Draco blinked back at the tone. For some very ambiguous reason he couldn’t remember, he had been expecting them to shower him with accusations and hateful words.

 

“I, I,” Draco stammered but words failed him again. He looked down still feeling slightly muddled and found his bare chest in full view. He was proud of his trim physic but he really didn’t want his family secrets out and about especially in front of the ever so invasive Weasleys. Draco gave an envious glance at the oldest Weasley who really did have it all going on for him in terms of looks. Draco shuddered at the self admission as he leaned forward to grab hold onto the blanket placed at his feet.

 

The man with the dragon fang in his ear, who had been sitting at the end of the sofa armrest, suddenly frowned at him.

 

Draco draped the blanket on his chest self consciously and raised his eyebrow at him.

 

“What’s that on your shoulder?” He pointed out with his finger.

                                              

Draco gave him a sneer as he turned his head towards his shoulder.

 

Red finger marks marring his pale flesh made him feel dizzy. Scenes of the past night flooded back in his head and Draco suddenly made a motion to get up with a hand firmly clamped onto the marks. He pushed aside the dwindling barrage of Weasleys still loitering around him and made a frantic rush towards his room.

 

“What’s up with him,” was the last snide remark he heard before he left the living room.

 

He raced up to his room and sat down on the bed, his breath refusing to leave him.

 

“Shit,” Draco exhaled as he grabbed his head in his hands. Last night kept swirling in his mind. Questions and emotions kept knocking on his mind. Draco wanted to believe all that happened was a dream but he couldn’t deny the marks on his body.

 

Draco was so caught up in his thoughts that he didn’t sense Bill Weasley’s arrival. It was movement on the bed beside him that alerted Draco.

 

“Is there something wrong, well, other than the obvious state of affairs we’ve had to deal with?” The Weasley man asked with an obvious effort to sound calm and neutral.

 

“What affairs?” Draco asked, wanting to clarify the present situation.                                       

 

“The ones where Harry Potter throws caution out of the window and disappears into thin air to pursue what is potentially a trap.”

 

“Possibly,” Draco bit his words carefully.

 

“And the marks, they look like you’ve been assaulted,”

 

Draco found offence in what Weasley was implying. He got up, feeling blood rushing to his ears, “I’m not some bloody girl to go off and get assaulted or some shit like that.”

 

The Weasley just looked back at him.

 

“I just bruise easily.” Draco muttered childishly as he crossed his arms and sat back in a huff.

 

The Weasley raised his eyebrow at the boy in front of him and wondered how to get him to open up to him. He had faced times when difficult siblings had created hell for him but they had been all been Weasleys and easily read. Malfoys were a different species altogether. He was closed like a lead safe with a broken key. It was a tough job but Bill was starting to get where the key lay to this apparently unbreakable safe.

 

“Does Harry have anything to do with your predicament?”                                                 

 

Draco Malfoy’s eyes opened beyond the limit that was considered normal. Emotion rushed through them like a freight train run off the tracks. He swallowed visibly and bent his head down in shame.

 

“How did you know?” Draco asked softly.

 

Bill Weasley tried to keep the shock and triumph out of his voice as he articulated the suggestion further. “You saw him last night,” The red head cleared his throat, “before he left.”

 

Draco couldn’t meet his eyes as he nodded in confirmation.

 

The eldest Weasley brother couldn’t decide whether the time for subtlety had come or gone. “So, you guys did… are...”

 

Draco looked back at him almost wildly. “Are you suggesting we’re…”

 

He made a faintly nauseated face. “No… never, he’s a guy, he’s Potter.” Draco, finally exclaimed, finding this to be the most convincing argument.

 

“As you wish,” The Weasley sighed. He knew Draco still had a lot of soul searching to do before he could explain or even accept anything.

 

The redhead got up to leave. As per habit he ruffled the slytherin’s hair, ignoring any protests, like he did with his siblings and left smirking at the boys shocked expression. The Weasley really felt like he was getting used to Malfoy being around.

 

Draco gaped at the fleeing back with an expression of stunned horror. Nobody had ever touched him with such familiarity before. His mother had been the only one who had touched him for any causal reasons but she too had that polite quality that came with high class breeding that required one to show decorum even in affection. Never could he imagine his family involved in any activity that included wrestling or even the joyous pat on the backs that the Weasleys seem to shower on each other.

 

Draco felt a strange pang of longing for something he couldn’t describe. He had never wanted someone to hold him this badly in his whole life.

 

Draco let his head hit the pillow as he felt himself lose control over the moisture in his eyes.

 

 

After the painfully awkward dinner, Draco sat down on the sofa in the parlour where he had regained consciousness that evening. Apparently the spell, he had been hit with, had been too powerful for one wizard to put off. It had taken the likes of Lupin, Tonks and Kingsley to fight the spell off him. Even after he was declared spell free, the physical toll of the spell had kept him unconscious.

 

He had been found early that morning by Tonks who had come in to change guard. She had first found the incapacitated auror in the great hall. She had been on her way to the fireplace to call for reinforcements when she had found Draco on the sofa. She had found a letter lying next to him. The letter contained a farewell note from Harry Potter who had run off on a wild goose chase to find his missing friends.

 

As he stared into the familiar fireplace a letter was thrust in Draco’s face.

 

“Here you go,” Bill Weasley grinned, as he sat down next to Draco.

 

The letter was creased and looked well read. He opened the letter and found unfamiliar handwriting staring back at him. Draco quizzically looked at the Weasley but all he did was shrug.

  

As Draco started reading the letter he realized it was from Potter. 

 

The writing was sketchy and rough. The Gryffindor had written a short note on how he couldn’t wait around while his friend’s lives were at stake and that he was leaving to find them. It was all Draco had expected but the last part of the letter put of guard. It was directly addressed to him.

 

--“I know the way I left you was horrible but I had no choice. I knew you wouldn’t let me leave like this.  I fixed your foot and put you back on the sofa.”—

 

At this sentence Draco looked down at his fully booted foot and realized that his foot had been completely flawless.

 

-- “I also want to apologize for what I did…last night. Not for why I did it but about how you must have felt. I know what it’s like to be forced…Never mind.”--

  

The concluding part of the letter was an apology to all the other people living in the house.

 

Draco’s shocked haze was broken Bill Weasley’s shinning face. He seemed to be very smug about something and Draco felt very transparent as he gave the letter back to the man.

 

“Nobody really understood this part of the letter until…” He pointedly looked back at the place where he had seen the marks on Draco’s body.

 

Draco got up, indignantly, “I really don’t see that this is really any of your business.”

 

With a huff he stormed out of the room. In all of the thoughts swirling in his mind, one was very clear. He needed to talk to Potter. It didn’t matter where Potter was or what he was in the middle of Draco had to get to him. Even if it meant going into Voldemort’s clutches to get him. With that thought Draco sat down on the middle of the floor with his wand in his hand in his room. He placed it in the middle of his hand and whispered “Point me.”  

 

 

 

Draco had never thought he would ever board a muggle bus; or be in a five meter radius with an old, muggle lady; or wear muggle clothing but he was doing all three. He was sitting in a ‘Peterson Guides for the adventurous’ bus with an old lady, practically drooling on his borrowed muggle sweatshirt and jeans. Draco was really very uncomfortable.

 

The bus was ridiculously overcrowded with mostly senior citizens. The old jazz music was running on a scratchy cassette that kept rewinding itself. Draco had stopped counting when he listened to “Whispered HeartBreak” the fourth time over. The old lady snorted as the bus took a lurching turn and snuggled in further with Draco.

 

An old man behind him kept muttering about killing someone in his sleep while the man next to the one behind kept playing with an odd contraption his son had given him for his sixtieth birthday. He had asked Draco about the latest mobile models to which Draco had replied with a shrug. He couldn’t, for the life of him, understand what he was going on about.

 

The tour guide had given up any hope of interesting her current audience. She had taken to making eyes at Draco who really wanted to throw something at her. He wished he could pick up the old lady and throw her at the guide. He knew the old lady wouldn’t be any less comfortable on top of the tour guide. Draco could swear that the girl’s shirt kept opening further every time he looked. He was sorely tempted to just spell all her buttons open. At least the old men behind him would have a great time.

 

The bus slowed down miraculously and the girl gained some composure to start speaking to her audience.

 

“We just passed the glorious Oakgreen forest and we now have a marvellous view of the DragonGrove Castle. It was built in the mid 1300s by…” By this time Draco had lost complete interest in what she was saying. He knew he had reached his destination.  

 

 

 

I just wanted to make clear that the spell, Harry had stunned Draco, with was of the common household variety. Harry never meant to put Draco out of action indefinitely.  It was only the emotions he was feeling at the time that had made his strength for spells a lot more.

 

I also wanted to say that I love old people and really didn’t mean to make any fun of them in this story. It’s only Draco who severely hates senior citizens.