The Hogwarts Poets' Society

"Let me get this straight," Harry said, feeling slightly confused. "You want to teach me to dance, right?"

"Isn't that what I said?" asked Draco. "I could teach you to dance. Though, judging from what I just saw, it's not going to be easy."

Harry felt rather torn. On one hand, Draco was still holding his wand it what appeared to be a neutral position. This was, however, a rather deceiving pose, because Harry knew full well that in less time than it takes to catch a snitch he could be hexed. On the other hand, he really did not fancy the idea of learning to dance with Draco Malfoy in a closet. He didn't have a choice though, did he? He eyed the hawthorn wand again.

"Fine, you can teach me to dance!" he sighed, feeling rather exasperated. Draco smiled. It was not a happy smile, nor was it a scary, sinister Evil Thing smile. No, this smile was much worse than either of those. This was a I-Have-Gotten-My-Way-And-Now-You-Shall-Learn-To-Dance smile.

"You have no background in dance at all, do you?" Draco asked. Harry shook his head. "No, it wouldn't be that easy. Well, you have some natural coordination, anyway, you play Quidditch fairly well."

"Fairly well? I play Quidditch damn well, thank you very much!" Harry grumbled.

"Oh, yes, I forgot, I'm speaking to Mr. Harry James Potter, King of the Quidditch Pitch."

"That's right, and don't you forget it," said Harry, grinning.

"Yes, well, King of the Quidditch Pitch, let's see if we can make you Lord of the Dance!" Draco stood up and took off his robes.

Harry snorted, and he tried to cover it up by coughing. It was a very bad cover up.

"Let's start with a simple waltz," said Draco, ignoring the snort.

"Wait, you're teaching me ballroom dancing?" exclaimed Harry, disturbed. "I thought I'd be learning the Macarena or something!"

"That's not dancing, that's a bunch of idiots shaking their tush to bad music," scoffed Draco. At the sound of hearing dignified, proper, pure-blood Malfoy say "tush", Harry collapsed into a fit of giggles.

Draco waited impatiently for this Immature Outburst to stop. When Harry's giggles had finally subsided into a few measly hiccoughs, he spoke.

"Are you quite done with your Immature Outburst?" Draco asked, his arms folded.

"Immature Outburst? What about you, you laughed at my dancing!"

"Your dancing was bloody funny!"

"It was not! Sorry if my Aunt didn't dress me up in pretty little tuxedo's and make me tango with her," Harry said, and then grimaced. "Ew, didn't want that mental image."

"I never wore a tuxedo," said Draco outraged. He didn't mention that he wore frilly dresses instead. "And I never tangoed with my mother."

"Okay, whatever," snorted Harry, happy to see that he had finally hit a nerve. "Anyway, I know nothing about waltzing, so it doesn't matter. I don't know anything about tangoing, either, come to think of it. Though, I have heard that it takes two to tango."

"What?"

"It takes two to tango, you know. It's a weird phrase that really has nothing to do with dancing and more implies that there is more than one person to blame for every situation."

"Ah." Draco thought for a moment. "I always push the blame off onto someone else. It seems to work fine for me, no tangoing involved."

"True," said Harry. "How very Slytherin of you." He said the word Slytherin with a voice of strong contempt.

"What's wrong with being a Slytherin?" asked Draco, sounding hurt. He had forgotten for a moment that he was speaking with Harry James Potter, Gryffindor extraordinaire and his sworn arch-enemy. Then he remembered. "I'd much rather be a Slytherin than a noble, loyal Gryffindor. They always end up sacrificing themselves for something stupid, like the Greater Good or Someone They Love."

The last comment hit Harry like a brick. Actually, more like a Bludger, since Harry had been hit with a Bludger before and knew perfectly well what it felt like, but was not quite sure what a being hit would feel like. Painful, probably.

"Fine, I don't want you to teach me to waltz anyway," he said scathingly. "You'd better not fall asleep or I might curse you."

"Curse me while I'm awake, coward," retorted Draco. How had this begun? he wondered. They'd been getting along. They'd been happy, to an extent. As happy as you can be while stuck in a closet with your arch-enemy, anyway. But they hadn't been arch-enemies, at least not for a moment.

Harry drew his wand and had the curse half-said before Draco put up his wand. Draco still managed a Shield Charm, and Harry found himself flung onto the ground, unconscious. The curse had not done what it was meant to do, but the force of it being returned to him had flung him against the wall.

The door opened. Albus Dumbledore was unpleasantly surprised to find Draco with his wand still up and Harry oblivious to the world.

"No, this won't do at all," he said gravely. The twinkle in his eyes was gone as he looked at Harry with concern. "I'll leave you two to sort it out. Here, I brought food. Oh, and the next Poet's meeting is tomorrow. I'll expect you and Mr. Potter to have some interesting material to share with all of us."

Dumbledore left, locking the door behind him again as he did so. Draco felt a sudden rush of panic. How long could he keep them in there? What was the point, anyway, of being stuck in a closet? It wasn't going to solve anything!

Harry stirred.

"Hey, Lord of the Dance, you up?" asked Draco. "Dumbledore brought food."

Much as Ron Weasley would react, Harry sat up at the prospect of food. He was hungry. He was also very confused. Why was Draco calling him Lord of the Dance? Then he remembered.

"I'm going to kill you," he shouted, raising his wand menacingly.

"That's not very Gryffindorish of you. Shut up and eat, already, won't you?" said Draco, handing Harry treacle tart.

"Didn't he give us anything that isn't dessert," grumbled Harry.

"We have salad, treacle tart, shepherd's pie, grapefruit, and yogurt."

"Er, that's an interesting assortment," said Harry. "Hand over some shepherd's pie, will you?" Draco obliged huffily. He was not used to serving someone else.

"So, are we done fighting? God only knows how long we're going to be stuck here. We might as well make it as painless as possible," suggested Harry. "Besides, I don't want to fight. I have this horrible headache."

"Can't imagine why," said Draco sarcastically.

"You know, it's that kind of attitude that makes everyone hate you," said Harry happily. "I mean, only the Slytherin's can stand you. Don't you want to try to build inter-house relationships?" He gave Draco an innocent look and dodged a flying grapefruit.

"It's not my attitude that's the problem. It's everyone else's. When they all realize that they're wrong and I'm right, even when I'm wrong, then the whole world will be a happy, fuzzy, rainbow and bunny filled place," said Draco. He took a bite of salad. "Besides, I tried being friendly, remember? The first day, on the train?"

"You mean when you told me that I shouldn't hang around with the wrong sort and insulted Ron?"

"Meh, I forget the details," scoffed Draco. "The point is, you're the one who wouldn't be friends with me!"

"But you insulted Ron, who had been nice to me. I had to defend him!"

"You had to defend him because he was nice to you? What, did you have a childhood of constant bullying and ostracizing, while simultaneously being raised in a closet?"

"Er," said Harry awkwardly. The truth was, he had been bullied and ostracized in his childhood, but that wasn't any of Mr. Ferret's business, was it? Besides, his uncanny ability for picking out exactly what had happened to him in his childhood was giving Harry the heebie-jeebies. "No."

"Whatever," said Draco. "Anyway, Dumbledore has organized the next Poets' Society meeting. We have to have some poetry ready for him."

"Ah, no, not again," moaned Harry. "I suck at poetry!"

"No kidding?" said Draco sarcastically. "And what gave you this ingenious insight, might I ask?"

Harry rolled his eyes. "What am I going to do now? I'm not a poet. I don't think about poetry. I don't care about poetry. It's nice and everything, but in general I have more pressing matters on my mind that rhymes and limericks and whatnot."

"Well, the way I see it, you have two options. You can either be very good, or very prolific. It's easier just to write a bunch of bad poetry. Then when it's your turn to recite it, people will get so sick of listening to it that eventually you'll be allowed to stop."

"You know, that's actually not a bad idea. I could write an insane amount of couplets or something. I'm sure Dumbledore won't be able to stand listening to a bunch of random rhyming lines."

How very wrong he was. Dumbledore loved random things. He thrived off of secrecy, lemon drops, and random things. He even had a box of random things in his office. Inside was a phoenix feather, a piece of a waffle from Belgium, a bit of old parchment, a twig, a wig, and a sonnet. But that was besides the point, wasn't it?

Right now Dumbledore was not worried about the things in his random box. In fact, he wasn't even thinking about his random box, any of the things in it, or any of the things that he might have the desire to put in it someday. Right now Dumbledore was too busy avoiding the questions of Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger.

He had been forewarned about this problem, if you remember. McGonagall had warned him that their insatiable curiosity and their uncanny ability for finding out thing they shouldn't, matched with their care and concern for Harry Potter, would soon bring Granger and Weasley poking about.

"Where is Harry?" asked Ron. Hermione was standing next to him, with a book of poetry open in front of her. She was reading, if you can believe it. She thought that surely the answer to Harry's whereabouts lied somewhere within the strange book of poetry that he had been reading before the Poets' Society meeting.

"He's busy," said Dumbledore vaguely. "Don't worry, if everything goes according to my plan, he'll be back before Monday."

"If?" questioned Hermione, suddenly aware that she was standing in Dumbledore's office and that he had just suggested that he had made a plan involving Harry-her best friend, Harry-that could go wrong. "Are you telling me that you sent him off on some stupid adventure where things might not go to plan?" Her voice was low and dangerous, in a way that suggested bodily harm to anybody who put Harry in more harm's way that he got into by himself. Ron turned a strange pale color. As much as he was in love with her, he also feared Hermione when she was really angry.

"No, no, nothing like that," said Dumbledore, amused that the Granger girl could be provoked so easily. "No, Harry is still in the castle. He just has some business to take care of, that's all."

"Couldn't we help him?" Ron blurted out. He cowered under Hermione's glare. "I mean, we always go with him. We always help him prepare for things."

"Not this time, Mr. Weasley. I'm afraid your presence would only complicate matters for Mr. Potter."

"What are you talking about?" asked Hermione. There is something much more frightening in a forced, measured calm rather than the fury of a rant; something dangerous, lurking just below vision.

"Miss Granger, I'm not afraid of you. I've seen hell, and although it comes terribly close to the wrath of a very angry woman. However, it is not quite as dangerous or as frightening," he said. "Therefore, I would appreciate it if you would stop trying to intimidate me. However, I do appreciate your concern, and I assure you that I have the situation completely under control."

As he finished this sentence, something very strange happened. Dumbledore found himself beilng struck by a Stinging Hex, something that had not happened to him in many years. As the hex was lifted, Dumbledore realized that he had underestimated both the Granger girl's reflexes, and her concern for Harry Potter. It was at this point that Dumbledore thought about his random box. Perhaps it was time to invest in some soothing ointment.

"If you don't tell me where the hell Harry is right now I will hurt you," said Hermione in her Dangerous voice. Ron nearly wet himself from fright. It was very comical, actually, watching Dumbledore be threatened by an infuriated Hermione.

Dumbledore was slightly swollen, red, and uncomfortable. He realized that Hermione still had her wand raised, and wondered if she really thought she would be able to hex him twice in a row. The first time he had not been expecting it. Now, though, he was expecting it.

Or so he thought. When he merely shook his head 'no' at Hermione's unreasonable request for information, he was Stunned not by Hermione, but Ron.

"That ought to teach him," said Ron, feeling rather pleased with himself. The two left the Headmaster's office, ready to do some investigating, since Plan A was so obviously not working.