Round 1 - Crime - Team B - "The Curious Case of Draco Malfoy"
Title: The Curious Case of Draco Malfoy
Author:mamalaz
Team: Ron
Prompt: Crime
Rating: R
Warnings: None
Length: 7,800 words
Summary: Secret walls, gaudily decorated interiors and Draco Malfoy acting suspicious - it's all in a day's work for Ron Weasley, Private Investigator.
Disclaimer: All sexual activity portrayed in this fic is between two consenting adults who are at least 18 years of age. I do not own any of the characters.
The Curious Case of Draco Malfoy
The dame that walked into Ron Weasley’s office on the fifty-third day his Detective Agency had opened wasn’t a seductive blonde temptress with legs that went for miles. She didn’t have smoky bedroom eyes, full of melancholy, intrigue and promise and she definitely didn’t have full red lips that shone in the sparse light of his office.
Hell, she wasn’t even lucky enough to be plain.
She was Pansy Parkinson and, if Ron was honest with himself, she was a bit of a hag. Ron, however, wasn’t the type of man who wouldn’t help a hag out for a bit of cash.
Don’t look at him like that, having an office with his name painted on the door cost good galleons. Not to mention the fan on the ceiling and the smoke machine by his feet.
Ron liked dramatics. Which is probably why his business was approaching bankruptcy and fast.
For the ninth time that day, he wondered if maybe he should have listened to Harry and Hermione when they said this whole detective thing was a bad idea…
Before he could think any longer on that, however, Pansy Parkinson pulled back the chair opposite him with a loud, irritating scrape and he was brought back to the present.
“Weasley, I need you to spy on someone for me,” said Parkinson, cutting straight to the chase as she plonked herself down without so much as an invite.
Ron cocked his head slightly at her. Still the same old Parkinson. Pug-nosed, black-bobbed and with all the good manners of a flobberworm.
Resisting the urge to irrationally stick his tongue out at her, he pushed it against his top teeth instead.
“Reckon you could give me more details…?” he replied as politely as he could. It hurt his jaw.
Pansy Parkinson, who had crossed her legs at the knee and was showing a bit too much skin for Ron’s liking, leaned a little closer towards him. He instinctively moved back.
“I need you to spy on Draco for me,” she elaborated prissily.
Grinning, Ron leaned forward with interest despite the fact it brought her so close that he could count her nose hairs (four, at a quick inspection).
Bringing the evil prick Draco Malfoy to justice? It was his dream case.
“Ole ferret-face, eh?” he said with curiosity, steepling his fingers together and resting his chin on them in a perfect imitation of a muggle detective Hermione had once shown him on the telly. The effect was lost slightly when his elbow slipped off the table. “So what’s Malfoy done to earn this visit?”
“I think he’s cheating on me.”
Letting the words digest for a moment, Ron scratched his head with some confusion.
“You’re a couple?”
The sound of outrage she made could have either been a cat being strangled or a hag trying to sing.
“For Circe’s sake, we’ve always been a couple!” she spat through gritted teeth, her cheeks pink and her face furious. Ron, who had a feeling this was a point she usually had to fight on, tried not to snigger. “And I know he’s cheating on me!”
Don’t blame him, Ron thought briefly as he wrinkled his nose at Parkinson’s breath but he wisely kept that thought to himself. For some reason, he thought saying it aloud might just lose him her business.
He tried to go for a look of sympathy.
Pansy immediately hissed at it.
“Cut the act, Weasley, you’re a horrendous liar. Now can you get the dirt on him and his little piece of trash or not?”
“What makes you think Malfoy’s even cheating on you?” he asked, leaning back in his seat, not sounding entirely convinced. He even raised his eyebrow for good measure. “He’s a slippery sod by nature anyway, isn’t he?”
“A woman knows, Weasley,” Parkinson replied tersely, eyeing him most contemptuously. “He disappears for long stretches of time, he’s distracted and he pushes me away... And I mean, literally pushes me away. I tried to instigate something the other day and he nearly broke my neck trying to get away. I wore my sexiest lingerie, too…”
“Parkinson,” Ron winced, looking a little green. “Can we just stick to the barest facts? Please? Before I lose my breakfast? Now, what about Floo records and stuff? Lipstick on the collar of his robes? Receipts for expensive presents that aren’t for you?”
Here Parkinson looked a little uncomfortable and Ron felt rather proud of himself that all those years of watching trash talk show television with Harry had paid off.
“Well… no,” she admitted reluctantly, fiddling with the corner of her robes. “But I know there’s something up with him! I know it. I just haven’t got any proof. That’s where you come in. Bring me some proof, Weasley, something that’ll prove he’s playing away and if you do, I’ll pay you five thousand galleons for your troubles.”
Ron almost fell out of his chair.
“Five thousand galleons?” he spluttered as he grasped onto the table edge for balance, his eyes as big as galleons and his jaw just shy of smacking the tabletop. “Are you kidding me?”
“Oh, alright, ten thousand,” Pansy said, with a dismissive wave of her hand, as though she had thrown in a knut. “You sure do strike a hard bargain, Weasley. Now, I have a charity event to get to and pretend to be sympathetic over. Here’s my card. I expect an owl from you in the next day or two. Oh and Weasley,” said Pansy, turning one last time before she stepped out of the door, “Comb your hair. I like to have my help looking presentable.”
* * *
“I got my first case today!” Ron exclaimed happily as he met up with Harry and Hermione for lunch. Collapsing into their regular booth in the packed Leaky Cauldron, Ron then set down his pint of beer, briefly grinned at their awed expressions and repeated, “Didn’t you hear me, I said I got my first case today!”
Hermione, her pumpkin juice held midway to her mouth, nearly dropped her drink while Harry, beside her in his Auror attire, actually did drop his with a loud crash.
“As in… a real one?” Harry finally managed in awe, sharing an uncertain look with Hermione and hardly noticing the angry barman who bustled over and cleaned up the mess he had made.
“Yup,” Ron said proudly, lifting up his glass so the muttering barman could mop up the spilt drink and conjure Harry another one. “An actual, bona fide, real case. Parkinson’s going to give me ten thousand galleons to check if Malfoy’s cheating on her.”
Harry dropped his drink again. Luckily, Hermione was there to catch it before it crashed on the table.
“Parkinson? As in Pansy Parkinson?” Hermione asked delicately, putting Harry’s glass down carefully on a coaster and throwing him a reproachful look. “Ron, do you think she’s likely to pay ten thousand galleons? I mean, she is a Slytherin. This could be some elaborate joke. Remember what she did to Neville last Halloween? His hair hasn’t been the same since…”
“Hermione,” Ron whined loudly, lowering his drink with a thunk before crossing his arms petulantly across his chest. “Quit being so paranoid, alright? Why can’t you just be happy for me, eh? She’s already owled me five grand and I get the rest once I get more dirt on Malfoy. It’s all under control. Nothing to worry about. Sorted. Except…” and here Ron rubbed the back of his neck, looking a little sheepish, “…um, I’ve got a bit of a problem.”
Hermione, who enjoyed problem solving possibly more than anyone else on the entire planet, perked up, almost twitching with excitement.
“A problem?” she said enthusiastically. “And what’s that?”
“Well… er, I don’t actually know where Malfoy is right now,” Ron said weakly. “Parkinson said to try at the Manor but he wasn’t there when I went and she wants me to report back to her by tomorrow with something and if I don’t I think she might put a curse on me or-”
However, before Ron could continue his babbling, a haughty looking blond dramatically entered the pub and cut his sentence short. Eyeing his surroundings with a wrinkled nose and all the amicability of a manticore, Draco Malfoy looked as though he had just landed in the foulest pits of hell.
It took a few seconds of gaping at the ill-tempered Malfoy for Ron to get his brain into gear but, when he finally did, he did the smoothest thing he could think of.
So, letting out a squeak, Ron dove under the table.
“What the-?!” spluttered Harry, whose beer sloshed into his face, the head of it dripping off of his nose like bath foam. Unfortunately, before Ron could mutter out an apology into Harry’s right knee, Malfoy noticed them.
“Well, well…” Malfoy drawled as he sauntered over, smirking about him something dreadful. “If it isn’t Potty and Granger. Having a romantic luncheon are we?” Then pausing in his insults to notice the drink dripping off Harry’s face, his thin smile grew wider, “I say, Potter, trying to drown yourself in your beer? Granger that bad a date?”
“What do you want, Malfoy?” Harry said petulantly, taking off his glasses to wipe his face with a napkin aggressively.
Shrugging lazily, Malfoy appeared to make a big show of thinking about it before, to Hermione’s horror, sliding into the semi-circular booth beside her.
Ron, still cowering under the table, swore under his breath and squeezed his long-limbed frame around one of the table legs.
“Tsk, tsk, Potter,” drawled Malfoy, a bite of laughter in his tone. “Play nice. I just wanted to have a little chat with my two least favourite people, that’s all, So how is your all important work at Auror Headquarters? I read Brown’s riveting article about that kneazle you saved from a tree. I was so excited I almost wet myself. What’s next in your adventurous agenda, helping an old muggle cross the street?”
Smiling nastily, Malfoy stretched his legs under the table before opening them.
Clinging to the table leg like a terrified fireman, Ron wasn’t entirely sure how Draco Malfoy’s crotch had ended up about five inches from his face. All he knew was that he felt more hot about it than mortified.
Maybe he was coming down with a fever.
“What are you even doing here, Malfoy?” Hermione suddenly asked, sounding suspicious. “I thought being this near Muggle London made you break out in hives.”
“Touché, Granger,” Malfoy said with a snort. “Unfortunately for you, my exciting affairs are none of your business. Now, if you pathetic wimps will excuse me, I have to go and meet someone.” Sliding from out of the booth again and wiping himself down with a handkerchief, as though just being in Harry and Hermione’s presence had sullied him, Malfoy then turned back to them one last time. “Oh, and do tell Weasley that if he does insist on hiding from me under the table like a little girl, to at least stop sniffing my balls when he’s down there.”
And then, with a rather flamboyant swish of his cloak that Ron would have called poncy, Malfoy made his way towards the back door of the Leaky Cauldron, disappearing behind a group of cackling hags.
There was silence around the table as Malfoy went, with Hermione opening and shutting her mouth until she finally asked,
“Ron, were you really sniffing his..?”
But Ron had already bolted out from under the table and after Malfoy by the time she had managed to get these words out, calling a quick goodbye to his friends as he did.
Because if Draco Malfoy was really meeting someone like he said he was, then it was Ron’s duty to find out whom.
Running after the blond as fast as his long legs would take him, Ron thundered into the group of hags, who squealed and went flying in all directions.
“Sorry!” he called over his shoulder, not sounding sorry in the slightest as they shook their boil-covered fists at him and shrieked curses.
Ducking a flash of purple sparks with a yelp, Ron skidded to the brick entrance to Diagon Alley, which was already beginning to close after Malfoy. He could see the blond man’s head ducking into the side street by Flourish and Blotts and, producing a rather miraculous dive that managed to surprise even himself, Ron jumped through the collapsing hole and pelted up the cobbled streets after his quarry.
The old, rusted sign of Knockturn Alley glared at him as he passed and he rolled his eyes at this predictable turn of events.
Really, all great detectives thrived on the unexpected. Like Sherlock Holmes and Martin Miggs and that bald bloke off the telly who liked lollipops… this really was a waste of Ron’s skills.
Catching sight of Malfoy, Ron slowed down and pressed his lanky frame against the moss covered stone. Cringing when he realised exactly what he was leaning in (and shuddering at what Hermione would say when she saw it), Ron peered as discreetly as could at the long, winding street where Malfoy was heading.
If he didn’t know better, he would say the runt looked nervous.
Just that thought brightened Ron up immeasurably.
Following behind and almost whistling as he did, Ron kept a safe distance between them as Malfoy ducked here and climbed there and disappeared down about five ominous-looking sets of stairs before he finally stopped in front of a large, unimpressive stone wall.
Ron, who had been ready to leave Malfoy to his odd little journey and go and get a sandwich, now craned his neck with renewed interest, watching as Malfoy pressed his ear against the wall and… was he talking to it?
Unfortunately, just as Ron leaned so far forward that his back was straining, a man shrieked out,
“Time Turners! Get your genuine Time Turners! Got yourself in a pickle? Fix it for only sixteen sickles!”
And in the split second he turned to him, Malfoy had disappeared.
* * *
“An enchanted wall in the deepest part of Knockturn Alley?” Hermione repeated over dinner at their shared apartment as Harry scoffed down his potatoes with vigour. Reminding herself that all boys were heathens, Hermione turned back to Ron. “That really doesn’t sound like such a good idea, Ron.”
“Aww, come on Hermione, don’t nag,” Ron said through a mouthful of pie before swallowing it loudly. “I know what I’m doing, alright? I’m a professional. Pass the gravy.”
Hermione, looking at the bits of pastry all over Ron’s mouth, didn’t look very convinced.
“Ron, you don’t know where that wall leads,” she tried again as she conjured a spotted handkerchief and handed it to him. As an afterthought, she conjured another and gave it to Harry. “It could be a den of Death Eaters for all you know. Pansy Parkinson’s paranoia is not worth this.”
“Hermione’s got a point, mate,” Harry agreed, dropping his cutlery on his now empty plate and patting his swollen tummy. “And this is Malfoy we’re talking about. He’s a dodgy little prat. He’s probably up to something far shadier than shagging about.”
Mulling over Harry’s words, Ron’s mouth salivated, and it wasn’t because of the pudding Hermione had levitated to the table.
“Merlin, can you imagine?” he said almost breathlessly, leaning his chin on his palm as his eyes glazed over. “Having something over that wanker, him being in my pocket for a change…”
“Ron,” Hermione chastised, looking suspicious as she prodded his elbows off the table. “You’re not doing this as a personal vendetta against him, are you?”
“Of course not, Hermione,” Ron said, crossing his fingers under the table and giving her an innocent smile. “Never even crossed my mind.”
* * *
It took him almost an hour to find it again but when Ron finally navigated himself through the snake-like lanes off Knockturn Alley (and avoided the rather shady streetsellers who were trying to sell him everything, including their mothers), he found himself in front of the very wall he had last seen Malfoy in front of.
Didn’t I tell you not to come here again? A Hermione-like voice shrilled in his head.
Now now, Hermione, he told the voice, taking out his wand.
He looked at the wall.
The wall looked dully back at him.
Letting out a shrug and assuming it worked like the entrance to Diagon Alley, Ron tapped at a few of the bricks with his wand.
Nothing happened.
Pointing his wand at the wall, Ron yelled, “Alohomora!”
The wall didn’t look very moved.
Tapping his finger to his lip, his mind raced back to Malfoy. What had Malfoy done again?
Tentatively, Ron eased the side of his head to the wall, hissing as the cold licked at the shell of his ear. Feeling a little stupid as he stood there, hunched with his ear pressed to the stone, Ron was about to give up and kick the stupid wall when a silky voice hissed,
“Password?”
And he almost jumped a foot in the air.
“Bloody hell!” he yelped, grabbing his chest. The wall let out an impatient sort of sigh in response.
“Incorrect, sir. Try again.”
“Are you a secret entrance?” Ron asked with curiosity.
“Incorrect, sir. Try again.”
“Okay, but at least tell me what you’re guarding…”
“Incorrect, sir. Try again.”
“I’m not giving you a password, I’m asking you a question!”
“Incorrect, sir,” the wall repeated, with a bite of humour in its tone. “Try again.”
“Stupid sodding wall,” Ron growled in annoyance.
“Incorrect, sir. Try ag-”
“Alright, alright, shut up!” he bellowed. A couple of witches gave him an odd look as they passed, muttering something that looked remarkably like “basketcase” as they shuffled off.
“Password?” the wall repeated yet again.
Ron had a feeling this wall was mocking him.
Letting out a sigh, he scratched his long nose and hazarded a guess.
“Um… Cheese?”
Ron couldn’t quite describe the noise the wall made but he knew that whatever the original password was, ‘cheese’ offended it to its very foundations.
“Incorrect, sir,” the wall forced out prissily, sounding most affronted. “Try again.”
“Look, I’m on important business, okay?” Ron implored desperately. “So if you just open up and let me through…”
The wall was silent for a little while before it finally said,
“Name?”
“Er…” Ron quickly rattled through his brain for an alias, “… um… Roonil Wazlib?”
There was more silence and Ron braced himself for another bout of “Incorrect, sir. Try again”.
However, the wall said nothing.
What it did do was begin to form a hundred little cracks. They ran into each other like spider webs and shook the stone like an earthquake, bits of dust and stone crumbling to the floor until the entire thing cascaded around Ron’s large feet.
The door it revealed was dark mahogany and had an elaborate gold doorknocker with the face of a man on it. Ron lifted his hand and could have sworn the thing giggled with ticklish laughter as he used it.
He heard a series of noises that sounded like magical locks being released and charms being broken before the door creaked open.
A thin man with a long chin and jet black hair looked curiously back at Ron.
“I’m afraid the club isn’t open yet, sir,” said the man, dressed in a uniform with a nametag that indicated his name was ‘Dick’. He looked at the dust in Ron’s hair with a little disapproval. “Please return in a few hours.”
“A club?” Ron asked, looking back at the slight man just as curiously. “What sort of club?”
The man’s dark eyebrows knitted together in suspicion.
“Sir had the password?”
“Er… yeah. Um… Draco Malfoy. He’s a friend of mine, see? Anyway, he told me I’d like the place so he passed it along… Yeah.”
Dick instantly looked appeased.
“Oh, you’re a friend of Mr Malfoy! A… good friend, I imagine?”
“Oh, yes,” Ron said, nodding vigorously. “We’re very good friends. The best, if you catch my drift.”
“Oh, I do, sir,” said Dick, giving him a wink and Ron wondered if the guy had a problem with his eyes. “But I’m afraid you’re a little early.”
“Oh, drat,” said Ron, then flashing a smile and trying to look as charming as he could, “Say, um, Dick… from what Mal-Draco told me… I’m assuming this is a Gentleman’s club?”
Dick wore a very strange little smile that Ron didn’t understand it at all. He shrugged and attributed it to indigestion.
“That’s a good way of putting it, sir, yes,” he said, leaning a little closer to Ron, and speaking conspiratorially. “That’s why we have the wall, you see. The Ministry don’t really approve of our sort of business. If you understand my meaning, sir.”
Biting his lip and restraining himself from cackling with mad glee, Ron just nodded in response.
“Don’t worry, Dick,” he said with a hearty clap on the arm, “Your secret is safe with me.”
* * *
“Draco Malfoy pays for sex!”
Harry, who was getting pinned by Madam Malkin, let out an “Ouch!” when the witch accidentally prodded him in the leg.
“Ron!” Hermione rebuked as Madam Malkin, bright pink, apologised profusely to Harry. “For heaven’s sake, lower your voice!”
“How can I?!” Ron laughed, smacking his knee and sniggering uncontrollably. “This is the best news in the world! I can’t wait to tell everyone we know!”
“Honestly, you boys,” Hermione sniffed as she examined a set of alabaster robes in the window. “Have you never heard of professional courtesy?”
Ron looked at Harry, who somehow managed to shrug with his arms out by his sides.
“Professional whuh?”
“You’re working for Pansy. I’m sure she appreciates discretion in these matters. Merlin knows, I wouldn’t want the world knowing my affairs.”
Ron deflated a little and looked beseeching.
“But Hermione…” he whined. “Malfoy… public humiliation… stoning…”
Hermione gave him a look and he swore and punched a nearby cushion.
“Fine!” he conceded, looking absolutely miserable. “I won’t have it announced in the Prophet… or print out flyers… or tell Seamus… Can I gloat to Malfoy, though? To see the git’s face when he knows I know his little secret…”
Hermione, watching the way Ron rubbed his hands together with a little frown on her face, hesitantly opened her mouth.
“You know, Ron,” she said, watching him closely. “I really think you’re obsessed with Draco Malfoy.”
The grin on Ron’s face immediately fell like a drop of a hat.
“What?!” he squawked indignantly. “No, I’m not! Shut up, Hermione!”
“Yes, you are,” Hermione responded coolly in her ‘Don’t argue with me, I’m always right’ voice. “If you’re not ranting and raving about Malfoy, then you’re talking about this case non-stop. And we all know why you are so infatuated with this case.”
“Malfoy,” Harry supplied from his stool as he fiddled with a loose thread. Madam Malkin slapped his hand away. “Sorry, mate. Hermione is right. I think you need a girlfriend.”
“Shut up, Harry,” Ron said, glaring at his best friend with a look that clearly said ‘traitor’. “For the last time, I do not need a bloody girlfriend.”
“When is the last time you had sex then?” Hermione asked bluntly.
“Hermione!” Ron hollered, his face burning.
“Ouch!” Harry cried out as another pin went into his side.
“It’s none of your bloody business how long it’s been since I had sex!” Ron snapped as Madam Malkin, red in the face, muttered something about making tea and practically sprinted to the back. “That’s got nothing to do with anything!”
“How long?” Hermione persisted.
“How long has it been for you, Hermione,” Ron sneered back.
“Since yesterday actually,” Hermione said tartly. Harry looked impressed. “You know, Ron, I don’t even think you know how long it’s been. If you’re trying to replace Draco Malfoy with sex…”
“I DON’T WANT TO HAVE SEX WITH DRACO MALFOY!”
One of the pins in Harry’s robes dropped and Madam Malkin stuck her head out of the kitchen to gape at Ron.
Hermione’s mouth hung open at him.
“You want to have sex with Draco Malfoy?”
Ron replied by bolting out the door.
Running up the cobbled street and only stopping once he was sure Hermione and her sex questions were far, far away, Ron leaned against the corner of a bookshop and wondered what the hell was going on with him.
Of course he didn’t want to have sex with Draco Malfoy. What a stupid thing for Hermione to think. So what if he hadn’t had sex in… a while? Why would anyone want to replace sex with a bastard like Malfoy?
Ron pulled at his tie. He was suddenly feeling very hot again. He really needed to see a healer about these constant hot flushes of his. He was turning into a menopausal woman…
“Fifty galleons? That’s daylight robbery.”
Turning his head to the familiar voice coming from the side street behind him, Ron wondered if his non-existent obsession for Malfoy was playing tricks with his mind. However, turning to the alley by the shop he was leaning against, Ron saw the very real Draco Malfoy in all his sneering glory.
Blond head lowered, Malfoy was standing close to a pretty woman who was wearing an outfit that left very little to the imagination. Ron didn’t know why but he immediately took a dislike to her.
“I supplied a prime service, Mr Malfoy,” the girl returned with a leer. “And you had no complaints at the time. I expect reasonable payment.”
“It was hardly that satisfactory, Millie,” Ron could hear Malfoy sneer. “I could have done better by myself.”
Something about that made Ron let out a moan before he clapped his hands over his mouth.
“Did you hear something?” the girl called Millie asked, her heavily-kohled eyes trailing over to where Ron was hidden.
“Look, I’m not discussing this here,” Malfoy said hurriedly, sounding a little nervous. “I’ll meet you at the club tonight. Don’t discuss this with anyone, do you hear me? I have a reputation to maintain.”
Watching as the pair dispersed into the dark streets towards Knockturn Alley, Ron stood up resolutely, Malfoy’s distracted words reverberating in his ears.
“I’ll meet you at the club tonight…”
Those ten thousand galleons were in the bag.
* * *
When the mahogany door with its ticklish doorknocker swung open for Ron the second time that day, he once again expected to see Dick, the wiry doorman. However, when Ron found himself staring into the gut of a man who made Gregory Goyle look like an underfed bird, he let out a weak sort of smile.
“Um… hi?”
The man crossed his gargantuan arms across a chest that was wide enough to play Quidditch on and stared at him fixedly. Music was pounding from behind his huge shoulders and the glow of multicoloured wand sparks drenched across the side of his face.
“Name?”
“Roonil Wazlib?” Ron tried again hopefully, scratching his nose and having to tip toe to peek past a collarbone that rivalled a dinosaur’s femur. “Er, I know Dick pretty well…?”
The doorman let out a twinkling leer at this. It was terrifying to witness.
“Don’t we all,” he said, his stoicism melting like sugar in a cup of Mrs Weasley’s best tea as he moved to the side to let Ron pass. “Come on in.”
Somehow managing to squeeze by the doorman’s impressive bulk to enter the sanctuary of the hallway, it was all Ron could do not to rub his hands together in glee at how mortified Malfoy would be to see him.
Of course, that was until Ron pulled open the door to the main room of the club.
And that cackle of triumph soon turned into a rather girly scream of horror.
Because this had to be, without a doubt, the tackiest place Ron had ever set foot in in his entire life.
Every colour under the sun seemed to be throwing up all around him, from velvet fuchsia curtains to blinding green fairies that whizzed around the room, glowing over the bodies of at least a hundred scantily clad men and women. Music pounded hard from every direction, making the sweaty crowd pulsate and gyrate against one another in ways Ron was quite sure were illegal in most countries.
Ornate chandeliers hung from the high ceilings over the clubbers, huge in size and decorated with what looked like gold leaf and crystals as big as quaffles. Leather and sequins were everywhere Ron looked, from the dresses of the overdressed female singers dancing on stage to the bar staff, who were happily jiggling to the warbled notes as they levitated drinks.
The piece de resistance, however, had to be the hideous gold fountain that sat itself in the middle of the room, embossed tackily with animated nude figures and bubbling merrily with what looked like Butterbeer.
Ron, who couldn’t understand how this much bad taste could exist in one room without it simply imploding in self disgust, was physically incapable of closing his horrified mouth, no matter how hard he tried to.
This was like hell. And it included purple wallpaper. And marble cherubs. And lilac sheepskin rugs. And what would someone like Malfoy be doing in a dive like this anyway?
He may have been the most infuriating little shit in the world and he may have had the manners of a blast ended skrewt and sure, he had an ego bigger than a planet but even Ron had to admit that Draco Malfoy was… well, a little too classy for this place.
For a ferrety little prick, of course.
And that was when Ron saw him in all his ferrety, prickish glory, sitting on a stool by the neon lit bar and sipping an elaborately constructed cocktail.
Storming towards him, Ron got a strange thrill of pleasure when the blond looked a little less cocky when he approached.
“Weasley, what the hell are you doing here?” Malfoy demanded imperiously.
Ron pointedly ignored this question.
“So, where is she, Malfoy?” he asked gruffly.
Malfoy, blinking slowly, wrapped his lips around an exotic looking straw and sucked it briefly.
“I’d beg your pardon but Malfoys don’t beg, especially to Weasleys.”
“Cut the crap, ferret, where’s the girl you’re sleeping with?”
Malfoy let out a slow, almost inhuman smile.
“Excuse me?” he asked lightly.
“You’re cheating on Parkinson with some floozy,” Ron continued heatedly, prodding Malfoy hard in the chest with his finger, “and I want you to admit it.”
Stirring his steaming drink with his cocktail olive, tendrils of smoke drifted up around Malfoy’s pale fingers in an almost mesmerising way.
“Indeed. And this is your business because…?”
“It just is,” Ron snapped. “So you better start talking or I’ll-”
“Or you’ll what?” Malfoy laughed nastily, batting away at the finger that had been prodding at him. “Uselessly threaten me some more? Is that the best you can do? Lucifer’s nipple, no wonder your business is in the toilet.”
“No, it isn’t! Shut up, you arse!” Ron cried out defensively, grabbing the front of the blond’s expensive robes. Then, realising what Malfoy just said, he stared bug-eyed at him and yelped, “Wait a minute! How do you know about my-?”
“ ‘Ronald Weasley, professional sleuth - by hook or by crook, I’ll discover the truth!’ You advertise in the Prophet, you moron. Conspicuous much?”
Ron, who was immensely proud of his jingle, glared at the sing-song mockery Malfoy made of it and let go of the sneering young man.
“I know what you’re up to.”
Malfoy stood up, their noses an inch from the other’s and Ron could feel his alcoholic breath on his lips. It made him feel oddly light-headed.
And hot.
Really, really hot.
Why is it that that fever of his always kicked off when Malfoy was around or in his thoughts?
“You,” Malfoy hissed, leaning close into Ron, “don’t know anything.”
Ron opened his mouth and tried to think of something suitably mean but found himself choking mid word as Malfoy pressed himself close into his side.
Grinning a slow, malicious sort of smile, Malfoy’s grey eyes twinkled in a not entirely unpleasant way.
“You’re so oblivious, Weasley,” he muttered as he turned his mouth to whisper in Ron’s red ear. Ron could feel his cold pointed nose slide up the side of his burning cheek. “It’d be adorable if you weren’t so dense.”
“I’m not-!”
Malfoy cupped the front of his trousers.
“-dense.”
“Hmm, maybe not,” Malfoy conceded with a devilish smile. “You’re definitely solid though…”
Ron’s voice disappeared. He didn’t know where it had gone or how long it went away but somehow, after who knows how long, he managed to find it lodged in a croak.
“… Malfoy, what are you playing at?”
“What do you think, Weasley?” Malfoy said in a low, seductive voice and Ron felt the wet of his tongue catch his earlobe as his hand fondled some more. “Gives Private Dick a whole new meaning, doesn’t it?”
And it was then, right then, that it hit him like a tonne of pewter cauldrons. Velvet curtains, dancing girls in glittery outfits with elaborate hair, kitsch furniture, those two guys over their with their tongues down each others’ throats…
He was in a gay club. Those singers were in drag, those naked sculptures with their todgers out were buggering each other silly and Malfoy… that meant Malfoy was a…
“You’re gay!”
“And you’re not moving away,” Malfoy responded, his fingers tracing the bulge at the front of Ron’s trousers and looking decidedly like the kneazle that got the cream.
Ron took a step back. Well, he tried to but his feet refused to comply.
Stupid, horny feet.
“I…” Ron replied ever so eloquently, his knees ready to collapse beneath him. He then let out a groan as Malfoy gave a long, languid lick up his throat and rolled the wrist he had on Ron’s crotch.
“There are back rooms, you know, Weasley,” he said almost conversationally, clenching his hand around Ron and letting the redhead thrust against his palm.
“I’m… supposed… help… Pansy…” Ron said breathlessly, clutching at the blond’s bicep as Malfoy skilfully worked his hand over him through his trousers. Watching his handiwork, Malfoy smirked wickedly in response.
“Oh, she never has to know, Weasel. So what do you say?”
This was crazy. This was his worst enemy. This was the opposite of what he was being paid to do. Malfoy was the anti-Christ and was probably sleeping with nine other people and Ron really shouldn’t be encouraging this and so what, Hermione, if he hadn’t had sex in God knows how long…?
And then Malfoy rubbed his hardness into Ron’s and all thoughts of Hermione left his head.
“Oh, fuck it…” Ron groaned in surrender, grabbing Malfoy by the shirt and latching hungrily onto his mouth.
And so it happened. He, Ron Weasley, Private Investigator, let himself be dragged to a back room of a seedy gay bar and happily fucked the hell out of Draco Malfoy in a pink, heart-shaped, vibrating bed.
Twice.
And Merlin was it the most incredible experience of his life.
Malfoy gasped in all the right places and knew just when to piston his hips in perfect rhythm and who would have thought someone so angular could get his legs behind his head like that?
Ron had clutched the blond’s sharp hipbone hard and sucked at his pale throat with gusto and Circe, were the noises Malfoy made the most sublime thing Ron had ever heard.
A moan here and a gasp there and a whimper that soon progressed into a wanton scream…
Ron could safely say he had never heard exclamations or profanities quite so filthy in his entire life. And Ptolemy help him for loving every sordid second of it.
Of course, when he woke up alone and sticky and smelling like a brothel the next morning, the contented feelings of the previous night promptly disappeared as effectively as Malfoy seemed to have had.
Because he certainly wasn’t lying beside him now.
Probably went snivelling back to Parkinson, he reasoned bitterly to himself as he groggily sat up, his bones aching and his hair doing a rather splendid impression of Harry’s. He then cocked his head as a thought hummed over his consciousness. Parkinson.
He had a meeting with her in an hour. Where she would ask him about Malfoy And he would have to lie. Even though Ron couldn’t lie to save his life.
Somewhere, he was sure Hermione was clucking her tongue in disapproval. And Harry was looking rather green about the whole thing. And his mother was screaming the house down about him putting his bits into places he shouldn’t.
Wincing at the thought, Ron buried his face into a fluffy puce pillow and let out an almighty moan.
Sometimes, he really wondered how he always got himself into these situations.
* * *
Standing in front of Pansy Parkinson was never a pleasant experience but now, after Ron had fucked her boyfriend in every conceivable way known to man, he found himself warily eyeing her wand, shielding his privates and taking note of every foreseeable exit in case he had to do a runner.
Pansy, her eyebrow raised as she sat behind her desk, eyed his actions with such an expression of boredom that it was likely she had died somewhere between opening the door and that very moment. At least, that was what Ron was hoping.
Corpses couldn’t castrate people, after all. Or so he dearly liked to hope.
“I assume you’ve got the evidence I asked for?” Pansy enquired lazily, easing back into her seat with a languid grace that would make Malfoy proud.
Not that Ron was thinking about Malfoy or anything.
“Yeah, about that…” Ron began nervously, wiping his damp palms against his trousers and feeling the sweat seeping through the material, “… there’s… well, there’s something you should know.”
"As long as what you have to say includes Draco and the name of his harlot, I'm listening,” Pansy drawled with a dismissive sort of wave. “But do say it quickly, Weasley. I don't want your hideous shoes sullying my carpet any longer than necessary."
Momentarily eying his favourite shoes and feeling horribly offended on their behalf, Ron petulantly opened his mouth only to be met by cold dark eyes.
Letting out a gulp, he could feel his face blotching unattractively.
"Well, I wouldn't exactly call them a harlot..." Ron squeaked as he pulled at his python-like collar. "I mean, Malfoy's his own man, isn't he? 'Can't really blame someone if a horny blond starts rubbing themselves against you... I mean, it's not my fault..."
"... Weasley," Pansy said in a dangerous voice that brooked no nonsense as she stepped closer, her heels clicking against the stone. Was it Ron's imagination or did she suddenly look taller and more imposing? "The name."
Holding up his large hands like a shield, Ron stepped backwards and tried to smile affably. He looked remarkably like a gazelle attempting to both befriend and escape a hungry lion.
"Okay, the thing about it is... heh...I mean, it's sort of funny if you think about it, Parkinson... You know, I bet we'll laugh about this one day when we look back at it and- wait, what is that?"
Because, at exactly that moment - as Pansy Parkinson leaned over and looked ready to tear his clavicle out with her teeth - a red mark blossomed on Pansy's pale neck like ink staining fresh parchment. And, like the lovebite under her chin, it certainly hadn't been there a second ago.
Ron, his jaw hanging open a little dumbly, watched in awe.
"What the- is that... I mean, is that a hickey?" he asked in confusion as another bitemark materialised in front of his eyes.
An oddly familiar bitemark.
“… damn it,” Pansy muttered. Although her voice sounded different. Deeper, and with more bite to it. “Millie, you cow…”
“Millie?” Ron replied with confusion. Was she sleeping with her, too?
However, before Ron could ask just how many people that girl was sleeping with, Pansy’s black bob began to shorten and a pale sheen appeared from the roots and spread to the tips.
Every inch of her skin was bubbling and shifting until her pug nosed popped out to a point and her eyes narrowed into grey slits.
Her limbs grew longer and thinner, her complexion began to pale to the colour of milk and all Ron could do was gape and gasp when a transformed blond stood before him.
“MALFOY?!”
“Weasley,” Draco Malfoy returned, looking far too amused in make up and a tight cocktail dress than any man had a right to be. “Be a dear and help me get these heels off, would you?”
Ron just continued to stare.
“I… what the… what?” he floundered in confusion. “Why are you… but Pansy hired…”
“No, I hired you,” Draco replied airily, removing a hair clip from his fringe. “I’m house sitting while Pansy visits the Canary Islands for a year. Seriously, Weasley, these shoes are murder.”
Ron was pretty sure he had just gone insane. He shook his head like a dog with water between its ears and tried to locate his brain.
“I… I don’t get it. Why did you…?”
“Because I’m a horny gay wizard who has wanted your arse since we were in school, obviously,” Malfoy explained as sat down, easing off the silver stilettos he was wearing and revealing red-marked feet. Giving Ron the filthiest leer in the existence of man, he then licked at his thin red lips. “And I must say, I was not disappointed.”
Ron just stared. Between the shoes, the lipstick, the tongue and the fact Malfoy looked remarkably better in that cocktail dress than he ever did when he was Pansy Parkinson, Ron’s mind began to race.
“So… so you planned all this?” Ron demanded, slowly cottoning on to this entire surreal situation. “Just to get me in bed?!”
“It worked, didn’t it?” Draco smirked smugly. “Of course, I didn’t realise how good you would be. You’re a filthy animal, Weasley. I approve.” He then pointed at himself with his wand, transfigured the tight fitting number into loose robes and sighed, “Much better.”
Ron’s mouth continued to work but he had no idea what to say. Draco Malfoy frolicked about in women’s clothing and Ron himself was apparently a sexual deviant. The most confusing thing was why he wasn’t more confused.
“So, the ten thousand galleons…” Ron croaked.
“To encourage you to investigate me, of course,” Draco replied, leaning forward in his chair to massage his pale feet. His narrow grey eyes were gleaming with a self-satisfied shine. “Everything you did, Weasley? I orchestrated. Following me, entering my club…”
“Wait a minute… your club…?” Ron spluttered.
“One of my many business ventures,” Malfoy enlightened again, looking horribly impressed with his own cunning. “I own everyone in that place. I mean, really, Weasley. Roonil Wazlib? What security wall would accept an alias as bad as that unless it wanted you to enter?”
Ron tried to digest all this. Malfoy had a point.
“So… you and that Millie... the services…”
Here Malfoy’s smug look dissipated momentarily and he looked immensely put out.
“The stupid bitch was supposed to be brewing me quality Polyjuice Potion. Barely lasted a half hour. I should have just brewed it myself. She will be dealt with.”
“So, you weren’t sleeping with her then?” Ron said in a hopeful voice and immediately cursed himself for sounding so god-damn pleased about it. Malfoy, obviously catching the rather cheerful tone in his voice, eased back to his well-trained look of arrogance. It was disturbingly attractive to witness.
“Jealous, Weasley?” he said in an almost sing-song voice, wearing a smile so fierce he looked like he wanted to eat the other man with a side of whipped cream
Ron just scoffed in response, although his cheeks went pink at the positively feral look Malfoy was giving him.
“I’m not the bloody psycho who polyjuiced into Pansy sodding Parkinson to get himself a shag,” he muttered.
“No, you’re just the moron who fell into his trap,” Malfoy countered and how had he managed to get himself an inch away from Ron without him noticing? Malfoy traced a teasing finger down Ron’s chest and the redhead didn’t even pretend to shy away from the touch. “This took days of planning, Weasel. You should thank me for lavishing my generous attention on your poor carcass.”
“Oh, shut up, Malfoy,” Ron said, without any malice as he rolled his eyes and swatted at the other man’s hand. Despite himself, he looked impressed. “You might be smart but it doesn’t change the fact that you’re an arrogant little prick.”
“Big prick, actually,” Draco corrected and rolled his hips against Ron’s to remind him of the fact. “A smart, big prick.” He nipped at Ron’s throat then mumbled, as an afterthought, “Smart enough to be a detective, I’d wager…”
Ron, his head thrown back and a hand entwined in Malfoy’s silky platinum hair, slowly lowered his head back down to stare at him stupidly.
“… You asking me for a job, Malfoy?” he asked in disbelief.
“A partnership,” Draco amended, before idly licking at the corner of Ron’s mouth like a snake and marking him with his lipstick. “I don’t work under anybody, Weasley. Especially you.”
Ron scoffed.
“That’s not what you said last ni- hey!” he yelped as Draco pinched him on the hip. Sharp features twisted with mild amusement as their bodies aligned, a warm breath ghosting against Ron’s lips.
“Weasley,” Draco drawled lazily, “you couldn’t find your arse with both hands, however…” he trailed his fingers seductively down the curves of Ron’s bottom and squeezed, “… I have a knack for finding things most others can’t. So, what do you say?”
Draco Malfoy.
Him, Ron Weasley, working with Draco Malfoy.
Solving crime. Sleeping together. Sleeping together again. Solving more crime….
Ron thought about it.
They would both be dead within the week.
“Fine,” Ron agreed, never one to back down from a challenge. “But my name goes before yours on the door, ferret.”
“Yeah fucking right it do-” Draco huffed but Ron silenced him with a hungry kiss.
How on earth they would both survive working together he would never know.
But the redhead did know one thing, however - it would be one hell of a way to go.
Finis
Author:mamalaz
Team: Ron
Prompt: Crime
Rating: R
Warnings: None
Length: 7,800 words
Summary: Secret walls, gaudily decorated interiors and Draco Malfoy acting suspicious - it's all in a day's work for Ron Weasley, Private Investigator.
Disclaimer: All sexual activity portrayed in this fic is between two consenting adults who are at least 18 years of age. I do not own any of the characters.
The Curious Case of Draco Malfoy
The dame that walked into Ron Weasley’s office on the fifty-third day his Detective Agency had opened wasn’t a seductive blonde temptress with legs that went for miles. She didn’t have smoky bedroom eyes, full of melancholy, intrigue and promise and she definitely didn’t have full red lips that shone in the sparse light of his office.
Hell, she wasn’t even lucky enough to be plain.
She was Pansy Parkinson and, if Ron was honest with himself, she was a bit of a hag. Ron, however, wasn’t the type of man who wouldn’t help a hag out for a bit of cash.
Don’t look at him like that, having an office with his name painted on the door cost good galleons. Not to mention the fan on the ceiling and the smoke machine by his feet.
Ron liked dramatics. Which is probably why his business was approaching bankruptcy and fast.
For the ninth time that day, he wondered if maybe he should have listened to Harry and Hermione when they said this whole detective thing was a bad idea…
Before he could think any longer on that, however, Pansy Parkinson pulled back the chair opposite him with a loud, irritating scrape and he was brought back to the present.
“Weasley, I need you to spy on someone for me,” said Parkinson, cutting straight to the chase as she plonked herself down without so much as an invite.
Ron cocked his head slightly at her. Still the same old Parkinson. Pug-nosed, black-bobbed and with all the good manners of a flobberworm.
Resisting the urge to irrationally stick his tongue out at her, he pushed it against his top teeth instead.
“Reckon you could give me more details…?” he replied as politely as he could. It hurt his jaw.
Pansy Parkinson, who had crossed her legs at the knee and was showing a bit too much skin for Ron’s liking, leaned a little closer towards him. He instinctively moved back.
“I need you to spy on Draco for me,” she elaborated prissily.
Grinning, Ron leaned forward with interest despite the fact it brought her so close that he could count her nose hairs (four, at a quick inspection).
Bringing the evil prick Draco Malfoy to justice? It was his dream case.
“Ole ferret-face, eh?” he said with curiosity, steepling his fingers together and resting his chin on them in a perfect imitation of a muggle detective Hermione had once shown him on the telly. The effect was lost slightly when his elbow slipped off the table. “So what’s Malfoy done to earn this visit?”
“I think he’s cheating on me.”
Letting the words digest for a moment, Ron scratched his head with some confusion.
“You’re a couple?”
The sound of outrage she made could have either been a cat being strangled or a hag trying to sing.
“For Circe’s sake, we’ve always been a couple!” she spat through gritted teeth, her cheeks pink and her face furious. Ron, who had a feeling this was a point she usually had to fight on, tried not to snigger. “And I know he’s cheating on me!”
Don’t blame him, Ron thought briefly as he wrinkled his nose at Parkinson’s breath but he wisely kept that thought to himself. For some reason, he thought saying it aloud might just lose him her business.
He tried to go for a look of sympathy.
Pansy immediately hissed at it.
“Cut the act, Weasley, you’re a horrendous liar. Now can you get the dirt on him and his little piece of trash or not?”
“What makes you think Malfoy’s even cheating on you?” he asked, leaning back in his seat, not sounding entirely convinced. He even raised his eyebrow for good measure. “He’s a slippery sod by nature anyway, isn’t he?”
“A woman knows, Weasley,” Parkinson replied tersely, eyeing him most contemptuously. “He disappears for long stretches of time, he’s distracted and he pushes me away... And I mean, literally pushes me away. I tried to instigate something the other day and he nearly broke my neck trying to get away. I wore my sexiest lingerie, too…”
“Parkinson,” Ron winced, looking a little green. “Can we just stick to the barest facts? Please? Before I lose my breakfast? Now, what about Floo records and stuff? Lipstick on the collar of his robes? Receipts for expensive presents that aren’t for you?”
Here Parkinson looked a little uncomfortable and Ron felt rather proud of himself that all those years of watching trash talk show television with Harry had paid off.
“Well… no,” she admitted reluctantly, fiddling with the corner of her robes. “But I know there’s something up with him! I know it. I just haven’t got any proof. That’s where you come in. Bring me some proof, Weasley, something that’ll prove he’s playing away and if you do, I’ll pay you five thousand galleons for your troubles.”
Ron almost fell out of his chair.
“Five thousand galleons?” he spluttered as he grasped onto the table edge for balance, his eyes as big as galleons and his jaw just shy of smacking the tabletop. “Are you kidding me?”
“Oh, alright, ten thousand,” Pansy said, with a dismissive wave of her hand, as though she had thrown in a knut. “You sure do strike a hard bargain, Weasley. Now, I have a charity event to get to and pretend to be sympathetic over. Here’s my card. I expect an owl from you in the next day or two. Oh and Weasley,” said Pansy, turning one last time before she stepped out of the door, “Comb your hair. I like to have my help looking presentable.”
* * *
“I got my first case today!” Ron exclaimed happily as he met up with Harry and Hermione for lunch. Collapsing into their regular booth in the packed Leaky Cauldron, Ron then set down his pint of beer, briefly grinned at their awed expressions and repeated, “Didn’t you hear me, I said I got my first case today!”
Hermione, her pumpkin juice held midway to her mouth, nearly dropped her drink while Harry, beside her in his Auror attire, actually did drop his with a loud crash.
“As in… a real one?” Harry finally managed in awe, sharing an uncertain look with Hermione and hardly noticing the angry barman who bustled over and cleaned up the mess he had made.
“Yup,” Ron said proudly, lifting up his glass so the muttering barman could mop up the spilt drink and conjure Harry another one. “An actual, bona fide, real case. Parkinson’s going to give me ten thousand galleons to check if Malfoy’s cheating on her.”
Harry dropped his drink again. Luckily, Hermione was there to catch it before it crashed on the table.
“Parkinson? As in Pansy Parkinson?” Hermione asked delicately, putting Harry’s glass down carefully on a coaster and throwing him a reproachful look. “Ron, do you think she’s likely to pay ten thousand galleons? I mean, she is a Slytherin. This could be some elaborate joke. Remember what she did to Neville last Halloween? His hair hasn’t been the same since…”
“Hermione,” Ron whined loudly, lowering his drink with a thunk before crossing his arms petulantly across his chest. “Quit being so paranoid, alright? Why can’t you just be happy for me, eh? She’s already owled me five grand and I get the rest once I get more dirt on Malfoy. It’s all under control. Nothing to worry about. Sorted. Except…” and here Ron rubbed the back of his neck, looking a little sheepish, “…um, I’ve got a bit of a problem.”
Hermione, who enjoyed problem solving possibly more than anyone else on the entire planet, perked up, almost twitching with excitement.
“A problem?” she said enthusiastically. “And what’s that?”
“Well… er, I don’t actually know where Malfoy is right now,” Ron said weakly. “Parkinson said to try at the Manor but he wasn’t there when I went and she wants me to report back to her by tomorrow with something and if I don’t I think she might put a curse on me or-”
However, before Ron could continue his babbling, a haughty looking blond dramatically entered the pub and cut his sentence short. Eyeing his surroundings with a wrinkled nose and all the amicability of a manticore, Draco Malfoy looked as though he had just landed in the foulest pits of hell.
It took a few seconds of gaping at the ill-tempered Malfoy for Ron to get his brain into gear but, when he finally did, he did the smoothest thing he could think of.
So, letting out a squeak, Ron dove under the table.
“What the-?!” spluttered Harry, whose beer sloshed into his face, the head of it dripping off of his nose like bath foam. Unfortunately, before Ron could mutter out an apology into Harry’s right knee, Malfoy noticed them.
“Well, well…” Malfoy drawled as he sauntered over, smirking about him something dreadful. “If it isn’t Potty and Granger. Having a romantic luncheon are we?” Then pausing in his insults to notice the drink dripping off Harry’s face, his thin smile grew wider, “I say, Potter, trying to drown yourself in your beer? Granger that bad a date?”
“What do you want, Malfoy?” Harry said petulantly, taking off his glasses to wipe his face with a napkin aggressively.
Shrugging lazily, Malfoy appeared to make a big show of thinking about it before, to Hermione’s horror, sliding into the semi-circular booth beside her.
Ron, still cowering under the table, swore under his breath and squeezed his long-limbed frame around one of the table legs.
“Tsk, tsk, Potter,” drawled Malfoy, a bite of laughter in his tone. “Play nice. I just wanted to have a little chat with my two least favourite people, that’s all, So how is your all important work at Auror Headquarters? I read Brown’s riveting article about that kneazle you saved from a tree. I was so excited I almost wet myself. What’s next in your adventurous agenda, helping an old muggle cross the street?”
Smiling nastily, Malfoy stretched his legs under the table before opening them.
Clinging to the table leg like a terrified fireman, Ron wasn’t entirely sure how Draco Malfoy’s crotch had ended up about five inches from his face. All he knew was that he felt more hot about it than mortified.
Maybe he was coming down with a fever.
“What are you even doing here, Malfoy?” Hermione suddenly asked, sounding suspicious. “I thought being this near Muggle London made you break out in hives.”
“Touché, Granger,” Malfoy said with a snort. “Unfortunately for you, my exciting affairs are none of your business. Now, if you pathetic wimps will excuse me, I have to go and meet someone.” Sliding from out of the booth again and wiping himself down with a handkerchief, as though just being in Harry and Hermione’s presence had sullied him, Malfoy then turned back to them one last time. “Oh, and do tell Weasley that if he does insist on hiding from me under the table like a little girl, to at least stop sniffing my balls when he’s down there.”
And then, with a rather flamboyant swish of his cloak that Ron would have called poncy, Malfoy made his way towards the back door of the Leaky Cauldron, disappearing behind a group of cackling hags.
There was silence around the table as Malfoy went, with Hermione opening and shutting her mouth until she finally asked,
“Ron, were you really sniffing his..?”
But Ron had already bolted out from under the table and after Malfoy by the time she had managed to get these words out, calling a quick goodbye to his friends as he did.
Because if Draco Malfoy was really meeting someone like he said he was, then it was Ron’s duty to find out whom.
Running after the blond as fast as his long legs would take him, Ron thundered into the group of hags, who squealed and went flying in all directions.
“Sorry!” he called over his shoulder, not sounding sorry in the slightest as they shook their boil-covered fists at him and shrieked curses.
Ducking a flash of purple sparks with a yelp, Ron skidded to the brick entrance to Diagon Alley, which was already beginning to close after Malfoy. He could see the blond man’s head ducking into the side street by Flourish and Blotts and, producing a rather miraculous dive that managed to surprise even himself, Ron jumped through the collapsing hole and pelted up the cobbled streets after his quarry.
The old, rusted sign of Knockturn Alley glared at him as he passed and he rolled his eyes at this predictable turn of events.
Really, all great detectives thrived on the unexpected. Like Sherlock Holmes and Martin Miggs and that bald bloke off the telly who liked lollipops… this really was a waste of Ron’s skills.
Catching sight of Malfoy, Ron slowed down and pressed his lanky frame against the moss covered stone. Cringing when he realised exactly what he was leaning in (and shuddering at what Hermione would say when she saw it), Ron peered as discreetly as could at the long, winding street where Malfoy was heading.
If he didn’t know better, he would say the runt looked nervous.
Just that thought brightened Ron up immeasurably.
Following behind and almost whistling as he did, Ron kept a safe distance between them as Malfoy ducked here and climbed there and disappeared down about five ominous-looking sets of stairs before he finally stopped in front of a large, unimpressive stone wall.
Ron, who had been ready to leave Malfoy to his odd little journey and go and get a sandwich, now craned his neck with renewed interest, watching as Malfoy pressed his ear against the wall and… was he talking to it?
Unfortunately, just as Ron leaned so far forward that his back was straining, a man shrieked out,
“Time Turners! Get your genuine Time Turners! Got yourself in a pickle? Fix it for only sixteen sickles!”
And in the split second he turned to him, Malfoy had disappeared.
* * *
“An enchanted wall in the deepest part of Knockturn Alley?” Hermione repeated over dinner at their shared apartment as Harry scoffed down his potatoes with vigour. Reminding herself that all boys were heathens, Hermione turned back to Ron. “That really doesn’t sound like such a good idea, Ron.”
“Aww, come on Hermione, don’t nag,” Ron said through a mouthful of pie before swallowing it loudly. “I know what I’m doing, alright? I’m a professional. Pass the gravy.”
Hermione, looking at the bits of pastry all over Ron’s mouth, didn’t look very convinced.
“Ron, you don’t know where that wall leads,” she tried again as she conjured a spotted handkerchief and handed it to him. As an afterthought, she conjured another and gave it to Harry. “It could be a den of Death Eaters for all you know. Pansy Parkinson’s paranoia is not worth this.”
“Hermione’s got a point, mate,” Harry agreed, dropping his cutlery on his now empty plate and patting his swollen tummy. “And this is Malfoy we’re talking about. He’s a dodgy little prat. He’s probably up to something far shadier than shagging about.”
Mulling over Harry’s words, Ron’s mouth salivated, and it wasn’t because of the pudding Hermione had levitated to the table.
“Merlin, can you imagine?” he said almost breathlessly, leaning his chin on his palm as his eyes glazed over. “Having something over that wanker, him being in my pocket for a change…”
“Ron,” Hermione chastised, looking suspicious as she prodded his elbows off the table. “You’re not doing this as a personal vendetta against him, are you?”
“Of course not, Hermione,” Ron said, crossing his fingers under the table and giving her an innocent smile. “Never even crossed my mind.”
* * *
It took him almost an hour to find it again but when Ron finally navigated himself through the snake-like lanes off Knockturn Alley (and avoided the rather shady streetsellers who were trying to sell him everything, including their mothers), he found himself in front of the very wall he had last seen Malfoy in front of.
Didn’t I tell you not to come here again? A Hermione-like voice shrilled in his head.
Now now, Hermione, he told the voice, taking out his wand.
He looked at the wall.
The wall looked dully back at him.
Letting out a shrug and assuming it worked like the entrance to Diagon Alley, Ron tapped at a few of the bricks with his wand.
Nothing happened.
Pointing his wand at the wall, Ron yelled, “Alohomora!”
The wall didn’t look very moved.
Tapping his finger to his lip, his mind raced back to Malfoy. What had Malfoy done again?
Tentatively, Ron eased the side of his head to the wall, hissing as the cold licked at the shell of his ear. Feeling a little stupid as he stood there, hunched with his ear pressed to the stone, Ron was about to give up and kick the stupid wall when a silky voice hissed,
“Password?”
And he almost jumped a foot in the air.
“Bloody hell!” he yelped, grabbing his chest. The wall let out an impatient sort of sigh in response.
“Incorrect, sir. Try again.”
“Are you a secret entrance?” Ron asked with curiosity.
“Incorrect, sir. Try again.”
“Okay, but at least tell me what you’re guarding…”
“Incorrect, sir. Try again.”
“I’m not giving you a password, I’m asking you a question!”
“Incorrect, sir,” the wall repeated, with a bite of humour in its tone. “Try again.”
“Stupid sodding wall,” Ron growled in annoyance.
“Incorrect, sir. Try ag-”
“Alright, alright, shut up!” he bellowed. A couple of witches gave him an odd look as they passed, muttering something that looked remarkably like “basketcase” as they shuffled off.
“Password?” the wall repeated yet again.
Ron had a feeling this wall was mocking him.
Letting out a sigh, he scratched his long nose and hazarded a guess.
“Um… Cheese?”
Ron couldn’t quite describe the noise the wall made but he knew that whatever the original password was, ‘cheese’ offended it to its very foundations.
“Incorrect, sir,” the wall forced out prissily, sounding most affronted. “Try again.”
“Look, I’m on important business, okay?” Ron implored desperately. “So if you just open up and let me through…”
The wall was silent for a little while before it finally said,
“Name?”
“Er…” Ron quickly rattled through his brain for an alias, “… um… Roonil Wazlib?”
There was more silence and Ron braced himself for another bout of “Incorrect, sir. Try again”.
However, the wall said nothing.
What it did do was begin to form a hundred little cracks. They ran into each other like spider webs and shook the stone like an earthquake, bits of dust and stone crumbling to the floor until the entire thing cascaded around Ron’s large feet.
The door it revealed was dark mahogany and had an elaborate gold doorknocker with the face of a man on it. Ron lifted his hand and could have sworn the thing giggled with ticklish laughter as he used it.
He heard a series of noises that sounded like magical locks being released and charms being broken before the door creaked open.
A thin man with a long chin and jet black hair looked curiously back at Ron.
“I’m afraid the club isn’t open yet, sir,” said the man, dressed in a uniform with a nametag that indicated his name was ‘Dick’. He looked at the dust in Ron’s hair with a little disapproval. “Please return in a few hours.”
“A club?” Ron asked, looking back at the slight man just as curiously. “What sort of club?”
The man’s dark eyebrows knitted together in suspicion.
“Sir had the password?”
“Er… yeah. Um… Draco Malfoy. He’s a friend of mine, see? Anyway, he told me I’d like the place so he passed it along… Yeah.”
Dick instantly looked appeased.
“Oh, you’re a friend of Mr Malfoy! A… good friend, I imagine?”
“Oh, yes,” Ron said, nodding vigorously. “We’re very good friends. The best, if you catch my drift.”
“Oh, I do, sir,” said Dick, giving him a wink and Ron wondered if the guy had a problem with his eyes. “But I’m afraid you’re a little early.”
“Oh, drat,” said Ron, then flashing a smile and trying to look as charming as he could, “Say, um, Dick… from what Mal-Draco told me… I’m assuming this is a Gentleman’s club?”
Dick wore a very strange little smile that Ron didn’t understand it at all. He shrugged and attributed it to indigestion.
“That’s a good way of putting it, sir, yes,” he said, leaning a little closer to Ron, and speaking conspiratorially. “That’s why we have the wall, you see. The Ministry don’t really approve of our sort of business. If you understand my meaning, sir.”
Biting his lip and restraining himself from cackling with mad glee, Ron just nodded in response.
“Don’t worry, Dick,” he said with a hearty clap on the arm, “Your secret is safe with me.”
* * *
“Draco Malfoy pays for sex!”
Harry, who was getting pinned by Madam Malkin, let out an “Ouch!” when the witch accidentally prodded him in the leg.
“Ron!” Hermione rebuked as Madam Malkin, bright pink, apologised profusely to Harry. “For heaven’s sake, lower your voice!”
“How can I?!” Ron laughed, smacking his knee and sniggering uncontrollably. “This is the best news in the world! I can’t wait to tell everyone we know!”
“Honestly, you boys,” Hermione sniffed as she examined a set of alabaster robes in the window. “Have you never heard of professional courtesy?”
Ron looked at Harry, who somehow managed to shrug with his arms out by his sides.
“Professional whuh?”
“You’re working for Pansy. I’m sure she appreciates discretion in these matters. Merlin knows, I wouldn’t want the world knowing my affairs.”
Ron deflated a little and looked beseeching.
“But Hermione…” he whined. “Malfoy… public humiliation… stoning…”
Hermione gave him a look and he swore and punched a nearby cushion.
“Fine!” he conceded, looking absolutely miserable. “I won’t have it announced in the Prophet… or print out flyers… or tell Seamus… Can I gloat to Malfoy, though? To see the git’s face when he knows I know his little secret…”
Hermione, watching the way Ron rubbed his hands together with a little frown on her face, hesitantly opened her mouth.
“You know, Ron,” she said, watching him closely. “I really think you’re obsessed with Draco Malfoy.”
The grin on Ron’s face immediately fell like a drop of a hat.
“What?!” he squawked indignantly. “No, I’m not! Shut up, Hermione!”
“Yes, you are,” Hermione responded coolly in her ‘Don’t argue with me, I’m always right’ voice. “If you’re not ranting and raving about Malfoy, then you’re talking about this case non-stop. And we all know why you are so infatuated with this case.”
“Malfoy,” Harry supplied from his stool as he fiddled with a loose thread. Madam Malkin slapped his hand away. “Sorry, mate. Hermione is right. I think you need a girlfriend.”
“Shut up, Harry,” Ron said, glaring at his best friend with a look that clearly said ‘traitor’. “For the last time, I do not need a bloody girlfriend.”
“When is the last time you had sex then?” Hermione asked bluntly.
“Hermione!” Ron hollered, his face burning.
“Ouch!” Harry cried out as another pin went into his side.
“It’s none of your bloody business how long it’s been since I had sex!” Ron snapped as Madam Malkin, red in the face, muttered something about making tea and practically sprinted to the back. “That’s got nothing to do with anything!”
“How long?” Hermione persisted.
“How long has it been for you, Hermione,” Ron sneered back.
“Since yesterday actually,” Hermione said tartly. Harry looked impressed. “You know, Ron, I don’t even think you know how long it’s been. If you’re trying to replace Draco Malfoy with sex…”
“I DON’T WANT TO HAVE SEX WITH DRACO MALFOY!”
One of the pins in Harry’s robes dropped and Madam Malkin stuck her head out of the kitchen to gape at Ron.
Hermione’s mouth hung open at him.
“You want to have sex with Draco Malfoy?”
Ron replied by bolting out the door.
Running up the cobbled street and only stopping once he was sure Hermione and her sex questions were far, far away, Ron leaned against the corner of a bookshop and wondered what the hell was going on with him.
Of course he didn’t want to have sex with Draco Malfoy. What a stupid thing for Hermione to think. So what if he hadn’t had sex in… a while? Why would anyone want to replace sex with a bastard like Malfoy?
Ron pulled at his tie. He was suddenly feeling very hot again. He really needed to see a healer about these constant hot flushes of his. He was turning into a menopausal woman…
“Fifty galleons? That’s daylight robbery.”
Turning his head to the familiar voice coming from the side street behind him, Ron wondered if his non-existent obsession for Malfoy was playing tricks with his mind. However, turning to the alley by the shop he was leaning against, Ron saw the very real Draco Malfoy in all his sneering glory.
Blond head lowered, Malfoy was standing close to a pretty woman who was wearing an outfit that left very little to the imagination. Ron didn’t know why but he immediately took a dislike to her.
“I supplied a prime service, Mr Malfoy,” the girl returned with a leer. “And you had no complaints at the time. I expect reasonable payment.”
“It was hardly that satisfactory, Millie,” Ron could hear Malfoy sneer. “I could have done better by myself.”
Something about that made Ron let out a moan before he clapped his hands over his mouth.
“Did you hear something?” the girl called Millie asked, her heavily-kohled eyes trailing over to where Ron was hidden.
“Look, I’m not discussing this here,” Malfoy said hurriedly, sounding a little nervous. “I’ll meet you at the club tonight. Don’t discuss this with anyone, do you hear me? I have a reputation to maintain.”
Watching as the pair dispersed into the dark streets towards Knockturn Alley, Ron stood up resolutely, Malfoy’s distracted words reverberating in his ears.
“I’ll meet you at the club tonight…”
Those ten thousand galleons were in the bag.
* * *
When the mahogany door with its ticklish doorknocker swung open for Ron the second time that day, he once again expected to see Dick, the wiry doorman. However, when Ron found himself staring into the gut of a man who made Gregory Goyle look like an underfed bird, he let out a weak sort of smile.
“Um… hi?”
The man crossed his gargantuan arms across a chest that was wide enough to play Quidditch on and stared at him fixedly. Music was pounding from behind his huge shoulders and the glow of multicoloured wand sparks drenched across the side of his face.
“Name?”
“Roonil Wazlib?” Ron tried again hopefully, scratching his nose and having to tip toe to peek past a collarbone that rivalled a dinosaur’s femur. “Er, I know Dick pretty well…?”
The doorman let out a twinkling leer at this. It was terrifying to witness.
“Don’t we all,” he said, his stoicism melting like sugar in a cup of Mrs Weasley’s best tea as he moved to the side to let Ron pass. “Come on in.”
Somehow managing to squeeze by the doorman’s impressive bulk to enter the sanctuary of the hallway, it was all Ron could do not to rub his hands together in glee at how mortified Malfoy would be to see him.
Of course, that was until Ron pulled open the door to the main room of the club.
And that cackle of triumph soon turned into a rather girly scream of horror.
Because this had to be, without a doubt, the tackiest place Ron had ever set foot in in his entire life.
Every colour under the sun seemed to be throwing up all around him, from velvet fuchsia curtains to blinding green fairies that whizzed around the room, glowing over the bodies of at least a hundred scantily clad men and women. Music pounded hard from every direction, making the sweaty crowd pulsate and gyrate against one another in ways Ron was quite sure were illegal in most countries.
Ornate chandeliers hung from the high ceilings over the clubbers, huge in size and decorated with what looked like gold leaf and crystals as big as quaffles. Leather and sequins were everywhere Ron looked, from the dresses of the overdressed female singers dancing on stage to the bar staff, who were happily jiggling to the warbled notes as they levitated drinks.
The piece de resistance, however, had to be the hideous gold fountain that sat itself in the middle of the room, embossed tackily with animated nude figures and bubbling merrily with what looked like Butterbeer.
Ron, who couldn’t understand how this much bad taste could exist in one room without it simply imploding in self disgust, was physically incapable of closing his horrified mouth, no matter how hard he tried to.
This was like hell. And it included purple wallpaper. And marble cherubs. And lilac sheepskin rugs. And what would someone like Malfoy be doing in a dive like this anyway?
He may have been the most infuriating little shit in the world and he may have had the manners of a blast ended skrewt and sure, he had an ego bigger than a planet but even Ron had to admit that Draco Malfoy was… well, a little too classy for this place.
For a ferrety little prick, of course.
And that was when Ron saw him in all his ferrety, prickish glory, sitting on a stool by the neon lit bar and sipping an elaborately constructed cocktail.
Storming towards him, Ron got a strange thrill of pleasure when the blond looked a little less cocky when he approached.
“Weasley, what the hell are you doing here?” Malfoy demanded imperiously.
Ron pointedly ignored this question.
“So, where is she, Malfoy?” he asked gruffly.
Malfoy, blinking slowly, wrapped his lips around an exotic looking straw and sucked it briefly.
“I’d beg your pardon but Malfoys don’t beg, especially to Weasleys.”
“Cut the crap, ferret, where’s the girl you’re sleeping with?”
Malfoy let out a slow, almost inhuman smile.
“Excuse me?” he asked lightly.
“You’re cheating on Parkinson with some floozy,” Ron continued heatedly, prodding Malfoy hard in the chest with his finger, “and I want you to admit it.”
Stirring his steaming drink with his cocktail olive, tendrils of smoke drifted up around Malfoy’s pale fingers in an almost mesmerising way.
“Indeed. And this is your business because…?”
“It just is,” Ron snapped. “So you better start talking or I’ll-”
“Or you’ll what?” Malfoy laughed nastily, batting away at the finger that had been prodding at him. “Uselessly threaten me some more? Is that the best you can do? Lucifer’s nipple, no wonder your business is in the toilet.”
“No, it isn’t! Shut up, you arse!” Ron cried out defensively, grabbing the front of the blond’s expensive robes. Then, realising what Malfoy just said, he stared bug-eyed at him and yelped, “Wait a minute! How do you know about my-?”
“ ‘Ronald Weasley, professional sleuth - by hook or by crook, I’ll discover the truth!’ You advertise in the Prophet, you moron. Conspicuous much?”
Ron, who was immensely proud of his jingle, glared at the sing-song mockery Malfoy made of it and let go of the sneering young man.
“I know what you’re up to.”
Malfoy stood up, their noses an inch from the other’s and Ron could feel his alcoholic breath on his lips. It made him feel oddly light-headed.
And hot.
Really, really hot.
Why is it that that fever of his always kicked off when Malfoy was around or in his thoughts?
“You,” Malfoy hissed, leaning close into Ron, “don’t know anything.”
Ron opened his mouth and tried to think of something suitably mean but found himself choking mid word as Malfoy pressed himself close into his side.
Grinning a slow, malicious sort of smile, Malfoy’s grey eyes twinkled in a not entirely unpleasant way.
“You’re so oblivious, Weasley,” he muttered as he turned his mouth to whisper in Ron’s red ear. Ron could feel his cold pointed nose slide up the side of his burning cheek. “It’d be adorable if you weren’t so dense.”
“I’m not-!”
Malfoy cupped the front of his trousers.
“-dense.”
“Hmm, maybe not,” Malfoy conceded with a devilish smile. “You’re definitely solid though…”
Ron’s voice disappeared. He didn’t know where it had gone or how long it went away but somehow, after who knows how long, he managed to find it lodged in a croak.
“… Malfoy, what are you playing at?”
“What do you think, Weasley?” Malfoy said in a low, seductive voice and Ron felt the wet of his tongue catch his earlobe as his hand fondled some more. “Gives Private Dick a whole new meaning, doesn’t it?”
And it was then, right then, that it hit him like a tonne of pewter cauldrons. Velvet curtains, dancing girls in glittery outfits with elaborate hair, kitsch furniture, those two guys over their with their tongues down each others’ throats…
He was in a gay club. Those singers were in drag, those naked sculptures with their todgers out were buggering each other silly and Malfoy… that meant Malfoy was a…
“You’re gay!”
“And you’re not moving away,” Malfoy responded, his fingers tracing the bulge at the front of Ron’s trousers and looking decidedly like the kneazle that got the cream.
Ron took a step back. Well, he tried to but his feet refused to comply.
Stupid, horny feet.
“I…” Ron replied ever so eloquently, his knees ready to collapse beneath him. He then let out a groan as Malfoy gave a long, languid lick up his throat and rolled the wrist he had on Ron’s crotch.
“There are back rooms, you know, Weasley,” he said almost conversationally, clenching his hand around Ron and letting the redhead thrust against his palm.
“I’m… supposed… help… Pansy…” Ron said breathlessly, clutching at the blond’s bicep as Malfoy skilfully worked his hand over him through his trousers. Watching his handiwork, Malfoy smirked wickedly in response.
“Oh, she never has to know, Weasel. So what do you say?”
This was crazy. This was his worst enemy. This was the opposite of what he was being paid to do. Malfoy was the anti-Christ and was probably sleeping with nine other people and Ron really shouldn’t be encouraging this and so what, Hermione, if he hadn’t had sex in God knows how long…?
And then Malfoy rubbed his hardness into Ron’s and all thoughts of Hermione left his head.
“Oh, fuck it…” Ron groaned in surrender, grabbing Malfoy by the shirt and latching hungrily onto his mouth.
And so it happened. He, Ron Weasley, Private Investigator, let himself be dragged to a back room of a seedy gay bar and happily fucked the hell out of Draco Malfoy in a pink, heart-shaped, vibrating bed.
Twice.
And Merlin was it the most incredible experience of his life.
Malfoy gasped in all the right places and knew just when to piston his hips in perfect rhythm and who would have thought someone so angular could get his legs behind his head like that?
Ron had clutched the blond’s sharp hipbone hard and sucked at his pale throat with gusto and Circe, were the noises Malfoy made the most sublime thing Ron had ever heard.
A moan here and a gasp there and a whimper that soon progressed into a wanton scream…
Ron could safely say he had never heard exclamations or profanities quite so filthy in his entire life. And Ptolemy help him for loving every sordid second of it.
Of course, when he woke up alone and sticky and smelling like a brothel the next morning, the contented feelings of the previous night promptly disappeared as effectively as Malfoy seemed to have had.
Because he certainly wasn’t lying beside him now.
Probably went snivelling back to Parkinson, he reasoned bitterly to himself as he groggily sat up, his bones aching and his hair doing a rather splendid impression of Harry’s. He then cocked his head as a thought hummed over his consciousness. Parkinson.
He had a meeting with her in an hour. Where she would ask him about Malfoy And he would have to lie. Even though Ron couldn’t lie to save his life.
Somewhere, he was sure Hermione was clucking her tongue in disapproval. And Harry was looking rather green about the whole thing. And his mother was screaming the house down about him putting his bits into places he shouldn’t.
Wincing at the thought, Ron buried his face into a fluffy puce pillow and let out an almighty moan.
Sometimes, he really wondered how he always got himself into these situations.
* * *
Standing in front of Pansy Parkinson was never a pleasant experience but now, after Ron had fucked her boyfriend in every conceivable way known to man, he found himself warily eyeing her wand, shielding his privates and taking note of every foreseeable exit in case he had to do a runner.
Pansy, her eyebrow raised as she sat behind her desk, eyed his actions with such an expression of boredom that it was likely she had died somewhere between opening the door and that very moment. At least, that was what Ron was hoping.
Corpses couldn’t castrate people, after all. Or so he dearly liked to hope.
“I assume you’ve got the evidence I asked for?” Pansy enquired lazily, easing back into her seat with a languid grace that would make Malfoy proud.
Not that Ron was thinking about Malfoy or anything.
“Yeah, about that…” Ron began nervously, wiping his damp palms against his trousers and feeling the sweat seeping through the material, “… there’s… well, there’s something you should know.”
"As long as what you have to say includes Draco and the name of his harlot, I'm listening,” Pansy drawled with a dismissive sort of wave. “But do say it quickly, Weasley. I don't want your hideous shoes sullying my carpet any longer than necessary."
Momentarily eying his favourite shoes and feeling horribly offended on their behalf, Ron petulantly opened his mouth only to be met by cold dark eyes.
Letting out a gulp, he could feel his face blotching unattractively.
"Well, I wouldn't exactly call them a harlot..." Ron squeaked as he pulled at his python-like collar. "I mean, Malfoy's his own man, isn't he? 'Can't really blame someone if a horny blond starts rubbing themselves against you... I mean, it's not my fault..."
"... Weasley," Pansy said in a dangerous voice that brooked no nonsense as she stepped closer, her heels clicking against the stone. Was it Ron's imagination or did she suddenly look taller and more imposing? "The name."
Holding up his large hands like a shield, Ron stepped backwards and tried to smile affably. He looked remarkably like a gazelle attempting to both befriend and escape a hungry lion.
"Okay, the thing about it is... heh...I mean, it's sort of funny if you think about it, Parkinson... You know, I bet we'll laugh about this one day when we look back at it and- wait, what is that?"
Because, at exactly that moment - as Pansy Parkinson leaned over and looked ready to tear his clavicle out with her teeth - a red mark blossomed on Pansy's pale neck like ink staining fresh parchment. And, like the lovebite under her chin, it certainly hadn't been there a second ago.
Ron, his jaw hanging open a little dumbly, watched in awe.
"What the- is that... I mean, is that a hickey?" he asked in confusion as another bitemark materialised in front of his eyes.
An oddly familiar bitemark.
“… damn it,” Pansy muttered. Although her voice sounded different. Deeper, and with more bite to it. “Millie, you cow…”
“Millie?” Ron replied with confusion. Was she sleeping with her, too?
However, before Ron could ask just how many people that girl was sleeping with, Pansy’s black bob began to shorten and a pale sheen appeared from the roots and spread to the tips.
Every inch of her skin was bubbling and shifting until her pug nosed popped out to a point and her eyes narrowed into grey slits.
Her limbs grew longer and thinner, her complexion began to pale to the colour of milk and all Ron could do was gape and gasp when a transformed blond stood before him.
“MALFOY?!”
“Weasley,” Draco Malfoy returned, looking far too amused in make up and a tight cocktail dress than any man had a right to be. “Be a dear and help me get these heels off, would you?”
Ron just continued to stare.
“I… what the… what?” he floundered in confusion. “Why are you… but Pansy hired…”
“No, I hired you,” Draco replied airily, removing a hair clip from his fringe. “I’m house sitting while Pansy visits the Canary Islands for a year. Seriously, Weasley, these shoes are murder.”
Ron was pretty sure he had just gone insane. He shook his head like a dog with water between its ears and tried to locate his brain.
“I… I don’t get it. Why did you…?”
“Because I’m a horny gay wizard who has wanted your arse since we were in school, obviously,” Malfoy explained as sat down, easing off the silver stilettos he was wearing and revealing red-marked feet. Giving Ron the filthiest leer in the existence of man, he then licked at his thin red lips. “And I must say, I was not disappointed.”
Ron just stared. Between the shoes, the lipstick, the tongue and the fact Malfoy looked remarkably better in that cocktail dress than he ever did when he was Pansy Parkinson, Ron’s mind began to race.
“So… so you planned all this?” Ron demanded, slowly cottoning on to this entire surreal situation. “Just to get me in bed?!”
“It worked, didn’t it?” Draco smirked smugly. “Of course, I didn’t realise how good you would be. You’re a filthy animal, Weasley. I approve.” He then pointed at himself with his wand, transfigured the tight fitting number into loose robes and sighed, “Much better.”
Ron’s mouth continued to work but he had no idea what to say. Draco Malfoy frolicked about in women’s clothing and Ron himself was apparently a sexual deviant. The most confusing thing was why he wasn’t more confused.
“So, the ten thousand galleons…” Ron croaked.
“To encourage you to investigate me, of course,” Draco replied, leaning forward in his chair to massage his pale feet. His narrow grey eyes were gleaming with a self-satisfied shine. “Everything you did, Weasley? I orchestrated. Following me, entering my club…”
“Wait a minute… your club…?” Ron spluttered.
“One of my many business ventures,” Malfoy enlightened again, looking horribly impressed with his own cunning. “I own everyone in that place. I mean, really, Weasley. Roonil Wazlib? What security wall would accept an alias as bad as that unless it wanted you to enter?”
Ron tried to digest all this. Malfoy had a point.
“So… you and that Millie... the services…”
Here Malfoy’s smug look dissipated momentarily and he looked immensely put out.
“The stupid bitch was supposed to be brewing me quality Polyjuice Potion. Barely lasted a half hour. I should have just brewed it myself. She will be dealt with.”
“So, you weren’t sleeping with her then?” Ron said in a hopeful voice and immediately cursed himself for sounding so god-damn pleased about it. Malfoy, obviously catching the rather cheerful tone in his voice, eased back to his well-trained look of arrogance. It was disturbingly attractive to witness.
“Jealous, Weasley?” he said in an almost sing-song voice, wearing a smile so fierce he looked like he wanted to eat the other man with a side of whipped cream
Ron just scoffed in response, although his cheeks went pink at the positively feral look Malfoy was giving him.
“I’m not the bloody psycho who polyjuiced into Pansy sodding Parkinson to get himself a shag,” he muttered.
“No, you’re just the moron who fell into his trap,” Malfoy countered and how had he managed to get himself an inch away from Ron without him noticing? Malfoy traced a teasing finger down Ron’s chest and the redhead didn’t even pretend to shy away from the touch. “This took days of planning, Weasel. You should thank me for lavishing my generous attention on your poor carcass.”
“Oh, shut up, Malfoy,” Ron said, without any malice as he rolled his eyes and swatted at the other man’s hand. Despite himself, he looked impressed. “You might be smart but it doesn’t change the fact that you’re an arrogant little prick.”
“Big prick, actually,” Draco corrected and rolled his hips against Ron’s to remind him of the fact. “A smart, big prick.” He nipped at Ron’s throat then mumbled, as an afterthought, “Smart enough to be a detective, I’d wager…”
Ron, his head thrown back and a hand entwined in Malfoy’s silky platinum hair, slowly lowered his head back down to stare at him stupidly.
“… You asking me for a job, Malfoy?” he asked in disbelief.
“A partnership,” Draco amended, before idly licking at the corner of Ron’s mouth like a snake and marking him with his lipstick. “I don’t work under anybody, Weasley. Especially you.”
Ron scoffed.
“That’s not what you said last ni- hey!” he yelped as Draco pinched him on the hip. Sharp features twisted with mild amusement as their bodies aligned, a warm breath ghosting against Ron’s lips.
“Weasley,” Draco drawled lazily, “you couldn’t find your arse with both hands, however…” he trailed his fingers seductively down the curves of Ron’s bottom and squeezed, “… I have a knack for finding things most others can’t. So, what do you say?”
Draco Malfoy.
Him, Ron Weasley, working with Draco Malfoy.
Solving crime. Sleeping together. Sleeping together again. Solving more crime….
Ron thought about it.
They would both be dead within the week.
“Fine,” Ron agreed, never one to back down from a challenge. “But my name goes before yours on the door, ferret.”
“Yeah fucking right it do-” Draco huffed but Ron silenced him with a hungry kiss.
How on earth they would both survive working together he would never know.
But the redhead did know one thing, however - it would be one hell of a way to go.
Finis