Title: Not Necessarily Wanting Me

Author: Lorien_Eve

Website: http://www.geocities.com/simpleadorationtwo/

Pairings: Harry/Ron, Ron/Draco

Disclaimer: All the characters in this story belong to J.K. Rowling. I dirtied them up a bit, but I promise to have them nice and clean when I give them back.

Spoilers: Everything

Rating: PG- NC-17; this chapter is PG.

Feedback: I'd love some!

Summary: Ron's in love with Harry, but he's afraid Harry will never feel the same way. Draco helps him forget - even if it's just for a little bit.

Genre: Romance, a little angst, a little drama

Author's Note: I wrote this story for NaNoWriMo back in November. After I went over my word count of 50,000, I set it aside and worked on some other things. The story isn't finished, but I'm still working on it and I'm a little over halfway done. I wanted to go ahead and post it to hopefully put pressure on myself to finish it. This has *not* been beta-ed. No way would I put my beta through such torture. I've read over it myself, but I know I missed a few things, so please excuse any typos and mistakes. I'm really bad at writing summaries, so don't judge the story by my description of it. It's better than it sounds. Honest.

Divination was Harry and Ron’s first class the next day, while Hermione had Arithmancy. Ron predicted that Professor Trelawney would foresee Harry dying tragically within five minutes of the beginning of class. Sure enough, she had no sooner made her grand entrance, when she said she felt a fatal aura surrounding all male children who were born at the end of July, and who had dark hair and wore glasses.

“I’m getting good at this Seeing stuff,” Ron said. “Maybe I should apply for her job.”

The room was stifling as usual, with a large fire going, though it was still very warm outside. Harry thought that Professor Trelawney’s favorite lesson was the crystal ball, because she had them staring in it the entire class period. During their third year, she had tried teaching them to recognize shapes and symbols in the swirling mist, but other than Parvati Patil and Lavender Brown, no one had ever seen anything. It must be a final attempt on her part to teach them something that was perfectly useless.

“How come I feel more stupid after her class than I do before?” Ron asked Harry as they descended the silver ladder down from the classroom.

“It’s not just you,” Harry said. “She makes me feel that way, too.”

****

They had Care of Magical Creatures next, and although Harry would be glad to see Hagrid, he wasn’t exactly looking forward to the class.

“Wonder what he’s got for us this year?” he asked, as they joined the group of students already assembled.

Hagrid wasn’t anywhere to be seen, but there were large wooden crates stacked up against the wall of his hut.

“Not more blast-ended skrewts!” Hermione wailed.

“No, no,” said Hagrid, emerging from his cabin. “Dumbledore didn’ think that’d be a good idea.”

Hagrid unstacked the crates and motioned for the students to step in closer.

“I’m not going any nearer until I see what’s in those,” said Malfoy, who Ron had just noticed was standing a few feet away. Malfoy was always giving Hagrid a difficult time, and Ron had had just about enough of it.

“Scared, are you?” Ron asked.

“No, Weasley. I’m smart. Unlike the rest of you.”

Ron made a move towards Malfoy, but Harry caught his arm.

“Not in Hagrid’s first lesson,” Harry muttered to him.

“They’re not bad, I promise ye,” Hagrid said, looking apologetic.

But Malfoy didn’t seem inclined to move any closer, so Hagrid continued prying the lids off the crates with his large, rough hands. Harry peaked over apprehensively. Well, at least they weren’t blast-ended skrewts. Though what they actually were, he didn’t know.

Each box contained something that looked like a caterpillar, only much, much larger. They were about two feet in length and six inches in diameter. They didn’t appear to have any fangs, blasts, horns, or spikes, and Harry took that as a good sign.

“What are those things?” asked Lavender Brown. She looked slightly repulsed.

“They’re fozzies,” Hagrid said casually, like she had just asked a really stupid question.

“What exactly do they do?” asked Seamus.

“Not a lot, really,” Hagrid said, looking slightly disappointed. “Crawl around and eat leaves and such. Then when they get old enough, they spin cocoons.”

“So they’re like butterflies?” said Hermione. She seemed wholly relieved.

“Not exactly,” said Hagrid. “I wan’ each of ye to take the fozzy outta its crate. Don’t worry-they’re slow. Not likely to run away.”

Harry was a little let down by that information, but together, he and Ron lifted the fozzy out of the box and placed it in the grass at their feet.

“Now, I gotta whole pile o’ leaves in those bags over there. Fozzies’ll eat almost any kind o’ plant. They’re probably hungry. Ye can feed ‘em, if ye’d like.”

“And what if we don’t like?” asked Malfoy in an arrogant voice.

“Well…” said Hagrid, not entirely sure how to handle such an obvious refusal.

“I’ll show you ‘what’,” Ron said, turning in Malfoy’s direction.

Harry grabbed the back of Ron’s robes before he could get very far. “Ignore him. He’s not worth it.” Ron continued to glare at Malfoy, but he didn’t try to go after him again.

Draco chuckled and crossed his arms. Surely Weasley didn’t think Draco was afraid of him. Weasley may have been bigger, but Draco was much quicker. Just because his dad was Minister of Magic didn’t give him the right to assume he could bully other students. Draco would welcome a confrontation with the Weasel. He almost lived for those kinds of moments. He’d use any excuse to beat the self-righteousness right out of his dirty, freckled face. Weasley was not going to walk around like he owned the school. That was Draco’s job, and he wasn’t giving it up. Especially to filthy little rat like Weasley.

During the shouting match, Hermione had gone for some leaves to feed to the fozzy. Like Hagrid had said, they seemed to eat almost anything green, and they chomped happily on every piece Harry, Ron, and Hermione fed them. It was one of the few peacefully successful Care of Magical Creatures lessons they’d ever had. Harry was surprised at Hagrid’s use of good judgment in choosing a proper creature.

Just as Hermione was feeding the last bit of foliage to their fozzy, Harry heard a shriek on the other side of the grounds. He stood up sharply and looked around. Lavender Brown’s robes were covered with a white, stringy mess. At her feet stood a fozzy, faithfully shooting spurts of web from its mouth.

Hagrid rushed over and picked the fozzy up. It ceased fire when he lifted it. “You’ll be alrigh’,” he told Lavender. “It’s harmless.”

Not only was Lavender being attacked, but several other students were also having the same experience. Hagrid looked around quickly between the fountains of web being shot into the air.

“Just get ‘em back in their boxes,” he yelled. “Help me, will ye, Harry?”

Harry really had rather not, but Hagrid was a friend of his, and he obviously needed some assistance. It wasn’t like it was the first time Harry had gotten Hagrid out of a sticky situation. Ron ran around behind Harry, trying to grab the fozzies that he and Hagrid couldn’t get. Hermione stood off to the side, biting her lip, not really wanting to join the fray.

To Harry and Ron’s surprisingly good fortune, grabbing the fozzy suddenly and stuffing them into their boxes caught them off guard, and their defense methods were halted long enough for the lid to be slammed down.

When the last fozzy had been caught, Harry and Ron collapsed against the wooden crates. They were both out of breath and clutching at their sides.

“So much for an uneventful class period,” Harry said.

****

Draco sat at a table in the Slytherin common room, making a poor attempt at doing homework. He stopped every few minutes to pull yet another sticky, white strand from his hair. Damn Hagrid and his lunatic obsession with horrible, uncivilized beasts. Draco didn’t even know why he bothered taking the class. An oaf like Hagrid could never teach them anything useful, and even if he could, Draco had no pretenses of ever having anything to do with something as vulgar as feeding wild animals. No, his goals were much higher. He’d take every galleon his father had and buy a mountain range somewhere. Some place far way from buffoons like Hagrid, Potter…and Weasley. He’d abolish the color red, so that anything even remotely connected to the arrogant prick would be wiped out. He anticipated the day when Lucius would break free from Azkaban and resume his financial persuasion over Ministry officials. Weasley’s Muggle-loving father would be thrown out on his arse. And that was if no one killed him before he got to the door. That’d teach Weasley, alright. He’d be put back in his rightful place as an ignorant, grubby, poverty-stricken lemming.

“What’s with you?”

Draco looked up from his book to see that Blaise Zambini was looking at him curiously. Damn it, his face must’ve been showing what his mind was thinking. Worry lines weren’t suitable for a countenance as pretty as Draco’s. Neither was letting anyone know that something was bothering a clever mind such as his. This was all Weasley’s fault. Draco recovered his composure quickly.

“I’m just thinking what this school would be like if they expelled all the Mudbloods and Muggle-borns.”

There. That was a typically Slytherin thing to say. Zambini would buy that line.

“I bet they’d let us learn Dark Arts then,” Blaise said dreamily. “It was because of the Mudbloods that they banned teaching it in the first place.”

This conversation was quickly boring Draco. He’d learned enough Dark Arts from his father to curse half the school with one hex. He was just smart enough not to use them. No sense in two Malfoys being in Azkaban. Although watching Weasley’s limp body fall to the floor sounded highly appealing.

Draco slammed his Astronomy book shut. This elicited a few angry looks from some of the other students, but he didn’t care. He was the ruler of this school, after all. Lucius had donated enough money for Draco to buy the damn thing if he wanted. He was too infuriated by Weasley’s Potter-like attitude to keep his mind on his studies. Astronomy was easy, anyway. All you had to do was draw dots on a piece of parchment and give them Roman names. Professor Sinistra wouldn’t know the difference.

“If you’re finished, can we copy?” Crabbe looked at Draco with his dull, unwitting eyes.

“No,” Draco snapped. “I didn’t spend hours perfecting my lunar charts for you to rewrite them in fifteen minutes and get a passing grade.”

In truth, Draco had only spent fifteen minutes himself, and he hadn’t so much as located one constellation. No matter, he could always scribble something down in the morning.

He sat with his back straight in the stiff wooden chair, and crossed his arms over his chest. He put a pompous mask on his face, disguising the troublesome thoughts that were going on behind his eyes. He wouldn’t slip up again. He had been taught at a very early age to never allow anyone to see what he was thinking. He had also been taught not to let anyone of lower class get under his skin. Now he’d been forced to break that rule because of Weasley. ‘Revenge’ sounded over and over again in his ears, almost drowning out the bland conversations going on around him. Vengeance this great would take a highly qualified mind, and Draco knew that no one had a surplus of that resource like he did. He started laying the tactical foundation, never forgetting to keep the illusion of a void in his gray eyes.

****

A week later, Harry was sitting in the relaxing surroundings of Professor Lupin’s rooms, having an evening tea with his teacher and Sirius. He had visited Sirius every night since school started, forgetting to finish his homework and ignoring the much-needed preparation for his sixth year classes. On a good night, he’d get about four hours sleep, and that was with leaving his homework only half-finished, and having to complete it over breakfast the next morning. He was exhausted, but spending time with Sirius meant everything to him, and if his grades had to suffer for it, it was worth it.

“I’m surprised you’re not tired of seeing me,” Sirius joked, reaching over and placing his cup down in its saucer. He was sitting in the floor, resting his back against the chair that Remus occupied.

“No, never,” said Harry. “I like being able to see you whenever I want.”

Sirius smiled warmly from across the table. “I like it, too.”

“Does the Order have any new information?” asked Harry. He knew Sirius didn’t like discussing Voldemort’s latest rise to power, but Dumbledore wouldn’t tell him anything, and he felt like someone owed him the truth. Sirius was cautious, but he agreed with Harry, and tried to keep him updated on any new developments.

“There have been reports of Death Eaters congregating more often than in the past. All in different locations, of course. They don’t hang around one place for very long. I know we’ve got a few Aurors following them, but that’s the last I heard.”

“Have any been spotted close to Hogwarts?”

“I don’t think so. Being so close to Dumbledore, not to mention all the Protection Charms, isn’t a wise move on their part.”

“What about spies in the Ministry?” Harry had been concerned for Mr. Weasley’s safety ever since he accepted his new position.

“We know of some,” Lupin said, running a distracted hand through Sirius’ hair. “But we’ve got our own spies, and we’re watching them closely.”

“How about-”

“That’s all we know, Harry,” Sirius said, though he didn’t sound annoyed. “You need to worry about school, not what’s going on outside. We’re handling it.”

“I know, but I don’t like being kept in the dark.”

“You know everything that Remus and I do. Stop worrying. Now, how’s school going?”

“It’s ok, I guess.”

“Are you studying? James would never forgive me if I let you get bad marks.”

“I study. Some.”

Sirius looked at him suspiciously. “I think Harry’s the one not telling us everything, don’t you, Moony?”

“You were always the perceptive one,” Lupin chuckled.

“Don’t think I haven’t noticed how tired you’ve been lately,” Sirius said to Harry. “You finish your classes, choke down your supper, and stay up here with us until all hours of the night.”

“But I like being here,” Harry protested.

“I like you being here, too, but you’re wearing yourself out. I’ll be here all year. You won’t hurt my feelings if you chose your school work over me. Merlin knows Remus did it plenty of times.”

“That’s not fair,” Lupin said, laughing and punching Sirius in the shoulder. Sirius caught Remus’s arm and bit it affectionately.

“Really, Harry,” he said after a moment, “you can come by as often as you’d like. Just don’t let it interfere with your marks, okay?”

Harry agreed, though he knew he’d miss spending these evenings with his godfather. Sirius was right, though, he had been spreading himself thin since the beginning of the year. He could still stop by a few times a week.

“I hear that a certain Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher assigned you a report on Stifling Spells. I don’t know if he’d buy the excuse that you spent all evening with your godfather.”

“I could always say my godfather ate it,” Harry said.

Sirius laughed loudly. “That wouldn’t be too far from the truth.”

“Now that you mention it, I have been missing some essays,” Lupin said, raising his eyebrows and looking down at Sirius.

“You trying staying locked up in here all day. You’d get bored, too.”

“So that’s why you pounce on me every evening when I come in?”

“That, among other reasons,” Sirius said, squeezing Lupin’s knee. “Sorry to run you off, Harry, but it’s already late, and if I remember my sixth year correctly, you’ve got mounds of homework waiting for you.”

****

Ron and Hermione were busy poring over their homework, much like they did every evening, when Harry walked in the Gryffindor common room. Ron put down his quill and looked up, but Hermione kept writing.

“How’s Sirius?”

“He’s good,” said Harry, opening his Transfiguration book and pulling out a roll of parchment.

“Really, Harry,” Hermione said, still not taking her attention away from her studies, “I’m as interested in Sirius as you are, but if you don’t get started on your homework, you’ll never get it finished. Professor Binns is giving us a quiz on dragon migration tomorrow.”

“Here,” Ron said, shoving a role of parchment in front of Harry. “You can copy mine.”

Ron was always so resourceful. If it weren’t for him, Harry wouldn’t have gotten any of his work done at all this week. He let Harry copy his homework every night, and even stayed up to help him after everyone else had gone to bed. Being around Hermione so much was really starting to rub off on him, but as it was also beneficial to Harry, he wasn’t going to give Ron a hard time about it.

“Ron, what have I told you about that? Harry’ll never learn it if you keep letting him copy yours.”

Ron rolled his eyes. Harry ignored her. He was too busy thinking about how to reword his essay so that it didn’t sound exactly like Ron’s.

“I’m finishing mine in the dorm,” Hermione said irritably, stacking her books with more force than was necessary. “I hope you’ll both still be down here in the morning. It’ll serve you right.” He turned on her heel and walked away.

“Mental, Hermione is,” said Ron. He pulled out his History of Magic book and opened it to the section on the Introduction of Magical Beasts. “Scribble those notes down, and then I’ll help you study for the quiz.”

Harry wrote frantically, trying to cram three hours’ worth of homework into about thirty minutes. His shoulder was burning, his elbow was stiff, and his fingers were cramping, but at last he’d managed to get his reports done.

“Finished!” he said.

“Good, mate. Now I’ll go over this dragon stuff with you, and we can go to bed.”

Ron had never been this studious before. Both of them usually waited until the last minute to complete their work, and that was only after getting tired of Hermione complaining about procrastination. Harry owed Ron big for all his help. He covered the material thoroughly, and Harry was surprised at his friend’s knowledge on the subject. He made it sound much more interesting than Professor Binns ever could. At the end of an hour, Harry felt scarily prepared for the upcoming quiz.

“Mind if I go see Sirius with you tomorrow night?” Ron hated to ask again. He’d already asked several times, but he really wanted to go, and he hoped Harry would say yes this time.

“I’m not going tomorrow.”

“The next time, then?”

“I don’t know when I’ll go back.”

“Oh.”

Ron went to bed that night, curious about why Harry seemed so determined that he not go with him to visit Sirius. He hadn’t told him no, but he was being very vague about it. Even though Sirius was Harry’s godfather, Ron considered him a part of his family, too. After all, he had spent almost the entire summer before his fifth year at Grimmauld Place. Perhaps it was his inability to restrain his affections whenever Harry got too close. Maybe Harry didn’t need him anymore, and was starting to pull away now that Sirius was around.

****

Draco had spent the past week watching Weasley carefully. He saw him walking through the halls, his gangly arms swinging in a most unrefined way. He stared at the vulgar, gaudy red mop, grateful that his own family’s genes had been clean enough to endow him with stunningly platinum hair. He studied the freckles that dotted Weasley’s face like specks of dirt. If Weasley ever took a bath, he’d probably scrub half of them off. His family was so poor that they probably didn’t have running water. Draco would’ve loved to claw each insolent orange mark from Weasley’s grubby face.

The greasy little wheels in his head were turning, producing delicious ideas for revenge. A bodily attack was out of the question. Weasley was bigger than he was, and Draco was never one for physical confrontations. He knew he was too small to ever win one of those, and far too smart to attempt it. Recruiting Crabbe and Goyle was a thought, but Draco wanted the satisfaction of bringing Weasley down himself. No, it would have to be a mental assault. He hoped his sights were accurate enough to find Weasley’s microscopic brain. He was searching for signs of weakness, something he could use to hurt Weasley as deep as possible. His most obvious weakness was Potter, but Draco didn’t want anything to do with him. Lowering himself to bother with a Weasley was bad enough. He wasn’t going to dirty his hands with Potter. He’d find something else. An insolent git like Weasley had to have more weaknesses than a hundred-eyed Cyclops. Wait…if he had a hundred eyes, he wouldn’t be a Cyclops, would he? Oh, forget it. Draco was never very good at keeping up with crude, barbaric half-humans.

His vengeful preparations were beginning to affect his studies. He spent way too much time thinking about the Weasel, and not nearly enough time on his homework. Even his favorite class, Potions, was becoming a task. He couldn’t brew a proper potion without Weasley’s and Potter’s sniveling faces obscuring his concentration. Especially Weasley’s. He was constantly jeering at Draco in that self-satisfied way that was so completely unbecoming for a vagrant like himself.

“I’m going to bed,” Draco announced. “If you wake me up, I’ll have your heads.”

Crabbe and Goyle seemed to take this as a real threat, because they nodded their heads stupidly in agreement.

Draco laughed to himself as he walked down the stairs to the dormitories. Crabbe and Goyle were as stupid as they were big. They could wring his skinny neck with one thick hand. But Draco had a certain power over people, and it was that power that he planned to exercise on Weasley.