If there was any justice in the world, Rubeus Hagrid would have been killed by the Basilisk in some misguided effort to clear his monstrous pet’s name. Or perhaps shoved in Azkaban on charges of excessive hugeness and stupidity. Bloody plebeian oversized mongrel. If it hadn’t been for that great hairy git, Draco Malfoy would have been reaping the benefits of the deliciously private Head Boy’s room and Pansy Parkinson’s older sister’s hen’s night over the summer – a whole gaggle of girls had gone out to a pole dancing class, and Draco was very interested to see what she and Daphne had learned. But alas, such debauched delights were not to be enjoyed for an indefinite period of time. Draco had been roped into helping out the school nurse after the half-giant (his other half obviously being moron, in Draco’s considered opinion) had borne witness to his significant talent for healing magic after the brute’s latest class topic, the Graphorn, had ravaged Draco’s previously pristine ivory arm. The privilege of being Head Boy apparently came with specific obligation, and Draco had found himself unable to beg, bully, cajole, argue or bat his eyelashes out of this particular obligation. Damned upstart half-breed oaf with no taste in suits.

Draco was sure it wouldn’t have been quite so bad if Nott hadn’t turned out to be some kind of black horse, star Chaser. The once retiring bookworm had been seen flying on his own one evening while Zabini had been taking some unsuspecting fifth year Ravenclaw for a moonlit stroll. Her chastity would have vexed him any other night, had he not stumbled upon Nott’s, and soon to be the Slytherin Quidditch team’s, best kept secret. He’d mercifully put the painful so-called “date” out of its misery and set off to inform his Quidditch Captain.

Which brought Draco back to the direness of his current predicament. Nott’s talent wasn’t without a touch of aggression, and the little Weasley bint had managed to get herself between Theo and the Quaffle one time too many. She’d been knocked bodily from her laughable Comet Two-Sixty by an enraged Theo, and though the resulting penalty shot from the foul aided in yet another Gryffindor victory, the little bint had been put out of action by Theo’s hit. She’d dropped like a stone, more of a pebble really, Draco thought, she was such a small thing, after all, and the bones in her left arm and leg had been snapped like dry spaghetti. Add to this a cracked rib or three, and Draco’s enforced “volunteer” work in the Hospital Wing was marred by the girl’s stay, “a week long at least, Mr. Malfoy, and do try not to be so insensitive when the poor mite wakes.”

Draco felt glaring daggers at an unconscious, heavily bandaged, undersized Gryffindor was quite justified, considering her presence upset his usual routine of cataloguing the potions store and generally standing around practicing his nonchalant pose. He simply couldn’t risk being caught practicing his favourite suave lines on bottles of Dr. Ubbly’s Oblivious Unction when she might wake up at any time. In fact, it was the bottles of potions that had Draco most perturbed. In a moment of what Draco was sure was early-onset Alzheimer’s, Pomfrey had forgotten to order more Skele-gro. Considering Snape’s prodigious potions prestige, this normally wouldn’t have been a problem, but for the fact that the company that produced Skele-gro, Magisoft, were big fans of Muggle copyright laws, so that home-brewing was simply not an option. So Draco was forced to endure not only the presence of the little red-haired twit, but her complaints, however occasional they might be.

And yet, it seemed Draco’s divine punishment for some unknown crime (his former illustrious career as a bigoted bully conveniently forgotten) never ended. Being as he was compelled to spend extra time in the Hospital Wing, Dumbledore had conveniently decided he could “help poor Miss Weasley with her homework.”

Great. So now he’d have to tutor the ridiculously undersized brat as well.

“No time like the present,” he muttered to himself as she began to stir.

Draco forgot his grumbling for a moment as he began to stare. The top button of the girl’s flannel pyjamas had conveniently come undone, offering Draco a flash of creamy rounded flesh before she regained full consciousness and he spun around to avoid being caught peeking.

Who knew Weasley was that well endowed? I’ll have to bump into her on the Quidditch Pitch more often. Or against a wall, or a desk, or in the most private reaches of the Restricted Section… His internal monologue could have continued for several minutes, cataloguing the various places around the castle where bumping into the curvy redhead would be most enjoyable, but an incredulous voice jolted him out of his particularly pleasurable reverie.

“Malfoy?” He decided her voice wasn’t nearly so grating when it was suddenly breathy like that.

“What are you doing in here? Can I see Charlie?”

He was about to offer a scathing retort when he realised she wasn’t asking after some besotted boyfriend, but rather one of the fraternal sextet.

“Charles graduated before you even started here, Weasley. Why, pray tell, would you ask for him?” He made an admirable effort to keep the sneer out of his voice, lest Madame Pomfrey appear round the corner.

“Because he’s the one I miss the most,” she whispered. “Can you find Ron?” she implored, before settling into a light doze.

Silly bird must have been hit harder than I thought, if she expects me to go and fetch Oaf number six, he mused. Nevertheless something about the tiny voice and big brown eyes were affecting him more than he’d rather admit, and so he slipped off to the library, where he assumed any friend of Granger’s would be sequestered for a portion of every evening.

Sure enough, he came upon a table full of Gryffindors: Finnigan, Granger, Potter, the resident idiot Longbottom, and penultimate Weasley.

“Stop glaring, Ronald, it’s terribly infantile. How can we help you, Draco?” The brunette had made an annoying habit of insisting they use first names ever since they’d been made Head Boy and Girl at the start of term.

“Actually, I’m here helping someone, shocking as it may seem. Your sister’s awake. Do try not to startle her.” He turned on his heel and was walking away when Ron gulped audibly, “Thanks, Malfoy.”

“Oh, no thanks required, Ronald. Just doing my job as Head Boy.” Draco couldn’t resist the urge to rub his office in Weasley’s face, even if a seldom listened-to voice in the back of his head told him getting on this Weasley’s good side would make it considerably easier to see the other Weasley’s wild side. Or backside. Or any side angle without clothes on, really, Draco wasn’t terribly fussed. Perhaps being a virile seventeen-year-old male had a few drawbacks after all, it was certainly affecting his impeccably high standards. No Malfoy should settle for anything less than hard core nudity, he told himself firmly, before setting off back to Purgatory, or the Infirmary, depending on how one looked at things.

Draco smiled at the welcome quiet of the Infirmary. Finally, Weasley’s sympathy squad had left, and she had drifted off to sleep before he’d had the chance to broach the subject of homework with the girl. His dubious luck seemed to have run out though, as Madame Pomfrey came bustling in, disturbing his serene contemplation on the merits of black bras under white school blouses, and insisting that the girl be roused, “else she shan’t sleep tonight and you need to get on with helping the girl catch up the classes she’s missed, thank you, Mister Malfoy.”

Stifling anything as undignified as a grumble, Draco made his way over to the sleeping girl, and was slightly mollified with a peek down her pyjama top before shaking her shoulder, just firm enough so as not to be gentle. She stirred slowly and Draco decided that being affronted by his enforced tutelage was a good choice of distraction from how very cute she was when she wasn’t speaking, or indeed, fully conscious. Finally, large brown eyes blinked up at him as the freckled female finally chose to rejoin the land of the living.

“Malfoy? What’d you wake me up for? Haven’t you got plundering and pillaging to see to?”

“Most amusing, Weasley. No, I’m stuck here to tutor you, as part of my punishment for being chosen Head Boy.”

Naturally, though he shuddered to think he should ever know what would come naturally to a Weasley, she seemed somewhat perturbed by this revelation. “Why isn’t Hermione here? She’d not mind at all, I’m sure.”

“Because,” came the drawled reply, “she’s already committed to tutoring half the lower school and has bullied the Ravenclaw prefects into divvying up the rest of them. Granger is, as she evidently loves to be, over committed already.”

A slightly frowny pout was all he received in reply, until she seemed to think better of it and relent. “Fine. I need to brush up on my Charms work anyway. You any good?”

Draco admirably kept from snorting. “Please, you think they award Head Boy on looks alone? Obviously not, as two of your brood somehow wrangled a spot. But yes, I’ll go over your Charms with you, since I’m sure the Headmaster’ll know if I haven’t helped you.”

She stifled a smile at his stuffy manner. “Thanks, Malfoy. D’you have a quill I can borrow, then?”

He looked at her in surprise. “A quill? Sod the theory, the way to get into charms is lots of practical application.” He then proceeded to drill her on an assortment of fourth, fifth and sixth year charms, rolling his eyes, but keeping mercifully quiet at most of her mistakes.

“Honestly, Weasley, I know you can claim the accident affected your fine motor skills, but try to keep your wand movements more precise. If you lose control of the wand, you lose the intent and direction of the spell, and it all goes pear shaped if you let that happen.” As if to demonstrate this, the apple she’d been trying to force into re-enacting Riverdance suddenly turned into a pear and toppled over, small legs ending in tiny tap shoes kicking pathetically in the air.

“Fine. Fine. More precise. How precisely does that change anything, Malfoy?” she bit out, the last syllable coming out as something of a growl.

“Come now, Weasley, manners don’t cost anything, and even your family can afford that. Besides, I already explained, if you’d deigned to listen to me before. The object you’re trying to charm can sense your intent and your confidence. Almost like a horse can sense whether you mean the orders you’re giving it. Precise wand movements encourage an air of decisiveness and confidence which make the object more conducive to being charmed.”

A swish and a flick later, and a non-verbal levitating charm saw the pear smacking Draco in the back of the head. Too tired to be bothered, and honestly glad he seemed to have gotten through to the brat, Draco laughed.

A look of shock registered on Ginny’s freckled features, and she even managed to drop the “pearpertrator” in surprise at the mirthful Malfoy before her.

“Are you feeling quite alright, Draco?” she asked, registering somewhere in the vague back reaches of her mind that his first name would be of greater comfort at a time when he was obviously emotionally disturbed.

“Obviously emotionally disturbed?” he chuckled, as Ginny realised with horror that she’d muttered those three words aloud. “Of course not, Ginny,” he replied, unconsciously returning the favour of using first names, “just over-tired and stressed about NEWTS. But never above a little…retaliation.”

The dangerous gleam that crept into his eye at the last word put Ginny on edge, but was not enough to warn her before the pear had suddenly exploded above her head, showering her in a fruity, pulpy mess. It soon escalated into all-out fruit basket war, as morsel after morsel was mercilessly turned into ammunition. Realising she was still not up to Malfoy’s standards as far as Charms went, Ginny decided to opt for her favourite subject, Defence Against the Dark Arts, and threw a silent leg-locker curse at her snickering, blond adversary. Evidently, she had not thought this through, as six-feet-plus of still chortling Slytherin suddenly toppled onto her bed, and she suddenly found herself crushed beneath a chuckling, fruit-covered young man.

Draco, however, had fewer problems with his newfound position, as it enabled him to see a rather tasty looking piece of banana sitting on the redhead’s pink lower lip. Giving in to the overwhelming instinct that came with having a rumpled, busty, young girl underneath him, he licked along the lip, gathering the morsel into his mouth before deciding the only gentlemanly thing to do would be to share. When they eventually stopped kissing, he opened his eyes to see a wry smile and raised red eyebrows before him.

“Charming, Malfoy,” she uttered in a fair imitation of his drawl.

“Indeed,” came his reply, before deciding that, as much as he liked her impression of him, he preferred it when her pouty little lips were otherwise engaged.

Perhaps Hagrid wasn’t quite the useless brute he’d pegged him as after all.