A Quaint Notion
Author: Helen
"Does anybody have a live sparrow in front of them?" Snape drawled, surveying their desks, most of which were covered with little mangled carcasses.
"I do," Ron said.
"I want to go outside," his sparrow said, in a penetrating nasal voice.
"Weasley. Unusual. I'll have to assume you didn't cheat, too, as none of the rest of you incompetents managed to do the spell correctly. Ten points to Gryffindor. Full marks, Weasley, and let's hope this is a trend, reversing your remarkably pedestrian performance of the last four years. The rest of you; there will be a retest Monday. The purpose of this spell is not, by the way, to murder small birds, but to render them able to talk, temporarily."
"You smell," the sparrow said to Neville, hopping off Ron's desk.
"Do please try to learn how to do this spell by then," Snape said, "otherwise I shall be forced to fail the lot of you. Class dismissed." He opened one of the windows and Ron's sparrow flew out.
"Oh, Granger, Potter," Snape said, "I'd very much appreciate your help in cleaning up this disaster area."
Ron grimaced sympathetically at Harry and Hermione, both of whom had blood on their faces. Their sparrows hadn't died so much as they had exploded. They both got up tiredly and began to clean, without complaint; they had become used to Snape sticking them with cleanup duty.
"See you at dinner," Hermione said.
"Yeah, sorry." Ron said. Harry shrugged.
It was only another half an hour until dinner, and it would probably take that long for Harry and Hermione to finish cleaning. Ron went downstairs to the mail room to pick up a parcel he'd been putting off getting. If a parcel was too heavy for owls, it was usually a bad sign. The last such parcel had contained some of the ugliest winter boots he had ever seen, and the one before that had been seven weighty tomes about the balance of Muggle-Wizard economics, from Percy, who gave terrible gifts. The mail room was small and narrow, with only a long table against one wall, and a small slot and a window in the other wall. The slot was to slide the claim ticket through; the parcel then came out the window. It was all highly automated. Ron had just fished his somewhat grubby claim ticket out of his pocket when someone else came in. Ron didn't turn around until the door closed.
"Malfoy—"
"How'd you do it?" Draco said, leaning back against the door.
"Wouldn't you like to know?"
"As a matter of fact, I would like to know," he said, almost pleasantly, shaking his hair back over his shoulders. It had grown very long this year, pale and straight and smooth.
"Sorry, wouldn't that be cheating?"
"Oh, you're not going to share with Potter? That's very principled of you, Weasley."
Ron decided to abandon his parcel. He stuffed the ticket back in his pocket and started towards the door. "Get out of my way, Malfoy."
"I'll make it worth your while."
"What?" He wanted to leave, but felt oddly reluctant about touching Draco, and the room was small enough that he would have to shove past him to get out. He stepped forward, wavering, and Draco's hand flashed out to grab the sleeve of Ron's robe, which was too short.
"I'll pay you; you could buy yourself a robe that fits properly."
Ron jerked back out of his grasp, taking several nervous steps back. He wasn't afraid of Draco, but he didn't want to fight, and Draco's calm good humour was disconcerting, to say the least.
"I wouldn't take your money if I were starving, so I suppose that's out."
"There must be something you want."
"Nothing from you."
"How about a blow job?"
"What?"
"Blow job," Draco said, enunciating. "I'd suck your cock."
"Very funny, Malfoy."
"Come on, Weasley. Has anyone ever sucked you off? You've never even thought about it?"
"Not with—"
"With Harry maybe?"
"No," Ron said, too quickly
"Think about him crawling into your bed at night, maybe, kissing you—"
"Shut the fuck up—" Ron said loudly.
"sucking you," Draco said quietly.
"Shut up," Ron said again, but weakly, refusing to meet Draco's eyes.
"Tell me how to do the spell," Draco said, and took a step forward. Ron stepped backwards, uncertainly.
"You'd do this. for better marks?"
"I'm under a certain amount of pressure, you understand. My father—"
"I don't believe you," Ron said, taking another step backwards and running into the table.
"Who cares what you believe?"
The classroom had been warm, and Ron's robe was open. Draco smiled up at him, a quick, unfathomable grin, before deftly flipping the button of his trousers undone and sliding his hand inside. "Huh. Not as disinterested as all that," he said.
"Shut up," Ron said again, flushing painfully.
"the spell," Draco said, moving his hand slowly.
"The rosemary has to be fresh. Let me go." He tried to step around Draco, but Draco slammed his hand down on the table next to Ron's hip. "You got what you wanted—"
"I wouldn't renege on a deal," Draco said and slid neatly to his knees between Ron's feet, nuzzling gently at his cock for a moment before sliding his mouth wetly over it.
It didn't take long. Draco had been right: beyond a few kisses that had been mostly dares, he hadn't ever done anything. It had only been, at most, four months ago that Harry had arrived in their room, soaked to the skin after Quidditch practice, and peeled off his robe, then his jumper and the shirt he was wearing underneath, talking the entire time to Ron about the Newburgh Feint, and Ron had nodded, sitting on his bed watching as Harry waved his hands around in illustration, and thought, quite out of the blue, that he wouldn't mind touching Harry's back, just below his shoulder blade. He had tried very hard not to think of it since.
The loudest sound in the room was Draco's sucking, thick and wet and rhythmic. Ron bit his lip and gripped the edge of table: the walls in the Weasley house were thin, the hangings on the beds in the dormitory thinner: he'd been masturbating quietly for so long that it had become his way. Draco's mouth was hot, and he gripped Ron's thigh almost painfully, and Ron resisted the impulse to touch him, his shoulder, his hair, already ashamed of what he was doing, but the shame didn't stop him from coming, and when Draco sat back on his knees and looked up at him, licking at his lower lip, it didn't stop Ron from pushing him down on the floor and wrenching his robe open.
The walls in the Malfoy household were evidently quite thick.
Harry and Hermione wouldn't let him tell them how to fix the spell
"La la la la la la la, I'm not listening, Ron," Hermione had said. "I'll figure it out myself."
"Seems unfair," Harry had said, shrugging. "You did it yourself. You should get the marks for it."
All that had happened, of course, was that he hadn't had the money for the standard dried rosemary, and had hated to ask anyone. He'd spent half the last weekend stumping crossly around the woods, picking plants and stuffing them in his bag.
Draco was the only one whose sparrow didn't die on Monday, and Ron dug his nails into his hands and stared at the table in front of him.
"Get out of my way, Weasley," Draco sneered, holding his breakfast tray in one hand, and Ron looked up, startled, quickly enough to catch Draco giving him a strange, prompting look.
"Oh. um. Shut up, Malfoy," he said.
"You're. ugly," Draco said, after a lengthy pause.
A week after that was a Gryffindor/Hufflepuff Quidditch game. Ron was filing down to the stands, working out the terms of a bet he and Hermione had going on the outcome. He had just managed to get her to agree to proofread all of his history essays and do his laundry for three weeks should Gryffindor win by only thirty points when he caught sight of Draco standing on the edge of the crowd, looking at him.
"Fine, Ron, but you're going to be doing my washing until spring," Hermione was saying merrily, as Draco turned slowly around and then began walking away towards the school.
"I have to go back, Hermione," Ron said abruptly.
"What—"
"I—um—that essay about important historical poisonings, how long was it supposed to be?"
"Two and a half scrolls."
"Oh, two and a half. I suppose I just heard that half part."
"But—."
"I'd better go do that right now—" Ron said, and handed the large blinking Gryffindor poster they'd made to Hermione, pushed his way through the crowd and began walking back up the embankment towards the school. He caught up with Draco before they'd reached the school, and they walked quickly, silently, through the great hall and up the stairs, stopping uncertainly for a moment at the top before Draco walked down a hallway, up a short staircase and around a corner, and opened the door to a small storeroom. Ron followed him in and closed the door carefully behind them.
"Hey," Draco said, quietly, turning around.
"Hey," Ron said, and took one step forward before Draco was in his arms, hands clutching at his shoulders, digging in tightly when Ron bent his head to brush his mouth across Draco's and Draco made a muffled sound against his mouth and then slid one hand up to Ron's neck. Draco pulled his head down, kissing him frantically, and they took a few stumbling steps together before Draco's back hit the wall of the room. Ron shoved his leg between Draco's thighs and slid his mouth down to bite at Draco's neck and Draco said
"Wait."
"What?"
"Clothes. I want to take off my clothes."
"oh. All right."
"And I wouldn't mind a bed, either."
"There's no bed in here."
"Really?" Draco said sardonically, and then he pulled his wand out and pointed it over Ron's shoulder. "Aedificare lectus," he said, and with a slight, withered pop, a bed appeared. It was low and wide and listed slightly to one side, with a tall engraved post at one corner, but the other posts were several feet shorter and corkscrew curled. Two of the feet were dragon clawed. The headboard appeared to be made of sheet metal, punched into intricate designs. The bedding was a bilious green color. Draco winced.
"Oh, fuck me," Ron said.
"As though you could do any better," Draco said.
"I think I could do better, as a matter of fact."
"Right," Draco said. "If you'd rather—"
Ron kissed him again, sliding his hand over Draco's shoulders and down his back, hands skidding noiselessly down his back, and Draco spun them around, pulling Ron towards the bed, tugging at the fastenings on his robe, finally pulling his mouth from Ron's and pulling off his own robe.
"Take those off," he said, and pulled his shirt off over his head. "What?" he said, still holding the shirt, when Ron didn't do anything. "Scared?"
"No." Ron took off his robe and the jumper he was wearing underneath, looking for a place to put them, and finally dropped on the floor.
"Come on," Draco said, already down to his underwear, hands meeting Ron's on his belt.
"I can do it myself," Ron said, pushing his hands away.
"Then do it," Draco said, sitting down on the bed. Ron, carefully not looking at him, kicked off his shoes and socks, and took off his trousers. Then he quirked his eyebrows defiantly at Draco and pulled off his pants.
"Maybe this isn't a good—"
"You're having second thoughts now?"
"What, I can't have second thoughts?"
"I—"
"Forget it, I take it back, lie down," Draco ordered and Ron glared at him a moment, but lay down, and Draco leaned down, bracing himself on his hands, and kissed him for a long time, sliding one leg over Ron's hips to straddle him without breaking the kiss. Ron arched up underneath him, sliding his hands restlessly down Draco's back, caressing his hips, finally plucking at his underwear. Draco pulled back, and slid his underwear off, ramming his knee awkwardly into Ron's thigh in the process.
"Sorry," he said, dropping the underwear on the floor by the bed.
"Come here," Ron said, reaching for him, rolling him onto his back and kissing his neck and Draco quivered and moaned and slid against him until Ron was panting, and circling his hips against Draco's and he'd never done it before, but Draco was digging his nails into Ron's waist, had wrapped one leg around Ron's thigh and had given up moaning for shuddering and mouthing Ron's shoulder and when he came he bit Ron's shoulder hard enough to draw blood, and Ron yelped, and came.
"Get off," Draco said, eventually, "you're crushing me."
"mm," Ron said, and rolled onto his back.
"Sorry about that. earlier this week," Draco said, after a few minutes.
"What?"
"The. In the dining hall."
"Oh. That. You've said a lot worse."
"Obviously. But—s'different now, isn't it?"
"Is it?"
"I don't bloody know." Draco sat up and started mopping at his groin with the sheet. Ron watched him, and then rolled over, leaning off the bed to retrieve his wand
"Um. Detergeo panni," he said, producing two washcloths, one of which he handed to Draco.
"Thanks."
"Why'd you—you know." Ron bit his lip. "In the first place."
"I rather thought you'd get angry," Draco said, and smiled.
"And?"
"And it would be fun."
"I see."
Draco shrugged. "You're quite fetching when you get angry. I'm surprised Potter hasn't noticed."
"Leave him out of this," Ron said sharply.
"Of course. He doesn't have anything to do with the fact that you've left what feels like quite an attractive array of hickeys on my neck." Draco hitched himself up to sit against the headboard.
"You're—you don't have to be such an asshole."
"Neither do you."
"Fuck," Ron said, pulling the sheet up over him. "I don't know why I'm even here."
"You're here because you're like me; you're a hell of a lot more like me than you're like Granger or Potter."
"I'm. better at transfiguration than Harry," Ron said unconvincingly.
"That doesn't matter."
"If you're going to start nattering about pureblood this and—"
"Don't be more of an idiot than you have to be," Draco said harshly. "We do all right, don't we? You got high passes in several things last term, didn't you?"
"Yeah."
"Me too. And Granger got high passes in everything. And Potter didn't get killed, once again, by Voldemort and—"
"Since when did you become so obsessed with marks?"
"Those two are something and they're going to continue to be something," Draco said, the words tumbling out of his mouth quickly, now. Ron thought that it was more than he'd ever heard Draco say at once. "What do you think we're going to be?"
"I hadn't really thought about it."
"Liar."
"I'm not—."
"Assuming you don't get killed heroically throwing yourself in front of a train or something for Harry, you're going to become some Ministry hack, just like your father and your brothers."
"And you're going to become some death eater peon—" Ron began.
"And that's why we're alike," Draco said. He didn't sound angry or thwarted, merely resigned.
"I'm not. unhappy," Ron said, after a pause.
"Well, you're something," Draco said, tiredly, "Or you wouldn't be here, fucking around with me."
Ron licked his lips uncomfortably and stared at the floor.
"I think you should leave," Draco said, turning away from him.
"Yeah," Ron said and stood up, pulling on his clothes quickly. When he was finished, he stood for a minute, holding his robe in his hand, staring at Draco's back.
"Well."
"What?" Draco said, not moving. He looked very thin without his robes, almost too thin, and Ron remembered how Draco had pressed his mouth fervently against his neck and said, almost reluctantly,
"I just—"
"Look, we were both slumming, how's that?"
"I wasn't—"
"I was," Draco said, turning halfway around. "So why don't you put on your shitty hand-me-down robes and get the fuck out of here."
"Fine," Ron said, shrugging on his robe. He closed the door hard on the way out.
Temporary insanity, Ron thought, especially when Harry grinned at him at dinner and invited him to sneak out to play broom tag with the rest of the Gryffindor Quidditch team, and that night, past midnight, the wind cold in his face as he swerved to avoid Angelina's tag, it seemed as if it hadn't even happened, Draco's hot body under his, his slick mouth, and he remembered, suddenly, the night two days before he'd left for school, when his father had stood at the foot of his bed, squinted at the wall behind his left shoulder and said "This is a confusing time," before handing him a parchment with birth control spells on it. Ron doubted that his youngest son screwing Draco Malfoy in a storeroom was quite what he had in mind. It would never happen again, he promised himself, and nearly fell off his broom as Harry plowed into him.
But three weeks later, when Draco appeared at the end of the library aisle, it happened again, this time in one of the tiny soundproofed study cubicles they were allowed to reserve for a few hours at a time,
"You started this. You—" Ron said viciously, undoing the buttons on Draco's shirt.
"I didn't have to try that hard, did I?" Draco spat back, already reaching for his trousers.
"Just. don't talk."
And the next time Draco didn't say anything except: "I want to fuck you." and "Don't look at me like that Weasley, I don't get off on hurting people." and a number of things that didn't count, like "You're doing fine." and "That hurt?" and "Fuck, you feel so good."
There were, he discovered, dozens of hidden rooms throughout Hogwarts, tiny windowless storage rooms, and forgotten cathedral-ceilinged practice rooms, the hidden room three-quarters of the way up the west tower where they fell asleep one afternoon while it rained and rained. Draco's beds had improved substantially, until they were mostly shining dark wood sleigh beds, with deep soft bedding that was nearly always some variation of blue.
"Why blue?" he asked one afternoon.
"You look good in blue," Draco said, after a pause, and looked for a moment, Ron could have sworn, sheepish.
He didn't know why he was doing it, he told himself again and again, staring in the mirror in the morning doing a spell Draco had taught him, stopping him before he could leave the room they'd spent the afternoon fucking in and pressing his fingers across the bite on Ron's neck, mumbling "Obscuratio morsus." He didn't know why he was doing it, except that he did know, and every absence that Harry failed to notice had started to be balanced by the secret gleam in Draco's eyes when they ran into each other in classes, when Draco tended to say:
"Get out of my way, you rotten git," with a remarkable lack of conviction, by the way he squirmed and made breathless threats when Ron slid inside him.
"It's not that I don't want to Malfoy,but. We've got that exam in potions and I can't remember the ingredients from half the damn things—" Ron said, lifting his mouth reluctantly, keeping his voice low, even though they were alone in the long stone corridor.
"But that shouldn't take long—" Draco said, pulling his robes straight and fixing his collar.
"Easy for you to say."
"Oh, because Snape just—" Draco said, lifting his chin in what Ron had learned was hurt pride.
"No, because, for some inexplicable reason, you're good at potions," Ron said. He had been paying attention in class, looking at the quiet certainty with which Draco added potion ingredients, so at odds with his dubious and rather imprecise wandwork in Transfigurations.
"Oh," Draco said, looking mollified. "I'll help you."
"You don't have to—"
"Look, I'd like to get laid here, Weasley, and if I have to drag you through the steps for making some ridiculously easy potions, then," he knocked briskly against the stone wall behind them until it reshaped itself into a clumsy door, which led to a very small, but cheery room, dark wood floors and a crackling fire in a grate.
"Okay," Ron said, weakly, letting Draco take his books and toss them on a convenient ottoman.
"All right."
"Take off your shirt."
"You always put too much chelth root in your potions."
"Yeah? You always make too much noise when I bite you."
Draco liked kissing. liked to have his nipples licked, liked to fuck gently and get fucked hard, was not as good at sucking cock as Ron became, was, Ron realized one Saturday afternoon, not the Slytherin seeker only because he had bought a place on the team, but because he was good, fast and crafty, ruthless, Ron thought, as Draco swung his broom around and slammed sideways into Harry, and they both fell end over end through the air before recovering and whirling away, facing each other, and Gryffindor won that day and Ron clapped Harry on the back and grinned at him and shouted "Well done!" and met Draco forty-five minutes later to get fucked, to wrap his legs around Draco's waist and watch his face, still flushed from the wind, to let Draco kiss his collarbone and his jaw, pinch his nipples almost too roughly.
They weren't friends, certainly, but they weren't enemies. Draco came back from the Christmas holiday silent, with a lot of bruises, and when Ron said,
"Are you okay?" touching a particularly nasty bruise on Draco's back above his kidneys, Draco said:
"Fuck you."
"You look like shit," Draco had said, on a number of occasions, but at least he was fucking
paying attention. Harry, Ron thought, might have a girlfriend; he often had a secret look on
his face. Amazing, really, that he spent perhaps an afternoon every fortnight with Draco,
sometimes more, like the week that half the school got Dragon Pox, and classes were cancelled,
and they fucked each other every day, most memorably in Snape's classroom, to which Draco had
the key. Mostly, though, they met infrequently enough that Ron could almost forget about it in
between meetings, his time taken up with studying, practicing Quidditch with Fred and George and Harry, who were certain he would make the team next year, lying on the floor of the Gryffindor common room talking to Hermione about one of the astonishingly large number of things she thought about. She was studying to become an Animagus, and spent most afternoons
working in a private seminar McGonagall was teaching. If she noticed that Ron was distracted, she said nothing.
He thought he would feel confusion. Remorse, maybe. Shame, disgust, he thought he would wake up one morning and know that this was wrong, but it didn't happen. He didn't know what Draco felt, but it certainly wasn't disgust.
Sometimes, they even had fun. Ron was dreadfully ticklish, although Draco didn't discover this until February. Draco could conjure up pretty decent sandwiches.
"What's this?" Ron said, hand framing a faint mouth mark on Draco's shoulder.
"Don't tell me you've been being faithful, Weasley. What a quaint notion," Draco drawled, narrowing his eyes, but not moving. Ron caught his arm and pressed him to the bed, pinning him loosely against the bedspread with one wrist, leaning close enough to kiss. Draco closed his eyes, already anticipating the kiss, tilted his head back, opened his mouth slightly. When Ron didn't kiss him, he opened his eyes.
"Does he make you feel the way I make you feel?" Ron said harshly.
Draco stared at him, but said nothing.
"Thought not," Ron said, shortly, and kissed him then, hard.
Things might have gone on like this indefinitely, meetings that were only half accidental, their occasional conversations about carefully neutral topics. Ron helped Draco with transfiguration and Draco helped him with potions, but not often. It had stopped feeling quite as furtively exciting as it had felt at first, but it was strangely satisfying in other ways. Ron had stopped worrying that anyone would find out:
"They wouldn't notice," he said to Draco, "if I stripped you bare and fucked you on the dinner table."
"Don't—" Draco twisted underneath him. "Don't, I'll come."
Still. They did notice when Draco tumbled into the Gryffindor common room late one evening, stumbling, wild-eyed.
"How'd you get in here?" Harry said, half of the dozen people who had been lounging in front of the fire starting to their feet.
"Voldemort's coming," Draco said, his voice terrible, hoarse.
"What?"
"Harry, you have to get out of here," Draco said, scrubbing one desperate hand across his face.
"Voldemort's here," Hermione said flatly.
"Are you deaf?" Draco snapped, and people began talking then, loudly:
"Why would you, of all people—"
"There are warding spells on the school, he can't just—"
"—a lying Slyth—"
"—Death-eater, anyway—"
"Ron," Draco said, urgently. His face was smeared with ash, his eyes bloodshot. "Ron. please."
"You're bleeding," Ron said quietly. Draco's robe was torn at the elbow, there was a spreading circle of blood on his shirt sleeve.
"I know. It's all right."
"Ron?" Harry said uncertainly.
They heard it, then, a crack, and a crash, and a thunderous splintering sound, like great old trees disintegrating. The room rocked, and half the lights on the chandelier overhead shattered, raining glass down on them, and then the chandelier went dark, leaving them in the flickering light of the fire.
"You have to get out of here, Potter—" Draco said, shouting now.
"Oh you don't believe him, do you, it's a trap—it's—"
"Did you see him?" Ron said, cutting Hermione off.
"No."
"Dumbledore. McGonagall—"
"I don't know."
"What do you suggest we do, then, Malfoy?" Harry said, rounding.
"Well, I don't recommend waiting here like rats in a trap."
Everything was quiet for a moment, enough that everyone could hear each other's panicked breathing, before Hermione said, quite calmly
"I think, perhaps, it's time for a little unlicensed apparation."
"Where the fuck to?" Harry said. There was another jolt, and a log flew out of the fire, crashing against an ottoman and setting it ablaze, the fire spreading quickly across the floor and up the drapes.
"Who cares," Hermione said hastily. "Let's just get the hell out of here."
People began blinking out around them, until only the four of them were left: Harry and Hermione, Ron and Draco.
"Wait—" Hermione said, when Harry checked his wand and took a breath. "We should stick together."
"Not if he's after me," Harry said.
"Quit being heroic," Hermione snapped. "Your place, Ron?"
"Fine."
"All right," Harry agreed, and Hermione nodded and apparated.
"Come on," Harry said. "I rather think the ceiling's about to collapse."
"Draco, you with us?" Ron said, because Draco hadn't said anything in several minutes.
"Of course."
"Can you apparate?"
"Don't be insulting, Weasley," Draco said, and then staggered forward when there was another crash. Ron put out a hand to catch him, and then stuck the other hand hastily under Draco's shoulders when he didn't stand back up.
"He's fainted."
"Fuck—" Harry said. "We've got to get out of here."
"I can't leave him," Ron said quietly.
"I don't want to either, but—"
"We've been fucking since October," Ron said.
"Ah," Harry said. The fire illuminated his face in bursts, his mouth a grim line.
"So I—"
"I know," Harry said.
"Get out of here," Ron said.
"Ron, I don't—"
"Get out of here or I'll kill you," Ron said harshly.
Harry nodded slowly, and then touched Ron's shoulder and stepped away. Ron didn't watch him go, already on the floor, slapping Draco's face.
He didn't wake up. The chandelier crashed to the floor, splintering glass across the room.
"Fuck," Ron mumbled, and pulled Draco into his arms, not without an effort. He took a wavering step, closed his eyes, and they both disappeared.
(end)