Chapter 3. Tip the Scales
"Harry! Harry! Get down!"
Harry looked down at Hermione. A very pissed off Hermione. He couldn't seem to come to the conclusion of why she was mad at him. Everyone was dancing, drunk and merry. Harry wondered why it was that everyone else was allowed to be shitfaced, except for him.
On the other hand, everyone else didn't have a Hermione on their back.
Harry had to lean closer to hear his friend properly over the noise in the room. "What is it, 'Mione?" he slurred.
Hermione took a deep breath, her nostrils flaring like they always did when she was trying to control her temper. She gritted between clenched teeth: "You were dancing on the table."
Oh, was the only thing that crossed Harry's mind.
He looked around himself, and found that he was indeed standing on top of a coffee table. Somewhere deep in his mind Harry knew that he should be mortified, but right now he couldn't seem to do anything but laugh. And when he began, he found that he couldn't stop, but kept laughing until his stomach started hurting.
Suddenly Harry felt the table shift. Oh, no, he realised, much too late, it wasn't the table. It was him.
Fallen down on the floor, Harry still couldn't seem to stop chuckling. Hermione's nostrils flared more than ever, and she breathed in deeply several times before speaking. "Honestly, Harry!" She looked around the room, frowning. "I'd better go look for Ron, he was worse off than you. The last time I saw him, he was trying to kiss Moaning Myrtle." Hermione pierced Harry with her gaze. "You stay here. I'll be back in a second."
Harry snorted. Hermione was such a party-pooper. She would definitely have benefited from letting her hair down once in a while, maybe then Ron wouldn't have be running after Moaning Myrtle.
Harry wanted to make his thoughts known to Hermione, but by the time he found himself actually able to form the words, she had already run off. Harry frowned. Darn it.
"Harry, hey! Whatcha doin' down there fo'?"
A very drunken Irishman approached him, a bottle of scotch in hand. Harry grinned stupidly at the bottle. Still grinning, he then turned to Seamus. "I have absolutely no idea," he answered truthfully.
Seamus chuckled at that, offering Harry the bottle. "Ya look like ya could use a drink."
"You bet," Harry nodded, and tried to crawl up from the floor. As he sat up though, the earth seemed to shift beneath him and his head started spinning violently. Harry decided that a drink was probably not the best idea after all.
"You know, Seamus," Harry groaned, standing up on shaking legs. "I think I'll go drink some water. Let's save that scotch for later."
"Sure thing, mate."
Harry nodded gratefully, though he knew that at this rate there would be no scotch left by the time he returned. Still, he saluted Seamus and made his way towards the stairway.
Climbing the stairs was not a pleasant thing. By the time he reached the top, Harry had vowed thousands of times to never, ever drink Firewhisky again. He stumbled through the dormitory and busted the bathroom door open.
"Potter! What the hell are you doing here?"
Fuck.Malfoy was standing in front of a sink, dressed in gray trousers and a white collar shirt, water dripping from his wet hair onto his face and clothes. Harry opened his mouth to say something snide and witty, but his not-too-sober brain couldn't seem to form a single decent sentence. Even after standing in the doorway for several minutes, Harry was still only able to mutter a few incoherent words.
"Uhm… Malfoy. I- uhm…"
Malfoy wiped his face half-heartedly with a towel, furrowing his brow at Harry. "Potter, are you drunk?" He sounded almost amused.
Harry opened his mouth to inform Malfoy that he was certainly not drunk, or at least not as drunk as he would have liked to be. But something about Malfoy standing there, half-clad, looking so bloody arrogant in spite of his disarrayed appearance, brought other thoughts to Harry's mind. Falling over his own feet more than once, he made his way over to Malfoy.
Harry grabbed Malfoy's arm brutally, pushing him up against the sink. Malfoy's mouth fell into a foul sneer, his voice morphing into a hiss. "What the hell do you think you are doing? Potter! Answer me!"
But Harry couldn't answer. His mind was fixed on Malfoy's mouth; on that drop of water that was gathering on his upper lip, on that sneer twisting his pink lips. Above all, Harry's mind was fixed upon knowing what that sneer tasted like, if a mouth that could only spit hexes and curses could taste anything but foul.
Harry was determined to find out.
Malfoy gasped in shock as Harry pressed his lips to his. The contact only lasted for the blink of a second, only for as long as it took for Malfoy to react and push Harry away. Not long. But long enough for Harry to find out that Slytherins taste anything but foul.
Malfoy stared at Harry in shock while he crouched down to pick up his cane from the bath room floor. "What the fuck are you playing at?" he hissed.
Harry couldn't seem to come up with a better answer than shrugging. "I'm not playing. I just kissed you."
Malfoy stared at Harry stupidly for a minute. It took a moment for him to gather himself. "'Just kissed me?' What the fuck?" He scowled at Harry, shaking his head softly. "I don't care about your sexual preferences, Potter, but please don't make me a victim of your perversions."
With those words Malfoy attempted to walk past Harry and exit to the dorm. And somewhere in the back of his brain Harry knew that he had already gone too far, that he would be very lucky if Malfoy chose to pretend that the whole scenario had never happened. But instead of making the smart move and getting the hell out of there, Harry chose to listen to the other part of his mind. The drunken one, telling him "why stop now, when you're already in so much trouble? It can hardly get any worse".
He grabbed Malfoy by his shoulders, efficiently trapping him in the doorway. "I'm the perverted one?" Harry leered, his face mere inches from Malfoy's.
Malfoy shuddered slightly beneath Harry's touch, but his face remained calm and collected. "Let me go, Potter," he ordered, eyes blazing.
Harry grinned mischievously. "You didn't answer my question." When Malfoy still refrained from answering, Harry leaned forward and trapped Malfoy's lips under his for the second time that evening. And for the second time Malfoy pushed him away immediately, this time hitting Harry in the stomach with his cane.
Harry bent over in pain, but luckily the alcohol in his blood softened the blow, though he was quite certain he would feel the repercussions the following day. Right then, all he could feel was rage. Harry narrowed his eyes at Malfoy, still blocking the doorway.
"So you'll fuck Zabini, but you won't even kiss me?"
Harry had no idea where those words had erupted from. And in his intoxicated state he barely had the presence of mind to be horrified by his statement. He pushed the thought aside, thinking it was just another thing for him to regret tomorrow.
Standing up straight, Harry took in Malfoy's expression. Malfoy looked much as if he had been hit, his eyes were as big as saucers and his was face paler than Harry had ever seen it. Malfoy swallowed loudly, fighting to retain his calm posture.
"I don't know what you are talking about," he droned, trying to seem indifferent even as his voice broke slightly at the words.
"Oh, please!" Harry barked out. "I see right through your little game. In the common room that first night. His hand on your thigh by the table. Your throat flushed when—" Harry trailed off, realising he might have taken it too far.
Malfoy suddenly regained some of his colour, and a vicious grin was spreading on his face. "You've spent a lot of time observing me, haven't you, Potter?"
He took a step closer to Harry, his hand firmly gripping his cane. Reflexively Harry tried to back away, but found himself with his back against the wall. He swallowed. "Don't flatter yourself, Malfoy. Anyone could've noticed."
Malfoy chuckled, taking yet another step closer. "No, Potter. I have taken great care that no one would find out about Zabini's little infatuation with me. It wouldn't provide a flattering image of the Slytherins, you see."
He stopped in front of Harry, leaning onto his cane nonchalantly. Harry knew he could have moved past him easily, but something in Malfoy's eyes kept him locked in place.
"Not even Goyle or Pansy know anything. So would you mind explaining the fact that you just happened to find out?"
Harry gritted his teeth, angry and humiliated by the fact that he couldn't tell Malfoy about the Invisibility Cloak and get himself off the hook. Malfoy smirked, obviously very happy to have cornered Harry after being taken so off guard himself. "I didn't think so."
Malfoy was already turning away when he froze mid-movement. "And by the way," he added as an afterthought. "What in finding out about Zabini made you chase me up here and try to kiss me? I would have expected you of all people to out me immediately and without discretion."
Malfoy raised his eyebrows provokingly, grinning as he turned his back on Harry and limped out through the door.
Harry stood frozen in place for what seemed like an eternity, contemplating his next move. He thought about running after Malfoy, knocking him down and beating him to a bloody pulp. The Ferret hadn't got the right to talk to him like that, make assumptions about him and—
Above all, Malfoy hadn't got the right to be correct about his assumptions.
Finally, Harry heard the dorm door slam shut. Malfoy had left. Harry breathed out as if he had been holding his breath for ages, and calmed down enough to realise that his pulse was racing. He turned around and stumbled towards a sink, then put his head under the faucet and let the cold water wash over him. After calming down somewhat and downing what seemed like litres of ice-cold water, Harry turned off the tap and stumble out into the dormitory. Ripping off his glasses and falling on to his bed, Harry did not even bother to change into his pyjamas.
He fell asleep within a minute.
"So you'll fuck Zabini, but you won't even kiss me?"Standing under the hot spray of the shower, Draco went over the peculiar events of the previous night. He was still quite uncertain if it had been real or just a very, very disturbing dream. If Draco had ever imagined how the scenario of Potter finding out about his affair with Blaise would go, this was definitely not what he would have expected.
Merlin, Potter must have been hammered, Draco thought, chuckling to himself. That however did not change the fact that Potter had tried to kiss him. Well, tried and succeeded, but Draco chose to ignore that humiliating fact for now.
Still, Draco couldn't pretend that he wasn't intrigued by Potter's actions. Who could have known that Harry Potter was actually the Poof Who Lived? Admittedly, Draco knew that Potter might just be bisexual, but 'gay' would stand out so nicely on the magazine cover.
Draco grinned to himself as he stepped out of the shower and moved to dry his hair.
It seemed to him that the year might prove to become quite interesting after all.