Chapter Text
“I dunno, it doesn’t really taste like blood sausage, I don’t think.” Ron frowned, holding a prototype of the upcoming Wheezes line— Sugar Quill offshoots with truly off-putting flavours— out in front of him in contemplation. He and Harry were making their way down to the Great Hall at a leisurely pace, each holding a fluffy brown quill in his hand.
“It does though, you just have to sort of suck it from the side.” Harry stopped twirling his quill and raised one feathery half of it to his lips. “Like thith.” He sucked on the feathers and almost instantly began to gag at the rancid flavour of cold blood sausage spreading over his tongue.
He was still trying to cough away the remnants of the taste when Ron tried his method and joined him in gagging and retching. “Eurgh! That’s nasty!”
“Ugh, remind me again why we’re doing this before breakfast,” Harry said distastefully.
Ron shot a proud look at his creation— his first ever Wheezes product. “It has to be perfect, Harry. Now I just need to figure out how to get the flavouring all over the quill instead of just the sides.”
They were still laughing and, in Harry’s case, gagging when Pansy Parkinson came walking in the opposite direction and shot the pair a narrow, scathing look. Normally, Harry would have ignored the spiteful witch and carried on with his morning. But today, he found himself jerking to an abrupt halt and staring at her while Ron continued on ahead. Parkinson appeared to startle a bit at the scrutiny— clearly, she hadn’t expected either Harry or Ron to actually pay attention to her— and quickened her pace.
Ron, having just noticed Harry’s absence, turned and walked back to him.
“What’s wrong, mate?”
Harry was still craning his neck to look at Parkinson, or rather, Parkinson’s friend, whom he didn't think he’d ever seen before. A blonde witch. Likely a Seventh Year, because Harry could list every single Eighth Year Slytherin from memory and she definitely didn't fall under the Malfoy-Zabini-Goyle-Parkinson-RandomDarkHairedGirl-Nott umbrella. She was a bit taller than Parkinson and rivalled Malfoy levels of paleness. From his vantage point, Harry could tell that her hair and skin were almost equally white.
But the most striking thing about her was her face. Harry had only caught a glimpse of it for about three seconds before she and Parkinson passed him, their skinny arms linked, but the image of it was burned into his retinas.
“Oh, hell. That bitch didn’t hex you, did she?”
“Nevermind her.” Harry lowered his voice to a not-quite-discreet whisper. “Who was that?”
Ron frowned back at the retreating figures, who had since struck up a furiously whispered conversation of their own. “Who, Parkinson?”
“No.” Harry groaned in frustration and bodily steered Ron in the girls’ direction. “Her. The blonde.”
Ron was wearing the pinched expression he got whenever Harry pushed away his treacle tart or declined a chat about Quidditch— like something was very wrong and he was very worried. “Malfoy?” He asked in a strained whisper, blue eyes rounded.
“Malfoy?” Harry echoed, “Mate, I’m talking about the pretty bird next to Parkinson.”
Ron gaped at him like he’d grown another head. “What?” Harry asked, exasperated and slightly confused.
“Potter,” A sharp voice snapped from behind him. Harry could recognize that particular tone of inflection blindfolded. The spat-out ‘P’, the crisp ‘T’ sounds: Malfoy was here. Great.
“What do you want Mal-” he started, turning around, but the only flash of white-blond in the corridor belonged to the new girl, and she was looking right at him.
Harry stared; he couldn't help it. The witch’s hair spilled over her shoulders in a glossy white sheet, a thin green headband slicking it back from her small, pale face. Her eyebrows were practically translucent, white like her hair and skin, but her eyelashes were long and dark with makeup. Silver eyes stared back at him, unimpressed and her lips curled into a delicate pink sneer. Harry’s eyes followed them as they parted.
“Close your mouth for Merlin’s sake. And quit gawking at me, unless you want people to start getting the wrong idea.”
Her acidic tone came as such a shock, it was almost as if the words themselves had come alive and punched him square in the jaw. The blonde smiled meanly, Parkinson giggling alongside her. It was then that Harry took in her pointy chin, her sharp nose and the little wrinkle next to it that made her look like she’d just smelled something foul. Oh hell.
“Malfoy?” he sounded out, barely believing himself as he said it. The girls stopped snickering and turned around to face him fully. The blonde girl— because there’s no way that could possibly be Malfoy— cocked her head, a sliver of confusion trickling into her expression despite herself. Next to Harry, Ron gaped between himself and definitely-not-Malfoy with his mouth wide open.
Harry’s eyes swept over the blonde— and she was definitely a girl, alright. Willowy and dressed in the Hogwarts girls’ uniform, her pleated skirt just as short as Pansy’s (shorter than regulation, that is.)
“Potter, are you ogling me?” The blonde asked, scandalised and a little pink in the cheeks. She crossed her arms over her chest with a gasp. “No, wait. Aren’t you gay?”
“What? No. Hold on.” Harry took a step back and shook his head. “You—”
“No?” Ron exclaimed suddenly. Now he was pressing a shocked hand to his chest. “You’re not gay?”
“No! Why do you think I’m— nevermind, that’s not important. Why’s Malfoy a girl?”
“You’re definitely gay, Potter,” Parkinson interjected, and Malfoy— fuck, that was Malfoy— nodded next to her. “You’ve had two—”
“Okay, am I the only one who's seeing this?” “Harry exclaimed, his voice hitting an embarrassing pitch as he pointed a shaky finger at Girl-Malfoy, who was staring at him open mouthed. “Malfoy’s a bird! He’s wearing a skirt!”
“Well…” Ron had this shifty look on his face while the girls glanced at each other and promptly initiated a furtive conversation using nothing but their eyes. With the air of someone trying very hard to take his best mate’s side even though he thought he was in the wrong, Ron said, “well— of course she is.”
“She?” Harry squawks dumbly.
“Listen, Potter,” Malfoy started heatedly, marching up to Harry until she was standing very close to him. For the first time since Malfoy’s growth spurt in Third Year, Harry found himself looking down at the blonde. “I don’t know what you’re insinuating.” She poked a manicured fingernail— quite painfully— into his chest. It was pink, Harry noted dazedly, with a painted-on white tip. “But you’d better quit gawking at me like an oversized baboon and return to your regular brand of insufferable if you know what’s good for you.”
That small face was awfully close to his now, and Harry’s eyes darted between Malfoy’s silver ones; taking in the mascara-coated lashes framing them, and how the haughty confidence in them quivered and began to morph into uncertainty. The pressure of her finger on his chest weakened.
“Insufferable, yeah,” he rasped, very belatedly, parroting the one part of Malfoy’s spiel that he’d caught onto. His gaze barely slipped from hers when he felt, rather than saw the heated smack of a hard palm against his cheek. Parkinson gasped, and so did Malfoy, even though she was the one who had delivered the slap. She clutched her no-doubt smarting hand to her chest, wide eyed and pink-faced.
“Pervert,” she hissed, sounding a bit shaken, before she staggered backwards and caught Parkinson’s elbow in a white-knuckled grip. “Come on, Pansy.” The Slytherins scurried off, with Harry watching Malfoy’s slender retreating figure until the pair turned the corner and disappeared.
“Merlin’s teeth,” Ron squeaked.
“I know. That was…” Harry said breathlessly before clearing his throat. “She was—”
Ron let out a bemused hum and exclaimed, “I guess you really are into girls now!”
A passing ginger boy gasped and stumbled to a stop. Ron clapped a hand over his mouth, dropped it, and aimed an awkward smile at the other redhead. The boy turned huge brown eyes on Harry who also managed a wobbly smile— mostly because he had no idea what was going on. For some reason, this caused the boy’s face to crumple and he ran off in the opposite direction back to Gryffindor tower.
“Gerr!” Ron shouted after him, looking for a moment like he might give chase, before letting out a sigh and turning back to Harry. “Well, Christmas is going to be bloody awkward this year.”
Harry almost asked Ron who that had been, but ultimately decided to hold his tongue.
“But I’ll be damned,” Ron said when they finally continued their walk to the Great Hall. “Are you, like, bisexual now or what?”
“Something like that,” Harry mumbled, not wanting to argue with Ron, who appeared to have gone insane. Between Loony-Ron and Girl-Malfoy and what he could only assume was a jilted cousin of Ron’s whom he’d never seen before, Harry decided that he needed to get some food into his system before he could even begin to process any of it..
“Alright then. Okay, nice.” Ron nodded. “Next time you decide to have an identity crisis though, maybe we could talk about it first. I think you’ve spooked Malfoy. Which is— y’know, sort of impressive.”
Harry just nodded in response. He’d decided to just keep on agreeing with everything Ron said until he got at least one sip of pumpkin juice in him.
“Gerry looked pretty shaken up though. You should probably talk to him,” Ron said. Harry nodded. “Anyway. Blood sausage. Pretty brilliant if you ask me. I’m thinking of doing scrambled eggs next— but only like, half-scrambled so they’ll still have that farty, eggy smell.”
“Urgh,” Harry shuddered, glad to have returned to a familiar topic. “Gross. You should do that.”
Harry was almost convinced that, against everything that was right and well with the universe, Malfoy and Ron must have teamed up to take the piss out of him. It was certainly working so far. Ron seemed fully convinced that Malfoy was a bird— and had always been one— and from the brief flash he’d caught of Malfoy on his way back from Herbology, he— she?— appeared to be completely comfortable walking around in public looking like a girl. Nobody else seemed to be paying him— her— any mind, either. Still, Harry thought, the pair could’ve devised a complex spell that ensured he’d be the only one seeing Malfoy looking like that.
Oddly enough, what ended up snapping him out of his spiral of suspicion and self-doubt was none other than his long-time stalker, Romilda Vane— or rather…
“Ronaldo. Ronaldo Vane!” A short boy with wild, dark curls blabbered excitedly. Two of his hands shot out to grab one of Harry’s. “Oh my God! You remember me!”
“Er, yes,” Harry started, then shook his head, “I mean, no. What’s happening?” He had no idea how he could have ended up in this situation, accosted by a near-stranger in his own common room, but he wanted out.
Vane ignored him, his eyes gleaming with mirth. “Gerry looked rather upset earlier, the poor thing... ARE YOU FINALLY SINGLE AGAIN?!”
“Let him go, Vane. He’s— recovering,” Ron— the greatest friend in the whole wide world, really— swooped in and yanked Harry’s arm free from Vane’s surprisingly strong grip. “Nasty breakup, you know. Shoo now.”
“Thanks,” Harry blinked once Vane had shuffled off with a despondent pout. He turned towards Ron. “Alright, what the fuck is happening?”
“I was about to ask you the same thing.” Ron frowned. “You’ve been acting all kinds of weird, mate. I mean, drooling over Malfoy, forgetting to book it in the other direction the minute you saw Vane… and don’t think I didn’t notice you ignoring Gerry at breakfast.”
Who the fuck is Gerry?
Harry took a deep breath and held it for three seconds before letting it out slowly. “I think we should talk.”