"Harry, where have you been? Ron and I were worried!"
"We were? Ow! Yes, of course we were." Ron rubbed his arm, which had been very recently punched by the feisty witch at his side. "So, where were you?"
"Oh, you found your glasses!" Hermione noticed, narrowing in on Harry. "Did Malfoy take them? Ooh, if I could ever get my hands on that weasel-faced, little..."
"I-it, I mean no," Harry said quickly. An odd look from Hermione sent him slinking to a chair, wincing as he settled into it.
"Hey, are you alright?" If Ron noticed something was wrong, it must have been serious.
"I'm fine," Harry said, almost defensively. He was clearly not fine; his clothes were beyond disheveled and his hair was mussed more than usual. Every time he moved, it seemed to cause some sort of pain and he was acting very oddly.
Hermione took position in front of the sitting boy, arms crossed and a strict look on her face. "What did Draco do to you?" she demanded. Her voice was strict, but her eyes showed an immense amount of worry and concern.
"He didn't-"
"Don't lie to me, Harry. You were fine before he drug you off after Potions and then you show up like this." She gave her friend another look over. "Did you two get in a fight?"
"Something like that," Harry muttered. His eyes had yet to lock with either of his friends', mostly because he was afraid of what they'd see. He was vulnerable right now, ashamedly so, and Hermione's usual drill-til-they-crack method was only making him wish to retreat more.
"Fine," she sighed, turning on her heel. "If I won't get any information out of you, maybe Malfoy will be more willing to talk."
Ron watched, dumbfounded, as the female of the group stalked out of the library, wand in hand.
"Shaken, you say?" Draco let out a small chuckle. He had expected one of Harry's friends to hunt him down; in fact, he was nearly looking forward to it.
Hermione's eyes narrowed at the blonde. "What did you do to him? I won't ask again."
"That's good," a new voice said. The two looked to see Pansy slip up to Draco's side. "I'm already tired of hearing your voice."
"Stay out of this," Hermione snapped. All but ignoring the Slytherin girl, she turned back to Draco. "You two didn't get in a fight, there would have been talk all around about it. This was something...secret."
"You're not far off," Draco teased.
Forehead crinkling in thought, Hermione fell silent, absorbed in her ideas. Draco and Harry hadn't fought, but Harry did look pretty roughed up. And something about a secret...Harry's secret? But the only secret he had was his crush on Ginny. Even if Draco knew that, even if he used it against Harry, it still wouldn't explain her friend's condition. Perhaps it wasn't Harry's secret, then. Did Draco have a secret?
Suddenly, it all clicked. Hermione's eyes grew wider than they ever had as she stared straight at the blonde. "You..."
Draco felt uneasy about the stare when he should have been laughing in her face. It wasn't a shocked realization of what he had done to her friend, though he was sure she had figured it out-- despite being a Muggle, Hermione did have an intimidating thought process. No, the stare she gave him was one of a discovery. She not only knew, she knew. Things had just gotten bad.
"What?" Pansy piped up, looking between the two, who seemed to be locked in a staring contest. "What is it? Draco?"
"Go away," the boy ordered, his eyes snapping from Hermione's to Pansy's. "I'm tired of you being around all the time."
"But I..." Frowning, the dark-haired girl turned her scowl on the Gryffindor. "This is your fault, isn't it? You'll pay."
Hermione barely even noticed the disappearance of the other girl's presence, other than the fact that now she knew she could speak freely. "You like Harr-"
"I do not." Draco's glare was of Snape-sized magnitude. He seemed more serious than before, perhaps threatened.
"And you...oh, god, Harry." So it hadn't dawned on her before, but now she had fully realized what took place. "Why would you...?" She was, for once in her life, at a loss for words. To commit such an unspeakable act, and against such a nice boy as Harry. Perhaps Draco was less of a coward and more of a bastard than she first thought.
"I don't care what you tell him," Draco said, turning his back, "but if I hear even one murmur that you spread some rumor about me around, I'll kill you and your Muggle family." His sneer was less cocky and more sinister this time.
"No," Hermione said, stubbornly. Her fingers clutched onto Draco's arm and her scowl melted into a pitied expression. "Why did you do it? Why Harry?"
"That's not for you to know," Draco hissed, ripping his arm out of her grasp.
"Then at least tell Harry." Her voice wasn't demanding nor pleading, it was surprisingly level for the amount of emotion she was feeling. "You owe him that much."
"A guilt-trip?" Draco muttered under his breath. "You've got to be kidding me." Harry didn't need to know anything. The fewer people that knew, the better, and right now only one person knew the whole truth: Draco.
"I don't know what your reasoning is, and I don't care." By now, Hermione's voice was far from wavering and her eyes shone only with determination. "Harry is my friend, and right now he's in bad shape, not just physically. You did something to him and only you can fix whatever you did."
Cursing under his breath, Draco ran his hand through his hair. "Tell him to meet me, he'll know where." With that, he stalked off, a flurry of feelings racing through his veins that he was both unfamiliar with and wary of.
Draco had been waiting by the Room of Requirement for nearly twenty minutes. He figured it would take some convincing to get the wizard to come, but he was also sure that if Hermione could convince him to do something, she could convince Harry to show up. Just as he was about to give up hope and banish any thoughts and feelings related to the situation from his mind, Draco spotted a figure from the corner of his eye.
It had taken quite a bit of will power to force himself here and now that Draco had spotted him, Harry wanted to simply run away. It had been Hermione to deliver the message, leaving a very confused Ron in the dark, so he figured it was, at the very least, safe. He was both surprised and not to see Draco's trademark grin vanished. Instead, the blonde looked very grave and very serious, a sign that things would not go well for the other party. There was something different about the feeling he gave off, though-- it wasn't menacing or evil, but perhaps...nervous? Hesitant? Curious as to get the answers he thought he wanted, Harry walked forward, stopping only when he was a few feet away from the older wizard.
Why hadn't he said anything yet? Draco was getting slightly anxious and thought about simply ditching the whole idea. Wait, was he the one that was supposed to say something? What, 'Sorry I raped you, here's a cookie'? For some reason, he didn't think that would fly. Sighing, he rubbed the bridge of his nose and let the noise in his head settle down.
"I'll only say this once, so listen good," Draco said, his voice small but firm. "I...guess I went about things the wrong way, but I'm not going to apologize or anything. It was what I wanted to do." A slight shift from Harry told him that wasn't the right thing to say. "What I mean is, you don't have to worry about me doing it again. Probably."
Harry shook his head. "Hermione said...you'd tell me why."
"Bitch," Draco thought, sighing in irritation. "Shouldn't that reason be obvious?" Of course, Harry said nothing, but waited for him to continue. "I did it because I found out about your thing for that Weasley girl and I..."
"You what?" Harry pressed.
"I wasn't about to let her take you first," Draco grumbled, scowling off to the side. He hated admitting his feelings, it was bad enough he had them to begin with. Not that he abhorred them completely, but the way they made him act was sickening.
"Everything I see in Ginny," Harry murmured, "all those traits I like, I don't see in you."
Not even Draco could deny words like those were painful to hear. Harry had basically just said he hated him. Of course, Draco refused to accept that. "How would you know anything about me when we've been enemies from day one?" While that wasn't entirely true, it sounded good for his case.
Harry couldn't help but scoff, the awkward position Draco was in helping to relax some of the tension he felt around the blonde. "So you're going to tell me that if I got to know you, the real you, that you'd be completely different? Nice and innocent and optimistic?"
That was also something Draco couldn't find the words to disagree with. He genuinely wasn't a nice or innocent guy. "Maybe not, but you might find something else you like." It wasn't exactly a plead for consideration because Draco wasn't exactly one to beg. He wasn't as nasty and vile as he always seemed, either, though. Very few, and certainly no one at Hogwarts, saw such a side of him.
Harry, though, threatened to bring that side out into full light. While Draco had, at first, tried to smother the feelings with hateful words and distancing himself as much as possible from the boy, he found that such actions (ones trying to suppress the feelings) only served to remind him even more of how fake he was being. It was a desperate move on his part to bury those feelings, and instead they began to eat away at him until he exploded. He had hurt Harry in that process, which he hadn't really intended to do, and threatened to fully cut ties with the person he'd made the strongest bond with. As it's said, the only emotion strong enough to rival love is hate.
"It would be...nice," Harry decided, "to see a different side of you."
Draco had nothing more to say, still half-lost in his thoughts. He nodded and his features softened just a smidgen, only enough for someone really paying attention to notice. "Come on," he said, walking past Harry toward the stairs. "I still have class."
Feeling free, released from some sort of cage he had been trapped in these past six years, Harry couldn't help the small, childish grin that came across his face as he followed his newly-acquired partner down from the seventh floor and the Room of Requirement.
The title WAS an inside joke, and still is, but I figured it'd be fun to tie it into the story anyway. I'm cheesy like that. SPEAKING OF, Draco was so difficult to write in this last scene. I went back and forth 'fluffy, Draco-like, fluffy, Draco-like'. I always try to keep everyone in character, but Draco is just so...not fluffy. It was a challenge that I'm not quite sure I overcame. I suppose I'll leave that decision up to you. Let me know what you thought!