By: PepperjackCandy
Rating: PG13 (up to "second base" explicit, beyond that implied)
Disclaimer: I'm just borrowing Harry, Draco, Snape, and co. from J.K. Rowling, and I'll put them back where I found them when I'm done.
Warning: This will be a slash story (Harry/Draco) eventually, though romantically-slashy, rather than erotically-slashy. Hence the PG-13 rating.
A/N - I'm afraid that some of Hermione's actions in this chapter might be seen as "character assassination," so I'm going to step out of my role as narrator here for a second to explain. I've always seen the Harry Potter wizarding world as a place of wish-fulfillment - where the quiet, overlooked kid is the hero, where magic is real, where anything you want to happen can happen. However, the muggle world is our own reality, so it seemed to me that Hermione's reaction in this chapter makes sense, given her upbringing in the muggle world.
And the chapter title is from Shakespeare's Sonnet X (http://www.shakespeare-sonnets.com/text/1-10.php3#10) and I chose it because, well, Harry and Draco are both going to have a lot of changing to do, and perhaps that change will start in this chapter . . . .
=============
As Harry stared across the Great Hall at Draco, the memory of the young Slytherin man staring up at him, gray eyes full of terror, kept replaying in his mind, over and over again.
He heard a voice saying, "Harry? You there, Harry?" And focused on Charlie Weasley, who was seated next to him, across from Ron.
"Yeah. I'm here." Harry gave Charlie a distracted smile. His eyes drifted back across the room to Draco.
"Could've fooled me." Charlie followed the line of Harry's sight. "You're watching Draco Malfoy?" He asked, surprised.
"Malfoy? What's he doing that's so interesting?" Ron asked.
"Nothing now." Harry admitted. "But I just found out something."
"You found out . . . about what we were talking about before?" Ron responded, casually brushing his left arm.
"No." Harry shook his head, his attention still focused on Draco. "He's afraid of dragons."
Ron snorted. "Maybe then you should go work with Charlie. That'd keep Malfoy out of your hair."
Hermione's mouth twitched. "I just think it's funny that he's afraid of dragons, and his name means dragon."
"I wonder if it's a family trait," Ginny began, but started giggling before she could finish her thought.
However, Neville did the honors, with "I bet you could scare Lucius off with the lumos charm, then."
By then, Harry's friends were all hysterically laughing, tears rolling down their faces. But somehow, Harry didn't find it funny.
"I mean it." He insisted seriously. "I'm not talking about just a little anxiety here. He was terrified. Absolutely terrified." He repeated.
At the gravity of Harry's tone, Ron, Hermione, Neville, Ginny and Charlie tried to force their laughter to stop, but soon burst out laughing again.
Harry wished he could find Draco's situation as amusing as his friends, but after seeing the abject terror in Draco's eyes, he just couldn't - it wasn't in his nature to exploit someone's weaknesses, even an enemy.
Ron looked at Harry, and stopped laughing long enough to say, "You're not laughing."
Harry shook his head sadly. "I can't."
"But this is Draco Malfoy we're talking about here." His red-haired friend insisted.
Harry just sighed. "I can't explain it. And even if I could, you'd never believe me."
* * *
After breakfast on Friday morning, Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Neville walked down to the dungeon together for Potions. As they walked, the aroma became increasingly pungent.
"You suppose something's gone bad down here?" Ron asked.
Hermione shook her head. "I was in the restricted section yesterday and saw the formula for the solvent we're making. It's supposed to smell like this." Nevertheless, she waved a hand in front of her nose as if to blow the odor away.
"After two hours of this smell, I'll be *glad* to have Herbology next. Even if it is with the Slytherins."
"Well, we won't be glad to have you around." Draco sneered as his group walked past.
Ron's comeback was stopped before it started when they turned the next corner and walked into the room. The smell was so strong there, that Harry would almost have sworn that he could see the stench rising from the cauldrons.
The four Gryffindors took their normal seats on the far side of the room just as Snape was stepping up to his table.
"Today," he informed them, "we will not be taking lecture notes first. We will, instead, be putting in the next-to-last ingredients in our cauldrons, which should have the effect of . . . dampening this lovely fragrance somewhat."
Snape wrote the instructions on the board and the students hastened to follow the instructions. Neville's sleeve (the right one this time, not the left one that had previously been bleached by the potion) caught on the edge of their cauldron and very nearly tipped it over, but Harry saw it and, proving that his Seeker's talent hadn't disappeared over the break, caught the cauldron, avoiding spilling a single drop.
Afterwards, Snape began his lecture by telling them what would come next in this potion. "Now the potion is effectively complete. All that it needs now is a few days to cure, and then the final ingredient." Snape picked up a small jar filled with some kind of tiny blue objects, between his middle finger and thumb, holding it aloft. "And so next Friday we will begin practicing with this potion, in which case, Mr. Longbottom might find it prudent to don some protective garments before class."
At lunch, Harry was watching Draco again, and what he saw surprised him. Draco was lonely. Not alone -- never alone -- but during unguarded moments, when Crabbe, Goyle and Pansy were planning or performing some act of malice, Harry would see something very like loneliness on his face.
It's almost like, Harry thought as they sat in the Great Hall during Friday lunch, they're his co-workers, rather than his friends, and their job is causing damage and destruction.
He was interrupted in this by the arrival of Charlie Weasley and another man, tall, with wavy blond hair and sparkling blue eyes.
The blond man took a seat between Charlie and Ginny, and then leaned over and exchanged a warm hug with Ginny. "Hey, Ron." He smiled across the table at Charlie's younger brother.
"Hi, Trent." Ron returned the smile. "Charlie said that you might be able to make it."
Charlie introduced the blond man around to Harry, Neville and Hermione as simply Trent.
"What's your last name?" Hermione asked.
Trent's food had just appeared on the table in front of him, so as he placed his serviette on his lap, he smiled at her. "Weasley."
Harry couldn't believe that this blond man was a Weasley. He looked from one red-haired, befreckled Weasley sibling to the next, searching in vain for a resemblance.
But before he could form the words, Hermione stepped in, "You don't look like any Weasley I've ever met."
"That's because it's his married name." Ron said simply.
"Married name?" Harry and Hermione asked together.
"Yes. Well, my name before we got married was Kent, but it's a Muggle name. Weasley is an established wizarding name, so I took Charlie's name, rather than the other way around."
"I told you I would change my name if you wanted me to," Charlie insisted.
Their discussion was interrupted when Hermione dropped her fork with a clatter. "You two're married?"
"Yes." Charlie said.
"Married? Like my Mum and Dad married?" She repeated.
"You're a Muggle-born, too, aren't you?" Trent grinned at her. "More like Arthur and Molly Weasley, though, since they got married the same place we did - the wizarding chapel in Avebury."
Dumbledore stopped by their table then. "Trent! Trent Weasley!"
Trent stood and the two men hugged.
"I haven't seen you since your wedding." Dumbledore grinned from Trent to Charlie and back again. "Married life treating you well?"
"Yes, sir." Trent grinned down at Charlie. "We're very happy."
Just then, Dumbledore looked across the room and made eye contact with McGonagall. "I've got to go. Come up to my office and visit me. You'll be staying the week-end?"
"Yes, sir."
McGonagall was clearly trying to indicate that she needed Dumbledore's attention immediately, so he said, "Potter there can help you with the password. He nearly always figures it out." He winked at Harry before he left the Gryffindor table.
As Harry, Ron, Hermione and Neville walked from the Great Hall to the field on the other side of campus where Care of Magical Creatures was being held that day, to keep the feral dragons away from the majority of the student body, Hermione kept talking about Charlie and Trent's marriage.
"But it just doesn't feel right to me."
"What's not right? Two people love each other and want to spend the rest of their lives together. Seems perfectly sensible to me." Neville made his first contribution to the subject.
"But my parents always told me that marriage was for a man and a woman. Not two men or two women." She insisted.
"Your parents," Harry smiled at her, "also told you that you needed to wait for the braces to straighten out your teeth."
"Not you, too!" Hermione rolled her eyes.
"I'm not taking a side," Harry said. "I really don't know enough about it to make a decision yet. But you certainly went against your folks' wishes when it came to your teeth."
Hermione sighed. "I know, but just the idea of two men together, like that." She gave a small involuntary shudder.
By this time, they'd reached the field where Care of Magical Creatures was being held. There Hagrid waited with Charlie and Trent and a few others that Harry didn't recognize. As Harry looked around, he could see all of his fellow seventh-year Gryffindors, and all of the seventh-year Slytherins, with one exception. Draco Malfoy was missing.
"Hey!" Ron called to Crabbe, Goyle and Pansy when they passed them. "Where's Malfoy? Not still scared, is he?"
The three Slytherins bristled at that.
"For your information," Pansy said, "Draco isn't feeling well. He had to go to the hospital wing."
Ron snorted. "Probably just nerves, since we're seeing more dragons. He probably had to change his underwear as well."
Harry sighed heavily, sorry that he'd mentioned Draco's phobia of dragons. Ron was enjoying knowing about Draco's weakness far too much.
"He very nearly fainted!" Pansy responded, not realizing that this was not the most persuasive argument she could have come up with.
Ron was about to respond to this, but was brought up short by Hagrid's booming voice. "All right now, everyone gather 'round here. Charlie's gonna tell you about some of these wild dragons."
At dinner that evening, Harry stood just inside the door of the Great Hall. He was hungry, but all Ron had been able to talk about since Care of Magical Creatures was how Harry was right -- that Draco really was afraid of dragons. And the more Ron talked, the more guilt-ridden Harry was about having mentioned it in the first place. I just don't like taking advantage of people's weaknesses. He fumed. What part of that doesn't Ron get?
Harry had a box of chocolate frogs in his trunk, and he decided that would do, and if he got hungry for real food later, he could always come down and visit the house-elves later. They might have been given their freedom, but all that meant was that money was collecting in their names at Gringott's. Their devotion to the service of the students and faculty of Hogwarts hadn't diminished in the slightest.
He spun around to leave the room, and ran smack into Draco.
"Watch where you're going, Potter." Draco snarled.
"So-rry." Harry drawled and made to leave the room, but then he stopped. "Hey, Malfoy."
"What?" Draco stopped in mid-stride and faced him.
"Let me in on a secret, would you?"
"Gladly."
"Why have you always hated me?"
By now, the room was silent, and Draco's voice reverberated from the starry ceiling. He began enumerating points on his fingers. "First, you rejected my House. Oh, don't pretend you didn't ask the Sorting Hat not to Sort you into Slytherin. Word gets around in this school, Potter.
"Second, you rejected my offer of an alliance." Harry noticed Draco didn't use the word friendship.
"Third, you got all the breaks. You get approval just for living. Rules seem to somehow break themselves in your presence. Like being named Gryffindor Seeker in first year.
"But right now." Raw anger burned in Draco's voice, which had lowered, becoming both deeper and quieter, as if Draco was sharing a terrible secret. "Right now, I hate you because you had parents who loved you enough to die to save you from the Dark Lord, while my father *sold* me to him."
With this, Draco slid his left sleeve upwards on his arm, revealing the Dark Mark, black as pitch on his snowy white skin.
And without another word, Draco pushed past Harry and left the Great Hall.