Chapter 6
"Well, well, well!" Theo grimaced as Draco and Harry walked into his bar and made their way up to him. "Looks like the ferret fell into the pants of the pothead! How's the bromance going?"
Draco lightly punched Theo's arm as he took his seat in front of his counter. "Shut up, Nott. Just give us our fire whiskey."
Theo threw his head back in laughter. "He said 'us'! The bond is real!" He turned to Blaise, Astoria, and Daphne, who were sitting two chairs down from Draco. "Did you guys hear that? Unbelievable!"
The three other Slytherins also broke out in laughter.
"Oy, Malfoy!" Blaise shot him his cool, smug smile. "Has your family gotten that desperate that they've let you do business with a Gryffindor?"
Harry took his seat between Draco and Blaise. He looked at Blaise with a placid expression on his face. "Nope, this has nothing to do with the Malfoys' new business. We're just two shameless bros ready to get drunk together and have the night of our lives." He turned to Nott and gave a sharp nod. "You heard Malfoy. Fire whiskey."
Theo blinked at him, as did Blaise. Then Theo resumed laughing as he prepared their drinks. "Just wait till you have to introduce him to your parents. I'll have to hack into the cameras so I can see the looks on their faces!"
"Hey, speaking of hacking into cameras…" Draco leaned forward, glaring seriously at Theo. "The Granger girl stumbled upon some hidden camera footage that revealed you, Blaise, and Luna with that Weasley git, on a day Arthur Weasley paid a visit to my house. It was not long after Parkinson was….you know."
An uneasy silence fell among them all, and for a moment, all that was heard was the background chatter in Nott's noisy bar.
Then Nott faced Draco with raised eyebrows. For once, the look on his face was solemn. "You really wanna know what we were doing that day?"
Draco rolled his eyes. "Why else would I bring it up?"
Nott set the fire whiskey in front of Draco and Harry, then faced them both with narrowed eyes. Blaise had also turned his full attention on them, though he had an unreadable expression on his face.
Theo spoke in a low voice. "Well I had shown up to protect my beloved Luna from the hands of that filthy Weasley scum. Blaise and I were on our way to my place, but we were surprised to see Luna was near Malfoy's, talking to Weasley of all people." He gave a derisive snort. "Turns out she was trying to help Ron recover from some kind of crazed state he was in. The redhead was acting like he had lost his mind. I mean, for real. The redhead's as stupid as can be, but this time, he was acting psychotically stupid."
Blaise nodded. "He was blabbering stuff that only Luna seemed to understand."
Harry raised his eyebrows. "Oh? What did Luna make of it?"
Theo gave a wry smile. "She said the nargyles were messing with his mind, and they were unwilling to speak to her. Then she said he needed healing from a special kind of spell only she knew how to perform. So she took him back to a spot in our garden where the ‘atmosphere was better.’ She raised her wand whispered something, and the two of them just vanished.”
Draco and Harry stared at Theo, holding their cups of whiskey in midair below their chins.
“So…Ron’s not the only one missing,” remarked Harry.
Theo looked like he was ready to murder someone. “If you guys track him down…you better let me know. Otherwise you’ll be the next missing victims here.”
Draco took a drink of whiskey. “Nott, we won’t need extra help beating the snot out of Weasley when we find him, so you won’t hear from us until after we’ve attacked him.”
Harry also took a drink. “You can join us for the Arthur beating, though.”
They spent the next half hour laughing drunkenly over Weasley jokes that Blaise cracked, and even Theo seemed to lighten up.
Then Harry felt his phone vibrate. Draco watched as he checked his phone, and his wild grin morphed into a serious frown.
“Hermione…” he said. “She wants us to meet her at her place. Now."
Draco grabbed Harry's phone and fixed his drunken eyes on the text message. Then he rolled his eyes lazily. "Damn that Granger, always ruining the fun." He dropped the phone in his glass of fire whiskey.
"Hey, you arsehead!" Harry gave his arm a light punch and stuck his hand in the whiskey, retrieving his phone.
Draco snickered. "You have your hand in my fire whiskey. You're silly, Potter," he gave the Gryffindor a hearty shove.
Harry nearly fell off his chair. He grabbed the edge of the counter to stand straight, looking rather dizzy from his own drunken state. Then he grabbed the back of Draco's shirt. "Let's go….can't waste time."