Even though it was dark and Draco couldn't see him, Harry blushed. He didn't want to go on about Draco... but the deal was too good to pass up. "Um... well, one time when I came down into the common room, a bunch of third- and fourth-years were giggling something awful. I sort of... er, stopped on the stairs to listen..."
"Harry Potter, champion eavesdropper," Draco gibed. "Well? Well? Go on. I didn't say I objected, did I?"
Harry crunched his eyes shut. "It was all about how you stalked down the hallways between classes, looking... uh, darkly majestic, I think, were the words they used, and how they all just wished you'd corner them in an alcove sometime and.... um, kiss them breathless."
"Names, Harry, I need names," Draco drawled. "I don't fancy snogging the wrong girl and getting slapped for my trouble. Or slugged, even. Hermione taught me that girls know how to land a punch, too."
"I'm not giving you their names."
"Then I'm not telling you what I hear the girls go on about."
"Yes, you are," Harry told him.
"Oh, very well," Draco replied in a long-suffering tone. Probably, Harry thought, he was using it to cover his own discomfort at discussing Harry's physical attributes. "One thing I've heard far too much about is your eyes. Such a stunning green, they say. I could stare into his eyes all day long, that sort of thing. Nauseating, really, and just think, that was before you lost the glasses. The minute you get back upstairs, you'll have girls falling at your feet! I'll probably just have my ex-girlfriend trying to kill me again."
Harry all but gaped. "You mean Pansy?"
"Yes, I mean Pansy! Just how many murderous ex-girlfriends do you think I've got?"
"I mean... I knew you took Pansy to the Yule Ball year before last, but I didn't think it was serious..."
"Oh, it wasn't serious," Draco breezed, but underneath the airy tones, Harry thought he heard a world of hurt. "If it was serious, she'd have let me at least explain why I switched sides. But no. All she cared about was that I wasn't a--" here, Draco began to sneer, "proper Slytherin any longer, and that was that! As if being a proper Slytherin means you have to switch off your brain and hand it over to some maniac who's going to get you killed at worst and make an abject slave of you at best! But would she listen to me about what it's really like at those damned Death Eater meetings? Noooooo.... She's never been to one, how would she know anything? But would she trust me, trust my judgment? Nooooo...."
Harry really hadn't meant to open up such a Pandora's box. "Well, she doesn't sound like much of a girlfriend," he told Draco. "You're well-rid of her."
"I'd like to be completely rid of her!" Draco snarled. "But Bumblemore, with his typical anti-Malfoy attitude, won't believe me about who set that snake on me!"
"I think he just needs evidence," Harry said in a placating tone.
"Ha!" Draco shouted, incensed. "How much evidence do you think he'd need against me if, say, Pansy showed up dead? Now there's a pleasant thought... But anyway, motive alone would be enough if I were the one being accused, but when it's anybody but a Malfoy, we need to have evidence...!"
"Breathe, Draco," Harry advised, his voice as dry as Snape's sometimes got, and at that, Draco chuckled slightly.
"Yeah. I should get over it, I know. Water under the bridge, all that. Like you and your cousin. Ha, see? There. I didn't call him anything but your cousin that time. Anyway, though... yeah, I had a bit of a thing going with Pansy. Ten to one that's the only reason she managed to catch me off-guard with that snake." He sighed, a heavy sound in the stillness of the room.
"Maybe what you need is a nice Hufflepuff girl. You know, somebody really loyal." Harry grinned in the dark. "Susan Bones... now she's pretty cute, I think."
"Yeah, if you like the vapid, brainless type."
"She is not!"
"She's a Hufflepuff."
"That doesn't mean stupid any more than Slytherin automatically means evil, you git."
"Slytherin means cunning, not evil, you git."
"My point exactly," Harry agreed. "And speaking of cunning, how about this? You apply a little of your fabled Slytherinness to getting over your fear of Hagrid. Personally, I think you ought to start by apologizing for the whole Buckbeak incident. Oh, and also for complaining about his teaching to that toad Umbridge."
"I do not fear him," Draco loftily informed Harry, conveniently ignoring all the advice about saying sorry. "Those were Severus' words, not mine."
"Fine. I'll tell Snape you don't mind if Hagrid has dinner with us tomorrow, then."
"All right, all right!" Draco erupted. "He's not my favorite person."
"He's one of mine, so you're going to have to get over your... whatever."
"Or," Draco proposed, "you could get over your... whatever... with your magic, and get out of here and back to your regular life, in which you can visit your big hulking friend to your heart's content."
"I'll work on that," Harry promised, as he fussed a bit with his blankets. Even after he'd gotten as comfortable as he could, sleep seemed a long way off. It was always like that when he was angry. For Snape to manipulate him like that about the Floo... to use his friendship with Hagrid against him...
Harry sighed. His father meant well; he knew that. But somehow, that made things seem worse instead of better. Why did everything with Snape have to be so... Slytherin? What was wrong with talking occasionally, instead of hatching plots inside plots, as Draco had once put it? No matter what the Sorting Hat had said when he was eleven, Harry just didn't think that way. Too many years in Gryffindor, perhaps.
He might be half-Slytherin, but as he was finding out, that was a far cry from being cunning clear through... or approving of those who were.
At that moment, it seemed to Harry that he and Snape were never going to learn to get along.
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Coming Soon in A Year Like None Other:
Chapter Fifty-Three: Money Matters
Comments very welcome,
Aspen in the Sunlight
Chapter 53: Money Matters
http://archive.skyehawke.com/story.php?no=5036&chapter=53
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A Year Like None Other
by Aspen in the Sunlight
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Chapter Fifty-Three: Money Matters
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"Okay, I've got it at last," Harry said one night as he pored over the thick books Madame Pince had lent him weeks earlier. "You'll tell me if I'm wrong, won't you? Even if it's just one plant I've misidentified?"
Draco did his best to look bored and superior, but he nodded.
Meanwhile, Ron growled as he kept writing his lines.
Harry gave his friend a sympathetic glance. He didn't know how far Ron had gotten, but he just had to have made it well into the nine-thousands by then.
Catching the friendly look Harry gave Ron, Draco growled too.
Harry decided he'd do better to ignore them both and focus on what mattered for the moment: the Gryffindor well-wish. "Okay, here goes," he announced, checking the notes he'd built up over the past few evenings. "Bluebell flowers, almond blossoms, strawberry leaves, sage leaves, sunflower seeds, and iris flowers!"