15
Hufflepuff parties were always the busiest. Concoctions were prepared, stolen bottles were stacked, and dried flowers were rolled into aromatic cigars placed on each table. The amber lights of the lamps clicked on, dimly illuminating the light decorations of bells and white flowers that, when shaken, opened and bloomed, releasing cascades of glitter that in the most intense hours of the celebration ended up giving the place an unmatched psychedelic sensation.
Hufflepuffs were generally thrilled at the idea of receiving guests. They were the best hosts, working throughout the semester to prepare for that twilight night. The warm common room was transformed into a raucous and exciting cave filled with smoke and frenetic dancing where magic ran wild and at the same time awakened an unexpected consciousness.
There was no better time to discuss the strangest and most emotional of subjects than in the midst of rapt people and blaring jazz. There was no better time to let oneself be carried away by passion. And although no one wanted to admit it, it was a cleansing experience that all students looked forward to with fervor every fall.
That year had been no exception.
“Hurry up Draco! I don't want the Gryffindors stealing all the handsome boys,” Pansy exclaimed, pulling him by the arm roughly. She put him in front of her to force him to go first.
Draco snorted in annoyance but forced himself to think a little more optimistically. He cracked his neck and relaxed his muscles before daring to draw the entrance curtains. They could already hear the hustle and bustle on the other side.
"Too slow, Malfoy." With an anxious laugh, Blaise pushed him forcefully through the curtain.
It was like being thrown down a rabbit hole and crashing into Wonderland. The lights and flashes blinded them, the glare distorted the images, the cigarette smoke numbed them, and the music made their skin crawl. It was a decadent, dark joy that no one initially expected to experience, but it was mesmerizing.
Draco adjusted his shirt and smiled thinly as they made their way through the mass of people dancing frantically in the middle of the room, jumping and rubbing shoulders with strangers and friends alike. Without thinking much, Draco quickly grabbed an unopened bottle of Firewhiskey and threw himself across one of the chairs, crossing his legs, unconsciously beginning to swing one foot in time to the music.
Blaise sat down beside him. The steamy air washed out the colors slightly, and combined with the old music and the enclosure that isolated them from any outside concern, Blaise felt like he was living inside a worn-out portrait of the 1920s. He soon realized that Draco's mind was elsewhere.
In front of them, crowded on a long, sickly mustard-colored sofa, a dozen Gryffindor boys were passing around bottles of a bright red liquid that, even from a distance, stank of roses and old wine. Sitting in the middle, his shirt unbuttoned and his forehead glistening with sweat, Harry Potter leaned back with his legs spread. In one hand, covered in scars that distorted the contours of his skin, he held a bottle, caressing the rim with his fingertips. With one arm he jealously encircled someone.
" What are you looking at, Draco?" Blaise asked with a smile.
"None of your concern," Draco replied.
“Oh really?”
Draco knew what Blaise was trying to do, he loved to make him lose control. Blaise moved a little closer to him, breathing his sweet breath in his ear.
"Potter is watching us," he whispered. Draco gritted his teeth.
“I couldn’t care less, Zabini,” Draco said, annoyed. Blaise grinned, feeling Draco snort like a bull.
"Are you sure, Draco?" Blaise insisted. "You know what? You're right, Potter doesn't matter. It's the big guy he's groping that matters, isn't it?"
Draco finally looked away, aggressively grabbing Blaise by the chin, and Blaise let out a laugh that died away among the music and the screams.
“Shut your mouth,” Draco warned.
“Do you think I’m an idiot, Malfoy? At first, it was funny to find out that, out of all the boys in school, he was the one who had managed to get on your nerves,” Blaise whispered, licking his lips. “But now all you do is look at him from afar, with that face, like you are being poisoned from the inside.”
Draco smiled coldly, shaking his head.
"You have no clue what you're talking about, Zabini," he said in a voice that was meant to sound confident, even though the words slipped out of his mouth. "Don't forget that I know about your fun times, too."
“Yeah well, I guess that's the difference between you and me, isn't it?”
“That?”
“I don't mind having that kind of fame. What do I care for honor and renown? But... You?”
Blaise shook his head with his cruel chuckle, staring at Draco as if disappointed by what he saw. Draco felt the blood rush to his head.
“Oh! The cold, flawless Malfoy heir… The pride of Slytherin House,” Blaise continued, looking back at the Gryffindor sofa “Tell me, Draco, would you like everyone to know how Neville Longbottom broke your heart?”
Boom! A pair of floating spheres exploded on the ceiling, like tiny fireworks, bursting into a shower of glitter that pulsed with rainbow lights, a thousand twinkling little stars. The crowd let out a collective whoop of excitement and applause as the magical sparkles fell on their faces, hair, and clothes.
Amidst the confusion and shouting, Draco released Blaise with such force that he fell off his chair. He grabbed his bottle and disappeared into the crowd, looking for another empty seat. He could still hear Blaise laughing behind him.
On the mustard-colored sofa, Harry watched Draco as he moved away to a more discreet armchair, just off the corner where a pair of Ravenclaw boys were arguing amidst golden smoke. Harry couldn't take his eyes off him, off his flickering silver eyes, off his blond hair falling over his face. Draco soon realized he was being watched.
The blonde stared at him through the smoke, defiant, studying Harry with a sick curiosity.
Oh, Harry. His dark skin was covered in tiny sparkles, his dark green eyes stormy, and his ribbons of black hair fell to the sides, fluffy from the heat. The crooked scar in the shape of a lightning bolt ran down from his forehead and across his right eye and part of his cheek, giving a fierce look to an otherwise angelic face. Harry took a swig from his bottle, and a trickle of liquid, red as blood, escaped from the corner of his mouth.
Draco gritted his teeth, looking down. He hated how imposing and magnificent Harry looked, sitting there in the middle of the couch, staring at him with an arrogance that was driving him crazy. “Look at me, look at me having everything you don’t,” he seemed to be saying. He couldn’t help but glance back at the burly boy sitting next to Harry, practically leaning on his chest, laughing.
Longbottom.
Amidst the twilight-colored lights and the shower of pearly sparkles, Neville Longbottom shone. With his simple linen clothes and leather braces, his hair disheveled, and his cheeks flushed, he laughed shyly at some stupid joke with other Gryffindors. Harry had put his arm around his shoulders caressingly, with his hand slipped under Neville's badly placed shirt, caressing his chest.
Draco's blood boiled as he realized how much it affected him, how wrong it felt to see this. The smoke from the cigarettes managed to raise a white wall in front of him just before Neville noticed him. Draco felt his gaze, but he could no longer see it clearly.
The music changed to a slightly quieter tone and the crowd dispersed, the noise of the party no longer so deafening. This allowed Draco to look for some other distraction among the sounds around him. Next to him, on an armchair surrounded by students who were crowded together as if expecting a fight, the voices of the argument became more noticeable.
“Please, Cooper!” exclaimed a voice that easily rose above the others, louder, more confident. “Of course he used you too! We are all, literally, under the same roof, darling…”
Draco turned, curious, half trying to pretend he'd always been focused on them. A person with outlandish pink hair and piercing black eyes sat in a small velvet armchair. Between his full lips, he held a floral-print cigarette, as if he were smoking a grandmother's tapestry. And that was more or less the same feeling that radiated from the air around him. He smelled of cheap perfume and old makeup.
The person leaned forward, where a small glass table separated him from a Gryffindor boy who was beginning to get heated with the argument.
“Used for what, Achilles?” the boy replied, rolling his eyes. “He’s the headmaster, we’re the students, and that’s all there is to it. You Hufflepuffs are always so dramatic…”
Achilles took a vigorous drink from his crystal goblet before answering.
"And because he's the headmaster I can't question what he does?" he asked, licking his lips. "We're all part of his bloody game. When Dumbledore isn't using us as pawns in his ego-quarrel with the Ministry, the Ministry is using us as scapegoats."
Draco was stunned by the topic of conversation. If he had to describe Achilles's raspy voice in any way, he would have said it was theatrical. Not a syllable went unheard, not a word trembled on his lips, and he knew how to project it in such a way that, if the music weren't echoing off the walls, Draco was sure it could be heard throughout the whole Hufflepuff common room.
Cooper, the Gryffindor, seemed about to argue again, but Achilles wouldn't let him.
“We all know of the Ministry's incompetence, but… Do you really think Dumbledore, the most powerful wizard of our times, doesn't have more effective ways to prevent a new angry creature, a new wand-wielding madman, from attacking us every year? Of course he does! But he likes things the way they are, just like the Ministry…”
“This is how things have always been and no one has complained. How exactly do you want them to be?”
“Again, Cooper! Just because things have always been this way doesn't mean they're right,” Achilles exclaimed, raising his glass and spilling a few drops on the ground. “And just because you haven't seen the complaints, means they don't exist…
“I think you've had too much to drink, badger, it's affecting your brain...”
Achilles, besides looking offended, smiled a skeletal smile that showed all his teeth.
“There it is. That stupid arrogance again,” Achilles replied. He said it with such disgust and disappointment that Cooper looked taken aback for a moment. “Do you really not realize that’s what they want? For us to fight each other over… what? Some ambiguous personality classification that a hat put on us when we were eleven?”
Cooper's eyes darted back and forth, seeming to be thinking about how to respond, the dozen or so people gathered around him watching expectantly.
"Come on, what were you going to say, Cooper? That I'm a useless fool like everyone else in my house?" Achilles continued in a defiant tone.
The music, appropriately, seemed to soften, as if the entire party was holding its breath so as not to miss a word. Cooper looked around warily, Draco imagined he was weighing his options. Although he didn't consider the Hufflepuffs the strongest adversaries in the world, at that moment, he was on their territory.
“Tell me, Cooper, you brave Gryffindor, do you really think I’m just a hopeless idiot?” Achilles said, raising his voice, and this time, his words caught the attention of more people. His black eyes shone with a power Draco had never seen before, making his skin crawl. The chair where Harry and Neville were leaning finally turned its gaze in his direction. “Do you think you can define me? Put me in a box? Me?”
"Come on, Achilles, I think you've made your point," Hermione suddenly intervened, in a conciliatory tone. "Do you mind if I take Cooper? Ginny's asking about him."
She gave Cooper a smack to get him to leave. He did so reluctantly, rising from his chair and tightening his grip on his wand, but not daring to use it. Hermione tried to smile to ease the tension, and Achilles seemed to relax.
"Of course, darling," Achilles replied, winking at Hermione. "Nice to see you Cooper, it was interesting..."
Achilles sat back in his chair, taking a drag on his cigarette as he watched Cooper walk away to the safety of his housemates, muttering that he could have beaten him in a duel if he had put his mind to it. Achilles smiled again, and the action-hungry crowd scattered in all directions. The music returned to its thunderous tone, and soon attention was once again focused on the improvised dance floor.
“Did you enjoy the show, Malfoy?”
The voice startled him, and Draco understood why Cooper had been left speechless. It was an entirely different experience when Achilles directed his voice at you, trapping you in a conversation you felt you couldn't win from the start. Draco regarded him with his well-rehearsed coolness, holding Cooper's dark eyes much better than Cooper had.
"Not much, I've never liked freak shows," Draco replied in a deadpan voice.
Achilles let out a loud laugh and leaned towards him.
"So you loved it, huh?" he replied good-naturedly, taking out of his striped coat a dented box of mints that held a row of cigars just like his own. "A cigar?"
“Who are you supposed to be?” Draco replied, not bothering to answer his question. “I haven’t seen you before… Achilles, right?”
"In the flesh," Achilles said, playing with his cigar between his fingers. "I didn't like to talk before, but you see, no one can silence me now."
"Except Granger, right?" Draco said, as if he found it pathetic.
"Of course, she's an angel, she can shut me up as many times as she wants."
“Oh! So that's it. So this little theatre of rebellion is to get dates?
“Something like that…”
Draco sipped from his bottle and looked up to see that Neville was still watching him discreetly from across the room. And Harry still had his hands on him. Draco tried to concentrate on the burn of the Firewhiskey, clenching his hands. He had only looked back at him for a second, but Achilles immediately noticed the gloom that suddenly surrounded him. He flicked the ashes off his cigar.
"Don't tell me you too, Malfoy."
"What the hell are you talking about?" Draco replied defensively.
"Hey, it's alright, we all feel it at some point..." Achilles said with a sigh, and for the first time, he didn't seem to be laughing at him.
“What, exactly?” Draco asked, ready to snatch the cigar from him with a hex if he answered “love” or some similar nonsense.
But instead, Achilles ran his hand through his short pink hair, gathering the strength to respond.
“The darkness Malfoy, the darkness of Hogwarts…”
Draco looked at him closely.
“There's something in those cigarettes, isn't there? Did it get to your head?
“Quite the opposite. Tell me, Malfoy, haven’t you ever been in a corridor on the way to class and felt like you were drowning? Like everything you worry about in the world is falling on you like a pile of rocks? When it touches you, it takes the sparkle out of your eyes, Malfoy. And you, you don’t have any sparkle anymore.”
“You really have a screw loose…”
“Maybe, but what I’m saying isn’t crazy,” Achilles said, leaning his head closer to Draco’s seat. “These walls, the things they’ve kept inside. So many decades of magical children, anguished and repressed, don’t you think it would have consequences one day?”
“Please, distressed and repressed? This is Dumbledore’s happy paradise,” Draco replied sarcastically. “What darkness would reach us?”
"The worst of all, Malfoy," said Achilles. “Our own…"
Just for an instant, Draco felt a spark of curiosity prickling in his mind. A tickling sensation. What Achilles was saying sounded vaguely familiar. Draco couldn't realize how much the conversation was shaking him, but Harry, sitting and watching from the mustard chair, did. His usual hard expression had suddenly vanished.
Harry squinted, trying to make out the two of them better so he could try to decipher what they were saying. What could Achilles be saying that had Draco Malfoy so interested? Draco wasn't even moving his eyes anymore, while Achilles whispered something in his ear. A strange bitter feeling washed over him, Harry knew what it was, but he had never been very good at dealing with it.
Jealousy.
Finally, Achilles stopped talking and leaned back, smoking his cigar, and Draco let out a small laugh. Harry blinked, wondering if he was starting to hallucinate. He felt dizzy, and an irrational anger was beginning to cloud his brain. Making him laugh? That was already too impossible a feat.
“Forget it, Harry,” he tried to tell himself. He felt like he was burning up, and Harry wasn’t sure if it was from the alcohol or the heartbreak that was eating away at him. In that dim corner, the light from an old wall lamp cast shadows over Draco’s face, making his hair shine with a golden glow. Harry closed his eyes tightly, a memory fluttering in his mind, and he wanted to push it away, far away from there.
But the memory, shrouded in the same amber light that had made Draco glow in the distance, rushed at him. Harry covered his ears, trying to drown out the sound of chaos and fire that came back to haunt him from the corners of his mind. He could feel the smoke poisoning his lungs again, and Draco shaking him hard, yelling at him to get up.
“Harry, are you okay?”
Neville put a hand on his shoulder, his soft eyes watching him with concern. The party music had become a distant murmur.
“I’m fine,” Harry said, moving away from him. He stood up from the chair with his bottle in hand and looked around, searching for the exit as the room spun and distorted into flames and screams. Neville, bewildered, stood up to follow him, but Ron got there first.
"Harry, I think you've had enough to drink," he said as calmly as he could, standing in front of him. But Harry moved him away, pushing him so hard that Ron collided with a couple of people who were dancing.
“I’m fine, Ron!” he exclaimed. Several people turned to look at him, but Harry didn’t seem to notice the spectacle he was making. He staggered towards the door, blinking the tears from his eyes.
“Harry…!” Neville said, trying to follow him.
"Leave him," Ron stopped him, putting a hand on his shoulder. "He wants to be alone."
Harry crossed the room and disappeared behind the curtains. Suddenly the music changed, becoming much louder than before, an electric swing, fast and exciting like a bolt of lightning that shot through their veins. The amber lights went out with a snap, leaving them with the magical neon spheres floating around as their only source of light. The entire crowd roared in approval. Twenty couples ran to jump and dance again, with renewed euphoria.
It was impossible to hear each other now, noise and music making the walls shake. Neville watched Ron, and in the shadows of the glow balls he saw his lips moving, but he could no longer make out what he was saying. He seemed dejected at having to face Harry, so he returned to his place at the edge of the sofa, and Dean Thomas came over to hand him a drink.
Neville felt his heart in his throat, all the relaxed happiness of the evening had slipped through his fingers. He could still feel the touch of Harry's hand on his chest, leaving him feeling empty inside. He moved away from the sofa, and although he was tempted to follow Harry, he headed in the opposite direction, towards the stairs to the Hufflepuff rooms.
Behind the thick makeshift curtain that separated him from the party, the steps were cool and lonely. He sat down on the stone, trying to calm himself, his heart pounding like crazy. A couple of tears stung his eyes, but he felt so pathetic that he wiped them away with his sleeve before they could fall. He hadn't had much to drink, but he still felt dizzy.
He considered leaving right then and returning to the empty bedroom, but that sounded like too depressing of a thought. Tears welled up in his eyes again, and he squeezed them shut. Someone suddenly opened the curtain.
Neville stood up quickly when he saw Draco and climbed the next step to get away from him. He prayed that the traces of tears wouldn't show in the dim light of the stairs. Draco was watching him intently, with those intense eyes that hypnotized him, and Neville couldn't help but think how vulnerable he looked.
The impeccable appearance Draco had acquired in puberty had vanished among rumpled clothes and long, untrimmed hair. His face had taken on a cadaverous look, and his eyes glittered with all the emotions he had tried to hide during his childhood. Neville wondered if Draco was aware of how much they gave away now.
“Long… bottom,” Draco said, taking a step towards him.
"What do you want, Malfoy?" Neville said, looking down and rubbing his eyes with his hands. Bad idea, now he had noticed the tears.
“Where’s Potter?” he asked, annoyance in his voice. “Did he leave you alone?”
“Maybe I want to be alone…”
It didn't sound convincing even to himself. The reality was that he desperately wanted to not be alone, but he couldn't afford the company of someone like Draco. Not again.
Draco took a step towards him, slowly, as if he just wanted to see what he would do. Neville thought about leaving, about pushing him out of the way and leaving the party for good, but he soon realized that he didn't want to. He was thinking about Harry, and he didn't want to.
"Did he hurt you?" Draco continued. He looked furious at the idea, and it accentuated the purpleness of his eyes.
Now Draco was so close that Neville could smell his expensive geranium perfume, mingling with the whiskey on his breath. A decadent trace of opulence, peeking through his paleness and melancholy. For a moment, Neville wondered if Draco saw him in a similar light to the one he was taking now, trying to unravel his true nature. What do you think of me now?
He began to corner him, with the same decadent eyes of a hungry animal. Neville, in a moment of brilliance, remembered that he knew how to disarm him too.
“Don't get involved... Draco.”
It always felt strange to call him by his name, it sounded so intimate, so invasive, so demeaning. Draco clenched his jaw, roiled by a maddening longing, and let out a shaky laugh that raised Neville's hair.
So Draco, seized by an uncontrollable impulse, reached out with his pale hand and took him by the neck, stroking with his cold fingers Neville's warm skin, his thick muscles, the areas where Harry had also put his hands during much of the night. He wanted to scream until he lost his voice, to touch him until Harry's scent came off his skin.
He pushed him roughly, causing Neville to crash into the opposite wall of the narrow hallway.
“Do you have any idea… what you’ve done to me?” Draco said breathlessly.
Neville seemed to understand, his eyes flashing with anger. He pushed him back, much harder, slamming him against the rock wall, his heart in his throat. Draco laughed loudly again.
"Come on, get angry," he said with a cold smile.
It worked. Neville grabbed him by the chin with his big, strong gardener's hands, forcing Malfoy to look at him, to know how much power he had over him. They were gasping for air, beginning to drown in this deranged game.
Swept through by electricity that shook his bones, deafened by the music and the screams, the pounding in his chest, dizzy from Harry's indifference and Draco's anger, from his own anger, and from the sadness that choked him and broke him, Neville knew there was a way to make it all go away, to feel the warmth for one night.
Looking into Draco's lost eyes, the sounds became soft whispers. Floating in some forgotten corner of space, far away from everything. He brought his lips closer and kissed Draco with a softness that surprised him. It was always that, Draco realized, that drove him insane. That sweetness.
Draco let himself be possessed by Neville. He let him cover his neck with kisses and unbutton his shirt, wrap his welcoming arms around his body, run his hands over his skeletal arms and his body emaciated by the hunger of misery. He delighted in his rough caresses, in his furious snorting, in the scent of roses on his lips.
Draco pulled him closer to his body, clinging to him with a desperation he wasn't prepared to feel. Just knowing it was him, that it was his body, recognizing the sound of his breathing, was enough to send him into delirium. His body shook violently, his disheveled hair fell over his face, and he felt Neville's thick lips on his earlobe. He moaned in one breath.
Neville hugged Draco's chest, and lay still, breathing in his scent. Draco stroked his hair with one hand. The noise was gone, darkness seemed to lessen.
“You’re mine,” Draco whispered breathlessly. “My Neville…”