InsaneJournal

8.

Draco closed his eyes and leaned back into the soft embrace of the armchair. He still hadn’t had any sleep - unless he counted that half-hour dozing in the corner of a deserted classroom. And I don’t. Potter had found him and shook him awake, prattling on about ‘helping with the evacuation’ - and that ‘helping’ had turned out to be lugging bags about, breaking up squabbles and trying to explain why people could only Apparate out two or three at a time when he really didn’t know himself. All in all, just another thing to enter on his mental list of ‘reasons why Harry Potter is a complete and utter git and must die for the good of wizard kind’.

“Are you still with me?” Lupin said, and Draco thought he heard a hint of amusement in his voice. Perhaps he needed to start a new list for Lupin.

“No,” he said, not opening his eyes. The armchair was too comfortable… “Piss off and let me sleep for a few days.”

“This won’t take long, I promise.” Draco heard the clink of glass on the table in front of him and cautiously opened one eye. He looked at the tiny vial of clear liquid sitting next to the tea service and shut his eyes again.

So, this is it. We’re about to test just how much of Snape’s training I actually took in. He’d guessed as much from the moment Lupin had pulled him aside in the hall.

“We’re besieged by a horde of Dark Creatures and you’ve got time to interrogate me? I’m impressed.”

“As I said, it won’t take long, and I’m sure it’ll prove to be a formality.” Draco heard the rattle of cups and forced himself to look at Lupin. He was pouring out tea, but he wasn’t paying any attention to the task - instead, his eyes were fixed on Draco. “Provided you’ve been telling us the truth.” Draco met his steady, disconcertingly intelligent gaze and felt the first twinge of unease.

His Veritaserum sessions with Snape had been a nightmare. Naturally averse to telling the straight truth on a deep, almost visceral level, Draco had been left feeling exposed and violated. I’ll take Cruciatus over Veritaserum any day. And that was with someone who, theoretically at least, was on his side. Lupin wasn’t.

“Tea?”

Draco looked at the unappetising green brew and shook his head.

“Are you sure? Veritaserum doesn’t taste very nice.”

“And that stuff does?”

Lupin took a sip of his tea and grimaced. “Not really, but it’s Hestia’s own special blend. It’d certainly wake you up. In fact, too much of it and you’ll never want to sleep again.” He smiled. To his horror, Draco found himself smiling back.

“Give me that,” he snapped, and snatched up the vial. He swallowed the potion neat, aware of Lupin watching with a bemused look on his face.

“You know, I wasn’t lying about this only taking a few minutes. I only intended you to take a few drops.” Lupin smiled again, and this time Draco was definitely not smiling back. “It looks like you’ll be having a very honest morning.”

The first thing Draco had ever learnt about Veritaserum was that it turned all the rules of interrogation - and the common strategies for resisting - on their head. You couldn’t refuse to answer a question, and you couldn’t lie - which didn’t leave many options. But there were options.

Option one - try to take control of the conversation...

“Ok - you want this to be quick - fine. I didn’t help Potter out of the goodness of my heart. I want the Dark Lord dead. And I’m not working for him.” Draco’s tongue didn’t even trip over the last line, and he was surprised. Up until that moment he hadn’t realised how totally he believed it. “That’s all you need to know, isn’t it?”

Lupin twisted his cup around on its saucer. “Why did you help Harry?”

“Because I didn’t want him dead.” Draco felt the Veritaserum driving him to say more, to clarify, and bit his tongue. Then he gave in, because it would just keep pushing him until he broke anyway. He could almost hear Snape’s voice in his head. You have to talk, and you have to tell the truth - it just doesn’t have to be the truth they want to hear. “I sometimes think I do, but there’s a big difference between having a few pleasant fantasies and actually making it happen. Potter’s not that bad really.”

Lupin raised an eyebrow, and Draco fought the impulse to bang his head on his table. I didn’t just say that - it was just my imagination. Or I’ve just hit upon some new, until now unknown, way of lying under Veritaserum. Or - “Really?” Lupin said quietly. And that’d better not be a smirk on his face…

Draco looked down at his hands. His fingers were wound together so tightly that they hurt. “If that’s a real question, could you please clarify? Because I don’t know how to answer it, and the Veritaserum’s making my head hurt.”

“I’m sorry. Why do you hate Voldemort?”

“He’s humiliating my father, threatening my mother, destroying my family - isn’t that enough?” Draco was quite proud of that answer - it was the whole truth. He didn’t have to refer to his own suffering at all - it was covered by two of the above. Fuck - I’m good.

Lupin nodded, sat back in his chair and took a sip of his tea. Then he looked at Draco calmly and said “so, when were you bitten?”

The pride disintegrated. Lupin had been going easy on him, his questions purposely designed to give Draco wriggle room, to make him complacent…and while Draco’s brain was coming to terms with that ego-puncturing realisation, his mouth was moving. “The 20^th,” he whispered. Lupin showed no signs of triumph; he put down his cup and leaned forwards, and the sadness and pity in his eyes made Draco want to curl up and hide.

He managed not to do anything so humiliating; he just looked down at his hands and tried to remember how to breathe. “I suppose you smelt it on me.”

“Ah, the legendary werewolf senses,” Lupin said, and the humour in his voice was tainted by bitterness. “Overrated, I’m afraid - at least for most of the month. I wondered, but I wasn’t sure until I saw the scar on your shoulder. Werewolf bites never heal correctly.” There was a sudden silence, and Draco felt as if he was under close scrutiny. “It wasn’t a random attack, was it? Because you seem to be very good at defending yourself.”

There wasn’t any point to resisting the Veritaserum anymore, but… he felt that if he spoke the words out loud, told Lupin the gory details, then somehow the whole thing would become more real. Besides, Lupin was the same as Greyback - he‘d probably enjoy the story too much. “It wasn’t random,” Draco said, and that was the only response the question needed.

He concentrated on his hands, carefully noting the damage that he still had to get fixed - bruising on one palm, grazes on his knuckles and across the back of his hand. The room seemed to be getting smaller, and the air stuffier.

“Who was it?”

And that didn‘t need much of an answer either. “Fenrir Greyback.”

“Ah.” More silence, then a shadow fell over him and he felt Lupin’s hand on his shoulder. “He’s responsible for my condition too.”

“Don’t touch me!” Draco stumbled to his feet, tiredness forgotten in a sudden blind rush of panic. What the fuck am I doing? I put myself alone with a werewolf - what was I thinking? The room was definitely shrinking. “I haven’t got a condition! The infection might not have taken. I’m not like you.” He backed up to the door. Lupin didn’t move - just looked at him with sad, sympathetic eyes - but he was still too close.

“Really?” Lupin said mildly. “If you can say that under Veritaserum you must really be in denial.”

*

Harry wasn’t intentionally listening. He’d just gone to look for Lupin and found a firmly-shut door with voices coming from behind it. One voice soft, the other raised in anger.

He hesitated for a moment, but he was only human. He pressed his ear to the wood…

“You have no fucking idea what I’ve got to be in denial about!”

The door swung inwards with such force that Harry fell forwards. The time he and Malfoy spent untangling themselves was probably measured in seconds, but the way Harry’s senses insisted on cataloguing every little detail - from the softness of the hair caught in his fingers, to the hard angles of Malfoy’s body, the harsh rasp of his breath and the naked panic in his eyes - made it seem to drag out for hours. Until Malfoy gave him a hefty shove that sent him crashing into the door frame.

“What -?”

“For once, just fucking leave me alone!”

As if I’m ever capable of doing that. He’s angry and frightened and in pain - I can’t just let him -

“Let him be, Harry,” Lupin said, and Malfoy shot him a look of pure loathing before striding off. “He’s got a lot to think about.”

“What did you do to him?” Lupin looked at him sadly, and Harry realised just how accusing those words had sounded. “I’m sorry. I -”

Lupin smiled. “No offence taken.” He walked back over to the table and poured himself another cup of tea. Perfectly calm, perfectly casual - but when he looked over his shoulder at Harry, it was with a curious expression in his eyes. “You’re very protective of him, aren’t you?”

Harry felt as though invisible fingers were squeezing at his stomach, twisting in into a knot, but he met Lupin’s gaze as calmly as if could. Don’t know what he’s implying, but - He shrugged. “I got him into all this.”

“Oh? That’s not what I’ve been told.” Lupin stirred his tea and smiled. “You two need to get your stories straight - or at least make sure they match up.”

If Lupin thought that Harry and Malfoy were somehow conspiring together against the Order, he didn’t seem too concerned about it. Harry walked over to the window, looking out while he decided what to say. Malfoy was complicated enough to keep his head hurting forever - the last thing Harry needed was for Lupin to go all enigmatic on him too.

He looked out into the playground. There were more people out there than there were Patronuses patrolling the walls. Most of them were huddled in little groups, talking and watching the Inferi.

The arrival of dawn should have taken away some of the horror and fear, banishing the shadows that shrouded the enemy and made them the stuff of nightmares, but the Inferi were even more horrifying in the cool dawn light. It showed details - to the point of being able to tell how some of the Inferi had died - and faces, some of which Harry recognised from the fight at the Ministry.

“Why haven’t they attacked yet?”

“I don’t know for certain,” Lupin said. “I can’t read minds.”

“But you’ve got an idea.”

“I’ve got a few ideas - I just don’t know if any of them are right.” Harry felt warmth at his shoulder as Lupin came to stand beside him, and smelt the bitter scent of the tea. “Do the Inferi horrify you?”

Harry tried to sound confident. “They’re horrible, but they’re easy enough to drive away with fire.”

“That’s not what I asked. All of us here know how to fight Inferi - in theory at least.” Confused, Harry looked at Lupin, but his sad, thoughtful expression gave him no clues. “But these Inferi are the corpses of those vanquished in the recent battles. Do you think there’s anyone here who hasn’t lost someone in the past couple of days? And so many people are missing…”

Lupin looked down at his tea; it should’ve needed no more stirring, but he moved the spoon around anyway. Harry wanted to ask about Tonks, but knew that he would have been told if there had been any news. He felt sick. Perhaps the news, when it came, would be the sight of her corpse amongst the army sent to destroy them. And if that thought horrifies me, what must Lupin be going through?

Harry tentatively put his hand on Lupin’s shoulder.

The moment was broken by the door cracking open again. Not Malfoy, this time, but two enormous trunks, floating in mid-air. One trunk cracked against the other, and Harry heard Fred Weasley’s voice raised in mock outrage.

“Right, that’s it! This means war!”

“You’re on!”

The trunks slammed up against each other. As Harry and Lupin watched the odd duel, Fred and George wandered in through the door, bickering amicably.

“A-ha - you cheat!”

“Just give in! Bow down to my mastery of trunk warfare!”

“Never! Your trunk won’t take mine alive!”

Lupin coughed. The twins stopped their game and beamed at Harry, who grinned back.

“This is a really bad time to be moving in,” he said.

“As the virgin said to the necromancer.”

“Bet you can’t remember the beginning of that joke.”

“It’s funnier out of context anyway.”

“It isn’t! Anyway, we bring provisions.”

“Just what you ordered, Remus. We’ve been doing some research and -”

“Do you mind if we continue our conversation later, Harry? I’ve got some things to discuss with Fred and George.”

Harry was eager to see the twins’ idea of ‘provisions’ - he was certain it wouldn’t involve food and drink or fresh clothes - but he didn’t argue.

Good little soldier… The little inner voice was mocking, and sounded more like Malfoy every day; Harry ignored it. Not acting like a spoilt child wasn’t being a ‘good little soldier’.

As he walked down the corridor, he heard a shouted hex, and the sound of wood splintering. His heart was pounding as he ran towards the hall door. Could Death Eaters have got through the Schoolhouse security? One had certainly managed it before…

As he burst through the door, he was hit by a sense of déjà vu. Oh, they were in a hall full of furniture rather than a deserted suburban street, but Malfoy’s fighting stance, and the way he silently deflected spell after spell, took Harry right back to Privet Drive. The only difference was that it was Ron attacking him, not Harry…and this time, Malfoy was perfectly happy to fight back…

Two slashes of his wand and Ron was down, wand clattering across the floorboards.

Whatever Malfoy had said to Ron to start the fight, that was the end of it - or it should have been.

Malfoy’s wand remained trained on Ron. Harry was reaching for his wand even before he heard “Cruc-”

“Expelliarmus!”

The air between them rippled like a heat haze as Harry’s spell hit a powerful shield charm. Malfoy glared at him through it, and Harry felt a guilty trickle of excitement mix in with his anger. He had to remind himself that he was just protecting Ron - not challenging Malfoy to a duel.

“Why do you always have to stick your nose into everything, Potter?” Malfoy said, and if Harry hadn’t been able to see his expression that would have almost sounded pleasant. “This is nothing to do with you.”

“It is when you try to use an Unforgivable on my best friend.” Harry took his cues from Malfoy, holding down his anger and making his voice calm but hard. “I don’t want to fight you. Just apologise to Ron and we can all forget about this.”

“That’s it - good old Potter - always jumping to conclusions! Ever think that, just maybe, he should be apologising to me?”

“Everything I said was true!”

“By whose definition? Lying journalists and vicious old gossips like your mother?”

Harry heard Ron scrambling to his feet, but he kept his eyes on Malfoy. “Take that back.” The anger was pounding through his body like a second heart beat. But so was the excitement. Harry looked along his wand at eyes that were bright and fierce, lit from within by a cocktail of anger, pain and spite, and at a wide mouth twisting into a sneer. If he was also looking at soft white skin stretched taut over sharp bones, and the proud tilt of Malfoy’s chin, it didn’t matter - the anger and excitement were like a chorus in his head, a group of children gathered around a playground scrap shouting ‘fight, fight, fight!’

“Make me.”

I could wipe that sneer off his face -

Harry tensed. His brain was already selecting spells, but he didn’t cast any of them.

Malfoy scowled. “Come on, Potter - what are you waiting for? I’m actually giving you an excuse to fight - and it’s not as if you’ve ever needed an excuse before!”

It would be so good. Both of them were tense and wound up - they could blow off a little steam, and finally find out which of them was better. Malfoy certainly wanted it. And it was that thought that stopped Harry, planted a germ of awkwardness in his head and made him lower his wand.

*

“Ask nicely,” Potter said, and actually smiled at him.

Stupid fucking Potter - always fucking ruining everything…

Draco was tempted to hex him anyway, just to teach him a lesson. I’ll show him what happens when he drops his guard like that - what does he think this is, a fucking game?

Then the choice was taken out of his hands, because Potter stepped forward, catching hold of his wand. The very fact that Draco let him, and remained standing there with him, chest to chest, gazes locked together, spoke volumes to him about his state of mind.

I’m sick - and I’m developing a severe case of masochism.

Potter’s eyes were challenging him to do something. But, of course, it is a game… And if the object of the game was to see which of them could make the other more uncomfortable, Potter was currently winning hands down.

It was sickening. Draco wasn’t the one with the ridiculous crush, so why couldn’t he just break the gaze and look away? He wanted to hex Potter, not stare into his stupid green eyes…

Beautiful eyes, though - if he ignored the face they were set in. So wide and clear and honest…he really shouldn’t try to play mind games when his eyes are so easy to read. Draco saw panic and excitement flare in them as he tilted his head forward. His lips almost brushed Potter’s as he spoke, loud enough for Weasley to hear. “Now now, lover - not in front of Weasley.” Potter flushed and jerked his head back. And he shouldn‘t play if he‘s not ready for me to raise the stakes… “And hands off the wand.”

Potter swore and wrenched his hand away. Draco watched what looked like smoke drifting from Potter’s palm as he clutched his injured hand to his chest, and silently blessed his mother for teaching him that curse. Funny, but when she said there would be impolite people trying to grab my wand, I took it in completely the wrong way. Dirty fourteen-year-old mind…

Potter’s glare was familiar and comfortable - and if it was an odd state of affairs when Draco was actually happy to see someone looking at him as if they wanted to murder him, he chose not to think about it. Potter hates me - all is right with the world.

“I’ll be waiting for your apology, Weasley,” he said as he turned to leave. Then something terrible happened. He was just mustering up a mocking grin for Potter when he felt it - an overwhelming compulsion to explain, to set the story straight before Potter got the rumours-and-lies version from Weasley. “My family don’t kill our children. Why would we? Girls don’t survive to puberty in my family because we’re under a curse - a curse we’ve been trying to defeat for centuries.”

Both Potter and Weasley were staring at him, open-mouthed, and Draco cursed the inventor of Veritaserum. Who knew it could work like that? Potter hadn‘t even asked him a question, but Draco was talking to him as if he actually cared about his opinion. “So think twice before you start throwing old lies about, Weasley - not only are you showing your arse, you’re talking out of it too.”

Potter looked at Weasley, who glared at him. “Fuck him. He said my mother would be happy to have one less mouth to feed.” Potter caught hold of his friend’s arm, and Draco turned away, because he was damned if he was going to watch them having a bonding session. And Weasley looks like he wants to cry. As he walked away, Weasley’s hoarse voice seemed to follow him across the room. “I’ve seen Percy. He’s out there - in the lane.”

******

Harry leaned against the wall, feeling the roughness of the bricks through his t-shirt. The sunlight was pleasantly warm against his face, and he closed his eyes, trying to imagine himself somewhere far away, in a place where no one was getting hurt, and everyone would have the chance to enjoy the glorious day.

Perhaps it was the lack of sleep, or for once it was him, not Ron, that had ‘the emotional range of a teaspoon’ - and the memory of Hermione saying that, and the look on her face as she did, still made him smile - but he felt curiously detached from the world. Ron, George and Fred were grieving over their brother, all fights with him forgotten and forgiven; Lupin was stressed and tired, drinking enormous amounts of herbal tea to give himself the energy to worry more; Hermione was red-eyed and quiet, carrying around the black box like it was a talisman against evil instead of quite possibly an evil thing itself; Malfoy had taken himself off to brood; the air inside the Schoolhouse seemed thick with fear and grief - and Harry stood out in the sun and tried to feel something - anything.

“What cannot die, cannot live.”

Harry opened his eyes. As he blinked at Hermione in puzzlement, she managed a smile for him.

“That’s what it says on the box.” She held out the box for his inspection. Harry looked at it, but even if he squinted, the carvings still looked more like abstract symbols than words. “In Latin, Greek, Old French and what seems to be Old Cornish. A lot of the letters have been worn away, but I used a translation spell on it and it picked up just enough to show that it’s the same phrase, repeated again and again. Someone wanted it to be read.”

“That’s a lot of trouble to go to for a cheesy proverb. Are you sure it doesn’t say ’do not open this box - ever’?” Harry realised that he was staring at the box as if it was going to leap out of Hermione’s hands and start snapping at him; he forced himself to relax. It was just a box. It didn’t even give him the same sensations of dread as it had before - the surface looked curiously touchable… He put his hands behind his back.

Hermione looked out towards the lane. “What cannot die, cannot live,” she repeated softly. “Remind you of anyone? It’s much too old to have been written about Voldemort, but it’s an interesting coincidence, isn’t it?” Her fingers stroked over the carvings, and for a split second Harry caught the scent of the sea.

“Hermione, please -” Then it was gone, and he was left wondering what to say as Hermione looked at him in puzzlement. Please be careful, he wanted to say, but she’d have every right to be insulted by that. Knowing Hermione, she was probably taking every precaution against curses and Influence of all kinds. So why do I feel so uneasy about her even handling it? “How’s Ron?” he said lamely, and her eyes narrowed.

“Ron’s fine. Ron’s so fine he’s felt the need to tell me so at least seven times.”

“In other words, he’s not fine at all.”

“He doesn’t want to talk about it,” Hermione said. To anyone else, her tone might have sounded merely exasperated, but Harry knew her well enough to hear the concern. “Until he does -” she hugged the box to her “- I’ll keep doing something useful.”

Any reply he might have made was cut off by a strange hissing, crackling sound. The warm sunlight was replaced by shadow, blotted out by a swirling dark cloud that twisted in the air, then collapsed liked a wave breaking against the shore - directly over the Schoolhouse.

Harry barely had time to register that the sound was the beating of thousands of little wings, or that the ‘cloud’ was a swarm of tiny creatures, before he pulled out his wand and threw up a shield around both of them.

Whatever the creatures were, they moved with the speed and force as bullets. As Harry gritted his teeth and concentrated on keeping the shield charm solid and stable, the miniscule attackers pinged off it. A window smashed just a few feet away from him, and little puffs of brick dust were blown out into the air as some of the creatures slammed into the wall. They looked and moved like insects, but real insects would have been splattered over the bricks, not burying deep into them.

Then, as quickly as it had begun, it was over. The swarm gathered together and retreated upwards, a battleship-grey cloud in an otherwise perfect blue sky.

Harry took a deep breath and looked around him.

The attack had only lasted a couple of minutes, but it left chaos and destruction in its wake. The Schoolhouse looked like it had been sprayed down by machine-gun fire, windows smashed and deep pock-marks left in its brickwork. Some people - too slow or just unlucky - were down. Harry’s gaze flicked over the bodies on the playground’s broken paving. He was vaguely disturbed by the fact he could tell none of them were dead or seriously injured with just one glance - surely he hadn’t seen that many dead and injured people in his life? Though the numbers have certainly been going up these past couple of days…

He looked at the Inferi still squirming against the walls, and the Dementors that had taken advantage of the distraction to advance back into the playground, and felt anger stab through the weary numbness.

And they’re not even our real enemy - he’s out there somewhere, hiding behind Dark Creatures and sneak attacks…

“WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?” The Dementors shrank back before his Patronus, but this morning it gave him no satisfaction. Harry’s question was for their master, and even if that unknown person couldn’t hear a word of Harry‘s shouts through the Fidelius Charm, that didn‘t stop him. “STOP PLAYING GAMES WITH US!” He was vaguely aware of wondering eyes on him as he strode across the playground, only stopping when he was so close to the wall he could smell the Inferi and stare into their blank eyes. “WHY DON’T YOU JUST FUCKING ATTACK?”

He stood in the warm sunlight, the only response to his shouts a cold silence, and realised that he couldn’t even hear birdsong. The injured people had gone quiet as well. Everyone’s probably waiting for me to leap the wall and start attacking the Inferi.

As the anger slipped away, and he started to feel slightly ridiculous, he heard a slow clapping, startlingly loud in the quiet playground. He turned around to see Malfoy sitting on the swing, clapping his hands with an air of studied boredom. “What are you going to do for an encore?”

The floor around Malfoy’s feet was littered with lumps of charred and twisted metal - he had obviously been neither slow or unlucky. He picked a piece up and poked at it with his wand, only looking back at Harry when he was practically standing over him.

“Really, Potter - ‘Come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough’?” His voice dripped with contempt, but his eyes gleamed in a way Harry was starting to recognise as amusement.

Harry dropped himself down on the seat next to him. “That’s not what I said.”

“Sounded like it from here.” Malfoy sniffed and poked the metal more forcefully. It dropped to pieces in his palm, looking like the charred bones of some tiny animal. There was a torn scrap of flesh in the middle of it. “Honestly, you might as well have been beating your chest and waving your club.” He glanced at Harry, his mouth twitching.

Harry refused to rise to the bait. He just smiled and said, “bit hard to do both at the same time.”

“Only for a Neanderthal.” The scrap of flesh moved, wriggling against Malfoy’s wand like a worm. He pulled a face and dropped it on the floor. “Incendio.” It squirmed as it burned, and he gave an exaggerated shudder.

“Have you ever seen anything like this before?”

A pained look shot across Malfoy’s face. He managed a half shake of his head before he started talking, the words coming out in fits and starts as if being forced out. “Maybe. Perhaps. Not in metal, though.” He shut his mouth, lips thinning to a hard line. He looked he was fighting a hard internal battle, and glared at Harry as if he was somehow beating the information out of him. “When I was a child my father used to make me birds out of paper - insects too. They flew as if they were alive, and could last for weeks.” He stared down at the pathetic little fire, dying down as he spoke. “I unfolded one when it ‘died’, and it had a couple of spider’s legs in it, all shrivelled up.”

“Nice toy,” Harry said.

Malfoy grinned at him, eyes unapologetic and sparkling. “Oh, they were.”

“Is it a common skill?”

“I’ve never seen anyone else do it. Though most of my friends’ fathers weren‘t particularly interested in them when they were kids, so the fact that they didn’t make them toys probably doesn’t mean anything.” He scowled down at his hands, lost in thought. “And these things aren’t toys, they’re weapons.”

Harry found it difficult enough to imagine Lucius Malfoy playing with his son, even if the toys he made for Draco did owe as much to the Dark Arts as they did the skill of his hands. He looked down at the metal insects, and pictured the cold, hard-eyed man he‘d fought against. Even if Lucius had used that spell in a frivolous way to amuse his son, Harry was sure it was designed for something much darker.

He opened his mouth to ask another question, and found Malfoy’s hand slapped over it. “The werewolf’s probably told you about the little misunderstanding we had over the Veritaserum, but I’m going to warn you anyway.” The point of his wand jabbed against Harry’s throat. “If you even look like you’re going to ask a personal question, I’ll silence you. Understand?”

Veritaserum? Harry thought about the way Malfoy had spoken so candidly about his family, and Lupin’s comment about ‘getting their stories straight’. Why didn’t I realise? God, I’m slow today… He was only just starting to consider the fun possibilities when he was hopelessly distracted by the way just trying to grin moved his lips over bumps and hollows and calluses… Nodding his head was an excuse to feel more; the sensation of Malfoy’s fingertips sliding over his cheek was just an added bonus.

Malfoy didn’t snatch his hand away, but his expression was closed-off and unreadable. Even those normally wicked eyes seemed like windows with their shutters closed. He took a deep breath that made his whole body tremble. “Nuzzle my hand all you like, Potter, but if you start licking it, I’ll be forced to kill you. No one would deny it was self-defence -”

*

He’s doing it. He’s fucking doing it. As his whole world narrowed down to the sensation of Potter’s tongue on his skin, leaving a damp, tingling trail up his life line, Draco realised two things. The first was that Potter was just as determined not to back down as he was. The second was just how long it was since Draco had been touched in anything resembling a non-violent way. The way he’d reacted to Potter’s previous, more innocent touches, should have warned him; his body was starved for touch, and now - even if Potter was only acting out of bravado - it was reacting accordingly.

Draco drew in another deep breath, trying to think of a suitably cutting comment. “That’s disgusting,” he said, inwardly cursing both the softness of his voice and the tightness twisting his stomach and spreading down his limbs. “You saw what I’ve just been holding.” He tried for a sneer. “And you don’t know what else I’ve been touching.”

Potter just grinned at him. I’m definitely losing my touch…

But maybe he hadn’t, because Potter dropped his hand and spun away, grin gone as quickly as it had formed. Draco was just wondering what he’d done, when a noise blared out through the still air.

Just a horn tooting, but Potter reacted to it as if it was a scream for help. Draco followed the direction of his anxious stare, and saw a Muggle vehicle in the lane.

He watched in fascination as the vehicle slowed to a crawl. The horn sounded again as the Inferi closed around it.

Is the idiot actually trying to get them to move out of his way? Has he not got eyes in his head? What does he think they are - people in very clever costumes?

If I were him I’d be driving very fast in the opposite direction…

“Oh, shit…” Potter’s muttered - but very succinct - summing up of the situation was almost drowned out by the sound of breaking glass. “NO!”

With a sharp pop, the air rushed in to fill the space in the world Potter had so recently been occupying. The split second before he reappeared on the car roof seemed to stretch out into hours, but Draco had known where he was going from the very instant he Disapparated.

Panic flooded through him like a tide, totally unexpected and unwelcome.

“STUPID FUCKING IDIOT!”

Potter threw up a wall of flame around the car. The Inferi shrank back, but Draco wasn’t impressed.

How are you going to keep them back, and get the Muggles out of their vehicle, and bring them back over here - when here is protected by Fidelius? Stupid, reckless, fucking Gryffindor!

I’m probably going to regret this…

Draco turned and ran into the Schoolhouse.

*

The choice had been made in an instant - and really wasn’t a choice at all. It was only when Harry found himself crouched on the car roof, listening to the screams coming from below him, surrounded by the flames he himself had called up, that he thought about the practicalities.

So - he’d forced the Inferi back. What now?

“Get out of the car! Climb up here!”

A ferocious buzzing in the air, barely audible over the screams and roar of the flames, was the only warning he got. Harry flung himself flat as the metal insects swarmed down over the car.

Another split-second choice - this one between continuing to hold back the Inferi and protecting himself against this new attack - and another easy one. Harry held the flames steady and tensed himself for the pain as the insects drove into his flesh…

It never came. The insects flew so close to him they caught in his clothes and hair, metal wings nicking his skin, then swept back off into the sky in a great swirling mass. Having seen what they could do, Harry should have been relieved, but all he could think was why?

He cautiously raised his head, and met the mocking gaze of a man standing on the other side of the flames. No Inferius, this. Lucius Malfoy smiled at him through the fire.

“Hello, Potter.”