He found her in the library after dinner. It wasn't hard. She had something of a reputation for being a rather enthusiastic fan of the place. He sauntered over to her table and sat down right in front of her. Almost as if she was expecting him, she shut her book.

"So, did you talk to your therapist about us?"

He didn't like the way she said "us" like it was something that existed. Come on, Granger. Don't be like that. Don't disappoint me. "Did I talk to my therapist about the sex we had? Yes, I did."

She didn't seem to care about his correction. "And?"

"And he obviously disapproves. He wouldn't say it outright, but—"

"So, what does that mean? You don't want a repeat performance because you think your therapist would disapprove?"

He snickered. "I have been hard ever since I saw you at dinner. If there wasn't a table between us right now, I would already be inside you."

"I see," she said, obviously pleased. "I'm not ready to talk yet about it, just so you know."

"About what?"

"About why I jumped you the other day. About why I'm about to drag you over to the Restricted Section and do it again."

He grinned as he rose from his seat. "Men are generally not complicated creatures, Granger. We have a slit in our underwear because we can't be bothered to pull our cocks out at the urinal. We all just want to get our penises touched. It's honestly about 95% of our hopes and dreams. If you want to fuck and not talk, that's alright by me."

The two strolled casually through the library, side-by-side. Anyone who saw them would never guess what they were about to do.

"Funny. That's not the impression you gave me the other day. You seemed much more preoccupied with the communication side of things."

"Call me crazy, Granger, but I do believe your pussy has healing powers. I haven't felt this relaxed in years." He dipped between the stacks and pulled her into him, kissing her before she could say another word.

"This…isn't…the Restricted Section," she said between kisses.

A growling sound escaped his chest. "I know, but isn't this so much hotter?" He pressed open-mouthed, sucking kisses against her jaw while he trapped her against the books. He could practically smell her pussy dampening by the second. He assumed it was more from the books than him, but he didn't care.

"Take me…here," she said.

And he did.

"In your ideal world, Draco, what do you want for yourself?"

The question made him uncomfortable for a variety of reasons, the most glaring of which was that he had never really thought about his life in those terms—hopes, dreams, potential, happiness. Optimism was still fairly novel to him, and he hadn't quite broken it in yet.

He observed Ben sitting patiently, adjusting his horn-rimmed glasses, Quick-Quotes Quill ready for Draco's response. Ben was certainly an optimistic person and an awfully nice bloke. What would a chap like Ben want for himself in a perfect world? "Um…" Draco squinted at a spot on the wall above Ben's head. "World peace?"

Ben's Quick-Quotes Quill paused, as if unsure it heard him correctly. Ben folded his hands together in his lap and nodded. "Interesting."

"Was that not right?"

"Well, there is no right or wrong answer, Draco, and even if there was, I am certainly not the keeper of that answer. In life, you choose your own adventure."

"Hmm." Draco liked that, he supposed. Growing up, he had never considered the possibility that his life might actually belong to him. Lucius had always seemed to have more a stake in his future than he did. "In that case, I have to be honest. I don't know."

"That's perfectly alright, Draco. Learning oneself is a process. For everyone. For a young man such as yourself, it's perhaps the most exciting time in this process because the possibilities are endless."

"Okay," Draco said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "Can I tell you a story?"

"Always."

"My first year of Hogwarts, Professor Snape told me I did a good job on a Calming Draught. I had never had an adult male say anything remotely encouraging to me before, and I didn't know what to do. So, I said, 'Thank you, Dad,' and Daphne Greengrass, the prettiest girl in my year, overheard me. And she laughed at me."

"I'm sorry to hear that, Draco."

"Thank you, Ben. Now, the reason I told you that story is because there is a decent chance I think of you as a father figure, and I don't want you to be alarmed if I call you 'Daddy.'"

"I should be so honored."

"Okay, seriously. Stop being so nice to me or I swear to Lucifer, I'm going to fall in love with you."

The Quick-Quotes Quill paused, awkwardly.

"Kidding. Obviously, I'm kidding."

"Of course, Draco."

"But seriously," Draco said, chuckling, "please hold me if I start to cry."

"Draco can I speak with you about something that deeply concerns me?"

"I wish you would, Ben. I really wish you would."

He took off his glasses and instantly became a much more serious person. "Are you still seeing Hermione Granger?"

Draco shifted in his seat. He stuffed his hand in his robe pocket and clutched the knickers he'd pilfered from her not thirty minutes before during their latest tryst. Lately, he'd been doing that. Stealing things. Knickers, socks, a cheap-looking bracelet that slipped off her wrist once while she rode him, a quill that fell out of her bag, a plastic barrette. The bottom of his trunk was starting to look like a seven-year-old witch's 'treasure trove'—full of useless small objects that he for some reason couldn't bear the thought of parting with. "A little bit."

"Does it make you happy?"

"Well…" He thought about it. "My penis likes her an awful lot. She's got shite taste in accessories, but she can put her feet behind her head, so that's good."

Ben's left eyebrow quirked slightly. "Accessories? Is it important to you that a young lady you're involved with have the same tastes as you, Draco?"

His hand released the panties in his pocket. "Not at all."

"Draco," Ben said, narrowing his eyes. "Are you stealing things from her?"

Draco laughed in a choppy, awkward way that fooled no one. "What? No. Why would you even ask that? I mean, first of all, 'stealing' is such an ugly word—"

"Are you aware, Draco, that ferrets have a tendency to pilfer and stow away shiny objects?"

His ears burned and he shifted in his chair. "Interesting. No, I didn't know that."

Ben sighed. "Draco, you're young. If you can't sow your wild oats now, then when can you? But I would like to leave you with a closing thought." The Quick-Quotes Quill paused for dramatic effect. "If you're going to continue to fornicate with this girl, you should forgive her. And for God's sake, stop stealing from her."

Draco scowled for the rest of the day.

The thing is, there wasn't really anything to forgive her for. He could debate it within himself until his inner voice was hoarse, but at the end of the day, Hermione Granger was a nice person who took responsibility for her actions. Draco wasn't. But he was working on it.

So how could he forgive someone for something he knew they didn't do? The only explanation was that Ben was wrong.

Comfortable in this decision, he happily skipped to a preselected broom cupboard where a topless Granger immediately sank to her knees for him.

As he thrashed against the wall, delirious with pleasure, oblivious to the gagging, choking Granger's watering eyes as she struggled while he furiously fucked her mouth, he thought to himself, You, my man, are a bastion of mental health.

He smiled as he strolled into the Slytherin Common room, high-fiving an equally smiley Blaise on his way out.

Theo rolled his eyes as Draco plopped on the sofa next to him. "You're annoying when you get laid. Both of you."

"Aww, you're just jealous that you're not getting any."

"There's more to life than coming on a girl's tits."

Draco made a mental note to do that to Granger the next time he got together with her. "Of course, there is. Coming in a girl's mouth, for one."

"You're the living worst."

"Hey, don't be upset with me just because no one ever asks to borrow your cock."

"I cordially invite you to suck my tiny cock."

Most boys Theo's and Draco's age engaged in a near-constant form of venal puffery—exaggerating their skills and endowments in all things sexual so as to conceal the fact that their cocks weren't as big as the cocks they saw in pornography, and they had no idea what they were doing.

But not Theo. Draco had never known anyone so grimly confident in his shortcomings. Rather than allowing it to chip away at his masculinity, Theo embraced—nay, flaunted—the fact that he had a slightly-below-average-sized penis, had only ever been with two girls, and had only ever given girls orgasms through guesswork. He wore his flaws like armor, and no one could ever use them to hurt him. He was perfectly content to be a beta-male, and this is precisely what made him an alpha. No other teenage boy had the courage to admit that they weren't a sex god.

Draco certainly didn't. He was well-aware that the whole Ferret thing had made him alarmingly insecure in his masculinity, and that had caused him to seek sex as a sort of soul medicine—as a reaffirmation that he was a virile, potent human male. Until recently, it had never worked, and Draco was still aware that while Granger had no reason to fake orgasms with him, his success in getting her off probably had more to do with the wrongness of the situation and her own sexual confidence than anything to do with him. Probably even Weasley could get her off.

"And for your information," Theo said, "I'm getting back together with Lisa."

Draco groaned. "Mate, she cheated on you. With a lot of people. You can do bet—"

"I know that. Believe me, I do. But…" he shrugged, "she's my Ferret."

He didn't really want to know. But there was no way he could just dumbly accept that as an explanation. "Say what now?"

"Well, not her specifically, but women like her. It's like I get off on the fact that she's so mean to me. You have your Ferret thing, I have my mean girl issues."

"But…if you know she's just going to hurt you again, why give her what she wants?"

Theo slumped in his seat and stared at the fire for a long moment before answering. "Before things get bad, they're good. Really good. She won't cheat on me for a while. Until that time, she lets me hold the cards. She gives me all the affection I want until she decides she's done with me. How can I say no to that?"

"With your words, Theo. It's just a single syllable. Have some self-respect."

"Those are mighty big words from a guy who sneaks around with Granger."

Draco stared at his friend who didn't take his eyes off the fire. "You know?"

"I'm not as stupid as you think."

"Does Blaise know too?"

Theo shook his head and snickered. "That Weasley girl has made him too penis dumb to pay attention to what's going on with his friends."

Draco chuckled at that.

"Don't you laugh. You're penis dumb too. So am I. In fact, you and I are worse because we fuck girls who have wronged us as a way to avoid actually forgiving them."

"I've forgiven Granger. She's not what I thought she was."

"You like her?"

Draco shrugged. "Not really, no. But she's not a bad person. And she's an epic lay."

"That's nice. I think Lisa might be a bad person. And you know just as well as I that she's selfish in bed."

"You need help, mate."

"Seconded. But enough chitchat." He rose from his seat and tapped Draco on the knee.

"Drunk?"

Draco grinned. "Let's."

"Have you ever considered that we as men will never be able to compete with a baby? Our cocks will never be that big! What if they like being stretched that much? I don't even...like...I can't even fucking picture it. So like...what if...no hear me out! What if...women secretly prefer the miracle of childbirth over our paltry little cocks?"

Draco had been going on basically nonstop for the past five minutes. Theo gingerly took the bottle from him. "Dude, you're done."

"Don't judgementalize me, Theo," Draco slurred. "Ben says my fears and feelings are valid and I shouldn't be ashamed of them."

"Not shaming you mate. You're just drunk, and you tend to be just a tad insecure when you drink. I'm just stopping you before you move onto the next phase, which is the racist kind of drunk. You're already saying some things most girls would find pretty offensive."

"And where are the girls, Theo? I don't see any! Do you think I like having athletic, mean-spirited, highly educational sex with Hermione Granger?"

"Yes," Theo deadpanned.

"Yes, I fucking love it, but it's not my fault. We're young, we're sexy, and we could conceivably just fuck in perpetuity if I don't put a stop to it! God that woman frosts my cookies, but what am I going to do? My dick can't suck itself and something about her pus—"

"Dude. All I asked was if you thought I could pull off a mustache."

"You could not. Your bone structure is far too weak."

"Nice."

At that moment, Blaise bounded in the room looking oddly forlorn for a man who had just had a threesome with two gorgeous women.

"Eeeeh-oooooo!" Draco shouted, having skipped the racist stage and entered the douchey stage of his intoxication. "Threeeee-some! Threeee-some! Details, mate!"

Blaise plopped onto the floor and grabbed for the Firewhiskey. "If I'm being honest, it wasn't all that great."

Theo sighed. "Aw, man. Don't tell me Lovegood is a starfish. That's gonna ruin a good portion of the fantasies I've got in my wank bank."

"Oh no. She was…pretty into it."

"Then why do you look like Snape holding in a fart?"

"I don't want to talk about it," he said, with a swig from the bottle.

"Blaise," Draco said patting his friend on the shoulder, "you don't have to talk about it if you don't want to. We will be here for you no matter what." Ladies and gentlemen—the sensitive drunk phase. The last stop before blackout.

Blaise grimaced. "You must be well pissed."

"I most certainly am."

"You know what, fuck it." He took another deep swig of the liquor. "I always thought if I ever got to have a threesome with two beautiful girls, that I'd be more the focus of the whole thing, you know? That maybe they'd both sort of…almost…compete over who got my cock next, and then they'd start play-fighting over it and then they'd start kissing, and maybe then we would all just—"

Theo smirked in understanding. "They were more interested in each other, weren't they?"

Blaise hung his head. "Little bit."

Draco bowed over in laughter. "Bloody perfect."

"Don't."

"Your girlfriend is a les—"

"Don't say it!"

The three friends were quiet for a minute before Draco's grin cracked, and he broke the silence. "Is she allergic to nuts?"

"Stop."

"She's on a strictly liquid diet."

"I hate you."

"I believe the word is…vagitarian."

"I'm warning you—"

"Does she favor the flatter shoe?" A swift Stinging Hex hit him square in the chest.

"Ouch! Merlin, mate. It's a joke, not a dick, so don't take it so hard." The hex had sobered him a bit, and he seemed to be resorting back to douchey drunk.

"Ignore him. He's a recovering arsehole," Theo said.

"I didn't even realize it at first," Blaise said, recovering from his fury. "They just kept touching each other in places I wouldn't even think of as sexual, and I thought, yeah, sure, this is good. But then they just kept touching each other and…they seemed really into it, and then they started touching each other in some places that were a little more fun, and then…they…just sort of…started without me."

"You gotta know about those erogenous zones, mate," Theo said. "Girls have got loads of them, and they all know about them. We don't know about them because blokes have all got one very easy-to-find erogenous zone that we're pretty much always thinking about. Spoiler alert. It's our dick."

"Oh, so are you the expert then?" Blaise asked.

"Fuck no," Theo answered. "I'm shite in bed. This is why I pull girls like Lisa Turpin, and you and Draco pull the Ginny Weasleys and Hermione Grangers."

Blaise's eyebrows raised and looked at Draco. "No shit?"

"I don't like to brag, but her spit still hasn't dried from my dick yet."

Blaise rewarded him with a fist bump. "Nice."

"Draco, mate!" Gregory Goyle entered the boy's dorm. "I've been looking for you for ages. Where have you been?"

The room was silent again. "You mean…like…for the past couple of months?" Draco asked. "Didn't Crabbe give you my message?"

"Yeah, he said you didn't wanna be friends no more. Tough luck for him, innit?" He sat on the floor with his three Slytherin peers and grabbed the nearly-empty bottle, draining it, not even realizing the tension in the room had thickened with his presence. "I could go for some cheese. You lot want some cheese? I think I've still got some in my trunk."

Draco signed. "Is it crack? Is that what you smoke? You smoke crack?"

"Huh?"

"Go away."

"Alright," Goyle said with the cheer of someone who wasn't fully able to comprehend that they are unwanted.

As he bound away, leaving the three Slytherin friends gaping in his absence, Theo asked, "Do you think it's possible that some people just aren't meant to be happy?"

Draco scratched the back of his neck. "Goyle's happy enough. I mean, genetically, he's closer to a moth, so—"

"Yeah, I meant us, you twat. Look at us. I'm sadness-fucking Lisa Turpin. You're basically a ferret trapped in the body of a gormless blond plonker, and Blaise just turned some of Hogwarts' prime tuna off cock, maybe forever."

Draco dropped on the floor and stared up at the ceiling. "Do you guys ever think about what your life would be like if you could live your best life?"

"What does that even mean?" Theo asked.

"Well," Blaise said. "If I had my way, I'd probably have to gargle with Acromantula venom to get the taste of pussy out of my mouth, but that's just me."

Draco snickered dully. "I've never thought about it either."

He avoided Hermione the next several days.

"Hey."

He looked up from his book to find an incredulous Hermione Granger looking down at him. "Hey."

"You don't look like you have the flu."

"I...what?"

"Perhaps you have a staph infection. Or you pulled a muscle in your groin."

He shut his book. "Or maybe I've had enough. Did you ever think of that?"

She scoffed. "So, you're ghosting me? Not very emotionally mature of you, is it? I wonder what your therapist would say."

"Oh, you want to talk emotional maturity?" Papa Ben would be so proud. "You jumped me."

She rolled her eyes, her bouncing, tapping shoe giving away how uncomfortable she was. "Yeah?"

"So…why?"

She clucked her tongue. "What can I say? You're just that irresistible."

"Bullshit, Granger. You and I both know I'm a solid 6.5, maybe a 7 if I get enough sleep and I wear my blue cashmere jumper. Then again, you gravitate between a 6 and a 6.75, so I guess I'm something of an upgrade for you."

"Uhhh. This is why we don't talk. You're just a vile little…little…"

"Go on," he said, leaning back in his chair. "Call me a ferret. I'd bloody love it if you did because it would confirm what I've always thought about you. I hate being wrong, so go ahead, Granger. Say it."

"You're an arsehole."

He tsked. "Almost had you. Look, while you're here, I actually have been meaning to speak with you about something. I've got some things I need to return to you."

She blinked down at him. "My knickers?"

Oh. So, she knew. "And your bracelet, and barrette. Just…a lot of stuff that belongs to you that I shouldn't have taken."

She shrugged. "Keep it. I don't need it."

"And I do? What exactly am I going to do with half a dozen pairs of plain white cotton briefs and a string of plastic beads?"

"You can shove it up your arse for all I care! I don't want it back."

Draco wasn't exactly what one could describe as 'a good listener,' and certainly not a good communicator. But he was pretty good at picking up on nonverbals. And Granger's ever-reddening, puffy eyes, and nervous twitching indicated that she was deeply, embarrassingly upset. "What did I do?"

"Nothing!"

Why did girls do that? If it really was nothing, they'd simply say it in a normal tone of voice. They wouldn't put their back into it when they insisted that nothing was wrong. "Do you…maybe need a shag?"

And she punched him in the face.

He woke up in the hospital wing. "Not again."

"Draco?" Hermione hopped up from her chair and cupped his face. "Oh, my god, I'm so sorry I did that! It was a ridiculous reaction, and there's no excuse for it. I've got some anger issues that I swear I'm working on and I never meant for you to get caught up in it."

And then he saw it. Hermione Granger liked him. Like…liked him, liked him.

"Oh my god, Draco, say something."

Well…shit.

More importantly…why?

He pulled her hands off his face. "I'm not sure this…thing…is a very good idea."

She nodded, her eyes widening. "Yeah. No, I understand."

"I'm a little fucked up, Granger."

"Yeah." She smiled sadly at her shoes. "I am too. You have no idea."

He didn't, but he could imagine. Hermione Granger's friendship with Harry Potter had put her through things he couldn't fathom. He hoped she could find her own Ben she could talk to who would unconditionally listen to her and make her feel relevant in a way he couldn't. "I can't shag you like we've been doing."

"I know."

"But…" He sighed. "Would you maybe want to get a drink with me in Hogsmeade this weekend?"

Maybe he wouldn't like her. Maybe she'd learn she didn't like him. Maybe they wouldn't speak to each other ever again after that. In all probability, they'd go their separate ways and find people more suited to them.

Or…maybe he could at least have an honest conversation with her. Maybe he could learn things about her that were so earth-shatteringly charming, he wouldn't be able to quit her. Maybe, given time, he'd even fall for her. Maybe they'd find a way to do it the right way, without using one another.

It was worth a shot.

She smiled a smile that reached all the way up to her puffy, red eyes. And she looked beautiful to him for the first time ever. "That would be really nice."

And the Ferret purred.

A/N: That's all, folks!

Weird? Yeah, but no shame. Also, I'm fairly certain ferrets don't purr, but I liked that work better than any other animal sound I could have used to signal contentment, so I'm cool with this inaccuracy.

Also, no plans to continue because I like leaving them open-ended, but you never know. Maybe someday.