Emperor Potter - H/R - PG
Title : Emperor Potter Author : shocfix For : ciorstaidh Pairing : Harry/Ron Prompt : A Place To Hide OR The Flaw In The Plan (both are chapter titles from DH) Rating : PG Words : 605
Emperor Potter **** Harry skidded down the final bank and under cover of the trees and grunted as Ron rolled on top of him.
“Get off me,” he grunted.
“Thought you like me on top?” Ron asked, scrambling up onto hands and knees and peering out into the darkness. “I think we lost them.”
“I like you on top in bed,” Harry admitted. “Just not in a ditch, in full dress uniform.”
“Well, it wasn’t my idea to wear full dress uniform on a mission,” Ron protested.
“Well, it wasn’t supposed to look like a mission, it was supposed to look like a cocktail party,” Harry said.
“Which is why I left my bag in the trees, before we walked up to the house,” Ron said. “So no one could scan us and find the emergency Portkey.”
“Well, I think that was a better risk than having to run a mile across parkland, in these full dress boots, just to get back to the emergency Portkey.”
Ron grunted.
“So,” Harry prompted him. “Where is the bag?”
“Right near here,” Ron assured him. “I hid it behind a white stone.”
They stumbled around in the dark woods, finding several white stones, and Ron became more and more upset as each one failed to reveal his bag.
“It was right here,” he moaned. “Harry, it really was, I swear.”
Harry undid the top button of his heavy dress robes.
“Look, forget it,” he said. “We’ll walk through the woods, Dissaparate once we’re beyond the wards.”
“But, Harry…”
“We’ll be fine, c’mon.”
They trudged deeper and darker into the woods, their robes catching on twisted branches until Harry stopped and swore and ripped open the rest of his clasps. “I think we can be forgiven for being out of uniform,” he muttered.
Ron struggled out of his own robes and used them to mop his sweaty face.
Harry stretched up and hung his robes from branches crossing the narrow path. “That should freak them out, if they manage to follow us,” he said.
“Clever,” Ron said.
“’Course,” Harry said. “My boyfriend wouldn’t date an idiot.”
Ron laughed and wrapped an arm round Harry’s shoulders, pressing a kiss to his temple; Harry leant into his embrace and took a steadying breath.
“Right,” he said, rolling his shoulders in his sweat soaked shirt.
Somewhere above the trees the moon had risen, but the thick foliage blocked all but the most determined moonbeams, and they stumbled down the overgrown path, each reaching out to steady the other when they tripped.
A stream trickled across the trail and Ron sank gratefully onto a rock, removed his heeled dress boots and plunged his aching feet into the cool water.
“Oh, bugger me, that feels good,” he moaned.
“Hardly the place,” Harry said, sitting beside him.
They wiggled their toes in companionable silence for a while.
“I’m really sorry…”
“Shut up!” Harry interrupted. “This is nothing, after everything we’ve been through. We’ll be fine.”
It proved impossible to cram their wet, bruised, swollen feet back into the heavy boots that were impervious to any Transfiguration attempts. In the end, they ripped their dress shirts into strips and bound them round their feet, and they stumbled on.
Time blurred and the path twisted and turned and Ron screamed as he was attacked by something unseen and large and flapping and clinging. Harry instantly went to his rescue and dragged it off him and they both lay on the ground, panting and shaking, and staring at Harry’s dress robes, strung above the path hours earlier, to frighten any pursuers.
“Oh, fuck,” Ron gasped. “Harry, we’ve been going in circles.”
**** I’m really sorry about this, sweetheart, and I freaked myself out and had to stop before anyone died.