(long one-shot) FIC: Turnabout 1/3 [NC-17; HP/DM, RW/DM]
Title: Turnabout (1/3)
Author: Hijja (kennahijja@yahoo.com)
Rating: NC-17; blackmail, ambiguous consent, BDSM themes
Pairing(s): HP/DM, RW/DM
Summary: We'll do nothing he hasn't done to us. And it'll still be far less than he deserves.
One-shot, cut into three parts to enable posting.
Harry waved to Andrew Kirke and Jack Sloan and peeled off his sweaty Quidditch robes before stepping into the shower. He preferred to have the shower room to himself, especially lately. Outside the Quidditch changing rooms, the shouting match between Ron and Ginny was still in full swing. Ron had fouled Malfoy savagely during the match, and the penalty had almost cost Gryffindor the lead in a very close game.
"A fine team captain you are," he heard Ginny yell at her brother. "... almost lost... all because of your ridiculous feud with Malfoy... solve that off the pitch, you git!"
Harry grinned, hit the lever and let the spray drown out the arguing voices. He winced as the hot water cascaded over his back. Only that bloody Slytherin Death Eater brat would come up with a healing charm that took away the bruises, but not the pain. And he'd gone pretty sparingly on the healing itself this time, in order to gain some extra leverage in the Gryffindor-Slytherin match. But he'd caught the Snitch nonetheless, Harry thought smugly. Oh, he knew he would pay for it, and quite likely for Ron's stunt as well, but it had been more than worth it to watch the ferret's rage-filled face as he dropped onto his arse on the pitch, empty-handed and ten feet away from his broom.
He reduced the heat, leaned his forehead against the tiles and lost himself in the luxury of the warm spray. It enveloped him, relaxing his muscles and emptying his mind. It also drowned any outside noise, which was why he jumped when a finger tapped against his shoulder. Harry whirled round, water splattering in all directions, only just in time restraining himself from diving for his wand. This was Hogwarts, after all, but his reflexes were all too often quicker than his thoughts.
"Ron!" he exclaimed, turning off the water and angling for his towel.
"What's that on your shoulder?" Ron asked.
"Er... that..." Harry stalled, painfully aware of how bad a liar he was. Damn that Slytherin bastard! "I went flying yesterday and skirted a bit too closely to the Whomping Willow." He shrugged, throwing on his robes quickly. He did so not want to talk about this with Ron.
"The Whomping Willow?" Ron asked, eyes narrowed.
"Yeah. It probably remembered me all right." Harry's laugh sounded artificial even in his own ears.
"Why didn't you go see Madam Pomfrey?"
"It's just a scratch, really. I didn't want to get another lecture about being an injury magnet."
"I see." Ron watched him dress dispassionately, and then slapped him on the back when he was busy towelling his dripping hair. It wasn't even a hard slap, but the sudden stinging pain made Harry yelp and almost sent him to his knees on the floor. Tears stung in his eyes.
"Just a scratch from the Whomping Willow, hm?" Ron's voice was dangerously low. "Care to try the truth, mate? Someone hurt you, or cursed you. Who?"
Don't go there, Ron!
"I said it was an accident," Harry snapped. "Look, can we just not talk about it?"
A year or so ago, his tone might have been enough to send his best friend off in an angry huff, but becoming first a prefect, then Quidditch captain had given Ron a degree of self-possession he had lacked before. He would never make a great Keeper, but his game strategies were inspired. In general, Harry was happy about this development, since it diminished the potential for clashes when Ron was confronted with his best friend's fame as the 'Boy Who Lived'. Now, however, was a particularly bad time for Ron to display his newfound maturity.
The redhead just shook his head resolutely.
"No, we can't," he stated matter-of-factly, then turned and glowered at Euan Abercrombie and Marius Crockford, Gryffindor's new junior chasers, who had stormed in raucously, brooms still in hand.
"Get your sticks into the broom shed, for Merlin's sake," Ron barked. "Do you have any idea what humidity does to a fine-tuned racing broom?"
They darted back out of the door as if they'd been hit with a Reductor Curse. Ron's Quidditch coach command voice tended to provoke snickers at best from Harry or Ginny, Jack and Andrew, but it still impressed the heck out of the newbies. Ron shrugged.
"Looks like this isn't the best place to sort this out." He pulled his gloves off and threw his robe after them. "I'll see you in half an hour in our dormitory." He gave Harry a hard look. "And don't try to hide from me, mate. If I have to get Hermione to help hunting you down, I'll throw you into detention with Filch for so long you'll wish someone trying to turn your sorry hide into hash was your only problem."
Had he felt a little less miserable, Harry would have grinned at that, but so he just nodded dejectedly and left, feeling more anxious than he ever had this year, which was saying something.
***
Half an hour later, Harry was lingering indecisively in front of Gryffindor Tower's portrait hole, pondering what to do. He didn't really think Ron would give him detention if he backed out of this 'appointment', and even if, he'd take almost anything over that particular talk. But it wasn't as if he could avoid Ron forever - they slept in the same room, for God's sake! It would only piss him off more.
A hand closing around his arm solved his dilemma.
"Don't even think about running!"
Heart plummeting, Harry stared into Ron's determined eyes, but put up no resistance as his friend marched him into the seventh-year boys dorm before him. Dean and Seamus were on their way out, loaded down with sweets and butterbeer for the victory party. Only Neville was left, sitting cross-legged on his four-poster and munching on a chocolate frog while watering his Mimbulus mimbletonia, which had grown to breath-taking proportions since their fifth year. It was now occupying Neville's whole bedside table and was making forays onto Harry's next to it.
Ron waited until Dean and Seamus had left with their load, then turned to Neville.
"Neville, Harry and I need to have a talk in private - would you mind? We'll be down for the party in a bit."
Neville gave them a wide-eyed look and swung his legs off the bed.
"You're going to yell, aren't you?"
"Of course not," said Harry.
"Quite likely," said Ron serenely.
Neville grinned and nodded, levitating his watering can away before pulling the door shut behind him.
Harry slumped down on his bed. He still had no idea about how to steer Ron off his perilous course. There was a steely glint in his best friend's eyes, and if he looked this angry now, he would fly off the handle in spectacular fashion if Harry let him in on the truth.
Ron flopped down on the end of the mattress, one lanky foot tucked under.
"Now spill. Who did it?"
"Ron, I hate keeping things from you, but this is extremely personal. Believe me, you don't want to know."
"You mean You-Know-Who has found a way to take over your mind again and is using it to slowly torture you to death?"
Harry gaped in shock.
"No!"
"Good," Ron replied. "Because that's the worst thing I could think of." A tight knot was forming in Harry's throat. "Now don't take this personally, all right," Ron continued doggedly, "but... are you letting someone beat the stuffing out of you because you get off on it?"
"No!" Harry yelled again.
"So what the heck's going on?"
Harry fiddled with a corner of his pillow to cover up the furious whirring of his brain. Well, Ron kept preaching at him that attack was better than defence at wizard chess... Attack it is, then.
"How come you're jumping to conclusions like that?" he asked, one eyebrow pulled up provocatively. "Have had any first-hand experience with getting your jollies that way recently?"
Harry winced at the way Ron's lips thinned, but there was something deeply suspicious about the way his friend's face went first white, then bright red.
"We're not talking about me!" Ron sputtered after a few seconds' struggle to swallow around his tongue.
"No?" Harry settled for his most innocent expression and let a bit of steel come out in his voice. "Perhaps we should?" Yes, there was something to be said for taking the offensive.
"You're trying to weasel out of this," Ron complained.
"Yep," Harry nodded, suppressing the impulse to go for the pun. "But you're hiding something just the same. Don't try to deny it - you're a lousy liar."
Ron bit his lips. He looked supremely awkward. "All right. You'll tell me, I'll tell you."
"Fair enough," Harry agreed. "You first."
Swallowing yet another protest, Ron tucked under his other foot as well to sit cross-legged, and took a deep breath. Then another.
"Look, Harry," he began very hesitantly. "It just kind of... looked like we might have a similar problem." He turned slightly and pulled his robe down from his shoulder. The pale, freckled skin was marred by an angry red line that made Harry's own scratch sting in commiseration. Icy rage flooded through Harry, but when he opened his mouth - to curse most vilely - Ron's raised hand stopped him.
"No, let me finish, otherwise I'll never work up the courage to start again." Harry nodded and relaxed fragmentarily.
"Remember when we came back to school this year? You'd been cooped up with the bloody Dursleys all summer, and you were still so miserable about Sirius?"
Harry nodded again. Yes, Wormtail Polyjuicing himself into Sirius come back from the Veil had been the distinct lowlight of his sixth year, and dashing that illusion had thrown Harry back into the grip of a depression as severe as the one after his godfather's first 'death'. Recent... developments had eclipsed some of his self-pity and replaced it with furious adrenaline, but it had been the most miserable start of a school year ever.
"Well, you... I... you were more downcast than usual one evening, staring out at the lake all alone, and..." Ron floundered, the tinge of his face slowly approaching the colour of his hair. Harry frowned. He remembered sitting out by the lake a lot, but...
"Well, I kind of went over to keep you company, and patted you on the arm, and then you kind of-" Ron's voice sunk down to a pained whisper, "-you kind of kissed me, and I thought what the heck, if it gets you out of your misery-"
"What?" Harry yelped, overcome by surprise and a deep, horrible sense of dread. This could not be! "I've never..."
"I know you didn't!" Ron yelled back and ran an agitated hand through his hair, systematically reducing it to a mess to rival Harry's. "Just listen, all right! Well, we... hell, you get the picture, don't you?" Harry nodded, white with terror. Ron's mouth set in a thin line, and his hand twisted in the bedclothes as if he were strangling an invisible enemy.
"Let's just say that when we were... done... the Polyjuice wore off and you turned into something else altogether." A strange flicker ran over his face, like the residual pain from an old injury, and Harry squashed the urge to pull him into a consoling hug. Considering the topic they were on, this would be the worst possible response. Fierce anger coiled in his stomach, but he didn't want Ron to think it was directed at him.
"Draco Malfoy," he said.
Ron's gaze dropped to the floor.
"He threatened to tell you. He said he could record it in a Pensieve and project the images all over Hogwarts."
"Ron..."
"I didn't even know you could do that with a Pensieve. I went to the bloody library to check-"
"Ron."
"He swore he wouldn't tell you if I agreed to..." A convulsive swallow.
"Ron!"
"And then he just told you anyway, that bastard, and blackmailed you too, for my own bloody stupidity!"
"Ron, dammit!" Harry grabbed his upper arms and forced him to look up. "He did not tell me."
"That bloody fucking bastard - what?" Ron paled until his freckles looked like a drizzle of blood on his face. "But you... I saw... I thought..." He hid behind his hands and flopped face-down onto the mattress like a warrior who had been dealt a death blow. "Just kill me now."
"No," Harry snarled through his teeth. "I'm quite ready to kill somebody, but it isn't you." He bit his lip, almost glad that Ron couldn't see him. "Let me tell you a little story myself."
Ron nodded faintly into the bedding, or maybe his shoulders were just shaking.
"Remember our first game this year, when Ravenclaw flattened us with their new line-up of Chasers even though I got the Snitch?" Ron groaned painfully. "Yes, I've never seen you this miserable." For a while, Harry had expected Ron to try and drown himself in the lake, broomstick, Quidditch gear and all. "Well, Ginny and Dean were trying to throw that consolation party, and you were hiding in our dorm..."
"Huh?" Ron's head came up, and Harry swatted it down again firmly.
"Well, I stuck my head through your curtains to ask if you wanted to come down, and then you just pulled me in and kissed me and put a silencing charm on the bed curtains and..."
"I was hiding in the Quidditch supplies shed with a half a bottle of cheap Firewhisky," Ron said flatly.
"I know."
Ron surged up with all the vehemence of a Grindylow coming at its prey from the depths of its pond.
"Fucking Merlin on a broomstick! He did both of us with the same trick, and then blackmailed each with the threat of telling the other?"
"Oh yes," Harry nodded bitterly.
Ron paused, mouth hanging slightly open for almost a minute before expelling the breath he'd been holding.
"You know, aside from the fact that I'd love to slowly disembowel him with a blunt quill, that is almost brilliant."
"You're not kidding! If that stunt ever becomes public, it'll catapult him right among the top entries of the Slytherin Encyclopaedia of Evil."
They pondered it quietly, until Harry forced his tongue around the question that burned inside him, but did not really want to come out.
"What... what did he do to you?"
Ron's face went blank. He didn't blush, or flinch, or turn away, which made it worse somehow. His voice, too, was schooled in concentrated calm.
"Put me down a bit. Lashed me a lot. Fucked me, of course." The calm turned to brittleness at the end, and Harry felt an overwhelming surge of rage at Malfoy, who couldn't have kept this between the two of them, who had to do it to his best friend as well. He, Harry, could deal with whatever Malfoy threw at him and then some, but to use Ron like this, whose self-confidence had always been so fragile... A sharp punch to the arm knocked him out of his fretting.
"If you start going all guilt-ridden hero on me I'll hex you," Ron warned. "I'm dealing. It's you I'm worried about. You've got enough on your plate, You-Know-Who and the bloody prophecy and all, without playing sex toy for the fucking ferret!"
Harry couldn't suppress a snort at that. There was something ultimately hilarious about the whole thing, well, if the universe had a very sick sense of humour. Which, judging from his past experiences, probably was the case.
"Well," he said, allowing the corner of his mouth to curl upwards as it wanted to, "he told me at the end of our fifth year that he'd have me. I just didn't expect that he meant it that way."
Ron returned his wry grin. "We're pretty ridiculous, aren't we?"
"Pretty!"
"Harry?"
"Hm?"
"You know I love you, right? I mean you're my best friend, but... it's not that I'd mind shagging you, but if you don't... you know? It's not as if there's anything wrong with shagging guys, of course, but you... Well, you're almost my brother. That's just weird."
Harry broke into the first relieved grin of the day and took a deep, liberating breath.
"Yes, definitely weird. I'm really glad that you don't... I mean... with me... you know."
Ron returned the grin and nodded empathically. "I know." Then his brows start to furrow again. "Mate... if he did that with us - do you think he might have tried it on Hermione as well?"
His hands balled into fists at the thought, and his neck turned an alarming shade of red. Harry pondered it, though with far less apprehension. He shook his head.
"I doubt it. He'd never seduce a Muggleborn, given that endless pureblood crap he's spouting all the time. And she'd never fall for it. She wouldn't jump into bed with one of us just on impulse, and she would have ripped Malfoy's balls off if he tried anything."
Ron's breath calmed slightly.
"You're right. She's brighter than us. Although ripping the bastard's balls off sounds pretty good to me."
"It does, doesn't it?" Harry agreed fervently. "Which brings us to the point... what are we going to do with Malfoy?"
"I say we kill him, pull a Crouch and Transfigure his body into a bone, and feed it to Fang," Ron proposed with feeling. "On second thought, let's Transfigure it into a fish head and feed it to Mrs Norris - if she chokes on him, we'll have hit two Doxies with one spray."
"Have you..." Harry hesitated. "Have you ever thought about... how it would be if the roles were reversed?" He felt heat creeping into his face, and observed the scarlet quilt on his bed to avoid looking at Ron. A quiet chuckle made him look up.
"Quite a bit," Ron answered with an ominous smile curving about his lips.
Continue to Part 2
Note: Thanks to amanuensis1, icarusancalion and Thea for beta-reading and advice. I've been fiddling with and procrastinating over this for over a year, so I'd be ecstatic about any kind of feedback...
Disclaimer: The characters in this story belong to J K Rowling. I'm just experimenting with them a bit. No harm intended, no money made.
Author: Hijja (kennahijja@yahoo.com)
Rating: NC-17; blackmail, ambiguous consent, BDSM themes
Pairing(s): HP/DM, RW/DM
Summary: We'll do nothing he hasn't done to us. And it'll still be far less than he deserves.
One-shot, cut into three parts to enable posting.
Harry waved to Andrew Kirke and Jack Sloan and peeled off his sweaty Quidditch robes before stepping into the shower. He preferred to have the shower room to himself, especially lately. Outside the Quidditch changing rooms, the shouting match between Ron and Ginny was still in full swing. Ron had fouled Malfoy savagely during the match, and the penalty had almost cost Gryffindor the lead in a very close game.
"A fine team captain you are," he heard Ginny yell at her brother. "... almost lost... all because of your ridiculous feud with Malfoy... solve that off the pitch, you git!"
Harry grinned, hit the lever and let the spray drown out the arguing voices. He winced as the hot water cascaded over his back. Only that bloody Slytherin Death Eater brat would come up with a healing charm that took away the bruises, but not the pain. And he'd gone pretty sparingly on the healing itself this time, in order to gain some extra leverage in the Gryffindor-Slytherin match. But he'd caught the Snitch nonetheless, Harry thought smugly. Oh, he knew he would pay for it, and quite likely for Ron's stunt as well, but it had been more than worth it to watch the ferret's rage-filled face as he dropped onto his arse on the pitch, empty-handed and ten feet away from his broom.
He reduced the heat, leaned his forehead against the tiles and lost himself in the luxury of the warm spray. It enveloped him, relaxing his muscles and emptying his mind. It also drowned any outside noise, which was why he jumped when a finger tapped against his shoulder. Harry whirled round, water splattering in all directions, only just in time restraining himself from diving for his wand. This was Hogwarts, after all, but his reflexes were all too often quicker than his thoughts.
"Ron!" he exclaimed, turning off the water and angling for his towel.
"What's that on your shoulder?" Ron asked.
"Er... that..." Harry stalled, painfully aware of how bad a liar he was. Damn that Slytherin bastard! "I went flying yesterday and skirted a bit too closely to the Whomping Willow." He shrugged, throwing on his robes quickly. He did so not want to talk about this with Ron.
"The Whomping Willow?" Ron asked, eyes narrowed.
"Yeah. It probably remembered me all right." Harry's laugh sounded artificial even in his own ears.
"Why didn't you go see Madam Pomfrey?"
"It's just a scratch, really. I didn't want to get another lecture about being an injury magnet."
"I see." Ron watched him dress dispassionately, and then slapped him on the back when he was busy towelling his dripping hair. It wasn't even a hard slap, but the sudden stinging pain made Harry yelp and almost sent him to his knees on the floor. Tears stung in his eyes.
"Just a scratch from the Whomping Willow, hm?" Ron's voice was dangerously low. "Care to try the truth, mate? Someone hurt you, or cursed you. Who?"
Don't go there, Ron!
"I said it was an accident," Harry snapped. "Look, can we just not talk about it?"
A year or so ago, his tone might have been enough to send his best friend off in an angry huff, but becoming first a prefect, then Quidditch captain had given Ron a degree of self-possession he had lacked before. He would never make a great Keeper, but his game strategies were inspired. In general, Harry was happy about this development, since it diminished the potential for clashes when Ron was confronted with his best friend's fame as the 'Boy Who Lived'. Now, however, was a particularly bad time for Ron to display his newfound maturity.
The redhead just shook his head resolutely.
"No, we can't," he stated matter-of-factly, then turned and glowered at Euan Abercrombie and Marius Crockford, Gryffindor's new junior chasers, who had stormed in raucously, brooms still in hand.
"Get your sticks into the broom shed, for Merlin's sake," Ron barked. "Do you have any idea what humidity does to a fine-tuned racing broom?"
They darted back out of the door as if they'd been hit with a Reductor Curse. Ron's Quidditch coach command voice tended to provoke snickers at best from Harry or Ginny, Jack and Andrew, but it still impressed the heck out of the newbies. Ron shrugged.
"Looks like this isn't the best place to sort this out." He pulled his gloves off and threw his robe after them. "I'll see you in half an hour in our dormitory." He gave Harry a hard look. "And don't try to hide from me, mate. If I have to get Hermione to help hunting you down, I'll throw you into detention with Filch for so long you'll wish someone trying to turn your sorry hide into hash was your only problem."
Had he felt a little less miserable, Harry would have grinned at that, but so he just nodded dejectedly and left, feeling more anxious than he ever had this year, which was saying something.
***
Half an hour later, Harry was lingering indecisively in front of Gryffindor Tower's portrait hole, pondering what to do. He didn't really think Ron would give him detention if he backed out of this 'appointment', and even if, he'd take almost anything over that particular talk. But it wasn't as if he could avoid Ron forever - they slept in the same room, for God's sake! It would only piss him off more.
A hand closing around his arm solved his dilemma.
"Don't even think about running!"
Heart plummeting, Harry stared into Ron's determined eyes, but put up no resistance as his friend marched him into the seventh-year boys dorm before him. Dean and Seamus were on their way out, loaded down with sweets and butterbeer for the victory party. Only Neville was left, sitting cross-legged on his four-poster and munching on a chocolate frog while watering his Mimbulus mimbletonia, which had grown to breath-taking proportions since their fifth year. It was now occupying Neville's whole bedside table and was making forays onto Harry's next to it.
Ron waited until Dean and Seamus had left with their load, then turned to Neville.
"Neville, Harry and I need to have a talk in private - would you mind? We'll be down for the party in a bit."
Neville gave them a wide-eyed look and swung his legs off the bed.
"You're going to yell, aren't you?"
"Of course not," said Harry.
"Quite likely," said Ron serenely.
Neville grinned and nodded, levitating his watering can away before pulling the door shut behind him.
Harry slumped down on his bed. He still had no idea about how to steer Ron off his perilous course. There was a steely glint in his best friend's eyes, and if he looked this angry now, he would fly off the handle in spectacular fashion if Harry let him in on the truth.
Ron flopped down on the end of the mattress, one lanky foot tucked under.
"Now spill. Who did it?"
"Ron, I hate keeping things from you, but this is extremely personal. Believe me, you don't want to know."
"You mean You-Know-Who has found a way to take over your mind again and is using it to slowly torture you to death?"
Harry gaped in shock.
"No!"
"Good," Ron replied. "Because that's the worst thing I could think of." A tight knot was forming in Harry's throat. "Now don't take this personally, all right," Ron continued doggedly, "but... are you letting someone beat the stuffing out of you because you get off on it?"
"No!" Harry yelled again.
"So what the heck's going on?"
Harry fiddled with a corner of his pillow to cover up the furious whirring of his brain. Well, Ron kept preaching at him that attack was better than defence at wizard chess... Attack it is, then.
"How come you're jumping to conclusions like that?" he asked, one eyebrow pulled up provocatively. "Have had any first-hand experience with getting your jollies that way recently?"
Harry winced at the way Ron's lips thinned, but there was something deeply suspicious about the way his friend's face went first white, then bright red.
"We're not talking about me!" Ron sputtered after a few seconds' struggle to swallow around his tongue.
"No?" Harry settled for his most innocent expression and let a bit of steel come out in his voice. "Perhaps we should?" Yes, there was something to be said for taking the offensive.
"You're trying to weasel out of this," Ron complained.
"Yep," Harry nodded, suppressing the impulse to go for the pun. "But you're hiding something just the same. Don't try to deny it - you're a lousy liar."
Ron bit his lips. He looked supremely awkward. "All right. You'll tell me, I'll tell you."
"Fair enough," Harry agreed. "You first."
Swallowing yet another protest, Ron tucked under his other foot as well to sit cross-legged, and took a deep breath. Then another.
"Look, Harry," he began very hesitantly. "It just kind of... looked like we might have a similar problem." He turned slightly and pulled his robe down from his shoulder. The pale, freckled skin was marred by an angry red line that made Harry's own scratch sting in commiseration. Icy rage flooded through Harry, but when he opened his mouth - to curse most vilely - Ron's raised hand stopped him.
"No, let me finish, otherwise I'll never work up the courage to start again." Harry nodded and relaxed fragmentarily.
"Remember when we came back to school this year? You'd been cooped up with the bloody Dursleys all summer, and you were still so miserable about Sirius?"
Harry nodded again. Yes, Wormtail Polyjuicing himself into Sirius come back from the Veil had been the distinct lowlight of his sixth year, and dashing that illusion had thrown Harry back into the grip of a depression as severe as the one after his godfather's first 'death'. Recent... developments had eclipsed some of his self-pity and replaced it with furious adrenaline, but it had been the most miserable start of a school year ever.
"Well, you... I... you were more downcast than usual one evening, staring out at the lake all alone, and..." Ron floundered, the tinge of his face slowly approaching the colour of his hair. Harry frowned. He remembered sitting out by the lake a lot, but...
"Well, I kind of went over to keep you company, and patted you on the arm, and then you kind of-" Ron's voice sunk down to a pained whisper, "-you kind of kissed me, and I thought what the heck, if it gets you out of your misery-"
"What?" Harry yelped, overcome by surprise and a deep, horrible sense of dread. This could not be! "I've never..."
"I know you didn't!" Ron yelled back and ran an agitated hand through his hair, systematically reducing it to a mess to rival Harry's. "Just listen, all right! Well, we... hell, you get the picture, don't you?" Harry nodded, white with terror. Ron's mouth set in a thin line, and his hand twisted in the bedclothes as if he were strangling an invisible enemy.
"Let's just say that when we were... done... the Polyjuice wore off and you turned into something else altogether." A strange flicker ran over his face, like the residual pain from an old injury, and Harry squashed the urge to pull him into a consoling hug. Considering the topic they were on, this would be the worst possible response. Fierce anger coiled in his stomach, but he didn't want Ron to think it was directed at him.
"Draco Malfoy," he said.
Ron's gaze dropped to the floor.
"He threatened to tell you. He said he could record it in a Pensieve and project the images all over Hogwarts."
"Ron..."
"I didn't even know you could do that with a Pensieve. I went to the bloody library to check-"
"Ron."
"He swore he wouldn't tell you if I agreed to..." A convulsive swallow.
"Ron!"
"And then he just told you anyway, that bastard, and blackmailed you too, for my own bloody stupidity!"
"Ron, dammit!" Harry grabbed his upper arms and forced him to look up. "He did not tell me."
"That bloody fucking bastard - what?" Ron paled until his freckles looked like a drizzle of blood on his face. "But you... I saw... I thought..." He hid behind his hands and flopped face-down onto the mattress like a warrior who had been dealt a death blow. "Just kill me now."
"No," Harry snarled through his teeth. "I'm quite ready to kill somebody, but it isn't you." He bit his lip, almost glad that Ron couldn't see him. "Let me tell you a little story myself."
Ron nodded faintly into the bedding, or maybe his shoulders were just shaking.
"Remember our first game this year, when Ravenclaw flattened us with their new line-up of Chasers even though I got the Snitch?" Ron groaned painfully. "Yes, I've never seen you this miserable." For a while, Harry had expected Ron to try and drown himself in the lake, broomstick, Quidditch gear and all. "Well, Ginny and Dean were trying to throw that consolation party, and you were hiding in our dorm..."
"Huh?" Ron's head came up, and Harry swatted it down again firmly.
"Well, I stuck my head through your curtains to ask if you wanted to come down, and then you just pulled me in and kissed me and put a silencing charm on the bed curtains and..."
"I was hiding in the Quidditch supplies shed with a half a bottle of cheap Firewhisky," Ron said flatly.
"I know."
Ron surged up with all the vehemence of a Grindylow coming at its prey from the depths of its pond.
"Fucking Merlin on a broomstick! He did both of us with the same trick, and then blackmailed each with the threat of telling the other?"
"Oh yes," Harry nodded bitterly.
Ron paused, mouth hanging slightly open for almost a minute before expelling the breath he'd been holding.
"You know, aside from the fact that I'd love to slowly disembowel him with a blunt quill, that is almost brilliant."
"You're not kidding! If that stunt ever becomes public, it'll catapult him right among the top entries of the Slytherin Encyclopaedia of Evil."
They pondered it quietly, until Harry forced his tongue around the question that burned inside him, but did not really want to come out.
"What... what did he do to you?"
Ron's face went blank. He didn't blush, or flinch, or turn away, which made it worse somehow. His voice, too, was schooled in concentrated calm.
"Put me down a bit. Lashed me a lot. Fucked me, of course." The calm turned to brittleness at the end, and Harry felt an overwhelming surge of rage at Malfoy, who couldn't have kept this between the two of them, who had to do it to his best friend as well. He, Harry, could deal with whatever Malfoy threw at him and then some, but to use Ron like this, whose self-confidence had always been so fragile... A sharp punch to the arm knocked him out of his fretting.
"If you start going all guilt-ridden hero on me I'll hex you," Ron warned. "I'm dealing. It's you I'm worried about. You've got enough on your plate, You-Know-Who and the bloody prophecy and all, without playing sex toy for the fucking ferret!"
Harry couldn't suppress a snort at that. There was something ultimately hilarious about the whole thing, well, if the universe had a very sick sense of humour. Which, judging from his past experiences, probably was the case.
"Well," he said, allowing the corner of his mouth to curl upwards as it wanted to, "he told me at the end of our fifth year that he'd have me. I just didn't expect that he meant it that way."
Ron returned his wry grin. "We're pretty ridiculous, aren't we?"
"Pretty!"
"Harry?"
"Hm?"
"You know I love you, right? I mean you're my best friend, but... it's not that I'd mind shagging you, but if you don't... you know? It's not as if there's anything wrong with shagging guys, of course, but you... Well, you're almost my brother. That's just weird."
Harry broke into the first relieved grin of the day and took a deep, liberating breath.
"Yes, definitely weird. I'm really glad that you don't... I mean... with me... you know."
Ron returned the grin and nodded empathically. "I know." Then his brows start to furrow again. "Mate... if he did that with us - do you think he might have tried it on Hermione as well?"
His hands balled into fists at the thought, and his neck turned an alarming shade of red. Harry pondered it, though with far less apprehension. He shook his head.
"I doubt it. He'd never seduce a Muggleborn, given that endless pureblood crap he's spouting all the time. And she'd never fall for it. She wouldn't jump into bed with one of us just on impulse, and she would have ripped Malfoy's balls off if he tried anything."
Ron's breath calmed slightly.
"You're right. She's brighter than us. Although ripping the bastard's balls off sounds pretty good to me."
"It does, doesn't it?" Harry agreed fervently. "Which brings us to the point... what are we going to do with Malfoy?"
"I say we kill him, pull a Crouch and Transfigure his body into a bone, and feed it to Fang," Ron proposed with feeling. "On second thought, let's Transfigure it into a fish head and feed it to Mrs Norris - if she chokes on him, we'll have hit two Doxies with one spray."
"Have you..." Harry hesitated. "Have you ever thought about... how it would be if the roles were reversed?" He felt heat creeping into his face, and observed the scarlet quilt on his bed to avoid looking at Ron. A quiet chuckle made him look up.
"Quite a bit," Ron answered with an ominous smile curving about his lips.
Continue to Part 2
Note: Thanks to amanuensis1, icarusancalion and Thea for beta-reading and advice. I've been fiddling with and procrastinating over this for over a year, so I'd be ecstatic about any kind of feedback...
Disclaimer: The characters in this story belong to J K Rowling. I'm just experimenting with them a bit. No harm intended, no money made.