"Hateful bitch of a world, it wouldn't ever last."
― Jack Kerouac, Book of Sketches
Harry didn't think he could have a worse Defense Against the Dark Arts professor than Lockhart the con-man or fake Mad-Eye Moody. But as with so many things, the universe just had to go and prove him wrong.
Dolores Umbridge is by far the worst thing that's ever happened to Hogwarts. Within the first week of classes, she's already made it painfully clear that she has no intention of actually teaching anyone anything about defending themselves.
Dumbledore seems content to do nothing about this dreadful situation, which is how Harry finds himself in an empty classroom whispering with Draco Malfoy and Luna Lovegood.
"Voldemort is back, but the adults don't believe me. The wizarding world won't be able to defeat him if the only people who do believe me aren't trained to fight him," Harry explains to them in a low voice.
"I agree with you wholeheartedly, but what do you suggest that we do about it?" Draco asks.
"Harry sighs helplessly. The problem is that he doesn't know what to do about it. He just knows that it's a problem, and the lack of an obvious solution to it infuriates him.
"You could teach them, couldn't you, Harry?"
He turns to look at Luna, confused at first.
Then Draco squeezes Harry's shoulder, grabbing his attention. "It's true, Harry. You have more practical dueling experience than anyone at this school. And that's what you wish Defense Against the Dark Arts would teach, right? So why wait for Umbitch to teach what you can probably teach better anyway?"
For some reason, only one part of that statement really seems to register in Harry's brain. "Umbitch?"
Draco blinks at him.
They all burst out laughing.
Draco had just slipped away from the unused second floor classroom where he'd hurriedly met with Harry and Luna. They couldn't risk being seen together, not when Draco was so clearly trying to reingratiate himself with the Purebloods after he'd so carelessly tossed aside their approval for his actions last year. Luna left a few minutes after that. Harry waited a few more minutes and then left himself.
Now, he's finding himself wishing he'd waited longer. Ron and Hermione are right there, arguing about Hermione getting back together with Viktor while she's accusing him of only caring due to his jealousy. All of this is news to Harry. He hadn't heard from either of them all summer, and frankly, he's over it. Hence, he'd suggested to Draco that Luna join them to complete their pleasantly weird new trio. Harry likes Luna, and surprisingly, it seems like Draco does too.
He'd been tempted to ask Snape to be the third member of their trio, but it seemed too obvious to Harry. Though he's found himself trusting Snape, he's not sure the professor would still care so much about the boy he knows from the journal if that boy turned out to be Harry Potter.
Harry still can't help but be reluctant to fully trust either Snape or Draco as he would be doing by letting them realize that he's their secretive journal correspondent. Not when he's been seeing them at Death Eater meetings with Voldemort in his dreams.
Severus is glad that the boy is still communicating with him via the journal. He really is. The boy's insistence to remain anonymous isn't what bothers him in and of itself. It's the fact that Severus knows he could provide so much more help to him if only he would come forward and allow himself to be helped.
Instead, he and Draco have been chasing their tails playing detective looking for him. A monumental waste of time.
"Draco, have you talked to George Adams like I asked?"
"His eye injury was from a potions accident, like I thought."
"It's entirely possible that we're looking for someone capable of using magic to remove the scar. I still think there are quite a few good candidates in Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw—"
"What if it really is him though?"
The young Slytherin has gotten a wild idea in his head that Harry Potter is the boy they've been looking for.
"We both know Potter would never trust us with anything, let alone with his life," Severus chides.
Draco hesitates. "Well . . . he seems to be trusting me more than his old friends now."
Leaning back in his chair contemplatively, Severus asks, "And what evidence have you found linking Potter to the boy we know in the journal?"
"The scar on his eye. It's fresh-looking. If only he was more talented with magic or on speaking terms with Granger, he probably could have magically healed it. You helped our journal boy save his eye this summer. That can't be a coincidence."
"I suppose that does seem unlikely," Snape says slowly, "but we must proceed with caution. That's only one piece of circumstantial evidence, far from concrete. We must be much more confident about this idea of yours before I'd even consider confronting him about it. I find it hard to believe that the sympathetic boy we've come to know could possible be the spoiled brat Potter.
"But if it really is him, then he's in trouble. Trouble that he doesn't seem to trust with anyone except us, anonymously. We must not give him a reason to doubt his decision to trust us."
"Okay." Draco nods and leaves Snape to his thoughts, which turn over and over again focused only on the question of whether Dumbledore could possibly have allowed his golden boy to endure years of abuse from his muggle relatives.
Last year, Cedric spent an inordinate amount of time showing Draco his favorite spots on Hogwarts' grounds. Right after his death, Draco had avoided those places determinately.
But now, he can't seem to stay away from them. Walking by the flowerbed near the main entrance of the castle, watching the sunset from a little hill overlooking the lake, climbing the trees near the forbidden forest. He goes to these places habitually, alone, and just allows emotions to overwhelm him. Control has always been essential to Draco, but he gave that away when he first allowed Cedric to kiss him. And now he continues to give that control away at the places that remind him of Cedric.
"Mind if I join you?"
Harry.
He can't bring himself to look at the Gryffindor, but nor can he bring himself to send him away. So he jerks his chin, allowing Harry to interpret that however he will. Harry being Harry, he either doesn't notice Draco's hesitancy or stubbornly ignores it, because he sits far too close to Draco for comfort. Their shoulders touch, and the physical contact makes Draco feel warm.
But a guilty voice inside his head reminds him, This isn't Cedric.
For a while, they don't speak. They just sit on the little hill where Draco used to sit with Cedric. The vibrant hues of orange clash, fade into, and reflect over the lake. Draco watches them battle for so long that he's almost forgotten he's not alone this evening.
But then Harry has to open his mouth and ruin the moment.
"You . . . you really aren't on Voldemort's side, right?"
Draco sighs internally and imagines rolling his eyes all the way back into his head. He wants to have this conversation now?
"And you weren't eliminated from the journal competition as early as you led everyone to believe last year?"
Harry's hand stills from where it had been creeping closer to Draco's.
"I just need to know. . . . Can I trust you to be all in for the plan we made with Luna?"
Whenever Harry's this close and the conversation this heated, Draco's shields against whatever magnetism draws him to Harry are the least effective. He finds himself purposefully inhaling his sandalwood scent, listening more to the tones of his voice than the exact words he's saying, wondering what he might taste like, staring at his unruly black hair, desperately wishing he could—
"Draco?"
And then he does it. "It" being the unholy act of running his hands through said unruly hair. Harry doesn't stop him, though his eyebrows furrow together in a way that makes Draco want to use his lips to smooth out the wrinkle that's formed between them.
Instead, he looks Harry directly in the eyes, their lips so close and whispers, "You can count on me if I can count on you."
It's their first official meeting. Luna has a hand on his shoulder. She's telling him that he can do this, that their plan will work. But Harry feels sick. He wants to turn around—
"Go inside and get set up," interrupts an all-too-familiar voice. Luna steps aside, and Draco places himself neatly in front of Harry, taking up his whole field of vision. "You'll be safe in there while I'm out here. And you're amazing at defense. You're the best teacher they could hope to have right now."
Harry doesn't let himself think about it; he just flings himself at Draco, wrapping himself around the other boy with a frantic energy. Then he feels it drain, as if Draco was a stress ball for his entire body. As quickly as he started it, Harry ends the hug. With a last glance at Draco, he follows Luna into the Room of Requirement.
Despite knowing that the room is supposed to do this, it always amazes Harry just how perfectly the room changes itself to meet whatever needs are placed before it. Now, the room is mostly empty space, but the walls are lined with mannequins, presumably for practicing curses against.
"This is perfect, Harry!"
"It really is. How long do we have before everyone shows up?"
"The particularly punctual ones'll probably start showing up in about ten minutes."
"Right. So shall we go over the plan again?"
Luna nods in agreement, and the two get to work.
Of course Snape is the one to first catch on to Harry's new extracurricular activity. Draco spots him slinking about the seventh floor consistently around the times of the informal DADA club's weekly meetings.
He warns Harry about it, of course, but Draco wasn't sure whether he should just approach Snape himself and ask him to leave this alone or not. It would probably seem too out of character for both of them, and Draco doesn't want to have to explain to Harry why he has such influence over their potions professor.
Draco's gone to great lengths to hide the secret meetings from Umbridge (or Umbitch as Draco likes to think of her. He'd whisper it to Harry sometimes, and the other boy would laugh breathily), even joining her Inquisitorial Squad. For all appearances, Draco Malfoy had no reason to protect Harry Potter and his gang of friends. (In reality, Draco and Harry carefully arranged when and how Draco would "catch" one of them performing the occasional misdemeanor so that no one would suspect him.)
So Umbridge does not discover them. Instead, it is Snape, whose suspicious instincts all of them had completely forgotten about. Draco was so accustomed to working with the potions professor, that he had overlooked the fact that Snape and Harry were supposed to be on opposite sides. For as much as Draco had forgotten, however, it seemed that Snape had not.
Draco's hidden under Harry's invisibility cloak, guarding the Room of Requirement. They haven't had any issues so far beyond the occasional Slytherin wandering dangerously close when the group's meetings were either beginning or ending.
He freezes as Snape's familiar figure sweeps past him in the direction of the Room of Requirement. Surely he won't be able to get inside at least.
His blood runs cold as a snakes when Snape walks past the Room of Requirement, turns on his heel, walks past it again, turns on his heel, and walks past it a third time.
Snapping out of his shocked daze, Draco casts the warning spell.
"Places, everyone!" Harry calls out.
His fellow students immediately abandon their spells and instead arrange themselves into a circle on the ground in the middle of the room. Luna starts crying.
Snape bursts through the door. "What exactly is going on here?"
"Oh, professor," bawls Luna. "Everyone's just here to support me. Please don't be upset with them."
"Support you in regards to what?"
"We're just sharing stories of bullying that have gone on here at Hogwarts, Professor," replies Ginny Weasley.
"Why?" Snape's tone is somewhere between frustration and bemusement.
"It's nice to have emotional support like this," Cho Chang pipes up.
"This is all very suspicious," Snape says, sounding entirely unconvinced of their true purpose.
"We're called SASA, Professor. We have weekly meetings. You're welcome to attend if you would like to participate in these very emotional sessions," Harry speaks up for the first time.
"What is SASA?"
"Students Against Slytherin Aggression," Luna explains, tears still streaking down her cheeks.
"I want no part in this," Snape seems to say more to himself than to them.
"Have a good day then!" Neville Longbottom says with a smile and a wave,
Then Snape is gone, and everyone lets out a breath of relief.
Harry's always the last one to leave the Room of Requirement when the meetings are over. Feeling anxious after that close call with Snape, Draco decides to have a little fun using that random observation of his.
He stays hidden under the invisibility cloak while students cautiously trickle out of the Room of Requirement. Harry and Luna exit last, as predicted.
Luckily, he'd enchanted his footsteps to be silenced when he arrived here to be the lookout, so it's all too easy for him to sneak up on Harry now. He leaps at him suddenly, eliciting a yelp from his unsuspecting victim.
Luna smiles at them both, a bit knowingly, before she leaves them alone.
"Thanks for the warning earlier," Harry pants out. Draco can feel his heart racing from where his hands are wrapped around the other boy's wrists, fingers against his pulse points.
"I told you you could count on me," Draco reminds him.
"I know, and I believed you. But that's not the same thing as seeing it proven."
"Well, I'm happy to prove myself over and over to you if that's what you want."
"You don't owe me anything, Draco."
Draco shivers a bit at hearing Harry say his first name. It's not a surprise to him anymore, but it's . . . oddly pleasurable every time he hears it aloud. He wonders if Harry takes the same pleasure from hearing his own name fall from Draco's lips.
"Harry," he whispers near his ear. Draco feels him shudder lightly.
Yes.
In unison, they both glance around and haphazardly maneuver each other into a shadowy corner. They're still pressed close together.
Draco already can't bear to look at Harry's eyes or even his face at all. So instead he just presses his lips behind Harry's ear, eliciting a low whimper from Harry. A low whimper completely unlike the soft sigh that Cedric would have made if Draco had kissed him in that spot.
Harry. That's who Draco is kissing. That's whose wrists Draco is clutching like a lifeline. That's who is making Draco weak enough to betray the love Cedric had given him.
While Draco was distracted by his paralyzing thoughts, Harry had taken the initiative to further things along. Suddenly, he's brought Draco's lips to meet his, and they're really kissing now.
Draco breaks away with a cry.
Harry looks at him, his pretty green eyes wide with concern, and Draco can feel hot tears streaking down his cheeks. He's feeling too much to possibly explain to Harry, but he manages to gasp out, "Cedric."
Why he'd kissed Draco, only Merlin knows. The blonde had just looked so . . . angelic, with his sharp features so dimly lit. Everything about him is intoxicating when Harry gets this close. That's partially why he stopped letting himself get so close to him in the first place.
But now Draco is crying, and Harry's heart hurts. It had only been earlier this year, in the spring, when Cedric died. Before that, the Hufflepuff had spent months falling in love with Draco. It had been plain to see from how happy both of them were together.
And now Harry had idiotically gone and kissed the boy who was still mourning his dead . . . lover? Boyfriend? Harry didn't know what they called each other, but that didn't matter really.
Cedric is gone, but Draco is still here. Harry still blames himself for not saving Cedric that day, so he decides that he'll do this for Cedric. He will help Draco to mourn him. To not let that mourning kill Draco.
"Hey, Draco, it's okay," Harry murmurs softly. He hugs him then, gently, rubbing circles into his back. "Cedric loved you. He would want you to be happy. Wouldn't you have wanted him to be happy if it had been the other way around, if you had been the one to die? Being with me, or anyone else, won't diminish the love you two shared. Still, you can take your time. I won't pressure you to do anything."
Draco's sobbing now, but somehow he looks more beautiful than ever. Maybe it's the fact that he's trusting Harry with his vulnerability, something that he never would have done a year ago, that endears him to Harry so much.
Regardless of his desire to smother the Slytherin with tender kisses, Harry doesn't do anything else besides hold him close while he cries into Harry's robes.