(no subject)
I shall now try and cheer myself up (though I am already feeling quite better) by posting a SECOND PART, har har har, yes, second part. Oof go me and suchlike.
It is the second part to It's the Heat (The Epidemic).
:D
Title: And Then the Ooze (The Epidemic pt. 2)
Words: 1, 511
Pairings: pre-slash-sort-of Harry/Draco, mainly. The others are scattered.
Rating: PG
Summary: Teenage drama doesn't get any better than this.
Notes: It is un-beta'd and therefore I take full responsibility for any errors. Bwaahh, bad me!
The love epidemic wanes steadily with the oncoming of a new year, a slow ooze that filters through the school even before it starts. The warmth is dissolving into a cool breeze as late September strikes up and the students find themselves turning away from each other instead of to each other, as the cold weather should make them do.
Students file onto the Hogwarts Express and smile awkwardly and avert eyes. Seamus Finnigan offers to hold Susan Bone’s (nee` Susie-with-the-perm) owl, but nothing else. Blaise cruelly knocks Ginny into the window and smirks as she squeaks in pain; Pansy spits at Ron as she stalks past him. Parvati and Lavender are especially careful not to touch each other the wrong way, and Harry steadily avoids Draco Malfoy’s eye the entire ride. Even Hermione reads a letter, sniffles angrily, and tears it up.
The teachers meet the students by the Great Hall as the Express reaches Hogwarts and are most surprised to see the newfound hostility. It is most unusual, the teachers think, but they will certainly not worry about it this year.
“The students shall do as they please. All we will do is teach,” says Professor McGonagall rather wearily to her colleagues during the new term meeting.
“It’s autumn now, after all, and winter soon. The cold will change them all,” says Professor Trelawney, looking moodily into a cup. It is to be her best prediction for the whole year.
Nobody bothers to ask anybody else how their summer was; they can tell by the looks on everyone’s face and according to that no one’s summer was especially great. Draco looks haggard; despondent, Hermione looks twice as irritated, and Susan looks like she has been crying for the last two months. The younger years are afraid to talk to the new 7th years; they keep their distance (“As it should be,” says Ron darkly, splashing ink on a third year).
The only news one hears is of break-ups and heartaches, and no new relationship seems to last longer than three weeks at the most. October comes around and declares itself the Month of Casanovas and Sluts, and November’s outlook looks bleak.
In the Gryffindor dormitories, things are not only dismal but brutal. Hermione can no longer stand the slightest wrong answer and has awful crying jags. Ron looks at everyone as though they are sleeping with his sister. Ginny looks like death all the time, and one icy night Dean suddenly decides he has to share his sex life with everyone else, which helps matters none at all.
“You know, Susan slept with me,” he blurts, sitting bolt upright on the chair in front of the fire. Opposite him, Seamus practically erupts in flames.
“Excuse me?” he scowls, books falling off his lap. “What did you just say, Thomas?”
Everyone in the room falls silent.
“I-you shouldn’t care,” says Dean, coloring oddly. “It was only once and I-she doesn’t love you anymore. She’s not-I mean-she was-!”
A virgin, everyone finishes, and groups of people gasp in unison. In one immediate rush Seamus lunges at Dean and begins his attack, even though he really shouldn’t care-from the circulating rumors, he was the one who spiraled his and Susan’s relationship into hell--an Irish Muggle girl, apparently, and it was more than a one-night stand.
Harry understands, though, for some reason that he cannot fathom to. He knows why Seamus is tearing Dean alive, and thinks that the fifth years trying to break apart the fight shouldn’t bother, because Seamus really needs this and Dean won’t die, anyway. They were best friends, after all. No-are.
“He still loves her,” says Harry to Hermione, on the girls’ staircase where they are sitting. “Doesn’t he.”
“Well, he’s a liar and he doesn’t deserve her otherwise,” says Hermione viciously. “Honestly, Harry, men all think it’s so easy-even if you mess up, you can still make it up. Sometimes you just can’t,” she says, blinking rapidly.
Harry is suddenly frightened. “Hermio-?” he begins, but she has already run up the staircase.
Across the room, the fight is still raging and Harry gets up to try and intervene. He runs over to Seamus and over to Dean and back to Seamus and back to Dean, but both push him away and say no thanks, mate, but this is my fight, and Harry has to respect that-he is a man, after all, before anything else, even though he has just been splashed with a bit of blood.
He goes to stand by the portrait hole and is elbowed out. Wonderful, he thinks, I am being shoved out of my own common room.
Out in the corridor it is cold and almost damp, and Harry’s sweater is back in his room. He shivers in his spot for awhile and ignores the prodding from the Fat Lady to get back in the room.
“It’s cold, dear,” she says, but Harry shrugs.
“I’ll find a warmer place,” he mumbles, and walks in a random direction.
“On second thought, it sounds rather nasty in there,” calls the Lady back to him, but he pretends he can’t hear.
He ambles down a couple of corridors; some he is familiar with from inch to inch and others he feels are completely new. He touches walls and listens behind doors and tries to forget that the school he is walking through is falling apart because they are all oversexed and undersexed and confused and young.
The promise to the Fat Lady was that he would find a warmer place, but he swears he has gone to every possible hideout and there are either people fighting there or people crying there or people having angry hate sex there (well, he hadn’t found the last one, but he was sure that was happening somewhere in the ruddy castle). He is about to turn back to the common room-to the fight and the sniffles and the death glares-until he realises he is on the third floor and has just passed a certain wall three times straight.
There is a door now where there wasn't before. Without thinking, Harry grasps the handle and pulls it towards him, not thinking of who or what will be there on the other side.
He feels the warmth, first of all; a great gush that hits him and then envelopes him. He thinks that he has kept his small promise of finding a peaceful, better-heated area, and then panics about who is there with him in this room. Perhaps no one; they would all be in their own common rooms anyway-but no, stupid school, they’d be wanting out of their drama-filled dormitories-
“Oh,” says a voice, and it is Draco Malfoy; and the second thing that Harry feels is something tugging at his stomach.
Er, says his stomach, I do believe this is a signal.
And Harry listens to his body, for once.
He walks inside the fuzzy-atmosphered room, which has a blazing fire in front and two squishy-looking armchairs in front of it. Draco is looking perplexedly at the second one, and Harry suspects it popped out of nowhere when he walked past the Room of Requirement in order to fulfill his wishes.
“Oh,” repeats Draco, suddenly noticing Harry has closed the door. “It, er, it-“
“I didn’t think…” starts Harry, but knows excuses will not help. I didn’t think I’d find myself here is most definitely an excuse, for he knew in the back of his mind he would eventually come around to using this room.
“No, I…I didn’t ask for it. I think I wanted it. Well. I did. Apparently,” he mumbles in continuation, gesturing around him. “You were here first, though.”
Well, yes. Obviously.
Draco makes a small sound in his throat. “It is mad down there,” he says, looking intently at the carpeted floor. “The Slytherin common room, I mean. Where Pansy is tearing down the curtains and pulling out her hair.”
Escaping, was all he really needed to say.
Harry makes his way towards the other armchair and settles into it. “And I’m running away,” he replies softly, “From my friends, who are fighting over someone’s virginity.”
They look at each other with a bit of difficulty, and Harry thinks Draco has just blushed, but it is very hot in the room anyway. He is also wearing a black turtleneck--perhaps he is just overheated.
“Malfoy,” Harry says, and immediately regrets it.
Draco looks up. “What,” he says, not even bothering to ask it properly like a question.
“I-it’s quite hot in here, don’t you think,” Harry says, trying to calm his voice.
There is no answer.
Harry was always one to succumb to a comfy armchair and a fire. He drifts off easily and falls into sleep deeply, firelight burning bright through his eyelids. In the middle of the night, he feels, through his almost-numb state, someone kiss him hard on the lips and on the forehead and then lightly, with a strange gentleness, on his eyelids.
+
...And in his office, Dumbledore smiles and ingests another lemon drop.
It is the second part to It's the Heat (The Epidemic).
:D
Title: And Then the Ooze (The Epidemic pt. 2)
Words: 1, 511
Pairings: pre-slash-sort-of Harry/Draco, mainly. The others are scattered.
Rating: PG
Summary: Teenage drama doesn't get any better than this.
Notes: It is un-beta'd and therefore I take full responsibility for any errors. Bwaahh, bad me!
The love epidemic wanes steadily with the oncoming of a new year, a slow ooze that filters through the school even before it starts. The warmth is dissolving into a cool breeze as late September strikes up and the students find themselves turning away from each other instead of to each other, as the cold weather should make them do.
Students file onto the Hogwarts Express and smile awkwardly and avert eyes. Seamus Finnigan offers to hold Susan Bone’s (nee` Susie-with-the-perm) owl, but nothing else. Blaise cruelly knocks Ginny into the window and smirks as she squeaks in pain; Pansy spits at Ron as she stalks past him. Parvati and Lavender are especially careful not to touch each other the wrong way, and Harry steadily avoids Draco Malfoy’s eye the entire ride. Even Hermione reads a letter, sniffles angrily, and tears it up.
The teachers meet the students by the Great Hall as the Express reaches Hogwarts and are most surprised to see the newfound hostility. It is most unusual, the teachers think, but they will certainly not worry about it this year.
“The students shall do as they please. All we will do is teach,” says Professor McGonagall rather wearily to her colleagues during the new term meeting.
“It’s autumn now, after all, and winter soon. The cold will change them all,” says Professor Trelawney, looking moodily into a cup. It is to be her best prediction for the whole year.
Nobody bothers to ask anybody else how their summer was; they can tell by the looks on everyone’s face and according to that no one’s summer was especially great. Draco looks haggard; despondent, Hermione looks twice as irritated, and Susan looks like she has been crying for the last two months. The younger years are afraid to talk to the new 7th years; they keep their distance (“As it should be,” says Ron darkly, splashing ink on a third year).
The only news one hears is of break-ups and heartaches, and no new relationship seems to last longer than three weeks at the most. October comes around and declares itself the Month of Casanovas and Sluts, and November’s outlook looks bleak.
In the Gryffindor dormitories, things are not only dismal but brutal. Hermione can no longer stand the slightest wrong answer and has awful crying jags. Ron looks at everyone as though they are sleeping with his sister. Ginny looks like death all the time, and one icy night Dean suddenly decides he has to share his sex life with everyone else, which helps matters none at all.
“You know, Susan slept with me,” he blurts, sitting bolt upright on the chair in front of the fire. Opposite him, Seamus practically erupts in flames.
“Excuse me?” he scowls, books falling off his lap. “What did you just say, Thomas?”
Everyone in the room falls silent.
“I-you shouldn’t care,” says Dean, coloring oddly. “It was only once and I-she doesn’t love you anymore. She’s not-I mean-she was-!”
A virgin, everyone finishes, and groups of people gasp in unison. In one immediate rush Seamus lunges at Dean and begins his attack, even though he really shouldn’t care-from the circulating rumors, he was the one who spiraled his and Susan’s relationship into hell--an Irish Muggle girl, apparently, and it was more than a one-night stand.
Harry understands, though, for some reason that he cannot fathom to. He knows why Seamus is tearing Dean alive, and thinks that the fifth years trying to break apart the fight shouldn’t bother, because Seamus really needs this and Dean won’t die, anyway. They were best friends, after all. No-are.
“He still loves her,” says Harry to Hermione, on the girls’ staircase where they are sitting. “Doesn’t he.”
“Well, he’s a liar and he doesn’t deserve her otherwise,” says Hermione viciously. “Honestly, Harry, men all think it’s so easy-even if you mess up, you can still make it up. Sometimes you just can’t,” she says, blinking rapidly.
Harry is suddenly frightened. “Hermio-?” he begins, but she has already run up the staircase.
Across the room, the fight is still raging and Harry gets up to try and intervene. He runs over to Seamus and over to Dean and back to Seamus and back to Dean, but both push him away and say no thanks, mate, but this is my fight, and Harry has to respect that-he is a man, after all, before anything else, even though he has just been splashed with a bit of blood.
He goes to stand by the portrait hole and is elbowed out. Wonderful, he thinks, I am being shoved out of my own common room.
Out in the corridor it is cold and almost damp, and Harry’s sweater is back in his room. He shivers in his spot for awhile and ignores the prodding from the Fat Lady to get back in the room.
“It’s cold, dear,” she says, but Harry shrugs.
“I’ll find a warmer place,” he mumbles, and walks in a random direction.
“On second thought, it sounds rather nasty in there,” calls the Lady back to him, but he pretends he can’t hear.
He ambles down a couple of corridors; some he is familiar with from inch to inch and others he feels are completely new. He touches walls and listens behind doors and tries to forget that the school he is walking through is falling apart because they are all oversexed and undersexed and confused and young.
The promise to the Fat Lady was that he would find a warmer place, but he swears he has gone to every possible hideout and there are either people fighting there or people crying there or people having angry hate sex there (well, he hadn’t found the last one, but he was sure that was happening somewhere in the ruddy castle). He is about to turn back to the common room-to the fight and the sniffles and the death glares-until he realises he is on the third floor and has just passed a certain wall three times straight.
There is a door now where there wasn't before. Without thinking, Harry grasps the handle and pulls it towards him, not thinking of who or what will be there on the other side.
He feels the warmth, first of all; a great gush that hits him and then envelopes him. He thinks that he has kept his small promise of finding a peaceful, better-heated area, and then panics about who is there with him in this room. Perhaps no one; they would all be in their own common rooms anyway-but no, stupid school, they’d be wanting out of their drama-filled dormitories-
“Oh,” says a voice, and it is Draco Malfoy; and the second thing that Harry feels is something tugging at his stomach.
Er, says his stomach, I do believe this is a signal.
And Harry listens to his body, for once.
He walks inside the fuzzy-atmosphered room, which has a blazing fire in front and two squishy-looking armchairs in front of it. Draco is looking perplexedly at the second one, and Harry suspects it popped out of nowhere when he walked past the Room of Requirement in order to fulfill his wishes.
“Oh,” repeats Draco, suddenly noticing Harry has closed the door. “It, er, it-“
“I didn’t think…” starts Harry, but knows excuses will not help. I didn’t think I’d find myself here is most definitely an excuse, for he knew in the back of his mind he would eventually come around to using this room.
“No, I…I didn’t ask for it. I think I wanted it. Well. I did. Apparently,” he mumbles in continuation, gesturing around him. “You were here first, though.”
Well, yes. Obviously.
Draco makes a small sound in his throat. “It is mad down there,” he says, looking intently at the carpeted floor. “The Slytherin common room, I mean. Where Pansy is tearing down the curtains and pulling out her hair.”
Escaping, was all he really needed to say.
Harry makes his way towards the other armchair and settles into it. “And I’m running away,” he replies softly, “From my friends, who are fighting over someone’s virginity.”
They look at each other with a bit of difficulty, and Harry thinks Draco has just blushed, but it is very hot in the room anyway. He is also wearing a black turtleneck--perhaps he is just overheated.
“Malfoy,” Harry says, and immediately regrets it.
Draco looks up. “What,” he says, not even bothering to ask it properly like a question.
“I-it’s quite hot in here, don’t you think,” Harry says, trying to calm his voice.
There is no answer.
Harry was always one to succumb to a comfy armchair and a fire. He drifts off easily and falls into sleep deeply, firelight burning bright through his eyelids. In the middle of the night, he feels, through his almost-numb state, someone kiss him hard on the lips and on the forehead and then lightly, with a strange gentleness, on his eyelids.
+
...And in his office, Dumbledore smiles and ingests another lemon drop.