Title: A Series of Malfoy Events

Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

Pairing: Harry/Draco, others mentioned

Rating: R

Warnings: Light angst, brief violence, rather crack-ish humor

Summary: Harry saves Draco's life. That should be the end of it. Except it isn't, because Draco keeps coming up with crazy things—and Harry goes along with it because he can't wait to see what Draco's going to come up with next.

Author's Notes: I don't yet know how long this story will be. It will be largely fluffy, and updated every Thursday.

A Series of Malfoy Events

Chapter One—Who's Allowed to Save Draco Malfoy's Life

"And the Cannons' Seeker is still looking for the Snitch—wait, what's wrong with the Falcons' Seeker?"

The Quidditch announcer's voice was the only thing that could have made Harry pay much attention to the game, at that point. It was a foregone conclusion for everyone paying attention (which meant everyone except Ron) that the Cannons were going to lose, again. Harry would rather listen to Hermione telling stories about her desperate colleagues who kept trying to prove that registered werewolves, on Wolfsbane, and confined during the full moon, were still dangerous.

But he jerked around when he heard that. Because he knew who the Falcons' Seeker was. It was sort of impossible not to, with the way that Ron had been moaning about it.

Draco Malfoy was clutching at his broom as though it had become Harry's broom in first year. Harry stood up in concern, rapidly scanning the crowd for someone who had hexed it. But too many people were staring up at Malfoy now. Locating the one person concentrating on the magic was impossible.

"There he goes!"

Harry didn't even look around to see if Malfoy was really slipping. He flicked his wand in the Summoning Charm and started running along the edge of the upper seats. He knew almost all Quidditch teams kept brooms just off the pitch in case one of the players started to have trouble, and one of them now sped towards him.

Harry jumped onto it as it went past the seats, flipping himself over. He was at home in an instant, clutching at the broom and clinging with his legs as he looked up. Yes, there was the small falling shape.

Even easier to see than a Snitch, Harry thought, and dipped and then zoomed across the pitch, his mind chanting the likelihood of running into someone to him. Almost all the players were higher up than he was, and most of them would realize that he was going lower because that was the way Malfoy was heading, and they would—

Get out of the way! Harry twisted to the side just as a Bludger zoomed past him.

And then he was there, below Malfoy, a little over to the side. Harry had time to lean towards Malfoy and snatch his arm and swing him around. Malfoy gasped as his arm jerked, and more when he banged into the broom, but he didn't whine or moan. He was too busy clambering over Harry onto the broom.

Harry turned the broom smoothly in midair, back towards the stands, trusting Malfoy to handle himself with sufficient grace that they wouldn't crash to the ground. At the moment, he had to make sure he didn't fall, even more than Malfoy didn't.

And Malfoy's teammates were trying to crowd around them, of all the inconvenient times, chattering constantly as they moved about how great a hero Harry was and how they'd never seen such skillful flying and how he should be a Quidditch player instead of an Auror. Harry smiled the way he did at people flashing cameras in his face and decided the best thing to do was spin down, moving the tip of the broom in a constant circle. It forced some of the other players to clear from around them and was less wearying than a straight descent.

They landed safely, and heard the Quidditch commentator yelling himself hoarse about the Snitch and the Cannons. Harry didn't care. He nodded at Malfoy as he hopped to the ground. "Are you all right?"

"No," said Malfoy, and when Harry leaned anxiously forwards, he continued in fixed, furious tones, "Oh, you meant physically. Yes. What, after all, are dignity and honor against my physical life?" He glanced away from Harry, his face set.

Harry blinked. "A lot of dignity and honor you would have had as a corpse," he said, the first thing that came to mind.

Malfoy glanced at him. "But I would have fallen to death in an ordinary way, which meant I would have died in a way befitting a Malfoy."

Harry held up his hands. "All right. I give up. Explain why being rescued isn't befitting a Malfoy."

Malfoy's teammates started landing around them before Malfoy could answer, clapping him on the back and hitting Harry on the shoulder until it hurt and shouting approval of Harry's skill.

"—did you see him? Did you see him? Came around the Bludger like a swallow, a bloody swallow—"

"I thought it was like a dragon."

"That was worth losing a game for, anyway!"

Harry blinked and looked up. It appeared that the Cannons' Seeker did have the Snitch, and was sitting on his broom staring at it in stunned silence. The stands of fans were also mostly silent, unsure what to do with a Cannon victory.

"That would be another piece of the dishonor," said Malfoy, his voice so stiff that Harry desperately clutched his own chin. It was the only way he could keep either his jaw from sagging open or his voice from bursting out in laughter.

Harry turned around with another small shrug. "It wasn't your fault you fell. Someone was jinxing your broom. I'll find out who it was and bring them in, and that will probably call for a rematch."

Malfoy pulled himself up like a very pale giraffe. "I want to earn my triumphs on my own, not because someone else wins them for me."

Harry cocked his head slowly. He knew he probably shouldn't ask the question, but it was being pulled out of his throat like treacle. "What person would be winning the triumph for you if someone jinxed your broom…?"

Malfoy gave him a glare that said all too clearly he didn't understand the plight of the pale giraffes, and turned away. "Get back to catching criminals like Aurors do, then," he said over his shoulder. "Not catching Seekers, which fans don't do."

"I never said I was a fan!" Harry called after him, but Malfoy was trying his best to melt through the crowd. Harry jogged after him. "Listen, Malfoy. I didn't mean to ruin anything for you. I reacted the way I always do when I see someone in trouble."

"That only makes it more insulting." Malfoy turned slowly in place to stare at him. "Because Malfoys are not like other people."

Clearly, because they want to be dignified corpses. But this time, Harry managed to hold the words in. He bowed his head in what he hoped would sufficiently look like real repentance and murmured, "Then how do I make it up to you? Malfoys can't be so different from other people that they don't want atonement," he added, and yes, those were words that he would explode if he tried to contain.

Malfoy stood there staring into space, perhaps at the remains of his patience because Harry continued to talk to him. Then he pivoted around further. "Attend the party the Crocodiles are giving tonight."

Harry blinked. The Crocodiles were an organization of Quidditch fans who tried to cultivate favor with the players by sending them gifts, badmouthing people who criticized them, and buying tickets to their games so they could sit in a solid row staring soulfully up at them. Harry hadn't known they also threw parties. "How will that help?"

Malfoy's nose went up and up. Now he looked like a giraffe straining for leaves just out of its reach. "It will aid me in recovering my poise. It will make it seem as though I can command the attendance of someone famous." He said the word "command" as if it was poison, which seemed to be the opposite of his beliefs to Harry, but far be it from Harry to object. "And you'll be going as my date, which puts you in the category of people who can save my life without an objection from me."

Harry blinked. He blinked again, but Malfoy's nose hadn't come down a centimeter and nothing made any more sense after the blink than before it.

"Um," he said. "I will?"

Malfoy apparently didn't hear the question in the last question, because he nodded regally. "The party will begin at seven," he said. "But come to the Manor at six. You'll need some instruction in how to dress." His nose lowered only enough so that his eyes appeared over it like frog's eyes and swept Harry's robes disdainfully. "No. Five-thirty."

And then he turned and somehow mince-swaggered away. Harry knew how silly that would sound if he tried to explain it to anyone, but that was what it was.

"I didn't know you were dating Malfoy," said another Falcons player, one of the Chasers, a tall woman with brown eyes of the sort Harry admired. Right now, though, they were so bright with amusement that Harry had to look away. "Congratulations—well, to him. I'm sorry for you."

Harry raised his eyebrows slowly, but none of the other Quidditch players around her contradicted her. They were all simply looking at Harry with sad eyes or slow, identical shakes of their heads, at least in two cases.

"You did just hear my surprise when he referred to that?" Harry finally had to ask. "I'm not dating him. I was shocked because I had no intention of showing up as his date."

The Chaser's expression didn't change. "Oh, I know that. But you're dating him now."

"There's this theory," Harry said, "and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think both people have to agree that they're dating. Or they're not." He kept his sentences short and simple. Sooner or later, that had to win him entry to a world where people were more sensible.

The Chaser shrugged. "If Draco Malfoy says you're dating, then you are. Believe me, I have some experience of this myself." She gave Harry another suspiciously—and specifically—sympathetic look, and then nodded. "Don't worry. He gets bored as fast as he gets interested. One evening at a Crocodile party, and then his ego will be soothed, and your life will go back to normal." She sounded as though she didn't know whether to envy him or not.

Harry closed his eyes and massaged his forehead for a second. "You were one of the people he dated?" he asked, just to make sure.

"Oh, yes."

"And who else?"

The other Falcons had drifted away, but the Chaser pointed after them when Harry opened his eyes. "Angelica, our Keeper. And some woman named Pansy Parkinson, for a while." The Chaser snorted. "I was the one who came after her. They were nasty for each other, which is probably why Draco stayed with her for so long."

"Um, we were rivals in school."

"That's all past, though, or he would have made some reference to it today." The Chaser shrugged, and her hair swayed into view, with a braid in it that only took up the last few bits of her hair. Harry remembered her name abruptly: Jessica Cassel, voted one of the best Chasers in Britain last year. "You don't have to worry about it for long."

Harry finally made the plunge in another way that was obvious to him, but apparently not to anyone else. "But he dates women, is what I'm saying."

"He's been very open about being bisexual." Cassel grinned. "Didn't bother me for the small amount of time that it was my business." She abruptly eyed Harry, and her smile was gone. "Does it bother you?" she asked.

"No. But I only date women."

Cassel wagged her head. "Not anymore."

"I could just not show up to the party," Harry pointed out, a little fascinated now. He wondered what response he could give, what level he could reach, that would make Cassel finally see how strange this was.

"Yes, but then he'll give an interview to the papers tomorrow about how you broke his heart. It's what he did with the last person who stood him up." Cassel raised an eyebrow at him. "The papers only picked that story up because he's famous. She wasn't. But I can imagine that it'll be much worse for you."

Harry exhaled. "This is crazy."

Cassel reached out and tapped him on the shoulder with one finger. "Draco knows how to have fun. I'll say that. And you can tell your grandchildren someday about the strangest evening of your life. Go for the good story, if nothing else." And then she shouldered her broom and walked off jauntily in the direction her teammates had taken.

Harry looked after her, and went on looking after her while he waited to wake up. Or for someone to walk up and laugh and tell him all about the joke they'd conspired with Malfoy to play on him.

It didn't happen. He went on standing there, and the people clustering around him now were the usual sort who always rushed in after he had done something normal and demanded to know how he had done it and what he wanted as a reward. Harry fended them off with the smiles and gestures he had down pat by now, and finally came out at the edge of the Quidditch pitch.

Ron was waiting there, looking around wildly. Harry thought for a second that he might be looking for a Cannon player to get his autograph, but then he focused on Harry and rushed towards him.

"That was amazing!" he cried.

"I know," said Harry. "Malfoy wanting me to go somewhere as his date? It's crazy."

Ron stared at him, then said, "What? Mate, stop joking! The Cannons won!" He gripped Harry and shook him back and forth. "You have to be serious when we go talk to Hermione, or she'll never believe me!"

Harry managed to keep his teeth from clamping down his tongue as Ron shook him, but only barely. He finally fended Ron off with a wave of his hand, and gasped at him, "A full audience saw. You don't have to—"

"Yes! I do!" Ron screeched, and waved his arms around. "Of course I have to! This is the most amazing day of my life!"

He pranced off the pitch, looking as though he was seeing the Seeker's catch of the Snitch over and over again. Harry stood looking after him for a bit. He knew Ron wouldn't leave without him, if only because he wanted Harry to support his "incredible story."

And then Harry, despite himself, began to laugh.

He had changed since the war. Now, people weren't trying to kill him because of a prophecy or even as revenge for causing Voldemort's downfall; all of them had been dealt with almost five years ago. Harry had had to learn to treat possible death and emergency situations with less than the deadly seriousness he'd had then. He might die saving someone, but so might any Auror. If he was committed to being treated like an ordinary person, he had to get over himself. And he had.

It seemed that it was the fate of many ordinary people to become Draco Malfoy's dates, at least for a while.

Harry shook his head, snorted once, and then went to get cleaned up and decide whether he was going to wear ordinary robes, dress robes, or something completely mad from the back of his wardrobe. All had their advantages.

Ordinary robes would tell Malfoy where he could shove his suggestions, and maybe get Harry out of attending the Crocodiles' party at all.

Dress robes would show that he respected both the occasion and his own taste.

Something completely mad would give Malfoy more scope to do something mad in return.

And Harry had to admit, he was fascinated to see what Malfoy would come up with next.