Disclaimer: Of course it's not mine. I know you know it's not mine. Just so you know.
Author's Note: Well, here's something random that came from my brain to be shuttled out into the ethers of the internet. Review, please. If it's not enough motivation to review because it makes me happy, review because it makes you happy. You know it does.
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Chapter One: In Which Mr. Malfoy is Made a Fool
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It was the way his hair stood up in the back, Draco thought, which really got him; the coarse, spiky black tufts, entirely and completely untamable, regardless of earnest attempts to quell it. Even when that ridiculous boy spit in his hand and smoothed it over his hair, it went unchanged. Draco pulled his sleeve over his hand and dragged it morosely beneath his nose, sniffling as he did so.
"Bloody colds, keeping me in bed all day with nothing to do," he muttered and yanked his thick blanket closer to his chin. He closed his eyes and was almost to the lovely point of sleeping, in which he wouldn't have to worry about what he thought—blame it on a bloody dream.
"Oy, Malfoy!"
Draco was startled by the shout, thrashing for a moment in panic and then lying still, waiting for his heart to return to its proper place. Let them think he didn't hear.
"Malfoy!" the person bellowed again. Probably that berk Crabbe.
"What?" Draco bellowed back, a cough interrupting him at the end. Stupid holidays. Stupid Christmas.
"Supper!"
Draco hauled himself from his bed and shuffled into his slippers. Let him be expelled. Lord knows he couldn't stand the place anyway. He yanked his robe shut over his pyjamas and worked his way blearily to the great hall. The food better be damn good for all this putting out I'm doing, he thought.
He sat heavily in his chair at the Slytherin table, scanning the empty gold plates set neatly in front of them all. "I thought supper was here," he muttered and wiped his sleeve beneath his nose once more.
"Draco, good Lord, didn't your mother teach you better?" Pansy Parkinson asked from across the table. "And what are you wearing? You'll never come to supper looking like that when we're married, do you understand?" She lowered her voice to a hiss. "Never."
"Or how's about this?" Draco hissed right back. "How's about I don't marry you and that way, you'll never have to see me at supper at all? Sounds like a damn fine plan to me. I'll tell my mother, you tell yours."
Pansy sputtered a moment before saying, "You don't mean that." She sneered and laughed derisively. "Your brains have just been addled by all the snot from your cold."
"I don't have a cold," Draco said and promptly sneezed onto his plate. She laughed again and he said, "It would be a bad marriage anyway. One of us would end up dead. Probably me, because you're less honest. Probably use poison or stab me in the middle of a good romp between the sheets. Not that there'd be many of those."
"Not if you keep this up, there won't be," Pansy snapped.
There was a loud burst of laughter at the Gryffindor table and Draco saw Potter, surrounded by the hedge Granger's hair created and his gangly sidekick Weasley, all of them laughing heartily, going red in the face. Granger's teeth jutted out as she hee-hawed and he had one rosy picture of her and Ron together with their rather ugly children and living in a boot. Now, Potter was a different story. Skinny, yes. Pale, yes. A little on the short side, yes. But God, he was beautiful. If someone wanted to see an attractive couple, Drace felt that he and Potter would…
Draco slapped his hand to his forehead. Definitely not be that couple.
Pansy followed Draco's eyes to the trio. "Can't someone get that boy out of here?"
"Well, the Dark Lord's been trying, see," Draco said condescendingly and Pansy shot him a fiery look, one that should have made her look sexy and should have made Draco burn with lust, but really only made him picture how nice Harry looked when he was angry. Draco's eyes went back to Potter. "But it appears he's just a little too badass to be done away with by the Dark Lord. The little roach."
"Oh, please," Theodore Nott said, liquidly entering the conversation from his spot three seats down. Draco looked startled and Pansy looked flattered, mostly because Theodore rarely talked, so having his attention was something akin to special. "You don't think he's a roach."
"Oh?" Draco said, but couldn't think of what else to add and left it at that, hoping it sounded superior.
Theodore smirked. "No. You don't." His eyes slid to Pansy and he opened his mouth, as if preparing to say something. He paused, his eyes flickering back to Draco and he shut his mouth, something that looked like another smirk pulling at the corner of his lips in the tiniest way. He turned back to his plate, his eyes lowered, and Draco felt certain he had been made a fool, but uncertain as to how.
After a few moments of an awkward and dreadful silence around Draco, Theodore stood up and bellowed, "POTTER" before resuming his seat and casting his eyes down once more, calmly placing a forkful of potatoes in his mouth. Harry looked up curiously from his table and saw Hermione pointing toward Theodore and then Harry ignored where she was pointing and looked directly at Draco, who flushed a brilliant red and looked away immediately.
"Something wrong, Malfoy?" Theodore asked, dabbing at his mouth with a napkin. Draco suspected it was actually to hide another smirk.
"No," Draco snapped and kept his eyes trained unwaveringly on his plate of food.
"Malfoy."
Draco clenched his jaw and looked up slowly into the face of Harry Potter, the Boy Who Could. The Boy Who Did. The Boy Who Lived. "Yes, four-eyes?" Draco glared.
"I hear tell Theodore says you want me. Is it true?"
A cough overwhelmed Draco, strangling him at the back of this throat in his surprise. Pansy looked as though she had just swallowed a lemon whole and Theodore looked mildly smug, chewing on a Brussels sprout.
"You little roach," Draco sputtered, glaring some more at Potter, who looked completely calm.
Theodore's head jerked up and he narrowed his eyes at Draco. "Liar. You don't think he's a roach, you think he's a god. There's a reason you've never been fond of Pansy, and it's not because she's piss and vinegar."
Harry cocked his head, looking slightly confused, and Draco turned his head, eyeing him. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Nope, definitely not a god." An uber-god, he added silently. "Sorry, Potter. I know you're disappointed."
"Do you want me?" he repeated, quietly this time.
Draco took a deep breath and then said, letting it out in a rush, "In the worst way."
Harry looked a little taken aback. "I mean—it'd just be for the day… nothing permanent… or anything…" he was looking fully disconcerted now, actually, Draco noticed.
"Not a man of commitment, then, are you?" Draco asked, jutting his chin out.
"Well, I mean… Flint will probably be back pretty soon… and I'm not really…" Harry trailed off. "Just what are you talking about, Malfoy?"
"I'm talking about what you're talking about," Draco said hurriedly. "I think," he added after a moment. "What are you talking about?"
"Filling in for Slytherin quidditch practise. I thought it was time we got over our hateful boundaries and became—well, not friends, that's asking too much—but acquaintances. So I thought I'd help… are you okay?"
Sometime in the middle of Harry's little speech Draco had let his head fall with a thunk on to the table, ripe with embarrassment and humiliation.
"Yeah, Malfoy, what were you thinking?" Theodore called from his spot down the table.
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Author's Note: Thanks for reading. Hopefully an update will be out soon.