The Room obliged them by turning into a replica of Madame Puddifoot's, which Harry detested, but Narcissa seemed delighted by. Harry tried to call Dobby to ask him to bring food, but Dobby took one look at Narcissa, squeaked and disappeared, so Harry called Kreacher instead. Kreacher, of course, was more than delighted to serve a member of the Black family. He bowed so low to the ground upon seeing Narcissa, that Harry started to worry about Kreacher's back. But then, Kreacher had easily swung the Sword of Gryffindor and destroyed the locket, so he clearly wasn't as fragile as he looked.

After about ten minutes, Kreacher returned, bearing a tray laden with several cups of tea and multiple different cakes and pastries. They had to pull up a second table in order to fit everything, but Harry thought that was a good problem to have.

"Thank you, Kreacher," Narcissa said. "Your service is as excellent as I remember it." Kreacher bowed again and Harry could have sworn he saw him wipe away a tear as he left them. Narcissa busied herself pouring tea and handing out sweets. When Harry tried to help, she waved him away.

"Mother takes tea very seriously," Draco said.

"Draco," she said. "You of all people should know that I take all meals very seriously." Draco rolled his eyes.

"Yes, mother loves to entertain," he said drolly.

"You say that like you haven't thrown some of the best parties in our year," Harry said.

"Draco," Narcissa said slowly.

"I'm sorry," Harry said. "I don't have parents. Is that not something you should say someone's mother?"

"Would you have said it to Mrs. Weasley?" Draco asked.

"Well, no, but mostly because Ron doesn't throw very good parties."

"Was that you at Christmas Lunch?" Narcissa asked. "Pansy seemed very vague when I asked her about it earlier." Harry glanced at Draco in a way that he hoped didn't telegraph the truth.

"She knows," Draco said with a small shake of his head. "I don't know how she knows, but she knows."

"In which case, yes it was," Harry said.

"Then I suppose you've experienced my hospitality first hand." Narcissa picked up her teacup and takes a delicate sip. Her nose wrinkles briefly in delight.

"I have and it was wonderful, even despite the dickhead at the other end of the table."

"Harry," Draco cried, but Narcissa only laughed.

"I see why you like him," Narcissa said to Draco, putting a hand on her son's arm. Draco gave her a tight smile and Harry noticed that the tips of his ears had turned red. He found it oddly endearing. Of course, it was surreal to be sitting in the Room of Requirement talking to Narcissa Malfoy, his boyfriend's mother — and Merlin the fact that she was his boyfriend's mother crashed over him all at once. Was he making a good impression? He thought back over what he'd said since they arrived and thought that, no, he wasn't. Luckily, both Malfoys appeared to be ignoring him now, so he just busied himself with drinking his tea.

"I know Father won't approve," Draco said quietly.

"He'll come around," Narcissa said. "Of course, we shan't tell him for the time being." Draco nodded. "I shall tell my sister, who I am sure will tell," her eyes slid to Harry for a moment, "the dickhead, that you are only pretending to be friends with Harry. That should keep them at bay for the moment, but Draco it does make it more imperative that you at least complete one of your tasks."

"I'm working on it," Draco said. "I won't say any more than that so you have some plausible deniability." Narcissa's eyebrows knit together for a moment before her features smoothed out again.

The rest of the morning passed uneventfully. Harry didn't stick his foot in his mouth too many more times and by the time she left, Narcissa seemed to at the very least tolerate him, if not outright like him.

"Don't do anything rash," she said to Draco before she left, sweeping him into her arms.

"Never, Mother," he said. Harry just hoped they could keep that promise.

If anyone noticed Harry's transformation from a person who wore ill fitting clothes into someone who was always impeccably (or at least decently) dressed, even when in uniform, no one said anything. Harry assumed everyone had read the stupid Prophet article. Well, almost no one said anything.

"Harry," Seamus said on the second day of the Spring term. "Where did these fabulous clothes come from?"

"I wouldn't call them fabulous," Harry said.

"Was it Draco?"

"Of course it was Draco. Do you think Ron helped me buy these?"

"Oi," Ron said.

"Harry." This was Dean. Harry turned around horrified. He had forgotten that Dean was in the room. "Why was Draco Malfoy shopping with you?"

"We're friends now," Harry said.

"Yes, I gleaned that from the article, and from, you know, being around you two at parties. Is that all it is?"

"Yes," Harry said quickly. Had he said it too quickly? He wasn't sure. Dean walked over to Seamus and whispered something that sounded suspiciously like,

"They're totally fucking," to which Seamus laughed. But Seamus didn't say anything else, and for that Harry was grateful. He wondered if he should tell Dean. Everyone else in the room knew. But already too many people knew. Ron, Hermione, Blaise, Pansy, Neville, Seamus, Justin, Colin… Fuck. They really were bad at this.

Harry looked over at Ron who shrugged. So supportive. He made a split second decision that he hoped he wouldn't regret.

"Fine," Harry said. "We're dating."

"Ooh," Dean said, waggling his eyebrows at Harry. "Tell me! How did you tame that Slytherin bad boy?"

"Dear lord, Dean," Harry muttered, his face turning red, as Seamus fell off his bed laughing. "You are the worst."

"Is that why I keep finding cashmere socks lying around?" Neville asked.

"Those are my socks I'll have you know," Ron said. "They were my Christmas present from Draco."

"Blimey, you lot are good friends, aren't you?" Dean said.

"I think it's nice," said Neville.

"So the only horcrux left is the snake, right?" Blaise asked during their next Potter training on Tuesday. They had wasted no time in getting back to their training schedule once the school term started up again.

"I think so," Hermione said. They were in the Room of Requirement, chatting before the real practice began. Ron scrunched his face up and his original blackboard reappeared with a pop. He picked up a piece of chalk and crossed out numbers four and five, the cup and the diadem respectively. He wrote 'snake' next to the number six. Then he circled it.

"How do we get to the snake?" Blaise asked.

"That's a very good question," Harry said. "I don't know."

"When we lure the Death Eaters into the school we'll just have to hope he brings the snake? Have we heard back from Dumbledore about that idea yet?" Blaise asked. Harry shook his head.

"Should we perhaps ask about it again?" Pansy suggested.

"Probably," Harry said. He ran a hand through his hair. He really didn't want to go to Dumbledore right now. He wanted for them to practice some more advanced shield charms today.

"I still can't believe we've managed to destroy all the other horcruxes," Ron said. "What efficiency!"

"Well, there are six of us, Ron," Hermione said.

"Still. Bloody brilliant. That's what it is."

"Ron's not wrong," Draco said, which caused Ron to look up in surprise. "We are rather brilliant." He lifted the corner of his mouth in a satisfied smirk.

"Agreed," Harry said. "And now that we've finished congratulating ourselves on how great we are, we should work on shield charms." There was a smattering of grumbles, but it didn't take long before they were on all their feet. Harry walked them through the basics before instructing them to cast their shields. He walked around, correcting and encouraging as needed, until he was sure they had mastered it. Then, he started shooting scores of stinging jinxes at them. Only Hermione managed to keep him out.

"Constant vigilance," he said as Ron made a disgruntled face.

"Yeah, yeah," Ron muttered, rubbing his arm.

"Again."

It took them the rest of the evening, but by the end, all five of them could keep Harry's spells at bay. They left the Room of Requirement in high spirits and walked right into Seamus.

"Were you lot having a party that no one told me about?" he asked. Hermione rolled her eyes.

"Seamus, it's a Tuesday," she said.

"So?"

"So no, we were not having a party."

"It was Remedial Defense Against the Dark Arts," Harry said. Blaise spluttered his outrage at 'remedial' but Seamus just grinned.

"You planning to extend that to the rest of the DA again?" Seamus asked.

"Oh, I hadn't thought," Harry said, because he hadn't. He would be the first to admit that sometimes he could be slow to think of things, but he was a little surprised that Hermione hadn't mentioned it. "I can. If you'd like."

"We would," Seamus said. "Not that Snape's not good." It was true. Snape had blown away all of their expectations as Defense Against the Dark Arts professor. "But as much as I want to ignore it, I can't help but feel like we're in the calm before the storm. And I want to be ready when the storm comes."

"We should open it up to the rest of Slytherin too," Blaise said. "It's only fair." Harry nodded, distracted.

"Fine," he said. "Nothing too large though." Hermione laid a hand on Harry's arm.

"We'll figure it out," she said.

And that was how Harry came to lead two "Remedial Defense Against the Dark Arts" classes a week. Not that he would dare complain about it. At least not to anyone but Draco.

In the meantime, Draco, Blaise and Hermione put their heads together to come up with not only a way to fix the vanishing cabinet in the Room of Requirement, but also a way to create the permanent elevator into the Chamber of Secrets. Pansy, Ron and Harry (but mostly Pansy and Ron as Harry had to make lesson plans) strategized how best to lure Voldemort and his Death Eaters to different parts of the castle where they could then be defeated once and for all. (Ron claimed that this required a lot of chess, and Pansy indulged him.)

This last task was made more interesting when three weeks into the new term, Dumbledore called the six of them, McGonagall, and Snape, into his office and announced that he was dying.

"But Professor," Hermione protested. "How can you be so calm about that?"

"I am old, Miss Granger," Dumbledore said. "And when you get to my age, if one has a well organized mind, death is but the next great adventure. I've made my peace with this." Harry was quite sure he'd heard Dumbledore say something similar before, but he wasn't entirely sure when.

"Well that makes my task easier," Draco said. Harry kicked him. "What? It means I don't have to do it."

"I never intended for you to do it, Draco," Snape said. "I was going to step in before you did anything serious."

"What?" Draco sounded so outraged at this, that Harry found it hard not to laugh, but he didn't out of sensitivity to Dumbledore. After all, they were discussing his death.

"Draco, you're sixteen."

"So's Harry and everyone expect him to kill Voldemort."

"I'm the Chosen One," Harry said, even though he thought Draco had a point. Why did he have to do it? And on top of that, it wasn't like anyone had taught him how to even do the killing curse. Of course they hadn't: it was illegal. But it did beg the question as to how he was expected to kill Voldemort.

"Mr. Malfoy," Dumbledore said. "You're forgetting that one important thing again."

"Yes, yes, teamwork," Draco said. "That's assuming everything goes to plan."

"Plan?" Snape asked.

"Oh yes, we have a plan," Ron said.

"Mr. Weasley," McGonagall said sharply. "What do you mean by that?"

"Well, Professor," he said. "Pansy and I have been strategizing how best to get the Death Eaters, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, and his snake into Hogwarts and how to split them up once they're here. We reckon that we should encourage them to use the Vanishing Cabinet in Borgin and Burkes once Draco, Blaise and Hermione fix it. This has the benefit of only allowing a few people through at a time. Once they emerge, we draw them out into the castle, so they become separated.

"Given that we spend all of our time at Hogwarts and have a very good understanding of the layout of the castle, we can lure the Death Eaters into hidden corridors or trap them in trick stairs, giving us the advantage. While many of them may have attended Hogwarts in their youth, it's likely been a long time since any of them set foot here."

"I always forget which ones are the trick stairs when we come back after the summer hols," Harry added.

"Plus," Ron continued. "We'll have a numbers advantage on them if they're coming through the cupboard in twos and threes."

"I'm still not sure I am entirely comfortable with luring Death Eaters to a school," McGonagall said. "Albus, I don't care if you think it's a good idea. It's dangerous for the students."

"Professor," Hermione said gently. "Being at Hogwarts is dangerous. And yet we're all still here." McGonagall fixed her with a thin lipped glare.

"Be that as it may, Miss Granger. I cannot in good conscience condone a plan that puts students in danger."

"As we've mentioned before," Ron said, as though there had been no interruption. "Any of the students who are not of age — except Harry, who, sorry mate, you're just ridiculously young — will be hidden in the Chamber of Secrets."

"I also will not be going down there," Draco said.

"Mr. Malfoy," McGonagall started to say.

"No," Draco said firmly. "You can't make me. Not if Harry is in danger." As he said this, he reached out and took Harry's hand. McGonagall seemed unsurprised if displeased by his insistence.

"We will also give the Order of the Phoenix several weeks' notice of the day we're planning this and we will set up apparition points in the Forbidden forest, or in the Hogs Head which will allow them to arrive quickly and discreetly."

"But how are you going to convince He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named to come at all?" McGonagall asked.

"That's where I come in," Draco said. "I will tell my mother to hint to Aunt Bella that I'm close to completing my tasks and that once Professor Dumbledore is gone, Harry will be vulnerable."

"I can report similar things," Snape added. "And I can insinuate that it will be easier to try to kill Mr. Potter in the chaos immediately following Albus's death."

"Brilliant," Ron said. "Uh, no offense Professor," he added, looking at Dumbledore.

"None taken, Mr. Weasley," Dumbledore said. "I only wish I could be here to witness this in person. I think you have a very good chance of defeating him."

"Really Albus?" McGonagall asked. "You really approve of bringing Death Eaters here?"

"As much as it pains me to admit it, I think Voldemort would relish the idea of killing Harry here." At those words, Draco tightened his grip on Harry's hand. "I think he would jump at the opportunity and it might be the best chance that we have to end this war before it really begins." McGonagall crossed her arms and glared at Dumbledore but he held her gaze without blinking. After a long minute, McGongall sighed.

"Fine," she said. "But only if we do everything in our power as teachers to keep our students safe."

Harry squeezed Draco's hand and nodded once at him. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the others exchanging glances. Now the real planning could begin.


I am so so sorry this is so terribly overdue. The real world has been very distracting recently. I might have to move to one chapter a month for a bit until I get everything sorted again.