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The Heart of the Matter	By : Jad Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 7323 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 13
- 14
- 15
Chapter Fourteen

'That boy is fifteen! Fifteen!'

'Well, the Jeep's only six months old, and you just fucked it.'

- QaF, Brit-style

: : :

'He what?'

Theodore looked distinctly uncomfortable. Draco distinctly didn't care. He couldn't believe what he was hearing. He tried again:

'He what?'

'God, just forget it,' Theodore said in exasperation, rolling his eyes at great length.

Draco stared at him in disbelief. 'That's not something you generally just "forget"!'

'I don't see why it's such a big deal.'

'Big deal! Big doesn't even begin to cover it. The man is a paedophile!'

Theodore gave him a pointed look. 'I was seventeen last May, idiot.'

'All right, sorry, the man is a borderline paedophile!'

Theodore rolled his eyes again. 'Not everything in this world is perverse, you know.'

Draco thought about this, and decided that, all things considered, most things in the world could be taken in one perverse form or the other. But that wasn't the point.

'It just sounds dodgy,' he said, shaking his head. 'Way dodgy. Like, report-it-to-your-Professor-dodgy.'

'Snape was there, too,' Theodore said, shrugging. 'So, like I said, it's not that big a deal. Unless, of course, you think they're both borderline paedophiles. But anyway, that was the last night, so I don't have to worry about it for another month. He reckons I could handle it on my own, if I start taking the Wolfsbane right away.'

Draco folded his arms and fumed. He was very protective of his fellows; they were his, as far as he was concerned, and therefore investments worth defending. He did not like the idea of grubby werewolf paws all over one of his respective Slytherins, no matter what the reason.

The wounds Theodore had sported that morning had already begun to fade, leaving him looking rather like a worn and re-stitched doll. Snape may have supervised the physical, but physicals were supposed to be preformed by certified Healers, not strange adults, even ex-Professors. Certainly they couldn't take Theodore to St Mungo's without them registering him as a werewolf and therefore putting his life at considerable stake, but still.

Draco decided the conversation was a lost cause; obviously, Theodore enjoyed being man-handled by strange men (and werewolves), and that was his business, so long as Draco never, ever had to hear about it again.

Of course, it was his own fault for asking, but he'd know better next time.

'Right. Well. That was educational. So where are you sleeping, now?'

Theodore shrugged. 'Dunno, we're sort of running low on space, aren't we?'

With Terry and his cousin in the study downstairs, Potter in his room, Smith in the one across from it, and the girls in the room on the first floor, this was very true. Lupin was going to stay with Tonks and her family, leaving Snape the master bedroom (something Potter was less than pleased about, especially considering Snape refused to house the motorbike in his quarters under any circumstances whatsoever).

'I already tried getting Potter and Smith in the same room,' Draco told him. 'Potter said he'd rather share with me, which, of course, is not acceptable by any means, but Smith wouldn't budge either.'

Theodore looked thoughtful. 'I could split with Smith,' he said, shrugging. At the look on Draco's face, he laughed. 'All right, all right, I don't care. Are you sure Potter won't mind sharing since I'm a, well, you know?'

'I really couldn't give a damn,' Draco said shortly.

: : :

Zacharias Smith looked up from his trunk and its contents when Draco opened the door and walked into the room without any warning.

'Most people knock, Malfoy.'

'Most people are polite,' Draco pointed out, dropping his trunk on the floor and giving it a kick up against the side of his bed.

Zacharias, surprisingly, smirked and went back to sorting his schoolbooks. 'Fair enough.'

Draco changed out of his day clothes quickly, shoving his trunk under the bed with one foot as he finished, and dropped backwards on to the bed. Zacharias was already in a pair of pyjama bottoms and a thin t-shirt, still bent over the trunk on his bed and organising the contents. Draco watched him quietly, wondering why in the two days since he'd arrived, he'd yet to breathe a word about Finch-Fletchley.

'Have you lot gotten your Hogwarts letters yet?' Zacharias asked without looking up.

'No,' Draco said through a yawn. 'Why?'

Zacharias sighed and slammed his trunk closed without answering. Kicking it off his bed, he twisted under the covers of his bed and rolled over to face the wall. 'You using that light?'

Draco pulled out his wand and uttered 'Nox,' extinguishing the lamp in the room. Settling down, the only sound was that of their breathing, his own relaxed and slowly lulling into sleep, and Zacharias', laboured and irregular. The pattern was so irregular that it kept Draco awake just listening to it; he slowly rolled over onto his back, and thought very, very carefully about his words before he spoke.

'Brooding over it won't do you any good,' he said finally. He heard a pause in the breathing, and continued, 'I've got a some Draught left over, if you want it.'

Zacharias was quiet for a moment, his breathing suddenly very shallow. 'Yeah,' he said finally, rolling into a sitting position. 'Thanks.'

: : :

Something dodgy was happening in that room.

Draco didn't notice it the first day; or perhaps he did, but passed it off as nothing and forgot about it later. But by the fifth day since the new sleeping arrangements, it was clear to him that something was off.

He couldn't put his finger on what, except that it had something to do with Theodore and Potter and the fact that, despite Ernie MacMillan, Jake Bradley and Dean Thomas showing up over the next few days and increasingly crowding Headquarters, none of them were sharing the room. Bradley and MacMillan had gone to occupy the room Terry and his cousin, while—much to Draco's chagrin—Thomas had opted for a rickety cot erected in the room he and Zacharias were sharing.

Draco had taken one up-turned nose look at him and muttered something rather rude about a Mudblood being unwelcome in pure-blood territory, and Dean had given him chafed look and said, 'You know, when you do that, you're no better than the Muggles that call me a nigger.'

Being compared to petty Muggles was not something Draco Malfoy was used to, especially when, after long and laborious consideration, he couldn't deny the parallel.

Zacharias had saved him replying. 'Shouldn't you be across the hall with your House prodigy?'

Dean had snorted derisively and adopted a very nasty look. 'If I have to spend one more minute looking at that pillock, I'm going to punch him in the head.'

While MacMillan and Bradley seemed all right with Potter, they seemed less all right with Theodore, whom everyone—aside from Draco, Snape and Potter—was giving a wide berth. Theodore didn't seem to mind particularly; in fact, he spent more of the day locked away in that room with Potter than he did anywhere else in the house.

Draco found this behaviour completely unacceptable. More time with a Gryffindor—Potter, of all people—than his own Housemates? It was sacrilege!

When he'd confronted Theodore about this, he'd given Draco a dubious sort of look and said, 'Malfoy, since when have I given a damn what you think?' and left Draco standing there in the hall with his mouth wide open, gaping like a lost fish.

'Who cares?' Zacharias said when, in desperation, Draco tried to confide his concerns with someone. 'Let's hope Nott gets wolfish one night and eats him.'

The worst was yet to come, but he wouldn't realise it until later in the afternoon. With Headquarters acting as a sort of refugee camp for targeted students and their immediate family, there was no extra room to hold the Weasleys, to which Draco was very thankful. Still, it was the last day of July and school (and more importantly, his own dorm) were that much closer. It was shaping up to be a rather good day, he thought, as he had the rather pleasant experience of running downstairs with intent to bathe and nearly walking into Susan Bones, who was disembarking the bathroom in wake of her own shower in nothing more than a short, form-fitting towel.

'Erk,' Draco said abruptly, raising his eyes well above her chin with immense difficulty. 'Ah—morning.'

Susan, with her wet, dark hair clinging to her shoulders, offered him a nervous smile and disappeared down the stairs without a word.

Draco closed the bathroom door behind him; the flowery scent of her cosmetics still clung to the heavy, humid air. He allowed himself a smirk, remembering the blush colouring her cheeks.

Maybe this summer wouldn't be too bad, after all.

: : :

With Mrs Weasley and Lupin gone, and Snape more of a foreboding presence in the attic than a supervising adult, the children were left to fend for themselves in respect to food. Susan had risen to the task magnificently, and the others alternated nights assisting her, mostly serving as pot-stirrers and dish-washers while she waved her wand around the kitchen. It wasn't the same calibre as the Weasley mother's entrées, but it was certainly better than cold leftovers.

'Your turn tonight, Malfoy,' she said in a flourish, but did not look him in the eye.

Looking up from his book, Zacharias caught his eye briefly and raised his eyebrows; Draco thought perhaps his smirk told too much, and quickly removed it before following her down to the kitchen.

Whatever intentions he had involving the two of them alone in the kitchen were quickly dismissed. No sooner had he entered the room did he find himself surrounded on all sides by pots and bowls and raw ingredients whizzing in the air, to-and-from the bench at which Susan had begun organising them in various combinations.

'You need to keep the flame under that at medium and stir it counter-clockwise for the first ten minutes, then twice clockwise, then back again—' She looked around to see Draco staring blankly at her. 'You know how to make a Pepper-Up potion?' He nodded. 'Okay, it's the same thing, only with different ingredients. And keep an eye on that skillet, while you're there.'

He did that for ten minutes before she asked for help getting a heavy sack of sugar off the top shelf. 'I'm still a bit rough with heavy things,' she admitted. He handed it to her, his fingers brushing her wrist; she smiled at him and had him set the table before sending him upstairs to get the others. At the top of the stairs he encountered Adam, Terry's cousin, and sent him to ring the dinner bells instead.

The whole lot of them had just trudged downstairs and taken their seats when the doorbell rang. Draco, Zacharias, Dean, Potter, and Theodore all managed simultaneous 'Not it's and, rolling his eyes, Terry said, 'I'll get it.'

Snape wasn't at the meal, nor was he ever; Draco was beginning to wonder if he ate at all. He managed to secure a seat between Susan and Zacharias while staying as far away from Potter and the Slytherin Traitor as possible. Luna had taken a seat beside Adam, who looked terrified of the way she managed to go through her entire helping without a blink. Draco was quite content with accidentally brushing his knee against Susan's thigh (she blushed but kept her eyes on her plate) while he ate, when a sudden surge of noise from above caused a wave of dread to wash over him.

The noise thundered down the stairs and burst into the kitchen, headed by the Weasley Twins.

'Well, well, well!' clapped the one in the lead. 'Aren't you a sorry lot of vagrants!'

Draco froze; beside him, Zacharias stiffened similarly, eyeing the twins with suspicion. They were quickly followed by Weasley, his mother, Granger, and Ginny, however, all of which were grinning broadly.

'Happy birthday, Harry dear,' Mrs Weasley said once everyone had squeezed into the kitchen. She plopped a heavy cake with chocolate icing on the table. 'And hello to the rest of you!'

'Told ya we'd make it,' Ginny said smartly, sidling up beside Potter's seat and giving him a nudge.

Potter returned the grin, but it disappeared when he looked at Theodore and found him glaring menacingly at her.

'I think I'm going to have an early night,' Draco declared, dropping his fork. Zacharias glared briefly at Weasley and Granger, muttered, 'Ditto,' and stood up with him—he was almost immediately followed by Theodore, both of them ignoring the triumphant looks of the surrounding Weasleys. After another moment, Dean dropped his utensils and joined them.

'Are you sure you won't stay?' Mrs Weasley asked as they squeezed their way around the table. 'I made plenty for the lot—'

She paused and pursed her lips in disapproval as Draco gouged the cake with a finger, picking off a sizeable chunk of icing and sticking it in his mouth on his way out. 'Yeah,' he said, licking his finger clean. 'We're sure.'

: : :

'I'm going to stick my wand in my ear if they keep that up,' Zacharias muttered miserably.

Draco, silently, agreed. He did not have anyone to complain to directly, as Theodore had gone back to his own room, leaving Draco with the Hufflepuff and Mudblood. The Weird Sisters that had been blasting through the floor was bad enough; Celestina Warbeck was more than he was willing to take. When the music finally moved on to The Randy Red Caps, even Dean looked suicidal.

'I can't take it anymore,' he declared, and Draco briefly entertained thoughts of hara-kari until Dean began digging into his trunk with earnest, throwing his robes and books this way and that until, with a note of triumph, held something the approximate size and shape of a dragon egg above his head. It was silver and black and had many buttons and funny markings upon it, but whatever it was, Zacharias seemed to know what it was, because he was suddenly grinning.

'You are the Saviour,' Zacharias declared in a worshipping tone. 'Please tell me you have that Muggle metal music.'

'What do you take me for?' Dean said, scoffing. 'What's better is Hermione showed me a spell to keep the batteries charged with magic, so they never run out.'

Draco did not pretend to be a scholar of music, but he was pretty sure the properties of metal couldn't be applied to sound. He also had no idea what a battery was, but supposed it had something to do with this madness. 'How can you have metal music?' he asked, half-laughing.

They both ignored him, to which Draco felt very much affronted. He was about to protest when Dean stuck a shiny, flat disc into the top of the metal egg and pressed a button, and the room exploded with noise.

Exploded was the right word, too, he thought, wincing. The music—if you could call it that—was so loud it was impossible to discern what was being played, much less the instruments themselves. There was something reminiscent of a voice screaming along with the noise, but it was so obnoxiously noisy that he could scarcely tell it apart from the blaring, grinding, screeching garble that made up the music. He clapped both hands over his ears in an attempt to save his hearing, but it blew right through.

'Well,' Zacharias yelled, standing up and coming over to collapse on his bed; Draco glared at him. 'At least we can't hear The Randy Red Caps anymore.'

: : :

Around ten o'clock, Draco slipped out into the hallway and closed the door tightly behind him. They had been playing the music for hours and although it was easier than listening to any of the crap coming through the floor from downstairs, his head had started buzzing and in the quiet of the hall, his ears were ringing. The music was muffled somewhat behind the door, but he could hear it pulsing through the thick wood at his back like a pounding heartbeat.

Someone down the hall giggled, and Draco flattened himself against the door—it was dark in the hall, anyway, so what little protection the door frame provided was enough. Besides, Ginny wasn't looking at him; she had her arms around Potter's neck and was murmuring something to him, and then he heard a husky laugh from Potter in return.

Oh great, he thought miserably. He'd escaped the nightmarish storm of noise just to traumatised by another, only this one was about ten times as worse. He couldn't open the door again without being obvious, and that was assuming they weren't aware of his presence already and just didn't care. Of course, he could just go over there and try to annoy them. How successful that would be, he didn't know—Potter didn't seem too bothered by the knowledge Draco had enlightened him to about his girlfriend the last time.

He was saved making a decision by the door of Potter's room slamming open. Potter had been leaning against the wall beside it and jumped, looking around, alarmed.

Theodore was standing in the doorway, the glow of the half-moon coming in the window behind him and illuminating his outline. 'Some of us,' he said in a deadly voice, 'are trying to sleep.'

Ginny put her hands on her hips. 'Oh, as if you can even hear us over that racket.'

'That racket I can sleep through, your slurping outside my door I cannot,' Theodore replied curtly.

'Technically, it's my door,' Potter pointed out.

'Technically, I don't give a damn. Isn't it past your bed time, Weasley?'

Ginny opened her mouth to protest but, as if on cue, her mother's voice rang up the stairs over the muffled music. 'Ginny, darling! Do not make me come up there and get you!'

The triumphant look on Theodore's face was only surpassed by the snarling indignation on Ginny's. Kissing Potter briefly and muttering a parting 'Happy birthday,' she shot Theodore a filthy look and trudged down the stairs without so much as a glance at Draco. Theodore gave her back a happy little wave.

'D'you have to be such a dick?' Potter demanded, although, oddly enough, he didn't seem all that angry.

Theodore, on the other hand, looked furious now that Ginny had gone. 'If you think that was being a dick, Potter—'

He paused, cocking his head, and Draco felt suddenly exposed as dark eyes snapped to the shadows in which he'd taken refuge. Potter followed Theodore's gaze. 'What are you doing, Malfoy?'

'Eavesdropping,' Draco replied innocently. 'You know, being a snoop, hearing things I shouldn't. S'hobby, see.'

Potter cracked a grin, but Theodore still looked miffed. He grabbed Potter by the back of his collar and yanked him backwards—Draco raised his eyebrows, expecting a fight, but Potter went easily, his grin snaking into a smirk. Draco was aware he was missing something vital here, but for the life of him couldn't put his finger on what.

Theodore held his gaze all the while dragging Potter towards the door of the bedroom before shoving him through without any ado whatsoever. 'Night, Malfoy.'

: : :
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The Heart of the Matter