Harry Potter - Series Fan Fiction ❯ Behind the Fog (Backup Upload) ❯ Behind the Fog (Backup Upload) 18th Chapter ( Chapter 18 )

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. Anything you recognize is property of JK Rowling. Additionally this is not my story. I am uploading this to my own account in support of the author the story belongs to who has been struggling with hackers.

The thing I've most been dreading as a fan is that the story would be removed from the site by the hackers and the author wouldn't have access to their old chapters when the situation was eventually brought under control in the event the site moderators wouldn't be able to give the author their account back.

For anyone interested the author goes by Hancock23 on Fanfiction -dot- net. I will remove the story from my account when Hancock23 has gotten the story safely uploaded elsewhere or has been safely given their account back on Fanfiction -dot- net. Without further ado I give you a backup upload of: Behind the Fog by Hancock23.

PS: This Backup Upload contains minor edits for grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Plus some rewording/restructuring of sentences so they make better sense and flow better. Hope you don't mind me becoming something of a Beta Reader for this Backup Upload Hancock23.

Chapter Eighteen - Safe Whichever Side Wins

After returning to the East tower after breakfast the previous day, Draco had spent some of the day sending letters. He let Marina and Bill know what had happened and then sent another letter to Snape, asking him if it was possible for him to help with the other potions until Draco could figure a way out.

The man had agreed, and Draco had made notes for the modified potions which he intended to give to Blaise to hand over. The rest of the day had been spent reading manga with Potter, but they had agreed to go to the classes they could on the following day. Now, Draco found himself heading to the Gryffindor table for breakfast, since they had decided to take turns sitting at each other's house table.

"Morning Harry, we got your letter yesterday." Hermione said as they took a seat on the opposite side of the table from Ron, Hermione, and Ginny.

"I bet the ferret did something." Ron said, but Draco did not react, because he was busy watching Pansy and Blaise walk over to the table.

"We will sit with you darling, no matter which house table you sit at." Pansy said, as she took a seat next to Draco.

"Ugh! It's enough to have one snake here; We don't need anymore." Ginny said sulkily, but she was ignored.

"That is not the standard coffee they serve." Hermione said, in accusation when a strong aroma rose into the air around them, as Malfoy poured himself a cup.

"True, it's not the usual." Harry agreed staring at it curiously.

"I specially buy this coffee, and have the elves make it for me." Draco said to Harry.

"I should have guessed something like that." Harry deadpanned. "So; What's wrong with the regular coffee?"

"I don't like instant coffee." Draco said simply.

"He just thinks he is better than us." Ginny sneered.

Once again she was ignored, Malfoy couldn't take umbrage over every little thing she said if he was going to make this little arrangement with Potter work. Harry poured himself a cup from Draco's jug and took a sip. "I see why you like this coffee; It's delicious."

"It's a brew from Ethiopia. I am partial to Kenyan, Ethiopian, and Moroccan coffee." Draco said.

"What in the world do you spend your time doing, when the rest of us are being normal teenagers?" Harry asked incredulously. In his world, he did not think it was normal for someone their age to have such refined taste.

"I do the things everyone else does." Draco said, playing at resentment.

"I seriously doubt that Malfoy." Harry said.

"What do you do in the summer?"
"I travel, read, play, and go out with friends, or on my own just to enjoy nature or animals, or people going about their day to day lives."

"Speaking of travel," Blaise interjected, "Do you think this bond thing will have let up or do we have to drag Potter around with us?" He asked, as he smeared jam on his toast.

"At this point, who knows?" The blonde declared with a pout; and Harry thought he looked very cute like that. "If we can, I was thinking Russia."

"No way." Pansy objected immediately. "I have no idea why you keep suggesting Russia every year; it's freaking cold over there."

Draco liked the cold while Pansy preferred hot temperatures, and every year Draco would suggest Russia only to be shut down in flames; as every year she would refuse. It was a long-standing argument between them, and although Draco hoped that he would win the argument one day, he did not begrudge his friends their preference for high temperatures.

To be truthful, he was just grateful that he was able to travel with them for a few weeks every summer; and he thought that the only reason he was allowed to was that his mother preferred him out of the manor. He could be bitter about it but he wasn't, he would rather spend his entire summer away with his friends and whichever chaperone his father appointed for the trip than with his mother who couldn't manage to spare him any motherly affection over fifteen years into his life.

"How about Turkey?" Blaise suggested. "We haven't been there, and they even have a national drink." That perked up everyone's interest. Being who they were, their parents had made sure their wands did not have the trace, which made stunning their chaperones pretty easy when they needed to do a little underage drinking.

"I don't mind Turkey." Pansy agreed.

"Turkey it is then." Draco said, with a smile to his friends.

"That is really not the type of travel that a normal teenager does." Harry said from beside Draco. "At least not every summer."

"Prepare yourself because you will have to join us if this bond thing hasn't worked itself out by then." Pansy said, unhappily.

"There is no way I am going anywhere with the lot of you." Harry refused earning approving looks from around the table.

"It's tradition." It was strictly speaking, not a tradition, since they hadn't gone the previous year; but none of the three wanted to ponder as to the reason why that had been the case. "Anyway, it is your turn to pay Draco."

"Go easy on me." Draco said.

Blaise snorted when he heard that. "I don't remember you going easy on me in Amsterdam." Blaise said with unholy glee, as if already planning to do serious damage to Draco's finances.

"You are a menace on people's money Draco." Pansy agreed. "You did quite a number on me in Ireland. I have been itching for revenge."

Draco groaned. "I suppose I should be happy we are not going to a fashion capital, or I would need to beg Potter for a monthly stipend when we get back.' The blonde said, with blatant resignation.

"It would be quite the amusing sight, to see a Malfoy beg." Harry teased with a mischevious smile.

"The only time it is remotely acceptable for a Malfoy to beg, is when he is being fucked senseless." Someone dropped their fork in shock; as Harry stared at Malfoy in disbelief before he burst out laughing.

"We have to go." Blaise said as he stood up.

"You are lucky to be missing History of Magic with the Ravenclaws." Pansy cringed, but she was not going to go out of her way to complain about Professor Binns, since his class allowed her to recover the hours of sleep lost when she had to help with the business.

"Take this before you go." Draco looked through his bag, and retrieved a journal which he handed to Blaise.

"Give it to 'you know who' and help out whenever you can." Pansy nodded, and the two left. It was not until Draco turned back to the table, that he realized what he had said.

"Not even you Gryffindorks would be so stupid as to think, that I would be speaking of Voldemort in such a public manner." No one said anything; they just continued to watch him like he was some disgusting thing that suddenly appeared in their presence.

"Who knows what you are capable of Malfoy; It could be that you no longer feel the need to hide your affiliations, now that everyone knows you are the dark lord's whore." Ginny said, her voice full of disgust.

"I suggest you start thinking before you speak, because I am seriously beginning to get annoyed, and you already have enough legal issues with me. What exactly is your problem?" Draco asked the red haired girl.

Of course there was a lot about his relationship with Potter that would legitimise her attitude, but he did not think she knew anything of what had been happening.

Ginny's face turned red with auger. "My problem, is that you exist, Malfoy! The very existence of someone like you is unnatural." She spat, her voice growing louder with passion as she spoke.

"Harry has told us how He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named looks; Snake-like glowing red eyes, greyed out scaly skin; He's bald, he has no nose, and he has a slit for a mouth with a forked tongue; Are you so power hungry that you would think it is acceptable to be that things lover?"

By now, her voice had reached such a volume that it was clearly audible to the other tables even without something like a Sonorus Charm; and everyone, literally everyone in the Great Hall, was looking at Draco expectantly; but the blonde did not react.

It was as if he was not the one being shouted at or humiliated in front of the entire hall. Harry tensed. In everything that had happened, he had forgotten all about Voldemort. He had forgotten that the barely human thing that had killed his parents, had touched Malfoy at some point in a sexual way; And he had forgotten that Malfoy had allowed it. He felt nauseated that he had allowed himself to indulge in Draco's body with such abandon and without meaning to, he put more distance between their bodies, but the gesture was not lost on anyone.

"Weaselette, let me ask you something; aren't you and I the same? At least in this. You have had a fanatical obsessive little girl's crush on Potter since before you had breasts and I had pubes; You fixated on Potter because on the Order of the Phoenix's side of the war Potter is the one with the most power did you not? How exactly does that differ from myself with Voldemort?" Draco asked, finally losing his patience, and aiming to make a damned good point.

"Malfoy, did you just compare me to Voldemort?" Harry asked in disbelief, and he was not the only one looking at Malfoy as if he had lost his marbles.

"Oh? Aren't you the same though?" Malfoy insisted.

"The light follows Potter, and the dark follows Voldemort; Isn't everything in this Wizarding World so beautifully black and white?" Draco sneered, not just at Potter, but at all the Gryffindors.

"I suppose I should start up a grey faction, since I am the only person alive to have had sex with both the Dark Lord and the so called Savior of the Wizarding World; It wouldn't do to favour one lover over the other after all."

Everyone was speechless, and they all looked at him in horror, but Draco didn't care. He was tired of the self-righteous attitude that the Gryffindors adopted when dealing with him; and he decided he wouldn't take it anymore. He stood up, and when he was sure that every eye in the room was trained on him, he spoke.

"Good Morning everyone; I am the leader of the grey faction, Draco Malfoy, and I am now recruiting." His voice boomed. "If you join, you will get a badge that says, 'Safe whichever side wins.' Think about it."

He then turned to Harry. "Potter, just in case you missed it, this is the point where I am supposed to stomp out of the hall with dramatic flair. There is no chance you will stomp out with me is there?" Harry stared at the older boy, truly believing he had lost his mind.

"No chance in hell, Malfoy." Harry said in a somewhat incredulous voice, as if he couldn't believe that he knew someone so incredibly unhinged.

There was sudden laughter from the Ravenclaw table, and everybody turned to see Luna Lovegood trying to control her mirth. "I believe I will join your grey faction Draco.' She declared loudly, shocking everyone especially her Gryffindor friends.

"I will make sure you have a faction badge by evening Lovegood." Draco said with a smile to the strange girl Hogwarts had welcomed in decades; and true to his word, by evening, four people wore silver badges on their left breasts that declared in dark grey words that they would be safe whichever side won.

Draco, Pansy, Blaise, and Luna were the first official members of the grey faction. The next morning, the four of them were captured in all their splendour on the front page of the daily prophet as the self-proclaimed grey faction. Draco had no idea how that Creevy kid had managed to get a picture of them, since they had only met for a few minutes when he gave out the badges, but there was no denying the evidence of his words and many in the Wizarding World had a lot to say about his new faction.

However, mixed in with all the hate mail from both of the pre-existing sides that he got on that day; Draco got three letters from people saying that they would like to join the grey faction and although he had only intended the grey faction as a joke, an idea began to form in his head.

Maybe a neutral grey faction was not such a bad idea, and maybe he wasn't the only person who had been caught up in the middle of this war without wanting to choose a side because he would lose if he joined either. With this thought in mind, he wrote back to Ms Edgecomb, Mr Balthzar, and Mr Slater.

Several letters later, he found that Edgecomb was a History Scholar, Balthazar was an Unspeakable, and Slater was a Vampire. He then sent Marina and Bill to speak to them the moment he was confident they could be trusted. Later when the meetings were finished, both Bill and Marina wrote to tell him that they had secured contracts with the three of them and Draco could not have been happier; especially since he needed someone within the Ministry to authenticate his Unbreakable Ward and the Shield.

The ward would be the most difficult to sell and the most expensive, and although he had no intention of launching it for many more months, probably as far off as a year, there was still a lot of groundwork to be covered.

Uploader's Note: This Has Been A Backup Upload of Chapter 18 of Behind the Fog by Hancock23.