By Tien Riu
tien_riu@yahoo.com
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Author's Note: Possibly the most generic and fluffy piece I have ever written. Read at your own risk – there is a decided lack of lubrication, plotless sex and rampant hormones. There is however, much water. And random kissing.
Warnings: Set after Order of the Phoenix – compatible and one spoiler (so slight I'll give a cookie to anybody who catches it) involved. Harry/Draco fluff. Enjoy.
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Their seventh year was marked by rain. It never got cold enough to snow – rather it just rained: a continuously wall of water till the courtyards were filled with puddles and everything seemed permanently wet.
Magic could only keep the pervading chill at bay and sometimes it seemed as if the sun had ceased to shine and everything seemed tinted with grey. Hagrid dragged in never ending bundles of wood and every fireplace was charmed smokeless. They learned the art of warming yourself at the fire – twisting just so that one half of your body didn't end up scorched while the other smouldered in damp skin and wool.
To Harry – as it must have been to any of the other muggle students – the magic fires were never as efficient as central heating. The dungeons were the worse – cold even on the warmest summer days, that year they were damp and frozen in turns. Half a dozen students ended up in the Infirmary with bruises and sprained or broken ankles three weeks before Christmas when the fourth staircase from the second corridor jerked to a stop and sent an unwary batch of third years falling down the iced steps straight to the doorstep of the Potions lab. Professor Snape was not amused.
Quidditch practise became lessons in hazard flying. Harry spent more time struggling with the unpredictable winds than searching for the snitch.
The rumours that usually flew around Hogwarts shifted from who was holding hands that week and who had lost which House how many points to the weather. The Hufflepuff first years were convinced that if the lake flooded the Giant Squid would crawl across the lawns and attack the castle. The Ravenclaw third years thought the formation of puddles in the garden courtyard were in the exact shape of a rain-calling rite. A few of the Slytherin seventh years were selling water-repelling potions – and were promptly stopped after it was found out that the potions repelled drinkers from all water. There were a few nasty accidents in the showers before Madam Pomfrey managed to brew an antidote.
The strangest rumour however, developed in Gryffindor Tower where more than half the students were willing to blame Voldemort for the continuos rain. Harry took it in his stride – six and a half years of defeating Voldemort had made him more than a little cynical when it came to the depths the wizarding world's inanity could fall to. As he told Hermione and Ron later, it might even be Voldemort. After all, the Dark Lord had a tendency for strange, convoluted plots.
Unfortunately, somebody heard and more rumours spread through the waterlogged castle. Several days later, somebody claimed to have uncovered an ancient curse for death by drowning. The curse did exist and it wasn't long before a Ravenclaw's research discovered that the curse had been created by a scorned lover and promptly broken by – and here the more impressionable girls had started sighing – a kiss.
At seventeen, Harry wasn't one to turn up his nose at being jumped in corridors and kissed by random girls. But after the first week, it did become tiresome. Especially as the professors – already irate at handling a castle full of restless teenagers – didn't care why he was late for class.
And through it all, it kept raining.
The final straw for Hermione came when Susan Bones kissed Harry in the middle of History of Magic, causing enough of a commotion that Professor Binns noticed and spluttered for a good thirty minutes about acceptable student behaviour. It left the class a full day behind in History and sent Hermione to the library in search for a way to stop such disruptions to classes.
It took a week, in which time, the rain continued falling.
The quidditch pitch had been transformed into an ankle deep wadding pool when Hermione appeared one day outside the changing rooms, a transfigured umbrella floating over her head. Harry, covered in mud, robes dripping, ducked under the shelter of the umbrella and listened to Hermione's excited words. The kiss to break the Drowning Curse, it seemed, had to meet a few criteria before qualifying.
"It isn't just a kiss that's needed." Hermione exclaimed, "It's got to be from somebody hated – the scorned lover from the first part of the curse obviously." And then she smiled – the same way Ron did after a particularly good chess match, "But this is the brilliant bit – in the moment of the kiss, the feelings have to change. Enemy to lover. The cure for the curse is the cure for the reason for the curse." Her smile was almost infectious.
"Better not tell Ron – he'll think I'm nuts or something stopping girls from kissing me." Harry said and grinned.
And the umbrella over their heads rattled as the rain intensified.
Of course if it was a secret all of Hogwarts knew. For a whole week things returned to normal – or as normal as possible as the green lawns surrounding Hogwarts slowly began to resemble small ponds then merged until it was almost impossible to tell which was the Great Lake and which were the lawns.
Harry got kissed by Daisy Parkinson (Pansy Parkinson's younger cousin) a week before the Christmas holidays started. It only got worse from there, culminating in Millicent Bulstrode, mistletoe and a split lip two days before the students were to leave.
And still it rained.
Ron found Harry sitting in the Quidditch stands, nursing a split lip and muttering obscenities.
"What happened?" he asked, sitting down (as the walk up had already ensured it looked like he'd gone swimming while fully dressed, the fact that he was sitting in a puddle didn't really matter).
"Bulstrode caught me with a petrificus under the mistletoe, kissed me, then punched me when she realised she still hated me." Harry gritted out, "And if you laugh, Weasley, I'm pushing you off."
Ron grinned instead, "Well you did say that it could be a plot of You-Know-Who."
"Yeah – if he wanted to assault the castle by boat." Harry snarled.
Ron laughed and stood up, thumping Harry's back (or squelching it at least), "Look – at least we're all heading off, maybe things will calm down after Christmas."
"Yeah, and the rain will stop." Harry retorted.
It was still raining when Hermione, Ron and the rest of the students left for the Christmas holidays. The coaches sent up a small wave as they rode through the water, thestrals daintily trotting.
There were puddles in the entrance hall.
At night the sound of rain reverberated off the roof of Gryffindor Tower and kept Harry awake until he thought to cast a silencing charm.
Harry overheard Professor Flitwick mention to Professor McGonnogal that it would be the first time in all his years at Hogwarts that there would be no snow for Christmas.
From the seventh year boy's dormitory, it looked as if Hogwarts was completely surrounded by water – and the rain looked as if it would never end. Christmas Eve, the students remaining at Hogwarts ate breakfast at tables floating a meter off the ground. A pipe had burst – or perhaps leaked – and most everything on the first level of the school was covered in an inch of water. Suffice to say the house elves were not happy; Dobby looked positively incandescent with rage when Harry popped into the kitchens later. It seemed house elves took it personally when the elements invaded their homes.
Harry was late for lunch – charming yourself to float down corridors ankle-deep in water will do that – when he saw Draco Malfoy (who for whatever reason had not left for Malfoy Manor that Christmas) wading to the Great Hall. He hadn't really thought (till that moment) about the fact that the dungeons were below the current water level. Malfoy looked as if he'd taken a bath with all his clothes on. His hair – normally a yellow so silver it could have been white – was darker when wet.
"Fall down, Malfoy?" one of the other seventh years who had stayed behind called from the table.
Malfoy glared and gestured with his wand; the other seventh year flinched but Malfoy simply floated up to a chair. Harry, floating at the doors, watched as the water dripped off Malfoy's robes and created concentric circles on the floor of the Great Hall.
He found out later that the dungeons were waist deep in water. All the Slytherins staying back (and for whatever reason there were ten that year: three first years, one second year, two third years, a fourth year, two sixth years and Malfoy) were forced to maintain a floating charm continuously. Somebody – so the rumour went – must have let off a stray finite incantatum as Malfoy's charm had failed. Harry made a mental note to tell this Ron later (it always cheered him up, hearing about Slytherin misfortunes). The image of Malfoy dropping – with much flailing of legs and arms – into waist high water was not as satisfying as it should have been.
Christmas Day dawned with an increase in rain. One of the other students in the common room said that the dungeons were completely flooded. If the waters didn't recede by nightfall – so the rumour went – the Slytherins would have to spend the remainder of their Christmas holidays rooming in the Infirmary.
The news was, strangely enough, not as funny as he would have thought it would be.
It stopped raining – briefly – on Boxing Day and the water receded. But by New Year's Eve it had begun again. By the first of the new year, the Slytherin dungeons were not only flooded, they were completely inaccessible. Harry watched as Professor Snape stalked through the corridors – robes trailing on the water behind him – several stacks of Slytherin sheets floating behind him.
Draco Malfoy was waiting in the Quidditch stands with his broomstick when Harry went out to do some flying (he was getting used to flying through a solid wall of water) the next day. Madam Pomfrey had given up on stopping the students from flying – probably because everybody would have gone stir-crazy otherwise. They got given warm-up potions every morning and a dose of pepper-up at dinner.
There was ice glazing the Quidditch stands Harry noted as Malfoy flew over, wet hair slickly pressed to his skull.
"It's getting boring." Malfoy said.
"What?" Harry asked.
"The rain." Malfoy elucidated and then leaned forward and kissed Harry.
It was a tight, fast kiss – barely lasting more than five seconds. There was no tongue, no hiss of breath, no warm puff of air against his cheek.
On the other hand, there was also no awkward crushing of limbs or bruising impact on his nose. And definitely no teeth biting into his lips.
Malfoy drew back; Harry stared at him.
It stopped raining.
After a while, it began to snow.
~owari~
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