HP : THE TRAUMA AND CHOICE

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The student population overall was, of course, delighted even though their robes and clothes, skin and hair were all smeared with ink. Ron was ecstatic. Even Neville looked pleased with their efforts. Harry made sure to take lots of pictures of everyone.

"Harry!" Fred exclaimed as he wrote a list of rude words on the wall with one blue fingertip. He was grinning behind a purple mustache. "Excellent prank!"

George, drawing a quidditch game involving stick figures with one purple fingertip, cheerfully added, "Well worth our investment!"

He had a blue beard.

"I don't know what you're talking about" Harry laughed as he ran orange fingertips through his hair.

Lee Jordan looked up from writing an Ode to Gryffindor on one wall of the corridor in pink ink. It looked surprisingly like a dirty limerick involving quidditch.

"Right. Our mistake." And grinned so widely that Harry could see all of his teeth.

Draco was not nearly so amused by the prank.

"Look at my clothes!" He wailed. "My hair! My face!"

Harry squinted at Draco. Aside from stripes of sunshine yellow ink in his hair, some smudges of it on the tip of his pointed chin and some smudged red fingerprints on his left hand, Draco was pristine. Harry, despite academically knowing that he was a few years older than Draco, still felt an overwhelming urge to smear Draco with his orange inked fingertips. It would be especially awesome if he could somehow draw a beard and glasses on Draco.

Harry very carefully put his hands behind his back and grinned. "Draco, you're the cleanest person I've seen today."

Draco glared. "I have ink all over me!"

Faster than even Harry could register, Harry's fingertip darted out to poke Malfoy's cheek.

Draco yelped and stumbled backwards. His hands automatically rose to paw at his face but stopped a hairsbreadth away. There, on Draco's high, pointy cheek, was a single blue smudge.

Draco's eyes narrowed. "You're going to pay for that Potter!"

The n he lunged at Harry, fingers spread wide. The next few minutes were filled with a fearsome duel in which both boys tried to smear as much ink on the other person as they could. Afterwards they collapsed in a sweaty, ink-stained heap and laughed until Harry's sides hurt.

"It'll come off, right Harry?"

"I expect it probably will."

"Probably? If you've stained my face for life, I'll kill you!"

Harry laughed. "How should I know how long this ink supposed to last?"

Draco glared at him. "I'm not blind or stupid. Prat. I know what you've been reading."

Harry rolled his eyes. "I'll remember that for next time."

"Harry!"

"If I were forced to guess – and I'm not saying that I know anything about this prank – I'd think that it will eventually wear off. It's not a tattoo. Provided that you don't keep touching whatever got you inky in the first place. Or anything else that might make you inky again."

"Eventually? Potter! I can't go around looking like this!"

"Why not? It's fun!"

"I'm a Malfoy! We don't look like this!"

And that might actually explain most of Draco's life in either timeline – it was a Malfoy thing.

Harry shrugged. "So use a few charms."

It was a completely worthless piece of advice since they would not learn those charms until the middle of fifth year. Harry had trouble imagining the older Slytherins helping the younger ones.

"To get the marks off?"

"To hide them."

Draco hopped to his feet and with a final incensed glare stormed off. Harry grinned at his retreating back.

"See you at dinner!"

Draco was not at dinner. None of the Slytherins below Sixth year were seen in the Great Hall. Apparently they either had pressing House business or were protesting their less than pristine appearance. Interestingly all of the Slytherins that attended dinner in the Great Hall were using charms to conceal their ink marks.

Of course the professors looked into who might be responsible for the prank. Although Fred and George were their original suspects, the twins eventually persuaded the professors that they were not the ones responsible much to their open disappointment. It was their disappointment more than anything else that persuaded the professors that the infamous Weasley twins were not responsible. But if not them then who?

Harry left Gryffindor Tower early the next morning. He made his way down to the bare stretch of wall that led to the Slytherin Common Room and loitered across from it until the first Slytherin seventh years came out. Harry pushed off of the wall behind him.

"Hey, can you ask Draco Malfoy, Theodore Nott, and Daphne Greengrass to come out?"

They eyed him suspiciously but one of them shrugged and called back into the common room.

"Hey! You! Nott is it? That first year Gryffindor you pal around with is out here!" Harry grinned. "He wants a word with you and Malfoy and Greengrass!"

Then the seventh years ignored him entirely and went to breakfast. The entire exchange took place without a single shout or a leery glare. It was… nice.

Things weren't yet tense enough in this timeline where Slytherins were immediately suspicious of the admittedly very real possibility of bodily harm from anyone not in Slytherin House. Plus, the rest of the Snake House was used to seeing him with the first year Slytherins.

The three first years he had requested dragged out through the entrance to the Slytherin common room with Crabbe and Goyle in tow. Harry bit back a sigh. It was hard to do nice things for Crabbe if only because he knew that Crabbe would kill Malfoy, who was his friend, if given half a chance. The fact that Crabbe was eleven and had yet to do anything terribly unpleasant much less evil was unimportant when it came to how Harry felt about the Slytherin. He could sort of forgive Malfoy, Goyle, Nott and Greengrass and put aside the things they had not yet done if only because none of them had ever been truly evil in the future. But it seemed that there was no way that he could forgive or put aside Crabbe's as yet undone future actions.

All five Slytherins glared at Harry.

"What?" Nott demanded shortly.

Harry grinned. Draco's face was still streaked from their earlier rough housing, Daphne's face was all bright green, and everyone else had an interesting collection of their own marks.

Harry smirked. "Be nice or I won't do the charms for you."

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Want to know what happens next? 100+ advanced chapters await you on Patreon! Be the first to read what others will have to wait for. Join the community and read ahead today!

(P).(A).(T).(R).(E).(O).(N)

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