Author's Note: Aaaaaaaannnddd… GO.

This is the best chapter in the whole fic, by the way. So SAVOR IT.

Chapter Fourteen

Pals

Saturday morning arrived and started to whittle down towards Saturday afternoon. Draco realized with an unplesant sinking feeling that he was beginning to get sedentary—to settle down and become accustomed to that feeling of lethargy, of quiet, warm contentment. Sitting-by-the-hearth syndrome.

It was all good and well until something downright nasty came roaring down the chimney, and your legs weren't good for running anymore.

And suddenly he itched for movement, craved it—not to get away so much as to get… around. Up, and out, and around.

"I'm going to take a walk, all right?" he told Hermione, popping into the kitchen.

Her brow knitted more deftly than a grandmother's hands. "I don't know if that's a good idea," she remarked slowly. "I mean, Leonine—"

He was already edging surreptitiously towards the door. "I've got my wits and my wand," he assured her. "They've taken me this far, and I think I've got a little dumb luck left."

Steady was her gaze upon him; piercing were her plain brown eyes. That was another reason he had to get a little air. You couldn't properly mull over people when they were sitting right next to you. That was fundamentally wrong—the way that the word "Gryffindor" inscribed on a House Cup was wrong. The way that a strikingly attractive Malfoy not getting some action once in a while was wrong. The way that rain on the day of your birthday party was wrong, 'cause you were gonna hava clown anna pony anna slide anna bouncy house, anna… anna…

In other words, wrong.

"Don't be long," Hermione cautioned.

"Won't," Draco replied blithely. And then he was out the door and free.

It felt good to be out and about, to have the uneven cobblestones under his feet and the smog-tainted air in his lungs. No, it felt wonderful.

Briskly he strode down the avenue, feeling blood rise to his cheeks in the cold, the breeze toying fastidiously with his hair like an overbearing mother before the family picture. He poked around a thrift shop, just for the Hell of it. Sometimes there were gems to be found in such places, though he didn't exactly have any money. If any treasure surfaced, he'd have little choice but to drag Hermione back later.

Hermione. What to make of Hermione? He wasn't sure. And maybe… maybe that was all right.

A cloudless sky poured sunbeams on him, but the bitter chill murdered their mitigating warmth in the cradle. That was all right, too. Little cold never hurt anyone.

And it was nothing near as cold as his little fire escape escapade had been.

Nonetheless, Draco took to the sidewalk, closer to the humming heat that radiated outward from the storefronts. He peered through the window of some uppity restaurant as he passed and was surprised to see his own reflection. He looked poorer and shabbier and scrawnier than ever. A business like this one that would have ushered him in with the height of unctuousness once upon a time would turn him away now—eject him back onto the street the moment he set a scuffed shoe over their pristine threshold.

Suddenly he missed the old days, missed them fiercely. It hurt like Hell, being reduced to this, having to scrape his way by on nothing more than his charm and his brains and the skin of his teeth. Longing burst into flame in the pit of his empty stomach—for of course he hadn't been smart enough to get lunch before sauntering out on this little adventure—and worked its way up to a solid blaze. He wanted those things again, the things he saw in the heart of that fire—the banquets, the laziness, the sumptuousness and the prestige.

He kicked at a pebble on the sidewalk, and it skittered away. On the upside, he reflected miserably, better a fire in his stomach than a fire under his ass.

He was just considering how his mood couldn't possibly get any worse when he looked up, and then it did.

Harry Potter and Satan—that was, Ron Weasley—were sitting at an outdoor table at the street-side café just feet away, holding up an amiable conversation bolstered by a variety of ostentatious hand gestures. Satan laughed, and Draco felt his hot blood cease to simmer and begin abruptly to boil.

In the blink of an eye, he had moved, and he found himself vaulting heedlessly over the low balustrade and pulling up a chair at their table. He would have cursed his father for bequeathing to him his whip-fast impetuousness, but he was quickly preoccupied with other matters.

Namely, how the Hell to explain himself.

"Draco?" Ron and Harry demanded in impressive synchronism.

"You look…" Harry began helplessly.

"Like something the cat dragged in," Ron finished, raising a ginger eyebrow.

Draco was not going to rise to that. There were more important things than his pride—for once in his pathetic life, there were more important things than his bloody pride.

"You bastard," he said, hoping that the venomous, go-in-for-the-kill calm he felt came through in the words. "You absolute bastard."

Ron stared. "What?" he managed.

Draco slapped a hand down on the table and gripped the edge so hard as to bleach the color from his knuckles. "I said, you are an unconscionable bastard."

A frown tugged at Ron's face. Draco memorized every line so that he could hate it more effectively later. "What are you even talking about?" Ron asked.

"Hermione," Draco hissed. As if there was anything else in the wide world! "You broke her heart, you little—"

Ron sighed—right as he was working up to a nice tirade, too. Damn Weasley. They were always doing things like that—breaking hearts, interrupting good rants. Where was a good rodent exterminator when you needed one? "Look," Ron said. "Hermione's my pal. And I realized that it's better that wa—"

"If she's your pal," Draco sneered mercilessly, "then why haven't you talked to her in months?"

With all earnestness, Ron looked at him, his hands out peaceably, and Draco felt himself falter. "I tried!" Ron insisted. "At the beginning, when it was all messy and horrible, I tried all the time! But when she wouldn't return my calls and wouldn't return my letters and wouldn't so much as acknowledge me, I gave up."

Draco stared at him. He had come here as a knight in shining armor, equipped with righteousness and justice. And he had just discovered that his sword was made of plastic, and his so-called principles were founded on a misconception.

"But…" he attempted hopelessly.

"I mean," Ron went on, "Hermione's a great friend. And she could always have been a great friend. But sometimes you've got to leave it at that, and this was one of those times. With Ilsa, it's different."

Ilsa. Draco tried to muster up some rage, but all of the power had gone out of him. He sympathized dearly with helium balloons, gradually having all the life eee out of them from some small, insidious hole, leaving them flat and listless and all gross and wrinkly-looking.

Distractedly he prayed that at least he wouldn't get all wrinkly.

"And when I agreed to be Ron's best man," Harry put in quietly, "she stopped talking to me, too." He paused and looked Draco up and down. Draco squirmed. Having Saint Potter give you the once-over was supremely disconcerting. "Wait," Harry Potter said, much too intelligently for Draco's liking. Just when you started to appreciate someone's tactful silence, they just had to go and get all too-intelligent on you. "Does that mean you're staying with Hermione?"

"Um," Draco said. "Gotta' go." He vaulted back over the railing, patted it apologetically, and glanced once more at the two bewildered faces staring at him. "You have a nice lunch," he told them kindly.

"Draco—" There they went with that synchronism thing again. Just creepy.

But he was already off down the sidewalk, trying to get out of sight, turning a corner into an alley—

"Sectumsempra!"

Only pure chance as he twisted his ankle and stumbled sent the spell carving a bloody swath up the left side of his chest instead of straight through his face. Looked like he had just a little bit of dumb luck left after all.

But that didn't prevent him from tumbling to the ground with a scream.

The spurting blood had soaked his hands. Lightheaded, he fumbled for his wand with slippery fingers, waiting for the words, for the rush, for the endless darkness that would follow—

Helplessly he looked up into the shadow cast by the hood that mostly concealed Arturo Leonine's face. Leonine opened his mouth, his wand arm outstretched.

"Expelliarmus!" shouted Harry Potter.

The wand clattered to the cobbles, and Leonine's marble green eyes darted to it. When Harry and Ron glanced in astonishment at Draco, Leonine dove to snatch it up and then Apparated in an instant.

"What the Hell—?"

There was that synchronized thing again. Draco tried to sigh, and a little bit of blood bubbled out of his mouth. They really needed to get their brains surgically disconnected. Little fancy work with the scalpel would solve this problem lickety-split.

Draco nodded to himself. Then he lay down on the cold cobblestones and passed out.

Author's Note: MWAhahahaha!

Sorry. I couldn't resist an evil laugh after that cliffhanger. I mean, really. But all is not lost, because I'll be updating on Wednesdays as well from now on.