Disclaimer: Every time I tell people I'm J.K. Rowling, the shrinks up my dosage, so I guess I'm not her.
(a/n: Oh, and just when you thought you'd gotten rid of me…
Tada! Hello again, dear readers. It is I, scum of the earth K-san with a new and unwieldy venture into the twisted world of fanfic. Of course it's only twisted because I make it so, but good luck proving that in court.
The Paranoid Android had major objections to this fic and kept changing the font whenever I looked away long enough (I still do not know how this happened and it frightens me even now), but I have once again come out at least partially victorious against the motorized maniac that is my beloved Marvin.
In other news, the set up of this story will most likely confuse the fuck out of you for this entire chapter and quite possibly the next one as well. I wanted to practice my first-person skills (having failed so epically the last time) and alternating POVs seemed like a fun idea. Or it did at four in the morning when I came up with it, anyway.
I'll also warn you that so far that this is the slowest-moving thing I've ever written in my friggin' life, so I don't know how long it'll be before any actual boy love goes down around here. Please forgive me.)
Hour One: Detainment
"Detention, Potter." There's a surprise. I don't know what I did this time and I don't bother asking. As if the miserable bastard doesn't find a new excuse to give me one every other day anyway. If I'm within eyeshot of Severus Snape, I must be breaking a rule, and if I'm not, he'll make one up. Just being Harry Potter is enough of a reason.
It's not my fault he had a crap childhood.
It's not my fault Dad and Sirius were "arrogant little berks" as kids.
It's not my fault and I don't feel the least bit sorry for the greasy git.
Bastard.
Ron's voice broke my train of thought. "What'd he come up with this time? No walking in the hallway unsupervised for more than 146 paces at a speed of less than four miles an hour?"
"Dunno. I wasn't listening. Did we lose any points?"
"Five." Hermione sounded unfazed. "Less than last time, at least."
"Terrific. I'll be sure and thank him later."It was going to be something disgusting again, I could feel it. It's never doing lines or cleaning desks with him, he's always got to have me up to my eyes in something slimy or sorting the souls of freshly killed kittens or whatever else he thinks will make me either cry or vomit. Preferably both, at the same time if he can manage it.
"Bastard." I don't know why, but I said it out loud this time. "Miserable sodding bastard…"
"Filthy language, Potter. But then I suppose it suits your company, doesn't it?"
If at all possible, Malfoy alternately disgusts and irritates me even more than Snape does.
On the one hand, Malfoy can't dock my house points for telling him to fuck off, I can punch him without being expelled (and one of these days…) and he's yet to give me a detention for being Harry Potter without a license.
On the other…
I really, really, really don't like him.
"Bugger off, Malfoy." More swearing, partly to emphasize the fact that I don't give a shit what he tells me to do, partly to distract the conceited little prat while I get my wand out.
But he doesn't get his. Doesn't even touch it. Just makes his usual friendly hand gesture and walks away.
Weird.
OoOoOo
"Detention, Malfoy."
Of course. Like half the class hasn't forgotten their bloody twelve inches of parchment without getting one, but somehow, astonishingly, miraculously, I'm the one that ancient hag gives a detention to.
Of course.
It's not my fault my family's got money.
It's not my fault she doesn't know the difference between confidence and egotism.
It's not my fault. I'm just lucky.
"I'm telling Father about this." I say it without thinking and with no intention of actually doing it, because Merlin knows the man couldn't care less about what I do with my time as long as I'm not wasting any of his, and the over-sized lumps of humanity on either side of me nod obediently even though they've got no idea what I'm talking about and don't especially care. Not exactly surprising; they're more like lackeys than friends and all three of us know it.
Crabbe grunts agreeably.
Goyle snorts agreeably.
God, I hate them.
"Bastard."
Ah. Relief. I always know where I am with Potter; namely somewhere where I can hex his stupid face off and then breathe easier knowing I've let off whatever steam was building up that day.
"Miserable sodding bastard…"
"Filthy language, Potter. But then I suppose it suits your company, doesn't it?" Once again the things coming out of my mouth bear no resemblance to what I actually think. Truthfully I don't give a damn whether Weasley and Granger are Mudbloods or Blood Traitors or scum or filth or whatever else people as foul as my idiot father want to call them, but it's just easier to say what they expect you to than to make a scene about people you don't even like.
That, and Potter hates it when you insult his friends.
"Bugger off, Malfoy."
Good. Nice to get a rise out of him. Better than getting one out of anyone else, for some reason. I've been like that as long as I can remember, testing to see if I can ever annoy people enough for them to forget I'm a Malfoy with the bloodline and social standing and, lest we forget, the money to crush them faster and harder than they'd previously thought possible, and get them to treat me like I deserve to be treated.
I deserve to be treated like an arsehole because I am an arsehole. But I'm an arsehole with money so nobody cares.
But Potter…Potter is oh so very different. Six years ago, the minute we met, he saw me for the arrogant little bastard I was and called me on it like he didn't care who he was dealing with. Because he didn't care who he was dealing with. Of course I hated him immediately, prancing about with his classless little friends, saving the wizarding world and looking every inch the nauseating hero, but there was and is something inarguably intriguing about that kind of dauntless stupidity.
And that was how I saw him now, half with loathing and half with morbid fascination, and neither one visible behind the smirking conceit written onto my face since conception.
Then I made a mistake.
I looked at him.
And Potter has those eyes…
Not just any eyes, obviously, everybody's got those. I've got my own pale gray ones that that repulsive cow Pansy likes to tell me are like "deep loving pools of" something so vomit-inducingly ridiculous I refuse to repeat any more of it, but Potter…
Eyes shouldn't look like that. They're too green, too deep, too sad…too distracting, too expressive, too beautiful…
It's annoying.
So annoying I didn't even remember I was supposed to be trying to come as close to killing him as was technically legal.
So annoying I very nearly forgot give him a filthy look, gesticulate rudely, and swagger off with cold dignity to spend more suicide-provoking time with the people Father tells me are my friends.
Weird.
OoOoOo
Detention. Not a strange idea to either of them, but presently neither had the faintest idea of how strange their day was going to get.
They took their separate ways as usual, Harry to Gryffindor tower, Draco to the dungeons, with less than an hour between them and their respective detainments.
"I'll never get why you leave early for this crap," said Ron in a mystified tone.
"The sooner I get there, the sooner he's got to let me leave," Harry answered with reasoned annoyance. "If I want to get back some time this decade I might as well go now."
The entire trip down to the dungeons was one long stream of silent obscenities directed at a certain potions master, but they were nothing compared to the level of copious mental swearing that took place when he actually reached his destination.
Snape wasn't in his office.
He wasn't anywhere near it.
"Bugger," Harry said very loudly.
Perpetually astounded at his ability to get lost in a school he'd attended for six years, Harry wandered the alarmingly silent corridors for another ten minutes before he heard a single noise.
A classroom, finally, albeit an abandoned one he'd never actually been in, but a classroom at least.
The only one that seemed to be lit. The only one that seemed to be occupied.
He opened the door.
He closed it again.
"Malfoy," said Harry.
"Potter," said Draco.
What the hell is going on? thought the both of them.
(a further a/n: Yay! Author's notes! Everyone's favorite part!
Or possibly the part everyone skips reading.
Going into a new fic, I always like to consider the ingredients that created the horrifying confectionary item I'm presently ramming down my readers' throats. Here the recipe reads something like:
--Take one yaoi obsessed ball of raging estrogen. Age seventeen years in the Boston area under the unhealthy influence of a crazed Irishwoman.
--Carefully expose to a fourteen hour session of "24" reruns with said Irishwoman's even more unhealthy (mentally, at least) mother.
--Combine gently with the firm belief that if two attractive people are left in a small enough area for an adequate period of time, sex will eventually happen.
--Mix with one part over-confidence brought on by ego-stroking reviews and 14,833 parts the usual neurotic lack of self-esteem.
--Let stand for exactly two hours, thirty-eight minutes, and eleven seconds.
--Consume at your own risk.
Yeah, that's about right.
On the note of my intense insecurity, do you think Harry and Draco's voices are distinct enough or do they read too much alike? I wanted it to be obvious whose point of view it was from by the way they talked but I don't know if I quite managed it…
Eh. It's probably not important.
P.S.
Next time, remind me to write shorter author's notes, please.)