Jace woke up late after being unable to fall asleep until something like three am. Despite having Emmara sharing his bed, he'd been having a much worse time sleeping than he had in years, and uneasily, disloyally, he wondered if he just slept better with Ral in the same bed, not just another warm body. But Emmara was his girlfriend—surely she ought to be a good replacement. Even that thought made him feel guilty. He didn't want to replace Ral, but he didn't want to lose Emmara, either.

She seemed pretty irritated at him for oversleeping this morning, and maybe it wasn't fair to blame her. She'd had to practically drag him out of bed in an effort to get him to breakfast on time, and it hadn't really worked—he'd been too sleepy and logy to make it down before the end of breakfast, and then his stomach was too heavy for him to eat anything, though he snagged a roll before his first class.

"Why don't you just skip class?" Emmara suggested, but Jace thought uneasily that he'd been doing that too often these days. N.E.W.T.s were coming up, and he couldn't completely blow them off, but when he said that to Emmara, she stalked off after saying icily, "I would think you'd recognize that a single class isn't going to change your whole career."

He'd meant to apologize as soon as he got through his first class, which was Potions, but somehow, by the end of it, he was feeling tired and frustratingly guilty. He hadn't worked on his individual project in several weeks now, and the only reason he wasn't in trouble was that he and Ral had a lot of leeway about when they were supposed to be working on them. But listening to Professor Malfoy's lecture both inflamed his curiosity—since what he was working on was a new version of the Bottled Dreams potion he still hadn't perfected—and made him feel deeply concerned about not getting any work on it done. Up until today, it had seemed like a perfect opportunity to snog Emmara, but somehow that was feeling a lot less like a good excuse and a lot more like a good way to get himself expelled when the teachers found out. So he slipped out of Potions without talking to Emmara and hurried up to the tower where the individual studies were carried out.

He hadn't seen Ral in Potions or at breakfast, so he was surprised to find his friend seated on his customary bench, chewing his lip and staring at the gauntlet in front of him.

"Um, hi," Jace said, as he started gathering the ingredients he had stored and taking them over to his part of the room.

Ral looked up and paused. "Haven't seen you here in a while," he said.

Running a hand through his hair, Jace laughed uncomfortably. "Yeah, I guess." He shuffled his feet. "I was, uh…"

"Skiving class to snog Emmara?"

"Um…"

"Yeah, probably a bad idea. Don't think the profs will be happy if they find out."

Jace rubbed at his forehead. "It's not really your business," he said tightly, caught between the uncomfortable feeling that Ral was right and a nagging impulse to defend himself.

"Oh, yeah, sorry, stupid me, I forgot. I'm not your best friend anymore, am I?"

The words hurt. "What? Ral—no—I just—"

"Whatever." Ral turned his back to Jace and went back to working at his gauntlet.

Jace swallowed and numbly continued gathering his ingredients. Trying to chop his asphodel evenly was a nightmare—he hadn't done any potions preparation in several months, and he was squinting through a haze in front of his eyes. After ten minutes of failing to get anywhere, he looked up and sighed. "I—I'm sorry," he said.

Ral sighed as well. "Yeah, me too."

"It's just—you know—I've never really been in love before," Jace managed, putting down his knife. "And I guess—Emmara seems to think that the Potions thing—isn't that important." The words rang rather hollow in his mouth, his stomach rolling with a sudden strange nausea. It was that important. It was one of his favorite things to do. But Emmara had always seemed to assume he'd rather spend time with her than in a "dusty old lab" and he hadn't wanted to disappoint her, for some reason. "I'm afraid she'll dump me," he blurted.

Quite slowly, Ral turned around and looked at him. "So what?" he said. "I mean, sure, she's cute, but you'd get over it. Isn't your favorite subject more important than getting laid?"

"But I'm in love with her." The words were out before Jace had a chance to think, and even as he said them, they sounded strange. Why was he in love with her? She was gorgeous, of course, but she wasn't that much more attractive than, say, Chandra, with whom he'd had a rather ill-advised snog two years ago. And he was close friends with Chandra. What did he and Emmara even have in common? Still, the thought of ending things with Emmara made him feel vaguely ill and frightened, and he sheared away from it.

"Jace, you're just…you're acting weird."

"I'm not!" Jace responded immediately, then paused. "I mean…I don't know. Maybe I am. She makes me feel special, I guess. I don't want to lose that."

He expected Ral to protest, but instead his friend opened his mouth, made a noise, closed it again. "Mm," he said. "I see." Almost like a doctor assessing symptoms.

"Anyway, you are my best friend," Jace continued hurriedly. "I'm sorry if I've been a shit this year."

Ral's shoulder went up and down, but he put his gauntlet down and walked across the room to Jace's lab station. "Show me what you're trying to do, I'm bored," was all he said.

It was much easier to remind himself of what he'd been trying to do with the project when he was explaining it to Ral instead of going over it again and again in his head. As he talked, he slowly started to slip back into the usual frame of mind—it wasn't his favorite thing to do, maybe, but he did enjoy it a lot. The only thing that was oddly disconcerting was his sudden awareness of Ral's presence.

The two of them had always been pretty physically close, but, Jace realized, it had been months since they'd last touched, and he didn't know what the touch had been—either an accidental elbow in the middle of the night or maybe, just maybe, a brief, awkward touch on the shoulder as they parted at Platform 9 ¾ for the summer. Presumably, the length of time it had been was what was responsible for the sudden tingling thrill that ran down his shoulder when Ral brushed against him.

And he hadn't really had many people stand this close to him in a while, except for Emmara, so it wasn't really surprising that he'd find Ral's breath on his ear hard to ignore. Still, it was definitely kind of distracting. He had a strange feeling that he'd been this close to Ral recently, even though he knew he hadn't, and he had to shake off the impression.

"What else?" Ral prompted, and Jace realized he'd let his voice trail off.

"Oh, well, I guess I've been trying to figure out a way to—to—" He'd turned when Ral addressed him, and he couldn't turn away, couldn't move his eyes away from Ral's mouth. This was—probably not okay, right? Most of the time, staring at someone's mouth meant you wanted to—but he was dating Emmara. Cheating on her was definitely not okay. Not that Jace wanted to cheat on her. Especially not with Ral. Because that would be all kinds of awkward. He tried again. "I've been trying to improve on the formula. It's got a few side effects like dizziness and disorientation, and I think that those could be mitigated if I can just tweak the ingredients some."

"You don't think that might just be what happens when you have someone else's dream in your head?"

"I know it isn't." Jace stuck out his tongue. "So do you."

"I dunno, your dreams in my head are usually pretty disorienting."

"Only because they're usually nightmares." Jace sighed. "That's another thing. If I can make it easier to bottle dreams, it'd be nice, because then I might be able to catch some of the non-terrible ones."

"Oh yeah? Like what?"

Which was when Jace remembered the dream he'd had the night before. He'd dreamed that he'd woken up and looked down at the lump beside him in the bed, and it had rolled over, and it was Ral, not Emmara. Which wasn't all that surprising, since he'd spent a lot more time sharing a bed with Ral than sharing one with Emmara. Except then he'd leaned down and kissed Ral on the lips, just as if it was Emmara, and when he'd woken up he'd been—heat rose to the tips of Jace's ears. "Uh," he said intelligently. "I, uh, I'd better get back to working on this."

"That good, huh?" Ral smirked at him. "Was it even about Emmara?"

Jace's cheeks flamed hotter than he'd ever felt them. "O-Of course," he stammered. "Why would I have dreams about somebody I'm not dating?"

"Oh my god, it wasn't, was it? Was it about Elspeth?"

"No! God, no! That would be so weird!" Elspeth was like—his big sister or something, despite the fact they were basically the same age. So, said a voice in his head, doesn't that make Ral like your brother?

"Was it a boy? Is that why you're so embarrassed? Was it Gideon?"

"I—I don't remember," Jace said desperately. You're dating Emmara, he reminded himself fiercely, but the brush of Ral's warmth at his back was almost painful in his awareness.

"Fine," Ral sniffed, sounding more animated than Jace had heard him all this year. "Keep your secrets." He ruffled Jace's hair, and Jace felt his eyes slide closed because that just felt so right. This whole year, ever since he got back from France, everything had felt a little bit off. He liked Emmara a lot—he loved her—she was a whirlwind of tantalizing excitement, but it was a stressful whirlwind. Well, no one could say Ral wasn't a stressful whirlwind as well, but—but. Jace stalled. Right now, the only thing he wanted to do was turn around, grab Ral, and kiss him. Hard. And possibly remove several layers of clothing as well.

All right. So maybe he should break up with Emmara. Because then he could snog Ral breathless. Assuming Ral was up for it, of course. Still, Jace thought, a little dizzily, he thought this might be worth risking. Snogging Ral breathless. Yeah. But he couldn't do that until he'd broken up with Emmara, and he couldn't do that before this evening, when he could get a minute alone with her. So that meant snogging Ral would have to wait—Jace groaned under his breath—for at least six hours.

Well, he might as well get some work done in the meantime. Still, before he went back to explaining the potion properly, Jace leaned back against Ral and squeezed his hand. He figured he owed himself that much.

"So the plan is we hang out here at this—" Draco struggled not to turn up his nose, "—er, authentic Muggle, er, establishment, while we try to find Luna's mystery broken dark enchantment?"

Harry grinned at him, and Draco tried to pretend the grin had no effect. Damn Potter. The way he scrunched up his nose without realizing it when he was smiling broadly—just for a moment, just at the beginning—was stupidly endearing and also rather infuriatingly attractive. Draco knew that falling for Potter was a truly awful idea—the social stigma of a man dating a man was bad enough, even post-war, but that wasn't even taking into account the fact that the object of his affection was Harry bloody Potter, savior of the Wizarding World, and Draco was an ex-Death Eater.

"It's called a Bed and Breakfast, Malfoy," he said. "Because they give you bed and breakfast. Not exactly hard to remember."

"Yes, yes. Remind me again why we're here?"

"You don't want to spend our charming vacation in an equally charming location?" Draco glared at him, and Harry grinned again. Damn it. "No one'll be able to find us here," he said pragmatically. "Something like this could attract some nasty dark wizards. The aurors still haven't got all of them, you know."

"Camouflage," Draco said, turning the idea over slowly. "With, perhaps, the added bonus of annoying your dear colleague?"

"Would I do that?" Harry responded with a wicked grin. "C'mon, it'll be an adventure for once."

"You know I'm not one of your Golden Trio members," Draco said snidely, deliberately using a term coined by the Daily Prophet that he knew that Harry hated. "I've never been all that big on adventures."

"Maybe you've just never been on adventures with the right person before."

Draco stumbled slightly as they started up the stairs of the old Muggle building, ending up with his face dangerously close to the worn carpet. "Oh, and I suppose you're the right person to have an adventure with?" He didn't manage to lace his words with quite as much sarcasm as he'd intended, but either way, Harry ignored the tone.

"Of course I am."

"Of course you are," Draco mumbled in echo, then tripped in earnest. "God, Potter, couldn't we have just apparated to the approximate location? Made this a day trip?"

Harry didn't bother to grace this with a response, since it was a stupid idea. Apparating was a hassle from Hogwarts to begin with, and besides that, there was almost certainly a befuddlement or other sort of redirection charm around the place they were looking for. It would be easier to have a nearby base of operation. Easier, just inconvenient. Especially since they were taking Muggle accommodations. Draco sighed and hoisted his trunk up the rest of the narrow flight of stairs, not bothering with the levitation charm he knew would earn him a reproving look from Harry.

For his part, Harry was pausing outside a door, digging a key out of his appallingly tight Muggle jeans. Muggle clothing was stupidly uncomfortable, Draco had discovered, but as Harry bent over, he raised an interested eyebrow. It did have certain perks. "I hope you at least reserved us a room with two beds," he drawled. "I know the younger generation have taken to sharing without much thought, but I kick. And occasionally try to hex people in my sleep."

"Good to know," Harry grunted, shoving the door open with his shoulder and dragging his own battered suitcase into the room with him. "And, yes, Draco, I did get two beds, I know you like your space."

Light flooded the room suddenly, and despite the fact that Draco had spent enough time in places where Ral Zarek and Hermione Granger had installed electric lights, he was startled. Rooms always looked a bit different by Muggle lighting than they did by magical. Or maybe his brain was just playing tricks on him.

It was actually an oddly nice room. Definitely not ornate, nothing like the mansion Draco had grown up in. But maybe a little bit like his rooms at Hogwarts. It was small, with a pattern of blue flowers on the wallpaper, plain powder blue curtains, and two beds with comfortable-looking bedspreads and—a lot of pillows. Why were there so many pillows? He stared. That was at least six pillows per bed. Did Muggles use pillows for something other than wizards did? What use could anyone possibly have for six pillows?

Wrenching his attention away from the frankly absurd number of pillows, he noted the TV sitting on the wooden dresser across from the beds. Something else he didn't really have much experience with. Draco shook his head tiredly and went to set his trunk down at the foot of the bed, letting the door swing shut behind him. "I suppose we'll need a plan," he said, with a frown. "We have some hints from Lovegood, but we don't necessarily know where to look. Did you have any ideas?"

"It's basically Seventh Year all over again," Harry said with a rueful laugh. "Less difficult, really, because we know where to start and we're only looking for one evil dark artifact for a change. Pity 'Mione couldn't come, though. She's damn good at this kind of thing." And, oh, that look. Whenever Harry talked about Hermione, he got such a tender look in his eyes. Draco shook his head. None of his business. He certainly had no right to be jealous.

"Merlin," Draco sighed. "What's next? Are you going to start pining for Weasley?"

Someone knocked on the door. He and Harry exchanged looks. No one other than Hermione and Luna should know where they were, and they'd just walked in—it was unlikely to be a maid or anything like that. (Did 'bed and breakfast' establishments employ maids? Draco didn't know.) Carefully, Draco reached for his wand. "Let me get it," he said tersely.

"I'll back you up." Draco was mildly surprised at the lack of argument, but he filed it under 'deal with later', and carefully moved toward the door, hand still on his wand. Unfortunately, the old building didn't even have a peephole in the door. It did have a chain lock, however. Draco slipped the chain on and opened the door a crack, coming face to face with a sudden deluge of freckles underneath a shock of red hair.

He blinked. "Wait. Weasley?"

A wand was shoved under his chin. "Where the fuck is Harry, what've you done with him?"