Draco flung himself down on his bed, hearing the door to his dormitory slam shut a second later. This was it—he wasn't going to mess around with Ron or with Pansy's demented dare anymore. It was hopeless anyway; Ron wasn't even remotely attracted to him—he'd made that abundantly clear.

Yes, he'd been insisting that he hated Draco every time they met. But this was the first time he'd actually pushed Draco away from him—the first time he'd done anything other than just stand there like a statue. The times he'd stomped on Draco's foot didn't really count; then he had just been worried about someone catching them, not attacking Draco because he genuinely wanted Draco to stop.

But today… today had been different. And the worst part was that they'd actually been having fun, until … until he'd ruined it.

Draco heard the door open again and wondered irritably who was stupid enough to have followed him. It wasn't any of his dorm mates—he knew their footsteps by heart.

"Draco?"

Oh. Of course, he should have known. It was Pansy. The only person clueless enough to come after him, and the last person he wanted to see right now. This was all her fault, after all. If it weren't for her stupid dare, he wouldn't have even thought about approaching Ron. He wondered for a moment if she might go away if he didn't respond, but he knew her better than that. She wouldn't leave until she was satisfied.

He felt the mattress shift as she sat down next to him. "Draco?" she asked again, her voice annoyingly gentle and soft.

"Go away," he muttered into his pillow.

Of course, she didn't cooperate, but it had been worth a try. Instead he felt her hand tentatively touch his shoulder with an irritating, too-light pressure that made him want to squirm away. He rolled over, mostly to get away from that feather light touch, and glared up into Pansy's concerned face.

"What do want, Pansy?"

"What happened?" she asked softly.

"I'm not screwing around with Weasley anymore," he informed her. She blinked, opening her mouth to protest, but Draco cut her off. "You talked to him and told him I was going to rape him. That's cheating. Therefore, I don't have to do this anymore. Now leave me alone."

Pansy just continued to stare into his eyes. "Why are you so upset?"

"Leave me alone."

"Just tell me what's wrong—"

"Nothing. Nothing's wrong, everything's wonderful, now go away."

"If nothing's wrong, why do you want to be alone? You only hide in your room when you're upset."

"I'm not hiding," Draco snapped.

"You know, you can still pursue things with Ron, even without the dare," Pansy said, looking just a little too eager. "If you want to, of course."

"I don't want to. I never want to see that inbred, pig-faced, Muggle-loving arsehole ever again, okay?"

"You know, you two would look really cute together—"

"Oh god—look Pansy, you had your chance to set us up, you blew it, that's it. It's not even any of your business, anyways."

"But—"

"Out!" Draco snapped, sitting up abruptly and pointing firmly to the door. "This is my room, now get out."

"Actually, it's—"

"It's the boys' dormitory. You're a girl. Get out."

Pansy reluctantly stood and left. For a moment, Draco just glared at the open door. Then he grabbed his wand, and before he could even say the spell, the door slammed shut hard enough to warp the wood.

Down in the common room, several heads turned at the sound of a bang from the direction of the boy's dormitories. Vincent looked up in time to see Pansy vanishing up the stairs to the girl's dormitory. He shrugged and turned back to his spiders, deciding to think about sleeping in the common room tonight.

------------------------------

Malfoy wasn't at dinner that evening, though ironically enough, almost everyone else was. Professor Stanwood, who had already made it clear that he stood with the Ministry's belief that school children should not be involved in fighting He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named in any way shape or form, had been asking questions about where everyone was during meals and Professor McGonagall had suggested that they skip tonight's DA meeting. Hermione was in the common room, working on making more fake Galleons—which they were using since posting notices in the common room would alert Professor Stanwood and anyone who had opted not to join. But they took time and resources to make, and right now there was only enough for the original members, the some of the teachers, and a few of the students; everyone else had to check with their designated 'Galleon holder'. Actually, Ron suspected Hermione was really just still embarrassed about Neville catching her off guard during today's DA meeting.

Though he was facing away from the Slytherin table out of habit, Ron was still painfully aware of Malfoy's absence. He longed to turn around and look, to see if maybe the boy had arrived yet, but he didn't dare. Harry would surely notice if he did, and Ron wasn't sure what he'd do if Malfoy was there.

Suddenly, he became realized that Harry was looking at him expectantly, as if waiting for an answer to a question.

"Er… what was that?"

Harry sighed. "I asked if you were even listening to me. I'll take that as a no."

Ron flushed slightly. "Sorry… I'm feeling a bit … off today."

"So I'd noticed."

"Yeah, I think I'm going to go to bed early tonight," Ron said getting up.

"Then can I finish your potatoes?" Dean asked.

Ron's heartbeat quickened at the thought that Dean was talking to him, asking for his food. He glanced down at his virtually untouched plate and nodded. "Of course."

"Thanks."

Ron just shrugged and left, trying hard not to think about the fact that Dean was eating his food—food that had been on his plate, originally intended for his mouth, but was now going into Dean's mouth and he really, really shouldn't think about Dean's mouth, although it was sort of relieving to be thinking about someone other than Malfoy for a change. Until he remembered that he'd be sleeping in the bed next to Dean that night, and quite probably be in the room while Dean got into his pyjamas; then he began to wish he could go back to obsessing exclusively over Malfoy. Of course, obsessing over Lavender would have been better. Unfortunately, he had long since discovered that obsessing over something that didn't even remotely interest you didn't work very well, no matter how hard you tried. And he found Lavender was about interesting as one of Professor Binns' lectures. But if Lavender was History of Magic, then Malfoy was the Quidditch World Cup.

Except that everyone knew he loved Quidditch and no one expected him to enjoy History of Magic.

When he arrived at the common room, he found Hermione sitting in front of the fire, frowning over a disk of bright gold metal. She looked up at the sound of the Fat Lady's portrait swinging shut and frowned at him.

"I wasn't hungry," he explained.

Hermione gave him an odd look, but just said, "Well, since you weren't at the DA meeting, you can help me with this."

Ron, not in a mood to argue, just nodded and sat down next to her. He lifted one of the thin, wooden disks from the pile on the table set to work casting the glamour to make it look and feel like a Galleon. They wouldn't stand up to the anti-forgery wards on any cash register, but they didn't have to. They just had to be convincing enough that if Professor Stanwood or a Slytherin saw one, they wouldn't get suspicious.

"How many of these do we have to make?" Ron asked as he worked.

"There are 209 students in Dumbledore's Army right now, plus 17 teachers—not counting Professor Stanwood, of course—is 226. So far, we've got about 71 made—including the nine I've made so far—which leaves 155."

"And it took us how long to make the 71 we've got so far?" Ron asked, feeling slightly daunted.

"Not counting the ones left over from last year, we've made 48 in the past two weeks."

"It'll be summer by the time we finish all of these," Ron complained.

Hermione just shrugged.

A/N: Stars-n-moons91: Action will come later... quite possibly much later, depending on how things go. Sorry... I'll try not to make it take too long. The spiders will be explained eventually (or not...). No promises (cause I'll prolly break them). Kashiaga: Thanks :P Princess Orli: Thanks And Orange: Has abandoned me for the next few week, leaving me only with the scraps of characterization and plot we've already worked out. So things might be taking longer now, since I've got to brainstorm and edit all on my own. : (