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Beta By Kristine Thorne
Chapter Summary – Draco and Ron spend their second day together but will there be fireworks.
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Chapter Thirty Five – Home Alone Day Two
Sometime in the middle of the night Ron woke again. He wasn't drunk anymore and although he didn't think he was going to develop a hangover, everything apart from his head hurt instead. He had got himself in such a scrunched up position that when he tried to move half his muscles screamed at him in protest. He decided that he would have to go lie on the sofa after all and crawled down onto the floor.
Ron left the door to Draco's room open, he wanted to leave him some way of calling for help still and he really couldn't risk trying to remove Severus' silencing charm. He managed to pull himself up onto the sofa but even when he got himself lain down and covered with his duvet, his muscles insisted on aching. Thinking that lying in the dark was better than doing anything else if he couldn't manage to get to sleep, he just stayed where he was and closed his eyes.
Ron found that he couldn't get comfortable, if he lay on one side he could feel his rib twinging, if he lay on the other his neck was sore. He tried lying on his back for a while but he knew that he snored when he did that, or so he had been told a thousand times by Hermione, he didn't want to face Draco giving him trouble over it in the morning.
Ron lay for another hour; he was just thinking that he might have to go hunting around for a sleep potion when he heard a distinct sniff. At first he thought it must be Harry, still feeling a bit emotional but then he remembered that Harry wasn't there. It didn't happen again so Ron dismissed it as his imagination and went back to tossing and turning.
After another half hour Ron gave up trying to get to sleep, without help anyway. He made his way on hands and knees to the potions room, Severus had told him where the sleeping potions were in case Draco had needed one but there was nothing on the label that said they were for Slytherins only.
It was while he was in the potions room that Ron heard another sniff and then a plaintive sigh. He sat down on the floor holding his potion in his hand but not taking it for a while. There were more similar sounds and Ron knew what was going on, he had heard it before. He thought it was rather sneaky of Severus to have a sound link with Draco's bedroom though, till he remembered that Harry had originally designed and decorated it for their first child and another room next door for the second.
Ron continued to sit on the floor. He knew what the problem was, he thought he did anyway, he felt like he wanted to do something, and yet he had no choice but to sit on the floor of the potions room listening to it. The last thing that Draco would want was a Ronald Weasley to come wandering in wanting to help, that was probably part of the problem anyway. Draco had only wanted Severus to help and now he had discovered that the former Professor Snape wasn't as much of a better option, as he had first thought.
The curses of the Death Eaters had seriously affected all their lives and it made all of their bickering, taunting, and arguments seem very silly. Neither he nor Draco had any way of knowing whether this was how it was going to be all the time or not, whether their would be more 'blackouts' or whether Severus' potion would be effective enough. Draco had only experienced a day or two when the potion had been really working well; no doubt he imagined that he would only get a few days more before the next seizure. It was no way to live. Ron hoped that the double doses that he had been administering would help them get an edge on the curse, which would allow Draco a lot more time than a few days.
In the end Ron took the sleeping potion and fell asleep on the potions room floor.
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When Ron woke up again it was light outside and he was still on the potions room floor.
"I hope this weird sleeping place thing isn't going to become a habit," he muttered to himself as he tried to sit up. He found that at least his rib had mostly healed because it only ached a little bit. There were other parts of his body however, that he didn't have any feeling in at all till he had sat up and wiggled them for a few minutes.
Ron crawled through into the living room and ordered two coffees first then gave his breakfast requirements to the house elf that brought the drinks. He had decided that he was going to be nice to Draco, no matter what the young Slytherin gave back he was going to be very nice to him. He wondered if one coffee each was going to be enough.
He had to push the tray with the two coffees through to Draco's bedroom along the floor crawling with it. There was no way that he could use the walker and carry hot drinks too. Fortunately the breakfast was coming directly to the bedroom fire.
"What are you doing down there Weasel?" Draco asked.
"Oh you're awake," Ron responded, he wasn't going to get wound up by Draco's teasing and he did have to admit that it probably looked quite ridiculous.
Ron put Draco's coffee on the table and pushed it over to the bed. He sat himself down in the armchair beside the bed and took a sip from his own cup.
"Can you manage that?" Ron asked.
"I think so," Draco replied.
Ron made a point of not looking as Draco attempted to pick up the mug, nothing seemed to go wrong and when Ron did chance a glance, Draco had the mug securely held in both hands and had been drinking.
"Breakfast shouldn't be long," Ron mentioned, glad that Draco was feeling a bit better now that it was morning, "Toast all right?"
"Yes," Draco answered and not unpleasantly either.
Ron was glad that they appeared to have settled into some kind of truce.
The toast came and Ron laid out the butter and the jam on the table. He did Draco a piece first and handed it to him and then did the next one for himself. Rather like they had with the pizza, they carried on eating till it was all gone.
The house elves had had the sense to send them a wet cloth with the tray and after they had both wiped their hands Ron heard a tap on the window of the bedroom. He got up and let the owl in and the owl deposited the newspaper on the bed before flying off again.
"The Daily Prophet?" Draco asked, obviously surprised that even a Weasley would stoop that low.
Ron shrugged, "Something to read."
"Since when have you read?"
Since I had nobody to talk to or play chess with, Ron thought to himself but he didn't answer the question, "You can have it first, the owl seems to have decided it's for you anyway," Ron said instead, "I am going to have a bath."
"Potions first," Draco reminded him.
Ron was annoyed with himself for having let it slip his mind, Draco for once didn't seem to want to make as much of it as possible and actually waited patiently while he went to the potions room. Draco managed the potions himself once Ron had taken all the stoppers out and once they were all taken Ron did as he had intended and headed for the bath.
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When Ron returned to Draco after his bath he was feeling cheery and optimistic, he had decided to make further steps towards developing some kind of friendship with the young man. He was even considering spending his whole evening with Draco and sharing his whiskey.
"Did you know about this?" Draco snapped at Ron angrily when he entered the bedroom.
Ron was a bit surprised after the nearly pleasant breakfast time that had just passed; Draco still held the newspaper so Ron could only assume that Draco was referring to something contained within.
"Know about what?" Ron asked as pleasantly as he could, the newspaper was scrunched up in Draco's fist so he couldn't see what he meant.
"This!" Draco snapped again unravelling the paper and spreading it out on the bed so that Ron could see the front cover.
The front page of the newspaper carried a picture of Severus and Harry as they had been dressed for Harry's birthday, the report must have been too late to make the morning after edition being a night time party. What was most eye-catching however was the headline above, 'Potions Master of Hogwarts Pregnant!'
Ron had to admit that he was rather surprised that Harry had got Severus to announce his pregnancy in this manner before he was showing too much to be able to deny it.
Draco snatched the paper back up and began to read the article below the picture, "Headmaster Severus Snape, former Potions Master of Hogwarts, has announced that he too is expecting a child, due barely two weeks after his Kin Harry. At Headmaster Harry Snape's birthday gathering the couple proudly announced the happy news. However the Headmasters of Hogwarts still strongly deny that Harry is expecting triplets!"
"I knew that Severus was pregnant, I didn't know that they were planning on announcing it, he didn't tell anybody but Harry, Hermione and I found out almost accidentally," Ron admitted.
Draco didn't seem any happier, "But Harry, Harry's pregnancy and the fact that he is Kin with Severus and that he's jointly Headmaster with Severus, that's common knowledge isn't it?"
"Yes," Ron had to admit.
"Everybody in the whole wizarding world knew about it except for stupid Draco Malfoy!"
"Yes," Ron admitted again, suddenly not feeling very proud of himself because he knew where this discussion was leading.
"I thought that I hadn't been told because you didn't trust me, that you had been waiting for me to prove my allegiance. But it wasn't was it? I didn't know because I had been living amongst Muggles and then lying close to death in the shrieking shack and missed knowing anything and you didn't say anything because you all wanted to laugh at me making an idiot of myself!"
"We didn't," Ron tried to defend.
"I saw you, you couldn't speak for laughing."
Ron couldn't say anything to defend himself; he had indeed been speechless with laughing for exactly the reasons that Draco had just mentioned.
"You could have told me," Draco said in a calmer voice, turning his head towards the window.
"Draco..."
"Go away!" Draco responded.
Ron retreated from the room and the newspaper came flying out of the room after him as he left.
"And close the door!" Draco shouted after him.
Ron returned to shut the door and then threw himself down on the sofa; he left the newspaper where it was. He was feeling very annoyed with himself now, they had indeed played with Draco. He had been an annoying git, so they had thought that was all right to play with him. Ron was curious to note that Draco seemed to be more annoyed with him than Severus or Harry. Maybe he realised now that it was pointless challenging those two, maybe it was because he was there and they weren't.
All his efforts at approaching friendship were in tatters; Ron poured himself a glass of whiskey even though he wasn't even halfway through the morning. It was the wrong way to deal with the situation but he didn't care. After one sip of his drink Ron thought about going to the potions room to listen to what Draco was up to but then realised that that was even worse than what he had just been rightly accused of.
He knew that he would have to wait till he had a decent excuse to go back in to Draco and that would be no earlier than lunchtime.
Ron sat staring into the flames of the fire for a while but then there was another owl tapping at the window, it was the owl he had sent to Harry.
Ron went to the desk and let the owl in; he took his letter and gave it a treat before returning to the sofa. Harry's letter was quite brief, he apologised for the shortness of the reply, that they had been very busy with their Muggle friend Will, the owl had been in need of a rest and had settled in a tree in the garden before returning. He said that he had been rather surprised when the owl arrived at his door. Harry said that he didn't know how long they were going to be staying with Will but that he should owl straight away if he was having problems with Draco.
Ron sighed, he couldn't really have expected more in the circumstances but he wished that there had been all the same.
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At lunchtime Ron opened the bedroom door and looked inside, Draco was awake.
"Do you want lunch now?" Ron asked.
"I'm not hungry," Draco replied still looking towards the window, he seemed more despondent than angry though, so Ron sat himself down in the chair by the bed anyway.
"I'm sorry," Ron said quietly, surprising himself by meaning it, "We should not have done it but you were horrible to us too."
"Ron..." Draco began.
"No, let me finish," Ron insisted, "School is over, maybe we should allow it be over and not end up still bickering like Severus and Sirius did nearly twenty years afterwards, it doesn't lead anywhere good and we're supposed to be on the same side."
"I do believe that's the most sensible thing I have ever heard you say Weasel," Draco observed, the anger had definitely gone but the despondency still lingered.
"Do you want lunch?" Ron repeated.
"Yes," Draco replied.
Ron attempted to behave as he had been doing before; he put Draco's lunch on the table and then pushed the table over the bed, now confident that he could manage fine on his own.
"What is that smell?" Draco asked as Ron sat back down in the armchair to get his own lunch.
"I don't know," Ron replied, he had only just had a bath that morning and he hadn't used anything out of the ordinary.
"It's like alcohol, have you been drinking?" Draco asked.
"Yes," Ron replied as he continued to eat.
Draco couldn't hide an amount of disgust, "This morning?"
"Yes," Ron repeated determined not to be ashamed about it.
"Why?"
Ron shrugged, "Passes the time."
Ron expected Draco to say that he was pathetic next but he didn't, he didn't need him to anyway, he knew that he was. They both got on with their lunches instead.
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After lunch Ron returned to the living room leaving the door open once again without receiving any orders to close it. He had no idea what he was going to do, he had gone off the idea of reading the newspaper thanks to Draco and he didn't feel like having a drink anymore, also thanks to Draco.
Ron went to look out of the window by the desk, they were so high up in the Headmaster's Tower that you could see for miles around. He supposed it must have been Harry's idea to make this as much of a look out tower as the Astronomy tower. He was almost falling asleep out of sheer boredom when he heard a loud thump noise from the direction of Draco's bedroom. The crutch then clattered down onto the wooden floor in the doorway.
Ron went over to see what was going on and found Draco lying on the floor looking angry and frustrated. He had got his borrowed robes off the back of the armchair, he had managed to get dressed and had obviously tried to stand, trying to reach the crutch that had been left propped up against the wall near the door and out of his reach.
"What are you doing?" Ron asked looking horrified, if Draco damaged himself Severus would be furious with him.
"What does it look like?" Draco snapped pulling himself up to a sitting position.
"You haven't hurt yourself, have you?" Ron panicked.
"I didn't know you cared," Draco sneered.
"Have you?"
"No," Draco snapped.
"Severus said that you had to stay in bed until he got back."
"Well you never told me," Draco snarled, "In any case, if you think I am going to lie here bored out of my wits waiting for another blackout, you are very mistaken. It's all right for you sitting out there drowning yourself, I'm lying in here with only three walls to look at, since I can't turn round to see the fourth one lying in that bloody bed."
"You never said you were bored," Ron pointed out.
"Neither did you," Draco countered.
"Want to play chess?" Ron asked.
"Don't be ridiculous, I'll slaughter you," Draco answered.
"Prove it," Ron challenged.
"Fine," Draco accepted, "Now help me get up off this floor."
"Just crawl through," Ron suggested.
"I am not crawling on my hands and knees."
"Fine," Ron said lowering himself down onto the floor, "Borrow this," He added giving Draco the walker, "If you start to fall, as long as you've got a firm hold it'll pull you straight back up."
Draco pulled himself up onto his feet and started to make his way through to the living room albeit very unsteadily.
Ron crawled alongside him.
"Really Weasley, don't you have any pride?" Draco asked when he noticed what Ron was doing.
"Nah," Ron answered, "The curse and Hermione cured me of any of that."
Draco sat down on the sofa and gave Ron the walker back but he continued to crawl over to the other sofa and then pulled himself up onto it.
"What is it you've been drinking anyway?" Draco asked reaching out for the bottle on the coffee table. He looked at the label and then had a sniff at the contents, "Yuk, you have no taste in drink either, don't tell me you've actually been drinking this stuff? I would have thought it would be put to better use cleaning the inside of a first year's cauldron after a particularly nasty accident."
"What would YOU suggest we drink Mr Malfoy?" Ron asked challenging him to come up with something better.
"Get me a house elf and I'll show you," Draco offered.
Ron went to the fire and called for Dobby but when Dobby appeared he noticed that Draco was there too and cowered back against Ron. Draco leant forward a little and Dobby leapt up onto the sofa.
"He's not going to talk to me," Draco said looking irritated.
"Draco here is going to apologise to Dobby for what he did to you when he was a child and Dobby is going to do Ron a favour, all right Dobby?" Ron spoke to the house elf with Draco glaring at him for volunteering him for an apology.
Dobby didn't answer but stared at Draco warily.
"Fine," Draco said giving up, "I apologise for how I treated you when you were the Malfoy family house elf."
"Draco here is going to tell you what we want and you are going to do Ron a favour and get some for him, ok?"
Dobby looked up at Ron, "Yes sir, Dobby will do his best sir."
"We would like two bottles of 25 year old Dalwhinnie single malt," Draco instructed the house elf.
"Won't sirs be wanting a nice new one?" Dobby asked.
Ron wasn't going to start explaining the age thing to a house elf, "No, the 25 year old will be fine Dobby," He said trying not to laugh.
Dobby disappeared and a few minutes later Ron and Draco had their two bottles.
"It always amazes me how they can do that," Ron commented.
"It's easy, they just apparate into a Muggle warehouse, pick them up and then go," Draco explained.
"So all these rich people who have house elves are getting stuff for free?" Ron asked, thoroughly disgusted and glad that Hermione wasn't there to hear about it.
"Yeah, but obviously we won't be making a habit of it," Draco replied.
"No," Ron agreed, "Besides, I don't like to drink when Severus and Harry are around." He left it for Draco to decide whether he was too scared of Severus or whether it was courtesy because of the pregnancies, in actual fact it was a bit of both.
Draco opened one of the bottles and poured a measure into each of the two glasses that Dobby had left for them.
Ron took a sip, preparing to be quite fair about the new drink, "Hmm, actually that is better," He was forced to admit.
"Told you," Draco grinned taking a nice big mouthful himself, "Get the board set up then."
Draco and Ron quickly found that they were quite evenly matched at chess, which Draco managed to blame on the effects of the curse and Ron refrained from disagreeing with him.
"Best of three?" Draco asked after he had won the first game and lost the second.
"How about choosing what we are going to have for dinner?" Ron suggested, he picked up the menu for the Muggle takeaway and handed it to Draco.
"Was this where you ordered last night's dinner from?" Draco asked.
"Yes," Ron replied.
"I have to say your taste in food is a lot better than your taste in drink," Draco commented giving the menu a look over, "My father would turn over in his grave if he saw me eating this stuff."
"Another point in its favour, although I'll have to decide what to do with the boxes, the house elves won't touch them because of the smell."
"What else have you got here?" Draco asked suddenly noticing that there was something lying underneath the previous day's newspaper.
"Smokes," Ron answered, "Though I haven't started on them."
"You had better have them tonight," Draco advised, "Then you'll stand a chance of getting rid of the smell before Severus gets back."
"Good point."
"He used to smoke them himself although I had noticed that he didn't anymore. I suppose the reason for that has recently become obvious to me." Draco added.
"Choose something," Ron encouraged helping to stop Draco from remembering why he wasn't supposed to be speaking to him.
The meals arrived promptly as they had the night before; this time they were both having a Chicken tikka kebab on a tandoori naan with chips and garlic sauce. Ron got them a whole jug of milk to go with it just in case.
After they had finished eating the two young men lay down on the sofas feeling like they wouldn't want to move for a week.
"I think we should just relax for a bit," Ron suggested.
Draco turned onto his side and poured them both a new drink he then laid on his back too, "Tell me about what happened at Hogwarts after graduation," Draco prompted.
"If you tell me what happened to you."
"Did Harry and Severus not tell you?"
"A bit," Ron replied, "But I would like to hear about it from you."
"Fine," Draco agreed, "You first, and I want all the gory details about you and Hermione."
"I don't think you do," Ron grumbled.
"Go on," Draco prompted, showing that he was quite determined to have his way.
Ron shrugged, "Straight after graduation? There isn't much to tell about that, I had just got together with Hermione and we thought that Harry had gone back to his relatives. When we left him at the station that's where he said he was going."
"Wait a minute, you left Potter at the train station on his own? The Dark Lord's most wanted left waiting for his Muggle relatives to show up on his own in the middle of London? Lucky for him that my father considered me to be too old to be picked up or he wouldn't have believed his luck."
"Are you going to interrupt all the way through?" Ron complained.
"Yes," Draco replied, "So what happened after that?"
"As it happens Harry was not alone, Severus was there somewhere waiting for him, meanwhile Hermione went to her parents and I went to mine. We communicated by owl and tried to communicate with Harry only every single owl we sent to him turned up a week later looking exhausted and depressed. Then Harry's own owl turned up at my house and refused to budge. Things were beginning to happen on a big scale so we couldn't even contact Dumbledore about it, we had to assume that there was a plan. Hermione and I were introduced into the Order and Hermione came to live at The Burrow after a while. That was pretty much it, for the school holidays anyway. What did you do?"
"Told my father that I would join the Death Eaters if I could go away for a while, went on holiday, flew away on a broomstick and tried to be gone for as long as I could," Draco answered.
"And then you came back?"
"Yes, shouldn't have done that looking back on things, I came back in September and father was very excited, he had big plans and they involved me somehow and it wasn't just joining the Death Eaters, over the following two months his intentions became clearer, well it became clearer that he definitely had intentions anyway. By November it appeared that Professor Snape had rejoined the fold full time. He and my father were always together, nobody ever noticed that nothing went right for my father after that, quite funny really."
Ron's first indication that Draco wasn't quite the liquor expert he made out to be and that he was becoming a little tipsy, was that as he was talking and without realising it, he smiled.
"Dumbledore was good, really good, I didn't know he wasn't Severus, nobody did. I joined the Death Eaters and I didn't kill anybody, I went on the raids and I stayed at the back, nobody said anything," Draco continued.
"That's weird."
"Yes, it was, I didn't think about it at the time. My father behaved as if he was very proud of me for joining, he bought me a new broom, and he had meetings with Professor Snape. They talked all the time, they went out on little missions together, just the two of them. Nobody commented once that I didn't have the required thirst for the kill."
"What made you leave then?" Ron asked. He was finding that he was enjoying himself, listening to the other side of events and since Draco had wanted out, it was like talking to a spy, not the enemy. Draco seemed to have forgotten that he wasn't talking to a friend and it was as if he needed to talk about it.
Draco filled his glass up and took a large swig, "What would you think if everybody was being nice to you, what if I suddenly started being cheerful and pleasant with you and bought you a present, what if you walked into a room one day and saw me talking to somebody else and the conversation stopped as soon as I saw you but you were welcomed into the group as if I had been eagerly waiting for you."
"I would think that you were up to something and you were keeping me sweet."
"Yes, Ronald, precisely, they had plans for me, my father told me so and he was, as you put it, 'keeping me sweet'."
"What plans?"
Draco smiled again, "Ah, now there is the big question, Severus wanted to know too, the real one that is, truth is I don't know. They were upfront about wanting me to join the Death Eaters, a bunch of torturers and killers, but to get me to do this other thing they felt they had to con me into it and keep it secret. I'm afraid I didn't wait around to find out what it was, would you?"
"You told Severus that you didn't want to talk about it," Ron reminded Draco.
"I know," Draco replied, "Makes me seem a little bit braver doesn't it? Much braver than somebody who runs away from nothing, or a something that you don't know the details of." Draco brought his hand up to his face and he seemed to push his hair back but he didn't lower his hand again, "Anyway, my father's dead now, or so I've been told, so that is that."
"Maybe we should have a smoke now?" Ron suggested.
"Was it Harry?" Draco asked.
"Was what Harry?" Ron responded.
"He killed my father didn't he?" Draco asked more bluntly.
"He...erm...well...I think so, though he does often feel quite bad about the whole battle thing." Ron spluttered.
Draco downed the rest of his drink, "Tell him not to, I don't."
Ron was a little stunned by what seemed to be intense coldness in Draco's voice.
"I didn't even feel it when the curse hit me, he must have done it as I left though, I suppose he wanted to be able to deny it had been him when he caught up with me, still wanting to get me for his plans I suppose," Draco continued, now talking about the day that he left home, "He knew I would only be able to keep going so long, he didn't even want the chase, he planned to just sit at home and wait."
"I don't understand."
Draco smiled grimly cradling his glass of whisky in his hand, "He knew how long it would take, or thought he did, he didn't know I would use the potions, or he might of guessed after I left I don't know," Draco took a sip of whisky, "He would wait so long and then it would be easy, you saw what the aurors brought in that night didn't you. Imagine that I had looked like myself and that I had been found anywhere other than Hogsmeade. There's no way he would have thought I would get to Hogsmeade."
"He thought you would be in a Muggle town?"
"Yes, a Muggle town, if I had been found in that state there, then I would have been taken to a Muggle hospital, then he would have had as long as he liked to find me while I lay there unable to move, Severus can't cure me, they certainly wouldn't have been able to. No doubt my father could once he did whatever it was that he wanted to do, it was one of his personal special curses after all," Draco drained his glass again and held it out for Ron to pour him another, "He hit Severus' brother with one of them once, accidentally my father said, while they were out on some Death Eater thing, though now I have to wonder whether it really was an accident, didn't have any effect though, Severus was with them, he would know."
Although he gave Draco some more whiskey Ron was getting worried, Draco drank all of the liquor in one go. He went quiet for a long while after and pulled his hair over his face a little and didn't lower his hand again, he was drinking too quickly Ron knew. It was getting dark and Ron couldn't see properly. He didn't know what to say. He didn't want to give Draco any more to drink, he was going far too fast for somebody who hadn't had any since at least the previous November, if he had ever had a drink at all.
Draco suddenly sniffed as he had done the night before and Ron realised exactly what was happening, he was terrified, it was bad enough dealing with a girl in this situation but what was he going to do with his recent enemy. When it happened in the middle of the night he had no choice but to ignore it but this was right in front of him. With Harry it had become simple but Draco wasn't a pregnant Kin, he was still Draco.
"Your father is dead and you made it to Hogwarts," Ron chose to say eventually, not knowing if it was for the best or not, "It is safe here, Harry and Severus keep it safe."
"Safer than before?" Draco mumbled.
"There was one day when even Professor McGonagall couldn't get in," Ron explained.
Draco laughed a little underneath his curtain of hair, "I bet she wasn't very happy."
"A slight understatement," Ron agreed, "And Severus will still make the potion and he will modify it if it needs to be changed, he was just angry."
"So how did Hermione end up shagging Wood then?" Draco asked obviously trying to distract himself from the subject that had been upsetting him.
Ron had been taking a sip of his drink and it was all he could do to keep himself from choking.
Ron didn't know if it was the drink having its effect on him as it had with Draco, but he actually started to confide in Draco Malfoy by openly discussing his life.
"I don't know," Ron admitted to Draco, "I didn't know anything about it then one day she told me that she thought that she was pregnant and I knew that it wasn't mine. When I got her to tell me who it was, she said that it had been Oliver Wood. By this point Oliver Wood was already dead so that was that. It never occurred to me that it might happen and there were so many other things happening with the war and everything, so if there were signs that they were developing a 'thing' together, I certainly never saw them."
"Maybe I had better get Severus to find me a new disguise," Draco commented.
"Developing consideration for my feelings?"
"No, I'm just not ready to be a father yet," Draco replied.
"You could learn to be an animagus then I can keep you as my pet cat or something," Ron suggested, not being entirely serious.
"I am not going to be a pet of yours Weasel!"
"Why not? It would make my life a whole lot easier the next time you collapse on me."
Draco ran out of words and responded by throwing a cushion at Ron.
Ron was used to having things thrown at him in play but he wasn't used to being able to throw them back. He retrieved the cushion and hurled it back. He then followed with another one.
"I mean, I had a perfectly decent rat and look how he turned out. At least this way I would know that my pet was evil from the start," Ron added.
Draco threw one of the cushions back again and it hit Ron squarely in the face.
"Hey ow!" Ron protested getting down onto the floor and crawling over to Draco's side of the coffee table.
"Wimp!" Draco taunted.
"Git!" Ron called back walloping Draco in the face with one of the cushions. A few cushions were exchanged and then Ron took the winning move by climbing up onto Draco's sofa and gaining possession of both cushions. He then beat Draco over the head with them while all Draco could do was wrap his arms over his head and cower.
"All right I give in!" Draco eventually surrendered.
Ron let him be and fell back onto the far side of the sofa feeling quite out of breath, drunk and just a bit happy.
"Got that out of your system now?" Draco asked, having now uncovered his head, his hair was sticking up in all directions. He wasn't the slightest bit annoyed by the play fight.
Ron had to laugh.
Draco nearly laughed too, "Get those smokes out now."
Ron got his smokes from underneath the newspaper and also retrieved his wand, lighting things was something that he still found it safe to do. It was difficult to roll the smokes up with just the light of the fire and drunken eyesight but he did an acceptable job and it wasn't long before he was testing one for himself and then lighting one for Draco also.
The sofa was long and deep, this was why it made such an acceptable sleeping place. It also meant that Ron was able to curl up at one end of the sofa while Draco also pulled his feet up to curl up at the other.
Draco tried not to cough which made Ron suspect with amusement that he had probably never had a smoke before either. He soon got used to it though and Ron didn't ruin the evening by mentioning it.
"Dad told me once that Muggles had made this stuff illegal," Ron mentioned.
"But not alcohol, I know, they're very strange. Why one and not the other?" Draco added to the conversation.
"Don't ask me, maybe we can compile a list for Harry to ask his friend next time they go."
"Go where?"
"Where they are now, Will is a Muggle."
"I might not be a Death Eater but I still don't care much for Muggles," Draco commented, "But then I don't feel like killing any either."
"Well that's a very important thing."
"So how is your family, father still working for the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts?" Draco asked.
Ron couldn't help freezing, he was speechless.
"Wonderful," Draco grumbled, "Another little detail nobody bothered to mention to stupid Malfoy."
"I suppose you weren't on that raid..." Ron tried to begin.
"It's all right," Draco said taking a long drag on his smoke, "I've worked it out."
"Yeah."
"Anything else I need to know?" Draco asked.
"Hermione's too, same raid."
"And yet you all took me in before I had even said a single word to deny I was one of them," Draco suddenly realised.
"Don't make it out to be too big a thing, you've never seen Harry in action since he became Kin with Severus, even the poor Dementors didn't stand a chance, he sucked the souls right back out of them. He would have defended us."
Ron derived a certain amount of satisfaction out of how disturbed Draco seemed to be at his most recent piece of information.
"Harry isn't expecting triplets is he?" Draco asked suddenly remembering the newspaper article.
Ron laughed, "No, he isn't, definitely not, I've checked."
"Good."
The two young men sat in silence for a while, Ron watched the flames from the fire dance across the ceiling, he smoked a bit more and felt his eyes grow heavy after his disturbed sleep the night before. When Ron looked at Draco again he wasn't looking much more alert, he was very drunk and he was stoned and although Ron much preferred him like that, if they were awake much longer it would be becoming light again.
"Maybe we should just go to sleep now," Ron suggested.
"Hmm," Draco replied, "Potions."
"Right," Ron said slipping onto the floor, he didn't bother with the walker and crawled to the potions room and back. When he returned Draco had his eyes closed but when Ron touched his shoulder he shook himself alert again. Draco drank down all of his potions.
"Suppose we should go to bed but I can't be bothered to get up," Draco said, a relaxed and drunken smile playing on his lips.
"Don't have to move," Ron said feeling just the same way.
"Hmm?" Draco queried closing his eyes again.
Ron reached over the side of the sofa and pulled his duvet up, he arranged it over them both and snuggled down onto a cushion. Some vague and sleepy part of his brain told him to expect a protest from Draco any second but instead he felt small shuffling movements and found that Draco had snuggled down too.
"Night," Draco said.
"Night," Ron replied.
c
c
TBC Continued soon.
Chapter Summary for Ch36 – Draco and Ron spend their third day together, what will Draco think when he wakes up in the morning and will the truce hold till Severus returns.