- Secrets of the Forbidden Broomcloset -

Authoress Ramble: I started this story when I was staying home sick with a mild headache, so I can't promise that it will be very good. I do promise, however, that if I get reviews, I will continue, and if I don't, this story will end in its youth. Thank you for stopping in for a read, in any case, and I hope that you have a nice day!

Warnings: This story has been rated R for repeated use of language and eventual sexual content (none now). Also, it is slash, though I don't feel that should influence the rating ... read as your morals and inhibitions permit.

Disclaimer: Obviously Harry Potter, Draco Malfoy, Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger et cetera, et cetera, all belong to J.K. Rowling, the rich genius authoress of the entire Harry Potter series, and also her publishers, et cetera, et cetera, though all original plot lines independent of her novels and her characters belong to me as they were derived from my own twisted mind, et cetera, et cetera, so please do not sue me as I am but a poor, lonely, slash-loving girl authoress, et cetera, et cetera.

REALLY IMPORTANT UPDATE REGARDING QUOTATION MARKS! So. I'm back from the dead, addressing this story that I wrote ... my god ... seven years ago now. It's hard to swallow reading my writing - I was so much younger then. The series wasn't even finished when I wrote this. Still, despite being silly, I think the story is all in good fun, and redeemable just for the fact that it's enjoyable to read. With the goal of eventually finishing this thing (I did put a lot of effort into it, after all), I'm now going through every chapter to refresh myself with the plot and fix grammar, major plots holes, etc. I'm also trying to fix the quotation mark issue. Why this site decided to delete them all, I don't know, but at this point I have to physically change every quotation mark from an error image to an actual quotation mark. I'm sorry to everyone who found the story unreadable in the meantime - I hadn't looked at this in years. Right now I'm up to Chapter 6 with the tidying up business, so if you find you need quotation marks, maybe just read up until that point and wait to read as I fix more chapters? Sorry. Sorry sorry sorry. I'm still kind of on the fence as to whether or not it's all worth it, but a lot of people seem to like the story, so ... what the hell.

Beautiful Malfoy Bachelor: Living In a Broomcloset?

"With Lucius Malfoy now imprisoned in Azkaban, his only son and heir, Draco Malfoy, finally finds himself free to express his true sexual heritage, friends close to the wealthy young man say.

'We'd always known he was a bit fruity,' one insider reports. 'Too girlie to be on the straight and narrow, if you know what I mean. But it was only after his father got locked up that he really started to show it off. Not afraid to flaunt it anymore, I guess.'

Keeping to the popular Wizarding code phrase, it seems that young Malfoy is finally ready to 'come out of his broomcloset'. Acquaintances near and dear to him disclose now the methods through which he expresses this formally hidden side of himself.

'He spends hours in Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions,' one reveals, 'Trying on robe after robe, like a bloody girl. He showers for ages, and uses herbal-scented hair-cleasing potion. Oh, and you've probably noticed his hair. He spends more time on his hair than any girl in the entire House.'

Another of Malfoy's companions went on to comment further on his friend's particular choice of clothing.

'He wears these really tight black turtleneck sweaters, and these snug black trousers all the time,' he explains, 'And his boxers are all made from ... from silk.'

'If he wears them at all,' the other adds, with a friendly, good-natured laugh. 'Oh yeah, and he's got this really expensive perfume imported from Paris ...'

Clearly, this popular wizard, long-adored by young witches for his dazzling looks and loaded pockets, may be further out of reach than ever thought possible. We can now only hope to congratulate the wizard that will someday steal his steeled heart. Perhaps a well-toned French Quidditch player will catch his fancy ..."

Blaise and Pansy, both seated at either side of Draco, began sliding hastily down the bench as his fingers curled deeply into the paper, his knuckles growing white as his fingernails punched faithfully through.

A moment later, the Daily Prophet exploded in a burst of flames from the center out, causing several shrieks to emancipate from Slytherin table. He threw it aside, watching with narrowed eyes as it fluttered down, ashes flying, into a large punch bowl of pumpkin juice.

"Whoever did this," he hissed slowly, grabbing the edges of the table now instead, barely holding back his flaring temper. "I'll hex their genitalia into flobberworms, sterile, starved flobberworms ... and then feed them their own intestines ... fucking ..."

"Draco, darling, calm down," Pansy's voice quivered from a good ten feet away. She reached out a hand tentatively, as if to pat his shoulder, though she was too far away to do so. "The Daily Prophet is just getting bored ... not much has happened lately, you know .."

"And at least it was only on the sixth page, huh?" Blaise added meekly, raising his hand to scratch the back of his neck awkwardly.

"Like that fucking makes it any better!," he screamed, violently barring his pearly white teeth. A group of first years screamed as all of the goblets from Draco's seat and outward began to shatter one after another, sending shards of glass flying into plates of half-eaten breakfasts.

"I'll going to hunt down the sorry arseholes that did this and kill them all ... slowly ... so slowly .." he muttered, biting down into his pink lower lip until a stream of blood began to flow steadily down his chin.

Pansy shot a desperate look over the top of Draco's head to Blaise, who shrugged miserably and mouthed a pathetic 'this is bad' to her. Both made no move to sneak any closer to their friend, who had snatched a large knife from a plate of breakfast sausages and was now stabbing it passionately into a large pile of pancakes.

"Miserable ... fucking ... Crucio! ... bastards .."

"Hey, listen, destroying all of the food won't help any," Blaise said consoling, his voice trembling a little. Draco froze, giving the pancakes a final slash before throwing the knife dispassionately into the same punch bowl in which flaming shreds of the morning's Daily Prophet still burned.

"You should write them a strongly-worded letter of outrage," Pansy added, nodding to herself as if to back up her own words.

"You're right," Draco mumbled. "I'll send them a Howler .. one enchanted to seek and behead Rita Skeeter .. yes .."

"No, no, no beheading just yet," Blaise muttered. "Ehrm ... just .. just calm down .."

"I don't know who to kill first," Draco continued lazily, his slate gray eyes staring eerily out into space.

Meanwhile, the Gryffindor table had fallen into a hushed state of shock and silence which almost immediately gave way to a wave of eager snickering and gossip.

"Oh .. my," Hermione murmured, paling as she began to automatically fold closed her copy of the Daily Prophet, the moving image of Malfoy holding a shimmering gray robe up to himself in front of a store mirror scowling at her as she did so. "This is .."

"So much funnier than anything we could have thought up," Ron said excitedly, cramming a sausage into his mouth. He had been reading over her left shoulder, grinning the entire time and occasionally spitting out half-chewed mouthfuls in his laughter. "Ehh, Harry?"

"I wonder who did this," Harry said slowly, running a finger calmly down the front of the folded Prophet. "I could see someone who hated him doing this, someone from Gryffindor ... but from his own House?"

"I understand what you're saying," Hermione frowned. "I had always assumed that he had them all under some kind of .. spell. Not literally, of course, but .."

"Yeah," Harry agreed, his downcast eyes settling on the bold headline. "Yeah."

"What is wrong with you two?" Ron asked incredulously, casting them both a disgruntled frown. "This is Malfoy we're talking about! We should all be laughing our arses off!"

Hermione sighed, shaking her head slowly as Ron shoved a large piece of pancake joyfully into his mouth.

"I'll admit it, Ron, this is a rather .. amusing .. article," she began regretfully. "But the fact that the Daily Prophet is willing to sink so low just to sell papers .."

"Is a truly great thing," Ron announced with a smile. "Not only does it mean more fun for us, but it also means that nothing more exciting is happening. No Death Eater attacks, no deaths! They're desperate."

"Exactly, Ronald," Hermione said, turning to glare at him, annoyance in her hazel eyes. "They're desperate for a story .. don't you realize what this could mean?"

"More trash about Malfoy?" he grinned, cutting apart an egg happily.

"No, Ron!," she hissed loudly, immediately wiping the smile off of his face with her rare scowl. "It means that Harry is probably next!"

"Thanks for being so blunt, 'Mione," Harry interjected wearily.

"Sorry Harry," she apologized quickly, though without turning away from Ron's rapidly reddening face. "I can't believe how insensitive you are! Honestly!"

"But ... but Harry's not gay," Ron protested, swallowing his mouthful in a single nervous gulp.

Harry flinched at this, freezing in downing his pumpkin juice, then reluctantly continuing.

"They'll think of some other kind of controversy to connect with him, Ron," Hermione sighed, exasperated. "I thought I'd silenced that insufferable woman ... honestly, what a conniving bitch .."

Ron gasped, paling. "Did you just swear, Hermione?"

"Huh?" she questioned, the corner of her mouth twitching. "What? Oh, no ... I said, 'what a conniving witch' .. you know, Skeeter .."

"Oh, right," Ron said automatically, a pathetic expression tracing his face.

Harry sighed miserably, weakly taking a bite of toast. As much as the article had amused him, it foreshadowed too much of what was surely to come. He'd been made sick over the articles written about him that had been published throughout his fourth and fifth years ... he didn't think he could take a sixth.

Back at the Slytherin table, Draco was twisting his finger angrily in his hair, a habit triggered only by the most uncontrolled of fury.

"We'll help you find out who did it, Drake," Pansy assured him, flinching as he flicked his finger in the direction of the large punch bowl, sending it skidding off the table only to land with a large crash on the floor. "Honey, stop that ..."

"You two can shut up at any time," he whispered dangerously. "You aren't helping."

He pointed his wand in the direction of a large platter of eggs, all of which instantly transfigured into dainty piles of black ash.

"Umm, Draco?" Blaise gasped, sliding a foot further away.

"Hush," Draco hissed, turning his eyes for the first time toward the Gryffindor table. He frowned, bearing his teeth slightly at the sight of many of its inhabitants, especially those in his year, laughing and eagerly discussing the article, gray copies of the Prophet littering the table. His eyes slid down the table ... there.

Weasley appeared to be sulking, chewing on a lump of food without much passion at all ... an amused Weasel would usually be shoving his face like a pig. Granger was cutting piles of a pancake into impossibly tiny pieces, her face pale and tense, her eyes keenly avoiding those of Ron.

Where the fuck was their joy? He would have thought those two to be the happiest out of everyone. Well, those two and, naturally ... Potter.

He shifted his gray eyes to his aforementioned enemy. He was staring down at his plate, looking pathetic, a cross between misery and the tense calm that mild anger evoked in him.

Why the fuck weren't they laughing?

"Fucking bastards," Draco growled, standing abruptly. Pansy and Blaise turned to him immediately, their eyes wide with surprise.

"Come on, class is starting soon," he ordered mildly, passing disgusted eyes over the Slytherin table in his immediate vicinity, which was now littered with slashed pieces of pancake, random piles of ashes, large puddles of pumpkin juice and sparkling fragments of shattered crystal.

"Reparo," he drawled lazily, pointing at the mess with his wand. In an instant, the breakfast table looked completely untouched, the punch bowl fully intact and sitting back in its original place on the table, though it was now empty of juice less a very shallow bit in the bottom. All of the food was back to normal, though the egg platter was empty as well. A row of goblets sparkled perfectly next to their pale, shaking first year owners.

"Right," Draco muttered. "Let's go."

Mustering as much dignity as he could in his current state of mildly sedated rage, he swept out of the Great Hall, heading toward the dungeons with Pansy and Blaise, both casting each other worried looks, in his wake.

"I told you that avoiding interference was the best option," Professor Snape commented haughtily from the staff table, watching his best student disappear from the Hall with slight pride on his face. "You see, Minerva. He repaired every bit of damage."

"Luckily, he did," she replied dryly, pressing a napkin daintily to her lips. Next to her, Professor Dumbledore smiled gently.

"I think he handled it rather well, actually," he added, his eyes twinkling calmly as usual. "Considering Mr. Malfoy's temperament."

"Perhaps," Professor McGonagall frowned. "But I shudder to think what will happen when those punch bowls are instead his fellow students."

"Nonsense, he would never conduct himself in such an uncivilized manner," Snape snapped. "Now, if you would excuse me, I have a class to teach."

He stood abruptly, walking quickly from the staff table, black robes billowing behind him, just as three Gryffindor students stood from their breakfasts as well.

"We have Potions now," Ron announced, unable to keep a smirk from snaking its way onto his face. "Double Potions with Malfoy .."

"If you dare say anything, Ronald Weasley," Hermione warned, glaring at him severely.

"'Course not, 'Mione," he grinned, his blue eyes glimmering with mischief.

Harry, following just behind the two, sighed, checking briefly to make sure that his wand was indeed safely inside his pocket. He had a strange feeling that he would be needing it before the day ended.

Was it good? Did it suck? Did Draco blowing innocent objects apart kinda turn you on? Hey my darling, that wasn't a rhetorical question: look there, a review button! Click upon it and earn my love! I'll even respond to your review in the next chapter I write, because I'm sweet like that ...