Glue

It was like some kind of glue. Harry resolutely kept his eyes down, refusing to look across the room to the Slytherin table. The Slytherins were trouble, and always had been, he told himself firmly, and this was just another of their little plots. They wanted to get him into trouble � well, they could go ahead and try. Spitefully, he took a bite of chicken and chewed forcefully, glaring at his plate.

�Um, Harry?� Ron�s voice beside him was loud, and drowned the rushing in his ears.

�What?�

�Are you all right? Only, well, that plate never did anything to you, and you�re looking at it like it was Malfoy or something.�

�Oh.� Malfoy. �No, sorry, �m fine really. It�s just I think the Slytherins are up to something.� It was as good an explanation as any, with the added bonus of being actually true, but of course it wasn�t the whole story. Nothing said out loud ever was these days.

�You might be right.� Ron glowered across the Hall at the Slytherin table; Hermione, beside him, rolled her eyes meaningfully and was completely ignored. �They�re probably planning how they�re going to cheat in the Quidditch match next week.�

�Yeah, maybe.� Harry felt his eyes rising, and hastily turned them back to his plate.

�Oh, honestly, Ron,� Hermione interjected in a superior tone of voice, pointing a fork at the red-haired boy, �Madam Hooch won�t let Malfoy get away with anything�� and they were off again, bickering companionably back and forth. Harry suppressed a sigh. Malfoy again. It was really very strange.

Malfoy was doing it again on the way to Divination that afternoon. Harry, who was looking forward to a quiet half-hour�s nap while Trelawney predicted his death a few dozen times, began getting an itchy feeling between his shoulder blades as soon as he and Ron had left the Great Hall. He risked a look around, and sure enough, there was Malfoy, silver-haired and smirking and exactly two paces behind him. Harry glared, trying to will the Slytherin to go away.

Malfoy smirked some more, and continued to follow him. Harry seethed inwardly as the blond boy stuck to him like glue all the way up to the top floor of the North Tower. Always there, two paces behind him, just barely visible in the corner of Harry�s eye. Finally, at the top of the staircase, he snapped and whirled on the evil-minded git.

�Stop bloody following me, Malfoy!� Harry hissed, beside himself, as Ron blithely continued along the hall, lost in some daydream.

Malfoy smirked his nastiest, smirkiest sort of smirk, and looked at him in a terribly condescending manner. �I�m not following you, Potter, I just happen to be going to class.�

�You don�t take Divination!� Harry balled his fists at his sides.

�No, I don�t, do I?� The smirk became a wry sort of smile, and Harry stared, appalled. Malfoy smiling at him? What was the world coming to?

�What the hell are you on about? And what the hell is up with you suddenly?�

�If you don�t know, Potter, I�m not going to tell you.� And with that, Malfoy pivoted smartly and started back down the worn stone steps. Harry stared after him until Ron made him jump by tapping his shoulder and reminding him that he had to go to Divination.

Harry had tried and tried to work this out on his own, but he was no closer to any sort of epiphany than Voldemort was to being named Witch Weekly�s Wizard of the Week. What on earth had Malfoy meant, if you don�t know I�m not going to tell you, and why was he following Harry around? Last night at Quidditch practise, an irate Ron had chased Malfoy (who had been standing at the side of the pitch, his eyes following Harry�s every move) all the way back to the castle, brandishing a Beater�s club at the supposed spy.

Perhaps Malfoy really was simply spying on the Gryffindor Quidditch strategy? If he is, he�s doing a damn poor job of it. Harry had always considered the Slytherins to be more sneaky than that, and it didn�t explain why Malfoy was always either following him around like a faithful dog (Harry snorted at that mental image) or staring at him from across the room. Perhaps it was psychological warfare? Maybe the nasty little bastard was trying to get Harry so off-balance that he�d fall off his broom next week or something. If so, it was working. Harry felt all jittery, and by now could tell by a sort of tingling feeling in his skin when Malfoy�s icy grey eyes were resting on him. But he had always considered Malfoy the sort of boy who was much more likely to employ physical or magical tactics. If he wanted Harry out of action for the game, why didn�t he just have Crabbe and Goyle corner him in a deserted corridor?

This was all too strange. Malfoy was just always there, his presence sending shivers along Harry�s nerves so that he couldn�t concentrate in lessons and twice tripped over the uneven flagstone in the Charms corridor. Always there, and always with his eyes trained on Harry. By now Harry was sure the boy was plotting something truly hideous to do to him. He started keeping an eye on what was going on around him, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

The glue, or whatever it was, seemed to go both ways. Half the time Harry would jolt out of some internal reverie (usually a daydream about flying. Flying was so much more fun than dull lists of potions ingredients or Herbology revision or watching Parvati and Seamus snogging at the dinner table) to find his field of vision centred on Malfoy. Who was always watching him right back, with that terrible little half-smile on his face that positively screamed I know something you don�t. The fact that the smile looked very out-of-place on Malfoy, who had usually been more wont to sneer in Harry�s direction, didn�t help.

Harry found himself purposefully slowing down sometimes as he walked through the halls. Curiously, Malfoy never bumped into him despite sticking so close to Harry. It felt a little like having an extra shadow, and very peculiar. Harry could no longer help looking at Malfoy across the Hall; it was like something about the boy pulled at his eyes like magnets. His gaze was constantly getting stuck on Malfoy.

Harry didn�t understand this at all. Was it only Malfoy being his usual rotten self? Had it always been like this, and Harry had simply never noticed before? He still felt the same kind of intensity as ever when he looked at his enemy (which equated to pretty much always now); he had always hated Malfoy. He had always known that his place in the world was to be the reluctant hero, and that Malfoy was there to make as much of a nuisance of himself as possible, and generally to be an all-round nasty little git. It was the way his world had been ordered for four years now. Why had it suddenly all changed?

Perhaps it was a spell. Hermione was always going on about how magic could do almost anything. Perhaps Malfoy had put some kind of Dark Arts spell on him, the better to hand him over to Voldemort. After all, Harry was so distracted now that his marks had already gone down noticeably. Professor McGonagall had frowned over her glasses at him yesterday in Transfiguration.

A spell could do this, couldn�t it? Make him feel watched wherever he went, make him feel as though he was on one end of an invisible cord attached to Draco Malfoy. Perhaps it was a spell, and the cord would strengthen and strengthen until Malfoy could make Harry do whatever he wanted.

Harry decided there was only one thing to do; he would have to go and ask Hermione.

Hermione was in the library. There was nothing new about this. It was just Harry�s bad luck that on his way through the corridors he encountered the Slytherins exiting the Transfiguration classroom along with the Ravenclaws. Immediately Malfoy peeled off from the group and attached himself to Harry again. Harry saw smirks and amused glances being exchanged among the rest of the Slytherins; clearly they found Harry�s not-quite-flinch as Malfoy reached his side and stuck himself there hilariously funny. Perhaps this was some great huge Slytherin plot; perhaps they were all in on it.

In the hallway outside the library, Harry stopped, and addressed the air. �Piss off, Malfoy, I�ve had enough of this.� He could feel without looking that the blond boy had opened his mouth. �I said piss off. I don�t want to look at you. I have never wanted to look at you. In fact I would be perfectly happy if you fell off a convenient cliff. So just� find someone else to follow around, OK?�

There was silence behind him as he walked into the library, no quiet footsteps dogging his own, no soft hiss of breath almost in his ear. Just him, just Harry, no shadow. It felt� strange. As though he had left part of himself outside, as though he had sprained a joint or overstrained a muscle. He felt stretched; he felt the pull of the invisible glue, the cord, trying to make him turn and look back at Malfoy, but he ignored it, thumbing his nose at it in his head. The strange pang of almost-guilt he felt was yet another in a long series of totally inexplicable occurrences.

Hermione looked up as Harry slid into a seat beside her, and smiled vaguely at him. Harry shuddered at the size of the Arithmancy tome she was engrossed in, and peered around warily for Madam Pince. She didn�t seem to be evident; perhaps she was repairing books in her office.

�Hermione, I have to ask you a question,� he hissed, tugging at her sleeve.

�Go ahead.� Hermione tilted her head at him, ready and willing to dispense knowledge.

�Is there some kind of spell that would make someone sort of attached to another person? Make them follow them all the time, and watch them, and stuff?�

Hermione twisted a lock of frizzy hair around her index finger, looking thoughtfully at the ceiling. �I don�t think so. I assume you mean Malfoy?�

�Um, yeah� He�s just always right there�� Harry trailed off miserably. �So it�s probably not a spell then? Not even the Dark Arts?�

�Well, it�s not in any spell-book I�ve seen, and it�s not mentioned in any of the Defence Against the Dark Arts texts either, so I would say no.� Hermione regarded him kindly, with that look that Harry had always thought she had borrowed from Mrs. Weasley. �It�s probably just Malfoy making a git of himself as usual, you know. He�s just trying to get to you, Harry.�

Harry shrugged. �It feels� well, different, is all.�

�Well, I don�t have anything that will help you. Perhaps you should just try ignoring it?�

�I can�t. It�s like� like he won�t let me ignore him��

�Well, then, if you want to get to the bottom of this that badly, you�re going to have to ask Malfoy.�

Harry didn�t want to ask Malfoy. That would require acknowledging the blond boy�s existence, which wasn�t something he wanted to do either. And yet every time he relaxed his guard his eyes were drawn inexorably to that pale pointed face, those ice-grey eyes, that platinum-blond hair. That silver Slytherin Prefect badge, with its green enamelled snake. He tried to distract himself by deliberately recalling the ferret incident of last year, but the thought that Malfoy didn�t actually look all that ferret-like strayed across his mind, and he found himself consciously analysing his enemy�s features.

Ever since Harry had snapped at him outside the library, Malfoy had had this sort of sulky, wounded-puppy look in his eyes that was most uncharacteristic. As though Harry had kicked him instead of merely insulting him like always. He stuck as close to Harry as ever, though, and carried right on watching him. And Harry, helpless, watched back. He noticed the strangest things. Like the fact that Malfoy�s neat footprints in the crisp January snow were exactly the same size as his own. Or the fact that Malfoy�s shoulders shook with giggles even when he was being hit by a snowball. Of course, it had been a Slytherin who had thrown the snowball at him, so he probably didn�t mind as much as if it had been a Gryffindor, thought Harry, pausing on his way to Herbology to watch the furious battle among the Slytherins. They were free this last period of the week and already out of uniform, messing about in last night�s new snow.

Harry saw that Malfoy was the most richly garbed of the lot of them, dressed in blinding white from head to toe, his cloak fastened with gold chains and trimmed with pure white fur. With his pale colouring, he looked like an ice sculpture, there amidst his sable-garbed Housemates. Like Hedwig in the midst of a flock of crows, thought Harry, unaware that he had stopped in the middle of the path.

Grey-silver eyes met his own green, and Malfoy smiled at him again. Harry felt his jaw drop a little, and his face heat to pink. Utterly humiliated and certain that this was all part of Malfoy�s plan, he wheeled and strode determinedly off to the snow-banked greenhouses. He was too busy telling himself not to look back to see the slightly stunned expression that flitted like a will-o�-the-wisp across Draco�s face as he watched Harry leaving.

The glue situation (as Harry had taken to referring to it) was only getting worse. Harry could feel the strange connection getting stronger every time he looked up from his Transfiguration or Charms notes to sneak a helpless look at Malfoy, every time he looked back over his shoulder to see that familiar, no-longer-sneering face. Twice, Harry had exited the Gryffindor portrait hole to find Malfoy lurking at the end of the corridor, plainly waiting for him. Malfoy was good at lurking. Once, when he had turned his head, expecting that flash of silver-gilt across his eyes that was enough to tell him that Malfoy was behind him, and unexpectedly found himself alone, Harry had been utterly surprised by a senseless pang of anxiety. Then he had belatedly remembered that he had actually made several detours on his journey to try and lose Malfoy in the first place. Still, it had felt unnatural. Which was senseless, because it was the whole being-stalked situation that was the unnatural one.

Harry felt that the time had come to take desperate measures. �I just don�t feel quite right,� he explained to Madam Pomfrey, who sniffed at him concernedly and bustled off to fetch her wand. Half an hour of being poked, prodded, and forced to drink potions later, and she pronounced Harry perfectly healthy and told him he must be imagining it, because there was nothing wrong with him. Shrugging his shirt back on, he left the hospital wing.

Malfoy was waiting for him outside, lounging against the same wall that he had propped himself on when they had arrived. He fell into step behind Harry as he wandered disconsolately back to Gryffindor Tower.

Outside the portrait hole, Harry turned and looked at Draco. �I don�t suppose you�d stop whatever this is if I asked you to?� He thought it was worth a try. Malfoy merely smiled one of his enigmatic smiles, and turned away, walking off down the corridor. Harry stared after him until he was out of sight, and continued staring blindly until the Fat Lady coughed at him and asked him gently whether he had forgotten the password.

Potions that afternoon was more unpleasant than ever. Snape was in a bad mood for some reason, and took it out on the Gryffindors as usual, snarling at Neville and sneering down his long nose at Hermione whenever she stuck her hand up with an answer. Ron winced every time that vicious black glare passed over Harry. Harry barely noticed the worst of it, unable to stop watching the way Malfoy balanced his quill across one finger in between taking notes, the way he bit his lip when he was thinking.

Eventually, of course, the inevitable happened, and Snape gave Harry a tongue-lashing for not paying attention. The fact that it took an elbow in the ribs from Ron before Harry realised that the Potions Master was standing over him with an expression like thunder and attempting to verbally dice him like so many Flobberworms earned him a detention. As Snape pronounced sentence Harry saw Malfoy turn his head and smile at him with astonishing sweetness. Something inside him gave a funny little tug.

Detention was horrible. Snape had him polishing the desks in the Potions classroom for hours on end while he marked scrolls and made withering comments about Harry�s friends, Harry�s parents and Harry himself. Harry gritted his teeth and ignored the nasty little witticisms, vaguely annoyed with the way Malfoy kept popping unbidden into his head. He was fairly certain he had dreamed of Malfoy the night before, although he couldn�t remember much beyond a diffuse kind of warm feeling.

Eventually, his scrolls finished, Snape left, instructing Harry to finish all the desks and the laboratory benches before returning to Gryffindor Tower (and if he, Snape, saw a single finger-mark or spot of grease on them tomorrow morning, he, Harry, would be polishing desks in every classroom in the school for the next two weeks). Harry continued scrubbing at a particularly encrusted section of table, trying to get the spilled wax off it.

He couldn�t have said exactly when the prickling along his spine began; it seemed to segue naturally out of his already spiky thoughts, and so it was a while before he realised that Draco Malfoy was standing in the doorway watching him. Harry felt himself tense, but deliberately kept polishing, finishing the last bench with a flourish of the cloth before he turned to meet that intrusive grey gaze.

Malfoy arched an eyebrow at him in silent greeting, and Harry felt his own features respond (entirely outside his conscious control) with a half-smile. Quite suddenly he was tired of all this: tired of watching, of being watched, and most of all tired of not understanding. Tired of this whole gluey situation from which he just couldn�t extricate himself. He moved forward to stand before the other boy. Malfoy was leaning against the doorframe, head resting against his hand. He looked completely human, completely at odds with the Draco Malfoy Harry had known for four years.

�Malfoy,� he heard his own voice plaintive in the silence between them, �would you just please tell me what this is about?� Harry realised he was twisting his hands together and quickly shoved them behind his back.

Malfoy looked at him for a long moment, something Harry couldn�t comprehend at all in his eyes. �Are you sure?� he asked finally. �Don�t you know, Harry?�

Harry jumped a little at being thus addressed; to his knowledge Malfoy had never used his first name before. �No!� he all but wailed. �I don�t understand this and I don�t know why you�re doing this or what you�ve done to me� I just want to understand!�

Malfoy�s grey eyes widened, became huge and round and luminous. �Oh. Oh. You really don�t know, do you? Oh, my.� There was a wicked sparkle about his face now, and Harry hung his head, ashamed and blushing pink.

�No, I don�t,� he whispered. �Can you just tell me, please? Please?� Once that word would have sounded bitter on his tongue, but now it was all he could say, all he wanted to say.

Eyes downcast, Harry saw Malfoy step forwards, towards him. Then he felt hands on his skin, lifting his face to meet that soft grey gaze. �Don�t worry, Harry,� he heard in a whisper that went straight into the core of his soul, �I can show you.� And Malfoy � Draco, Draco now (now and always and forever) � leaned forward and kissed Harry softly on the lips.

Harry felt his jaw drop in a soundless oh as Draco pulled back, smiling into his eyes, and with such a dreamy look on his face� He couldn�t seem to think beyond noticing the faintest tinge of flush across Draco�s cheekbones and the way the lamplight caught and glittered in his eyelashes as he blinked at Harry.

�Now do you see, Harry?� Draco asked quietly, brushing one tender finger along Harry�s jawline. Harry did see; he saw so much that he couldn�t speak for the wonder of it, and he also saw Draco�s mouth tighten imperceptibly, saw some of the sparkle go out of those beautiful eyes.

�I�� he forced past his frozen vocal chords at last, unable to bear the thought of Draco turning away from him, �I� I�m not sure. �Show me again?�

Draco�s face lit up as if washed by sudden spring sunshine, and he leaned in again, slipping one hand around into Harry�s hair as he met his lips. This kiss was sweeter than the last; Harry tasted apple and spice on Draco�s mouth and had to grasp at his shoulders as his knees went wobblier than a jelly. Sight long denied exploded behind his closed eyelids in a starburst of understanding. This was what it had been about, maybe what it had always been about, this heat between them that Harry had always thought was hatred. Perhaps it had been hatred once� perhaps it still was, but this felt so good�

Draco was smiling at him, eyes on a level with his and one arm wrapped around Harry�s waist. �You understand yet, Harry? You�re mine.�

Harry blinked. �What?�

Draco laughed at him, eyes sparkling in that way that made it difficult for Harry to think clearly. Not to mention the way Draco�s leg was brushing oh-so-lightly against his� �You�re mine. You belong to me. Now, anyway,� he added thoughtfully as Harry frowned at him, certain he must be mishearing. �Before, you belonged to the Weasel and the� and Granger, I mean,� Draco corrected himself hastily, flipping back his hair. �But you�re mine now, and I�m keeping you.�

Harry finally found his voice. �You think you own me? What? Draco, you can�t own people!�

Draco frowned at him, pouting in an extremely sullen way that Harry couldn�t help but find extremely endearing. �But I want to. And you don�t mind.� He trailed the fingers of his free hand down Harry�s neck and inside the open collar of his shirt, watching him shiver in reaction. �See?� Then his eyes widened; he looked suddenly very vulnerable indeed. �Did you� just call me Draco?�

�I� yes, Draco.� Harry watched the assurance on that sharp face crumble, his own mark of ownership, and smiled. Then he pulled Draco forward and into another kiss, tasting the sweetness of it as Draco�s lips parted beneath his and he arched against Harry, lithe and all but purring. Perhaps being glued together might not be so bad after all, Harry thought as Draco wound serpentine arms about him and pulled him into the most passionate embrace of his life.

Wandering back to Gryffindor tower in a sleepy, sticky daze some hours later, his skin still tingling from Draco�s touch, Harry privately decided that he had never been quite this happy in his life. Not even when he had found out he was a wizard, not even when Gryffindor had won the Quidditch Cup. Glue was a simply wonderful thing, he thought as he climbed through the portrait hole into the common room, unable to keep the smile off his face.