@-'-,-'--
- Book Three - Harry -
"Truce?"
"She isn't eating, Harry," whispered Hermione, the concern glittering in her words. "Talk to her - find out what's going on."
Helplessly, Harry looked to Ron for support as he stammered desperately, "But can't you talk to her? I mean, she barely talks to me anyway, and you want me to find out what's wrong when she's this upset? It's impossible, a kamikaze mission." But Ron just shook his head and repeated firmly that Hermione had already tried to talk Lola out of the gloom she had sunk into.
"After supper," said Hermione when Harry had finally conceded. "You'll take her into the library and ask her what's wrong, and be there for her if she breaks down, if she cries. Be someone she can lean on."
Harry watched as Hermione and Ron left the common room, Ron's arm slung over Hermione's shoulders and Hermione's hand resting at the small of Ron's back. He wanted very much to have Lola open up to him, to have her in his arms as she told him everything that troubled her, but a small, bitter voice in the back of his mind reminded him harshly that Lola was closer to Hermione and Ron than she was to him, and he sighed, defeated by himself.
Somehow, despite the minute probability that he would be able to find the root of Lola's misery, Harry found himself in the Great Hall for supper, rehearsing the conversation he would have with Lola within the hour.
Barely half and hour after the meal had begun, Lola rose from her seat and excused herself; Harry was far from finished eating, but was encouraged to follow by a sharp elbow in the ribs from Hermione, and he excused himself as Lola slipped out of the Hall. Had he been paying attention as he left the Hall, he might have noticed the relief which flooded Professor Rosen's long features and wide eyes, and the pained restraint lying open in the pale eyes of Draco Malfoy.
@-'-,-'--
Harry caught up with Lola at the top of the first flight of marble stairs in the entrance hall. He grabbed hold of her elbow, spinning her around to face him, and, in the process, into him. She lashed out against him, struggling to tear her arms from his hands, and the tears were streaming down her face in rivulets, her hair clinging to the dampness on her cheeks.
"Let me go," she cried through clenched teeth. "Let me go! I won't let you - "
"Let me what, Lola?" Harry asked, strained. He forced her into a hug, crushing her arms and breasts against his chest and grinding her hips against his. "Let me help you?"
"Let go!"
And Harry's hand was pressing into her hair, pushing her chin to his shoulder, and he murmured reassurances and sympathetic words to her. In a moment, she collapsed against him, sobbing, and crumbled to him.
He led her to a corner and leaned against the wall, sinking to the floor, with her between his outstretched legs, her back pressed to his stomach and chest. He held her hands, brushed her hair from her eyes and mouth, and kissed her softly.
"Don't do this to yourself," he was whispering, "don't ruin yourself, your friendships, because you're too stubborn to tell us all what's the matter with you. Don't curl yourself up and forget that we want to help you - do you know how much it's killing us to see you like this?" Lola gave a great, silent, shuddering sob. "You're nothing but skin and bones, you look as though everywhere you look you see a ghost, and your grades are falling."
"M-my grades?" she said, her teeth chattering in her skull, "t-they f-fall when I f-fall..." And she gave a low bout of laughter, madness seared into her tongue. "We all f-fall d-down, don't we?"
"Yes," said Harry slowly. "Stop falling, Lola."
She sobered, relaxing into his arms, and let out a long sigh. It was a very long and tense moment for Harry before anything happened, and then the doors of the Great Hall opened with a hollow thunk of heavy wood hitting thick stone, students began to pour into the entrance hall and then scatter down corridors. A number of students stumbled past Harry and Lola, unaware of their presence, until the masses thinned, and a stretched shadow fell over them.
Harry's eyes trailed up from the marble floor to expensive leather shoes, to cuffed, creased grey trousers, to black school robes and a grey turtleneck sweater, to the pale and pointed face of Draco Malfoy, who was peering down his nose at Harry with a threatening air of peace lingering about his figure. Lola had frozen, only moving with each shuddering breath, and Malfoy shifted his weight from his right leg to his left.
"Hello, Harry," he said amiably. Around Lola, Harry's arms tightened, and he gazed levelly at the blond standing before him, silhouetted in the light from the Great Hall at the bottom of the stairs.
"Malfoy," replied Harry with a cold nod of his head. Malfoy was smiling, his pale gaze never once leaving Harry's face but for once, when he glanced down at the mess of a girl in Harry's embrace.
"Listen, Harry," said Malfoy after a moment, "do you think we could possibly have a word together....in private?" Harry shook his head and made a pointed glance downwards. Lola seemed to sense this, and pushed herself closer to him. "Very well, then. I've come to offer up peace between us."
"What?" said Harry.
"Peace," repeated Malfoy, a bit more loudly than before, and he added, "I'm through fighting with you." His words were slow and separated, but their sincerity was true. With a winning smile, Malfoy asked with an innocence Harry had not seen since their first meeting in Diagon Alley seven years ago, "Truce?"
And Harry, feeling a tremor from Lola, ignored all better judgement, and said, "Truce," and Malfoy's hand was stuck under Harry's nose, and they shook on it, sealing a pact between them.
@-'-,-'--
"So," said Harry casually, while walking through Hogsmeade's high street with Lola on his arm and Hermione and Ron at his side, "Draco asked me to play a bout of chess with him tonight in the library."
"Draco?" said Ron blankly, looking at Hermione, who shrugged with a half-smile lighting her lips. "Draco who?"
"Malfoy, silly," said Hermione, throwing a playful punch into the redhead's shoulder. Ron laughed and kissed her, muttering, "How many Dracos do we know, Hermione? Of course Malfoy..."
Lola stopped Harry, however, and looked at him carefully. "You aren't going to go with him, are you?" she asked carefully. He shrugged, threading his fingers through hers and drawing closer.
"Maybe," he admitted. Since Lola had broken on the stairs, they had been closer than before, but Harry had not been aware of this rivalry between Malfoy and Lola before. "He took the time to make a truce with me, Lola. I can't just disrespect that out of pure spite of him, can I?"
"Well," she said carefully, "I'm not you."
"When did he ask you to meet him, Harry?" asked Hermione curiously, and they walked slowly past the Three Broomsticks.
"Seven-thirty."
"Ooo, he asked you to meet him in essentially broad daylight?" said Ron in mock suspicion. "He's willing to risk being seen by other people with a Gryffindor? Er, not just any Gryffindor, either, might I add - with Harry Potter?" He frowned, his mouth stretching downward and making him look like a sort of red-haired frog. "I don't know, Harry, sounds dangerous. Perhaps you should stay in the common room tonight, instead."
Harry rolled his eyes and let Hermione reprimand him, but he was more concerned with Lola's nervous whisper of, "I don't like this, Harry; I don't think you should be going..."
Not really caring that he'd stopped in the middle of the road, Harry put his hands on Lola's arms and looked at her with genuine concern, and she stared him back stubbornly.
"Do you really want me to stay in tonight?" Lola nodded, and Harry nodded once, saying, "Then I'll stay in." And he kissed her tentatively, his hands only moving from her arms when she responded to the kiss, and he wrapped his cloak around them both and savored the taste of her lips under his own.
Neither of them noticed that Hermione and Ron kept walking, because neither of them particularly cared; they were wrapped around each other, and Harry licked her lower lip gently. She tasted like coffee, or ice cream - something sweet and familiar but undeniably new and exciting. And when she licked back, he was elated, and he leaned into her, feeling her hands on his back, her hips pushed against his stomach and her back arched, her breath tickling his lip.
He lifted his lips from hers long enough to whisper, "I'll stay in," and then melted into her again.