Darien and Duo followed Harry to the great hall for breakfast. Harry took a short cut, so they had an hour to spare before classes. Darien noticed a few people raising an eyebrow at the fact that Duo and Harry were holding hands the entire way. Somehow he knew the Hogwarts rumor mill would be spreading the fact that Harry had a boyfriend by lunch.

Harry groaned when he saw their schedules. At least Duo would join him in his suffering, so it wasn't all bad.

Double Potions, double DADA and Ancient Runes. Harry had been told by the teacher of that class that he would have to pass a test to determine how far behind he was.


The minute he entered the potions lab, he had to stop Duo from inspecting the jars on the shelves. Neville sat next to Duo and Harry. Darien sat next to Hermione.

Heero walked in with Draco, and took to the Slytherin side. Snape gave his son a nod of acknowledgment that Heero returned. It seemed that the potions master accepted Heero was his son and Heero accepted that Snape was his biological father. They could take it from there. It didn't mean that Snape was suddenly going to act all fatherly to Heero, and Heero wouldn't start calling him father.

It just meant they admitted the role each had in the other's lives, and nothing more.

Something Draco found fascinating, as did Hermione.


Harry started on the potion without comment, having Neville cut up the ingredients while having Duo double check the instructions before adding them. Fortunately Duo mentioned the hellabore, which is the only reason Harry's came up with a perfect potion. He would have missed that bit, since the writing was so small.

Much to Neville's shock, his potion was pronounced passable for the first time in years. He made a note to partner up with Harry and Duo from now on, since he usually blew up complicated potions.

Ron on the other hand, was getting no help from Seamus and Dean, who had a problem with the red head since they got together.

Snape walked up to the thick sludge in the cauldron and sneered.

"What exactly do you call this Weasly? Even Longbottom was able to brew this potion!"

"It's the Draught of Peace sir," said Ron through gritted teeth.

"This isn't even test worthy, Weasly! Ten points from Gryffindor."

Snape used a 'scourgify' to clear the cauldron, since the only way Ron would have been able to get any out was to gouge it with a shovel. Ron seethed over the fact that Harry and his boyfriend had helped the potions disaster brew a passable potion while he was stuck with a failing grade.

Which is probably what prompted the exchange in the hallway after potions.


"You think you're special, don't you freak?" said Ron. He was talking to Duo, but it was also aimed at Harry. He knew full well his former friend loathed that word more than mudblood.

"Excuse me?" said Duo, turning to him fully.

Draco was behind Ron, and was watching the whole exchange.

"You must think you're hot stuff since you're shagging the scarred freak," sneered Ron.

Harry saw red, and pushed past Duo. His eyes were harder than the gems they resembled as his wand was out and prepared to hex Ron.

Draco and Heero watched this in interest.

"You are a spiteful, pathetic shade of a wizard, who has been lagging behind me and Hermione for years. The only redeeming quality about you is your chess strategies. You have an irrational fear of spiders, and hate those different from you. I would rather have Malfoy as my best friend than you, you pathetic worm of a boy."

Harry proceeded to rip into Ron, naming each of his problems, paying particular attention to his hygiene and table manners, not caring that he now had an audience of most of the Slytherin house. The second Harry had realized his preference and realized Ron would hate him for it, he had cataloged each of the other boy's faults just in case of this scenario.

Draco was loving every minute of this, because Harry was willingly giving him ammo against the annoying Weasel.

When Harry was done, Ron, red faced in anger and embarrassment, tried to shoot a curse at Harry.

He never got the chance, as Snape said loudly "Detention Weasly! And twenty points from Gryffindor for hexing in the corridors!"

Harry looked at Snape, who was smirking.


During DADA, Harry found himself sandwiched between Draco and Duo. Draco had a smirk which implied that the cat got the canary, cream and the dog took the fall for good measure. In his opinion, today was a very, very good day.

The toad walked in, and everything went to hell.

Harry now loathed the color pink. And the walls...dear lord were those tacky kitten plates that moved? The doilies and frills made him want to gag.

He snuck a glance at the others, and saw a very interesting reaction in Heero. Heero looked quite panicky, like a deer caught in the headlights. He was quite ready to bolt at the first chance.

Umbitch (as Harry privately called her already. Something just made him itch to hex her.) waltzed in, and used that grating voice of hers.

As soon as she announced the course aims, he gave her his best glare (which had been improved thanks to Heero and Wu Fei) suddenly her eyes were on him and him alone.

"Mr. Potter, why do you not have your required text?"

"I threw it in the fireplace the minute I realized it held no useful information pertaining to the subject matter. It may be useful for wet behind the ears first years, but as someone preparing to take their OWLs, it would only hold me back."

Harry was rather proud of his Ravenclaw worthy speech.

"Mr. Potter, it is not up to you to determine what is and is not useful for this class," said Umbridge in her simpering voice.

Harry glared at her.

"Exactly when do you plan to actually teach us something? Your course aims have nothing about correct wand movements, or proper pronunciation of spells."

"My dear boy, whyever would you need such things? If you have a comprehensive knowledge of how to use spells, then practice is not necessary."

Suddenly many pairs of eyes were looking at her in disbelief.

"Practice is always necessary to prevent catastrophic failure."

Harry was almost tempted to bring up Voldemort, but something told him that she was waiting for him to say something about the Dark Lord. Besides, as far as he was concerned, the Dark Lord was their problem to clean up, not his.

Harry began to cite instances when improperly spoken spells had caused disastrous results, and Umbridge grew redder and redder.

When she began to say that no spells would be cast this year, Harry grabbed his books and left in disgust. Umbridge seized the chance to give him detention by saying loudly, "Where do you think you're going, Mr. Potter?"

Harry gave her a dark glare.

"I intend to spend this period doing actually work. Since it is very clear that I will not be learning anything worth my time this year in Defense, I shall be studying somewhere else."

"You will receive detention unless you sit down now Mr. Potter!" Umbridge said smugly.

Harry gave her a cold chuckle.

"Go ahead and try, you simpering hag of a toad. Did you parents try to transfigure you into a human only to screw it up? You'll have to catch me to give me detention," smirked Harry.

Draco was never more proud to have recently befriended Harry than he was at that moment. Harry was showing his true Slytherin nature for everyone to see. He loved it.

Duo later found Harry in the library buried under a pile of Ancient Runes books. Harry was double checking his self study before he took that test.


Harry went with Duo into the class. Wu Fei was there next to Hermione. The teacher handed them all three papers, and they had to do the best they could in thirty minutes.

Harry was quite proud that he finished it in fifteen. The teacher raised an eyebrow before having him sit next to Hermione. She had the best grade in the class, though now she would have some serious competition.

Duo and Wu Fei were having a bit of trouble, but managed to get half of them right.

They had no idea that self study with Harry was enough to put them with the rest of the class, or that the test they had been given was from the NEWTs exam. The fact that Harry managed to make a decent grade on that meant that his self study would have been enough for him to pass his Ancient Runes tests with flying colors.

But the teacher wasn't about to let him know that until Christmas.


Harry spent the rest of the week either hiding in the deeper parts of the library, which to his shock had books which should most definitely have been thrown in the restricted section, or avoiding Kate, since she had been turned into the current Quidditch captain.

She seemed to take offense that Harry was avoiding the tryouts because of Umbridge. When he explained his reasoning she calmed a bit, but was still annoyed.

Which is probably why he didn't know until it was too late that his brother had made the team, barely. Darien, in an attempt to get closer to his newly found younger brother, had tried out for the team.

Much to his disbelief Duo had also gotten on the team, as a reserve beater. Apparently the twins had decided to make him their heir as the power player.

Another interesting note, all five pilots had made their house teams. Quatre took over for Cedric, Wu Fei was a chaser, and Heero was now the Slytherin keeper.

Surprisingly enough, despite being muggle-raised, Heero was the second most popular boy in his house. Even though he didn't support the Dark Lord, and made it very clear that he would never become one of the Death Eaters. When one of the soon-to-be DE demanded to know why Heero refused to join the Dark Lord despite being the son of a Death Eater, his answer surprised them.

He said "Why would I join a side lead by someone who can't even kill a half trained boy who runs in without thinking? He's too inefficient."


While Harry breezed through his Transfiguration class, enjoyed introducing Darien to Professor Flitwick, avoiding Sprout for good reason, and snored through History of Magic, his week was only brought down when he went to Care of Magical Creatures.

Hagrid was missing, and their sub had a clear fixation on unicorns.

Much to his surprise, a pair of unicorns came up to him and Draco both. Darien went to pet one, and found himself surrounded by the entire herd.

According to the teacher, Unicorns would only approach females or those with Pure hearts. (Or in Darien's case being an extreme animal magnet.)

Harry would have laughed before at the thought of Draco being pure hearted. But after he snapped at Ron in the potions corridor, he suddenly found himself with a friendlier Slytherin house. After he went after Umbridge using Slytherin tactics, he found himself confronted with a majority of the snakes giving him calculating, thoughtful looks. Not once had any Slytherins come after him or even called him scarface.

He loved it. He fully admitted to Draco that the one who hated Slytherins had always been Ron, who started the fight between him and the snake house. He personally had no problem with Slytherins, since the hat almost made him one first year.

Much to his shock, after admitted that Draco had given him the password to their dorm.

"In case you ever want to ditch the Weasel," had been his exact words.

Harry had been thrilled to have the password to a dorm which he had inadvertently broken into second year at Ron's goading that Draco was the heir of Slytherin.

He ended up using the password to drag Draco into the library for a study session with Wu Fei and Duo over Ancient Runes homework.

Not that the boy minded, since he was able to learn more about Wu Fei's family history in the bargain. Harry honestly had no idea that the reason Draco was a pure blood maniac was because family history fascinated him.

Though this new knowledge did make his odd comments about bloodlines more tolerable to take. Embarrassed, Harry realized he knew nothing about his brother or his father's side of the family. So one Sunday night before Hogsmeade weekend, he asked his brother and Duo how their childhood was like.

(He knew full well that he would have to tell more about himself, but that was a small price to pay.)

He ended up with tales of mercenaries and street rats. He on the other hand fudged details about his home life, and somehow he knew by the look in his boyfriend's face that he didn't fool him for a minute.

(This is why he was hijacked by not only Darien and Duo, but the twins as well.)

Once Darien heard exactly how Harry's life had been before he learned he was a wizard, he vowed to get back.

Personally Harry couldn't wait for the holidays, and for snow. He had something diabolical planned that would appeal to any prankster. It involved snowmen, and lots of them.