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Dating Draco was throwing off Harry’s breakfast theory. It used to be that breakfast at Hogwarts regularly reflected the day’s mood, but with Draco fluttering around him like a schizophrenic butterfly, even grey-egg days and tasteless-porridge days could be full of unrest and insanity and all manner of other things that had no business happening when it should have predictably been a bland, or just plain bad, day.
Like today, as Harry was gnawing his way through some overdone toast that he had smothered in butter and drowned in preserves, and Draco came in, flowing gracefully into the seat beside Harry at the Gryffindor table.
“What’s he doing here, mate?” Dean asked, being the first to notice, as Ron was chewing his way through a mountain of eggs and Hermione was buried in a new book. Seamus was, of course, flirting with some of the lower-year girls, and Neville had left breakfast early to help Professor Sprout repot some Screechsnap seedlings.
Harry stared at Draco, who simply reached over for the toast and proceeded to overuse spread all over it, then at Dean, whose eyebrow cocked upward, then back at Draco, who was now nibbling happily at his butter and jam that might have had bread in it once. Then Harry looked back at Dean and shrugged. “Eating breakfast, I suppose?”
Dean shrugged too, like the laid-back bloke he was, and returned to his own food.
Somehow, even though Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff were chattering away, and the lower-year students from Gryffindor were whispering fearfully from the farther end of the table, the Eighth Year Gryffindors remained in blissful inattention and quiet. Slytherin was, of course, the only table that was not speculating on Draco’s new seating arrangement, mostly because the rest of the Eighth Year Slytherins understood Draco’s oddities, while the younger ones dared not question them.
Eventually, Hermione looked up from her book and took a sip of pumpkin juice. “Have you two started the essay for Transfiguration?” she asked Harry and Ron.
“Mmmrgh mm,” replied Ron through his eggs, which Hermione knew meant ‘not yet’.
“I wrote a little,” mumbled Harry.
“How much is a little?” Hermione inquired sharply.
Harry scratched his head sheepishly. “About three inches?”
“Harry,” she sighed, “You do know it’s supposed to be three feet of parchment, and it’s due tomorrow?”
“I’ve got it done,” Draco said between bites. Harry stared at him.
“When did you have time?”
“In Transfiguration,” the git replied calmly. “From the front of the room, it looks like I’m taking notes.”
“What are you doing at the Gryffindor table?” Hermione asked him, to which he smiled charmingly.
“Eating with Harry, of course.”
Hermione raised an eyebrow and looked at Harry, who gave her a sheepish nod. She shrugged and turned back to Draco civilly.
“I decided to write mine on Protean charms. I’d worked with them before, and the spell theory is simply magnificent.”
“It is.” Draco nodded politely. “I’ve used them myself, as it were.”
“I’m glad you agree,” responded Hermione, strangely civil. “What did you pick as your essay topic then?”
“Draconifors.”
“Vain git,” Harry muttered from beside him.
‘Thank you, Harry,” Draco beamed, as Hermione clapped her hands together.
“I love that spell! You can turn things into cute little dragons!”
“Er, Hermione,” Harry cut in. “I do appreciate that you’re taking Draco’s presence here so well, but, um, aren’t you reacting, I don’t know, a little too well?” Hermione rolled her eyes. Boys were such morons sometimes.
“Aren’t you dating him, Harry? I have to be polite to your boyfriend, even if I think your taste in men is rather awful, and quite inconvenient. Anyway, he’s been polite and well-adjusted so far today, so I figured it would be a good idea to reinforce such behavior with positive responses, right? And I do like Draconifors.”
“Thank you, Granger,” said Draco cordially. Hermione held out a hand as if to say “see?”
“‘Sright, mate,” Ron interrupted from the other side of Hermione. “I may not like the git, but I’d rather him not be a git while you’re, er, with him, than act like a prat to everyone all the time. Plus, ‘Mione says it’s good for you two to stop fighting.”
“You’re all taking it…really well,” Harry stuttered. “I mean, not just Draco, but me fancying blokes and the whole Slytherin bit—”
“Well, Harry,” interjected Seamus with a grin, “You always did like to make strange choices, but it’s turned out for the best so far, hasn’t it?”
“That,” Ron put in, “And Slytherin took it so well on their side. We can’t be losing to those snakes, can we?”
Harry sighed. He had thought the extreme weirdness was restricted only to Slytherin house.
“Anyway,” said Draco, “See how polite I’m being? Tomorrow you ought to sit at the Slytherin table with me.”
“Draco,” Harry said bluntly, “What are you doing? I mean, we do, you know, but I didn’t think we were going for the holding-hands, sitting-together, lovey-dovey bit.”
“Why, you wound me, Harry, my cute little Pumpkin Pasty. I thought we swore to be together forever. I even promised to take poison if you ever stabbed yourself to death.”
Harry sighed again.
“Draco, stop that. It’s giving me gooseflesh.”
“Stop what?” Draco blinked innocently, only the evil glimmer in his eyes giving away his true self. “Aren’t you my sweet Chocolate Frog?”
Harry couldn’t help himself.
“Of course, Draco, and you’re my hot treacle tart.” The wicked grin spread like softened butter over Draco’s face.
“But only your tart now.”
“All right, mate, I take it back,” said Ron, “Please stop letting him sit at our table.”
“Plus, the Slytherins deserve to experience the…unique joy…that is listening to you two getting, er, along,” Dean choked out, as Seamus nodded insistently in agreement.
“What a lovely idea,” said Draco sweetly, “I’ll be sure to make my friends behave for you, darling.” This was followed by a suggestive wink.
“In fact,” suggested Seamus helpfully, “you should go over there right now.”
“Wouldn’t want Slytherin thinking you two were biased, would we?” added Ginny, who had sat down sometime around the discussion of Draconifors but was too entertained by the rest of the conversation to interrupt. Draco gave her a wary look, momentarily dropping out of his lovey-dovey act. “Oh, save it, Malfoy,” Ginny told him, rolling her eyes. “I was over Harry by the time he started staring at your arse. And even if I still don’t like you, it’s really not worth the effort to pretend Harry didn’t work harder at stalking you than he ever did at dating me.” She paused, looking thoughtful and slightly mischievous. “Or that you aren’t mad fit.”
For a moment, Draco looked as confused as Harry had ever seen him, as though Draco were questioning the sanity of the Gryffindor table. Harry patted his shoulder in sympathy and stood. “They’re not always like this, I promise,” he said, tugging at Draco’s arm. “Let’s go torment your friends for a while, the strange voyeuristic bastards.”
As the two walked away, Seamus and Dean sighed in relief. Beside them, Hermione had long since returned to her book, bored of the conversation, and was now ignoring Ron’s sputtering about his sister calling Malfoy fit. Ginny calmly returned to her breakfast.
“Come to visit?” asked Pansy as Harry and Draco approached the Slytherin table. Harry could not help the feeling that he was a fly going to breakfast on a spider web, and the black widow herself was welcoming him in.
“We have traumatized Gryffindor house sufficiently and felt we should extend the same courtesy to you,” Draco responded, smirking.
“Oh, Draco,” said Blaise with mock-sadness, “It’s far too late for that. After the things we’ve heard…”
“I hear nothing,” interjected Theo.
“But they’re so loud,” Pansy pointed out.
“I know of a wonderful and mystical spell,” Theo told her, deadpan. “They call it Muffliato.”
“Which,” said Pansy, turning back to Draco and Harry, “you really ought to learn, by the way.”
“The point being,” Blaise added, and Harry was slightly frightened by the fact that Draco’s three friends had just spoken in a long chain with no pauses between each other’s sentences, “you can’t traumatize us anymore.”
Draco looked at Blaise skeptically for a moment, then exchanged a wicked glance with Harry.
“I think the big bad Slytherin underestimated us, my little Liquorice Wand,” said Harry, knowing exactly all the ways that sentence was cringe-inducing.
Draco gave as good as he got, and threw an arm dramatically over Harry’s shoulders, the other hand settling right on Harry’s arse. “Oh, Cauldron Cake, I’ll protect you.” A Malfoy smirk emerged. “And I’ll have you know there’s nothing little about your Liquorice Wand.”
Harry grinned, seeing the looks of horror slipping onto the Slytherins’ faces. “Or your Sugar Quill?” The look on Draco’s face then—aglow with the joy of tormenting his friends, wicked and clever as the painfully soppy romanticisms and disturbing innuendos formed in his head, filled with glee at sharing an inside joke with Harry—was Harry’s favorite.
“Or my Sugar Quill,” agreed Draco smugly.
Channeling his inner Lavender, Harry clung to Draco’s side and pouted. “What, I don’t get a new confection-based nickname this time, Dray-dray?” Draco hid his cringe well and instead turned them both so they were face to face and Draco’s hands were cupping Harry’s chin.
“You,” he told Harry seriously, “are my Lightning Bolt Shaped Dark Chocolate Covered Rice Crispy Treat.” There was a horrified silence from the others.
“Did you just implicate I’m a treat with a lightning bolt?” Harry asked, grinning.
“I believe I did.”
“I may be kind of turned on.”
“Oh my god, I can’t take it anymore,” Pansy interrupted, finally finding her voice again. “Stop.”
“We’ll even concede that you’ve managed to thoroughly traumatize us even after what we’ve heard through the walls,” added Blaise. He and Pansy both looked somewhat shaken.
“You don’t need to stop on my account,” said Theo cheerfully, “I think this is hilarious.”
“No,” Pansy told them forcefully, “don’t listen to Theo. Blaise and I are already considering Obliviating ourselves.”
“Mission accomplished, then,” Draco declared and turned back to Harry. “Now, Cauldron Cake, I think we should go make out in the halls until class starts.”
As the two left the Great Hall, both the Slytherins and Gryffindors could hear the conversation drifting back, and shared a mutual cringe. It was a moment of Inter-House unity stronger than anything McGonagall had managed to create over the past year.
“Cauldron Cake had better not start becoming an actual thing.”
“What? I like it.”
“I’m going to have to threaten you with Dray-dray, aren’t I?”
“I can change it to Lightning Bolt Shaped Dark Chocolate Covered Rice Crispy Treat.”
“You realize that nickname doesn’t actually turn me on, right?”
“How you wound me, Pumpkin Pasty!”
“Dray-dray. Forever and ever.”
“I feel…”
“Yes?”
“This argument can only be solved with Sugar Quills.”