Bubble Bath

Gryffindor Tower was buzzing with the excitement of Potions. Pansy had a knack of annoying people: whether by her stupid remarks, her patronising attitude, or her tendency to kick someone when they were down.

Draco would have been amused to find that he had gone up in the Gryffindors estimation; amused, but also worried, because that was all he needed to destroy his carefully nurtured reputation - people liking him – fortunately for his peace of mind, they would return to disliking him in a few hours, once the excitement had worn off.

Neville sat in a corner, by the fire, gazing into the middle distance. Hermione watched him for a while, and then nudged Harry. "Fetch the Marauder's map."

Harry followed her gaze, and then sighed. "What is it with Slytherin men," he sighed, before doing as he was told.

That was as far as his support took him though, and when he returned he handed the map over to Hermione so that she could do, as he put it, the tricky bit. After all, he reasoned, it wasn't anything one bloke would be happy chatting about to another bloke unless that other bloke happened to be of the same persuasion. Otherwise, it was something much better left to girls.

Hermione rolled her eyes, but secretly thought Harry might have a point, even if it was in the limited sense that Neville would undoubtedly prefer to discuss it with her than Harry. If only because Harry would umm and ahh to such an extent that he could be talking about anything.

And after all, the truth serum only had another hour or so to run, so if Neville wanted to have a word with Draco at a time when he couldn't lie, then he needed to be pointed in the right direction as quickly as possible.

Hermione sat next to Neville, and said softly, "I can tell you where he is, if you want to know." She tapped the map, assured it she was up to no good, and then pushed it into his unresisting hands.

He didn't pretend that he didn't understand what she was talking about, but he didn't seem that keen to take her up on the suggestion either. "Do you think he might really be interested in me?"

"I don't know Neville but if I were you I'd go and find out."

Neville looked over at Harry and Ron who were ostentatiously ignoring the whole conversation. "Don't worry about them," she said. "They've had worse shocks recently. Honestly, Draco will be tame in comparison."

Neville looked at her in awe. "You're shagging Snape. No wonder you weren't worried about the points or detention," he hissed. "You lucky, lucky bitch."

Hermione neither denied nor confirmed his assumption, but her rosy blush was all that was needed to convince Neville he was right. He was disappointed, obviously, to find that his primary crush was no longer available – he didn't think that he wanted to cross wands with Hermione over a man – and was indeed disappointingly heterosexual.

Who would have thought it? He'd hoped that Snape would be a bit pervy in a let-me-give-you-detention sort of a way, but to find out he liked girls!! Ew. It could put him off Potions for good, although if he wasn't trying so hard to get detention from the silky-voiced Slytherin Sex God his marks might actually improve. It was hard to imagine that his hands would be shaking with suppressed excitement in the future, not when he knew that he and Hermione were an item. Ew. Ew. Ew. In fact, ew again.

However, there was the plus side: that today's events had shown that his secondary crush was both available and slightly interested, and if Hermione could pull of a coup of such magnitude, who was to say that he couldn't do the same. He looked down at the map in silence for a long moment, and then, without saying anything, headed out of the common room.

Neville was a man with a mission: Find Draco, snog Draco. They could argue about the fiddly bits of whether he wanted a relationship or not once the snogging – and more? – had been completed. He wasn't about to blow the chance of a lifetime with pettifogging questions as to Draco's intentions. They were probably dishonourable, in fact the more dishonourable the better.

It didn't take him long to find Draco, who had secreted himself in a disused room in the Astronomy Tower. Draco didn't look pleased to see him, and for two pins he would have turned round and left. However, this was likely to be his only chance to find out whether Draco was interested or not, and although being a Gryffindor should mean that he was too noble to take advantage of him, common sense indicated that it was a bloody good idea.

So he cautiously approached the blond – after all, being forced to tell the truth didn't mean that Draco had to like telling the truth, and he did still have a wand – and decided to try his luck. He went for the direct I'm- a-Gryffindor-and-I've-never-heard-of-subtlety-much-less-able-to-spell-it approach.

"So, did you mean what you said in Potions?" Realising that even this managed to leave a certain amount of leeway to an experienced prevaricator and equivocator like Draco, he followed that up with, "Do you want to sleep with me?"

His heart sank when Draco replied, "No." It rose again when the truth serum forced Draco to complete the half-truth. "I don't want to sleep with you at all; I want to shag you. There wouldn't be any sleeping involved."

Neville smiled at that exciting prospect. "You know," he said, "bearing in mind I'm at least partially responsible for your present condition, it seems to me that I really ought to do something to help you out. Now if we were to spend the next hour like this" – he bent and kissed Draco – "then you really couldn't get any trouble with telling the truth, would you?"

Even the effects of the truth serum, Draco would recognise that as a rhetorical question and simply pulled Neville down into another kiss.