Chapter 3 Starting with the Potions assignment

They had been given the assignment already during their first class this morning and everyone had been a little surprised when Slughorn had asked, which of the students already had a partner and Harry had raised his hand and said,
"I'm working with Draco Malfoy."

The rest of the day went easily. Harry was only a little nervous in the evening when he was walking down the stairs to meet Malfoy in the third floor.

Malfoy was already there, he had his school bag on his left shoulder, just like Harry had his.

"Let's go," Harry said to him already from halfway up the stairs and turned around to go back up to fourth floor. He glanced over his shoulder, Malfoy was following him slowly so Harry waited for him on the top of the stairs.

"Are we going to the new Room of Requirement?" Malfoy asked him as soon as he caught up with Harry.

"Yeah," Harry answered and they walked silently along the corridor until they reached a new part of the wall on their left side.

"It's not as effective as the former one but I believe it will give us at least a room where we can work and hopefully it will give us all the necessary equipment for the potion too."

Malfoy nodded and Harry started to pace back and forth in front of the wall; we need a place where we can work with our potions assignment…

The door appeared soon. Harry looked at Malfoy, who looked back and raised his left eyebrow a little. It occurred to Harry Malfoy was excited about this. It was visible in the faint glimmer Malfoy's eyes held, they were very dark grey now because of the dim lighting on the corridor.

Harry put his hand on the door handle and pushed, he had no idea what to expect to find in the room.

The door opened but the room inside was completely dark so Harry pulled out his wand and pointed it inside the room, "Lumos".

"That's useless, let me," Malfoy muttered and pushed past Harry in the darkness, Harry heard him mutter something just as the whole room seemed to burst into light.
Harry's eyebrows shot up as he followed Malfoy in the room. It had everything they needed, it seemed.
There was a large window and it was raining outside again. In front of the window there was a working table big enough for both of them, with only two chairs.

There were counters on every side of the room filled with all sorts of cauldrons, vials, scales, books, parchment, quills and a lot of empty bottles.

"This will do," Malfoy declared and marched to the working table, threw his bag on it and began pulling quills and parchment out of his bag.

Harry looked at the ceiling and muttered, "What is that light?"

Malfoy looked at Harry like he had asked something stupid, "A sun. Don't you know what a sun is?"

Harry walked to the working table, sat down opposite Malfoy and frowned at the Slytherin, "I haven't seen a wizard pull out an artificial sun from their wand before."

Malfoy shrugged, now his eyes looked bright grey in the bright light of the room. Harry was vaguely reminded of a delicate mist in a field on an early morning but threw the thought out of his head deciding it didn't matter what colour Malfoy's eyes were.

After they had been looking at each other for a couple of minutes Harry bit his lip and asked,

"Do you want to be our team leader?"

Malfoy blinked, "A team leader? What does that include?"

"Well… I thought you're a lot better in potions than I am so I thought you might want to plan what we are supposed to do and… if you want to boss me around, just tell me what I need to do."

Harry said and leaned further back in his chair, trying to find the most comfortable position.

"Alright," Malfoy muttered and then pushed a parchment over the table so Harry could read it, he continued, "I actually took the liberty of planning already."

Harry nodded and looked at the parchment, "Okay, good. Where do we start?"

Harry looked up from the parchment and realised Malfoy's eyes were glimmering with enthusiasm,

"I divided our potion making in different parts. First part of course is getting the ingredients. Some of them we can steal from Slughorn's room and the rest we have to go and search from the grounds of Hogwarts but I think I already know where some of them might be located. We have three weeks to work with the potion. I figured we could do it faster than that. If we focus on getting the ingredients during this week, we can start with the potion next Monday. The only problem is if we get it done in less than two weeks, how do we preserve it so it won't go bad?"

Harry blinked, he had only taken a quick look at their assignment but hadn't even really thought about it yet. He was surprised Malfoy was so keen on doing the assignment, and also that the Slytherin had already put so much time on it. It was almost unfair Harry hadn't done a thing yet. So he said so,

"I uhm… I hadn't even looked at the assignment yet. I think all you said sounds really good. Since I'm quite… not so good, just tell me what I should do and I'll do it but I think… I think I might owe you one after we've made this."

Malfoy nodded, "It might go to that, yes. Although this isn't an easy potion to make and that's why I thought we could try to make it during the first two weeks so we still have an extra week if we screw it up."

Harry nodded and tried to smile a little, it came out very hesitant, "Yes. Good. I can volunteer to try and find out a preservation spell."

Malfoy answered, "Oh, well… that's fine but you have to remember to select one with delicate magic, do you know what that means?"

Harry shook his head and Malfoy said, "Usually you shouldn't use magic when you're doing potions and that includes all the stages of the potion making so you need to find a preservation charm that's designed for potions, so that it's delicate enough not to ruin it. If you do find a good spell, I want you to take the whole book with you and show it to me so I can check it's okay."

Harry nodded and felt like an idiot. It seemed like he'd forgotten even the tiniest bits of information relating to potions making during the time he hadn't been in Hogwarts.
It felt weird Malfoy wasn't commentating on it. actually he wasn't mocking Harry about anything.

Harry sighed, "Alright. What else do I need to know?"

"You need to know a lot but I don't expect you to remember everything so I think it's best if we take one day at a time."

Harry smiled at him, why was Malfoy making everything this easy for him?

"Sounds great," Harry said, Malfoy looked down on the parchment in front of him, like he didn't know how to react to Harry's smile.

The Slytherin muttered, "I hope we can get the ingredients as fast as possible so I suggest we work with this task every evening this week. How does that sound?"

"That sounds… great, too." Harry said, still smiling.
By far he had never had this easy with any potion before. He couldn't have chosen a better partner for the work.

Malfoy muttered, "You said the other day you thought people might think we won't be able to work together and it might give us an advantage. How would you feel about working out of their sight? Like if we pretend we're not actually putting any effort on this and meet only on the evenings so they have no clue about what we're doing?"

Harry thought about it before saying anything. He didn't know why Malfoy would want it go like that so he asked,

"I think we could do that although you just made me curious. If you and I manage to get along, why don't you want anyone to know about it? Are you ashamed of working with me?"

Malfoy looked at him, "I'm not sure if we can manage to work together so I thought it might be easier for you to drop out if people hadn't seen us even trying."

Harry fell silent. He couldn't think of anything to say. This was the first thing Malfoy said today which felt like an insult, and it stung.

"Oh," He finally muttered, then added, "I honestly thought this might go pretty well. We're doing fine right now. Don't you think so?"

Malfoy shrugged.

Harry said, "Well… I'm sorry if you think so. I'll do the best I can to make this go as easily as possible. And I do owe you one if we survive with this."

Malfoy didn't say anything so they sat in silence; Harry stared at the parchment Malfoy had written to him. It described all the different parts of the process carefully; some of the sentences were so simple Harry thought Malfoy might think Harry was an idiot. It made him smile a little bit.

It also made Harry ask, "Honestly, do you feel so bad about this? What am I doing wrong so far?"

Malfoy shrugged again and didn't answer. Harry looked at the Slytherin's face, who was biting his lower lip in concentration as he was reading a potions book. As the teeth released the bruised lip, Harry could see the small scratch where his teeth had scraped the skin.

"Do you want me to heal that for you?" Harry asked and Malfoy looked up from the parchment, asking,

"What?"

Harry swallowed, feeling embarrassed, "Your lip. I could heal it for you."

Malfoy stared at him like he'd just seen a ghost, "No."

Harry stared at the boy's expression and didn't know where that reaction came from, "Why not?"

Malfoy frowned, "I don't like people doing spells on me. It'll heal on its own. It's just a scratch, don't worry about it."

"Okay," Harry muttered but kept shifting his eyes between Malfoy's lip and his grey eyes which were dark grey in some sort of irritation.

Malfoy said, "It's really late, I think we should call it a night. Shall we meet in front of this room from now on?"

Harry folded the parchment Malfoy had written him and put it in his bag, "Yeah, we could meet every evening the same time, would eleven be alright?"

Malfoy asked, "Why not ten?"

Harry shrugged, "I think there might be quite a few people using this room as a snogging place and they usually come here in the evenings so I thought the later the better."

Malfoy's eyes glittered in amusement, "Oh. So you're here snogging at ten and then you have to get out before eleven to show up again looking all innocent?"

Harry blinked, he was too confused to answer right away but then he said, "I'm not snogging with anyone."

He almost felt like saying he was gay just to shut Malfoy up but didn't want the whole school to know about it just yet. Harry was pretty certain Malfoy was gay too, he'd heard rumours so many times it couldn't be just talking without some fact on it too.

Malfoy rolled his eyes and stood up, threw his bag on his shoulder and said, "Well, I'll meet you here tomorrow then."

"Wait," Harry said and stood up too, "I'll come with you."

They exited the room and departed their ways on the top of the staircase from which Malfoy would go down and Harry would head for the next staircase up.

"Good night, Malfoy," Harry said when he was about to turn around and leave the boy. Malfoy said,

"Don't get all emotional on me, Potter. Just because I've let you slack off by far doesn't mean I'm going to let it happen every night."

Harry raised his eyebrows; Malfoy smirked and left down the stairs. When he was about half way down, Harry shouted after him; "I'm not getting emotional!"

He wasn't sure but he though he heard Malfoy snort.

He clenched his jaw and started climbing to Gryffindor tower. He still thought the evening had went easily, even more so than he could've imagined.

He fell asleep immediately.