Especially Our Enemies

I realized, as we were walking back to my quarters, that I wasn’t even certain where his were located. He pushed me against the door once it was closed, taking thorough control of the kiss that ensued. Malfoy was an unashamed alpha, and although neither of my previous partners had been dominant over me I found myself willing to play along.

“Take off your shirt,” he said. I unbuttoned it carefully, hindered by my clumsy left hand, and he tugged it from my shoulders with obvious impatience.

He ran his hands over the spray of freckles on my shoulders and chest, following warm, dry hands with a searing mouth. I leaned my head back against the door, allowing him to explore me. Malfoy tugged my hands to his waist and I obediently caressed his back, pulling his long jacket out of the way and untucking the slick silk shirt he wore underneath. I worked the buttons as quickly as I could. He shrugged out of both layers, throwing them carelessly to the floor. I tried not to step on them as he dragged me towards the bedroom.

Malfoy paused with me pressed against the edge of the bed, my knees buckling.

“You haven’t said anything,” he said.

“I didn’t think you wanted me to.”

He pushed me onto the mattress more slowly, kissing my chest gently.

“Forgive me for rushing,” he murmured.

“No harm done,” I insisted. I took advantage of the gap in his onslaught and rolled us, bracing myself with my strong arm and kissing him soundly. His fingers dug into my biceps. Malfoy made a purring sound as I nibbled his throat.

“You never cease to surprise me,” he said, gasping sharply as I found a particularly tender place on his side.

“I have done this a few times before,” I said.

“With Granger,” he pointed out, tilting his head up to watch me. I grasped his belt in my teeth and tugged sharply.

“You think I’m a stranger to a man’s touch?” I asked. I wrapped my mouth around the top of his fly, carefully unbuttoning his trousers.

“Another surprise.” He made a sound like a hiccough when I pushed my nose around the fine black gabardine and discovered he wasn’t wearing anything under. I was briefly confused by the fact that he was uncircumcised, which I had noticed before but not considered. Circumcision was not in fashion for upper-class wizarding families. It was only a momentary distraction. I was delighted to discover that it seemed to make my ministrations all the more effective. I hadn’t lost my touch.

Malfoy’s legs tensed on either side of me, and I could tell that he was desperately trying not to rip my hair out with his clenched hands.

“Weasley,” he gasped.

“Hmm?” I inquired, smiling around my task.

“Who the hell taught you to do this?” I didn’t bother answering. He wasn’t as large as Douglas had been, and I found I could take him all the way down. I drew back, gently swirling my tongue against him. Both Hermione and Douglas had told me I was very good with my mouth. Malfoy had not yet learned this, but I was determined that after tonight he would know.

He snarled like a tiger when he came, and I swallowed easily. When I released him I saw I had missed some, and I lapped it up quickly to avoid a mess. I crawled up him and he kissed me, something Douglas had certainly never wanted to do so soon after I had pleased him.

I could not help but smirk as he pulled back and looked at me. He returned the half-smile and nudged me gently with his thigh.

“Would you like for me to return the favor?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

When I was lying on my back, staring up at the ceiling, feeling pretty good about myself, Malfoy stood and pulled his trousers up.

“Are you leaving?” I asked.

“You steal all the covers,” he said, picking up his shirt from the floor near the door. “Besides, I know if I stay here long enough I’ll be tempted to goad you into hitting me again.”

“Sucker for punishment, or a guilty conscience?”

“I have no conscience, Weasley, so it must be the former.” He slipped on his shirt and tucked it in, leaving it unbuttoned so a deep white V of flesh showed. I sat up and watched him bend to retrieve his outer robe. He threw it over his arm and opened the door.

“Oh, and Weasley,” he said, looking over his shoulder.

“Yeah?”

“You are going to help me teach that class, aren’t you?”

“Aye.”

He closed the door and I felt that a great source of trouble in my life was leaving. I gave a rather intimate portion of my body a very satisfying scratch, then fought off the overwhelming inertia and hauled myself out of bed to go have a pee.

I dreamt of Quidditch that night.

It was the World Cup again, but the old team from Hogwarts was there instead of the twenty-somethings from the Arrows roster. I kept trying to tell them all that they couldn’t play because they were dead.

“Mind that Bludger,” Harry said, zipping past me.

“What?” I asked, turning towards him. From the other side, I heard a faint rushing sound, and then all was blackness. In the dark, I heard Ginny’s voice. But not Ginny as she was when she died; her voice was high and sweet, like it had been in school.

“I can’t believe he stood us up,” she said.

“Perhaps something came up,” said Harry. “He’ll join us eventually. We’ve got plenty of time to wait.”

I awoke in the darkness of my room and stared out the window for several minutes. My hand felt numb, and I rubbed it with the other absently. Finally I closed my eyes, submitting myself to whatever my subconscious might have lurking for me.

It was a night plagued by such dreams. I hadn’t often dreamed of my lost friends and family since Chaz was born; the past eleven years seemed to be catching up with me now. The dreams of the previous days were back, where I tried to save Ginny and was thwarted. And I dreamed of my childhood, and all the times when I felt helpless and angry. Malfoy figured prominently in these scenes. I awoke numerous times wrapped in the sheets, sweating and uncomfortable. Each time it took more effort to get back to sleep. Finally, at four, I got up and dressed. I needed to take a walk.

The quiet dark would have seemed empty and frightening to me as a boy. Now I felt safe alone. I wondered about the dreams as I walked, out onto the Quidditch pitch and along the edge of the forest. I had been lucky to survive my injury, I knew. Maybe I felt guilty that so many had died and I had lived. I saw a light on in Hagrid’s hut, and I made my way up to the little stone structure. Fang was long dead, but Hagrid was raising up an impossibly huge Pyrenees puppy, and he began to bark and claw at the door as I approached. Hagrid opened the door as I arrived.

“Hullo there, Ron,” he said. Rory, the puppy, bounded out and leapt at me. He was easily up to forty kilos or more, and Hagrid picked him up as lightly as I might a little terrier of some sort. I petted the pup’s soft, fuzzy head and followed Hagrid into his hut.

“What’s got you up so late there Ron?” he asked, going to put on the kettle.

“Bad dreams,” I said. “And you?”

“Oh, I’m just getting up to start rounds,” he said, sitting down. I took a seat in the other huge chair, one of the few that comfortably accommodated my long legs. “I’ve got to feed the thestrals early, or they start wandering onto the main grounds.”

I once dreaded the sight of those creatures, but after more than a dozen years of being able to see them I had almost gotten to liking them.

“Do you mind if I go with you?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said. “It’ll be right nice to have someone to talk to.”

We drank tea and then Hagrid led me out into the darkness. I helped him gather up feed buckets full of I don’t know what, and we went into the woods.

“They gather theirselves around this one clearing,” he said. I nodded. Rory followed us, gamboling about in the roots and chasing small things through the brush. His white coat was picking up mud and grass stains, but since he always seemed to be clean I figured Hagrid would do something about that later.

“So what’re these dreams like?” he asked casually, leading me into an open area. Silver moonlight made the grass a pale powdery green color, and I looked up from it to see the thestrals. One made what I could only describe as a nickering noise and came over at an easy lope. Their movements, unlike their bodies, were very graceful.

“Ginny and Harry are there,” I said, dumping the buckets as I saw him do. The other thestrals were more hesitant than the first, but they soon joined the feast.

“Aye, that kind of dream,” Hagrid said, leaning against a big elm. It seemed to groan, though I’m sure it was my imagination.

“Ever since Malfoy’s come back I’ve been having them.”

“He’s a strange one, that fellow,” Hagrid said. “Hasn’t said a word to me since he’s been back.”

“He’s definitely changed,” I agreed, leaning back against the tree as well.

“He been bothering you?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” I hesitated, looking at the ground. A thestral chased Rory towards us; he had been sniffing around the babies. Animals tended to be able to see them.

“I heard you two got in a bit of a roughhouse last month,” Hagrid said. He was a big dumb friendly oaf, but he had a remarkable way of teasing something out of a person. I’d watched him work wonders on teenage psyches for years.

“If that were only the least of it,” I sighed.

“Ah.” Hagrid stacked the buckets, whistled to Rory, and started walking back towards the hut. I followed him.

“It’s complicated.”

“Thirty years is too long to be hating one man,” Hagrid said. I said nothing. “Even one as ornery and prickly as Malfoy.”

When we got back to the hut, it was light already, and I said goodbye to Hagrid.

“See you at breakfast then,” he said heartily. I smiled and started the hike back to the castle.

For now, this is all about sex, he’d said. But I realized that we both knew the lie in that. It was about needing, something no man wants to admit, and it was about unresolved issues. And it wasn’t really about each other at all.

The dreams had resurfaced because having Malfoy around meant I couldn’t hide from my past anymore. With Hermione and the children, and even my old friends from school, I was still able to bury myself in the present and not dwell on pain. But as an old enemy, Malfoy represented all the conflicts I had hidden away.

I found one of his socks on the floor by my bed when I went to get a shower, and I draped it over the arm of the chair in my little living room. It would be a good reason to lure him back to my quarters, in case I needed one, which I probably wouldn’t. I washed the nightmare-sweat from my body and put on a set of fresh robes.

“Good morning, Weasley,” Malfoy purred. This time I didn’t flinch. We walked towards the crowd of students waiting to get into the great hall.

“Good morning,” I said. “Did you sleep well?”

He looked at me for a long moment, and when he answered his words were very careful, suspicious.

“Quite. And you?”

“Just dreadfully, actually,” I said, keeping my voice light.

“I’m sorry to hear it,” he said, watching my face. “What was the matter?”

“Oh, you know,” I dithered, taking my seat. Malfoy sat beside me.

“Weasley, are you feeling quite well?” he asked, glancing at me out of the corner of his eye.

“I think so.”

I picked up my fork and dug in. In fact I had been feeling kind of dizzy, but I chalked it up to lack of sleep. Malfoy sat uncomfortably for a few minutes.

“So, what do you want to do for the dueling class?” I asked, taking more eggs from the dish. This he seemed comfortable with.

“I was thinking we should start with basic formal dueling, and work them through that at least. Then I want to do some, well, informal dueling.”

“You mean brawling,” I said, smiling.

“If you want to put it that way, yes,” he said.

“Hey, it came in handy for us,” I reminded him. “You were at the British Museum, if I remember correctly.”

“I fought badly that night,” he murmured, sipping coffee. “I threw more punches than spells.”

“You fought badly? I had to be carried out by Harry and Seamus.”

Malfoy chuckled a little, like a human being might have. We both seemed to sigh at the same time.

“They were not good times,” he said, “but they were our times.”

He put his hand on my arm, and when I looked into his eyes I could once again see through the silver surface. His lips curved upwards into what may have been a smile. Then the moment was gone and I couldn’t see through his eyes anymore. The hint of a smile vanished and he turned back to his food.

“I have the last period free,” he said.

“Same.”

“We should sit down and make up a lesson plan. Do you know where my office is?”

“I’ll find it.” He nodded and that was it. I could tell he didn’t want to risk any further vulnerability. It was exactly the way I had acted when I wanted Hermione to leave me with my thoughts. He’d done the conversational equivalent of rolling over to face the wall.

I made it through all of my first class before I staggered into the second-corridor loo and heaved the better part of my innards into the toilet. Once my stomach was empty, I felt a little better. I drank some water and went back to teach the second period. Although the nausea had subsided, I decided to skip lunch and have a nap in my office.

When the time came, I made my way down into the dungeons. There was a very certain kind of professor who wanted his office down there, and it didn’t surprise me when Minerva told me that was where his was located. It was in the lowest level, where there weren’t even grated windows near the ceiling. His office was surprisingly well lit.

“Have a seat, Weasley,” he said. He was flipping through a musty old book, fingers following the lines as he read. “I’ll be with you in a moment.”

“Minerva was very glad to hear we would be working together on something,” I said, trying to fold myself into the small chair.

“She just doesn’t want to see two professors whaling away at each other in the corridor.”

“I think she was worried I might hurt you.”

He smirked a little and closed the book.

“I want to start with disarmament spells, beginning of course with that old standard,” he said, picking up a notepad that I noticed bore a Muggle store logo. So he wasn’t too good to shop at an office supply store with the rest of us.

“Some of the higher level ones are too complex for the kids,” I reminded him.

“I learned to cast the Killing Curse when I was sixteen,” he said.

“You had a very accomplished teacher.”

He licked his lips.

“So do they.”