Something in the Air

The Potions dungeon was dimly lit, as always. Harry and Hermione sat towards the back of the room, where there was a slight leak in the ceiling, and Harry constantly got hit with freezing cold drops of water.

"...the wolfsbane is extremely simple to make, and very powerful to those who drink it," Snape said.

Harry looked across the aisle, where Draco and Sasha sat. Sasha was half-asleep on Draco's shoulder, and Draco was sneering at Snape in a fashion that suggested that Snape wasn't the head of his House, or even a professor, for that matter, but an eccentric acquaintance of Draco's. Sasha, as if she could feel Harry's eyes on her, looked up at him. Unfortunately, Draco's eyes followed.

Harry narrowed his eyes at Draco and made a disgusted face as if he had just stepped on a large tarantula. Draco returned the glare, except with a much more contemptuous and disgusted iciness that took actual practice to achieve.

Snape stopped mid-sentence and looked at a large grandfather clock that Harry couldn't remember being there before.

"Close your books. There will be no homework tonight, as we have covered everything in this unit. However," Snape said, pausing to send an icy glare around the room. "You will be having a test on this material on Thursday. You're dismissed."

Harry and Hermione left the room hand-in-hand, as did Sasha and Draco. Sasha looked up at Harry for a brief second, and then purposefully walked into him, forcing him to drop his book bag.

"Meet me at the main entrance at eight. Dress for a night out," Sasha whispered as Harry bent down to pick up his things.

Noticing that people were beginning to stare, Sasha narrowed her eyes and sneered at Harry.

"Why don't you watch where you're going, Potter?" she spat. "Get out of my way," she added, pushing him out of the way to stalk past him.

"Come on, Draco," she commanded, and Draco followed behind her like a lost puppy.

Hermione came to Harry's side as he stood. "That is an awful girl, Harry," she said. "I hope something truly awful happens to her."

"You don't know her," Harry said in Sasha's defense. Hermione looked at him strangely.

"What do you mean? She just pushed you out of the way. And she makes fun of you in the halls," Hermione listed in a tone that suggested that Sasha personally offended her by simply being alive.

"Well, yeah, I mean, you don't know if maybe something bad was already happening to her, and that you should just wish that something doubly terrible would come up," Harry said.

"Harry, are you feeling alright?" Hermione asked. "You seem like you're defending Sasha Borgen."

"I'm feeling a little woozy, yeah," Harry lied. "It must be the water that drips on my head in Potions."

"Alright," Hermione said, hurrying him towards the staircase to Gryffindor Tower.

***

Draco was lying on the couch in the Slytherin common room, staring blankly at the fire. Sasha was sitting in a chair opposite him, engulfed within a romance novel.

"Is something wrong with you?" Draco asked her suddenly and tactlessly.

"No, why?" Sasha replied, not looking up from her book. It seemed as though she hadn't actually listened to what Draco had asked.

"It's just that you're acting weird lately. It's scaring me, Sasha," Draco continued as Sasha remained absorbed in the book. "It's like you're not all here. Like, only half of you are actually paying any attention to me," Draco said, his voice trailing off during the last sentence, knowing that she was, indeed, not paying attention to him.

"Meanwhile, I've become a gay mob hit man, and my first assignment is to kill you and steal your stiletto boots," Draco said, making sure that no one else was in the room.

Sasha dropped the book. "What?" she said in a voice that suggested that Draco had just told her that Snape was deeply attracted to her and was the one sending those awkward love letters she'd been receiving lately. For all Draco knew, it could've been true.

"This is exactly what I'm talking about. You're not all here lately, Sash, and it's starting to really bug me. I feel like I'm being snubbed. I'm losing my confident glow because you're not paying me enough attention."

"Sorry, I'm having some...back...problems," Sasha stuttered, searching for the right answer. "I've been in a lot of pain lately, and it's...uh...distracting."

"I can fix that," Draco said, getting up from the couch. "Get up for a second." Sasha got up, kicking her book across the room. She let Draco sit down in the chair, and then he pulled her down to sit on his lap. "Where does it hurt?" he asked.

Sasha wasn't one to turn down a good massage, and so she lied. "Everywhere," she said, deciding that it was the best answer.

"Alright," Draco said. He heard the statue outside that guarded the entrance scraping against the floor as it moved to let someone in. "Let's go to my room, okay? It's more private."

"Sounds perfect," Sasha said, following Draco up the short flight of stone stairs to the Prefects' bedrooms. She glanced at her watch. It was 7:45. "Actually..."

"Actually, what?" Draco said, opening the door and turning around to look at her.

"I forgot, I got a detention in Arithmancy today. I have to be there in fifteen minutes," Sasha lied expertly.

"You sure you can't skip it?" Draco asked.

"I'm sure," Sasha replied, wrapping her arms around his thin neck. She felt his arms slip around her waist. "Sorry, baby."
"After detention," Draco said, "meet me up here. We'll fix that back of yours."

"You got it," Sasha said, and kissed him on the lips quickly. "I'll be here after detention."
"I'll be waiting," Draco said as she slipped down the stairs and he heard her leave.

***

It had been a challenge for Harry to leave the common room unnoticed at 8:00 pm. For one thing, Hermione was in the room, asking him about how he was feeling, and trying to come up with a way to make him sleep better. But, eventually, he'd made the excuse that he was going to take a bath.

He was waiting at the main entrance at 7:58, just in time to see Sasha coming upstairs from the dungeons.

"Perfect timing," Harry said as the heels of her black, leather stiletto boots clicked across the stone floor. She looked better than he could ever imagine anyone looking. She was wearing dark gray wool wide-legged Capri's with a silver tank top and dark green velvet blazer.

He'd chosen to wear his new, ridiculously expensive black 'casual dress' shoes with black pants, and a red button-up shirt unbuttoned towards the top to show a little of the white t-shirt he had on underneath.

Sasha smiled at him, and pulled out a silver, sequin-covered purse. She dug through it for a second, and pulled out her wand. She flicked it at him, muttering something under her breath, and Harry's red shirt turned into a hunter green turtleneck sweater.

"Red is a bad color where we're going," Sasha explained. "Besides, it brings out your eyes."
Harry chuckled inwardly, and she led him outside. He followed her up the slight hill that led to Hogsmeade. Once in the snow-dusted streets of the merchant village, Sasha led him down a dark alleyway that ended in a brick wall. Before she did anything, she took out her wand again.

"Give me your glasses," Sasha ordered, holding out her other hand, palm-up. Harry hesitantly slid them off his face, folded them, and gave them to her. Everything was terribly blurry, like he was looking through frosted glass. She waved her wand at his face, and suddenly the world became clear again. "Step two, done. Now, about that scar." She thought a moment, and then her face lit up. "Aha," she said, and pulled out a small, silver, circular thing, and flipped it open. There was a small, thin sponge-like thing in it, which she dabbed into a flesh-colored cream.

"Makeup?" Harry asked incredulously. "No way. I am not wearing makeup."

"Yes you are. It's a safety precaution, Harry. Now hold back your bangs," Sasha replied. Harry did as he was told, and Sasha dabbed makeup on the scar, soon turning the small compact to him so he could see himself. He didn't look like himself; he looked so empty without his scar, or his glasses.

"Alright, now we're ready," Sasha said, and began to count bricks from the right wall of the narrow alley. She placed a finger on one, and then began to count from the bottom. When she had found a particular brick, she tapped it with her wand, and stepped back, and stood next to him. The bricks up to where she'd counted moved to reveal a small space. Then, right below that, the ground opened up to reveal a metal staircase leading down below the wall.

"C'mon, we can't stand here all night," Sasha said, pulling him down the stairs behind her. There was a door at the bottom, a plain, grey metal door, which Sasha opened. Harry was amazed at what he saw.

It was an enormous room, with a bar to one side and a dance floor to the others. The bar top was a huge piece of glass, or so it seemed, covering an enormous fish tank. Behind it was a man who couldn't have been older than twenty-five. He was serving people brightly-colored drinks in interestingly shaped glasses, and talking and laughing with some of them.

Sasha sat down on a stool, and gestured for Harry to sit down as well.

"Hey, Gray," Sasha said to the bartender.

"What's new, Sasha?" Gray the Bartender replied.

"Nothing much," Sasha replied. "The usual, Gray."

"And for your friend?" Gray asked, his eyes shooting to Harry.

"A Tom Collins. Extra strong, on the rocks," Sasha answered for Harry. "He's a little down in the dumps."

"Sure thing," Gray replied, sending Harry a sympathetic look.

"Thanks Gray," Sasha called after the bartender as he went to go get the drinks.

"Sasha, what the hell did you just order?" Harry whispered to her.

"A peppermint martini," Sasha replied, eating an olive from the bowl beside her. "And a Tom Collins. Lemon juice, vodka, and lime juice. You'll like it. They're good."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. Alcohol?" Harry said. "Last time....well...you know what happened last time."

"Yeah, I know. But I come here twice a week, sometimes more. And that was the first time that's ever happened. It's one drink. Extra strong is like, 1 more shot-glass full of vodka. It's nothing," Sasha replied comfortingly.

"Whatever you say, Sasha, whatever you say," Harry said as Gray came back carrying two glasses, one with a pinwheel mint at the bottom, the other with a slice of lime resting on the edge.

Gray placed the drink with the mint in it before Sasha, and gave him the other drink. Harry took a mouthful of it, and found that Sasha had been right: he did like it. Sasha was drinking her martini, and talking to another girl in high-fashion clothes on the other side of her.

Harry downed the Tom Collins in about forty-five more minutes, not realizing how much time had gone by and that the drink had been diluted completely by the melted ice. In between sips, he'd talk to Gray, or other people who would say hello to him and start up a conversation. He didn't talk to Sasha, because every time he turned to say something to her, she was in the middle of another conversation with another person.

Finally, around 10:00, Sasha turned to him, her eyes bright.

"Hey, sweet cheeks, you ready to get going?" she said.

"Did you just call me sweet cheeks?" Harry asked.

"Don't think anything of it. I call everyone stuff like that," Sasha replied.

"Alright..." Harry said unsurely. He looked at his empty Tom Collins glass, and saw Sasha stand up and hug the other girl goodbye.

She came over to him, and held out her hand to help him up. He took it, and she pulled him off the stool, but didn't let go even after they'd walked out of the bar. He looked down at their intertwined hands, slightly confused.

"Sasha, how much have you had to drink?" he wondered aloud.

"Just that one martini," Sasha replied. They had gotten out of the alleyway, and were now standing in the snow-dusted streets. Sasha looked up and down the street, and promptly relinquished Harry's hand.

"Oh," Harry said, almost sorry that she had let go. He liked the feel of her silky smooth hands in his, the way her perfectly-polished nails felt to the tips of his fingers. He imagined how flawless she was, and then quickly stopped himself for two reasons: one, he was going out with Hermione, who would be pissed beyond belief. And two, because Sasha was going out with Draco, who was friends with Crabbe and Goyle, who were both unnaturally large, and rather frightening, and would do Draco's loathsome bidding at the snap of a finger. Which could easily result in the snapping of Harry's neck. Which wasn't appealing.

Besides, it would look shifty to Hermione, and all his friends, really, if he came back from 'the bath' completely and uncontrollably horny. People would start to think things, and well....it wouldn't have a happy ending.

Before he knew it, they were back at the castle, and Sasha changed his shirt back to red button up. Then she made a dissatisfied look and said, "What was your excuse for getting out?"

"Bath," Harry replied.

"Alright," Sasha said, and flicked her wand at him. He was suddenly clad only in a white towel bearing the Hogwarts crest. She turned the wand on herself, and tapped her wand on the top of her head, and was dressed in dark green sweatpants and a grey t-shirt bearing the Slytherin House shield on the left side-almost shoulder. On her feet was a pair of gray and dark green running sneakers. She looked about to run a marathon. Harry didn't understand.

"What was yours?" he asked, giving an aggressive yank at the knot, making sure it was tight.

"Detention," Sasha said. "We're allowed to wear lounge clothes, as long as they're House Pride."

"Oh," Harry replied, nodding his head slowly. He looked towards the staircase. "Then I guess, erm...this is goodnight?"

"Yeah," Sasha said, smiling. "Good night."

"G'night," Harry returned. "I'll...uh...see you in Potions tomorrow?"

"First class," Sasha smiled, and turned to go to the Dungeon staircase.

Harry smiled, and felt his face heat. He climbed the staircase back to Gryffindor tower, and stopped in the bathroom, just to wet his hair for that extra effect. He ran the sink, and stuck his head under the faucet stupidly, even though he knew there was a much easier way to go about this.

After he was satisfied with the wetness of his hair, he walked up to the Fat Lady's portrait, and gave her the password, feeling pretty damn good about himself for no particular reason.