Work Text:
Harry awoke from an afternoon nap in the eighth year common room to the sound of squeaking. He didn’t have to look far to find the source of it — it was stood directly on his chest.
Harry grabbed his glasses from a nearby end table, accidentally scattering some Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans to the floor in the process. Putting them on, the white blur turned into a four-legged, and rather irate, pristine white ferret.
“Hello,” he croaked out in a sleep-rough voice. “Where did you come from?”
The ferret, presumably somebody’s pet, continued its fast paced squeaking and chirruping, and zoomed up and down Harry’s sleeve. He sat up and watched as the ferret bounded off the arm of the worn red sofa and onto the end table. The ferret stopped its squeaking in favour of watching him intently.
After a few moments, he turned back around to resume his nap. The common room was empty for once, perhaps due to it being an unseasonably hot day that most Hogwarts students were eager to take advantage of. He could have slept in his own bed, but Harry was fairly sure he had seen Dean and Seamus go in and not come out yet. It was perfectly silent, but that was all the more disturbing, for it suggested they were producing the sorts of noises that would necessitate a Silencing Charm.
He had just closed his eyes again when the ferret once more started up making noise. It was tapping a pink bean over and over again.
“I don’t mind if you eat one,” he said. “They’re not mine.”
The ferret stopped tapping and gave him a withering look. It was curiously familiar.
The animal was unlikely to be Conjured, as he was alone in the common room. It was so beautifully white that it could almost be mistaken for a Patronus form, if he hadn’t felt it sitting on him. Harry racked his mind for any fellow student known to own a ferret, but in his sleepy state, couldn’t recall any. Hadn’t one of the Patil twins owned a chipmunk in third year? Harry had taken to mixing a drop of Dreamless Sleep in his tea, which resulted in a bit of a foggy brain sometimes. A side effect of abusing the potion was memory loss, but he had, after all, been through what Hermione termed Quite An Ordeal. Subsequently, his mind couldn’t make any further connections to ferret related information.
He picked up a royal blue bean, ignoring the frantic chirrups, but stopped once it was an inch from his mouth. Instead of a ‘B’, he noticed the bean was marked with a stamped white ‘W’.
“Ah,” he groaned, putting it back on the table. Realisation slowly dawned on him. “This must be a Wheeze.”
The ferret slinked and scurried back over the arm of the chair and resettled itself on Harry’s chest.
“I’m sorry,” he said apologetically. “Ron’s on prefect duty. He’ll probably be back in about half an hour.”
The ferret seemed to accept this, and span in circles a few times before landing back down heavily. Harry lifted a hand to stroke it, and was rewarded with a small lick. Idly running his hand along the creature’s soft slender back, they both eventually dozed off.
This time, Harry awoke to a hysterical sounding whooping. Ron Weasley was crouched on the floor in front of the fire, laughing so hard he was temporarily incapacitated. The sky outside had got a little darker, and the lamps had been lit. A few Hufflepuffs were seated in the corner, looking amused.
“Hey, Ron. Nice to see you. Have a bean.”
Ron took a few wheezing gasps and paused to wipe a tear from his eye.
“Nah thanks, Harry, I’m alright.”
“No, I insist. Have one. Eat the bean, Ronald.”
Ron took one more glance at the ferret blissfully stretched out upon Harry’s chest and burst into peals of laughter. Harry waited patiently for it to stop, and resumed stroking the ferret’s warm body. The fluffy tail twitched once or twice, but it didn’t stir.
“Good, aren’t they?” said Ron, leaning in close to peer at the ferret. “Neville turned into a chinchilla the other day.”
“How do you turn people back? This one didn’t seem too happy about it.”
“I’m not surprised,” he choked out, shoulders shaking.
“Ron!”
“Oh, it’s fine, Harry! It wears off in an hour or two. You do know who that is, don’t you?”
As members of Slytherin House were well aware, Draco Malfoy was an incredibly heavy sleeper. More than once Pansy had had to physically drag him out of bed to ensure they got to Potions on time. Another of Draco’s talents was always looking immaculate, which Harry had assumed was a natural result of Draco’s pure wizarding blood. Not that he spent a lot of time thinking about Draco’s appearance. Only when he watched him saunter into classrooms, or caught sight of him in the Great Hall, or was bored during a shower. There was that time he had got distracted thinking of Draco during an informal Quidditch game and got his ankle stuck in the goal hoops. He had refrained from telling Ron and Hermione what had got his attention, knowing full well that they would brand it an ‘obsession’ and a ‘fixation’. So what if he was fixated? He wasn’t doing anything wrong. He needed something to take his mind off the Great Ordeal. So what if his distraction was a blonde, leggy, mouthy…
Shifting slightly and pulling a face at the stiff feeling in his back, he assessed his surroundings. He was once again alone in the common room, still on the ratty red sofa, but this time he was underneath a great heavy weight. The weight was breathing softly and quietly. Even though the fire had gone out leaving the room in darkness, he could tell who it was.
He curled an arm around Draco’s back, fingertips ghosting under the hem of his t-shirt and grazing warm skin. Harry let out a breath he didn’t know he had been holding, and watched it ruffle Draco’s fine blond hair. He continued stroking up and down his back, as he had done a few hours ago when he had been much smaller and furrier. Feeling daring, he brushed some of Draco’s hair away from his face, and concluded that it was just as soft as his fur had been in ferret form. However, despite its gorgeousness, it was not as immaculate as Harry was accustomed to seeing. Sleep-mussed and messy, his usual pristine appearance could only be the result of advanced Charmwork.
Jolted out of his train of thought by the sensation of something incoherent being mumbled against his right nipple, he started.
“What?”
Draco lifted his head and looked at Harry through lidded eyes.
“What time is it?” he yawned.
Harry cast a wandless Tempus and determined that they had slept halfway through dinner.
“How are you feeling?”
Draco instantly turned a rather appealing shade of Gryffindor red. After a beat or two of awkward silence, Harry became hyper aware of their intertwined legs, his palm pressed into the small of Draco’s back, and the heat pooling in his abdomen that was threatening to make itself known to the world.
“I,” he started. “I mean. It didn’t hurt, did it? Transforming like that?”
“I’m fine. I will, of course, never touch a bean again. Weasley has utterly tarnished all future confectionary experiences.”
Harry grinned.
”We’ll get him back. Hide a bean in his sandwich, or something.”
“Won’t he notice eating it?”
“Have you seen Ron eat?”
“Good point.”
“What animal would he turn into, do you think?” Harry asked, sneaking his fingers back up under Draco’s t-shirt and moving in small circles.
“A weasel, obviously.” Draco’s hand crept up to Harry’s shoulder, resting carefully at the edge of his collarbone. “Nominative determinism.”
“Shouldn’t you be a dragon, then?” he murmured.
“Mm.”
They relaxed into a cosy silence, and Harry’s brain drifted to think what form he might take, if he had eaten a bean. His Patronus was only a stag because of his father, he didn’t think he was necessarily stag-like himself. He was just Harry. It didn’t much matter anyway. Turning into a fish indoors might be a little disastrous. Or an elephant, too big for the room. Thoughts of elephants and big things made him feel a little hot suddenly, and he was grateful for Draco shifting away from him.
Relieved that Draco wouldn’t be able to notice his flushed face in the darkness, he took his hand away as Draco sat up. He chewed his lip absently and caught Draco watching him.
“Harry.”
He swore he could see the moonlight reflected in Draco’s grey eyes.
“Harry. Kiss me.”
It was a few days later when Ron Weasley spontaneously turned into an enormous rust-coloured crup at the dinner table. He knocked over three plates of profiteroles and a chocolate fountain, wagging twin tails and barking loudly. Hermione looked stunned, as did the rest of the students and staff, Neville choked on his slice of tart, and Ginny roared with laughter. Draco’s eyes were twinkling as he popped a chocolate covered strawberry into his mouth.
Harry threw his head back with joyful laughter and slid an arm around Draco’s waist beside him. Not a minute later, he was gone, and a golden phoenix soared around the Great Hall’s bewitched night sky.