The Scent Of Malice | drarry

twenty nine | babysitting

Harry was instantly jolted from his dream by the noise, somehow immediately aware that the knocking was for him.

He grabbed a robe and some slippers, dashing briefly back for his wand to conjure a Lumos, before opening the dormitory door to make the sound subside.

In the doorway stood a Slytherin he didn't know well, but recognised as Daphne Greengrass. "Hello?" he blinked uncertainly.

"Good, Potter, it's you." She rolled her eyes. "I thought I'd never say those words."

"What do you - is everything alright?" Harry asked, rubbing his eyes.

"Pansy sent me," Daphne replied. "Draco's being a prat on the Lake and keeps calling for you. Won't let anyone else take him home."

"Is he..." Harry's voice trailed off.

"High?" Daphne checked with another expressive roll of her eyes. Harry was beginning to find her attitude quite wearing; why were all Slytherins like this?

"Of course he's high," she was saying. "When is he not?"

"Fantastic."

There was a rude pause. "So are you coming, or what?"

Harry sighed. "I'm coming. Though I'm not sure what exactly I'll be able to do. He doesn't listen to me, either. He kind of follows his own laws, in case you hadn't noticed."

He followed Daphne's hurried steps down the winding staircases and corridors of the castle before slipping out of a side exit he hadn't known previously existed, which took them out right to the banks of the Black Lake.

Various Slytherins in Harry's year and the year above were scattered around the scene with bottles of Firewhiskey and suspicious-looking tiny bags of white powder in their hands, and several wands cast pretty colours into the night to illuminate the scene.

A clever Muffling charm had been cast around the far parameters of the grounds, so the blaring music was only audible once you got through the magical boundary, but after that point, God, it was loud enough to blow anyone right off their feet.

And there, at the centre of attention as ever, was Draco Malfoy, parading on the frozen part of the Lake as though it was a runway.

"He wouldn't come back with us," a tall boy that Harry recognised as Theodore Nott informed him, striding over, Pansy Parkinson glued to his side. "He kept yelling for you."

"Thanks," Harry nodded awkwardly, not sure why he was thanking the other boy. "Daphne said."

"Potter's here, Draco," Parkinson called, and the blonde's eyes visibly lit up from across the water.

She turned to Harry. "Keep him with you, will you, Potter? There's no controlling him at the best of times, but he's worse when he's high and he seems to have decided he wants you specifically."

Harry nodded. "Fine," he said reluctantly. "I'll Hex him if I have to."

"Can he stay with you till morning?" Pansy asked.

Harry got the impression she was palming Malfoy onto him rather like a mother dropping her hyperactive child with an underpaid babysitter, but again he nodded. It didn't feel like his own feelings really came into the matter.

"I bet you can't do this, Potter!" Malfoy called, attracting Harry's attention over the Lake before executing a moderately graceful spin on the ice. He let out a loud, exhilarated whoop, and as he spun close to the edge, Harry came close enough to see that the boy was injured.

There was blood on his knees, pissing through the material of his black trousers down to his ankles, and when he leaned over to kiss Harry, he saw there was still a little powder on his tongue, the residue from his bottle.

He hasn't even bothered to dissolve it properly.

"Are you still taking that shit?!" Harry asked in horror, swerving the kiss under the gaze of about a dozen watchful Slytherins.

"Only a little at a time," Malfoy replied vaguely, lunging again for Harry's face. "Just enough to keep me up."

"You're still going to be high for training at this rate!" Harry exclaimed. "Isn't it an early session? Flint'll kill you!"

Malfoy laughed, and cast a surprisingly decent Glamour over his eyes to make the pupils look normal.

He batted them down at Harry, who didn't think it was at all funny.

His constitution must be insanely powerful to process all this shit, he thought in a mix of wonder and horror. He's been high all night now.

"You're a fucking mess, you know that?" he asked. "Do you have any idea how reckless you're being?"

"And you're fucking perfect, aren't you?" Malfoy beamed back. There was a fine line between sarcasm and sincerity, and Harry had no idea where that sentence fell on it.

He sighed, his breath making dragon clouds in the frosty air as he did so. "Are you coming inside?" he asked impatiently. "Because it's now-" he checked his watch- "Quarter to 5 in the morning. And I don't want to be here, but in some way I don't quite understand, I'm responsible for you."

Malfoy grinned. "Do you have a more fun suggestion than this?" he asked, skidding on his cut knees in a way that made Harry wince just to see, though no indication of pain crossed Malfoy's face.

"I got the idea Pansy wants you to come and sleep in my bed," Harry suggested.

Surprisingly, it didn't seem to tempt the Slytherin the way he'd expected.

"Why?" Malfoy frowned. "I probably won't sleep anyway and this isn't exactly my first time getting high. I know what I'm doing."

"I know," Harry reassured him. He made his eyes pleading. "Can you just come with me, though? I'm really fucking cold and it's really fucking late and I'm going to lose my temper with you in a huge way if you carry on playing Angelina fucking Ballerina while I stand here."

"Is it not the best thing you've ever seen?" Draco asked, his eyes glinting silver in the moonlight.

"It's reckless and stupid," Harry replied firmly. "What if the ice cracks?"

He ignored the pretend hurt looks Malfoy threw his way. "You may well be manic and euphoric right now, and that's fun for you, but I'm sober and really exhausted and I don't want to come over there and fetch you like I'm your fucking dad, okay?"

"You could be my dad, if you wanted to," Malfoy smirked, and Harry's eyebrows raised. He knew exactly where this was going.

"Let's talk about that later, when we get you to bed," he insisted, keeping his tone kinder than he really felt so as to make Malfoy listen. "We can go to yours if you prefer, but we aren't having sex, I want to make that clear."

"We'll see," Malfoy replied, but Harry could tell he wasn't entirely serious. He stepped off the ice and onto the bank, much to Harry's relief, but when their hands brushed Harry could tell that the boy was freezing cold.

"How long have you been out here?" he asked, and Malfoy shrugged. He took a red lollipop out of his pocket, the same ones Harry had seen the last time he'd seen him high, and slipped it into his mouth to calm his grinding jaw.

"A while," he said thoughtfully. "Not long enough."

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a/n: thanks for reading again, please vote and comment as ever! 🤍🤍

~ paradisedraco