harry thought.

He turned, wriggling his shoulders for the pleasure of being able to do so without feeling they would creak like pressure-stressed icebergs, and asked, "Right, Malfoy, what did we do wrong this time? Because we'd better not do it again."

"Not just one thing, a whole lot of things," Draco responded, ticking off on his fingers.

"You wouldn't use Everto on that mongrel. I drew the line at the cat - well, we have kneazles at home, and it might have been at least part kneazle. That's wrong. Besides, other kneazles always know; they can smell it on you, or something; so doing it would have been stupid, too. Good thing you followed my lead. But what really made him lose his rag was when we both cast Protego on them, to make sure he didn't hex them to death. After that it probably didn't matter that we did everything else exactly the way he wanted, even duelling."

He added wryly, "He'll have us trained like performing dogs before long."

"We'll have to stop arguing about learning Dark hexes. Shit, I hate those things. So we learn, we perform to order, but it's not like being under Imperius; we can stop any time. We can still say no, if it's important enough. As it was this time, with the animals. Damn. He's going to go right on dreaming up these stupid public appearances for us, isn't he, and sometimes we're going to let him. But you know what, Malfoy? I bet that Shredding Hex would work just fine on old tea towels."

As one they leaned over the side of the bath to retrieve their wands, and pointed them at the pathetic little heaps of linen on the floor. When Draco used Incendio on the mass of thread that was all that remained of his costume, Harry followed suit.

Then they both looked at the scorch marks on the marble floor.

Harry said pensively, "Cleaning charms should be all right in the bathroom, don't you think?"

They dropped their wands, they laughed so hard.

~~The End~~