Thanks to Sanguiyn my wonderful beta, who not only saves me from grammatical errors, but also dresses as a super hero when she does it.

Disclaimer:

Loosely based on '10 Things I hate about you', which was based on Shakespeare's 'Taming of the Shrew'.

You all know that I don't own the Harry Potter characters (JKR does). But if I did, something like this would happen to them...

Blaise was sitting at the Slytherin table, happily munching on a piece of toast. There was no sign of Draco or Harry this morning, which to Blaise meant that they were still in bed together. The idea of such an upside made his mouth curve in a large smile. It immediately flattened, however, when he glanced over at the Gryffindor table.

Knives and forks clinked in an uncomfortable silence, and a fragile gloss of cordiality slicked over an undercurrent of tension which Blaise could sense all the way over at the Slytherin side of the hall. In an apparent effort to lighten the atmosphere, Granger and Weasley were talking too much, from opposite sides of the table.

Murmurs of conversation about this sudden change of ambience threaded through the other houses tables; breakfast at the Gryffindor table was usually a loud, rowdy affair.

"Pansy?" Blaise asked, turning to the girl next to him, knowing that she would have an explanation for this strange behaviour. "What's with the Gryffindors this morning?"

"Well…" Pansy let out the customary sigh for suspense she always used when she was about to share an important piece of gossip. "Thomas and the Weaselette broke up."

"What!? Why!?" Blaise dropped the piece of toast he was holding. It landed with a soft splat on his thigh.

"Thomas caught her cheating on him last night with…" She added another dramatic pause for good measure. "Michael Corner."

Blaise looked over to the Ravenclaw table, and, to his horror, found Ginny Weasley sitting there, hip to hip with Michael Corner, her lovely neck bent so she could whisper in his ear.

The shifting of her favours was obvious, but no one at the Gryffindor table was audibly remarking on it. Granger was frowning a warning at her, but she ignored it and Weasley's displeasure was only revealed in frequent sharp glances.

Thomas was merely looking on in silence, occasionally tipping his head back to swallow from his goblet of pumpkin juice. He had reorganised the plate of food Granger had pressed on him, but had eaten none of it.

"I don't believe this!" Blaise cried, trying to scrub the jam from his toast off his trousers with a napkin. "How could something like this hap-- oh fuck!" He crumpled up the napkin and threw it onto the table, realisation dawning on him.

"Looks like Draco carried out Step Four of the plan," Pansy said, spitting on a fresh napkin before using it to scrub away the jam Blaise had missed.

"You know about the plan?!" Blaise pulled himself away from Pansy in momentary shock.

"I can't help it if the walls connecting our dormitories are thin," Pansy said with a shrug, scooting closer to Blaise in order to resume cleaning the jam off his trousers.

"The walls are made of thick stone, you little sneak," Blaise scoffed. "You went and bought yourself some Extendable Ears from Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes, didn't you?!"

"Don't be ridiculous--"

"So that's how you do it!" Blaise continued to accuse. "You could single-handedly keep that shop in business at the rate you're going!"

"Oh, shut up!" Pansy snapped, throwing the napkin on the table next to the first. "I found a piece of parchment with the plan written on it in the drawer of Draco's bedside table the other week."

"You went through his things!?" As nosy as Pansy was, Blaise had never thought her capable of something that extreme.

"For your information, I was looking for my nail file," Pansy huffed. "I thought I left it in your room a while ago."

"And you expected to find it in Draco's drawer?"

"I was just quickly scanning--"

"For a nail file you could easily replace," Blaise interrupted her again. "You're lucky he didn't catch you. You know how short his temper is. Remember what he did to Theodore Nott back in fourth year when he borrowed his textbook without permission?"

"He hexed his balls off," Pansy replied shuddering, but also smiling slightly, at the memory.

"That testicles retrieval operation did not sound pleasant," Blaise added, also shuddering. "He spent two weeks in the hospital wing."

"And he was too scared of Draco to get him into trouble; he told Madame Pomfrey that he accidentally hexed himself in the balls."

"I can just imagine what he would do if he caught you…" It was Blaise's turn to pause for dramatic effect. "He'd probably rip all your finger nails off so that you would never have the need for a nail file ever again."

"Well, he shouldn't have something like that lying around anyway. Anyone could stumble across it," Pansy replied, coolly changing the subject, though Blaise noticed that she was now clasping her hands together tightly.

"Thanks for that," he replied sarcastically. "I'll mention it to him before I hex his balls off."

"What's the problem?" Pansy asked, unclasping her hands and sitting on them. "He followed the steps properly, didn't he?"

"That's not entirely true…" This time Blaise's pause was not for dramatic effect. "Everything went according to the plan, but I kind of had an ulterior motive."

"Of course you did," Pansy smirked. "Out with it then."

"I wanted Draco to settle down with someone himself. I thought that after being with Potter for a while, the idea would grow on him."

"You tried to trick Draco into falling for Potter while winning over Finnigan at the same time?" Pansy freed her hands in order to give a half-ironic slow handclap. "My, my, haven't you been a busy little Slytherin these past couple of months."

"And I'll be damned if all that work goes to waste," Blaise declared, getting up.

"Where are you going?"

"To find Draco… and lock my trunk and all my drawers before you lose another nail file."

"What the fuck happened last night?" Blaise shouted without preamble, marching into his dormitory and slamming the door shut behind him.

Draco was sprawled on his bed, his head bent over a book. Under his breath he made a small, dismissive sound, 'Tchuh', to show he couldn't care less about last night's events.

"What did you do last night?" Blaise repeated.

"Step Three." Draco's voice was cool and bored as he kept his focus on his book. "Step Four." He turned a page over. "And then this morning, Step Five."

"Obviously." Blaise wanted Draco's attention and he wanted to challenge him too. "You could have at least told me beforehand."

"Yeah right." Draco could feel Blaise's stare drilling into the side of his head, but he still didn't take his eyes off his book. "If I came in here, I would have got an eyeful of you fucking Finnigan. Besides, it's not as if you didn't know it was going to happen anyway."

"A heads-up would still have been nice. I had to find out from Pansy."

"We find out everything from Pansy."

"This is different."

"How's it different?" Draco finally looked up at Blaise. "People break up around here all the time. They're unfaithful to each other. It's not exactly an original story, is it?"

"That's not how all relationships work, Draco."

"Yes it is. Weasley and Thomas are proof of that."

"Weasley wouldn't have cheated on Thomas if we hadn't interfered."

Draco gave a low, disbelieving laugh and turned back to his book. "We didn't interfere."

Blaise was going to have to push the words out of him. "You mean Weasley cheated on Thomas without intervention?"

Draco sighed irritably, realising that Blaise wasn't going to leave him alone until he gave him a detailed account.

He told Blaise some of it, only the bones of it, without the precious details. He told him about walking in on Weasley and Corner in the Astronomy Tower and sending a tip-off to Thomas, but it wasn't enough to silence Blaise; he wanted to hear about something else that Draco failed to mention.

"What was it like? Sex with Potter."

"It wasn't anything amazing. It was just sex." Draco quickly looked back at his book, fumbling as he turned another page. He looked clumsy, and for once, uncomfortable with himself.

Blaise immediately noticed the change in Draco's tone; he was hiding something. He knew it wasn't just anything, however much Draco wanted to diminish it.

"So a bed didn't make a difference, then? Well, aside from giving you the ability to foresee the future."

Despite Blaise's sarcastic taunting, Draco seemed to have regained his composure. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"You couldn't have known that Weasley and Corner were in the Astronomy Tower, so why did you go there?"

Draco paused halfway turning another page.

"Because I wanted to get away from Potter." It wasn't a lie, but it was still concealing part of the truth.

"How could you go from not being able to take your hands off him to wanting to get several floors away from him in such a short amount of time?" Blaise pressed on, determined.

He expected his question to send Draco into one of his familiar petulant outbursts, but Draco remained unperturbed. "I was only touching him in the common room for the sake of Step Three."

"I saw the way you looked at him!" A wave of frustration broke and washed over Blaise. "Something happened in between the common room and the Astronomy Tower last night! Why are you hiding it from me?"

"I'm not hiding it from you. It's just irrelevant."

They seemed to have switched places with each other over the course of last night; Draco confident and in control, and Blaise quickly losing his temper and patience.

"I still want to know!" Blaise cried, snatching the book from under Draco's nose and flinging it across the room. It was a pale thing compared to Draco's past tantrums, but it was still a change no matter how infinitesimal.

"You're becoming as nosy as Parkinson." Draco hadn't even flinched as the book landed with a loud thump on the other side of the room. He simply slid off the bed and went to retrieve it. "Potter told me he loved me."

Blaise's anger continued to flow in a seductive rush. "That is not irrelevant!"

"Yes it is." Draco went back to his bed and flipped his book open. "Since when has 'I love you' ever meant anything?"

"Since always! I'm sure it meant a lot to Potter!"

"No it didn't. He can't even remember saying it." Draco began to smooth out some of the pages that had been crumpled.

"Don't do that! Don't pretend you don't care!"

"I don't care."

"Yes you do! I see what this is!" Blaise gestured at Draco's relaxed position. "You finally realised your feelings for Potter and it scared you!"

"I never had feelings for Potter." Draco was completely withdrawn. He had placed a protective tower of stones all around him, and all Blaise wanted to do was scatter them and knock them down.

"I don't think so! I think you liked him from the beginning! The shame is that you don't have the guts or the wit to own up to it!"

"Don't be so sentimental."

"Just look at you! Pulling away! Always pulling away!"

"I'm not pulling away. I'm done. The plan worked. It's over. So quit bothering me and go to Finnigan. He's all yours now."

At that precise moment, the dormitory door opened and Seamus walked in, his face twisted with concern.

Draco returned to his book without even acknowledging him. Seamus glared at him briefly before turning to Blaise.

"I'm going to have to cancel our plans for today. Harry…" Seamus looked pointedly at Draco, but Draco continued to ignore him and idly turned another page in his book. "…isn't doing so well."

Blaise nodded, though he was slightly disappointed. His disappointment turned into fear when Seamus exited the room without even kissing him or hugging him goodbye, closing the door behind him.

Blaise stared at the closed door before turning back to Draco. "That's right! I have Seamus! Oh no, but wait! He's too busy consoling Potter, trying to repair the damage that you caused!"

When Draco made no response he corrected himself, "That we caused."

"Don't take it out on me because you're feeling guilty," Draco said with a yawn.

"I'm not feeling guilty! I'm worried that Seamus is going to leave me because you left Potter!"

"He wouldn't do that. There's no pact anymore." Draco looked up to see that Blaise was not only angry, he was worried.

"It's not the pact that kept him loyal to Potter. He cares about him! I care about you ! I care about you too much to watch you throw away your life just because you're too proud to admit that you have feelings for Potter!"

"I'm not throwing my life away. I'm returning to it."

"What if Seamus breaks up with me?" All thoughts of Draco and Potter had been swallowed up by Blaise's fear of losing Seamus.

"Not my problem." Draco gave another careless flick of his wrist and turned yet another page.

Blaise stared at Draco only for a moment before marching out of the room in the same way he had entered, slamming the door shut behind him.

He was going to make it Draco's problem.

Blaise flew out of the Slytherin quarters entrance and ran up the dungeon steps. Seamus was already halfway down the corridor.

"Seamus!" Blaise called, running to catch up with him. "Wait!"

Seamus stopped and turned around. "Blaise, I told you I can't--"

"I know," Blaise panted. "I need to talk to you about Draco."

"What about him? That he dumped Harry with nothing more than some pathetic excuse about him saying something?"

"It wasn't an excuse. Potter said something."

"Are you going to tell me? Or are you going to do what Malfoy did to Harry and keep it from me?" Seamus's resentment towards Draco was leaking onto Blaise.

"Of course not. I would never keep anything from you."

Seamus simply looked at Blaise expectantly.

"Potter told Draco that he loved him."

"That's it! That's the thing Harry can't remember saying!" Seamus gaped at Blaise.

Blaise held his head up, keeping his resolve firm; he wasn't going to let this come between Seamus and him.

"Harry says 'I love you' and Malfoy dumps him? I can't believe that even Malfoy could be that heartless." Seamus shook his head, trying to overcome this new information. "This is worse than I thought. Maybe you and I should call things off until--"

"No! Don't say that!" Blaise clamped a hand over Seamus's mouth before he could finish his sentence. "Draco feels the same way about Potter!"

"I'm not convinced of that, on the evidence," Seamus replied once Blaise had removed his hand.

"I know that Draco's acting like he doesn't care, but he really does want to be with Potter. Potter just… caught him off guard with his confession…" Blaise's voice blurred in his throat, then came out too high and hard. "We have to get them back together."

There was a brief silence, during which Seamus appraised what Blaise had said.

"I don't know about that, Blaise. Harry's been hurt enough as it is. I don't want to risk hurting him any more. We can't exactly force them together either."

"We've done it before."

"The pact was on then."

"What if I can get it back on?"

"How could you possibly do that? Dean is furious with Ginny and Ginny is practically glued to Michael Corner's side."

"I have an idea."

Seamus wanted to continue seeing Blaise, but he felt guilty after seeing the state Harry was in. But then, he remembered that the guilt would be passed onto Harry if he broke up with Blaise because of him. And guilt made Harry shrivel up and lose his courage, and Seamus didn't want to put Harry through that. It seemed that his only other option was to go along with what Blaise was suggesting.

So, after Blaise had finished telling him what his idea was, he nodded in agreement. "Okay, Blaise, but if Malfoy hurts Harry again, I will hurt him." His declaration was almost violent. He briefly kissed Blaise on the cheek before continuing down the corridor and returning to Harry.

Blaise stared after him, sighing in relief. He had been very close to losing him.

Breakfast was nearly over when Blaise re-entered the Great Hall. When he approached the Slytherin table, Pansy was eagerly giving her account of the Thomas/Weasley/Corner debacle to Millicent Bulstrode .

"I know that look," Pansy commented, as Blaise sat down in Millicent's place after she scurried off down the table to pass on the information she had just heard. "What are you up to now?"

"The second plan."

"You Slytherin you." Pansy rolled her eyes amusedly. "Are you going to tell me about it or are you going to risk having me go through your drawers instead?"

"I'm going to tell you," Blaise admitted. "But only because I need your help."

"What's in it for me?"

"You Slytherin you," Blaise parroted, glaring at her. "There's nothing in it for you, but if you don't help me, I'll tell Draco all about your little nail file escapade, which will probably result in the loss of all your fingernails."

"Okay, okay, I'm in," Pansy surrendered, holding up her perfectly manicured hands in defeat. "What do you want me to do?"

"Well, the first thing that needs to be addressed, before we can do anything, is the re-establishment of the Gryffindor Pact," Blaise explained. "And that can only happen when Thomas--"

"Whoa! Slow down, Captain Slytherin!" Pansy interrupted him. "I think I see where this is going, and there is no way that it is going to work."

"You have little faith."

"Just look at him!" Pansy pointed to Dean Thomas, who was now staring into the bowl of porridge Granger had just forced on him, looking as though he was seriously contemplating drowning himself in it. "He's devastated! Not to mention probably hoping that the Weaselette will drop Corner at any minute and come crawling back to him."

"Spot on, Pans." Blaise put his head to the side and smiled. "That's exactly what he wants."

"But--"

"And we can get Weasley to come crawling back to him by making her see him with someone else." Blaise's smile only broadened. "Not to mention she's embarrassed him by moving onto someone else so quickly. He's going to want to even the score. Everyone has a little Slytherin in them, even the saintly Gryffindors."

"When do you want me to do it?" Pansy asked, still not fully convinced.

"No time like the present."

"You want me to do it now?"

"Yes. Right now where Weasley can see."

"You seriously think that Weasley will come crawling back to him when she sees him with someone else?" Pansy snapped the cap off her lipstick and coloured her mouth, lifting a questioning eyebrow at Blaise.

"Yep," Blaise answered simply. "And if she doesn't, to have ourselves a pact again, that special someone else will just have to stay with him."

Pansy lowered her lipstick for a second. "And what if Thomas doesn't want that?"

"He's not going to want to be alone when Ginny isn't."

"I don't know how I feel about being Thomas's rebound," Pansy said, as Blaise began to brush imaginary dust off Pansy's shoulders in order to remind her of her task. "And when Draco figures out what we're doing, he is going to hex your balls off and rip out all my fingernails."

She wiggled her fingers in front of Blaise before using them to comb through her hair.

"By the time he figures it out, he will have already seen the error of his ways and been back together with Potter."

"You're amazingly self-assured. Has anyone ever told you that?"

"I tell myself that everyday, actually."

"How do I look?" Pansy asked, getting up.

"Nice."

"Nice? Don't go crazy, will you?"

"What do you want me to say? How about hot? You look like you put out big time, as it happens."

"Git," Pansy retorted, not without amusement.

"Good luck."

Blaise watched as Pansy waltzed over to the Gryffindor table and leant down to whisper in Thomas's ear. A smile broke over his face as he saw Thomas nod, get out of his seat and head out of the Great Hall, hand-in-hand with Pansy.

His smile broke into a large grin when he noticed that Ginny Weasley, along with all the other Gryffindors, was watching them too. What made Blaise grin wider still was the glare of jealous disbelief that washed over her freckled face.

There was no way this plan could backfire.

Harry felt that whichever way he tried to direct himself, there was a precipice yawning at his feet.

He sat down heavily on the Quidditch pitch, shuffling his back up against a convenient goal post. He had always resorted to flying in times of difficulty, but in his haste he had forgotten his broom, so he merely sat down instead, hoping that the pitch itself and his memories of flying would be enough to ease him.

Images of flying were indeed obstinately stuck in his head, and they jarred like misshapen jigsaw pieces against each other.

Pushing off the ground, air rushing through his hair, his robes whipping behind him. Seven Nimbus Two Thousand and One gleaming in the early morning sun. A pale, pointed face smiling nastily and throwing a glass ball high into the air.

They were suddenly memories that he didn't want to revisit, but they attacked all his senses. There was no sign of Draco, but he was everywhere. In the stands and in the goal posts, even his footprints seemed clearly printed in the tangled blades of grass.

Someone was coming across the pitch. Harry looked up and saw Seamus.

Seamus knew his friends perfectly. So when he returned to his dormitory to find that Harry was gone, he knew exactly where he would find him.

Unable to look at Seamus, Harry stared dully at the grass. It was pocked with dusty hollows and coarsened with weeds. Hagrid would soon tidy it up in preparation for the oncoming Quidditch season.

"I knew you would be here." Seamus's feet were planted in front of Harry. There were tiny tuffets of bleached grass hairs glinting on each of his shoes. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"No." Harry heard how his blank monosyllable disconcerted Seamus. Miserably he added, "I'd rather we didn't."

"It's just…"

"Please," Harry begged.

His desperation silenced Seamus. "Okay, we don't have to talk about it," he murmured, flopping down on the grass next to Harry. "We can just sit here."

When Seamus turned his head to look at Harry, he was pained to see that the seams of Harry's cheeks were still glistening with tears.

From so many years of watching him and Malfoy fight, it was strange to see Harry breakdown and weep rather than bite back. Seamus understood that Harry would despise his own grieving, because he would interpret it as weakness.

Seamus inclined his head so as to seem not to notice Harry's tears. Then he took Harry's arm through his, feeling that he had to offer some more support.

The palm of Harry's hand when he touched it felt as brittle as a dead leaf, from being on his Firebolt too much.

A dead leaf was exactly what Harry was, Seamus thought, still clinging to the branch while the fat spring buds and new foliage in gaudy colours pushed out all around him as he held on at the top of his twig, waiting for the brutal wind to dispatch him.

A twisting sympathy for Harry that was all wound up with admiration and exasperation pulled at Seamus's heart. He would have given anything to make his friend feel happy again.

And at that moment, he fully believed that he and Blaise were doing the right thing.