"Mr. Malfoy is awake."
Yes, Draco is perfectly aware of that, but does not know why they are. He deduces that they must have a monitor on him, since he hasn't even opened his eyes yet. He's a good little dark child, never giving an indication that he is awake until he's aware of his surroundings.
Cheap cotton on a hard bed.
He is either hospitalized or imprisoned.
He decides that now that he's been had, he might as well open his eyes, and makes out three very serious-looking fellows all staring at him. Regulation robes, stone-faces, they are aurors.
"Mr. Malfoy," The most serious looking one says, "We need you to tell us exactly what happened."
"The strangest thing ever." Draco says, inwardly laughing at how vague he sounds. The whole thing was too absurd to be anything but real, especially with Potter involved.
"Drakie!" A familiar screech rings out, and he is interrupted with a tall, pale, dark haired blur of estrogen and tears, jumping into the bed and curling into his lap, "You're awake! I thought Potter led you into certain death! How could you be so stupid!"
"It's Potter." Blaise replies before he has a chance to, and he sends Blaise a glare while patting Pansy on the head. Merlin, she was so weepy. The thing had too many emotions for her own good.
"Excuse me," One of the auror says, "We have to question Mr. Malfoy on the events-"
"No you do not." Pansy snapped, "You already got the Granger and Weasel's version of things, so let the two go. The nundu was just sniffing them out and it's gone now. So let my Drakie," her Drakie? "rest, or my parents will sue the living daylights out of your entire industry until your creature-friendly organization is swimming in too much debt to lift a wand properly, much less hound a recovering patient."
"It's procedure-"
"Your procedure can wait until my patient has had sufficient rest." Madame Pomfrey sniffs, looking at Pansy with a sigh, "Already Miss Parkinson? You could have at least waited for me to check him over before pouncing on him."
"I don't know why you're surprised at all, after all these years." Blaise quips, and Madame Pomfrey carries on a conversation with him while checking over Draco for any injuries she couldn't see while he was unconscious.
Draco takes a few moments to go through everything that was said, and once he is fully awake decides to get answers.
"Where's Potter?"
"Still sleeping." Pansy waves her hands, "The lazy twat."
"Mm. I have the maddest recollection." The aurors leaned forward in interest, too afraid of anything in case they invoked the wrath of Pomfrey, "It must have been a hallucination of some sort. The nundu was nuzzling Potter as if it were his pet."
Pansy laughs, "Oh Drakie, you really are going mad."
The aurors look at each other, shake their heads, and then leave.
Draco is now bored, so after Madame Pomfrey is done with him and has disappeared into her office, he sits up and finds where Harry is resting. The devil always looks so bleeding innocent, especially when he is rendered unconscious. Draco blames the spectacles. Anyone in spectacles looks twice as innocent as they really are, and his are round and wiry things of evil. Draco holds up the offending things, and raises the frames up to his face, squinting at how the clear lines suddenly turned into a blurry mess.
Blind fool.
"Draco, darling?"
"Leave me, Pansy." Draco says melodramatically, "I am doomed to die of dreadful boredom."
"Fussy little priss." Blaise mutters, his voice so quiet that only Pansy is able to make out his words.
From the giggles Pansy is unable to hold in, Draco deduces that it is something bad and that Blaise should also be shunned from the hospital wing.
"This wing is no longer welcome to the likes of you." He sniffs, and goes back to his bed, throwing the curtains around him to block out the two.
The two leave, laughing.
"Are the aurors gone?" Harry asks, suddenly waking now that there was no one in the room but the two of them.
"Yes." Draco says slowly, opening his curtains to look at Harry suspiciously, "After I said what I remembered."
"Oh. You didn't tell them I was related to the nundu, right? I want to keep a little of my strangeness to myself."
"Oh, so that wasn't a dream then?"
"Of course it wasn't."
"So you really are that strange."
"The parts I can't control, yes, they tend to be a little peculiar." Harry looks at him a little warily, "That doesn't bother you, does it?"
Draco rolls his eyes.
"I gave up on any normality you had when I saw you talking to that snake in second year, Potter. And I welcomed it once it enabled me to make an even bigger laugh of you than before."
Harry looks a little happier, and Draco thinks him even stranger.
"I don't suppose anyone left anything, did they?" Harry asks, looking around his bed.
"No tokens of affection from your admirers?" Draco quips.
Harry ignores him and falls back on the bed, "Pomfrey spelled the wing. Can't leave it until she dismisses me." He lets out an angry huff, "She finally got fed up with my escape maneuvers. I'm going to be bored out of my mind for days"
"After seven bloody years, and you being in the hospital how many times? If I were here, I wouldn't even be bothered with the pleasantries. I would've bound you right to the bed with big showy ropes and everything." Draco sneers.
"Aw Draco, you should've just asked."
Draco gives him a startled look at the flirtatious tone.
Harry then also looks startled.
"I've been with George and Lee most of the summer." He said as way of explanation, in which Draco wrinkled his nose.
"Don't relate to me the details of your sordid past." Draco sneered, "What you do with your fellowship of merry men is on you."
Harry flushes at the implication, and goes on in denial, mentioning his ginger a few times, and Draco blocks him out and spots that Pansy brought him his manuscript. So thoughtful, that girl.
"Do you ever wonder?" Harry asks, and Draco is completely lost in the change of subject.
"Wonder what?"
"What it would've been like, if we hadn't hated each other so much all these years."
Draco raises an eyebrow, "And what's got you so introspective?"
Harry shrugs, "There's nothing else to do." Harry then tilts his head and observes Draco, "This year has gone a lot better, for one, now that my school rival isn't trying to do me in."
"A lot more boring now, too." Draco says, from his bed in the hospital wing where they just got back from meeting a nundu.
Harry laughs, and notes to himself that he hasn't been doing much in the ways of laughing the past years. Looking back, even though it was a bit cruel and petty, Draco did have a sense of humor. Harry was just at the butt of it for the most part.
Now, though, it was a tolerable and even at times amusing sense of humor. Even when he was being teased.
A bit like being at the messy end of a Weasley Wizard Wheezes © production.
"I wouldn't say that." Harry says, giving Draco a faint little grin. He looks curiously at the pages Draco was scribbling notes on. "Is that more of your crazy writing?"
"Crazy?" Draco scoffs, "It's understandable a man of such low class as yourself would be unable to appreciate fine literature."
"I appreciate it just fine." Harry holds up his hands, "I also recognize bollocks when I see it."
"You're just being obstinate now, aren't you?"
"How'd you learn such big words with the classes we have here?" Harry asks suddenly, "Transfiguration, Potions, no literature or writing or maths or anything."
"Is this your muggle side talking, Potter? Wizards don't pay for their children to bloody read, Potter. What ill-bred idiots do you take us for?" Draco went deadpan, "Is this why you're so daft, Potter? You stopped reading at age eleven?"
"What? No!" Harry flushed again, and Draco smirked at him triumphantly.
"No wonder muggles are all dunderheads. If I were forced into literature by way of proper schooling I would've given up on the whole thing as soon as I graduated."
"So who did teach you literature and all that?" Harry asked curiously.
"I had tutors all my life." Draco says proudly, "My first word, I called our old house elf quixotic."
"Isn't that a muggle term? Quixotic. From that one play."
"That book," Draco sneered, "Was a commentary piece on squibs attempting to assimilate into muggle culture once cast out by our world. Seen as eccentric with delusions of grandeur and in a realm of one's own making."
"There wasn't any magic in it, though."
"It was marketed to both worlds. Greedy little bugger."
Hermione's fun facts weren't nearly as interesting. Hers were all filled with political righteousness that, yes, was very sad and all, but really, he was just trying to eat breakfast 'Mione, he doesn't care where his pumpkin juice came from and he wasn't going to boycott a good meal because house elves touched it.
"Was that the only one? The only wizard-written muggle classic?"
Draco scoffs, "What wasn't written by a wizard? Kepler's has a whole section devoted to works that have transcended wizard barriers. Lord of the Rings, for one."
"What? No! Tolkien was a muggle war veteran and a professor. I saw a biography on the telly." Draco ignored whatever a telly was.
"Tolkien was a squib who took an old memoir and turned into a classic series."
"Frodo was real!"
"Many years ago, yes. Times were much different then."
Draco smiled, and Harry imagined he was dreaming himself in Sauron's place.
"I always did admire Aragorn." Harry mused.
"Not Frodo? I imagine the Weasley is your Sam."
"I suppose so. But why admire someone who reminds you of yourself? I imagine you'd relate most to Legolas, hm? Blond pretty boy?"
"Wise, noble, and youthful all the same? Yes, I suppose so. Gandalf'd be Dumbledore, of course."
"Merry and Pippin would've been Fred and George."
"Gimli would be the Granger and the Weasel's lovechild. Redheaded, frizzy, and hotheaded."
Harry should feel offended. After all, these are his best friends that Draco is making fun of.
He blinks at the image it brings to mind, though, and stifles a chuckle.
He was less serious about his life now. Whether it was from surviving a war or finding out his enemy of over seven years was a bizarre superfluous thing, he wasn't sure.
"All of them striving to defeat the Dark Lord?"
Draco cracks his back, "And, while everyone else does real work to try and win the war, you just up and win by a fluke. Gollum bleeding tripped into Mt. Doom." Draco shook his head, "He tripped."
"Really? I only saw the movie."
"What the hell is a movie?"
"It's a, uh, a moving picture."
"All pictures move, Potter."
"It's a play in a picture, then. They play them in theatres and on tellies, boxes that the moving pictures go in, and you can hear it and see the story unfolding and everything."
"So it's more of an excuse for daft muggles not to read."
"So you don't want to see the Lord of the Rings as a movie? They made Don Quixote into a movie, too. They have this thing called CGI, where they can look like they're doing real magic."
"So they can pretend they're wizards?"
"And aliens and monsters and all sorts of fantastic things."
"And they're all in a box called a teddy."
"George made a magic telly over the summer. It works in Hogwarts, even though muggle technology usually goes on the fritz."
Draco spends almost five minutes deliberating his next course of action, and finally makes a decision.
"You tell no one."
"I won't tell a soul." Harry grins, grabbing his wand and muttering under his breath.
A huge metal contraption appears, floating in front of him, and Draco raises an eyebrow.
"I thought you'd have nothing to do for days?" Draco asks bemusedly.
"Well, movies are no fun if no one is watching them with you." Harry supplies, and Draco walks over to where Harry's bed is, seeing that the metal contraption was smooth at the front, and with a wave of Harry's wand the smoothness lit up with color.
When Hermione and Ron come to visit them a few hours later with Pansy and Blaise in tow, (the Slytherins were slow in the news that there was life in the hospital wing,) it is to the scene of Harry and Draco both sleeping, curled up in front of Legolas and Aragorn clasping arms, Legolas handing Aragorn a delicate white necklace with the affectionate teasing words, 'You're late.'
Ron looks as if someone's mortally wounded him, but Hermione just gives the two a curious look and drags Ron away before he can make a scene.
Blaise looks incredibly amused, and Pansy's eyes narrow.
Madame Pomfrey's just glad that Harry isn't making any escape attempts like the last time.
Just like his father.
Ginny is a wonderful girlfriend.
Really.
But the first game was up in a week, and honestly with the amount of times Harry's been in the hospital, she waited a few hours past the initial 'he's alive and well' bit to actually visit him.
Okay, so she waited until dinner.
After dinner.
Exercise made her hungry! And it was a six-hour practice.
She took a small nap in between.
But she snuck him his favorite blueberry muffins and some pumpkin juice (because hospital wing food was awful, and he couldn't make a meal out of all the treats people always leave him when he's in the wing,) so that should count for something.
The poor thing. Having Draco all day for company. She heard the two of them had the highest toxins in their system due to the proximity they were in with the beast, so unlike Ron and Hermione they weren't discharged as soon as they woke up.
According to Hermione, Harry had been napping on and off all day.
She's a bit sad she missed it, actually. Harry always was so innocent-looking when he was asleep.
Was it the girlfriend that was supposed to say things like that?
When she walked in the hospital wing, she was a little confused.
She was expecting to find her boyfriend, solitary and dozing on the bed Madame Pomfrey put aside just for him at all times, a glaring Draco Malfoy off in the corner.
Instead, she found the two of them on just the one bed (her eye twitched at the thought,) laughing in front of her brother's invention, sharing a box of Bertie's, laughing? With each other?
"Are you telling me that they've got an actual man battling that windmill in real life? All to put it on, what do they call it, film?"
"Surely there are actors in the wizarding world. He is an actor, Malfoy, playing Don Quixote, who battles a windmill he thinks is a dragon."
"Plays are acted out by enchantments. None by actual wizards. We are above such menial careers." Draco muses, not sounding pompous as he would have had he said it two years ago. Instead, he sounds detached from the wizarding ideals. Harry looks far too intrigued for Ginny's liking, "Sometimes squibs play pretend."
"Wizards don't play pretend." Harry deadpans.
"No, they don't."
"That's rubbish."
"You're rubbish!" Draco retorts, and throws a green colored bean at his rival.
This turns into a Bertie's fight with the two of them wrestling on the much-too-small bed, attempting to stuff the flavored beans into each other's mouths. The two of them keep fighting, with Ginny staring shocked from the doorway, even after the two of them fall from the bed in a tangle of limbs and sheets. Pomfrey's wing is much too prepared for that, though, and has a cushioning charm permanently enchanted into the floor.
She has thought of everything, and was on her dinner break right now.
The scuffle takes a turn for the worse when Draco wrestles his way onto the top, and forcefeeds Harry a handful of beans, laughing maniacally. Harry spits them out quickly and spins the two of them, pinning Draco's arms by his side and just glaring, with Draco smirking up at him like he's won a victory over Harry. And then Harry's lips quirk up in an almost-smile.
The two of them.
Just looking at each other with an intensity they've only ever reserved for each other, breathing like the two of them have been taken over by feral animals.
The intensity that makes Ginny feel like she's a stranger to her own boyfriend.
She liked it better when they were all enemies.
She clears her throat then, before something even worse happens in the heat of the moment (she's read all the articles in Wonderful Witches Weekly. She knows all about these things,) and smiles a bit awkardly when the two of them turn to look at each other. Harry looks shocked and quickly scrambles off of the blond (and it's always a blond, isn't it? In the stories?) and pats down his clothes. Draco just looks bothered with the whole situation, and leisurely stands up, looking at his wrinkled clothing with distaste and fixing his rumpled state with a flick of his wand.
Ginny shakes her head to clear her thoughts. Harry was muggleborn. The whole race thrived on homophobia and achieving "normalcy". Harry wouldn't fool around on her with a man, least of all Draco Malfoy.
Seamus Finnegan was the only pansexual with muggle relations, as far as Ginny was concerned. She was being silly, because of her guilt over being such a bad girlfriend.
"I brought you a muffin." She says, breaking the silence.
Draco bursts into laughter at all the awkwardness, lest he should suffocate from it.
AN: A few bases to cover~
Over three thousand words, just like I promised. Go team! It may be grammatically incorrect, because I only write when I'm tired, and only revise when I'm tired, because that's the only time that I have the patience for it.
Okay, so I'm completely ignoring what decade they are actually in, because if I were to take into consideration their time, then I would have to force them into watching the cartoonized Lord of the Rings. Elijah's Frodo is only a little gay, not a flamboyant fairy that that cartoonized Frodo is. I mean, really. He's supposed to save the world. Not ride around on a unicorn sprinkling fairy dust on everything and singing in five part harmony with his little forest friends. Or atleast that's what I remember of it.
This is pretty much the first hint of gayness, and for all of those who have been reading this story and are now shocked and appalled at the direction this is headed in, I apologize sincerely. But there won't be any X-rated smut or anything, and if you squint your eyes it's just a bromance even, because I am a prude. A sailor mouth prude.
The first hint is always through a woman's perceptiveness. Because we are wise, although often in denial.