Title: While You Were Freaking!
Author: Libertine & TRLDM
Genre: Humor, Drama, Adventure.
Pairing: Dean/Hermione, Pansy/Ron
Rating: NC-17, although really, it's no worse than R.
Homepage: http://libertine.veela-inc.net
Mailing list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/veelainc
Disclaimer: JKR & Warner Bros. own the characters & Places. I'm making no money from this.
Summary: Harry touches Draco's testicles, Draco gets angsty, and there is a resolution of sorts. Oh, hooray, hurrah, not.
* * * *
II
Weakly: "What happened to me...?"
"Well, we were hoping to hear your side of things before we came to any conclusions about the matter. We've already heard Malfoy's."
"...oh? What did he say?"
"Apparently, you started talking in the corridor outside the library."
"Yes, that's right."
"And then you grabbed him by the balls."
"...well, I guess so."
"So he broke your nose."
"Ah." Harry tentatively raised his hands to his face. His nose was swollen, but healing fast -- he could practically feel the bones knitting beneath his fingertips. Best not to touch it, he felt, and risk having his nose set on an angle. He lay still, eyes on the ceiling.
Beside him, his friends exchanged worried looks. Upon hearing the news that Malfoy had knocked Harry unconscious, they'd all raced to his bedside in the infirmary to make sure he was okay. The sight of Harry lying there, pale, comatose and bloody-nosed, had sent Neville into a fit of tears. Currently, Neville was sniffling into Dean's jacket, while Ron, Seamus and Hermione, squeezed shoulder to shoulder in the small infirmary room, tried to work out what was going on.
"He admitted to it," Hermione managed to say, in a hoarse voice, as if she couldn't quite believe her own ears. "He actually... did it."
"Ours not to reason why," said Dean, who tended to take such strange events in his stride. He patted at Neville's head. "Cheer up, kid," he said, stooping slightly to whisper into the boy's ear. "A broken nose never killed anyone."
"What? Ours not to reason why? Come on, Dean," Ron said crossly. "You don't just grab people's balls for no reason. Especially not Malfoy's balls. Harry's been acting weird ever since the Quidditch game. I'll just bet he's under the influence of some dark power."
"Under the influence, yes," Seamus chuckled. "The dark power part is debateable. Or wait... is 'dark power' a euphemism?"
"Oh gosh," said Neville, detaching himself from Dean's chest for a moment to clasp a hand over his mouth. "Maybe he's gay."
"Malfoy is fairly attractive, in the right light," Dean mused aloud.
"That is, no light at all," Seamus quipped.
"Oh gosh," said Neville again. "Are you gay, too, Dean?"
Dean muffled a laugh. Hermione cleared her throat noisily. "It's very obvious that we have a problem here," she told the boys. "A very severe problem. So I feel it's essential that we all band together and put a stop to it. I vote we create a study group. We can spend a few hours in the library every night and try to find out exactly what is wrong with Harry, and then we'll..."
"For godsake, 'Mione, he grabbed a guy's balls," said Seamus, grinning. "It's not as if You Know Who made him do it."
"We don't know that, Seamus! How do you know that for certain?"
"Good grief!" Despite his aching head, Harry felt it was his duty to interject before the issue was blown even further out of proportion. "I am still here, you know. You can ask me why I did it."
"Yes, Harry, but we didn't want to bother you," said Hermione soothingly.
Harry bit his lip. Hard.
"Alright, Harry," said Seamus, leaning partway over the bed. Even close-up, the boy's face was a blur of freckles and blonde hair. "What made you grab Malfoy by the nuts, if it wasn't... interference from some dark power?" He smirked at Hermione, who huffed.
Harry opened his mouth. 'He was naked, and I thought he wanted to do things to me,' was what he wanted to say. However, now that he actually ran the words over in his mind, Harry realised that this might not be such a good idea. Not a good idea at all, really. There were some things he could say to his friends, and there were some things... well, there were some things that Harry would much prefer to keep to himself. Given that Malfoy evidently hadn't mentioned his nakedness to the Gryffindor Inquisition, Harry felt it would be rather imprudent of him to open that particular barrel of worms.
Let sleeping dogs lie, and let naked Malfoys spit fallacies through their nasty little teeth. At least Harry's nose was healing, which was more than Harry hoped for the Malfoy family jewels. Harry supposed he had some good blackmail material to fall back on, at any rate. The next time Draco shoved Neville's books out of his hands on the way to class, Harry would be right behind him with a smart, 'Oh, you've decided to put on clothes today' comment.
Well, perhaps the comment wasn't very smart after all. But Harry was sure he could work on that.
"Malfoy was trying to lure me into a fight," Harry said aloud. "I figured I'd deal with it in a way he'd remember."
Hermione let out a disgusted splutter, while the boys burst into laughter. "You got that much right, Harry," Dean said eventually. "The boy's in shock."
*
Draco felt dirty. Extremely dirty. Even the bath wasn't helping. He'd scrubbed at his genitals now for the better part of an hour, scrubbed until the skin was raw, until he didn't imagine it would be possible to piss straight for a month, until he'd drawn blood -- but above the pain he could still remember -- visualise -- Potter's skinny little fingers wrapping neatly around his testicles.
"Bastard. Bastard. Bastard."
He'd been violated. He'd been violated by Potter. His father would hear about this, of course -- the teachers would have to provide a reason for Draco suddenly snapping and punching The Boy Who Lived in the face. Then his mother would faint and Lucius Malfoy would write a stern letter to the school, and Draco would be plunged into a world of shame, not that he wasn't in one already.
Word spread fast around the corridors of Hogwarts. Pansy had passed him earlier in the corridor with some of her air-brained companions; they'd pointed at him as one and burst into hysterical giggles. Vincent and Gregory were avoiding him like the plague: it was fine to hang out with Draco when he was lording it up around the Slytherin dormitory, but it wasn't fine to hang with him after he'd been manhandled by Harry Potter. Even Millicent, who'd had a crush on him since first year, hadn't been able to look him in the eye when he'd crawled past her to the shower rooms. It was as if he'd been tainted, somehow.
Only the bloody Gryffindors had cut him any slack. A few of them had been around to hear him shakingly confess to what he'd done infront of Professor McGonagall, and they'd looked just as horrified by Harry's actions as Draco himself was. Well, the Mud-blood and her boyfriend had been horrified -- the blonde Irish one, whose name Draco had never been bothered to learn, nearly burst a lung laughing.
The bastard. The bastards.
If only Draco had thought up some witty response, some quick one-liner, just to prove that he hadn't been affected at all by bloody Potter's sudden and unexpected show of affection. But when he opened his mouth he'd gibbered, actually gibbered, and his lower lip started to tremble so hard that McGonagall, showing a rather uncharacteristic concern, told him to go to his room. He hadn't been punished for it; perhaps she'd realised that having Potter clinging to your gonads against your will was punishment enough...
Draco wiped his face, his hands, worked a bar of soap between them until the suds frothed up and over his knees like a fountain.
How many people had seen it? he wondered. None had witnessed the actual act, of course, and for that much he could be thankful. But his confession? He counted them mentally: the three Gryffindors, four Slytherins from the year below, a smattering of Hufflepuffs -- at least six of the little bastards, and there were almost a dozen Ravenclaws. That all added up to twenty four loose tongues wagging about the school; Draco wouldn't have been surprised if that bloody hairy gameskeeper had learnt of his 'encounter' by now.
They'd talk about this for years. Years and years... he'd be the shame of the Malfoy family.
Perhaps the only way to rid himself of the Potter-taint was to perform a quick emasculation spell on himself.
For a few minutes, staring thoughtfully at his wand lying on the edge of the bath-tub, Draco seriously considered this option. It wasn't as if he'd get anything interesting to do with the damned organ, now that Pansy Parkinson was marrying into poverty...
"Malfoy?"
Draco jumped, stumbled about on his knees, and accidentally splashed out most of the water in the tub before managing to get his hands on a towel. The voice had come from behind the flimsy screen that walled off each individual bath. Through the corrugated surface Draco could just make out a squat black patch of robes, above which was a pale circle of a face. Framing the face was a thatch of hair so red that it could have only belonged to a Weasley. Given the pitch of the voice, this one was a female Weasley, and almost certainly an envoy of her brother, come to gloat over the sad state of Draco's affairs. Rising as imperiously as he could while balancing on slippery porcelain, Draco wrapped his towel around his waist and called out a tentative: "What?"
"McGonagall sent me down here to see if you were alright. If you wanted counselling, she said."
Was nothing sacred these days? Was there no privacy in this hell hole of a school that some Gryffindor do-gooder couldn't penetrate? Unsteadily Draco slid out of the bath, water puddling at his feet, and began to grope around for his clothes. "You can tell McGonagall that I have absolutely no intention of being counselled by her, or anyone else," he snapped. "And before you ask, no, you cannot come in to see how I am doing. Nor will I be up for any quick photo opportunities in the near future. Is that clear?"
Behind the screen the Weasley laughed. Draco concentrated on the buttons on his shirt. "Don't you have a Potter to coo over, anyway?" he sneered, recalling yet another bitchy conversation he'd overheard between Pansy and Blaise: something along the lines of Harry never wanting anything to do with one particular freckled sixth year, and wasn't it terrible for poor darling Ronnikins, having to put up with such an unrefined sibling... Of course, given that Pansy's beloved boyfriend ate soup with both hands, Draco didn't feel that poor darling Ronnikins was a fit commentator on matters of ettiquette. "Potter, Potter, Potter," he said now, playing it up for what it was worth. "I'm sure the Boy Who Groped is missing you terribly."
"I'm sure he isn't," came the curt reply. "And I don't miss him either, if that's what you're asking. I've you to thank for that."
This sounded disturbingly like an accusation, or the prelude to a lovesick bout of tears. Whichever outcome it eventually turned out to be, Draco wanted to play no part in it. After seven years of listening in on the Slytherin girls' discussions, he'd suffered enough boy-related whinging to last him a life time. With water-wrinkled fingers he nudged the spike of his belt into the appropriate loop, intent to get out as fast as he could. Corridor slanging matches he could deal with. Fist fights he could handle, no problem, especially with Vincent and Gregory's brawn to back him up. Girls, on the other hand, were an unknown quantity and their premenstrual angst scared the bejesus out of him.
"Maybe I should explain it to you," the Weasley was saying. "I spent five years of my life hung up on Harry Potter. Did all the right things, too. Brought him chocolates when he was sick, listened to him talk about stupid Quidditch, made his bed when he was staying at our house, even went around Hogsmeade with him during the holidays and watched him and Ron get sugar-highs and give each other wedgies in the main street. And I was happy! I accepted it, because I thought, idiotically, that I, Virginia Margaret Weasley, was in love!"
And I, Draco Marius Malfoy, am about this close to committing hari-kari. He knelt to fasten the soggy laces of his boots."I wrote him poetry! I sung to him! I did everything a man could ever wish for; I was everything a man could ever wish for. I cleaned his shoes. I pressed his clothes. I cooked him his favourite steak and kidney pie. I wore low cut tops and short skirts and dropped my pens on the floor infront of him, and the bastard just walked by me. By my bum! I stopped wearing underwear! I wore white t-shirts and accidentally on purpose walked infront of the sprinklers. Once I even got Colin Creevey to push me into the lake! And still no response from him!"
This little monologue had become rather more interesting. Obsessive, yes. Psychotic, indutibly. But despite his misgivings, Draco couldn't help listening on. Anything that involved wet t-shirts and no under garments couldn't be all bad. Now fully dressed, he stood in his puddle and gave his wet hair an obligatory swiping with his drenched towel.
"He didn't even look at me when I pretended I'd locked myself out of the dormitory and forgotten to put on clothes. Seamus was another matter, but Harry? He just let me in again, smiled a stupid, brotherly smile, and left. I wore a push-up bra. I used make-up. I made out with Parvati Patil at the breakfast table, and all he did was ask me to pass him the margarine."
Draco made a mental note to keep one eye on the Gryffindor table next morning.
"The margarine! Can you imagine how that felt? My tongue is half way down Parvarti's throat, and he wants the fucking margarine. Kinky, I said to him, and winked, hoping against hope that he might actually be a little less pathetic than I imagined. And what do you plan to do with that margarine, wink wink, I said. I just love margarine in the mornings, giggle giggle, I said. And what did he do with it? Did he lather it on my thighs and lick it off? Did he lubricate himself with it and enter me, bringing me to sexual heights hitherto unbeknownst to wizard kind? No! No! I'll tell you what the prick did with it."
"He buttered his bread," said Draco automatically.
"He buttered his bread," the Weasley echoed, in a forlorn little voice. "He buttered his fucking bread."
Draco stared at the wall.
"Which brings me to the real reason I've come here," the Weasley continued, pulling herself together with what seemed to be a surpreme effort of will. "Before today, I thought I was a failure as a woman. I thought I was a failure at making the man I loved fall in lust with me. But now, thanks be, I know the truth, and the truth has set me free. Free! I'm a new person, as of today. All these years, I'd heard people mentioning it, suggesting it, but I never realised... never guessed... until you, Malfoy, made it clear."
There wasn't much he could say to that. "Glad to be of assistance?" he tried. "All in a day's work?"
"Without you, I'd never have known Harry was gay," the Weasley chirped. "So I just want you to know that I hope you're both very happy together. Honestly, I do."
"Thanks," said Draco absently. "Great."
"Bye bye for now then," said the Weasley pleasantly. "And just be sure, on pride day, I'll be waving a very special banner just for you."
The sounds of her footsteps pattered off along the linoleum, finally fading into the distance. The bathroom door creaked on its hinges, then thumped shut again. Opposite Draco, the wall was pale and glistening with steam; the floor beneath his feet was a centimeter deep in water, and the towel over his arm had left a dark imprint on the material of his robe. He wanted to leave the room to dry off infront of the common room fire, but a gradual sensation of uncertainty was keeping him put: he felt obscurely as if he'd missed something in their one-sided conversation. At the back of his mind -- beyond the fantasies conjured by wet t-shirts and freckled buttocks -- doubt niggled away at him.
What was it she'd said? Something about Harry Potter, from what he remembered. He replayed the last things she'd said over in his brain. Pride marches, and banners, and being happy together with Potter, and Potter being...
Draco dropped his towel, swung his head out from behind the screen and stared desperately about. "Excuse me, Weasley?" he yelled down the empty bathroom. "What the fuck was that about me and Potter?"
*
While joining the ranks of the Aurors was foremost in Hermione's mind, the idea that one of her friends was in trouble was enough to turn her head from her studies and send her into a state of frantic reading that Dean called 'research-mode'. For, in spite of Harry's assertions that there was nothing whatsoever wrong with him, Hermione Granger knew differently. After explaining the matter in detail to her arithmancy teacher, Professor Vector, she was granted a pass to the library in order to research the particular nature of Harry's plight. Vector had even given her some choice articles to inspect in the Restricted Section: books relating to the various Dark Arts spells that might convince a quite nice young wizard, who'd never shown any inclination toward foul play in the past, to sieze upon another student's genetalia.
Seamus was too busy smoking pot with Padma Patil, and Ron was off on another of his 'dates' with Pansy Parkinson (as far as Hermione could ascertain, this meant that he and Pansy would spend an hour or two snogging in the bushes by the Quidditch pitch), but Dean and Neville, ever the reliable partners, tagged along as she made her way through the library. Neither of them were convinced that Harry was in dire straits, but Dean wasn't about to tell Hermione that, and Neville liked to feel useful, in whatever small way he could. Carrying around a heavy stack of grimores wasn't exactly his idea of a good time, but it certainly beat sitting alone in the common room picking fluff out of his navel.
"Only I don't see why she's making such a fuss," he whispered cautiously to Dean, as Hermione teetered at the top of a ladder, straining to grasp a book on the topmost shelf. "If Harry wants to touch other boys, it shouldn't really..."
"It shouldn't really be any of our business?" Dean suggested, as Neville trailed off. He had his back propped against the ladder, keeping it steady as best he could without using his hands: his arms were laden with leather-bound volumes.
"Yes. Exactly." Neville nodded, tore at his lower lip with his teeth. "I don't have a problem with that, if you know what I mean."
"Me either."
"So why are we here?" Neville asked. "Why don't we just tell her that it's not a good idea? That it's none of our business?"
Dean made a wry face. "I'll let you into a little secret, Nev," he said. "It'll make your life a lot better in the long run. See, when it comes to women like 'Mione, they're always right until they prove themselves wrong. And woe betide anyone who stands between them and self-enlightenment. Get my drift?"
"I heard that, Dean," said Hermione in a muffled voice, clambering down the ladder with a thin volume clenched between her teeth. With a gentlemanly tilt of his head, Dean stepped aside, and offered the better part of an elbow for Hermione to grasp hold of. Undetered by his chivalry, Hermione ignored the elbow and made it to the floor unassisted. "I don't like you talking about me like that," she said sharply, leading the way to the study tables at the library's centre. "Either of you. It's very frustrating for me. If you've nothing nice to say, I suggest you keep it to yourself."
Neville and Dean exchanged looks.
"You're absolutely right," they said in unison.
*
After three hours of poring through texts, the trio had unearthed many interesting facts about Dark Magic and the various shapes it took, but precious little that pertained to Harry's specific condition. There were spells that could turn a man into a monster, spells that could transform a person's entire perspective on life, so that good was bad and bad was good; there was even a footnote relating an incident in which a live demon had crawled inside the head of a respectable member of society and caused her to go mad. But there was nothing about Malfoy-groping, or any of its potential derivatives.
"Useless, useless, useless," Hermione was hissing through her teeth as she read. "Useless, even more useless, completely and totally useless, waste of my time useless, unbearably useless, just plain stupidly useless... For goodness sake, half of these don't even have an explaination of what they do. Listen: Maracus imbasus avangara -- what's that? Or this one: Arrakus venganus --"
She twirled her wand boredly, and to her surprise a small pink object burst from the end and shot out across the room, missing Dean's left ear by less than an inch.
"Oops, sorry," said Hermione, blushing.
Very, very slowly, Dean turned his head. There was now a small, sickle-sized hole in the wall some twenty metres behind him; a group of first years were huddled around it, pointing and gasping amongst themselves. As he watched, a miasma of pink smoke puffed from the centre of the hole, and then evaporated into the air. That could have been my eye, he thought weakly, turning back to Hermione, who looked positively embarrassed with herself. Gently he reached over, prying her fingers from around the grip of the wand, and then set it aside on the table, far away from her.
"You know, if you really want to break up with me, I can think of a lot of better ways to go about it," he said shakily. "Ones that don't involve homocide, I mean."
"I'm really, really sorry." Hermione glowered at the page, as if it was the book's fault she'd cast the spell. "It just didn't say what it would do."
"It's a book about Dark Magic," Dean snapped. "What did you think it would do? Make fluffy bunny rabbits? Create party balloons? They shouldn't even have books like this in the library -- it's just plain unsafe."
"They're from the restricted section," Hermione pointed out. "They're restricted for a reason."
"Oh, I see that," said Dean thinly. "I appreciate that. I really do."
Beside him, Neville was staring at the grimore he'd been flipping through as if it was about to spontaneously combust. Relenting a little (if only for Neville's sake), Dean patted his friend on the shoulder. "It's okay," he told Neville. "No harm done. So long as you don't decide to say any dangerous Dark Arts spells aloud," he added, shooting Hermione a particularly poisonous look.
"I said sorry," Hermione muttered. "It's just that this feels so... useless. None of these spells are what we're after. Especially not that one." She made a gesture toward the smoking wall that was entirely too offhand for Dean's liking. "We're looking for something that will cause people to behave in strange and mysterious ways. Aside from the Imperius curse, I can't think of anything -- and if it was Imperius, we'd have known about it. The Ministry keeps close eye on any magical emmissions that even vaguely resemble the three primary curses. This place would be swarming with Aurors by now if Harry was under that type of power."
"Maybe it is," said Neville worriedly. "Only they're hidden... camoflagued somehow..."
Dean made with pantomime gestures. "They're behiiiind you," he sung.
Twitching, Neville stared over his shoulder. Hermione sighed, flung up her hands. "There's no point in this if you're going to be silly about it," she said.
On the verge of mentioning a certain someone nearly killing him not so very long ago, Dean clamped his jaw shut. Always right, he told himself firmly. Always right until they prove themselves wrong. And that's the way it's always going to be.
It was times like these that Dean wondered if dating Hermione was really worth the bother -- she was a nice girl, certainly, a sensible, intelligent girl, and one who got on remarkably well with his parents. But with the prospect of joining the Aurors hanging over her head, not to mention their upcoming school exams, Hermione had begun to go... how had Seamus termed it? Off the bloody rails. Stress aside, Hermione would have to do some serious grovelling before Dean would consider taking her out to dinner in Hogsmeade again.
"Fine, sure, okay," he said shortly. "Whatever you want, 'Mione."
"Perhaps we should ask Malfoy about it," Neville suggested meekly, aware of the rising tension between his two friends. Nervously he picked at the lip of a cover sticker. "He says he knows everything about the Dark Arts..."
"Hey, hey, hey," said Dean, waving a hand infront of Neville's face. "That's crazy talk, that is."
"I'm sure Draco Malfoy is very well versed in the Dark Arts," said Hermione tersely, "but I'm with Dean on this. For all we know, he could be the person at the bottom of Harry's problem." She paused, raising her chin to give Dean a stern look. "Are you laughing?" she asked him. "This is a very serious matter, you know."
"I'm not laughing at all," said Dean, who was.
"What I'm trying to say," Hermione said haughtily, "is that I don't think we can trust anyone but ourselves, at the present moment. And I don't think we should let anyone else know about what happened to Harry. Until we're sure of the cause. And a solution. We'll have to keep all our research well and truly under our hats." She tapped the side of her hat-less head for emphasis.
"Bit late for that," said Dean, with a shrug. "The entire school is already talking about Harry and Malfoy. Rife with gossip, as you'd put it. You should have heard the bunch of sixth years I overheard chatting in the loo. Half of them are working on spells to protect their family jewels incase Harry feels amourous towards them. And the other half are making stupid jokes about it. Malfoy and Harry, sitting in a -- well, you know the rhymes."
"Very childish of them," Hermione sniffed. "And Neville, stop that before you rip it."
Neville's hand shot away from the sticker as if he'd been burnt, profuse apologies spilling from his lips. In a hapeless attempt to ammend things, he began to push the sticker flat onto the cover again, but Hermione gripped his wrist firmly before he could complete the task, pulling the book away. The boys waited, expecting her to use one of the quick-fix spells she was accustomed to performing (especially when around Neville), but instead she simply held the book infront of her face, regarding the sticker as if it was some vital clue.
"I say," she said slowly, "there is someone we could ask."
"Do tell," said Dean. "We're on the edge of our seats, here."
Hermione ignored his sarcasm. "Look here," she said, indicating the sticker with her index. "This book was donated to the school libraries by Severus Snape. And he used to be a Death Eater, too. I bet if we asked him where we'd find a cure to Harry's condition --"
"-- if Harry has a condition --" Dean interjected.
"-- a cure to Harry's condition, he'd know precisely where we should be looking." Hermione beamed suddenly. "I'm sure he'd help us out, if we told him it was about Dark Magic, and fighting against Dark Wizards. And, after all, Harry and he do share a... a past."
The expression on Neville's face was one of abject horror. Amongst all his worst nightmares he could not concieve of a worse horror than that of approaching Professor Snape for assistance. Dean seemed to be sympathetic toward his plight. He rose from the table, patting Neville gently on the shoulder. "Don't worry," he said quietly. "We'll drop you off at the common room before we interogate the Sinister Mister Snape."
On their way out of the library, the three of them bumped into a very flustered looking Draco Malfoy. The boy's blonde hair was drenched with water, the hems of his robes were soaking, and his fancy dragon-hide boots made squish-squish noises where he stepped and left small puddles of water -- a far cry from his usually well-presented self. Sighting Hermione, he stepped boldly up to them (or as boldly as he could, in his condition), and gripped Hermione by the forearm.
"Weasley. The girl one. Where the hell is she?"
Hermione was non-plussed. "Try the infirmary?" she suggested, squirming out of his hold. "She's probably looking after Harry. Why...?"
"Hopeless," Malfoy snarled at her, starting away from them. "Absolutely fucking hopeless... Mud-blood wretches, the lot of you..."
They watched him go his squishy way in silence.
"Malfoy's acting funny," said Neville finally, to break the uncomfortable silence.
"Maybe Ginny got her hands on another diary?" Hermione murmured thoughtfully. "I just wonder..."
"Oh for god's sake," said Dean. "Don't you start on that."
* * * *