Raveled

"Harry isn't liking the Wigtown Wanderers."

"Rightly so, the meat cleaver theme is absolutely stupid."

"Master is be liking which team the greatest?"

"The Falmouth Falcons, they're the most fun to watch."

"Harry isn't liking the way they is to play."

"Well if you can't handle a little blood Potter then—"

"Stop it!"

Harry and Malfoy stared at Hermione incredulously, both near starting out of their seats at her outburst, her very loud outburst in the library no less. Usually she enforced the silence with pointed looks and harsh shushing, but suddenly her voice rang throughout the shelves and shattered the peace she normally fought to keep.

"I can't stand you mocking house elves! How dare you?" she shrieked, slamming her book with another echoing thump that made them flinch.

"C'mon, 'Mione, we were just having a bit of fun is all." Harry soothed, but was immediately pinned with an unforgiving, piercing glare.

"Don't you 'Mione me Harry James Potter! I would think that from your situation you'd come to better appreciate house elves and not make fun of things they can't control."

"They can control it, actually. I had a house elf when I was little that read to me with proper grammar." Malfoy drawled, "Really Granger, you need to get it through your bushy head that house elves have a choice in most things."

She sent him a look that could freeze flame, a look that Malfoy didn't even blink at and Harry was tempted to laugh, but laughing at that moment would likely result in an untimely death beneath the formidable power that was the fearsome Hermione Granger.

It was a clear Saturday afternoon that they were absolutely wasting inside the repressive, stagnant air while a crisp, autumn-scented breeze gusted gently out the window. So far the only success they'd had while cramming their heads full with scrapped theories and arcane texts they couldn't decipher never mind read was make Hermione both suspicious and furious. Suspicious because he and Malfoy were being civil, civil in the way that rather than tearing at each other's throats and sending venomous glares back and forth, they were joking around and chatting amicably about Quidditch, something even the ever All-Knowing Hermione couldn't predict ever happening while Harry was still in his right mind. Perhaps she was also harbored dubious thoughts about his sanity, his brain addled by a curse none of them fully understood.

After all, Harry had used the excuse plenty enough times himself.

She was furious because of they both were interrupting her concentration with their strange friendliness and alleged 'mocking of house elves'. She was generally in a constant fume these days, whether it be from frustration about her lack of ability to solve the curse and find its counter-enchantment or from, as always, Ron being a thick git.

A week ago Harry would have understood why Ron loathed the very thought of willingly spending time with Draco Malfoy, but a week ago Harry was the Boy Who Lived to Snog Horklumps, today he was just Harry and, after a week of mutual detentions, Quidditch talk, and an accidental transfer of secrets, Malfoy was getting to be more like…Draco.

Ever since that afternoon in Hogsmeade near the Shrieking Shack that coldly friendly thing had remained between them, indeed it seemed to shadow over the curse, suppressing it almost. But in reality it had the opposite effect, it was strengthening it; Harry complied to commands without a second thought, he found tiny marks of punishment on his arms in the form of scratches from quills or his own nails, and more often than not he went to bed with tented pajamas and the latest sardonic praise from his master singing through the curse like a song.

This was thoroughly awkward coupled with the fact that the school was whispering, and in some individual cases, shouting rumors about the newly publicly gay Golden Boy going about with the Kinky Prince of Slytherin.

He was dangerously close to murdering Seamus Finnegan the morning he and his painfully loud Irish voice demanded to know if he and Malfoy were shagging while they stood in the Great Hall exchanging Charms notes.

Malfoy's words had more effect on him than his fellow Gryffindor's however, his face flushing as the curse lilted hotly through his veins at the cadence of Malfoy's smirking, drawling, inexplicably beautiful voice.

"Are we then, Potter? Shall we make good use of Severus' desk during detention tonight? You should tell Finnegan that what happens in the Potions classroom stays there. Something to that effect, yeah?"

Harry sputtered eloquently at Malfoy's retreating blond head, trying to set his mind to rights and not envision himself sprawled on Snape's desk in the cold, drafty dungeons completely naked, staring into lust-hazed grey eyes, hands threading into mussed white-blond hair and tasting every inch of—

He calmed down only when he realized that Malfoy had nicked his Charms homework.

By 'something to that effect', Harry had told Seamus to mind his own bloody business unless he wanted to wake up to the Giant Squid snogging him.

Harry was pulled from his thoughts by Hermione thumping him firmly on the head with her little leather-bound book, skewing his glasses and sending him tilting frightfully backward in his chair. Malfoy naturally laughed, and Harry could tell that he was likely the next victim of Hermione's curiously heavy notebook if he didn't stop.

"I wonder if I can order you to have some sense of balance, Potter." he chuckled, dodging Hermione's blow as she lunged. He sprung nimbly from his own chair and twisted his lithe body behind it, and Harry had to admit that he had the proper build of a proper Seeker.

"Oh, why don't you two go and do what you so obviously really want to? Leave me be and go play your damn Quidditch." She harrumphed as if reading Harry's mind.

Harry glanced uncertainly to Malfoy, he didn't want either of them getting the idea that he didn't want to help to break the curse that was entangled within him, even if it meant sacrificing perfect Quidditch conditions in favor for lazing in the library pretending to do something important.

"Oh, come on, Potter!" Malfoy whined at his look, then stood ramrod straight and announced formally, "Fine then, I, Draco Malfoy, Master of Harry Potter, and Best Seeker in Hogwarts do hereby command Harry Potter to join me outside on this glorious day for a fly. Specific enough for you, you sodding martyr?"

Harry nodded dumbly and took Malfoy's offered hand, shrugging at Hermione, who was ignoring them huffily, flipping furiously through her notes. They exited the library, leaving a flock of slack-jawed and affronted Ravenclaws in their wake, those who chose to fritter away one of the last lovely days of the year in the library, a place that would not be ravaged by a Scottish winter in a matter of weeks.

"How can you not be afraid of her?" Harry shook his head at Malfoy's equally insulted look.

"Granger? Honestly Potter, it takes more than a brown-eyed menace bashing a book about to scare me."

Harry simply raised an eyebrow, an expression that he was sure belonged on Malfoy's face rather than his own. He couldn't decide whether or not it was worrying that his mannerisms were rubbing off on him.

It was worrying, however, the images the simple word 'rubbing' conjured.

"Besides, she doesn't know my middle name, now does she?" he called down the corridor as they parted ways to fetch their brooms.

~o0o~

Draco was actually glad that Granger didn't know his middle name, because, admittedly, she could indeed be quite scary when she wanted to be.

Although he was more frightened about what Potter was doing to him.

It amazed Draco how easily Potter could smile when he wasn't scowling and brooding, though he had every reason to what with a mad man after him, along with some morbid, misty prophecy hanging over his head like a dark cloud, and it wasn't as if Draco was working to make his life any easier.

For that, he was a tad bit guilty, but wild Thestrals couldn't drag that admission from him. He would admit, however, that he was as furious as a house-elf-loving-Hermione-Granger at that manipulative old codger for using him, Severus, and even his favorite little Potter for his own grand schemes on a chess board none of them could see. Who knew when one of them, nothing more than a simple pawn, might be sacrificed for 'the greater good' of this mad battle of politics called a war? Draco saw no soldiers or battlefronts, no, it was all skulking and spying and suffering through the Cruciatus Curse for the damnable 'greater good'.

Dumbledore may be his ticket to freedom from the curse as binding as Potter's own that scarred itself across his forearm, but he still hated the Muggle-loving Headmaster with his bloody soulless twinkling and poisonously sweet lemon drops.

It was also frightening that he was not only feeling guilty and liking Harry bloody Potter, both of which went against everything that was Malfoy, what's more he was scared for him, all the while Draco could be killed at any one of those gatherings, slowly and torturously punished for his treason, his parents murdered, maybe even Severus discovered, and then the 'greater good' would be bloody lost all together.

So it obviously didn't make sense why he was biting his nails for a boy, who was safe and sound at Hogwarts, nothing more than the prospect of his future and the recollections of the past to truly harm him within the walls of the castle.

That, and Draco.

Guilt seems to be an infectious thing that insists on lingering, something that requires a cure in the form of a promise, a promise Draco wasn't sure he could take nor keep. He'd hurt Potter, and he didn't want it to happen again.

Now that was a frightening idea.

But everything that was scary, dark, and complicated dispersed as soon as he laid hands on the polished wood of his broom. The sky was an inexplicably safe place, high above all the problems waiting for him on the ground, it was a place that could not hold heavy thoughts and weighted feelings, it simply soared.

Sometimes Draco wished he never had to land again.

Sauntering down to the pitch with his broom shouldered and wind playing in his hair, things started to look like they used to, the sky was still the same brilliant blue as it had been last year, the lake was still glossy-surfaced and glimmering, and firsties still scampered away when they saw him. It was almost as if the summer had never happened.

Until he saw Potter.

Then things, including the summer months and mark on his arm, became very real again, but it wasn't as if he was alone and terrified on the drawing room floor, he had a broom in hand and a Saviour at his side.

He knew this should be wrong and terrifying, relying on another for his happiness, but he wasn't. He was as he was flying when he looked into Potter's eyes.

Free.

He groaned, feeling like one of the little Hufflepuffs he'd just ousted from the pitch for standing there and thinking so bloody romantically about stupid Harry Potter and his stupid green, green eyes.

Those eyes were looking at him along with a cluster of Ravenclaws cowed at the other end of the pitch, but he paid them, and even Potter's gaze no mind, impulsively mounting his broom and rocketing skyward, worries and thoughts ripped away by the wind snatching at his clothes, the world's details blurred with speed, his lungs expanding with the crisp October air and eyes filling with the clear, cloudless expanse of forget-me-not blue.

He was above it all, sneering at those gawking Ravenclaws, the students congregated about the lake, but not Potter, Potter was circling him like a hungry shark, cutting through the air on his damned Firebolt that Draco wanted so much.

But Draco couldn't allow Potter to make him any more of a liar than he already was, he had proclaimed himself the best Seeker of the school after all, so fast racing broom or not, Potter was going down.

Without another second's hesitation, they dove, the ground rearing up at them at an incredible speed an unspoken dare pushing them and their dangerous game of chicken.

They went on like that for what could have been hours, a score never set and challenge never met, diving and swooping and spinning and never quite meeting the other's eye. The spectators grew bored and left, the group at the lake thinned until it was only the two of them flitting in the twilight like summer fireflies.

Draco wasn't sure what caused it then, maybe the flash of the sunset off of Potter's glasses, or perhaps the glimmer of light off the lake, but something blinded him for a moment, white-hot light flashing across his vision, his hands flying up instinctively to shield his eyes and with his grip gone, he fell.

He felt the awful sensation of helplessly falling before a different awful sensation jerked through his shoulder, but that pain was welcome because he quickly realized was his arm popping out of place because Potter had caught him.

Potter who had been on the other end of the pitch.

Potter who was not on his broom, but rather on Draco's now.

Potter who was staring down at him, face reflecting the pure astonishment Draco was sure was on his own.

Potter who had Apparated.

Draco hung limply as Potter hauled him awkwardly onto his broom, an arm snaked around him tentatively, the look of surprise never leaving and only growing when Draco took a firm hold of him, his frame shaking and eyes fixed on the ground, which was far, far beneath them.

He could have been a pile of broken bones and bloodied flesh down there if not for Potter and the house elf skill of Apparating on school grounds evidently.

"You Apparated." He whispered, the words making the action somehow real and not the desperate dream of a person actually falling to their death. He tried in vain to detach his fingers from their inappropriately needy grasp on Potter's arms, reasoning with himself that this was reality, though the dizzied look on Potter's face, which was so very close, did nothing to convince him that it really was.

"I did?" Potter was whispering too, breath huffing in the hair at the back of Draco's neck.

"What else could it have been? You—"

Draco took a shaky breath, halting the words 'saved me'. He didn't want to be in Potter's debt after all, although after the incident in detention, wasn't he already? Or was Potter in his debt? He wondered when he stopped keeping score, something he'd once kept meticulously, brooding and frankly obsessing over. Perhaps Pansy and Blaise were right; after all, here he was breathless and blushing like a girl in Harry Potter's arms, high in the sky above the Quidditch pitch with a romantic view of the sunset over the mountains.

A vantage point that any student who happened to look out a window would easily see, the silhouette of two people entwined on a broomclear against the purpling sky.

"Potter. Land. Now." Draco was appalled at how quivering his voice was, but satisfied that Potter obeyed without question, easing toward the ground below, a hand once hesitant wound securely about his waist.

When they did touchdown, Potter did not let go as Draco expected, making a distantly familiar motion in sweeping him up into his arms and holding him close. And it was then he felt protected and precious and all that loving, Muggle-made nonsense, which it clearly was, nothing but nonsense.

Even if it felt good.

"Potter?"

There, it was gone, fleeting as a Snitch, the something that was more than coldly friendly, something warmer and more than friendly. It was something that lived in a moment he wasn't sure he could have back, even if he ordered it.

He was on his own two feet, only a concerned hand steadying him lingering on his shoulder, Potter's eyes downcast and a long silence spanning between them. This was a new moment, and although set at an awkward angle, there were more pressing matters to attend to.

"Apparate Potter."

Potter blinked, but did not so shift so much as an inch, making Draco scowl.

"What?" Potter looked highly offended under his frowning scrutiny, "You don't honestly expect me to do it again, do you?"

"Yes, I honestly do. Now be a good house elf and Apparate for your master." He replied crisply.

Potter shoved away, a shudder rippling through him even as a scowl of his own replaced the careless abandon of flight from his features.

"I told you I can't, now stop. The curse…hurts."

Draco was ready to argue that it wasn't hurting at all, but refrained, Potter was in an odd mood as it was and he was already longing for the simple joy of flying.

"It was probably the curse itself that made it happen in the first place, wasn't it? Why shouldn't it allow you to Apparate now if I ask?"

"It was a life or death situation, so it was like accidental magic, that's likely why." Potter insisted, "It happens sometimes."

"Rarely," Draco scoffed, but raised a brow at the look on Potter's face, "Doesn't it?"

Potter tugged at a forelock and peered around the darkening pitch almost sheepishly. "I've told you before; my magic can get a bit…unruly."

Draco was tempted to make the connection between Potter's untamable hair and his equally unruly magic, but held his tongue again, trying to think as Granger, who surely would be having a conniption by now, would. Doing so was embarrassingly easy, Draco supposed it was a skill copied from Pomfrey rather than Granger, being calculatingly mothering as she always was when Draco dragged himself back to the hospital wing.

"Accidental magic has happened to you after having come to Hogwarts? Recently?"

"Well there was just now and…" Potter trailed away, biting his lips in an infuriatingly attractive way, "A few times before."

"Before or after the curse?"

"After wh—" Potter broke off, a stupidly enlightened grin brightening his face, "We should tell Hermione!"

"Granger will probably beat me with that book of hers for daring to make so much headway on a curse of her own design." He sighed, tossing his head back and trying to look terribly abused, which, naturally, only made Potter laugh harder.

"Malfoy, I know you'll be the one to solve this yet!"

Draco's smirk crumpled even as Potter slung a brotherly arm about him and continued to beam brilliantly.

Would Draco be the one to free Potter? Did he even want to? If he did, what would become of this coldly friendly and surely fragile thing?

"Well, Potter," he sighed, looking up to the place they'd hovered, the place Potter had saved him, "I hope you're ready to spend the rest of the weekend in the library suffering my company along with a Granger that will no doubt be beside herself in inspiration once we tell her my latest theory."

Potter didn't complain even once.

~o0o~

The sky outside was seething in a mass of dark grey, rain falling in earnest, splattering sharply against the windows and turning the grounds to muddy slush.

Naturally, the first Quidditch game of the year was today, Gryffindor versus Slytherin, and the Great Hall was churning as much as the Lake under the tangible anxious tension flashing like thunderclaps in the form of biting insults and burning glares between the two teams.

It was the two Seekers everyone was watching however, the pair that did not speak to each other, but every stolen glance across the room was just as electric. Harry really hated it when everyone was watching, it made it all the more worse that this was before the game that they were so attentive to his every move, but he supposed that it was something he'd always have to deal with.

But he didn't want them witnessing his own supposedly secret stares thrown Draco's way, stares that, strangely, were not returned.

Over the last few days, the glances Harry didn't even know he'd been casting were returned, grey twining through him as tightly as the curse, but today they were avoided and ignored, Draco was bent over his breakfast with a decided tautness to his slim shoulders.

Yes, he had indeed become not Malfoy but Draco, after what was the almost accident at the Quidditch pitch the smirking, sneering ice sculpture that was Malfoy had melted to become more human, a simple boy that like everyone else trembled when they nearly fell to their death and, perhaps unconsciously, sought comfort, he'd become just Draco.

And yet he wasn't just Draco, he was so much more than that; he was quick wit and aristocratic fingers, natural grace and gossamer hair, the smell of mint and eyes like the December sky. He was becoming much more than a schoolyard nemesis, or his master, or even a sort of friend that may actually hate you, and this was probably why Harry was foolishly worried.

Draco was also worried about something, he could tell, it was in the bruise-like marks of insomnia beneath his eyes and slump to his gait, the way he got as frosty and still as an icicle when the subject of Quidditch was brought up, his words sharp and cold. It was also in the way the git was refusing to meet his eye as he so often did, the ritual of the glance, gaze met, smirk and quirk of the eyebrow gone.

Harry, as he so often did many things, could be merely over thinking it. It was Quidditch, who wouldn't be nervous? First game jitters were creeping through the entire school, especially the Seekers. Although Harry had been too preoccupied with the fact that his new friend of cold, imbalanced sorts to really notice the clenching of his stomach and sweat of his palms, the classic symptoms of pre-game nerves, that or thoughts of Draco Malfoy.

Before he had time to gather the courage needed to walk across the hall to the Slytherin table and ask what was on Draco's mind, he was dragged away by Ginny, who was raving about something Angelina had planned, but it was all just a distant murmur his ears, like thunder on the horizon.

It continued to be a distant murmur even when they entered the pitch were masses of students were already cheering over the pound of the rain, he didn't pay much attention to the chatter of the locker room until he heard the word 'Malfoy'.

It was only then that his attention was impossibly piqued.

"What did you say?" he demanded of Ginny, who merely blinked at him, but then frowned.

"Oh, yeah well, Malfoy's mummy is here watching the game. I'm surprised that Dumbledore would allow a Death Eater's wife on school grounds, just like how it amazes me that Malfoy is still in school, wouldn't you think that he'd drop out to become what he's always wanted to be?"

Harry vaguely recalled making the same argument on the train on the way to Hogwarts this year, but still felt the need to defend Draco, whether it was from the curse or the coldly friendly thing, he did not know.

Ginny would probably have a fit if she ever heard him calling Malfoy, his supposed archenemy, Draco.

He sidled away from Ginny and toward the locker room door, wondering if he could slip out and find Draco in the last few minutes before the game, but his thoughts were cut short when he was snatched around the collar by a forceful hand and yanked out the door, knocking his glasses off.

He didn't have to see properly to know who was holding him, however, the figure was all pale and green and smelled intoxicatingly like mint and leather and rain. Harry blinked owlishly when his glasses were slipped back onto his nose gingerly by skillful fingers and was met with a spectacularly close half-hearted smirk.

"You know I forget you actually need them sometimes, I occasionally assume you simple wear them to annoy me. Honestly with your money you could afford something better than there rounded atrocities."

Harry laughed softly and tugged self consciously at his fringe, inexplicably feeling no need to move away or ask what Draco wanted, indeed his thoughts of confronting him had all fled his mind, content to continue to be pressed into a wall by a willowy form and the pleasant sight of such a form slicked with rain, his white-blonde hair plastered down and darkened to spun-gold.

But Draco seemed to want to say something, the curse was wriggling in a way that knew he needed something and Harry was all the willing to give him whatever that may be. He tried smiling encouragingly and, surprisingly, it worked. Malfoy met his gaze almost shyly; bottom lip between his teeth in a way that Harry was sure didn't look near as edible on himself. It was probably the hazed look to Harry's eyes now that made Draco plough on, as if afraid to loss Harry's attention.

"Potter, I need a favor," he hesitated, voice so low it was almost inaudible, "A favor doesn't mean it's an order, you have a choice."

Harry nodded slowly, the curse wilting as if in disappointment it didn't have to strangle Harry into something he was unwilling to do. That was worrying, but not that matter to be addressed at the moment.

"I want you to let me win the game."

Harry was convinced now that this was something he'd been mustering up the courage—and humility—to say for ages. It was all in a rush, like an explanation from a guilty child, and Harry was almost expecting him to scuff his foot on the ground from the way he met his gaze insolently and pleading all at once.

Then there was the question itself—throw a game so Draco could win for once? Cheat? Why would he do that? Why would Draco dare ask him when he knows Harry would never do such a—

Oh.

Things were falling into place, his silence, his worry, his sleeplessness, and his mother. He wanted to win just one Quidditch game for his mother, who was the equivalent of a grieving widow, now persecuted by the public for her husband's crimes just as Draco was. Harry didn't think it was fair, in fact it set his blood a boil, it wasn't their fault that Lucius went and decided to follow an undead mad man, just as it wasn't Harry's fault that his father was a prat in school.

A niggling in the back of his head told him he was being naïve, what if Draco and Narcissa had a choice in that path as well? What if they were as good as Death Eaters, carrying out the Dark Lord's dark deeds with no one the wiser, only the father Malfoy wearing the mask and bearing the Mark?

Could he really say that now? With those grey eyes gazing at him in a shame hidden false haughtiness? Could he really let his team down all for Draco?

"Yes," he answered himself more than the Slytherin still holding him to the wall, who went suddenly stiff, eyes narrowed and searching for a lie. Mistrustful as always.

"Draco, you deserve to win for once," he said earnestly, arms coming up to grip his biceps, "I'm only doing this once, and you have to really try, I'm not making this easy."

He relaxed only then, a near smirk turning up his lips and Harry was sure they were poised to say something scathing about Gryffindor pride. A lot could be said about Slytherin pride, but Harry simply smiled for now, even if he wasn't sure why.

"I suppose I owe you now?" Draco said dryly, still making no move to let him go and Harry found he was just fine with that.

"A brave thing for a Slytherin to say," Harry grinned wisely, earning a cuff to the side of his head, "I'm sure I'll think of some way for you to repay me, maybe house elf for a day?"

Draco shuddered, "What are you going to do, Potter? Make me wear nothing but rags and tea towels? I've told you you're the kinky one, not me."

Harry knew he was about to have a lot of thoughts about Draco in nothing but a tea towel, but those lovely thoughts were quashed by the calling of his name and the abruptly deafening roar of the crowd. It was as if the world was sonly just now invading the bubble he and Draco had formed in the shadows of the Quidditch locker rooms.

"Thank you, Potter."

It was nearly like a kiss; the way Draco's lips pressed to his ear and lingered for what could have been the longest three seconds of his life.

And then it was gone, the moment trailing away like the string of wayward balloon, and he was alone in the shadows, soon to be discovered by a furious Ginny, but he only dimly made out her words and just as foggily lied about what he'd been doing.

The icy persistence of the rain helped him to sharpen his thoughts, but still they only drifted to Draco and the possibilities of him falling again in the dreadful weather, or being struck by lightning, or being blind-sided by a Bludger—

He was slow to the take off, kicking up mud and rising to hover above the other players, who certainly weren't distracted playing in deplorable weather like this.

They also weren't distracted by the way Draco looked his Quidditch robes, breeches laced tight and gloves of soft leather encasing his slender arms, both begging to be ripped off…

A flash of gold snapped him from his thoughts, but it was just the necklace of a Ravenclaw girl in the stands, and he made himself focus. He'd promised to not make this easy for Draco and he definately wasn't keeping that promise by daydreaming.

Although so near the stands, he wondered where Draco's mother was, watching as she sat primly, and secretly hoped, an enthusiasm a proper pure-blood lady would never show outwardly.

But he knew she would be watching now, because Harry saw the Snitch and so did Draco, it was flitting in the center of the pitch, darting about an oblivious Chaser for the Slytherin team.

Their gazes met, even through the darkness and rain, Draco's eyes were unmistakably determined, just as the battering storm that prowled above them. A challenge was met and a promise kept as they dived, rain and wind trying uselessly to drag them back as they neared the Golden Snitch.

An arm's length, an inch, it was almost in his grasp, just as it was almost in Draco's clawing hand. It would be easy to snatch it now, fair to, but he didn't. He swerved and watched as Draco's pale hand closed around the Snitch and a look of pure shock dawned on his face, as if he expected to be denied last second.

Harry should have been insulted, but he didn't have much time to react as he was suddenly thrown back by an excited Seeker, broom and all, which proved to be quite a force as he was tossed to the ground and crushed under Draco.

And then there was no almost because this was a kiss, a real kiss that was pressed firmly and wetly to his mouth and all the breath he'd managed to retain through the short fall to the muddy ground was gone.

Before he had time to recover, or, dare he, kiss back, he was met with a smirk and sincere grey eyes, a face of grateful triumph splattered with rain and mud.

"I think I owe you a lot more than that."

Then he was gone, pulled up and embraced by his own team who were shouting themselves hoarse in victory. His own team was quiet when they gathered his near unresponsive body from the ground, mumbling their own complaints and about 'Malfoy tackling Harry just to shove it in his face'.

Harry didn't correct them, because something had indeed been shoved in his face and right onto his mouth. He was mildly surprised no one saw.

He was awakened from his daze by a figure hovering pale as a ghost in the rain nearby, her blue eyes trained on him as if she had seen, a controlled smile that was rather like a grimace on her beautiful face. He pushed away from the defeated Gryffindors, who did not ask where he was going, patting him on the back and nodding understandingly, thinking he was off to mope and brood on the game he'd purposely lost.

Muddied and soaked, he approached Narcissa Malfoy, who stood unmarred beneath an Umbrella Charm, the smile quickly fading as her pale blue eyes settle on him. Her face did not contort in disdain, but rather looked him over in an appraising sort of way, brushing her long golden hair in a gesture that could be attributed as nervous.

"Harry Potter," she said in a soft voice that contained a command not unlike that of her husband, "You flew well today,"

Harry was nearly sure that she knew that he'd lost on purpose, but said nothing and quietly thanked her, not dropping her gaze.

She suddenly glanced around and drew close, towering over him and filling his nose with the cloying scent of gardenias and the expensive silk of her dress, her eyes were searching his face in the silently desperate way Draco had just before the game. He was amazed at how much he looked like his mother, rather than his father upon further inspection. There was something softer about Narcissa Malfoy that her husband didn't have, but her son had inherited. Maybe it was the eyelashes.

"Harry Potter this an order from the lady of the House of Malfoy, whom ranks higher than the heir," she whispered, and the curse bound him to attention, plucking and knitting in a fury he'd never felt, like strings ready to snap, "You will do everything in your power to protect my son, understand?"

"Yes Madam," he replied automatically, the curse tying and binding like a promise wrapped tight.

She nodded once, drawing herself up and gliding away like a specter in the storm, off to likely congratulate her son who had won by cheating.

Her son that Harry had sworn to protect with his life.

~o0o~

A/N~ Thanks for reading, please review!