Title: The Spinning World: I Will Trust Authority

Author: Hans Bekhart

Rating: PG-13

Summary:In the sequelto Casualties of War, Harry and Draco's fifth year at Hogwarts has begun, and they must try to rebuild the lives they used to lead. In which Sirius has drunken conversations, Slytherins get wet, naked and touch each other, and Harry's mistake gets found out. (Harry/Draco, Remus/Sirius, others)
Notes: Super thanks to shored and seaoftethys for beta'ing and an additional thanks to shored for the use of her Teeny Tweedlebugs. This chapter was hard for me because I hate writing Gryffindors, so I hope that part ok. Feedback and reviews are very much appreciated.

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Ginny found Hermione in the library, buried deep within musty textbooks, surrounded by silence and Ravenclaws. Professor Sinistra had assigned work dealing with fortune-telling, and a short while ago Terry Boot had passed Hermione an absolutely fascinating book on Chinese face reading with a tiny smile that made Hermione forgive him for what he said about her in Ancient Runes some weeks ago.

Ginny had come up behind her and tapped Hermione on the shoulder twice before she noticed, and when she glanced up at Ginny's face she thought: there's a bump to the top of her nose, that means she's strong-willed but won't be lucky in love, and the little groove beneath her nose is very defined, that means a strong sexual energy before she actually focused on her. Her normally cheerful, obstinate features were flushed and her hair was disheveled

"Ginny?" Hermione asked, startled. "Are you alright?"

She was aware of the eyes of her study group following them as Ginny led her behind a stack of books and into a corner, her jaw lowered and her eyebrows knitted together. "What's happened, Ginny? You look awful," Hermione said, and Ginny glanced up at her and then away, scowling. "Has something happened?" she asked, worriedly.

"Oh, Hermione, you are never going to believe ... Harry, Harry and I -- oh Merlin, Hermione. It was awful."

The next person to hear was Parvati Patil, who had come to the library for a book on ancient Greek mythology and came away with the juicy news that Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley had spent a significant amount of time on top of the Quidditch stands and they hadn't been just watching the sun set, if you know what I mean. Parvati carried the news not only to the Gryffindor House but told it to her sister as well, and from there it spread to the upper echelon of Ravenclaw. Each time the story was told it shifted beneath the teller's tongue, new details adding and subtracting themselves so that by the time it reached the ears of Slytherin house it was dead certain that Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley had had sex in the Quidditch commentators box.

But it would take nearly a week for that to happen, and by the time a small scrap of a Slytherin named Graham Pritchard overheard two Hufflepuffs discussing the incident, Harry still hadn't told Draco what actually had happened in the Quidditch stands, the day of their fight.

And as these things usually go, Dean Thomas hadn't heard about it, either.

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"Isn't it funny," Sirius said to the world at large, "how you can know someone inside and out, and then find out you didn't know them at all?" He took another taste of the bottle for emphasis, shaking it lightly as he brought it back to his side to confirm that there was still liquid inside. Crumpled in his other hand was a long roll of parchment that stuck out between his fingers. He had left a trail of carnage from the attic on downwards, but the grass beneath his bony frame was clear of everything except for a shining bit of dark glass here and there.

Sirius was barefoot in the sunlight, hunched over his knees by the lavender bushes. He hadn't worked on the wards that Remus had used to keep his home warm and safe, but Snape had been making the odd repair here and there. Sirius had watched Snape work for hours the last time he had been there, pacing around the outlines of the property, searching for the traces of magic that still lingered in every blade of grass and every clod of dirt. He had resurrected Remus' work as though he were conducting a symphony, drawing the neglected threads out of the ground and binding the bass notes of the old spells with his own complex charms, bending it to his needs. The sunlight had returned, blocking out the snow that blanketed the surrounding countryside, and the Dingwall Gins had drawn in close to the house, annoying Sirius in the night with their noise.

Sirius closed his eyes and tipped his head back, fighting a rather giddy urge to simply fold himself over into the grass and sleep. The sun was bright against the back of his eyelids and he rolled his head from side to side, enjoying the feeling. "I don't think I knew you at all, you bastard," he announced brightly. "Every time I get to thinking that I've got you figured out, that you don't have any secrets I don't know about, you pull the curtain away and --"

He broke off abruptly, frowning at his fist and the letter tucked inside of it, before bursting into surprised giggles. "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!" he crowed. "Muggles. Muggles and their idea of magic -- !"

There was a step on the grass behind him. He didn't turn, and after a moment a shadow slipped over him. "I would have thought Lupin's larder would be exhausted by this point," Snape said dryly. "Or was he as much of a drunkard as you seem to be?"

"Nah," Sirius said, opening his eyes and squinting out over the pond. "I apparated to the nearest town. It's all Muggle and probably wasn't electrified more than twenty years ago, so I've been able to walk around and get things at the pub without them recognising me."

"That is what you do with your hard-won freedom, is it?" Snape mused. "Buying whisky. I'm sure you're very proud of what you're making of your life."

"If I was sober," Sirius said clearly, "I think I'd hex your face off. Not all of it, but little strips of it, just a bit at a time. Maybe I'd turn you into one of those Gins and take you back to Hogwarts, give you to the first years for a pet. Now that -- that would make me proud. I'd be able to die a happy, if verrrry drunk, man." He giggled and leaned back on his hands, still not looking at Snape. "Now shut your mouth, Snivellius. I'm having a conversation."

Snape lifted an eyebrow and surveyed the landscape, empty even of the Farmhouse's bovine inhabitants, but said nothing. Sirius resumed speaking.

"I never," he said, lifting his chin, "thought you had some sort of return to virginity during -- those years (I didn't, Snivellius, and anyway we hadn't much claim on each other after Hogwarts, but I expect you know that, you grubby little snake.) but you never said anything. What was I supposed to think? Was I supposed to ask?"

"What is in your hand, Black?" Snape asked coolly.

"It's a letter," Sirius pronounced. "Took me a bloody long time to remember the translating charms to work it out, I'll tell you. Wouldn't have ever known what language it was except he mentioned living in Hong Kong once." Sirius tossed the parchment over his shoulder in Snape's general direction. Snape retrieved it from the ground and smoothed the paper over his knee thoughtfully.

"It's Chinese, as any fool can tell," he said dryly. "Is that so far beyond you?"

Sirius chuckled. "Did Remus ever make anything that simple? It's something called guwen. He had a book about it in the same box I found it in. It hasn't been in use since the Han dynasty, meaning roughly two thousand bloody years. Why did he translate his little love letter into a form of Chinese that hasn't been used in roughly two thousand bloody years, when he was living all by himself anyway, when all he apparently did with it after turning it completely unreadable was stick it into a very small box in the attic?" He paused to consider the question. "Well. Well -- if you can figure it out -- you'd be a better man than I, which I --"

He subsided into quiet without finishing the sentence, his chin tipped thoughtfully towards the sky.

"It's a love letter?" Snape asked, finally. He tapped the parchment with his wand and watched the spindly Chinese characters twist themselves into modern baihua and from there into English. The more ... poetic elements of the letter seemed to have been lost with his translation charms, but the intent was plain enough.

Snape let out a tight, agonized breath and then forced another into his lungs. He wasn't surprised; over the course of his correspondence with Lupin in the months after his capture, the werewolf had hinted at a colourful life, and if the contents of his will had shown nothing else, it had revealed Lupin to be ... uncomfortably unpredictable.

Snape bent his head over the letter, studying it with a ruthless gaze. Even though he had possessed an unsettlingly poetic bent when he was young, his knowledge of words that would burn the page they were written on was strictly anecdotal. If he divorced himself from the knowledge of who had sent the letter -- and who had received it --

He looked up when Black spoke, haltingly, his words a drunken lilt.

"I just wish," Black said slowly. "I just wish that I had known enough to ask. I didn't even know ... all of the things I didn't know."

And now it's too late, he didn't add. Snape heard it anyway.

Hail fell heedlessly against the barrier of the Farmhouse, glancing angrily off the invisible wards. Behind them, in the rambling stone of the house, secrets were hidden away in the chinks of the walls, in dusty boxes that hadn't been opened since they had been young and whole.

Snape sighed, and stood. "Come on, Black," he said, his voice a parody of its normal languid tone. "This drunken self-pity is boring and pointless. I'm not about to make you dinner, but I can Floo to Hogwarts for an antidote to the no doubt horrendous hangover you'll have in the morning."

Black chuckled. "Not leaving me to suffer in agony, Snivellus?" he asked. The question, strangely, seemed honestly curious. Snape made no reply, but stepped in front of Black and held out a hand.

Black turned empty grey eyes to Snape, the pain in them as obvious as the memories that poured from his brain, offering themselves up as though Black knew. Knew that Snape was stealing them away to nurse in the privacy of his rooms, exactly as Black himself had been nursing the bottle. Snape hesitated, nearly withdrew his hand and then Black had grasped it, hauling himself onto unsteady legs before clapping a hand onto Snape's shoulder as though they were friends.

Black grinned at Snape, heedless of the scowl directed at him. His hand on Snape's shoulder was heavy, but Snape was frozen beneath Black's gaze and the pictures that fluttered behind his eyes. They stayed that way for a long moment before Sirius pulled away, grinning.

"Ho ho ho to the bottle I go," he sang as he weaved towards the Farmhouse. "To heal my heart and drown my woe ..."

Snape stared down at the bottles beneath his feet, at the parchment still grasped loosely in his other hand. He glanced upwards, irritated at the sky and the fact that he was about to follow Sirius Black inside and try to force the bastard into some form of sobriety, before Floo'ing back to Hogwarts.

Snape let Remus' letter fall from his hand and turned his footsteps towards his new home.

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"You know," Draco said conversationally, tugging his pajama top over his head, "I've never really apologised for anything before. It's quite nice."

Theo glanced over to him and then away as bottoms followed top and Draco wandered, naked, into the brightness of the Slytherin showers. There were two scars, deeper and paler than the rest, that came down from his shoulder blades, twining and crossing the others, and joined together just above the swell of Draco's bottom. Theo's gaze traced these lines and glanced away guiltily when Vincent and Gregory stumbled into the room, rubbing their eyes. They nodded to Theo and shucked their clothes. The three of them followed Draco to the showers.

It was bright inside the Slytherin showers, brighter than the rest of the House's space beneath the dungeons. It was long and cool and the stones beneath their feet and reaching up the walls were a pale, shimmering green. Here, as indeed in most of the places that Slytherin had set his hand to, snakes were the obvious decorating motif; their coils ran round the piping and up to spit hot water from their mouths. Salazar himself could be glimpsed in the mosaic on the eastern wall, his flowing hair and beard intertwined with sea creatures beyond all description. When they were eleven, Draco and his friends had found the snake shower heads absolutely hilarious, but they were far more blasé about them these days.

Draco was already slick and wet beneath a spray of water along the western wall. He didn't glance up as Gregory and Vincent settled onto his left side, and Theo on the right. The boys showered quietly, grunts passing as conversation flowing between Vincent and Greg, still too sleepy for form coherent sentences. Draco's eyes were closed and a small smile lifted one corner of his mouth, and Theo's glance caught there, surreptitiously.

"I actually said sorry to Potter the other day," Draco said cheerfully as he opened his eyes, picking up the thread of conversation as though there hadn't been a pause. "You know, I had never really thought of doing that before?"

"What have you been doing, then?" Theo asked, knowing the answer. "Stomping your feet and pouting until you get your way?"

Draco sneered eloquently at him, but his eyes were dancing. Something uncomfortable and nameless twisted in Theo's gut, and he frowned and reached for the shampoo, squeezing it out over his hand and pointedly ignoring Draco, who prattled on as though he had a willing and eager audience.

Theo retreated inside himself, watching the heavy fall of water onto his stomach with a fixed attention. He pulled his thoughts away from Draco with an effort and for a short while was actually able to clear his mind of everything that had troubled it lately. It didn't last, of course; when he was younger he had been able to push everything away from himself, but that talent had been irritatingly absent lately, just when he needed it most. Gregory hadn't been the only Slytherin to get letters from home.

Blaise wandered over to them and passed his fingers over Draco's hair. "Are you going to cut it again?" he asked, his mouth twisted as he tried to get enough of a grip to tug on the short strands.

Draco's hand came up without pause to bat Blaise away. "I might," he said loftily. "It looks quite good on me, doesn't it?" He leaned over and snatched the soap out of Theo's hands as the taller boy was soaping his chest, blithely ignoring the glare shot at him.

"You look like a boy, at least," Blaise observed. "You should get Daphne to help you cut this all off or grow it back to normal, it looks stupid at this length." He draped his arm around Draco's narrow shoulders and craned his head to the side, dark fingers ruffling at the soft hair in front of Draco's ear before pressing a quick kiss to the side of Draco's head and moving off again.

Theo grabbed the soap back from Draco when his head turned to follow Blaise. "Do you think I should cut my hair, Theo?" Draco asked, but Theo's attention was far away.

Theo's father, to the wizarding world at large, was on the run along with several other Death Eaters and the Dark Lord himself. Theo knew better; most of them were holed up in a village called Little Hangleton, in an uncomfortably ancient property that had one belonged to a wizarding family that had died out some generations ago. He didn't know what they were doing; Theo's father never said directly, giving vague mentions instead of a plan that would cripple their enemies.

Theodore Nott was far more clever than most of his dorm mates, and had a far clearer idea of what their fathers got up to when they put on those black hoods. His father had never shielded him, like Draco's father had, never cloaked his doings in a guise of revolutionary language. Theodore Nott had had no trouble believing that his father could rape a fifteen year old girl while one of his friends held her down and another pulled her fingernails out one by one with his wand. It wasn't something that his father had confirmed and it wasn't based on anything Draco had ever said, but that was the image that replayed itself in Theo's mind whenever he let his guard down, his brain caught by endless memories of Pansy Parkinson painting her fingernails by the fire in the Slytherin common room.

Draco called his name again, more pointedly, and Theo's head snapped up. Draco's head was cocked towards him, his face curious, a ferret testing the air. Even his hands were up against his chest, curled protectively around the shampoo like it was a bit of fruit or something, and Theo snickered. He shook his head when Draco lifted an eyebrow at him and turned off his shower. "I'm clean and so are you," he said to Draco. "Come on, I'm hungry."

Draco insisted on a moment to make sure he'd gotten all the soap out of his ears before trailing tamely after Theo. He snagged a towel from the changing room and wrapped it around his waist before vanishing back to their room, but Theo took his time and dried himself carefully. More bodies passed in and out of the room on their way to the showers or returning, damp and quieted from the hot water. Theo struggled against his thoughts. He stood apart from his classmates, even more than usual; he had always been aloof, but now he felt as if his back would break beneath all of the memories that crowded his mind.

It was nearly time for breakfast when he emerged from the showers to find that people were waiting for him. Millicent Bulstrode had collared a first year, dwarfed by her bulky frame, and narrowed her eyes when she saw Theo emerge. "Took you long enough," she said, and went on without waiting for a response. "I think we have a problem."

Theo looked at the first year, mystified, and Millicent pushed him forward. "Go on, Pritchard. Tell him what you told me."

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I will trust authority.

The water of the lake was cool on Daphne's hand. Every muscle in her body wanted to curl around itself, and so she laid herself flat on her belly, chin propped against the back of her other hand, determinedly stretching her ankles and knees out until they popped in protest. The grass was chill and damp against her body, but she didn't cast any Charms to protect herself from the mud and the rainwater.

I will trust authority.

The line stretched red across the back of her hand, scabbed over with thin dark tissue. It itched horribly. Eight days down, six to go. Every night as dusk fell, her dinner would start to twist unhappily in her stomach, her entire body preparing itself to step into that office and take a knife to the back of her hand again. It would scar pink, paler than any other skin on her body, and anybody would be able to see it, read it and know.

But nobody, she thought, would ever be able to look at those pink lines and read the way her palms got damp as she climbed endless stairs towards Umbridge, how she had cried for hours after that first shocking detention. Eventually, all that those lines would be was a mute judgment.

There was something inside Daphne that was hardening, calcifying around the bone of grief that she had been carrying inside of herself since term began. It curled around her heart -- Pansy had always teased her about her soft heart, marveling that anybody so sensitive should choose Slytherin -- bracketing it, bringing her spine straighter until the night before, when she had been able to look Umbridge in the face as she set quill to paper.

I will trust authority.

The gramophone was always playing in the Slytherin common room these days, Draco inexplicably generous where he had never before been one for sharing. The older students huddled around it after classes, pushing for the privilege of selecting the next record. Slowly, they had begun to learn the words to the albums played most often, growing familiar enough with their limited library that an entire chorus of voices could go up to debate the merits of Sarah Vaughn against Billie Holiday, and it was an easy choice to decide which of their six Tom Waits albums would best match the general mood.

As she lay by the lakeside, her hand drifting lazily below the surface of the water, Daphne sang quietly to herself. She had a good voice, not a great one, with a tendency to go a little flat. The song she sang was one of those that had been widely adopted by the Slytherins; it was a slow song, despite its driving drumbeat, within her range but rather ill-suited to her voice. The first time they'd heard the song, Draco had slid the album out of its all-white cover with reverence and forbidden everybody from touching it, although the rule had since been blithely ignored. It was a song that Daphne had set the needle to again and again, impatient with the slow growth of strength within her, curling up in the long, sagging couch nearest to the gramophone.

Slytherin House had lived in blithe ignorance of Muggle customs, Muggle dress but rock and roll had slipped through their defences, as it usually does.

Daphne's eyes drifted to her watch, which had slipped down her plump arm to dip cautiously into the lake. Nearly time to head in for dinner and from there to her detention, and Merlin knew that she did, in fact, want a revolution.

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Draco sneezed when he stepped into the library, but it didn't wipe the grin from his face. Madam Pince lifted her bony neck from the tome she was bent over and glared at him, and Draco hurriedly stepped past her, escaping down an unsteady aisle full of luridly coloured books. He made a beeline towards the back of the vast library, where the aisles narrowed and the books on the shelves started to smell a bit like soggy pastries. Terry was usually to be found there when one was looking for him, perusing some subject under a single corona of light that lit up the dust motes settled in his brown hair. Sometimes there were other students with him, part of the study group that Terry had formed some time ago (Granger was a part of it, although Draco forgave Terry for that; the two of them had developed an affable friendship years ago when Draco had discovered that although Terry wouldn't allow him to copy homework, he was only too happy to be sent off to research any random fancy, of which Draco had many.) but more often Terry was alone.

Today, he was accompanied by an untidy blonde head, which looked up when Draco approached and shook back a pair of absurd earrings that had fish dangling from them, their blue, bulging eyes an unsettling mirror of her own. "Hello, Loony," Draco greeted.

Luna Lovegood beamed at him. "Hi, Draco."

"Hi, Draco," Terry echoed. He gestured to a seat across from him, which Draco accepted before turning to Luna.

"Loony," he said seriously, "when I walked by Madam Pince today, I think I saw her frown sloping a bit on one side. It would be an attack of Teeny Tweedlebugs, burrowing into the line between her eyebrows. You should go and warn her of the danger she faces."

Luna stood and gathered her things. "Thank you, Draco," she said. "I hope I can catch one of them before her hair falls out and they disappear -- my father has been looking for a good specimen of Tweedlebug."

"So has mine," Draco agreed.

After Luna had taken her leave, Draco turned to Terry -- who had no clue that the only thing Draco's father had done recently was molder in the form that the Order of the Phoenix had transfigured him into -- and rubbed his hands together briskly. "What do you have for me then, Boot?"

"More on the bones of the spell, the casting of it. And some bad news. Which do you want first?"

"I hate bad news," Draco said promptly. "Give me the brainy things first."

Once Draco had put him onto the scent of the red wolf, Terry had worried ceaselessly at it. Undaunted by the fact that there didn't seem to be any direct references to the spell that had saved Harry and Draco's lives, Terry had started to compile the indirect references, updating Draco every week or so on his progress. In this way, they had uncovered the mysterious hours that Remus must have spent on a potion, imagined the nights he must have crept silently from the bed he shared with Sirius to the kitchen, to croon incantations over its bubbling surface. Draco's mind had supplied him with a strangely vivid picture of this: Remus' face lit from the potion below his chin as it stirred it, each ingredient he added a confirmation of the death he felt coming for him, his eyes steady and content. After he had consumed his labour of love, it would have eaten away at him from the inside out for three days, loosening away bits of his soul. This was what Draco had seen that day that Remus had performed what only seemed like a simple spell, tugging pieces of himself out of his chest in thick crimson threads and casting it over them.

"There is a way," Terry said slowly, excitement lighting up his face, "to call the soul back."

Draco's heart leapt into his throat. "What?" he said frantically. "How?"

Terry shook his head. "I'm not sure," he said mournfully. "The book wasn't clear on that point. And it didn't specify whether you can bring back the guardian, or the person's soul, or the person themselves. So whether you could actually resurrect Professor Lupin in some form -- I'm not sure. I really want to get a hold of this other book but Madam Pince told me --"

"What the hell did the book say, if it didn't tell you how to recall the soul, then?" Draco interrupted, aggravated, and then held up a hand. "If there's some annoyingly long story involved, I don't want to hear about it."

Terry frowned reproachfully. "You asked," he said. "Anyway, during the Norman Conquest there was this wizard whose --"

"Are you getting to the point soon? It's nearly dinnertime and I'd like to hear the end of this before I die of starvation," Draco said, and Terry pushed him, playfully. "All right, tell your stupid story. You can feed me bits of paper to stave off death until you finish, and then you can carry me on your back into the Great Hall and hand-feed me until I recover my --"

A cry of relief cut Draco's posturing off and made both of them jump. Millicent Bulstrode, closely followed by Theo Nott, made her way to the table and rested her thick hands on its scratched surface. "We've been looking all over for you," she said.

"What?" Draco said, his eyebrows raised. "Why have you been looking for me? If Greg or Vince have gotten lost again, Potter's got this brilliant map that shows --"

"It's about Potter," Theo said flatly.

Draco trailed off in mid sentence, blinking up at Theo. Absurdly, he wanted to ask if Harry was all right, if he had been hurt or something. He licked his lips. "Well?" he asked. "Are you going to tell me what he's done now?"

Theo and Millicent glanced towards Terry, who looked rather unnerved. Draco shook his head. "Terry's fine. What's Potter done?"

There was another beat of silence as Theo and Millicent exchanged glances. Draco didn't know whether to be annoyed or terrified; he'd never known either of them to be anything but brutally forthcoming. Theo was the one who spoke.

"Potter fucked Ginny Weasley on the Quidditch stands." His voice was flat, and it fell with surprising quiet into the dark space.

Terry giggled. "Was that what that was about?" he asked, grinning. "Ginny came into the library looking for Hermione about a week ago, looking all disheveled. They went behind a book stack and I went back to reading, but I did sort of wonder. She didn't look very happy, though -- Ginny, rather. I mean, she always looks sort of sour, but --"

Draco stood suddenly, awkwardly, hitting his hip on the lip of the table. He winced, his eyes focused on nothing.

"Draco?" Terry asked. "Are you all right?" Millicent glowered silently off into middle ground. Theo's eyes were focused on Draco. "Draco? What's the --" Terry's mouth closed with an audible click of his teeth, his eyes widening as understanding dawned on him.

There was a coldness in Draco's belly, a yawning numbness that crept up the sides of his cheeks and spread down into his fingertips. He looked to Theo, searching his friend's face for something, something to show that it wasn't true. Somewhere in the back of his mind he felt incredibly, amazingly stupid.

"I d --" he said, and then stopped. Tried again, glancing down at his dead arm as it tried to curl into a fist at his side. "I. He'll --"

"Everyone's going to the Great Hall for dinner," Theo said quietly. Draco nodded.

He paused when Terry blurted out his name, one hand braced on the corner of a bookshelf, Theo and Millicent behind him. Terry faltered, and Draco turned around to look at him, eyes glazed. "Draco, I forgot to tell you the bad news I had ... not that you might want to hear it now but -- I asked Professor Flitwick and he thinks he knows of one book that explains everything about the Tutela charm -- but Professor Snape has it. He borrowed it from Dumbledore during the summer, and he hasn't given it back. He might have given it to Lupin or taken it back after ..."

A harsh bark of laughter escaped Draco, and he clapped a hand over his mouth to stifle it, the curve of his spine bending and heaving. Theo's arm went around his shoulders but Draco shrugged him off, straightening and giving a silent, wry nod to Terry before the three Slytherins passed from the library and into the halls.

The way was thronged with chattering students, eddying around them as they cut through the stone courtyard, ducking beneath spreading branches that shuddered under a cold rain. They walked quickly, Theo and Millicent mismatched bookends flanking him, occupying the spots that Vincent and Gregory usually held.

The voices of the people around him swallowed all thought, and it was with a curious detachment that Draco watched his own anger swell, both hands stretching to their full length, fingers spreading as their numbness faded to a black hatred. He welcomed it, gave it all of his attention as one foot mechanically went in front of the other; it stripped away the lingering traces of hooded figures standing in a ring within the forest, cleared the smell of burned flesh from his nose. As they drew close to the Great Hall, the crowds thickened around them, milling around the great doors leading to the Hall. Gregory and Vincent weren't there to push people out of the way for Draco, but Millicent's foreboding stare accomplished the task almost as quickly.

Gryffindor table was furthest away from the doors, furthest away from Slytherin, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff standing as barriers between the two. The first thing that Draco spotted was Ron Weasley, whose copper hair was a bright spot between one frizzy brown head and one unruly black one. Weasley's sister was further up the table, facing towards Harry and therefore towards Draco, her sullen face turned towards her empty plate.

Dean Thomas and Seamus Finnigan, seated across from Harry and his cronies, looked up as Draco approached, but it wasn't until Draco clawed a hand into the neck of Harry's robes and yanked him backwards that the others took any notice.

"Was it good for you, Potter?" he spat into Harry's upturned face. "Was it worth it?"

Harry, who had started to smile after his first surprised gasp, paled. Up and down the lengths of the table, faces began to turn towards them. Gryffindor was curious but not overly surprised; most of them had been skeptical of this new experiment in inter-House relations and had been waiting for the two former enemies to come to blows for weeks.

"Go on," Draco hissed, leaning close. "Tell me that it's not what I think. Tell me that I don't understand."

Harry's mouth opened and closed soundlessly, but Weasley and Granger more than made up for his silence. Weasley grabbed Draco's arm and jerked him away, sending Draco staggering back. Millicent caught him, saving Draco from an undignified fall into the table behind them.

"Get away from Harry, you monster!" Granger screeched.

Draco straightened with dignity, smoothing the collar of his robes down. He didn't look at Harry when the other boy spoke, his voice ashamed: "Draco, I'm sorry."

Draco flushed, a fresh spasm of humiliation burning in his chest. His eyes flicked up, not to Harry, but across the table to Dean Thomas. "Thomas," he said loudly, so that his voice would carry down the table, "have you heard that you've been getting Potter's sloppy seconds these days?"

Thomas' eyes widened, and his head jerked to the side to find Ginny Weasley, who pushed herself away from the table abruptly and fled the room. Draco watched sympathetically as Thomas went after her. Harry's eyes were hard, his hands raised to warn off his friends. "Why did you do that?" he said hotly.

Draco snorted. "Better that he know, wouldn't you think?"

"I was going to tell you," Harry said in a low voice.

"Oh, I'm sure," Draco scoffed. "That would have been nicer than finding out a week after everyone else at Hogwarts. Did you forget? That test in Care of Magical Creatures put you off your stride? Say something, Potter! The least you can do is fight for it!"

He was dimly aware that all heads in the Great Hall had turned towards them, mouths open or whispering busily. Millicent shifted uneasily beside him, unused to being so exposed.

"It was you --" Harry stopped, glanced around with hooded eyes. "Come on, we can't talk here, everybody's watching --"

He rose to his knees onto the bench and reached for Draco, and when Draco pushed him Harry fell hard, his elbow landing on the corner of a dish and skidding it across the table. Granger gasped.

"Don't you ever, ever," Draco growled, "come near me again."

He stormed from the silent hall, drawing his friends behind him, and nobody followed them.

-

-

They had been yelling for a while now, but it kept coming back to two things. With Hermione, it was disgust: how could you sleep with Draco Malfoy of all people? With Ron, it was betrayal: how could you not tell us? Harry buried his face in his hands and tried to decide which one was worse.

At the moment, it was Ron's turn to yell a bit. Hermione sat on Ron's bed, her arms folded across her chest, her face furrowed as though she was replaying hundreds of conversations between Harry and Draco in her mind, trying to uncover how she could possibly have missed something like this. Ron was on his feet, hands clenched at his sides, his freckles invisible through the flush on his face. Neville, inexplicably, had followed them back to the privacy of their rooms and was sitting next to Hermione with a serious expression on his face.

"Draco fucking Malfoy!" Ron yelled. "I guess I should be glad -- if you're seeing that arsehole, at least it's not like you've really been friends with such a slimy --"

"We are really friends!" Harry shouted back, a small voice in the back of his head keeping him from adding that Draco had been a better friend than either of them lately.

"Oh, so you're friends with my sister then, too?" Ron sneered.

"No!"

Either answer would have been dangerous. Ron's face darkened. "Oh, you think you're too good for Ginny? What's wrong with her? Not man enough for you?"

Hermione joined back in before Harry could retort that yes, actually, that was exactly what the problem had been. Her voice overrode the uncomfortable churning of feelings in the pit of Harry's belly, the sudden bright need to see Draco and make everything ok again. He took a deep breath and tried to remember what Draco had told him, that wizards didn't have the same sort of ... feelings about gay people that Muggles did. He glanced over at Neville and was reassured to see that the other boy didn't look angry or disgusted. Ron and Hermione, however, were more than enough of both.

"I don't know what makes you believe that you can trust Malfoy," Hermione said, "but Malfoy has never been anything but a bossy, overbearing sneak and I know that he has some sort of plan up his sleeve to get back in favour with his father's crowd."

Harry snorted. "You mean the crowd that beat him almost to death and lit his best friend on fire? What makes you think they'd want anything to do with him, even if he did still want to be a Death Eater? Do you think they light girls on fire just for fun, as a test to make sure he really wants to follow Voldemort?" He bit down on reminding Hermione that murdering one of Voldemort's top followers -- and Draco's own father -- was probably not the way to endear himself to the Death Eaters.

"Even if he's not allied with the You-Know-Who anymore," Hermione said stubbornly, "he's still up to no good, mark my words."

"When has Malfoy ever been up to any good?" Ron snorted. "I should have known he had such -- such designs on your virtue. I bet this is what he wanted all along! The whole time he's been pretending to be your enemy he's really wanted to -- to lead you down a path of sin and iniquity!"

Harry stared at Ron, his mouth open. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Look, Harry," Hermione broke in, throwing an irritated glance towards Ron, "That may be a bit of an exaggeration but the point is, Malfoy is bad news and there's no arguing around that, right? Whatever you think is, you know, between the two of you," here Ron made a noise of horror, "it isn't real. Please, think sensibly, Harry."

"I have been!" Harry shouted. "It's you two who have these weird theories and absolutely no idea what you're talking about!"

"We don't know because you didn't tell us!" Ron shouted back. "We didn't hear one bloody word about you and your boyfriend -- that's a nice way to treat your friends, I don't think!"

"That's because you wouldn't have understood! It would have been exactly like this, with you sounding like your mum and her scarlet women and Hermione treating this -- this thing like it's just like figuring out who the Heir of Slytherin was but it's not like that at all! It's --" He fumbled for the right words for long minutes, his hands raised as though he could pluck them from the air.

"I don't want to hear about it," Ron said angrily. "I don't want to know what you get up to with that weasel in your free time."

"Then LEAVE ME ALONE!" Harry bellowed. "GET OUT OF HERE AND LEAVE ME ALONE! I'm sick of all of this!"

The argument petered out quickly, both sides refusing to be budged. Ron threatened on behalf of his sister, swore that he'd put Malfoy in his place. Hermione pleaded for reason and advocated a vast, sexually-driven conspiracy to turn Harry over to Voldemort. Eventually they both left in disgust, and Harry flung himself down on his bed and prepared for a prolonged sulk. He looked at Neville with a hostile eye, wishing that the other boy would take the hint and leave him in peace. Neville showed no signs of leaving, but fidgeted awkwardly.

"What, Neville?" Harry said at last. "You want to tell me what an idiot I've been too?"

Neville shook his head. "What, then?" Harry said aggressively. "I thought that wizards weren't supposed to care about ... stuff like that?"

Neville frowned. "Stuff like what?" he asked, puzzled.

Harry shifted uncomfortably. "You know."

"I don't think Ron really cares about that part," Neville said thoughtfully.

Harry raised an eyebrow. "He said that Draco was leading me down a path of sin and iniquity."

Neville laughed. "Isn't it more about, you know, that it's Malfoy? Maybe he's just jealous."

"Of Malfoy?" Harry squeaked.

Neville blushed, but went on resolutely. "No! No, no. Just that you're ... doing things and he isn't."

Harry thought about that, turning it around in his brain. "Not that that matters anymore," he said after a while, bitterly. "Draco hates me now."

"Are you going to go after him?" Neville asked softly.

Harry shook his head, mutely, staring at his feet. He had felt so ashamed over the past week. He had, guiltily, taken to avoiding Draco, certain each time he saw him that Draco would instantly know. Days had passed and Draco had remained blissfully unaware of what Harry had done, but Harry's guts cramped painfully whenever he thought of it, and it had only gotten worse as the week had worn on. Some little part of him was relieved to have it all out in the open, even though Draco's reaction had been the worst Harry could imagine, short of physical violence. Most of him, however, was only sickened: by what he'd said and done to all of his friends, by the thought that everybody would be talking now about how Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy were shirt lifters together. Everybody would know.

"Neville, you ... you don't hate me or think it's disgusting or anything, right?" Harry asked, wincing.

Neville smiled and shook his head.

They sat quietly for some time before they heard a footfall on the stair and looked up to see Seamus' sandy head peering around the door frame. He looked relieved to see that nobody was yelling, and came in without being invited and sat down across from Harry.

"Well," he said casually. "This is all a bit of a mess, isn't it?"

Harry lifted his head and glared at Seamus, who took it in stride. "It's all over the castle now, Harry," he continued. "Everybody's talkin' about it, but I don't think that most of 'em have figured out the thing about you and Draco being ..."

"Poofs?" Harry said sourly.

Seamus shrugged. "Hardly anybody actually heard what Malfoy said to you, they just know it has something to do with Ginny, so they're all makin' up their own reasons for it. Dean's pretty angry, though."

"Did they break up?" Neville asked.

Seamus nodded, his eyebrows high. "Only took a minute or two. Dean'd heard about enough and once he got the story out of Ginny he wanted nothing to do with it. I steered him outside, told him he should go over to the other side of the lake and scream for a bit. I don't think he's that angry with you though, Harry."

Harry stared unhappily at the ground. "Draco is, though." The confession forced itself unwillingly from his mouth. Harry licked his lips. "Is he ... are people talking about him too?"

"Not really," Seamus said.

"I guess people expect Malfoy to be a bit odd," Neville said. "He's always been a bit out there, hasn't he? And he has seemed to have a hard time of it this term."

Harry stared at his hands. Neville and Seamus stared openly at him, waiting for some signal, some sort of -- what? Harry didn't know. He felt their eyes on his bowed head, their expectations only another weight added to everything else that had happened that day.

Seamus sighed and reached across the beds to pat Harry on the shoulder. "I've talked the house elves into making pies and things for me any time, and they'll slip us some firewhiskey if we ask really nice. How about it?"

Harry glanced up at him, forcing a smile onto his face. "Do you think they'll make lemon cake?"

"Only one way to find out," Seamus said, grinning.

-

-

They curled themselves around him in layers, scattering across the dungeons. Blaise, disassociated, glowering in the common room with Millicent. Daphne and Tracey sitting by the silent gramophone, risking glances over their shoulders, late arrivals to the upset in the Hall. Theo, Vincent and Gregory in the fifth year dorms, Theo on his own bed, Vincent in his and Greg sitting at the foot of Draco's, his hand cupped around Draco's ankle. Draco was quiet now, although when they had followed him back to their room he had flung himself on the bed and drawn his knees up to his chest and cried, hard. Theo had sat with him until Gregory and Vincent, who had come late to dinner and entirely missed the scene between Harry and Draco, had arrived in a state of panic.

They had let Draco cry himself out, messily, his face red and puffy, offering him one of Blaise's towels to wipe his nose on. After a while, Theo had tried to get Draco to talk, tried to hold his friend up or just hold him, but Draco had shaken his head and pushed Theo away.

When you've crawled up from the depths of your own mind and found a sort of balance against the grind of daily life, it's easy to believe that when your tenuous hold on peace is shaken, it has all been based on a lie that was compounded again and again until it's impossible to tell where the lie began and ended. It's wrapped itself so deeply around you that it would be easier to think that all of that happiness and joy that you've struggled for is just as false, and you're that much more of an idiot for having bought into it all.

The scabs that Draco had built up over the events of his summer tore away painfully, leaving a wound as raw and weeping as his hand had been. When he cried, it wracked his entire body, but it came without words or explanations, the hurt going deeper than Harry, than Remus -- deeper than his father and Pansy. And so Draco pushed Theo away, and when he got his legs under him, he went to the foot of his bed and opened his trunk. Gregory and Vincent watched him as he dug within it and drew something out in his fist. Draco glanced at Greg from under his eyelashes as he laid back down on his side, but he didn't say anything. He tucked the seashell that he took from Remus' house against his ear, and waited for the sound of the ocean to drown out all thoughts.