After All TBGC
Updated: September 01, 2005
Summer 3/Part B:
“Feel better?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“… Do you feel better?”
“Yes.”
“Wanker.”
“Prat.”
They went back to glaring wordlessly at each other.
The fight had only lasted five minutes, not because they ran out of energy, or weren’t angry anymore, but because Snape had pulled them forcibly apart, yelling at them for acting like common muggle ruffians. Harry still wasn’t sure what upset Snape more, that they’d been fighting, or that they’d been doing it with fists. When the professor had been sure they weren’t going to jump on each other the moment he turned his back he’d marched them to the infirmary and left them sitting on separate beds while he searched for a mild healing potion. Harry could have told him where it was, but he didn’t think Snape was in the mood to hear his voice at the moment.
No matter how quiet Harry stayed, however, he knew it wasn’t going to help him, because Snape being in the infirmary was a bad thing, especially when he saw… “Would one of you mind explaining why the medicine cabinet is open?” …that.
Harry sighed. It didn’t even matter that he had done it this time, because Snape would have blamed it on him anyway and Harry didn’t have it in himself to explain that he’d only done it because Malfoy was hurt. Before he could open his mouth to give some horrible excuse about having scraped his knee, or perhaps a nagging paper cut, Malfoy stepped in.
“I’m sorry, sir, that was me. I was… not feeling well and I didn’t want to be a bother to you, so I asked Potter to get it for me.” Harry stared, open-mouthed. Had Malfoy just taken the blame for him?
Snape stared at Malfoy for several moments before turning to look at Harry. “Simply because you have assisted Madame Pomfrey on several occasions does not qualify you to diagnose another student. If Draco is not feeling well, you should have brought him to me instead of assuming that you knew how best to treat him.”
“I’m not his bloody keeper.” Oh, damn! Harry bit his tongue. Hard. Ow, ow, ow. Better than saying anything else, though, because Snape’s lips were pursed together in a hard, thin line. “I mean… yes, sir. Of course.”
Snape narrowed his eyes dangerously, before unscrewing the lid to the small vial of potion he’d brought in and carefully pouring it into a small spoon. For some inexplicable reason, Harry knew that he could go an entire year without getting into one ounce of trouble, without back-talking a single professor, or breaking one rule, but the moment he was alone with this man, his survival instincts fled and it was all he could do to keep from telling Snape exactly what he thought of him.
Harry opened his mouth and grimaced as the spoon and its sour tasting contents were shoved unceremoniously into his mouth, clicking painfully against his teeth. He watched resentfully as Snape gently tilted the spoon into Draco’s mouth a moment later, sliding the potion onto his tongue. He saw the blond watching him out of one gray eye and then purposefully looked away.
On second thought, it wasn’t just Snape, because for the past few weeks he’d handled Snape fairly well. In fact, right up until that very day, he’d had no problems. A few snide remarks, perhaps, but nothing that had gotten him yelled at, lectured, or grounded in any way. It seemed that his problem was Draco bloody Malfoy and his prattish behavior and the fact that Snape refused to see that until Malfoy arrived, Harry was always on best behavior.
An unpleasant crawling sensation spread across his face and into his torso as the potion took affect, kneading the sore muscles. It wouldn’t help much with the bruising, but at least he’d be able to see properly out of his eye. Snape finished glaring at Harry and crossed his arms over his chest, turning to Draco. “And you, Draco, should know better than to act like a common muggleborn. You are a Malfoy and as such, certain behaviors are unacceptable. Fist fighting is one of them. Just be thankful your father had already departed.”
Draco pouted, but said nothing more than, “Yes, sir,” before hanging his head.
Harry wished that was all he had to do in order to get out of trouble, but even before Snape spoke, he knew what he was going to say. “As you should be. Harry, you’re grounded for two days. Set one foot outside of my chambers in that time and it will be a week. Am I clear?
As much as he dearly wanted to complain, Harry had promised Dumbledore, so he nodded mutely and held in a sigh. Snape’s scowl deepened, as if Harry’s acquiescence only succeeded in angering him further. “Go now, both of you. I will be reinforcing the locks on the cabinet, in case Mr. Potter decides to play healer again.”
Harry marched out, muttering under his breath that he wasn’t trying to ‘play healer,’ although to be honest, he wasn’t really sure because he didn’t know what ‘playing healer’ entailed. Draco snickered and followed close behind. Once their hushed voices could no longer be heard, Snape let out a sigh and pinched his nose between his fingers, shaking his head.
Despite acclamations otherwise, he knew very well what Potter and his do-gooder Gryffindor intentions had been doing. Had the boy simply waiting, instead of jaunting off with Malfoy in tow at the first possible moment, Snape would have been able to administer a potion that would have sped the healing process as well as numbing the pain. Now, he’d have to wait for the lotion to wear off, which, due to Potter’s impeccable timing, would probably be at around two in the morning.
He turned around and pulled out his wand to lock the cabinet. Of all the things he was suited for, Severus Snape was sure that child rearing was not one of them. He had no patience, a quick temper, and he simply could not abide children with no manners and a lack of respect for their superiors. He sighed heavily. If this were going to last an entire month… he needed to brew more calming draught.
____________________
Harry tried desperately to ignore Draco as they walked away from the infirmary and towards the dungeons.
“Ickly Potter wanna play healer again?”
“Stuff it, Malfoy.”
“What, embarrassed?”
“I’m not embarrassed.” He clenched his fists and kept walking. “I wasn’t trying to be a healer, anyway, I was only trying to help you, which was apparently a mistake and next time I… what?!” Draco had stopped walking and was staring at him, wide eyed. Harry's cheeks threatened to heat up.
After a moment, Draco blinked. “You… you don’t know what playing healer is.”
Even though Malfoy had been dead on, or perhaps because of that, Harry felt the insane urge to deny it. “I do too.”
“What is it then?”
“I…” Harry blushed. “Fine, I don’t know, but I bet you don’t, either.”
Draco smirked. “It’s what boys do to get girls to take off their knickers.”
Take off their knickers? What was Draco talking about? After a moment, Harry’s curiosity got the better of him. “Why would they want to do that?”
“Why would they…” Draco trailed off, the smirk dying on his face. “You’re serious. You’ve never been curious about what’s under a girl’s skirt?”
He’d seen some of the older boys trying to do that, but hadn’t really put any thought into why. Giving Draco a sour look, he turned around and began to walk towards the dungeon again.
“Potter!” Draco caught up with him. “Potter, are you serious?”
Harry tried to speed up, but Draco grabbed him by his wrist. “What? Fine! I don’t understand what you mean by playing healer and I don’t understand why anyone would want to look up a girl’s skirt. Is that what you wanted?”
Draco grinned and Harry thought that it looked like a particularly wicked sort of grin. “Maybe. Come on.”
Before he could protest, Harry found himself being dragged down the stairs and through the dungeon. Draco didn’t stop until they were in the bedroom and the door was locked behind them. “Draco, what are you up to?”
“Shut up, Potter, and sit on the bed.”
As much as Harry wanted to tell him where he could take his bloody commands, he was grounded and he didn’t have anywhere else to really go that Draco couldn’t easily follow if he wanted to. Sitting down, he watched as Draco pulled out the desk chair and sat on it, eagerness shining in his eyes.
After several moments of eerie silence, Harry couldn’t stand it any longer. “Well?”
Draco continued to grin. “You do know that boys and girls are different, right?”
Harry raised an eyebrow. “Of course, that’s why they’re called girls.”
“So, how are they different?”
Harry’s mouth twitched in annoyance. “Girls are… girls.” He thought back to the previous conversation. “They don’t have a… thing.”
Draco snickered. “You mean penis.”
With a blush, Harry nodded. “Yeah, they have something else.”
“What?”
Blushing
still deeper, Harry didn’t bother to answer, because in all truth, he didn’t
know. When he was six, he’d overheard his
Aunt Petunia telling
Draco stopped smiling, taken aback by Harry’s accusing tone. “I do! It’s called a vagina.”
Harry’s face went blank. “Vagina? That sounds like… a disease or something.” He couldn’t even begin to imagine what something called a ‘vagina’ looked like and he wasn’t sure he wanted to. Draco, however, seemed to have gotten his good humor back, because he was smiling again.
“It’s not. You stick your penis in it and it’s supposed to feel really good.”
Stick his penis in it? “But… why would you do that?”
“To make babies.” At Harry’s still blank face, Draco nearly faltered. “Potter, you do know where babies come from, don’t you?”
“That’s absurd, of course I know where babies come from. They come from a mother’s stomach. I’m not daft.” Well, he might have been had his primary school teacher not gotten pregnant. That was the same incident that had lead to Dudley receiving what Aunt Petunia had called ‘the talk,’ while Harry tried to pretend he wasn’t listening. Uncle Vernon had looked particularly purple during that conversation.
“Do you know how they get there?”
He hadn’t thought about that. Very slowly, he managed to get out, “No,” half afraid that Draco was going to tell him and half afraid he wasn’t.
Draco’s grin broadened.
____________________
Harry stood in the shower, looking down at his penis. He’d spent quite a good amount of time touching it over the years - to piss, to wash, to toss off - but he’d never given it much thought. He’d never, for example, really thought about why he wanted to touch it, or why it felt good. It just did and that was that.
According to Draco, he would one day be expected to stick it in a girl and it would feel really good and they’d make a baby. Well, there was more to it than that, but none of it had sounded particularly interesting to Harry. He’d never been mesmerized by a girl’s breasts before, or wanted to stick his hand up her skirt.
Was there something wrong with him? Was he supposed to want to? Not that Harry put a great deal of trust in anything Draco had to say, but he did know that the other boys thought about girls like that. Fred and George were always making comments about Alicia Spinnet and how she looked in her Quidditch uniform, saying that this year she filled it out quite nicely.
Should he be thinking that too? Was it wrong that he hadn’t exactly noticed how nice any of the older girls looked? Sighing, Harry put his head under the faucet and tried to concentrate on the flow of hot water sending shivers down his spine. He’d spent all night thinking about it and hadn’t gotten nearly enough sleep. If he was lucky, this would help wake him up some and he could turn in early.
A sudden pounding on the door nearly sent Harry crashing to the floor as he slipped on the water soaked tiles in shock. “What?!”
“You’ve been in there for nearly twenty minutes. What could you possibly be doing?” It was Snape.
Unable to think of an answer, Harry pushed his hair back with his hands. He didn’t want to say ‘thinking’ because Snape always made cracks about his inability to do so. “I’m… soaking.”
There was a pause. “Get out and get dressed, Potter. Breakfast is waiting.”
With a sigh, Harry turned off the water and quickly dried off, pulling his clothes on. Draco was sitting at the table, smirking as he picked at his cooling breakfast with a fork. Snape scowled at Harry as he took his seat. “In future, I would appreciate you refraining from indulging in your more juvenile instincts in my shower. I do have to bathe in it, as well.”
Harry had already picked up his fork when it occurred to him what Snape meant. He looked up, eye wide and face red with embarrassment. “I wasn’t!”
Snape sneered distastefully, “Yes, of course, you were… soaking.” He began eating, ignoring Harry’s gaping mouth and stunned expression.
Harry hung his head and tried to eat, but his stomach was tied in knots. He’d barely gotten two pieces of toast down when he decided that was all that he was going to be able to manage for the day and excused himself, going into his room and laying on the bed. He couldn’t fathom why, but the idea that Snape thought he’d been masturbating in the shower was humiliating, even worse so since he’d said it in front of Draco.
The door to his room creaked opened, but he ignored it, staring at his book and pretending he was reading. Draco sat at the desk and tapped the end of a quill on the wood, staring at him intently. After several minutes, Harry turned around. “Could you stop that? You’ll ruin the quill and it’s the one Professor McGonagall gave me for Christmas.”
Draco looked at the quill with distaste and shrugged, setting it down. “So, were you?”
Harry looked back at the book, trying and failing to read the text. “Was I what?”
“Were you having a wank in the shower?”
Did he have to be so crude about it? “No, I wasn’t.”
“You were in there for an awfully long time.”
He closed his eyes, breathing deeply and trying not to get upset. He had promised that he’d keep his temper and he meant to do just that. “I was thinking.”
“About what?”
“About what you said yesterday, about girls and babies.” It hadn’t seemed like a good idea to tell the truth, but he’d doubted Draco would have believed ‘Quidditch.’
“So, you were having a go, then!”
Harry closed his book and sat up. “I wasn’t!”
Draco smirked. “I do.”
The room went silent and Harry blinked as he went over the words in his head. “You… you wank in Snape’s shower?”
“No. In my shower at home, where I can lock the door and ensure that there are no interruptions and no one around to get suspicious.”
For a moment, it was all Harry could do not to gape openly, then, something horrible happened. He picture it. Not in the bathroom at Malfoy Manor, of course, because he’d never seen it, but he imagined Draco, standing in Snape’s shower, legs tense and naked as he stroked himself to orgasm. The more he thought about it, the warmer it felt in the room, until Harry became very aware that he was reacting to the information in a way he couldn’t hide.
Turning around very suddenly, Harry laid on his stomach again, facing away from Draco and trying not to cringe as his erection dug into the bed. “You’re a prat, Malfoy, now leave me alone, I’m trying to read.”
Draco shrugged and got up, leaving the room with all the air of someone who hadn’t just been told to ‘bugger off.’ As soon as the door was closed behind him, Harry buried his head in the comforter and groaned. There was nothing for it, he was going to have to take care of his not-so-little problem and hope that Malfoy didn’t come back before he was finished.
-tbc-