Turn DRARRY

Chapter Five

"I don't think sulking is going to help," Harry says, perching on the edge of the kitchen table with his feet on a chair and his elbows resting on his knees.

Frank stares up at him from the hearth and then looks away pointedly.

Harry sighs. "If you'll recall, it wasn't me who said you couldn't come."

"You would not fight for me. You would so easily leave me all alone and celebrate in some other place," Frank says wretchedly, resting his head on his coils. "Do not care for such abandonment."

"I know," Harry says wearily, at the same time fighting to control a smile. It's a fair possibility that Frank the snake is the most dramatic entity he has ever had the pleasure of dealing with. "Believe me, I'd love to take you, if only for the look on Lucius Malfoy's face, but you know how Draco is."

"Unfeeling. Callous. Never shares his bacon," Frank offers, tongue flicking viciously.

"Bacon's bad for you," Harry says, adjusting the sleeves of his coat and wondering just what, exactly, Draco is still doing upstairs. Perhaps it's best not to know, but, still, they're going to be late.

"Does not stop you," Frank points out.

"That's true. But it doesn't change the fact that you're not allowed to come with us to the Manor."

Frank slithers across the tiles and insinuates himself between the spindles of Harry's chair, muscles rippling. "So cruel. So, so cruel. All alone, left to wither away, such a tragic and beautiful waste of life, such a—"

"Alright, alright, that's enough," Harry cuts in, getting down from the table and ducking into the pantry. When he emerges, bacon in hand, Frank's tongue darts out, tasting the air with enthusiasm. Harry rolls several rashers into an easily-swallowable, snake-friendly lump and holds it out. "You can have this if you promise to stop being so melodramatic. I've got enough to worry about today without your help."

"Delicious," Frank says, head waving almost drunkenly from side to side.

"Promise," Harry demands, holding the bacon out of reach and hoping that Draco doesn't choose this exact moment to finally enter the kitchen. Because this moment, in which he's using raw bacon to bribe a highly-strung python, he'd rather like to keep to himself.

Frank's head nods vigorously and Harry allows him to snap the bacon into his wide-open mouth and then disappear under the table with it. He sighs, looking down at his slightly sticky fingers and heading to the sink to run them under the hot tap. Anxieties are already running high this morning, what with the impending Malfoy Day and the wearying prospect of heaving that fucking lamp through the Floo network with them, and even now that Frank has been neutralised, the possibility of being unpunctual looms large and ominous.

"Come on, Draco," he mutters, perching once more on the kitchen table and all the while wondering whether or not it might be better for everyone—well, for him—if Draco just stays up there, tapping walls or playing with his hair or whatever he's doing. The memory of midnight is still glowing inside him with noisy intensity, and the wriggling thing, rather than being sated by the kiss, has been sent into overdrive. Fortunately... unfortunately, he thinks now, there hasn't yet been a chance for things to become awkward.

Draco, of course, having no idea that anything so momentous had just occurred, much less that he had just kissed a confusedly turned-on, falling fast, supposedly-straight Harry Potter, had clattered into the house, carefully put away his clothes and dived under the sheets without a word. By the time Harry had managed to find the approved homes for all the different parts of his outfit, Draco had been curled on his side and breathing softly, stirring only to reach out for Harry and press their cold skin together.