Apart from receiving a very, very petrifying lecture from Hermione, accompanied by random nods and approving noises from Ron, Harry could say that his morning was quite pleasant. A slight pain in his chest and a horrendous headache kept him preoccupied for the first few lessons, a nice distraction from the voices.

Potter, however, couldn't help but distract himself with glancing at his saviour, Malfoy, every so often and just thinking what the blonde boy could be thinking at the moment. He was wondering so intensively that he missed the teacher's signal for dismissal and had to be dragged away by the elbow.

Some time around lunch the voice crept back up his ears and Harry found he had to excuse himself from his friends to relieve himself with a quick Incendio here and there. Once he reunited with the small group he was asked a mountain of questions about whether he is alright and whether he was feeling sick.

"Does your head still hurt Harry?" Potter nodded in response to Hermione's voice. "Well, maybe you should go to the infirmary then. I'm sure Miss Pomfrey has a remedy."

"Thanks Hermione, but I think I'll be alright." He lied. "Besides, it's becoming more bearable now, I think it will be gone in an hour or so."

"Fine, but if it prevails then promise me you'll go, okay?"

"Sure." Harry ran his hand through his hair and noticed the back of Draco's hair in the distance. Before he could even start thinking about anything related, a ginger girl popped out in front of him. "Oh, hi Ginny."

"Hi Harry." The girl's cheeks have taken on a slightly redder shade. "How are you feeling?"

How many more times are they going to ask me this question, Harry questioned himself in his head. "I'm good, how about you?"

"Same…" Ginny was clearly looking for something else to say but failed and hurried off. "Well, talk to you later."

"Yeah."

Harry had a crush on Ginny for over a year now and yet, at this very moment, he couldn't muster up any feelings for her anymore. It was as if she was just another person in the crowd, insignificant, a stranger, even. He hated the fact that he felt this way, but at the same time he was glad that he drove her away, because that meant less questions and fewer people worrying about him.

xxx

The rest of the day passed similarly, with young Potter trying very hard to ignore both the conversations his friends were having and the conversations his own thoughts were having with each other. Thankfully, he was always the quiet one so no one found it suspicious that he hasn't participated in the chat much, and didn't take much notice when he slipped out of the armchair he was sitting in, at quarter to eight, to go down to the Dungeons.

He didn't know why he was so excited about going down there. He didn't fancy potions at all, Snape wasn't exactly his favourite teacher and Draco Malfoy was definitely not the person he wanted to spend his evening with. And yet, he was happy, or rather, as happy as he could be in the state that he was at the moment.

Harry pushed open the door to the Potions classroom which let out a slight creek, causing two pairs of eyes to focus on him.

"Mr. Potter."

"Sir."

The boy saw his partner in crime at the front of the room and decided to situate himself as far away as possible, settling at a table in the far left corner. Professor Snape stared blankly at him for a moment.

"Potter, don't you know this practical is a group one?"

"No, sir, you forgot to mention that."

"Well then, now that it has been said, I'm sure you will have no trouble locating the rest of your group." Snape took out his wand and wrote out the instructions on the board while Harry approached the front desk. He exchanged cold glances with Malfoy, gritting his teeth together to stop himself from saying something stupid. "You have two hours to complete your potion. When you're done, bottle it up and leave it on my desk." The black robe danced around as the professor retreated to his office. "And don't forget to clean up after yourselves."

It seemed as if both boys were waiting for the other to say something other than 'Pass me the knife' or 'Stir it clockwise'. In his distraction, Harry couldn't help but do the wrong thing most of the time – squeezing instead of cutting up, stirring thrice instead of twice, putting the ingredients into the cauldron in the wrong order…

"Potter, let me do this step." Malfoy pulled his wand out from his trousers and stirred the mixture with it, adding octopus powder. Harry has never seen the boy so focused in his life. "I'm pretty sure you would have mucked it up and then all our work would go to waste."

The brunette narrowed his eyebrows. "What makes you so confident that you're doing it correctly, Malfoy?"

"Well, I did get an Outstanding in my O.W.L." The boy kept on stirring until he was satisfied with the colour and consistency of the mixture. "Now we have to wait for five minutes for the powder to set."

"I thought you weren't good in anything apart from putting people down." Harry snorted.

"Don't underestimate me, Potter." Draco twirled his wand with his fingers, catching it before it nearly fell to the ground. "Say, Potter, we're not so different, you and I."

"Pardon me?" The brunette was quite certain that he has misheard what the other boy has said just now. "In what way are we similar?"

"People expect great things from both of us, you know?" The boy's long, thin fingers tapped a short rhythm on the top of the desk. He then looked Harry straight in the eyes. "But one of us will have to fail for the other one to succeed."

"You sounded like Voldemort just there." The prophecy played itself in Harry's mind, over and over again, each time becoming louder and squeakier, until no more words could be made out. The brunette grabbed his head in between his hands and let out a stifled growl. "I wish those voices would shut up."

"What voices?" Draco seemed thoroughly interested in his quirky way. "Potter going mad, that would be some story to tell! The Ministry would love to hear abo-"

"Don't you DARE tell anyone about it!" In a split of a second Harry's wand found itself probing against Malfoy's throat. Rage mixed with fear flown out of the boy's eyes, filling each and every cell of his body. "Try telling them and I will not hesitate." To accentuate his point, he pushed the wand a bit deeper into the skin, causing the blonde boy to yelp.

"What, are you going to kill me?" The rusty, breathless voice filled the room, and Draco's eyes fixed themselves on Harry's. "Go ahead; I have nothing to live for anyway."

Surprised, Potter let down his wand, although his heart was still racing dangerously. Neither of the boys broke the eye contact – it was as if the two of them were speaking with their eyes and their eyes only. The room seemed to shake from the intense messages they were sending each other. Finally, Malfoy spoke up.

"We have to finish the potion." Harry just nodded his head softly and watched as the other boy fulfilled the last steps of the instructions, filled a flask with the potion and laid it down on Snape's desk while he put the equipment away. "What's that on your arms, Potter?"

The brunette just realised that the sleeves of his jumper rolled down as he was placing the cauldron on a high shelf. Embarrassed, he pulled them down and held them. "Just bruises from Quidditch practice."

"Liar." Draco walked up to the shorter boy and pulled Harry's sleeve up, shortly after pulling up his. A deep, black Dark Mark decorated his left forearm, and its eyes seemed to drill into Potter's eyes as he stared at the image in shock. "We all have our secrets, Potter. Funnily enough, our ones seem to hide in the same place on our bodies." The boy grabbed Harry's forearm firmly and trailed over the burns, making Harry hiss. "Those ones were caused by a spell, but those ones are real fire burns." Instantly, Draco's right sleeve rolled up and Harry could trace over the numerous, red lines across the blonde boy's arms.

Harry stared at the scars until the sleeve rolled back down. "Say, Potter," the boys looked one another in the eyes for the last time. "This is not me proposing to be friends or anything, don't get the wrong idea… But maybe we could help each other cope." The brunette's eyes grew to the size of galleons. "I have some good ways of coping that I have collected over the years."

"…Alright." Harry grabbed his bag and flung it over his shoulder, directing himself towards the door. "But we can't tell anyone about this agreement, understood?"

"Potter, I'm evil, not stupid."

The young brunette just chuckled and, in a much better mood, headed towards his Common Room.