Title: Dealing With the Devil [4/?]
Author: Grevola
Rating: PG 13
Notes: Don't own HP or GW. Part of the Sorting Hat Arc. Follows "Anything You Can Do". Hiiro realizes he's in need of a sneaky individual with flexible morals. Too bad Duo doesn't do anything for free.
-_-_-_-
Hiiro clung to six years of intensive training in posture and comportment in order to extract himself from George's grip, and get himself away from the Great Hall. If his arms were folded neatly in his sleeves, then they weren't strangling someone, or making the curse gestures he'd had beaten into him over the summer. Once he made it into the hall he hurried toward the stairs to the basement. Just past them was a passage that would allow him to cut across the length of the school so he wouldn't have to walk to Divination with the rest of his class. He passed the dark archway to the basement just as some one was entering the hall. He didn't even look, when the other person bumped into him hard enough to jerk his hand out of his sleeve. He barely registered that it was Duo who had bumped into him before he lashed out and landed a hard punch to Duo's ribs. Duo deserved it for starting the rumor in the first place.
No sooner had the blow connected than he found himself with a face full of some kind of dust that made his eyes water and his breathing difficult. "Damnit," he heard Duo curse, "I was saving that. Come on, let's get you cleaned up." And then Hiiro felt a firm hand trying to guide him across the hall.
Still angry, and even more embarrassed, Hiiro tried to jerk himself out of Duo's grasp so he could make an escape, but the other student had a surprisingly strong grip for someone so skinny.
"Shit Hiiro, what's your problem?" Duo said.
Hiiro opened his mouth to explain that Duo was the cause, however indirectly, of the current problem, but instead he got a face full of some mint scented water that had apparently been dumped over his head. "My problem?" he finally managed to sputter.
"Yeah your problem," Duo growled as he wiped Hiiro's face off roughly with his sleeve, "I had plans for that Hungarian crying powder you know. Now all I've got is a bruise. What the hell is wrong with you today?"
"It's all your fault."
Hiiro's eyes had cleared enough to see that Duo was glaring at him. "My fault? You're the one stalking down the hall like you're about to kill some, and then you don't just bump into me, you go and punch me!"
"It is because of you that the school now believes I... like" he nearly spit the word, "Harry Potter."
"So you've been stomping around angry at me all day just because I laughed at you last night?"
"You are not the only-" Abruptly Hiiro clammed up and turned away from Duo, "Never mind. You're an idiot and the damage is done. I will have to find my own way around it."
Duo put an arm around Hiiro's shoulders and turned the other teen back toward him. "What happened Hiiro?"
"I..." Hiiro realized that Duo had some how trapped him in a corner that was normally under one of the stairways, and the only way he was going to be leaving was through his friend.
"Tell me who it was," Duo said, "I'll make their lives a living hell."
And the way the young Slytherin said that made Hiiro shudder. As angry and embarrassed as the Weasley twins had made him, he wouldn't wish Duo on them when he was like this. Last time, Duo had pulled a prank that landed a fourth year Slytherin in the hospital wing for a week. "It doesn't matter," he said at last, but the devil in
Duo's eye didn't fade away, "They aren't worth the trouble."
"You said this was my fault," Duo said, "and I can guess who it was anyway. Ron Weasley isn't bright enough to come up with anything that'd ruffle your feathers, but his brothers..."
Hiiro knew that Duo had a long standing rivalry with the Weasley twins, both sides striving to be the biggest pranksters and troublemakers in the school. And he also suspected that as the rivalry progressed it was growing to be less prank and more war. Then he started thinking about the powder he'd been hit him with. As fast as that had happened, Duo must have been carrying it loose in his hand, and something like that done right in the Dining Hall could only lead to serious trouble for the long haired boy. It was then that it clicked in Hiiro's mind exactly why Duo was in Slytherin. It was quite likely that the other boy had no limits at all when it came to achieving a goal.
"Yes," he said at last, "it is your fault and so you must do something for me to make it up."
"Yes?" Duo's grin was dangerous.
"There is a book I need from the library. You will steal it, or help me to steal it."
"What?!" Duo spluttered, "You get run out of the dining hall two days in a row, and instead of revenge you want a book?"
"Yes Duo, I want a book, because it is more useful than petty revenge."
"What's this book about?" The Slytherin asked, now suspicious.
"It is-" but Hiiro paused wondering if he should tell the other students. But if he wanted his help to get at the tome, and it was a proper tome more than a mere book, he would have to at least give him the title. "It will show me a spell I want to learn. The book is in the restricted section of the library."
"You know what it looks like?" Duo asked.
"It is bound in leather from a feathered serpent," he said, "and wears a lock that looks like bone."
"And this is worth more to you than having the Weasley twins put in their place, and the rumors about you and Potter squashed?"
Hiiro was tempted. It would be nice to go back to living in a school where he wasn't stared at everywhere he went. And where the boy he had been sent to protect wouldn't avoid him like he carried plague. But those were petty, thirteen year old wants. Becoming an animagus was a much deeper desire than that, and up until now he'd had no way of getting at that book. If he asked Duo as a favor, he'd be repaying that request for a very long time to come. But if Duo owed him the debt first...
"Yes Duo. Please let the others go. The rumors will pass when everyone becomes more interested in something else."
Duo scratched his nose, considering, and then grinned, "Okay, you got yourself a deal. Let's meet at the library after our potions detention."
"Agreed."
And before they could make more plans, the warning bell for the next class sounded, and Hiiro had to rush to make it up to the stuffy tower where he would have to sit through Divination. It was boring, and uncomfortable sitting in the hot stuffy room. And it was embarrassing having Professor Trelawny read his palm and predict that he was doomed to failure in his love life. But he managed to get through by trying to imagine what his animagus for would be like. It was actually a much better use of his brain power, he decided, than paying attention to soggy leaves and other people's chapped palms.