disclaimer: disclaimed.
dedication: to Sonya, because she asked.
notes: oh look, another oneshot series.
notes2: hahahahaha kill me

chapter title: first floor people
summary: Pansy is the only one with any sense here, not even kidding. — Harry, Draco, Blaise, Pansy, peripheral Draco/Hermione, Slytherin!Harry AU.

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"Hermione's brilliant, you know," Harry said conversationally, one Saturday morning in Febrary as he and Draco and Blaise lounged in the Slytherin Common Room next to the roaring fire. The lake water was a thick sheet of ice against the windows, pale blue-green light filtering down to wash the dungeons in a quiet winter's morning light.

"Since when d'you want in Granger's knickers, then, Potter?" Blaise asked, tipping his head back so that hung comfortably over the edge of the squishy couch he'd flopped down upon.

"Hermione and me? Nah, mate, that'd just end terribly. I'm talking about Drakey over there," Harry said, snickering and nodding towards the blond Slytherin currently bent over the Arithmancy essay he'd been snarling at all evening. He was three feet into it, and apparently that wasn't enough—he was tugging at his hair the way he always did when he got mental about school.

"What about him?"

"Can't even hear us, can he," Harry said rhetorically, waving a hand lazily in Draco's direction. "Look at him, Zabini, good little worker bee he is."

"'Course he is, he's still muttering 'bout that five-foot parchment Vector wanted from him."

"He can hear you," Draco snarled at them, "and he doesn't appreciate your commentary, Potter."

"It's not Hermione's fault she's brilliant," Harry said reasonably as he crumpled up a bit of parchment and flung it at Draco's head. "She's just brilliant. Would have failed Charms last year without her."

"You're the worst Slytherin ever, Potter," Pansy voice came from behind them. There may have been actual fondness in there, but neither Harry nor Blaise nor Draco really wanted to think about it. Pansy was not known for fondness. "What are you on about, anyway?"

"Granger," Blaise said, still hanging near-upside down on the couch. "Potter says Malfoy's got a crush."

Pansy scoffed, flipped the sharp edges of her hair over her shoulder with her hip popped out. "Well, everyone knows that."

Draco sat up, eyes wild as he stared round at the three of them. "What?!"

"Everyone knows you wank it to Granger," Pansy yawned at him. "Literally everyone. Even Daphne knows, and that girl's been infatuated with you since, Merlin, I don't even know. So, yeah, everyone," but she paused for a moment to think about it. "Oh, 'cept maybe Granger herself. Girl hasn't a clue—she's blinder than Ronald, it's terrible."

"Ron's not blind, he's just…"

"He's thick," she said boredly, "I don't know why I like him. Regardless, Granger's blinder than a bat. I love her, but romance is lost on her, poor soul."

"Pans, this is Draco we're talking about," Harry said.

"And he's no better than she is," Pansy said, tossing her head impatiently.

"I am right here," Draco snapped, surfacing again from the clutches of his parchment. There was ink on his nose.

"You've got ink on your nose, darling," Pansy sighed. "Just there. It makes you look a little mad. And stop ruffling your hair, you're going to go bald, and then what will people say?"

"Who are you, my mother?!"

"Oh, Merlin, now I've gone and imagined that…"

"Shut it, Zabini!"

Harry choked on his laughter and only barely managed to dodge out of the way of the textbook that Draco had sent flying their way. "Mate, your aim needs work."

"Says the Seeker," Draco sneered.

"Have we hurt your feelings, Your Highness?"

"Oh, let him alone, he's coming to terms with his crush on Granger. That can't be fun," Pansy said, exasperated, as she plopped herself down between Blaise and Harry, easy as you please.

Harry raised a skeptical eyebrow at her, extracting an arm from beneath a pillow to wrap it around her shoulders. "You got something to tell us, Pans? She is your best friend."

Pansy sniffed at him. "And I went through the horror when I first realized that. Hands off, Potter, lest I tell Weasley."

"Which one?" Harry asked, honest.

"The one you kiss."

"…Yes?"

"Oh, Morgana, how do I even know you? The female one that you stalk around the Greenhouses asking for a date like the pathetic mook you are!"

"Aww, Pans, don't be cruel, it's not his fault he's dim, you gotta be clear with him. After all, Weasley is quite lovely—"

Harry launched himself across Pansy to box Blaise's ears.

It didn't work very well.

But it set Pansy to laughing between them, shoving at Harry to get him off her lap and into Blaise's, where it devolved into the pair of them making kissy faces and batting their eyelashes at each other, just like every other tussle fight they'd ever had. They were almost grown, now, but so little had changed—no one paid them any attention, because this was par for the course. Even the little Firsties where too busy revising for their end-of-semester exams to gawk at Harry Potter and the odds and ends of the upper echelon of Wizarding Society.

(It wasn't very often that you saw Draco Malfoy looking anything less than immaculate, after all.)

"You're all so distracting!" Draco exploded at last. "I'm going to the Library!"

And then he stomped off, books and paper stuffed haphazardly into his bag, looking harassed.

The door to the common room slammed closed with a bang after he was gone.

Harry, Blaise, and Pansy all winced in unison.

For a long moment, everything was silent.

And then Harry grinned terribly.

"Well, that went well," he said, from the floor where Blaise had finally dumped him.

"What did you do?" Pansy asked, and helped him back up onto the couch where she promptly curled up like a contented cat. "Oh, Harry, you haven't done what I think you have?"

"Ron was working on Hermione," Harry said happily. "If I've got it right, she should be swearing her way down to the Library right 'bout now."

Pansy sat up, eyes narrowing. "Harry Potter, are you trying to set your best friend up with my best friend?"

"Yes?" Harry hazarded, shrinking back from the sudden suspicion in her gaze.

"Oh," Pansy said, and sunk back down. "Well then. Go get me a cup of tea from the kitchens. I'm going to need it for when Draco gets back with lip marks all over his collar."

"Must I?"

"Go, Potter, before I catch Draco and tell him what you're up to!"

Harry was gone like a shot to find his Invisibility Cloak before Pansy got truly upset.

"How do you know that?" Blaise asked, wrapping himself around her in the space that Harry had left.

"Oh, just something Hermione said," Pansy shrugged one shoulder like a crow before she reached up to pat Blaise on the cheek. "She's quite fond of him, though she doesn't want to be."

"Pans…" Blaise said slowly.

Her laughter filtered through the Common Room, brightly airy. "She had a hickey last I saw her, Blaise. That was yesterday, after they fought in Potions, remember?"

Blaise stared down at her, wide-eyed.

"Don't give me that, Zabini, don't tell me you didn't see it coming."

"I—didn't think it would be this soon?"

"No," Pansy grinned, "you did not. By the way, you owe me five galleons. I said they'd snog before Christmas, and I was right."

"That's not fair, you had Harry helping you!"

"Slytherin," she said, still smiling.

Well, Blaise really had nothing to say to that.

And later, when Draco came back to the Common Room, there were, indeed, lip marks on his collar. Pansy hooted her laughter, and Blaise paid up.

Harry tried not to be too vindicated.

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fin.