Tequila

Chapter 17

Severus had watched Harry and Draco leave the Slytherin table together that morning and his curiosity was definitely piqued. It had been harder than he thought seeing Harry at breakfast. Everything that he’d told Hermione and himself still stood but by seeing the boy, he’d realised just how much he was missing him. Sure he’d gone days without spending any time with him before, but he missed having Harry glancing frequently up at the top table, or smirking when he was lecturing in Potions. He’d been well and truly ignored that morning and it had caused him more pain than he was willing to admit to himself. He’d bitten everyone’s head off, even Dumbledore, who’d just twinkled at him and told him to try to keep his temper.

Severus had thought long and hard about his imperfections and his relationships and he’d realised that he had probably blown the first relationship in his life that had been somewhat normal.

// If you can call shagging someone half my age normal. //

Harry wasn’t perfect. He’d come to that conclusion. In fact he’d come to that conclusion long before he’d even started seeing him. He was too tempestuous, bad tempered and nosy to be ever called perfect. They’d had many heated battles both before and during training and while Severus had thought the boy to be passionate, he’d also realised that he didn’t like being wrong. He was also little more than a child, though his circumstances had caused him to grow up very quickly, and Severus could still remember his 5th year at the school where he’d acted more like a teenager than Severus had ever seen.

Remembering the things about Harry that had annoyed him made Severus realise that he’d been foolish beyond belief to put him up on that pedestal. The fault was his and not Harry’s and it was up to himself to try and fix it. He’d come to the conclusion that whether or not he wanted to spend the rest of his life with Harry, he wanted to spend RIGHT NOW with him, and explore their relationship and see how his feelings developed for Harry and how Harry’s developed for him. He was going to have to explain to the young Gryffindor and apologise

// apologise???? //

for being an idiot. He only hoped that Harry was in the mood to forgive an old deatheater for being a fool.

Instead of going for lunch with the rest of the faculty, Severus had made rounds in the castle and its grounds. He could be seen doing this fairly frequently, but never with such a look of intensity on his face. He was searching for Harry, without looking like he was searching for Harry, in order to apologise and explain what was going on.

Seeing Harry’s usual group of friends walking from behind the whomping willow he slunk in behind them, making sure that Harry was there and that he was alone. He’d definitely not been expecting the sight he came across. Harry and Draco, their heads together, laughing. He overcame his shock after a few seconds and hastily backed away before they could see him. Making his way quickly to the castle he glanced back and saw them laugh again before looking around and discreetly moving off in opposite directions.

Well that was a revelation. Harry and Draco are friends?

// or are they seeing each other? //

Severus stomped quickly down on that train of thought. They hated each other. As observed by Severus repeatedly in the last few weeks. Maybe they were finally putting their differences aside

// and becoming lovers //

and becoming allies. They were both intelligent

// attractive //

young men, perhaps they were finally seeing

// each other //

the benefit of being friends rather than enemies.

Severus was an intellectual grown up. He could see the sense in them putting aside their differences. He could understand if Draco had finally asked for Harry’s help. He could comprehend Harry helping the blonde boy; he was that kind of person.

Severus spent several minutes convincing himself that there was nothing more than mutual understanding

// attraction //

between the two young men and went off to his office to prepare for his next class. He’d completely forgotten about speaking to Harry. He’d do it later.

Severus spent the remaining classes that afternoon thinking about what he’d witnessed at lunchtime. There was really nothing in it, he knew that. Well mentally he knew that, emotionally it was a bit harder to take.

// God knows there are younger, better looking men than myself after Harry. //

He knew, he absolutely knew that there was nothing going on between Harry and Draco. Nothing. Both had shown disinterest when the other’s name had been mentioned. In fact Draco has put 2 fingers in his mouth and feigned vomiting just to show how little he was attracted to the other young man. And Harry’s little outburst the other day had proven how much he thought of Draco.

Feeling slightly better, but still barking orders and taking points in every class, he admitted that the thought of Harry with another person disturbed him enormously. He’d give himself a few days to let his overactive imagination deal with it then he’d speak to them both.

After class he shut himself in his office like he’d done every other of the previous few days and drank himself into oblivion.

Harry hadn’t seen Severus that afternoon, he’d finished his conversation and headed to lunch completely unaware of what Severus had seen. He’d been careful to make sure that no-one saw himself and Draco together if they were gonna start this little plan right away. Harry admitted to himself that the plan was reckless and someone, probably Draco, could get hurt, but he also realised that the teachers, despite their infinite wisdom, were probably not going to be able to fix this one. Too obvious if they started poking about. Too easy to spot if they started waiting around corners, hoping to jump out on the culprits.

Harry headed up to the common room before dinner, hoping to see one of his friends to get some kind of idea of how things were going. He hoped it didn’t come to the point of him fighting with any of the other students but he figure that’s what was probably on the way. He was not afraid of fighting with the bad guys, after all he’d fought Voldie, but this was different. Harry knew his physical strength was equal to the other boys his age, but his magical strength was way beyond and he was scared he might seriously hurt someone in his attempt to make things right.

Harry sighed. It was a chance he’d have to take, and hearing the bell, he ran to his next class.

Later that afternoon, after classes were done and before dinner started, Harry was sitting in the common room in quiet conversation with Hermione, trying to figure out the best was to solve the world’s problems.

“Harry, you know I love you and I’d do anything for you but I just think this could be more dangerous than you can imagine.”

Hermione had spent the last 20 minutes trying to persuade Harry to go to the teachers instead of fixing the situation himself.

“You are impossibly arrogant,” she laughed.

Harry stood quickly and gave a florid bow. Between them they decided to set up the confrontation for as soon as possible, i.e. tomorrow. They knew it would be difficult but they had the element of surprise, and hopefully the culprits, used to attacking Draco unimpeded would be complacent.

And after he’d fixed things with Draco, he could concentrate on sorting out Severus. After all, he should be able to show Severus that although he didn’t particularly like Draco, he could still respect Severus’ closeness with the blonde. Felling slightly more confident about everything, he and Hermione headed down to dinner.

Entering the hall, Harry could see things were already going according to plan. Draco was sat at the end of the Slytherin table, by himself, something Harry had never seen before. He glanced quickly at the top table and found Severus looking with something like pity at Draco and something like calculation at the Gryffindor table where Seamus and Neville were busy whispering.

Harry looked away quickly and realised, for the first time, that Severus might figure out something was going on.

// Please, please, please, please, Severus, for once in your life, stay out of other peoples business //

Sitting down beside Hermione, he watched Seamus and Neville head over to the Hufflepuff table. He saw their heads go together with a couple of the more outgoing Hufflepuffs and watched as what they were saying slowly made its way down that table and across to the Ravenclaws.

// Everyone in this school is such a gossip, it should be round in a matter of minutes //

Harry knew that they were going to have to work fast to keep Severus from finding out what was going on and didn’t hold much hope that the perpetrators would come to Seamus before everything kicked off, but he knew he had to try and get this sorted without any bloodshed. He tried not to look too closely at what was going on at the other tables out of fear that the bad guys would pick up on something. He could only hope that after months of beating Draco unchallenged, they had become complacent and wouldn’t think that what was going on would have anything to do with them.

Harry knew that he couldn’t even wait a day to see who it was on the marauders map before tackling them. He just had to hope that he would be able to sort things out in the morning.

After dinner, the Gryffindors headed back to the common room and Harry and his friends headed up to the boys dorms to discuss what was going on.

“They all seemed to buy it,” Seamus told the group. “I actually find it a bit suspicious that they all seem so happy to turn on Draco. I mean apart from this group of people, no one’s said anything or done anything to him since the end of the war. It seems like they’ve all just been waiting for Harry Potter’s “People” to make it known that his turn had come. But no one in particular came forward to say that they were the ones currently causing the problem.”

Harry nodded. “It seems to me like they’re probably going to keep quiet. I mean this has been going on for quite a while and so far no one knows about it. They can obviously keep a secret. Lets hope that we can catch them at it tomorrow.”

Everyone murmured in agreement.

“Now. We can’t all be waiting down in the dungeons for these idiots cause they’ll know something’s up, so I need you all to be waiting close by the dungeons and when I send my patronus to you, you can all come rushing in. Form how I understand it, there are 5 or 6 of them so we should be evenly matched with the element of surprise. I don’t want anyone to do anything stupid and I certainly don’t want any proper hexes on them I want petrificus totalus and that’s all. I want us to be able to hold these guys till Severus and Dumbledore get there. We don’t know who they are and we don’t know which house they’re from so beware of the fact that they may be able shrug off the hex after a few minutes. Once we have them caught, I want you to keep an eye on one each and if you see anyone beginning to move, hit them again. Like I said, we only have to hold them till help gets there. Everyone got that?”

Everyone again nodded their agreement and when Harry established that there no questions, people started drifting off to bed.

// Let’s see what tomorrow brings //







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