The Mistaken Connection

𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚙𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝙴𝚒𝚐𝚑𝚝𝚎𝚎𝚗

picture artist: im kinda guessing, but i believe this is cris__art on twitter

BEGINNING NOTES: okay i ended up writing one last lead-up chapter, don't kill me

The pulse of the classroom was eerie without the rampant drown of teenagers sounding this way and that way, and the shadows clung especially tight to the corners. The large wood-covered room creaked in the silence bestowed upon them.

Harry recognized the sound of dismissed desks screeching across the floor and presumably into a corner, but his eyes were closed and he was leaning back on Draco's shoulder, his back warmed by the Dom's chest. By now, he hated that rose scent clinging to the Dominant with strength, and after their break in the hallway to air their heads out, Harry couldn't convince himself to keep scenting the other. The stench of another, of a familiar person, at that, warded off his advances after he'd collected his bearings.

And he didn't have an interest in scenting Draco Malfoy anyway. It wasn't like the Dom was pressing warm, feverish lips to the base of his neck to sway him, or anything, and there definitely wasn't an affirming arm held limply across the front of his neck to lock them together as Pansy Parkinson, just a Submissive but not in any way less threatening, edged closer. "What the fuck happened?" she whispered, never more cautious around her best friend and around her . . . Was Harry still a nemesis? Well, if he had to ask, then it likely wasn't true, he reasoned.

Harry could feel the rumble in Draco's chest as he murmured, "Ask the professor if you're so curious, 'cause I've got no idea. I have got a favor for you, though, Pans. No, c'mere."

Initially, Harry wasn't worried about Pansy stepping closer, eyes flicking over to him numerous times with her strategic hands spread to show their emptiness, because he trusted Draco's judgement. If the Dominant was willing to allow her closer, why shouldn't he?

But that was before he caught it.

Harry could feel the air around him thicken instantaneously as his eyes flashed over his shoulder to where Pansy was looking anywhere but at him, and Draco's hand covered where his mouth and her ear hovered close. There were whispers exchanged, but Harry felt his own expression morph to that of disgust as, from Pansy's clean-cut black bob and sharp eyeliner and worried brown eyes to her drowning black robe and dangling emerald tie, the same rose scent that was singed into Draco's skin now wafted naturally from her own scent gland.

Pansy caught his eyes for just an instant before she was clearly trying to escape the situation that Draco kept pulling her back down into. Draco's eyes were burning holes in the side of her head as he spoke, low and intelligible, and his hand was fastened around her forearm instead of around Harry like it had been a second earlier, and he had never felt the urge to run quite like he did now. He'd never felt sick at the very sight of someone save a few instances, and one was the unknown Submissive Mason throwing himself at Draco just to receive a brush-off comment, but that was different from this: slitted eyes, stern features, an unwavering hold, and a Dominant not pushing away the Submissive whose scent he was doused in even while another Sub was nearly sat in his lap.

Harry's stomach churned with the revelation, and he couldn't be more relieved at the sight of Professor Barlowe reentering the room after excusing the last student out the door. Immediately, she came in barking at the trio. "Draco Malfoy, if you don't send her out the door right now, you will face issues bigger than whatever you're discussing. No," she snapped when Pansy tried to follow orders to flee the room, "I said Draco Malfoy send her out. Now, and it will be verbal."