A/N: Okay, first thing's first. This story contains slash, that is, two characters of the same sex coming in contact with each other in more than a simple friendly manner. Now, it's not 'disgusting', NC-17 rated slash, but it is slash nonetheless, and if you flame me for it, I have no other response but to think of you as the hypocritical person you are, because I have warned you. (Granted, it's not my favorite kind of slash, but I didn't think that Draco/Harry would quite work with the storyline....::grins::)
Now that we've got that out of the way, I'll get on with the summary. This is a much shorter chapter than the other two, mostly dealing with Ron and Hermione's own scandals... Harry's not the only one. Please read and review... nicely!
Draco loved numbers. He loved how he could slice and dice them like vegetables under a chopping knife; mix them like martinis; bend them like soft rubber. And the answers always came out different, yet somehow the same. Clear-cut logic - no room for debate. Two times two is four: there's no way around it. The answer is right, or wrong. No middle ground, no confusion, no frustration.
He hated words for exactly the same reason. The world was under your control if you worded it right; it could become your enemy in a snap if you skipped a breath in a speech, slandered a stanza in poetry, botched a line in a play. The world was politics - Draco was no politician.
This was the reason he was easing out of bed at three forty two in the morning, aside the fact that it was so loud. Not in the room, of course, which housed about eight other softly snoring boys - no, rather, the noise was in his head.
It hadn't been a hard job to keep the Slytherin faithful from ganging up and knocking Harry's brains out his ears, though the group took it as an odd request. Draco amused himself at the thought as well - most of the time he'd have no qualms with the idea, especially after he had been viciously knocked to the floor... but this was different.
Cousins?
Draco's feet hit the cold wooden floor, and he winced out of his current state of mind. He sauntered over to the wastebasket and laboriously pulled out a crumpled bit of parchment with his long fingers. Uncrumpling it, he scanned over the contents.
Dear Mother,
How are you? I am...
This is where the letter had ended - he didn't know how to say he was. Fine? Tired? Sore? Apprehensive? Angry? He collapsed the paper into a vicious sphere again and threw it back into the wastepaper bin. Wrapping the folds of a black robe around his body, he carefully inched his way out of the room and into the Slytherin Common room.
It, of course, was deserted at this late hour, but still dimly lit by braziers in the background, casting shadowy light around the room. Draco walked around to the exit to the room, wanting to leave, but having no place to go, and not relishing the consequences of his unavoidable capture by Filch.
So instead he turned to the grayboard beside the exit of the dorms. It was a thin piece of wood, magicked to be smooth and a light, slick gray color, with a magical pen that hung on a frayed cord next to it. The board itself, of course, had been carved elaborately to match the Victorian elegance of the room, but it was empty of writing, since there were no announcements to be made at this hour.
"Give me the formula for the circumference of a circle," he abruptly asked the black pen. The pen wavered on its cord and rose in the air uncertainly, before writing:
Give me the area of the circumference of a circle.
Draco smirked. Stupid thing - he knew it would do that. So he plucked the pen from the side and started neatly drawing numbers over the grayboard. He went through quadratic equations, the areas of circles, squares, trapezoids, octagons, regular polygons, multiple algebraic problems before his mind went fuzzy from all of the work at such a late hour. Then he slowly started to scrawl out as many theorems and postulates as he could remember. Even though he would never admit it, if there were one muggle subject he would be willing to dabble in, it would have been mathematics.
It was sad, really, Draco thought as he wrote down the reflexive postulate of angles, that a person with such a brilliant mathematical mind could have so much trouble putting his thoughts in words.
# # #
Harry awoke the next morning with a throbbing headache. So, he promptly made for Hermione and asked for some headache pills - the school never supplied magical aid except for in dire situations, and Harry would have felt stupid asking for a magical cure for a headache.
Hermione brought down her medicine sack and started pulling out random bottles. "I don't think you'd be needing any Midol," she said thoughtfully, pushing aside a blue bottle.
Patil giggled. "Yes, Harry, we know that those cramps can be horrid, but..." she trailed off laughing.
Red-eared, Harry accepted the white bottle of Advil and mustered out of the girl's dormitories as fast as he could. In the bathrooms he quickly popped three of the brown extra-strength pills, and let his head fall down into his hands, running them through his hair.
"Look, mate," Dean Thomas said, standing behind him, arms akimbo, "if you're not going to use the sink, move it."
Harry walked out of the way and back up to the boy's dormitories, where he slowly proceeded to pull on his clothes. Ron yawned loudly and sat up in bed. "Morning, Harry," he said sleepily, rolling out of his blankets.
"What hour do we have Potions today?" Harry asked, running his hands through his hair for lack of a brush.
"Never thought you'd be so eager to talk to Snape," Ron remarked, stretching. "It's a Green day. Fourth rotation, I do believe."
"Bloody hell," Harry muttered, wondering how he was going to get through the day. "I didn't do my Transfigurations homework," he added as a cover.
"Don't worry about it," Ron assured him, standing up. "Do it over lunch - though Hermione will surely pitch a good one. D'you have Quidditch tonight?"
Harry chewed his bottom lip in thought. "Don't think so. No, Alicia gave us the day off."
"Well, you had better get a move on," Ron proclaimed, leaving for the bathroom. "You play Slytherin in two weeks."
Too soon! Harry thought, watching Ron leave. It's all happening too soon, all at once. Damnit.
# # #
The rest of the day passed in somewhat of a haze, as if the world was pushing its way through thick maple syrup. Then it was Potions class.
Harry entered with some trepidation, as indeed, most of the Slytherins were glaring at him for his assault on Malfoy yesterday. Yet Malfoy was looking at him directly in a contained sort of way, a way that said very clearly; We need to talk.
Harry agreed with him, but didn't get the chance to before class, since he barely had time to slide into his seat before class started.
"Polyjuice potion today," Snape said in his icily abrupt way. Harry, Hermione and Ron shot each other sideways looks, making sure Snape couldn't see. "Pick your partners, and start adding the flaxweed. This potion takes over two weeks to concoct... so choose wisely."
Harry saw Ron looking at him, and was about to respond, when thin fingers clutched his forearm, and Harry found himself nose to nose with Malfoy. Ron appeared too flabbergasted to react.
"Come on, Potty," Malfoy said in a low voice, fingers tightening their grip on Harry's flesh. "I need a word or two with you."
Harry sighed and nodded rather reluctantly, before getting up and following the pale boy rather reluctantly. Ron's mouth dropped.
"Well," Hermione said, watching Harry animatedly talking to Malfoy, as the other boy hacked flaxweed, "that's certainly the oddest thing I've seen all day. Come on, Ron, we'll be partners."
Ron had gone red in the ears, and was welding the small chopping knife like a cleaver on the helpless plants. "Malfoy?" he sputtered, unable to make any other word form on his lips.
Hermione glanced at Malfoy, who was waving his arms in the air and talking furiously to Harry, who was looking amused. "I guess they needed to talk. It's not like they've become blood-brothers or something, so calm down."
Ron made an irate noise in his throat and lodged the blade in the soft table. Snape whirled around to snap at him with black eyes, so he dislodged the knife and added the flaxweed. "I can't believe he would do that!"
"Oh really?" asked Hermione shrewdly. "I get the idea that's what Harry would say if he knew about you and Cho."
Ron froze the chopped bits of leaves falling off his cutting board. Hermione calmly stooped down and started to shovel them into the cauldron. "What about me and Cho?" he asked defensively. "Harry doesn't even like..."
"Oh, cow putty," Hermione snapped. "He's had a major crush on her for about four years! Are you insane? Besides, if he doesn't like her, then why haven't you told him yet?"
Ron sealed his lips in a tight, angry line. "Because he doesn't have to know everything about me!" he shot back weakly.
Hermione smiled halfheartedly. "You just don't want to hurt his feelings," she pointed out. "You don't want him to know about you and Cho meeting at midnight in the bathrooms, about how you steal his invisibility cloak late at night to see the girl you know he likes..."
"Shut up!" Ron ordered, very red now. "I don't see how you know any of this, anyhow! What do you do, follow me around?"
Hermione picked up the ladle and started stirring the potion until it was a creamy pink. "I'm not daft. Girls know how to look for this sort of thing. You're not a good liar - you leak all over the place... in all senses of the word."
"You won't tell him, will you?" Ron asked humbly, weaving his fingers together.
"No, but you'll have to tell him eventually or cut it off with Cho," Hermione said, sitting down. "You don't want him to find out on his own, that you've been snogging..."
"Shut up!"
"...with his crush."
# # #
"What do you mean, you haven't sent the letter yet?!" Harry yelled, forgetting completely about the potion, which was about to froth over the sides of the cauldron.
"Chill out, Potter!" Malfoy shot back, hands clenching into fists. "It's been a day! What am I supposed to write about, anyhow? 'Dear Mother, I just have to know, am I related to Harry Potter?'"
"She's your mother!" Harry shrieked, stamping a foot. "I don't know what you should write, but do it soon, so we can both get back to our sanities!"
There was silence between them after that. Another second of staring, and then both of them started busily fixing their botched potion before it started overflowing.
"It can't be true," Malfoy panted, wiping sweat off his brow from the fire. He squatted and changed the temperature with his wand. "I would have been told if I had any cousins."
"Oh yeah, and I'm sure that Lucius Malfoy would readily admit that he was related by marriage to Harry Potter," Harry sneered, the heat and Malfoy making him cross.
Malfoy turned from the fire and looked up at him. "What's that supposed to mean?" he asked in a low voice. "My father was cleared of all charges associated with the Dark Side, so you can drop that little theory right there..."
Harry squatted by Malfoy, so they were both hidden behind the large cauldron. "I don't care what the authorities say," he said quietly, though he wanted to scream it. "Last year, I saw your father there..."
The next thing Harry knew was a sharp pain in the back of his head, and a sound like a gong going off. Malfoy had his fingers coiled around Harry's neck, slamming him against the large pewter cauldron. "Listen here," Malfoy seethed raggedly, tightening his grip, "you little shit..."
Blinding pain on his backside. Harry screamed and flung himself from Malfoy's grip, leaping up.
"Potter, stop!" Malfoy's voice, distant. "You're making it worse!"
Wetness, then black.
# # #
Nighttime had fallen again when Ron rose from his bed, creeping quietly over to Harry's trunk and unlatching it. Under the pile of dirty robes there was a heap of iridescent fabric, which he slid over his shoulders and stole out of his dormitory with.
Making his way through the hallways was easier at night under the aid of the invisibility cloak than it was in the middle of the day. No people, no problems. Mrs. Norris was there, of course, but Ron passed the cat by without a thought. Mrs. Norris sniffed the air, but since she couldn't see anything, turned her lamplike eyes elsewhere.
Ron trotted up five sets of stairs and through a hallway. He was tired, and had to slow down for the sixth set of stairs. He had spent the rest of the day with Harry in the infirmary, Harry who had very bad burns on his back from getting carelessly close to the cauldron flames. Ron grunted. Malfoy had to have had a hand in Harry getting 'too close', since Harry was never so clumsy.
Ron was the clumsy one, both in physical and emotional actions. Here he was, sneaking out in the middle of the night in his injured best friend's cloak to see his best friend's crush and steal his best friend's kisses and touches and handholding and love.
Faithful Ron Weasley?
Nothing is faithful in the end, Ron thought savagely, taking off the cloak at the top of the eighth stair. Remorse? Of course. Regret? No.
Pushing open the door to the Astronomy deck produced a brilliant, metallic-tiled room with a glass domed ceiling that opened the view to the heavens, which were alight and sparkling with pricks of light called stars, and the globe of the moon cast bright silvery light to cascade off the tiles.
While painfully bright and garish in the daytime, those metallic, mirror-tiles gleamed like shining silver in the nighttime.
Beautiful as it was, the most beautiful thing to Ron was the person in the center of the circular room, Cho. She was sitting, staring at the stars, her knees hugged to her chest in little-girl fashion. Her dark hair was brushing her earlobes, and Ron had never seen anything so innocent and erotic at the same time.
"Hello, Ron."
"Hi, Cho."
Ron slid next to the girl on the floor and craned his neck to the heavens with her. After a few moments contemplative silence, Cho spoke. "So, how's Harry? I heard he's in the infirmary."
Ron grunted as he squinted at a red star. "If he'd stay away from Malfoy, he'd be all right."
Cho whirled her head around, black eyes wide. "You don't mean...!"
Ron shook his head vigorously. "No! No, Harry's as straight as you or me. I mean, they've been talking a lot lately, and Malfoy shoved him into the fires in Potions."
Cho shrugged, her hair cascading over her shoulders, as she looked back skywards. "Well, you never know, I suppose. Sometimes hatred can change to love."
Ron shivered. "Please, the thought of Harry and Malfoy together is more than I can stomach. No, I don't think it's about that... not if they're maiming each other constantly. Harry decked Malfoy the other day, Malfoy shoves him into fire..."
"Still." Cho's eyes glinted evilly. "Some like it rough."
"You!" Ron sighed, exasperated. He took a gentle finger and tilted Cho's head down, the fingertip carefully outlining Cho's lips, her cheeks, her eyes, before leaning forward and planting a kiss on her soft pink lips, tinted silvery by the moonlight.
Sighing into his mouth, Cho let a hand tangle up in the red shock of hair, tilting the head back, savoring the scent of the shampoo that came off of Ron in waves from the assault.
The kiss became deeper and more passionate, almost bruising, before they had to let go and come up for gulps of air. Cho scrabbled up off of the shiny tiles and leaned forward onto Ron, letting him take her body weight as she eased him back into a lying position, covering his face and neck with butterfly kisses, light and sweeping over the skin.
Ron moaned and put his hands on her hips, letting her mouth do the expressions and talking. Pricks of guilt washed through him, but they weren't enough to make him want to give this up.
Not after so long.
Sometimes the nights were wild and passionate - they never did anything that would be considered blatantly immoral, partially because Cho was reserving herself for marriage, mostly because they were only fifteen, partially because they weren't about to try anything on the floor in the astronomy tower.
Sometimes the nights were soothing and calming, like this was. The nights when the kisses and touching didn't matter so much, but simple body contact, like holding hands, was all they needed for fulfillment. Cho had a wonderful singing voice, and she displayed her talents often for Ron, and Ron liked to share of his adventures with Harry, his brother's new prank, a lewd joke or two he had learned from the twins.
"You had better go," Cho whispered, her head leaning against his chest. "You don't want the others to know where you've gone."
Ron nodded rather reluctantly, his fingers distangeling from her hair. He stood up, exhausted and sated. "Tomorrow?"
Cho smiled. "Like always." She turned her head back towards the heavens. Ron left. He always left before she did - the Ravenclaw dormitories were very, very close to the Astronomy Tower, so she always left after.
Cho was left alone in the tower for a grand total of two seconds, before she called out again. "Hermione, come on."
Hermione came to the center of the room. Daybreak was coming, as betrayed by the shimmering lines of gold that streaked the sky. "I must say that that was an interesting show."
Cho rolled her eyes and patted the tiles beside her. "It was nothing. Besides, I thought we agreed at the beginning of this that we weren't going to be faithful, anyway."
Hermione took the seat and leaned her head against the other girl's shoulder. Cho wrapped an arm around Hermione's waist, drawing her closer. "You know that Harry likes you."
"I know."
"Then why are you doing this?"
"Doing what?"
"Cheating on his best friend to go out with his other best friend?"
Cho sighed and snuggled closer to the other girl. "You know I prefer girls."
"Yes, you've told me that several times. But why Ron, not Harry?"
Cho sighed again and nibbled on Hermione's ear lobe. "Because do you know how many girls would go with Harry if he asked them? Half of the school, even the Slytherins would go. Not many go for his sidekick."
"But he wants you."
"Let's just say I have a thing for guys with red hair."
"Even Percy Weasley?"
"Ugh."
They both shared a giggle at this, but the giggle was soon replaced with Cho's lips on Hermione's in a deep kiss, deeper than the one Ron shared with Cho earlier. Cho pushed her tongue past Hermione's lips into her mouth, and Hermione moaned in submission at the entrance.
Hermione didn't know how she had gotten herself into this - it just sort of happened on the fly, one day after a Ravenclaw Quidditch practice. Cho was a very passionate woman, and Hermione was an intellect, smarter than the entire Ravenclaw house. They clicked. Cho was something of a bisexual, though she had admitted to Hermione several times that she was leaning in the direction of women.
Hermione wasn't sure. She never was. Though the passion was good for her, she wasn't sure what she wanted. She was sure that she didn't really want Cho - Cho, for all of her attractiveness and charm, was dishonest; she was being dishonest with Ron as they kissed. Every touch, every brush, every wild look was a double slash against Ron and Harry both.
Though she couldn't help it. Cho was addicted to love, as Ron and Hermione were addicted to her physically, while Harry swooned and was addicted to her in nocturnal fantasies.
Everything is so messed up, Hermione thought in resignation as Cho licked curiously at the tip of her nose.
"But soft!" Cho said, looking at the rising sun. "What light through yonder window breaks?"
"It is the East," Hermione said quietly. "And Cho is the sun."
Cho grinned, hauling Hermione to her feet and twirling her around. "Arise fair sun, and kill the envious moon, who is sick and pale with grief that thou art her maid, and thou art more fair than she!"
Yeah, Hermione thought quietly. That's me, the moon. Only the moon.