Third Place - Comedy

When the door opened Harry was confronted with the most bizarre thing he had ever seen.

Large roiling ripples broke the shiny surface. Lumps shimmied under the glossy blackness. Whenever there was movement, new rolls of flesh appeared as if the tide had changed and the moon was exerting gravitational pull on Dudley's buttocks, encased in skintight black leather.

Harry swallowed and stared in horror.

"Gngh," he said, and prayed he was dreaming.

He'd realised that losing his parents and facing death at school every year for the past five years had been stressful. He hadn't realised that hallucinations were looming quite this close, or that they would be quite this traumatic.

"Hi Harry," Dudley said amiably. "Like my new trousers?"

"They're, um, they're very different," Harry told him, privately thanking God, because if leather trousers had been everyday Muggle apparel then Uncle Vernon would have worn them and, and now he thought his mind's eye was burning.

Dudley sat down on Harry's bed with a groaning of the springs and a vague sloshing sound from within the mighty leather pants.

Harry gagged.

"Well, obviously I realised I was gay a while ago," Dudley said chattily.

"Oh?" said Harry, and then belatedly realised that Dudley was probably confiding something to him that he, Harry, as a loving relative, should receive in a sensitive manner.

Mrs Figg had let him watch Oprah sometimes, and he'd often wondered if it had brainwashed him. "And how did this important revelation become clear to you, Dudley?" asked Harry, in what he hoped was a caring and therapeutic tone.

"It was pretty obvious, actually," Dudley said. "All that aggression and beating up little boys in the playground? Textbook case, really. Mum and Dad suspected it before I told them."

"Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon know?" Harry yelped, outraged.

So Dudley wasn't coming out to him, and Harry didn't have to handle it delicately. He just had to sit there and wonder why this knowledge - and those pants - had to be inflicted on him.

"Yeah. Mum told me that she thought Piers and I made a cute couple. And Dad told me that I should go with it through my schooldays, and then I should just marry some woman in order to further my career - Mum got a bit upset then, but I think if Dad did dabble in a bit of slap and tickle then he should-"

"Dudley!" Harry shouted. "You should stop telling me this! Because it's, uh, very personal, and private, and believe me, I really don't want to know. Especially not about Uncle Vernon - and - and anything of the ticklish variety. Please. Thank you. Now just - just leave."

Dudley pouted and his leather trousers squeaked in protest.

"But Harry," he said, "I need your help."

Back to Oprah territory.

"Oh, you want to come out to your friends," Harry said, attempting an understanding nod. "Well, if they're your true friends-"

"Harry, what the hell are you on about?" Dudley asked. "All my friends know. All my friends are gay."

"Really?" Harry said. "Huh. What are the odds."

"It's not that strange, Harry," Dudley informed him patiently. "Hello? We're sent to Smeltings and we're given these massive sticks, and everyone whacks the other boys with their enormous sticks. You have to be really persistent to grow up straight in Smeltings."

"That will be - ah, my beautiful thought for the day," Harry assured him. "Now if you could just see your way clear to getting out of my room-"

"But Harry," Dudley exclaimed, "I need you to come to a gay club with me!"

Harry did not know what kind of alternate universe he had wandered into, with leather pants and enormous sticks and slap and tickle, and most disturbingly, Uncle Vernon somehow in the mix.

But he knew where he stood on this subject.

"No. No, absolutely not."

"Harry, it's very important," Dudley fussed. "See, I broke up with Piers, and now he has a new boyfriend, and I need to show him that my life isn't over because we're through, so I need to go clubbing-"

"That's fascinating," Harry snapped. "And very like a gay version of one of Aunt Petunia's soap operas. But you're ignoring the important fact that I'm straight, and thus I don't want to-"

Dudley burst out laughing. Harry glared at his stupid fat face - carefully avoiding his stupid fat arse in those pants, because there was only so much nausea he could deal with.

"You? Straight? Good one," said Dudley.

"I am!" Harry said, insulted and amazed.

"Oh, of course," sneered Dudley. "I've seen you, playing around with your little stick-"

"My wand-"

"And polishing your great big stick-"

"My broom-"

"And looking at all your pictures of muscular guys and their sticks-"

"It's my hobby!" snarled Harry, slamming shut his copy of Flying with the Cannons.

"Sure, sure," said Dudley, waving his fat hand. "What about your total lack of interest in girls?"

"I have a lot of interest in girls," Harry told him loftily. "I have a burning and unrequited passion for Cho Chang, I'll have you know. And she's very, very pretty, and nice, and terribly female. And one day I will recover from the last time she blew me off and I will ask her out again."

"Harry, she blew you off halfway through fourth year. You're going into seventh year."

"I have a fragile ego," Harry said grouchily.

"Hasn't she left school?"

"Look, our love transcends all barriers, all right? And - and how do you know all this anyway?"

Dudley flapped his hand dismissively again.

"I've been reading your mail," he explained.

"What!"

"That's not important-"

"Yes it is! How dare you! And, and how dare you doubt my own statement of my personal preferences, I think I should know! And stop violating my privacy! Will you leave my room!"

Dudley sighed. Fatly.

"Oh, Harry, Harry. You force me to fulfill our stereotyped childhood roles."

"Have you been watching Oprah too?" Harry asked suspiciously.

"This gives me no pleasure, I'll have you know," Dudley continued sadly.

He waddled out of the room. Harry caught a glimpse of his entire arse painted in that black leather, and said goodbye to unscarred retinas.

"Muuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuum!" Dudley howled. "Harry won't come to a gay bar with meeeeeeeeee!"

"Harry!" Aunt Petunia's voice was thin and autocratic. "If, after all we've done for you, you can't even go to a gay bar with our precious Duddykins-"

"All right, all right!" Harry shouted.

His world had gone mad. He still wasn't certain that the leather pants weren't a sign of his damaged psyche.

And now he was going to a gay bar.

He got up hastily and opened the door.

"Dudley," he said, hoping his voice was placating. "I hate to bother you. But what does one wear to a gay bar?"

Dudley gave him a withering look.

"You? Straight?" he said. "Ha!"

Harry was in a foul mood.

He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt that were quite stupidly tight because, as he'd explained, he'd out-grown them and thus they were not suitable public attire.

He was wondering why he had Dudley let choose his clothes, when Dudley was wearing those dreadful pants and a cobweb shirt that frankly, looked like a net full of overweight flounder on Dudley. His only theory was that the pants caused some sort of horror-induced hypnosis.

He was also wondering about this neighbourhood, which was making Harry feel very very uneasy.

"Hello there," said a man flicking his tongue stud out at Harry.

"I'm straight!" Harry squeaked.

Dudley elbowed him. "Harry," he hissed. "That's the bouncer! Sorry about him, he's new. Here's the cash."

"Ah well," said the man, accepting folded money. "At least he's cute."

"Straight," squeaked Harry, sticking to what he knew.

He lurched unsteadily into the club after Dudley, squinting against the darkness and the multicoloured, flashing lights. He thought it was all most impractical.

"Isn't this place great?" asked Dudley, bouncing up and down. Harry wished he wouldn't do that, it made him feel seasick.

"Er," Harry replied.

For a den of iniquity maybe, he thought, borrowing a favourite phrase of Mrs Figg's. There were a lot of men here, and some girls he didn't - well, there were a lot of men here, and he thought some of the girls were men, and that was all he was thinking. And whatever the sex of the person wearing it, that vinyl dress was atrocious.

There was someone bent backwards on the stage, flat smooth stomach bared and being strewn with glitter by someone else, who was licking that stomach's bellybutton.

Harry was quite, quite horrified.

"Harry!" Dudley shouted. "Harry!"

"Huh? Yes, what?"

"D'you want a drink?" Dudley asked. "I've been yelling at you for the last five minutes," he added. "You. Straight. Ha!"

"Will you stop saying that," Harry yelled back.

Honestly, first Hermione and now Dudley. What was their problem, anyway?

"What would you like, anyway?"

"A lager," said Harry, and looked stubborn at Dudley's gasp of disbelief. "Well, I would."

"I'm not ordering a lager," Dudley told him sternly. "I have a reputation to keep up here."

"What kind of reputation?" Harry groused. "He Shakes It, Baby - and causes earth tremors in Ethiopia?"

"Oooh, bitchy, Harry."

"Fine," Harry said through gritted teeth. "I'll have a Bacardi Breezer. Under protest. And make sure it's pineapple!"

Dudley went off, causing the crowds to part in sheer awe at the might of his leather pants' holding capacity.

Harry stood there and took a deep breathing, trying to convert his negative energy to positive, as Oprah had in one of her more pseudo-mystical shows.

This valiant attempt was stopped in its tracks by the fact he suddenly saw a familiar face, and felt his heart slam to a stop. "Blaise Zabini?"

That dark, sly-faced Slytherin it indubitably was. He turned around and gave Harry a stunned look.

Harry gave him a stunned look too, mostly because Blaise was wearing vinyl trousers and a shirt that said ‘Pretty in Pink.'

"Harry Potter?" Blaise yelped.

"I'm straight," Harry said quickly. "I'm here with my cousin. Um, I'm not here here with my cousin, it's-"

"I could care less about your sexual preferences," Blaise sniffed disdainfully. "You have glasses and I have standards, four-eyes. Besides, everyone knows Gryffindors don't put out."

"Hey!" Harry said, moved to noble defence of his house. "I'll have you know that Gryffindors can be quite, um, saucy when we put our minds to it. We're, you know, bold and noble and, like, voracious sexual animals. Though I'm not saying we're like the Gryffinwhores or anything... it's..."

"When you're in a hole, bury yourself in it, you voracious sexual animal," Blaise said. "And while you're at it, push off."

"What? Why?" said Harry, who had been rather pleased to see a familiar face. He didn't fancy flinging himself on the mercy of this vinyl-clad and perverse crowd of strangers.

"Because he'll go mad if he sees you," Blaise snapped. "And I fancy him like mad, and it took me forever to persuade him to come here, and now after slipping him that doctored drink everything is going perfectly, so could you kindly not mess it up!"

"Who?"

"Harry, just because you come from a house full of prudes does not mean everyone else wants to live chaste! I've been trying to get off with him for three years, don't do this to me-"

"But who are you talking-"

"Potter?"

Harry stared.

There, leaning suddenly against Blaise's shoulder, was Draco Malfoy, pristine blond hair a rumpled mess, eyes shining oddly, wearing skintight white jeans and a silver, clinging shirt which was still riding high on his stomach, showing an awful lot of pale flesh and the remnants of silver glitter.

"Malfoy?"

"Well, that's torn it," Blaise said crossly in the silence.

Malfoy eventually seemed to get over his shock, and gave Harry a bright and extremely pleasant smile.

Which was when Harry remembered that Malfoy had been swigging doctored drinks.

"My, what a surprise," he drawled, running a negligent hand through his hair. Harry noticed that his nails were painted silver. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm straight and I'm here nonsexually with my cousin," Harry said promptly.

"Fancy," said Malfoy, and his eyes were caught by something over Harry's shoulder. Harry recognised the suddenly glazed look in them as the look of someone who had been blindsided by the pants.

"And this is my cousin," he said wearily, preparing for the Great Mockery.

"Wow, Harry," Dudley said in his ear. "You work fast, don't you? What a pair. God, look at the blond!"

Harry numbly accepted the Bacardi Breezer, wondering if he'd feel better if he was drunk.

Dudley still had his eyes on the graceful line of Malfoy's throat and - well, the graceful line of Malfoy's everything, Harry supposed - and he said in awed tones, "Mmm, pretty," which wasn't something Harry had ever wanted to hear about Draco Malfoy's anything.

"Are you straight?" Malfoy inquired suddenly.

"Yes," Harry said in fear and with all the vehemence he could summon up.

Malfoy beamed. "What a coincidence," he said. "Me too."

"Oh God, not another one," Dudley said.

Blaise made an exasperated noise. "No you're not, Draco."

"Am too," Malfoy asserted.

"Draco, you were just dancing onstage and being smeared with glitter as a drag queen licked your bellybutton!"

Malfoy examined his silver fingernails. "So? So what? I'm experimenting. It's perfectly normal. My father said so."

"Yeah, your father would," Blaise said. "Does he always stroke up people's legs with his cane?"

"Look, he's a tactile person!" Malfoy snapped.

"With his phallic symbol?"

"Good God, was everyone's father involved in sordid matters at school?" Harry demanded.

Malfoy raised an eyebrow. "Don't ask me," he answered with a slow, rich smile. "Your father was Head Boy."

"My father and mother's love was pure and exclusive," Harry said sternly.

"Oh, yes?" Malfoy said. "I heard they called him Prongs because he was horny all the time."

"That's - taken out of context," Harry responded indignantly.

"This is so typical of my life," Blaise muttered to himself. "All I hear for three years is ‘I'm not gay, Blaise, I'm not gay' and now here's Harry Potter-"

Dudley sidled up to him. "You part of the denial brigade?" he asked, winking.

"Oh no, I'm gay," Blaise said. "I'm very, very gay. I like the boys - but I don't like the orca whales, so keep your oversized paws to yourself." He breathed out through his nose. "Look at them. Just look."

Dudley looked at Draco. "Pretty," he murmured.

"They're like this all the time at school," Blaise said. "It's disgusting. Well, and hot, obviously. But it's so frustrating. Bicker, bicker, jump on each other, roll around, and then back they come bleating ‘I'm not gay, Blaise, I'm not gay.' I call it pathetic. It's not like I haven't offered to role-play. I said, I can wear glasses, we can paint on a scar, it'll actually be kind of kinky, and he called me twisted. Can you believe that?"

"What?" Harry asked, distracted from the argument, which was denigrating to a level along the lines of ‘Yo' pappa's so gay...'

"Nothing," Blaise said quickly. "Draco, want to dance?"

Malfoy looked to Harry like he was attempting to focus. "I'd like another drink," he concluded at last.

"Brilliant," Blaise announced with deepest satisfaction. "Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, eh?"

"Hung?" said Harry, who wasn't really keeping up with the conversation because he was trying to work out - out of innocent curiosity - whether Malfoy was wearing an earring or had glitter on his ear.

"Well, yes," Malfoy answered. "This is a Muggle club, Potter. Our parents would die if they found out."

"Your parents might die," Blaise said darkly. "You're lucky, you're the only heir. I have brothers - my parents would kill me."

"You don't know my father," Malfoy said. "He'd still kill me. He'd kill me and he'd stuff me, and he'd say, ‘Yes, this is Draco. He's my only heir. He's a bit quiet recently, I don't think he likes living in this glass case.'"

Malfoy laughed, another bright sweet sound Harry presumed was entirely drug-induced.

Which reminded Harry of what Blaise was running off to fetch Malfoy.

Oh, God.

Harry really couldn't imagine what Dumbledore would say if Harry told him ‘Well, I was at this gay bar, and I saw someone taking advantage of Draco Malfoy.' Sheer humiliation would keep him quiet, for one thing, and he'd probably have to explain about drugs, and maybe even about gayness, because let's face it, Dumbledore...

But Harry was fairly sure that if he ever found the words, and then if Dumbledore ever understood, that Dumbledore would disapprove of Harry letting that happen.

Moreover, Harry himself couldn't just - stand here and watch it happen. Malfoy's judgement was impaired. He wasn't responsible for his actions, no matter how dreadful his actions generally were when he was responsible for them.

Besides, he hardly thought Blaise Zabini was Malfoy's type.

"Come on," he instructed, seizing Malfoy's elbow. "This way. Quickly."

"Oh, of course," Malfoy said readily. "I forgot to tell Blaise that I want a pink cocktail with an umbrella in it."

Harry raised an eyebrow. "You? Straight? Ha!"

Malfoy put his hand on his hip. "My drink preference does not indicate my sexual preference. I am not gay," he said loudly, and the people standing around them turned and stared.

Malfoy gazed beatifically back at them.

"Um, he's just kidding," Harry said, grabbing Malfoy's hand.

He had never actually held hands with anyone before, and it was just his luck that his first would be Malfoy.

Naturally, it was terribly unpleasant. Well, Malfoy's hand was cool and his fingers were long and slim, and he could feel Malfoy's pulse skittering up his arm, but the whole idea was most unpleasant.

"Come on," Harry said, and dragged him into the thickest throng of people.

He hadn't realised that throng was thickest because the people were dancing.

"Oh, lord," Harry exclaimed in dismay, and turned around to share a horrified look with Malfoy.

Malfoy was already shimmying between two people, tossing that arrogant white-blond head and arching backwards, someone else's thumbs in the hooks of those white jeans, until all Harry could see was exposed stomach and the glitter still dusting the taut pale skin.

"Malfoy!" Harry said, employing his ‘Aunt Petunia' voice.

Such was the power of the voice that Malfoy stood up with a snap, his eyes still closed and his lashes dusting his cheekbones like some odd sort of glitter.

"Quickly," Harry said firmly, because Malfoy's eyelashes were most annoying.

"Okay," Malfoy agreed. "Oooh, can we sing karaoke?"

It had never occurred to Harry before that part of Malfoy's incessant meanness might simply be ADHD.

Alternately, this could just be Malfoy's brain on drugs talking.

"Ahhh, sure," Harry said feebly, trying to drag him in any direction other than that towards the stage.

"Great," Malfoy told him with enormous glee, and began to valiantly make his way towards the open mikes.

"No, no,this way," Harry said coaxingly and uselessly.

"Want mike," Malfoy said, pulling the other way.

It was hot in there, so obviously Harry's hand was sweaty, which was natural - but rather unfortunate, since Malfoy's hand slipped out of his and Malfoy made a dash towards the mike.

Harry made a lunge at Malfoy, attempting to grab him and pull him back before he could do this.

The spotlight blinked on, and everything happened at once. Malfoy threw back his head and opened his mouth.

Harry was bathed in bright purple light, in a gay bar, clinging around the waist of an indecently-clad and drug-crazed Draco Malfoy, who had just begun to sing Abba.

He was cursed. There was no other explanation. Voldemort had dressed up as an evil fairy and cursed him at his christening.

Harry had a sudden bizarre and upsetting image of Voldemort in a black vinyl dress.

This image gave him the strength to end this trauma, and drag Malfoy bodily off the platform.

The crowd looked disappointed, and Harry dragged Malfoy well away from the chorus of sighs and mutters that would only have encouraged him further, and out the door.

"We need a bit of air," he explained hastily to the bouncer.

"Sure, sure," leered the awful man.

Harry gave him a reproachful look and hissed, "We're both straight! Tell him, Malfoy."

"Stars pretty," said Malfoy.

"Oh lord," Harry said. Malfoy's pupils were very, very small. He wondered what that meant.

Malfoy began to meander happily down the street. On one side, there was a scoop of dirt instead of road because of roadworks, and Harry thanked God that the moon was full and bright, otherwise they might have broken their necks.

"The moon's pretty too," Malfoy remarked happily.

Harry went after him, seizing his elbow in an attempt to restrain him from doing anything stupid. Malfoy turned to him with his eyes bright with discovery and Harry waited in dread.

"You're looking after me, aren't you?" he asked.

"Maybe," temporised Harry, who was going to have to lie about this to Ron and claim he'd been waiting his moment to push Malfoy off a cliff.

"That's so Harry Potter," Malfoy drawled, and it was astonishing how, even on a cocktail of drugged cocktails, Malfoy remained so very much like Malfoy. "Oooh, look, it's helpless, I'd better protect it. My God. That's so pathetic. I'm like Gay Bar Neville Longbottom."

No images of Neville in white jeans and glitter! wailed Harry's abused brain. I can't take any more!

"I'm Draco Malfoy," Malfoy informed Harry. "I don't get taken care of." He paused, musing, and added casually, "Besides, you think I'm horrible."

"Well," said Harry.

"And I'm not horrible," Malfoy said with sudden vehemence. "I just get angry. Things annoy me. I hate it when people are know-it-alls. And I hate it when people say ‘Oh, a Malfoy' as if I'd given them an explanation instead of telling them my surname. And I hate it when people don't know anything. People can be such fools."

"Charming," Harry commented.

"I hate losing at anything," Malfoy proceeded blithely. "I hate it when people expect things of me. I hate it when the house elves water down the coffee at the Slytherin table, they do that you know, the sneaky little things-"

"It's a regular coffee conspiracy," Harry said, nodding and fighting to keep a straight face.

"It is," Malfoy insisted. "Never trust a house elf. Centuries and they never thought of making their dishtowels into something fashionable as well as functional? Have you noticed how their eyes sort of swivel in their heads? It's creepy. And they're perverted, too!"

Harry actually laughed, and realised that Ron would never forgive him.

"It's true!" Malfoy protested. "My family used to have this house elf called Dobby. I'm telling you, he was weird. Any excuse and he was leaping on my bed, turning up at all hours to say cryptic things just so I'd be intrigued - you look kind of peculiar, Potter."

"Fine! I'm fine!" Harry squeaked. "Not psychologically scarred at all! Oh, urgh, my God, the socks!"

Malfoy raised his eyebrows.

"Anyway," he said, with the air of one who wasn't touching that sentence, "I hate mismatched socks, too. Dobby was always putting my socks together mismatched. I hate it that I can't get a tan. I hate it when I freckle."

Harry bit down on a grin. "You freckle?"

"Tell a soul and you die. This is not an idle threat."

"Yeah, you're not much for idle threats."

"I hate people who don't follow through," Malfoy continued. He seemed to have a mental list. "I hate being ignored. Oooh, I really really hate that. And whenever I hate something it feels like my whole brain is going to boil in my skull and I just want to lash out at something." He looked thoughtful. "I quite like it when people cry."

"You have issues, Malfoy."

"Duh, Daddy is a Death Eater. Anyway, rich kids are supposed to be messed up, they're the ones who can pay for therapy."

Harry sighed dramatically. "Now I suppose you're going to say you hate being rich."

Malfoy laughed. His face was much brighter when it was unguarded.

Of course, that might be the moon, or the glitter.

"I love being rich," he said. "Of course, I hate it when Father spends money on charities rather than me. I hate attending my mother's soirees. I hate-"

"You seem to hate an awful lot of things. Explains why you're perpetually horrible," Harry remarked cheerfully.

He realised that he and Malfoy had fallen into step, strolling easily down a broken path in the moonlight. It was the strangest thing.

Malfoy looked a little bemused for a moment, caught off guard and under a streetlight, face and hair bright-white, blinking and bemused and - cute.

Harry supposed. To a girl, maybe.

Probably.

"It's not my fault practically the whole world is stupid," Malfoy pointed out, sounding aggrieved.

Harry felt his mouth twitch again. "Oh, quite."

"I hate it when I suddenly realise I have broken a rule of etiquette," Malfoy said suddenly. "My God, I came outside with you. What did the bouncer think? I'm sure that's against gay bar procedure. You should at least have asked me if I came there often and offered to buy me a drink."

"You've had enough," Harry informed him severely. A thought occurred to him. "And why should I have had to buy you a drink? Why couldn't you buy me a drink?"

Malfoy looked prim.

"I'm the one wearing the nail polish here. I don't make the rules."

"No, you just hate everything and everyone."

"I don't," Malfoy said vehemently. "I hardly ever hate people. Please." He sniffed. "I wouldn't lower myself enough to hate that Longbottom creature."

"Aren't I lucky, I'm one of the chosen few."

"I don't hate you." Malfoy looked blank. Harry suspected that his mouth had been hijacked by the drugs and stolen away from his brain, and the suspicion was confirmed as Malfoy added casually, "I hate the way you look at me."

Harry blinked twice, very hard, and said, "I'm sorry, what?"

"The way you look at me," Malfoy explained in a condescending manner, as if to a small child. "That ‘Malfoy you are beneath contempt' look. It's like the time Longbottom said he was worth twelve of me, and glanced up at the sky where you were flying and I knew you'd said it and I wanted to hit you with a dustbin lid."

"I didn't mean it," Harry blurted.

And he hadn't known it would ever get back to Malfoy, and he couldn't believe Malfoy remembered something that had happened back in first year, and what kind of bizarre wish was wanting to hit someone with a dustbin lid anyway, and perhaps Harry should have meant it, because Neville was kind and decent and Malfoy wouldn't even understand such concepts, but he hadn't then and he didn't now.

"You always looked at me like that, from the very first time we met, and it drives me mad," Malfoy went on, scowling.

Harry looked back and thought about a small white-haired boy, swathed in overlong black robes and making a face as he stood on a stool.

He remembered his thoughts at the time while a tiny weird part of himself stood back and went, ‘Okay, you have to admit that was kind of adorable.'

"I thought you were like my cousin," he said.

Malfoy gave him one scandalised look and then looked over his shoulder, eyes straining and torso twisted unnaturally around.

Harry was entirely bemused until he realised that Malfoy was desperately trying to examine his own ass.

"Malfoy, I did not mean physically," he said.

"Oh," Malfoy breathed in a shaken tone. He looked paler than usual. "Oh, thank God."

"Don't be ridiculous, Malfoy," Harry said crossly. "Dudley's hideous, and you're-"

Suddenly Malfoy was looking amused. Harry stopped.

"And I'm what?" he inquired in a drawling voice.

"Um," said Harry.

For a terrible moment, Malfoy was still looking at him interrogatively, and all that was in Harry's frantic mind was Dudley's ‘Mmm, pretty' and he'd kill himself first.

"Never mind," Malfoy said with sudden brightness, and reached out.

Harry's world suddenly dissolved into a myopic blur, but he would have bet that the white figure in front of him was grinning a manic, drug-crazed grin.

"Now you can't look at me at all," Malfoy said with immense satisfaction, putting the glasses in his pocket.

"You're mad, Malfoy," Harry said with immense conviction. "You've always been mad mad mad. Give me my glasses back."

He lunged at Malfoy, who laughed and dodged but of course Malfoy's reflexes were slow because of the drugs and Harry caught him, but he was blind and Malfoy was drugged and both of them misjudged and...

They were tumbling down into the dirt, the loose gravel spraying into Harry's eyes, waiting for the crash at the end as he fell but actually there was no sickening thump for him because he fell on top of Malfoy.

"Ow," said Malfoy decidedly, since he had obviously been hit both by Harry and the ground.

"Um, sorry," Harry mumbled quickly, and it was astounding and not a little indecent how tangled up bodies could get falling down into a bit of dirt.

"Did Blaise put something in my drink?" Malfoy asked out of the blue, and with startling calm.

Malfoy was lying in a relaxed manner, cool-pale and languid and sexy, as if falling down into dirt with someone on top of him was something that happened every day.

"Er, yes," said Harry, who was flushed and flustered and trying to rewind the thoughts he'd just had and to think them in some approximation of a heterosexual manner.

"I thought so," Malfoy nodded, and it was astonishing how matter-of-fact drugs seemed to make you. "I'm sure I'd never normally say I hated how you look at me."

"It, ah, isn't your style, no," Harry said, and now he was just trying to work things out.

Malfoy nodded again, and this close up his skin was oh-so-perfect, and Harry thought the vain idiot probably used Dark Magic to effect this, and there was actually some glitter in those long fair eyelashes, sticking them together.

"Even though I do," Malfoy continued nonchalantly, and added, "But I don't hate you. Actually, I think I have kind of a crush on you."

Harry's brain reeled and gave up, just as Malfoy casually reached up, curved a hand around his neck and pulled him down into a kiss.

Really, no more thought ever, and that was a good thing, because he preferred this, the clean simplicity of - of this. The cool-wet-softness of Malfoy's mouth under his, the squirm of Malfoy's body under his, Malfoy's nice torso flat under his hands and Malfoy's tongue in his mouth, a shock like diving into a lake on a warm day when the water was warm too and like a different sort of sunlight, gorgeously different and good and there was nothing but squirming against him and craving more...

Malfoy calmly sat up, and pushed him backwards.

"I don't like lying in the dirt," he explained placidly. "It messes up my hair."

Harry had had it up to here with this insane drugged logic, which made people sing and fall and steal glasses and admire the stars and blurt out crazy talk and stop kissing.

"Here are your glasses, Harry," Malfoy said in a soothing voice, and when Harry had them back on Malfoy was smiling a winsome smile that he'd clearly always used as a child to get people to forgive him and like him again after he'd done something atrocious.

It was working. Stupid Malfoy.

Malfoy got up, dusted his jeans and climbed lightly back onto the broken path. Harry followed him, and he was thinking, and Malfoy was still smiling, of course, because he probably did this sort of thing all the time, with boys and girls and fish for all Harry knew, because it was just light-hearted fun. Harry flashed back on the bar - and Malfoy talking about how perfectly normal experimentation was.

Harry had a vision of this - this stupid playboy Malfoy toying with people, maybe writing in his diary ‘La la la, kissed Harry Potter, la la la, went off for an orgy with cream cheese' and while one part of him stood aside and said ‘My God, what is in those Bacardi Breezers?' most of him just pushed Malfoy up against the wall.

"Screw experimentation," Harry said a trifle vindictively, pushing aside the fact that he had been heterosexual about three minutes ago, and put his hands in Malfoy's pockets and drew him against him hard, and kissed him again.

Malfoy made an interesting noise and rubbed up against him, hands suddenly tangling in Harry's hair and tongue suddenly tasting a little wickedly.

Harry moaned, basically tried to shove his tongue down Malfoy's throat and pressed up against him, liking the sharp knock against Malfoy's collarbone and the smooth slide of chest along chest, and then liking it all so much he felt a bit dizzy and his leg was between Malfoy's and...

"Oh my God," Blaise said pathetically. "Have I mentioned yet how much I really hate this night?"

Harry and Malfoy sprang apart. Harry wondered if he could get away with saying something like Malfoy had needed mouth to mouth resuscitation. Then he looked over at Malfoy, whose mouth was swollen and who looked a debauched and ravishable mess, and he realised that he couldn't first, because of the way Malfoy looked and secondly, because he'd now been staring at Malfoy far too long for them to buy it.

Them being Dudley and Blaise. Blaise was swaying and looked faintly sick.

"Blaise," Malfoy said cheerfully. "You look dreadful."

"Well, I drank your drugged drink, didn't I," Blaise said sulkily. "I wasn't letting good alcohol and drugs go to waste. And that would probably have gone all right, but then this - this thing was dancing. It was horrible. He swung one way and his buttocks swung the other, he practically cleared the dance floor. That was enough to make me ill, but then I drank far too much to try and make the memories go away. Have I mentioned it was horrible yet?"

"I can imagine," Malfoy said, and then winced as he looked over at Dudley. "But I don't want to."

Dudley gave him a smitten smile. Malfoy's eyes widened in horror.

"I feel dreadful," Blaise wailed. "I'm going to go home and do as father says from now on. I'm going to go to Death Eaters In Training summer camp, I swear."

Malfoy rolled his eyes.

"We always do that, Blaise. We always go out and get drunk and wake up the next morning saying we wish we were dead and from now on we're going to do as our fathers say and join Death Eaters In Training, and we never do, and our fathers tell us that children today don't have the spirit they did when they were young."

"Yes, well." Blaise made a face. "I wanted this night to be perfect, Draco. Those drugs were very expensive. And you have to go off and get off with Harry Potter."

Malfoy's ears went slightly pink. Harry, who had given in utterly to the pineapple madness contained in Bacardi Breezers, thought it was rather fetching.

"Of course, I'm sleeping over at your house tonight," Blaise continued, brightening up. "I could-"

"You're sleeping on the floor like you always do," Malfoy told him sternly.

Blaise sighed morosely. Harry smiled a bit.

"Don't you smirk at me, Harry Potter," Blaise said darkly. "You. Straight. Ha!"

"I always said it," Dudley agreed complacently. "You know, we have a lot in-"

"Hit on me once more and I'll turn you into a radish," Blaise promised, his eyes a little wild.

"Fine," Dudley said. "It's your friend I really fancy, anyway."

Malfoy looked pained. "Going home now," he declared.

"Home already?" Harry asked.

"Well, yes, Harry," Dudley explained, rolling his eyes. "The bar's closed. You two were gone for hours."

"Oh," said Harry.

"Worst. Night. Ever," said Blaise Zabini, grabbing Malfoy's elbow and beginning to stride off.

"I don't know, I had fun," Dudley told Harry. "I think I stunned a few people."

"You mean you, like, knocked them out with your ass?" Harry wanted to know, but he was a bit distracted by looking after Malfoy.

He held the pineapple alcohol directly responsible for the fact he thought that he hated to see Malfoy leave, but he loved to watch Malfoy go.

Malfoy looked over his shoulder and smiled, bright and quick as a flash of glitter.

"You," Dudley began. "Straight. H-"

"Let it go," said Harry. "I've made your point."

"You lucky, lucky bastard," Dudley added. "Maybe I should look into playing hard to get."

"Maybe," Harry said tactfully, "and this should in no way be taken as advocating nudity, but maybe you should consider leaving the leather pants at home."

It was exactly one month, a week, five hours and twenty minutes later when Harry saw Draco Malfoy again.

He'd been thinking about him, though, sometimes in creative and surprising ways. And he'd blushed when Dudley mentioned him, which Dudley constantly did in yearning and envious tones. And, to his eternal shame, he'd gone and looked at his school picture and picked out his sneering face in the Slytherin crowd.

He had also thought about things Malfoy had said on the broken path, and put them together to make sense, and he'd wondered why nobody had told him before, and then he'd remembered that Hermione had. She had drawn a chart and everything, with a little stick figure Malfoy and big red love hearts.

He wrote her a very apologetic letter, and tentatively called Malfoy ‘Draco' in it a few times.

So Harry wasn't all that surprised on Platform 93/4, when he emerged from the wall and saw Malfoy standing around with his Slytherin cronies. Actually, he just felt like his suspicions had been confirmed when he saw Malfoy's hair was in regimental order and his robes were expensive and entirely unrevealing, and his face was typically disdainful, and Harry still thought, ‘Mmm, pretty.'

He went over to them, because he was from the house of the noble and brave and besides, Dudley had dared him to.

Malfoy saw him coming and his face screwed up in pale distaste that Harry thought was just possibly utter embarrassment. And in a minute he'd say something dreadful and Harry would want to hit him, and broken paths in the moonlight and drug-induced truths and glitter mightn't matter anymore, and he would have lost it forever.

Harry spoke first, which he didn't do often with Malfoy.

"Come here often?"

And incredibly, Malfoy's ears went pink. He looked over at Harry, lower lip sucked in for an instant of thought.

Then, with apparent difficulty, he smiled. "Now and then," he said.

The Slytherins were looking bewildered. Out of the corner of his eye, Harry saw Hermione and Ron going over a letter he vaguely recognised. Ron had a resigned expression on his face.

Blaise Zabini looked like he might cry.

"Leave," Malfoy said peremptorily to the Slytherins, and they did. Although really, the only place to go was further along the platform, and everyone could still see everything.

Malfoy shoved his hands in his pockets in an odd, awkward way Harry thought was familiar, and realised was his own way. He was unable to repress a smile.

"Er," said Malfoy, and looked appalled at the Potteresque level of communication emanating from his lips. He pulled himself together, the aristocratic boy who hated attending his mother's soirees, and said the appropriate thing. "How is your cousin?" he inquired with preternatural politeness.

Harry laughed, and it was this easy.

"He's fine," he said. "He got back together with his boyfriend - this boy called Piers Polkiss who looks like a rat, but who apparently he's attracted to." He paused, and added, "I - er - I guess it runs in the family."

Malfoy looked for a moment like he was torn between shocked indignation and laughter, and he chose the more pleasant option.

He didn't do that often with Harry.

When Malfoy laughed, even Crabbe and Goyle started to look suspicious and disturbed, so Harry laughed too.

"And he's retired the leather pants," Harry continued.

"I'm glad to hear it," Malfoy said devoutly.

Harry hesitated. "The - er - train's coming in a minute."

Malfoy put his head on one side, raising his eyebrows in a way that was either cute or annoying. Harry was planning to stick around until he decided.

"Yes?"

"There's pumpkin juice on the trolley..." Harry hesitated, and then took the plunge. "I was wondering if I could buy you a drink."