Chapter five.
******
"Today marks the beginning of our transition from theory to practice of the material. You've probably noticed that the room is a bit different today."
Harry had noticed that. Upon first walking into class the row of small booths with heavy purple curtains along the far wall had caught his eye. He found his gaze drawn back to them and apprehension seized him at the implications of what the more private accommodations could mean.
"We'll be starting slow, so there's no need to worry if you're unexperienced. Today you'll only be kissing your partners."
Through all of his many dreadful classes- Snape's humiliating Potions practicals, Umbridge's godawful DADA lessons, Trelawney's rubbish- Harry had never been more sorely tempted to walk out of a class than he was right then.
"Please move to one of the booths with your assigned partner and begin."
Harry didn't need to see Draco to know that he had remained just as firmly rooted to the spot as himself. He avoided looking directly at Professor Mason, prolonging the moment until she would force him to participate. He groaned when he heard her call their names.
"Mr. Potter? Mr. Malfoy? Could you come to the front, please?" she asked, and smiled at their identical scowls as they made their way to stand before her. "There's no need for those frowns quite yet, boys. I knew you'd refuse to take part in today's lesson and I've arranged something special for you. Follow me."
Harry and Draco shared a puzzled look before falling into step behind her as she made her way to one of the booths. Once all three of them were inside, she drew the heavy violet drape closed and turned to face them.
The first thing that Harry noticed was that the booth, quite like the Weasleys' tents at the Quidditch World Cup, was much larger inside than it appeared from the outside. It was comfortably furnished with two squashy armchairs and a loveseat. Harry and Draco each took one of the chairs. Mason remained standing.
"One moment," she said, searching through her robes. "Ah, here we are."
Drawing a small vial out of her pocket she unscrewed the cap and withdrew an eyedropper full of clear liquid. Tilting her head back, she carefully squeezed three drops onto her tongue before replacing the cap.
"Testing. My name is Alb- Rosemary Mason," she said awkwardly. "Well, everything appears to be in order."
"Er, Professor?" Harry spoke up. "Is that Veritaserum?"
"Yes, Harry, it is," she told him, walking toward the two boys seated across one another to set the vial down on a table between them. "I feel that you and Draco aren't comfortable enough with one another yet to take part in normal class lessons. Perhaps a bit of honestly will help to ease the problem."
"Doubtful," muttered Harry.
"Three drops, Mr. Potter. On the tongue," she ordered, arms folded over her chest.
Harry sighed and took the vial, letting the drops splatter onto his tongue. Reaching out, he set it back on the table and at Mason's nod watched as Malfoy copied him.
"Good," said Mason crisply. "You have the entire period, one hour, to discuss whatever you wish."
She waited a moment to make sure that they would start on their own, and predictably, they did not.
Sighing, she pulled the curtain back and snapped, "Mr. Potter, why did you jump away from Mr. Malfoy as though he were diseased after the last class? Discuss."
Harry gaped at the closed curtain for several moments after she had left until the pull of the Veritaserum began to take effect. Gritting his teeth he glanced up through his bangs to see Malfoy staring at him intently.
"Because I was uncomfortable," he said quickly.
"Why?" Draco asked.
"What do you mean, why?" Harry asked, astounded. "I- we- We hate each other, Malfoy! I mean, it's been that way for years and suddenly we're cuddling? It was weird! But..."
Harry immediately shut his mouth with an audible click. The Veritaserum, however, deemed it necessary to answer both honestly and fully and he found himself drawing a deep breath to finish.
"But it wasn't all bad. It was warm," he said, furiously embarrassed.
"Warm?" Malfoy asked.
"Yes. I mean, you were. Warm." Harry said lamely, and felt the rest of it coming before he could stop it. "And you smelled good. And I was uncomfortable because it was you."
Closing his eyes, Harry clenched his traitorous jaw closed and tried not to think about what he'd just revealed. When no scathing retort came from the other side of the room, though, he quickly snatched up the opportunity to return the humiliating favor in kind.
"You didn't seem too eager to get away from me," he remarked, and watched the other boy go pink. "Why was that?"
It was interesting to watch the war waging between Malfoy's pride and the potion in his system. When, predictably, the Veritaserum won out, the Slytherin released a breath and turned his face away from Harry before answering.
"I've never," he paused, desperately trying to come up with a less pathetic way of phrasing it and failing. "I've never been held."
Harry wasn't surprised. He'd never pictured Lucius and Narcissa as very cuddly. But somehow that revelation seemed monumental in understanding Malfoy. He knew the question hadn't been completely answered yet, though.
"When you pulled me around like that, I didn't know what to do. But after awhile, I started to like it, somewhat. It was warm, like you said, and it was... Sort of nice."
Harry swallowed, feeling a strange tightness in his chest that he couldn't identify and didn't want to investigate too deeply. Hating that Malfoy was becoming more human, he scrubbed a hand through his hair and sighed. "God, I can't stand you."
"Thanks, Potter," the blond muttered.
"What? Don't pretend that you don't feel the same way."
Draco remained quiet and under any other circumstances, Harry might have let it go. If the two of them hadn't ingested a truth-telling potion. It occured to him that perhaps Draco wasn't saying anything because he hadn't been asked a direct question. "You do, don't you?"
Draco gripped the arms of his chair, obviously fighting the answer, before murmuring softly, "I don't know."
"Malfoy!" Harry jumped in his seat.
"Please, Potter, just leave it?" Draco winced, pressing his fingers to his eyes dejectedly. Ensuring that Harry couldn't probe further, he quickly asked, "Do you think we can do this? The whole Sex Magic thing?"
"I mean, we're going to have to," Harry said, still a bit unsteady from Malfoy's confession.
"Yeah," Draco agreed.
"But do you want to?" Harry had asked the question before he was even aware of wanting to know the answer.
"What kind of question is that? N- I mean, of course n-" Draco sputtered.
Harry's eyes went wide with malicious glee. "You do, don't you?"
"N-! Damn it! I didn't! Not until yesterday! With the whispering..."
"Whispering?" Harry pressed.
"Merlin, you're a sadist, Potter," Draco groased. "Yes, whispering. In my ear. Last Friday."
"What about it?" Harry asked, genuinely confused.
Draco buried face in his hands. Harry felt embarrassed for him, but he was enjoying this immensely nonetheless.
"Your lips. They were very close to my ear, and your breath was hot, and your voice was pleasant," Draco said in a rush, eager to get it over with.
"You were shaking," Harry remembered, grinning.
"I was no- Oh, hell!" Draco deliberately banged the back of his head against his chair in defeat.
Harry chuckled, and Draco's eyes cracked open to glare at him heatedly. But then Draco was already turning the tables on him.
"What about you, Potter? Pulling me closer? Wrapping your legs around me? Don't tell me you didn't get something out of it."
"I was only trying to keep you from squirming!" Harry exclaimed, thrilled that it was true. "It wasn't my fault that you started pressing back against me! I couldn't help but get distracted."
"Distracted?" Draco repeated with a quirk of one eyebrow.
"Yes, distracted." Harry glared at him.
"Are you sure you weren't enjoying yourself?"
"Ye-" Harry cursed when the potion stopped him and growled instead. "No."
"So you did like it?"
"Yes," said Harry, obviously not liking this game. "Now bugger off, Malfoy."
"I'm only following directions, Potter," Draco smirked, using Harry's own words from the hand-holding lesson against him.
Harry resisted the urge to cross the space between them and knock that infuriating grin off of Malfoy's face.
Unnerved and deeply shaken by the openness that they'd just shared, Harry sank lower in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. After a few moments, Draco shifted in his seat, the creak of springs loud in the silence.
"Do you really hate me?" he asked quietly.
"No," Harry answered automatically, not knowing that it was true until he'd said it. "I used to. But there's a lot of other stuff going on that's more important."
"Thanks," Draco muttered dryly.
"Don't pout," Harry snapped. "I guess I realized at the end of fifth year that I didn't hate you anymore. I know why things changed for me, but what about you?"
Draco didn't answer immediately. He drew his lower lip partially between his teeth and Harry's eyes followed the movement unconsciously. He thought about the other students in the booths around them kissing their partners, and the fact that he and Malfoy would have to kiss as well at some point. A smidge of anticipation tingled in his belly and Harry forced himself to stop thinking about it.
"I don't think I did hate you until the end of fifth year," Draco said softly, looking straight at Harry. "I was embarrassed when you rejected my friendship our first year. It stung and I wanted to hurt you back. But I don't think I genuinely hated you, because if you'd changed your mind and asked to be my friend I would have forgiven everything."
Harry stared at the other boy in mute shock for several seconds before voicing his thoughts. "You insulted my friends, made fun of my parents, and tried to get me expelled or possibly even killed because I hurt your feelings when we were eleven?"
"What can I say? I'm petty."
Harry sighed, rolling his eyes. "Continue. Fifth year?"
"Well, that all changed when you got my father in jail," Draco paused and made a disgusted sound. "As if it wasn't enough that you had to be so bloody perfect! Better at everything, getting away with breaking rules, the famous Boy Who Lived making the front page of the Prophet every other day... Then you had to go and take away the one thing in my life that made me feel that I had something over you."
He gave Harry a vicious look. "After all, at least I had a father."
Harry snarled. "Even under Vertitaserum, you're still just a snotty, spoiled little boy who can only feel good about himself by making other people feel horrible."
Draco turned away and fell into a moody silence. Harry's brain nagged at him that he was missing something important.
"Wait a second," he began. "You still haven't answered my question. Why did you say earlier that you don't know whether or not you hate me?"
Draco turned to give him a look of extreme resentment. The muscles in his jaw twitched a bit as he clenched it tightly, but Harry knew that he had to answer whether he wanted to or not.
"I realized that it wasn't your fault," Draco answered through gritted teeth. "My father made a poor decision and got himself caught."
"Good," Harry said. "So you're not completely stupid after all."
"Fuck you, Potter," Draco breathed heatedly.
"No, Malfoy, I don't think that's the way it's going to be." Harry told him, and watched Malfoy's eyes go wide with shock and disbelief.
Both boys jumped when the curtain was suddenly drawn back and Professor Mason's silhouette filled the entrance.
"I've had the house elves deliver some sandwiches. You'll be completing the day's lesson after you've finished eating," she said, beckoning them out into the empty classroom. The rest of the students had left for dinner in the Great Hall.
The boys rose from their seats, glaring daggers at one another as they walked by her. Looking up toward the heavens, Rosemary Mason heaved a great sigh. "Well, that appears to have been productive."
******
Next chapter.
"Today marks the beginning of our transition from theory to practice of the material. You've probably noticed that the room is a bit different today."
Harry had noticed that. Upon first walking into class the row of small booths with heavy purple curtains along the far wall had caught his eye. He found his gaze drawn back to them and apprehension seized him at the implications of what the more private accommodations could mean.
"We'll be starting slow, so there's no need to worry if you're unexperienced. Today you'll only be kissing your partners."
Through all of his many dreadful classes- Snape's humiliating Potions practicals, Umbridge's godawful DADA lessons, Trelawney's rubbish- Harry had never been more sorely tempted to walk out of a class than he was right then.
"Please move to one of the booths with your assigned partner and begin."
Harry didn't need to see Draco to know that he had remained just as firmly rooted to the spot as himself. He avoided looking directly at Professor Mason, prolonging the moment until she would force him to participate. He groaned when he heard her call their names.
"Mr. Potter? Mr. Malfoy? Could you come to the front, please?" she asked, and smiled at their identical scowls as they made their way to stand before her. "There's no need for those frowns quite yet, boys. I knew you'd refuse to take part in today's lesson and I've arranged something special for you. Follow me."
Harry and Draco shared a puzzled look before falling into step behind her as she made her way to one of the booths. Once all three of them were inside, she drew the heavy violet drape closed and turned to face them.
The first thing that Harry noticed was that the booth, quite like the Weasleys' tents at the Quidditch World Cup, was much larger inside than it appeared from the outside. It was comfortably furnished with two squashy armchairs and a loveseat. Harry and Draco each took one of the chairs. Mason remained standing.
"One moment," she said, searching through her robes. "Ah, here we are."
Drawing a small vial out of her pocket she unscrewed the cap and withdrew an eyedropper full of clear liquid. Tilting her head back, she carefully squeezed three drops onto her tongue before replacing the cap.
"Testing. My name is Alb- Rosemary Mason," she said awkwardly. "Well, everything appears to be in order."
"Er, Professor?" Harry spoke up. "Is that Veritaserum?"
"Yes, Harry, it is," she told him, walking toward the two boys seated across one another to set the vial down on a table between them. "I feel that you and Draco aren't comfortable enough with one another yet to take part in normal class lessons. Perhaps a bit of honestly will help to ease the problem."
"Doubtful," muttered Harry.
"Three drops, Mr. Potter. On the tongue," she ordered, arms folded over her chest.
Harry sighed and took the vial, letting the drops splatter onto his tongue. Reaching out, he set it back on the table and at Mason's nod watched as Malfoy copied him.
"Good," said Mason crisply. "You have the entire period, one hour, to discuss whatever you wish."
She waited a moment to make sure that they would start on their own, and predictably, they did not.
Sighing, she pulled the curtain back and snapped, "Mr. Potter, why did you jump away from Mr. Malfoy as though he were diseased after the last class? Discuss."
Harry gaped at the closed curtain for several moments after she had left until the pull of the Veritaserum began to take effect. Gritting his teeth he glanced up through his bangs to see Malfoy staring at him intently.
"Because I was uncomfortable," he said quickly.
"Why?" Draco asked.
"What do you mean, why?" Harry asked, astounded. "I- we- We hate each other, Malfoy! I mean, it's been that way for years and suddenly we're cuddling? It was weird! But..."
Harry immediately shut his mouth with an audible click. The Veritaserum, however, deemed it necessary to answer both honestly and fully and he found himself drawing a deep breath to finish.
"But it wasn't all bad. It was warm," he said, furiously embarrassed.
"Warm?" Malfoy asked.
"Yes. I mean, you were. Warm." Harry said lamely, and felt the rest of it coming before he could stop it. "And you smelled good. And I was uncomfortable because it was you."
Closing his eyes, Harry clenched his traitorous jaw closed and tried not to think about what he'd just revealed. When no scathing retort came from the other side of the room, though, he quickly snatched up the opportunity to return the humiliating favor in kind.
"You didn't seem too eager to get away from me," he remarked, and watched the other boy go pink. "Why was that?"
It was interesting to watch the war waging between Malfoy's pride and the potion in his system. When, predictably, the Veritaserum won out, the Slytherin released a breath and turned his face away from Harry before answering.
"I've never," he paused, desperately trying to come up with a less pathetic way of phrasing it and failing. "I've never been held."
Harry wasn't surprised. He'd never pictured Lucius and Narcissa as very cuddly. But somehow that revelation seemed monumental in understanding Malfoy. He knew the question hadn't been completely answered yet, though.
"When you pulled me around like that, I didn't know what to do. But after awhile, I started to like it, somewhat. It was warm, like you said, and it was... Sort of nice."
Harry swallowed, feeling a strange tightness in his chest that he couldn't identify and didn't want to investigate too deeply. Hating that Malfoy was becoming more human, he scrubbed a hand through his hair and sighed. "God, I can't stand you."
"Thanks, Potter," the blond muttered.
"What? Don't pretend that you don't feel the same way."
Draco remained quiet and under any other circumstances, Harry might have let it go. If the two of them hadn't ingested a truth-telling potion. It occured to him that perhaps Draco wasn't saying anything because he hadn't been asked a direct question. "You do, don't you?"
Draco gripped the arms of his chair, obviously fighting the answer, before murmuring softly, "I don't know."
"Malfoy!" Harry jumped in his seat.
"Please, Potter, just leave it?" Draco winced, pressing his fingers to his eyes dejectedly. Ensuring that Harry couldn't probe further, he quickly asked, "Do you think we can do this? The whole Sex Magic thing?"
"I mean, we're going to have to," Harry said, still a bit unsteady from Malfoy's confession.
"Yeah," Draco agreed.
"But do you want to?" Harry had asked the question before he was even aware of wanting to know the answer.
"What kind of question is that? N- I mean, of course n-" Draco sputtered.
Harry's eyes went wide with malicious glee. "You do, don't you?"
"N-! Damn it! I didn't! Not until yesterday! With the whispering..."
"Whispering?" Harry pressed.
"Merlin, you're a sadist, Potter," Draco groased. "Yes, whispering. In my ear. Last Friday."
"What about it?" Harry asked, genuinely confused.
Draco buried face in his hands. Harry felt embarrassed for him, but he was enjoying this immensely nonetheless.
"Your lips. They were very close to my ear, and your breath was hot, and your voice was pleasant," Draco said in a rush, eager to get it over with.
"You were shaking," Harry remembered, grinning.
"I was no- Oh, hell!" Draco deliberately banged the back of his head against his chair in defeat.
Harry chuckled, and Draco's eyes cracked open to glare at him heatedly. But then Draco was already turning the tables on him.
"What about you, Potter? Pulling me closer? Wrapping your legs around me? Don't tell me you didn't get something out of it."
"I was only trying to keep you from squirming!" Harry exclaimed, thrilled that it was true. "It wasn't my fault that you started pressing back against me! I couldn't help but get distracted."
"Distracted?" Draco repeated with a quirk of one eyebrow.
"Yes, distracted." Harry glared at him.
"Are you sure you weren't enjoying yourself?"
"Ye-" Harry cursed when the potion stopped him and growled instead. "No."
"So you did like it?"
"Yes," said Harry, obviously not liking this game. "Now bugger off, Malfoy."
"I'm only following directions, Potter," Draco smirked, using Harry's own words from the hand-holding lesson against him.
Harry resisted the urge to cross the space between them and knock that infuriating grin off of Malfoy's face.
Unnerved and deeply shaken by the openness that they'd just shared, Harry sank lower in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. After a few moments, Draco shifted in his seat, the creak of springs loud in the silence.
"Do you really hate me?" he asked quietly.
"No," Harry answered automatically, not knowing that it was true until he'd said it. "I used to. But there's a lot of other stuff going on that's more important."
"Thanks," Draco muttered dryly.
"Don't pout," Harry snapped. "I guess I realized at the end of fifth year that I didn't hate you anymore. I know why things changed for me, but what about you?"
Draco didn't answer immediately. He drew his lower lip partially between his teeth and Harry's eyes followed the movement unconsciously. He thought about the other students in the booths around them kissing their partners, and the fact that he and Malfoy would have to kiss as well at some point. A smidge of anticipation tingled in his belly and Harry forced himself to stop thinking about it.
"I don't think I did hate you until the end of fifth year," Draco said softly, looking straight at Harry. "I was embarrassed when you rejected my friendship our first year. It stung and I wanted to hurt you back. But I don't think I genuinely hated you, because if you'd changed your mind and asked to be my friend I would have forgiven everything."
Harry stared at the other boy in mute shock for several seconds before voicing his thoughts. "You insulted my friends, made fun of my parents, and tried to get me expelled or possibly even killed because I hurt your feelings when we were eleven?"
"What can I say? I'm petty."
Harry sighed, rolling his eyes. "Continue. Fifth year?"
"Well, that all changed when you got my father in jail," Draco paused and made a disgusted sound. "As if it wasn't enough that you had to be so bloody perfect! Better at everything, getting away with breaking rules, the famous Boy Who Lived making the front page of the Prophet every other day... Then you had to go and take away the one thing in my life that made me feel that I had something over you."
He gave Harry a vicious look. "After all, at least I had a father."
Harry snarled. "Even under Vertitaserum, you're still just a snotty, spoiled little boy who can only feel good about himself by making other people feel horrible."
Draco turned away and fell into a moody silence. Harry's brain nagged at him that he was missing something important.
"Wait a second," he began. "You still haven't answered my question. Why did you say earlier that you don't know whether or not you hate me?"
Draco turned to give him a look of extreme resentment. The muscles in his jaw twitched a bit as he clenched it tightly, but Harry knew that he had to answer whether he wanted to or not.
"I realized that it wasn't your fault," Draco answered through gritted teeth. "My father made a poor decision and got himself caught."
"Good," Harry said. "So you're not completely stupid after all."
"Fuck you, Potter," Draco breathed heatedly.
"No, Malfoy, I don't think that's the way it's going to be." Harry told him, and watched Malfoy's eyes go wide with shock and disbelief.
Both boys jumped when the curtain was suddenly drawn back and Professor Mason's silhouette filled the entrance.
"I've had the house elves deliver some sandwiches. You'll be completing the day's lesson after you've finished eating," she said, beckoning them out into the empty classroom. The rest of the students had left for dinner in the Great Hall.
The boys rose from their seats, glaring daggers at one another as they walked by her. Looking up toward the heavens, Rosemary Mason heaved a great sigh. "Well, that appears to have been productive."
******
Next chapter.