Make Me Scene

by Celestial-Dragon

Crackficish. Harry spends a summer holiday in America and reorganizes his priorities. How will his friends, and not so friends, react to the reinvented Boy Who Lived?

3. Chapter 3

Title: Make Me Scene
Pairing: HD, past H/OC, a bit of R/Hr
Warnings: emo!Harry, slash, crackfic-ish, AU sixth year.
Disclaimer: Harry Potter and all things such related are copyright J.K. Rowling. I own nothing, am making no profit, and mean no harm by spinning my amusing little tales. I'm but a lowly student low on the pocket change, so please don't feel offended.

This installment is dedicated to my friend Jeffy and his contempt for scene kids across the globe. Much love, you crazy English major, you!

xXxXxXxXx

Chapter Three

"Desperation, Devastation
All I truly know
Is Isolation, Self Damnation
All life that I'd own was shed and worthless now."
- "Rabbits are Roadkill on Route 37," AFI

xXxXxXxXx

Not to Harry's surprise, Hermione popped her brown, bushy head into the room. She struck him with a questioning, almost queasy, glance. "Could I talk to you, Harry?"

Still lying lethargically on his bed, he nodded and waved her in absently.

Closing the door behind her, she entered and cautiously made her way over to his bed. After a moment of hesitation, she seated herself on the edge and looked at him expectantly. Sighing almost inaudibly, he sat up cross-legged before her and looked her in the eyes.

"Harry ..." she started, a finger against her lips as she internally fought for the right words. "What happened to you?"

Harry looked away and focused on a spot on the wall to the right of her, resisting the urge to roll his eyes. He figured it was pretty obvious what had happened to him, and he was a little disappointed that this was the way she was starting the conversation. Some small part of him had been hoping for a, "Good for you, I completely understand what you're going for!" And yet he knew it was sort of foolish for him to expect something so positive.

"I just ..." She gestured at him helplessly. "I just don't get it! I mean, we - Ron and I - we know you and this just isn't you!"

That got Harry's attention. He snapped his gaze back to her immediately, and she was startled at the beginnings of smouldering anger in it's depths. "You know me? You know me?" He threw up his hands in disbelief and lifted himself with startling force from the bed, standing to pace back and forth between his bed and Ron's. He wheeled around to face her. "How could you know me so well when I didn't even know myself?"

Hermione frowned. "Oh, and you know yourself so well now?"

Harry crossed his arms before him. "Better than I did before."

"How can you even say that?" Hermione's gaze was slowly becoming as heated as Harry's as she leapt up from the bed and moved to stand before him. She gestured at him wildly. "Look at yourself, for Merlin's sake! This isn't who you are, this is somebody else! It's as if you looked into some random magazine, pointed your finger at a page and said, 'Oh, yes. I'm going to be this person from now on.'"

"How dare you!" Harry gasped with a hand against his chest, feeling an almost physical pain from the veritable blow. She was basically calling him a poseur, and it hurt. No matter what he said in the heat of an argument, he would have thought as one of his best friends she would know him just a little bit better than that, and he told her so.

"Obviously not, if one summer abroad can change you from the person we know and love into this ... impersonator I'm staring at right now!"

Harry stared at her icily. "What is it that you see, then?"

"I see someone trying to shock the world for the wrong reasons. I see someone parading as something they're not in order to separate himself from everyone, or even worse, to garner sympathy and attention!" Harry gasped and his eyes widened in pain, but Hermione was far too worked up to stop. "I see someone slowly becoming self-centered and narcissistic right before my eyes! You never cared about your clothes or your hair before; what's changed you now?"

Harry refused to answer her, more out of reluctance to admit why than in anger, as memory threatened to intrude on him.

She plunged ahead. "I see someone ready to turn his back on the wizarding world when they need him, and that scares me!" She stopped with a sharp intake of breath, fists clenched at her sides and her eyes awash with tears.

He stared at her in shock and confusion, mouth slightly ajar. "Is that what you think? That I'd abandon you and Ron?"

She looked away.

Suddenly, the implications of what she said hit home and all the anger he held over being the Boy-Who-Lived came crashing down. "So what's expected of me is this: I'm supposed to sit here, do my duty and destroy Voldemort," - A fearful quiver from Hermione - "while everyone cheers and pats me on the head and tells me what a good boy I was for saving them all when none of them would even lift a finger to help themselves. And then what? I just fade into nothingness?"

In his anger he began to pace again as his voice rose. "Well, now that everyone's safe, of course, there's no need for the Boy-Who-Lived anymore. No one really cares what happens to him now, no one really cares what plans he had for the future because all that mattered was the destruction of evil."

He stopped at the night table next to his bed and slammed his fist into it with shuddering force, causing Hermione to jump and take a step back in fear. "What about what I want? Hermione, maybe I want to laze in the sun and relax like everyone else my age. Maybe I want to sit with my feet in the surf and gaze up at the stars. Maybe I want to play the guitar and listen to muggle rock music, grow out my hair and dress like this." He gestured to himself hopelessly, and turned to the window to hide his impending tears.

"Maybe I need this to be happy," he breathed, almost inaudibly, lying his head against the cool glass just as it began to rain.

Hermione shook her head as her own tears began to flow. "You're being selfish!"

"I'm being selfish!"

Just at that moment, Ron peeked his head into the dorms. One look at the stances, facial expressions, and the tears in his friend's eyes he was pretty sure he didn't want to get involved. Part of him wanted to comfort Hermione; part of him wanted to stand by his best friend. He was about to slink back out of the room when Harry turned around to yell something at Hermione, saw him, and stopped in tear-soaked shock. Hermione wheeled around, and in her face Ron saw a mixture of anger, sadness, and relief.

Reluctantly, he stepped into the room and closed the door behind him.

"I ..." He wasn't sure where to begin. They were both looking at him expectantly as if wishing for his input, and he felt out-of-sorts at the fact that he didn't really know what the fight had escalated into at this point. He wished more than ever he had just minded his own business and stayed in the common room until this was over. "We heard you both shouting downstairs. What ... what's going on?"

Harry let his head fall into his hands. He hadn't wanted his anger to escalate to this point. At least, not on the first night he was back in the castle. He was disgusted with the part of himself that was ashamed; but he felt ashamed, nonetheless. He opened his mouth to tell Ron everything was okay and to acquiesce to Hermione's demands in shame, but Hermione had other ideas.

"Come on, Ronald! You were just as confused and concerned as I was when Harry walked into the Great Hall looking like ..." She waved at him, as if she was unable to even work her observation into words.

Ron was confused. He was sure by the way Harry was reacting that this was some sort of muggle thing he didn't understand, and he wasn't sure if he was happy at being dragged into it.

"Like what, Hermione?" Harry demanded coldly.

Hermione had turned back to Harry at Ron's blank stare. "Look at you! You're a complete and utter scene kid and it's sickening!"

Now Ron was sure he didn't understand. He felt like raising his hand for clarification. So he did. His two warring friends ignored him.

Harry saw red. "A scene kid?"

"Yes, a scene kid." She repeated mockingly. "A complete and utter lemming! A .. A ..." She gestured in the air helplessly for the right word. Both boys feared she had caught it when a triumphant glint appeared in her eyes. "A trend-whore!"

"Get out." Harry ground out through a clenched jaw, face turning red.

"You-"

"Get. OUT." He thundered, punctuating his command with a pointed finger toward the door.

Body shaking in rage, she turned on her heel sharply with one last glare, and stalked from the room. Everyone could clearly hear her pound up the stairs to the girls dormitories, and slam the door of her room when she got there.

Ron turned tail soundlessly, gaping like a fish, and went back downstairs. Dean was from a muggle family, maybe he would get this ...

As the door slid shut with an audible 'click,' Harry slumped back onto his bed. Of course, he wanted to indulge in a little bit of artistic and emotional freedom; but he didn't want to lose his friends over it, either. He knew Ron wasn't a problem, at least not now, but Hermione ... What she had said really hurt him. Even worse, it made him doubt himself. Was this really all just a front? Was he still the scared little boy he used to be, raging against the forces of evil, fearless because he was expected to be?

He shook his head. No, he wasn't. With a sigh, he admitted that at least he knew that much.

The difference was that now he was willing to do something about it.

Harry rifled through his trunk at the foot of his bed, and pulled out his quill and a sheet of parchment. Now, more than ever, he needed to get a letter back to America. Back to ...

He shook his head to clear his thoughts. Settling down, he dipped the quill in his inkwell swiftly, and pressed it almost hesitantly to the paper.

xXxXxXxXx

Draco paced the Slytherin sixth-year's dorm room without pause, ignoring the shouts and thinly-veiled insults being hurled at him through the locked door. ("Hey, some of us have to sleep tonight!" "You don't own the dorms, you know!" "kick Ow! Drake, I think I stubbed my toe!")

What in the hell was wrong with him? Thinly-veiled interest in other men accompanied by that classic Slytherin swagger and a snide remark was one thing; openly ogling St. Harry of Potter and wanting to jump him when he gazed at you with those big, beautiful emerald eyes was quite another.

Draco stopped. Did he just think to himself that Harry Potter had "big, beautiful emerald eyes"? He slumped his head into his hands and mumbled, "I must be losing my mind."

Taking a deep breath, Draco dropped his hands and forced himself to keep his mind on the subject at hand. Most importantly: had he gone crazy enough that he needed to send a letter to his father care of St. Mungo's, or was this something he could handle?

Even though it was already dark, he could see the barest outline of the Quidditch pitch outside his bewitched window. He settled down onto the ledge he'd long ago covered with Turkish cushions to produce a make-shift window seat. As he gazed out the window he traced the constellations with his eyes, naming them off as he did so. Perseus, Cassiopeia, Cepheus. His mother's interest in astronomy was nurtured by the Blacks and had grown to a love in her adulthood, as made obvious by his own name. During his childhood, she had taught him as much about the subject as he could possibly absorb. Reverting to naming the patterns of the stars was comforting to him. It reminded him of years past that were much easier and more free than the present.

As he reached The Dragon, the constellation of his namesake, it began to rain. Lightly at first, then falling in torrents, soaking the ground with it's life giving essence.

Draco sighed. "Brilliant. Now even the sky won't comfort me."

He leaned his forehead against the window and sighed. He got the strangest premonition, almost like a magical shudder, and the first thought that came to him was that someone else was doing this exact same thing somewhere in the castle at this very moment. He shrugged, and let the feeling slip away from him, delighting in the cold feeling of the glass against his face.

"It's just because he's different, that's all." As soon as the words left his mouth, Draco knew he was deluding himself. Checking to make sure his classmates hadn't busted down the door yet, he vowed to puzzle this thing out.

And to do that, he had to stop lying to himself.

"So I think he's ... pleasant ... to look at now," He struggled, though hearing it out loud somehow made it easier to take, and he felt as if a weight were beginning to lift off of his shoulders. He shook his head. "No lying. Alright." A deep breath. "It's more than that, then ... it's ..." Draco stood and began to pace - an activity he often engaged in when attempting to puzzle something out.

"What is it that he's wearing, anyway? It's no style I've ever seen in wizarding shops, so it must be a muggle thing." Draco scrunched up his nose in disgust: he hated acknowledging that something good had come from muggle meddling, but occasionally he had to admit that some of their inventions and trends were well-conceived.

And even he couldn't deny that Potter had looked good.

Draco recalled that one of his dorm mates - a mousy, shy boy who's name he hadn't ever bothered to learn - was a half-blood: his mother would send him muggle magazines and such in the post every few weeks. Such a thing was kept very hush-hush, and apparently the boy had proven himself to the others because no one much raised a fuss at the news. But these things do prove to be useful from time to time. Perhaps there was something mixed in his things ...?

After rifling through the boy's things for several minutes, he found a stack of magazines, bound, at the bottom of his trunk. With a smirk, he tore the latest magazine off the top and began to peruse it. Most of it was junk: reviews of something called CDs (which Draco filed into his brain for later sleuthing), interviews with movie stars and equally boring drivel.

He was halfway through the third magazine, completely bored out of his mind and about to toss the whole thing and call it quits when he recognized those square-framed glasses of Potter's on a model. In fact, the model's entire clothing style seemed to be reminiscent of what Potter had been wearing. Praying to every deity he could think of in hopes that he had struck gold, he began to read the article.

xXxXxXxXx

For what seemed like the millionth time since he re-entered the castle, Harry was lying on his back in his dorm room, staring up at the canopy over his bed. Why did things have to turn out this way? He felt so confused. Part of him was beyond hurt at Hermione's accusations; the other, dancing triumphantly at the back of his mind, sing-songingly taunting: "I told you so! I told you so!"

He clamped a pillow over his face in dismay. "Just ... Shut up," Harry whispered. He realized he was talking to himself, but at this point, he reckoned it wasn't a big deal.

The inkwell, and still-blank piece of parchment, lay still at the foot of his bed, untouched in his tumultuous frustration. For the first time in his life, he knew something needed to be said, and he knew what needed to be said, but he wasn't quite sure how to actually ... say it. Something like this required delicate words: if he played it off too easily, his friends wouldn't think anything of it. Just the tortured whining of an out-of-place Emo Boy, Harry thought to himself. But if he overdid it, overemphasized his turmoil, one of the richer Yanks would hop a plane just as fast as they could to come check on him.

Harry didn't want that. He needed to be able to handle these ... crises of faith, as it were, on his own. He just ... needed a little advice this time.

And Draco ... God, why were his thoughts continuously drifting back to Draco? It had to do with that strange glance Draco gave him in the Hall; but it was more than that. At the back of his mind he felt that familiar tug of intuition, that he should know why, and that the answers were buried deep in the memories trapped in his subconscious.

That was a place he wasn't willing to search. Not yet.

So he settled for a sigh, yet again, and forced himself up from his lethargic rest - easing almost seamlessly back to the cross-legged position he had taken before Hermione just hours before. Forcing himself to clear his mind, he thought, I just have to write it all out. If I mess up, I can keep going and just recopy the whole thing when I've finished. I've plenty of parchment.

He started:

To: Marlene, Chance, Danni and the rest of the Crew

I'm sure you weren't expecting me to contact you all so soon, and I don't want you to worry, but I have a slight problem. A very close friend, to put it mildly, didn't take news of the "new me" too well.

I can already see you smirking in triumph, Marlene. Just give me a second to explain. Alright?

Some of the things she said to me really hurt me. Mentally, I was prepared for this. I knew, going into the fight as she began to speak, that hurt was exactly where we were hurtling for.

That doesn't make it any easier to bear. But, at the same time, it's nothing I can't handle on my own - so don't get any wild ideas. I was just wondering what advice you could give me.

I don't want to lose my friends. They've been with me through a lot, and their support means more to me than anything else.

He paused for a long moment at that, thinking. Harry came to the startling realization that their support was all he had left. Without them, it was him against the masses and, ultimately, Voldemort. That was too dark a thought for him to bear on his own. He touched quill to paper again.

On the other hand, I haven't felt so alive my entire life. (Physical looks are just the corporeal manifestation of my inner turmoil and hidden persona; right, Danni?)

Harry laughed, in spite of himself. The blonde-haired coffeehouse bum was headed on the fast track for muggle psychiatry.

Giving up the physical "illusion", if you will, isn't going to change anything. If they're upset with the physical changes, then they'll be upset with the personality that goes along with it. Might as well bring it all out in the open at once, eh?

Remembering the conversation they had on that exact topic not a week before, he realized he was almost quoting Chance verbatim. Shaking his head, he decided to just let those thoughts go and continue with the task at hand. Live in the present moment. A Buddhist mantra. If it worked for Danni, it could work for him. Right?

He hoped so.

Chance: I already know what you are going to say, and I don't want to hear it. I don't want to turn my back on the people I've cared about since I was eleven over something as trivial as this. Yes, trivial. This isn't a radical philosophic change. This is me as I've always been. I just need to make them see it.

I need some sound advice. Reply as soon as you can.

In light of the whining he felt like he had been doing the entire letter, he decided to ask some lighthearted questions about their lives to lighten the mood. With a soft sigh, he hoped it would work. He was genuinely concerned about how their lives were going, but ... Harry really wanted to ask on more pleasant circumstances than this.

Again, as always, many apologies for wasting your time. I'm sure your surfing contests are far more important than my own whining. By the way, how is it going? Has Marlene acquisitioned her Asiatic love slave yet?

He smirked.

Write back soon. Contrary to popular belief, I do miss you all.

Later,

Harry.

Harry looked back at his handiwork. Over two hours worth of struggling had earned him a very messy piece of parchment: cross outs, ink blots, splatters and spills and smudged fingerprints erratically dotted the entirety of his work. But he was satisfied: What he had actually written seemed like it would do the job nicely - it wasn't too over-the-top and it wasn't too low key. He genuinely smiled in spite of himself, in spite of the evening he had just had.

Every cloud has a silver lining, Harry mused.

He thought of Draco.

He shook his head, trying in vain to dislodge his thoughts as he hurriedly recopied his note. Buddhist mantra, Buddhist mantra. Harry thought, This really doesn't seem to be working very well. He cursed his rebellious brain.

Folding and sealing the letter, he headed off for the Owlery. He wanted to get this out before curfew - something had to go right today. Harry only hoped he wouldn't be faced with any more over-zealous attempts by his housemates to find out "what was going on with him".

The Boy Who Lived had definitely had enough of that for one night.

xXxXxXxXx

Draco felt like his brain had gone cross-eyed, if that were even possible.

He had been sitting in the same spot on the floor in the dormitories, pondering the article he just read for over an hour now. He scowled; he wasn't fond of having to puzzle over Harry Potter. Especially when his puzzling lead him to ... this.

In all honesty, he couldn't tell whether the article was meant to be a joke or not.

The end of the article featured a tableau: full length pictures of a teenaged girl and boy dressed in emo fashion, dissected right down to the shoes with a strange mixture of the reverence of an estranged aesthete and satirical, almost biting, commentary. Apparently, it all came down to your own preconceived notions, anyway: did you think it was a joke? Or a lifestyle?

Draco let his head drop into his hands. "I need a cigarette." Not one of his better habits, he admitted, but when you're the son of a Death Eater, the forms of rebellion not punishable under pain of death are few and far between. He cast a glance at the enchanted window. "And an actual view of the sky, while I'm at it."

He decided to trudge off to his favorite stargazing spot: the Astronomy tower. Usually, a few hours time spent with the stars would help him put his affairs in order.

He hoped this time it would be the same.

Racing through the halls, his eyes on the floor as he mused, he shot a glance at his watch and knew he was cutting it close. Draco hoped he could at least arrive at his place in the tower before curfew - he didn't much feel up to sneaking about the castle on account of a Gryffindor.

Potter. Even when The Boy Who Lived wasn't around he seemed to be ruining Draco's life. If he could have glared at himself, he would have. He settled for turning his heated gaze on the floor instead. What in Merlin's name was wrong with him? Draco cursed his raging teenage hormones. There was no feasible way that his brain would turn traitor on him like this - the problem must lie elsewhere, somewhere uncontrollable.

His scowl deepened. He picked up the pace.

He reached the end of the corridor at break-neck speed and hurtled around the corner - just barely stopping himself from slamming bodily into the very person he wanted least to see.

Draco cursed his luck to the seventh circle of hell. "Bloody. Fucking. Brilliant," he muttered, rolling his eyes with a pained expression. "Why does this always happen to me?"

Harry peered at Draco curiously. The boy had stopped dead in front of him where they had almost collided seconds before and seemed to be muttering to himself.

Against his better judgement, he thought maybe he should snap the boy out of ... whatever it was he was stuck in.

"Uh ... D-Malfoy?" He caught himself just in time before saying the boy's name. "Are you alright? You're looking kind of ... green." For emphasis, he waved a hand in front of the Slytherin's face, attempting to break his concentration.

Draco snapped back at once, blinking incredulously. For a moment his face held a mixture of that previously pained look and newfound confusion, but as his eyes focused on Harry, they narrowed. "Who do you think you are, bustling about the halls so quickly?" He pointed at the folded parchment in Harry's hand. "You could have put somebody's eye out! Mine, to be exact, which wouldn't have turned out very well for you."

He knew he was rambling; he just hoped a nervous blush wasn't accompanying it. Damn all the stars in the sky, but Potter was looking much better than a passing "presentable", and it was throwing him for a loop.

Harry cocked an eyebrow. "You almost ran into me. If anyone should have complaints about near-loss of life and limb, I do."

Draco had the good grace to look bemused. Had Potter ever shown the barest hint of cleverness in the past? He felt struck dumb, and he didn't like it one bit. He lashed out in the most Slytherin fashion he could with what he had to work with.

He pointed at the letter with a trademark smirk. "What's that? Have you got a girlfriend back in the 'states hanging on your every word?"

Harry snorted. "Of course not." He moved to pass Draco and continue on his way down the hall.

Draco's mind raced. A heady mixture of Malfoy and Slytherin pride simply would not let Harry Potter have the last word. "I should have known. A boyfriend, then?"

Harry stopped dead in his tracks, mouth slack in shock, not two inches before the other boy, and was nowhere near fast enough to conceal the tomato-red blush he could feel creeping over his face.

Draco's eyes twinkled mischievously as a slow, satisfied smirk spread across his face. Harry, a picture of dismay, dashed off past the Slytherin and around the corner, the sound of his light, running steps echoing back to where Draco still stood.

With a sardonic chuckle, the Slytherin resumed his original course to the Astronomy tower, a tumultuous barrage of questions simmering unheeded under a triumphant glaze.

xXxXxXxXx

Draco took another long drag off the thin cigarette between his fingers, letting the smoke coil like a snake in the depths of his lungs, before slowly letting it out, marveling at the sweet taste and the emerald green colour of the smoke escaping his lips.

Magical cigarettes, though still containing the same tars and addictive herbs as their muggle counterparts, had been greatly improved upon in the taste and sight departments very recently by some ingenious young wizards. There were a plethora of flavours and colours to choose from, if one knew which less-than-reputable shops to ask in.

If there was anything Draco had learned from his father, it was to take pride in the family contacts.

You could still taste it in the air: that sinfully indulgent flavour of fresh mint. The disgusting menthol of muggle cigarettes had nothing on the real thing. Amusedly, Draco figured the only thing these "improvements" had really done was make it easier to get addicted.

Another, deeper, drag. He supposed you could be addicted to worse.

At the back of his mind, a voice seemed to whisper, "Like Harry Potter?"

He scowled.

The Slytherin knew he should have felt like he struck pay-dirt in light of what he had just learned. As it stood, he felt as if somewhere in the three-fold chasm between ecstatic elation, uncharacteristic sympathy, and obtuse disappointment. Sympathy was understandable. He figured the both of them featured equally in the public eye, and he quite agreed with the viewpoint of wanting to keep some things private. As disgusting as the notion was to the Slytherin, sexuality could make or break you - it was always best to at least appear "acceptable".

Who's business was it but his own whom he kept in his bed? He snorted. That didn't mean everyone and their mother wasn't trying to find out whom, if anyone, it was.

The latter was a little different. The disappointment had to spring from envy - but who was it, truthfully, that he envied? Was it Potter, gallivanting about the castle with his sappy, Gryffindor-esque missives of adoration to some boy he obviously cared enough for to want to keep secret?

Or was it this mysterious American boy, himself? Was it the position that he envied? Was he, perhaps, even longing for a few sappy missives of his own?

Draco snorted at the thought of Potter attempting to sweep him off his feet, like those annoying, helpless damsels in children's fairy tales. If he ever ended up in such a position, he would be the one doing the sweeping. Malfoys were not "wooed". Or coddled. They took what they wanted, consequences be damned.

It was as simple as that.

He took his final drag, reclining back in his perch on the window to grind out the dregs of his cigarette against the rough-hewn stone of the wall, leaned his head against the cool surface and closed his eyes. He'd made his decision. What wasn't so simple was how in the world he was going to pull off such a lofty scheme.

Because, honestly? How do you steal The Boy Who Lived?

xXxXxXxXx

Author's Note: Many apologies - again - because I completely forgot that this was beta'd. --;

That last line owns. How, indeed! That totally ended in a way different than how I planned. Actually, I think this will turn out better in the end. What can I say? Draco isn't as reticent as I was trying to make him, I suppose. :)

And now, for a mini-rant, because I know I'll get questions: Yes, a half-blood in Slytherin. It is statistically impossible for the entire house to be filled with purebloods, and yet people write fics centering around such conceptions. /Pet Peeve A tad too boring for me. I like to shake things up a bit!

Much Love,
Ashe