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Author: Black Heart

Title: Perplexed Alliance

Rating: PG 13+ - low level swearing

Author's Note: Will be Harry/Draco slash eventually, but not yet. Enjoy, and please review! ^-^;

Disclaimer: Characters, names, places, etc belong to JK Rowling. Plotline belongs to ME.



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CHAPTER 1

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Harry sighed, staring at the mirror, fussing with his collar.

"Damn these dress robes," he cursed furiously, trying to force down the royal emerald collar.

"You look quite charming, dear," the mirror wheezed at him.

Harry shook his head, and picked up some muggle's hair gel Hermione had given to him.

"You really need to put this to use," she had said, eyeing his unruly hair, having to crane her neck upwards. He had grown considerably taller than what he used to be.

So he stuck a finger in the goo and made a face.

"It ain't happenin', Harry. That hair of yours will just ping back up again," Ron said from behind him. He was dressed in black dress robes. He didn't really look any different from when he was studying or in class. He'd had enough of standing out with vibrant colours and lace. Harry grinned to himself at the memory of the Yule ball in their fourth year.

"Shall we get going?" Ron said smoothly, holding his hand towards the door.

"Shut your face," Harry replied, straightening his thin wire frames. He had long changed his boyish, round glasses. Actually, he changed them once he realized that Quidditch-related muscles, tanned skin and an apparently "cute" hairstyle (quoted by a group of sixth year witches) did NOT belong with kiddy glasses. And that happened right at the start of his fifth year. Hermione had transfigured the glasses into better-looking, thin, black, rectangular frames.

He was, in fact, in his last month of his seventh year at Hogwarts. His last month... So much had happened in the past few years.

Attacks from Voldemort had gone from small murders, whispered in taverns, to a full out war. Muggles were now informed that foreign terrorists were roaming the country and should stay in safety. Wizards and witches were to stay indoors after sundown, and at all times, there were Aurors and ministry wizards guarding the whole of the wizarding world, and even some under disguise, guarding the muggle world. It was insane. And with the constant news of Voldemort's antics, Harry had double the attention, because people were sure something would happen, involving him. And so his popularity soared.

Yet Hogwarts itself had hardly changed. The atmosphere was a little more tense, and there was always people crying, clutching letters or newspaper clippings with news of their parents' death. But apart from that, Hogwarts was Hogwarts, with the normal lessons and teenage lives constantly flinging from emotion to emotion. Indeed a lot of people were now no longer innocent teenagers, and there were people being caught in empty classrooms in the middle of the night, making love behind stacked desks. The sixth and seventh years had learnt within the first week of their school year that such acts were punished with hour-long detentions every night for a week. The guilty were usually found by Peeves, who later gave out the details to the other sixth and seventh years, much to the annoyance of McGonagall.

And so life went on, amidst the darkest times in the history of wizarding kind. A sign of the strange normality was Draco Malfoy. His appearance had changed remarkably, if nothing else. He was now a complete opposite of Harry. Draco was not muscled, but skinny. He was tall, slender and quite pale. His terribly light-blue eyes flickered menacingly from student to student as he strutted the halls, making people look away or hurry off, quite terrified. His silver hair was often being toyed with by a Slytherin girl hanging off his arm, Crabbe and Goyle in tow, still much as they had been.

Draco had had so many girlfriends and treated each one so often that he had the sexual-act punishment lined up for months that would have lasted long after he graduated, to which he laughed and gloated about.

To any person not in Slytherin, there was no doubt he was either a Death Eater or almost one, and he was hated for it. And yet no one except the seventh year Gryffindor boys dared say a bad word against him. Such was the fear that Malfoy managed to produce around the school. But he was a student, and was treated like one, and the teachers seemed to have no fear about his family being involved in the dark arts. Either that or nobody wanted to be the first to point the finger, lest revenge fall upon them.



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Harry sighed, walking down the dormitory stairs, earning more than a few glances from Gryffindor girls. He didn't have a date, and didn't want one. He and Ron were going to the ball just for the fun of it.

And so, twenty minutes later with a troupe of giggling, date-less girls watching them, Harry and Ron found themselves in a corner of the Great Hall, swigging down more Butterbeer than was wise, watching Hermione dance with her date. "Can't believe she scored him, though," Ron said, and belched.

"Yeah, I know, but hey, he's a Ravenclaw. Pretty boy or not, he's smart. Guess that's why she likes him so much," Harry replied, watching the tall blonde Ravenclaw smiling at Hermione, leading her in a weird kind of swaying waltz.

"I can't believe he'd stoop so low as to go out with a Mudblood bitch," a cold voice commented. Harry looked up and, as a result of his Butterbeer, was more than ready for something 'good' to happen at the boring dance.

He leapt to his feet, and stared Draco Malfoy in the face. They were the same height, but Harry, having more muscles, seemed to physically daunt the pale Slytherin. Thought not mentally.

Draco sneered, a silver lock of hair falling in front of his face.

Harry grabbed the Slytherin's collar. "What did you just say about Hermione?" Harry snarled.

Draco smiled coldly. His icy-blue eyes flickered down to Harry's feet, then moved upwards slowly, taking in the brand new dress robes and the new silver watch that was revealed as Harry held Draco by the collar.

"My, my: somebody seems to be flourishing in these dreadfully dark times."

"I asked you a question. What did you just say about Hermione, you git?" Harry tightened his grip.

"Oh, simply stating the truth about that good for nothing Mudblood. And I thought Ravenclaws were supposed to be intelligent," Draco said softly, shaking his head accusingly, then spat directly onto Harry's Head Boy badge.

"POTTER! MALFOY! GIVE IT A REST!" It was McGonagall, currently being twirled about by Hagrid.

Professor McGonagall had, like the other teachers, become used to the semi- serious conflicts between Draco and Harry. It occurred quite often in the hallways.

Harry abruptly let go of Malfoy, and sat down. Draco gave a last smirk and backed off to the other end of the room, gathered his newest girlfriend into his arms and started making out with her. She was wider than he was as he pinned her body to the wall.

Ron shuddered at it.

"What's up with YOU? You used to jump at the chance to get your hands on him," Harry snapped at Ron, who had held back from the argument.

"Seems like your territory, really. It's become kinda regular, ever since our fifth year. You two are the main topic of every gossip this school has. And anyway, I can't be bothered wasting my breath with him."

Harry fell silent, strangely proud about this. He shook his head, stood up and refused yet another invitation to dance and headed up the marble staircase.

Ron stayed behind, swigging down more Butterbeer, glaring at the girls who were ordering him to persuade Harry to come back.

He set down his beer and yelled at them over the music that perving wasn't the only thing dances were good for, and offered them a Butterbeer.



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"Potter."

Harry turned slowly on the middle landing of the stairs, knowing what was about to happen. He fingered the wand in his pocket.

Draco stood a few stairs below him. He was very stealthy, owing to his light figure, and Harry hadn't heard the Slytherin stalking him. He really had changed. He had gone from the schoolyard bully to a sort of...white devil. There was no word for it. Harry looked upon the boy now so pale who appeared strange without a girl clinging to him. His white-silver hair blew around his head as a draft blew down the stairs. It was amazing that a boy so strangely coloured could be so evil.

"What now, you bastard?" Harry spat.

"Just wanted a word with you, Harry, that's all."

Harry stared.

"Didn't know we were on a first name basis, Draco," Harry replied, emphasising the boy's name.

"Oh, I wonder why," Draco said sarcastically, dropping the fake friendliness. He stuck his hands in the pockets of his vampire-like jet black dress robes, and slowly sauntered up the last few stairs until he was on Harry's landing. He kept his eyes to the floor, keeping Harry to his right side.

"What do you want, Malfoy?" Harry asked warily.

Draco turned to him, and Harry's eyes widened. Draco had suddenly turned a hell of a lot more paler, and his usually sharp, menacing eyes held a component Harry had rarely seen on the Slytherin: fear. He took a breath, and opened his mouth.

"Ooooh, it's the two widdle rivals, having a civil conversation!!! Should tell the media, I should. WORLD BREAKING NEWS!!!" Peeves cackled, zooming around them in a wide circle. Draco's fear vanished as he bared his teeth and grabbed Peeves around the neck. Harry admitted to himself that even HE would have quailed under the look Draco gave the poltergeist.

"Piss off, Peeves. I swear it on my own mother's grave that the Bloody Baron will beat you to the very fires of HELL if you don't piss off!" The poltergeist was so surprised that when he was dropped to the floor, he stayed there a few minutes, staring up at Draco with wide eyes. He then picked himself up and zoomed off quickly, around a corner, and they heard a distant door slam.

Draco turned around and jogged down the stairs, his silver hair waving to and fro.

"Wait!" Harry called, but it seemed that Draco had dismissed the importance of his problem, and he raised the finger at Harry over his shoulder.

"Prick," Harry muttered.

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