Strange Thing Mystifying, Part the Eleventh
OMG LOOK AT THIS FUCKING FANFIC GODDAMN. Yes, that's RIGHT. I have actually, truly, really finished it! And not a cop-out like the last "final" part. So, here we go!
fandom: Harry Potter
title: "Strange Thing Mystifying"
genre: romance, comedy, drama
rating: PG-13 for language
part 11 of 10 (part one, part two, part three, part four, part five, part six, part seven, part eight, part nine, part ten)
notes: I don't own anything related to Harry Potter except my copies of the books and my dirty thoughts. Also, this part is far longer than any of the previous parts.
As usual, I'll post the last few lines of the previous part for continuity.
"What? No! This git still hasn't explained - " he suddenly turned to Draco, "- what the bloody hell is going on!"
Draco, resigned to the fact he wasn't getting out of this one, threw up his hands and said, "Fine. You want to know what the bloody hell is going on, follow me."
Draco led Harry and Ron to a dungeon neither of them had been to before and showed them…
"Um, you're gonna have to explain," said Ron.
"Yet another reason why Hermione should be with me and not you," Draco muttered.
"What?"
"That's what this is all about," Draco said. He sighed and figured that he might as well practice his evil speech-making skills, like Father was always going on about. "Although it pains me to say it, and may very well make me a blood traitor, I have found myself quite enraptured with your friend Hermione Granger."
Harry and Ron glanced at each other, confused and suspicious.
"She's funny, strangely enough. And wicked smart. Tough. Cute. She's strong-willed, which I like. We were paired up once in Arithmancy. I particularly enjoyed having an equal as my partner for once. I think she secretly did, too," he added. Noting their confusion, he smirked and lit a chain of lamps.
"What is this, Malfoy?" Harry demanded.
It was Ron that answered, however. "Voodoo."
"Yes," said Draco. "A more modern kind, using photographs instead of dolls with your hair or something, which is why it's been so slow."
Five photographs of Ron were arranged in a cross on in the middle of the floor. To the right of that was a cross made of pictures of Harry which had been torn out of magazines and newspapers. Thick twine, glowing with some sort of spell, connected the pictures. In between the two crosses was a small bowl with a potion. The middles of the pieces of twine were soaking in the potion.
"It's a variation on the traditional love potion," Draco explained. "I won't go into too much detail - I know your small brains won't be able to handle it - but basically the twine has been enchanted to carry the love potion to each of you via the pictures. It's slow, but clearly it's effective," he finished, grinning lewdly at them.
Harry absentmindedly held back Ron, who was about to attack Draco again. "But what does this have to do with Hermione?"
"Everyone knows she and the Weasel King are practically destined to be together," Draco said, pouting slightly. "I had to get him out of the way. This spell works best with someone who's already close to the person, so I chose you, of course, and anyway it's far easier to find pictures of you, Potter, than of, say, the Weasel girl."
"Enough with the weasel stuff, Malfoy," Ron snapped.
"So you started this in mid-November, and it made us - um - be interested in each other?" Harry asked, thinking hard and doing some mental calculations.
"Yes, Potter."
Harry shook his head and came back to the situation at hand. "So what's the best way to destroy this and punish the git?" he asked Ron.
"Nooooo," Draco whined. "Do you know how much work I've put into this?"
Ron, ignoring them both, pointed his wand at the pictures of himself and said, "Incendio!"
"No!"
It was too late. The fire quickly spread from the pictures of Ron through the twine to the bowl, which cracked and spilled the potion across the floor. Harry dropped the newspaper and magazine cuttings of himself into the fire. Once they were gone, Harry told Draco he could clean up the rest himself, and he and Ron turned to leave.
"Oh, and by the way," Harry said, looking at Draco over his shoulder. "I'm sure it goes without saying, but you tell anyone about any of this, and we'll tell Dumbledore about your little voodoo experiment, and we'll beat your ass."
Ron added, "Fuck you," and they left.
Draco was left, dejected, to disappear the leftover mess himself and trudge back to the common room. It was no surprise to him the next day when he saw Ron and Hermione holding hands as they walked to class, Ron leaning close to whisper in her ear. He was so miserable he didn't even notice Harry until he was right next to him.
Harry said under his breath, "Well done. Your voodoo mess made Ron realize that there's other guys out there who might be interested in Hermione. Without this, they might've made it all the way through the end of seventh year without getting together. Thanks, Malfoy."
Harry patted him on the back - thumped him, really, and walked on after the new couple.
Mouth hanging open, he followed everyone into the Potions classroom. Earlier that day in Arithmancy, Hermione had been distracted from their work for the first time. She kept smiling and biting her lip and acting unusually distant toward Malfoy. When they working together in class, she generally was quite nice, even friendly to him. Now? Nothing.
He sat at the back of the class, ignoring everything around him and focusing instead on sulking. Snape swept into the dungeon. He smiled at Draco as he went by. Draco shuddered. He was a total teacher's pet to Snape because it was useful, but the attention that Snape gave him a lot of the time freaked him out.
Draco narrowed his eyes as Snape began lecturing about the something property of the thingy potion stuff. Snape was ugly. There was just no getting around that fact. His hair was always disgustingly greasy, but even if he washed it, it would still be a mass of black tangles and far too long. Not like… his eyes roamed the dungeon… not like Potter's hair, for example. Sure, it was messy and black, like Snape's, but it was a cool messy, a just-got-back-from-saving-the-world or just-got-off-my-brilliant-broomstick messy.
Snape was simply too thin. Potter and Weasley were both thin, as well, but it was a more healthy thinness, more muscular. They could be described as lean, whereas Snape was closer to underfed. And his fashion sense! Well, total lack thereof. Even Potter could dress better than him, and Potter still sometimes wore hand-me-down clothes which, Draco had heard, used to belong to his whale of a cousin.
Yes, Draco decided, there was actually something positive about Potter: his looks. He wasn't half bad. Puberty had done much for him. He was taller, and for some reason now his glasses looked geeky cute on him, instead of just geeky. Also - Draco suddenly sat up. What the FUCK?
"Draco?"
He looked up at the sound of his name. Snape was looking at him concern.
"Sorry, Professor!" he said wildly. Everyone in the classroom was looking at him, including Potter. "Ah ha, ha, ha, just remembered I left my things somewhere…else. Must go now. Hope it's not a problem!"
He slid off of his stool as Snape said, "Of course not," and was out of the dungeon faster than you could say "Wronsky Feint."
-----------------------------------------------------------
Ron and Hermione were arguing. This was nowhere near strange, except that this time they were arguing about what to do to celebrate being together for a month. Ron thought it was stupid to celebrate such a short amount of time ("My parents have been together for twenty years! Who cares about one month?"), while Hermione thought they should celebrate every milestone, however small ("Do you not read the newspapers, Ron? With all of the disappearances and attacks, what if one of us is next? We need to treasure our time!").
Also, unusual for their arguments, once they had both worn themselves out with shouting, instead of Hermione stomping off to her bedroom and Ron coming over to complain to Harry, they went off into a corner and snogged.
Harry scowled at his Astronomy homework.
"I know, right?" Ginny said to his right. "They're actually more obnoxious now."
Harry shrugged. He wasn't only scowling because of Ron and Hermione.
Ginny moved closer. "Ugh, Astronomy. Who cares about the size of Jupiter's moons?" she giggled. "That kind of sounds dirty."
Harry halfheartedly went "ha."
"What's gotten into you?" she asked.
"Nothing," he lied. "I think I'm going to go for a walk. Been sitting too long." He hurried away before she could offer to come with him.
He had been taking a lot of walks lately - to the library, to visit Hagrid, to the loo, to the owlery… supposedly. He usually just walked, taking the Marauder's Map with him to help avoid everyone he could. Ever since That Night, he had been thinking a lot. He had to walk, to get away from everyone else. He felt like a stranger amongst his friends and fellow Gryffindors. Sure, he could still laugh and talk with them, and they were still going to classes together, but now there was always something holding him back, something else on his mind making him watch his words more carefully.
He slipped into an open classroom to sit. He couldn't walk as far tonight because he was tired. The night before he had been up late listening to Ron giving Neville tips for his date with Hannah Abbott next week.
The door opened farther. Harry jumped up, handing going to his wand automatically - and Draco walked in.
"Potter?"
"Malfoy?"
The two of them stared at each other, then, at the same time they both said, "What're you doing here?"
Glaring at each other, they both said, "Never you mind."
"Shut up!" yelled Harry.
"Wonderful retort, so witty, where do you come up with these things, Potter?"
Harry shook his head. "Never mind. I'm leaving."
Draco shut the door behind him. "No. I blame you. Stay here."
Harry was immediately set on edge. He glanced surreptitiously around the room, trying to figure out other ways of escape. "Blame me for what?"
Draco smiled humorlessly. "Is this your revenge? Turning the tables on me? Huh?"
Now Harry was confused. "Um, what?"
"I make you and Weasley fall for each other, and now you put a spell on me so I start thinking about you and - and - and Smith and Finnigan? You think that's funny? You think that's fair? I only made you two like each other. You've got me sizing up every boy in fourth year and up!" he finished hysterically.
Harry stared at him, mouth hanging open. Is he saying what I think he's saying?
"Malfoy," he started slowly, "we didn't put any kind of spell on you. At least I didn't, and I'm sure Ron is too busy with Hermione to worry about you. But are you - are you saying you've been thinking about boys…?"
"Yes, because clearly someone has put a spell on me or - or- or slipped a potion!" Draco proclaimed, panicking.
In spite of all their enmity, all their years of bickering and yelling and dueling and full-out fist-fighting, it was Malfoy who was there right then, and it was Malfoy who seemed to be going through exactly what Harry had been going through for a year and a half now. All this time he had wanted someone to talk to, and now he had someone. If it had to be Malfoy, so be it.
"You know, that's what I thought for a while, too."
"What?" Draco said softly.
"And then I found out someone did put a spell on me, but after it was broken… I was still, you know, thinking things. You made me and Ron fall for each other, but I'd already been having - you know - thoughts about guys before that. It was just never Ron. And then it was only Ron, and now it's back to being other guys and not Ron, thank God."
"Are you telling me you're gay, Potter?" Draco asked, incredulous.
Harry nodded. "Yeah." He smiled. "I think I am!" He laughed. "Yeah, that's right. I just came out to Draco Malfoy! God, this is WEIRD. It's gotta be weird for you, too, and I'm sorry about that, but I've never had anyone to talk to, and, well, here you are."
Draco was silent for almost a full minute. Harry, never usually the patient type, willed himself to wait for the other boy to feel ready to talk. "Well," Draco finally said. "You're right. There isn't really anyone for you to talk to. For us to talk to," he amended.
Harry smiled. "Ernie MacMillan wanted to start a gay-straight alliance last school year, but he couldn’t find any gay kids to join. It's a kind of club," he explained, seeing Draco's confusion, "for gay and lesbian people and straight people who support them. Maybe we can make, like, a gay-gay alliance."
"I'm not gay," Draco said.
Harry's face fell. "But you just said - "
"I was quite serious when I told you I liked Hermione… a lot. And I may be sizing up boys now, but I'm still sizing up girls." He paused, then murmured, "I suppose I've been sizing up boys for a while, actually." He looked directly at Harry then. "So, maybe we can start a gay-gayish alliance?"
"Never thought I'd see the day that you and I would make any kind of alliance."
"But we're not friends," Draco added hurriedly.
"Of course not," Harry said, grinning.
"And we're not dating."
"No!" He pulled a face. "No. But I don't want us to just be meeting up in dark classrooms."
"What, you want to, like… talk in public?"
"We could be more friendly to each other, or maybe even actually be friends."
Draco looked offended at the mere thought. "I rarely have friends, only minions."
"Yeah," Harry said, "but wouldn't it be awesome to see everyone shitting themselves as we start acting like friends?"
Draco smirked. "That would be good." He looked at Harry, again thinking of how cute he actually was. He shook his head. Maybe later, he thought. "All right." He held out his hand. "Welcome to the first ever Hogwarts Gay-Gayish Alliance, Potter."
THE END.
fandom: Harry Potter
title: "Strange Thing Mystifying"
genre: romance, comedy, drama
rating: PG-13 for language
part 11 of 10 (part one, part two, part three, part four, part five, part six, part seven, part eight, part nine, part ten)
notes: I don't own anything related to Harry Potter except my copies of the books and my dirty thoughts. Also, this part is far longer than any of the previous parts.
As usual, I'll post the last few lines of the previous part for continuity.
"What? No! This git still hasn't explained - " he suddenly turned to Draco, "- what the bloody hell is going on!"
Draco, resigned to the fact he wasn't getting out of this one, threw up his hands and said, "Fine. You want to know what the bloody hell is going on, follow me."
Draco led Harry and Ron to a dungeon neither of them had been to before and showed them…
"Um, you're gonna have to explain," said Ron.
"Yet another reason why Hermione should be with me and not you," Draco muttered.
"What?"
"That's what this is all about," Draco said. He sighed and figured that he might as well practice his evil speech-making skills, like Father was always going on about. "Although it pains me to say it, and may very well make me a blood traitor, I have found myself quite enraptured with your friend Hermione Granger."
Harry and Ron glanced at each other, confused and suspicious.
"She's funny, strangely enough. And wicked smart. Tough. Cute. She's strong-willed, which I like. We were paired up once in Arithmancy. I particularly enjoyed having an equal as my partner for once. I think she secretly did, too," he added. Noting their confusion, he smirked and lit a chain of lamps.
"What is this, Malfoy?" Harry demanded.
It was Ron that answered, however. "Voodoo."
"Yes," said Draco. "A more modern kind, using photographs instead of dolls with your hair or something, which is why it's been so slow."
Five photographs of Ron were arranged in a cross on in the middle of the floor. To the right of that was a cross made of pictures of Harry which had been torn out of magazines and newspapers. Thick twine, glowing with some sort of spell, connected the pictures. In between the two crosses was a small bowl with a potion. The middles of the pieces of twine were soaking in the potion.
"It's a variation on the traditional love potion," Draco explained. "I won't go into too much detail - I know your small brains won't be able to handle it - but basically the twine has been enchanted to carry the love potion to each of you via the pictures. It's slow, but clearly it's effective," he finished, grinning lewdly at them.
Harry absentmindedly held back Ron, who was about to attack Draco again. "But what does this have to do with Hermione?"
"Everyone knows she and the Weasel King are practically destined to be together," Draco said, pouting slightly. "I had to get him out of the way. This spell works best with someone who's already close to the person, so I chose you, of course, and anyway it's far easier to find pictures of you, Potter, than of, say, the Weasel girl."
"Enough with the weasel stuff, Malfoy," Ron snapped.
"So you started this in mid-November, and it made us - um - be interested in each other?" Harry asked, thinking hard and doing some mental calculations.
"Yes, Potter."
Harry shook his head and came back to the situation at hand. "So what's the best way to destroy this and punish the git?" he asked Ron.
"Nooooo," Draco whined. "Do you know how much work I've put into this?"
Ron, ignoring them both, pointed his wand at the pictures of himself and said, "Incendio!"
"No!"
It was too late. The fire quickly spread from the pictures of Ron through the twine to the bowl, which cracked and spilled the potion across the floor. Harry dropped the newspaper and magazine cuttings of himself into the fire. Once they were gone, Harry told Draco he could clean up the rest himself, and he and Ron turned to leave.
"Oh, and by the way," Harry said, looking at Draco over his shoulder. "I'm sure it goes without saying, but you tell anyone about any of this, and we'll tell Dumbledore about your little voodoo experiment, and we'll beat your ass."
Ron added, "Fuck you," and they left.
Draco was left, dejected, to disappear the leftover mess himself and trudge back to the common room. It was no surprise to him the next day when he saw Ron and Hermione holding hands as they walked to class, Ron leaning close to whisper in her ear. He was so miserable he didn't even notice Harry until he was right next to him.
Harry said under his breath, "Well done. Your voodoo mess made Ron realize that there's other guys out there who might be interested in Hermione. Without this, they might've made it all the way through the end of seventh year without getting together. Thanks, Malfoy."
Harry patted him on the back - thumped him, really, and walked on after the new couple.
Mouth hanging open, he followed everyone into the Potions classroom. Earlier that day in Arithmancy, Hermione had been distracted from their work for the first time. She kept smiling and biting her lip and acting unusually distant toward Malfoy. When they working together in class, she generally was quite nice, even friendly to him. Now? Nothing.
He sat at the back of the class, ignoring everything around him and focusing instead on sulking. Snape swept into the dungeon. He smiled at Draco as he went by. Draco shuddered. He was a total teacher's pet to Snape because it was useful, but the attention that Snape gave him a lot of the time freaked him out.
Draco narrowed his eyes as Snape began lecturing about the something property of the thingy potion stuff. Snape was ugly. There was just no getting around that fact. His hair was always disgustingly greasy, but even if he washed it, it would still be a mass of black tangles and far too long. Not like… his eyes roamed the dungeon… not like Potter's hair, for example. Sure, it was messy and black, like Snape's, but it was a cool messy, a just-got-back-from-saving-the-world or just-got-off-my-brilliant-broomstick messy.
Snape was simply too thin. Potter and Weasley were both thin, as well, but it was a more healthy thinness, more muscular. They could be described as lean, whereas Snape was closer to underfed. And his fashion sense! Well, total lack thereof. Even Potter could dress better than him, and Potter still sometimes wore hand-me-down clothes which, Draco had heard, used to belong to his whale of a cousin.
Yes, Draco decided, there was actually something positive about Potter: his looks. He wasn't half bad. Puberty had done much for him. He was taller, and for some reason now his glasses looked geeky cute on him, instead of just geeky. Also - Draco suddenly sat up. What the FUCK?
"Draco?"
He looked up at the sound of his name. Snape was looking at him concern.
"Sorry, Professor!" he said wildly. Everyone in the classroom was looking at him, including Potter. "Ah ha, ha, ha, just remembered I left my things somewhere…else. Must go now. Hope it's not a problem!"
He slid off of his stool as Snape said, "Of course not," and was out of the dungeon faster than you could say "Wronsky Feint."
-----------------------------------------------------------
Ron and Hermione were arguing. This was nowhere near strange, except that this time they were arguing about what to do to celebrate being together for a month. Ron thought it was stupid to celebrate such a short amount of time ("My parents have been together for twenty years! Who cares about one month?"), while Hermione thought they should celebrate every milestone, however small ("Do you not read the newspapers, Ron? With all of the disappearances and attacks, what if one of us is next? We need to treasure our time!").
Also, unusual for their arguments, once they had both worn themselves out with shouting, instead of Hermione stomping off to her bedroom and Ron coming over to complain to Harry, they went off into a corner and snogged.
Harry scowled at his Astronomy homework.
"I know, right?" Ginny said to his right. "They're actually more obnoxious now."
Harry shrugged. He wasn't only scowling because of Ron and Hermione.
Ginny moved closer. "Ugh, Astronomy. Who cares about the size of Jupiter's moons?" she giggled. "That kind of sounds dirty."
Harry halfheartedly went "ha."
"What's gotten into you?" she asked.
"Nothing," he lied. "I think I'm going to go for a walk. Been sitting too long." He hurried away before she could offer to come with him.
He had been taking a lot of walks lately - to the library, to visit Hagrid, to the loo, to the owlery… supposedly. He usually just walked, taking the Marauder's Map with him to help avoid everyone he could. Ever since That Night, he had been thinking a lot. He had to walk, to get away from everyone else. He felt like a stranger amongst his friends and fellow Gryffindors. Sure, he could still laugh and talk with them, and they were still going to classes together, but now there was always something holding him back, something else on his mind making him watch his words more carefully.
He slipped into an open classroom to sit. He couldn't walk as far tonight because he was tired. The night before he had been up late listening to Ron giving Neville tips for his date with Hannah Abbott next week.
The door opened farther. Harry jumped up, handing going to his wand automatically - and Draco walked in.
"Potter?"
"Malfoy?"
The two of them stared at each other, then, at the same time they both said, "What're you doing here?"
Glaring at each other, they both said, "Never you mind."
"Shut up!" yelled Harry.
"Wonderful retort, so witty, where do you come up with these things, Potter?"
Harry shook his head. "Never mind. I'm leaving."
Draco shut the door behind him. "No. I blame you. Stay here."
Harry was immediately set on edge. He glanced surreptitiously around the room, trying to figure out other ways of escape. "Blame me for what?"
Draco smiled humorlessly. "Is this your revenge? Turning the tables on me? Huh?"
Now Harry was confused. "Um, what?"
"I make you and Weasley fall for each other, and now you put a spell on me so I start thinking about you and - and - and Smith and Finnigan? You think that's funny? You think that's fair? I only made you two like each other. You've got me sizing up every boy in fourth year and up!" he finished hysterically.
Harry stared at him, mouth hanging open. Is he saying what I think he's saying?
"Malfoy," he started slowly, "we didn't put any kind of spell on you. At least I didn't, and I'm sure Ron is too busy with Hermione to worry about you. But are you - are you saying you've been thinking about boys…?"
"Yes, because clearly someone has put a spell on me or - or- or slipped a potion!" Draco proclaimed, panicking.
In spite of all their enmity, all their years of bickering and yelling and dueling and full-out fist-fighting, it was Malfoy who was there right then, and it was Malfoy who seemed to be going through exactly what Harry had been going through for a year and a half now. All this time he had wanted someone to talk to, and now he had someone. If it had to be Malfoy, so be it.
"You know, that's what I thought for a while, too."
"What?" Draco said softly.
"And then I found out someone did put a spell on me, but after it was broken… I was still, you know, thinking things. You made me and Ron fall for each other, but I'd already been having - you know - thoughts about guys before that. It was just never Ron. And then it was only Ron, and now it's back to being other guys and not Ron, thank God."
"Are you telling me you're gay, Potter?" Draco asked, incredulous.
Harry nodded. "Yeah." He smiled. "I think I am!" He laughed. "Yeah, that's right. I just came out to Draco Malfoy! God, this is WEIRD. It's gotta be weird for you, too, and I'm sorry about that, but I've never had anyone to talk to, and, well, here you are."
Draco was silent for almost a full minute. Harry, never usually the patient type, willed himself to wait for the other boy to feel ready to talk. "Well," Draco finally said. "You're right. There isn't really anyone for you to talk to. For us to talk to," he amended.
Harry smiled. "Ernie MacMillan wanted to start a gay-straight alliance last school year, but he couldn’t find any gay kids to join. It's a kind of club," he explained, seeing Draco's confusion, "for gay and lesbian people and straight people who support them. Maybe we can make, like, a gay-gay alliance."
"I'm not gay," Draco said.
Harry's face fell. "But you just said - "
"I was quite serious when I told you I liked Hermione… a lot. And I may be sizing up boys now, but I'm still sizing up girls." He paused, then murmured, "I suppose I've been sizing up boys for a while, actually." He looked directly at Harry then. "So, maybe we can start a gay-gayish alliance?"
"Never thought I'd see the day that you and I would make any kind of alliance."
"But we're not friends," Draco added hurriedly.
"Of course not," Harry said, grinning.
"And we're not dating."
"No!" He pulled a face. "No. But I don't want us to just be meeting up in dark classrooms."
"What, you want to, like… talk in public?"
"We could be more friendly to each other, or maybe even actually be friends."
Draco looked offended at the mere thought. "I rarely have friends, only minions."
"Yeah," Harry said, "but wouldn't it be awesome to see everyone shitting themselves as we start acting like friends?"
Draco smirked. "That would be good." He looked at Harry, again thinking of how cute he actually was. He shook his head. Maybe later, he thought. "All right." He held out his hand. "Welcome to the first ever Hogwarts Gay-Gayish Alliance, Potter."
THE END.