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You've Always Been Mine	By : Mamacita Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Draco/Ron Views: 7415 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor any of the characters from the books or movies. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

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But She’s a Girl!

Hogwarts, Potions Classroom
9 Sep 1992

Snape swept into the classroom in his usual haughty, hurried manner. “Parchments out,” he said. “On the board are guidelines for an essay you will be writing. Copy them carefully; they will only be given to you once.”

He whapped his thin wooden pointer against the first point on the blackboard. “The assigned topic is ‘Deadly Healing Potions’. The pointer smacked against the next bulleted item. “List no fewer than five, and—” he glared at Hermione— “no more than ten potions that can be deadly but are also used in healing.” Next item: thwap! “Explain the properties of those ingredients which in some circumstances can be deadly, but in these potions enable the healing process.”

He folded his arms across his chest. “Essays will comprise three feet of parchment—” again he directed a warning look at Hermione— “no more, no less. Obviously those of you who think to make less work for yourselves by writing about only five potions will need to find twice as much to say about them. The essay is due next Monday at the beginning of class.” An indignant buzz arose as quills began to scratch on parchment, and the word “Quidditch” was heard whispered repeatedly around the room. An important match between Slytherin and Ravenclaw was scheduled for Saturday, and a three-foot essay would be difficult to accomplish for anyone who planned to attend, as most of those present did.

Snape whacked the pointer down on his desktop, and the whispering ceased instantly. He pinned the class with a disdainful sneer and said, “Quidditch will never get you anywhere in life. It would behoove you to allow yourselves ample time to complete your essays. Anyone turning in a late or substandard essay can expect to serve detention with me.” There were a few audible gulps and several fervent resolutions to try especially hard on this assignment. Detentions with Snape were to be avoided at any cost. You never knew what disgusting or unnerving task he would come up with, just that it was bound to be nasty—and he was devilishly creative.

Ron and Draco, who shared a table at the back of the room, laboriously copied out the guidelines onto their parchments. Draco was not particularly concerned about the essay, as writing came easily for him. Ron, however, sighed dejectedly. Three feet! It might as well be thirty, he thought glumly. It would take every spare minute of the next few days, including the weekend, to end up with something good enough to turn in, he just knew it. And he had so been looking forward to the Quidditch match on Saturday.

Draco nudged him with his knee. “Don’t worry,” he said softly. “I’ll help you.”

Ron sent him a grateful look, but before he could reply the pointer came down—twock!—on the desk between them, making them jump and spring apart guiltily.

Snape’s silky voice suddenly came from behind them. “And if,” he said, the smoothness of his voice in no way detracting from its thereatening tone, “I find evidence of anyone not doing his own work, he—or she—will suffer the consequences.” His voice lingered almost lovingly over the word “suffer”.

Ron and Draco, who had frozen at the first word, relaxed marginally as Snape strode on, only giving each other the briefest of commiserating glances. They wrote quietly for a while, Ron’s left and Draco’s right leg pressed tightly against each other beneath the desk. With Snape circulating around the room it was all they could safely do.

Suddenly there was a knock at the door. Snape stomped over and opened it to find a fifth year from Gryffindor standing in the corridor. “Well? What is it?” Snape barked.

“Please, sir, you’re wanted in the Headmaster’s office at once, Professor Snape, sir,” the boy said. He bowed politely and hurried away.

Snape made an impatient noise and looked at the class. “I will be back shortly,” he said, obviously reluctant to leave them unsupervised. “Continue working on your essays. There will be no need to talk.” He stalked out of the door, leaving it open behind him.

A few moments after he had gone Harry, greatly daring, sneaked over to the doorway and peeked out, looking both ways down the corridor. “Gone,” he announced. As if Snape’s parting warning had never been delivered, an animated buzz spread across the classroom.

Under cover of the conversations taking place all around them, Draco rested one hand reassuringly on Ron’s knee under the table and said, “Cheer up, mate. Really, this is nothing. I can think of a dozen examples of potions just off the top of my head. It’ll be okay. Sprout doesn’t assign much homework and Binns never gives us any, so all we have to do is make it through Charms for the next couple of days without getting loaded down and we’ve got it made. We’ll spend every evening working on the essay, starting with tonight. By Saturday we should have most of it done—and we’ll still have Sunday if we need a bit more time to polish it off. Right?”

Ron nodded. “I guess so.” He cocked a grin at Draco suddenly. “You know who you sounded like just then?” At Draco’s blank look and head shake, Ron snickered. “Hermione. ‘Honestly, you two, if you’d organize your time a bit better you’d have time for homework and all your other activities!’” Out of the corner of his eye he saw a bushy brown head two tables away turn suspiciously in his direction and said loudly, “Yep, organization is the key, all right. I don’t know what I’d do if it weren’t for my organizational skills.”

The classroom suddenly fell silent but Ron, carried away with the unexpected opportunity to poke fun at Hermione, didn’t notice. Draco stepped on his foot, hard, but Ron just smiled sweetly at him. “No, really, you ought to let me help you get organized sometime, Draco. You’d thank me fo—”

He stopped in mid-word when he noticed Neville staring, entranced, at something at the back of the classroom. Then he noticed that several other people, wearing equally horrified expressions, were also staring at something behind Ron and Draco. Well, that couldn’t be good.

Ron turned his head ever so slightly, just enough to see something massive and black looming over him. He paled so dramatically that every freckle on his face stood out in stark relief. “Oh Merlin,” he whispered, screwing his eyes shut as tightly as he could and ducking his head into his shoulders.

“I’m afraid Merlin can’t help you, Mr Weasley,” Snape murmured as he came around the desk to loom over Ron from from the front instead, just for variety. He met Ron’s extremely reluctant gaze with a quirk of his lips. (Oh, that surely didn’t bode well.) Then, his step almost jaunty, he proceeded at a leisurely pace to the front of the classroom and whirled to face the hapless Ron.

“So,” he purred. “You’re long on...organizational skills, are you, Weasley?” Ron squirmed and hung his head. “Now, now, I’m sure you’re far too modest. Perhaps there’s a way we can all benefit from these skills of yours, eh? Ah, I have it!” He snapped his fingers and Ron cringed. Snape was never jolly. It meant certain doom, he just knew it.

Snape rounded his desk and pulled open the bottom left drawer. He tugged and yanked and finally succeeded in freeing a bulging notebook that had scraps of parchment and bits of herbs and leaves falling out of it. He slammed it down on the desktop and slapped his hand on top of it.

“There,” he said. “My notes on poisonous herbs and fungi of the eastern European continent. Eight thousand, six hundred and forty-two of them, to be exact.” Ron’s eyes were glued to the notebook and his mouth was slack with disbelief. “Eight thousand, six hundred...and forty-two,” Snape repeated, and he gave the book a satisfied pat. “And you, Mr Weasley, are going to organize them for me—by species. Alphabetically.” He tapped one thin finger against his lips. “Latin and English, I think. Yes, definitely both. That shouldn’t be too much of a strain for you, should it, Mr Weasley? Your...organizational skills being what they are, of course.”

Ron found his voice, although it was a mere shadow of its former self. “But—but—that’ll take weeks. Months,” he said in disbelief.

“Perhaps,” Snape said briskly. “All I can say for certain is that you will spend the next three evenings working on the project.” He smirked nastily as he surveyed Ron’s lip which, as hard as he tried to control it, would insist on quivering just the slightest bit. “Come now, Mr Weasley, this should present little challenge for an expert like yourself, surely? Eight o’clock tonight, my office. Don’t be late.”

“But, Professor,” Ron protested unwisely, “when am I supposed to write my essay?”

Snape eyed him down the length of his very long nose. “For one of your...skills...it shouldn’t be difficult. After all, Mr Weasley, there’s all weekend—two solid days—in which to work on it. I’m sure you’ll...organize...something.”

Ron heard little of the remainder of the lesson as he sat there in dumb misery—self-inflicted, to be sure, but misery nonetheless—contemplating the bleak prospect of a weekend spent entirely in the Library writing his essay. He couldn’t expect Draco to give up his own weekend—and certainly not the Quidditch match—to help him. For once Snape’s punishment seemed the lesser of two evils, when compared to the greater tragedy of missing out on Quidditch—the only thing that really made life worthwhile, in Ron’s opinion.

When the endless Potions class finally drew to a close, Ron listlessly threw his book, parchment, and quill into his bag all anyhow, smearing the still-wet ink from his parchment across the cover of his Potions textbook and doing irreparable damage to his quill, although he wouldn’t discover that until later. Sunk in his own woeful thoughts, he was only vaguely aware of Draco’s encouraging pat on the back and renewed promise to help with the assignment. As they left the classroom Ron did notice Hermione, who was waiting for him just outside the door. Surprisingly, she didn’t seem particularly angry.

But that was probably because he’d handed her a lovely opportunity to reproach him for something instead.

And indeed, she did look somewhat reproachful. Her big brown eyes were full of sympathy and she put her hand on his arm, but the first words out of her mouth were, “Oh, Ron, how could you?” When he just heaved a sigh and avoided her eyes, she hurried on, nearly jogging to keep up with him and Draco. “Well—I mean, in Snape’s class of all places?” She tutted and dragged her planner out of her bag. “I suppose you’ll need some help with your essay if you’re to finish it on time, won’t you? Let me see...why don’t we—”

But Draco stopped abruptly and turned to face her. “I’m going to help Ron with his essay,” he said. “Me. Not everyone needs your help to get their work done, Hermione. I have plenty of ‘organizational skills’ myself, you know. Now leave off.” He grabbed Ron’s arm and stalked off down the hall. Ron turned and sent Hermione an apologetic look. She threw her hands up in the air and march away in the opposite direction, her nose in the air. Ron made a face.

“Did you have to be so rude?” he mumbled. “She was only trying to help. Pretty decent of her, really, considering I was making fun of her.”

Draco snorted. “Oh sure, she’d like to help all right—you, right into her clutches.”

It was Ron’s turn to snort. “What? What’s that supposed to mean?”

Draco glanced at him in disbelief. “Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed.”

“Noticed what?”

The blond’s ears turned a delicate shade of pink along the edges and he refused to meet Ron’s eyes. “Oh, never mind.”

Ron dragged on his arm to slow him down. “Never mind what? What haven’t I noticed? Come on, tell me.”

Draco’s steps slowed and he said reluctantly, “Hermione. She likes you.” When Ron opened his mouth, clearly to protest, Draco put up a hand. “No, I’m serious. She really likes you. You mean to say you really didn’t know?”

Ron’s mouth opened and closed a couple of times, but he found he had no idea what to say, or even think, about this revelation, so he merely shook his head dumbly. Finally he croaked, “But she's a girl! How—how do you know?”

“I heard them talking one day last year—her and Lavender and Parvati. They were down by the lake skipping stones, and I was walking on the lake path. They didn’t know I was there, but I heard your name being mentioned so I stopped to listen.” Draco shrugged. “Mostly just girl stuff, you know, pretty boring. I don’t think Hermione wanted to tell them, but the other two were talking about what boys they liked and they more or less pried a confession out of her. I—I think she’s got it pretty bad for you, mate.” He grinned at Ron’s horrified expression. “It does happen, you know.”

“Great—just great. So what am I supposed to do about it?”

“I don’t think you have to do anything. I mean, she’s never said a word about this to you, right? If you just ignore it, it’ll probably go away.” Draco wave his hand dismissively with all the insouciance of youth, convinced that the “problem” could be dealt with just that easily.

Ron, having experienced the emotional highs and lows of both a mother and a sister, was not so sure, but he was willing to be convinced. Especially when, after a quick glance round to make sure they were alone, Draco met his gaze with that look in his eyes and said huskily, “Besides, you’re mine. Mine. And I refuse to give you up to anyone.”

Their bodies might have been magnets, so irresistibly did they sway toward each other then, unconscious of their surroundings and, truthfully, uncaring. Just before their lips met, Peeves rounded the corner wielding two large blackboard erasers. He skidded—if ghosts can be said to skid—to a halt with a startled gasp when he saw the tableau before him. Ron and Draco, alerted by the small sound, separated abruptly, and all three of them stared at each other for one frozen moment that seemed to stretch out interminably.

Then Peeves sailed toward them, clapping the erasers together to create a shower of white chalkdust along Filch’s spotless floor. “Here now, has ickle Dwaco found himself a fwend?” he chortled. “Ooo, the little Weasel had best watch out or the Dragon will eat him!” He cackled madly and pursued them, erasers at the ready, as they pelted down the stairs to the Great Hall, from which Peeves was banned at mealtimes.

As they ran, though, Peeves’s parting shot stuck in Ron’s mind. The Dragon will eat him. It brought an extremely vivid picture to mind—possibly not what Peeves had meant at all, although with Peeves you never really knew—that made him feel almost feverish. He’d had tiny glimpses of the picture in his mind’s eye before, but never more than that. He hadn’t allowed himself to think of it. Much. But now...well, suddenly he couldn’t stop thinking about it. He wished very much that he was somewhere other than the Great Hall in the midst of two hundred students. Somewhere alone...with Draco.

Draco glanced at him, laughing, as they ran. The unexpectedly hot expression in Ron’s eyes took his breath away and very nearly made him crash into the Gryffindor table. Annoyed shouts of “Oi, watch yourself there!” and “Grow up, you two!” brought both of them back to awareness of time and place—not the time for whatever thoughts had put that heat into Ron’s eyes, and definitely not the place to carry them out.

But as they took their seats next to each other on the bench, they looked at each other and shivered with shared delight, knowing there would be a place, and a time.

And it would be soon.
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You've Always Been Mine