Plucked
Harry woke, a slow, hesitant affair because there was an insistent ache crawling about his body along with the niggling suspicion that if he dared to move, he'd be very sorry.
Sorry for he knew a headache was ready to bloom in the blinding light of morning, and because he was very comfortable as it was for the moment, curled up against another body, gentle breath on his face, one of his hands feeling the rise and fall of the body's chest.
Draco's body.
There was an odd pang through the curse when he thought of the name, as if he'd said something uncouth, he frowned, why ever would that be?
Not Draco, Master.
It was then that the happenings of the night before ruthlessly flooded back and his head burst with pain. He groaned and flushed when he remembered how much moaning and groaning there had been at a time that seemed ages ago, blurred and unreal, Firewhisky's drunken haze distorting the memories.
He felt the chuckle, more than heard it, and groaned again.
He certainly didn't want to open his eyes now, the threat of the sun's blade-like shafts of light paled in comparison to the look he couldn't bare to imagine on Draco's face, all smug smirks and dark looks. That damn Slytherin. He was only glad that that damn Slytherin was once again clothed or else Harry would have been all too tempted to open his eyes.
"Is there any way I can convince you to Obliviate yourself?" Harry sighed.
"Absolutely not. In fact, I think I'll store up all of last night in a Pensive for safe-keeping."
Harry buried his flushing face further into Draco's forearm, feeling the Slytherin stiffen, breath held and body almost poised to spring. Harry sighed again and shook his head, which made his head hurt even worse, jarring his thoughts so he could think past the throb at his temples, not when he was hung-over and snuggled up next to the impossible, the ever rumored shameless and unshakable Draco Malfoy, guilty and nervous because he thought his arch enemy hadn't enjoyed their illicit activities of the night before.
The world was a very different place after you found yourself in so many unexpected situations.
"I was pissed, it's not your fault," Harry began, "I'm sor—"
"Potter, haven't we had a discussion about apologies and not meaning them before?" Draco said firmly, and Harry could imagine the stern scowl on his face, "As I recall, we have. So shut your mouth."
"But I don't—"
"Trust you to be a proper Gryffindor and apologize for something that was my fault." Harry could now hear the smirk, purring and superior. He growled and persisted.
"I completely lost it last night."
"As did I, right down your throat."
That stopped Harry's argument dead, burned away by the blush on his face and the heated lust that curled in his stomach at the memory. They had indeed both lost all sense last night, and the only thing to blame was alcohol and teenage hormones, things that neither could overcome nor ever hope to control. Not to mention the curse, which was still humming pleasantly, like a mollified beast, happy to be by its master's side, happy to have carried out master's orders so dutifully last night.
What orders?
Well, there had been the silly ones, dog's tricks and the like, which Harry was sure he wouldn't hear the end of. He couldn't believe he'd been rolling about, smiling stupidly like a loyal mutt on a dirty bathroom floor.
A dirty bathroom floor that he didn't know existed, but evidently the house elf part of him did. The curse had been more dominate than ever, Apparating them on his master's unspoken orders, whispered from his very heart's desires on subconscious strings into the curse, invisible links neither knew existed nor, like hormones and alcohol, could ever hope to control.
It'd been like a song Harry couldn't remember the tune to, little snatches of lyrics working their way through his fuzzy recollections; the bath Draco so desired and he'd found for him, the comfort he needed and Harry had promptly supplied in the only way he knew how to, the lust that had to be sated, which Harry was proud to say he'd more than satisfied.
But then there was the terror, dark and thick, dripping off their link like blood, which had to be quelled as well. Harry had done all he could, but he couldn't obey that order, for even now the twitchings of the curse told him it still lurked, hiding and waiting in the darkness, a patient predator that stalked its quarry when it was alone, far away from comforting arms, with claws and high-pitched cackling and curses, its name a hiss and flash of red eyes,
"Crucio!"
The danger. The danger Harry had been ordered to protect his master from with his life, the danger that he knew was there, was always there, that tormenting and painful and inexpressibly bad thing, that shadowed Draco's eyes and quivered through his hands, catching in his throat, carefully hidden behind smirks and sneers.
"Draco," Harry's voice was just as unsteady and hoarse as his master's had been the night before, "Tell me again everything that happened last night."
"Again with the kinks Potter. You like dirty talk, yeah? Well then, you—"
As loathe as he was to do it, because Harry may just indeed have a kink for Draco's smooth, drawling voice telling him all sorts of inappropriate things, he cut him off, forcing himself to be firm and not think about how firm other things would be feeling after a few minutes listening to—
"No, I mean, before…that." Harry could feel Draco physically recoil from his tone, so Harry rubbed his hand down Draco's ribs, glad to find that it was enough to placate the Slytherin as he spoke, his low voice painting images on the blackness of Harry's shut eyes.
"Right then, I ran into you, all out of sorts and pissed off your arse."
"Where were you before that?" Harry asked, nearly opening his eyes to the silence he was answered with, the hitch of Draco's breath and the tensing of the arm beneath him.
"Pansy needed me for something. Clothes and make up and such, figuring that I was enough of a ponce to help. She was sorely mistake." Draco replied, a few moments too late, the smirk artificial in his voice, the smallest of falters alerting Harry to a lie, effortless and ineffective against the ties of the curse and Harry's own determination.
"Why did you want a bath so badly?"
"The awful make up and powders Pansy left on my hands." He answered more swiftly, an entire tale of an evening with Pansy Parkinson forcing perfumes and lipsticks on him no doubt coming to life in his clever mind, but Harry knew it wasn't the truth, for one reason above all else.
"You were so scared."
There was something different about the quiet that followed, it was not tight and tense with the pressing of lies and walls and excuses, it was weightless, punctuated by a single, long exhale that smelled like mint and defeat, maybe even a tentative relief, but it was waiting, reluctant. Scared.
"Yeah,"
"Why?"
Harry knew better than to ask something like that, not to an untrusting, prideful Slytherin that had been reduced to a terrified young boy, so naturally he didn't expect to be answered with anything more than a sneer or a non-answer, but then, the unexpected happened.
"It hurts."
Harry should have been confused, he should have asked what hurt, been concerned and thought of the hospital wing or any other host of things, but instead something irrational, something faded and frayed but nevertheless there, plucked a quiet melody within him, the remnants of an order and the volition of his own heart strings brought him to turn his head and kiss Draco's forearm.
Kiss the pain better.
Then, he opened his eyes and was he hurt in turn, not by the harsh light of morning, but by something very, very dark.
A Dark Mark, stained black across a pale forearm.
And it hurt when he sat up sharply, his headache protesting violently, but it was the look on Draco's face that struck deeper, the momentary flash of everything he'd been hiding, raw fear, shame, pain, the danger pouncing, the danger that Harry was supposed to protect him from, protect the whole bloody world from; the horrors of Voldemort.
However, did Harry want to shield Draco from something he'd voluntarily thrown himself into?
No, Harry didn't want to, Harry didn't want to obey the curse, he didn't want to be tied and tangled up with another evil, but most of all, he didn't want Ginny to be right.
But she was.
"Harry," the soft voice broke through his thoughts and he realized he was standing, his hand clutching for his wand that wasn't there. Draco was unsteadily rising from the ground, the Dark Mark grotesquely lucid in the muted light of the bathroom. Draco's eyes were as guarded as ever as he reached toward Harry with a long fingered hand, as if to grab his chin as he so often did.
"There was blood on your hands last night." Harry swallowed, thoughts working furiously as he felt increasingly sick. He'd kissed lips that had likely been pressed to Voldemort's robes, he'd held hands that might have wrung life from innocents, and he'd loved a voice that may have sent more than one person to their death. He felt disgusted and horrified and…sorry, profoundly, achingly sorry.
But betrayal has a cold blade, and it made his heart icy and voice just as frozen.
"You're a murderer, aren't you?" he watched Draco flinch and shuffle backward as if to escape the biting wind of Harry glare, which watched him unwaveringly.
"Harry, I—it wasn't as if, damn it, I can't—" He was ineloquent and bumbling over his words, so much unlike his normal Draco—no, Harry didn't have a Draco, he had a master, just like Draco.
Draco had had him all along, fooled and oblivious and under a spell. A perfect gift to present to his beloved Dark Lord indeed.
"You're a murderer and a Death Eater." Harry voice was shaking now, the cool cracking.
Draco didn't say anything, an acquiescence that lurched in Harry's stomach, visions ripping unbidden through his head; that soft skin splashed with blood, the mask of a Death Eater covering his handsome face, and green light illuminating those grey eyes. There was a screeching through the curse, a ringing in his ears and he felt as if he'd never be able to hear music again, hear that drawling voice the same way, it'd always be replaced with a high-pitched laugh and the hiss of a curse.
"Harry,"
He shattered.
There was no thinking about the ramifications for his actions later on, or the fact that he was unarmed and alone with a Death Eater he was bound to, or anything else for that matter as he strode forward and shoved Draco halfway across the room.
He landed bodily on the floor and peered up at Harry through the curtain of his fringe, looking younger than ever, before he hardened, aged, a phantom of that hurt and frightened boy.
"For once Potter, it appears that you've made a correct deduction without the help of your dear Mudblood." He hissed, and Harry wanted to punch the cold haughtiness off his pointed face and he found himself dragging Draco to his feet to do just that.
"Going to slap me again?" he hissed, and Harry blinked, "You're so predictable, Potter. I know your every move, and I know just how to…"
His slender fingers wrapped around Harry's wrists, short nails drawing blood as he punctuated each word with a scrape, "Get. Under. Your. Skin."
Harry pushed him away with a snarl, finding no satisfaction as he heard the blonde's head crack against the tiled wall, only that twanging pluck of concern that was surely the damned curse's fault.
"Well look at you," Harry thundered, "Who would have guessed that Draco Malfoy would have followed in his daddy's footsteps to become a Death Eater? What a coincidence!"
"Is it any different from what you do, oh Saviour? Admit that you've never done anything the world hadn't already expected you to do."
"I did," Harry's voice was suddenly quiet, his throat raw and head fit to split open, Draco's eyes fixed to him, Harry's own stare boring into the Dark Mark that seemed to laugh at him, Ginny's laugh, the 'I told you so's he was sure to get, mockery.
"I trusted you,"
This was a quiet he knew, the silence he was faced with when Draco's volatile mood was shifting, likely to something violent when he caught Harry watching him, witness to the rare moment that his eyes got so bright and his hands worked themselves into fists and a sound in his throat was silenced.
The sound of a sob that was quickly turned to a scream.
"Bow down, Potter," Draco shouted, his voice drilling into Harry's aching mind and yanking ruthlessly on the curse, "Get on your knees and grovel at the feet of your Master like I have to."
Harry's knees cracked loudly on the floor as the curse threw him down, his spine twisting and forcing his face into the grimy ground. All the while he listened to the blood pounding in his ears, the receding sound of it, the dangerous sigh of cooling anger. He couldn't stop being angry, if he did that then other feelings would slip in, feelings he didn't want to face, things much deeper than the blade he felt was protruding from his back.
He listened to the slap of Draco's bare feet approaching him, firm, hard, undeniably angry steps that Harry was sure would soon be kicking him in the face, or gut, or other more tender areas.
Really, he should have known what would happen next, but it still stole the breath from him as a familiar hand buried itself in his hair and yanked him up none too gently, finding himself panting in the face of the ice mask, ineffectually trying to tear his eyes away from the ones that pinned him down and made him feel—feel like—
Just feel far too much.
"You're not going to tell anyone about this, or you'll find yourself a crumpled mess at the bottom of the Astronomy Tower."
The order was toneless, but violently binding, the collar of servitude about Harry's neck tightening like a noose, twining in his vocal cords and promising that if any small whisper would to be uttered, there would be blood. Lots of it.
Harry was almost glad for it, the order, not the blood. How could he go on, carrying the secret that Draco Malfoy, the boy he'd been flirting with relentlessly was a Death Eater? How could he look Ron or Hermione or Ginny in the eye after they'd done their gasping and 'I told you so's? How could he watch as Dumbledore sent Draco away in shackles, flanked by Dementors to join his father in Azkaban?
He couldn't, and now he wouldn't have to.
So Harry's silence was acquiescence, an unspoken yes Master, which Draco heard nevertheless, nodding to himself, his piercing gaze dropped along with the painful hand in Harry's hair, releasing him to stumble to the floor with a sharp twist to his ankle that almost made him cry out.
And Harry stayed in the silence, trying to gather the last bits of smoldering fury and failing, their power snuffed out by something colder, rather wet and maybe even salty, even if Harry's eyes were dry behind his glasses, it was welling up, filling his chest and threatening to spill with watery demands and accusations and perhaps even a few pleas that Harry would never admit to having.
But a single something spilled past his lips, without tears, with the last shard of the coolness he'd formerly possessed, something he had to know, he had to question,
"Why? Why aren't you going to kill me? Why haven't you been trying?"
It was something anyone would have asked in his situation, but the way Draco looked back at him, something flickering in his eyes, it was as if he'd asked something very different.
Perhaps he had.
"Because," softly came the reply, thoughtful, almost as if Draco was speaking to himself rather than Harry, "I expected it to be the same."
And then Harry was alone, but without any Firewhisky to drench himself in or even a house elf to confide in, alone with only his worsening migraine and the smothering hold of the curse that was raking itself along his insides in displeasure, the beast awakened and infuriated by the all the acidic ill will toward its master.
Because Harry felt absolutely sick, sick toward Draco, sick toward himself, the tears he suppressed and the blood boiling in his veins settling and simmering in his emptied cauldron of a chest. He wanted to break down and vomit and cry and scream until he couldn't anymore, and by all means he was in the proper setting to do so, an abandoned bathroom where no one could hear him or find him, but he didn't.
After all, he never did when he was feeling such hatred for Voldemort.
That was the most frustrating part, perhaps it was the curse's doing, but he simply couldn't bring himself to hate Draco as he so wanted to right then, as he should. Yes, he was bloody furious with that ferrety, traitor of a snake, but he didn't hate him. He was hurt, he was betrayed, and he was just sick.
Terminally so, it seemed.
~o0o~
That sick feeling lingered with Harry, threatening to boil over at times as he made his slow, limping way back to Gryffindor Tower, each step felt like the long strides he had taken up the hill at a time that seemed ages ago, his heart nervous and head knowing very well that what he was doing made no sense whatsoever. It felt like that now, only now his head was making perfect sense, but his heart, well that was an achingly matter.
It had to have been sometime in the wee hours of the morning, not a glimmer of the sunrise yet to shine on the dark horizon out the snow dusted windows. He felt very naked traipsing about so late without his Cloak or the Marauder's Map, although he wasn't sure how much he'd react at the moment if Filch were to spring from around a corner.
Harry felt dangerous and unstable, like one of Neville's potions, because he couldn't decide if he wanted to break something, or if he was going to himself, both emotionally and physically.
He muttered the password to a half asleep Fat Lady and stumbled into the warmth of the common room, wanting to melt into one of its cushy chairs and sleep until that cauldron in his chest stopped boiling and cooled, when his head and heart made some sort of agreement or truce.
It was his head this time that argued that that would never happen.
Evidently he'd never get the rest he so desired at the moment either, not with the infuriatingly stubborn stance Ginny had as she leaned on the back of a loveseat and glared at him.
"Where have you been?"
Harry had to literally bite his tongue to keep from retorting, "To hell in back!" It very much felt like it after all, that hell being an awful awakening in a filthy bathroom.
He didn't say anything however, tongue stinging and blood boiling, wishing he could just push past her and escape into the boys' dormitory, but knowing her, she'd merely chase after him and wake the whole house with her questions and wild, if not accurate, speculations.
Harry hated that she was right.
She no doubt loved it, even though it hurt Harry so much.
"Well, Harry?" she demanded, foot tapping.
"What's it to you?" he finally groused, shifting further unto the carpet.
"What's it to me?" she hissed shrilly, before her voice went soft, "Harry, I care. You're important to me."
Harry just felt worse, listening to her quiet voice and craving another smooth sound, saying the same words even though he'd dismiss them with a sardonic wave of the hand as 'Hufflepuffish'.
"Harry,"
Merlin, why had Draco used his given name like that? Did the cunning git know what it did to him? How that soft, breaking plea drew across his heart strings like a violin bow? Maybe he did or didn't, but the effect remained.
"Something happened, didn't it?" Ginny's eyes had that mad light again, "You got pissed, didn't you?"
"I'm sober now, that's for sure." He mumbled.
"What happened when you were drunk? You didn't drink both bottles of Firewhisky did you? Those are hard to get! One of a kind maybe!" she admonished, stepping forward quickly, and scrutinizing him.
"No, I didn't but they won't last long with Winky," he growled, "I'm fine; just let me go to bed now."
Ginny was still in front of him and Harry froze, fearing one of her failing tactics to seduce him, drawing up all close and cozy and looking up coyly, it'd happened more than once and just got more and more awkward each time she was left standing there while Harry sidled away.
But this time she never looked up, he gaze locked, not coy but horrified at Harry's neck. At the love bite Draco had left.
Harry had the strangest sense of déjà vu, like looking in a backward mirror and he realized this had happened before, not so long ago, with himself playing Ginny's part, face twisted with a similar disgust at a different mark, a darker one, but something that meant almost just as much.
"Ginny—" he began, a sinking pit in his stomach knowing that this was how Draco had felt.
It wasn't a very good feeling.
"Harry, you—" she sputtered, mouth working without words, mouthing things Harry didn't want to know, "I can't believe—even after—"
"Ginny, please," he groaned, aware that there was no way to explain himself, no way to keep her from throwing a fit anyway.
"Harry," she said, flat cold, tone like an icicle that was ready to run him through, "You got drunk and went and shagged Malfoy, didn't you?"
"It wasn't like that!"
"So you were sober then?"
"No! But—"
"Then he took advantage of you, didn't he? I told you! He uses people, didn't I—"
"Yeah, he does. Alright? He does." His voice was broken, and he felt like he was trying to convince his heart all over again. "I'd like to know why but fuck, Ginny."
He shoved past her, knowing how near the tears were, thankful for how close a pillow he could scream into was.
She just watched him storm away, her eyes gone soft and worried again, her voice just as much when she said almost inaudibly,
"He's doing something in the Room of Requirement."
Harry paused, the curious part of him perking up before it was quashed by feeling, far, far too much feeling to be doing any snooping.
By the time he got into bed, he'd forgotten what Ginny had said, exhaustion dragging him into a sleep where there were only sneers and green light, along with the occasional flicker of December sky grey that he could never find again no matter how hard he looked.
~o0o~
Draco should have expected it, Merlin knows those few waking moments before Harry woke he'd thought of it, brooded on it, feared it, and yet it still felt like a shocking blow to the gut, a punch to the face, a burst of magic he hadn't been expecting at all.
Why would he foolishly assume that Harry bloody Potter, poster boy for the Light and Boy Who Lived would react with anything more than disgust and fury when Draco Malfoy revealed himself a Death Eater?
He almost assumed Harry to already know, that crooning, comforting, limitless power of the curse whispering his darkest secret to him and Harry had miraculously accepted it, maybe pitied him for it. But it was only guesses any feeling fool could deduce and Draco's own reckless decision to bare the Dark Mark to and hope for the best that tore away his disguise he'd made for himself.
Since when had he been so hopeful, for anything?
It was because something had changed, hadn't it? Some dramatic shift in the world had taken place the moment he'd allowed himself to flirt with Harry. The rules of the universe had been rewritten when he'd kissed him. It seemed that way anyway, and he'd been so convinced of this that when the world, unchanged and unforgiving, came crashing down around him, he'd been shocked, surprised, and very hurt.
He'd found the only thing that changed was that Potter inexplicably became Harry and that trying to explain something in the face of a livid Gryffindor was a lost cause.
Of course, Draco had started to explain, having planned to do so calmly, clinically, tell him all about Dumbledore's deal and leave out all the unpleasant, gory details he had to live with, but then everything, much like the world, had crashed, fallen, shattered.
It was because he saw the revulsion in Harry's beautiful green eyes, it was something he'd see nearly every night in the mirror, but that didn't make it any less cutting. And then finally Harry had said it, a truth so black that it showed through Draco's pale skin, graying it and darkening his eyes, robbing him of sleep and the much taken for granted feeling of being clean.
He was a murderer and there was no denying that, no atonement, no excuse. He'd indeed had blood on his hands that night and every night prior and every night following, it wouldn't wash away not even under his Saviour's touch.
Then there were no explanations to be given, because everything had gone so cold, unlike the tears that now threatened to prick at his eyes. He'd spoken the truth, harsh and bitter and tearing itself from his throat uncensored and irrevocable and Harry had matched him with as much scornful realities and won whatever war they'd been waging, even if Harry was the one trembling and bowed on a dirty bathroom floor.
He'd never be as tainted as Draco was, after all.
But there was one thing Draco was more than stained and stupid, he was wrong.
He'd been exceptionally wrong to be truthful and trusting, wrong to expect any understanding from Harry, and wrong to expect it'd be the same, to think he wouldn't care when the boy who had scowled, cursed, even hated him started to hate him all over again.
It had taken him six very thoughtful showers to somewhat come to terms with this, only somewhat because there was something irritable and irrational fluttering about his chest like a mad owl in those rare moments he could think of Harry and not hurt. It was quickly shot down by his morbidly sane and resigned mind, but the stupid thing was resilient and came twittering about when he allowed his mind to wander somewhere that didn't threaten to prick at his eyes and set a heavy weight in his chest, something he wouldn't admit to being the most broken, unwelcome sob still trying to drag him into further, excruciating feeling.
It was when he had to use a seventh charm to heat the water in the shower after that long day of trying to deny the existence of the green-eyed boy that walked the same corridors he decided he was going to do something.
Something that escaladed into something else that involved smashing things
"What do you mean, it's been taken? You'd really just give something like that away? I doubt it," Draco shouted, his voice louder than it'd been all day, sparingly used only to mumble irritated things to Blaise and Pansy's concern. Now he was far more than annoyed with the sniveling excuse of an elf that took shelter beneath a table from the shattering of anything Draco could get his hands on.
Draco had come down to the kitchens to claim the age-old Ogden's Best Firewhisky that Winky had found in the Room of Lost Things, but discovered that it was lost all over again. That's when something heated inside him and he simply had to destroy something. Luckily for him, the empty kitchens were filled with breakable goods.
"He comes and he takes it, Master Malfoy, Winky is cannot be denying him." she wailed, squeak of a voice echoing above the din of clanging pots and swears from Draco.
"Why hadn't you downed it all in the first place?" Draco snarled, beyond reason and ready to sate his thirst with blood if it would get him out of the terribly wide, terribly echoing, terribly cold place his mind had become over the past day. He wanted the Firewhisky to burn the barren fields there, not wine that just made him colder. He wanted some safe, furious feeling rather than anymore numbness.
"Rumored should be saved, she says," Winky replied miserably as Draco crunched a tea cup under foot, chest heaving, but the savage desire to destroy ebbing away, his tantrum coming to the lonely, miserable close it always did.
"Well it wasn't, now was it?" Draco sighed, "Who has it then?"
"Her friend,"
"Who?"
"Master Nott."
That momentary warmth of anger flared again. Of course, who else would deny Draco any escape from the fate that hung heavy on his shoulders? Theodore-Death-Eater-Fucking-Wannabe-Nott.
"Fucking fantastic," Draco muttered, sweeping out of the kitchens as glass tinkled under his strides and saucepans were kicked away with a clang, all punctuated by the lone house elf's snuffling, "Bloody brilliant."
He clambered out into the corridor, not caring about the mess he'd left for the house elves. He'd done worse before in the midst of a tantrum after all, and it was only house elf magic that could ever properly restore whatever he'd taken out his feelings on.
"Such foul language, Draco."
Draco whipped round at the purr of the silkily sarcastic voice he knew so well, watching as his godfather detached himself from the shadows that so naturally cloaked him. He was a true spy, unshakable and unreadable, a mere shadow himself, unlike Draco, a sniveling beacon of weakness that could never master the mask Severus had.
"Such a blank look as well, if I weren't sure it was you, I'd say a Weasley had broken into my stores of Polyjuice."
Severus came to stand before him, and Draco saw that small glitter of understanding, like some distant constellation in the night sky of his black eyes. It was that glitter that likely allowed him to nick temporary cures from nightmares and feeling from his precious wine stores, Draco knew that so sharp a man wouldn't not miss a sixth year nicking wine with a few third year level spells.
"Is it a Weasley that has you so entranced? Because just last week I would have said it was a Potter."
Draco blinked and gaped dumbly up at the Potions master, the man was deadly sharp, obviously, and though the rest of the school had indeed taken both notice and interest in he and Harry's chumming about, he'd have never thought even Severus to see something Draco was only half sure ever existed.
"I've no idea what you mean," Draco retorted adamantly, in vain, he knew.
"I'm insulted." Severus replied simply, "Come now, it's written all over your blank face."
Draco lapsed into a stubborn silence, but Severus read his every blink as an answer it seemed and sneered mildly.
"I thought you were smarter than that, had better taste in the least," it was Draco's turn to sneer defensively, feeling foolish and angry at himself for still defending Harry and that mess of hair of his.
Severus only graced him a dry look and a small shake of the head.
"Must be from Potter you've gotten so…" he trailed off and Draco bit back a growl, realizing bitterly that his godfather could mean any number of things; oblivious, soft, Gryffindorish, smitten, hopeful, stupid, hurt…
"Well as you've evidently haven't noticed, you two have Dumbledore's blessing,"
"What is that supposed to mean?" Draco demanded, the thought of that old codger furthering his frustration, it was his fault Draco had stumbled into this mess more than even Granger's, leaving a sixth year to sort through the library and ineffective theories when he could so easily draw upon innumerable sources to fix the curse with a flick of a wand.
"If you're asking that then I suppose you haven't noticed how all your tyrannical little orders and most of you and Potter's skirmishes go unnoticed under the all seeing eyes of the great Albus Dumbledore and even his little pet Minerva McGonagall?"
Draco paused to ponder this, eyes widening with each recollection of each detention-worthy happening under the noses of the few staff members that knew of the hold Draco possessed over Harry.
Of course it was that manipulative bastard again, what wouldn't he involve himself in for his perfect chess pieces? Draco couldn't fathom what the Headmaster could possibly gain for turning the other cheek when he and Harry snogged in empty rooms, but he didn't trust it at all.
Even if he was the smallest, tiny bit thankful he did.
"Lovely," was all Draco had to say to Severus' expectant stare, and he only raised a dark brow.
Quiet reigned over them as his godfather no doubt read everything Draco was thinking with a skill that went beyond Legilimency, a magic only the observant, glaring gaze of Severus Snape had. Draco didn't much care if his mind was being invaded, it already had been before, mercilessly by the Dark Lord's horrors, and just as ruthlessly by a certain Harry Potter, the latter the most difficult to expel from his thoughts, even with a hefty glass of Firewhisky.
He'd soon find out if he could, however.
As if reading his mind (which he probably was) Severus frowned and turned to billow away and Draco followed suit, a small dread rising in his stomach at the thought of facing Nott, accompanied by bile when he thought of the other Slytherin's shameless lust for the name Death Eater to be his own.
Something else, suspicion, reared itself as well when he heard the soft voice of his godfather carry down the corridor.
"I'd beware the Weasleys for now; one may do a bit more than entrancing if you don't tread carefully."
Draco felt more than ever the apparent obliviousness that Harry had given him was not a safe haven to hide from his own nightmares, but a blindfold that was leading him to neglect to see something, a monster far fiercer than even the Cruciatus.
Even so, the Cruciatus Curse had never been so cold, never taken the form of a disgusted green-eyed boy, and never had it been so painful.
Draco had never wanted it so badly.
~o0o~
A/N~ As many of us have, I've been having technical errors, but luckily for me an angel in the form of a certain person (who believes that smiles make everthing better) *Wink nudge* helped me out. Thanks loads!
And a big OMG YOU'RE AWESOME! to a reviewer by the name of Nali-Blunt. :D
Sorry for the wait! Thanks for reading, please review!