Fic: A Malfoy Sized Case of Denial for circeniko
Title: A Malfoy Sized Case of Denial
Author: dreya_uberwald
Giftee: circeniko
Rating: PG-13/R (for language)
Word Count(for fic): 3800
Characters/Pairings: Ron/Draco, mentions of Harry/Lucius.
Warnings: Crackfic
Author’s Notes: I was given so many possible prompts to chose from here. In the end I opted for the one requesting crackfic, fluff and snappy dialogue. Hope I’ve managed to deliver.
Summary: Ronald Weasley’s fast running out of excuses for his repeated ‘lapses in judgement’ when it comes to his former enemy.
As the haze of intoxication and lust began to dissipate and the grim, harsh realities of what had just happened started to set in, a flushed, rather nauseous and decidedly naked Ronald Bilius Weasley sat bolt upright and groaned.
“Oh bloody hell!”
They were three words that he had grown increasingly used to uttering of late. So much so that the exclamation mark implicit in his voice was now quite superfluous and more than a tad disingenuous. Still, he couldn’t very well admit to himself that he was growing accustomed to… to, well, this happening.
Ron looked down at the pale, blonde and equally naked form lying on the floor next to him. A form that was staring resolutely back at him.
“Something wrong, Weasley?” It was the voice of somebody who was attempting to affect an air of dismissive boredom, but was in actuality experiencing a pronounced case of moderate to high embarrassment.
“What do you think, Malfoy?” He said, in tones of deepest disgruntlement, as he scrabbled round for his clothing, which was currently strewn about the worn oak floorboards of the room above the Hangman’s Haunt Inn on Knockturn Alley.
Draco gave a sneer, or at least what looked like it was attempting to be a sneer; truth be told it resembled a stroppy pout more than anything else. “I don’t know Weasley, not being a mind reader I have to actually ask you these questions. But if we’re going on recent history my guess is that you’re about to make some remark about me taking advantage of you while you were under the influence of seven varieties of Goblin distilled alcohol, despite the fact that you were the one who challenged me to that drinking contest.”
Ron didn’t respond, opting instead to glower and pull his boxer shorts back on. It was with great embarrassment that he realised they that they were the novelty Marvin Miggs the Mad Muggle ones that his mother had bought for him a few weeks earlier.
“In fact,” Draco continued, thankfully ignoring Ron’s ignominious underwear. “I might even go as far as to suggest that you spent several hours looking for me so that I could take drunken advantage of you.”
“What?”
“Well, when I went into the Viper’s Nest earlier, the barman told me that you’d been asking if I was around.”
“Yeah, so I could avoid you.” He knew that this was this wasn’t going to convince anybody, let alone himself, but it seemed like the most face saving thing he could say under the circumstances. Part of him was regretting partaking in Goblin liquor rather than Fire Whisky. While the hangover you got with the Goblin stuff was a bit lighter, the fact that you started to sober up within a couple of hours could be rather inconvenient; and at this point in time being completely and utterly sloshed would have been a definite plus.
“Your excuses really are getting ever more pathetic, Weasley, you know that? The one you gave me after last time about accidentally falling into a vat of love potion in one of the Confiscated Magical Substances Storerooms at the Ministry was laughable.”
That, Ron thought, was unfair. He had fallen into that vat filled with a variety of love potion currently residing on the Ministry’s banned list; even if it was part of an extremely watered down batch, which was incapable of inducing anything more than a case of very mild lust and had its effects limited to the first person one looked directly in the eye after consumption (he’d spent the subsequent two hours finding the middle-aged and distinctly motherly first aid witch worryingly attractive).
“Next time you’ll be telling me that a Snorkack made you do it.”
“Sod off Malfoy.” He tried to refrain from dwelling on the fact that he’d earlier been half-heartedly wondering if any of the strange phenomena reported in last week’s Quibbler might form the basis of an excuse for any future ‘lapses of judgement’. Not that there were going to be any more lapses, of course. This was the last time ever. No, really, none of the other last times had ever been quite as final as this.
“Droll as ever Weasley,” said Draco, who had finally dragged himself up off the floor and was now putting on his robes. His expression was one that - had it resided on the face of anybody else - Ron would have most probably interpreted as mild hurt.
“Says the man who at one time thought that calling me and Harry ‘Potty and the Weasel’ could be classed as devastating wit.”
“Yes, when I was about twelve.”
“All right, but you’re also the bloke who once spent over an hour trying to make obscene anagrams of the Russian Magical President’s name on a napkin.”
“You laughed at them too, didn’t you?”
“Only because I was extremely drunk at the time.”
“So was I.”
“Yeah, but I was drunker.”
“Sod off Weasley.”
“Fine,” Ron snapped, with a tad more venom than was really warranted. Unfortunately for him, the brisk storming out that would generally accompany a sharply spoken word such as this was prevented by the fact that he was still trying to button up his shirt. Thus, he was forced to continue fumblingly dress himself as a cold and very awkward silence descended between them.
The real kicker however was that Draco somehow managed to finish getting his clothes back on and walk out of the door before Ron did.
Still, he told himself as he realised that he’d actually put his shirt on inside out, this wouldn’t be happening again. From now on he’d do his level best to avoid the Malfoy heir.
Ten minutes and several muttered profanities later he was dressed - if in a noticeably rumpled fashion - and ready to leave Knockturn Alley’s seediest pub; which he did after casting upon himself the glamour he always used on these occasions. He just hoped that when he got home his housemates weren’t going to ask what he’d been up to.
As luck would have it by the time he apparated on the doorstep, everybody else was in bed.
His decision to move out of the Burrow and into Grimmauld Place with Harry, Hermione, Neville and Luna had caused a heated argument with his mother, which had left relations between them strained to the point that there were moments when Ron questioned whether he had made the right decision. This, needless to say, was not one of those moments. The thought of being quizzed by his parents on the subject as to where he’d been all night was just too cringe-inducing to bear.
The door creaked open as the password was spoken and he stepped into the pitch black hallway, drawing his wand.
“Lumos,” he whispered as quietly as he could. A dim glow filled the corridor. Luckily his room was on the first floor and just next to the staircase, which greatly reduced the chance of him waking anybody or - given that this was, despite the recent change in ownership, still 12, Grimmauld Place - anything up.
Tentatively he walked up the stairs, trying to cause as little squeaking as possible, and carefully opened the first door on the left.
Exhausted, he collapsed onto the unmade bed within.
Never again, he thought. Never again. Draco Malfoy could just stay the hell away from him.
Three hours later he was awoken by the shrill ring of the alarm clock that Hermione had given him for his last birthday. The pitch of the accursed thing was such that it succeeded in making anybody unfortunate enough to be within a ten metre radius feel as though some ungodly force had seen fit to take a Muggle power drill to their head.
Silencing the infernal device, he groaned pitifully before hauling himself out of bed, trudging down to the kitchen and making himself a cup of extra strong coffee. All the while trying to draw comfort from the fact that tomorrow was Saturday.
Nobody else was up. The lazy bastards. It irked him beyond belief that out of all of them he was the only one who’d ended up paper pushing at the Ministry of Magic. Harry was an Auror, Luna had all but taken over editorship of the Quibbler, Neville worked with his plants and Hermione was combining advanced charms research with Elf Rights campaigning. Ron used to have a job that he enjoyed too. Unfortunately after one too many accidents with the merchandise, Fred and George had been angry enough to give him the sack. His parents had hated the idea of him being unemployed and so his father had managed to get him a job as a clerk in the Confiscated Magical Substances Office. He hated it, he really did; but until Fred and George decided to forgive him for the completely unintentional destruction of seven-hundred Galleons worth of Skiving Snackboxes, his only other alternative would be to sponge off Harry. And he was damned if he was going to do that. So each morning, Monday to Friday, he got up at 6:00 a.m., had breakfast and apparated to work. This day was no exception. After two cups of coffee and a bowl of sugary cereal, he stepped out of the front door, which slammed itself shut behind him, and materialised outside the Ministry of Magic, ready for another tedious, soul destroying day at the Office.
Or at least, so he thought.
The first few hours passed in a perfectly normal fashion: filing, stock taking, having his arse pinched by the elderly witch who brought around the tea trolley and dealing with a howler from an irate wizard from Yorkshire who was demanding to know why the Department of Magical Law Enforcement had seen fit to retain his supply of Exploding Doxy Spray, despite the fact that it was responsible for the new two-hundred and fifty foot crater that was now residing in the middle of the Pennines.
Around lunchtime however he noticed that people were giving him what one might call ‘funny looks’. At first he tried to ignore it, thinking that it was paranoia spawned by spending a sizeable chunk of the previous night doing obscene things to Draco Malfoy. However when a young witch he vaguely recognised as belonging to the Auror Squad stopped him in a corridor and made enquiries, voice full of concern, as to how he and friends were handling things, he found himself decided unsettled.
“We’re fine thanks,” he said in reply to the question, feeling decided puzzled.
“He and Hermione aren’t an item, are they?” she asked.
Ron shook his head. “No, I don’t think he’s really interested in being in a relationship at the moment.” He couldn’t help but let a little irritation seep into his voice; if she thought that Ron was going to play cupid for her and Harry, she had another thing coming. Over the years he’d grown decidedly tired of being seen by the world as little more than ‘that bloke who knows Potter’, and wished that - just for once - some attractive young witch or wizard would beseech The Boy Who Kicked the Dark Lord’s Arse to set them up with his handsome red-headed friend.
Rather than looking disheartened however the witch gave a sympathetic nod. “Just as well I suppose.”
As she proceeded on her way, Ron shook his head in confusion, convinced that the whole world had gone slightly loopy.
It didn’t stop there though. Three more people - Ministry employees he’d never exchanged more than a quick hello with - approached him and, in anxious voices, asked how things were at home.
He told them that everything was fine. A response to which they nodded indulgently, rather like one would to a child who was being especially brave in the face of adversity.
Even stranger than this however were the older wizards and witches who walked up to him and muttered darkly about disgusting perversions and the moral degeneracy of young people today. Part of him reeled at the possibility that they knew about what had gone on between him and Draco the previous night; but the rational part of his brain told him that it was highly unlikely that anybody had recognised him under the glamour he’d been sporting.
He was about to mentally upgraded the state of the world from ‘slightly loopy’ to ‘outright demented’, when he bumped into Angelina Johnson - the current Assistant Deputy Head of Magical Games and Sports - as he was delivering a requisition form for more pencils to the Stationary Office.
“Alright Ron,” she said with smile.
Well, at least somebody was behaving in a semi-normal fashion, he thought, as he said a quick hello.
She took a deep and ominous breath.
He winced as he realised that he’d thought too soon.
“Ron,” she said, voice suddenly sombre. “I’d just like to say that I don’t believe any of it.”
Ron’s brow furrowed. “Any of what?”
“The article. I mean, that Skeeter woman’s a vindictive cow. She probably got somebody to forge those pictures.”
He felt a stab of panic. “What pictures.”
Angelina’s eyes widened. “You’ve seen today’s Prophet, haven’t you?”
“Er, no,” he said, gulping. Surely she couldn’t mean that Rita Skeeter had found out about him and Draco, could she? The idea of it was just too awful to contemplate. From the most treacherous regions of his mind came a vision of his mother opening the morning paper to see pictures of him and the Malfoy spawn doing… doing…. Thankfully his imagination shut down out of what one can only guess was self-preservation at that point and he looked resignedly at Angelina. “Why, what’s in there?”
“Well, er… I’m not quite sure how to tell you this, but....” She trailed off as she pulled a rather ragged bundle of newspaper from her cloak pocket. “I think that you should probably have a see for yourself.” She thrust it towards him and bit her lip.
Ron took paper and uncrumpled it to reveal the contents of the first page.
He then proceeded to stare open mouthed at the headline and corresponding photograph.
Boy Who Lived’s Raucous Romp With Lusty Lucius
For an indeterminate amount of time he found himself quite unable to move, eyes fixated on the image of what looked horrifically like his best friend sticking his tongue down Azkaban Prisoner #666’s throat.
Once he regained voluntary movement he took the only action that he felt was realistically available to him at that moment.
He blanched and ran.
He ran all the way to the Hangman’s Haunt in Knockturn Alley.
The barman and patrons stared. Without his usual glamour in place he was merely ‘that friend of Harry Potter’s’. None of them recognised him as the man who’d been meeting the Malfoy boy here nearly every week since the beginning last November. Well, none apart from the Malfoy boy in question; who currently seemed to be hunched over a piece of paper bearing a nauseatingly familiar image and looking like he was about to have some kind of seizure. A dangerously reasonable voice in Ron’s mind pointed out that while it was indeed humiliating to be the best mate of the hero who’d been snapped administering a reasonable facsimile of the Dementor’s Kiss to an infamous Death Eater; being Draco Malfoy at this second in time was possibly far far worse than being Ronald Weasley.
Draco didn’t really seem to acknowledge Ron’s approach; preferring instead to emit sporadic whimpers.
“Malfoy,” Ron said quietly, trying not to draw any more attention than was necessary.
There was no response.
“Malfoy, what the fuck is this?” he jabbed a finger at the offending article.
“I don’t know Weasley, I just don’t know. Maybe you should ask Potter.” His voice was uncharacteristically small and strangely distant.
The urge to leap in with an angry defence of Harry briefly surged, but he managed to fight it down.
“It’s a setup right, it has to be,” Ron said, forgetting for a moment that he was trying to enact as little attention grabbing behaviour as possible, and raising his voice.
Draco shook his head. “Mother wondered why he looked so cheerful when she went to visit him last Tuesday. It was the same day that your precious Potter called in to interview that murder suspect.” The man looked like he was about to burst into tears.
“B… but, no it can’t be. Harry wouldn’t do anything like that. I mean, he likes girls, I know he does. He used to go out with my sister, he….” He trailed off as he unwillingly recalled the big smile on his friend’s face the evening he’d returned from that particular trip to Azkaban. “Oh fuck, oh fucking fuck. How the fuck could he be so stupid?”
“The breath of your vocabulary never ceases to amaze me, Weasley,” said Draco, a certain amount of his usual drawl returning to his voice. For some inexplicable reason Ron found this vaguely heartening.
“Oh, sod off Malfoy.”
For a moment Ron was certain that Draco would either: a) punch him, b) hex him or c) storm out of the pub. Instead however the corners of his mouth quirked upwards.
“So what’s it to be, Weasley,” he said in very hushed tones, “your place or mine?”
This was the point at which Ron had sword to himself that he’d tell Draco to sod off, but as he’d already done this once and it hadn’t resulted in him leaving the premises, it seemed only reasonable that they make the best out of the situation. “Well, you’ve got your own flat, while I currently live with Harry, Hermione, Luna and Neville. And right now Hermione’s probably their waiting for Harry to return so she can tell him how thoroughly irresponsible he’s been. So I’d say your place.”
“All right, but you better not bring any Muggle junk with you and leave it lying around on the floor.”
Ron’s brow furrowed. “Why the hell would I have any ‘Muggle junk’ on me?”
“You are a Weasley. Malfoy honour practically demands that I say something derogatory about you and Muggles at this point.”
It was testament to Ron’s self-control that he didn’t make some very obvious and rather cruel remarks at the juncture. “That’s stupid.”
Draco inclined his head in manner that probably trying to be an imperious, but in fact just looked rather childish. “Look, do you want to come or not?”
“I already said so, didn’t I?”
And so he did.
There are in the world several standard comfort sex scenarios. There’s the old: ‘Oh dearie me I’ve got a minor injury/mild cold masquerading as flu and need that special nurse to help me feel better’. There’s also the: ‘I’ve just had something horribly unpleasant and quite possibly traumatic happen to me; help me forget about if for a while’. And, of course, when all else fails there’s always: ‘I’ve just had a really bad day at office, a minor car accident, an argument with my best friend and my cat was sick on the new carpet, please fuck me out of sympathy’. Very rarely however is the variant entitled: ‘My best friend and your father have completely humiliated themselves all over the national press, thereby making us a laughing stock by proxy, let us share and therefore diminish our pain by screwing each other senseless all over the bedroom floor’.
Still, at that point in time, it worked for them.
**********
When Ron awoke, it was in a very comfortable four poster bed with dark green drapes. Clearly all attempts to force the former Death Eater who was currently curled up around him into poverty had been in vain.
He looked down at the blonde head resting on his chest. In this state even Ron had to admit that his once hated enemy looked rather appealing and disturbingly innocent.
As he grudgingly attempted to extricate himself from this entwinement Draco stirred.
“Still here, Weasley?” he said, with a yawn and a stretch that left him even more entangled with Ron than he had been before.
“I was tired so I fell asleep.” It wasn’t a particularly clever response but it was the truth.
“Isn’t this the point at which you start screaming about how I’ve once again taken advantage of your inebriated and vulnerable state?”
Ron wasn’t quite sure how to respond to this, given that it had been Draco rather than himself who’d been drowning his sorrows. He supposed he could claim temporary insanity induced by the psychological trauma of seeing Harry Potter snogging Lucius Malfoy on the front page of the Prophet; but surprisingly, he didn’t feel the least bit inclined to. The trouble was that he was feeling rather comfortable at the moment. Well, aside from the fact that he a) hungry and b) inwardly squirming at the thought of all the snide comments about being the best friend of the Boy Who Snogged That Posh Death Eater Bastard he was going to have to endure for the next few months.
Still, he supposed it would be a little hypocritical for him to judge Harry too harshly given that he’d spent most of the afternoon doing deliciously debauched things to Lucius Malfoy’s only son, who currently seemed to be clutching onto him a rather possessive fashion.
“Malfoy.”
“What.”
“Do you want to go out for something to eat soon? I’m starving.”
“What, you mean go out for something to eat with you?”
“Well, yeah.”
“You mean, go out for something to eat with you, as in going on some kind of date?”
It took a few moments for Ron to answer. “Er, well, I suppose, if you wanted to look at it like that.”
Draco propped his head up with his hand and regarded Ron with a look that couldn’t be more different from the innocent-seeming slumber of a few minutes ago. “So you want to take me on a date?”
Ron shrugged. “I suppose so. I mean, we have been shagging each other on and off for a few months now.”
Draco raised an eyebrow, suddenly making Ron feel very foolish indeed. The man clearly had no interest in him other than as sex toy and occasional comfort blanket.
“Oh all right then, but you better not start calling me by any revolting pet names, otherwise I’ll have to kill you.”
“That sounds fair enough,” Ron said, trying to keep himself from beaming like an idiot. And then, because he was still Ron Weasley he couldn’t help but add: “My little ferret.”
Revenge was instantaneous and took the form of repeated clouting over the head with a pillow.
“You. Will. Not. Call. Me. That. Ever. Again. You. Bastard,” shouted Draco, punctuating each word with a blow.
“All right, all right,” said Ron, not quite certain whether he’d caused genuine offence or not.
“Apologise.” The command was sharply spoken.
“I’m sorry.”
“What for.”
“For calling you my little ferret.”
“Well,” said Draco with a sigh, voice losing its outrage, “I suppose I’ll forgive you this once.” A grin stole over his face. “My darling Weasel.”
Inexplicably relieved, it was Ron’s turn to strike back with feather-stuffed retribution.
Dinner, needless to say, was temporarily forgotten.
Author: dreya_uberwald
Giftee: circeniko
Rating: PG-13/R (for language)
Word Count(for fic): 3800
Characters/Pairings: Ron/Draco, mentions of Harry/Lucius.
Warnings: Crackfic
Author’s Notes: I was given so many possible prompts to chose from here. In the end I opted for the one requesting crackfic, fluff and snappy dialogue. Hope I’ve managed to deliver.
Summary: Ronald Weasley’s fast running out of excuses for his repeated ‘lapses in judgement’ when it comes to his former enemy.
As the haze of intoxication and lust began to dissipate and the grim, harsh realities of what had just happened started to set in, a flushed, rather nauseous and decidedly naked Ronald Bilius Weasley sat bolt upright and groaned.
“Oh bloody hell!”
They were three words that he had grown increasingly used to uttering of late. So much so that the exclamation mark implicit in his voice was now quite superfluous and more than a tad disingenuous. Still, he couldn’t very well admit to himself that he was growing accustomed to… to, well, this happening.
Ron looked down at the pale, blonde and equally naked form lying on the floor next to him. A form that was staring resolutely back at him.
“Something wrong, Weasley?” It was the voice of somebody who was attempting to affect an air of dismissive boredom, but was in actuality experiencing a pronounced case of moderate to high embarrassment.
“What do you think, Malfoy?” He said, in tones of deepest disgruntlement, as he scrabbled round for his clothing, which was currently strewn about the worn oak floorboards of the room above the Hangman’s Haunt Inn on Knockturn Alley.
Draco gave a sneer, or at least what looked like it was attempting to be a sneer; truth be told it resembled a stroppy pout more than anything else. “I don’t know Weasley, not being a mind reader I have to actually ask you these questions. But if we’re going on recent history my guess is that you’re about to make some remark about me taking advantage of you while you were under the influence of seven varieties of Goblin distilled alcohol, despite the fact that you were the one who challenged me to that drinking contest.”
Ron didn’t respond, opting instead to glower and pull his boxer shorts back on. It was with great embarrassment that he realised they that they were the novelty Marvin Miggs the Mad Muggle ones that his mother had bought for him a few weeks earlier.
“In fact,” Draco continued, thankfully ignoring Ron’s ignominious underwear. “I might even go as far as to suggest that you spent several hours looking for me so that I could take drunken advantage of you.”
“What?”
“Well, when I went into the Viper’s Nest earlier, the barman told me that you’d been asking if I was around.”
“Yeah, so I could avoid you.” He knew that this was this wasn’t going to convince anybody, let alone himself, but it seemed like the most face saving thing he could say under the circumstances. Part of him was regretting partaking in Goblin liquor rather than Fire Whisky. While the hangover you got with the Goblin stuff was a bit lighter, the fact that you started to sober up within a couple of hours could be rather inconvenient; and at this point in time being completely and utterly sloshed would have been a definite plus.
“Your excuses really are getting ever more pathetic, Weasley, you know that? The one you gave me after last time about accidentally falling into a vat of love potion in one of the Confiscated Magical Substances Storerooms at the Ministry was laughable.”
That, Ron thought, was unfair. He had fallen into that vat filled with a variety of love potion currently residing on the Ministry’s banned list; even if it was part of an extremely watered down batch, which was incapable of inducing anything more than a case of very mild lust and had its effects limited to the first person one looked directly in the eye after consumption (he’d spent the subsequent two hours finding the middle-aged and distinctly motherly first aid witch worryingly attractive).
“Next time you’ll be telling me that a Snorkack made you do it.”
“Sod off Malfoy.” He tried to refrain from dwelling on the fact that he’d earlier been half-heartedly wondering if any of the strange phenomena reported in last week’s Quibbler might form the basis of an excuse for any future ‘lapses of judgement’. Not that there were going to be any more lapses, of course. This was the last time ever. No, really, none of the other last times had ever been quite as final as this.
“Droll as ever Weasley,” said Draco, who had finally dragged himself up off the floor and was now putting on his robes. His expression was one that - had it resided on the face of anybody else - Ron would have most probably interpreted as mild hurt.
“Says the man who at one time thought that calling me and Harry ‘Potty and the Weasel’ could be classed as devastating wit.”
“Yes, when I was about twelve.”
“All right, but you’re also the bloke who once spent over an hour trying to make obscene anagrams of the Russian Magical President’s name on a napkin.”
“You laughed at them too, didn’t you?”
“Only because I was extremely drunk at the time.”
“So was I.”
“Yeah, but I was drunker.”
“Sod off Weasley.”
“Fine,” Ron snapped, with a tad more venom than was really warranted. Unfortunately for him, the brisk storming out that would generally accompany a sharply spoken word such as this was prevented by the fact that he was still trying to button up his shirt. Thus, he was forced to continue fumblingly dress himself as a cold and very awkward silence descended between them.
The real kicker however was that Draco somehow managed to finish getting his clothes back on and walk out of the door before Ron did.
Still, he told himself as he realised that he’d actually put his shirt on inside out, this wouldn’t be happening again. From now on he’d do his level best to avoid the Malfoy heir.
Ten minutes and several muttered profanities later he was dressed - if in a noticeably rumpled fashion - and ready to leave Knockturn Alley’s seediest pub; which he did after casting upon himself the glamour he always used on these occasions. He just hoped that when he got home his housemates weren’t going to ask what he’d been up to.
As luck would have it by the time he apparated on the doorstep, everybody else was in bed.
His decision to move out of the Burrow and into Grimmauld Place with Harry, Hermione, Neville and Luna had caused a heated argument with his mother, which had left relations between them strained to the point that there were moments when Ron questioned whether he had made the right decision. This, needless to say, was not one of those moments. The thought of being quizzed by his parents on the subject as to where he’d been all night was just too cringe-inducing to bear.
The door creaked open as the password was spoken and he stepped into the pitch black hallway, drawing his wand.
“Lumos,” he whispered as quietly as he could. A dim glow filled the corridor. Luckily his room was on the first floor and just next to the staircase, which greatly reduced the chance of him waking anybody or - given that this was, despite the recent change in ownership, still 12, Grimmauld Place - anything up.
Tentatively he walked up the stairs, trying to cause as little squeaking as possible, and carefully opened the first door on the left.
Exhausted, he collapsed onto the unmade bed within.
Never again, he thought. Never again. Draco Malfoy could just stay the hell away from him.
Three hours later he was awoken by the shrill ring of the alarm clock that Hermione had given him for his last birthday. The pitch of the accursed thing was such that it succeeded in making anybody unfortunate enough to be within a ten metre radius feel as though some ungodly force had seen fit to take a Muggle power drill to their head.
Silencing the infernal device, he groaned pitifully before hauling himself out of bed, trudging down to the kitchen and making himself a cup of extra strong coffee. All the while trying to draw comfort from the fact that tomorrow was Saturday.
Nobody else was up. The lazy bastards. It irked him beyond belief that out of all of them he was the only one who’d ended up paper pushing at the Ministry of Magic. Harry was an Auror, Luna had all but taken over editorship of the Quibbler, Neville worked with his plants and Hermione was combining advanced charms research with Elf Rights campaigning. Ron used to have a job that he enjoyed too. Unfortunately after one too many accidents with the merchandise, Fred and George had been angry enough to give him the sack. His parents had hated the idea of him being unemployed and so his father had managed to get him a job as a clerk in the Confiscated Magical Substances Office. He hated it, he really did; but until Fred and George decided to forgive him for the completely unintentional destruction of seven-hundred Galleons worth of Skiving Snackboxes, his only other alternative would be to sponge off Harry. And he was damned if he was going to do that. So each morning, Monday to Friday, he got up at 6:00 a.m., had breakfast and apparated to work. This day was no exception. After two cups of coffee and a bowl of sugary cereal, he stepped out of the front door, which slammed itself shut behind him, and materialised outside the Ministry of Magic, ready for another tedious, soul destroying day at the Office.
Or at least, so he thought.
The first few hours passed in a perfectly normal fashion: filing, stock taking, having his arse pinched by the elderly witch who brought around the tea trolley and dealing with a howler from an irate wizard from Yorkshire who was demanding to know why the Department of Magical Law Enforcement had seen fit to retain his supply of Exploding Doxy Spray, despite the fact that it was responsible for the new two-hundred and fifty foot crater that was now residing in the middle of the Pennines.
Around lunchtime however he noticed that people were giving him what one might call ‘funny looks’. At first he tried to ignore it, thinking that it was paranoia spawned by spending a sizeable chunk of the previous night doing obscene things to Draco Malfoy. However when a young witch he vaguely recognised as belonging to the Auror Squad stopped him in a corridor and made enquiries, voice full of concern, as to how he and friends were handling things, he found himself decided unsettled.
“We’re fine thanks,” he said in reply to the question, feeling decided puzzled.
“He and Hermione aren’t an item, are they?” she asked.
Ron shook his head. “No, I don’t think he’s really interested in being in a relationship at the moment.” He couldn’t help but let a little irritation seep into his voice; if she thought that Ron was going to play cupid for her and Harry, she had another thing coming. Over the years he’d grown decidedly tired of being seen by the world as little more than ‘that bloke who knows Potter’, and wished that - just for once - some attractive young witch or wizard would beseech The Boy Who Kicked the Dark Lord’s Arse to set them up with his handsome red-headed friend.
Rather than looking disheartened however the witch gave a sympathetic nod. “Just as well I suppose.”
As she proceeded on her way, Ron shook his head in confusion, convinced that the whole world had gone slightly loopy.
It didn’t stop there though. Three more people - Ministry employees he’d never exchanged more than a quick hello with - approached him and, in anxious voices, asked how things were at home.
He told them that everything was fine. A response to which they nodded indulgently, rather like one would to a child who was being especially brave in the face of adversity.
Even stranger than this however were the older wizards and witches who walked up to him and muttered darkly about disgusting perversions and the moral degeneracy of young people today. Part of him reeled at the possibility that they knew about what had gone on between him and Draco the previous night; but the rational part of his brain told him that it was highly unlikely that anybody had recognised him under the glamour he’d been sporting.
He was about to mentally upgraded the state of the world from ‘slightly loopy’ to ‘outright demented’, when he bumped into Angelina Johnson - the current Assistant Deputy Head of Magical Games and Sports - as he was delivering a requisition form for more pencils to the Stationary Office.
“Alright Ron,” she said with smile.
Well, at least somebody was behaving in a semi-normal fashion, he thought, as he said a quick hello.
She took a deep and ominous breath.
He winced as he realised that he’d thought too soon.
“Ron,” she said, voice suddenly sombre. “I’d just like to say that I don’t believe any of it.”
Ron’s brow furrowed. “Any of what?”
“The article. I mean, that Skeeter woman’s a vindictive cow. She probably got somebody to forge those pictures.”
He felt a stab of panic. “What pictures.”
Angelina’s eyes widened. “You’ve seen today’s Prophet, haven’t you?”
“Er, no,” he said, gulping. Surely she couldn’t mean that Rita Skeeter had found out about him and Draco, could she? The idea of it was just too awful to contemplate. From the most treacherous regions of his mind came a vision of his mother opening the morning paper to see pictures of him and the Malfoy spawn doing… doing…. Thankfully his imagination shut down out of what one can only guess was self-preservation at that point and he looked resignedly at Angelina. “Why, what’s in there?”
“Well, er… I’m not quite sure how to tell you this, but....” She trailed off as she pulled a rather ragged bundle of newspaper from her cloak pocket. “I think that you should probably have a see for yourself.” She thrust it towards him and bit her lip.
Ron took paper and uncrumpled it to reveal the contents of the first page.
He then proceeded to stare open mouthed at the headline and corresponding photograph.
Boy Who Lived’s Raucous Romp With Lusty Lucius
For an indeterminate amount of time he found himself quite unable to move, eyes fixated on the image of what looked horrifically like his best friend sticking his tongue down Azkaban Prisoner #666’s throat.
Once he regained voluntary movement he took the only action that he felt was realistically available to him at that moment.
He blanched and ran.
He ran all the way to the Hangman’s Haunt in Knockturn Alley.
The barman and patrons stared. Without his usual glamour in place he was merely ‘that friend of Harry Potter’s’. None of them recognised him as the man who’d been meeting the Malfoy boy here nearly every week since the beginning last November. Well, none apart from the Malfoy boy in question; who currently seemed to be hunched over a piece of paper bearing a nauseatingly familiar image and looking like he was about to have some kind of seizure. A dangerously reasonable voice in Ron’s mind pointed out that while it was indeed humiliating to be the best mate of the hero who’d been snapped administering a reasonable facsimile of the Dementor’s Kiss to an infamous Death Eater; being Draco Malfoy at this second in time was possibly far far worse than being Ronald Weasley.
Draco didn’t really seem to acknowledge Ron’s approach; preferring instead to emit sporadic whimpers.
“Malfoy,” Ron said quietly, trying not to draw any more attention than was necessary.
There was no response.
“Malfoy, what the fuck is this?” he jabbed a finger at the offending article.
“I don’t know Weasley, I just don’t know. Maybe you should ask Potter.” His voice was uncharacteristically small and strangely distant.
The urge to leap in with an angry defence of Harry briefly surged, but he managed to fight it down.
“It’s a setup right, it has to be,” Ron said, forgetting for a moment that he was trying to enact as little attention grabbing behaviour as possible, and raising his voice.
Draco shook his head. “Mother wondered why he looked so cheerful when she went to visit him last Tuesday. It was the same day that your precious Potter called in to interview that murder suspect.” The man looked like he was about to burst into tears.
“B… but, no it can’t be. Harry wouldn’t do anything like that. I mean, he likes girls, I know he does. He used to go out with my sister, he….” He trailed off as he unwillingly recalled the big smile on his friend’s face the evening he’d returned from that particular trip to Azkaban. “Oh fuck, oh fucking fuck. How the fuck could he be so stupid?”
“The breath of your vocabulary never ceases to amaze me, Weasley,” said Draco, a certain amount of his usual drawl returning to his voice. For some inexplicable reason Ron found this vaguely heartening.
“Oh, sod off Malfoy.”
For a moment Ron was certain that Draco would either: a) punch him, b) hex him or c) storm out of the pub. Instead however the corners of his mouth quirked upwards.
“So what’s it to be, Weasley,” he said in very hushed tones, “your place or mine?”
This was the point at which Ron had sword to himself that he’d tell Draco to sod off, but as he’d already done this once and it hadn’t resulted in him leaving the premises, it seemed only reasonable that they make the best out of the situation. “Well, you’ve got your own flat, while I currently live with Harry, Hermione, Luna and Neville. And right now Hermione’s probably their waiting for Harry to return so she can tell him how thoroughly irresponsible he’s been. So I’d say your place.”
“All right, but you better not bring any Muggle junk with you and leave it lying around on the floor.”
Ron’s brow furrowed. “Why the hell would I have any ‘Muggle junk’ on me?”
“You are a Weasley. Malfoy honour practically demands that I say something derogatory about you and Muggles at this point.”
It was testament to Ron’s self-control that he didn’t make some very obvious and rather cruel remarks at the juncture. “That’s stupid.”
Draco inclined his head in manner that probably trying to be an imperious, but in fact just looked rather childish. “Look, do you want to come or not?”
“I already said so, didn’t I?”
And so he did.
There are in the world several standard comfort sex scenarios. There’s the old: ‘Oh dearie me I’ve got a minor injury/mild cold masquerading as flu and need that special nurse to help me feel better’. There’s also the: ‘I’ve just had something horribly unpleasant and quite possibly traumatic happen to me; help me forget about if for a while’. And, of course, when all else fails there’s always: ‘I’ve just had a really bad day at office, a minor car accident, an argument with my best friend and my cat was sick on the new carpet, please fuck me out of sympathy’. Very rarely however is the variant entitled: ‘My best friend and your father have completely humiliated themselves all over the national press, thereby making us a laughing stock by proxy, let us share and therefore diminish our pain by screwing each other senseless all over the bedroom floor’.
Still, at that point in time, it worked for them.
**********
When Ron awoke, it was in a very comfortable four poster bed with dark green drapes. Clearly all attempts to force the former Death Eater who was currently curled up around him into poverty had been in vain.
He looked down at the blonde head resting on his chest. In this state even Ron had to admit that his once hated enemy looked rather appealing and disturbingly innocent.
As he grudgingly attempted to extricate himself from this entwinement Draco stirred.
“Still here, Weasley?” he said, with a yawn and a stretch that left him even more entangled with Ron than he had been before.
“I was tired so I fell asleep.” It wasn’t a particularly clever response but it was the truth.
“Isn’t this the point at which you start screaming about how I’ve once again taken advantage of your inebriated and vulnerable state?”
Ron wasn’t quite sure how to respond to this, given that it had been Draco rather than himself who’d been drowning his sorrows. He supposed he could claim temporary insanity induced by the psychological trauma of seeing Harry Potter snogging Lucius Malfoy on the front page of the Prophet; but surprisingly, he didn’t feel the least bit inclined to. The trouble was that he was feeling rather comfortable at the moment. Well, aside from the fact that he a) hungry and b) inwardly squirming at the thought of all the snide comments about being the best friend of the Boy Who Snogged That Posh Death Eater Bastard he was going to have to endure for the next few months.
Still, he supposed it would be a little hypocritical for him to judge Harry too harshly given that he’d spent most of the afternoon doing deliciously debauched things to Lucius Malfoy’s only son, who currently seemed to be clutching onto him a rather possessive fashion.
“Malfoy.”
“What.”
“Do you want to go out for something to eat soon? I’m starving.”
“What, you mean go out for something to eat with you?”
“Well, yeah.”
“You mean, go out for something to eat with you, as in going on some kind of date?”
It took a few moments for Ron to answer. “Er, well, I suppose, if you wanted to look at it like that.”
Draco propped his head up with his hand and regarded Ron with a look that couldn’t be more different from the innocent-seeming slumber of a few minutes ago. “So you want to take me on a date?”
Ron shrugged. “I suppose so. I mean, we have been shagging each other on and off for a few months now.”
Draco raised an eyebrow, suddenly making Ron feel very foolish indeed. The man clearly had no interest in him other than as sex toy and occasional comfort blanket.
“Oh all right then, but you better not start calling me by any revolting pet names, otherwise I’ll have to kill you.”
“That sounds fair enough,” Ron said, trying to keep himself from beaming like an idiot. And then, because he was still Ron Weasley he couldn’t help but add: “My little ferret.”
Revenge was instantaneous and took the form of repeated clouting over the head with a pillow.
“You. Will. Not. Call. Me. That. Ever. Again. You. Bastard,” shouted Draco, punctuating each word with a blow.
“All right, all right,” said Ron, not quite certain whether he’d caused genuine offence or not.
“Apologise.” The command was sharply spoken.
“I’m sorry.”
“What for.”
“For calling you my little ferret.”
“Well,” said Draco with a sigh, voice losing its outrage, “I suppose I’ll forgive you this once.” A grin stole over his face. “My darling Weasel.”
Inexplicably relieved, it was Ron’s turn to strike back with feather-stuffed retribution.
Dinner, needless to say, was temporarily forgotten.