If Draco has learned anything at Hogwarts, if all of the ceaseless private tutoring, lessons, faux-detentions and scorching firewhiskey after prefect meetings managed to drill anything into him, it’s that there’s no place in the wizarding world that he’ll be treated like a normal person. It’s always the young mister Malfoy, wrapped neatly in plastic and presented with defining characteristics: pureblood, Slytherin, prefect, Death Eater (soon), heir (soon?). Buy now. Father’s name still included. Father’s name seared into veins.
So there he is again, prefects’ bathroom mirror staring right back at him, and he’s nearly memorized the exact spot a slight distortion happens that elongates his face just enough that he looks nearly identical to the moving portrait of Lucius in his youth hanging at the stairwell at Malfoy manor. There’s that shame. It makes his brows furrow like mother’s do, makes him want to vomit. He looks waifish to himself, frail and tired, like someone took the real young mister Malfoy and sucked something out of him, and this is all that’s left. Draco knows all about rigging up dying flesh on dry bone until it looks human, urges the sun into losing eyes every morning until the characteristic shine of them is strong enough that he even fools himself. And Nicolas Flamel be damned, Draco’s learned this all by himself.
When he’s flanked (and dwarfed) by his companions, childhood friends nearly permanently sandwiched together, it’s a shield. The ground stomps itself before he even has the chance to lay his foot down onto it, Crabbe elbows through crowds with a practiced confidence that has their little trio making their way to the commons with more ease than the Head Boy.
A password is mumbled and the dungeon doors open to the depths of their heavenhell. Dante’s descent is a teenage boy, all dizziness and limbs.
When Vince and Gregory take up the sides of the emerald chesterfield facing the door to the boy’s dormitory, Draco throws himself in the middle of it, half his torso leaning on Gregory and his bony knees jabbing the trunk of Crabbe’s thigh. He listens halfheartedly to the recollection of a Quidditch match he missed, raises his eyebrows and quirks his lips at all the right cues as he toys with one of his rings. Twisting the cool metal with the pads of his fingers is enough to tether him there and keep him.
Goyle, on his other side, pulls out a handful of tea biscuits wrapped in a napkin that he’d nicked from dinner. He offers them to Draco (who frowns and declines), then to Crabbe, who reaches an arm across Draco and gracelessly grabs nearly half of them. The slowness of the weekend makes everything feel more exposed, so soon enough they’re shuffling back to their dorm, locking the door as they do.
“Crabbe,” Draco begins as he rifles through his desk in search of his notes, “Have you done your Transfiguration homework?”
His friend lets out a hum of agreement around half a mouthful of biscuit.
“And you, Goyle?”
No response. As if playing deaf will save him. It’s only Saturday, he wants to say, and my marks are fine enough this year. Instead, he just waits for his friend to turn around and lock greys onto him. He has tired eyes today, despite the shield of an intense stare he puts up.
“You haven’t? Do you need help?” then, Draco hastily adds, “Get it done by tomorrow.”
Gregory groans at this. “I’ve got better things to do,” he says.
“You won’t if McGonagall sees you on Monday with empty parchment.”
Vincent tunes out his friends’ chatter, though he considers for a second that no, Goyle doesn’t exactly have anything better to do, at least as far as he knows. Unless he counts trying to follow the girls into their dormitories and scaring them when they come out in the morning. That’s always fun to do. Daphne practically squeals with terror every time, before swatting them with the closest thing she can find and threatening to hex them until there’s new ghosts haunting the school. It’s worth it for the look on her face.
Draco Malfoy sits at his desk until nightfall, mindlessly flipping through pages of Potions notes in a faux attempt at revising. He tries to listen in on Crabbe’s bragging about the date he’s goaded Milicent Bulstraud into. Tonight, he says, they’re going to sit by the lake. Maybe tonight, he says, she’ll let him put his hand up her skirt. Goyle lets out a laugh at that, and gives a lighthearted smack to Vincent’s arm as he walks through the room in a rush, trying to get ready.
Eventually, the door shuts, and it’s overwhelmingly quiet. Draco’s mind finally wanders. It floats up to the ceiling like he’s a balloon, stays there. Up there, it’s featherlight, up there, he’s on the Black family tapestry, staring at his own frowning face. His stomach growls.
There’s a routine to this next part. There’s a careful ritual. Getting Crabbe out of the room is the first step. Locking him out is the second. He’ll complain about it if he gets stood up. (But if a girl stands him up, Goyle thinks, that’s his own fault. Girls are always right about that sort of thing. And if he’s dull enough not to remember how to alohamora his own dorm room lock, Draco thinks, that’s his own fault.)
It isn’t that Gregory’s gay per se, or in love with Draco. At least, not like that. Whatever emotion is there, he can’t find the word for it. The eternal presque vu, the big long why. Draco knows why, he’s sure, Draco knows a lot about those things, the same way that girls do. Draco is a lot like a girl, in the ways that matter.
Draco is also floating away, eyes unfocused but lids heavy, arms settling on Gregory’s shoulders. His entire body wants to scream out Tie me down, tear me apart, rip whatever this is to pieces and swallow it. Get it off of me. Instead, his friend undresses him carefully. The sensation is enough to make a shiver run deep through him, from the top of his head to the tips of his fingers and toes, like his entire body got hit with a stunning hex.
Vast hands grip at the expanse of him, find their place on his ribs and clutch. It’s automatic, no second thought to follow, and Gregory’s tongue drags across pale neck. Draco tilts his head up. The swirl of motifs at the corner of the ceiling draw his attention as he’s handled, mind wandering and floating away. When those hands squeeze at him, though, he’s pulled back.
“Alright, love?” Greg asks him. He sounds like he’s talking to a pretty girl, voice drunk, voice heavy, dragging him down. Draco hums in agreement. It’s answer enough. That’s what he’s good for, good for dragging those grey Malfoy eyes out of the mess of clouds they tangle themselves in. He bites angry marks into Draco’s collarbone like Draco taught him, low enough to be concealed by uniform, high enough that he can let a small hint of it slip if he unbuttons it just right. The sting of it is more grounding than any cognition spell. Big arms envelop him and hold him there. He remembers a dream Greg told him, about being a giant, being taller than the school, and placing Draco on his shoulders, protecting him. That’s how it’s always been. Crabbe is big, but Greg is bigger, Greg flings himself around more, wound tighter and ready to unleash on anyone that looks at them wrong. He likes it, too, likes being big and strong and untouchable. And he likes how slight his blond friend is, he thinks. Makes him feel even bigger, makes him feel useful.
When Goyle slips inside, it’s effortless, Draco is air and water and calm and Gregory is earth and fire and dense. They’ve done it enough times that he’s practically memorized it, speaks it like a mother tongue. He presses himself flush against his friend, listens to the patter of his heartbeat and the tiny gasp that escapes him.
There’s always been a hole in Draco, a chasm. Cock won’t fill it, Goyle thinks, but, Merlin, is it fun to try. He wishes Crabbe were there too, that they could all do this together, but having his friend all to himself is hardly something he’d complain about. He mentions it sometimes, though, and seems to get an eager response that tells him the idea isn’t entirely off the table. He mumbles something against Draco’s skin, but the boy isn’t paying attention. Neither of them are. Draco’s outside of himself, but all there just the same. He’s someone else, something else, cut loose from his name and face. Just a coiled thing of nerves, being unfurled, being stomped out.
“Suck your stomach in,” Gregory stops kissing and biting at him to say, no longer muffled by an expanse of pale and bruised. He pulls himself away enough to get a good look at his friend’s torso.
Draco just lets out a small trilling laugh in amusement, and complies. There’s the outline of his friend burrowing into him, or where it would be. Draco’s not sure he sees it, but Goyle’s convinced he can, touches his hand to the skin of his stomach and pushes on it just a little and lets out a low groan. Sometimes he’ll tell Draco how fucking tiny he is, how he could grind him down to dust with just a press. Not this time, though, not when he’s watched him starve with worry and work, wither like spoiled fruit.
Instead, he just holds his waist, watches the space where he ends and Draco begins. The boy’s slight frame is ashiver, eyes wound shut tightly like he’s trying to push anything else away, hug this sensation closer, keep it there and let it wrack him like waves to stone. In the end, his friend clings to him, ruts into him so personal that it can only be fraternal. And like true Slytherins, they’re quiet when they come. Just gasps and sighs. Then the world collapses back, the Great Lake pouring into the room, washing them bare. Draco still shivers as Greg tucks him into the vastness of him. David and Goliath as Friends.
Sunlight disperses in shimmers through lakewater and the thick glass of their dorm window, spills the room aglow, and it’s a Sunday. Tired greys greet the green that dances across fine bed covers, and across his sleeping companion. If he were a smarter man, Draco would have dressed, or pulled himself away, or shoved Goyle out of his bed. Instead, they’re stuck together with sweat like flypaper and he peels himself off as gracefully as he can muster.
Every muscle in his body seems to hate him. Good. And Gregory is fucked out enough that he doesn’t even stir. Even better. He picks his wand up from the bedside and reverses the muffling charm on the canopy bed so his friend isn’t woken up. Then, resisting a pained groan, he gets up, rifles through his dresser for a good jumper and pair of trousers, struggles to find matching socks, and slips into his loafers. Even the half-minute he spends in the mirror adjusting his hair is enough to sour him. He’d snarl at himself like a mad dog if he could, he’d bite into the skin of his own neck and pull out, between red teeth, marrow and nerve. Instead, he pushes his hair back and brushes his teeth.
How lucky, he thinks, the commons are dimly lit today, just weak candlelight and slight sun through water. Pansy catches him at the archway, practically runs up to him, small round eyes wide like she’s just seen a dead man come to life. She grabs his bicep and urges him close, until they’re almost flush together, then opens her palm (her nails are lilac today, Draco notes, filed short and rounded) to reveal a vial of silver shimmering liquid. There’s a name for the stuff, but Draco can’t remember. He knows what it is, though. He also knows that an entire vial of it is enough to get them sky high every day until the end of the term.
“I got this at Knockturne,” she says, voice treading between a whisper and a hiss, how it always gets when she’s too excited to be properly quiet, “Tracey swore it made her see thestrals,” and her dark eyes are wide awake as she stares. Draco scoffs.
“Tracey couldn’t list three traits of a thestral in a Care quiz if they included a picture,” he says. Still, he eyes the little bottle, plucks it from her hand and brings it closer to his face.
“Well, either way,” Pansy announces, assertive now, “it’s what those Hufflepuffs were huffing on at the end of our Hogsmeade trip last week, and it’s supposed to be really strong, and,” her train of thought is interrupted as Draco begins to shake the little vial, making the liquid glimmer in the dim light, “I paid good money for that, Draco, don’t break it,” her smaller hand snatches it from him.
“Alright, alright,” he says, “do you want to do it now?” there’s something conspiratorial in the way he says that, a type of camaraderie based on mutual secret-keeping that everyone in his house seemed to understand. Their own language. Pansy grins.
They hardly resist the urge to just apparate to the forest. Instead, at a brisk and unassuming pace, they make their way through nearly empty halls and courtyards. The edge of the forest in early autumn has them avoiding stepping on the still-asleep flying toads that make their home in the tall grass. Draco sits down on the dry soil, surrounded by trees, and places his wand down. He pats the ground next to him, urging his friend to sit as well. She fumbles with the edge of her skirt for a second as she sits down like she’s shy, legs pressed tightly together. Heirs of the greatest pureblood families, the generation that will pull the wizarding world out of the pit it’s dug itself into, future Ministry officials, sitting in the dirt ready to get high out of their minds on a Sunday morning.
The poison comes into Draco’s vision as Pansy dangles it in front of him. She’s always been a gentleman, he thinks, and the thought makes him let out a small laugh.
“What?” she asks, frowning immediately, ready to be embarrassed if needed.
“Nothing, you wretch,” he tells her, “I just remembered something funny.”
“Oh. You’re a prick,” she says, smiling. Then she waits a second before urging him, “Well, go on.”
So he does, uncaps the bottle and listens to the satisfying pop, then the hiss of liquid that’s inside. He wonders if drinking it would kill you or just maim you, wonders how many cases of recreational drug related mishaps Poppy Pomphrey has had to treat. He raises liquid to royal nose and takes a whiff.
It burns going in, like a match searing right through his face into the top of his head, and it sends his eyes wide open. He breathes in for longer than he means to, so by the time he pulls it away, it feels like there’s a fire hex on the backs of his eyeballs. He shuts them tight, shoves the bottle at Pansy.
“Oh, wow,” she says, like she’s reading the Prophet, and she scans Draco’s coiled body as it comes unfurled, as his neck cranes upwards and stares at the blue sky, catching his breath. Then, her friend lets out a hoarse sigh, and how messed up he looks makes her even more eager. She quickly follows, huffs at the liquid in tiny breaths and nearly falls over on her back as it hits her.
“Holy-- fucking Merlin, holy shit,” she’s breathless now, capping the tiny vial quickly and shoving it into her pocket. She looks skyward and squints, “Why is it so bright out here?”
“This what you wanted, Pansy?” Draco asks, louder than he meant to, fingers threading through grass and pulling tufts out. Every bone in his body seems to be readjusting, or dislocating, writhing, “I feel like there’s a snake inside me.”
“I feel like I’m a snake,” she answers almost automatically, “or something else that’s… really close to the ground. Fuck off, Draco, don’t make me think.”
He just laughs at her. His heartbeat feels tiny and quick like a bird, and he’s definitely not seeing Thestrals but there’s a terrible sense of dread he gets when he looks at the clouds for too long. At some point Pansy ends up on her back. He notices her once his eyes dart towards the source of a small giggle that erupts next to him. She’s got one of her hands clutching the edge of her skirt so it doesn’t hike up as she bends her leg at the knee. Then, she turns weakly to her side to face her partner in crime. Maderno’s Saint Cecilia in color. Back covered in dirt.
“Draco, look,” and she points to her socks, “these are yours!” and she laughs again. He leans up close, touches her ankle and feels the loose fabric of where the heel ought to go, and he grins.
“That they are, you little thief, give those back.”
“No, no,” she says boldly, pulls herself up, and sits down cross-legged, suddenly no longer seeming to care about her bare legs showing under her skirt, “I’m no house-elf, Malfoy, I’m keeping these.”
“You’re a harpy, a terrible witch-harpy, the worst of womankind,” and he’s watching the grin spread across her face. She stares at him expectantly.
”Alright,” he says, “but you have to give me something of yours.”
The suggestion almost blinds her, or maybe it’s the potion. The entire time, it sounds like Draco is underwater, or like he’s smothered by thick fabric or like there’s cotton in her ears. Her hands seem to lag behind as she forces them to move. Still, she’s as cocky as ever.
“Fine.”
It’s slow-motion, like the moving pictures in pornographic magazines Crabbe keeps in a pile under his mattress. Except it’s Pansy, just Pansy, petite Pansy with no chest to speak of, taking her jumper off to reveal a white button-down shirt. Her hair goes flying everywhere when the wool makes its way over her head, but it knocks whatever’s been muffling her hearing right out, and she doesn’t even notice that she gasps for air once she gets the garment off. She shoves it in Draco’s hands.
The fabric is scratchy, thick and heavy in that way that makes him feel like he’d break out in hives if it were to touch the bare skin of his chest. Instead, he just twists it around in his hands, picks at it gently with his nails, then spreads it out to inspect it. There’s no tag on it, probably an antique. He turns it right side in, pulls his own jumper off, adjusts the collar of his shirt underneath and pulls it on over his head. Pansy just watches intently. Though it hung loosely off of his friend, it’s nowhere near as snug on him as it ought to be. It’s comfortable. He tosses his own discarded one to Pansy, who scrambles to get it on and grins sheepishly after she does. Then, she darts up, holds her hand out for Draco to grab and then pulls him to his feet.
“I think if Lockheart had tried this,” she says, “he wouldn’t have resorted to plagiarism,” and she begins guiding them deeper into the forest.
“He would have turned to poetry.”
The poison in his blood has him feeling purely byronian, like he’d fling himself from skin to glass to silk to metal and absorb it all. He tells Pansy that much.
“You’re just a slag,” she responds, then pulls him forward til they’re both pressed against a tree, “not like me.”
He hums in agreement with her.
“A unicorn would rest its head in your lap in a heartbeat.”
She laughs, this time higher pitched, like a bird call. There’s no mistaking that look in her eye, feline in its curiosity. She’s always been half girl, half want, envious of anything she can see grabbing more than her, can’t resist tearing things out from their packaging. That’s how she curls her fingers around the collar of Draco’s-- her jumper, and tugs him closer. It’s for play, it’s all a joke, but that makes it better. It makes it funny how much more she wants. He chuckles, the air of it hits her face. Her skin feels tight like she’s a serpent stuck in its shed, her skin feels like it’s going to split open and reveal a simmering core.
You idiot, Draco wants to tell her, you tart, you’re going to die for this. You’ll kill yourself for this. Nothing can eat the desperation out of you. No one will love us enough to tear this out of us. NO ONE WILL LOVE US ENOUGH TO TEAR THIS OUT OF US.
Instead he presses their foreheads together in a promise. She shuts her eyes, wills her jittering body to still and absorb this. Draco’s hands wrap around hers, cold fingers forming a cocoon and squeezing. She tilts her head up, slots their faces together in a motionless kiss, flush and dry. No bullets in the chamber. Stranded with no gas.
They stay like that for what feels like an eternity, high and shivering, nerves frayed as they will themselves not to shake. Once they come apart, the front of Draco feels cold, a breeze where a body used to be. He hugs himself. Business as usual. The trees around them feel closer than before. He can practically smell every weed and herb that he’s stepping on, smell the lichen on the tree bark and the bits of dirt and grass under his nails.
He’s Byron, collapsed in rosebushes and poppies, shirt unbuttoned in a romantic stupor, opium fever and arms flung open uselessly. Somewhere, his Percy Shelley’s locked away, curled up on the floor in his office beset with a terrible melancholia. Yes, that’s the kind of man Draco needs, he thinks, deathcurled and frowning and hard to undress.
And then there’s Pansy, grabbing his hand, dragging him deeper into the forest, so he thinks now he’ll be Dante, and she’ll be Vergil. She’ll show him all the terrors that await them, guide him deeper into brimstone and flame, and he’ll be good, he’ll note everything down, he’ll memorize it.
Pansy trips over roots, gets dirt on her pretty shoes, brown hair flying wildly behind her and into her face in wisps. She’s pulling Draco along with her with intent, as if something hidden between all the trees is dragging her towards it. She’s dragging them to the molten core of whatever’s burning inside them, looping around in circles and infinity signs while still going deeper and deeper into the forest until Draco is so disoriented he feels he might bump into himself.
The labyrinth of trees that she slides them between seems to wind inwards forever, makes him dizzy. Finally, breathless and dazed, he pulls his hand away. Pansy turns around, almost expecting him to disappear. (Eurydice as a boy) He stands there, halved, hands on his knees, breathing heavily.
“Not to alarm you,” he says, “or dampen your high, but I think I’m gonna be sick. In fact, I might,” he begins, and his voice suddenly feels disembodied and distant. His ears begin to ring and the picture freezes.
Now, he’s on his back again, except this time there’s an incessant buzzing in his ears. Now, it feels like being dunked in a pool of cold water. Now, a hand wipes sweat from his brow, and the awful ringing turns to girlvoice.
“Fucking hell,” it says, “fucking Merlin, Draco,” and she’s pulling the jumper over his head, unbuttoning his shirt and fanning him, all in such quick succession that Draco’s certain she must have grown an extra couple of hands in the time it took him to fall on his arse. Her cooling charm hits his chest, then washes through all of him, sending a shiver and gooseflesh everywhere it touches. He sighs and blinks slowly.
“You scared me, you know,” she says. Draco lets himself rest flat on his back. When he doesn’t dignify her with an answer, she sits down and pulls his head onto her lap, “you wretched, dramatic little rat.”
This makes him muster a smile. Pansy smiles back, strokes his newly damp hair, always eager to run her small hands through it, mess it up and carefully brush it back into place. Dark eyes scan her friend’s exposed chest, her gaze stuck on the splatter of red and plum that’s not foreign to either of them. She puts a hand on his shoulder, leaning right down so she’s close to his face.
“You’ve been bad, young Mr Malfoy,” she tells him, voice low in an imitation of authority before raising to a dramatic lilt, “What has our youth come to?”
Draco sits up, allowing her to move and lie down next to him again. She turns on her side and hooks a leg over his, and he shoves at her weakly with false disdain.
“All before marriage, too,” Draco responds, voice still light and frail from his previous excursion from vertical to horizontal, “mother would be appalled.”
Pansy shifts around, still abuzz and jittering with that anxious energy that’s making her want to just roll around in grass until she digs herself into it. She could burrow in there, she thinks, or join all the tiny creatures that live in the dirt. Instead, she turns onto her back for a moment, then returns to resting on her side.
“No mothers today,” she tells him gently.
“No mothers,” he parrots, “no tutors, homework, howlers, meetings…”
“Meetings.”
And there’s the comedown. Thick tree crowns above them hang so heavy they block out the sun. The silence that follows hangs heavier. If he never has to hear that word again in his life, Draco thinks, it would be too soon. He’d rather be buried where Buckbeak scratched him, rather slam his head into the mirror until the reflection etched itself into him, than stare terror in the eye and stand at its side again.
“There are things, Draco,” Narcissa Malfoy would say, “there are things we must do. Dear boy,” she would coo to him, “there are things I wish you did not have to do.”
Pansy’s hand touches his leg now, slightly above the knee, and gives a comforting squeeze. It pulls him down. That’s what he screams for, that’s what he can never find: something to tie him to the ground and keep him there, something to grab him and tell him here you go, here is simple and good and here is your life- you can stay here. Pansy tries, Gregory tries, Vincent tries, but the skin he flings his frame between never seems to keep him in place. All it does is suck the heaven out of all their chests and pass it around between them. All it does is dull the blade.
Slowly, they both sit up. The horizon twists in on itself, making it hard to tell sky from ground. The light, airy feeling is there again at Draco’s center, but the rest of him feels so heavy. Pansy stands up first. He looks up her skirt. He makes it obvious, too, because it’s funny, because it’s finally a joke they’re both in on. He lets her pull him upright.
“I told Blaise to meet us,” she says, now that she’s got him vertical. Then, she hesitates for a moment, “I, uh… I thought we wouldn’t still be…”
“Out of our minds?”
Draco brushes his hair into place. Pansy nods. He watches her, knowing she hasn’t told him everything.
“I might have also told Crabbe,” her voice is softer now, “and Goyle,” even smaller, “and Nott.”
Malfoy is pink in the face with embarrassment, and he straightens up quickly.
“Anyone else, Pansy? Albus Dumbledore? My father?” the words are pouring out of him with frustration as he grabs her shoulders. It catches his friend off guard, and she freezes under his grasp, “Merlin, your pupils…”
“It’s okay!” she lilts, assuring herself and him. She slowly snakes out from under his grip and those smaller hands grasp his bicep, “It’s fine, Draco! Where do you think they’ve been all day? Smoking outside Hogsmeade,” her voice grows more confident, “and, knowing Theo, he’s probably been doing a lot more in his dorm.”
Smug now, herself now, she wipes the dust off his shoulders, allowing an impish smile to spread across her features. How unnatural for a face that soft to bend to wickedness, Draco thinks, how cherubic she looks at rest, and how darkly she bares her teeth. Not the wolf, no, but the coyote.
Sunlight spends itself behind them, seems to falter by the time he can collect them both in his grasp. It’s pink-orange up above, over the trees, and the wind picks up slowly around them. It’s lucky, they both think (though they don’t know), that they’re the same height. It’s lucky those jumpers fit just right.
Pansy notices the motion in the horizon, and she jumps up to greet it, reaching her palms up in a wave.
“Over here,” she calls, “we’re here!”
Draco isn’t given a moment to process before hands grasp at his shoulders with a running start, Vincent Crabbe grabbing him in his beater-grip. He holds him in place, and Draco just gasps and laughs, airy, through tiny lungs.
“Crabbe!” he says. There’s no voice to it, just oxygen, and Goyle emerges from the other side of him, as if summoned. Theodore Nott runs up to the group of them and pulls Goyle and Pansy towards himself, effectively trapping them in a group hug. Elbows jut into guts and breaths are caught. Slowly, Blaise Zabini approaches, offering the lightest embrace he could muster, capturing as many as he can with his arms and slowly parting himself.
“We’ve been looking for you,” Theo says. Draco stares into his dark, shiny eyes. Nott’s pupils sit blown wider than he’s ever seen. Their eyes meeting feels significant, a camaraderie in the hell of it all. Quickly, though, Nott blinks it all away, “why’d you come all the way out here?”
He looks at Pansy when he asks this, knowing. She puts her hands on her knees in a slight bow, and prompts the rest of the group to look at her as well.
“Number one, it’s secluded. Number two, it’s beautiful, I mean have you looked--,” she starts, ready to gesture wildly, but catches herself. She straightens up, and grins, “look, I’m really high okay?”
The giggle that erupts from her is more shrill than any she’s normally produced, making the rest of them erupt in laughs as well. Blaise is the first to grab at her, wrap his arms around her middle as she giggles and lift her up. She hugs him, runs her hands through his hair and tips her head back, letting him spin her in the air.
“We all are, love,” says Crabbe, and he throws a large arm over Draco’s and her shoulder once Blaise places her back down, “we all are.”
Pink-purple sky hits Blaise Zabini’s dark eyes just so, making him look much more thoughtful than he could ever muster by himself. It makes Draco split himself into a smirk, seeing his friend backlit so starkly. Zabini looks back at him - the moment feels frozen in time. Pansy scans between the two of them like a child in a candy store: hungry. Draco knows this look, he knows the starved temperament of his friend, so he gives her a small nod of affirmation and bares his teeth in a smile as Pansy nods right back at him and quickly pecks Blaise’s soft, high cheek. His face grows hot at the attention. Crabbe and Goyle’s hands are on their shoulders, as if egging them on, as if throwing them all forward into wherever this vortex drags them to. Pansy’s hands are on Zabini’s waist, and Crabbe is pulling Draco and Gregory towards himself. Again, sunlight peeks through tree-crest, and again, they slow as Crabbe and Goyle, in a fit of cannabis-induced genius, pull themselves and Draco down towards the ground. Pansy kisses Blaise on the lips, and they observe comfortably from the dirt. Draco thinks Blaise must taste like mint or cherry, like something rich and quick. The way that Pansy’s humming above him confirms it. From the ground, Crabbe tactlessly leans over to look up Pansy Parkinson’s skirt, only to earn a fist to his bicep from Gregory.
Draco wishes silently that they could remain like that forever, locked together in that enchanted ring where he's grabbed from all sides by nothing but friendly hands.
He sits down cross-legged in the middle, and he lets himself be tugged on by his friends as they settle around him.
“We found such rich beard-weeds,” Theodore says, sitting down as well, “behind Hagrid’s hut,” and he gestures behind the group. Then, he folds himself and shuffles closer to them as he buries his hands in his robe, “and, I got this,” and he pulls out a glass vial. (It’s the exact same shape as the one Pansy presented Draco with, he notes, identical.) The liquid inside this one is a deep auburn, shimmering and just purple enough to differentiate it from unicorn’s blood. Draco’s eyes widen with curiosity and want. Now, he leans closer. He doesn’t notice that Pansy had finished snogging possibly the pickiest Slytherin in their grade. So, when she hisses out a whisper of, “What’s that?” it’s enough to startle Draco into a gasp.
Nott shakes his head.
“You take one shot of this,” he tells them, voice low and conspiratorial, “you’ll be flying circles around the castle from all angles.”
Theodore Nott, rich and misunderstood, had just the right access to wizard drugs to pull himself and his friends into a black hole. Always considerate, though, he only presented them with just enough to send them skyward. It was never too much with Nott, and never not enough.
“Let’s try it, then,” Gregory Goyle says. He reaches a big hand towards the small vial. Draco grabs it for himself before he can manage.
“Absolutely not,” he chides, “I think we’ve all had enough for one day.”
As strong as the pull is to drown them all in drugs and firewhiskey (as much as the hole that tears through him demands more), Draco knows better. Draco always knows better. So, he hands the vial back to Nott.
“Next weekend, alright?” he says. Theodore nods, noncommittal. Goyle sighs loudly in feigned disappointment and leans back. Darkness looms at the horizon, threatening the purple sky above. Raking his eyes across all his companions, Draco’s gaze falls on Vincent Crabbe’s large hand as it pulls grass out from the dirt. He does this a few times, ripping out a few clumps, inspecting them in his open palm for a few seconds and then tossing them aside. His stomach juts out from the way he’s sitting, making him look even bigger than he is. He looks at Gregory next, who’s now fully lying on his back and looking with glassy eyes at the near-evening sky.
“So,” Blaise’s voice cracks through the silence as he and Pansy take their seats next to the trio in the grass, “who are you,” and he pokes his index finger into Draco’s bicep as he says this, “taking to the Yule ball?”
Draco frowns, looks at him incredulously, “Yule? Merlin, that’s ages away.”
“Only a couple of months, mate.”
“Pansy Parkinson, I suppose,” he says. His voice heightens with a hint of embarrassment (his cheeks grow pink, but no one can see it in the dark) and he offers a light smile, “if you’d like to go with me.”
Pansy huffs, amused.
“Alright, I suppose,” and she rolls her eyes when she says this. She could never feign frustration for longer than mere seconds, though, and soon enough she allows a chuckle to escape her as she looks at her friend.
“And you?” Draco asks, “in fact, all of you: Who are you taking to Yule?”
In near unison, Crabbe and Goyle guffaw at the question, Vincent rubbing at his red eyes as he laughs and Goyle leaning back where he’s sitting. The rest of them join in, this fuzzy feeling in the air making them all erupt in grins and giggles.
“Well I’m taking Daphne,” Blaise says. Draco offers an impressed look, raises his eyebrows. Pansy leans across and pats him on the shoulder, while Crabbe does the same to his back.
“Good on you, mate,” Vincent praises, still grinning wide, “Goyle and I are going stag. Right, Goyle?” and he nudges his companion’s broad bicep as he asks this, knocking him out of his high and happy stupor enough to get a nod and a ‘yeah’ in return.
“What, Milicent turn you down?” Draco asks. Crabbe frowns like a grumpy child.
“She’s still cross with me for getting toffee in her hair! Last time I saw her, all she talked about was how mad she was!”
Gregory just nods in sympathy, as if fully understanding his friend’s turmoil. If it weren’t for the calming buzz enveloping them, Draco would have rolled his eyes. Instead, he leaves the sore spot be.
“And you, Theo?” he asks.
Theodore Nott shifts and hugs his knees a bit as he casts heavy dark eyes down to the grass.
“I’m not sure,” he says, voice tired, “haven’t had the time to ask anyone.”
Immediately sensing his discomfort, Goyle reaches an arm out to touch his shoulder.
“You can go stag with us. Be less weird than if it were just two blokes,” he jokes. Theodore breathes out through his nose in a near laugh and smiles, nods his head to indicate his approval.
As evening falls, the earth under them begins to grow cold as well. Around them, the circling of fireflies is stark against the darkness of the forest. Soon enough, Draco feels a shiver run through him as he hugs his torso before quickly reaching for Pansy’s discarded jumper and pulling it on. He feels her eyes on him, and he’s sure she’s smiling that same devilish smirk she always does when she catches him.
“Should we head back to the castle?” Gregory asks everyone, though he only looks at Draco, who’s curled in on himself slightly. Blaise looks at his wristwatch before nodding his head.
“I’m not getting caught out past curfew,” he explains, moving to stand up before offering a hand to Pansy. She smiles politely and takes it. (Draco still sees her teeth)
They all make their way back through the same winding path, though less frenzied this time, and reach the edge of the forest, clear grass and the castle within reach. As they approach, Draco really feels it, feels the potion leaving his body, a dull ache settling in his bones as he tries his best to keep his posture straight despite the exhaustion that threatens to make itself visible. Even beneath just the pallid moonlight, he knows appearances are all he’s got to rely on. So when they walk through the halls and into the commons, he keeps a light and sharp step, walks in front, flanked by his two companions. Gregory’s fingers brush against his for a second, reassuring.
Inside, the dreary commons are nearly empty, most students either already in bed or fully dedicated to breaking curfew. Pansy Parkinson sits down on the lounge at the center of the room and taps manicured fingernails on the oak coffee table in front of it. Blaise and Crabbe sit down on either side of her. She lifts a brow, asks Draco a question that he answers with a frown and a slight shake of the head. He’s too tired, hasn’t got the energy to listen to more gossip or make any plans for the following weekend. Even standing among his friends makes him feel dizzy. He meets Theo’s faded gaze for a moment, the deep darkness of it drawing him in. Theodore bites his lip when he notices. Draco pictures himself biting it instead. He'll get him alone soon, he thinks, and kiss him silly. But not tonight.
As curtly as he can manage, Draco excuses himself for the evening, turns around quickly and makes his way past the heavy door and into the dorms. The room is a haven, as stuffy as it is with the strong smell of Crabbe’s cologne and something that’s been burning. Incense? Candles? He can’t be sure. He gently kicks the door closed behind him and makes haste of getting out of his clothes before grabbing the jumper. Right. He’ll give it back tomorrow, he thinks, folds it and places it neatly onto the bedside table.
Only once he’s in his sleepwear does the day truly feel over. The high has long washed over him, and the low starts to pour down, making him spill over into his bed and cast his half-lidded stare onto the ceiling. He can crumble like he needs to, fall deep into the chasm he always seems to be standing on Bambi legs at the precipice of. Time feels like it stutters, as if mere moments ago they were all sitting on the forest floor, and now so much as a blink lasts eons. His bones, and the places where they meet, feel sore and tired, muscles lax, starved body somehow heavy with exhaustion. The comedown never feels good, but this particular one wants to drown him in his own mattress, wants to drown him in his own cold sweat, his own ringing ears.
Moments pass, or an hour, or two, and the door gently creaks open, letting cold air into the room. (A shiver) Then, the sound of shushing as Vincent and Gregory clumsily wade through the room, kick off their clothes and stumble into bed with hushed whispers of ‘shush, he’s asleep’ and ‘you’re the one being loud’. Draco keeps his eyes shut tight, pulls the covers over the lower half of his face. He wishes, in that moment, something strong and wide would wrap itself around him and hold him tight, he wishes he could be buried beneath something heavy. Maybe then he’ll finally sleep properly. Maybe then the nervous slamming of his hummingbird heart would grow slow and lazy. Or maybe, if he's lucky, it would snuff him out, finally kill the terror that makes its home inside him by crushing its nest. The creaking of a mattress close to him pulls him from these thoughts.
“You asleep?” Gregory asks, low voice hoarse with his attempt at a whisper. There's something intoxicating, Draco finds, about hearing tired men speak, makes him want to crawl into the cavernous space inside their chests and stay there.
“No,” he near-hisses in response, though there’s no venom behind it.
He turns to look as Gregory shifts around, emptying a humble amount of room on the bed. Draco watches it suspiciously from his bed/tomb. (Another shiver) Greg pats the space he's made.
“Come here?”