Detention was hell tonight, and it wasn't just the heat.

The trophy room had never been the high point of my less than extensive geographical knowledge of Hogwarts; the isolation and stillness of the place was eerie, not comforting. Lifeless shelves holding the glory of our predecessors, dusty plaques which never gleamed anymore. I scrubbed at one with my rag. The name below was faint, the engraving rusty. I didn't read it.

Tonight was one of those nights when the humidity came with the heat. The room was ventilated, and a breeze blew through it, but it was sweaty, warm air that followed in its backwind. It had a terrible feel of lingering dampness. Bathe my window, make it flow, Melt it as the ice will go... only I wasn't really thinking of flowering plants. I tossed the rug on to a shelf and stood near the window. The moon was bright tonight. I thought of Heather, alone in the girl's dorm. I wondered what she was doing. I smiled. Hell, I knew what she was doing. I conjured up a mental picture of her, hand creeping softly southward under the yellow blankets, red hair falling over the pillows, mouth open slightly at the touch of her own fingers. I wondered if her eyes were shut. Mine were, which is why I didn't see the door opening.

"Had enough, Flinch-Fletchley?"

My head snapped up, happy thoughts scattering. I tried to make the voice out.

"Draco Malfoy. What are you doing here?"

"Serving my detention."

"Filch didn't mention you were coming."

He smiled.

"Yeah, he's uncommunicative like that."

Then he stepped real close, backing me into the wall. He grabbed my chin and smiled, a slow, cold smile that made me tremble.

"Are you afraid, Justin? Are you afraid of me?"

I held his gaze for a moment, feeling his fingers on my jaw, his other arm brushing my sleeve. And then his expression changed. I was pressed against him, back to the wall, one of his legs between both of mine. I knew he could feel me hard against his thigh. I didn't move, didn't breathe.

"My, my, my," he whispered, close by my ear, "someone's been hard at work." And then-oh, god-and then he pressed harder against me, moving against me, gently, almost lovingly.

"You like this, Justin?" he said, his voice caressing my ear like a blade. "You like this? Are you going to come, Justin? Do you want to?"

I nodded, breathing hard now, pressing back despite myself. I could feel him through his robes and jeans, excited, too, and I ran my hands up his back and into his hair as his hand moved down, into the waistband of my pants, and held me. I gasped.

"This isn't pretend, Justin. Are you thinking about your girlfriend? Pretending it isn't me?" His fingers were running all over my head, down, up, down, up, again and again and driving me crazy while he whispered in my ear, tongue tickling my earlobe. "You know that's not true, don't you?" Then he squeezed, hard, and I came, fear and desire making my knees weak.

He looked down at me, leaning against the wall, eyes wet. "I did that to you." he said, and left.

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Dumbledore knew most of the things that were going on in the school. Most things he tried not to, after a while, but some things just slipped through sometimes, and sometimes he felt genuine anxiousness for the parties concerned.

Justin Flinch-Fletchley was a project of his, a kid he liked to watch out for, a kid he liked. A kid, that is, in the most general sense of the word, or maybe a sort of habitual one after-what was it-six years now? Habitual kid. Forgetfulness was a sign of old-age, Nick used to say. Incoherence he hadn't mentioned. Well, Dumbledore knew what Dumbledore meant, that was good enough for him.

Here, though, was a messy, messy Pensieve. Every now and then there was a fleeting image of Justin on the streets, which melted away into an older-looking Justin, holding Heather Finn's hand, laughing with Heather. A year now, and nothing had broken, no dams had burst. The poetic soul was in check. And so Dumbledore waited, patiently.

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He'd been avoiding me since that night, I could tell. It was actually quite funny, the way he'd duck around the corner when he saw me coming, or pretend to be deep in conversation when I walked into Herbology. I saw him sneak some time off with Heather.

He wasn't playing hard to get. I was quite sure, in fact, that he wanted me the hell away, but the more he ducked, the more I wanted to play the game. And so it happened that I found out he and some other sixth-years gave tuition to some first-years in the evenings sometimes, for Hufflepuff kids with Muggle parentage who were uncomfortable with leaving their 'normal' education behind. And so it happened that I walked in on one of his poetry classes, late in the evening in one of the unused Transfiguration classrooms. He was holding a book and a stack of papers, his students listening with rapt attention.

"O stand, stand at the window As the tears scald and start; You shall love your crooked neighbour With your crooked heart."

The last two lines he said as he watched me walk across the room, voice quieting with every syllable. I took a seat near the back and sat, eyebrows raised at his recitation. 'Don't mind me', I mouthed, and after he'd regained his composure, he went on, discussing imagery and Merlin knows what other stuff these fluffs were so fond of. The students were pretty into it. They were asking questions, and taking an awfully long time, and I was beginning to wonder if this had been such a good idea after all.

"Justin? Wasn't Auden gay?"

I sat up. It was a small, dark-haired boy in the front row.

"He was," said Justin, remarkably calmly, "but homosexuality was condemned by the standards of his religious upbringing. And it was a crime in England at the time."

"How did he come out?" Me.

He watched me for a while. I put on my best hey-I'm-just-into-the-poetry face.

"Well, he moved to Berlin for a year. It was a much looser society there, and he learned to live with his ... orientation." Then he addressed the class. "I don't want you to see homosexual references in all of his work. Auden was influenced by a lot of things, not just personal. Political, scientific, even medical-a lot of his early work was influenced by his relationship with his father, who was a physician. There's a tendency to see subtext in a lot of writing by gay authors, I don't want that narrowing your interpretation of Auden."

The class veered off on a Marxist tangent. I played with the carpet frill. After almost an hour of this, Justin finally sent the first-years off to bed. As they cleared out of the classroom, I walked over to his desk. He didn't look up at me, continued to pack his bag.

"Hey." I said.

He didn't respond.

"How'd you get so good at handling kids?"

He mumbled something that sounded a bit like 'prefect'.

"Yeah, I thought so. You're not all totalitarian bastard with them, though. It's cool."

He stayed silent, I stood there, just watching him. After a bit more shuffling, he looked up.

"What do you want, Draco?"

"Your mouth, mostly."

Justin groaned and slumped against the wall.

"Look, I wasn't-I should explain about that night. I was thinking about-"

"Heather, yeah, I know." I squinted at him. "Hey, I'm not proposing. I just thought, you know, if it was good for you...well. What the fuck, you know?"

Justin raised his eyebrows, but didn't say anything. I walked over, and put one hand in his hair, running fingers through the softness of it.

"Kneel down," I whispered in his ear.

"No."

I held his shoulders and pushed him down, onto his knees. I was hard already, and he leaned forward, looking as though he didn't quite know what he was doing. He glanced up at my face.

"Draco, no. I-"

"Yes." I hissed. Whether that was a reply or whether it was his breath through my robes I didn't know, but I figured the ambiguity lent some kind of mystery to the whole thing for him. It worked; he unzipped me and just knelt there for a while, looking scared and hot and unsure. Then his tongue came out, slowly, softly, and he gave an experimental lick.

I groaned and pushed inside of his mouth. Then I pushed in harder.

"Faster, Justin."

He made this noise around me, vibrated in his throat and inside of me.

"You like it when I say your name, huh? Like that, Justin?"

He nodded frantically, sucking so hard now I thought he'd take my skin right off. I thrusted in a final time, and came in his throat. Then I sank down to the floor beside him.

"You okay?" I said, after a bit of silence.

"Yeah. Just...thinking." He sort of chuckled.

"About?"

"'Come to me in my dreams, and then by day I shall be well again, for then the night will more than pay the hopeless longing of the day.'"

"Right."

He looked sheepish.

"That wasn't a dream."

"I know. I don't really wish it was. I just thought it fit."

I turned to look at him, trying to make out his expression. He looked right back at me, no guilt or reproach on his face. I smiled.

"'Hopeless longing', hey?"