Disguised Affections

A/N: JK Rowling owns everything you recognize. I'm just playing.

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Constantine flipped his quill in his fingers as he listened to Professor Vector lecture. She was waxing poetic about the Conjugus Principle of Arithmancy whereby a prime number could be further broken down by the inclusion of external impetus in an equation, but he listened with only half an ear.

Draco Malfoy’s eyes were glued to his back, and it was making him unbearably twitchy. From the start of the shared Gryffindor/Slytherin lesson, Con had done his best to ignore the prat, but he was finding it difficult. His nerves were tiny animals on creeping feet that snuck over his spine, and he had to physically restrain himself from turning to glare at his classmate.

Malfoy was an unknown quantity and it sat uneasily with Con. He didn’t trust anyone whose motivations he didn’t understand. Most people were disappointingly one-dimensional with simple, caveman desires of food, sex, or status. Con was able to pick them out of the crowd easily like telling cows apart from wild dogs. It was their bovine eyes. Goyle, Crabbe, Creevey… Longbottom. Con’s lip curled.

There were far fewer wild dogs in the school, but the black-haired boy was infinitely more concerned by them. Malfoy, with his sharp, icy gaze was definitely a predator. So were Potter, Weasley, and Hermione, of course, although he trusted that their motivations were, for the most part, benign or even altruistic. With surprise, Con decided he had to classify McGonagall and Dumbledore as people with suspect motivations as well. The Transfigurations professor had taken to watching him – her green eyes like marbles. He imagined that if they fell out of her head, they’d clink when they hit the ground.

So what were Draco’s motivations? What did he want and how did Con fit into his plans? He was a vocal proponent of Pureblooded supremacy and idolized his father. He reveled in his wealth and despised the poor. Con was fairly certain that he was a marked Death Eater or he had at least attended several Dark Revels.

And yet…

Yet he had sent word to his arch-enemy when his father had kidnapped a Blood traitor and a Mudblood. He still verbally sparred with Potter, but there didn’t seem to be any vitriol in it, and he was positively polite to Granger.

If Con was to wager, he’d hazard that Draco believed every word of his Pureblood rhetoric, but didn’t like the bloodshed that came with Voldemort’s agenda. Unfortunately, Constantine didn’t believe in games of chance and so instead of dismissing his fears, he waited for his moment to corner the Pureblood and find out just what he was planning.

When Professor Vector called for her students to pair up to work on five equations in class, he was completely unsurprised when Draco moved to the seat next to him. He gave Hermione an apologetic smile and she shrugged, moving to partner Seamus Finnegan. His mouth tightened a bit, before he turned to face the Slytherin at his side.

“Malfoy! Have you come to dazzle me with more material goods your father has purchased for you? I swear, I still haven’t recovered from when I saw the fabulous earrings he sent you!”

“Those were a gift for Pansy, idiot.”

“Of course. How silly of me. So, what brings you to the seedier section of the Arithmancy classroom?”

“Look, Prince. Shut the hell up. I need to talk to you without making it obvious to the rest of Slytherin that I sought you out.” Draco’s hands moved with dry, restless whispers against his robes. Con was reminded of a bird’s wings flapping in vain to escape a closed cage.

“Oh, really. This isn’t obvious? That you chose to partner with me, a Gryffindor Blood Traitor, and not that lovely piece of tat over there?” Con jerked his thumb towards Padma Patil who was watching Draco through heavy-lidded eyes. When she saw that she had his attention, she winked and blew him a kiss.

Draco smirked and held up eight fingers, indicating what time she should come to his room.

“Please! Don’t try and out-Slytherin a Slytherin. I might want to sleep with Padma, but she’s an idiot. I’d end up doing all of the Arithmancy homework and answering her moronic questions. Last time I partnered with her in Vector’s class, she asked me if she could use math to predict what the hot color for next season’s robes will be.” Malfoy’s voice was dry. “You, on the other hand, are a genius and I will have to do very little work to get a good grade. It’s a basic sort of cunning that any Slytherin would understand.”

If Con had been sitting next to anyone other than Draco, he would have laughed. As it was, he simply stared at him stone-faced. He had to admit that he was impressed with the little shite.

“So, what did you need to talk about so desperately that it had you pining for my company?”

Draco’s mouth pinched sharply, and he looked uncomfortable. For a moment, he concentrated on the equations in front of him, scratching a few numbers onto the page. Constantine glanced down at his solutions. They were very wrong. “Look, I think you’re a total git, and I hate your guts.”

“That hurts my feelings!”

“Shut your bloody yap for just a minute, for God’s sake. Merlin, you are a probably the most annoying person I’ve ever… Look, mate. I don’t know who you are but you got up my father’s nose and he wants me to find out everything I can about you.”

Con responded to Draco by raising an eyebrow. It was a look designed to intimidate. It said, I’ve listened to what you’ve said and I am not impressed. Have you considered adding visuals to your presentation?

Malfoy snorted. “My godfather patented that look, and yours is just a weak imitation of it.”

The patrician-looking Slytherin underwent a drastic transformation. The Malfoy arrogance suddenly shattered, and Con caught a glimpse of the fragile, brittle boy that hid beneath it. His hands shook as they passed over his face and dragged twin sheens of moisture over his cheeks. “Aw, shite,” Draco said, shocked at the tears he’d shed. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard.

Uncomfortable, Con looked down at the worksheet in front of him and solved several while he waited for Draco to compose himself.

“I don’t care what you’re thinking right now. I really don’t.” The Slytherin cleared his throat firmly and once more met the other boy’s eyes. “I know the tripe that Potter has been feeding you about me, but I’m not a monster. I need to ask you something. Are you related to Severus Snape? My father wants to know. Something about you struck him as familiar, and he practically choked on his own tongue when he heard your name was Constantine Prince. Think about your answer very carefully.”

The black-haired boy narrowed his eyes to glittering black slits. “To the best of my knowledge, I am not. However, I will be sure to enquire when the professor returns from sabbatical.” Con knew that Snape had been Dumbledore’s spy amongst the Death Eaters for over twenty years. To claim kinship with him would be foolhardy. And indeed, he didn’t think he was related. Dumbledore would surely have told him.

“Snape won’t be returning to Hogwarts.” Malfoy looked at his slender fingers splayed out on the desk. His jaw was tightly clenched. “My father has informed me via Owl Post that he’s taken care of my godfather. He was a traitor to the Pureblood cause, after all.”

Silence descended upon them, as stifling and claustrophobic as being wandless in a group of strangers. Con tapped his fingers uneasily on his thigh.

“Pureblood Vendetta, then? That’s why your father wants to know?”

Draco nodded, his mouth an uncertain line. “My godfather was already the last of his father’s nasty, muggle line, and the majority of the Princes died out during Voldemort’s first rise – either killed for opposing him or killed fighting for him. Father wants to wipe any trace of Severus Snape off the map. He thought he’d already accomplished that, but then… he saw you.” Draco’s hands spread wide, palms up. It was nearly a supplicating gesture, as if begging the other boy to forgive his father’s madness, but Constantine knew that a Malfoy would never ask forgiveness.

Draco flicked his grey eyes disdainfully over Con’s face. “Personally, I don’t see the resemblance. My godfather was a great man while you are clearly as common as a Bowtruckle. However, my father said it was like looking directly into the face of an eighteen-year-old Severus Snape. He said you even spoke like he did, all truculence and sharp wit.”

Considering Draco’s words, Con slid deeper into his seat and crossed his arms over his chest. “Why are you warning me? What’s in it for you?”

Fury crept into the other boy’s face. It was chilling to watch the Draco’s genial, smug face transform into a mask of crackling anger and cold grudge. “What’s it going to take?” he hissed. “To show you Gryffindors that I’m not Lucius Malfoy? Should I rub ashes in my hair and take a vow of poverty to atone for his actions? Wasn’t it bloody enough that I tipped off the Boy-Who-Hates-My-Guts to the fact that the Mudblood and Weaselette were trapped in my father’s ruddy dungeons? How is it that Dumbledore came out of that smelling like a rose when it was his delays that caused Ginny’s death?” His lips pulled back in a snarl. “You know, she was the only bloody Gryffindor that treated me like a human being, and not a baby Death Eater. It took us five years to get there, but Ginny and I were friends, and now she’s dead because Dumbledore was too busy scratching his own arse.”

Con’s face remained impassive. However, internally Constantine Prince was reeling from Draco’s well-aimed barbs. Ginny Weasley had seen beyond the supercilious sneer to the human being beneath. Draco and she had been friends. Con wondered what it had meant for the Slytherin to befriend a Gryffindor. Both of their houses would have seen it as a betrayal that needed to be addressed. But here he was, proudly claiming that friendship after she was gone, killed by his father and the bumblings of the Headmaster. She’d left the boy an aching, empty cavity.

“Did you love her?” Con quailed as the blunt question left his mouth. And here he’d just been chastising Potter for his lack of sublety.

Draco’s shoulders relaxed, and his breath huffed out in a small laugh. “Don’t romanticize it, mate. We weren’t good friends.” His eyes flicked over to Con’s and he gave him a sickly, wilted attempt at a smirk. He gathered the tattered ruins of his arrogance around him like a cloak and said, “She did have a nice set of tits, though.”

And with that, he turned back to the desk in front of him and continued to work on the Arithmancy problems. Con pushed his completed worksheet towards Draco.

“Here. Your answers are bollocks.”

“Thanks.” The Slytherin tapped his quill on the desk in front of him. “Look, just because I warned you doesn’t mean I like you at all. I’m going to continue to compose poems about your ugly mug and how you’re probably going to die alone in a gutter. My housemates think they’re hilarious.”

Con smirked. “You write poems about me, Draco?”

Draco covered his mouth with a hand, almost as if he was hiding a small smile. “Shove off, Prince.”

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A/N: Like it, love it, hate it, review it nonetheless! Hope you guys enjoyed this bit.