Title: Double Dare
Author: Silvia Kundera
Disclaimer: This story's author does not claim to own any of the characters, concepts, or ideas originating in J. K. Rowlings' Harry Potter novels. No copyright infringement intended. No harm intended. Material is offered to the public free of charge--not for profit. This piece of fiction is the sole property of the author and cannot be copied, sent, or reproduced without permission of the author.
Rating: PG
Pairing: Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy
Summary: Draco is a self-satisfied little bastard. Harry is ridiculously tolerant and an awful judge of character. Boys are stubborn. It's just like the books, except much shorter and gayer!

*SLASH*


FF.net seems so impersonal, and I have no way to thank you people, so if you want to actually discuss the story with me, send me a note at kundera_silvia[at]ureach[dot]com.

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Don't back away just yet
From destinations set
I dare you to be proud
To dare to shout aloud

I dare
I dare
I dare you



"See," said Draco, pulling a chair out from the table and straddling its back, "This is the thing I don't trust."

"Did you hear something?" Ron said. He scratched at the back of his ear and narrowed his eyes at a spot in the wood finish.

"No, I don't believe so," Hermione replied, eyes focused on The Standard Book of Spells Grade 5 and hand scratching at parchment with a long two feathered quill, and Harry nodded.

"See," Draco said, catching Harry's elbow outside Potions, and Harry tugged it back, and Draco caught hold of it again, and when he moved Harry moved, and then, predictably, Ron and Hermione followed.

"The thing I don't trust, " Draco continued, as if without interruption, "is that I'm not supposed to speak to you."

"I don't imagine you were ever supposed to speak to me," Harry said.

Draco shook his head. "No, father never really paid any mind.

"Said I prattled on about you too much, though," he added absentmindedly.

"You talk about me?"

"Nothing good, Potter."

Ron was gaping incredulously. "But now you can't speak to him?"

"Right."

"And this is bad for anyone because..?"

"Because that's what I don't trust," Draco reminded him, with a touch of exasperation.

"You're speaking to him right now," Ron snapped. "In fact, you're talking up a bloody storm."

"But I'm not supposed to be. And, if you hadn't noticed, I really dislike being ordered around like some servant. " Draco paused, his face sliding into ever-so-innocent consternation, "Though, on second thought, Weasley's probably fairly used to that, so perhaps it wasn't the best examp-" He raised an eyebrow at Ron's increasing ire.

"So let's talk," Draco said.

Hermione peered over at Harry, who peered over at Ron and then flinched at the glare he received and staunchly directed his very wounded and heroic type gaze at the classroom wall that Draco was lounging against.

"About what?" Harry said after a moment, suspiciously.

"Well, I don't know. I was assuming you'd think of something."

Harry didn't think of something, which Draco supposed shouldn't be too surprising. There was a reason, of course, that this was the undesirable crowd. If they were capable of fun, all of his illusions and certainties about life would have been irrevocably shattered.

And then he might have had to experience a "change of heart", become an honorable Gryffindor, and start giving alms to the poor and his old robes to beggars in dark alleys. And that sort of thing only got a person viciously stabbed, at any rate.

"I'll think of something," he finally informed them one afternoon, in a neutral section of walkway between the Slytherin and Gryffindor house tables.

"You do that," Harry assented tiredly, fingertips massaging his temples, and Draco knew he was finally getting somewhere.

The lawn was wet beneath his feet as Draco slipped up behind them, and he caught his balance firmly by latching onto the backs of Hermione and Harry's necks.

"How about dirt?" Draco suggested, falling in line beside Neville - or, more accurately, where Neville had been, before Draco bumped him into a fairly large bush.

Harry blinked. "Dirt?"

"Dirt," he affirmed.

"Dirt?"

"I was trying to think of something that didn't particularly cost anything," said Draco, cheerfully. "For Weasley's sake, of course."

"That's it," Ron shouted, yanking his wand from beneath his robes and elbowing Harry in the process, "He's dead."

"Ron!" Hermione said, reaching towards Harry's rapidly blackening eye.

"Hermione!" Ron gestured helplessly towards the smug curl of Draco's lips.

Harry cursed. "Malfoy!"

"Well," Draco observed, "We've all got each other's names down at least. This is progress."

"I was thinking maybe we should just talk," Harry said.

Draco did his best to look incredibly put out. "Alone?"

"Yes."

Initially, talking alone with Harry was relatively boring, for it was very similar to conversing with his father -- all 'Voldemort is always plotting, always watching, breathing down the necks of the world and the grass and the little itty bitty worms underneath it even, being an all-knowing evil criminal mastermind bent on world wide domination, and if you're not exceptionally careful he might just bite your head off.'

It was nothing but, "Oh, my scar is hurting again," or "I feel so helpless," or "I had that dream against last night, where people were dying."

A bit of good old-fashioned school yard taunting, however, seemed to take the edge off and focus Potter back on what was important. Namely, Draco.

Draco was determined to enjoy himself, despite the company, and though attempts at duplicating Harry's Potions and Transfiguration essays were unsuccessful, he managed to engage the two of them in a bit of good old fashioned terrorism.

It seemed that Saint Potter had no moral complications about pulling pranks and extending torment over Draco's house -- merely his own -- and seemed rather startled that Draco himself had no such reservations, since

"I would have thought that -"

"I'm no Hufflepuff."

"Well, no," Harry conceded, "But it's your house," and Draco was quite aware of that, and that was the point as, "Slytherin, don't you recall? Or did that bludger last match do more damage than I'd supposed?"

"That bludger you--"

"I'm not a Beater," said Draco, mildly.

"But you told them to do it!"

"This wasn't even the subject," he pointed out.

Harry sputtered. "Oh, I think it is."

"We're sly, cunning, and ambitious," Draco elaborated, ignoring the hissing and spitting that bore an intriguing resemblance to Pansy when one set her ponytail ablaze. "We don't particularly care who this is directed towards."

"Instilling reducing charms in their knickers is ambitious?" Harry peered at him skeptically.

"Well," Draco mused, "it will certainly hurry dressing time in the locker room, come game time. And with the passionate affair you seem to be carrying on with the snitch as of late, I'd say we need all of the extra practice time that we can get."

"I've decided," Draco informed Harry, "that we're now best friends."

Harry's eyes went wide. "We're not."

"Yes, we are," Draco said, and paused. "Do you want money?"

Harry blinked, and Draco was beginning to wonder if he was suffering from some sort of facial tic. There were potions for that. "You can't buy friendship, Malfoy."

"You can't?"

"No!"

"Why not?" Draco demanded.

"You just can't."

"Look, Potter," Draco said in a very business-like manner, "how many friends have you had? I wouldn't consider you an expert on the subject."

Harry blinked once more.

"We're best friends. You should come over to my house during winter holiday. We can have tea in the breakfast room."

"Your house?" Harry shouted. "Your family wants me dead!"

"Feeling a little self-important, are we?"

"I'm not going to your house," Harry stated firmly.

Draco's eyes narrowed. "Come with me to the library."

"I was going there anyway," said Harry crossly, arms folded across this chest.

"Well then," Draco said, looking quite self-satisfied, "you can't very well say no, can you?"

The grass warmed in the afternoon enough that Draco would put his back to it, with a patch of lavenders transfigured into a pillow, and if he warned off Crabbe and Goyle ahead of time he could order to Harry to plop down beside him, with a threat to sit next to him in Potions otherwise, and usually Harry would.

It all felt so habitual, using words like "would" with Harry, and so Draco supposed maybe he could sort of stand him. Once in a very long while. He'd almost gotten used to this, and that felt like he'd broken some basic laws of nature, which was always nice.

"The Boy Who Lived," Draco pondered, turning to nudge Harry's side with his wand, right where he knew it would tinge for a good ten minutes, and earning a flurry of muttered slanders against his mother and even a few distant relations. "I don't suppose that functions as a middle name, does it Potter? Think they'll have that on your NEWT certificate? Harry 'The Boy Who Lived' Potter?"

Harry glared.

"Because I've been thinking... Draco 'That Charming Bloke' Malfoy has an especially nice ring to it."

"I'd go with something more along the lines of 'That Right Bastard' Malfoy," Harry grumbled, flicking a snail into the trim of Draco's robes, which was just repulsive.

"I'm flexible," Draco said, and shrugged.

"Draco, my boy," called Mr. Crabbe from the bleachers post-match, gesturing for him to approach, and Draco linked his arm with Harry's -- against various strident objections -- before striding across the field.

"You'll see them in a moment," Draco hissed, tossing his head so that the loose strands of hair that had been framing his forehead would rediscover their proper place.

"What do you need me for?" Harry hissed back, prying at Draco's grip.

"I don't need you for anything," returned Draco, and then smoothed his face into a particularly agreeable, if smug, smile.

Crabbe was as large, round, and slow as his son, eyes a yellow tinged brown. They were shining with friendly greeting, and possibly a touch of ale, as Draco, and consequently Harry, approached. "I'm just been to see your father, and decided to stop by the old stomping grounds. How are you, my boy?"

"Oh, very well," Draco drawled. "Are you acquainted with my boyfriend, Harry Potter?"

Crabbe coughed, pounding at his chest. "Well-"

"Draco? Could I possibly see you for a moment," Harry inquired stiffly, fingernails tearing gashes into Draco's right lower arm. "We'll be right back," he directed forwards, and nodded abruptly before pulling Draco off to the side and beneath the wooden seating.

Draco Malfoy was a man of positive thinking. Never mind that he was still fifteen years old and his father ate positive, happy go-lucky persons for breakfast, and possibly for a late supper as well. Draco wasn't particularly frightened of his father, as typically happened when a person had only to put on that certain tone of voice in order to be offered anything in a ten kilometre radius.

Draco wasn't particularly frightened of anything that couldn't tear the flesh from his bones and grind then them into floo powder, as typically happened when a person grew up with the deep down assurance that everyone wanted to give him anything he might suddenly decide he desired.

They just didn't know it yet.

"We're dating now?" Harry shrieked, and then clapped at hand over his own mouth as his words bounced off their enclosure.

Draco studied him, speculative. "I suppose there should be more snogging, but you're profoundly irritating. You don't appreciate my stunning conversation skills."

"You insult us without even trying," Harry exclaimed, his hands making an odd pantomime in the air.

Draco snorted. "And what should that say to you?"

Opening his mouth for a speech clearly filled with righteous indignation, and then snapping it shut, Harry seemed to shake something off. He followed it with a deep breath. "Isn't it customary to get permission about these things? Don't I have to agree to be your boyfriend?"

"Again I ask, Potter," Draco said, somewhere between impatient and disgusted, "Have you ever had a boyfriend?"

"Oh, and you have?"

"Yes."

Harry was blinking again. "Who?"

"A Malfoy does not kiss and tell," Draco replied primly.

"A Malfoy doesn't have boyfriends!"

Draco laced the fingers of their left hands together, and squeezed. "This one does."

"I hate you."

"You love me," Draco announced airily.

"Don't press your luck."

The owl was one he didn't especially recognize, and the parchment it had been carrying blathered about in terms of Potter and him sitting in some tree of all things.

When he glanced towards the Gryffindor table, Dean Thomas smirked at him.

"You're sitting in a tree," Draco said back, very loudly.

Terence Higgs was staring at him oddly, so he passed on the note, saying, "They truly are a stupid lot, aren't they?" and the Seeker, face creased in bewilderment, looked inclined to agree.

It was only a matter of time until Snape put in a few words on the subject.

Draco was well aware of this fact because it one of those shared traits that enabled him and his favorite instructor to get along so smashingly. The both of them felt it was of utmost importance that they had a very definite say on every matter set before them, even matters that didn't especially concern them. In fact, the less the matter concerned them, the more passionate an opinion they felt inclined to harbor.

The talk absolutely should have come on Saturday, and he dallied around for it, missing out on butterbeer and Ravenclaw-baiting at Hogsmeade. When it didn't come until Tuesday, Draco assumed that Snape was making an attempt at discretion, which was in such disillusion inducing poor taste that Draco recalled the suddenly very immediate threat of a Gryffindor future. And possibly some sort of spiritual penance and flogging.

"Your house-" Snape rumbled ominously, hands smoothing down the slightest creases in the oily black flow of his robes.

"Fears me. As they should."

"Your mother --" Snape persisted.

"Will be absolutely appalled," Draco agreed, with relish. "Isn't life grand?"

"What did Snape want with you after?" Harry demanded, in a rather pointed and attractively spiteful manner, as Draco stalked into the Great Hall with a spring in his step.

Whirling around with twirl to his robes, Draco relayed, matter-of-factly, "He felt I should know that you're a filthy Potter, beneath me, and certainly not about to do anything so certain to jeopardize your fame."

Ron bloomed bright scarlet in the face, "Why that-!" and words seeming to dissolve beneath his outrage, which was vastly amusing to witness. "If Harry wanted to see a salamander-! Or a yellow-bellied sewage sniffler! Or my own gram's corpse --"

Hermione gasped. "Ron!"

"All right, no, not gram," he corrected, pink now at the ears as well, "But if anyone were beneath anyone it would be--"

"You," Harry said, and caught Draco's wrists tight against the palms of his hands and Draco's mouth beneath his mouth, wet open push and a swipe of tongue to follow.

"Potter," Draco gasped. Harry's mouth was soft and shaking with fury.

And certain things had been planned, and certain consequences had been weighed, and certain things were worth it, as certain things always were, as Draco would not stop short at his means in the face of an ends.

And certain things, they hadn't been expected to feel good.

But they did.

Harry hunched over his plate and clutched thick, solid wood between his fingers. Someone laughed and his Adam's apple skittered up and down like a mouse caught in this throat. Draco laid a hand on the back of his neck and the whole body jerked in shock, wand clattering out of his pocket and to the floor.

Draco was having a marvelous afternoon meal. "We should do this again some time."

"Not that I believe table switching should be a common occurrence," Hermione disclaimed hurriedly, "but." She passed a pastry down to Goyle, who stuffed it into his mouth, puffing out his cheeks as if they'd been sprinkled with an engorgement charm. "They're sort of endearing." She appeared to taste the word in her mouth, mulling it over. "Like house pets."

Crabbe and Goyle had co-written her fourteen sonnets of eternal love and devotion, with thirty seven errors between them. She had performed a vigorous spell check and sent back the corrections.

"Like house elves?" Ron eyed her dangerously.

Draco's attention was peaked. "Mudblood fancies of a bit of elf love?"

"Don't call her-"

"It's about their dignity, and-"

"Malfoy's your boyfriend?" Seamus Finnigan queried, standing on the tips of his toes to peer over the line of broad shoulders belonging to Adrian Pucey and Marcus Flint.

"Don't ask. Please," Harry said.

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