Before the Storm

Chapter 9

Chapter 9

"All I'm saying," Harry said as they walked the silent halls alone, the torches sputtering in the cold breeze from several open windows, tugging at Harry's dark green cloak so that he had to pulled it closer to his body, "is that you keep her distracted with something long enough for me to burn the papers. Accidentally, of course. Will she be mad? Sure. Will she get over it? I sincerely hope so, but she's so batty who knows."

Tom laughed softly, with a sweep of an arm, he pulled Harry into his side, wrapping his own cloak around Harry's shoulders to share his heat. Harry huffed, evidently wanting something else than laughter and a hug for his ludicrous idea.

The last several days had been a special sort of bliss for Tom. After Harry woke up in his arms Tom had worked up the courage to finally return the kiss Harry had bestowed upon him that morning. Only where Harry's had been swift and chaste, Tom took it upon himself to go slow, to convey emotions and intents that he had only ever pretended to feel before. There had been enough time before their need to wake that Tom took his time, relishing in Harry's flushed cheeks and stuttered breaths by the time he was finished.

Things had been, understandably, different after that. There wasn't much time or opportunity for them to be alone in the waking world. And Tom wasn't quite ready for the rest of the school to know about their relationship just yet. The small rumors were one thing, actually confirming it would bring more attention down on Harry. Something Tom viscerally wanted to avoid. He would not make any public step forward without Harry's consent.

But moments like this, when they were completely alone, Tom indulged the part of him that wanted to hold Harry close, make him smile. Make him happy.

So Tom said, "She might be old, but you should not doubt her reflexes. The second she senses a fire she'll be there putting it out. You wouldn't get more than a handful of papers destroyed that way, and on top of which she would probably give you more detention for setting her precious files alight." Trying to be the reasonable one.

Harry took his reason and turned it sideways, "So you lure her away, out into the hall or another room. I say a candle fell over when I wasn't looking. I stepped out to the loo and came back and everything was on fire! I saved what I could and we just chalk the rest up to tragedy." He beamed, hopeful, up at Tom.

Tom sighed dramatically, "and how, exactly, am I to 'lure' her away?"

Harry pressed a slender finger to his lips in thought, "hmm, you tell her there is some sort of emergency in the hall...like a troll or something has entered the school."

"A troll?'

"It could happen," Harry said in soft defense.

"It's very unlikely for a troll to enter the grounds on its own, let alone the school itself."

"Well," Harry said snappily, "you think of something."

Tom stopped before the door, taking a moment to ponder before grinning down at Harry, "how about," he began, speaking low so that Harry had to lean into him to hear, "we go in and I help with the second year pop quiz scheduled for tomorrow and you spend an hour and a half sorting through a hundred year old papers, hmm?" Tom had to laugh at Harry's look of utter betrayal, bestowing a little kiss on her forehead to soften the blow.

There was such an interesting little scar there, Tom had noticed it a few times before when Harry's hair had fallen just so, or when he was sleeping. Placing his lips next to it sent an electric shock down his spine, the world turning almost blinding for a instant, then it was gone. Tom hid his wonder fairly well, he was sure, though Harry looked rather dazed for a moment as he pulled away, shaking out of it only when Tom opened the door, palm flat against the door so that Harry would have to walk under it to enter the room.