Chapter Three

"These really aren't my colour," said Draco, looking despairingly at his feet. "Have you got any in green?"

"No. Only red."

"Well, as least I'll match the wallpaper." The Wellington boots were the most offensive piece of footwear Draco had ever had to don, and the damp smelly mop presented to him did not lighten his foul mood one bit. The only up side to the whole fiasco was that he had used amazing logic to get Potter in on the work order as well.

xx

"I was doing my job! Why have I got roped into your mess?" The mop gave a loud, wet slop into the pink water and Harry scowled over to Draco who was also making similar sloshing noises into another bucket on the opposite side of the kitchen floor.

"It was my mess?!" Draco cried, indignation making him sprinkle rosé droplets over his white shirt. "It was McNair's wand, it's his mess!"

"Pfft! You're a very funny man, sometimes," commented Harry, waggling his mop to drain off the excess water. "What were you thinking, anyway?! 'Sitis Tetley'?! You actually told me yourself that you cannot make water into tea!"

Draco gave an infuriating grin over his shoulder and continued to mop up blood from around the table legs. "Does this look like tea to you?"

"You actually knew it would turn into blood," ranted Harry. "You knew!"

"I did not! I thought that those fleshy-wands were supposed to make the impossible happen. Why else would everyone want one?"

Harry tired to clean up the congealed gloop from under the fridge, but the soggy mop only made a puddle upon the caked layer of blood. "Have you not been paying attention to Collab conferences? They are wands that allow the caster to cast any Dark spell without having to feel the emotional baggage, not for making water into tea!"

"Emotional baggage?" Draco repeated, laughing. "Is that a technical term?" Harry flushed the same colour as the ceiling.

"Well… I may… have fallen asleep during that part of the conference…" He coughed. "But what's in a name? Your aunt told me 'you have to really mean it' to cast a Dark spell. See, emotional baggage!"

"The technical term," began Draco, who knew almost everything there was to know about the Dark Arts and tea brands, "is Catharsis."

Harry crinkled his brow. "Doesn't that mean getting things off your chest?"

"It's the term also used for the emotional and magical drain one feels when they cast a spell. You don't notice it unless you're tired or injured, or it's a big spell. Like the Killing Curse. These bloody miracle wands stop Catharsis." Draco stuck his tongue out childishly. "See, I listen. Just not to Granger, her voice is like Binn's lectures mixed with owl talons on a nail board. Imagine… no Catharsis… just imagine how many people you can kill then! And never get weak or pass out… hundreds… thousands…"

Harry raised an eyebrow "You look psychotic with that look on your face." Draco blinked dreamily. "So, no Catharsis. How did you jump to the conclusion that you could make tea with one of those wands?"

Draco shrugged out of his daydream and went back to spring cleaning, "Just figured the reason you couldn't directly transfigure water into tea was because there was too much Catharsis." Draco dumped his mop back into the bucket and looked around the kitchen, which was still clearly suffering from two of the ten plagues of Egypt. Water to blood and insects. "If Granger would just give me back the wand, I could Transfigure all this blood into tea…" Harry didn't trust the idea of Draco with any wand, let alone a wand as potent as the one Hermione was supergluing back together upstairs.

"Get back to work."

"But I'm thirsty!"

xx

"I'm not quite sure how I feel about my delicates fraternising with your under things. Seems a bit depraved."

"Because their both boy-under things?" asked Harry, draping a towel around his waist and leaning back against the machine. Draco shook his head and pointed to himself, then gestured towards Harry in a symbolism of their connection.

"Do I look homophobic to you? Of course I don't care if they're both boxers. It's not my right to question which lacies my Devlin Whitehorn boxers choose to get sudsy with, I'm all for elasticised ecstasy. I do not judge."

"It's good to hear you're not discriminating anyone, Mister Death Eater man," commended Harry. Draco seemed to ignore that comment, but his forearm was suddenly itchy as he wrapped a towel around his hips and threw his own underwear into the drum reluctantly. Standing back from the machine, Draco gesticulated to it.

"Make it work."

Harry sighed and moved to pour in the powder, then press the quick-cycle button. Though Draco was willing to entrust his clothes inside the whirlpool-in-a-box, he wasn't silly enough to put his fingers inside its mouth. He stood well back from the washing machine and allowed Potter to handle the Muggle contraption. Once it flurried into life, Harry leaned against the shuddering appliance and watched Draco.

"You've still got blood on your knee."

"Get your eyes off my knees," said Draco sharply. It was all Potter's fault that they ended up sword fighting with mops and then ended up on their arses on the blood marinated floor. Harry blinked.

"They're nice knees."

"Stop trying to console me, I know they're the knees not of Greek gods, but of knobbly Englishmen. Do not look Potter, you'll make my kneecaps blush." Draco pointed to the blood coagulating on the joint. "Too late. Look how shy my knee is!"

Harry raised an eyebrow, not only because Harry knew that Draco knew this was blood, and knew that Harry knew, but the way Draco was bending over to inspect the stain led to a wonderful event. Draco Malfoy, losing balance in a towel. Harry was too stunned to laugh.

Sprawled on the floor, flat on his face, legs and bloodied knee now spewed at odd angles and the towel, which Harry noticed with a flush, had ridden up one thigh to reveal the round of his bum. Harry stepped over Draco's splayed ankle to stand between his angled thighs and leaned over. "Malfoy? Malfoy…Draco? Are you dead?"

Harry bent down and tapped the blonde's shoulder. Draco groaned and looked over his shoulder laboriously. "Don't laugh at me. I'm a pureblood. Situations like these are merely an affirmation of my regal grace."

"I wouldn't call it that. More like regal clumsiness," corrected Harry, one eye straying and then snapping back to the blonde head.

"Whatever. Just help me up, there's a breeze ticking my wand." Draco reached behind himself to adjust his dignity and that was the moment the door opened.

"Oh." Harry turned, eyes wide in horror at what he must look like, leering over an ex-Death Eater spy's seemingly bloodied and crippled form. "I'll leave you to it then." Justin turned on his heels and left.

Harry turned his gaze to look at Draco, who merely rested his head against the cold floor and said; "I bet Flinchy isn't going to call it regal grace, either, when he's telling the Weasel."

xx

"Why does he get to go?! I'm the Dark Arts expert!" Draco kicked the bed leg in defiance. Harry felt it wobble beneath him and stretched a little more over the mattress to soak up every vibration.

"He will actually do the mission instead of going to the nearest shop to buy tea!" cried Tonks, annoyed at her fellow Mental Ward neighbour and his bloody drinking habits. Robert continued to look smug behind her in the door threshold. The man was not stupid enough as to enter Draco's domain.

"I wouldn't have to keep buying more if that fucker stayed in his own kitchen!"

There was a little stain on the ceiling where the air had grown damp with canal water and made imprints in the paint. Harry would rather think it was Draco's good aim than the Venetian humidity.

"Leave the tea out of this, Draco. If you want a mission, go see Kingsley." Tonks, always the voice of sensibility. However, Harry could see her crimson red hair out of the corner of his eye. Draco liked to boast that he always had an affect on women, but Harry was sure if Tonks' violent follicle reaction was what he had in mind when he made statements like that.

"Fine. I'll talk to Kingsley. I'll go out, follow the leads, catch the bad guys and come back to HQ, be hailed as a hero, and drink some tea." Robert looked positively green at the though of Draco being 'hailed as a hero' and Harry could share the sentiment. Draco had no idea what the spotlight was like. Its lights were hot and made sweat drip off his brow and while Draco's brow would not be diminished by a healthy gleam, Harry was sure he would prefer life out of the spotlight. Draco would surely prefer the low lights, in the wings of the stage, like him.

"No solo missions left," stated Robert, moving behind Tonks' bristling form.

"Well… Well, Potter will be my partner, won't you, Potter?"

Harry didn't take a second to think for his answer. "Course I will. Only if I can have a cuppa when we come back, too."

Draco snorted, and Robert and Tonks left for their reconnaissance mission casting a look at the two men left in the room together. "He's been stealing my teabags again."

"How did this stain get here?"

"Good aim."

xx

"He slipped!" cried Harry, angry at the injustice.

"Sure he did."

"He did!"

"Hmm." Justin turned on his side, presenting his back to Harry and stayed silent for the rest of the night. Harry lay staring out of the balcony doors to the edge of another balcony, donned in creeping vegetation and white flowers.

"He only slipped."

"Whatever."

xx

Harry really wished that Draco would put the magazine down. It was appallingly crude and offended his Gryffindor sensibilities greatly. "You're a pervert."

Draco turned the page over and his eyebrows gave a funny sort of wiggle that Harry hoped meant disgust. "Cor! Look at those! They must be spelled!" Apparently not.

Harry decided to brave it and peer over Draco's shoulder. He instantly regretted it and wondered how Draco could sit there, drinking a cup of tea and look at that! "You're filthy. And so is that."

"You wouldn't know a good bit of porn if it wiggled up to you and offered a lap dance."

Harry snatched the literature from the man's grip and flittered through the pages with feigned enthusiasm. "Oh wow, look at those feeding sacks. All that fat! God, the only thing that could make them better is if the baby was still attached to them! And those feminine folds - oh how I want to bury my head there and have her squelch her -"

"Stop! You've ruined boobies for me, now. Gimme that back before you destroy the magic that is the vagina." A brief scuffle ensued, which Harry won on account of Draco was careful not to spill a drop of his beverage.

"I don't see what's so special about vaginas anyway, they're -"

"That's just the sort of comment I'd expect from the man playing 'wax the broom wood' with the world's most effeminate man."

"We've had sex?" asked Harry, theatrically shocked.

"I take offence to that."

"Actually, me and Justin are fighting at the moment." Confiding in Draco was like drinking coffee. You think you are going to get a good kick out of it and instead you have a lung full of beans.

"Oh? Pray tell."

"He thinks he walked in on us about to do -"

"I have a fair idea what Flinchy thinks," interrupted Draco, his eyes narrowed over the novelty cup. "The perv. His mind only wonders like that because he's gotten a look at my snitches. Go to him and tell him that his crush is not tolerated. Tell him that you lust him and that you want his imaginary babies and that he should try with all his might to forget about me."

"…Your ego astounds me."

"Thank you." Draco was about to say something else, but Robert walked into the kitchen, his face scrunched up in disgust at the floor and walls, and made his way over to the kettle. Robert's form was slouched over, the only physical sign of exhaustion from his seventy-two hour mission; he clearly couldn't make it up the stairs to his own kitchen. Harry watched Draco watching Robert, who clearly didn't accept fatigue as a reason to extract his teabags from the clay container that was clearly marked 'DM's Tea - touch and perish!'

"Evening, Jeff," greeted Draco, narrowing his eyes dangerously. Harry tore up the magazine while the blonde was distracted.

xx

TBC