Love, Lies & Loneliness

Chapter 16
(Inviting Trouble)

Harry yawned as he trudged down the last corridor and in through the portrait door into the Slytherin common room. It was late, Snape having deliberately kept Harry back in class until they’d gotten the ‘impervious’ curse right.

Three weeks had passed since Harry had first begun his classes again and the routine was finally beginning to catch up to the boy. In between Quidditch practice, normal classes, studying and Snape’s extra lessons Harry had hardly had anytime to himself. His weekends too had been spent with Filch, cleaning out the owlery and scrubbing cauldrons. Despite their new understanding of each other Snape had not retracted his earlier outburst of Harry’s three weekends spent in detention. Today was Friday though and tomorrow would be his first weekend free of detention and homework having done all the assignments for that week on Wednesday evening in Snape’s extra lesson. As it happened it also turned out to be the first Hogsmeade weekend. Ron and Hermione had promised to take Harry to the three broomsticks and buy him a round of butter beers to celebrate his completion of detention. Harry was looking forward to it.

Wandering in through the common room Harry wasn’t surprised that it was deserted. With curfew nearly an hour passed all of the Slytherins were now safely in their respective dorms. Making his way over to his staircase Harry bearly noticed the steps leading up to his door until he reached the top of the staircase and found a familiar blonde haired boy sitting patiently in front of the closed door.

“Potter.” Malfoy stood quickly from the top step as Harry came to a stand still beside him, outside his bedroom door.

“Malfoy.” Harry didn’t move to unlock his bedroom door, unsure of the boy’s motives in having obviously waited sometime to see him. In the past week he and Harry had been tolerant of each other, but no more. During potions class they’d worked in relative silence together and with Snape assigning a project for each lab pair, the boys had worked one morning a week together in the library completing it. Rumours had spread like wildfire about the truce between Harry and Draco but neither boy had reacted to any of them. Admittedly there were still verbal sparing matches between them but the maliciousness of those had almost halved and never resulted in physical duelling. Neither boy went out their way to annoy the other and it was only when surrounded by their respective house peers that they partook in house rivalry. Still it was strange to Harry that Malfoy had waited up for him, especially since they were certainly not friends.

“Slytherins have a meeting in the boys dorm once a month.” Harry raised an eyebrow in suspicion of Malfoy, somewhat confused by why Draco was telling him this.

“And that’s of interest to me because….” Harry cautiously looked back down the stairs as if waiting for an ambush of Slytherin’s to jump him. Draco found Harry’s paranoia amusing and a familiar smug smile broke out at the corner of Draco’s lips

“We decided that since you’re going to be here all year you might as well take the time to get to know some of us.” Harry was shocked and judging by the way Draco’s smug smile widened that shock must have been clearly written on Harry’s face.

“You’re kidding right.” Harry’s eyes narrowed as the sensible part of his brain reminded him that Malfoy was a Slytherin and that no Slytherin ever did anything that didn’t benefit them in someway.

“You don’t have to look at me like I’m luring you to your death Potter, it’s just a meeting where we eat, drink and generally just bitch about stuff.” Malfoy looked a little pissed that Harry was suspicious and while his conscience told him that accepting this was a bad idea, another part of him was actually extremely intrigued to know what Slytherins got up to.

“Fine I’ll come but if one of your buddies lays a finger on me…” Harry didn’t finish his threat as Draco waved it off with a sarcastic chuckle.

“They won’t.” Draco looked seriously up at Harry who for all intent and purpose believed the blonde boy. “Our meetings always coincide with staff meetings, so there’s no chance Snape will come barging in. I’ll come get you tomorrow night after dinner, it’s considered polite to filch something from the kitchens to bring with you.” Harry nodded silently in agreement to which end Draco smiled in success. “Night Potter.” With that Draco turned and disappeared down the stairs leaving Harry somewhat pleased with himself at having finally infiltrated the Slytherin house. Harry now couldn’t wait until the morning to tell Ron and Hermione about the meeting he’d been invited to. With his magic finally returned Harry had password protected his bedroom door and so with a whispered word Harry slid into his room and hastily went about getting some well-earned rest.

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“Harry be careful.” Hermione sipped on her butter beer as she, Harry and Ron sat down at a table by the fire in the three broomsticks. “Draco’s still a Malfoy, for all you know this could be just a ploy to spy on you for ‘you-know-who’.” Hermione lowered her voice a little as some Ravenclaw students sat down at the table next to them chatting wildly about their purchases from Honeydukes and Zonko’s.

“I will be Hermione, I promise I’m not going to tell them anything.” Harry looked seriously across at his worried friend who seemed to accept his promise with a warm smile.

“Besides Harry’s going to be too busy snooping for us aren’t you Harry.” Ron winked brightly at his best friend as he too sipped from his butter beer having dunked two chocolate frogs into the mixture in a disgusting display. Only Ronald Weasley liked butter beer dipped chocolate frogs.

“Ron I told you I promised Snape I would respect….”

“Who cares what you promised that slim ball.” Ron cut Harry off abruptly waving away Snape’s rule about respecting Slytherins rights. Harry didn’t say anything but he’d come to respect Snape’s rules far more than ever before, Harry even had to admit he’d come to enjoy the professors company during their private tutoring sessions and there was no way he was going to ruin Snape’s trust in him when the professor was just beginning to teach him Dark Arts on a Wednesday. “Ooooh hey I bet you could find out about the death eaters and what they’re up to.” Ron’s eyes lit up widely at the prospect of Harry spying on the death eaters but Harry merely rolled his eyes at his friends over enthusiasm.

“Ron. I doubt very much if they’re going to be discussing death eaters while Harry’s there, honestly they’re not completely stupid.” Hermione scolded the red head’s stupidity to which end Ron pulled a face and continued to drink his butter beer in silence. Hermione turned her attention back to Harry who was staring quietly out of the window of the pub, where he could see Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle throwing levitated snowballs at passers by. “Have you got something to take with you to this meeting then?” Harry turned his attention back from the scene outside and towards Hermione who hadn’t seemed to notice his lack of attention.

“Yeah, Dobby’s made a cake for me to take he’ll bring it to me after dinner.” Hermione nodded in silence as she finished off what remained of her butter beer and stood up from the table, to glance down at where Ron was sulking at having been chastised like a child.

“Oh for Merlin’s sake Ron do stop sulking. Perhaps if you used your brain for once I wouldn’t have to keep correcting you, now get up and lets go to Zonko’s?” Harry smiled inwardly to himself amused by the way Hermione and Ron were acting. He was sure now than ever that something was going on between them, but as yet neither of them had mentioned it to him and Harry wasn’t about to pry. Ron seemed to perk up again at the mention of Zonko’s and so the three of them left the broomsticks and began towards the joke shop in the centre of the village. Ron struck up a conversation about Quidditch on the way there and Harry’s lingering thoughts on the Slytherin meeting that night disappeared as he enjoyed the company of his friends.

TBC>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

A/N Let me know if you\'re all still with me on this, and if you want the next chapter about the \'meeting\' soon you better get groveling.....\"Smiles cheekily\" Oh and a review or two would be nice too.

Oh and for the person who asked \'when are snape and harry going to get together\' well it\'s coming very soon.