Third Place - Angst

The two young men woke just in time for Potions class. Neither one of them hurried to get there. Harry, dressed in one of Draco's robes with a transfigured Gryffindor insignia, slipped into class and made his way to his seat and his friends. He did not begrudge Draco for having to sit up front. Snape burst in before Harry had a chance to say a word to Hermione or Ron. His face was more austere than ever and he sneered at all of them before slamming open his book and barking out orders to turn to the correct page. Thus began one of the worst Potions classes ever known in Hogwarts history. Even the Slytherins were watching the clock and begging for it to end. Snape yelled at and snarled at and ridiculed and down right insulted everyone. Everyone except Draco and Harry. They he merely glared at and then promptly ignored. More than a few students, boys and girls, were in tears by the time the bell rang. There was a fight to get out of there and Harry and his friends could not push hard enough to get through the crowded doorway.

"Well, I'd say that Snape is clearly not happy with you two," Hermione observed needlessly, straitening herself from the crush.

"What gave you a clue?" Ron scoffed. They turned down the hall as they made their way to the library for their free period. "Why'd he have to take it out on the rest of us? Thirty points! We lost thirty points!"

"Slytherin lost forty," Harry pointed out.

"Yes, that is certainly telling, isn't it? Shows exactly who he is angriest with." Hermione steered them towards a table in the back near the restricted section.

"Wouldn't want to be in Draco's shoes, that's for sure." Ron dropped into a chair and dug around in his bag for a piece of parchment for his newest aerodynamic project.

"Harry," Hermione said as she opened her Transfiguration book, "did you find Draco? It looked like the two of you came in to class together."

Harry stopped rummaging in his own bag and pulled out his bag of sweets. "Um," he blushed, "yeah, I did."

"Ugh, guess we don't have to ask what happened," Ron groused.

"Are you alright? Was he still angry?" Hermione asked.

Harry swallowed the sweet he had popped into his mouth and shook his head. "No. Well, sort of. More like he just wanted to prove who the bigger man was."

"What do you mean?" Hermione's brow was furrowed in confusion.

Shrugging his shoulders, Harry explained as best he could. "Well, it was just that he wanted to make sure that I knew who could, er, keep me happy. You know, like who would always be there to, um, give me what I want. Guess he wanted to prove who the top dog was." A blushing Harry reached into his bag of sweets again.

"Hmm, that is interesting. So you think that the encounter with Snape may have shaken his self-assuredness? His sense of dominance?" Hermione tapped a finger to her lip. "That does make sense after being made to be submissive like that. But he didn't hurt you?"

Harry shook his head. "No."

"What's with the bruise then, mate?" Ron pointed towards Harry's neck. Harry brought a hand up to touch gingerly at the bite mark Draco had left.

"Oh, well, it just got a bit... intense." Hermione and Ron's eyebrows climbed towards their hair. "I'm alright. Promise."

"Well, I for one am happy that Snape finally choked some sense into Draco. Now, if only he'll listen to it," Hermione said as she picked up her quill. "He's needed a push off his high horse for most of his life and if anyone could have done it, it would have been Snape." Ron nodded agreement and Harry happily chewed on a licorice wand. The three were busy with their own pursuits for a few moments until Ron looked up from his paper phoenix and spoke.

"Harry, can I ask you a question?"

Harry swallowed his latest treat. "Mm hm, of course, Ron."

"Well, I was just wondering." Ron scratched the back of his head. "You seem okay with everything. I mean, if I were in your shoes I'd have opened a bloody vein by now. But you're just, I don't know, calm about it all."

Harry tilted his head and thought for a moment. "Well, I guess I just don't think much about it."

"You don't think much about it?" Ron asked incredulously. Harry scrunched up his face and tried to put his thoughts into words.

"Well, at first I just let the voices battle it out-,"

"Uh, voices?"

Smiling, Harry explained. "Don't worry Ron, I haven't gone barkers. It was more like my sense of pride and the little sub in me. They would fight it out and I'd just do whatever the winner wanted, you know?"

"Interesting coping skills, Harry," Hermione said looking up from her book with a raised eyebrow.

"Thank you." Harry gave her an unabashed smile.

"So," Ron carried on, "you just do what the little voices in your head tell you, huh?"

"Very funny. And, yeah, at first. But I think Lustrum shut them up. Or blanked them out, or whatever."

"So then, how have you been so calm since?"

"I haven't exactly been calm if you'll think back to my two incredibly embarrassing outbursts," Harry said with a grimace.

"Well, yeah, those," Ron said casually waving it aside. "But I mean, you haven't been eating your heart out over being with Malfoy or even doing the deed with Snape." Ron shivered in revulsion.

Harry chewed on the end of a sugar quill from his sweet sack and thought about his past behavior. Ron was right, he had been fairly calm about the whole thing. "Well, maybe it has something to do with Lustrum. You know, the pheromones and chemicals and all that. I guess it all just seems... I don't know.... Right, I guess." Harry shrugged his shoulders and looked at Hermione.

Sighing as she realized that once again real life was going to interrupt her studying, Hermione put her quill down. "That is probably correct, Harry. I imagine that anytime anyone finds who they are, they will feel true to themselves and not question it much. I have heard that women who are pregnant and give birth feel a sense of rightness at doing what their body was meant to do." Hermione tapped the side of her quill against her face. "You are also being governed by your instincts and are not fighting them. I imagine that is a lot less stressful than trying to be who you are not."

Harry nodded in thought and Ron chewed at the inside of his cheek.

"But what do you think about now, Harry? Right now without instincts clouding it up," Ron asked.

"I don't know. I mean, honestly, I'm thinking about the fact that I have to wait until after Draco's class is done before I can even think about um... seeing him. I know that wasn't what you wanted to hear, Ron, but it's what I'm thinking."

Hermione smirked. "Is that why you're going through your sweets as if tomorrow will never come?" Harry smiled slyly and took another bite out of his Chocolate Frog.

Ron made a sound of exasperation. "I don't mean what you want to do in a bloody hour! I mean, what about the future and all that. Don't you think about that at all?"

"No, not really."

"Well, try!" Ron was clearly becoming upset at his friend's blithe attitude. Harry decided to placate him.

"Alright, Ron. Hmm, well, I still like the idea of herpetology. I'll have to talk to Professor McGonagall about which subjects I'll have to do really well in."

"But other than that. Where are you going to live?" Ron kept on doggedly.

"What are you doing, Ron? What are you hoping to accomplish here?" Hermione asked sharply. Ron pointed towards Harry.

"I'm trying to get him to realize that life is going to keep going on without him and he can't bloody well spend it shagging Malfoy all the time!" Ron took a deep breath. "I just want to know if Harry is still Harry in there."

Harry dropped his Chocolate Frog and stared at his best friend. How could Ron say that? Think that? Hermione was also staring at Ron, but she quickly put out her hand and placed it on Ron's. She patted the fist that was crumpling the remains of his Phoenix.

"Ron," she said gently, "Harry is still Harry. He has more on his plate but that is nothing new."

"No, it's different. I tried to not think it, but Harry acts different and is so calm about everything. As if this is all supposed to happen!"

"It is supposed to happen." Hermione insisted. "This is Harry. This has always been Harry. Just as you have always been Ron even when you grew to fifteen feet tall. Just as Neville has always been Neville even though he has found his niche in school and life. We are all the same but we have all changed. Harry's was just a little more spectacular."

Ron took another deep breath and nodded his head. "Yeah, I guess." He looked towards Harry and saw how badly he had shocked his friend.

"Mate, I'm sorry. I just... I just want you to be happy. You deserve it, Harry. It's just that you've been acting so laid back about it all that I thought that maybe you weren't really dealing with it."

Harry looked down at the time worn table. His Chocolate Frog sat there with half a leg and no head. Harry wondered if that was symbolic or not. He decided it wasn't.

"Harry? Come on, I didn't mean to get you angry." Ron's voice carried worry and Harry realized how many times he had heard that tone in his friends' voices.

"I'm not angry," Harry said quietly. He looked up at his best friend. "I just don't want you to worry about me anymore."

"Harry-,"

"No, listen," Harry interrupted. "This isn't your burden to bear. Neither one of you. None of my rubbish ever has been, but you have always taken it on and let me bite and lash out at you and you are always there to pick up the pieces. I just, I just don't want you to have to do that anymore."

"Harry, stop it," Hermione said. "Just stop it right now. Ron had every right to question how you were feeling and thinking. Don't punish him by trying to pull away and take away his right, our right, to be your friend."

Harry looked between his best friends. Was that what he had tried to do? Punish Ron for his hurtful words?

He took a deep breath. "Okay, well, I'm not sure where I'll live after school. Draco says that I'll be with him, but I'm not sure where that will be. I really hate the fact that I don't have a say in where I'll be; either with him or if I decide to make a run for it. Either way, it's not my choice. I hate the fact that I had to get permission to carry on with a career instead of 'serving him' like he wanted. I hate that I get no choice in the matter at all. So, I try not to think about it."

"Oh Harry," Hermione sighed. Ron looked pained.

"I'm sorry, mate. I shouldn't have gotten sore and butted in where I shouldn't have," Ron said quietly.

Harry gave him a reassuring smile. "It's alright, Ron. I guess I'm so calm because it would be as silly as getting angry at the weather. I could do it, but what's it going to get me?" He shrugged. "I'll manage. There's got to be some way that a sub can get their way, right? I mean, how could any of my ancestors have lived like this?"

"I bet they had better doms than Malfoy. Someone who knew what they were about and not arsing around like they were a little king!" Ron exclaimed. Harry laughed at that and even Hermione smiled.

"I just thought of something," Ron said as he started to unwrinkle his paper phoenix. "Whenever my dad wants something that he knows my mum won't have, he starts acting real sweet and accommodating. Like, making sure the plugs are all sorted and out of the house and that the garden gnomes have been cleared out and all that. My mum notices, but she thinks it's so nice that she usually lets him have it. How'd you think we got the car?"

"So, you think if I start acting all nice and sweet to Draco, he'd let me be?" Harry asked skeptically.

"It's an idea, Harry," Hermione said. "You already are accepting and docile when he's about, but what if you went a bit out of your way to be a bit more accommodating?"

"He'd think he had won and that it was his due," Harry stated firmly. Ron's shoulder's slumped.

"Oh, yeah, forgot we were talking about Malfoy."

The three sat in silence as they all tried to come up with some sort of plan for Harry.

"What if you spurned him, then?" Hermione asked. "You have the ability now, Harry, during Lustrum to not do as he says. If you tell him to leave you alone and perhaps moved back into Gryffindor Tower..."

"He'd wait until I became slave Harry again and make me pay," Harry said knowingly. It was Hermione's turn to slump her shoulders in defeat.

"Hermione, wasn't there anything in those books that would help Harry?" Ron asked in exasperation.

Hermione shook her head. "No, they just assume that any Indago would realize what a prize they had when they found another of its kind and that they would be considerate and nice. They didn't take into account a history of bad blood between the two."

Harry popped the rest of his Frog into his mouth and swallowed it down. "It's alright, guys. I'll figure it out. I have some hope, you know. Like I said, he could have forced himself on me this morning, but he didn't when I said something. And he stopped himself from hitting me. In fact, he hasn't hit me since that first night."

"Harry, you sound like a beaten wife trying to protect her drunken husband from the Aurors," Ron pointed out.

"Yeah, well, it's all I got!" Harry grumped.

The bell rang signaling the end of the school day. Harry scooped up his sweet pouch and stuffed it back into his bookbag and stood up. Hermione and Ron looked up at him.

"Harry, we still have an hour before dinner," she pointed out.

"Uh huh, see you then." Harry waved and left his two discontented friends. He had to go find Draco because the sweets weren't scratching his itch.

Indago - Chapter 38

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