AN: Gah! Sorry this has taken so long; I've been having major issues getting back in the swing of writing after so long away. Just nothing I tried out would work!
Plus note about holidays - I've spent a lot of time fleshing out the characters from Sure Fire Winners and thinking up prompts for chapters; I was thinking maybe 3-5 chapters per year for them. Anyways that means I should have something for that up soon too.
Near the beginning there's a general third person PoV, it then jumps back roughly half an hour to Harry's PoV, it then changes to Draco's PoV which is atthe same time as Harry's. Then it's back to Harry's and is around about the same time as the first part, and after that it continues on as normal. Just to be clear. In a very complicated way.
On a less cheerful note it would be really great if everyone could visit Darren's Library. I don't know him personally, but he really needs help right now; his most recent post was to explain why he's been away for so long recently. His boyfriend, who is also his best friend, broke up with, he used to have some self-harming problems and as a result of loosing someone so close to him started again. He ended up trying to kill himself and made a second attempt while in hospital, ending up on suicide watch. Add to that some complete dicks at his school and, last time he mentioned it, his father not being 100% with him being gay… well. He just sounds like he needs all the support he can get right now.
RIP to Eric Sykes, who played Frank Bryce in GoF, who died on the 4th June.
Huge thanks to BickyMonster for beta-ing this and getting things to work out when docx wasn't working and when she wasn't well.
Disclaimer: Not mine *goes and cries in corner*
The Aftermath
Chapter 10 – Letters, Newspapers and Whispers
The Great Hall was filled with murmurs, some shocked, some angry, as students pointed out pieces of the article to their neighbours. A few were still staring at the double doors where they had just seen Draco Malfoy chase after Harry.
Hermione frowned worriedly at the door, which had just swung shut, with half a mind to go after her best friend. Before she was even part way out her chair Ron's hand was on her arm.
"Leave them. They need to sort this out themselves. It had to come out eventually."
"I know, but like this?"
HPDM Harry's PoV – The Start of Breakfast HPDM
Harry sat toying with his breakfast. It had been a day and half since his and Draco's not-quite-a-fight and things were still not one hundred percent with them. They had barley spoken apart from the ten minutes during their previous lunch break, about the Transfiguration homework.
Hermione was persisting in trying to get him to actually eat something, nudging him every so often and giving him The Look.
"'Mione, just leave him be," Ron cut in after almost fifteen minutes of this charade, "he obviously doesn't want anything, just drop it."
Harry let their voices wash over him as they began bickering, pushing his food around with his fork. He lifted his head out of his hand, which he had been leaning on, as owls coasted into the room. Quickly the four house tables were littered with birds of varying sizes and colours, each being greeted by their respective owner. He stroked a tawny owl absent-mindedly as he picked up his copy of The Quibbler; after all the lies printed about him and their reporters practically stalking him after the battle Harry now refused point blank to buy The Prophet.
He was scanning an article on Aquavirius Maggots when Hermione began nudging him again.
"Hermione, I'm not hungry, can you please leave it?"
"It's not that. You really need to see this."
He blinked as a copy of The Prophet was shoved under his nose and watched the front pages shift and fold until the article the girl was talking about appeared. All the blood very quickly drained out of his face.
He didn't even give the front page a second glance before he was on his feet. His eyes connected with Draco's for a second and then he was running.
HPDM Draco's Pov – The Start of Breakfast HPDM
Draco listened with half an ear as Blaise read Pansy's Charms essay over her shoulder, correcting it as she went. His annoyance at Harry had burned out extremely quickly and he had spent the subsequent day trying to swallow his pride and apologize for over-reacting. It wasn't going well. He was a Malfoy; Malfoys don't apologize, simple as that. Except this time he had been in the wrong; part of the role of being someone's boyfriend was sticking up for them; hell that was the role of friend even and if he wanted to continue to call Harry that he was going to have to apologize.
The arrival of the mail broke his chain of thought and a large eagle owl landed on the table in front of him. It managed to strategically place itself between a jug of pumpkin juice and a toast rack without upsetting anything- unlike some owls he could mention, Draco thought, as he noticed a group of first years being soaked with milk.
With a start Draco recognized the handwriting on the envelope. This was it; the letter he had been waiting for, for a week. Taking a few seconds more than normal due to his shaking hands he carefully removed the letter off the owl's leg, which then swiftly flew away. He slit the dark green wax seal open with his thumb slipping the parchment out, and letting the envelope fall to the table. His eyes skimmed over his mother's words, in too much shock to read it properly. Certain phrases jumped out at him from the page; 'shocked', 'over-reacted', 'come to terms with', 'more time', 'apologise', and then at the bottom, above her curly signature 'with love'. His heart rate began to slow back to its normal pace and he carefully folded the letter, placing it in his robe's pocket.
Looking up at his friends worried gazes he smiled, "It's ok. Everything's going to be ok."
"I wouldn't speak too soon Draco," Blaise said, sliding the newspaper across the table to him. Splashed across the front page was a photo from the previous weekend of him and Harry holding hands in front of the Shrieking Shack.
"Crap."
He snapped his head up and locked eyes with Harry, through the hundreds of students in the hall and saw the shock in them, probably mirrored his own. The look lasted only a second and then Harry was gone, disappearing out of the hall. It took even less time for Draco to decide to chase after him, and he was gone to The Prophet still held tightly in his hand.
HPDM *** HPDM
He grinned down at the slice of toast he was buttering as everyone around him gossiped about the article. If the pair's reactions were anything to go by he wouldn't have to wait much longer. Sometimes you really had to love the public media.
HPDM Harry's PoV HPDM
Harry leant against a wall in a small alcove trying to catch his breath; after the first two staircases and four corridors everything had begun to blur together. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands; this wasn't how it was supposed to go; they had had a plan, he was meant to have more time! He was going to tell who he wanted, when he wanted, where he wanted. But no, bloody Rita Skeeter had taken that all away from him, taken away his control of his own life! He didn't want to face this yet; he wasn't ready to face it.
He was just starting to come out of the lime light slightly; he wasn't stupid he knew people would never completely forget about him but he hadn't been on the front page at all in the last two weeks. Things were beginning to return to something close to resembling normal. And now people would staring, whispering, and gossiping, and this would draw so much attention to Draco, and probably his friends too- he had resigned of the Quidditch team so people wouldn't notice him and now he was on the front page of the Daily Prophet!
Harry's eyes flew open as he heard running footsteps but he relaxed as he recognised the shock of blond hair fast approaching. The Slytherin leant against the opposite wall of the alcove, trying to catch his breath.
"How the hell… did you get so fast?" he panted out, once he could speak again; running across half the castle was not his favourite activity to do first thing in the morning.
"Lots of practice; my cousin's favourite game when we were little was 'Harry Hunting'," he replied, in a bitter tone.
"Ok, I am going to come back to that," Draco made a circling gesture at Harry, managing to encompass his last sentence, tone and all, "later, but first, are you ok?"
He gave him a look which quite clearly said 'I just ran out of the Great Hall mid-breakfast, sprinted across half the castle and you found me close to tears. Which part of that is ok?'"
Harry was shot back a look in return which was just as easy to read, if a lot more succinct; 'Shut up, you know what I meant.'
He lent his head back against the stone wall, running his hand through his already-messy hair. "I feel a bit stupid actually. After all that stuff I said the other day about not caring if anyone found out, and now I react like this."
"Harry, last week we were talking about a couple of people starting an easily-deniable rumour, not a front page story with photographic proof that the whole English speaking Wizarding world has probably seen. You're allowed to panic a bit."
"You're not," Harry quipped back, sounding slightly accusatory.
"Everyone already thinks I'm shit, I can't really sink much lower in their eyes. Also I got a letter from mother this morning," a self-conscious grin started to sneak across his face, "You were right; she was just surprised. She needs a bit more time to get used to it but she'll be fine. I couldn't care less what father thinks and I'd like to see what he can do from Azkaban." He paused for a moment, "Actually I don't think I would but the point is I don't care. All my friends already knew which way I swang, and hey; I managed to snag Harry Potter."
"But won't this cause trouble for you? All that stuff about keeping your head down, not drawing attention to yourselves, being inconspicuous? I don't think a front page article really fits onto that category."
"No, it doesn't," Draco conceded, "but it does mean I can hold your hand in the corridor," he reached across the small gap to do just that, "and I can call you my boyfriend and we can act like an actual couple."
Harry smiled to himself. When it was put like that it did sound rather appealing. Then the smile vanished. "Bloody hell, I just realised; this is how the Weasley's are going to find out I've got a boyfriend."
"You hadn't told them?"
"You said yourself it's not the sort of thing you can put in a letter. Oh Merlin, Mrs Weasley is going to be crushed. She was sort-of rooting for me and Ginny to get married eventually. She's been trying to force us back together for the last month."
"Oh come on, surely it won't be that bad? They're like your family, it might take a while but they'll be fine with it."
Harry nodded slowly. "Okay, I think I can take it now," he gestured to the crumpled newspaper in Draco's hand, "Let's see the article then. How bad can it be?"
"Don't say that. You realise it's about ten times worse than it originally was now you've said that?" the Slytherin laughed.
Paper rustled as Draco made a vague attempt at flattening out the paper, which had been crushed in his hand since leaving the hall. Holding it between them they poured over the text, reading the words faster and their skin getting paler the more they took in. By the time they reached the end of the article they were both white as a sheet.
"Shit."
HPDM Draco's PoV HPDM
Rita hadn't lost her flair for sensationalist writing, that was for sure. Any acceptance they could have garnered after the article had been completely blow out of the water by the number of ridiculous accusations and, as gossip goes, what had been put in the story had already been greatly exaggerated. What had started as a suggestion of trickery had escalated to love potions in a matter of hours and by the second day Draco was almost positive he had heard someone mention some sort of mind control. Depending on how you viewed it, the situation was either a rather impressive display of the Hogwarts grape vine or a great example of how normally quite intelligent people manage to lose about twenty IQ points when in a large group; the same people hailing Harry as their Savior just days previously were now swearing blind that they had seen him use dark magic.
The only good thing about the article was that their not-exactly-a-fight had ended; Draco highly doubted he could have gone through the pressure the article had created alone. He and Harry gripped each other's hands tightly as they walked down the corridor, pretending they couldn't hear the insults being thrown at them. It was rather amazing how shallow people could be; less than half a week ago these idiots had practically been worshipping the ground Harry walked on, now he was fair game, to be poked and prodded at like some animal in a zoo.
They walked through a large group of students, almost all of them staring at the couple, some merely curious, others out-right judging. Draco was watching Harry out of the corner of his eye, and saw his brow furrowed, eyes beginning to darken in annoyance as vicious whispers flew around them like wasps, just on the edge of hearing. He gave his boyfriends hand a reassuring squeeze; he knew how much the Gryffindor hated being the spotlight and could tell how much effort it was taking him not to snap.
Milliseconds after doing so one of the spectator's whispers ceased being so quiet. Before Draco could so much as blink Harry had spun towards them so they stood only two feet apart, and had his wand pointed at his chest.
"Draco?" Harry spoke normally, as if they were just continuing a conversation, though he didn't break eye contact with the Slytherin. Everyone in the corridor had frozen. "I know you said you didn't want people to stick up for you but this is completely different. Exception from the rule?"
He understood what he meant about a different situation – previously they had been going off at him for being a Death Eater, which he knew he completely deserved, no matter what anyone said. Now it was just because he was dating a guy, which was just stupid. "As much as I would appreciate that, Harry, I don't think now is the time," he replied, after pondering the question for a brief moment and then gently tugged on his hand, which had not been dropped throughout the whole encounter.
Once they were out earshot Harry turned to Draco. "Why wouldn't you let me hex him? You can't just expect me to let him get away with calling you - us – que-."
"I heard what he said, thanks, you don't need to repeat it. Three reasons," the blond lifted his free hand, counting off the reasons, "One, we were in the middle of a corridor where a teacher was extremely likely to catch you; I don't want you getting into easily-avoidable trouble. Also there were a lot of eyewitnesses. Two, he had friends with him, and I didn't fancy getting into a fight with four other students. And three," he smirked, "now he's going to spend all his time worrying about what we'll do and we have time to plan, get him when he's alone so there's no proof. Merlin we wouldn't even have to do anything, he could probably worry himself sick in two weeks; I know Slytherins, we're extremely suspicious."
Harry stared at the boy next to him, his expression verging on awe. "I don't know whether I should be really worried or really impressed," he said shaking his head with a grin.
AN: Believe it or not I still have stuff to say! You guys have been so great with your reviews I felt I should start answering them, so here we go;
asmallwren- Thank you so so much, I was literally grinning from ear to ear for about fifteen minutes after I read your review!
Hpfan- No such luck, I'm afraid! People are still gonna be a bit like complete pricks for a while, but he's got some really great friends to help him out, so hopefully it'll balance out. I've got to love Luna- she's probably one of my most favourite characters! Hope Narcissa was ok
elliebronbron- I know you reviewed on chapter 1, so probably haven't read this far, but 'no no no no no. i did not like this one bit.' is the least useful comment ever. If you don't like something then tell me. I may or may not change anything but whatever. Congrats on being my first negative review, but I'm going to go with the 33 other reviews. You can't please everyone.
Thanks also to DarkLady, DracoMalfoyIsMyLionI'mHisLamb and nannily.
Also anyone got some ideas for prompts for second year in Sure Fire Winners?
Review and you get a mention in my next AN
Chance x