Seven Days

On Monday, they just looked at each other across the Potions dungeon, green eyes meeting grey, sparking with hatred and challenge.

Ron caught Hermione's eye, jerked his head toward Harry and rolled his eyes.

Hermione nodded sympathetically and mouthed I know.

On Tuesday, Harry, hurrying down the hall, ran into Draco, fell and lay sprawled on the ground. Draco looked down at him and sneered, then he bent down, took Harry's Transfiguration text and strode off.

Harry couldn't get the feel of Draco's thin, hard chest out of his fingers. He got a detention from McGonagall for not paying attention and then another for not having his text.

On Wednesday, McGonagall gave Harry his book back and reminded him about his detention on Friday night.

As he walked back to the common room, he met Draco, who accused him of going crying to McGonagall. Harry had no idea what he meant.

"The textbook, dolt," Draco sneered.

"What about it?" said Harry. He hadn't told McGonagall why he didn't have his textbook.

"She came up to me in class and demanded to see my textbook, so I showed her. Then she demanded to see the other one."

Harry sniggered. He liked McGonagall more and more.

Draco took this the wrong way and shoved Harry against the wall, using surprise to overpower the stronger boy. Momentum carried them together and Harry found himself sandwiched between a cold, unyielding wall and a warm, unyielding body. Draco's face was only centimetres from his own, and his eyes were narrowed almost to slits.

"Fuck you, Potter," he said slowly and deliberately.

Harry found himself fascinated by Draco's lips, moving outwards to frame the shape of the profanity. Such nasty words shouldn't come from such lovely lips, he thought distractedly.

Draco was staring at him. He shoved himself away from the wall and strode off.

Harry walked on to the Gryffindor common room and hastily forgot that he had ever thought that Draco's lips were lovely.

On Thursday, it was Harry who grabbed Draco. Draco had attempted to trip him in the hall outside Potions after everyone else went in. Harry was in a bad mood. In his defense, he had been having a pretty lousy day--Snape had already taken points off him for 'looking disreputable', and the portrait of a maiden being menaced by a dragon on the second floor had stopped in her screams to point and laugh at him. Moments later, Sir Cadogan had galloped up, fallen off his horse and asked Harry if he was aware that his robes were on backwards. Consequently, he grabbed Draco, who was a few inches shorter than him, by the collar.

"Not today, Malfoy," he spat, but again, he was distracted by the Slytherin's nearness--a highly disconcerting matter.

Draco was glaring up at him, lips slightly parted, wide eyes even now narrowing into a glare.

Harry wanted to touch those lips. He wanted to kiss them. They were the kind of pale pink of a baby's, slightly flushed. The bottom lip was just a bit pouty.

Unexpectedly, Draco grabbed his shirt and pulled him down, until there was barely a millimetre between their mouths. His breath was warm on Harry's lips.

Harry, shocked, pulled away, and Draco, smirking, slipped under his arm and into the dungeon.

Harry spent the entire potions lesson staring at Draco's back.

On Friday, they had detention. Harry was waiting in the Great Hall for Filch at precisely 8pm. The caretaker arrived at 8:02pm, but didn't motion for Harry to follow him. Instead he stood there, staring out the arched entrance.

Finally, Harry asked him why they were still there.

"Waiting for Mr. Malfoy, Potter."

"What?"

Though, now that he thought about it, he wasn't surprised. After all, they had both gotten detention on the same day.

They waited around until 8:30pm, which was when Draco finally turned up.

"Are you always late, Malfoy?" Harry snapped. "Because some of us have better things to do than sit around waiting for you to come."

"Potter, if you want to make me come, take a more active role," Draco deadpanned.

Filch motioned for them to follow him. Harry made a point of walking behind and as far away as possible from Draco, until Draco looked back and gave him a mocking glance. Harry sped up a bit.

Eventually, they reached a room, deep in the bowels of the Castle. Filch gestured them inside, and said with a grin, "The fourth-years need this room next week for lessons on banishment charms. You have to clean it and make it generally presentable--"

Draco seemed transfixed by Filch's charming yellow teeth and wasn't listening to a word the caretaker was saying.

"--clean the floors, scrub the walls, clear the spider webs and other rubbish, remove any water stains--"

Now Draco was surreptitiously rubbing his own teeth, as if to check that they were all there and all perfect.

"--get any marks off the ceiling and dust carefully. I want to see this room immaculate when I get back."

He pushed them both inside, handed them several buckets full of soapy water, a couple of mops, sponges and a towel. "I'll be back in two hours," he said abruptly, then shut the door in their faces.

"Well, Potter," drawled Draco. "This seems awfully contrived, doesn't it?"

Harry used a Lumos spell to light up the dark room as they turned to face it. Apparently triggered by the spell, the whole room was suddenly illuminated as bright as day. It seemed to be wallpapered in mattresses. The floor and walls and even the roof was covered in a soft-looking fabric. Experimentally, Harry bounced a bit. The floor was springy.

It was filthy, though. The walls were a sort of half-hearted, dingy pink and there were spider webs and insect carcasses in the corners.

Draco curled his lip.

His bloody, aristocratic, sculpted lip.

Harry sensed some punishment evasion was in the offing, so he forestalled it by shoving a bucket of water at Draco.

"You work from, that corner and I'll work from this one. We can meet in the middle."

"What an entrancing prospect," Draco said, as he took his mop and bucket and stalked to his corner.

They worked for about half an hour. Cleaning up the spider webs and dead insects was disgusting but easy. Getting the stains out of the walls was harder, and getting them off the ceiling was impossible. Harry resorted to jumping and swiping the sponge at the stains.

After doing this a few times, he looked over to see how Draco was progressing.

Draco wasn't progressing. Draco was leaning on his mop and looking at Harry.

"What?" Harry said defensively.

"Potter, you dunce, did it ever occur to you to use the mop?"

Draco demonstrated, pointing the mop at the ceiling, and was rewarded by a cascade of dirty mop water. Harry nearly died with amusement. Draco, damp and sulky, went back to cleaning the walls.

Half an hour after that, Harry was occupying his time by rehearsing the spells they had learned in charms recently. After all, exams were coming up. He had gotten up to helpful household spells. That was when he had a Brilliant Idea.

He turned around, raised his wand and said, "Scourgify."

Moments later, the room was sparkly and clean. As was Draco. In fact, Draco's face had a rather pink, well-exfoliated look, and his hair was standing up on end.

"Smashing, Potter," he said sourly, trying unsuccessfully to smooth his hair down. "What the hell are we going to do for another hour until Filch returns?"

Harry shrugged. He didn't really have anything to say.

Draco flopped--but gracefully!--onto the ground. Eventually, Harry followed suit.

"So, Potter," Draco began conversationally, "Why are you such a prat?"

Harry scowled. "I could ask the same of you."

Draco ignored him. "Hm, is it your sensational Quidditch skills? Or your cretinous friends? Or perhaps your absent family?"

"Malfoy," said Harry frostily, "I hardly think you have high ground from which to throw any of those stones, since I always beat you at Quidditch, your friends are Crabbe and Goyle, and your father is a cold, sadistic bastard."

Draco was on his feet in an instant. "Take that back, Potter."

Harry jumped up. "What, the part about beating you at Quidditch?" he asked sarcastically. "Because that's a fact."

"You little sod, you know what I mean. Take that back about my father. He is not a bastard."

"But he is," Harry said, tensing when Draco started towards him.

Unfortunately, the mattress-like floor was prohibitive of Draco's menacing stride and after a few steps he was forced to give up stalking and just kind of bounce at Harry instead.

"My. Father. Is. Not. A. Bastard. My grandparents are married and if there was ever any other children on the side, they certainly weren't acknowledged or made heir. Take it back, Potter."

Harry stared at him. "Is that honestly all you're worried about?" He was amazed. "Fine, I take it back. Lucius Malfoy is the legitimate son of Mr. And Mrs. Grandparents-of-Malfoy." He paused. "But that's pathetic, Malfoy."

He couldn't say any more because Draco had launched himself at Harry and tackled him to the ground.

It was a reasonably good fight, all in all. Both boys had their tempers up, and if the soft floor wasn't conducive to a martial mood, well, they made up for it with good, violent intentions. And if, maybe, Harry's hand got a little too friendly with Draco's inner thigh, it was an act of anger and Harry didn't notice at all. The same does for that time their lips kind of almost brushed. Neither of them noticed it, of course.

They were angry.

Certainly, by the end of it, Draco was sporting a very impressive split lip and Harry's eye was beginning to swell.

All in all, as they glared at each other across the bouncy floor, both were satisfied that they had proven once and for all that they hated each other. Having established that, the next logical step seemed to Harry to close the gab between them again, push Draco to the ground and prove once and for all that he wanted to shag Draco senseless.

Draco, it seemed, had the same idea. Once again they met in the middle of the room, staring at each other. Draco's hands wound into Harry's hair, tightening just enough to hurt.

At that moment, they both heard the door rattle.

They leaped away from each other. Harry fell over, bounced a few times, then pretended to be inspecting the floor closely for any stains. Draco became intensely interested in his fingernails. Filch eventually opened the door. He looked around, made a kind of snort-grunt noise and said they could go. Both left as quickly as possible.

On Saturday, they had another fight over use of the Quidditch pitch. It seemed that both teams had booked the pitch. At the end of it, Draco's lip had started bleeding again. Harry caught up with him later and did a spell to patch it up. Draco gave him the oddest look.

On Sunday, Draco flicked a piece of potato clean across the Great hall and into Harry's hair. Harry leapt up, stalked over to the Slytherin table and hit him.

Draco looked up at him, eyes wide and ingenuous. Then, he grabbed Harry's collar and yanked, forcing Harry's mouth down to his own.

The whole Great Hall went up in a cheer.

Over at the Gryffindor table, Ron leaned over and whispered to Hermione, "Well, it's about fucking time."

Hermione nodded wryly.