Covering All The Hoops

Disclaimer: These characters don't belong to us; we make no profit and have no qualms about using them for our own slightly warped pleasure.

Authors' Notes:

There is a chance, however slight, that you may find your Fanta exiting your nostrils rather than entering your esophagus as a result of this story. Organize your eating and drinking activities accordingly.

---

Harry wanted to lug his unconventional copy of Hogwarts: A History the way Quidditch players carried their brooms...proud and out in the open for easy access. He would brave having a reputation for being studious just to be near his new favorite diversion... if only he wasn't so worried that Hermione might see him with it.

So, he settled for the next best thing: hiding the book in his book bag. Between classes, he kept the bag squashed possessively between his chest and his arms. Other students knew better than to ask him what was hiding in there...it could be some Dark Artifact.

"Considering that it contains a fic with naked!Voldemort and some ff.net stuff tucked into the back, it probably IS a Dark Artifact," the Narrator said with a shudder.

In the classroom, the satchel leaned against his ankle like a faithful pet as he spent double Potions stewing over his recent epiphanies rather than brewing anything Potions-related.

As if it hadn't been enough to discover his gayness, Harry's week was made more difficult by the revelation that he seemed to be at his... well, most gay... around snarky Slytherins. Draco had insisted on asserting his (somewhat unilaterally declared) boyfriendly status by sitting next to Harry during Potions, which made Snape insist on glaring daggers at Harry and behave in an even more elegantly nasty manner than usual.

Which made Harry notice, more so than usual, that Snape also had very long, dexterous fingers. Which made Potions even more torturous than usual. He blamed the Snarry section of that damned book (which he had yet to return to Hermione).

He made the mistake of saying this to Draco. He compounded it by saying it loud enough for Snape to hear, which caused the Potions master to stand abruptly from retrieving his dropped quill and bang his head on the podium.

"EXCUSE ME?" Draco responded, his voice rising shrilly. In keeping with his cosmically bad judgment in regards to handling Harry, he followed this up with, "What in the WORLD would HE see in YOU?"

This left Harry feeling distinctly put out. "What sort of thing to say is THAT? You're the one who started holding my hand!"

"I'm not interested in dunderheads, Potter," Snape said dazedly. Only a pronounced dizziness from having smacked his head was standing between Gryffindor and an epic point loss.

This had the unfortunate effect of arousing Harry's natural contrariness. He turned his most wide-eyed expression on Snape and dug into his recently acquired stores of fanfic knowledge. "But... I have Lily's... er... orbs."

Snape's expression went odd. He turned away with an exaggerated sniffle. Of course, considering his nose, the exaggeration was purely unintentional. "Oh... Lily..."

Draco was left feeling that this was all going very much pear-shaped. Harry was not supposed to be making big, stupid eyes at any other Slytherins. "You...you...and SEVERUS?" Then he replayed that statement in his mind and frowned. "Orbs?"

"I think I could look at him all day with... with my... um... myopic orbs," Harry said, borrowing the phrase from fanfic, despite not being entirely clear on what 'myopic' meant.

Frankly, Snape had suffered through many a conversation with Trelawney without hearing the term 'orbs' that often. "You need to work on that vocabulary, Potter."

"I am your meek, little dunderhead who can't utter an eloquent sentence in your presence," Harry offered shyly.

"Batting eyelashes and begging will only get you so far, Potter," Snape said dryly, then wondered why in the hell he was responding to this inanity with anything but disciplinary action. Damn those green eyes!

"I am an insolent little brat... but I am under you charge..."

A strangled sob finally tore his attention away from the professor. Draco was...there was no other word for it...wibbling.

Hermione was rapidly transitioning from dumbfounded to seriously cheesed off. "It shouldn't be getting him anywhere. I've got dibs on Severus," she grumbled. After all, Hermione/Snape is the most popular ship for a reason! She considered formulating a devious plot to make him hers.

The Narrator threw caution to the wind and spoke audibly. "Not to burst your bubble or anything, Hermione, honey...but most fansite statistics show that the most popular ships are, in order: Harry/Hermione..."

"WHAT?" Harry glanced over at Hermione. "No offense... but that would be almost like...like incest," he said, half-apologetic, half-disturbed. Then he returned to ogling Snape.

The Narrator continued helpfully, "...then the primary canon ships, then Hermione..."

"I notice that 'Hermione' seems to be the common theme here," Hermione said, smirking happily to herself. She gathered her infamous resolve and schooled her self-satisfied expression into one of a contemplative variety. Now was not the time to get distracted...even to delight in her own unfading popularity...not with serious devious plotting to do...

"...and Draco," the Narrator continued, completely unfazed. This roused Draco from his massive sulk, replacing his pout with an expression that looked as if he'd just been force-fed a lemon. Glancing over to see if Granger was equally unimpressed, he found her to be plotting deviously. He was particularly talented at spotting someone in the process of forming a devious plot, even from a great distance, though he himself had but modest proficiency in that particular activity.

"Yes, you'd better plot, Granger." When she turned to look at him questioningly, he folded his arms and nodded darkly at the sort of staring contest between Harry and Snape. "Need help? I don't like the way my mentor is looking at my boyfriend."

"Yes," Hermione whispered conspiratorially. "I suppose we really ought to team up on this one. There's something in it for both of us if we succeed."

The Narrator took this moment to intervene and ask, "Folks... have we hit all the fanfic clichés yet?"

"We've got to be getting close," Hermione said, only slightly bemused at the presence of a disembodied voice discussing fan fiction in the middle of Potions. This was Hogwarts, after all.

Besides, she rather hoped that this Narrator person would keep popping in to share such important information. The sooner the rest of the school learned about all the fan fiction out there, based on the bug's best-selling books about them, the sooner everyone would give her the high regard she was due.

Meanwhile, Snape must have hit his head harder than he'd thought, since he was so busy blinking curiously at Potter that he failed to notice that half the N.E.W.T. level class was checking each other out and that the other half were doing a very dubious job of distilling fresh extract of armadillo bile for the potion in progress. "Potter, what are you staring at?"

"I am staring at your long, slim fingers, sir," he replied, sounding flatteringly intrigued.

"I know! I'll get Professor Snape to give me a detention, and I'll woo him with my intelligence and charm!" Hermione was so thrilled with this revolutionary idea that she did not realize that she'd vocalized her enthusiasm until Draco turned to her with one finely-arched eyebrow raised.

"You call that a devious plot?" Draco asked dubiously. Granger had apparently gone soft since the Skeeter blackmail incident in fourth year.

In what was definitely not her finest hour, personally or academically, Hermione blew up her cauldron on purpose and awaited Snape's reaction.

"Detention, Granger! My office, eight o'clock sharp!"

It was fortunate that Snape could assign detentions out of pure reflex at this point in his teaching career. What he actually wanted to say was, 'Who the fuck are you, and what the fucking hell have you done with one of my few competent students?'

Somehow, he didn't think that an outburst of that nature would play well with old Albus.

Hermione gleefully thought, YES! Success!, barely able to restrain a grin as she chirped, "Yes, sir! I'll be there right on time."

She turned to Draco, giddy with joy at the prospect of time alone with her adored. "Pssst! Draco! I have detention with Snape!" She smiled triumphantly, her eyes glinting with mischief.

"So I noticed," Draco said, wondering what in the hell had happened to turn the Gryffindor brainbox into a ditzy firebug. She'd blasted soot onto his robes, too, damn it! Although, there was some comfort in knowing that head-of-the-class Granger wasn't any better at devious plotting than he was.

The lizard part of Harry's brain processed that it would be a bad thing for Hermione to spend time... alone... with Snape. He set off Draco's cauldron, even though it didn't have anything particularly combustible in it as of yet. Harry really had a knack for that sort of thing. Perhaps it was a Gryffindor talent.

Hermione glared at Harry in such a way as to make Snape's classic stare-of-doom look jovial.

Draco did a slow burn from under a layer of purple goo.

Snape took one look at the proceedings and uncharacteristically decided that Draco was at fault. "Mr. Malfoy! Clean up that mess immediately!" He could probably be forgiven, if only on the basis of the fact that Miss Granger's... betrayal... had left him more stunned than Potter's wide, mooning, Slytherin-green eyes.

Damned distracting eyes! Who told you to clean your glasses today, you insufferable little pillock?

If outrage could kill, Snape would be dead and Harry badly injured. "ME?" Draco's voice rose dangerously. His fingers worked the air, looking suspiciously as if he were itching to draw his wand. Or strangle someone. "Clean up the mess that POTTER made?"

"What happened to first names?" Harry tore his gaze away from Snape for a moment to direct a miffed expression at Draco.

"You'll have to re-earn that privilege," Draco said. Their mutual pout caused an unimportant tertiary character to faint from the sheer sexiness of it.

With the patented 'Snape smirk' on her face, Hermione thought cheerfully, He will be all mine tonight...chances are good that Harry and Draco are going to get detention at the bottom of the lake!

Her conscience managed to dispel layers of hormones to protest that this would actually be a bad thing, assuming Snape would do it, and would simply muck up her seduction...detention...with a third wheel. Or third and fourth wheels.

"Draco! Don't get Harry in trouble! He wants to ditch you for MY SNAPE! You're messing up my...our plan!"

Draco was quite beyond caring what Granger-the-Detonator had to say. "Limber up your hands, Potter, because you aren't getting any as long as I'm coated in PURPLE." Never mind that they hadn't actually got to giving each other 'any' as of yet. It was the principle of the thing.

"Oh, and Potter, detention as well! With Filch!"

Somehow, the idea of detention with Filch cooled Harry's ardor for professorial types considerably. He returned his attention to Draco, sniffing thoughtfully at the mess. "I think it's fruit-flavored. Can I lick it off?"

"You ARSE! I look like an EASTER EGG!" Draco had no intention of being easily appeased. There would have to be groveling involved. And chocolate.

Harry looked over the purple mess that was allegedly his boyfriend. Then he did a very foolish thing. He sniggered. At Draco.

Apparently, the 'Snape Death Glare' was licensed for use by Slytherin students.

About this time, Snape noticed that he had definitely lost control of the classroom, and if the potions continued along their current trajectory, they would be losing a good deal more than that. "All three of you, see me at eight o'clock! I refuse to devote more class time to this idiocy!"

Harry batted his eyelashes at Snape. Both Hermione and Draco seethed to note that he actually seemed better at it than Hermione was. "Yes, sir."

Shite shite shite shite shite! I can't believe I'm competing with Harry for Snape! Hermione thought. Loudly.

Draco was a bit more direct. "You'd BETTER be straight. Very straight," he said with a pointed glare at his Head of House.

"Potter, mind your own cauldron!" Snape ordered, ignoring Draco and making himself scarce on the other side of the room.

"Is class over yet? I can't wait for my detention." Hermione fidgeted, reconstructing her destroyed potion to try to take her mind off the problem and spilling a decanter of pumpkin juice out of nervousness.

Snape surveyed the mess blankly, feeling certain that his brain had just exploded. "Why the hell is there pumpkin juice in my classroom?"

The voice of the Narrator decided to have mercy on the beleaguered Potions master and stepped in. "Think about it, Professor...love quadrangles... inter-House plots... pumpkin juice in Potions class..."

"Oh, Merlin!" Snape murmured in dismay. He decided against asking if anyone else was hearing this, especially in light of the odd, repetitive, beeping sort of music accompanying the voice.

"Clearly, we've just stepped into a crackfic." The Narrator took a deep breath and chirped out a steady and unnerving, "Deedee-deedee, deedee-deedee!" until, seemingly at random, deciding to end with a resounding, "Dah-duh-DUN!"

Hermione eyed her professor, the love of her life...if only she could get him to figure it out...with compassion. "Oh, the angst!"

Harry idly poured the remainder of the decanter into Malfoy's cauldron just for the hell of it.

Very much unnerved by the disembodied voiceover and the odd music that apparently only he could hear, Snape roared, "SILENCE! Clean up this mess, and GET OUT OF MY CLASSROOM!"

Draco decided to forgo severe irritation in favor of flirty innuendo, seeing as the former had so far served him rather ill in the area of scoring the much-desired Potter-attention. "You heard him, Potter. Clean me up."

"That wasn't what I meant," Snape groaned in agony, watching as the majority of the class scampered out of the room. Only Draco, Potter, and Granger lingered. Potter and Draco made a very slow exit, delayed by Potter's occasional tentative licks at the purple goo. Granger was the last to leave, gyrating her hips with each step. Snape was left to wonder just what was wrong with Granger's legs (she didn't usually walk like that, did she?), and he wondered if an interlude of hysterics was out of the question at this point.

---

With classes over and detention quite some time in the future, Harry went in search of a place where he could once again indulge in his... um... research. He felt vaguely guilty for giving Draco the slip and leaving him to deal with the goo, but he suspected that he wasn't quite... sufficiently well-read in the subject to deal with more than a few licks yet.

He ran his hand lovingly down the spine of the book, feeling its tautness through the fabric before gently cupping the rounded corner when his fingers reached the end. A curl of fingers made him realize, disappointedly, that it wasn't exactly soft or kneadable. He heaved a sigh; for once, he was reluctant to part with a something that had no instructions for proper broomstick polishing techniques. Not that his enthusiasm for this text was any less than for Quidditch Through the Ages, but he had so much more to learn in this... er... sport.

Seeing that the Muggle Studies classroom was empty, he veered inside.

"Hey, does anyone know the name of the Muggle Studies professor?" the Narrator asked.

"Name? Try finding someone who knows this person's gender," the Editorial Staff answered in frustration.

Harry dropped his satchel on the floor. His favorite book was out in no time, and sitting on the edge of the desk, he began to read.

He decided to chance a new section. It occupied a substantial fraction towards the end of the book, but its pages looked almost crisp with disuse. Hermione's neat handwriting graced the corner of the first page: "ff.net...For occasional gems."

Harry suspected it was slash... in runes. While some were perfectly readable, others looked only remotely like English, with the alphabets of every other word scrambled and randomly replaced. There was a piece that was total gibberish to him except for the note: "Crossover written in Klingon."

Must be some foreign magical city, he thought.

Evidently, this land was populated by gothic people (whatever that meant) with extremely long names. They always gave birth to twins, too.

That might explain why some of the scenes between him and Draco (he was fairly certain that they actually existed in the text) were so bloody difficult to follow. The ones he had read before were complicated enough and had almost exhausted his imagination, but these...

Harry shook his head, laid the book down, and rubbed his temples. His scar was hurting again...how did fictional Draco stick that into here while his this was already there?

It was high time for Harry to fall back on the wisdom of Oliver Wood and employ the blackboard.

He picked up the chalk and drew at the empty space adjacent to the homework description. Three circles...rather like Oliver Wood's depiction of the Quidditch hoops...represented here, there, and that elusive over there, the latter only found in Polyjuice and genderbender fics.

Now, the story said Draco got that in...

The door opened. "Speaking of Draco getting in..." the Narrator said.

"Draco! How... Uh, how did you find me?" Harry edged in front of the diagrams.

"It was the strangest thing. Someone handed me this bit of parchment entitled: 'Outline,' that said I needed to be in the Muggle Studies room with you. I'm not going to argue with the results."

"I had it well in hand." The Narrator sulked. "You didn't need to draw him a map."

"Listen, we have lives to deal with. We couldn't spend all day waiting for him to find Harry," the Editorial Staff whispered back.

Gray eyes, already shimmering with devilish glee, practically turned silver at the sight of the thick book.

"Put the book away, Potter. Wouldn't you rather DO explicit slash than read about it?" Draco wiggled his eyebrows suggestively.

"I... dunno." Harry wished he could have come up with a more definitive sounding answer, but those eyebrows were distracting. Sort of like watching a pair of blond caterpillars doing the cha-cha.

The Narrator sighed sadly. "McGonagall couldn't teach him that dance either."

Draco sidled closer. "You owe me a cleaning, Potter. I'm all sticky." He paused significantly. "All over."

True to form, Harry immediately built up a head of defiant steam and proceeded to vent it. "I don't owe you..." Almost as quickly as the ire built, it started to dissipate. "S...sticky? All... over?"

"And I had planned to put on my best leather trousers for tonight. Sticky and leather don't mix, Potter," Draco explained with the air of conveying something that would be on an exam later.

"Draco, you're just going to get Harry all riled up again with the thought of you sporting leather!" The Narrator was beginning to get downright interfering.

Draco soldiered on, hoping to generate a great deal of 'riling up.' Just to make certain, he fanned the flames with some judicious eyelash fluttering.

"The leather trousers... they... they would fit..." Harry trailed off, once again rather having lost track of what point he was trying to make.

"Oh, they fit perfectly," Draco asserted with a final eyelash flutter for good measure. He hoped Potter's prescription was up to detecting all this effort. He was beginning to feel a little disoriented from the strobe effect.

"Er, I mean...I don't mean..."

"They fit so well, I just can't wear pants under them. Lines, you know."

Desperately trying to recover the plot (and some sense of equilibrium), Harry came back with, "And... if it sticks... I mean, why should I care?" The measure of defiance in the last few words was almost convincing.

Draco decided it was time to take out the big guns... so to speak. He turned slowly, looking pointedly over his shoulder at his own backside...at least, insofar as anyone not an owl can do such a thing. "I can't have lines, Potter. It just wouldn't be becoming on me."

"Well, smooth it out."

"How do you propose I do that?"

"Er... Run your hand over that... that..."

Getting impatient, Draco gave his hips an emphatic toss. It was almost a flounce, a maneuver that would have earned him a place of honor in the Slytherin Vocabulary of Seductive Body Language had he been female. "Over what, Potter? You seem to be having trouble talking. Perhaps you should show me instead."

"No, I do not! My mouth is perfectly capable..."

The speed at which Draco turned, a predatory smile bursting across his face, was rather alarming. "Oh good! Then perhaps we don't need the bath after all!" His fingers fluttered to his shirt buttons, anticipatory gleam firmly in place in his eyes.

"Wedoneebath?" Harry squeaked. The whole buttons thing seemed rather sudden. He started hyperventilating slightly. "Oh, my God... I need Quidditch showers right now. Or the prefects' bathroom."

Draco's smile turned smug. "You're right. The bath would be perfect. They have the nicest foam there... You know, the kind that tingles in the heat?"

Harry's eyes were thoroughly mesmerized by the motions of those slender fingers. All he managed by way of response was a rather loud gulp.

Draco reached for Potter's hand...gleefully noting that, however myopic his love might be (in multiple senses of the word), his ideally green eyes were fixated on the movement to a flattering degree. "Shall we?"

"The smooth bubbles..." Harry murmured, as if in a trance.

Draco curled his fingers around Potter's hand and dragged him from the room, practically quivering with anticipation and triumph.

However, upon reaching the bath, Draco discovered that actual triumph would not be as easy to come by as he had supposed.

"Wait... What are you doing?"

Draco wondered whether something had struck Harry in the head during the cauldron incident. "Offhand... I'd say I'm standing beside the bath, awaiting nudity."

"Huh?" Harry blinked and attempted coherency. "Naked?"

"Yes... I fully intend on getting into the water to be washed. Do you normally bathe fully dressed, Potter?"

"But we haven't picked the right type of soap and bubbles, and I only came here for the smooth bubbles..."

"Well, I'M not getting colored bubbles on my clothes!" Draco started stripping quite deliberately, tossing the purple-stained garments aside for the house-elves to deal with.

"I mean, can't you just jump in and rub yourself clean? I'll be over on the other side...with the bubbles."

Draco whipped off his pants with a bit of a flourish and marched purposefully...with a hip wiggle that was quite possibly deliberate...to the taps.

Harry rotated violently in the other direction, nearly succeeding in chucking himself into the water.

"I was promised help cleaning up. You're not leaving me to handle the hard-to-reach places by myself." Draco attempted a coy glance from over his shoulder while kneeling to play with taps. In point of fact, he looked a bit like an albino frog in that position, but Harry was gratifyingly flustered.

"Um... I think next time. I need to go. I really need to go."

"You're responsible for this mess, Harry."

"Er, Dumbledore wants to talk to me now." Harry edged toward the door, trying not to slip on the marble.

"Yes... trying not to slip... or... trying not to pinch the erection in his trousers," the Narrator mumbled appreciatively.

Draco's eyes widened, but he decided he'd imagined the sotto voce remark out of wishful thinking. "Don't good Gryffindors clean up their messes?" Draco slid into the water slowly, trying for coy, but managing something closer to petulant.

Harry, on the other hand, was in no condition to hear much of anything except his own attempts to hyperventilate.

Draco raised his voice while still trying to keep it vulnerable and appealing. "Harry... I need help."

"What you... You don't know how to clean yourself?"

"There are some places that are just so very... hard... to reach." Draco turned and made a major show of reaching over his shoulder with the sponge.

Harry made the mistake of glancing back and swallowed heavily at the sight. "There's some place I need to 'reach' now and can't," he muttered.

The Narrator broke in with an audible comment, visibly startling Harry. "Harry, dear, if you're worried about the stripping part, do it now, while his back is turned."

"Alright... I'm coming. No, wait... I mean, I am... Never mind...just don't turn around, okay?"

Draco sighed heavily, practically twitching with the desire to turn around. "I'll just run some more bubbles, yeah?" He paddled over to the taps, trying to look alluring while listening for sounds of clothes being removed. The sound of a belt clinking to the floor had his fingers trembling on the faucet.

Meanwhile, Harry had his own problems. "Merlin, not now... Come on...!" he muttered desperately, struggling with his zipper.

"Need help?" Draco's voice rose to a hopeful squeak. He squeezed his eyes shut and hugged the sponge ecstatically at the sound of a zipper running in painfully slow clicks... as if straining...

"No... No, no. I need no help," Harry answered, overly loud. Still struggling, he moaned softly, "Oh, God."

The sound of trousers falling (finally!) brought a whimper to Draco's lips. Remember...you need to wait for Potter to pounce...

The rest of Harry's clothing practically exploded off. He whipped his tie free of his collar with a wild hiss of silk on cotton, then threw it backward...

...where it landed directly in front of Draco and disappeared into the bubbles.

"Eep!" Draco gasped and couldn't resist turning around.

Harry was fairly certain he would turn tail and run off down the corridor in his shirt if he thought about the completely nude blond in the bubbles any longer. Accordingly, he pulled his shirt free, kicked away his pants, and ran towards the bath...managing to trip on the little step between the floor and the bathtub...tumbling in with an impressive splash.

Draco swooned slightly, more from what he thought he could see than from any real glimpse of the goods, but it was enough for him to get a mouthful of bubbles and come up spluttering. "Help!" he coughed weakly, sure that Harry would offer some heroic comfort in response. Preferably involving lots of full body contact.

Water bubbled up directly in front of Draco, followed immediately by Harry.

Harry blinked helplessly, eyes completely unobstructed and correspondingly sightless. "Did you see my glasses?"

Draco, still coughing up bubbles, was in no condition to either respond to the question or appreciate the view.

"Oh, you're useless," Harry fretted, beginning to feel around in the water for the missing glasses. "Huh? What's..."

Draco jumped. "H...Harry! Those aren't your glasses," he squeaked, thoroughly pink in the face.

Harry's hand shot back. He raised the blushing stakes to the tune of a profoundly Gryffindor red. "Sorry!"

Now a total wreck, Draco mumbled something resembling, 'It's okay,' and promptly got lost in squinting green eyes.

The Narrator sighed. "May I suggest you try, 'Accio Harry's Glasses'?"

A good deal more blushing and a facepalm later, Harry had visual acuity again.

"So... my back?" Draco turned and offered the aforementioned body part for inspection. "I can never quite reach just... there." He wiggled his shoulders to illustrate, handing the sponge back.

Harry took it as if it might bite. "You mean... here?" He dabbed the sponge lightly and somewhat ticklishly at the offending sticky spot.

Draco giggled and pressed back. Between Harry's alternately firm and tentative dabbing and Draco's attempts to push into it, they succeeded in creating an utterly ineffectual rhythm. "It's not... not working," Harry said, frustrated in more ways than one.

"I think I need it a bit harder, Harry," Draco replied. He bit his lip, realizing the double entendre too late.

"It can't... can't be harder," Harry said, his mind somewhere other than on the sponge.

"Well, is it coming..." Draco coughed, going so pink he looked sunburned. "Coming off, that is?"

"No... I can't get it off..." Harry noticed that it was actually possible to sweat in the bathtub.

"Maybe you can scratch it off?" Draco whined hopefully.

"I... um..." Harry set the sponge aside with a gulp. "I guess I can..." Hyperventilating was a distinct possibility. "All right."

As soon as Harry's fingers touched Draco's skin, Draco rather melted, coming dangerously close to Harry's chest...and to other parts Harry wasn't quite ready to deal with yet.

Harry's hand flattened over Draco's back, half rubbing, half holding him up. "Draco, can you stand up straight for me?"

"I don't do 'straight' anymore." Draco sighed disjointedly.

"Draco, I need you to stretch... It seems... seems like the stuff is everywhere."

"Hmm?" Draco stretched, arching back until he could lean his head on Harry's shoulder. Each arm reached back to wrap awkwardly around Harry's neck. "How's this?"

Rapidly losing sight of any reason that this might be a bad idea, Harry ran his palm from Draco's neck all the way down his spine...being rewarded with more shivers the further down he went. Green eyes met gray. Harry sniffed appreciatively at Draco's hair. "You are enjoying this."

"Mmmhmm," Draco hummed happily. He bent one elbow to awkwardly play with Harry's damp and slightly less bird's nest-y hair. "I think there's some goo here... Let me get that for you."

"I don't think I got any..." Harry's brain short-circuited as slender fingers worked bubbles against his scalp.

"Are you sure? Feels a bit sticky," Draco whispered against his neck. Wow! The fanfic was right about this slow seduction thing!

"I... I... Okay."

Both continued massaging slowly, hair and back. Draco's voice was both sleepy and curiously eager. "So... ready for explicit slash?"

Harry was jolted out of the warm, bubbly haze. "What? Me? I..." He trailed off, blushing. "Can I just 'Ssss' my way through?" He cuddled Draco in what he hoped was an appeasing manner.

Draco derailed his train of thought with a well-timed nuzzle.

"Someone may be watching," Harry whispered a little weakly.

"I don't care about the mermaid. She never gossips." Draco paired nuzzling action with a light ear massage, sensing victory.

"Draco... your hands are... evil..." Harry's neck bent until his head rested on Draco's.

"Really? I thought I'd outgrown all that evil stuff... I suppose you'll have to save me from myself." He played with Harry's ear, smiling smugly. "Sort of whip me into shape... so those latent tendencies don't get me into trouble."

"Or perhaps..." Harry said, turning his face so as to nuzzle against Draco's hair, "I will be evil to you, too." He scooped up the bubbles and commenced shampooing Draco's hair. After all, it works in Veela!fic all the time...

The Narrator picked up the outline and used it as a fan. "Well, whatever you may think of Veela!fic, it certainly looks like Draco's scalp is a hot spot."

"Mmm... Harry..." Draco lost the plot at that point insofar as cleaning was concerned and abandoned Harry's hair in favor of serious neck-nibbling. "How evil are you going to be?"

"Wait... Draco..."

"Hmm?" It was the most articulate he could be between licks.

"Myrtle."

"Myrtle?"

"She was here before... in the bath."

Licking a soapy neck wasn't really all that, so Draco returned to nibbling. "What are you on about?" He glanced around impatiently. "I don't see anything."

"I was here once... and she... she watched me."

"Well, she can look, but not touch," Draco said possessively.

"No, she can't! I mean... she has this... this... hungry look..."

"You mean like this?" Draco straightened up and turned to face Harry with a hungry look that might well have put Myrtle out of countenance.

"Now that you mention it..."

They were so close that the least movement would bring their lips together. Draco decided that moving was the least he was willing to do under the circumstances... so he did.

It was a little softer than a 'peck' and just a tad warmer than a 'brush.' And just as they were pulling back to gaze into each other's eyes before reforming it into a really spectacular snog, it was... interrupted.

"Draco, time's up. You need to get back to your dorm and find that empty vitamin potion bottle to take to Snape."

Draco blinked. "What?"

"Hurry! There's not much time! Snape will be done analyzing the purple goo soon, and you'll have to catch him before he leaves the classroom!"

"Who in FUCK are you to interrupt my RST?" Draco practically screamed.

"I'm the Narrator! Now, get your arse out of the water and grab a robe, or you'll end up streaking back to the dungeons!"

"Oh, for the love of..." Draco pulled himself out of the tub wretchedly, practically crying as he toweled himself off rather roughly and pulled on a robe to hurry off as instructed.

Harry stared forlornly after him.

"Sorry, dear," the Narrator said, not unkindly, "but there's no RST in the outline until at least chapter three."

Harry glanced down rather desperately through the dissipating bubbles. "But... but... what about...?"

"I can't help you with that, dear. I'm scheduled to be in the dungeon scene as well."

Sensing that this Narrator person had left the scene, Harry sighed and prepared to deal with his not-insignificant-problem.

Until he heard what he was certain was a giggle and abandoned the bath half-wet, half-hard, and half-dressed... with perhaps half a hope of finding a Myrtle-free place to wank.

---

Snape brought a sample of the purple disaster back to his desk and set up a burner and cauldron, then fetched the necessary ingredients from the storeroom he would need to brew an Analyzing Potion. It was a task he hadn't planned on performing, but considering the fact that the damned Potter prat had been literally licking the unknown substance off Draco's body (did that boy even understand the concept of self-preservation?), Snape figured he should at least ensure that it wasn't poisonous if he wanted to retain his position.

Hmmm... glistening pink tongue against pale flesh... pale, dungeon-cooled flesh... That warm, wet heat would feel so incredible...

No no no, he was not thinking of Potter's tongue. This had absolutely nothing to do with licking. Boys licking. Each other. Snape groaned at the pure eroticism of the scene, then firmly pulled himself together to focus on the task at hand. He was doing this strictly to ensure that the imbecile hadn't poisoned himself in his classroom.

"Two explosions! TWO! One of which from Granger, of all people. All I asked was for them to brew a simple Stress-Relief Potion for the Infirmary," he muttered.

"Might I suggest you partake of a dose of it? You really are an uptight bas... ," the Narrator started, only to be interrupted by a muttering Snape who was trying valiantly to pretend the voice wasn't there.

"It's really no surprise that Potter could so brilliantly bungle such a simple brew, but Granger? It's one of the most nonvolatile brews on this year's syllabus!"

"Give the girl a break for once. You're always so hard on her." The Narrator abruptly took a lascivious tone. "Ooh... is it maybe because you'd rather be hard in h..."

"Oh, just SHUT UP! I refuse to participate in this absurdity!" Snape yelled, completely losing his infamous control. Disembodied voices popping up at random moments could not bode well for one's sanity.

Unfortunately, or fortunately (he wasn't quite sure yet), the voice's last comment seemed to embed itself in Snape's brain. An image of Granger arose in Snape's mind: quite an alluring image of a lusty, half-lidded expression and thin, fitted robes (that left little to the imagination). Vision!Hermione had a firm, young body with luscious curves. Snape couldn't resist wondering if the real Granger sported the same voluptuous physique.

Now, to devise a way to answer that inquiry.

That line of thought was forced aside as the cauldron began to bubble. The sweet smell of fruit once again threatened to overwhelm the room as he added the sample from the beaker. A few seconds later, a magical list of ingredients appeared in the air above the cauldron. The hovering words had no sooner vanished when the next phase of analysis spit out its conclusion. "Result: Very Appetizing."

Snape blinked incredulously as he realized no further revelations were forthcoming.

"Appetizing? APPETIZING? I spent all this time only to discover that Potter created a culinary masterpiece? If the potion doesn't do anything, then why the hell were the students exhibiting such brazen behavior?" Snape ranted, pacing behind his desk, his robes billowing in a fashion that might possibly be due to a certain impressively-massive something therein that happened to find such brazen behavior quite appetizing indeed.

"Sorry to say, Snape, but this is NORMAL for your students," that damnable commentator retorted.

Oh, that's just great... Now, I can't even blame their appalling behavior on Potter's 'masterpiece,' Snape thought grumpily.

Unfortunately for Snape, however, the Narrator was apparently the world's strongest Legilimens, somehow managing to break through Snape's formidable Voldie-proof shields to pick up on this thought. The voice that was rapidly becoming the bane of Snape's existence broke through the silence of the classroom, this time in a soothing, yet rather condescending tone. "It's called 'goo,' dear."

Snape crossed his arms over his chest and huffed. "I refuse to stoop to uttering such childish nonsense."

"What would you call it then, O Master of Potions?" the Narrator retorted.

"It is a slightly elastic, somewhat adherent matter," Snape replied in his most haughty tone.

"Do you realize that you sound just like Hermione Granger in one of her most 'I-know-everything'-type moments? It would be much more efficient to just say 'goo,'" the Narrator sniped in return.

"No, it wouldn't. It would make me sound like a dunderhead," Snape argued.

"So, you won't say it?" the Narrator asked.

"I do believe that we've already established that," Snape drawled, trying to sound bored.

"It wouldn't have anything to do with the delicious images of you licking it off Miss Granger's breasts that fill your mind every time I say the word 'goo,' would it?" the Narrator taunted.

"I've imagined no such thing!" Snape hissed through clenched teeth.

"No, but you have now, haven't you?" the Narrator said in a smirky sort of voice.

Snape glared around the room but refused to answer.

"Goo."

Snape's stance stiffened.

"Goo."

A barely audible groan escaped his lips.

"Goooooo," the Narrator drawled seductively.

"Goo," Snape repeated softly, his eyes glazed over with desire.

"Now, see? That wasn't so bad!" The Narrator's tone of unholy glee effectively snapped the professor back to reality.

"AHHH!" Snape roared. "I thought I told you to SHUT THE HELL UP!"

Before Snape could really begin a proper rant, he was derailed by a knock at the door. "Enter," he said wearily.

Looking up, Snape's eyes fell upon none other than the platinum prince of Slytherin house and lucky (willing, Snape's Voice of Discipline corrected sternly) recipient of that enticing (totally inappropriate!) tongue massage earlier this afternoon. Snape didn't want to imagine just what the two boys had been up to in order for Draco to look so 'tousled.' No, really... he didn't.

"Keep it brief, Draco. As you can see, I'm rather busy," he ordered.

Draco looked a bit uncomfortable, but squared his shoulders and looked his Head of House in the eye. "I was hoping you could help me, Professor. Under the circumstances, it's rather impossible for Father to send me the vitamin tonic I've been taking for years. Mother doesn't know anything about it."

"So buy one," Snape snapped, barely restraining himself from rolling his eyes. The boy was obviously spending too much time with Potter as Potter's lack of logical thought was beginning to rub off on him.

Bad Severus! No thinking of students and rubbing!

"I've tried taking the commercial vitamin potions, but they don't taste the same, and they make me feel... um... different. I'd like to brew the original, but I don't know what's in it. Could you determine the composition from the residue?" Draco presented an empty vial and a pleading expression.

"Of course I could," the professor retorted, "but if you think that I've the time to..." He trailed off, taking in the boy's shrinking demeanor. "Oh, give it here," he groused, grabbing the vial from Draco's hand.

The boy thanked him and fled the room. No doubt he was headed to rejoin Potter, who was most likely responsible for Draco's disheveled appearance.

Still, not even Potter's disruptive influence should be able to account for young Malfoy's behavioral changes as of late. Snape had never actually seen Draco as delicate, despite Lucius' nigh-unendurable whinging to that effect over the years. The boy he knew threw a rather mean hex, something Snape felt quite proud of on most occasions. Yet, since the end of the war, Draco seemed to become increasingly... well... poncey... especially around Potter.

Snape smirked. He could just imagine 'Daddy's' reaction to 'the licking incident.' The smirk instantly disappeared as a particular New Year's Eve encounter with a certain werewolf sprang to mind. Of course, that incident involved the use of a rather obscure potion, but the result was still eerily reminiscent of the Potter/Malfoy situation.

Snape was starting to feel uncomfortably aroused, surrounded as he was by the potion's delicious aroma and lustful thoughts of Lupin, glistening pink tongues, and the newly discovered curves of one Hermione Granger. Her tongue certainly has plenty of experience wagging about with all those questions. I'm sure together we could find a MUCH better use for that overly active organ.

In desperate need of distraction or a decent shag...the latter not exactly a feasible option on a school day afternoon...he started the analysis of Draco's vitamins.

Before his mind could complete another tantalizing fantasy involving the curvaceous Hermione Granger, his cauldron spewed forth its magical results. Once again, Snape was at a total loss.

Of all the mad coincidences...

The potion he had unknowingly consumed on that New Year's Eve was a rare one indeed. This even more obscure potion was its mirror image: the Sex-to-Hex Potion, whose chief effect was to convert sexual urges to violent urges.

Well... perhaps 'poncey' wasn't so surprising, after all.

Now, if Snape could just find a way to clear out these offensively scrumptious fumes and stop thinking of the way Hermione Granger's hips had moved when she'd left class that day, or the way her breasts had bounced when she'd waved her hand in class, or the way her eyes had shined when she'd looked at him...

---

When the door closed behind Harry, the mermaid in the picture giggled and said, "Tsk. Tsk. Draco only has eyes for that shy, young man. Doesn't he realize there are better fish..." She wiggled her fishtail seductively. "...in the sea?"

"Why don't you ever SHUT IT, you pompous slapper!" screeched Moaning Myrtle, who had flitted out from the tap she was hiding in.

The mermaid turned a wry grin on Myrtle. "Jealous, Myrtle? I suppose you don't fancy having to hide when the good-looking boys come in. You know they don't want to see fat Myrtle! Ugly Myrtle! Miserable, moaning, moping Myrtle!"

"Hah! They may not see me, but when I'm hiding in the tap, I can almost, almost feel Harry touching me when he turns the bubbles on!"

"Draco is much more beautiful to look at than your Harry," remarked the mermaid smugly. "He is graceful and elegant...just like me."

"Sure, but he does not have Harry's hot arse!" Myrtle sighed dreamily. She then shot an evilly gleeful look at the mermaid and said tauntingly, "You are just a PICTURE! You could NEVER actually GET Draco!"

"What if I were to tell those boys how you watch them like a depraved, disgusting peeping-tom? I'd like to see what you'd 'get' then!"

"Then Draco would know you were a gossip after all, YOU TWATLESS SNOT, who still manages to SMELL LIKE FISH!" Myrtle screamed back triumphantly.

"Me?" The mermaid gasped in pretend disbelief. "A gossip? I can't very well gossip to someone who saw the show herself, now can I? And you're the only one who comes in here...the only one twisted enough to come and spy on the boys!" The mermaid's face split into a wicked grin. "Girls, too, I've noticed. Although you don't come out and talk about them afterwards; you just slink back down those pipes to your own toilet where those girls of yours will never...EVER come!"

The mermaid decided to turn her attention to someone much, much more pleasant. She turned away, flopping her tail frenetically and successfully drowned out Myrtle's angry retort by crooning, "Oh Draco! Draco! Drac-O!"

Myrtle, in a fit of offended rage, took a running leap off the diving board, plummeting into the bath. The subsequent splash was titanic in size, coating the walls, including the mermaid's picture, in the colored-foam filled bath water the two boys had left behind. She emerged from the water wearing a triumphant grin as she took in the view of the mermaid dripping with rainbow-colored globs of frothy bubbles.

The mermaid gave Myrtle a look that would have killed, if Myrtle hadn't been beyond all that, before submerging herself in her own pool of water to rinse away the bubbles. She rose with practiced grace and, wearing the official smirk of the vain and self-adoring, looked down upon herself. Clearly having expected to see her usual shimmery, golden, ethereal beauty, she let loose a few choice, high-pitched expletives in her own tongue when she saw her splendor had been marred by the same purple, gooey substance that had plagued Draco.

Little miss mermaid gasped in horror at the mess. "Oh, I wish Draco were here to lick this goo off me," the mermaid whined.

Myrtle smirked. "Harry's the one who does the licking. I wish his tongue was on my..."

The mermaid realized that the goo didn't appear to be going anywhere, even with repeated splashes. "You squat, frog-eyed, toad-faced, lanky-haired, socially-repugnant... hideous freak!" she shrieked.

Myrtle flew towards the mermaid's picture, fury in her goggly eyes, fists clenched at her sides. She didn't stop until she found herself ghostly-skin to painted-skin with the mermaid.

The mermaid gasped, "Cold!" She shivered.

Myrtle had been searching for something good that she could yell back at the mermaid. Yet, for some reason, their close proximity silenced her like nothing else had ever been able to do. Something about the feel of the mermaid's scales when they shimmied against her like that. The mad fury in her eyes turned into an insane glint.

The mermaid raised her brows, goose-bumps spreading down her arms as she quivered from Myrtle's touch. A strange look crossed her face. "Care to lick this goo off me, Harry?" she asked Myrtle, a brow raised suggestively.

"Oh Draco! I thought you'd never ask!" Myrtle began to do just that.

"Oh Harry!" screamed the mermaid.

"Oh Draco!" moaned Myrtle, the words slightly muffled due to all the purple goo in her mouth.

The goo gone in a most expert fashion, not a single drop (or glob as it were) left behind, Myrtle and the mermaid stopped to look intently at each other.

"Er, this role-playing thing isn't exactly working," one of them said. The other nodded.

Myrtle applied her Ravenclaw wit. "I'm going to try something..." She proceeded to melt into the canvas...without passing through the wall.

The Narrator entered in anticipation of the next scene, only to find the mermaid writhing in a cloud of ghostly mist. "Wait a minute! What are you doing? This has nothing to do with the plot! And who said that the story could move along without ME?"

"Don't look at us," said the Editorial Staff. "The secondary characters got out of control, and we were too busy with the main characters...to say nothing of real life...to rein them in."

The Narrator sighed. "That's all very well, but shouldn't I at least know how this story goes if I'm the one who has to tell it?"

Everyone pointedly ignored the incongruous 'Oh Harry!' and 'Oh Draco!' chorus from the wall.

"Unfortunately, none of us can say how the story will go. The characters keep diverging from our prescribed outline. Clearly, they are on a mission to RST as soon as possible and are refusing to comply with the totally plausible and absolutely believable way we wanted to bring them together."

The Narrator bravely soldiered on. "The afterglow following the only RST in this chapter (and our apologies for the squickish nature thereof) found Myrtle and the mermaid curled up together."

"Binns really missed the boat," Myrtle remarked. "He only walks through chalkboards."

"No kidding! Perhaps biting the dust once wasn't satisfying enough for him?" The mermaid caressed Myrtle's pimple-covered cheek gently, as if they had always been lovers rather than rivals.

Myrtle cackled with glee. "Guess not, since Binns does it daily!" She turned to face the mermaid, sliding her hand down the fishy scales. "I know what I want to do daily."

The mermaid giggled.

Suddenly, the door opened. At its first creak, Myrtle zoomed out of the picture and into one of the taps. Hermione Granger entered. Myrtle settled into her chosen tap to watch as the grinning girl removed her bathrobe and began to refill the tub.

The Narrator heaved an exasperated sigh. "Screw it. There's no RST scheduled for this scene, and I refuse to run all the way to the Head Girl's room for the next one. I'm out of here."

---

Authors' Notes:

The chaos in the classroom (which actually started this whole mess) courtesy of SeverusLovesUs, Snapemylove, Potteresque_ire, and dracontia in a diabolical collaboration in the good ol' TPP chat room.

The music that the Narrator is beeping out during said scene is...obviously...the Twilight Zone theme song. (Ask a convenient Muggle if you don't know what we're talking about.)

The Harry/Draco not-quite-slash courtesy of Potteresque_ire and dracontia during several chat sessions with welcome pithy comments from Snapemylove.

Snape's chemical analysis courtesy of SnapeMyLove.

Myrtle and the Mermaid RST-ing courtesy of SeverusLovesUs, who is also our lovely beta for this fiasco.

Up next: Chapter 3. If you want lemons, clap your hands three times and say, "Resolve Sexual Tension!"

(This may not GET you lemons, but I guarantee your coworker/spouse/roommate/small domestic animal will sit up and take notice...)