Funerals and Weddings

Disclaimer: The magical world of Harry Potter and all of the characters, places, events and things therein are the property of J. K. Rowling and her publishers. Only original characters and ideas belong to me. No money is being made from the publication of this work of fiction and no disrespect is intended.

For summary, story codes and other information, please see the prologue.

Chapter the second: With the Dursleys away, Harry will play!

Six months earlier, summer between Years 5 and 6
31 July
No. 4 Privet Drive

It was his 16th birthday and Harry was happier than he’d ever been on his birthday. Just last night at dinner, Uncle Vernon had announced that the family would be leaving on holiday the next morning. Harry hadn’t gotten very excited, predicting his uncle’s next words.

“Yes, that’s right, two weeks in a cottage on the beach!” Uncle Vernon puffed himself up, making him look more like an over-inflated tyre than normal. “Two whole weeks! Pity you won’t be joining us, boy! You’ll be staying here!”

With that oh-so-shocking pronouncement, he and Dudley had smirked at Harry. Harry had carefully kept his face bland, concealing his inner joy. He’d listened dutifully to all of Uncle Vernon’s usual admonishments about not blowing up the house and his typical threats about what he’d do to Harry if “anything funny happened.” It wasn’t until the next morning, when the Dursleys had driven away (after Dudley had smacked Harry upside the head, gloating over Harry having to stay home, of course), that Harry had truly let himself believe his good fortune. Alone! Two weeks alone! Two Dursley-free weeks! He hadn’t been able to restrain himself from doing a little happy dance around the house. Harry had eaten the Honeydukes chocolates Ron had owled him for his birthday the night before for breakfast in celebration.

Later on, while taking advantage of a Dursley-free house to watch MTV, Harry pondered his options. What could he do for two weeks? Anything! Could he afford to miss this golden opportunity to get out of this damn house and…have fun? He thought not! His mind raced as he thought of all the things he had fantasized about doing if he were on his own, with no adults telling what to do and how to do it. He grinned. Did he dare do those things? Hell, yes! He wasn’t a Gryffindor for nothing! Dashing up the stairs to his trunk, he quickly checked to see how much Muggle money he had. Grinning at the amount he saw, he moved back downstairs to grab a snack, watch MTV and plan.

“Well, the first thing I need to do is buy some decent clothes,” Harry said to himself. “Hermione and Ginny are always nattering on about the crap clothes I have and I must say I’m quite sick of “Dudders” hand-me-downs. But how the hell am I supposed to know what clothes to buy? It’s not like I’ve ever been shopping for new clothes before.”

Harry sighed. ‘Normally, I would ask Hermione or Ginny for help; after all, they are girls and girls just seem to magically (Harry snorted at his own pun) know these things. But, just my luck, both of them are away!’ His birthday owl from Hermione had included a postcard from Athens along with his gift and he knew the Weasleys were on a long-overdue trip to Ireland to visit assorted cousins, aunts and uncles for the next two weeks.

Harry puzzled over what to do for a bit, then decided to focus on what he did know. ‘Well, there have to be some blokes who dress decently at Hogwarts. Definitely not Ron. His clothes look as bad as mine, except they are usually too small as opposed to being too big! Seamus? Nah. Nothing special about Seamus’ clothes—or Neville’s. Dean? Hmmm…Dean does normally look ok. Come to think of it, he spent quite a bit of time in front of the mirror last year, especially before Hogsmeade trips.’ Harry tried to picture Dean’s wardrobe but didn’t remember anything special about it. Button-downs and trousers, sometimes a jumper. Seemed a bit ordinary to him and if Harry was going to finally get a chance to dress as he wanted, he didn’t want to be dull about it.

Having exhausted his dorm mates as potential inspiration, he cast about for a new idea. ‘Who are Lavender and Parvati forever going on about looking ‘hot’ or whatever? Let’s see…seems to me I heard Justin Finch-Fletchley’s name mentioned a few times…and oh yeah, that Slytherin bloke Zabini.’ Harry’s brow creased as he remembered something else. ‘Yeah, and Malfoy! I remember Ron going ballistic when he heard Lavender prattling on about how ‘sexy’ that git looks. What had Lavender said back to Ron? Oh yeah, she said she didn’t have to like a person to admire how they looked and that Malfoy and Zabini were definitely two of the hottest guys at Hogwarts. That had shut Ron right up!’ Harry laughed as he remembered Ron’s red face.

“Right,” he said aloud. “Malfoy and Zabini. A bit ironic that I’m stuck with two Slytherins as my fashion plates.” He snorted at that, then tried to picture what Zabini wore. He couldn’t think of anything specific, but for some reason the word ‘tight’ seemed to describe most of the dark-haired boy’s wardrobe.

‘Tight in all the right places, that is…his chest, his thighs, his hot arse, his…’ Harry shook his head to dispel his thoughts. ‘Whoa, where did that come from?” Feeling unsettled for reasons he didn’t really want to explore, he brushed Zabini-of-the-hot-arse off his mental palette and focused on Malfoy instead.

It wasn’t hard to pull up mental images of Malfoy—he’d spent enough time glaring at him, after all. Harry shuffled visuals of his rival through his head, trying to catalogue what the boy wore. ‘Lots of black and green, well, duh, Slytherin…white or dark coloured shirts, some sort of silver necklace, black boots, dark trousers—sometimes tight, sometimes baggy. But not baggy like Dudley’s are on me…baggy in the legs but properly fitted at the waist and arse…shirts tucked in to show off that arse…shirts not too tight but snug enough to show off his chest…’ Harry broke off his thoughts yet again, shaking his head like a wet dog.

“Bloody hell, what’s wrong with me?” he exclaimed out loud. “First Zabini, now Malfoy. Have I really been noticing their chests and… arses?” He choked a little, shaking his head in denial. “No! It’s just some weird-ass hormone thing, I’m a 16-year-old bloke with no sex life to speak of—I mean, watching paint dry is enough to make most guys my age horny! The fact that I subconsciously noticed the backsides of two blokes I see all the time means nothing. Nothing at all.”

Even as he worked to convince himself of this, Harry couldn’t help but hear the little voice inside his head saying, ‘But Harry, you DID notice them. And it wasn’t subconsciously--you remember quite well staring at Malfoy’s tight arse astride his broom during the Slytherin-Hufflepuff Quidditch match. Remember, when Ron asked you why you were staring at Malfoy, you made up some waffle about wanting to make sure he didn’t have any new surprise moves. And remember last Halloween’s fancy dress party? When Malfoy wore those black leather trousers? Those tight, black leather trousers that clung to his thighs and his perfectly rounded buns and cupped his packet so well? Stop trying to fool yourself, Harry; Malfoy made you hard then, just like he’s making you hard now!’

And Harry was hard. Painfully hard. Even so, he refused to admit that he was hard because of Malfoy. It had to be something else. Hormones, the scantily-clad women gyrating on MTV, paint drying, something! (After all, doesn’t everyone enjoy a visit to ‘de Nile’ once in awhile?)

After a cold shower (Harry refused to wank off to thoughts of Malfoy—not that he was hard because of Malfoy, mind you, but…well, he just wasn’t going to do it.), Harry decided actions were better than thoughts and determined to play it by ear the next day on his shopping trip. He didn’t think he could handle any more mental fashion modeling.