Chapter 12: Flight of Frenzy
Despite the fact that foxlet gliders are particularly interdependent, relying upon those both in their family groups, empathy linked and bond-parented, particularly threatening situations have been demonstrated to induce a flight response. This response is exhibited more pronouncedly in juveniles and Sedate gliders than in their more aggressive counterparts. Analogous to the response of stampeding cattle, the mindless, compulsive urge to flee and to continue fleeing until abruptly stopped by a greater catalyst or until run into exhaustion has been observed in several instances and depicted a number of studies (Honeycomb et al., 1901; Jofferson, 1940). Foxlet gliders have similarly demonstrated markedly determined, focused and persistent behaviour in situations as workaday as foraging to those as climatic as territorial displays and aggressive encounters. This persistence is exhibited in such flight responses.
If such an occurrence is initiated in a tamed or 'pet' glider, at times not even the urging of their bond-parents can inhibit it.
Eighth year restarted with a vengeance. It was as though before Christmas had been the calm before the storm, but now the thunder and lightning had returned with rekindled vigour.
Harry had never been one inclined toward studying. He and Ron had spent most of their years at Hogwarts avoid doing just that. He knew himself well enough to know that he was a practical person. He learned better on his feet and actually doing things than, much to Hermione's distress, with a book open before him and quill in hand. Harry had long ago learned to tune out her scolding reprimands that urged him towards more consistent academic attendance.
That was before. Now, Harry found himself with his nose in his books so often that he could almost feel Hermione's radiating pride. It was entirely not his fault. Harry blamed Draco for his change in attitude. All of it; he was the one to blame.
Draco didn't tell him expressly what to do. He didn't insist that, just as he did, Harry should spent his days squinting at the often minute writings in his textbooks, or shaking cramps from his quill hand after writing ridiculously long parchment pages of essays and revision notes. He didn't have to. Harry, who was by his side practically every minute of the day, had his habits rub off on him. He felt guilty simply sitting and doing next to nothing while Draco showed such obvious dedication to his work. How had Harry never noticed before how ardently and obsessively Draco studied? It was fascinating to realise, and at times Harry actually found himself just staring; Draco looked like an entirely different person when he concentrated wholly on his studies.
Hermione was ecstatic with Harry's apparent change of heart, which, after the blow Kitsune's maturation had inflicted upon her, Harry could hardly resent. She in turn guilt-tripped Ron into joining what she had jubilantly termed their 'study group' in either the library or the eighth year common room. Harry had become depressingly accustomed to the feeling of a sore arse from sitting for too many hours on the hard, unforgiving desk chairs. It didn't take too many such days for him to decide that he was decidedly more comfortable reclining on the floor alongside Pipsqueak than he was at the desks, a fact that Pipsqueak certainly made the most of by lying perpendicular across his back or belly at every available opportunity. She really was too big to sit in his lap anymore.
The professors similarly seemed to kick up their game, and seventh and eighth years alike were soon run off their feet writing essays, finishing reports and procedural anecdotes for Potions, drawing sketches for Herbology or those lines of unintelligible script for Runes. Harry marvelled at both Draco and Hermione's efficiency in scrawling the foreign script as though the blocky runes were an alphabet they actually understood. He had never been more thankful that he hadn't taken Ancient Runes.
It was all driving him a little bit crazy, and Harry had to seriously question his masochistic tendencies that had urged him to come back to school in the first place. It felt like the only times they weren't madly studying was at meal times which Harry, naturally, spent most of at the Slytherin table with Draco, Blaise and, more often than not, Luna. Draco had actually started pulling his textbooks from his bag to read at his meals, as though even a few moment bereft of study would effect his overall N.E. . He needed a reality check.
"You know, Draco," Harry said one morning in late February around a mouthful of toast. It was a surprise that Draco actually spared him a glance, pausing in writing what looked to be more pointless notes from his Arithmancy textbook onto the parchment alongside it. "If you read while eating it will only end in disaster."
Draco frowned, momentarily distracted by his confusion at Harry's words. "Disaster? How so?"
"Disaster indeed," Blaise nodded solemnly, as though he knew what Harry was talking about. He didn't, but Harry had come to expect as much from Blaise. He was a bit of a shit-tease.
"Because," Harry explained, "you'll end up getting crumbs all through your book. It'll stain the pages."
Blaise gave a gasp of mock horror. "Not the crumbs!"
Harry ignored him. He hadn't missed the slight twitch of Draco's eye at his words. He'd come to pick up on Draco's quirks over the past months both unconsciously and, more recently, deliberately, and that twitch he knew was nothing if not indicative of barely suppressed agitation. Just as he'd realised, quite obviously, that Draco had a compulsive desire for cleanliness. Weirdly so.
"I have to study," Draco replied, though his voice was touched with a hint of something that could have been distress. Harry knew his casual words would stick.
Shrugging just because he knew it annoyed Draco for some unfathomable reason, Harry turned towards Pipsqueak who sat on the bench at his side and offered her the rest of his piece of toast. She took it gently from his fingers with tentative jaws. "Yes, you do. But half an hour to have breakfast or lunch or dinner isn't going to make that much difference. Just like always sleeping with a textbook isn't going to put knowledge into your head by osmosis when you're unconscious."
Blaise snorted at his side. "I don't know, Harry. I wouldn't put it past Draco's 'osmosis' abilities."
"Actually, I think more correctly it would be 'diffusion'," Luna pondered aloud at Harry's side. "Osmosis involves more specifically water movement. Diffusion is just the movement of molecules in general."
Harry, Draco and Blaise all stared at her for a moment as she contemplated the middle-distance thoughtfully before shaking herself slightly and turning back to her watermelon. Her whole half a watermelon, which she was eating with a spoon. Harry didn't even consider the oddity anymore. It was simply how Luna was.
"Anyway, moving on," Draco said slowly, blinking himself out of his bemusement. He turned back towards Harry. "It can't hurt to study just a little bit more. It couldn't hurt you either."
"Actually, it could," Harry corrected, handing another halved slice of toast to Pipsqueak. "It's putting me and Pips off our breakfast." As if to directly disprove his words, the foxlet at his side swallowed the toast nearly whole.
Surprisingly, however, Draco did put his book away after that. Harry wasn't the only one to notice, either; Blaise watched as Draco turned deliberately back to his breakfast, sliding his textbook back into his bag, before he turned slowly back towards Harry. "What are you? How did you do that?"
Harry only smirked. He didn't really know why Draco listened to him sometimes, and actually more often of late, but it was certainly satisfying.
There were also the times that Harry – rarely – visited Kitsune and Tod with Ron and Hermione. He found that, quite unfortunately, both his study load and his desire to be around Pipsqueak as much as humanly possible restricted him from doing so more than he would have liked, what with the necessity of leaving Pips with Draco to do so. More unfortunately, it meant that he was spending less and less time with Ron and Hermione, much to his regret. He didn't want distance to come between them, but such would be inevitable, wouldn't it? He was spending less time with and Ron and Hermione as they became closer and closer with their relationship every passing day. It felt increasingly lonely to be merely an onlooker to such love, which Harry usually did from afar when studying, or watching them standing in the mid-ground between Tod's and Kitsune's dens.
That loneliness only urged Harry to seek out Pipsqueak all the more as a place of solace. Pipsqueak and, less consequentially and more deliberately, Draco. Impossibly, unbelievably even, Harry found himself liking Draco's company more and more. It wasn't so much that he had to spent time with Draco because of Pipsqueak but more of a happy coincidence these days. He might have been a overly studious nerd, might have traded insults or spoken in sarcasm more often than he did otherwise, and he might have the weight of a history of mutual dislike resting upon his shoulders, but Harry liked him.
He liked spending time with Draco. Hell, he even sort of liked arguing with him. It was the perfect way to alleviate the stress of studying for hours on end. Besides, Draco actually occasional stopped in his studying to do just that. Harry wondered if he was as satisfied with the act of bantering, whether he too got a reprieve from it as much as Harry did.
There was that, there were the visits to the Berserker's dens, and there were meal times. But other than that, precious few times were spared from the exhausting routine of studying. The only other exception was when Hagrid, who still at times requested he and Pipsqueak join his sixth year classes to show off the foxlet's continued growth spurts, called him down for a visit on Thursday mornings.
Unfortunately, it just had to be one of those mornings, when Harry was with Pipsqueak by himself, that disaster had to strike.
He should have anticipated it. It was a windy day and, quite outside of what every book he'd read on foxlet gliders had said, Harry found that the wind tended to agitate Pipsqueak for some reason. Even as she followed him through the sludge of approaching spring rains down towards Hagrid's cabin, she grumbled and yipped to herself, snapping at the wind as though it were an irritating fly before pressing herself against Harry's leg once more. He rested a hand upon the top of Pips' head to soothe her disgruntlement; she was just tall enough for his fingers to brush her fur without needing to bend over.
Harry squinted into the wind and shucked his jacket further up his shoulders. He would have preferred snow to being nearly thrown off his feet by the gale. "I think Draco was right on this one. It would have been nice if Hagrid had picked some other day for us to visit his class. Just maybe."
Pipsqueak grumbled her agreement, butting her head into his leg once more. She pressed herself even more closely to his side as they passed the foxlet dens; even from a distance, even though they shouldn't have been able to smell her from so far away, Kitsune and less-pronouncedly Tod set to throwing themselves into fits of snarls and barking yaps. Harry swore he could feel Pipsqueak's wariness on a mental rather than just a physical level, which quite possibly he actually could. He raised a hand to Lavender and Ginny seated inside each den, having a overly loud conversation of their own that he doubted either of them caught more than every second word of.
The sixth year Care of Magical Creatures students were huddled together like a waddle of penguins, their dark robes mingling together as they shuffled in step in the clearing before Hagrid. Hagrid himself looked none the worse for wear for the near-hurricane whipping around them and turned a beaming smile upon Harry as he approached them. "Hi, Harry, Pips. How're yeh doing?"
"Other than nearly getting blown away? Just dandy, Hagrid, thanks," Harry replied, though offered a smile to take the sarcastic sting from his words.
Hagrid actually looked a touch guilty for once. "Sorry 'bout this, Harry. I know it must be frustrating coming down every other week fer the classes and all, but I really 'preciate it. Won't keep yeh the whole lesson, though. I'm sure yeh've got a mountain o' study teh be doin'."
Harry waved away Hagrid's words. "Honestly, Hagrid, I don't have any particular interest in burying myself in homework any more than I absolutely have to. Do you know what it's like having both Hermione and Draco setting an example?" He shook his head. "I get exhausted just watching them."
Hagrid smiled fondly, though Harry very much suspected it was intended more for Hermione than for Draco. He hadn't seemed quite as averse to Draco's very existence since he'd been bonded to Pipsqueak, or since Harry had assured Hagrid that more recently Draco was stepping up to the game as Hagrid would very likely have liked to demand of him. Harry didn't think he'd ever quite gotten over the soreness he'd felt that the foxlets would never consider him a potential bond-parent.
"Well, even so, I'm sure yer looking forward teh gettin' out o' this wind," he said loudly enough that the sixth year students evidently heard him for Harry noticed several of them nod in fervent agreement. "Alrigh' then, yeh lot. Gather round, gather round. Taking a look at our lil' foxlet here, see how much she's grown in the past two weeks before we get back into the Porlocks, which I'm sure yer all mighty excited about." Hagrid chuckled to himself at the lack of response from his sixth years who, Harry knew, had been studying the two-foot tall horses for several weeks now and were likely thoroughly sick of. He turned his smile towards Pipsqueak and studied her with a clinical eye before nodding approvingly. "Blimey, she has had a bit o' a growth spurt, hasn't she?"
Harry smiled obligingly as Hagrid launched himself into a description of the incremental changes that Pipsqueak had and likely would undergo in the near future. He found the classes of particular interest in a way he never had the study of magical creatures before, most likely because it held a certain personalised weight to it. Besides that, he enjoyed the softening of gazes as the small clutch of sixth years turned towards Pipsqueak. Whose wouldn't when confronted with her? She might be significantly larger than how she had been months before but she was still quite definitely the cutest creature Harry had personally ever seen. And he had seen all of Mrs Figg's cats.
"Now, if I'm not mistaken, her ears are likely teh stop growing probably in about a week or so, which means she likely won't be getting all that much bigger from now on. I'd say maybe another head or two on her at most – she's never going teh be all that big, even is she does become a Berserker."
Harry winced slightly at the offhanded suggestion, spoken as though it could actually happen and perhaps even likely would. Only for a second, however, before he was thoroughly distracted by the crashing explosion behind him.
Snapping his gaze over his shoulder, Harry immediately dropped his hand down to touch the top of Pipsqueak's head. Her ears had swung forwards as she too turned to glance behind them, eyes wide and just a touch fearful. Harry noticed that the fur on her three tails had bristled slightly, was continuing to bristle.
Then he was distracted even from that by the white charger that pelted across the grounds towards them. By the scream of distress or perhaps of warning that sounded like it came from Lavender. By Kitsune who, somehow, appeared to have thrown herself through the mesh fence of her den and was making straight for them in all of her enraged Berserker glory.
Pipsqueak was momentarily frozen. Harry could feel it; she froze like a deer before the headlights of an oncoming car. To the startled cries of the sixth years that seemed to abruptly dissipate from their cluster, to Hagrid's bark of "Bloody hell!", Harry drew his wand. He acted without thought, without even a word of enchantment tumbling from his lips.
Thick ropes sprung from the end of his wand, spinning like a Frisbee towards the rapidly approaching Kitsune. She drew just close enough for him to see her teeth bared in aggressive rage, her third eye narrowed and hackles raised like spikes at her ruff. The sheer size of her pelting towards them, distinctly larger than Pipsqueak was, seemed suddenly enormous. Then she crashed to the ground in a heap of tangled ropes fifty meters away, of twisting limbs, yelps and growling "yap"s mixed between her snarls.
Harry didn't get a chance to sigh in relief. He barely caught sight of Lavender sprinting around Hagrid's cabin, sheer horror and terror upon her face, before his arm was nearly wrenched from its socket. Pipsqueak had shaken free of her stupefaction. Without logical thought, she only now threw herself into flight. Unfortunately, with the chain linking them together, Harry was dragged along with her.
He maintained his footing just barely. It was a struggle, but he managed. Harry just steadied himself quickly enough before Pipsqueak, straining at their link, fur on more than just her tails bristling in her flight of frenzy, gave another tugging jerk and launched herself forwards.
Harry could have extended the chain. He might have perhaps even shot Pipsqueak down, wrapped her in magical ropes as he had Kitsune crumpled to the ground behind him. But he didn't. He couldn't do it. Not to Pipsqueak, and certainly not after he heard the pitiful, terrified "yip"s that sprung from her throat as she dragged him towards the Forbidden Forest.
To the sound of Hagrid calling frantically behind him to "Stop! Stop, Harry, stop her!" and the unintelligible cries of the sixth years, Harry let himself be dragged into the darkness of the forest. Within second, running at a sprint with Pipsqueak's leash pulled taut between them, the grounds of Hogwarts disappeared behind him. Harry barely noticed. He had eyes only for the foxlet ahead of him, sprinting as if hellhounds were on her tail and wailing in terror.
Draco tapped his quill on his parchment in vexation. He liked Arithmancy. He was good at Arithmancy, at least as good as Hermione and, perhaps in this case, maybe even better. Maybe. Probably not but maybe. But for some reason he couldn't concentrate.
Despite his resolution to throw himself into his N.E. entirely, Draco was finding it increasingly difficult to concentrate on Vector's words throughout the lesson. It wasn't because what she had to say wasn't interesting; it was new material, enthrallingly and unfortunately so as it meant Draco had more to memorise for the exams. But even so his studious attention had waned throughout the hour. Throughout the half-hour. Less, because it really hadn't been all that long since he'd entered the classroom. And the reason?
Harry. Harry and Pipsqueak.
Draco was only made aware – or more aware – of his dependence upon Harry and Pipsqueak's presence when it was absented. Only on rare occasions were they ever apart at all, for he spent almost every night down in the common room with Harry. On the nights that he did retire to his bed he got up early anyway and took himself down to the couch where he would inevitably find Harry sitting on the floor with Pipsqueak already awake. Apparently Harry didn't sleep all that well when Draco wasn't there either. He didn't know what to think about that; he knew what he wanted to think but he wouldn't, what he felt.
Bloody satisfied, that's what, with just a touch of euphoria. Draco didn't even try to pretend to himself that he didn't fancy Harry any longer. He'd accepted it, even if he didn't know quite how to approach the situation. He still didn't, after months. Months.
Draco and Harry argued as much as they talked. It wasn't really fighting, and certainly wasn't as rigorous as they had done in the past, but it was banter all the same. Draco still loved every second of it. They studied alongside one another, attended classes together, and cared for Pipsqueak alongside one another. That was just how things were. How they'd become. With the exception of the precious few times Harry went down to the foxlet dens with Ron and Hermione, they were always together. Draco had come to quite like it that way.
And now… now he couldn't bloody well concentrate because Harry – and Pipsqueak, of course, Pipsqueak just as much – weren't with him. The hide of him! Even if it was for Hagrid's lesson, which, in Draco's opinion, had extended far longer than it had any right to, Harry should respect Draco's needs. Didn't he understand that Draco needed him to better concentrate?
No. No he didn't. Of course he didn't, and he wouldn't unless Draco told him. Which, of course, he wouldn't. Ever.
Sighing, Draco trained his attention once more upon the equations on the blackboard at the front of the room. It was difficult; for some reason he felt even more distracted than normal, something like a physical itch niggling at him and urging him to his feet as though he truly should go and find Harry and Pipsqueak. With a struggle, he fastened his gaze upon the mess of numbers and brackets, of arrowed lines pointed to annotations that Vector had made and appeared to have multiplied tenfold in the time that Draco had been lost in frowning at the absent Harry. Shaking his head, he set to copying the notes from into his book.
"Now, if we exchange the alpha unknown with its composite here," Vector was saying, gesturing as usual with her rod of cane that, far be it from being used in punishment, was nothing more than a particularly long pointer, "then the similar exchange of the beta Chronicle, in accordance to the Wisenbourgh Equation, should be equal to alpha times two to the power of seven. From this of course we can discern through deductive reasoning and comparison to our previous equations that –"
A sharp series of knocks on the door silenced the professor. Starting slightly, for Vector often lost herself a little when discussing numbers, she slowly turned her attention towards the door. "Oh, um… yes?"
The door swung inwards to reveal a Slytherin sixth year – Francesca Merle, Draco recalled – panting in the doorway. Draco felt his eyebrows rise, blinking in surprise. Merle was a pureblood and no pureblood would willingly be caught in such an outrageous display of breathlessness. It was positively unseemly.
"Merle, is it?" Vector asked, lowering her pointer-cane and cocking her head with a curious smile. "How can I help you? Did you perhaps need someone, or -?"
"Professor," Merle interrupted with such promptness that Draco found himself surprised once more. Such rudeness was similarly unseemly. "Sorry to interrupt but I just – I just needed to tell Malfoy that –"
"Does another professor perhaps need to see Mr Malfoy?" Vector asked not unkindly.
Merle shook her head, her turning towards Draco and appearing to otherwise disregard Vector entirely. She swept a compulsive hand through her curls, struggling to instil a vague sense of composure upon herself. "He didn't ask me to come to – to Malfoy, Professor Hagrid sent someone to the headmistress but I thought he had to know, that he should…"
Draco found himself on his feet in an instant. That was right. Merle was about the only Slytherin in sixth, seventh or eighth year actually taking Care f Magical Creatures. She'd come from that class, the class that should have been running now, that should have had Harry making an appearance and a show and tell visit, in all haste. To find Draco.
He felt his stomach clench. "What is it?" Draco demanded. "What happened?"
"Mr Malfoy," Vector began, but Merle overrode her.
"There was a situation," the sixth year rushed to explain. She ignored Vector entirely for which Draco was sincerely grateful. There was something to be said for Slytherin camaraderie. "Kitsune somehow got out of her den. Pipsqueak spooked. She took off into the Forbidden Forest and Potter, he didn't shoot her like Hagrid told him to, so he was dragged after her and –"
Draco didn't hear a word after that. He was distantly aware of Hermione gasping in horror at his side, starting to her own feet at the mention of Kitsune, of Vector attempting to interrupt once more and Merle continuing with her clipped explanation. He didn't heed any of it. Without a backwards glance, without seeking permission for leave from Vector or informing her of his intentions, he threw himself towards the door, nearly bowling Merle over as he set off at a full sprint down the corridor.
It was against pureblood procedure to run in public. It was against procedure to leave a room in haste, informally, disregarding everyone left behind, or to nearly cast a fellow pureblood to the ground when passing them in such haste. Draco didn't care. He didn't care about any of that, and doubted he had ever cared less in his life. To the sound of what was likely Hermione's footsteps racing after him, Draco tore through the castle with single-minded determination.
Pipsqueak had spooked because bloody Kitsune had somehow gotten out of her den. Draco wasn't entirely ignorant of the behaviours of the other foxlets and their bond-parents; he knew that Kitsune was still wavering on the tail end of getting a hold of her Berserker maturation. If she did somehow get out of her den, it would mean that her perceived territory had abruptly extended. That would mean she would confront any potential encroachers upon her territory, starting with her fellow foxlet gliders.
It was no wonder Pipsqueak had spooked. Draco had seen the slavering, snarling image that Kitsune presented. She was now as large as a German Shepherd and still growing and such a sight was terrifying. He would likely have turned tail in flight had she affixed her sights upon him.
Draco spilled out onto the grounds in both less and frustratingly more time than he had anticipated and hoped. Dashing the light shower of rain that immediately sprayed into his eyes, he charged down the hill. He didn't slow, not even when he was nearly thrown from his feet by the ridiculously strong winds which, Draco realised detachedly, might have had something to do with Kitsune's spontaneous and savage escape. He didn't even pause when his feet nearly slid from beneath him as he descended the rain-slick slope towards Hagrid's hut, barely sparing a glance for the dens. And damn her, Kitsune had already been replaced by an evidently frantic Lavender and even looked to have calmed. He barely considered it. Draco had thought space for only two things: Harry and Pipsqueak.
The Forbidden Forest; why into the Forbidden Forest? Of all the places Pipsqueak could have fled to, quite literally anywhere else would have been better. And Harry was dragged after her? Draco could feel himself becoming nearly hysterical with rising worry. No, it was more than worry; it was downright terror. Harry could take care of himself in just about every situation, Draco was sure, but this? Into the Forest that was so unpredictable and dark and deeply magical that it was next to impossible to prepare oneself for what would happen?
What if something happened to him? Merlin, what if something happened to Pipsqueak? He'd read offhandedly, barely attending to the words, that the stampeding flight of a frightened foxlet ended only with an abrupt and overwhelming trigger or when they ran themselves into exhaustion. The thought filled him with nauseating horror. Not Pipsqueak. Not Draco's foxlet. And Harry too who, according to Merle, had been dragged after her. How would he even be able to keep up with Pipsqueak's flight of fear? Draco didn't blame him in the slightest for not being able to strike her down, in a binding or otherwise. He doubted he could have managed to do so himself. Not to Pips.
Panting, Draco only skidded to a stop when he pulled up beside Hagrid himself. Beside the sixth years that where huddling together with wide eyes and nervous shuffling. Hagrid was standing just on the outskirts of the Forest and looked to be strapping something like an armoury of weapons, tools and pouches to his belt. One hand was looped through a leash and attached to his giant of a bloodhound that hunkered in place with shoulders hunched against the wind.
Draco didn't pause to catch his breath, didn't offer any kind of greeting. He grasped Hagrid's arm in a manner that he never would have done before, demanding his attention. "Which way did they go?" He gasped. "Which direction?"
The half-giant started as he turned towards Draco, pausing in the act of fastening a second belt around his waist. "Draco," he said, tone vaguely surprised but not as much as it perhaps should have been. "What are yeh doing here?"
Draco barely even registered the use of his first name – which Hagrid was impartial to doing – or the faint reprimand in his question. "Where. Did. They go?" He ground out instead, narrowing his eyes more in desperation than anger.
Hagrid made a sharp gesture into the Forest. It was a redundant gesture because the Forest was largely directionless. "Just took off," he said, concern redoubling his frown. "Couldn't spot them. But don't yeh worry, Draco, I'm going teh go and get them. I'll go and find them, and Vorne's gone teh the headmistress so she'll be down in no time and –"
Draco didn't listen to another word Hagrid said. Instead, he turned his gaze upon the Forest once more, already drawing his wand. He didn't know where Harry and Pipsqueak had gone, would have to use magic to find them but… but something… it was something, a faint feeling, a faint tug that Draco had never noticed before. As though an unseen force had locked onto his desperation, urging him onwards in a particular direction. Was it the bond? Was it from Pipsqueak? He didn't know.
Draco didn't pause to consider it, either. Disregarding Hagrid's continued words, he released his arm and started towards the Forest.
"Now, wait just a minute, Malfoy," Hagrid said, resorting to the use of Draco's surname with his demand. "Yeh can't just go traipsing into the Forbidden Forest. It's dangerous if yeh –"
Draco snapped his gaze towards him and his expression must have been fiercer than he'd intended for Hagrid actually stuttered to a stop. "I am a fully realised adult, Professor. If I want to bloody well go into the Forest than I bloody well will." And without another word, he turned, picked up his feet and charged into the Forest. Hagrid took a moment to pause as if stunned before calling after him. Draco didn't even hear what words he said and they rapidly faded from hearing as he dove further the sheltered darkness.
Draco had never liked the Forbidden Forest. Not after his first year's detention in it's depths. It was dark, and spooky, and threatening in a 'can't see the danger but know it's there' kind of way. But for once Draco barely considered his fears. They seemed to pale in comparison to the greater fear that settled increasingly heavily upon him.
Harry. Pipsqueak. Were they alright? Had they run into danger? If they had, were they injured or had they escaped? What of Pipsqueak herself? She must have been terrified if she'd fallen into stampeding flight. It physically hurt to consider her distress, and more than just because Draco hated to think of her upset.
They all knew what happened when a foxlet became distressed.
He was sprinting. Draco didn't even know how for long he'd been running, jumping over fallen branches and weaving through tree trunks. His breath was ragged, was coming hard, but he didn't care. Some time, seemingly without his direction, his wand had sprung alight with a Lumos Charm. He barely considered it, even as he followed the light of its illumination into the shrouding, almost tangible darkness.
He didn't encounter any creatures, blessedly. Draco thought he might have heard them, the distant crunches were the footsteps of a centaur, the whisper of leaves from the passage of Acromantula who, since the Battle of Hogwarts, had been realised to actually exist within the forest's depths. Draco didn't care, even as a part of his mind was screaming at him to watch his back, to be wary and on his guard. The far larger part of him was frantically scanning his surrounds for any sign of Harry and Pipsqueak.
He must have been deeply embedded in the Forest by the time he felt the abrupt sharpness of the strange draw within him. The link that he suspected, that he hoped, was leading him to Pipsqueak and Harry. Draco paused in step, nearly falling to his knees as his legs trembled in weariness and, gasping, turned in the direction his attention felt drawn. There. That was it. With staggering steps, he dragged himself into the shadows that, but for his mental itch, looked exactly the same as every other shadow.
Draco felt them. He felt them before he saw them, and even before his Lumos caught a glimpse of them he felt himself nearly sag in relief. When he did, however, it was only to hasten his step into a sprint once more for both Harry and Pipsqueak were crumpled to the floor as though collapsed.
They weren't. Thank Merlin but they weren't lying slumped in unconsciousness or worse. Draco registered that much as, in a sliding collapse, he tumbled to the ground beside them. Pipsqueak was curled in Harry's arms, practically crawling up his chest with her arms around his neck as if in an actual embrace even though she was far too big to be seated in his lap. She was trembling, Draco could see, bodily shaking with her ears flattened along her head and snout tucked into the crook of Harry's neck. Her tails were twitching, bristled as if in continued distress, though at least – blessedly – she was no longer fleeing.
Harry himself was breathing heavily, as though he too had only just stopped running. He was shaking almost as much as Pipsqueak, clutching onto her just as fiercely in a return embrace. His eyes were closed, Draco could see, his shoulders slumped. His sat sprawled, legs twisted in what must have been an uncomfortable angle but he made no motion to correct himself. His hair was a mess, likely both from the wind and the rain that had been sprinkling upon the grounds, and there was a faint sheen of sweat painting his cheeks, visible even through the gloom. Somewhere along the way he'd lost the jacket that Draco had seen him wearing that morning, but other than a thin welt on his cheek that looked to be the result a snapping tree branch he appeared unharmed.
That whatever Gods Harry was always referring to.
Draco didn't think. He simply acted through his sheer relief. As soon as his knees touched the ground, as soon as he was sure that they were both blessedly unharmed and that thank Merlin Pipsqueak hadn't gone Berserker, he lunged forwards and wrapped his arms around them both. He squeezed as tightly as he was capable of, ignoring Harry's start as though he hadn't even been aware of Draco's arrival, or Pipsqueak's feeble "yip" as he crushed her between them.
He didn't know he was speaking, had been asking – no demanding to know if they were both alright, until Harry interrupted him. "Draco, we're fine, we- we're fine. Really." He made a motion as if to pull away slightly but Draco didn't let him. He couldn't. Even at the sight of them both, his heart was still racing a thousand beats a minute. He was still wavering between terrified and sagging with relief. "We're fine, just… just tired. We're just… we're okay."
Draco forced his lips to clamp shut. He could feel his own arms trembling just as much as Pipsqueak did, as Harry shivered in his embrace, but he didn't care. It was an embarrassing display, true, but he didn't care. Not now. Pipsqueak was a solid, soft weight between them. Draco revelled in that warm, that softness, and was struck once more by how much the little foxlet truly had come to mean to him. So much, more than he could have possibly imagined. More than almost anything else in the world.
And Harry, too. Harry, who was so real, so here, just where Draco could touch, where he could feel him and know he was alright. If Draco had any further suspicions as to his feelings, the tidal wave of relief would have washed them away. This. This was what he needed. Needed more than he wanted, even.
It was a struggle to unlock his arms from around Harry enough to that he wasn't squeezing the life out of him. Just enough to pull back do that he was no longer crushing his face into his shoulder and to slide his hands up behind his head. Harry peered up at him, blinking hazily, wearily, still panting in slightly slower gasps now. Draco parted his fringe with his thumbs, met his gaze, and couldn't help himself.
He leant forwards to kiss him without a thought.
The circumstances could have ben better. They could have been much better, really. They were both exhausted, wet and shivering. They had a sorely distressed foxlet on their hands and they were in the middle of the fucking Forbidden Forest. But Draco didn't care. In that moment he'd never cared less about his surrounds, because he had finally, finally worked out what to do about his feelings. That he simply had to act. Harry was the sort of person who acted without hashing out the theory. Draco would be just like Harry.
For a moment Harry didn't respond. He seemed frozen, as though stunned by the gesture, which he most likely was. But only for a moment until, wriggling one arm out from between them to draw around Draco's, he drew him close and pressed him more deeply into their kiss. His lips were cool but it hardly mattered. It was perfect.
It didn't last long, though. Not because Draco didn't want it to but simply because it didn't. Poor timing. Poor situation. Poor everything except for the fact that it had happened. When they drew away from one another, Draco maintained his hold upon Harry's head, however, eyes closed for a moment almost fearfully before he opened them to peer into Harry's. Harry was staring straight back at him with an expression that could only be perceived as wondering.
"Sorry," Draco managed to choke out in barely more than a whispered gasp. "I didn't… I'm sorry I –"
Harry didn't let him say any more. Not another word. Leaning forwards, he closed the distance between them once more and fit his lips back to Draco's. Perfect.
It was poor timing. A poor situation. It was appalling in everything else. But that at least was perfect. Draco didn't want to be anywhere else in the world
A/N: Hi everyone! I hope you're liking the story (UST finally doesn't seem so far from resolution, no?). Just wanted to leave a special thank you to my lovely reviewers - secretlysmitten, AnnaBurton5.5apple26, Shinikaru Juun, EsterofPersia and Vladamir Mithrander - for your kind words. I absolutely love hearing from any and everyone, so if you have a second please take the time to let me know what you think. Thank you!