Title: Black and Deep Desires
By: Dr. Kim-chan
Ron: (still crying)
Lucius: (secretly sad)
Harry: (hugging his plushie)
Draco: (a tad upset)
Me: A lot of sad sacks around here. I'm sorry already! I didn't know the last chapter would be that depressing (or that short)! Writing angst is one of my fortes, after all. Don't worry: December shall soon come, and in the meantime enjoy the D/H (and a bit of Blaise) tension! Anyway, most of this chapter takes place on the train, and Ron finally bears all (well, most of it). In fact, to shake things up around here, Harry, say my famous line.
Harry: (a little grouchy) Fine. (grabs remote) Rolling Chapter 18. (clicks)
(Begin Chap. 18)
…It had to be this year of all years that Ron would choose to be morbid and isolate himself from everyone else. Since there were fewer people coming to Hogwarts, there was a greater chance he found an empty compartment. Still, Harry and Hermione were traipsing up and down the aisle, peering into every compartment door window. Ginny would've come, but she decided in the end that finding Dean was a greater concern…but not before muttering something about "three's a crowd".
Hermione flipped a few strands of brown hair out of her eyes and asked Harry, "Where do you think he'd be?"
"With Ron, he wouldn't make it too much of a job to find a place to be alone. Could be anywhere as long as no one else is with him."
"Why do you think he's so down?"
After discovering that the compartment to the left of him was also Ron-free, Harry paused. He couldn't say, and if Hermione was asking him, of course he didn't know. It didn't make sense. According to his usual custom, he would've long since gathered a group of his fellow peers around him as he regaled them with the stories of his capture and how the Malfoy Manor actually looked…from the inside, no less. He'd embellish the tale of how he suddenly became the only known Gryffindor permitted to be in Draco Malfoy's bedroom. Far be it from Harry to say Ron was conceited—sticking around the Boy Who Lived for a while would make anyone a little starved for attention.
And yet here he was with a prime opportunity for popularity and not grabbing it by the throat. Narrowly avoiding bumping into a third-year Ravenclaw, Harry grumbled and was about to open the door leading to the next car when Hermione stopped and abruptly turned him around.
"What?" he snapped, then realized he skipped the last compartment to his right—the one with Ron in it. Being closest, Hermione opened the door and let themselves in.
Ron was sitting at the far end, staring at the blurry, verdant landscape. Upon hearing his two friends come in, he actually bothered to pay attention to their presence.
"Hey, guys. What's up?"
"We could ask you the same thing," Harry said, sitting down next to him. Hermione sat across.
"You haven't told us a thing about how it was at the Malfoys' house. Did anything…well, happen?" she inquired.
"More importantly, we want to continue the conversation we had in Diagon. You were acting strangely that day and you're acting strange now."
"Maybe it's the Stockholm Syndrome. Remember what I said, Harry?"
"Not even Ron would be that desperate for friendship."
"Well…in the note he gave us, he said the Malfoys were treating him nicely…it could be something else. Servants at the Malfoy Manor—humans, not elves, obviously—are probably kept well. Maybe after living such a good life, it was the hit of reality that got him down."
"It's not that," Ron muttered out of the blue. Hermione's eyes got wide and looked at him incredulously.
"So what is it, then?"
The redhead sighed, not sure how to vocalize what he was saying without giving away too many of the 'details'.
"It's just…well, promise me you won't freak out or anything like that when I tell you."
Harry and Hermione looked at each other doubtfully.
"You didn't become friends with Malfoy, did you?"
"Pfft. Please. I'd die first…but you're close."
It took a long moment of brainstorming before Harry bellowed out, "Mr. Malfoy?"
Hermione jumped back, then was horrified to see Ron wasn't making any attempt to correct him. "You've gotten close to Mr. Malfoy? But he's—"
"One of Voldemort's men!" Harry finished in a roar. "A liar, a thief—not to mention he tried to kill us!"
Wondering whether to feel sympathetic or stick with her horrified expression, Hermione practically forced herself between Harry and Ron.
"How did this happen?"
"Well, not exactly in the way you think…just let me be honest. You all know working isn't a favorite thing of mine to do, but I guess I did better than I thought, with me getting experience helping Mum around the Burrow and all," he explained. "Believe it or not, he appreciated my help a lot, and...and it just felt nice to be appreciated and be good at something for once, even if it was Mr. Malfoy giving the compliments."
Harry and Hermione looked thoroughly shocked…and more than a little indignant.
"When have you ever felt not appreciated with us?" Hermione demanded. Ron sent her a dirty look.
" 'It's Levi-oh-sa, not Levio-sa'," he taunted.
"Oh, don't tell me you're still bitter about that business, Ron!"
"It wasn't just what you told me that day in first year. You always tell me how bad my spelling and grammar is, how I should be more serious about my schoolwork and how it's such a pain to help me, why I shouldn't buy another thing from Zonko's ever again. You even complain about how I wear my tie!"
"Well, it wouldn't hurt to try and do your own work," she muttered.
"And when I'm not getting bossed around by you, I'm being ignored…and no wonder," Ron added, nodding his head towards Harry.
"Ignored? Who encouraged you to join the Quidditch team in the first place, or couldn't thank you enough for risking your neck when we went for the Sorcerer's Stone?"
"And then who gets babied by Mum while she complains about me and tells me to be more like my older brothers? In second year, when I tried to stick up for Hermione and tried to hex Malfoy—stupid me had to do it with a broken wand. A wand I broke, by the way, when I came up with the crazy idea to fly us to Hogwarts in my dad's Ford Anglia and almost got us killed and expelled!" Ron yelled. "The point is I had time to think about all the dumb stuff I did. I've never done anything to help…and you criticized me in fourth year about going on about wondering if you got yourself into the Triwizard Tournament. It's because you're always pulling off a stunt everyone can't help but notice! Is it any wonder I try to get attention when one friend's the smartest witch the school's ever known and the other's the one who's been chosen to defeat the most evil Dark wizard of our time?"
"…You play wizarding chess like a pro."
"That never saved our lives!"
"And again I have to go back to first year. If you hadn't known about the rules of wizarding chess, Voldemort would've long since beat us," retorted Harry. "You were also my first friend—if that never happened, look who I'd be stuck with as a best friend."
"Little consolation. Even then it'd have been a perfect match: the strongest, the smartest, and the richest. I've never been good at anything. Hermione gets Outstandings on just about all her schoolwork, Harry's idolized everywhere he goes…so even if I was a servant, it turned out cleaning and cooking were my greatest talents. I didn't save the world, but I felt good about myself. Mr. Malfoy needed the company anyway. The manor's been all outta shape since Mrs. Malfoy split."
Two pairs of eyes went wide at this unexpected news.
"Malfoy's mother left? Where'd she go?"
"Apparently the le Fay estate."
"Another rich wizarding family, descendants of Morgan le Fay," she lectured before Harry could find the time to ask. "But wait—why would she leave after letting her husband out of Azkaban? Wasn't she working with Kreacher?"
"Believe it or not, Mrs. Malfoy loved money more. By that time she got tired of being responsible for Lucius, and the bail price put a real drain on their finances. Guess she decided to live her own life. But from what I hear, she's using Lestrange to keep her in the know about the Death Eaters. Anyway, Mr. Malfoy seemed pretty bent about it, and I couldn't blame him. His house is bloody huge and he had nobody else to share it with, let alone clean it up. I guess when I came along, I brightened things up."
Ron turned back to the window, feeling relieved of everything he got off his chest (and smiling a bit at the double meaning behind his last statement). He hoped that what he said would satiate their curiosity and finally stop them from digging deeper to uncover the real secret of the whole affair. The promise he made to Lucius wasn't something to be made public. It was something to hide deep inside, the source of comfort to console him through the first half of sixth year--or if the most hopeless of scenarios concerning his next plan happened this year, whichever came first.
"So don't worry about me betraying you guys or anything. We just enjoyed each other's company, that's all."
"We know you wouldn't do anything to betray us," Hermione declared quickly. "It's Mr. Malfoy we want to be careful of. Are you sure he wasn't nice just to win your trust?"
"I was thinking the same thing, but he didn't seem like the same guy who was chasing us around in the Department of Mysteries. Neither of us brought it up, and I didn't tell him anything, so it wasn't a problem—"
"Speaking of bringing things up, you never answered our last question."
"What question?"
Before Ron could bat another 'clueless' eyelash, Harry reached over and unbuttoned the top button on Ron's shirt. For completely different reasons, Hermione and Ron blushed a little.
"That question."
…A couple of cars further down, Blaise Zabini was holding his own interrogation with Draco Malfoy. He had tried cornering Draco before in the manor, but the blonde scarcely escaped his grasp and left Ron's bedroom before Blaise could get there. One thing he had always liked about Draco was that he was always free-spoken. If a person like him couldn't face up to his own boyfriend, something was seriously wrong.
"Of course you know I'm past being suspicious. Now I'm put off. One minute we're getting intimate, and all of a sudden you're an ice prince. What's wrong? Is it over between us—?"
"Father found out. He knew this whole time," Draco admitted hastily, his voice insecure. There were two other reasons he was holding back, one of them a recent memory he didn't care to recollect. The scars on his right back and back leg were still faintly visible.
"I understand if we're breaking up because of that, but you said before that you didn't care if your father found out or not—"
"That was before he actually went through and showed me how serious he was. The night he told me he found out was also when he punished me."
Blaise paused hesitantly, not sure if he wanted to know what he was going to say next. Being around Draco's family for so long, he was well aware of how unmerciful Lucius could be.
"You didn't tell me this part. Never thought he'd be able to intimidate you," said Blaise scathingly.
Both the comment and how it was said stung into his memory, provoking strong emotion, which then invariably forced Draco to shout, " 'Intimidate'? You don't know the half of it! Getting whipped thirteen times would intimidate anyone, wouldn't it! And anyway, there's another reason we aren't going out anymore!"
It was a mixed reaction from a usually cool person: shock for the whipping, curiosity about the other reason.
"Sorry. Okay, so we're broken up...so what's the other reason?"
Blaise took it way better than he thought. Now that that was out of the way, Draco tried desperately not to look into Blaise's eyes as he slowly added, "I met you in first year, of course, but I also met someone else. Obviously things didn't go well with the other one—in fact, it was the worst that could've happened, and I kept thinking about him while we were getting closer. You…"
He stopped to catch his breath and get rid of the lump in his throat.
"…You look so much like him, I couldn't help myself…"
"Who is he?"
Blaise's sudden inquiry surprised his ex-boyfriend, who flatly refused to tell.
"No more secrets," Blaise sternly chastised. "It was bad enough I didn't know why you up and left me."
"The problem is I don't know whether you'd be flattered or offended."
"Try me."
Dating or not, he was still the same, indifferent, close-to-mature wizard as always. At last, Draco decided to turn back into his regular, straightforward self and stared Blaise right in his dark gray eyes.
"Potter."
"Wha—I thought you hated him."
"Not just for the heck of it. He never gave me a chance…"
"Hold on. You told me this story before, but I thought you had just wanted to be friends. You never told me you actually liked him."
Blaise leaned back into the cushioned seat. "Well, that explains a lot. I didn't think you only hated him because he was there or 'cause he was more popular. You like attention, but you're not that superficial."
"No, I'm not," Draco replied dryly, a little angered at the implication. Then his voice softened at what he wanted to say next. "It sounds like I only went out with you because you were second choice. I hope you're not too put off. I--"
"I'm not angry. I'd go a little mad, too, if my crush turned me down the first time and never gave me another chance. All that said, there's just one more problem to take care of."
Draco looked up.
"Tell Potter how you feel."
Draco gave him a look of complete and utter incredulity, as if he had just been slapped. "I never thought I'd see the day when Zabini would lose his common sense. If I was whipped just for seeing you, you can't even begin to imagine what I'd go through if I start snogging the Dark Lord's worst enemy! Besides, Potter's way past the point where he'll listen to reason. Now the hatred's simply natural, and there's no turning back. And on top of that, even if we did find a way—"
He stopped to retrieve something from inside his shirt. There was an elaborate necklace around his neck with a silver-plated serpent-shaped charm at the end…or what looked like a charm. It was actually a tiny bottle. Draco held it up to the light and stared at it very worriedly.
"—Voldemort's already decided. He's not going to live to see the end of sixth year."
(End Chap. 18)
Me: Ominous, ain't it?
Ron: I'm certainly intrigued.
Harry (glaring at his plushie): Malfoy has it in for me! What happened to us? What happened to what we had?
Plushie: "It's all lies, Harry-Warry. We're livin' in a dictator's world. (very smoothly) We have each other. Now kiss me, you bespectacled fool."
Harry: (begins to wonder if there's any way possible at all he could get away with kissing a plushie without looking like an idiot)
Me: Yay! My imagination almost gave out. Thought I'd have to end the fic there for a while. My muses never cease to amaze me. Until Chapter Nineteen, everybody!