Chapter Three
How the Badger has Fallen
I stumble and fall, baby
Under it all
I bleed and I bruise
Oh but what's it to you?
I'm only human on the inside
I crash and I burn
Maybe someday you'll learn
I'm only human on the inside
Zacharias was very amused when Hogwarts burned down.
At the time, of course, it was unsettling, what with the mass panic and everyone stampeding out of their rooms, Ernie shouting that the Dark Lord was trying to smoke the Hufflepuffs out. Once they were all standing out by the lake and watching the castle burn merrily, though, Zacharias started to see the funny side.
"What a shame this is, what a shame," Dumbledore said genially. "A great big fire. And me in a nightshirt without marshmallows in the pockets."
Zacharias considered hero worship for a bit, and then decided it was too much bother.
Justin had stared at Hogwarts for a long time, apparently lost in introspection. Zacharias had been mildly startled to see that he didn't even appear to notice that Terry Boot was wandering around in boxers. He just stared, and stared, and finally light seemed to dawn.
"You know what?" he said, as the fire exploded Gryffindor Tower. "I'm gay! I'm FLAMING!"
"What an amazing thing," Zacharias remarked.
"Do you want to go out with me, Ernie? Because I'm flaming, I am! I am totally ready for a committed homosexual relationship!"
Ernie peered at him suspiciously. "Is this code?"
Justin started to unbutton Ernie's pyjama top and Ernie jumped in horror.
"I know what's going on here!" he exclaimed. "You're the Dark Lord, Transfigured into Justin, trying to get close to me because I am the only one who knows the key to the top secret code!"
"Your house mates are weird," Draco complained, and rested his head on Zacharias' shoulder. "Oh, well. At least somebody burned down the rat hole at last. Though why they couldn't burn in down in daylight, which would have been far more convenient..."
"Arson is generally a bit tricky in broad daylight," Zacharias observed neutrally.
"Don't question me," Draco scowled. "We can both go to Durmstrang, now," he added thoughtfully.
"I'm still Muggleborn," Zacharias reminded him. "It's not a phase."
Draco smiled engagingly. "I thought of that," he said. "I'm going to buy you a collar and a chain, and you can be my slave boy. Nobody will mind."
Hermione had wandered up at this point, wringing her hands. Her hair was in curlers.
"Thousands of protective wards," she murmured, looking dazed. "Wasted. Complex, ingenious charms... I feel a little..."
Zacharias thoughtfully passed her Ernie's paper bag.
"Yes, who would have thought You Know Who would work out the complex mechanisms of gasoline and a lit match," he observed.
"Curlers," Draco said, distracted from the blaze. "So... Granger, the hair is deliberate?"
"Well... yes," Hermione answered, flustered. "I wanted everyone to think I was a natural beauty." She began to sob into Ernie's paper bag. "Now that's out, too!"
"A human being did that to their hair on purpose," Draco said. He looked very young and scared, suddenly. He looped an arm around Zacharias' waist and added tremulously, "Hold me."
Zacharias did. Justin ran past, and yelled, "More power to you, rainbow brethren!"
Harry Potter ambled up, scowling terrifically.
"You mocked me before," he told them both, his expression darkening further as he looked at them. "Now what do you have to say?"
"Don't make that face," Draco answered. "It'll stick that way."
"Now Voldemort has attacked my last refuge," Harry said, over-solemnly. "I swear he will pay for this."
"For Hogwarts? Let's hope he has insurance," Zacharias observed. It was, after all, a castle.
"My hands are cold," Draco grumbled. "My hands would not have been cold at Durmstrang, because their uniform has fur gloves. Woe on the substandard places of education, which do not nurture their students tenderly or fashionably. Can I put my hands under your pyjama shirt?"
Zacharias shrugged. "Put them wherever you like."
"I HATE VOLDEMORT," Harry said with sudden violence.
"Really, Potter," Draco said. "Medication. Look into it."
Justin wandered past again, and gave Zacharias a thumbs-up. Then he came to stand by Harry.
"Hi, Harry," he said. "I'm gay."
"I'm not that oblivious," Harry told him.
Justin smiled seductively. "How about it, big boy? You and me."
"I know the Dark Arts," Harry said, hastily producing his wand. "I'm not afraid to use them."
"Oh, I don't mind a spot of Imperius," Justin purred. "I'm kinky like that."
Harry backed up. "I don't know how yet," he said in a strangled voice, "but I know this is Voldemort's fault. And he will pay, the bastard!"
"I love it when you talk enraged to me," Justin told him.
Harry fled.
Draco looked at Justin with a new respect. "Who would have thought it," he said to Zacharias. "Hufflepuffs do have their uses."
Zacharias shrugged.
They all ended up being shipped home. Zacharias knocked on his front door at three in the morning.
"Hello, Mother," he said. "The school burned down. It was evil invaders. Also, I appear to be gay."
Ivy Smith shrugged. "I'll make coffee."
Zacharias had found his mother's eminently sensible attitude to life a great relief when they had been told he was a magical being who had to go to a school complete with robes and broomsticks.
She had commented that it would be a saving on school fees, and it was lucky that Zacharias did not have to wear a pointy hat, since he did not have the nose for it.
A Howler arrived from Draco at six.
'ZACHARIAS, WHERE ARE MY DOZEN ROSES? WHERE ARE MY SCENTED MISSIVES TELLING ME THAT YOU CANNOT LIVE ANOTHER DAY WITHOUT ME? WHY HAVE YOU NOT CONTACTED ME YET? WHY DO YOU LEAVE ME HERE NEGLECTED TO DIE? YOU MUST PINE FOR MY PRESENCE AND REFUSE FOOD UNTIL NEXT YOU BEHOLD MY FACE! THIS IS WHAT RELATIONSHIPS ARE ABOUT!'
Zacharias shrugged and continued to eat his cereal. It was nice to know Draco was thinking of him.
"Is this the boyfriend, then?" his mother asked. "Good pair of lungs on him. Perhaps a little demanding but then, it's important to know what you want in a relationship. Your father and I fell apart because he could never give me what I wanted."
"Yes, mother," said Zacharias, "but what you wanted was sex with women."
"Well, he never gave me that," his mother said. "I was forced to go outside the relationship to get what I needed. He never understood that."
"Yes, mother," said Zacharias. "If only my father had been able to provide lesbian sex, you would still be together today."
Ivy shrugged. "Well, I don't know. He also insisted on reading the T.V. Guide first."
The next Howler from Draco arrived at seven.
'ZACHARIAS, WHY DID YOU NOT RESPOND TO MY LAST? THIS COLDHEARTED ABANDONMENT WOUNDS ME! I MUST BE PLACATED WITH MANY EXPENSIVE GIFTS! MY HAIR IS STANDING ON END! SOMEONE WILL PAY!'
"Is he that loud during your little encounters?" Ivy inquired. "How embarrassing that must be. I understood you lived in dormitories."
Zacharias shrugged. "He had a private room."
"Ah. That's all right then."
The next Howler arrived at seven-thirty. Draco's patience was clearly wearing thin.
'HAVING LISTENED TO SEVERAL MUGGLE SONGS BECAUSE I WAS ASSURED THAT WAS THE CORRECT BEHAVIOUR FOR A DESERTED PARTNER, I HAVE THIS TO SAY: WHY YOU GOT TO HURT ME THIS WAY, BABY? ALSO, MY MOTHER HAS FALLEN TO PIECES SINCE MY FATHER WAS IMPRISONED. SHE CLAIMS TO HAVE NO FRENCH SHAMPOO IN STOCK. SHE HAS CLEARLY COMPLETELY LET GO OF REASON. I AM TRAPPED IN HELL WITH A RAVING WOMAN. WHERE IS YOUR HEART, ZACHARIAS?'
Attached to the owl's other leg was a reply form with the 'Please Reply' scratched out and replaced with 'You'd better reply Zacharias, reply right now Zacharias, you are in so much trouble if you do not Respond Immediately Zacharias!'
"I think perhaps your boyfriend wants to you to write to him," said Ivy.
Zacharias shrugged. "I suppose so."
Zacharias wrote back
'Dear Draco, Nice to hear from you.
You seem lonely. Would you like to come and stay?'
Draco's Howler arrived at seven-forty-five.
Draco arrived in Zacharias' fireplace at eight.
"I was expecting you sooner," Zacharias said, helping him out, brushing the coal dust off his cloak and giving him a kiss.
"I had things to do," Draco answered with dignity. "I assume you missed me."
Zacharias shrugged.
Zacharias thought his mother was rather amused by Draco too.
"He isn't as good as Ernest, though," she remarked, rather wistfully.
Ernie had come over to stay for a week last summer. Ivy and Zacharias had been woken up every morning with two short raps, followed by the sound of a hippopotamus in the wilderness, and then finishing with a scream of 'Oh my God it's attacking me the Dark Lord has sent a robot to destroy me what is this foul thing you call a toaster?'
Zacharias shrugged.
Draco watched very carefully as Zacharias' mother made them lasagne, and Zacharias thought this was rather sweet.
Then it emerged that Draco thought that you could mix up any mess of completely stupid things, put them in the magical box and produce whatever you wished for. He applied this creative logic while Zacharias and his mother were out. He filled one tin with washing up liquid, spaghetti sauce and cheese to get French shampoo, and another with lettuce, crisps, shoe polish and marmalade because he felt like cake.
They came in at about the time the oven door flew open and spewed thick, strange-smelling bubbles. Draco Malfoy was deposited in a wave to their feet.
He looked up through wet, silvery, bubble-threaded bangs and scowled at them hideously.
"Did you two know you shrug in tandem?" he demanded.
Zacharias and Ivy shrugged.
"I shall make a cup of tea," Ivy said, keeping a weather eye on Draco. When Ernie had first seen a kettle, he had shouted 'To me, comrades! Hut hut hut!' and hit it violently. Draco merely looked at it balefully.
He seemed disillusioned with technology until that night, when Zacharias showed him the television. He was enchanted, and carried out little unconscious mimicry of the characters.
They all watched a movie where a woman died tragically of cancer while her children and past lovers wept around her.
"Ha," said Draco. "This is hysterical. Could they be more cheap and obvious about trying to make me cry? People kill me."
Zacharias' mother looked faintly pleased. "I see why you like him," she observed.
"I should have hoped that it was obvious from the first sight of my beautiful face," Draco said.
"We have certain things in common," Zacharias told her neutrally, and put his arm around Draco. Draco curled up around him and fell asleep.
Draco almost immediately co-opted every item of clothing in Zacharias' closet that he fancied, and was very upset that there were no house elves to have them adjusted to his satisfaction. He wandered around, thinner and more slightly built than Zacharias, with his collars exposing a little too much of his collarbone and his jeans slipping to show pale sections of hip. He also wandered around looking sulky because of the sheer imperfection of his attire.
Zacharias considered that it was not a bad look on him.
He forced them to buy different curtains. Both of them went along with it, amused enough to let him have his way.
On the last day before their return to Hogwarts, Draco said, "Have I been awful?"
"Very," Zacharias answered. "But you always are."
Draco sat up, pushing his hair out of his eyes. He was careless about it, so Zacharias thought he might be rather serious.
"But you'd much rather have me here being awful than not."
Zacharias noted the slight hesitation in the imperious statement. Zacharias shrugged. "Probably."
Draco looked discontented, said, "And you never did buy French shampoo either" and went to sleep. He was curled up on top of the bedcovers with his hair getting rumpled the way he did not like it to.
Zacharias fetched another blanket and tucked it around him, and lay on the bed with his hand in the small of Draco's back. He rubbed it now and then when Draco stirred.
His mother came up, and stood in the doorway. "So it's like that then," she said.
Zacharias shrugged.
Draco was outraged when they returned to the building site that used to be Hogwarts, and found out that while it was being rebuilt they had to eat and sleep in portacabins.
"I'll grow mould," he threatened darkly. "I'll grow mould on my face. I asked That Pomfrey Woman for face cream but she said she was working out of a First Aid kit and it wasn't an emergency."
Zacharias shrugged. "That is upsetting."
Their whole year had to eat meals on an enormous rug outside their portacabins. Zacharias thought this was a rather amusing prospect, and had been quite content with Draco's insistence on leaning against his chest in place of a chair back.
He thought there was little need for Harry Potter to sit quite so close, but he was basically unruffled. It was impractical to commit lustful assault in front of witnesses.
Draco frowned and glared into the distance. "I hate the Dark Lord," he announced.
Harry gazed at Draco in a manner that reminded Zacharias of an ice-cream in a microwave.
"I love you," he said.
"And then I asked Professor Snape, but he said we were sent into this world to suffer and anyway he had gone thirty years without hygienic products and it was high time for me to start," Draco continued woefully, and then squinted at Harry. "Did you say something, Potter?"
"I love yams," said Harry. "They're an... American thing... kind of, you know. Sweet potatoes. I wish I had some right now."
Draco glared at him. "That's right, Potter," he snapped. "We are living in cardboard shacks, there is a leak over my bed and my skin is in dire straits. And you sit here yammering about carbohydrates. Fine hero you are."
Zacharias noted that Harry looked like a kicked, although still slightly rabid, puppy. Zacharias had never been overly fond of dogs.
Of course, Zacharias had never been overly fond of anything much.
"I was thinking, Malfoy," he began tentatively.
"A likely story," Draco snapped.
"Since we're on the same side and all, this rivalry seems a little silly," Harry continued laboriously.
"Oh silly, am I? Not even worth bothering about in the enemy stakes, I suppose," Draco said, narrowing his eyes. "Fine. I don't care. You can say what you want, but I for one am not abandoning tradition with rapid and callous cruelty. I STILL HATE YOU, Potter. And I always will!"
"I just thought it would be nice if we could get along-"
"Yes, yes, any excuse to break it off, obviously!"
"It was just a little juvenile-"
"Clearly I mean nothing to you!" Draco's mouth curled. "I wasted the best vitriol of my life on you, Potter."
"But-"
He gestured dramatically. "No! No words! Nothing you say can make a difference! I understand what you want - and now get off my picnic rug!"
"Come sit by me, Harry," Justin cooed.
Harry bit down on his fork.
"You look a little put out," Zacharias said, not looking all that put out about it.
"Thinking about Voldemort," Harry said indistinctly.
"Potter is a giant obsessed freak," Draco told Zacharias as they walked around the lake afterwards, holding hands. "I think he's fixated, you know."
"Do you?" Zacharias said in the most noncommittal of tones.
"Please. He practically has a crush on Voldemort," Draco sneered. "I'm telling you, Zacharias. My father and now Potter. I don't want to face it, but the Dark Lord obviously has sex appeal."
"Power is an aphrodisiac," Zacharias agreed.
At that point, Justin wandered by and tried to get them to buy badges for the Gay and Lesbian Society of Hogwarts. He had cut his shirt so his midriff showed, and was wearing cut-off shirts and a rainbow bandanna around his forehead.
"Has anybody joined?" Draco asked disdainfully.
"A surprising amount of people," Justin said, looking thrilled. "I showed the badges to Hermione Granger and she agreed to join... er, without asking me what they were for... and er, Mr. Filch and Professor Snape, but they pinned their badges into their flesh.... And Harry Potter," he added. "And then Colin Creevey immediately afterwards."
"Be off with you," Draco said sharply. "I will not touch your Hufflepuffian wares."
Justin shimmied in his roller skates. "Oooh, Draco, you're so masterful."
Draco tilted his head to share a God-aren't-the-rest-of-the-world-just-kind-of-plebeian smile with Zacharias, but Zacharias was thinking of Harry Potter and Draco at lunchtime.
"Is something the matter?" said Draco.
Zacharias shrugged.
"Zacharias."
"Yes?"
"I think you should write me a sonnet."
Zacharias considered this interesting proposition. "No, I don't think I'm the sonnet type."
"I think my beauty should be immortalised in verse," Draco said.
Zacharias shrugged. "Pay someone to do it."
Draco's smile was only small. "I suppose that's the sensible thing to do," he said. He stabbed at something on his plate, and then tried to lift it out. "Oh my God, it's a worm," he exclaimed. "Insects are crawling on and off our plates. If we have magic, why are we living like savages, like apes, like Professor Hagrid?"
"It's full of protein," Zacharias observed mildly.
"I'm going to get sick."
"Maybe not if you eat the protein."
"He doesn't need to. Doesn't get his protein off plates, eh?" Justin grinned, and began to mug.
Draco looked completely scandalised, and gave Justin a withering look. Justin, however, was busy talking to Colin Creevey about his photo collection.
Draco abandoned his plate and leaned against Zacharias' shoulder. Zacharias continued to eat.
"Well, I thought a collage of someone heroic would be a fine bedroom decoration," Colin explained gravely. "But, obviously for verisimilitude I had to depict every part of Harry's life, and I think he's a little camera shy. I fixed it, though. I set up self-taking cameras in his dormitory, and the Quidditch changing rooms, and the showers-"
"I can see you're just the man for me," Justin said. "Show me your collages, you tiger."
Colin looked pleased. "They have borders."
"Oooh, you naughty thing! So, Colin, do you have a boyfriend?"
Colin seemed taken aback. "Oh, I just wanted to have a badge like Harry Potter! I'm not gay. My father's a milkman, you know. Dairy products are a very manly line of trade."
Justin sighed. "You're insulting the whole world with your denial of your true self, you know."
"I'm not gay!" Colin squawked. "I'm a dairy man!"
"Your room is covered with naked Harry Potter!"
"Only the left wall!"
Harry Potter began to gnaw on his fork, but Hermione took it away from him.
"What are you doing?" he snapped. "I'm just angry. Thinking about Voldemort."
"Yes, Harry," she said. "But we're getting worried. Ron says there are teeth marks all over the new dormitory furniture."
"Probably Voldemort," Harry replied, his expression shifty. "He is evil, and bent on destruction."
"Of bedposts?"
"Don't ask me to fathom his dark mind."
"Right on, Comrade Potter," said Ernie. "The bedposts are clearly part of a deeper plan. Possibly a warm-up for the bones of Hufflepuffs!"
Harry glowered at Zacharias. "Possibly."
Draco bristled. "Don't you dare threaten my boyfriend, Potter."
The word boyfriend seemed to lift Harry to new heights of rage.
"You know what you are, Draco?" demanded the Boy Who Loathed. "You're a splinter!"
Draco sniffed. "How many devastatingly handsome splinters have you met recently?"
"You're a splinter," spat Harry. "You get under people's skin and you nag and you itch and you poison their blood and you irritate them until they want to claw you out. You're absolutely impossible and you make me furious!"
"So does marzipan," Draco pointed out.
But he looked taken aback, Zacharias noticed, his eyelashes down to conceal the fact he was thinking.
It was not a factor in Zacharias' equation, but for some reason he noticed that Draco's eyelashes were almost invisible against his skin, just a gleam rather than a contrast.
"Don't get worked up, Harry," said Susan. "We have things to do, you know."
Harry looked irate. "And what do Hufflepuffs do? Exactly?"
"Nothing important," Zacharias said calmly, shrugging. "They never do anything important. Even Cedric Diggory didn't do anything important. They just mark the way with little tasks, pile up a hundred little boring jobs with no glory which nobody else ever wanted to do, and in the end after all the small things the Hufflepuffs tried the hero can triumph."
It was another small thing when Draco took his hand.
"Hey," he said. "You still adore me even though I never want to do anything boring, right?"
Zacharias shrugged.
Draco looked over his shoulder at Harry, who was glaring with heated rage at a small bug crawling on the picnic blanket. Apparently something about it offended him. Possibly it reminded him of Voldemort.
"Do you think Potter meant all that?" he asked carefully, a small wedge of distance in his voice.
Zacharias shrugged.
The rebuilding of Hogwarts was carried on at night, so everyone could fall asleep to the soothing grind of moving stones and the conviction that Dumbledore was setting everything to rights.
Of course, in the Hufflepuff portacabin dorms Ernie woke everyone up hourly with a scream of 'They are using the noise to tunnel through the floors! Quickly! Everyone stand on their bed with their chests raised over their heads for as long as it takes and we will foil their plan, win victory and have impressive biceps!'
In between those hours, everyone got a chance to say, 'No Justin, go to your own bed!'
Amusing as this was, Zacharias had a slight headache, so he went outside for a bit of night air.
Stones were flying nimbly in the air, skipping about like granite swallows on crack cocaine. Dumbledore sat in front of them with a bag of cheese puffs, watching them genially.
He didn't have his wand out. Zacharias wondered if he was using the cheese puffs as a substitute.
Then he looked at the stones more closely.
"The house elves are doing it," he said, with mild surprise.
"Bless them," said Dumbledore. "They feel so lost and forlorn without their kitchen."
"But everybody thinks you're slaving through the night to rebuild-" Zacharias stopped midsentence, and settled for gazing at Dumbledore with the faint stirrings of what felt like awe.
"Bright lad. Cheese puff?" Dumbledore asked. "Do you have something to say about that?"
"No, sir. I just think you're sort of cool."
"Ravenclaw, are you?"
"Hufflepuff, sir."
"Ah," said Dumbledore. "Well, never mind. Good lad."
"I don't mind," Zacharias said. "Hufflepuffs have low expectations. Strategically, that's a good move. It means we are never disappointed and rarely surprised."
"Seems like you've given the place of Hufflepuff some thought."
"I like to have an unusual hobby," Zacharias agreed placidly.
Dumbledore nodded. "And what is it at present that you have low expectations of, lad?"
Zacharias shrugged.
Zacharias did not talk to Draco the next morning. He was waiting for Draco to speak to someone else.
Harry frowned at the picnic blanket. Draco noticed.
"Maybe you could defeat it instead of the Dark Lord," Draco told him, faux sympathetic. "I think it might be more your speed."
"Maybe if you spent less time whining about French conditioner for your stupid hair you might be of some use to the D.A.," Harry snapped. "Your hair isn't even that nice."
"!!!" said Draco, which Zacharias had always vaguely thought of as 'their' sound.
Harry had insulted the hair. Zacharias watched with a certain sense of inevitability as Draco flung himself at him and they began to fight.
It would of course be faintly ludicrous to say something like 'Get your hand off your wand and step away from my boyfriend.'
They rolled around for a bit.
"Can you believe that vicious, blasphemous freak?" Draco asked afterwards, his eyes glittering.
Zacharias shrugged. He thought it was the wisest move.
"Zacharias," Draco said, in a lower voice, and tilted his head to one side. Zacharias was not entirely sure what he wanted, but his face looked appealing.
"What do you want?"
"Sonnets, French shampoo, to be waited on hand and foot and to be the ruler of the world, but you don't have to arrange that last one."
"That's good, I have Potions homework."
Draco laughed and Zacharias did not. He was not feeling particularly like it.
"What is it?" said Draco.
Zacharias shrugged. "I'm not all that amused."
"I thought you were amused by everything," Draco pointed out. "I thought you only liked things you were amused by."
"Well."
Draco was biting down on his lip, and probably thinking about passion.
"I'll talk to you later," he said.
Zacharias shrugged.
Draco continued to have fights with Harry Potter on the picnic rugs. And in the classrooms. Once Draco was aggravated to such an extent that he kicked a hole in the portacabin wall and got his foot stuck in there.
Professor Binns blinked at it.
"My," he said. "How remarkable. It reminds me of the Half-Ghost Incident of 1854... cease squawking, foot, and take out your quills as I begin dictation, children."
Zacharias was aware, in a more detached sort of way than usual, that it was all most amusing.
It happened on Wednesday. Draco came storming into the Hufflepuff dorm room.
"Speak the password, friend, and enter!" Ernie declaimed.
"Buzz off, you freakish twerp," said Draco. "Zacharias. Harry Potter kissed me!"
Zacharias noticed he'd used Harry's first name. Eton always burst into flames in the end.
"Did he," he said.
"Yes, we were fighting and then he pinned me down - temporary thing, it was a strategy really, I was just about to employ my fiendish plan and vanquish him totally - and then he said 'You'll get what's coming to you' and then he put his tongue in my mouth," Draco exclaimed.
"Don't sound so shocked," Justin said. "Homophobe. You think you can oppress us, but we're here, we're queer, we get drunk on Butterbeer! You're never going to keep us down!"
"Did you like it?"
Draco looked at him in horror. "Aren't you upset?"
Zacharias noticed that that was not a negative. "Do you want him to do it again?"
"Do I want to cheat on you?" Draco demanded.
"I know you're familiar with the concept, Draco," Zacharias reminded him, and tried to share a smile. "I see you do it in Quidditch all the time."
"Why aren't you upset?" Draco asked furiously. "What, am I not amusing any more? Oh, it figures that I would find the one Hufflepuff in all the world with a superiority complex."
Zacharias thought about the fiendish compatibility, but Draco had not shared the last smile. He shrugged instead.
"Why don't you hit Potter? Why don't you ask me not to leave you, why don't you do something? What do you want to do?" Draco shouted, and his voice was imperious and quavering at once.
Zacharias shrugged. "What do you want to do, Draco?"
Privately, he thought Draco's "To hell with you and all bloody Hufflepuffs" was terribly melodramatic.
As he slammed out, he wondered why he was not amused.
"Did you two just break up?" Justin asked in a subdued voice.
Zacharias shrugged.
It was two minutes later that Justin fell on his knees.
"Zacharias!" he said. "I have always loved you, and I know that you have always loved me!"
"No, not so much," Zacharias answered.
Justin waved it aside. "Denial."
Zacharias felt obliged to point out, "Boyfriend."
"Doesn't count," Justin said firmly. "Very girly hair. Let me lead you out of the closet, Zacharias, to embrace a world of sticky boy on boy love."
"This is code, isn't it," Ernie said with conviction.
"I will wed thee, Zacharias," said Justin. "I've been reading. We can do it in Las Vegas. There's an Elvis chapel."
Ernie went off to fetch his translation book.
"I'll even look into the male pregnancy spell for you, Zacharias. I mean, for me. Not for you. That would be a crime. You svelte, saucy piece of manhood, you."
Zacharias noted all possible means of escape from the portacabin. In a pinch, the walls would crumble.
"I hear that has side effects on the morning sickness," he remarked neutrally. "Causing people to vomit for miles around."
"For you I would cause untold suffering to innocent strangers!"
"That's sweet."
Zacharias wished Draco was here to exchange a snicker.
"So, fair Zacharias, wilt thou be mine?"
"On the whole, Justin, I think not."
Justin got up from his knees, looking disappointed. "But it was a very gay proposal at least," he said hopefully.
"I can safely tell you it is the very gayest proposal I have ever received."
Zacharias saw Harry and Draco arguing in the corridors three days later. He saw the shouting, and the flushed faces, and the way Harry pinned Draco to the wall and slipped his tongue into his mouth. The way Draco let him.
In the end after all the small things the Hufflepuffs tried the hero can triumph.
He went back to the Hufflepuff common room, and sat down. Susan came over and leaned against him. Justin leaped over eagerly.
"Does my man need a cuddle?"
"Really, Justin. Unwanted touches," Zacharias said mildly.
Susan's voice was quiet. "Are you very upset, Zacharias?"
Zacharias wondered if that was what that was, that slightly emptier place that made things less amusing.
Zacharias shrugged.