Chapter 3

"Hey Ron?"

"Yeah?"

"Have you seen my invisibility cloak?"

Ron froze where he was stretched out on his four-poster bed, reading.  "Uh…no."

Harry sighed and continued to dig through his trunk.  "Are you sure?"

"I think so. What do you need it for?"  Ron got up to help, his insides burning with guilt. 

"I was going to go visit Hagrid, maybe go for a walk or something.  I don't know…"  He trailed off, his eyes fixed forward. 

"Harry, are you all right?"

Harry started.  "Uh, yeah, I'm fine.  Just… got a lot on my mind, you know?"  He looked at Ron, smiling weakly.  His emerald eyes were filled with emotion, but somehow unreadable. 

Ron's conscience got the better of him.  With a sigh, he bent and pulled the cloak out from under his bed.  "Here you go, Harry," he said, offering it toward his friend. 

"Ron, did you have it?"

"Yeah."

"You know you're welcome to it."

"Yeah."

"So why did you lie about having it?"

Ron gulped, eyes fixed on his feet.  He tried to think of a way to tell Harry without hurting him.  He looked up at his friend, his eyes apologetic. 

"Ron, are you seeing someone?"

Ron nodded.  Harry pressed further. 

"Who?"

After a moment, Ron answered.  "Draco.  Er- Malfoy, I mean."

He watched as despair flooded Harry's face.  "Oh, Ron…"

Ron was suddenly angry.  "Oh nothing!  You dumped him. Remember?  You've stripped yourself of ownership.  He isn't yours, he's mine, and if-"

"He's not yours."

"Yes he is.  He is mine and I'm his."

"You're his nothing.  You're his pleasure, his fuck in the night, his… his revenge."

Ron stood as if he had been slapped.  "How dare you…"

"You know it's true, Ron."

"No, you're wrong.  You're just angry because he hurt you and because he wants me instead of you.  You're upset because the most wanted boy at Hogwarts chose nobody Ron Weasley over the famous Harry Potter, for once."

"Ron, he's using you.  I humiliated him by dumping him in public, and now he's just with you so that he can hurt me."

Ron's eyes blazed.  "Harry, you're pathetic.  Do you really think that everything, my personal life included, revolves around you?  Has fame gone so far to your head?  I'm disgusted."  He threw the invisibility cloak at Harry's feet and stormed out of the dormitory.  A few minutes later, Harry donned the cloak and headed out into the grounds, struggling not to cry.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

"Draco?"

"Yes?"  It was well after midnight and Ron and Draco were stretched out facing each other on the pile of blankets in the disused classroom having spent the last hour "bathing in the rivers of paradise" as Ron had once heard it described.

"Are you… I mean, am I… are we…"  Ron floundered, unsure of how to phrase his question.

"You want to know if you're just another multiple-night stand, don't you."  To Ron's relief, Draco didn't seem offended. 

"Well, yeah."

Draco looked at his hand, which was running up and down Ron's side, stroking the rarely-touched skin with all of his natural delicacy.   "Why do you ask?"  He looked at Ron's face now.  "Don't you trust me, Ron?"

"Well, of course I do.  But, well, Harry found out about us."

Draco's eyes flickered.  "Did he?"

"Yeah.  And he said some really horrible things about you, and I said some things to him that I really regret now, and then I stormed off."  Ron looked at the floor, his insides burning with shame at having so mercilessly assaulted his best friend. 

"What did he say?"

"He said that you were just using me to get revenge on him for humiliating you when you two split up." 

Draco was silent for a moment.

"But it can't be true, can it?"  Ron continued.  "I mean, why would you being with me hurt Harry so much?  What's it to him who I sleep with?"

"He's in love with you," said Draco, almost to himself. 

"What?"

"Harry's in love with you, Ron.  I can't believe it took me so long to put it together."

"How would you know who Harry loves?"

Draco sat up, eyes fixed on Ron's face.  "When did you say you had your shouting match?"

"This afternoon."

"Well listen.  I ran into Harry just before dinner.  He was sitting under that tree by the lake looking utterly destroyed, and when I went over to talk to him, he told me off loudly about using you, just like you said."

Ron sat up now, too.  "Oh Christ."

"Yeah I know.  It's a bit awkward for me, really.  And for you."

"How so?"

"Ron, don't be angry, but I… well I hadn't really intended for us to last."

Ron's face fell.  He was speechless with shock and fury.  He had thought that Draco had really cared about him, that he had been in love.  Ron had been in love with Draco, or at least he thought so.  "How could you do that?"

"Do what?"

"Everything!  Kiss me, fuck me, all of this.  Jesus, do you really mean that these past weeks were an act?"

"They weren't an act Ron!  I genuinely wanted you.  You're very attractive, in a quiet, gangling sort of way."  He turned away.  "But I knew we couldn't last."  Draco dropped the last of his usual dignity, looking at the blankets underneath him and sighing deeply.  Ron watched him, less angry but more perplexed.

"But Draco, I'm in love with-"

"Harry.  You're in love with Harry."

"What are you talking about?"

"I don't see how you could not be.  You may want me, but so do a lot of people.  But there's something in your voice when you talk about him, something in your eyes when you think of him that says loud and clear that you love him more than you could say."

Ron was stunned.  He had never heard anything so truthful in his life.  In a moment his entire past with Harry pieced itself together, forming an almost unbearably clear picture of what he suspected he had known all along.  He loved Harry.

Ron moved his hand slowly over to Draco's face, which he turned up to his.  "I'm sorry," he said softly.

"Don't be.  You've nothing to be sorry for."  Draco was suddenly brisk.  The two got up and put on their clothes in silence, facing away from each other.  Then they turned and stood for a moment, face to face in the gentle firelight.  Draco tilted his head upwards and kissed Ron lightly and briefly on the lips.  "Take care of Harry for me," he whispered, and was gone.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Ron didn't remember walking up to Gryffindor tower, or climbing the stairs to the boys' dormitory.  All he knew was that suddenly he was standing beside Harry's bed, watching his black-haired friend as he slept, his breath traveling in and out in a slow, easy rhythm. 

Ron changed into his pajamas and, after a moment's hesitation, slid quietly into bed beside Harry.  He curled himself around his sleeping friend, who stirred. 

"'S that you, Ron?"  He asked sleepily, not opening his eyes.  Ron slid his arms around Harry and pulled him close.  The feeling of his friend's solidity, of another loving body next to his was a new sensation to Ron, more wonderful than anything he had felt in his entire life, and he gave his friend a gentle hug. 

"Yeah, it's me," he whispered, kissing Harry lightly on the cheek.

Harry smiled, his eyes still closed.  "Good," he said, and fell asleep.