Title: Noise Levels: Promptly One
Author: Candieddragon
Rating: T due to language
Summary: While even Ron would have to admit that Malfoy had lost some of his arrogance and git-y-ness, Harry did not. And Malfoy, it seemed, thought Harry was just as much of a prat as he was before he defeated You-Know-Who. The two spent a lot of time bickering, yelling, fighting, cursing, and hexing. At full volume and at any time of the day. Rated T for language.
My friend, Angel Minerva McGonagall, and I decided to have a prompt war where:
1. Our fics must continually be one pairing (ie mmad, hpdm, rwhg, etc)
2. Each of us will give the other (#) prompt(s)
(prompts meaning items, nouns)
3. The story should be written the day of or the day after and posted after a day of editing (but that's flexible)
4. We go until we can't anymore.
I'm writing HPDM, she's writing MMAD.
Ok? –thumbs up-
My prompt was ferret, McGonagall, and chair. Unbeta'd as usual.
Malfoy was shouting.
Loudly.
And Harry was shouting right back.
"—kill you to try to be fucking nice—"
"—oh, just as nice as you when you hexed that first yea—"
Ron rubbed his temples with his forehead resting on the cool wooden table, desperately hoping his oncoming migraine would miraculously disappear, along with the angrily raised voices. No such luck.
Coming back to Hogwarts for their messed up seventh year was difficult. Hogwarts had been battered and beaten, so much that parts of the school was declared unsafe and thus roped off. The scars that the school held, however, only served to rip open many other emotional scars in its students.
So when Ron, Hermione and Harry returned t o school for their last year, or "Eighth Year", they had been unsurprised by the few eight years—seven Gryffindors and Ravenclaws each, four Slytherins, and five Hufflepuffs—who came back to finish their education at Hogwarts.
They were surprised however, that Draco Malfoy, the git, did. Or at least Ron was. He couldn't be sure what the other two were thinking.
All the eighth years had been quickly herded into a tower, instead of being allowed to stay with their house under the reasoning that they had in common than the younger students. Hermione theorized that an eighth year was highly irregular, and the Headmistress, Professor McGonagall, did not know what to do with them. Ron personally thought that the younger students would mob them and demand retellings of the war, something none of them were willing to face. The motley collection of students agreed with Hermione however and resigned themselves to living together for their last year.
In the spirit of "inter-house unity"—a load of bullshit in Ron's opinion—the eighth years had been placed randomly into their dorms. Ron landed a dorm room with Theodore Nott, Ernie McMillan and Neville Longbottom, a relatively OK set of dorm mates; none of them wanted to fight, and left each other well alone. On the other hand, Harry and Malfoy had managed to secure a dorm with Dean Thomas and Terry Boot, and apparently none of the professors had seen fit to double check the living arrangements.
A new hell for everyone in the tower.
While even Ron would have to admit that Malfoy had lost some of his arrogance and git-y-ness, Harry did not. And Malfoy, it seemed, thought Harry was just as much of a prat as he was before he defeated You-Know-Who. The two spent a lot of time bickering, yelling, fighting, cursing, and hexing. At full volume and at any time of the day.
Like they were now. At 10:00 pm. When people were trying to catch up on homework.
Ron winced as a loud smash resounded from the room, punctuated by "You fucking bastard!" from Harry.
"—See? You can't go two minutes without resorting to violence—"
"—and who's fault is that? You can't go thirty seconds without insulting someone—"
He glanced imploringly at Herminone. "Isn't there any spell at all that can make them shut up?"
Not even putting her book down to answer him, she sighed exasperatingly, "We've been over this. No, the tower won't let us cast a Silencio to make their room sound proof. No, no one is stupid enough to go into that room when they're yelling," Ron smiled ruefully at that; the first time Malfoy and Harry fought, Terry had tried to calm them down, only to walk out proudly displaying a Jelly Legs and a particularly nasty Bat Bogies hex. The rest of the eighth years cleared out pretty fast after that and stayed well away. "No, neither of them will switch dorms, the stubborn idiots, and yes, we've tried appealing to the professors, but it hasn't worked." Hermione summarized.
"Great." Ron muttered, viciously picking up his quill and accidentally-not-really stabbing his Transfiguration essay.
He still needed two feet on the Maliability of Animal Transformations, and the yelling didn't help. Nor did it help that the fucking essay was due tomorrow. Ron growled, staring at the parchment and hoping it would just fill itself.
The already ear piercing shouting match grew steadily in volume (Malfoy and Harry were making absolute sure that the other could hear him over themselves) did absolute wonders for Ron's new migraine, and he glared nastily at the direction of the voices.
"—just because you can't get over yourself—"
"—getting over myself? Pot. Kettle.—"
"—Shut UP. That's another thing: you can't keep your damn mouth shut for half a second—"
"—someone's got to knock you off that pedestal—"
Another crash, this time followed by "Take the fucking pedestal then."
He could not take it anymore. "Right!" Abruptly standing up and knocking the chair he had been occupying over, he snatched his wand and matched up to Harry's room and wretched the door open, fully intending to hex both the ferret and his best mate. Fuck the consequences.
He froze, mouth open to stun the two of them, at the sight of a shirtless Harry kissing a—thank god— not shirtless Malfoy on somebody's bed before they broke apart with a start and whirled to probably curse the intruder.
"Fuck—"
"Shit—"
"WEASLEY!"
Ron fled, not before slamming the door behind him, cheeks burning. Bloody hell, he could have gone his whole life without that image. Harry and, and, and Malfoy.
He clattered down the stairs, panting and ran straight for Hermione. She'd know what to do.
"Hermione, Harry… he… Malfoy… oh fuck." Each word was punctuated with wild wavings of his arms as he tried to explain what he just saw. Just as he reached Hermione, he tripped over his fallen chair. In that split second as the ground rushed toward him, he heard Hermione's "Ron!" mingle with Harry's and Malfoy's "Weasley!" before he heard a bang, saw stars as everything went black.
Pain in his head, pain in his side, pain everywhere. Ron groaned and clutched his head, then blearily opened his eyes to find a worried Harry hovering over him, Hermione mysteriously absent. Shifting slowly, he focused a bit and recognized his surroundings as the hospital wing. His friends caught his attention again when something sounding suspiciously like questions reached his ears.
"Wha?"
"—do you feel Ron?" Harry was asking. Harry, his best mate, his friend, shirtless, kissing Malfoy.
Ron shot up with a gasp, then a groan as his head exploded with pain. Attempting to ignore it, and Harry's voice telling him to lie down again, he gaped at Harry before gasping "…Malfoy!" in hopes that maybe it was all just his imagination.
Harry flushed scarlet. Shit, it was real.
"Look Ron, I wasn't trying to hide it or anything. I was going to tell you— " Harry began with a hint of desperation before he broke off and relocated his gaze at the floor.
Looking at his friend, he realized that Harry probably expected everyone to force him to not be with Malfoy, and so they couple used their "argument time" to guarantee privacy. He wondered how the argument continued while they kissed and …
Right then, Ron decided that he didn't care to hear the rest of it, and didn't want to find out when this had all started, and didn't want to think of those unwelcome images of Harry and Malfoy. Harry was Harry and his own head was still throbbing and he was not in the mood to solve anything more complex than his head right now.
"Well, then." he muttered under his breathe, and turned back to Harry, looked him straight in the eye and said "Forget it Harry." And nodded, hoping Harry would get the hint.
Taking the relieved face his best mate gave him as understanding, Ron sank back into his comfortable hospital bed and wondered if self Obliviation was possible—a certain shirtless Harry kissing Malfoy memory needed to vanish.