Chapter Four.

Permission.

I didn't notice Hermione until she spoke. "Ron?"

"You're not supposed to be up here," I told her, and continued to rummage through my trunk in search of something to wear that was not too small, torn, or maroon.

"Ron, do you really think this is a good idea?"

I considered a Canons shirt for a minute before tossing it aside. "Who told you, Harry or Neville?"

"Dean, actually." She sat down on the edge of Neville's bed and watched me. "And since when do you actually care about your appearance?"

"Since I decided to seek out a meaningless one-night stand with a total stranger."

"What about Michael?"

"Michael can rot in hell."

"You didn't break up, did you?"

"Very perceptive, Miss Granger, five points to Gryffindor." I tossed aside a year-old Weasley jumper and kept digging.

"Oh, Ron..." She knelt next to me and tried to hug me. "What happened? I thought you were doing so well together..."

"So did I," I said. Actually, I'd figured out a while ago that he was losing interest, but I'd been so sick of Hermione's lectures by that point that I'd actually made an effort to keep the relationship going. Shows how smart I am.

She sat on her heels. "That still doesn't explain why you want to sneak into Hogsmeade."

I found a faded blue sweater that I'd swiped from Bill and tugged it over my head. "We want to sneak into Hogsmeade to get terrifyingly drunk."

"Ron!"

"What?" I jumped to my feet the same time she did and did my best to loom at her. "Look, Harry's been tying himself in knots for the past week over Sirius, if he doesn't start to relax soon, his head will explode!"

"So you're going to get him drunk?" she asked. Great, she'd gone all Little Miss Temperance on me.

I grabbed my comb and tried to fix my hair. "We—meaning all of us, Dean included—are going to take him for a night out. We are going to distract him. Merlin help us, we're going to make him have fun or die trying, and, yes, drinking will figure in the equation."

"How is getting Harry drunk supposed to help him have fun?"

"It'll make him relax for a while."

"And what about tomorrow, when he's sober?" she asked.

I sighed and leaned my forehead against the mirror. "Hermione, I'd much rather forget about tomorrow for the moment, all right? Tomorrow Harry will be sober and probably depressed again, and Michael will be at breakfast, and I'll have to write a letter home and explain myself to my mum, and I will actually have to think. Right now, I'm going to sneak into Hogsmeade and enjoy myself, which means not thinking, to the best of my ability. Okay?"

She came up behind me and put her hand on my shoulder. "What do you mean, explain yourself to your mother?"

"She found out, okay?" I pulled away from her and turned around. "Somehow she and Dad heard something and they want to know what's going on."

"You didn't tell them?"

Oh, joy, another Hermione lecture. "What am I supposed to say? 'Dear Mum and Dad, I'm queer, love Ron?' They'd disown me."

"They would not!"

"You don't know my parents."

"I know—" She snapped her mouth shut and growled, then hugged me tightly. For a moment there I'd thought she was going to bite. "Take care of Harry, all right? And don't drink too much."

"Are you saying you approve—"

"No. Now get going, before I come to my senses."

I impulsively hugged her back. "Thanks. Don't wait up." Before she could lecture any more, I snagged my cloak and bolted down the stairs.

Proposition

I should've known things weren't going to go as planned after that, but we sallied forth nevertheless. After all, we were all Gryffindors, weren't we? And Gryffindors aren't afraid of anything, except women's underwear and, in certain situations, ordering anything stronger than butterbeer.

"I thought the idea was to get drunk," I hissed to Seamus right when the smirky little waiter at the Hog's Head brought over the third round.

He gave me an evil look. "Did you see those bouncers? What if they ask to see our Apparation licenses or something?"

As if we weren't suspicious enough in our black Hogwarts cloaks. "You suggested we come here, I thought you had a plan!"

He kicked me under the table and I turned away, frustrated and sober. Damned Irishmen. Harry and Dean were talking about yesterday's Quidditch game, and Neville was mostly looking about and trembling. I groaned and buried my face in my arms. Bloody great idea this was, eh?

All of a sudden there was a moment of almost absolute silence, and then everyone started talking again, louder than before. I looked around. Two witches with black hair and short robes were walking through the pub, flirting with the customers and laughing. "Who are they?" Seamus asked, interest instantly piqued by anything with breasts.

Neville and Harry had to turn around in their seats to get a look; Neville swung right back forward wearing look of sheer horror. (How could someone be that virginal?) "I guess they work here," Harry said, looking a bit more pink in the face than normal.

Dean's eyebrows shot up and his eyes bugged out. "No wonder this place is so popular, then."

"Or maybe it's the five-Sickle beer," I said, and stopped paying much attention to the conversation. Those girls looked familiar.

They spent quite a bit of time at a table halfway across the room, then came straight towards us. Neville turned around again, and went very red, then pale, then red again; it was like watching a barber poll. Seamus immediately tried to comb his hair back with his fingers, and Harry got that pie-eyed look he normally reserves for Cho Chang. The slightly taller one stepped between Harry and Neville and leaned forward, bracing her hands on the table. This allowed Seamus, Dean and I to look down her robes, but she either didn't notice or didn't care. "Good evening, gentlemen," she said in a sort of deep, seductive voice. "Are you enjoying yourselves?"

Nobody else seemed capable of speech, so I said, "Immensely." I would've said it sarcastically, except I was pretty sure Seamus lacked the brain function to recognize sarcasm by then, and my voice sort of cracked in the middle of it. Yep, we could just see right down her robes, couldn't we?

The second one laughed and leaned over too, though not as far. She put one hand on Harry's chair, which seemed to make him the happiest boy alive, and the other on Neville's, which seemed to paralyze him. This had her draped bodily over her friend, but neither of them seemed to mind. "Tell us," the second one said, "would any of you be interested in a little proposition?"

"What sort of a proposition?" Seamus blurted. I snorted at him; for all his obsession with sex, I knew for a fact he'd never even gotten into a girl's bra, silly Catholic boy that he is.

The first witch put on a look of fake innocence the like of which I hadn't seen since the last time Fred and George blew a hole in a wall. "Oh, nothing much...but if you oblige us, we'll buy you drinks for the rest of the night."

"We know the bartender," the other one said, and winked.

Dean regained his composure long enough to ask, "What is it you want us to do?"

The first one dropped her voice to a mock-whisper. "We want to see one of you kiss another boy."

Four pairs of bulging eyes turned to look at me.

Of course, I thought, let the token queer handle it. Never worry, never fear, Ron the Wonder Fag is here. Although…it would net us free drinks, and might even further my quest for an emotionally void one-night stand. It appeared that it was once again up to me to take one for the good of Gryffindor. "Some boy in particular, or will any one do?"

The second witch peeled herself off her friend and went to the table across the room. I had just enough time to register that everyone sitting there wore a black school cloak before she grabbed someone by the shoulder and pulled him up. Platinum hair shimmering gold, Draco Malfoy climbed to his feet and let her guide him over to our table. That was different, then; that changed everything. I jumped up and strode over to meet them, feeling the sweet old hate coursing through my veins with every step.

Malfoy looked surprised for a second when he saw me, but that surprise turned to arrogance and…was that possibly anticipation? The lights were so low and flickery it was hard to tell. I stopped when he was just a step away, but he kept moving until we were toe to toe, as close as we could get without actually touching. "That desperate for a handout, Weasley?" he asked under his breath.

"This desperate for some action, Malfoy?" I said, and glanced sideways at the two witches. They were standing arm-in-arm about a foot away, and the taller one nodded with an indecent little smile. I had barely looked back to Malfoy before he jumped upwards, wrapped his arms around my neck, and pulled me down into a kiss. I grabbed his head from behind to hold him in place and leaned into it.

He shoved his tongue in my mouth, probing and questioning; I shoved right back, and our teeth scraped together. We were pushing against each other with enough force to bruise, and he pulled at my hair as he sank his fingers into it; but his mouth did in fact taste like lemons and I could feel his heart pounding against my chest and his racing pulse through his lips. I could smell the overpriced cologne he wore and the sweat underneath it, and his hair was soft under my hands. It was pleasure and pain and force and demanding and sweet like cinammon candy; he fought with me like his life was at stake, and I didn't back off for a moment. Wouldn't give him that satisfaction. Our teeth banged together again, I tasted somebody's blood, and he gave up a little, voiceless moan.

Eventually, we both had to stop and breath.

I straightened up, which broke his loose hold on the back of my head, though he pulled out some hair before dropping his arms. His face was flushed and his eyes hooded, and he licked blood off his lower lip before swaggering back to his table. The two witches in short robes applauded before going of towards the bar, and I dropped back into my seat to catch my breath.

Neville had covered his eyes with his hands, and Seamus and Dean were sitting perpendicular to the table and talking about football. Harry just shook his head at me. "I hope that was worth it," he muttered, swirling the butterbeer in his mug.

I smiled and punched him in the shoulder. "Lighten up, Harry, it's only Malfoy. Besides, we get free drinks out of it."

He frowned. "Ron, your mouth...

I blinked at him, then touched my tingling lips. My fingertips came away stained blood-red; Malfoy's blood had smeared all over me. I wiped it off with a napkin and smiled at him again. "Not mine. 'Salright."

Harry shook his head and went back to his butterbeer.

That little waiter came back, no longer so smirky. "What will you gentlemen be having?" he asked, as if he resented our presence.

I smiled at him, too. "Do you serve screwdrivers?"

Submission

I love the snow. It's like a scab out of heaven, covering everything and protecting it and concealing it. It doesn't matter what's underneath, see, whether it's good or bad or indifferent, because snow makes everything soft and cold and perfect.

"Oi, Ron, come on...the road's this way, mate."

I love the snow.

Dean grabbed me by one elbow and pulled me in another direction. "I love the snow," I told him, smiling at the swirls of white stained gold by the lamps.

He shook his head. "You drank too much."

"Did not."

"Fine, you didn't."

He tapped Harry on the shoulder; Harry and Neville were leaning on each other and seemed need the help walking. "Found him. Where'd Seamus go?"

"Seamus?" Harry blinked. "I just saw him..."

"He is wise," I announced, "and, on my life, hath stol'n him home to bed."

Harry and Dean both stared at me. "What did you just say?"

I laughed at them, they looked so confused. They were from Muggle families, didn't they know? "Seamus," I explained. "The ape is dead, and I must conjure him."

Harry frowned, sending his glasses askew. "Did he just call Seamus an ape?"

But now that I remembered the speech, I took off running through the gold-stained snow. Take that, Fix. "Seamus! Madman! Passion! Lover! I conjour thee by Lavender's bright eyes, by her fine foot, straight leg, and quivering thigh, and the, the wossnames that there adjacent lie—"

I could've kept going, honestly, but Dean had to go and tackle me, offending the snow. "Ron, shut up, we're going to get caught!"

I squirmed and tried to throw him off; for a skinny guy, Dean is strong, and I couldn't get any traction in the soft snow. It occurred to me just how we were positioned, and I giggled. "Honestly, Dean, you could've just asked..."

"What are you...? Oh, hell, Weasley! Stick some of this snow in your pants, why don't you?" He stood up, unfortunately, and tried to pull me to me feet. I wobbled, and landed on my ass. "Ron!"

"What?" I tried to stand up by myself and fell again. "God, Dean, you didn't have to hit me so hard..."

He was about to launch into tirade—you get to know these things, after a while, with Dean—but then I thought I heard Seamus hollering, and Dean said a word I hadn't thought he even knew. "Ron," he said desperately, "stay right there. I'm going to go get Seamus, and then I'll come back and get you. Okay?"

"Sure." I huddled in the snow and did my best to look pathetic. "Just leave me here, all alone in the cold, I'll be just fine all by myself..."

"Good." He sprinted off, yelling Seamus' name.

Well, fine.

I managed, with complex machinations, to get to my feet. All around me, the buildings kept jumping in and out of the snow. I shivered and tried to remember which way was the road back to Hogwarts. I'd just come from that way, hadn't I? But then why were footprints leading that way? And where was Gladrags, I thought we'd just passed it...which set of footprints were mine?

"Oh, Weasley...?"

I turned away from contemplating the swiftly vanishing tracks. Malfoy was standing on the other side of the street (at least, I guessed it was a street, and I presumed that was the other side of it) and he didn't seem cold at all. Or terribly drunk, at that. "What do you want?" I shouted.

He seemed to be smiling, but with all that blowing snow I couldn't tell. "I think the question is, what do you want?"

"Good king of cats, nothing but one of your nine lives."

"What?"

See, I pay attention sometimes in Muggle Studies. "I asked you first."

He lifted his chin, all arrogance and conceit. "I want to know whether you're interested in finishing what you started back there, in the pub."

Now, if that wasn't a proposition, I'd never heard one before in my life. And if I'd been a bit more sober, or a bit less annoyed with Dean, or if I'd still been with Michael, I'd have ignored him. As it was, I crossed the street. "What did you have in mind?"

Instead of telling me, like a normal person, he ran. I had to chase him.

Even though I was drunk, I could still run faster, as long as I was sure I was headed the right way. He stayed just within my line of sight, a black and white figure looking larger than life as his cloak blew in the wind. He seemed to be jumping in and out of the snow like the buildings, never far enough to lose, never close enough to catch. Then just like that, he disappeared, and if I hadn't needed half a block to stop running I would've missed the place where his tracks bent into an alleyway and up a set of wooden stairs. I looked up just in time to see the door of an attic room close. At first I was relieved he wasn't planning to just go at it in the snow, whatever form 'it' would take; then I realized that the fact he was planning at all didn't bode well for me. After all, he was sober.

I climbed the stairs, opened the door, and stepped into the attic room. Malfoy was ready for me. He seized me by the front of my cloak, trying to throw me to the floor. The door, apparently uninterested, swung shut by itself. By some miracle I kept my feet, and we staggered around the room like very bad dancers before he managed to pin me against a wall. He started to kiss me; I seized his hair and leaned into it, refusing to submit. It was heaven for thirty-six seconds before he stuck his hand in my pants.

Michael had fucked me; I'd let him fuck me. I'd had some vague notion that it might save what we passed off as a relationship. That particular idea had lasted about as long as it took for him make sure nobody had seen us leave the Ravenclaw dorms together, and I wasn't out looking for a repeat performance. Whatever Malfoy wanted to do, I vowed, he'd do it on my terms. I shoved him away from me, and all he succeeded in doing was dragging me down on top of himself. For a few moments our bodies were aligned, and I felt his erection pressing into my own. Then he squirted out of my grip like so much wet soap, and yanked my t-shirt and sweater both over my head in the process. My arms ended up snarled in my own clothes, and by the time I got them free (by taking the shirts off) Malfoy had gotten across the room, putting between us a big, hideous brass bed with moldy sheets.

"Nice view, Weasley," he said, brushing the hair out of his face as his eyes swept over my bare chest. He was staring so hard I could nearly feel it.

"Shut up and get over here," I snapped at him.

He smirked. "Come and get me."

Merlin knows I tried.

I vaulted right onto the bed, intending to go up and over, but he tackled me halfway. We landed on the mattress in a heap. He tried to squirm away again, but I got a handful of his shirt and tugged him back, ripping off half the buttons in the process. We tussled like that for a while, until I finally got him underneath me again and held him by the wrists. He smirked like a madman and kissed me again, and I didn't even notice he was slowly stretching both our arms upwards until my knuckles hit the tacky brass bedposts. And I still didn't think anything of it, until he started to flex his body against mine and I started to groan, and suddenly I didn't have his wrists anymore, he had mine. Or something did, anyway. Just that fast he was gone again, slithering out of my reach.

I stared at the headboard, trying to work out what had happened. A huge, hideous metal bracelet had closed over either of my wrists, and a metal chain wound through the ornamental bits of brass connected them. I lifted my body and jerked them uselessly; there was no way I'd be able to get out of this short of removing an arm. I twisted my head around, and found Malfoy staring at me in smug triumph, all mussed hair and hickeys and torn-up shirt. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" I demanded...well, more like yelped. Not that I was panicking, mind you.

"You like those?" He gestured to the bracelet affair, practically caressing the steel before trailing fingers across my arm. I shivered. "They're call hand coughs."

"Where the hell did you get them?"

He smirked. "Virgil Moon." (Moon is a well-known mental pervert. There's something about the way he smiles.)

I wriggled closer to the headboard, so I could look at this contraption closer. The wrestling match had burned through some of my screwdriver-induced fog, and I was aware that being half-naked and chained to a bed and alone with Draco Malfoy fell into a small, special catergory of Very Bad Things I had heretofore never encountered. This was not a public spectacle or a crowded classroom; there was no danger of someone walking in on us. There was a distinct possibility that I was in trouble, and I hoped he wasn't planning on simply killing me.

The mattress squeaked; he had climbed onto the bed behind me. I twisted around creatively, and was stunned to see he was stark raving nude. He saw me looking and smirked. "See something you like?"

I groaned and dropped my body, burying my face in the pillows. I simply do not know how these sorts of things happen to me. The next thing I felt was Malfoy's body stretched out over mine, and his lips on the side of my neck—sucking, touching, tasting. I turned my head to ask again what the hell he was playing at, but he started kissing me, and I couldn't have protested for all the tea in China. He shifted around, resting most of his weight on top of me, and started running one hand over my chest. It felt...well, nice, damn it. Something was wrong with the universe.

I gasped when he tweaked one of my nipples, and he went back to nuzzling my neck and shoulder. "Malfoy, what are you doing?" I asked again.

He trailed the tip of his tongue across my collarbone, the looked up with a perfectly amused smirk. "I thought that was rather obvious myself." He then slid his hand lower, over my stomach, and started fumbling with my pants fly.

No. That was it. He may have me tied up and I may be horny and he may be offering, but he was not going to...to...to whatever me, no matter how "nice" it felt. I started squirming and thrashing, trying to throw him off me; he just caught me in a bear hug, dead weight forcing me down, and dug those long girly nails into my skin. "If you'd prefer, I'll leave right now," he hissed in my ear. "I'm sure you can free yourself eventually."

"Go to hell," I growled back...but I stopped moving.

He kissed me behind the ear, then slid backwards and straddled my legs; with some difficulty, he got my fly open and dragged my jeans down. I had some vague notion of just letting it happen, trying to ignore it, playing the dead arse so he'd get bored and let me go. That was before he started touching me through my boxers. Now that—that was better than just nice. My knees went all shaky, and I pressed my face into the musty pillows, and my hips, totally on their own, started to grind into his grip. When he let go to pull off the rest of my clothes, I nearly groaned out loud.

Suddenly I was chained to a bed, alone with Draco Malfoy and naked, and I was not only not doing anything about it, I was encouraging him. He stretched out over me again, and started kissing and licking up the other side of my neck; his free hand went back to what it had been doing, and my world narrowed down to three points of sensation where his body met mine. Everything else could, and did, disappear.

He pulled away, and I couldn't do much more than sink down to the mattress and gasp for air. He reached onto the floor for something, and then he whispered the spell that brought me back to full attention: "Lubricus."

Something cold and slippery started oozing across my ass, and I started in alarm. "Malfoy..." But what the hell was I going to say? Please don't fuck me, I've had a bad experience with that already? Let's not and say we did? "...er..." Oops, sorry, look at the time, must dash...

He traced his fingers down my spine and made a shushing noise. "Just relax." That was all the warning I got before he stuck the first finger in. It hurt, while he stretched and prodded; but that pain was just another kind of pleasure, and I could live with it. Then, all too soon, he put his knees between mine and his and hands on my hips and pushed, and that was definitely painful in a hundred thousand ways. What little of me could think rationally knew it was the result of too little lube and too little stretching, all too fast. I felt a yell rising in my throat, but, damn it, I wasn't going to give him even that much; I clenched my jaw and buried my face in the pillow. It ended up a low sort of keening sound, and Malfoy froze. I shifted around and tried to make it hurt less, without much effect.

He started to rub his hands down my flanks, and planted little kisses on my back, and made those shushing noises again. After a few moments he reached around and started to stroke me again. Pain, pleasure, pain; I shuddered and welcomed them both, and time start to blur out of proportion. I hadn't even realized Malfoy was moving again until he slid all the way in and kissed my neck, and when he started to thrust I found myself moving in time. I could hear him breathing through his nose, harshly, and making small noises that never got past his teeth. Now and then he would nuzzle my neck again, and his free hand lay against my chest. (I was supporting both of us, braced on my elbows.) Pleasure, pain, pleasure; it felt too good to continue and it hurt too much to stop.

He bit into my shoulder when he came, hard enough to break the skin. We both collapsed and lay there in our own mess. The first thing I was able to think coherently was oh, fuck. After a few minutes, Malfoy pushed himself up, stretched, and then, very deliberately, licked the blood off my skin before getting up and dressing again. I felt him kiss me one last time, on the cheek, then heard his wand tap against the steel hand coughs. They fell away, Malfoy left, and I rolled over to wait for circulation to return to my hands.

 Omission

 The Gryffindor common room was empty when I finally got back, still blushing from the Fat Lady's pointed, painted look. I climbed the stairs slowly, jumping the squeaky ones and trying not to move too suddenly. I reckoned I'd be sore for a while.

It was a relief to see four beds with their curtains shut and lamps extinguished, even if I did nearly break my neck on Neville's shoes. I lit my wand, as dimly as I could, then stripped to the waist to inspect the damage. Both my wrists were bruised darkly from the hand coughs, and in a few places, rubbed raw; I had other scrapes and bruises here and there from the wrestling match beforehand. He'd left a big hicky on either side of my neck, the mark on my shoulder, and four shallow, parallel scratches across my chest, right over my heart. If I wore long-sleeved shirts with high collars for a few days, and maybe changed clothes in the bathrooms, nobody would ever notice. I was just thankful he hadn't done anything to my face...

...wait a second.

I opened my wardrobe and peered into the mirror on the door. There was a bloody mark across my cheek, a parody of lipstick. I furiously scrubbed it away with my discarded shirt. Fucking Malfoy. Fucking Malfoy and his fucking games and his fucking kisses and his fucking mouth—

"Ron?"

I jumped and looked around. Harry, still half-asleep, had stuck his head out of the curtains around his bed and was blinking at me. I panicked until I noticed he wasn't wearing his glasses; his vision was perfect with them on, but without, he couldn't see anything clearly more than five or six feet away. I extinguished my wand, just to be safe. "Yeah, Harry, I'm back."

"Where'd you get off to? We looked all over Hogsmeade."

"I got lost."

"I figured." I sat down on the edge of my bed to take my shoes off—sat down too quickly, and hissed in pain. "Ron? You okay?"

"I'm fine."

"You sounded like you were hurt."

I shut my eyes and swallowed hard. "Peeves knocked me over on a staircase. I landed on my tailbone."

"Ouch. Do you need to see Madame Pomfrey?"

"I'm fine."

"Okay." He yawned hugely. "Good night, Ron."

"Good night, Harry."

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