Physiognomy

The one was designed as a mirror in which we might behold the other reflected; but the vicious study dissimulation; they endeavour to lock their passions and vices within their own breasts, and by a virtuous exterior, to conceal the characteristic expression of villany. In vain, however, does hypocrisy tender them her aid: the outward figure and form of the man are forced to a resemblance of the internal model, and the dispositions of the heart are almost invariably depicted on the countenance.

-The Physiognomist's Own Book: an Introduction to Physiognomy Drawn From the Writings of Lavater, 1841

**

Ron does not understand the appeal.

Granted, he also doesn't, in general, find himself attracted to boys, so perhaps he simply isn't the one to ask. But round about the middle of sixth year it got so nobody would shut up about Draco Fucking Malfoy, and he has no idea why.

Ron has, this year, been settling comfortably into an understanding of Malfoy as That Obnoxious Bloke Over There, a loudmouthed Quidditch rival who, to coin a phrase, barks but rarely bites. He hasn't the teeth for it, Ron has finally decided, and been pleased with how far he could carry the metaphor. Sure, when they were twelve they thought he was the Heir of Slytherin, but he has turned out to just be the Heir of Malfoy, which is much less interesting. Ron has enjoyed getting more and more involved in the ultimate fight against the Evils threatening the whole wizarding world, while Malfoy has spent the same time harassing Neville in Potions and practicing his sneer in the mirror.

Malfoy is not a gripping subject. Ron feels, in short, no grip. Yet his fellow students have gone gaga for him.

All right, "gaga" may not be the right word. Some people, the slightly saner ones, seem to have just decided Malfoy was interesting--not interesting as a thorn in their sides, but interesting as a person. They talk about things he's said and done in class, his interactions with the other Slytherins in the halls or at meals, and while Ron thinks all the things they're talking about are deadly, deadly dull, they seem to fill hours with such stultifying conversation. They think he's fascinating.

Some of them, the less sane ones, even think he's hot.

Ron has therefore watched Malfoy for a while now, trying to understand at least the physical attraction. He has decided it has something or other to do with how Malfoy carries himself, rather than any sort of intrinsic, Apollonian ideal of beauty that he fulfills. (Ron is not the type to think in terms of Greek ideals, but there was that entire mess with Hermione and the Apollonio charm and going around Perfecting everything's Proportions, which was fine until she accidentally turned Mrs. Norris into a perfect sphere.) Malfoy struts around like he owns the place, whatever place he happens to be in, and where Ron has always found this to be a mark of total git-itude, he is starting to think that perhaps it gives Malfoy an aura of power that the easily-fleeced find magnetic.

It cannot be pure good looks, he thinks to himself as he sprawls on the overstuffed couch in the common room, tossing a Quaffle to himself and watching the leaves fall in the distance out the tower windows. It simply cannot be. Malfoy is, to put it bluntly, weird-looking. There is something drawn and pinched and pulled about his face that makes the whole thing seem to be held together at the nose, as if, were you to somehow loosen his nose, his whole face would relax and his eyes might fall out. Worse, that nose is long and comes to an unfortunate point at the end. A few months ago, Dean was doing a whole series of in-action drawings of Quidditch matches, and admitted to Ron that when drawing Malfoy he always started with the nose.

Ron has discovered, while watching him in the Great Hall during meals, that Malfoy's eyes are oddly colorless, pale and absorbing of whatever light is around them. His hair, which when he was younger was that little-boy shade of straw that gets called "towheaded" or "flaxen," has darkened in adolescence to a sort of limp off-white, like an overlaundered t-shirt, and his forehead is, at seventeen, already starting to widen. He sweeps his hair back and mats it down with water and a Holding Charm, which accentuates his widow's peak and makes his forehead look like a groin vault. His mouth is thin, but too wide, and he seems unable to smile naturally without looking more or less like a completely smug bastard. He is a bit bird-chested. His elbows and knees are pointy and knobby. His arms are muscular from all the Quidditch but his shoulders and back are weak, completely unbalancing his torso. Malfoy, thinks Ron, is not what he would call preternaturally hot.

So why do people seem to drool all over him?

"Ron?" says Hermione with a touch of concern. "Why have you spent all of lunch staring at Malfoy?"

Ron finally turns away and grins at her sheepishly. "He's one ugly sod, isn't he?"

Hermione takes her turn to appraise Malfoy. "I don't know. He's a complete jerk, sure, but he's got a certain charm."

Next to him, Harry takes notice and interrupts a fervent conversation with Neville about man-in-the-moon marigolds and their use in healing unguents to throw in, "It's that aristocratic upbringing. He's a bastard, but he's got a certain charisma, I'll give him that."

Ron is shocked. "Are you completely barmy, Harry? He's a Death Eater! Or a Junior Death Eater or a Death Eater Guide or something."

Neville nods. "He tried to sell me some biscuits the other day. I'm pretty sure they were evil biscuits."

"You," says Dean, gesturing with a half-eaten chip, "are a straight boy, and do not therefore get a vote. As not only the gay boy at the table--"

Down the way, Colin folds his arms and flashes Dean an exasperated Look.

"As I was saying, as not only the gay boy in the conversation," Dean remarks in Colin's direction, "but also the one with aesthetic vision...." Turning back to the group at hand: "Draco Malfoy is hot." He shrugs to Ron. "Sorry."

"But you draw him from the nose outward! You said so!"

"His nose is pretty pointy," comments Neville.

Dean cocks his head. "Well, so is yours, Ron."

Ron reflexively brings his hand to his nose.

"Doesn't mean you aren't a fine-looking bloke," Dean goes on. "You think the nose looks bad on Draco because we hate Draco."

"Also, his twitches when he thinks he's getting away with something," puts in Neville sagely. "That's how I knew to watch out for the biscuits."

"I just don't see it," Ron says. "We hate him. How can he be hot? Why do we care whether or not he's hot? I care whether you lot are hot. Dean--you're a handsome man. You've got that great smile. And Harry, you're a good-looking fellow."

"That and they were glowing with a red unholy light," Neville muses.

"Well, of course you think they're attractive," says Hermione in that matter-of-fact way. "They're your friends. Everything thinks their friends look good."

"But Malfoy isn't Dean's friend!" Ron insists, feeling that he is losing control of the conversation. "And he's completely hateful! Why does he even get an aesthetic judgment?"

"I'm an artist, Ron. Everyone gets an aesthetic judgment."

Ron looks across the table at Ginny, who has been ignoring all of this. "Gin?" he prompts frantically. "Can we get another female opinion here?" He wants, needs, desperately, for Ginny to not think Malfoy is hot. Or even particularly interesting.

Ginny finally looks up. "Oh?" she says ingenuously. "I think probably Neville was right to not buy the biscuits."

"Malfoy," Ron clarifies. "Is. He. Hot?"

Ginny flashes him a demure look. The rest of Gryffindor turns as one to stare at them. Ron flushes. Ginny doesn't.

"He has a flair," she says matter-of-factly, and immediately turns to Natalie MacDonald to ask about the Potions essay they have due that week.

Ron turns helplessly to the group at hand. "Is that good?"

"Depends on whether you like flair, I suppose," shrugs Dean.

I, thinks Ron as he leans his chair back to examine Malfoy again behind Harry's head, do not like flair.

**

When Ginny starts dating him there is a mild scene in, of all places, the Astronomy Tower, only it is mid-afternoon and so it is the non-snogging sort of hanging out in the Astronomy Tower. In fact it is the escaping-from-the-snogging-in-Gryffindor-Tower kind of hanging out because Lavender Brown has fallen deeply in love with Neville, for reasons no one can explain, least of all Lavender or Neville, and they have commandeered the common room for the day.

It is just the three of them up there, which is good, Ron thinks, because Harry and Hermione are really the only ones in the school he's willing to let see him get this bent out of shape. He is, he suspects, an unpleasant bright red color, and he is not so much shouting as allowing his anger and horror to escape his mouth in incoherent bursts. He is sputtering, and some distant, detached part of his brain notes that he sounds a bit like his father.

"Ron," says Hermione reasonably, because this is Hermione and when she speaks she does her best to speak reasonably, "be reasonable."

"Reasonable?" roars Ron, only his voice is shot so it is maybe more like a croak. "My baby sister is dating the head of You-Know-Who's Junior League and you want me to be reasonable? I'll kill him!"

"Oh, you can't kill him," says Hermione.

"Yeah, don't stoop to his level," puts in Harry, lying on his back on the observatory wall. He has the Cannons season preview brochure propped open on his chest, but really he is watching the unseasonable early November snow as it falls and then winks out of existence two meters above his head.

"But...but he's somehow seduced Ginny! That snake! He's got her with his talons!"

"Snakes don't have talons," says Hermione.

"You're thinking of fangs," Harry adds helpfully, turning the page.

"Ron, will you stop pacing? The groove you're wearing in the floor is going to unbalance the telescope."

Ron heavily collapses and stares into the middle distance. "What am I going to do?"

Harry puts down the magazine and swings his legs back onto the ground. "You're not actually going to do anything."

"I have to do something." Ron knows he is whinging and decides he does not care.

"Like what? Snitch on her? Shortsheet Malfoy's bed? Complain to McGonagall? Professor, help, you have to do something, my baby sister is kissing a boy I don't like."

Ron rubs his forehead with three fingers, but says nothing.

"Ginny's sixteen, Ron. She's not stupid. If Draco turns out to be evil she's not going to stay with him." Hermione sits down across from him.

"Right," says Harry. "He's not that hot."

"Well..." Hermione begins.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"No, really, what?" Harry demands.

Ron interrupts hurriedly. "Right, so Ginny, not stupid, I hear you."

"So who knows why Ginny likes him?" Hermione rejoins the discussion. "Maybe he's different when he's with her, or maybe she thinks she can redeem him. Or maybe it's that thing he does where he worries his hair with his fingers when he's thinking hard..."

"Hermione!" Harry snaps his fingers at her.

"Right, right, anyway, the point is, Ginny isn't going to stay with him if he does anything truly Dark, right? She's one of the good guys."

"And she's not in our year; it's not like they'll be snogging in class."

"No, but he'll be there to smirk at me in Potions, won't he?"

"Well," says Hermione. "Let him smirk."

"Hermione," Ron says, "he's a very effective smirker."

"So smirk back."

"You know, you sound like my mother."

"Actually," Harry is lying down on the wall again, "your mother would say, that Malfoy boy needs a smack in the gob."

"No, she wouldn't."

"All right, she wouldn't say gob."

"Do either of you have a point?" says Hermione.

Harry reopens the magazine. "No, but we're probably happy to just agree with yours."

"My point," says Hermione, "is that Draco, master smirker though he may be, can't do much more than that. Ginny's tough. If he does more than smirk you won't have to wipe it off his face, because Ginny will have already."

Ron allows a dubious look to cross his face. "You think so?"

"She stood up to Malfoy when she was twelve," Harry calls out from within the depths of the magazine.

"Oh, right, the Valentine's Day business." Ron feels a smile crack on his lips, despite himself. "Boy, she had it bad for you."

"I'll be sure to smirk at you during Potions about it."

"Look." Hermione is using her Reasonable Voice again. "Either Draco is a Death Eater or he isn't. If he is, this will be over quickly, I reckon. If he isn't, then either he'll treat her like a git or he won't, and Ginny isn't going to stay with a git."

"And if he doesn't treat her like a git?"

Hermione grins a wicked grin. "Then you'll get to decorate sugar cookies with him at Christmas."

**

Ron sends a weak smile across the table at Malfoy. The snowman cookie cutter is over by him, and Ron has avoided talking to him as much as possible since he arrived at the Burrow yesterday, but he needs the snowman cookie cutter and sometimes being a hero for the side of Good means making sacrifices. Right?

"Malfoy," he stage-whispers accidentally, and then clears his throat. "Malfoy," he tries again, "could you pass that snowman there?"

Malfoy looks up at Ron in surprise, as if he's noticing he's there for the first time, and then wordlessly passes the cookie cutter over. Not scowling, but not smiling either. Mostly, he seems pre-occupied by adding little candy buttons down the front of his gingerbread man. Ron would like to think that Malfoy looks ridiculous and out-of-place putting candy buttons on a gingerbread man but in fact he just looks like someone at Christmas decorating cookies. Possibly someone whose girlfriend is making him do so, but even so, that is fairly normal.

Ron would also like to think that Malfoy looks horribly out-of-place at the Burrow in general. After all, he's seen pictures of Malfoy Manor (Ginny having cornered him weeks before to show him pictures of ickle Draco making a snow goblin, or whatever) and it is roughly the opposite of the Burrow, all straight clean lines and art glass and spotless marble floors and Danish modern furniture. It looks like the world's biggest prefab job--honestly, stucco in Wiltshire? It may have been in the family for generations, but if so it has gone through some seriously thorough overhauls in that time. In any case, Ron would like to think that Malfoy looks horribly out-of-place, but no, evidently his ability to walk around like he owns the place extends even to overgrown, frumpy, poltergeist-infested homes like the Burrow. What is weird is that he's been polite to Mum and Dad, and helpful with the cleaning and the decorations, and, all right, not warm, but not unpleasant, either, to Ron or his brothers. He's been affectionate with Ginny but he hasn't been snogging her in public or anything. Charlie, in fact, Ron remembers, commented this morning that they were cute together, which earned him a look of death from Ron.

"What?"

"They are not cute!" Ron had protested. "The Malfoys are the enemy!"

"Enemies are, you know, adults," Charlie had shrugged. "Draco is just a kid."

"He's the enemy-in-training, then," Ron had insisted.

Charlie had looked over Ron's shoulder. "Well, at the moment he's the enemy-in- giggling-and-trying-to-put-a-snowball-down-Gin's-back."

"Charlie..."

Charlie had grinned. "That Death Eater bastard. Putting snowballs down Ginny's back is our job."

He just doesn't see, Ron decides. Just because Malfoy isn't torturing people or harassing Muggles doesn't mean he doesn't have the seeds of evil inside him. He squints suspiciously at Malfoy, who catches it, looks up, smiles weakly at him, and reaches for the raisins.

Malfoy is not this nice. Ron knows Malfoy. Ron knows that Malfoy is not this nice. So the next day he confronts him on the staircase down from Bill's room, where he's been staying.

"I need to talk to you, Malfoy," Ron snarls in his best snarly voice.

Draco looks puzzled. "What do you want, Ron?"

"'Ron?' You're calling me 'Ron' now?"

"I can hardly call you 'Weasley' in this house, now can I? Even the bloody cat is Weasley."

"Look. You don't like me and I don't like you. Are we at least agreed on that? Can we start there?"

"Start what? Could you try to make at least a little sense? It's early."

"All right, I'll make it crystal clear." Ron strides up the steps and pokes him in the chest. "Why are you being so nice to my sister?"

Draco blinks at him. "What?"

"Why are you being so nice to her? Why are you being so polite to my parents, and to me, and to the rest of us? I know you! I know we don't like each other! I remember it like it was October, all right?"

"Would you rather I spent the week insulting everyone?" Draco sneers. Ron feels somehow more comfortable with the sneering.

"It would certainly make more sense!" Ron exclaims. "I know you're not suddenly full of tidings of comfort and joy towards my whole family just because you're dating Gin."

"Oh! Well, no, certainly not, you weedy sod." Draco breaks into a smirk. "That better?"

"Somewhat," admits Ron. "The smirking helps."

"Look, Weasley, I'm not stupid. I'm not about to go around insulting my girlfriend's family while I'm a guest at her house. That too complicated for you?"

"Ha!" Ron feels triumphant. "So you're just being nice to us to get to Ginny?"

Malfoy stares at him. "Yes, and that's perfectly normal."

"Perfectly normal? You call your Machiavellian schemes perfectly normal?"

"Look. I don't like you, Weasley. I don't like your brothers. I don't like your parents. You've got a cramped, messy, meager, second-rate house here; you can't even afford to get the poltergeist exorcised. And this morning your cat bit me on the head."

"Good kitty," mutters Ron.

"But I like Ginny, all right? I can't explain it, I just do."

"I certainly can't explain why she'd like you."

"I," Draco says loftily, "am eminently likeable. And I am a snappy dresser and I have great hair. And I like Ginny. So when you like someone, maybe you don't insult their family or their house. Even if you think the insults, you don't say them. That's etiquette. I wasn't raised in a barn, you know." He glances around. "Unlike some people on this staircase."

"Etiquette? Lucius Malfoy's son is teaching me etiquette? You're two steps away from a Dark Mark! We're all onto you. Er, maybe not Ginny, but--"

Draco cackles. "You're throwing my father at me? My father doesn't even know I'm here."

"Oh, sure he doesn't. You're just his little spy in this house, aren't you."

"I haven't been my father's little anything," Draco snarls, "since I was about twelve years old. In case you hadn't noticed, I do what I like. You think my parents would let me date a Weasley? They think I'm in London visiting Millicent."

"Millicent is vouching for you?"

"No, you fool, Millicent thinks I'm home at the Manor. She'd love to tell on me if she knew."

"So why are you here?"

"Because I like Ginny. What is wrong with you?"

"So you're not a Death Eater?"

"Why would I not be a Death Eater?" Malfoy leans back and crossed his arms.

"If you don't do what your father tells you..." Ron trails off, feeling like somehow his train of thought has missed the station and is in danger of careening off the rails and down a steep, rocky cliff.

"I'm not a Death Eater because I'm still at Hogwarts," Malfoy says. "You can't be a Death Eater if you're still in school. What could I say, 'Oh, Flitwick, I'll have to get tomorrow's notes from Pansy, I have Muggles to torture? Iron maiden to oil? Have to open the Hidden Crypt of Evil Mambo Hamsters?"

"What do you know about the Hidden Crypt of Evil Mambo Hamsters?" Ron demands.

"Just because I harass the plebeians at school whenever I get a free moment doesn't make me a Death Eater. Doesn't mean I do what my father tells me. We're seventeen. If you do everything your father tells you, you're even more hopeless than I thought."

Ron has to admit that Draco has a point. Well, not that he has to admit it, per se. He would admit that Draco has a point, except that he'd never let the bastard get the upper hand. But otherwise, it makes sense.

"Your sister certainly doesn't," Draco adds, and then before that can sink in he has fled back up the stairs. The implications hit Ron a minute or so later, and, red spots flashing behind his eyes, he stalks back down to the kitchen, where his mum and Charlie are moving cookies from sheet to cooling rack.

"You all right?" Charlie says in mid-spatula. "You're, um, unpleasantly red."

"It clashes with the freckles," puts in Mum. "It's a curse in this family."

"I," Ron announces, "hate him."

"Who?" says Mum. Then, a second later, "Oh. Oh, yes."

"Hate him," Ron says again, with relish. "I know he's been polite since he got here, but I still hate him."

"But his gingerbread men are so neat," Mum protests.

Charlie examines them. "Mm, yes, he does seem to have a flair for them."

Ron flees for his room and slams the door.

**

"I have a great idea."

That is Hermione, of course, Mistress of the Great Idea. They are in Harry and Ron's room, and it is about two weeks after classes have resumed. They are supposed to be at Quidditch practice, but it is raining, and not quite cold enough to freeze, and so being outside entails being constantly jabbed by tiny drops of stinging cold water. In retaliation they have lit a small, enchanted fire on Seamus's bedspread and are roasting chestnuts on it. And Hermione has a great idea.

"My great idea," Hermione says with some pride, "is that we should recruit Draco for Dumbledore's Army."

"Oh, dear Merlin, no," Ron groans. "First of all, we call him Malfoy. Malfoy. Not Draco."

"I didn't realize there was a rule," sniffs Hermione.

"There's a rule," confirms Harry.

"Then I think we should recruit Malfoy for Dumbledore's Army."

"And I was saying, dear Merlin, no," says Ron. "That's all we need, is to invite someone who can go and report everything we say to his Dark masters. I know we're trying to be inclusive, but can we avoid recruiting the bad guys? Do we need a third for Grottle on Thursday? Shall we call up Wormtail?"

"He said he wasn't a Death Eater yet," points out Harry, the great compromiser. "And he's, er, good with a wand."

"And he really likes Ginny," says Hermione.

"Yes, yes, and he's blisteringly hot," Ron grumbles. "We all know. We've all got posters of Malfoy Spellotaped to our bedroom ceilings."

"You're being obtuse," Hermione complains.

"I don't have a poster," Harry tells Ron.

"My point," Hermione glares, "is that there are these two conflicting forces working on Draco, right? His parents, and the evil kids among the Slytherins, on the one hand, and on the other hand, Ginny. The love of his life. The beckoning side of tolerance and righteousness."

"I suppose," Ron says doubtfully. "Why do we need him exactly? We already have that one belligerent blond kid."

"Zach." Harry rolls his eyes.

"He has such a crush on you."

"Draco," says Hermione firmly, "is mysterious. And conflicted."

"And you think he's hot."

"That has nothing to do with it!"

"Although you have to admit it can't hurt," Harry offers.

"Mysterious and conflicted," Hermione glowers. "We ought to recruit him if only so he doesn't become our most powerful enemy."

"What about Bellatrix Lestrange and Wormtail?" offers Ron.

"Not to mention the big V himself," adds Harry.

"The big V?"

"Fine," Hermione snaps. "Our most powerful enemy our age. Honestly."

Ron tries for the how-about-some-perspective-around-here-honestly approach. "Hermione, so far Draco hasn't really been much of a factor in the war so far. He just taunts us at dinner. And in class sometimes. And tries to win at Quidditch. And, all right, he's generally nasty, but that doesn't necessarily imply a tortured soul."

"Oh, his soul is tortured," says Hermione firmly. "I promise you that."

Ron sighs. "He wasn't even nasty over Christmas. He was normal. He was polite, like...well, like he was trying to impress his girlfriend's family. Which he was. It was ruthlessly normal behavior."

"You aren't forgetting anything?" Harry sounds suspicious. "Animal torture, anything like that? Rubbing his hands together maliciously? Yelling 'Fools! I'll destroy you all!'?"

"He did yell that last one," says Ron. "But we were playing Boggle at the time and he's very competitive. No, he was very normal. Maybe his soul stops being tortured during Christmas, I don't know."

"Maybe his heart grew two sizes that day," offers Hermione.

"Look, he put Ernie Macmillan's hand in that bowl of warm water while Ernie was napping in the library last week," points out Harry, "so I wouldn't necessarily say he wasn't in need of redemption."

"So what do you propose?" Ron resigns himself, as always, to Hermione's insane plans.

"We get Ginny to talk to him," says Hermione, who has clearly been waiting for exactly this prompt since the conversation began. "She tells him she finds fighting on the side of good hopelessly sexy, or something."

Ron makes a squeaking noise that he did not even know he was capable of.

Harry, however, is into it.

"Sure," he says slowly. "She tells him how great it was to see him being nice and friendly at the Burrow at Christmas." He swings himself off the bed and begins to pace. "It's not that she doesn't like him now, of course...just that when she saw him making an effort to be sweet, and kind, and smile at people...be helpful and diligent...she really loved it--"

"--and it's not that she thinks he should be fighting evil," Hermione says. She, too, absent-mindedly swings her legs off the bed and paces thoughtfully.

"Not necessarily fighting evil," corrects Harry.

"But that, well, Dumbledore's Army are all Ginny's friends. And she doesn't want her friends and her boyfriend to be so separated in her life..."

"It's high time!" Harry exclaims, pacing slightly faster, "that you and Potter should put aside your silly old feud--"

"--after all," Hermione, too, speeding up, "this is more important than some House rivalry--"

"--you're going to leave Hogwarts soon, are you going to dislike people because of their House all your life?--"

"--just come to one meeting, it's loads of fun, we talk about interesting spells, counterhexes--"

"--potions! He'll want to come more if we're talking about potions. He likes Potions, right?"

"--we duel, sometimes, and look over interesting books, and--"

"--if you'll just come it'd make me really happy!"

Ron morosely toasts a marshmellow.

Hermione finally notices. "Are you in, Ron? You're not exactly bouncing up and down on the bed in excitement."

"I'm in, I'm in." Ron, still seated akimbo, bounces himself up and down a few times for her benefit. "Fighting for good, very hot, I get it."

This is just more of the usual, thinks Ron. Why do they care so much? Why is Draco so important, or even interesting? He decides, a bit smugly, that his ten minutes of conversation on the stairwell with Draco constitutes Expert Knowledge and Insight, and moreover that his Insight tells him that Draco is the Useless Git he always thought he was. "Look," he says, his last-ditch effort to maintain sanity, "Draco is not the last great hope for the wizarding world. I promise."

"But what if he is?" Harry leans towards Ron and raises his eyebrows as if this is an argument-winner. He waggles them for effect.

"But what if he isn't?" Ron persists wearily. "I mean, why is he worth the trouble?"

Hermione finally stops pacing and falls into her Why You Are Wrong stance, in which she leans back on her right leg and looks at you while ducking her head, so she can simultaneously stare you down and roll her eyes. She ticks off on her fingers. "His father is one of the most evil men in the wizarding world, so he has inside knowledge of the ways of the Dark side. He's a bastard but underneath he must be good because Ginny likes him. He's got striking features--"

"Oh, right, he's the hottest hot thing on a hot day in Hotsburg," Ron puts in.

"He's striking," Hermione continues, now somehow staring him down, rolling her eyes, and glaring all at the same time, "which must mean something; you've read the Dark is Rising books, Harry, right?"

Harry nods, not looking, still pacing. "The striking blond kid is always important."

Ron gives up.

"All right, all right, I'm in. We get Ginny to force Draco to come to Dumbledore's Army meetings. He'll come for her, but stay when he realizes that although Evil may dress better and throw better parties, Good, um..."

"Eats better," offers Harry, grabs a handful of cooling chestnuts off the bedspread.

"He will be swayed by the power of good things, like friendship and camaraderie and, um, sharing."

"Yes," says Hermione firmly.

"And then he will be our bestest friend and will fight on our and his great love for Ginny will save the world and kill You-Know-Who."

"Worth a shot," Harry mumbles through a mouthful of chestnut.

"Why is my bed on fire?" says Seamus in an amiable tone, coming in and hanging up his coat.

"You make those neat hospital corners on yours. Dean's was all mussed," explains Ron.

"And we saved you some chestnuts," puts in Hermione, offering him a bowl of same.

"Ah. Well, that's all right then," says Seamus, settling on Harry's bed across the way. "What's the good word?"

"We're going to redeem Draco!" Hermione reveals.

Seamus nods. "Good for you. What do you think you can get for him, then?"

**

"You want me to invite Draco where?"

Ginny.

"To the DA meeting next week," says Ron. Ginny has a look on her face that he does not like, and he thinks, perhaps this was not as good an idea as I originally thought. And then he thinks, wait, I never actually thought this was a good idea.

He doesn't buy that Divination crap, but right now he can, in fact, see slightly into the future and it doesn't look good for him. Hermione and Harry, of course, have pressing engagements elsewhere.

"Why in bloody hell would Draco want to come to the DA meeting next week?" Ginny asks, reasonably.

"Well," Ron begins, but in fact he has no idea. Malfoy probably has no interest in coming to the DA meeting next week, which makes perfect sense as it is not as if he has friends there, or likes the "D" in "DA" particularly, or has any interest in having Harry tell him what to do. "We were thinking that perhaps, since you two have been together for a while, we should...maybe get to...know each other a bit? Spend some time together? He must not be a bad guy, right?"

His brain is yelling, Lame! Lame! So lame! But he smiles desperately through it.

Ginny looks dumbfounded. "So you thought the best social gathering to introduce Draco around involved counterhex drills and lectures by Harry?"

Ron nods weakly.

"You know, what the hell is wrong with a Hogsmeade weekend, exactly?" she demands. "We could meet for lunch! Or ice cream! Or just walk around a bit! Only you, Ron, only you and Harry and Hermione, could come up with a plan as insane as getting to know Draco by inviting him to fight evil with you."

Ron considers this. "We do a lot of fighting evil," he points out. "So we wanted to, er, share that with him...?"

Ginny is flushed with anger. This is a look Ron is extremely familiar with. The things I do for my friends, he thinks.

And, of course, the cause of fighting evil, he wryly adds.

"I know what you're up to," growls Ginny, poking him in the ribs with a finger. "You little...weasel."

"Hey, takes one to know one," Ron says, grabbing her finger and removing it from the vicinity of his viscerals.

"You," Ginny accuses, "are trying to make Draco nice."

"What?" squeaks Ron. It is not an attractive sound.

"You don't want to make friends with Draco," she fumes. "You're not that stupid; you'd try to meet us for an ice cream or something if that was it. You want him for your Army. You want him to fight for the side of Good."

"Never," Ron squeaks.

"You do! Merlin, don't you folks ever put it to rest? Things are relatively calm out there! You-Know-Who has been quiet, the Order has been catching some high-ranking Death Eaters, and you've decided that things are, what, too quiet? And so Draco is going to be...your secret weapon? Or do you just like the neat dramatic irony of Draco facing off against his own father?"

Some tiny part of Ron that is somehow not buried under this assault is actually thinking about this, and says, hey, wait a tic. Is Ginny actually suggesting that she prefers Malfoy the way he is?

He straightens up a bit and tries to find his own Inner Molly. "Hang on, Gin, are you honestly saying that you'd rather Malfoy be... Evil?"

Ginny stares at him. Unnerved, Ron's Inner Molly flees for higher ground. "What?"

"Do you know what I like about Draco?" Ginny says out of nowhere.

He thinks. Honesty? Best policy? How much more trouble could he get in, anyway? "No, actually. No idea. I hear he's got a flair, or something."

"The thing I like most about Draco," says Ginny, "is that he is not endlessly, eternally, ceaselessly going on and on and on and on about Good and Evil."

Ron opens and shuts his mouth like some sort of very surprised fish.

"Draco," says Ginny, "likes normal things. Normal, teenaged boy things. He likes books, you know? Not books about curses or evil beasts or, or, jinxes and counterjinxes and countercounterjinxes, but books. He likes mysteries, did you know that? And he likes music, he likes to listen to the Wireless. He likes to play Quidditch, and I know you and Harry like that too, but you treat it like it's a stretching exercise for the war and he treats it like a game. And, and..." She fumbles. "Archery, he likes archery, and he used to go skiing in the Alps when he was young, and... I mean, he likes things!"

Harry chooses this moment to wander in. Ron shoots him a "you'll regret it, mate" look, but Harry is Harry, and therefore does not notice. Both Ginny and Ron are now glaring at him, and he looks a bit startled.

"Erm, forgot my...gloves..." he attempts. But by then it is too late.

"Harry," Ginny says savagely. "What kinds of things do you like?"

Harry considers. "I like...Quidditch...and...fighting evil..."

Ginny screams.

Over the course of their years of close friendship, Ron feels that he and Harry are able to communicate quite a lot in a glance. Harry gives him a glance that says, Hmm, you seem to be in trouble, mate, as things don't seem to be going quite as swimmingly as we'd hoped on this Ginny and Draco thing.

Ron gives him back a glance that says, No shit, Harry.

"You!" says Ginny accusingly. "What is with the two of you and fighting evil? There is more to life! Not everything is about the greater fight between Light and Dark!"

There is a long pause.

"Hey!" says Harry in a casual, friendly manner, as if nothing has happened. "You know who you should really bring to the DA meeting next week? Draco! I think it's high time we all got to know him a little better!"

"You," yells Ginny, "are obsessed with Draco! Why are you so obsessed with Draco!"

"He's very striking," begins Harry.

"Out! Get out!" declares Ginny with fire in her eyes, pointing at the door.

"But it's our common r--"

"OUT!"

They go out.

"Well," says Harry, looking off into the middle distance and taking one of those funny-old-world, learn-something-new-every-day tones, "can't say fairer than that, I suppose."

Ron shakes his head noncommittally.

"I think maybe we got through to her, a little," Harry suggests.

Ron shakes his head less noncommittally this time.

**

They break up in March, quietly and discreetly. To Ron's disappointment there is no epic shouting match in the Great Hall. Pumpkin juice is not thrown in anyone's smarmy blond gob; nor, sadly, is anyone viciously hexed to cough up slugs for two days in a delightful reversal of a certain childhood humiliation.

In point of fact, according to Lavender, who has taken fifteen minutes away from her precious Neville-shagging time to explain this to Ron, Ginny appears to have calmly told Draco that it wasn't working out, that she had a nice time with him but it wasn't really love. Draco appears to have expressed his disappointment, but also to have expressed his hope that they could still be friends. They both kept their stiff upper lips and gave each other a chaste hug and Ginny joked that she had seen Millicent eyeing Draco at breakfast and he should "get in there" and Draco chuckled and they went off to classes.

Neville seems to concur with this assessment, although it is hard to tell as he can no longer stand up without help, his hair has gone a shocking white, and he mostly spends his time these days muttering to himself and downing Pepper-Up Potion like it was water. Lavender gives him a look that is somehow both loving and ominous. Ron gives a wan smile and backs out of the room.

Predictably, the Malfoy Evilwatch begins immediately. Everyone, where everyone is Harry, Ron, and Hermione, and anyone else they can strongarm into helping, has become convinced that Draco's rage and hurt at being thrown over by Ginny (for Terry Boot, who is already in the DA and wants to be an architect when he leaves Hogwarts and, other than the eyeliner and spiky hair, is uninteresting, Evilwise) will lead directly to his getting a Dark Mark and Crucioing anyone who looks at him funny. That Draco mostly seems to go about his business as before, and in fact has been seen chatting up Sally-Anne Perks during Herbology, is regarded as an elaborate Dark subterfuge and so he is watched, constantly, by some combination of seventh-year Gryffindors at all times. He is no doubt beginning to wonder why Ron is always in the prefects' bathroom when he is taking a bath. Ron hopes he just comes across as obsessive-compulsive.

"You know," comments Dean as they lurk under the second-floor stairwell, munching Licorice Wands, revising for a Charms exam, and idly watching for The Potentially Evil One, "Ginny broke up with me and it didn't make me evil."

"No," Ron says, "it made you gay."

Dean grins. "Oh, I'm just flamboyant."

"Mm, is that what they call grinding with Justin at Mandrake last week, nowadays?"

"Perhaps that's where we should be watching for Draco. Preferably at Eighties Night. You could borrow that tight shirt of mine with all the grommets."

"You know, I think I liked you better when you were cute and mild-mannered."

"You mean 'repressed,' Weasley?" Dean pokes him in the ribs.

"Hey, hey, geroff," Ron grins. "I'll play your victim, but not your catcher."

"My point is, do we actually have any evidence he's going to go off on some path of destruction? It sounds like everything was cool between them."

Dean may have a point, but Ron is beyond such petty things as "good points" or "logical explanations." Instead he spends Potions fumbling through working with Harry while keeping both eyes firmly fixed on Draco in case he decides to steal some ingredients or hex Parvati or sell Neville biscuits or anything.

Ginny is barely speaking to any of them at this point. She has had one stirring monologue, outside the common room, about how neither of them is angry, it just wasn't working out, it was never that serious to begin with, it has nothing to do with good or evil or You-Know-Who or Dumbledore, Draco is just a kid like the rest of them, please, please, please lay off. For her troubles Harry rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet, stared into the middle distance, and said, "Well, Gin...we just want to be sure." And walked off, ignoring the steam coming out of Ginny's ears.

So Ron watches Draco. For several weeks he becomes a Draco-watching machine. He watches during class, making sure he doesn't try anything funny with a wand (Charms) or a potion (Potions) or a particularly thorny house plant (Herbology). He keeps an eye on him during meals, always sitting in the same seat with a good view of the Slytherin table, pretending to talk to Colin but listening for maniacal cackling or perhaps a "They will pay! They will all pay!" He watches when the mail comes in to see if Draco is getting letters from any particularly ornery owls. He starts hanging out discreetly under the bleachers during Slytherin Quidditch practice, which is more boring than he'd expected, and offhand he can't even think of what evil Draco might pull at Quidditch practice, but he feels that these are the sacrifices of duty. At one Hogsmeade weekend he tails him all over town and ends up having to buy three dozen blood lollipops and another six Pepper Imps because he has been absentmindedly filling his basket with them at Honeydukes while Draco selects only those Bertie Bott's beans that satisfy his delicate palette, or something. (Ron is distressed to note that Draco appears to really enjoy the sardine.) He gives a dozen or so of the blood lollipops to Seamus and gets the hell out of there before Seamus figures out they aren't cherry.

Ron discovers that he is starting to know things about Draco. Stupid little things, like that he doesn't eat the crust on his sandwiches, or that he chews the end of his quill while he's thinking. He likes to do celebratory barrel rolls playing Quidditch, which Ron knew because he does them in matches as well, but Ron always thought they were show-offy and in fact Draco appears to do them even if no one is watching, so maybe they are just for himself. Ron is put out. He does not really want to know all these cute details about Draco, he wants to make sure Draco is not about to eat someone's kitten in fury. Draco, meanwhile, has been spotted feeding Millicent's kitten a kipper he took from breakfast. This is problematic.

It is not that Draco has suddenly become a nice bloke, or anything. Neville is even more hopeless in class than usual because he clearly isn't getting any sleep and Draco never misses an opportunity to laugh uproariously as Neville, say, overturns a cauldron of Feathergrow Potion over his own head, or transfigures a clock into a slightly smaller clock. He calls Hermione a Mudblood twice, three times a day. He gets called for blagging twice in the Gryffindor-Slytherin Quidditch match and argues with Hooch about it for fifteen minutes and then gets called for cobbing thirty seconds later.

"Thirty seconds later!" Ron yells at Hermione.

"Mm, yes," says Hermione, "but that's not really evil, is it?"

Three weeks in, when Ron is wondering when they get to stop keeping track of the way Draco laces up his trainers (first the left, then the right; oh, bloody hell, this is precious brain space that could be used for something more important), Draco comes up to him in the hallway between classes, nods, and says, "You. Weasley. Prefects' bathroom. Now."

"I have Charms," Ron protests.

"I'm sure you must," Draco says frostily. "Prefects' bathroom."

The prefects' bathroom is, thank Merlin, empty, except for the usual mermaid in the painting, who giggles, "Ooh, cute boys snarling at each other for my amusement."

"Bugger off," Draco suggests.

She giggles again but does in fact bugger off, to Ron's relief.

Draco glowers at Ron for a little bit, and Ron is worried until he realizes that it is Draco's fault he is here, and not in class, in the first place. "What's all this then, Malfoy?" he snarls. Ah, he hasn't had a good snarl in months.

"Oh, like you have to ask," Draco snarls right back. Then, almost as an afterthought, "Weasley."

This pulls Ron rather up short. He hasn't actually done anything. "Consider this me asking," he says, relishing his irritation. "I have no idea why you dragged me in here."

Draco, perhaps just to be more annoying, stops glaring at Ron and starts pacing back and forth. Ron is very sick of pacing. "You know," says Draco, in a voice that is somehow dangerously pensive, "of all the things that could have come out of the past few months, this is one I would never have expected."

Ron is lost. He keeps his mouth shut in the hope this makes him winningly enigmatic.

"Honestly, Weasley, did you think I wouldn't notice you?" Draco demands. "I don't know how subtle you thought you were being, but it's not your strong suit, let me say that."

Ron's blood has gone cold. He knows! Half his mind begins plotting an escape route and the other half begins making out a will.

"You ought to leave the subtlety to those of us smart and refined enough to handle it," Draco goes on. "If this is you and your Muggle-loving friends' idea of clever sneakiness, just give up."

Harry gets his Quidditch things, of course, the Cannons posters. Ginny gets all his family pictures and that miniature talking glass Sphinx he got in Egypt.

"The Dark Lord is not the idiot you seem to think I am. You might want to learn some discretion before you try to spy on him."

Fred and George get his cauldron and his wand.

"And honestly, if you fancy someone, staring all the time isn't really the right way to show it."

Charlie gets that jumper he likes with the dragon on it and what?

"What's wrong with you, Weasley? At least your sister had the guts to come out and tell me."

Something is extremely wrong. Ron's face is, he feels, a paper-white mask of horror.

"Not that I'm not flattered, of course. Who wouldn't be, even if it's an ugly chap like yourself. Not that I go for boys at all. But even if I did--really, you look like a frog, Weasley."

Ron opens his mouth and closes it a few times. He makes a croaking noise.

"And you've got that huge head. It looks like a post box. Not sexy."

Ron finds his voice. It is somewhere out in the Forest, running for its life, but he drags it back with all his might. "I don't fancy you," he tries to snarl, but it just comes out as sort of a desperate gasp.

"Oh?" Draco says. "You've been following me around for weeks. You've been showing up to Quidditch practice and hiding under the bleachers. You spend meals watching me like a hawk while you pretend to talk to Creevey. Come on. We both know you don't want to talk to Creevey. He's as useless as Longbottom."

Now is not really the time to rise to Neville's defense, so Ron just splutters for a while and hopes this communicates something.

"You always sit in Potions so you can see me. You spent that Hogsmeade weekend following me like a third-rate spy in a fourth-rate spy novel. What did you do with all those blood pops, anyway?"

It is time to take a stand. Ron gathers all his strength. "Look. I don't fancy you. I don't even vaguely like you."

"Oh, give up, you're obsessed with me. Obsessed! Not that I can blame you for fancying me," Draco drawls. "If I weren't me I think I'd fancy me."

"Stop preening," Ron says.

Draco preens some more, just for good measure, Ron assumes.

"I don't like you!" Ron continues. "I don't think you're even slightly attractive. Just because you have the money for good clothes and you use all those hair products and you do that draaaawling thing doesn't make you sexy."

"No, no, don't worry about it," Draco drawls. "I understand."

These are not words Ron is prepared to hear. "You do?"

"I know it's hard," Draco says. He appears to just be picking random sentences and throwing them at Ron, who hopes there is a point here somewhere.

"You know what's hard?"

Draco shakes his head, almost sympathetically. "You've grown up hating me, right? And you've also grown up thinking, right, of course I like girls, what else would I do?"

Ron's eyes widen.

"And so to have to come to terms with it this way--I mean, liking a boy is one thing, but liking a boy you always thought you hated?" He shakes his dead. "I don't like you, Weasley, and I never have, but that must be hard for anyone."

"I don't fancy you!" Ron yells desperately.

Draco, horribly, is only getting more sympathic. Ron liked him better when he was snarling and nasty. "I can't help you, you know. I'm not gay, and anyway it would be strange to go with Ginny and then you."

"I don't fancy you!" Ron has no recourse but repetition. Also he is choked with wrath, but he decides he is being rhetorically deft anyway.

"Weasley," Draco says, and puts his hand on his shoulder. Ron looks at it fearfully as if it might bite him. "Ron. Just because I think you're a worthless sod doesn't mean I don't understand. I don't like you Weasleys any farther than I can throw you. You've got that carrot hair, and those low-class manners. You're an insult to the name of pureblood wizardry." This is delivered in such an amiable tone Ron doesn't even think to retaliate. "But I fell for your sister. We can't necessarily choose who we fall in love with."

"I am not in love with you, you smarmy wanker!"

"Ron," says Draco with all due gravitas. "C'est l'amour."

"Malfoy," Ron begins. "Stop calling me Ron. Stop speaking French. Listen carefully. I do not like you. You do not like me. I am not gay, and if I were gay, I would still not find you attractive. You treat my friends like shit. You make fun of those different from you. You're halfway to becoming a Death Eater. My friends and I hate you, and you and your friends hate me. That is how it's supposed to be, do you understand? We try to prevent You-Know-Who from ruling the world; you try to undermine us. And ever since you started dating Ginny I don't understand you anymore. You seemed nice to her, but you weren't any less mean to the rest of us. And then you broke up, and we all thought you'd be rageful and rush off to join the Death Eaters and cause mayhem in school, and instead you didn't do anything! You just went on with your life like nothing had happened! And Ginny said it was a good-natured breakup and you are many things, Malfoy, many things, but you are not good-natured. And so I've watched you, we've all watched you, waiting for you to go be horrible and cruel and take revenge and now here you are with your hand on my shoulder and I simply cannot cope with that. Can things just go back to the way they were? Can I please stop trying to understand you and just hate and suspect you? Because I am not sure I can handle thinking of you as anybody other than that jammy bastard who my friends hate but mysteriously think is compellingly attractive.

"You know what else?" Ron continues, and he has no idea where the words are coming from now. He wishes that wherever it is, it would stop sending the words to him, but he is, unfortunately, on a roll. "You're right! I am obsessed! I've been watching you for weeks, and that is not the behavior of the non-obsessed. You haven't even done anything and I've become obsessed with the fact that you haven't done anything! I don't know how you do it, or why, or if you have any control over it, but bloody hell, there's something about you that makes me pay attention to you, whether I want to or not."

Draco looks somewhat taken aback.

"And I've spent months--months--telling Harry and Hermione and the rest that they're completely barmy for thinking you're so interesting, but I've been scrutinizing you just as much as the rest of them. Trying to find all the precise ways in which you're not interesting! But then I must find you interesting, right?"

Draco turns his head slightly to the side to look askance at Ron. He seems to be wondering whether Ron is about to begin foaming. Ron is wondering much the same thing himself but presses on anyway.

"So fine! You're right! I'm obsessed! I can't help looking at you, and I don't even think you're attractive. You've got knobby elbows and dull hair and your nose is pointy."

"Hey, so is yours," Draco rises to defend himself.

"But if you're not attractive, then why have I spent so much time looking at you that I can tell you exactly why you're not attractive?"

"Is that a rhetorical question?" says Draco, in the tone one would use to ask a St. Mungo's patient whether he really thinks the Kaiser is stealing his teeth, or whether that's just meant to be a metaphor.

Ron shakes his head, more to clear it than to answer the question. "Look, I'm done," he says. "I can't waste my time watching you anymore. I don't think it's healthy. You're not going to blow up the school just because you broke up with Ginny. I just have to accept that everybody thinks you're oh-so-interesting. I guess that's why you and Ginny started dating."

"Actually," says Draco quietly, "Ginny and I started dating because she just liked me. Rather than thinking I was oh-so-interesting."

Ron deflates. "Oh. So."

"Not that I mind the attention," Draco clarifies. "I love, and of course deserve, the attention. But it was good not feeling on display."

Ron feels that he and Draco are, for the first and probably only time, experiencing a moment of true understanding and empathy. He hopes it is over soon, but in that spirit, he says warmly, "Well, Malfoy, I promise to try to stop paying so much attention to you, given that I'm not gay, I hate you, and I despise having to stand this close to you to even have this conversation." He smiles slightly. "That's the best I can do, you horrible bastard."

Draco smiles slightly, at well. As usual, it looks like a supercilious smirk, but Ron decides to appreciate the thought, for the moment. "Fair enough, you filthy Muggle-lover."

We could shake hands, Ron thinks. Only we hate each other. So instead they just quietly leave the bathroom.

Draco heads back off towards the classrooms. For the first time in months, the thought of him fills Ron with something other than boredom or exasperation with what Harry and Hermione and Ginny will be saying about him. Which is convenient, given that Harry strides up to him right then.

"Harry!" Ron punches him lightly on the arm. "What are you doing out of class?"

"I saw Malfoy drag you into the bathroom," Harry says. "I wanted to make sure you were all right. I thought he might take his revenge against Ginny on you."

"No, no," Ron waves this off, "it's all right. We had a talk. He thought I was gay. We decided we hate each other. It was a first-rate conversation."

This clearly does not make sense to Harry, and Ron concludes that for right now he doesn't care. "So do we need to worry about Malfoy, or not?" Harry wants to know.

"He's not going to take revenge on Ginny or anything because she broke up with him, if that's what you mean," Ron says. "So we can call off the Evilwatch. But who knows what that wanker might be up to next?"

"That's true," Harry muses. "I should call a special meeting of the DA for later this week. We need to train more in case Malfoy tries to bring Death Eaters into Hogwarts. We can't trust the school defenses to stand up to what the Slytherins might do from the inside."

"That's the spirit!" Ron cries, clapping Harry on the back. "Everything is back to how it should be, eh?"

Harry looks at him nervously. "Are you feeling all right, Ron? I thought you hated talking about Malfoy."

"Never better," Ron grins. "I've figured it out, you see. We're doomed."

"Doomed? Doesn't sound good," and now Harry is the second person in fifteen minutes to look at Ron like he's grown four extra heads and they're singing "Sweet Adeline."

"Not doomed doomed," Ron clarifies unhelpfully. "Doomed to watch Malfoy. Doomed to have Malfoy hovering around and having to deal with him. Is he a Death Eater? Could he be redeemed? Is he just a boring kid with a bad haircut?"

"Is that a rhetorical question?" Harry says.

"Who knows?" says Ron. "But we're doomed to try to find out. No more Evilwatch. But we can't stop paying attention to Malfoy. He's there and he's confusing and we can't help but pay attention to him. It's not our fault."

"No?" says Harry, looking around, possibly for something to knock Ron unconscious with.

"No," says Ron. "Malfoy is compelling. That's just how he is."

"Well," says Harry judiciously, "certainly, he's got a flair."

"That's right," Ron says with relish. "He's got a flair."

They head down the hallway together, back to class.