It's short, but to get back into the swing of things, it might as well be.

Dedicated to Non Innocent Angel.

Disclaimer: Own no Harry. Profit no money. Sue no Kitty.

Warning(s): preslash, OOC!main characters, ridiculousness for the sake of ridiculousness, insanity

Minor edit: 12/15/2014

"Ricky says hi," Harry commented, still chewing, during breakfast the morning after the second Task. An owl had flown in with a rare letter for him, and Draco hadn't had enough curiosity to read it over his shoulder. Which appeared to have been a mistake. "I think he's in love with Tonks."

"Give me that." Draco snatched the parchment and scanned it hastily, mouthing the words without thinking about it. From the way Ricky had praised Tonks' actions and er- assets- Draco could see what Harry was inferring, or rather what Ricky was blatantly implying, but, either way, "It'd never work. He's far too young for her." When Harry shrugged, another thought occurred to the snarky blonde, "And why is he writing you to say he's safe at Durmstrang?" After taking another bite, Harry held up the empty envelope, addressed to "Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy."

"Oh?" Harry supplied for him when Draco appeared to have lost control of his verbal functions.

"Oh," Draco repeated blankly.

"Yeah, your cousin still loves you Draco. I just figured with the random letter nonsense you got to have earlier, I deserved a shot." The explanation was far from explicatory- to Draco's point of view- but one concept came across clearly.

"Right; I- I still can't tell you about what that letter said. It's just- I panicked, because of something that was in it, but I've sort of calmed down and looked at it rationally since then, so…" Draco was confusing himself at this point, and offered tentatively, "Sorry?"

Ron tilted slowly around Harry to look at Draco with widened eyes.

For his part, Harry just nodded and kept eating, "Delayed apology accepted."

There was a pause as Draco processed the nonchalance. "You weren't even mad, were you?"

"Not one bit," Harry replied without hesitation. He understood family things and politics better than Draco gave him credit for. After some thought. After a lot of thought. After asking Blaise while Draco was distracted.

"…I just apologized for nothing."

"Yes, you did."

"…I hate you."

"No, you don't."

After a second's thought, Draco put down his fork with a clatter, "Damn it."

Harry's smugness was highly unappreciated with his messy mouthed grin and unnecessarily triumphant, "Told you."

Draco really had thought about his precarious home situation quite thoroughly, and he figured not even his father could fault him for 'acting' to 'soften up' someone who was just noble enough to sacrifice themselves to bring down another they deemed evil enough. He was fairly certain Harry had never seen him as quite that evil, but the letter he'd sent home while Harry slept had been received positively. He hadn't expected his father to fall so easily for it, having foreseen a long and tension-laden exchange of letters until his loyalty to his father had been reaffirmed, but it appeared his father was as desperate for an explanation as Draco was to give one.

Good thing Draco had stumbled upon those infertility curses in his less morally developed phase.

Actually, good thing Draco hadn't thought that around a teacher with any working knowledge of Legilimancy. He really needed to get a handle on that thought sorting Professor Snape had made a game of when he was younger.

Naturally, just thinking of the topic caused any thoughts he'd suppressed to spring to the forefront of his mind just as he and Harry were sitting down in the History of Magic classroom that day. Ron was back to sitting with Hermione, but at the table behind Draco and Harry.

"Harry, stay awake," the bushy-haired Gryffindor hissed urgently, "Professor Binns has been much more aware than usual."

"Mm-hm," Harry replied without opening his eyes as the cold desk cooled his strangely warm forehead. Maybe he was starting to get a fever due to Draco dragging him over to the probably plague-ridden Slytherin table so often. Actually, there's a great line to tell Draco. The look on his face if Harry said that he literally made him sick.

Or it could be some weird after effect of the jade.

"You might want to stay awake, mate," Ron's eagerness in backing up Hermione earned him a warm smile from the bookworm, but it was quickly dropped when Ron continued, "Sean didn't disappear after the Task."

"Sean?" She echoed.

"The leprechaun is where?" Harry mumbled, luckily into a dry set of notes. Draco tried not to imagine what could have happened had there been ink on Harry's lips to wipe off, but it was something like thinking of trying not to think of a tree.

Maple. Oak. Yew. Elder. And so on.

His point? Exactly.

Anyway, Ron was for once utterly oblivious to Draco's inner line of thinking. Perhaps he needed sleep deprivation to become observant.

"He's in this very room, Harry," Ron replied with a painful looking smile that seemed to want to burst the seams of his control and become the grin it was meant to be.

A moment of connecting the dots he'd separated with the overlong train of thought, and Draco realized the little Scottish menace was somewhere in the classroom, waiting to pounce. He shivered in a strange empathy for the longhaired girls, innocently writing and sleeping at their desks. If something leprechaun-like happened to his own perfect gel helmet, he didn't know what he would do. On that note, he should probably be grateful Harry hadn't discovered hair ruffling.

"And what is he doing here, Ron?" Harry asked quietly so as not to alert Binns, yet still not completely rising from his comfortable face plant.

"He's brought the others."

A whooping arose from the back of the classroom then, and others joined in from the sides.

"For Scotland!" Ron cried, standing with one fist in the air.

"For Scotland!" The leprechauns echoed, and pounced.