A/N: Okay, so, you all deserve an explanation for all of this. Basically, this story is not writing itself like it used to, and so what I'm doing right now is going back and re-writing everything. I'm going to make the story into more of a cohesive plotline and make sure that it all makes sense, plus just kind of change a few things.
I really am sorry. Please just stick with this, and know that I will be finishing this story even if it kills me.
I'll be uploading the re-uploaded chapters every few weeks, then trying to get some new chapters up soon. My goal is to have this finished by the end of this school year, so just bear with me here. I love you all, and thanks for putting up with all this. You're all amazing.
That Heinous Scarf
Chapter One.
It all began with a scarf, left in the Potions room one fateful afternoon. A Gryffindor scarf, of course—no self-respecting Slytherin left their possessions about for any plebian to pilfer. Of course, no Slytherin would pair red and gold together, wrap said red-and-gold object about their neck, and not have the decency to hang themselves.
Draco Malfoy picked up the scarf that as he left the classroom, sneering at the colors. Heating Draughts had been the work for that day, and he supposed some blithering idiot had tested their potion on themselves and discovered that it worked a bit too well. Probably Longbottom or the Weasel. Ah well. Draco shoved the offensive scarf into his bookbag and left the classroom, already plotting to frame some Gryffindor for one of his own schemes. As he strode out of the classroom towards the great hall, a short leech by the name of Pansy latched herself onto his free arm.
"Draco…" she cooed ingratiatingly. "You've hardly spent any time with me in the past few days! I've been so lonely without my Drakie-poo… promise me we'll go to Hogsmeade together this weekend?"
Draco shuddered involuntarily. "Pansy, I'm so sorry." Not. "Remember that Potions essay we have due Monday? I haven't even started. I don't think I'll be able to leave the common room, much less school grounds." And even if I could, I wouldn't be spending time with you.
Pansy pouted, her lower lip jutting out far past her upper. This didn't quite achieve the sex kitten look she'd been originally planning on, rather, it made her look rather like a deranged baboon. With bangs. "But we've hardly been seeing each other lately… Draco, are you going out with someone else?"
Draco cringed. He and Pansy had never been going out in the first place, so there really couldn't be someone 'else'. Racking his brains for a way to tell Pansy that without being hexed within an inch of his life as a result, Draco heard a voice sounding remarkably like his own casually say "Actually, I have been seeing someone as of lately."
"Who?" Pansy challenged.
Reaching into his bookbag, Draco pulled out the heinous Gryffindor scarf and wrapped it around his neck. Barely resisting the urge to hang himself off the nearest tower, he said "The owner of this scarf, as a matter of fact." He mentally patted himself on the back for his quick thinking, though the urge to incinerate either the scarf or himself and the scarf was becoming harder and harder to ignore.
Pansy's resemblance to a deranged baboon was getting stronger by the second, and Draco half expected her to go off and do… well, whatever it was that deranged baboons did. She began to speak again, but this time was interrupted by a confused voice from behind the pair.
"Malfoy? What in God's name are you doing wearing my scarf?"
Draco mentally apologized for everything bad he had ever done in his life, hoping that instant forgiveness would be granted and the boy standing behind him wasn't the worst possible Gryffindor to ever be the owner of the heinous garment currently wrapped around his neck. Unfortunately, instant redemption was a bit out of the question at this point. Bollocks.
Pansy gasped. "Draco… you… that's… Potter's… scarf?"
Draco quickly regretted not having hung himself when he had the chance to do so in a dignified manner. "Harry," he said, his voice in the general area of about six octaves higher than normal. "Your… scarf? I just wanted to keep it for you. Until we saw each other later."
Pansy's expression was now less akin to a deranged baboon than it was to a very confused baboon. One who has perhaps been teleported to Mars and back in the blink of an eye, only to have the other baboons laugh at it when it tells its story. Poor baboon.
"Draco… you and… Potter—"
"Are a couple. Indeed." Finished Draco.
Potter was looking rather like his brain had just exploded, and the pieces scattered to faraway places. He shook himself, then looked Draco. "Malfoy, what's—"
"No need to worry, Harry, I told Pansy all about us." Draco stalked towards the other boy, trying to mentally impress upon Potter the importance of not fucking this up for him. He even tried to look pleading. Never having had to plead for anything in his life put a bit of a damper on this tactic, though, as his skills were sorely underdeveloped.
When Draco was just a few inches away from Potter's face, Harry seemed to regain his motor skills and started to say "Malf—" only to be silenced with his greatest rival's lips on his.
Behind them, Pansy gasped, but Draco was too overwhelmed with the reality of his kiss with Potter to notice. Draco leaned into the kiss, raising a hand to brace Potter's head against his own. His senses cried out in indignation as Potter pulled away, his eyes searching Draco's for some explanation for what had just happened. Draco trailed a few light kisses up Potter's jawline. He didn't know whether the tremor than ran through his rival's body was of pleasure or of repugnance, but whispered "Play along, Potter," into the boy's ear. Harry shivered again, then closed his eyes.
Draco leaned in again, only to find that Potter had met him halfway. Draco ran his tongue along Harry's lower lip, then nibbled softly. Harry moaned quietly, the sound alone sending chills up his spine. Draco neither noticed nor cared that Pansy was currently fending off a gigantic nosebleed, he was so intoxicated by Potter's smell—something spicy, but sweet—to detect anything short of a nuclear war. The two boys fought for domination over the kiss, Draco finally winning and shoving the other boy roughly up against the wall behind him. Draco gradually moved from kissing Potter's lips to his jaw down to his neck, where he alternated between gently pressing his lips to the boy's soft flesh and roughly biting. Hopefully this was convincing. Oh, God, that felt good. Just an act. Just an act.
"MALFOY, WHAT IN THE NAME OF MERLIN'S BEARD ARE YOU DOING TO MY BEST MATE?"
Draco groaned, completely in relief. There was no annoyance at the interruption, no reaction to the way –oh God, why did that stop?—that the other boy had been nibbling on his ear. Just relief. No need to continue. Oh, goodie.
Harry stuttered, realizing that his best friend had just seen him being kissed—and quite passionately, at that—by his arch-rival. Draco grimaced as he realized that Weasley wasn't going just disappear in a puff of smoke, as he would in any fair world.
"What the hell does it look like I was doing, Weasel?" Draco said with his signature smirk. He turned to Potter again and pressed a soft kiss to his lips—purely for affect, of course—murmuring "Meet me in the Room of Requirement tonight. Ten 'o' clock." His mouth twisted in amusement when he realized the green-eyed boy was still panting. "And don't you dare be… late." He whispered. Sauntering off in a decidedly cheerful manner, Draco whistled a few bars of something light and cheery as he passed the stunned redhead. Weasley turned to Potter, who had slumped into a heap in the base of the wall.
"What in hell's name was that, mate?"
Draco paced the Slytherin common room anxiously, his shoes making a soft scuffing noise on the dungeon floors. What the hell had that been? He could completely understand the whole kiss thing, that had just been necessary for his plan. Genius plan, really. But what the hell was he doing? Telling Potter to meet him later?
Why did it have to be Potter, for god's sake? POTTER. There were plenty of other Gryffindors. There were plenty of idiotic Gryffindors who could have left their scarves behind. The whole house was full of idiots, actually. Any one of them would have been preferable to sodding Potter.
Draco sighed, ceasing his pacing to slump into a heap at the base of one of the many sculptures lining the common room. What the hell was he going to tell Potter when he met him in the Room of Requirement? Er, sorry old chap, but I'm not gay, you see, and I was just trying to make sure that Pansy wouldn't try and take me to Hogsmeade this weekend, you know, so that's that I guess. Spiffing. Let's just go about our daily dose of hatred, now, and call it quits.
Yeah. That was going to go over really well. Either Harry was a much better actor than Draco had ever thought, or Potter had been hiding that he fancied him for a very long time.
"…so, you've fancied Malfoy for a very long time, then?" Hermione asked, a puzzled expression on her face.
Ron sat bolt upright on the sofa behind her, screamed "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! I'LL DO ANYTHING AS LONG AS YOU DON'T MAKE ME WATCH THEM KISS! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!" and fell back into a dead faint.
Harry winced. "About three years, give or take a few months."
"Oh. I…see." Hermione said, the puzzled expression becoming more pitying than anything else. "So the reason you didn't tell your two closest friends that you're gay and you like your arch-rival is…what?"
Harry slouched down in his chair. "I figured you two would both react… well, sort of like Ron did." He sighed, looking at his best friend. "Must you state it so bluntly?"
"Terribly sorry to not tell you sooner, but I've known you're gay for Malfoy for a while." Hermione said nonchalantly as she finished her Potions essay with a flourish. It wasn't due until the next Monday, but she wanted to go into Hogsmeade this weekend rather than deal with Harry and Ron trying to copy.
"…"
"What? It's fairly obvious. At every turn, you obsess over him. It doesn't matter what happened, you think it's Malfoy. You see some way to bring him into everything. You blame everything on him. Really, you're obsessed with him."
"…"
"Harry? Are you alright?"
"How the hell do girls do that?" Harry asked, his voice trailing off into a squeak at the end.
"It's not something to do with being a girl, Harry, it has to do with being observant. You know… paying attention to things aside the boy you're in love with?"
Harry grimaced. "Is that even possible? It's Malfoy, for crying out loud."
Draco slammed his head into the base of the statue, the impact jarring his brain. Why had he done that? Why hadn't he just told Pansy he wasn't going out with her, that he didn't like her? Why did he feel the need to overcomplicate things? WHY THE HELL HAD HE KISSED POTTER?
"Planning what to wear for your little rendezvous, Potter-lover?" Blaise asked, sitting down gracefully with his back against the wall next to Draco. "Or what not to wear, moreover?"
Draco groaned. "Zabini, get the fuck away from me. You're not helping. How the hell do you even know what happened?" He'd really been hoping it was all a bad dream.
"Your little girlfriend is up there crying her eyes out because her 'Drakie' has dumped her."
"The hell I did. I merely informed her that we were never going out. And how the hell does she have time to gossip if she's supposedly crying her eyes out?" It still could be a bad dream, couldn't it? Of course it could. Just a really long one.
Blaise raised his voice to a shaky falsetto and batted his eyes ingratiatingly at Draco. "Oh, darling, -sob- it's the worst thing, -sob- my Drakie… -sob- he dumped me for Potter! -sob- THE HORROR! -sob-"
"I'm nobody's Drakie." Draco said condescendingly. "Malfoys do not appreciate nicknames that end in –ie. It's undignified and… and… well, it's undignified. And obnoxious." This had to be a bad dream. Really.
"Be you'd be Potter's Drakie. So tell me, how long have you two been an item? And why has no one heard about it? Potter doesn't really seem the type to keep his mouth shut. More the type to be shagged silly and wander around in a lovesick haze. Unless you've been the one doing the shagging… no, I doubt that. You don't seem like a top."
Draco slammed his head into the wall repeatedly, trying to shake the fact that his best friend was insinuating that he was a bottom. And in a relationship with Potter. And gay, for that matter. But he was most indignant about the bottom part.
"Neither of us has been 'shagged silly', as you so tastefully put it. Honestly, Zabini, I have no idea how an insolent bastard with no tact got into Slytherin at all. You'd be better off in Hufflepuff."
Blaise grinned. "I may be an insolent bastard, but I'm an insolent bastard with style."
"You still have no tact."
"Ah, but I have killer abs."
"Stop changing the subject. You have no tact. Slytherins should be tactful. It's only logical."
"I have plenty of tact when I want to."
"Since when?"
"I just never want to. So tell me, Draco, what are you wearing tonight?"
Draco grunted and stalked off to his room so he could nurse the growing lump on the back of his head in private. That… and decide what to wear.
Harry was in a similar dilemma, though he had no lump on the back of his head. He did, however, have a best friend who would sit up, scream something derogatory about him and Malfoy, then fall back in a dead faint. Roughly every three minutes. Hermione was trying to find some way to calm Ron down, but he wasn't really responding. Being in a dead faint will do that to you sometimes.
Throwing open his trunk, Harry discovered that he had approximately… one choice. Damn his lack of laundry planning. All he had left was a single pair of robes and a pair of boxers. Said boxers had been a joke gift from Ron a few years earlier, and said "Ho, ho, ho" all over the silken material.
Harry was quickly found to be nursing a lump on his head of his very own.
Draco anxiously paced the Room of Requirement, noticing the slight strain in his legs from all the pacing he'd been doing that day. If nothing else good came out of this talk with Potter, at least the anticipation would have given him a good workout. Perhaps anticipation wasn't the right word, though. Anxiety was closer. After all, was anxiety not a normal emotion for this sort of thing?
Sighing, Draco slipped into a chair that seemed to have formed itself when he had turned around. What was this sort of thing, exactly? He didn't know what on earth he'd gotten himself into. Did Potter think they were really going out? They certainly weren't.
But what did Potter think was going to happen? And what would Harry say when he had to tell him that Draco had needed a prop for an elaborate scheme to avoid going out with Pansy and that he'd just grabbed Potter as the nearest breathing object?
Honestly, Draco had less tact than Blaise himself at times. He knew he couldn't just let Harry down. That would be mean, and, well, cruel. Even though Slytherins were supposed to be cruel, Draco couldn't bring himself to hurt Harry's feelings in that way.
…but apparently he could bring himself to call him Harry. When exactly had that happened?
Harry sighed and slipped the boxers on. The silky fabric glided all too easily across his skin, and the only thing he could think of was how easily it could come off again with Draco's nimble fingers tugging at it. Mmm, Draco.
Crap. Bad mind. Bad, bad, bad mind. Trying to keep everything PG… and failing miserably.
Shrugging, he slipped his robes on over his boxers. He really wished he had some sort of normal clothes that were even vaguely clean, but he had been wearing his clothes for Quidditch and with sixth-year homework he hadn't had time to do anything and all of his jeans were wearing out, so even if he knew a basic cleaning spell that wouldn't have helped. That long-winded excuse had absolutely nothing to do with how much quicker it was to get robes off than the relative time it took to get jeans off. Nothing whatsoever.
Pulling the Marauder's Map out of his trunk, he checked to see if Draco had left the dungeons yet. Not seeing Draco's name anywhere on the map, he assumed he should already be in the Room of Requirement. Although why Draco would want the room to be Unplottable for this meeting he really had no idea. Unless this really did mean something.
Which it probably didn't.
He was probably just overthinking things, really. It didn't mean anything. It was just a kiss. Kisses really didn't mean anything. They never did.
He wanted it to, though.
A/N: So, yes. Here is the first of the edited and re-uploaded chapters. The new ones will be up soon. Please note that I'm NOT changing major plot points, just making the story flow more.