lomonaaeren

“Thanks for coming with us, mate.”

“Yes, thank you, Potter.”

At least neither Ron nor Malfoy appears to resent this ridiculous situation. Harry slouches along between them on the path down to Hogsmeade, trying to walk in a relaxed way and failing. This is utterly ridiculous, and he’s sure they must both feel the same way.

But Ron and Malfoy are talking more easily than Harry has ever heard them—sure, a little stiffly, but it’s progress. They haven’t mentioned “blood traitor” or “ferret” once.

Malfoy says something about chess, and Ron catches himself back, visibly blushing. Harry glances at him, but Ron seems disinclined to say anything, so Harry volunteers. “Ron’s great at chess.”

“Are you, Weasley?”

Harry stares at the sky. Malfoy’s voice sounds like a purr. Why couldn’t I have stayed at the castle?

“Yeah,” Harry continues, when Ron seems to have sunk into a tongue-tied silence. “He was beating the seventh-years when he was in third. And of course, there’s the most important chess game of our lives that he won in first year—”

Ron shoots him a sharp glance. Harry shuts up. Shit, was I not supposed to mention that? Does Ron think Malfoy would make fun of us for going after the Stone? Or does he just not want to talk about it?

“The most important chess game of your lives?” Malfoy repeats delicately.

Ron still isn’t saying anything, so Harry decides to plunge recklessly ahead. Ron can’t go his whole life—or dating life, anyway—with Malfoy without mentioning some of the crazy things he and Harry and Hermione did in the past. “Yeah. There was this giant chess game set up to protect the Philosopher’s Stone…”

It takes Harry the rest of the walk down the road to Hogsmeade to explain about the chess game and the traps that McGonagall and Dumbledore and the others had guarding the Stone. Ron’s ears turn steadily redder, but he doesn’t interrupt. Malfoy listens and sometimes shoots keen glances at Ron.

Maybe Ron didn’t want to say anything just because he was embarrassed. But he should. Malfoy needs to know how great he is.

Malfoy only asks one question, despite the many Harry thought he would have, as they arrive at the door of the Three Broomsticks. “And then you took the potion to go ahead through the fire, while Granger took the one that would allow her to go back and get help for—Weasley?”

“Yes,” Harry says, heartened by the little pause that Malfoy made before saying Ron’s name. At least to Harry, it indicates that Malfoy is thinking about calling Ron by his first name.

Malfoy nods, face pale and set, and sweeps past them into the Three Broomsticks. Harry watches him go hopefully.

He nearly gets knocked over by the ferocious clap that Ron lands on his back. “Good one, mate, good one,” Ron mumbles. “I didn’t want to tell the story because it would look like I was bragging, but with you telling it…”

Harry smiles up at him and says, “You would have done just fine on your own, Ron. You didn’t need to invite me on your date.”

“But you said, if you were dating Malfoy…”

“It was a hypothetical.”

“A whatsit?” Ron says in a slightly suspicious voice.

Harry rolls his eyes, because he knows Ron knows that word. “Do you want me to leave you alone so that you can talk to each other over lunch?”

Ron gives him a panicked, appealing glance, so Harry sighs and follows him inside the pub. The things he does for love.

Well. Friendship and screwed-up attraction, which is all this will ever be for Harry.

*

“So what was all that nonsense about a basilisk in our second year, Potter? Was that like Weasley’s chess game?”

Harry has drunk enough Firewhisky that he snorts. Malfoy dodges the flying droplets and scowls at him. Harry shakes his head. “Don’t you think you can call Ron by his first name, now?” he asks. “You’ve spent hours in each other’s company without arguing now.”

“When he says that I can, then I will.”

Harry looks at Ron. Ron breaks off from staring at Malfoy with big eyes to give Harry the same sort of panicked look that got Harry into the pub in the first place. Harry rolls his eyes and glances back at Malfoy.

“The basilisk was real, but it’s nothing like Ron’s chess game. Ron had a strategy and played his way through the game knowing what he was doing. I had no idea what I was doing, really.”

“I still want to hear the story.”

Malfoy looks so appealing with the firelight playing in gentle pink and red stripes over his face. Harry sighs and begins telling the story. He leaves in the detail about Lockhart Obliviating himself, because he knows it’s the sort of thing Malfoy might appreciate.

Sure enough, Malfoy laughs loudly, tilting his head back. Harry watches the play of the light over his throat in turn. Honestly, this is unfair.

Harry then jumps and glances at Ron, about to apologize for staring at the bloke Ron wants to be his boyfriend. But Ron is just giving him a warm, goofy smile. Harry relaxes. Ron must have drunk enough not to mind.

“And then you went through the cave-in by yourself, Potter?’

“Well, Ginny was in there.”

Malfoy seems to cool and draw away. Harry thinks that he probably finds this sort of expedition stupid after all, at least if he can’t laugh about things like Lockhart’s spell backfiring on him. “And you knew you wanted to date her even then, of course.”

“No? I was twelve, Malfoy, for Merlin’s sake.”

“But you dated her. You went to rescue her from a deadly basilisk.”

“She was my best mate’s little sister! I wasn’t going to leave her down there. But that had nothing to do with wanting to date her.” Harry waves his hand in between them hard enough to slosh some of his drink on the table. “And you’ll notice that we’re not dating now. I’m here with the two of you, although I’ll be Vanished if I can figure out why.”

“We asked you to come.” Malfoy looks pleased with himself now for some reason. “So what was fighting the basilisk like?”

Harry does his best to tell the story, but between being pissed and not remembering that well himself, he doesn’t think he does a good job. Ron must agree, because he snorts—without the flying droplets that accompanied Harry’s—and takes over.

“Harry’s being modest. He didn’t know who Tom Riddle was at first, other than the bloke from the diary, because no one did, but he figured out he was a Dark nutter. And then he survived long enough for Fawkes to get the Sorting Hat to him…”

Malfoy appears utterly enthralled with the way that Ron is telling the story. Harry sips his drink and leans back in his chair, closing his eyes. Listening to his stupid exploits transformed into Ron’s words, he can almost believe he was a hero.

He opens his eyes and considers Malfoy and Ron. They’re leaning towards each other over the table, and although Ron’s wildly gesturing hands don’t actually brush Malfoy’s skin, they’re coming pretty close.

They’ll get together, Harry silently assures himself and an absent Hermione. It might seem odd at first, but they’ll be together, and once they overcome the lingering remnants of this silly argument between their families, they’ll be glorious together.

It tastes like most of the Firewhisky in his stomach and the lingering flavor in his throat has curdled. Harry ignores that and swallows some more.

*

“Aren’t you excited?”

“That the Potions exam is finally done with? Yeah—”

Hermione hits Harry on the arm with the rolled-up parchment of some essay or another. Harry fakes a stagger that isn’t all fake. Hermione’s essays could be deadly weapons. “No, I mean, happy that Ron and Malfoy finally went on a solo date?”

“Yeah, that,” Harry says with a nod. Ron and Malfoy have got along better than ever since their first Hogsmeade expedition, even though they still don’t seem to have granted each other permission for first names. Today they’re in Hogsmeade by themselves.

Just the two of them.

You were attracted to both of them and you couldn’t have had both of them even if one of them was attracted to you, Harry tells himself sternly. Ron would be jealous and never forgive you, and Malfoy would make things a lot worse than it’s worth if you and Ron dated. Which you won’t. Because Ron is attracted to Malfoy, not you.

Harry’s inner voice sounds a lot like Professor McGonagall, not that he intends to ever tell her that.

*

“Oh, no.”

Harry looks up from his mouthful of toast and butter at Hermione’s groan. For a moment, he thinks that maybe the Defense curse wasn’t negated after all and has taken the new Defense professor, John Dawlish, an Auror on loan. She’s staring towards the doors where Dawlish likes to make an entrance each morning.

Then Harry sees that both Ron and Malfoy are walking in covered in boils.

His mouth drops a little open, but he coughs and Hermione hits him with an Anti-Choking Charm, so he manages to swallow. “Do you think someone hexed them because they don’t think they should date each other?” he asks.

Hermione gives him a doom-laden look. By then, Ron has appeared at the table, and he sits down with a glower that would deter Harry if he weren’t Ron’s best friend.

It’s still a trial, best friend or not, for Harry to smile and say as chirpily as possible, “So you found a common enemy?”

“Yeah,” Ron says, slumping back in the seat, and then yelping and sitting up. Apparently the back of the chair poked one of his boils. “Each other.”

Hermione is nodding, because apparently this is what she predicted all along. Harry blinks. “You hexed each other?”

“He’s such a git!” Ron bursts out, sitting up and waving his hand around. “I said that it was good he could go with me to Hogsmeade and not go on about blood traitors, and then he said that all my family are blood traitors but I’m not so bad, and I told him to take it back, and he said he wouldn’t, and then I told him that he would have been in prison only Harry spoke for him, and he said that he only did what he did because he had no choice, and I said, ‘Yeah, but not all of us were proud to take the Dark Mark,’ and then he said—”

“You know that he tortured people because Voldemort forced him to,” Harry says wearily.

“Yeah, but does he have to be such a git about it?”

From the looks of the waving hands at the Slytherin table, Malfoy is telling his version of the story over there, and a few people are starting to give the Gryffindor table narrow-eyed, considering looks. Harry sighs and resigns himself to hearing the story over and over, and probably escorting Ron to Madam Pomfrey to cure his boils. If they were the product of an ordinary hex, they should have faded by now.

*

“It just doesn’t work.”

Harry pauses, listening. He didn’t mean to sneak up on Ron and Hermione having a serious conversation, but it seems that’s what he’s done.

There’s the loud sound of Hermione shutting a book, and the louder sound of her sigh. Harry can’t actually see them from his position halfway up the staircase to the boys’ dormitories. “Ron, it would work if you wanted it to. From what you’ve told me, Malfoy is still as much of a git as he ever was, but you’re attracted to him. Either you’re attracted to him enough to ignore his past, or you aren’t.”

“It did work!”

“During the early portion of your date in Hogsmeade before you covered each other with boils, you mean?”

“No! On the date in Hogsmeade when Harry was there!”

There’s a long silence. Harry can feel the silence whirring around inside his head, too. He stares at the wall and can think of nothing but the ringing echo of those words.

Then Hermione says slowly, “Most romantic relationships don’t proceed with a buffer—”

“Not a buffer! A third part!” From the squeaks of Ron’s shoes, he’s on his feet and pacing now. “It worked when Harry was there! And you know I thought about—dating him. It was just I thought Ginny had a claim, and then they broke up, and Harry’s never shown any signs of preferring blokes, and I am attracted to Malfoy, so I thought we could make a go of it, but then he was a git—”

“Please endeavor to speak in sentences that consist of single thoughts, Ron.”

“See, this is why we stopped dating.”

Harry has to smile, leaning against the wall with his world still singing around him, to hear the exasperated tone in Ron’s voice.

“No, we stopped dating because you didn’t follow up on what you started,” Hermione retorts, but her voice is soft when she continues. “I think Harry may be more open to this than you think.”

“What, dating me and Malfoy? He would never.”

“He agreed to go on that date to Hogsmeade with both of you, doesn’t he? Ask him and see what he says.”

“But what if he says no?”

“Then at least you know what your choices are.”

There’s silence. Harry leans on the wall and thinks about dating both Ron and Malfoy and feels his mind whirl around some more and come to a sharp crash landing.

“I can at least ask,” Ron whispers finally.

Harry can—he doesn’t know what he can do right now. He ends up turning and going up the stairs to his room, where he collapses on the bed and stares up at the canopy, his mind whirling over and over.

*

“Uh, Harry, mate, I have something to ask you.”

Harry sort of wishes he hadn’t overheard that conversation between Ron and Hermione. It turns out that waiting for his best mate to ask him on a date with both him and their Slytherin rival is an exercise in anxiety. Every time Ron asked for Harry to pass something at the table for the past week, part of Harry went tense and still.

But now it seems as if the moment has arrived. Harry looks up. He’s sitting in a chair near the hearth with one of the impossibly thick magical history books Hermione recommended, and Ron is standing over him, scratching the back of his neck. What seals the matter, as far as Harry’s concerned, is the shimmer of a Privacy Charm around them.

Harry leans back and tries to smile. He finds that his hands are shaking. He does his best, though. “Yeah, Ron?”

“I, uh, wantedtoknowifyouwantedtogoonadatewithmeandMalfoy.”

Harry would have no hope of interpreting that if he didn’t already know what Ron wanted to say, but he doesn’t hold that against Ron. He just leans forwards and opens his mouth.

The word he didn’t even know he would speak falls out of it.

“Yes.”

Ron’s eyes widen, and he looks a little silly, standing there. Then again, Harry is still gaping as if he expected more words to come out. He’s not sure who looks sillier.

“You would?” Ron’s voice is a little high-pitched.

I would?

Harry’s whirling mind seems to settle as he thinks about it, though, and new thoughts pour out. He wants to be with Ron. He just never thought Ron would look twice at Harry when he likes Malfoy. Harry has found Malfoy can be good company, and that he’s still prone to being stuck-up and insulting, but Harry can get him out of that mood.

It would—

It’s what he wants. It’s just not something he bothered thinking about because he never anticipated the possibility.

Harry smiles at Ron, knowing he’s the one who looks like a dazed idiot now, and whispers, “Yeah, that’s what I want.”

*

“Potter! Weasley told me that you agreed to go on a date with me and him.”

Harry turns around. He’s been going around all morning feeling as if he’s full of fizzing golden butterbeer. Ron keeps giving him awed looks, and Hermione satisfied ones. Harry wonders how much she thought he was an idiot for not seeing how he fit into the drama between Ron and Malfoy.

Speaking of…

“Don’t you think you should call me Harry?” Harry asks, as Malfoy comes to a halt in front of him in the entrance hall, and his voice is soft and teasing and playful in a way he didn’t know it would come out as.

Malfoy stops and gapes at him. And then blushes. It’s not the hectic flush Harry has seen so often when Malfoy—Draco is upset, or the sweaty look he gets on the Quidditch pitch. It’s something soft and pink and new.

“You want to call me Draco.” Draco probably means that to come out commanding or arrogant, but it sounds as soft and as new as the blush.

“Yeah,” Harry says. “Yeah, I do.”

Draco swallows and holds out a hand. Harry reaches towards him, not realizing until he gets hallway through the gesture why this might seem heavy and weighted with meaning for Draco.

But he completes the gesture. He shakes Draco’s hand.

Draco flushes a rosy pink that’s really quite attractive. Harry stares at him and thinks about Draco possibly turning that color when Harry kisses him.

Then he shakes the vision out of his head. He doesn’t even know yet if they—if it’ll last—

A voice in his head asks, So only people who are married can kiss?

Harry takes a deep breath. “Can I—kiss you?”

Draco’s eyes turn so round that Harry winces and wonders if he should have asked that. But Draco says, his voice soft and full of wonder, “Yes. Yes, of course you can. That’s a great idea. Why didn’t I think of it myself?”

Before he can get too upset at not thinking of it himself, Harry moves forwards and leans in to peck Draco softly on the cheek. Draco reaches up and cradles his hand against his cheek for a moment, eyes closing.

“A proper one on the lips would be appreciated next time,” he grumbles.

Harry laughs.

*

“Can I kiss you, mate?”

Harry turns around with a smile. He might have been oblivious about the way that Ron and Draco needed him to work as a couple—so Hermione said with a single glance and a shake of her head when Harry happened to mention something about it in her hearing—but it’s hard to be oblivious about Ron following Harry with his eyes and practically stalking him around the school and jumping up at breakfast when Harry started to leave with a loud announcement about how he needed to leave, too.

“Of course,” Harry says, leaning on the wall of the corridor. Luckily for Ron, there’s no one in sight.

Ron looks as though a Bludger has smashed into his head, and turns so bright red that his freckles all vanish. Harry smiles at him, seeing the face of the friend who followed him into the third-floor corridor and the Chamber of Secrets and the Department of Mysteries.

“Really?”

“Yes, really,” Harry says with a little laugh. “What, did you think we were going to date but I was going to tell you that you couldn’t kiss me?”

“I just—didn’t know if you’d want to wait for M—Draco or not.”

“Oh, I kissed Draco the other day,” Harry says casually, and hides his glee as he watches Ron freeze in place. “So I reckon that you’re owed one, as it were.” He stretches out a hand and watches Ron stomp towards him.

“That git kissed you first?”

“No one would know from the way you talk that you really want to date us both—”

Ron grabs Harry and kisses him.

It’s hard and bruising and kind of wet and Harry enjoys it immensely. He loops his arms around Ron’s neck and drags him closer, and Ron stumbles, and they both go spinning against the wall, but their lips never part. It makes Harry’s stomach swoop as though he’s diving on his broom.

When Ron pulls back, panting, Harry winks at him and says, “Did I forget to mention that I didn’t kiss Draco on the lips yet?”

Ron looks exceptionally smug.

*

“You great git—”

“Freckled prat—”

“Nobody wants to hear about your father!”

“He’s front-page news in the paper, Weasley, of course people are going to discuss him!”

Harry pauses half a corridor away from the Potions classroom, shaking his head as he watches Ron and Draco argue. He’s already seen the article about Lucius Malfoy being sentenced to five years of house arrest. At least that means he should hopefully be in the news less often from now on, but then again, Narcissa Malfoy is making lots of noise about her charitable donations, so it’s probable there’ll still be articles about her.

Just the way that Ron is frequently in the paper as a war hero, along with Hermione and Harry, and there are people interviewing Molly about her takedown of Bellatrix and most of the other Weasleys because they helped in the battle or the resistance to Voldemort. It’s something Ron and Draco will both have to get used to.

“But you don’t have to sound as if—”

“What did I sound like, exactly, Ron?”

Harry grins again, and holds an arm in front of Hermione, who’s halted next to him and opened her mouth as if she’s about to scold Ron and Draco. She shoots Harry a glance. He shakes his head. Hermione shrugs and takes out a Potions book, leaning against the wall to read.

Her body language says more clearly than anything else, Not my bloody problem.

It’s Harry’s problem, though, or Harry’s delight. He keeps avidly watching.

“You sound as though you admire him!” Ron snarls, taking a step towards Draco. “As though you want to be like him! I thought we’d moved past that, but here you are again, sticking your nose up in the air and sneering!”

“I said I don’t want to be like him—”

“You sneered like him! It’s the most obnoxious thing I’ve seen your mouth do!”

“Watch my mouth do this!”

Draco dives forwards and plasters his lips to Ron’s. The jaws of most of the students in the corridor drop open in response. Harry wants to roll his eyes. Surely they know by now that Ron and Draco are attracted to each other?

At least they do now, Harry thinks in some satisfaction as he watches Ron’s mouth move almost frantically against Draco’s, his hand rising to fist in Draco’s hair.

They break apart, and Draco licks his lips and announces to the staring audience, “There was my proper kiss with Weasley, here’s mine with Potter!” and runs down the corridor. Harry opens his arms, laughing in anticipation.

Draco doesn’t manage to bang Harry’s head into the wall with the force of his kiss, but not through lack of trying.

“Boys, boys, my, my.”

Professor Slughorn has opened the door of the Potions classroom and is staring at them with comically wide eyes. Harry pulls back with a final ruffling touch to Draco’s hair that makes Draco glare at him and smiles. “Sorry, Professor.”

“Well!” Slughorn says, and then turns and walks into the classroom, shaking his head. A few of the other students follow, but most of them linger, looking back and forth between Ron and Harry as though they assume Ron’s going to be upset.

“What do you think we need now?” Ron asks Harry instead. His ears are so red they’re almost orange, but he maintains eye contact.

“A proper kiss,” Harry says, and makes it so.

*

Halfway through Potions class, Draco sprouts donkey ears.

Harry noticed the notes he and Ron were exchanging, small paper birds flying back and forth under the tables, but he didn’t realize they were provoking each other. He sighs as Ron puts his wand away and turns his head to look at Hermione.

She gives him the most long-suffering look imaginable. “Go sit between them, then.”

Harry stands up and does so, listening to Slughorn’s clucking as he tries to remove the ears, and gives Ron a stern look. Ron glares back with his arms folded.

At least, Harry thinks, as he sit down and turns around to soothe Draco’s temper the way Slughorn is soothing his ears, my life is never going to be boring.

The End